Many schools are considering a BYOD program for a wide range of reasons. For schools this represents a huge shift from the various models they have employed before to see appropriate ICT’s in the hands of their students for learning. Whether the program has been a lab based approach, a laptop program or some blend of everything, BYOD brings its own challenges as well as advantages. While there are the obvious issues of inappropriate use and the shift of control from the school to the student, there are more subtle issues that are as important. School based networks often provide back up solutions for students who store materials on the network, this feature may or may not be available on a BYOD program. Even if it is available the onus of responsibility shifts to the student to action the back up, to keep safe their work. Students now also have to consider the underlying concepts of file management as well. (protect yourself) In a similar vein, students need to protect themselves and their peers by taking responsibility for the antivirus protection required on their device, something that most school owned/leased programs take care of. (protect yourself and protect others) The freedom of having your own device and control of it carries with it the responcibility of self management. It is unrealistic to expect that the students BYOD devices is only for use at school. BYOD is blurring the boundaries between the social device and the educational tool. It challenges students to be focused on learning and resistant to the distractions presented by the applications and connections that they have on their own device. Applications and connections that in the structured format of a school program are limited and restricted. source; http://www.freefoto.com/images/04/20/04_20_50—Laptop-Computer_web.jpg Within reason schools are able to control the connections which utilise their network, filter applications and sites. However the convergence between mobile technologies/cellular phones and devices like ipads/tablets etc means that students are able to connect independently of the school and thus can bypass the controls the school may put in place. Inappropriate must now cover more than just unacceptable images etc. (respect and protect yourself and others) The students and their parents, who are paying the bill, have a vested interest in the care and maintenance of the device that extends beyond the standards expected of a school provide tool in many cases. They need support on how to care for their device, be that carrying it around, regular maintenance and care, repairs etc. This too is an aspect of digital citizenship where the student takes responsibility for their learning. (respect and protect yourself). With students having a greater degree of control over the devices, and with it probably the ability to install software comes the issue of ethical and moral use of software. Because you can download and install software doesn’t mean you should. Because you can install a cracked version does not mean you should. In the school provided model it was possible to prevent this, but the BYOD model now requires this to be a conscious and considered decision, something that 14 year old students living in the now struggle with. At the core of a BYOD program must be digital citizenship, and digital citizenship that encompasses all aspects of the use of technology within and beyond the school environment. http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Digital+Citizen+AUA      

When I am preparing a presentation I often like to take a snap shot of whats happening in the world at the moment to frame the amazing rate of change we are seeing. So here are some of my favourites: 1. CIA Factbook - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html Say what you like about the CIA this is an interesting site filled with huge amount of information and statistics. 2. Worldometers - http://www.worldometers.info/ This site is actually a little bit scary. With updating totals that tick over a a very fast rate this page will tell you about world population governments and economics society & media environment food water energy and so much more. Enjoy the visit, but the numbers are stunning 3. Gap Minder - http://www.gapminder.org/ The website of stats genius Hans Rosling. This is a must visit site and like worldometers, is a little frightening. But watch the videos and dive into the statistics presented in interesting and understandable ways. Just brilliant. 4. World Internet Stats - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm This site will give you a continent by continent breakdown of connections and more. Again a useful site particularly for those who need a global perspective. 5. Royal Pingdom - http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/01/17/internet-2011-in-numbers/ - this is a great snap shot of 2011, and it examine more than just connection to the internet. have a look at these comments about email 3.146 billion - Number of email accounts worldwide. 27.6% - Microsoft Outlook was the most popular email client. 19% - Percentage of spam emails delivered to corporate email inboxes despite spam filters. 112 - Number of emails sent and received per day by the average corporate user. 71% - Percentage of worldwide email traffic that was spam (November 2011). 360 million - Total number of Hotmail users (largest email service in the world). $44.25 - The estimated return on $1 invested in email marketing in 2011. 40 - Years since the first email was sent, in 1971. 0.39% - Percentage of email that was malicious (November 2011). 6. Youtube statistics - http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics/ Youtube like facebook is an icon of our age. Its not surprizing that its changing how we view our media and how media producers are publishing media. Have a look at the traffic they have Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth 7. Facebook newsroom http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 The social network with 900+ million subscribers 955 million monthly active users at the end of June 2012. Approximately 81% of our monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada. 552 million daily active users on average in June 2012. 543 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in June 2012. 8. Netcraft webserver survey - http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/08/02/august-2012-web-server-survey.html This site does a monthly survey and presents data on the number of webservers in the world each month. The growth over time is impressive, but last month saw the number of websites decrease by 30 million.

source: http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/2790/as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/ipad2012-step0-ipad-gallery-01-normal?wid=520&hei=410&fmt=png-alpha&qlt=95 The iPad and other gesture based tablets have capture the minds and fingers of many in education. Whether its in pre-K or senior classes these intuitive devices are making changes to how teaching and learning occurs in the classroom. The combination of ease of use, cost effective applications, simple navigation and user friendlyness plus a generally lower entry price compare to a full laptop (rather than a netbook) make these the tools of choice for many schools. Its worth noting that for many people there is also a convenience and aesthetic factor as well. As schools grasp with these devices its great to see people sharing their teaching practice. Here are some sites that I have recently stumbled across that are useful. 1. TCEA - http://www.tcea.org/ipad A useful list of applications broken down into curriculum areas 2. Apps in education  - http://appsineducation.blogspot.co.nz/ This site is broken down again into learning areas and has detailed lists of suitable applications. 3. ipad curriculum - http://www.ipadcurriculum.com/ this is a regularly updated blog on the use of ipads featuring a single app per post 4. ipad schools http://ipadschools.wikispaces.com/home this is a wiki on the use of ipads again detailing apps by learning areas 5. ipad multimedia tools - https://sites.google.com/site/ipadmultimediatools/home this google site is focused on the multimedia aspects of ipad use. It looks at the ipads apps by use rather than by learning area. 6. iPad as… http://edtechteacher.org/index.php/teaching-technology/mobile-technology-apps/ipad-as this is an excellent post examining the use of the tool rather than the curriculum area. 7. Bridging the gap - http://bridgingapps.org/ This is a site bridging the gap between applications and disabilities - they have reviewed a number of apps for suitability for special needs students, a very useful site. Harry Dickens & I wrote the apps for learning book with scenarios from different subject areas to examine how the tools could be used from a variety of perspectives.  

One of the reasons why iPads and android tablets have flourished is the ease of access to applications. Whether you go to the App store or the App marketplace (https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/?pli=1) you have access to a huge range of applications at a reasonable cost. One of the advantages that I see with Apple’s model, is the "vetting" or approval process that occurs before an application becomes available on the App store. The app you install is tested and approved by apple. The speed of this process, the cost of set up & return on investment may be seen equally as disadvantages as well. If you read the posts and features about Microsoft Windows 8, which has extensive support for tablets you would note that this is a ubiquitous operating system - the same OS operating on tablet, using touch or PC.  Great! But here is my question, one of the selling points of the ipad and android tablets is low cost and to be fair often lower spec applications. This makes them accessible and useful. But the consistency of applications from PC to tablet raises the possibility of having to pay "full application" price for much of the software. There is after all a considerable difference between what you can do with a fully featured PC, with keyboard, mouse and large monitor. Will we see a change in the pricing policy for developers and software providers? Since Windows 8 supports both tablets and PC’s will we see reduced feature set apps being run on both platforms? This, I think, will be interesting to watch.

All the way through my teaching career I have been privileged to have great teaching colleagues.They have been great because they are and were stunning practitioners, student centered, passionate and demanding the best from their students. But they were also great because of something else too. With all of them, Nick, Steve, Alan and Doug, I have been able to walk into their classrooms with out feeling like I was intruding, to remain working at the front of the room as the classes switch and they came in a started their lessons and not feel out of place and often to remain there for a large part of the class. This is and was often reciprocated. One of the best learning experiences that I have had was a colleague from another spending a day with me observing. No appraising, observing. It was a great experience and the conversations that we had were stunning. Seeing my peers in action and sharing my own practice has been a huge help in shaping my teaching practice. Every time I observe a lesson or someone observes mine I learn from the experience. Fundamental to this experience and practice are some important key or core considerations: This is about the students, which is who we as teachers are here for. How can I make the learning of my students better by observing some one else teaching or by being observed. There is trust. There is trust to let down the facade of the structured prefect lesson and teach as I normally would. To openly allow others to observe you or be observed so that you and they may learn from the experience. That praise, reflection, critique and feedback are how we grow and develop. It is ironic that most of us will focus on the critique and ignore the praise. I have been lucky that with my colleagues all of these core considerations were and are the norm. One of the advantages that can be seen in the learning commons model which is increasingly becoming a feature of new schools is the inherent openness of teaching and learning. It no longer can occur behind closed doors, in a silo.

Last night I was a guest at the National Library for the round table discussions on the services to schools provided. It was a fascinating session and one I really enjoyed. The session was looking at the future of the national Library service through the lens of a SWOT analysis the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  What I saw coming thorough was the huge service the Library service performance and the opportunity that presents itself for them being leaders in the digital environment. The digital environment is also the biggest threat to the service as well. The changing nature of the digital medium and publishing,  Google’s desire to control every thing all challenge the existence of the service. OER is also making considerable changes to the landscape of learning. Almost everyone present stressed the digital citizenship aspects and the key validating skills that the staff at the national library had. This led in turn to the digital leadership opportunities that may present themselves for this service. source: http://www.public-domain-image.com/cache/objects-public-domain-images-pictures/books-public-domain-images-pictures/books-writing-ms-dos-device-drivers-assembly-language_w725_h544.jpg What was clearly understood by all was that the national Libraries service to schools and the wider national library service itself must change and adapt. There were a couple of points that came as a surprise to me though I think many of the others in the room already knew them. 1. There is no legal requirement for a school to have a library or to provision one with stock or staff. 2. The average primary school in New Zealand has 160-180 students and the average secondary school has approximately 4-500 students. Half of the  schools in NZ are under this size (this information came from a MinEd staff member) half the secondary schools have under 500 students. How could these small schools provision a library space with out the assistance of the national library service? source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QEWhOURarSU/R7derL_lo5I/AAAAAAAABKA/Z0xrgAV3tDU/s320/ebook1.jpg I am not a fan of reference books like encyclopaedia etc, most are out of date before they are published, occupy space and are seldom used. There are better resources that can be accessed via subscription or in the case of EPIC for free for schools - these are often timely and up to date. Wouldn’t it be better to have a small fleet of ebook readers which link to subscriptions like EPIC as the reference material for the school - I would pick that the cost of the readers would be the same or less than the cost of the equivalent books. http://www.natlib.govt.nz/services/national-collaborative-services/epic http://epic.org.nz/ Much to ponder. Much to ponder…..

As teachers we know that we need to have unit plans. This is a standard expectation of teachers, in many circumstances we are also expected to have lesson plans as well. We often hear adages as justification of the need for planners like "Failure to plan is planning to fail" "Proper planning prevents poor performance" While these are very applicable and true, I think there are five underlying reasons for structured unit planning. These are the five C’s - Consistency, Continuity, Coverage, Considered & Creativity Consistency - Consistency allows us to have consistent delivery of the curriculum between classes and across the course. We know that what is covered in one class is covered in the others, thus the preparations for assessment is fair and equitable. Consistency does not mean that each class is delivered in the same manner, rather that the core content is covered. Continuity - Continuity is planning for the unthinkable. Should a member of staff be unable to teach, their is suitable structure in place to allow the replacement teacher to quickly and easily pick up the thread of teaching and learning and provide continuity of education to our students. Coverage - Coverage is ensuring that all aspects of the syllabus or curriculum are addressed, that they are covered in sufficient depth and rigor to meet the requirements for assessment. It allows us to apply curriculum mapping to examine the syllabus as a whole and to make the links between the different disciplines, building the cross curricula links that are synergistic to learning. Cross curricula learning is the core element of Daggett’s application Model (see Activity mapping - http://edorigami.edublogs.org/2010/02/13/activity-mapping/) Creativity - Unit planning allows you to look at the bigger picture. Once you have laid out the wealth of content, concepts, attitudes and processes you need to share with your students, you can start to consider the different approaches, methods and strategies you can use to engage and motivate the students. You can link the higher order thinking skills (See Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy), Sensory learning (See ICT & Learning styles - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/ICT+and+LEARNING+STYLES) Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences ( See ICT & Multiple intelligences - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Gardners+Multiple+Intelligences+and+ICT) and consider how you can integrate traditional and digital approaches to teaching and learning - (See Traditional practice and Digital Approaches - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Traditional+and+Digital+Practice) Considered - Structure and planning allows all of these and it faciltiates reflection. We can look back and consider what we did and how we can improve. It allows our teaching to be deliberate. This does not mean we can not seize the teachable moment, I would never ever want to see regimented teaching.  

The recent events surrounding Charlotte Dawson are worth reflecting on and drawing some lessons from. Source: https://twitter.com/images/resources/twitter-bird-blue-on-white.png Charlotte is a celebrity who uses social media like twitter to maintain and potentially increase her profile. She, like many celebrities, is a polarising person with some people loving her and some people loving to hate her. The majority of people are not drawn to either extreme. It is the unfortunate reality of being a public space, like twitter, that anyone will draw some unwanted attention. The chance of this happening are increased if you have a higher profile or are more provocative in your posts and interactions. There are some sad people in cyberspace as in life who take sick delight from being unkind. Charlotte encountered some of these people - they were malicious, malignant, spiteful and unpleasant, but alas not unexpected. Where Charlotte went wrong was she did not ignore them  - She forgot the rule "Don’t feed the trolls" - http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/7587950/Trolling-Charlotte-Dawson Whether it is twitter, texting or any other medium - do not respond to the trolls, this encourages them. Don’t feed them, don’t respond. But this does not mean don’t take any action - Inappropriate action should, no MUST, be reported - often social media will have a report abuse link that can be used.  Vodafone has a blacklist, that enable the subscriber to block calls and texts from a specific number, telecom and 2 degrees have a reporting system to deal with text bullying. the fundamental rules remain the same DO NOT RESPOND Document evidence Report to site, provider, police, school counsellor/teacher or parents etc This is where Charlotte when wrong. How would our students respond if they were subjected to similar attacks? resources: The Orb - Netsafes site for reporting cyber crime - http://www.theorb.org.nz/ Netsafe NZ - http://www.netsafe.org.nz Netsafe dealing with text bullying - http://www.netsafe.org.nz/how-can-i-prevent-textbullying/ Vodafone - dealing with text bullying - http://www.vodafone.co.nz/about/responsible-mobile-use/stop-txt-bullying.jsp Telecom - Mobile Bullying NZ Police - No Bully - http://www.police.govt.nz/service/yes/nobully/index.html 2 Degrees  - bullying -http://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/bullying Twitter - report a violation - https://support.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser Twitter tips for teachers Twitter tips for Teens  

FINALLY…. …. Apple announced that volume licences will be available in a number of new countries including New Zealand. The list is: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand - http://www.apple.com/nz/education/volume-purchase-program/ Spain, UK, US This is great news for the large number of schools that are adopting the iPads as their preferred learning device for their students. The lack of volume licences has made the imaging or softwaring of the iPads difficult. It limits the effectiveness of the Apple configurator tool which uses the volume liciencing codes to distribute the licienced software. Until now schools have had to purchase individual licences and were unable to access the reduce costs. For example pages costs $13.99 for a single licence but using volume purchasing if you buy 20+ you can pay $6.99 each. This makes a substantial saving for schools as well as allowing uniform distribution of software, quickly and effectively to a fleet of iPads. This is very very good. Check out the T&C’s http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/volume/nz/terms.html Worth noting "Gift Certificates, Allowances and iTunes Cards, and unused portions of Gift Certificates, Allowances and iTunes Cards, expire on the later of, two years from the date of issuance, and two years from the date of last activity if applied to an iTunes Store Account. "

Education Alberta (Canada) has published a Development guide for Digital Citizenship Policy. This is an extensive document which includes some of my work and that of my esteemed colleague Dr Jason Ohler. This is a great resource and well worth downloading and working through. It is about 80+ pages so you do need to put aside a little time to do this. http://education.alberta.ca/media/6735100/digital%20citizenship%20policy%20development%20guide.pdf Check out their internet safety page - http://education.alberta.ca/admin/technology/standards/internetsafety.aspx Wordle of the tenets of Digital citizenship