On the 24th November I attended a research symposium on how technology is used in secondary schools, held at the Library at the Dock and hosted by Dr Selena Nemorin, Dr Nicola F. Johnson, Dr Scott Bulfin and Professor Neil Selwyn.

Making a digital difference - new technology in secondary schools is a three year joint research project between the Learning with New Media research group from Monash University, Federation University Australia with funding by the Australian Research Council.

As an educational technologist and solutions engineer at D2L I was interested to hear the pain points of secondary school educators, but as a father of a 12yr old, I have skin in the game so to speak.

The first part of the day focused on the actual research process, and the theories underpinning research in education in general, and drew on Neil Postmans 7 questions about new technology -

• What is the problem that this new technology solves?
• Whose problem is it?
• What new problems do we create by solving this problem?
• Which people and institutions will be most impacted by a technological solution?
• What changes in language occur as the result of technological change?
• Which shifts in economic and political power might result when this technology is adopted?
• What alternative (and unintended) uses might be made of this technology?

The research aims to look at the 'state of the actual' rather than the promise of the 'state of the art' in educational technology, to look at the 'messy' realities of digital education across three secondary schools in Victoria.

Lunchtime and exploring 3D printing at The Dock Makerspace #lnm_monash pic.twitter.com/0OssqWu9wB

— Darcy Nicolson (@darcynicolson) November 24, 2016

Video

During the lunchbreak, we took the opportunity to explore the library makerspace

While the report is still in progress, some key issues so far are around the different contexts across the three schools, the difference in educational activity and roles (learners and learning vs students and studying vs teachers and teaching) and surveillance and dataveillance. Teachers find they can only utilise technology to a lowest common denominator in respect to the devices learners have, which can bring socio-economic issues into play in the classroom. Learners struggled with different apps being used by different teachers, which gave an inconsistent delivery between classes.

Do schools have a vision for how they wish to use technology? criteria for what success looks like? #lnm_monash

— Dr Narelle Lemon (@rellypops) November 24, 2016

There was a healthy backchannel on Twitter

Some early recommendation areas included changing technology culture to be more accepting of the realities of digital technology in schools. The management and provision of technology seemed adequate but somewhat haphazard and so improvements this aspect could be a focus area.

I look forward to reading and reviewing the resulting book which is due early-mid 2017.

You can imagine my frustration when my daughter returned home from school one day crying, because of being singled out in a online safety school incursion. "Dad, I have been breaking the law!" The visiting educator had asked anyone with a YouTube of Facebook account to stand up and then those children were scolded for breaking the law in respect to age restrictions.

I have had this argument with many educators - yes there are dangers for our children online. Bullying, sexting and online anonymity are all very relevant and very, very scary for a parent.
The danger here is just as real as other risks like a young driver having a car accident - and yet to combat this we educate and assess a beginner driver. We get in the car with them and go driving - we actually make it a condition of their first three months of driving with a big L and a licensed driver at their side at all times.

Why would learning to use social media be any different? I'd like the large Social Media companies to adopt this method with indicators and potential parent moderated accounts for younger users. Here are some tactics and discussions I had with my daughter around social media.

Start them on L-Plates

If your child wants to have social media account before the required age, use an L-Plates concept! Work with them to research the age limit, and talk about why they aren't allowed their own account. Then, set it up with your own email details but with an anonymous nickname for them. Explain the situation to them and let them know it's a privilege, not a right.

Monitor 100%

Open the account for them using your own email address, and set it up so that all the posts and replies are sent to your email as a notification. Yes, if they are going to be prolific it will be a hard task to keep up - but that in itself should be a good conversation to have. Be really clear that you are seeing everything - It's not an invasion of privacy if everyone knows the deal.

Explain the technology

I don't mean your need to start on a computer science degree, but explain this one simple aspect... Once something has been posted on the internet it's always there. Even if you delete it, someone can take a screenshot.
Show them. Even if you not sure on how to do this, use your phone to take a picture of what is on their screen.

Keep the lines open

Read everything and if there are issues work through them. Every now and then comment on a post or reply. I haven't got to this part yet, but I guess there will be a point where I will hand over too.

I'll keep you posted :)

Image: Perth city - 28mm 8" f5 ISO100 20160924

So this is the new look blog...

My previous WordPress had waay too many plugins, fell over during a 'select all and update' session and couldn't get back up! After some research around what is new and popular in the blog/cms arena I've decided on an update to Ghost, hope you like it. Ghost moves away from PHP, it's built on the newer Node.JS.

After deleting the previous site from Amazon I started looking (again) at my options for CMS tools. My first choice was to use the New Google Sites as it looks like a modern take on website creation (and would have saved me the afternoon mucking around with setting up an EC2 instance). Unfortunately, it's in a closed beta right now.

So far so good with Ghost, it's a clean responsive interface but takes a little knowledge in Linux command line and config file editing to set url and mail etc. There is a hosted version which is reasonably cheap here if you want to avoid losing an hour or so to server configuration.

I am enjoying the simplicity of the editor and the markdown options. I guess I will have no excuses now writing content with Ghost - I must admit that a majority of time spent with WP was spent playing with the amazing range of plugins available.