electro-textual

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework has put out their monthly “Flex e-news” for February, and there’s plenty going on. This time of year, details about available project funds, but also interviews.

Have a listen to Alex Hayes interviewing Jo Kaye. Alex and Jo worked with the NSW Learnscope teams last year.  Jo’s favourite learning environment is “Second Life”, which you may have seen in the news, a virtual reality place.

The Framework’s “e-learning Benchmarking surveys” have come back in, showing that 17% of students in vocational ed. are experiencing some kind of e-learning (up from 7% two years ago, which is huge growth really). They have a powerpoint on this page, showing community provider results.

Plus apparently, “Female students were more likely to enjoy their course as a result of e-learning (59%) than their male peers (48%)..”

cheerio, michael

I’ve been thinking about this:
How do people use web-based resources in their classroom?

I’m sure the answer is “plenty of different ways”, eg.:

• Blended Learning: group activities involving discussion around a theme or text, followed up by a link to a web site.
• Blended Learning: in a face-to-face class, use a digital projector to engage a whole group with web-based learning activities …
• Ask learners to search for resources and share links (either in a face-to-face group, or in an online course).
• Provide links in a self-access, or independent learning centre.
• Provide links in a blog or podcast, asking learners to complete some activity.
• WebQuests: set up a series of ‘things to find’ on the web, and report back.
• Research project: more extended web quest, aiming at publishing work in student ‘zine.

Is there any research into this? Must be !!
(thanks Leigh Blackall for the image)

Over at Preston Reservoir ACE, we’re slowly setting up an intranet. Anyone on the site can set up their own “blog” (diary, or journal). This could be useful for reflective learning in the classroom: teachers could encourage students to post thoughts on their own learning progress.

There’s so much going on in the world of learning- with- technology, that it would be great to involve the wonderful teachers at PRACE even more. I’m hoping this place will help us share our knowledge more effectively.

We’re using moodle, the popular, open source “learning management system” software.
But do we want our learning “managed”?
.. and how flexible is this system really?

By the way, the image top right is one of my favourites, and is free to use, as long as i tell you where i got it. Eisenrah, at flickr.com, published this image with a “Creative Commons licence” (search from that link).

michael

Wow! Take a look at this collection of flash writing tools from Read Write Think dot org

i’ve only tried the “Bio-Cube” so far, but was impressed when the printout revealed an actual cube that the student can cut and glue into the shape of a cube.

Looking back at all the feedback we’ve had from the Beach site, one of my least favourite comments was this one:

“There are some very good points in this website but as a teacher I have been told that I cannot use terms such as ‘Christian name’ and ‘Surname’ because it is offensive to some. Therefore I would like to see the offensive racist comment ‘When Europeans first invaded Australia’ removed from your web site. I am sure your point could be made just as simply by stating ‘When Europenas (sic) first came to Australia’. Else you are walking on dangerous grounds. Thanks and I hope this feedback helps you.” (Anon. coded t009.)

My first responses were surprise, astonishment and disbelief, followed by confusion. i wondered how anyone could see as racist, the suggestion that Europeans invaded Australia.

I understand why someone might be offended, if they hold the view that the Australian colonies were founded through peaceful agreement and negotiation with the Indigenous people. But that view is wrong, and it’s better to offend someone than perpetrate a lie, innit?

Then comes the anger. It’s such a classic “Hansonist” comment, ignorant, reactionary, and one which ascribes to the classic (currently ascendant) “White Blindfold” view of Australian history.

Then i feel urged to ridicule the respondent; but i remember that ridicule and humiliation were the behaviours that got Paul Keating thrown out of the Lodge, allowing bigotry to resurface in the 1990’s, in the guise of ‘free speech’.

i remember showing the comment to the site co-authors, who shared my irritation, and asserted their refusal to change the text. Our position is that “When Europeans first came to Australia” is a phrase that deliberately disguises the truth of what happened. The English invasion was based on a legal fiction, the notion of “Terra Nullius” or ‘uninhabited land’.

Now, i’m thinking .. that perhaps our reader is confused about the term “European”, and doesn’t understand that we intended this to signify British people, the arrival of the First Fleet.

Perhaps this is confusing, and we should change it to British or English. Perhaps we should add “in the eighteenth century”, so that people won’t think we are referring to the waves of “European immigration” in the 1950-60’s.

But no, what teacher of Australian English would think that in the 1950’s, “the only people here who were good at swimming were the Aboriginal people”?

When spammers attacked our “English at the Beach” website, on both the Guestbooks and the Feedback Survey pages, we were experiencing the “New Chicago-style Web”.

“We used to call the Internet a sort of Wild West. Now it’s more like Chicago in the 1920s with Al Capone,” says Prolexic President Keith Laslop.

Writing up my research on the web usage server logs, i needed a definition of ‘botnet’. While searching, i came across an intriguing article in Wired late last year, which outlines an attack on Six Apart’s Type Pad and Live Journal blog networks.

According to the article by Scott Berinato, One Russian spammer was determined (allegedly) to take out a vigilante anti-spam crowd known as Blue Security, who employed an anti-spam (ro-)bot called “Blue Frog”.

The spammers attacked the security firm’s web site (with huge Denial of Service attacks), so the director of Blue Security re-directed his domain to a Live Journal blog site, to keep customers informed. This led to the whole of Six Apart’s blog-oporium going down as well.

The director sought help, from a big security firm called Prolexic. They put shields in place to protect the Blue Frog anti-spammers. At first it seemed that the Russian spammer had given up, but then he returned and took out Prolexic’s entire DNS server in one hit, removing their protection over many sites.

Blue Security gave up, and the director has still not emerged from hiding, five months later. The (allegedly) bad Russian spammer remains at large with his or her “Botnets” (massive networks of around 100,000 zombie machines, operated remotely).

Berinato, Scott. “Attack of the Bots”. Wired Magazine, Vol 14.11, November ‘06. wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/botnet.html 4 February 2007.