Safer Internet Day 2011 – Top 10 Tips for Parents

This list of Top 10 E-safety tips for parents (and teachers) was originally put together by Marc Shoffren of Clore Shalom school and updated by us both for a session we did together on Limmud conference. I think it’s a great resource as it’s really simple and each point has a web resource. It also treats the internet as a learning opportunity to be embraced rather than a danger to avoided. If you find it useful let us know.

You can download the document here to print or edit Limmud e-safety Top Ten Tips for Parents

Top Ten e-safety Tips for Parents

  • Discover the internet together: www.getsafeonline.org contains advice about firewalls, spyware and antivirus protection as well as how to protect your child.
  • Agree a framework for sensible internet use at home: www.childnet-int.org has some good suggestions for this.
  • Discuss disclosing personal information: www.chatdanger.com is a site for teenagers that gives advice on how to stay safe while chatting online.
  • Explore the issues involved in meeting an e-pal face to face: www.thinkuknow.co.uk has advice for children about this.
  • Teach critical questioning skills when looking at websites: http://web.archive.org/web/20080430094706/www.quick.org.uk/menu.htm has a useful checklist to assess whether a website is likely to be credible. QUICK stands for the Quality Information Checklist. (nb the link takes you to an archive of the site which is otherwise not available)
  • Don’t be too critical of your child’s exploration: It is natural for children to be curious about off-limits material. If they come across inappropriate material use this as an opening to discuss the content with them, and perhaps make rules for this kind of activity. Encourage your children to use child appropriate search engines, such as www.askkids.com.
  • Report illegal material: www.ceop.gov.uk is the website of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre, a police agency tackling child abuse on the internet. It includes a unique facility that enables parents and young people to make reports of actual or attempted abuse on line.
  • Encourage good netiquette: www.transl8it.com is a fun website which translates some of the language used in chatrooms, instant messaging and texting into normal English.
  • Know your child’s net use: Let your child show you which websites that they like visiting and what it is that they do there. Try some of the sites yourself to see what they are experiencing. To explore with them try http://kidsmart.org.uk/
  • Remember the positives: Embrace the internet, it’s a great thing and it’s here to stay. To remind yourself of some of the positives watch the Did You Know presentation, available at http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/

3 Simple Rules for Kids:

  • Stick with your friends. Have your teens limit their privacy settings to Only Friends. That’ll restrict who sees your kids’ information, including pictures, videos, and applications they use.
  • Keep private information private. When filling out their bios, teens can leave fields blank. There is no need for your teens to post their phone numbers or addresses. These features are optional and aren’t required to create a Facebook account.
  • Don’t let your information get away from you. If your teens haven’t restricted who can share their information, their personal data can end up in the hands of marketers. Also, advise your teens to be on the lookout for personal information requests — like their birthday or music playlist — from third parties. And make sure your teens uncheck the public search results box so people can’t find their Facebook page through a Google search.

Why Twitter is good for teachers – thanks to…

I did a presentation last week at the World ORT Wingate Seminar which included a 15 minute piece on why Twitter is a great tool for teachers and educators. I’ll add the video and information in a separate post when it is ready.

One of the old Twitter tricks to show how Twitter is useful is to ask your followers to say hi, where they are from and answer a question. I asked my followers to say hi and tell us a great resource. I wasn’t specific about the resource as I wanted to show the people I was presenting to the range of people and resources out there. As always I was astounded by the replies which I have embedded below.

If you (PC) Hold Ctrl + click on the names you should be able to get directly to each person’s twitter account in a new tab on your browser.





Many thanks to @mrshgm @mr_mclaughlin @bredano @monprof @antheald @mark_dubois @kristianstill @redmenace56 @h1moodle @cbrannon @langwitches @dan_bowen @yvonneosborn @gvibe @carolskyring @islayian @relativism @dwsm for their help.

Stream of conference on digital content creation for learning

All are welcome to watch the live stream of the World ORT Wingate Seminar on Digital Content Creation for learning.

You can watch at

http://www.ort.org/asp/page.asp?id=49

Schedule

Monday 10th January

11:00-12:30 Keynote: Digital Media in Education
Jonathan Drori, Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, UK

14:00-15:30 IWB Workshop, “Essential Digital Resources for Your Classroom”
Danny Nicholson, IWB Consultant and Teacher Trainer, UK

15:45-17:15 Particpant Presentations
15:45 – Barbora Pechová – Lauder Schools of Prague ,Czech Republic
16:00 Christine Cook – Lycee ORT Strasbourg, France
16:15 Aliza Weingarten, Nesher Junior High School, Israel
16:30 Rebeca Rochman – CIM-ORT School, Mexico
16:45 Dr. Olga Tuzova – ORT De Gunzburg, St Petersburg, Russia

Tuesday 11th January

09:15-10:45 Flash Animation Workshop
Sadler Johnson, Website Developer, World ORT, UK

11:00-12:30 Participant Presentations
11:00 Jimena Fernanda Castellión & Claudia Ruth Tujschinaider, School 2.0: Real-World Projects in the Virtual Age – ORT High School, Argentina (30mins)
11:30 Nadia Maria Petriccioli – Milan, Italy
11:45 Rani Ben-Zeev, Student Created Content – Western Galilee Maaravi High School, Israel
12:00 Teresa Segalien?, Shifting Teachers’ Role: Constructionism and SmartBoard Workflow Experience – Vilnius Sholom Aleichem Jewish School, Lithuania

14:00-15:30 Enhancing Learning through Good Design
Professor Tom Boyle and Carl Smith, London Metropolitan University, UK

15:45-17:15 Participant Presentations
15:45 Olga Trupp – ORT-“Mishpahteinu”, Kazan, Russia
16:00 Martin Kalenberg, Learning Through the News – ORT University, Uruguay
16:30 Pennit Amarel, Assessment in your Palm – Rogozin Junior B School, Kiryat Ata, Israel
17:00 Dr. Nir Yehuda – Eynot Yarden Comprehensive School, Israel

Wednesday 12th January

09:15-10:45 Collaborative resource banks
Andy Smith, Head of Resources, TSL, Times Educational Supplement

11:00-12:30 Finding Digital Content
Theo Kuechel, Researcher and Consultant, University of Hull, UK

14:00-15:30 Participant Presentations
14:00 Maryna Gezalova –Jewish Gymnasium, ORT “Aleph”, Ukraine
14:15 Philippe Balais – ORT Lyon, France
14:30 Megan Lawless – Geared for Life Program, ORT South Africa
14:45 Dovale Lanir – Anna Frank High School, Sasa, Israel

Thursday 13th January: No streaming – visits to local school and BETT.

Friday 14th January

09:15-10:45 Online Tools for Creating Content (workshop)
Daniel Needlestone, Educational Development Manager, World ORT, UK

BETT 2011 – who to visit? where to start?

As part of my work at World ORT I’m organising a seminar next week which will be attended by 18 teachers from abroad. As part of the seminar we are spending an afternoon at BETT, a large educational technology exhibition with hundreds of exhibitors displaying their wares.

It can be a rather imtimidating place for a newbie and it’s sometimes hard to know what to do when you arrive. I wanted to make the participants a few recommendations to get them on their way. Again it was hard to know where to start so I thought I would get the exhibitors to do the work for me, if they want me to recommend them then they should tell me why I should visit. I created a Google Form here and sent a few messages on twitter asking for exhibitors to fill in the form. A couple of weeks later and I had 25 sets of information which can be viewed in their raw form here.

A quick mail merge and a bit of tidying up later and I’ve  got booklet with all the information in.

You can view and download the booklet here via Google Docs, to download click the link, the file menu and select download.

Or you can download it directly via this link: Please come and visit us at BETT 2011

If you would like an editable version just get in touch.

I hope you find it useful

For some general advice on visiting BETT I recommend this post

BETT 2011 Fringe Unconferences and Extra Events

It’s time for BETT again. Despite the tightening belts in UK education it’s still the place to be for everything edtech. Some go to see specific products and services, some to collect free pens, some to network and some to just see what’s new.

For those that want to network, learn and be inspired there are a number of fringe events going on that I would recommend.

In order of date rather than importance and starting with the Learning Without Frontiers Fringe Events rather than the BETT ones…

Sunday 9th January
Mirandamod Unconference LWF, 15:00-17:30, “Why do I need a school now I use mobile technology? …and why do I need a teacher when I have the Internet?”
Teachmeet LWF, 17:30-19:30

Wednesday 12th January
MirandaMod 15:30 -17:00 Which Web 2.0 tools develop teaching and learning effectively?
TedXOrenda at BETT

Thursday 13th January
MirandaMod 15:30 -17:00 How can teachers get the most in the classroom from today’s ICT tools?
Collabor8 4 Change at BETT 18:00

Friday 14th January
MirandaMod 15:30 -17:00 How can digital technologies … be implemented to increase achievement for all?
Teachmeet at BETT 18:00

Everyday at BETT
Teachmeet Takeover at BETT, 12th-15th January

I’m yet to decide how many I can make but regrettably it will only be 2 or 3. They are all slightly different, I won’t explain each format or event, take a look at their webpages to find out more. If you go and see me there please say hi!

E-tools for education and community building session on Limmud

Last Tuesday I ran a session at Limmud conference on E-tools for education and community building at Limmud Conference UK.

As promised I am including links to all the resources discussed here, this post also gives me a chance to thank all the people who helped me put the session together.

You can watch the session replayed via Flashmeeting here http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/fmm.php?pwd=6091f7-11930&jt=00:19:52
It’s all taken via a laptop webcam so no great quality but if you listen with headphones you should be able to hear the audio fine and I will link to the presentation below.

During the presentation I explained 4 main tools, Flashmeeting, Twitter, Voicethread and Google Apps as well as passing references to Wallwisher and blogging via posterous.

You can see the voicethread I created below or via this direct link

Thanks to the following people who participated, many of whom have excellent blogs and websites that are linked to via their twitter profiles.

Allanah King @allanahk
Drew Thomson @mrthomson
Peter Eckstein @redmenace56
Mark Carls @mcarls
Judy Mckenzie @judykmck
Chris @infernaldepart who also linked to his blog post on using twitter here

Thanks to the 5 Flashmeeting contributors including the following who left their twitter names.
Caren @jlearn20
Peter @redmenace56
Adena @PELIE_org

For those that don’t know Flashmeeting it’s a great and really simple tool for online meetings and discussion, I usually use the E2BN server at www.flashmeeting.e2bn.net which is free for UK Educators, an alternative is the Open University Open Learn server which seems to be open to all as long as you are happy for your meeting to be syndicated.

A couple of online participants mentioned the open Google Document “Useful Web 2.0 Tools for Jewish Educators and Staff Developers” – it is a a quickly growing and already large resource listing so many great web tools but also with links to tutorials and examples of each tool being used in education, a great resource for anyone in education.

Another list is one I compiled last year for a similar presentation where I asked people to submit their favourite tool via a Google Form, you can see the results at this link.

And an example use of wallwisher to compile yet more tools is here

Finally a link to my presentation from the session here also embedded below – it’s not a standalone presentation but maybe if you watch it alongside the flashmeeting linked to above it will make sense!

Facebook Stats in 2010

A number of places on the web have posted some fascinating Facebook stats of activity in 2010 – I can’t work out where the original source is but will post some references at the end.

They quote that in 2010 in a randomly sampled 20 minute time slot there were (in order)

  • Comments: 10,208,000
  • Likes: 7,657,000
  • Messages: 4,632,000
  • Photos uploaded: 2,716,000
  • Friend requests accepted: 1,972,000
  • Status updates: 1,851,000
  • Wall posts: 1,587,000
  • Event invites sent out: 1,484,000
  • Tagged photos: 1,323,000
  • Shared links: 1,000,000

I assume they are all rounded to the nearest 1000 or it would be quite a coincidence.

They also claim that in 2010 the following changes were made to relationship statuses

  • 43,869,800 changed to single
  • 36,774,801 changes to married
  • 28,460,516 changed to in a relationship
  • 5,974,574 changed to engaged
  • 3,025,791 changed to “it’s complicated”

Of course these statistics don’t really tell you much except that Facebook is pretty enormous and heavily used and that it’s pretty easy to get statistics from it.

A week ago Facebook posted this video about the top trends on Facebook in 2010, over 6000 people have liked it so far so it’s probably worth a watch!

References:
I first came across this story from http://rorycellan.posterous.com/those-facebook-stats-for-2010 the posterous blog of BBC Tech Correspondant Rory Cellan Jones via a linked in message.

Trying to find the source I came across posts by Democracy UK http://www.facebook.com/notes/democracy-uk-on-facebook/a-snapshot-of-facebook-in-2010/172769082761603 and Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/12/31/facebook-by-the-numbers-in-2010-stats/ who also put the link in to the video.

Edit – this Facebook blog post also explains the top status trends of the year http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=466369142130

Wishing all readers a great New Year.

A day at #limmud conference… Monday

My day at Limmud Conference

Every day at Limmud is different, no doubt I’ve included too much information in this blog post but I wanted to give a full picture of what this conference is actually about. It does miss out all the important little conversations in between sessions, over meals and to the people you are sitting next to, many of whom are complete strangers. Such is Limmud

Breakfast

11-12.10 – Sat in the AV room at the back of RAM 1 with Charles Darwish and Jonathan Hunter streaming the session on the internet – chatting to people online about the session and tweeting about it.

12.30-13:40 – Sat in the same AV room streaming and listening to John Ging of UNRWA in conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, fascinating.

14:00-15:10 – Sat on the panel of a discussion on “Long Term Prospects for Israel’s Democracy” – really enjoyed discussing the topic with Jpost journalist Yaakov Lapin, Acri (Israel Civil Rights Movement) worker Libby Lenkinski Friedlander and was a real pleasure have the session chaired by journalist and former editor of The Jewish Chronicle Ned Temko, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. Questions from the floor were brilliantly thought out and very challenging. A great discussion I hope we didn’t disappoint people by not arguing too much!

15:30 – 16:40 – Listened to a discussion on new models for Jewish Communities for the 21st Century. Interesting though more focused on creating communities based around prayer than I had expected.

17:00 – took a coffee break for an hour and chatted to a Dane a Norwegian and two English francophiles!

18:00 – quick dinner, quite nice!

18:30-19:40 – Ran a networking session for Jewish teachers. Was lovely to arrive to an already formed chatty circle of teachers of all ages and areas of expertise, many trainees. There are so many Jewish people working in education and so many are keen to share experiences and resources. www.jewishteachers.org.uk

20:00 – Sat by a Christmas tree and watched football on my laptop, not very sociable of me, best not to say anymore

22:00-23:30 – Attended a very fun and funny session on cocktail making. The most patient presenter, a London bar manager, did a great job.

23:30 until late – sat in the open mic cafe (the acoustic cafe) and listened to some fantastic and a few bizarre performances finishing in a great jam session.

Today has already been very different…

Virtual Presenters welcome to e-tools session at Limmud

Once again this year I am attending Limmud Conference at Warwick University and again I am giving a number of sessions. (More about Limmud conference later on).

One of my sessions it titled e-Tools, e-Learning, and e-Communication for e-veryone happening at 19:00-20:10 GMT on Tuesday (28th December)

In this session I will be presenting various online tools and case studies to give people ideas on how to use e-tools for learning, teaching, networking and communicating.

I would love to get some participation from people online, live on the night or via this voicethread. If you have a tool you could talk about or a case study to share please let me know by adding your name to this Google Doc.

I will be broadcasting the session via Flashmeeting so all can join in

If you want to contribute but can’t make it live on the evening please leave us a comment on this voicethread.

Nb in case you are wondering, like all the presenters at Limmud I am volunteering to be there, and like most of the presenters I am a paying participant!

About Limmud Conference: Limmud conference is an annual conference of Jewish learning which attracts about 2500 people. It attracts an incredibly diverse range of people with sessions on anything and everything. You can view the full conference programme on their website.

Snow days self-learning and online learning

Back in January when the UK shut down for a week because of snow schools leaders suddenly realised that VLEs and e-learning could be a solution to closed schools. Maybe the promise of virtual classrooms and 24 hour learning could actually keep school children learning when schools were closed.

With this in mind, alongside the prospect of further school closures, I started an open Google Document allowing teachers to share websites and ideas useful for student self learning. These aren’t necessarily alternatives to the classroom but links to share with a class when an unplanned closure hits.

I apologise it’s taken so long to share all the links. I was reminded of this long forgotten document by the snow outside my window and the UK school closures again this December.

You can view the ideas and links here
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dhnhtkkp_179chpjhjfh

Thanks to all who contributed, there are a list of names at the bottom of the document but there were many other contributors who contributed anonymously.

If anyone would like to contribute further links and ideas please message via twitter or leave a comment and I will send you the link to the document.

As well as the document I experimented teaching two 6th form classes online during the school closure. I’ll blog about this experience another time.