I*EARN Student News

Sunday

The NEWS

Overview

Today was an interesting day, the keynote speaker was not that interseting to us, but I'm sure it was more interesting for teachers. The workshops all went well and were all interesting. I was told by my friends that the workshops they attended were very good. We all had a good time today.

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Keynote Speaker

Bill Coppinger welcomed us to day two of I*EARN. The Keynote speaker, who was Pr. Brian Caldwell, was introduced by Andrew Hocking. Brian believes this is the leading edge of education and he had ten themes.

  1. Schools around the world are being transformed on a scale not experienced for more than one hundred years.
  2. The most important element in the next stage of reform are those concerned more directly with learning and those should now take centre.
  3. Increasingly, an international perspective must be adopted but there is a paradox as state and national curriculum are developed. Schools were very local and only connection to world was books, over the last decade we have become part of a global village which allows us to communicate to anywhere anytime.
  4. There must be success for all in both primary and secondary education if national need within a global economy are to addresses ad if man of he nations youth are not to be consigned to an economic social scrap heap.
  5. Most governments are setting priorities for early literacy . Equally important, if more so is the matter of orality.
  6. The basics of orality and literacy, as well as the new basics of the information age, must be addressed simultaneously and successful if we are to avoid being seal-less society.
  7. The scale of the transformation of school education in the post-industrial society is daunting if one contemplates the resource requirements.
  8. It is clear that we are in the transition year of an historic quest to reinvent the school. To win the confidence of the public will be a monumental task.
  9. Profound to change the nature of teaching as a job and to school as a place of work must now occur. Professional practice is to be successful and satisfying.
  10. With the development of self managing schools it is time for the self managing student to take centre stage.

    This speech helped people to understand where we are at when it comes to telecommunications and what we want to achieve at schools in the near future.

    By Grant Smith.

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    South African Experience

    Presenters:

    Our presenters from South Africa started off by:

    Gregg King talked about the community, racism, and how the community is being separated because of racism.

    Bev McDavid talked about a number of things, including the racism. Since 1990 everyone has been allowed to live where they want too. She also showed slides and explains the type of life styles, people and the choices the people make of where too live. The slides had pictures of the different community groups in Capetown. It showed people who live in small suburbs and houses.

    *EDUCATION: The presenters showed how the schools are still separated into colours, black and white.

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    Dr Darren Williams

    Dr Williams described the development of a Hypercard stack called PEAT(Practical Education Authoring Tool)by the University of Melbourne's biomedical multimedia unit.The stack is designed to let students undertake practical investigations on the computer.

    The stack, designed mainly by Darren Williams, takes students through practical investigations on the computer using text and video.

    The student enters the stack and is taken to an index which allows them to go to a prac of their choice. On the new page there are four buttons: Introduction, Method, Analysis and Report.

       
    1. Introduction: this gives the students a written paragraph of the prac.
    2. Method: this gives the students a typed paragraph of the method, but also had highlighted words which take you to a video on the screen. These videos are usually of how to set up and use equipment.
    3. Analysis: This gives the students a view of how the prac went and how well it works.
    4. Report: This gave the students an example of how to write a prac report.

    This is a great idea because of it saves the teachers' time by not having to answer students questions because usually the answers are in the software. Things like setting up equipment and using it are all explained by text and then shown in a video. Also the students can move along at their own pace, the students do the prac on the computer and they donít have to wait for teachers to explain detail which they already know.

    When developing the software one of the significant decisions they had to make was whether to use Macs or IBMs. They chose Macs because of their advanced technology in the multimedia department. They then decided to put the software on CD rather then the network so they ran faster and students could also take the CDs home and use them on their own computer..

    The programme was designed so it could be transferred onto IBMs in the future and so other departments could use the programme by putting their own script in and their own videos.

    Also in this session we had a preview of some virtual reality videos. One was of a scene in which you could turn around and zoom into things. The second type was of an object like a hat which you could turn around so you could see it from all angles. This looked really good and I think this sort of thing has great potential for many things.

    This session was really interesting to me because of my recent work on hypercard and creating my own stacks. The stack showed me how hypercard could be used for such a great thing and the virtual reality really impressed me.

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    The lunch

    WARNING: Do not read if you liked saturdays lunch

    The lunch today did improve a little on yesterdays, but I was still disappointed with all the healthy stuff. I did enjoy my roll but only after I took out all the healthy stuff (There was not much left in the roll). I did not even attempt to eat my orange because I hate mandarines and it felt very soft. I have two good things to say about the lunch

    So welldone to whoever put these in. Todays lunch scores a 4.

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    Video Conferencing

    This session was about communicating with other people using a CU-SeeMe programme that lets you see and talk to people all over the world using your computer.

    The setup consists of a Macintosh, video camera or quickcam and CU-SeeMe software.

    The programme lets you talk into a microphone and look into a camera and then a person accross the world can see and hear you on their screen. This works both ways, they can see and hear you and you can see and hear them. You can also type messages in and it comes up on the other persons screen.

    When you have connected a box comes up on the screen with your picture in it, and then when another person connects, their picture comes up in a little box on your screen. So both people can see themselves and the other person.

    You can change how many frames you see in the box with their picture from 1 to 30.a second. The more frames a second, the better quality and more liflike it is, but with the more frames a second you also use a lot more memory.

    you need a AV Macintosh and Video Camera or a Quickcam.

    A video recorder can show 256 shades of grey, but the Quickcam can only show 16 CU-SeeMe is the program that runs it black and white can talk using a microphone, hold done the mouse button on the audio window to talk

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    I*EARN International

    This I*EARN International workshop was presented by Kristin Brown and Ed Gragert. First they showed a twelve minute video about Primary School children using the telecommunications to help build a water well for children over in Nicuaquara. The video also showed other Primary school children using the I*EARN connection to help children in Bosnia. This operation was called the "Smiles Project". In this case I*EARN's goal is to help school children do meaningful work towards helping the world. The teachers in the video said that this project helps kids learn all the normal educational needs of a Primary School student, for instance cut and paste, English, Maths and others.

    While studying this project the children learn more about the world and its problems. They gain this information by using the telecommunications provided. This video shows how children can help other children by using the internet.

    After the video Ed Gragert and Kristin Brown inform us on a range of different things about I*EARN, one is that I*EARN is linked to about 25 countries in the world. I*EARN is trying to link the world and while doing this they are also trying to make it as low cost as possible. The I*EARN council has five members on the board they are from U.S.A., Australia, Argentina, Russia and Spain. Ed and Kristin answered a number of questions that the group asks for instance, "What equipment do you need to be linked?, And when you are linked how much is the joining fee?" and others.

    In my opinion Ed Gragert and Kristin Brown make this workshop not only informative, but also enjoyable. There is also another positive point for this workshop, if you are just new to the internet Ed and Kristin explain the information in, easy to understand, wording.

    So if you are looking for an enjoyable and informative workshop this is the one for you.

    By Andrew Jackson

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    Schools Net

    In this workshop there is three presenters, Rob Summers, Di Fleming and Daniel Ingvarsen. The intention of this workshop is to give you a basic knowledge of the internet.

    The presenters tell you of E-Mail, Z-Term, Netscape and other information concerning the Internet.

    Di Fleming tells us of how the students from her school are heavily involved in multimedia. For instance, when the students go on an excursion they never go without a "Quicktake Camera".

    One of the presenters tells us of how students doing projects involving multimedia learn how to plan and draft. We are told that the students use Netsearch to research certain topics.

    Di tells us that at her school every staff member is supplied with a Toshiba computer. After the presentation the group is free to roam through the internet. This workshop is a good one for the reason of the group being able to have hands on experience with the Internet. After having gone to this workshop you come away with a feeling of knowledge.

    By Andrew Jackson

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