voyeurism

ad astra

;ad astra' is the motto of Innova Junior College.

this fifty-fourth episode brings news of how some of the sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds at Innova are taking initial steps at producing what is possibly the first podcast from an educational institution in Singapore.

join me in this 2.6 MB download, as i also share my thoughts on geographically-themed web services, such as Google Earth and Clustrmaps, are evolving to put the lie to Friedman's 'flat earth' thesis.

meeting Veronica

today was the final day of the conference.

i attended a talk by Professor Simon Catling, describing research that was done to investigate the extent to which primary school teachers in Britain receive sufficient pre-service training in geography, as compared to subjects such as English, mathematics and science.

Grant Kleeman, who works in New South Wales, conducted a workshop offering a few ideas about the geography curriculum. echoing ideas from yesterday, he emphasised the role of choice in letting teachers decide which particular case studies to elaborate on, as well as the importance of learning more about the learners' own personal geographies.

finally, Dr Janet Speake at Liverpool Hope University introduced the interesting idea of 'sensational cities'. sadly, despite having reminded us at the start of her lecture that 'sensational' could have both positive and pejorative connotations, she then went on to cripple her talk by spelling out explicitly that the 'sensational' was associated with successful cities which people aspire to visit and live in. her talk featured photographs from cities entirely from the western hemisphere. the only non-western city she showed a photograph of was a streetscape in Hongkong, which she promptly dismissed as a generic photograph of a city which could have been taken anywhere.

what about Lagos, Mogadishu, Rio, Manila and Kolkota, i say.

the only vaguely thought-provoking point she made was that budget air travel "raises cities out of the mundane".

i guess the real highlight today was meeting Veronica.

Veronica is a geography teacher from Kenya.

Veronica was also the only black delegate whom i saw during my three days at the conference.

Technorati Tags: education, GA2006, geography, learning

where are all the black geography teachers?

at the annual conference of the UK's Geographical Association today, the association's president - Sue Lomas - posed delegates the following question:

"are teachers making geography a burden on the memory, or a challenge to the mind?"

i think it's an insight which should continually inform our pedagogical approach and decision-making.

she reminded us about David Lambert's distinction of the 'vocabulary' and 'grammar / syntax' of geography - ie, that care should be taken to go beyond the portrayal of geography as the trivial pursuit of discrete facts.

Sue also shared the following quotation from Dewey:

"if we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow".

pithy, but true :-)

Margaret Roberts - the editor of Teaching Geography - talked about enquiry-based approaches to geography in her keynote. she divided her talk into four parts:

- creating a need to know
she talked about the importance of a teacher's Stance (a concept akin to Voice). she gave a list of clever starters which present learners with cognitive conundrums, eg the use of pictures, charts, videos, maps, props (such as a recycling bag), and concept maps. the concept map she showed was particularly interesting, and it was used to open a lesson on the European Union (EU). i felt it could also be applied to lessons on globalization. all her starters had the common strategy of (a) arousing curiosity (b) activating prior knowledge and (c) helping the learners formulate questions;

- learners study the data for themselves
she emphasised that a key concept, often overlooked, at this stage is that of choice. choice can be manifested through choice of research topic, as well as choice of reporting / presentation. she also reminded us that it's helpful to use topical, recent, data (the example she gave was earthquake activity within the last twenty-four hours). another crucial concept was that of affective mapping (such as mapping the feelings of the learners towards the school / neighbourhood);

- making sense of the data
she used frames of inference here. an interesting twist was that she actually inserted the pictorial source into the graphic organiser. she suggested that we use more than one mode of data presentation, and encouraged us to get our learners to critique / compare various modes, depicting similar content. role play is another strategy that could be employed successfully at this stage of the enquiry process. it is important generally for the learners to write and talk about their learning;

- reflecting
this involves both reflecting about what has been learnt, but also metacognition. she emphasised that each strand has at times been neglected. Margaret concluded her excellent talk by suggesting to us to beyond the traditional 5W1H, and to ask questions such as "what ought...?" and "what are the implications...?"

Professor Peter Jackson of Sheffield University gave a lecture on 'thinking geographically'. using the case study of consumer ethics, he suggested that there are four elements to geographical thinking, namely:

- space and place
- scale and connection
- proximity and distance
- relational thinking (vide Margaret Roberts's concept map on the EU)

finally, if you're curious about the title of this post, something that struck me and kept me awake tonight was my observation that almost everyone at the conference was white. it reminded me so much of my days as an undergraduate in Cambridge.

in the context of Thatcherite Britain in the 1980s, i can understand the racial mix at that time. but today? in so-called 'multicultural' Britain?

many speakers today were bemoaning the fact that geography enrolments across the UK are declining.

frankly i'm not surprised, because what seems to me a primary cause is staring at them in the face at their very own conference.

the present proportion of blacks in the UK is approximately five to six percent. that proportion is not reflected among the attendees at this conference. even the four students who shared their experiences during Sue Lomas's opening address were all white.

if the Geographical Association is wondering why geography is an increasingly disenfranchised subject in schools in the UK, they might possibly start by wondering why black geography teachers (of whom i am sure there are many, and doing a good job to boot) are, for whatever reason, absent from a conference which purportedly represents them.

Technorati Tags: education, GA2006, geography, globalization, learning

the quantum classroom®

in this fifty-third episode of ventriloquy, i bring you my thoughts on how i went about exploring, and making sense of, the urban morphology of Manchester.

i'm currently visiting the city, to attend the annual conference of the United Kingdom's Geographical Association.

this 3.7 MB episode can be thought of as a conceptual follow-up to Episode Nine which i put together on July 24 last year from Las Vegas, in which i shared how i formulated my mental map of Caesar's Palace hotel. instead of wayfinding at the building level, today i talk about wayfinding at the scale of the city.

this ability to operate (often concurrently) at various scales is a key element which various geographers (including Margaret Roberts and Peter Jackson) have identified as geographical thinking.

the title of this post alludes to this ability, in that i believe that, borrowing ideas from quantum physics, effective learning environments for geography should be crafted such that learners are able to shift scales, and operate concurrently at various scales, in a manner which is largely transparent to them. looking ahead, this concept of the 'quantum classroom®' is something which i would like to build upon.

Flight Level 380

wow this is a new experience for me, so i had to blog it.

i'm posting from 11600 metres in the sky, somewhere over the Caspian Sea, on an approximate 300 degree bearing. ground speed is 432 knots, battling against a 57 knot headwind.

... and now, a word from our sponsor :-)

inflight internet is provided by Connexion by Boeing, as a service for Singapore Airlines.

the contribution of history to web literacy

this fifty-second episode of ventriloquy is a recording of Dr Mark C Baildon, who was addressing an audience at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, on the topic: Examining ways readers engage with websites in inquiry-based social studies.

Mark is a ninth-grade teacher at the Taipei American School in Taiwan. His talk focused on the challenges middle school students encounter in their attempts to make sense of the information and claims on the web.

if you are at all interested in social studies and history education, this 66.8 MB episode is certainly worth a listen!

Show notes:
- opening remarks
- overview of research interests
- investigating inquiry & literacy practices
- literacy challenges facing students on the web
- making sense of 'new' information
- evaluating claims and evidence
- identifying two core challenges
- how historians could address these challenges
- helping students engage in new ways of reading
- the Critical Web Reader (CWR)
- the 'three dimensions' conceptual model
- conclusion: CWR research agenda
- questions from the audience

"... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

today is the thirtieth anniversary of the company which has wielded the most influence in my life.

more so than simply shaping the technology i use daily, it has been greatly responsible in moulding my aesthetic sense and my values system.

the story of Apple Computer is the quintessential story of the American dream, of the comeback kid, of the ethos that simply doesn't settle for second-best.

it's a story which is being well documented in so many places on the web today, such as here and here.

so i'd just like to celebrate the occasion on a more personal note, by looking back at some of the Apple hardware that i've appropriated into my life over the past three decades, and reflecting on how the insanely great combination of hardware and software elegance has helped me discover and develop the creative side of me.

thank you, Steve and Woz. here's to the crazy ones :-)

1980
- Apple ][+ (persuaded my parents to buy this for me ostensibly so i could learn BASIC, but really only because i wanted to play games such as Castle Wolfenstein and F-15 Strike Eagle)

1989
- Macintosh SE FDHD [System 3.0; 8 MHz processor] (my first Mac! i wrote my first book - the GreenAge Textbook - with MacWrite)

1991
- PowerBook 140 [ System 7.0; 16 MHz] (i entered the education service with it, and it enabled me to bring ICT into the classroom)

1993
- Newton MessagePad (ahead of its time... way too far ahead :-P )

1994
- Macintosh LC630 [System 7.1; 33 MHz] (my first taste of the Mac GUI in full colour - a true multimedia machine, it opened the world of CD-ROMs to me and allowed me to watch TV on it)
- Newton MessagePad 120 (handwriting recognition approaches a useable state)

1995
- PowerBook 5300cs [System 7.5; 100 MHz] (the notorious 5300 of exploding-battery fame... although i did not know it at the time when i paid for my first PowerPC Mac / colour-screened portable Mac - it turned out to be such a lemon that Apple Singapore allowed me to return it; nonetheless, it was the Mac on which i made my first tentative steps on to the internet, and on which i wrote the first draft of my web-based geography book 'No Place Like Home')

1996
- PowerBook 1400c [System 7.5; 117 MHz] (one of my favourite portable Macs - oh-so-sturdy and so customisable; it pioneered the concept of swappable covers long before Nokia. this was also the Mac on which i authored my first QuickTime VR panoramas)

1997

[a special note must be made of this year: to many Mac faithful, it was the nadir of Apple's long and turbulent history. 1997 was the year when Bill Gates appeared on the big screen at MacWorld New York. i remember the day vividly. 1997 was the only time i considered (for the briefest moment) that Apple's road had come to an ignominous end and it was time for me to switch to Windows. 1997 was therefore the year that i responded by giving Apple my biggest injection of cash in all these thirty years (just like Microsoft did, come to think of it)]

- PowerBook 3400 [OS 7.6; 200 MHz] (fondly remembered not as the fastest portable PC (which it was), but as the Mac which saw me through the first half of my Masters - i toiled for countless hours with Director on this machine)
- eMate 300 (_the_absolute_best_note-taking_machine_EVER_)
- Newton MessagePad 2000 (Newton at its zenith - fast, usable, cool... but still too big)
- Power Macintosh G3 [OS 8.0; 266 MHz] (my first G3... more significantly, mom learned her tech skills on it)

1998
- Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh [OS 7.6; 250 MHz] (i bought this at an auction; it was (and still is) the first time i have ever bid for anything)

1999
- PowerBook G3 Series [OS 8.1; 292 MHz] (my favourite portable Mac - gorgeous drop-dead curves and textures and eminently flexible to configure. i bought it at MacWorld San Francisco and remember unboxing it in my hotel room)
- iMac Special Edition [OS 8.5; 400 MHz] (Steve Jobs's 'alien egg', and the machine that saved Apple from the nightmare '90s)

2000
- Power Macintosh G4 [OS 9.0 & OS X 10 Public Beta; 2x450 MHz] (i was in the audience at MacWorld New York when Steve unveiled it to the usual chorus of 'oohs' and 'aahs' - my first G4, my first dual-processor Mac :-) )

2001
- PowerBook G4 [OS 9.1 & OS X 10.0 Cheetah; 500 MHz] (the Titanium will always be a minimalist classic - i wrote 'One world: the essential social studies resource' on it)
- iPod (enough said)

2002
- iMac G4 [OS X 10.1 Puma; 800 MHz] (an absolute design classic - iMac evolved to perfection)
- PowerBook G4 [OS X 10.2 Jaguar; 1.0 Ghz] (my second Titanium - i just couldn't get enough of the stuff)

2003
- iPod (because i outgrew the hard drive - enough said)

2004
- iPod Photo (do we really need a portable photo viewer? *duh* - enough said)
- PowerBook G4 [OS X 10.3 Panther; 1.0 GHz] (my first Aluminium, and the Mac which i bring for overseas conferences; ah yes, i wrote my doctoral thesis on this Mac :-) )

2005
- iPod shuffle (finally an iPod which is of true use to me)
- PowerBook G4 [OS X 10.4 Tiger; 1.67 GHz] (i bought this for posterity - the final PowerPC Mac that i'd own, and (as things turned out), the final PowerBook)

2006
- MacBook Pro [OS X 10.4 Tiger; 2x2.0 GHz] (Core Duo and loving it :-) what a way to commemorate ownership of ten portable Macs!)
- ???