Wind blowing

School educational board, programming for the now starting year.

Asked by the Principal to speak about the school web site, I end my improvised talk saying: "ah, and well, should anyone be interested in experimenting anything in the field of web applications in education, I've read and done some little things and I am available to share and work together...".

The Principal: "Well then it would be really good if we could organize an internal personnel-update course for those teachers who are interested in these topics!".

How can you not like a school like this?

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Wikis with fifteen-sixteen-agers

Just to get back in activity with the blog, I'm updating the last post.

Wikis with fifteen-sixteen-agers. We finished them and the wikis are (almost) ready and eventually I was able to sort the final questionnaires and put them together.

Four classes, four wikis, one about electrization, one about lightnings and two about equilibrium in fluids.

The work was arranged as follows:

1. researching infos to answer some questions raised by observing some phenomena
2. information accumulation, skimming, group rewriting processes, ending in a single document for every student/group containing all information deemed pertaining, necessary and sufficient to describe the subject
3. choosing key-words and mind-mapping
   
4. assigning key-words to students and writing of individual encyclopedic entries about key-word
5. wiki population with
   
1. texts
2. images and graphic elements
3. links according to the mind-map and more
   
6. reading and mutual peer editing of the encyclopedic entries
7. self-assessment about the quality of own work, teacher's assessment about the quality of work, classwork on contents with a questionnaire about appreciation

From a scientific point of view, this should only be the beginning of a methodologic process that should lead to experimental verification in lab of the explanations found to the phenomena.

For me, it is anyway a starting point. The interesting thing that I want to share are the results of the appreciation questionnaire. The question was:

Question 3: With the wiki activity we worked in quite an unusual way: try to balance the books about this methodology, expressing in particular your opinion about:
a) is it or is it not useful to learn more (and, in case, which kind of thigs can you learn better and which can you learn worse?)
b) is it or is it not useful to motivate you to study
c) which aspects of this work do you find more positive and which more critical
d) suggestions, various thoughts, your ideas about what we have done.

The results are interesting. 37 students took part. The answers were free and of various length, some following the scheme, other more original. Here is a summary of the answers.

Pros

• you can learn ICT (32)
• you can learn physics (22)
• it makes studying physics light (21)
• you get motivation from the fact that you are creating something (20)
• you learn to use the net in order to study and learn (14)
• you get to cooperate with your school mates, even when they live far away (14)
• it's different (13)
• you can go in depth with unknown words and concepts (10)
• you learn a method of work that will be useful in future (8)
• you share ideas (8)
• you are forced to pay attention to the connections between concepts (8)
• you reach plenty of specific and detailed information (7)
• you get motivated by using computers and the net (6)
• you can study in a creative and constructive way (5)
• you learn to cooperate (5)
• it facilitates theoretical learning (5)
• working so much on shared information you get to understand its contents (4)
• the product grows with everybody's contribution (4)
• it's accessible everywhere and always (3)
• you get to interact directly and at any time with the teacher (2)
• it makes your school innovative (2)
• you become curious about the final result (2)
• you are responsible of what you write (2)
• you produce your own studying materials (2)
• you can work alone or in a group (2)
• you improve the net (2)
• you learn how to evaluate and improve your and other mates' work (2)
• you share working methods (1)
• it motivates students who like working in groups and share (1)
• you get to use the school's ICT labs (1)
• you don't write with a pen but on a keyboard (1)
• you learn to express yourself in an appropriate way (1)
• it's easier than learning on books (1)
• it forces you to read everybody's work (1)

Cons

• it's difficult if you don't have a computer or an internet connection at home, or if the schools computers are slow or malfunctioning (16)
• technically editing isn't too easy (5)
• sometimes the information you find is not correct or appropriate or adequate or reliable (4)
• some can work more and others less, coordinating is not always easy (2)
• working in the PC room is distracting (2)
• sometimes you end working alone anyway (1)
• little practical learning (1)
• there's a risk that someone's contributions are mishandled by others (1)
• you go in too little depth regarding physics (1)
• someone can be unable to study on a PC (1)
• the topic wasn't interesting (1)
• you learn well your own contribution but not the others' (1)
• not enough time to absorb the contents (1)

Suggestions

• work like this more frequently (30)
• use this method in other subjects or topics (4)
• make the wikis accessible to everyone, not only to our classes (3)
• keep changing groups (2)
• build a social network (1)
• build a gaming site (1)
• improve graphics (1)
• the school should provide tools for everyone to have an experience like this (1)
• choose better topics (1)
• insert exercises (1)
• insert summaries (1)
• insert lesson notes (1)
• use IM services (1)

Feels like it's a good first time. Although I have some corrections and steerings to think of for the next time. In a next post I'll focus on these.

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Physics on Classroom 2.0

Translation of post "Fisica su Classroom 2.0" of March 28th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

On Classroom 2.0 there is a new interesting discussion about which 2.0 tools can be more suitable for teaching physics. If you want to follow it, it's here.

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Moodle in a second year scientific studies "liceo"

Translation of post "Moodle in seconda liceo scientifico" of March 28th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

Last summer I had installed Moodle on my personal domain, just to see how it works and if there are potentials for its use at school. This year I tried using it with my 14-16 y.o. students. I see the students don't feel bad about it.

Now, getting close to the end of the school year and with the growth of my interest in Web 2.0, I decided to give throttle. So I started two modules in my second classes using Moodle forums. The modules are quite similar, only the theme changes (and not much either, since they both circle around static electricity).

• Introduction in class: visualization of a physical phenomenon (electrization of a pen by friction, attraction of small pieces of paper).
• Formulation of possible explanations by students.
• Formulation of "crucial" questions by the teacher, to allow verification or falsification of explanations.
• Internet quest about the answers to the crucial questions; answers are posted on a specific Moodle forum.
• Organization of the answers by the teacher; the information found are simply gathered and only material repetitions are eliminated.

This is where we reached so far. The amount of information found is impressive. I realized, though, that a tool like a wiki could be more suitable for a work like this. So the following steps could be:

• Personal work on the global information file, so as to have a personal summary for each student.
• Creation of a glossary (or of a wiki) on the basis of the already found information.
• Comparison in the physics lab of other similar phenomena: so what explanation can we give?
  
• Meta: reflection about the work done, about the tools used, evaluation of the obtained learning.

I'll try to keep the blog updated about the state of the project.

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Online and local wikis - technical notes

Translation of post "Wiki online e in locale - note tecniche" of March 19th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

I knew hardly anything about wikis. To learn more I tried creating accounts at a couple of web sites offering free wiki spaces (pbwiki and wikispaces) and to install locally on my laptop some wiki servers: tikiwiki, dokuwiki, mediawiki.

I found pbwiki simpler, more customizable and overall more attractive, between the two candidates for a work-wiki (and I already started using it).

About local wikis, the only one that didn't give me trouble instaling on my Ubuntu box was dokuwiki, which I immediately adopted as a (network) home collaboration tool. Too bad it doesn't iron.

One of the good things of these technologies is exactly this: being able to learn by yourself, simply reading here and there and trying hands-on.

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Wikis and blogs

Translation of post "Wiki e blog" of March 17th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

In this wiki I found interesting ideas worth sharing.

Blog (from web log). An online diary where the writer (or writers) post articles or columns that are reachable, according to the settings, by anybody or by a selected group of users, and where readers (or a portion of them) can post comments taking part in a discussion. This site is a (rather poor, at present) example of a blog.

Wiki (from hawaiian, "quick", "fast"). It is a collection of structured information reachable by a set of people who can modify, edit, add to, the site's contents. Wikipedia is a (gigantic) example of a wiki.

What follows is just some night babbling of mine with no real supporting facts.

What educational uses could I find for these two lead characters of Web 2.0? The former is surely advisable for discussions, creative writing, somehow for any kind of activity where exchange and dialogue are central. Because of the journalistic form and the sequential line of posts, I think a blog could be useful for building individual distinct knowledges through sharing and discussing.

The latter is more useful in situations where there is a final goal to reach through successive approximations and in a collaborative way. Since many wiki services also offer discussion tools (for example about what a user modified), a wiki can be useful for cumulatively increasing a single unifiable collective knowledge, without a central role of chronology.

Focusing on the role of time, I notice a substantial duality of the two media: a wiki is a synchronic glance on a knowledge that is growing diachronically. A blog is a diachronic glance on different knowledges growing synchronically.

Focusing on the central element and the type of knowledge involved, a wiki is object-centered, and the object is singular (meaning that the content of a wiki is only one), whereas a blog is process-centered, and the process is plural (meaning that the knowledge-building processes are as many as the people involved).

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How to become a 21st Century Literate Educator

Translation of post "Come diventare un insegnante alfabetizzato del XXI secolo" of March 14th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

In his blog, David Warlick suggests a twelve-step path to become "a 21st Century Literate Educator". I interpret that this century needs some instructions, a learning path for teachers born and raised in the previous one.
To summarize the twelve points:

1. Create a group of teachers to work with.
   
2. Have support from the school technical (ICT assistant).
   
3. Subscribe some edu-bloggers feeds.
4. Share work with your group.
   
5. Read, study, discuss books.
6. Plan regular group meetings.
7. Open a social bookmarking account.
8. Open a wiki for notes, links and directions.
9. Join a specific Ning social network.
10. Open your personal blog.
11. Start experimenting in your class.
    
12. Share your results.
    

The post ends with a recommendation I completely agree with, well beyond technological aspects. Start becoming a master learner.

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Objective or means?

Translation of post "Fine o mezzo" of March 11th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

A colleague of mine, teaching literary subjects refuses any right of citizenship to ICT in schools. In fact ICT is there (or should be there) in many situations, even if we (she) doesn't see it.

Let's take it as a fact: for some reason ICT is in our schools. Why? How can we interpret this presence we might sometimes feel, frankly speaking, uneasy with?

As a first approximation, I'd say that a way of seeing it is as an "objective": we must teach our students some technological abilities (probably because these are needed in the enterprise and corporate world) and the ICT periods at school are directed to this aim.

In some technical or professional school studies this is certainly the case: there are ICT contents the students have to learn, like programming or systems building or admin'ing. In other cases, I think you will agree with me, we've lost before starting the race: "they know more than we do", our students are the digital natives while we are just immigrants, to use a metaphor that's quite fashionable today.

Or we can consider ICT as "means", a "medium" (or "media") to reach something else. I like this perspective more, because it opens up a question: to reach what? I am provoked by this question: which abilities/competences are reachable through technologies, by means of them? In my opinion this might help us to give an answer to the question about the dignity of technologies in schools, too.

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Let's open (again!)

Translation of post "Apriamo!" of March 11th 2008 on "Il deserto dei tartari 2.0".

This blog means to be an attempt at opening a discussion.
The discussion is about the use of technology in didactics, in particular about the so-called Web 2.0, more in particular in Italian high schools, even more in particular for scientific subjects.
The title of this blog suggests my expectations about the level of interest of the average Italian teacher.
And yet perhaps waiting will not be vain.
Welcome to all who want to have a chat here, in this fortress.

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