Stephen Downes posted a note regarding this video via Karl Kapp. It brings back many memories for me.

Maish Nichani has written a telling post on inner spam filters. He was inspired by an article in the Scientific American, Your Inner Spam Filter. Maish succinctly relates that there are two types of people, “those who can remember large amounts of information (high-capacity individuals) and those who can’t (low-capacity individuals). The draw on research and show that it’s not that the high-capacity individuals have a larger store, it’s just that they are better at ignoring the spam that comes their way! In fact they found that some low-capacity individuals were holding more information than high-capacity individuals.” Which am I?

Is this a skill or an ability that we can teach to our students? This is certainly a skill for the 21st century. Kyle Barrow published the chart shown above last May. I wonder what data generated the chart yet assuming it is accurate it is quite clear that we need to impart to our children the ability to filter out the noise and eliminate the spam in the first instance.

Sketching on the whiteboard during Year 10 history today. Teaching the history of the womens’ movement in Australia. Exchanging ideas with the students regarding the glass ceiling. I asked the students to create a diagram that they felt illustrated the concept. I sketched my own. Consisted of stick figures.

As I sketched one of my students exclaimed, “Whoever invented stick figures was a genius!”.

It was a revelatory moment for her and also for me. That person was a genius.

Dean Groom in his role as Howard as he weaves his OzNZ disciples down the PBL pathway

Sat in on an OzNZ educators flash meeting. It seemed I arrived first and rather idiotically I clicked on the Start Broadcast button and sat there like a stunned mullet for a bit until I realised I had hijacked the opening of the proceedings. Oh well, I will not lose any sleep over at that.

There was discussion regarding Second Life and also Interactive Whiteboards. I was looking forward to more talk on SL actually. SL intrigues me somewhat.

Some educators rave about SL. Others deplore it. Two documentaries regarding virtual worlds and Second Life that aired on the 6th August on SBS TV here in Australia, the Age of Avatars and Wonderland: Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love did not go down too well in some education sectors. PodLove may have perturbed some educators as well.

Then as the online discussion continued, Dean Groom, provided us all with an excellent and impromptu live example of PBL. We were all involved as we gradually collaborated to solve the problem set up by Dean. One gradually took on a role as we sought a solution to the conundrum. Dean is a real practitioner. Impressive. It was a good get together. I lurked more than contributed. Next time I should be more proactive. A number of sites were referenced during the meeting:

AUGrid
Machinima
OSGrid
GenerateWebSite
Skoolabarate
Digital Ethnography

I participated in what I believe was the first OzNZ flash meeting back in April. That was a interesting experience as well.

This evening’s meeting has been archived here. The OzNZ educators group is well supported with a wiki, diigo group and a ning.

Addendum: Discovered this nice piece on Machinima on the SBS TV website. May interest you.

Recently Bill Kerr wrote a thoughtful post on the Cotton wool culture. This is a culture in which children are mollycoddled by society and kept out of harm’s way. His post was inspired by an article in the Guardian, ‘Kids need the adventure of risky play‘ [print]. I commented on Bill’s post and he responded with a selection of related links which I have listed at the foot of this post.

The article in the Mail online, ‘How children lost the right to roam in four generations‘, is particularly telling. It sets out quite clearly how from one generation to the next children are not roaming as far as their parents and grandparents. The article also mentions how walking through parks and gardens can reduce stress levels. It mentions that adding plants to your environment can also reduce stress. Recently, news that the German government plans to ban the Kinder Surprise chocolate egg as they pose a health risk to children has also generated comment regarding the cotton wool culture.

The view from our home in Bellambi looking towards the Pacific Ocean back in the 1960s.

Now, when I was seven our family moved house to a place called Bellambi. Between us and the ocean were open areas and an old rifle range that was rarely used. There were beaches, creeks, rock platforms, bush tracks and large sandhills.

The same stretch of road in 2008. Open space replaced with houses.

It has been turned into a suburb now. One end of our street was actually a dirt road back then. All that free space has largely disappeared. This Google map shows the area today.

Where I roamed as a young boy. Click on the map to view a larger map with a scale and labels.

As kids we would roam around the area. There was so much to do and so much to explore. We would go fishing, swimming, sliding down the sandhills on cardboard or sheets of masonite, look for bullet shells, let off fire crackers, search for geckoes, build massive sand-castles and so on. We would be gone all day, returning home at dusk. No worries, no fears. [We even smoked cigarettes at times, something I never took up thank goodness. You could buy a packet of Rothman’s Tens for 21 cents. We would look for empty drink bottles. The bottles were worth three cents each. Seven bottles could buy us a packet of cigarettes. We even smoked at primary school in Year 6 at St Columbkille’s when we were on incinerator duty.]

When I was eleven years of age I began riding my brother’s bike around the area. Peter had recently resurrected his old bike and I was keen to learn how to ride the old thing. When I turned twelve I received a Speedwell bike for my birthday and the area in which I roamed with my siblings and friends extended regularly to seven or more kilometres. I remember riding up the hills of Corrimal to the home of my good friend, Robert.

Even before that I used to ride my Cyclops scooter to the home of my friend Peter in Corrimal. At the age of 10 a group of us climbed Brokers’ Nose, on the escarpment west of the Illawarra. My sister and I rode our bikes from primary school on the highway in Corrimal all the way home to Bellambi. Sometimes we even walked home, a journey of several kilometres, if we missed the school bus. We were aged 10 or so at the time.

Things have certainly changed. How far did you roam as a child? How far did your parents and grandparents roam? Would be happy to read your own stories…

Perhaps this could be a meme, How far I roamed as a child… Would you like to help me get it started?

Addendum: Today I was interviewed by ABC radio here in the Illawarra. One of their interns discovered this blog post yesterday and arranged for an interview with Nick Rheinberger during the ‘Mornings‘ show. The interview went live to air as I was teaching my Year Eleven Ancient History class. The interview covered such points as real versus perceived dangers, the degree of violence in the world, the role of the media, taking risks, and the debate over to what extent one should allow children to freely roam. At the conclusion of the interview I returned to teaching. There was a talkback session on the topic with the general public on the radio afterwards. I am hoping to secure a recording of that as I was not able to listen. I shall add links and audio as they come to hand. I added some more links below.

Links:

Bill Kerr ~ Cotton wool culture; just the facts about online youth victimisation; 5 or 6 dangerous things you should let your children do [inspired by..]

Ted Talks ~ Gever Tully: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

The Guardian ~ Kids need the adventure of ‘risky’ play

Waraku Education ~ Playing with stuff

Sydney Morning Herald ~ Charlie Brooker: Egg the youngsters on so that life tastes better

Sydney Morning Herald ~ Surprise ruled bad for health

BBC ~ Analysis: Rearing children in captivity

Times Online: Children who have everything, except freedom to play outside

Mail Online: Children who play unsupervised, turn out fitter and more sociable, study says

Spiked: Don’t blame parents for ‘Cotton wool kids’

Times Online: Help! How afraid should I be of stranger danger?

Lenore Skenazy: Free Range Kids

Times Online: Let ‘cotton-wool kids’ hang out on the streets

Times Online: Our cotton-wool kids

Telegraph.co.uk ~ The danger from our ‘cotton wool kids’

Telegraph.co.uk ~ Get a life and take sensible risks, says safety chief

Guardian.co.uk ~ Cotton wool revolution: Instilling resilience in children is a vital lesson but only makes sense in a supportive society

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis  ~ The Capable Project 

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis  ~ Children who play unsupervised are fitter

Babies online ~ Unsupervised Play is Good for Children

HTI ~ Cotton Wool Kids

Times Online ~ ‘Bring back the conker fight to re-educate cottonwool kids‘

Spiked ~ Unwrapping the ‘cotton wool’ kids

Created a tip sheet for Photoshop Elements ~ version 3 admittedly but still useful for later incarnations of the software. I am running a workshop for Year 6 students from a neighbouring primary school on Monday. They have been collaborating on a project with our Year 7 students. They would like to repair and modify some photographs, hence the workshop. You may find the tip sheet useful. It is a pdf file ~ about 1.3mb. I created it using Comic Life and ‘printed it to pdf’.

Well, had a quick look at Bimbl yet I am not impressed. Should the team at Posterous be worried?

Posted by email from Watershed Lite (posterous)

I just received a phone call from a friend who is thinking of leaving the teaching profession. They have been teaching for many years. They mentioned that they enjoy being in the classroom yet there are times when sharing spaces with others in their workplace drives them to distraction and causes them to feel considerable anxiety. They feel that the worldview of some of their colleagues seems to be narrow. That they are missing the big picture. They also lamented that the backstabbing that happens in their school was terrible. There was a distinct lack of collegiality between the various faculties and within faculties. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

My friend mentioned that workplaces can be toxic at times. Some times it is just specific sections of the workplace. Some areas can become too insular and self-serving.

They also mentioned the “tall poppy“ syndrome. Have you ever noticed the “tall poppy” syndrome  in your workplace? My friend relayed that it is alive and well in some sections of their workplace. They said “Heaven help you if you are undertaking a postgraduate degree or a certificate course to further your qualifications or skill set. You will be criticised by some colleagues, directly or indirectly”. Isn’t that a real shame?

They added that some sections of their workplace have an unwritten policy that members of staff should not be nominated for excellence in teaching awards as it is considered to be non-egalitarian. It is argued that is not good to see staff rewarded when all the staff are working just as hard. The opponents to the excellence in teaching awards argue why should individual staff be singled out for mention? It is not fair to the others they state. What do you think? I feel teachers that excel in their field should be rewarded. They deserve it.

I know that some teachers feel concerned about these trends in the workplace. My friend certainly does. But what can a teacher do about it? They have to work with those same colleagues each day. They cannot complain about it. Their life will become miserable. They may as well hand their colleagues a big stick and say “Hit me.”

Updated the Year 9 and 10 history pages last night. Added some links relevant to the local and national sites studies currently being undertaken by the students in those years.

Year Nine History links

Year Ten History links

Some of the sites are worthy, others not so worthy. The students will provide feedback on that. Included some Wikipedia entries as well. Referencing WIkipedia does not always go down well in some academic quarters. Often the external links at the foot of a Wikipedia page are useful.

I shall encourage the students to suggest more links. If you would like to suggest some local Illawarra History site or Australian historical sites of national interest please comment below.

Our kitchen is being replaced. On Friday our old kitchen was removed. Back to the original walls and floors. We temporarily covered the floor to prevent accidents with nails protruding from the wooden part of the floor. Parts of the wall were removed. Inside one of the wall cavities were pages from a newspaper dated March 28th, 1978. I flicked through the pages and the items that caught my eye are illustrated below.

Advertisements for calculators that still give the impression of the revolutionary and brilliant this technology. Calculations… Casio solves them scientifically! I think our family obtained its first calculator in 1977.

Then there is this advertisement for a 48cm colour television with a price tag of $599-00AUD. That was an enormous amount of money back then. That may have been equivalent to a month’s salary for many people, perhaps more. The advertiser has used a photograph of ABBA on the TV screen. Love the AM/FM transistor radio and the bedside AM/FM clock radio. You still see those clock-radios in motels.

Finally, an article about the copyright problems posed by the rich man’s new toy, the video tape recorder. The article indicated thet there would be legal battles between manufactuers, television stations and home consumers of the product. Things have certainly changed in some respects.

We are going to put a current copy of the local paper, wrapped in plastic, back in the wall cavity for the next renovators to discover years from now. I wish there was an anachronism lying around I could throw in for good measure.