A few posts ago I referenced a blog written by a 14 year old american student, who frequently comments on technology in education. He is perhaps far from the average 14 year old, but he does have some definite insights into how our students see technology, and what they can potentially benefit from it - and how they see education. I have seen several of the edubloggers I follow referring to ‘Arthus’ recently - he is making quite an impact in the online world of Education, even considering running some student led sessions at major conferences such as NECC. I read a great post on the Infinite Thinking Machine blog today, which summarises an interview with Arthus. Or, if you prefer, you can listen to the whole interview. It’s well worth reading for all Teachers - and Arthus’ blog is now a must read in my RSS feed too.

I’m afraid I wont be back at my desk till next Monday, so those environmental links are going to be a bit late. Sorry.  But I was reading my RSS feeds today and I saw a great post by a  14 year old student who writes a very interesting blog.  Anyway, his post today was in response to Blog Action Day also, and I think its worth a read. So checkout Newly Ancient’s entry Take Action.

Today is Blog Action Day.  I wanted to make this post relevant to my elearning theme, so I spent some time last week hunting down some sites with interactive activities and games for students on the theme of the environment.  I found a few that looked promising, so I bookmarked them…on the Mac, at work.  And I’m out of the office till Friday…. 

So, I’m going go have to come back and edit this entry later in the week - maybe I’ll get time tomorrow to redo the search. (I really should have added them to my Del.ico.us account.) And maybe not - I am doing one to one LMS training with staff all this week. Its been great to see teachers come to a realisation that they can do so much more with an LMS than send messages and upload files, but a few technical glitches with network access at one site so far have also been a bit frustrating.

OK, I’m back - I finally have those links. So, here they are….

Environmental Kids Club Games Room
Environmental Education Activities
Act Now – Environment
WWF Games

I saw an interesting episode of Stateline on the ABC this morning. ” ‘Second Life’ launch - Melbourne’s famous laneways now part of a virtual world.” You can read a full transcript here.  The Victorian Government has employed a company to produce a re-creation of Melbourne City’s Laneways on the ABC island within the virtual world Second Life.  It will be an interesting experiment, and I intend to hop on and have a stroll around myself (or maybe a fly over - that will be a new viewpoint on a local landmark!) when I have installed the latest update.  Its been awhile since I have ventured into Second Life. I am intrigued by the possibilities for education, but haven’t spent a lot of time exploring yet.

Anyway, the reason I thought this story was blog-worthy here on my edublog, was some comments made regarding the reasoning behind this experiment, and the inherent ‘risks’. Apparently the State Government has stated that “it is not worried about what goes on in its virtual space, so much as missing out if it is really is the next big thing.”  That’s a big statement to make, and one that  doesn’t often seem to extend to policies about online innovations within the state government education system.  Obviously I realise its a different situation, and the duty of care, student safety, parental wishes, etc etc means that introducing these things into schools is a very different issue entirely.  But when Innovations Minister Theo Theophanus says “There will be issues of fraud, issues of people who don’t do the right thing, issues of proper behaviour. All of those things are ethical issues that we will have to deal with but that is not a reason for us not to experiment with this kind of technology and try and see what can be done.” I sometimes wish that this was more often the approach within our education system.

Recently I read a blog by a teacher in a Melbourne private school, who was discussing policies regarding use of online resources such as You Tube etc in schools.  He pointed out that You Tube is blocked in every government school in Vic, and that his school had recently banned students from using Wikipedia as a source in their bibliographies.  Wikipedia has been proven to be a very reliable source… but students do have to be aware it is written by users, and learn how to check for secondary sources, and verify its content.  That is a very valuable lesson for students to learn in this age of immediate information.  Even journalists have faced criticism recently for using the Internet as a shortcut, and not verifying sources etc. Digital citizens must learn to make these judgements for themselves, and we could teach students that lesson while using Wikipedia as a valuable resource.  But we keep facing that fear of new sites, applications and technologies in our schools, potentially to the detriment of educational possibilities.

You can find some further articles about the launch, and links to ABC’s Second Life island at Multimedia Victoria and Victoria’s eGovernment Resource Centre.