Mr. Hamada’s Universe

To my 3 loyal readers, please redirect your feeds to Learning on the Job, my new blog at http://blog.misterhamada.com. Thank you for your continued support and sorry for the inconvenience!

Once again, thank you to Sue Waters and the edublog community for all their help and support over the past 1.5 years!

Image: ‘We’re Not Gone‘
www.flickr.com/photos/51035597898@N01/405395160

Or, What SharePoint has Taught  Reminded Me About the IBO

My school runs a Microsoft SharePoint portal. It’s okay, I guess. It’s a bit clunky, not very attractive and somewhat limited in terms of customization. Or so I thought…

I have been given the keys to my own little kingdom: I have been granted permissions above and beyond those of most teachers (but not fully admin rights) because of my spiffy new job title. And, like any geeky gadget-lovin’ guy or gal, I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to see how far I can go before I break something. And that’s how I discovered that, with the proper design privileges, you can embed media-rich content into SharePoint web pages.

Notice that I did not say blogs or wikis. That is the one feature that is most missed in SharePoint. You simply cannot embed videos or any other script-based ‘widget’ into the SharePoint blogs or wikis. But, emboldened by my new discoveries, I did some more research and came up with this: the Enhanced Rich Text Editor. This just adds a new button to the WYSIWYG editor that allows for exactly the embedding features I’ve been looking for. It hasn’t been installed yet but my Tech Director seems keen on the find too.

I’ve just finished reading “Education Needs to be Turned on Its Head” which was Tweeted to me by my friend @amichetti. I think his words are relevant here:

It’s this: learn about what interests you, gets you curious, gets you excited. Figure out where to get the information you need. Read about it, talk to someone about it, find out about it. Try it. Do it, make mistakes. Figure out how to correct the mistakes. Figure out how to solve the problems you encounter. Repeat.

I’ve just done exactly what we want our students to do. Find a problem; solve a problem. It was my own natural curiousity that drove this inquiry and I was only able to be an inquirer because of that extra bit of tinkering room I was given. We need to take the shackles off the students, give them the room to play, to make mistakes and maybe even break something. Let them be a risk taker! But we also need to guide them down the path of being a responsible and principled memeber of their community. Did you see what just happened?

Image Credit: Kingdom Keys by LivingOS (CC BY SA)

Here’s a list of what I’m plugging to the staff here:

What: 23 Things: Tools for 21^st Century Teaching and Learning
Where: This is an online course
When: Begins September 14 and will go for 10 weeks

http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/

• Technically, you should have registered by last Friday. However, you can try to sneak your registration in if you are really keen. There are already a few teachers who have signed up and I hope to host a 23 Things Professional Learning Community for all those involved.

What: ASB Unplugged
Where: The American School of Bombay
When: Feb 24 – 27 2010

• http://www.asbunplugged.org/drupal/asb_un-plugged/
• http://asbunplugged.ning.com/
• Registration Deadline is November 15 2009

 What: K12 Online Conference 2009
Where: This is a virtual conference.
When: Starts November 20 2009 with 40 presentations being posted for download over a two-week period (December 7 – 17). There will also be live events.

• You can get an idea of what it’s all about by checking out the Getting Started info from last year’s conference.
• http://k12onlineconference.org/

What: Create the Future: Become a 21^st Century Learner
Where: BISS International School, Beijing
When: January 16 – 17

• This is an EARCOS Weekend Workshop
• http://www.earcos.org/ww_approvedSY0910.php

Did I miss anything? (I know I don’t have the 21st Century Learning HK conference listed… I figure it’s too late for people to register anyhow…)

image: Untitled by _fLeMmA__

Three weeks on the new job have passed. I’m still finding my feet, so to speak. I’m loving the ability to help teachers both in and out of the class. I just wish there was more of the “in class” part! It’ll come, I know, as teachers figure out how to utilize my services. I guess I need to be more vocal about going into classes and find some friendly faces who won’t mind an unplanned visit.

There is still a long, long road ahead. As I try to organize my thoughts and priorities, as I try to define the parameters of this new position, I realize that there is a lot of work to be done! But where to begin?

the long road ahead by qmnonic (CC BY)

• I’ve got a small group of teachers (and one administrator!) interested in starting a Professional Learning Community around the 23 Things workshop.
• I’d like to work with the ES IT Facilitator in finalizing a series of after-school Tech Sessions.
• I’d like to plan and implement a series of Parent Workshops on issues such as Online Safety, Digital Citizenship, Copyright and Creative Commons, Navigating Our School Portal, Truths and Myths Regarding Facebook, <anything else?>
• I’d like to establish a culture of Personal Learning Networks, trying to get more teachers reading and learning from other teachers as well as sharing their own expertise with teachers around the world.
• I’d like to get students blogging, either internally or publicly. At this point, it is most important to establish the culture of blogging, regardless of the location.
• I’d like to establish a scalable method of tracking (and reporting?) Technology Integration standards (which don’t exist for my school but can easily be based upon NETS, the IB Learner Profile and MYP ATL Skills).
• I’d like to get a say in the setup of our school tablets. Why are we using Real Player instead of VLC? Is it truly a security risk to include Firefox and IE8? (IE8 is necessary, in my experience, to view and use our MS SharePoint portal.)

Anything else I should keep on my radar?