Skype is listed at number 11 on the top 100 tools for Learning in 2009. This is actually a small drop from where it was listed in 2008 and 2007. While it is frequently used in the general community, it still has to “take off” in educational settings.

The 2009 Horizon Report: K-12 edition lists Skype in the One Year or Less Online Communication Tools. It says “Desktop video conferencing knocks down classroom walls and brings subject experts and co-learners from all over the world into the classroom.”

Already there are lots of teacher-generated ideas about how we might use Skype so that teachers and students can interact with their peers beyond the classroom walls.
Here are some links to check:

My introduction to Skype occurred earlier this year when a class in a Perth school rang me to have a “conversation.”

So last week I asked teacher colleagues what experience they had had of Skype and was pleasantly surprised by what they reported. I will spread their responses over a couple of posts.

Anne Mirtschin, ICTEV Leader of the year for 2009, and recently the recipient of an excellence in Teaching Award, is a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in country western Victoria, Australia.
She writes
I have done a lot of videoconferencing with skype over the last two years, with amazing learning outcomes.

I am passionate about the use of Skype. People across the world find it user friendly but my biggest connection difficulties have been with Australian schools and experts!
If you would like to investigate further information about Anne’s use of Skype check her blog posts.

Damien Morgan from Dalby Queensland told me this story:
First of all, I had better tell you that I have never used Skype (but I know people who do!).
We have a little girl at our school currently recovering from a bone-marrow transplant in the Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. As she ( and her mother) are in isolation for some 8 weeks to avoid infection, we were able to set her up with a laptop with internet access and webcam, with similar for her father and siblings. We also put a webcam in her classroom at school, and her classmates have just in the last week begun chatting with her using Skype. A couple of things: obviously she can be very tired/sick, so contact is sort of arranged through her mum, who also is able to use the technology to keep in touch with her husband and three other kids. We thought it important that as far as possible Ainsleigh (the little girl) be kept as part of her class group. She won’t physically return to school before Easter, and probably not until second semester next year.

BTW, the latest prognosis for Ainsleigh is cautiously positive, but she has a long road ahead of her.

Have you tried using Skype in your classroom? Please tell us about your experiences in a comment.

Many thanks to Stephen Downes for the heads-up on this one. The original post is on Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day blog.
Jane says in her post:

I think this year’s list, once again, is a great demonstration of how learning professionals are making use of a wide range of both traditional and innovative tools and services both for personal learning and within formal structured learning contexts. The fact that Twitter is now the Number 1 tool shows that learning professionals clearly appreciate the power of social media technologies for learning and are demonstrating its use in ways that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. I also believe that although some well-known tools have moved down or even off the list this year, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are no longer of value for learning; it is much more likely that they are now just “taken for granted”. This year’s list once again shows that learning moves on!

Stephen says in his post that what he finds interesting is the page of winners and losers.

For me by far the most interesting is the inclusion, high on the list, of sites and tools that we have identified as high on the “blocked list” for many Australian education institutions. It does illustrate the fact that we need to come up with other options than just blocking doesn’t it?

Here are the top 10 in the list (visit the site for a list where you can click on the tool). Note the top 10 tools are all free.
KEY
F=Free, C=Commercial, W=Windows, M=Mac, S=Server, O=Online

Interesting also to see Moodle coming in at 14th, Wikipedia at 17th, Prezi (a relatively new kid on the block) already at 28th.

Today I am presenting a session at e-Dayz09 at Tea Tree Gully TAFE.
Just a bit of a “show and tell” really, called from Toy to Tool.

I have a few gadgets and gizmos to demo and talk about, and I rather hope participants will be able to chime in with gadgets and thoughts of their own. One of the things I want to talk about is the fact that there is often a lag time between the appearance of a new gadget in the marketplace and the utilisation of that in our own teaching and learning.

I know that when I have been conducting workshops for educators, many of the participants say they are grateful for the time to “play”. Most of us feel that first of all we need to get a good grasp of how to use the gadget, then we need to assess its educational potential, and then we need to have time to work out how to unleash that potential into our classroom pedagogy. That all takes time, and if we then add system wide implementation into the mix, what can be a matter of months may become years. Sometimes that time lag is just too great and by the time the tool makes it into our classroom, our students think it is “old hat”.

My other thought is that sometimes a new tool may not be for implementation in our classroom, but may be most useful for our own professional development or for our own professional learning. And not everything will be useful. Sometimes you put in a fair bit of effort learning to do something, and in the long run decide that you won’t add it to your repertoire. My learning trail is littered with those. But the learning process is always useful! In the end, you know how it works, and you’ve decoded the steps, and added the process to your strategies.

My Prezi isn’t very startling and can be found here. For me the jury is still out on whether some of these toys/tools would be useful to the educator in the classroom or lecture theatre.

Other posts you might like to look at:

Among my future posts will be ones relating to the Kindle.

A new website, equity101, launched this week, offers
a centralised online portal for researchers, teachers, managers, practitioners and policy makers, providing online spaces for increased collaboration and evolving discussions, raising awareness of news and events in social inclusion and widening participation in education, and promoting wider dissemination of scholarship in social justice and equity.

The site aims to better facilitate collaboration and research for those from around the world with interests in widening participation, student equity and social inclusion in education, while also raising the profile of those who work in the field as practitioners and managers.

This week I acquired a Kindle and have begun to read my first e-book on it, and so I’m venturing into thinking about how an e-book reader might be used in education.

I do not want to get into arguments about whether I have chosen the right e-book reader, or about the fact that Kindle is basically attached to Amazon (although you can upload other items to it), but I am interested in whether there are already examples of how e-book readers are being used in education, and whether Australian institutions are considering their use.

I have done some preliminary research on mailing lists I belong to and the response has been varied.

Judy O’Connell, Head of Library and Information Services at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, is one person I know who has been working with a Kindle, and she has posted her thoughts online. This post is also worth considering.

e-books are a topic I seem to keep returning to on my blog.
So far with my Kindle I have managed to

The International Kindle, which is the one available here in Australia, does not have the internet browsing enabled, that its US counterpart has. That may be a good thing if all you are wanting to do is use it for reading e-books.

The 6″ Kindle which is what the International version is called, is fine for reading text, but in the pdf I uploaded there were a couple of diagrams which were just too squidgy. That made me think that if you were using the Kindle as a text book e-reader then you probably want the 9.7″ one (US A4 size) which is the Kindle DX, not yet available in Australia.

What I am really looking forward to is travelling with the Kindle - it is small and light, will slip easily into my bag alongside my 9″ netbook computer, and able to contain several books to replace the bundle of 6-8 books I tote along with me.

I’ve set up a Google Alert so I can monitor news stories about the Kindle.

An article that came through today called Kindle for the Academic basically says what I was beginning to suspect: “Let’s face it: at heart, the Kindle is designed to let you read mystery novels, not academic books.” The rest of the article is worth reading too. He makes this alarming statement: “I think the book as an artifact is already dead…… the e-book feels like the nail in the coffin.”
Alex Golub concludes: “It is too early for academics to shift much of their workload over to e-book format — although that day may come sooner than we expect. So if you, like me, are going to spend a lot of time traveling or just away from bookstores, it might be the time to try one of these devices. While they are not ready for prime time yet, they are still great places to outsource our pleasure reading and reference libraries. And soon they might be good for even more.”

So tell me where you stand on e-books. Are they as Alex says right at the beginning of his article in the category, for you, of “Extremely Complicated Handheld Devices Our Students Understand“, just one more thing to get your head around, an expense you don’t need, or can you see a niche for one in your life, your classroom, your teaching and learning?

Some other links for you to check:

This YouTube video talks about the world in 2025.

The link if you can’t play the video in screen.

It asks some pertinent questions that affect all of us in the education business:

or will students collaborate to teach each other? through social networking, virtual environments, sharing… exploring … creating.. collaborating.

While I watched this I thought about how much my life has changed in just the last year. 2025 seems a long way into the future when I think of the radical changes that have happened in my life in the last 10.
There are things I do now that I didn’t do even just a year ago, technologies I have that I didn’t have then.
What about you?

Last week I wrote about iPods in education in Australia with a number of examples of how teachers are using them.

As Lorraine Cairns from Dookie Primary School in Victoria says, the key factor is the way students engage with the technology. Here is what Lorraine sent to me:

I have 6 iPod touches in a class of 17 Grade 3-6 children.
I use them in Literacy and Maths rotations in the following ways:

Downloaded Apps from Itunes -Literacy- Hangman, Grammar Lite, Word Families, Scramble, Scrabble, Word Dash, Wurdle, etc
Mathematics - Four Free, Times Tables Free, Math Quizzer, Mathemagics Lite, Geared Free, Carrie’s Dots,

I also have downloaded some images and the children use these as writing prompts.

I also make up slide shows and save as an mp4. I have made up slide shows about the Solar System for the children to listen to and watch. I also make up slide shows with spelling words on them. The children then listen and watch the slide show to practice their spelling.

At present the children are making up small podcasts to advertise the local Agricultural Show. These will be loaded onto the iPods for others to hear.

Podcasts of stories are also downloaded and children can read along or just listen to a story.

The iPod Touches can access the internet through our wireless network which means the children can access the internet right at their tables.

Of course much of this can be done on computers or tapes and listening posts but the interest and the engagement is high when they get a turn on the iPods.

Still need some ideas?

Here is a Clip from Australia’s Channel 7 News showing the how the StudyWiz Learning Management System is leveraging iPods for education.

Here is the longer version of the report (also a Youtube video).

And here is a list of possible uses.

How far do you walk each day? Could you walk from Darwin to Melbourne? That’s a touch over 6,000 km if you walk mainly around the edge. On August 18th, 2000, at 9:00 am, Jean Béliveau left Montreal, Canada. His goal is to walk around the planet to promote “Peace and non-violence for the profit of the children of the world”. In October this year, on the 62nd leg of his journey, Jean began a trek in Australia most of us would never even attempt.
If you are in any of these places keep your eye out for Jean: Australia - Darwin (2009-10-07), Palmerston (2009-10-10), Adelaide River (2009-10-13 - approx), Pine Creek (2009-10-16 - approx.), Katherine (2009-10-19 - exact), Daly Waters (2009-10-27), Tennant Creek (projected Nov. 10), Mount Isa (projected Dec. 1), Townsville (projected Jan. 1), Rockhampton, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne - 6,013km. Perhaps you’ve already seen him?

However, I digress. What I really meant to write about is the 10,000 steps project. If the organisers, CQUniversity in Rockhampton, and the Queensland Department of Health had their way, we’d all be wearing pedometers, and aiming for that magical 10,000 steps on the way to better health. This month my buddy Janet and I have nearly walked across Florida (only 3 days and 25,000 steps to go), and last month we walked across Devon.

Somehow our lifestyle has made most of us sedentary. We hop in our cars, go to work, sit at our desks or in our classrooms, do minimal walking, and then get in our cars, drive home, flop down in front of the TV. Some use public transport and they walk more. But very few of us, according to research, walk nearly enough.

The 10,000 steps site allows users to create their own personal interactive Step Log, sign up for monthly I-challenges, hook up with a buddy, and access a variety of online resources.

10,000 Steps is committed to ongoing Research, Development, Distribution and Support of new and existing 10,000 Steps support materials at the local, state and national level, all with web-based support. The aim of this program is to increase participation in physical activity through the state and nation.

Many thanks to my colleague Nelly who pointed these prints out to me yesterday.

The images were created by Chris Jordan in 2007 and 2008 in a project called Running the Numbers.
The one I have chosen to display was created in 2007 depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

A partial zoom into the picture shows

and then a detail of the actual size.

Do visit the site for other mind boggling images.

In 2009 Chris Jordan has had another exhibition Running the Numbers II: portraits of global mass culture. Similarly to the first Running the Numbers series, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: the number of tuna fished from the world’s oceans every fifteen minutes, for example. But this time the statistics are global in scale, rather than specifically American.

For example this one depicts 20,500 tuna, the average number of tuna fished from the world’s oceans every fifteen minutes.

Today’s post features a number of Australian schools using iPods and iPod Touches in the classroom.

Tania Hunt, ICT Coordinator at Baden Powell College, Derrimut Heath (Victoria), describes how her school has been using iPod Touches with literacy and numeracy groups and for problem solving. Prep-6 classes have used them on a weekly roster. The tub of 8 iPod touches on loan to the class for the week comes with Power Docks and a number of recommended activity sheets.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald at the beginning of this year featured a class of year 8 students at Shepparton High School in central Victoria using iPod touches in the classroom for a global “mobile learning” project. The article said that the project resulted in increased attendance and increased enthusiasm for homework.

There is also an example of teachers learning how to integrate iPod Touches into their normal classroom practice by developing a programme for their class (with the help of a consultant) using the video and application functions of the iPod Touch. The teacher can also learn how to make instructional podcasts to download to the iPod Touches so students can have a resource of ‘how to’ lessons at their fingertips! The website gives an example of students collaborating with the teacher to create a movie from powerpoint projects.

Kathleen McGeady has been using an iPod Touch in her classroom for over twelve months. This blog post gives examples of the activities she has carried out with her Grade Two students, ranging from listening to stories through a headphone splitter that allows one iPod to be used simultaneously by a group of five students, to applications that allow them to practise spelling, language, maths and logic skills. Students have also created videos and podcasts, and Kathleen says it is a great way to reinforce concepts and encourage independent as well as co-operative group learning.

Jenny Ashby, Leading Teacher, ICT Specialist and Administrator, and ICT Peer Coach at Epsom Primary School in Victoria gave a presentation at the QSITE conference just recently on using iPods across the school. The presentation can be found on Jenny’s blog - look for the pdf link on the page. If you’d like to follow Jenny on Twitter she is jjash. Jenny says she is forever learning and she recently wrote ” I love seeing teachers getting hooked on using ICT in their classrooms. When I feel left out and ICT is happening I know I have success.”
I am hoping to have Jenny as a guest on this blog soon.

The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria, Australia has published a report on a project that examined the use of the iPod Touch in school settings, with emphasis on the impact on student learning, on teacher pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, and on external technical issues involved in implementing emerging technologies. Students provided their perceptions of mobile technologies for learning and provided a snapshot of what they expect from their schooling.

http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/ict/ipodtouchresearch2009.doc

This headline popped out at me last week: Griffiths University journalism students to be marked on Tweets.
“BRISBANE university students are the first in the country to be assessed on the social networking site Twitter.”

In justification for the move (which not all students were happy with) the lecturer who is requiring students to tweet as part of their course said “We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices”.

A lecturer at another Australian university said that all higher education providers should be implementing social network technology processes into curriculums.

My brain immediately said - what sort of assessment? Summative (it counts in the final mark)? Or Formative (a learning process- a task that need to be done, but is not graded)?

While it may be true that Griffiths is the first Australian university to incorporate assessment of Twitter in their course, it would surprise me if they were the first to add the use of Twitter as a learning element. of course it would rather depend on whether electronic devices are banned wouldn’t it?

I found a rubric for assessing the use of Twitter (see below) on an American teacher’s blog. Harry Grover Tuttle is keen to use web 2.0 tools in his teaching and raises some interesting questions about how we assess student’s learning in web 2.0 based environments. And for Australian educators it is not a question that is going to go away, particularly in the school’s sector where ICTs are to be an underpinning element in each of the frameworks in the National Curriculum.

So what can you point me to? Are you using web 2.0 tools in your teaching and learning? How are they being assessed? Is it the learning that is being assessed or the use of the tool? What should happen? Would you/do you use a grading system?

The recently released 2009 Australian and New Zealand Horizon Report puts QR codes as being on the horizon for new technologies that will be adopted in the next 4-5 years.

It is interesting to think of a technology that you’ve never met actually being used being in common use in that relatively short time frame. So what do you know about QR codes? Have you ever met one in real life? Do you have the means to use them?

So here’s a little bit of background and what I know so far, supplemented by a list of links where you can continue your quest for more.
From OllieBray:
QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created in Japan (where it is currently the most popular type of two-dimensional code). QR stands for ‘Quick Response’ as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be downloaded at a high speed. QR Code is very popular in Japan and is starting to catch on in Europe. Some phones come with built in QR code readers and for other phones you can download QR readers for free over the Internet. Check OllieBray for more information.

Here’s a YouTube video that shows how a QR code works by using your mobile phone’s camera to read its digital content and then connect the user to an internet site.

The University of Bath blog site has a set of posts devoted to QR codes, and their application in education.
On their QR Codes in education page, the writer describes a number of scenarios where QR codes might contain useful embedded information:
• a student subscribing to an RSS news feed
• inclusion within printed learning materials
• integration within an alternate reality game
• just in time information in a face to face lecture

My research so far has shown me just how many people are talking about QR codes and their possible educational applications.

Andy Ramsden, head of eLearning at the University of Bath, has posted a number of sets of slides on SlideShare:

I can see this is a topic I’ll need to investigate more. What about you? What can you tell me about QR Codes?

Links that have come in from various sources:

Today’s Coal Face comes from here at Education.au, just to let you know there are real people here.

Today we are joining the Stand Against Poverty, so here are some of the “real workers” at Education.au (with me in the white hair on the right).

Hear and see us take the pledge on Flickr.

For me education is one of the most important elements in the fight against poverty and so I want share a couple of items with you.

First of all a news story this week from the BBC, about 16 year old Babar Ali from Murshidabad in West Bengal, who must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He’s a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family’s backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village. Read more here. The article contains a couple of interesting videos to watch.

The second is a YouTube video which comes with this description:
192 million children between 6-14 years of age across 1.1 million places in India are not going to school.
This film for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Universilisation of Elementary Education) addresses the needs of these children.
The film catches the moment when children all across India from Kashmir to Kerala wake up in the morning and run to go to school.
Music:Shankar/Ehsaan/Loy; Lyrics:Mehboob
Directed by: Kanika and Bala, Bharatbala Productions (BBP) for the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India.

If you are looking for teaching resources related to the Reduction of Poverty, then here is a link to some on the Global Education website.

A new resource and activity to help you learn more about poverty has been added to the Millennium Development Goals project at http://www.ozprojects.edu.au/course/view.php?id=75
You can watch a slideshow as people describe their hopes and dreams for the future in a world without poverty. The people in the slideshow are from Namibia, Sierra Leonne, Ecuador and Vietnam. After watching the slideshow you can follow links to learn more about these countries and then add some information to a wiki.

Guests can access this project to watch the slideshow, follow the links and read wiki entries. However, only logged in users who are enrolled in the MDG project can add information to the wiki.

Today this blog is participating in a world wide event.
Here are some resources for you to consider:

This concept is certainly not new, but an article I saw earlier this week has prompted me to revisit it.

In 2008 education researchers at The University of Nottingham said they believe it is time that phone bans were reassessed — because mobile phones can be a powerful learning aid. Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young and her colleagues reached this conclusion after studying the consequences of allowing pupils in five secondary schools to use either their own mobile phones or the new generation of ‘smartphones’ in lessons.

This week came a news article from Florida which says
In a world where most high schools have adopted a “we see them, we take them” policy on cell phones, Pasco County’s Wiregrass Ranch High School swims upstream. It encourages teachers to allow students to use their phones in classes for educational purposes. Teens routinely use their phones to shoot pictures for projects, calculate math problems, check their teachers’ blogs and even take lecture notes.
According to the principal and the teacher involved, their policy has solved a two-fold problem - that of having to regulate or confiscate mobile phones, and the problem of maintaining student interest.
The principal has even gone so far as to distribute “some recommended classroom uses for cell phones to teachers”.

Here’s an interesting page of resources to check out: Think Mobile Phones for Learning

Here is a short video created by John Travers about using the power of iPhone for learning

I wonder where Australian educational institutions are on the mobile phone issue?

Registration is now open for the National conference being held April 6-10 next year in Melbourne.
The conference has an impressive line up of keynote speakers and will be held in a brand new conference centre opposite the Crown Casino.

http://acec2010.info

The Australian Computers in Education Conference is on again and ICTEV is delighted to announce that bookings for ACEC2010: Digital Diversity have now opened. The ACEC2010 is the biennial conference of the Australian Council for Computers in Education will be hosted by ICT in Education Victoria in April 2010.

This comprehensive conference program delving into ICT enriched learning anywhere, anytime best practice, will be of interest to all educators and leaders throughout the Australian education sector. For conference program updates visit http://acec2010.info from mid October to follow the evolving program as it is finalized. Be part of ACEC2010: Digital Diversity.

The four day conference program features an abundance of sessions, on-site educational visits, countless trade exhibits and the highly regarded leadership forum, which in April 2010 will focus on the national curriculum and ICT, all of this will take place in the brand new and very impressive Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Program at glance
Tues 6 April:
Pre-conference hands-on workshops and the Leadership Forum focusing on the national curriculum and ICT
Registration, Welcome Cocktail Party and opening of the Trade Expo

Wed 7 - Fri 9 April:
300 Presentations from Australian ICT leaders and classroom practitioners, including 35 hands-on workshops and 75 refereed papers from academics and educational on-site visits.

Thurs 8 April:
Conference dinner, Victory Room, Etihad Stadium

Keynotes: http://acec2010.info/keynotes

Sylvia Martinez, President of Generation YES, advocating student involvement in education reform through technology. Prior to joining Generation YES, Sylvia oversaw product development, design and programming for consumer software, console games and educational games at several software publishing companies.

Alan November, Technology and Learning Magazine named Alan one of the USA’s 15th most influential thinkers of the decade. In 2001, he was listed one of eight educators to provide leadership into the future by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse.

Gary Stager, Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium, for 27 years Gary Stager, an internationally recognised educator, speaker and consultant, has helped learners of all ages on six continents embrace the power of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self expression.

Adam Elliot, Academy Award winning director of films such as Uncle, Cousin, Brother, Harvie Krumpet and the recently released Mary & Max. Adam’s world famous claymation will a be highlight to educators who are interested in using this technique with young Australians in their classroom.

Tom March, ‘Bright Ideas for Education’

Chris Rogers, MIT Boston

‘On the Couch with Jeff Richardson’ ABC, ‘The Coodabeens’

Conference ticket options
Early Bird Ticket: $660 (Early Bird expires 28 February 2010) or Individual Day Tickets: $250 per day. Conference tickets are available online from http://acec2010.info

Why you will want to act soon!
1. If you register for the conference by 30 October 2009, you will go into the draw for two free tickets to the conference dinner.
2. You are able to book the full conference at Early Bird rates.
3. Don’t miss out on your preferences, take the Early Bird option and book into what you want to see.

Last Thursday, 8 October, the UK Times Higher Education published world rankings showing that Australia’s Group of Eight research universities are all placed in the global top 100 research universities.

Australian universities are ranked in the top 200:
17. Australian National University
36. University of Sydney, tied with University of Melbourne
41. University of Queensland
45. Monash University
47. University of New South Wales
81. Adelaide University
84. University of Western Australia
189. Macquarie University

At the top of the table is Harvard University, followed by Cambridge, Yale, and University College London.

The University of Melbourne is ranked 29th, UNSW 33rd, University of Sydney 41st, ANU 42nd, and Monash University 50th, in the top 50 for Engineering and Information Technology.

In the top 50 for Life Sciences and Biomedicine, University of Melbourne is equal 13th, University of Sydney 15th, ANU 21st, MOnash University 25th, University of Queensland 28th, and UNSW 43rd.

Natural Science Top 50: ANU 21st, University of Melbourne 23rd, University of Sydney 34th, and UNSW 45th.

In the Social Sciences Top 50: ANU -11, University of Melbourne - 19, Monash Uni -26, University of Sydney - 27, UNSW -35, University of Queensland -46.

In the top 50 for Arts and Humanities: 12th ANU, 17th University of Melbourne, 19th University of Sydney, and 37th Monash University.

Other articles in The Times ask whether these rankings matter, what it is about Harvard University that puts it at the top of nearly every list, and among the “Talking Points” is what makes a world-class university.
Investigation of the latter reveals what the rankings are actually based on - citations for all papers published from the institution; staff-to-student ratio (seen as “teaching excellence”); proportion of overseas staff a university has on its books; qualitative data from surveys of informed people.
So the biggest part of the ranking score - worth 40 per cent - is based on the result of an academic peer review survey: consulting academics around the world, from lecturers to university presidents, and ask them to name up to 30 institutions they regard as being the best in the world in their field.

So, I guess before we start asking why some Australian universities are missing from the lists, we need to first of all understand what the lists are actually showing, and what the mission of a “missing” university is, whether they should have been listed anyway.

You can comment of the Times methodology in creating the lists on the Talking Points page.

See reports in Australian newspapers:

Information today comes from Margaret Lloyd, Senior lecturer in ICT at Queensland University of Technology.

Margaret writes
Following our terrific success in the last two years with the Oz-teachers’ project – Land Yachts – we are sailing again…

At the close of last year’s project, one teacher wrote:
Once again thanks to you and your enthusiasm! We did race, we did have a couple of successes and a couple who “failed to proceed”. … The whole event has been marvellous, the children have become much clearer thinkers in a small scientific way and have learned to record, compute and speak about their efforts. I look forward to next year … I can see some much more streamlined planning on my behalf and, as a result of the assembly item my class presented, I’ve already been asked “If I’m in your class next year are we going to do that boat thing?”

The project is a Technology/Science project open to students in Years 4-7 and also welcomes pre-service teachers to take part.
In 2007, we had 477 children, 18 teachers and about 120 student teachers all building small wheeled vehicles and testing out some fundamental principles of physics, motion and material properties along the way. The blogging and comments were the heart of the project as participants were able to share their designs as they progressed. The scanned plans, images and video made the project come alive.
In 2008, we had about 800 children from all across Australia and two home-schoolers from the U.S. taking part.
Have a look at http://www.otn.edu.au/projects/yachts/ for more information.

We will start ‘sailing’ on October 19 and ‘finish’ in on December 4. Your Race Day could be any time in the week beginning November 30. Registrations will open shortly. We will again be creating a teachers’ email list for support while the project will make use of blogs and allow the entry of data, images and a video.

Please forward this invitation to others who may be interested in taking part. Any particular questions or intention to register should be directed to James Lloyd who’ll be the Commodore of the Fleet for 2009.

If you would like to showcase what is happening with ICT in your school, then check what From the Coal Face is all about and email me with a short article and perhaps a photo or two.

OpenID allows you to use an existing identity to sign in to multiple websites, without the need to create another set of usernames and password.

Just look out for the OpenID logo when you go register for a new online service. There are many webservices that use and accept OpenID such as Blogger, Wikispaces, Facebook or PBWorks to name a few.

All you need to do is enter the URL of your me.edu.au profile e.g. http://me.edu.au/p/aboutme/ and you will be taken to the me.edu.au service to login and verify your details.

For more information about using OpenID:

This week’s input to From the Coal Face comes from Ruth Buchanan, Teacher Librarian at Colo High School, New South Wales.

I’ve met Ruth “virtually” through the OZTL listserv, a great email distribution list that supports teacher librarians throughout Australia.

Ruth writes
We distributed our federally-funded, state-administered Year 9 laptops last week. Arising from a discussion with a colleague, I put together a one page guide to seven simple things to try in week 1, for all our Year 9 teachers.

Ruth has described the first two days with laptops on her blog Skerricks

While different systems have selected different laptop/hardware configurations, Ruth’s 7 things to try is general enough to be widely relevant. If you’d like a copy, the Google Docs link can be found in her Day Two post.

If you would like to showcase what is happening with ICT in your school, then check what From the Coal Face is all about and email me with a short article and perhaps a photo or two.