EdTechUK

Learners as teachers as learners

A nice companion story for the children teaching adults the non-lethal use of PowerPoint that has recently been doing the rounds (thanks Albert! Thanks Stephen!): 7th of February is Safer Internet Day in the Netherlands, where:

"...an initiative for schools has been launched called "Ik zal je leren!" ("I will teach you!"). Various studies have pointed out that many parents and teachers are hardly aware of their children's activities on the internet, while the time children spend on the internet is growing rapidly. Many adults feel insecure about using the internet, and an interesting phenomenon arises: children often know more about the internet than the people who care for them.

For this reason, the Dutch awareness campaign Surf op Safe is going to turn the classical pedagogical patterns upside down: on 7 February 2006, children are going to teach their parents and teachers about their activities on the internet. The idea behind this switching of roles is to stimulate communication between children and adults about their internet use. By becoming more involved in the internet activities of their children, adults will be better able to discuss possible risks the internet may bring about.

Throughout the country children will teach adults. Schools are also invited to receive media, celebrities and public figures such as politicians to follow the lesson.

At this moment instructions are being developed for children as well as teachers, and for two levels: one for primary schools, and another one for secondary schools. All schools receive a mailing with information on the Safer internet Day.

Let's hope these kind of initiatives soon become common practice.

Yahoo RSS: feeding the consumer?

What's wrong with this picture?

Most bloggers and educators reading this will spot it right away. Do Scott Gatz & Yahoo really not get that that the web is fundamentally different to mainstream media, and that the main attraction for those of us who spend the most time here is community, content production and collaboration - & the huge majority are not here for monitization opportunities or a big following. Or is clear separation of content producers from passive consumers just an easy sell for the marketing people?  Are the marketeers really that unsophisticated?

Anyway, I got side tracked. This was supposed to be a post about this diagram:

Which I saw over at Richard MacManus's Read/WriteWeb on Scott Gatz's recent Yahoo RSS release presentation - Yahoo's 2005 RSS launch fest, although to be honest, as a long-time Yahoo user, the last year seemed more exciting in slide form. The Yahoo blogs launch in June was pretty disappointing for example (you can see my evaluation on my web-based services blog comparison chart).

BlogSafety

Via Will Richardson ("put the blog down Will...walk away from the blog...") Blogger hosted BlogSafety blog by Larry Magid, which takes a pro-education stance to the thorny issue of teen blogging, providing teachers and parents with a bunch of reassuring, good advice resources including  Safe Blogging Advice for [non-blogging] Parents, a Teachers Guide, Teens Guide (I'd take the word rules out of that if I were you Larry). Part of BlogSafety.com, which also links to advice from the excellent Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Ana/mia (annorexia/bulimic) Communities

OK. I've been immersed in community recently, running the Edblog Awards an all. And for me it's been a positive, engaging and constructive experience (all of it, including the disagreements). I've also been very involved in (and am committed to continuing to be involved in) anti-censorship and access issues, particularly those where children young adults and their rights are concerned.

This post then has been a while coming because it's something that still bugs the hell out of me, and something that I am working towards being able to articulate my objection to in a reasonable, or at lest, un-harmful, way. I've been following Liz Ditz recent series on blogging and Moral Panic with real interest, not least because it ties in well with issues that the edublog community are reckoning with and organising in response to right now. Part IV - Real Risks is out now and addresses bullying and victimisation - topics that we really need to face up to right now. What it leaves out, and what I'd like to draw attention to here, is equally as complex: Identity communities that are life threatening or explicitly nihilistic. I really, really don't want to match these communities in terms of their own (sometimes very accurately portrayed) melodrama, at the same time I'm totally weirded out that no one else is posting about ana/mia (or ana/mia/ed) blogs and blog rings. Ana/mia is short for (& I'm sure that some of you reading this will already know) anorexia, bulimia, ed for Eating Disorder.

It was about six years ago that I became aware of ana/mia sites, and of course the ease and accessibility of web 2.0 was going to extend to these kind of sites and girls and women (and some men) in search of these communities, this kind of voice. I didn't really want to think about it, suddenly, I find myself thinking about it more and more.

Ana/mi blogs and blog rings - you can find a whole load, covering Live Journal, Xanga and MSN Spaces blogs and communities. It isn't hard to find them - you can search under ana/mia or look under diet. They typically consist of tips for hiding not eating from the people around you, reports about not eating, and pictures of models and anorexics. This is a formula that hasn't changed in the last however many years.

I'm certainly not putting this post forward as a reason we need to crack down on young peoples internet access even further. I really want to be able to engage in a realistic dialogue about how the internet is being used by children and young people, including all the crappy, hard to deal with ways, because I know that this is part of a wider dialogue about how we educate and engage them in society and politics. So I want to make it clear that I'm not judging these bloggers or shouting "eat some pies!" at them, neither of which would make the slightest difference to when this current crop of bloggers live or die - neither am I at all pro-ana. It's obvious that they get a lot of the same benefits from blogging as I do - community building, self affirmation, belonging. And maybe one in fifty of these blogs are recovery based. But...

Edublog Awards 2005 - Winners

We’ve just wrapped up the second international Edublog Awards. Many, many thanks to everyone who nominated, voted, and edublogged this year! There's now a ton of stuff over at the Award site, and you can listen to the recording of yesterdays awards event over at EdTechTalk.

During the awards Dave Cormier contributed his rundown of the top ten edublog stories of 2005.

I’m also on the lookout for edublogging activists who want to help out next year! Click through if you fancy being involved in the design and delivery of a community based international award.

The International Edublog Awards Winners 2005

* Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme 2005

James Farmer: Edublogs

* Best newcomer 2005

Konrad Glogowski: Blog of proximinal development

* Most influential post, resource or presentation 2005

George Siemens: Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation

* Best designed/most beautiful edublog 2005

D’Arcy Norman: D’Arcy Norman Dot Net

* Best library/librarian blog 2005

Joyce Valenza: Joyce Valenza’s NeverEnding Search

* Best teacher blog, joint winners 2005

Konrad Glogowski: Blog of proximinal development

Anne Davis: Edublog Insights

* Best audio and/or visual blog 2005

Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow: Ed Tech Talk

* Best example/ case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning 2005

Thomas Hawke, Thomas Stiff, Susan Stiff, Diane Hammond (YES I Can! Science team): Polar Science

* Best group blog 2005

Rudolf Amman, Aaron Campbell, Barbara Dieu: Dekita.org

* Best individual blog 2005

Stephen Downes: OLDaily

Taliban guerrillas targeting schools

Last Thursday a male teacher was dragged out of his classroom in the district of Helmand, Afghanistan, and executed by Taliban guerrillas for refusing to stop teaching girls. On Saturday, guerrillas attacked another school in the region, opening fire on teachers, and killing a guard and an 18-year-old male student. 

The Taliban ban on the education of girls continues to curtail and threaten the rights of the Afghanistan people, 4 years after their overthrow by US-led forces - Operation Enduring Freedom. Schools are being burnt down. 

The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is one organization that have been documenting and fighting human rights abuses in Afghanistan, and you can find plenty of information on what's been going on over there at their site. Human Rights Watch recently pointed up that the first democratically elected Parliament in 30 years, which convenes in Kabul today, is dominated by warlords linked to serious human rights abuses. They've also produced information about the participation of women in the elections.