Despite hail, peak hour traffic and a string of out-of-action traffic lights, teachers and principals leave work (unless they are committed to parent-teacher interviews) and head to Hindmarsh to be part of the historic launch of a Charter for the Australian teaching profession. A charter developed by the national professional associations with Teaching Australia, a statement of values and commitments.

Teachers believe in the power of education to make a difference to the lives of individuals and to society. As teachers and principals we are committed to giving students the best education possible for them to lead fulfilling, purposeful and productive lives. We bring to the role high levels of professional knowledge, expertise and ethical commitment.

Chris Robinson, Chief Executive of DECS does the honours assisted by the youngest and the oldest registered teachers in South Australia. Ian Smyth and Lia Tedesco also acknowledge Jim Dellit’s work.

Two hours later, walking down the corridor past the food standards in early childhood workshop, I come across the ESL educators presenting the ESLE Ann Sexton Memorial Awards to merit award winners of SACE Stage 2 ESL in front of proud parents and teachers. It is wonderful to realise that an educator with vision, dedication and passion for giving ESL students access to excellent courses and opportunities is remembered by her colleagues in this way each year.

Then downstairs to the CEGSA AGM to join in congratulating colleagues receiving awards for SA Computer Teacher of the Year: Graham Taylor, and SA ICT Leaders of the Year: John Travers and Anne Ballard. What a wealth of talented teachers we have: http://cegsa.editme.com/awards2007
And don't forget the teachers staying back in country schools to take their professional learning via Centra videoconference.

The teaching profession does indeed set itself demanding standards. As the charter says "We take responsibility for the development and renewal of our profession. We act to advance the quality and reputation of teaching through professional learning and reflection."

Lots of toilet humour, biogas and ideas for online projects. 

Beyond GLAT (Gee! Look at that): technology in the SOSE classroom
Malcolm McInerney's great quotes, questions and resources...

• Toys do not mean engagement
• How can you teach about the history of a place without a knowledge of the geography
• Snow who worked out the connection of cholera to water source would have killed for GIS technology
• Ozepedia initiative - is this needed?
• Digital geography, historical GIS
• What is the profile of the teacher who jumps into new technologies? Commitment, not age-related, personality, flexibility, happy to work outside comfort zone
• Careers that require GIS knowledge: tourism, planning, police, military, emergency services, industry, councils, statistics,
• Why has education not taken up GIS? Don't blame schools for performance without considering spatial context
• GIS competition 2007: why were there no entries from Victoria or South Australia?
• If the technology can get into Sun Hill (The Bill) why can't it get into schools?
• What can we do to convince government that geography needs to be part of the national curriculum?
• Earthquakes have to be red don't they

Resources

• Derek's http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/
• GTASA: http://www.gtasa.asn.au
• Juicy geography blog: www.juicygeography.co.uk/blog/
• Surname search (UK data)
• Earthcam: http://www.earthcam.com/
• Fly to Gallipoli (Google earth)
• Geoscience Australia - data sources minerals, disasters, etc
• National Toilet Map: Australia's incontinence project
  www.toiletmap.gov.au/

Spatial literacy: ability to understand spatial relationships, how geographic space is represented, ability to reason and make key decisions about spatial concepts
3D games, flight simulators, Google Earth
GIS is used to solve real spatial problems - need to create conundrums which require students to collect data and do original research

Creative enquiry and problematic approach through GIS
Use at all levels of education

Skills

• Visual literacy
• Cartography
• Design: some students have a real way with maps (use of colour, de-cluttered, easy to read)
• Searching: querying a map, developing a search syntax, eg find the 10 biggest cities in the world, or over a certain size
• Refining search: What data fields do you have? What do you need to get the specific information you are interested in?
• Reading maps
• Mathematical/statistical skills
• Analysis and application
• Create a new information produce, eg develop a disaster plan for local council
• GPS
• Database skills
• Mashups

Many packages: some free download, examples ArcGIS & ArcView (~$595 for unlimited education licence). ESRI have invested in education materials
Online training available: GIS for dummies
Huge datasets behind queries from range of sources: eg SA planning - agreement in place for all South Australian schools to receive SA data.
ESRI - need to get in (shape) .shp data file form
Composite layers of files - move layers to expose different data
Check out the data (eg Earthquake exercise: all the earthquakes that occurred in 1999: date, location, magnitude)
Buffering technique
MapINFO (same price as ESRI) has converter for .map files to .shp files (ABS data released in .map form)

This is how it started:
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Web 2.0: What's in it for me?
There is an emerging trend in sessions and discussions I attend and take part in about emerging technologies and Web 2.0 or School Library 2.0 and all the associated so-called ‘terrible 2.0s’. It revolves around trust, identity, quality and community. Web 2.0 is about giving up control in return for trust. If I only listen to, or am exposed only to those I trust, how do I learn other opinions, become exposed to other issues? This is particularly problematic when I am in with the 'wrong crowd'.
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And after a lot of stuff that is slightly cringe-making to read a year later (wow - what a year 2007 has been!) the article ended abruptly with a paragraph that was so inconclusive it is no wonder the article was never finished and submitted to Access.
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Why am I writing an article for a print journal for a limited number of subscribers to read in 3 months time, when I could be sticking these ideas on my blog and have them splashed all over the web sphere tomorrow? Reasons might include: credibility, considered opinion, association endorsement, and broader audience. It removes the 'personality' element, and because it was requested or commissioned then there is a chance it might actually get written. It may also gain publication points or kudos for my employing institution. On the other hand, perhaps personality is the key and the individual is the new institution?

It will be interesting to watch whether people's personal blogs will rank higher than their myedna profile, ie will my http://elgg.edna.edu.au/pmitchell which has content (and hopefully get updated more frequently again now) rank higher in search engines than http://me.edu.au/p/pru?

With the launch of myedna 2.0 (to be known ask me.edu.au) Kerrie asks 'How many personas do you have?'
[Click to view link]

I have a more immediate issue, which is how are you coping with multiple edna Groups personas (not to mention edna Lists when they join the party)? For many years I have been registered with edna with both my work email address and my personal address. This enables me to separate my mail so that professional association traffic goes to personal email, and work related lists and groups get directed to the work server/folders. It has always seemed good information management practice, and means my professional association connections are independent of my employer.

With the integrated profile of me.edu.au which brings together my professional interests and communities irrespective of 'pigeonhole' I don't really want to maintain two edna personas and duplicate myself through communities. 

So, is it time to merge all my logins and only use the one email address for edna? This was certainly one of the key cases for myedna proof of concept projects: give me a space online that is independent of a sector/system/institution/employer. Perhaps a new identity system not based on email address?

· Organised around individuals/egos: unlike usenet, lists and groups

· Profiles: a formula for personal information

· Friends: danah thought no-one really took the time to work out the right term to use here. Friends here are not friends as we know them. Friends mean ‘audience’, doesn’t necessarily mean these people are paying attention to you. The term watchlist has been suggested for myedna which seems more accurate, with colleague being used for a mutual 'watching' relationship.

· Comments, testimonials, the wall: for public expression, social patter, becomes a way of showing social status and who you are paying attention to.

· Private messaging function

· Apps

· Theming:  danah made an interesting point about online spaces that are themed to reflect the personality of their owner (like this one is). She likened it to the teenager's bedroom wall or decorated lockers - a further expression of who I am.

Critical differences between online publics and traditional publics (eg parks, malls, libraries etc)

·         Persistence of comments and content which can never be deleted

·         Searchability which enables you to be found anywhere, by anyone

·         Replicability and copying over and over raises issues of where is the original vs the copy

·         Invisible audience where I never know who is watching me, and I'm always writing to an imagined audience

Other issues

Context: part of being socialised is context and how you want to be seen in this context. Not all public spaces have the same rules. You can't easily be simultaneously cool in different contexts, eg to your family and to your colleagues.

Information literacy experts or expats?
[Click to view link] (102 Kb pdf)