ACEC 2008
My presentation and workshops have been accepted for ACEC2008 National ICT Conference in Canberra (I am guessing as they are listed on the website) The late-night, online brainstorming with the boundless energy of Roslyn from a neighboring school seems to have paid off. She has some great ideas and I really look forward to working with her on some of these presentations and workshops.
Unlike the ACCE study tour in June/July, this conference will not impact on my teaching at Westall as it will run during our 2 week October term break. I hope to have some precious time with the family and see Floriade, the annual flower festival.
Here are the four abstracts that I will need to work with.
OLPC to help bridge the digital divide
The OLPC (one laptop per child) project was launched in 2005. The OLPC organization views the laptops as a means to provide education for all, particularly in developing countries where children have limited access to schooling. The authors are actively involved with a trial using OLPC laptops and Linux based sub-notebook computers in IT programming classes. We are assisted in this role by an OLPC Australia organisation and technical community that supports both the educational and open source aspects of this project. This workshop will give an overview of the project, provide a hand on experience at using these robust small computers, and importantly a chance to experience the unique networking environment that has been built into the Sugar Interface with the XO laptop. It is all about community, collaboration and a chance for Australia to help make a real difference at bridging the digital divide.
Web 2.5 - Beyond the Blog?
The advent of Web 2.0 technologies heralded a new era of the internet where online sharing and collaboration has allowed new teaching and learning strategies to be incorporated into our classrooms. We are already familiar with Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networking, but what lies beyond the blog? This session will examine one of the next phases of Web 2.0 technologies - free online applications. Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, mind mapping, creating diagrams, project management, photo and video editing, painting etc can all be done online without even having to install any software. Gadgets, widgets and mashups will also be briefly discussed, as well as a brief consideration of some of the latest technologies which hold promises of the dawn of Web 3.0
Scratching around for a Python
There are now some exciting new and free programming languages for teachers to use explore in the classroom. This session will give teachers some hands on experience and wet their appetite. Scratch is a tile-based visual programming environment that lets kids make games, animated stories, interactive art. It is very easy language to start students off with. Alice is an open-source, graphical software program that allows users to learn the very basics of programming concepts while making 3-D animations. The Python based tools allows users to create scripts that combine introductory programming with storytelling. Python is a portable, interpreted, object-oriented programming language that powers most of the applications by Google and NASA. It is a good teaching language used by universities and increasing in popularity for secondary schools.
Young fingers on the pulse of our planet
Over the past decade, Westall Secondary College has successfully participated in a range of environmental monitoring and space based projects with projects including PAA, GLOBE, EarthDial and CloudSat. Year 9 students have built an automatic, Internet-linked weather station to collect local weather data, constructed an EarthDial that mirrors smaller versions carried on the backs of the Mars mission rovers, and processed Lansat Satellite photographs to ground truth data collected locally from a nearby biometric site and using a reflective dish, take earth based images to support JPL CloudSat mission scientists. From their local urban footprint to the bigger picture from space, they gain an better understanding of the value of technology to monitor the environment, diminishing biodiversity, climate change modeling and decision making.