See all the ideas at http://visionsofstudents.org (an HTML5 interactive video collage).

Race Online 2012 has set the challenge of making the UK the first nation in the world where everyone can use the web.

Aligned with this goal Make IT Happy, the UK wide technology competition for pupils aged 9 to 11, has chosen the theme for this year’s competition to be Pass IT On.

Specifically “schools are challenged to show how they have used technology to connect schoolchildren with others in their community – whether that is down the corridor, around the town, across the UK or halfway around the world.”

A colleague who has taken up the challenge of enabling our children to to provide a community resource, integrated within school, that supports the sharing of ideas and experiences. I thought I would look at wether a Wiki, blog or a combination of these would provide a useful platform. To start with, as I was less familiar with them, I have decided to investigate Wikis.

Initial considerations that have come to mind are;

• The platform needs to be accessed from both a closed school network and the internet.
• Simplicity and ease of use are essential.
• Administration and security. How open will the resource be? Can anyone add and edit content? How will identities be managed and protected? How will security impact administration requirements?
• How will be pictures, video and audio be hosted?
• Costs will need to be kept to a minimum.
• How will the community be made aware of the site and encouraged to participate?

Firstly commoncraft answered the basic question;

What is a wiki?

and this presentation from Rachel Boyd pointed to some great resources;

I wanted to find solutions that were tailored to fit an educational context. Teachersfirst have done an excellent job of addressing this exact question, reviewing in depth two wiki platforms; Wikispaces and PBwiki and providing working examples of a Wikispaces Wiki and a PBwiki Wiki to try out. I also took a brief look at the educational offering from Wetpaint but I am currently drawn towards recommending Wikispaces. Next step is to sketch out what the children want to do and see if a wiki really fits the bill.

In “This is How We Think,” Richard E. Miller and Paul D. Hammond explore how education must change now that we live in a world where information abounds, where reading and research have moved from the library to the laptop, and where the act of learning itself is now making its way out of the shadows into the public eye.

In this collaborative presentation, Professors Miller and Hammond discuss their efforts to invent new media teaching practices that encourage students to engage with the most pressing problems of our time.

“This is How We Think” continues the line of thinking begun in Miller and Hammond’s “This is How We Dream,” which is currently posted on YouTube.

This is How We Think: Learning in Public After the Paradigm Shift from From Text to Cloud on Vimeo.

When I’m not being a Teaching Assistant or Learning Mentor I fill my ‘spare’ time as a Lunchtime Supervisor. Now this gives me some real freedom in the classroom. I share my lunchtime with my Year 5 class and I got thinking that during this time we have a real opportunity to try some things out.

So I dug out my wife’s old Nintendo DS and a brain training game and I loaded up some Apps on my iPhone and gave them both out to the class to use. I also fired up the whiteboard and got a tone matrix running. They are really, and I mean really, excited to get their hands on the technology. Now the students are creating ambient music whilst we have our lunch and my main issue now is making sure everyone has a fair turn on the limited amount of kit we have whilst keeping up with how well everyone is doing on the ‘games’.

It’s early days but their enthusiasm is showing the way this needs to go. There is an old PC in the corner of the classroom which I literally blew the dust off last week but it looks like I might be able to get a net connection on it so that is going to be my focus next week. That and OFSTED inspectors but that’s another story .

Anyway and as if by magic my PLN came up trumps and tweeted this great, and very much related, post on Learn 4 Life;

What happens when you give a class of 8 year old children an iPod touch each?

Came across this video by Stephen Downes after reading an interesting essay he wrote;