Recently I heard that another secondary school in Singapre has just adopted 1:1 computing for students. They didn’t use netbooks (which I blogged about a while ago) but got Apple systems instead. Good for them and what a way to feed the economy!

I have also heard from two sources that MOE might be setting aside funds for a few schools to trial 1:1. Isn’t that a bit late given how a few schools have already taken the initiative? But this should give principals who are thinking of taking this route but are low on funding some renewed hope!

1:1 computing puts technology in the hands of learners, which is a good thing. In theory. In practice, there can be lots of issues. So it was timely that Richard Byrne suggested 10 things teachers should know before they embark on this journey.

Added after posting: Buzz Garwood wrote a short article in Edtech magazine about things to think about when implementing a 1:1 programme.

Tom Barrett is an educator in the UK. If you follow his tweets, you will know that  he has Nintendo DSs and multitouch surface computers to use in his classroom. I envy him. But that it not why I am blogging.

Tom shared in his blog how he uses Google Docs (GD) to provide feedback on his students’ written work. He is also thinking of using GD to provide regular feedback to parents.

If more practitioners shared ideas like him, they would need next to no formal professional development. Every teacher would be helping some other teacher!

Dipity is a tool that could be very useful in education. I did a search on A(H1N1) and this is what I got. It’s an interactive timeline comprising of various resources from the WWW!

Dipity helps make temporal and visual sense of searches. This organises the plethora of information that typically results from a Web search and makes it easier to manage. Better still, the information can be reorganised into a list, flipbook or a map to suit the needs of the searcher!

I wonder if Google might acquire Dipity some day…

Thanks to an email list, I discovered two articles that may interest my preservice teachers.

The first is an Edutopia article on “Ten Steps to Better Student Engagement“.

The other is from Teacher Magazine and is titled “When Testing Fails“. This site requires registration, but it’s free.

I highlight the first article because the course I facilitate is ICT for Engaged Learning, but we focus largely on ICT-mediated pedagogies. The article describes some other principles for engaging students and these cover the gamut of classroom management, classroom culture, managing relationships, etc.

How about the second article? It is a tongue-in-cheek yet serious look at how much emphasis many administrators place on test scores… which are subjective rather than objective!

The second article emphasized how poorly test scores indicated the effectiveness of the teacher. For the same principles brought up in the article, I think that test scores also do not necessarily reflect how much a student has really learned. There are just too many variables that influence learning.

So instead of trying to tackle learning with tests, I say we engage them instead. Provide meaningful experiences. Encourage learners to play, ask questions, and get answers. Get them to think and self-evaluate. I am certain that if we do this, we will prepare them better for an uncertain future better than tests ever will.

Just discovered another online mind mapping tool. It’s called mind42.

Many thanks to Tom Barrett for tweeting the resource and sharing his map.

Thanks to a recommendation by Martin Weller, the Ed Techie, I have discovered two more nifty tools.

OpenZine allows users to create a blogzine. OpenZine outlines its purpose below:

aMap is a very promising tool. It allows users to create ARGUMENTATIVE concept or mind maps like the one on cutting technology costs while improving education. Or the one on whether Batman is better than Superman.

I have just completed my draft of a revised presentation on Second Life that I intend to use with my classes in two weeks time. I used a new presentation tool called Prezi to do this.

One thing I like about Prezi is how you can break out of the linear presentation mode that is so typical of PowerPoint. I think Prezi can allow teachers and students to get creative with their presentations!

At the moment, the use of the beta version of Prezi is by invitation only.

I love Comic Life that came free on my Mac with OS 10.4. It is an optional purchase with the latest Mac OS and for Windows machines. But along comes Comiqs which has many of Comic Life’s features.

Tweets are sweet!

Using Twitter, I started following the thoughts of Tom Barrett, a teacher in Nottingham, England, after a recommendation from Mr Tweet.

From his tweets, I found a shared Google presentation on “18 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom“!

Every now and then a technology comes along that gets me excited. Dabbleboard is a tool that a group of teacher trainees introduced to me as something that they would like to demonstrate in class next week. Thank you, Group 7F!

I see it being used for collaboration both online and face-to-face. I see learners using Dabbleboard to create artefacts for practically all content areas. Brainstorming sessions, flowcharts, timelines, concept maps, storyboards, presentations… the possibilities are practically endless!