March 2004
March 31, 2004
Open House Presentation
Today is the open house and I have spent the last couple of days putting together a virtual presentation for the day. This presentation we will run during the open house for anyone who might be interested. It was a great exercise and I did learn a new program. The program used was talkingslide.
Cyber Guidance counsellor
Update on the Suicide Discussion:
I thought the discussion had run its course, as there had been no posts on the topic for a number of days. I moved the topic into the archives, where students may still read the threads. A student continued the discussion (very eloquently) in the current discussion area by beginning a new thread. Obviously, they weren't done talking yet.
This indicates to me that there is a HUGE unfulfilled need for young people to have their voices heard on topics that matter to them. I think that the fact that we offer a forum for them to express their opinions has become, for many, one of the highlights of the school. It would be interesting for someone to look at the need for students to have "authentic voice" (the new buzzwords) as an integral part of their education. This mode of service delivery may be popular because it meets that need, which is far removed from the academic needs that have already been identified. There's a Masters project in there for someone!
I'll let you know where the suicide discussion goes next.
Dave Knowles
Guidance Counsellor
SCCS
(306) 668 4104
(306) 668 7222
March 29, 2004
Open House
We spent most of the day looking back over the last four years. We are hosting an open house on wednesday and we are putting together a list of "For our Information" posters.
Here is what we compiled.
FYI
The total number of e-mail replies to students sent out since January 1 2004 ( 2 months) is 3050.
FYI
Total high school course requests:
2003-2004 1283
2002-2003 878
2001-2002 751
FYI
Total number of high school classes currently being taken 407
FYI
There are currently 780 high school students accessing cyber school classes, hybrid classes and communication hubs.
FYI
Cyber school staff is:
16 teacher/developers
1 assistant principal
1 Chaplain
1 guidance counsellor
1 secretary
FYI
There are currently 385 elementary students acessing cyber school.
FYI
There are currently 147 students accessing hybrid classes and communication hubs.
For your information as seen through the cyber glasses.
A research guide for students
Another guide to assist students. This site contains some very good links.
Academic tips for students.
Welcome to academictips.org. This web site contains tips and tricks to help you manage your time, take better notes, study more effectively, improve memory, take tests, and handle the stresses of college life.
Student Academic Success Website
this has some great links to helpful sites.
Welcome! - Student Academic Success Service (SASS)
March 27, 2004
Turing Test...some background information on the history of AI
G5AIAI : History of AI : The Turing Test
ChatNannies might be fakes
Earlier this month I posted an article about Chatnannies...well so much for good journalism...it was a fake...check it out.
Waxy.org: Daily Log: Nanniebots: Hoax, Fraud, or Delusion?
March 25, 2004
Internet Watch Foundation Safe Surfing Guide
Welcome to the Internet Watch Foundation's guide to safe use of the Internet. This will help you find the best advice on the Net about its dangers for young users, and how to avoid them.
Safe Surfing
BBC - CBBC - Help - Safe Surfing
Safe Surfing Guide
Easynet has confirmed its commitment to responsible use of internet technology in education with the launch of a specialist resource for teachers entitled The Safe Surfing Guide. This resource provides clear, practical advice for effective classroom management of internet technology. It outlines recommendations on how to ensure children gain maximum benefit from the Internet in education, and offers guidelines to protect them from the risks inherent to the technology.
Easynet UK > Public Sector > Education Products > Safe Surfing Guide
How to keep safe in chat rooms
March 23, 2004
Counselling online coming of age.
There are some days that Counselling is more "fun" than others. One of the "others" is when the issue of suicide is raised.
That happened recently at SCCS. A student posted an intention in the Chapel for her friend who was thinking of killing herself. We responded to the post, advising the student that she needed to get adult help for her friend. The posting student later revealed her identity, and has been in conversation with me and with the Chaplain.
The ensuing discussion has really been a coming of age for SCCS. There have been numerous posts from the students on the topic. Discussions have touched on listening, getting help, cutting(self stimulation through self mutilation) etc. The key element is that the students are voicing their opinions, impressions, and experiences in an open, frank yet respectful manner.
They must have a need to be heard on this issue. This mode of service delivery accommodates that need.
Stay Tuned.
Dave Knowles
Guidance Counsellor
SCCS
March 22, 2004
Mondays
It seems like every monday brings a new adventure. Today our server was having problems, something about a firewall issue, our school board was cross linked to the public school board and the servers were talking and not getting along. So, all day the server was not working. A cyber school with no cyber...very slow day. The neat thing was according to our stats, we had a good day as far as hits go...from 3 pm until 11 pm we got as many hits as we get on most days. Everyone must have just been waiting to get into their courses and the moment the server was back up and running they all jumped on and did their school work.
It is always a cool thing to know at any time their is someone accessing the course material and learning.
Any time, any place, any path, any pace
This slogan from Florida Virtual School I like.
March 20, 2004
Test your net IQ
LEARN THE NET: Test Your Net IQ: Quiz I
Parental activities
This site has some great activities for parents and their children to do together.
Peel District School Board - Parents Boost Learning
March 19, 2004
Stephen Downes OLWeekly
I find many of my postings through this blog...Thanks to Stephen Downes who seems to have a finger on the pulse. Keep up the good work.
University is not a business
I liked Stephen Downes comments about this: "I know a false dilemma when I see it, and I see one in this article. One one horn of the dilemma, a criticism of the university system I have been making for a long time now: that it is essentially a cottage industry, unable or unwilling to adapt to the growing needs of students and society, resistant in so many ways to the opportunities offered by technological change. On the other horn of the dilemma, the proposition that the university must be run as a business, consolodating and rationalizing, attending to the bottom line, becoming customer centric, and probably, doing away with tenure."
EDUCAUSE REVIEW | March/April 2004, Volume 39, Number 2
Chat Bots
Give it a few years and I should be able to get one that can be the help desk bot for a cyber school.
March 18, 2004
Tutorials - learning electric
This neat site has a large number of very cool tutorials.
LearningElectric.com - Tutorials!
WebCT posting by Bernadette Howlett
One critical issue regarding video is that in terms of learning it's not much different from watching a live lecture, the operative word is "watching." We know that humans retain very little of what they hear. It's our least effective method of receiving information. Recording an entire lecture leads primarily to a listening activity. Watching an instructor speak does not add an effective visual learning element from a learning standpoint. Watching someone speak does little to enhance retention of auditory information. The reason for this is that the visual signal does not add information, usually. One exception is when the lecturer is demonstrating something, such as a mathematical procedure. In that case the visual input adds to the auditory input.
Ten things we know about teaching online
There has been a good dicussion on the WebCT list server and this article was the result of Rik Hall's post. I like the article so I thought I would share it.
10 things we know about teaching online.
March 14, 2004
Typing Tutors
Typing Tutor is Analytical Eye Technologies first product. It was originally written for use only at Great Sankey High School to replace an old program which was unable to run under Windows 95. Version 1.01 was the first really version, and this was never made public. It was later in versions 1.5 that the product had it's first public showing. Since then there has been one major update to Typing Tutor, version 1.6.3 is the current version. Since it first release Typing Tutor has amazed me. The program has had close to 100,000 downloads in just over 1 year, and this rate of take up does not seem to be slowing.
Analytical Eye Technologies - Specialists in custom technology solutions
Teachers' Aides
The items below consist of web sites that help take the technical out of technology for busy teachers. In some cases, useful online tutorials are given to help teachers learn "how to." But in most cases, the web sites listed below enable teachers to do something automatically that would otherwise require intervention on the part of a server administrator, knowledge of advanced web techniques (such as JavaScript, Perl, cgi bins, etc.), or use of technical skills beyond the realm of the average teacher who is trying to integrate technology into the curriculum without retraining to become a certified Microsoft engineer! Teachers can wow their students and create marvelous online activities with very little technical knowledge using the sites below.
March 13, 2004
Adventures of Cyberbee
CyberBee is a perfect example.
If you go back in time to the mid-1950s on a small farm in rural Ohio, you will see a large beehive in the far corner of an orchard behind a white brick farmhouse. You will also observe a little girl hiking through the fields and along the creek looking for treasures. She was so active, her father dubbed her "Busy Bee," and that is how her name appeared on the family letterhead. Fastforward to the 1990s and observe this same person, needing a cartoon character to guide teachers on Internet adventures. During one restless night, the idea exploded from her mind - CyberBee, a busy little bumblebee zooming around the Internet scouting out curriculum treasures.
March 12, 2004
North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium
This profile tool will help you to compare your current instructional practices with a set of indicators for engaged learning and high-performance technology. For each category, there is a description of the indicators and examples that fall along a continuum. There are three examples for each indicator.
Select the example that best describes your current practice, even though it may not represent your instructional goals. You may select only one example for each indicator.
You may scroll back and change your responses. When you have worked your way through all of the indicators you will find a "Graph My Responses" button at the bottom of this document. Click the "Graph My Responses" button, and a graph of your responses will be displayed on the screen.
This activity can be done alone or as a group. You can profile one individual class, all of the classes that you teach, your department, your school, or your district.
This is not intended to be a rating of your skill or ability as a teacher, but rather as a tool to help you think through the kinds of activities you use to help your students learn. Use the graph to help clarify your thinking about what types of activities you would like to use more frequently in your classroom.
This activity frequently takes about 30 minutes to complete.
Learning With Technology Profile Tool
Portland Community College
Portland Community College has some great material online that pertains to Online Orientation. Check it out.
PCC Distance Education - Online Orientation
March 11, 2004
Communication Hub in action
The grade 8 class at St. Goretti Community School in Saskatoon has been given a very exciting opportunity by the Federal government through the SEVEC program and the Department of Canadian Heritage. The students will be flying to Prince Edward Island for one week in June 2004. The grade 8 class in Somerset P.E.I. will then return in exchange the third week of June. This is one of the first times an exchange of these sorts has occurred.
The idea for the trip was fashioned out of a grassroots project involving cross-cultural activities. The students in the Grade 8 class at St. Goretti were able to use a Communication Hub provided by the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School to communicate with a partner class in P.E.I. The students in both Saskatchewan and P.E.I. Logged into a secure Web CT chat room and spent many hours discussing differences in their cultures, agriculture, industry etc. The chats were logged and the students then wrote reports concerning the information they were provided with during the chats. The Communication Hub also provided secure e-mail and discussion boards for the students to use when they were not in a formal chat setting. The students spent time getting to know one another while at home and out of a school setting.
After seeing how engaged the students at an inner city school were with regards to online chatting and communication the idea to send them on a once in a lifetime trip to visit their online partners arose.
Some of the other interesting things that have arisen from this project
include:
* Students who may have normally missed school made a point of
being at school on the days when they were to chat online.
* Students who were unable to attend school found computers away
from school and logged on while the students were chatting
* English language and communication skills have improved
* Typing skills have improved
The students and teachers of this project feel very fortunate that they were able to use the SCCS communication hub. It is an easy and secure way to bring students together to learn and experience many things that may not have been possible in the past.
Kelli Boklaschuk
Cyber School Elementary Developer (Thursdays)
668-2981
http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/elem.htm
St. Maria Goretti (Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri)
668-7360
http://www.scs.sk.ca/gor
March 8, 2004
The Clew
A very cool idea, I will be interested to see how this develops.
It was a monday.
Today we had a teacher return from Mat leave. One year ago she had a baby girl and at that time she was working on developing a grade nine french math course. She had worked on it for 8 months and was very close to being done. Her joyous return to the cyber school staff was tarnished by the loss of her course material. Everything she had written was on her harddrive and on the repository which was a shared file on another person's harddrive in the pod. Having her material in two locations, gave her a sense that it would be there when she returned. During her absence we formated hardrives and put the XP operating system. Each person's personal files we thought had been saved on the board office server in a file area which is back up each night or within the webct course.
In other words we had no idea that such a thing might happen when we had our techie update our operating systems.
So...the heart began to race...she looked a little terrified, so I sent her home and said don't worry.
We are now running a program to see if we can retrieve the files from a formatted harddrive.
With fingers cross we wait to see if we were successful.
We will let you know what happens...
My view through a set of nervous cyber glasses.
March 5, 2004
Parasites and Spyware
Spyware and parasites are clogging up machines. Near the end of December we started to see some students running into problems logging into WebCt. After eliminating everything we could think of...it turned out that most of the students who were having problems also download music via the net. When we figured out it was not the problem they used to download the music maybe it had to be some of the junk that comes with the downloads... Parasites or spyware. I asked around via the webct user listserve and found others were finding the same thing and started to put together pages to help students remove their spyware.
Another program that we use often is one called Spybot search and destroy.
Idaho State University
Check out these resources. Idaho State has some amazing resources.
March 3, 2004
Brown Bag Session
Today we had a brown bag session. Once a month, on the first wednesday we have a brown bag session. These sessions are brief, (unlike todays argument) and are normally start at 12:30 and end by 1:00. A different topic is choosen for each one and it is spoken to and discussed.
Todays topic:
The last day students will be able to access their courses this year will be on June 28th. At midnight all students will be denied access to their courses. The report cards will be due at 8:30 AM on the 28th on Sandra's Desk for any students who will be completing their courses this academic year. The student lounge and chapel will remain open during the summer. Cyber School staff will still have access to their courses; all students will still be in their courses. When a student goes to access their course it will say they have been denied access.
There has been much talk about when the last day will be that you as an instructor will accept material if the student would like to receive a credit in this school year.
A few points:
1) Students will make the decision to complete a course early and meet the last day assignment acceptance date.
2) Instructors will always grant them the full 150 days and should not dictate an early finish date unless the student chooses to do so.
3) The office will not be building in marking time for instructors.
4) If instructors feel they need marking time they need to inform the students of the last day assignments will be accepted.
5) Last Day Assignment acceptance dates should only apply to students who are choosing to finish early and whose course finish dates fall in the next school year.
6) Last Day Assignment acceptance dates should not apply to students whose course finish dates fall in this school year. (This may mean we have a couple of students that will be handing stuff in up to and including the 27th of June.)
7) When setting Last Day Assignment acceptance dates give yourself enough time but be logical, think it through and be aware that the office will back up your decision. The office will not be setting a school wide policy because each course is different.
8) The flexibility of the cyber school should allow you to take a day off here and there without negatively impacting your course in order to have time to put in at the end. Think about taking a week day during a slow time in exchange for Saturday June 26 and Sunday June 27th. This may allow you to give the students the maximum amount of time before their Last Day Assignment acceptance dates.
9) Please think outside the box, comparing a non-semestered, mulit-start, multi-end system with a face to face system doesn't work.
10) The end of the school year is always a busy time; the flexibility of the Cyber School will not change this fact. Relieving this pressure by shortening the time which students are allowed to complete their courses is not an acceptable student centered choice.
11) Reviewing course structures, due dates, types of assignments and their progression (are they evenly spread out or heavily weighted at the end of a course)etc. might be a more student centered approach to dealing with year end pressure.
I think this will generate some discussion, please keep me in the loop. Most of our decisions are fine tuned by discussion, so discuss but let me know what is good and what is not.
We are still working on this...(As I breath deeply)
This is all a result of the multiple entry multiple exit system. I post a description earlier about this system.
My tired eyes are looking through my cyber glasses
March 2, 2004
GUIStuff
What's GUIStuff?
GUIStuff offers you many free tools to create a great-looking website. You can download one of dozens of graphical interfaces, use our Flash, DHTML, and graphics generation tools to add spice to your page, and check out our tutorials section to learn how to design by yourself.
GUIStuff.com - Free Graphical User Interfaces
Too many types of students...
It has been an interesting time as the cyber school grows. As the number and popularity of the program continues to increase so does the different types of students we are registering. Each type of student requires a new set of rules, procedures, and policies. This is the biggest headache, but can also be the most exciting aspect of the job. A student from Mongolia registered. I had to go to a map to figure out where in the world this student will be.
The school division mission statement has taken on meaning, all decisions we make have to be true to that mission. There have been times where as we grow, I have made decisions and then found out it was way off the mark. It is important however to make the decisions, clear the way for the school to grow and function. Lack of decisions can be very detrimental to the growth.
Decisions need to be made, apologies when they are made wrong, new decisions made. That is a summary of my days.
Today, I started to construct a webpage that will allow an interested student to find the answers to the registration process by explaining the steps via a series of questions answered.
It will start with...are you a current a student of the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School?
The student's answer will determine where they go next. The second round of questions will ask about their age...again their answer will determine where they go next.
I am hoping that through this website most interested students can have a personalized summary of how they need to proceed in order to register.
It has turned out to be a bigger task than I originally thought. So many branches, every time I think I got all the students covered another type comes to mind. Students from Mongolia, how do they register...it just keep growing.
My view through my cyber glasses.
March 1, 2004
Mondays...I hate mondays
Today...I met with SaskTel and got a chance to see their new phone system. We are currently using Voice over I.P. phones and we are looking at the more advanced system of Multimedia VoIP platform. Very cool, I will be looking forward to the pilot of this platform.
The rest of the day was spent putting out fires, the first being based around the concept of...
As part of a division (SCS) you have the right to voice your opinion about projects within the division. Rant and rave...but when the conversation moves to outside the division then we must show a united front. Teamwork.
The second fire has to do with application to SaskLearning. Our governing body in Saskatchewan funds the development of online learning objects. To tap into this money you need to complete a batch of applications. Most of the applications come from individual schools in our province as per design by Sask Learning. Our division send in their applications according what they see as division wide needs. I find it funny that a governing body would design a system that pits one school against another. A division wide approach will always gain better support and does not break the unity of a School division.
On top of all of this, we had 55 new students register over the weekend. I think that might be a record. Thank goodness, most of these students registered for the communication hub course. It was designed to allow students from Holy Cross High School to communicate with students from a school in Quebec. The students will do a face to face exchange in the next couple of years. So, this hub allows them to meet and get to know each other before the actual exchange.
