learning with technology

What is great master? Great master is the one that have thought before you think of and give you insight on your thinking. A day before I had a half-hour chance to chat with David Buckingham. I asked him a lot of questions on research methodology in visual analysis. He just gave me a mystery smile and said I had dug into a question that might not have any answers right now, but it is worth to explore. 3 hours after the meeting, Great Master sent me a e-mail attached with his unpublished Journal paper stating out all the possibilities, problems and proposals on media visual research methods, a comprehensive critical review on visual analysis research for the past ten years. What can I say? Thanks God.

It is a wonderful experience for the past 7 days. Through the Pop Culture conference in HKIEd, I attended a series of presentations by David Buckingham and various media educators. A lot of hot issues have been discussed inlcuding: media education 2.0, media literacy, multiple literacies, visual semiotics, blog, web2.0 etc. Yesterday, it is my pleasure for me to have a half hour consultation with David Buckingham. Prof Buckingham is full of wisdom and gave me a lot of reference readings upon my research agenda. To conclude, the visual analysis method on students' produced video is under development and the existing anaylsis tool is waiting for further research support. In view of the non-written mode IES in Liberal Studies on the NSS curriculum, it is still a challanging job to develop a valid assessment tool under the school based assessment.

Thanks for Jan Connelly shared with us such wonderful advsertisement demonstrating visual semiotics and intertextual meanings. David Buckingham in the pre-conference workshop expressed that visual semiotics and multimodality are using the methods of textual analysis but with new invented wordings. Here Jan presented "intertextual meanings" and made use of this to analyses with visual semiotics. To me, intertextual meanings" might have similar meaning as multimodality, both are talking the text, visual,sound and with social embedded meaning for interpretation. I like Jan's perspectives in "read with the text", "read across the text" and "read against the text". Social semiotcs are playing a role in interpretation. In fact, the following video is wonderful. Can you guess the product while watching the video?

In addition to New Literacies, New London Group (1996) introduced the term multiliteracies in response to the changing social conditions of global capitalism, especially on the new demands on the job markets. Jewitt (2008) summarized Multiliteracies as literacies beyond traditional written and spoken litearcy to expressing ourselves with multiple and multimodal texts. Situated in the digital word, we communicate not limited to text, but visual, audio, video and all other new modes such as in Facebook and blog etc. We are expressing ourselves in Multimodal Discourse (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). In summary, Jewitt (2008) remarked that multimodality is about meaning making through the situated configurations across image, gesture, gaze, body posture, sound , writing, music, speech .... Next time don't blame that the youth are getting worse in expressing themselves in written or spoken language. They might be expert in expressing themselve in Facebook and YouTube.

Here comes the plural "New Literacies" again. Some people commended on the YouTube that why the New Media Literacies created new word "Literacies" and did not know what it is about. However, more and more academics are using Literacies instead of literacy. In more simple words, under the digital world, we should have our competency to express ourselves beyond the traditional printed mode. Literacy is referring to the traditional competency in read, write and communicate with text. However, nowadays, we communicate and express ourselves in Facebook, Blog and all sorts of web2.0 technology beyond text, scuh as hypertext, sound, image manipulation, embedded video etc. The competency to communicate in these multimodalities is named as new literacies. Here comes a video inspired by Gunther Kress about New Literacies.

We have two mindsets in facing the new brave technological world. Last week I attended seminar from a History subject professor about outcome-based learning on communciation, problem solving, critical thinking etc. Henry Jenkins from MIT proposed new media literacies developed from multiple literacies where literacies are more than one literacy. Under 21st century, a new 21st century literacies are developing with the integration of technology, outcome-based and literacies....... What am I talking? Oh, you can see Henry Jenkins in this video.

Knobel and Lankshear (2007) in their book "A new literacies sampler" regard there are two mindsets for people approaching the contemporary world. Physical-industrial mindset We are in modern-industrial period, only the technology is new and advanced. There are no big change in economic, cultural, social world that has evolved throughout the modern era. We should treat technology as the same as before in all aspects such as bodies, materials, property and forms of ownership, industrial techniques and principles, physical texts, face to face dealings ..... Cyberspatial postindustrial mindset The contemporary world is different to how it has been for 30 years. The great difference is basically from digital technologies and electronic network. People should have new ways of doing things and new ways of being that are made possible by new tools and techniques, rather than using new technologies to do familiar things in more "technologized" ways (first mindset). What kind...

A video showing step-by-step procedure of drawing with Bubbl.us, a concept map drawing tool.

This is really a big topic. No can can say he or she will get all right in this aspect. However, we should explore otherwise we do not know what we are. Here is a so called a e-book "Education for the 21st Century: the basic". It mentions the basic principle of 21st century skills, the famous "digital natives", problem of assessment, bloom's taxonomy and the 21st learning spaces. It is really a basic understanding of the integration ICT with teaching and learning. http://newbay.ebookhost.net/tl/21cc/2/

The video was produced five years ago. A lot of friends are now teachers. A problem-based approach video covers a lof of technical issues in video production.

Last night, a friend who is a primary school teacher, asked me what is Facebook. When I wanted to explain to her, my F3 son started to talk about. I never know he knows Facebook. At the same time, my son then told me he can classify all his teachers into three categories. 1. Speak all the time, do not like student talk and discuss 2. Like to ask questions, or telling jokes, however, most of time talking by oneself and don't let students answer. And the jokes are in fact not so good. 3. Really engage students to talk and discuss. Interesting.

I always say that Podcasting is far more complicated than expected. Here is an article written by a teacher telling his experience of creating Podcasting. Reading through the lines, you will find that it is challanging and interesting to create your own Podcasting, however, Hong Kong teachers might find it complicated. Is there any more easy way to make it? http://techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196605453

Web2.0 becomes a jargon now. Everyone is talking about Web2.0, Web3.0 is even coming. No matter what webN.0 (N>2) is coming, I find this website is an excellent introduction of web2.0. All the basic concepts and their application in teaching and learning are shown. The paper is called " Web2.0: From curious to competent ".

Many people heard of YouTube, how about TeacherTube? It looks very similar to YouTube except it was created by a lot of teachers. You can also upload the video for sharing and making comment. However, you need to declare the video is for teaching and learning purpose only and copyright free. It is more safe to view TeacherTube in classroom. Here is a video from TeacherTube. It is a quick look about a street in Nanjing, with the viewpoint from Western people. They descirbed this as a teaching material in school.

There is a lot of freeware that can support collaborative drawing of Mind map. Bubbl.us is one of the most simple concept map drawing that can support multiple users. Hers is a drawing produced with bubbl.us .

The concept of Podcasting is easy to understand but far more difficult to implement, produce and publish. For receiving Podcasting materials, the most easy way is to downloand itune from http://www.apple.com/itunes/ and then you can subscribe a lot of interesting podcasting materials, such as CNN, BBC and other Pop songs. Some are free and some are marked with price for subscription. However, if you want to produce your own Podcasting station and for others to subscribe. You need to have some basic knowledge in audio recording, mixing and podcasting. Audacity (http://audacity.sf.net)is a easy-to-use and powerful freeware for audio recording and mixing. After producing your mp3, you need to upload the mp3 to a server and then you can make use of itune to podcast your mp3. The logistis is simple but difficult to a lot of beginners.

Podcasting is to broadcast your mp3 to the people who has subscribed. Most of the time it is combined with the function of RSS , Really Simple Syndication. Here is one of the examples. How to capture your voice into Windows Movie Maker. mp3

You are browsing a blog and I am sure you should know what is a blog. Here is a simple and easy to be understood video about blog.

Social Bookmarking Del.icio.us is a wonderful social bookmarking freeware for you to share your favourite websites to others. Similar to other web 2.0 technology, keyword tagging is applied for easy categorisation and information retrieval. Here is my del.icio.us . People having same interest might group into a community to share their bookmarking, with the function of subscribion and RSS, latest updating can be shared without delay. Here is an example called markazine created by a group of Hong Kong media people.

Armidale of Australia, located midway between Sydney and Brisbane, is a place full of red leaves during April.

Nice to develop a place for sharing.