On JellyOS after 2 months

Stengths and Weaknesses

This post in reponse to the discussion started by Jolyon Miller - Making a better JellyOS.

The strength of jellyOS lies in the ability for almost anybody to create a simple homepage, upload photos, make a guestboook and link to others. The weakness is in the functionality of discussions - having to scroll slowly through lots of old messages only to find there a re no new ones, no ability to sort for most recent, by author, or anything like that.
So I conclude that the best way to make a better jellyOS would be to keep it as it is for some purposes, but to move all the serious discussions and extended conversations onto another platform. Unless this is done pretty soonish, then a lot of the advantages of online community will be tragically missed. I'm not exectly sure how the linking will work between the jelly pages and the new discussion forums, but I hope someone is working on this right now. Who wrote jellyOS anyway? I was impressed to read that ultralab collaborated with Oracle over think.com and If I heard it was Macromedia themselves helping with jellyOS then I'd have confidence in it's future development.

peer to peer learning - new practise and observations

Since I've been exposed to all this theory about the importance of peer learning groups, I took advantage of an opportunity to try out a different approach with a class of year 5 children today. It was their first lesson with the new eMac computers and OS X desktop.
I suggested to the class teacher that instead of a demonstration by me, we would just let the children go straight in and experiment for themselves, then report back whatever they managed to find out.

I wrote up on the board ( instead of a learning objective taken from the QCA scheme) :

What can we learn from each other about the new computers?
1)
2)
3)
etc

Then I introduced the session by saying "today I am not going to show you what to do, you are going to learn from each other. "

Result: Chaos! But the lesson was sucessful in a number of ways and everybody was pleased. In particular, those children who aren't good at following instructions and usually get told off seemed to feel empowered by the liberating lack of constraint, eagerly reported back discoveries and displayed positive self esteem. The two TAs and the class teacher all learned things as well, without having to pretend they already know more than the kids.

So instead of me telling them "this is how to find your documents, this is how to find your applications" and then they go off and play with the CD eject button, they got all that out of their systems in one go and then went on to seek out the Internet Browser. Once one person found it, you could literally observe that knowlege spreading along the walls of the room in both directions, just like wild fire.

I'm quite excited writing this up, because this is the first instance really of the ideas I have come across on the degree course affecting the way I act at work and think and observe. And to top it all, I believe this is just the sort of thing these learning journals are meant to be used for.

Should a learning journal be public?

This is from my write up of activity 4, which is about setting up the blog in the first place, and my reflections on the use of blogs for Learning Journals.

"Should a learning journal be public?

Issues such as confidentiality and inhibition could mean that certain kinds of personal reflection can be included in a private LJ which couldn't in a public one. But writing for a perceived audience may improve quality or motivate to keep up to date. I find it useful to be able to share some of my writings, such as "my impression of jellyOS after a few days".

Some blogs allow others people to make comments on your writings. This turns the writer into a kind of interactive columnist, with feedback and discussions going on around the articles. Mine doesn't do that, and I suspect that this could make it harder to write in a spontaneous and uninhibited fashion. It's just a little bit too public for this specific application. Fine for internet 'celebrities' though.

Actually, I think it might be a great idea to set up a private blog with a comment facility, because this would allow me to read back over old thoughts and make comments myself, on my own past reflections, in the light of later experience. Yes, that seems very much in the spirit of the reflective practitioner philosophy. You could have a dialogue with yourself telescoping forward through time.

voice recorder

Another idea I have had is in response to the question I posed in my blog about mornings, afternoons and evenings. I decided it would be most useful to get one of those tiny digital voice recorders, so that I can 'jot down' any thoughts, information, questions, worth recording when I'm away from a computer. It may even be possible to upload the soundfiles rather than have to type in a transcript. I'm looking through eBay to see what's available."

What do you think?

report 1

I haven't written an entry in this blog for a few days or more, and this is mainly because I have been chanelling my creative writing energies into my "report 1". This has to be submitted by this sunday, so I have only two weekday evenings and then saturday and sunday mornings left. What a fuss!

Action researcher

I discovered someone who works at my school sometimes who is familiar with the concept of action research and reflective practice, having studied and used it for many years. She may be willing to give some useful advice and feedback, perhaps in exchange for technical support with her projects, although she does always seem to be very busy. She left me with the suggestion that the essence of good teaching IS action research, and I think I understand why.
It has always seemed to be to be a bit of a waste that after an ICT lesson has taken place in the suite, with both myself and a class teacher present, there's should be a possibility to discuss afterwards, how did it go, what worked and what didn't work.

Mornings, afternoons and evenings

I often have my clearest thoughts in the mornings, perhaps when I'm travelling to work on the train but it isn't usually until the afternoon, when I'm feeling tired and take a break that I get around to recording them, if at all.
In the evening I like to catch up with lighter conversations and entertainment, but I have to get some things done then as well and often stay up late.
Given this understand of the pattern of my day, how can I make more out of it?

A hard week

Events have conspired to make this last week particularly difficult, and I've been tired and tetchy some of the time. At this point, I'm wary that my ultraversity activities are having a detrimental effect even though I understand why that shouldn't be the case.
I have told people who are interested that I'm doing a degree course but it isn't really recognised on any formal basis. Communication is getting harder rather than easier, and the situation with upgrading the computers has got unnecessarily awkward.
Late nights and stressful travel have compounded the general frustrations and the endless questions about printer queues and lost files occasionally solicit a terse reply, which hasn't gone unnoticed.

course

I received a letter from EiC Action Zone about attending a training course for evaluating software for the Curriculum Online content. Although I am sceptical about the whole concept of curriculum content software, preferring the contructivist approach, I suppose I had better register an interest so that I can take advantage of the opportunity. I'll also do some research about "schoolzone" the company behind this, 'creating success' 'creative tools' and 'Lewisham Education in Cities Action Zone' who work from an office upstairs in this school.

Back to work

I've had a good week getting on with the course activities and exploring jellyOS, and I feel glad that I now know a lot more about the course, what I'm expected to do and how it will shape up in practice. It all seemed a bit formless and abstract.
Meanwhile back at work, I'm still having to deal with the installation of a the new computers in the ICT suite. I had a terse phone conversation with the suppliers this morning and then the Head, which resulted in a plan to close the suite for 1 week and do it all in one go, rather than the phased transition which I had envisaged. Oh well, at least there is some communication going on rather than none at all.