Two Edublogs webinar overviews – Fb privacy & Google power search

Introduction

This overview covers our two most recent webinars. This first was a Serendipity session where we discussed Facebook privacy sessions and the flow-on effects that happen between accounts. The second webinar (a FineFocus) was inspired by the recent short course in “Power Searching” from Google.

Serendipity – Facebook privacy settings

In this session, recorded as always, we discussed issues around Facebook privacy settings. This arose from one of the group recounting an experience where a family member had changed something in their profile and this had had a knock on effect on other people’s accounts.

Facebook privacy (and other) settings seem to cause issues for many people. We took a “walk” through some of these and shared how we try to use them.

They do seem inordinately complex. For example I am not entirely sure what would happen in terms of my privacy if I ticked the boxes in the window shown above. Personally I don’t use any apps and games, and I think I have all these things turned off but I am not really sure!

This was an interesting session. My concern is that if a group of quite “techie” and social network savvy people have trouble “getting our heads” around Facebook’s privacy and other settings what chance does the average user have!

FineFocus – Are you a “Power Searcher”

The second session, again recorded, was a look at some of the search features that were explored in the recent “Power Searching with Google” course that I joined. Although the interactive (forum posting) parts of the course have finished the content and activities are still available.  I was already a fairly sophisticated searcher using many of the tools explored but I enjoyed the course immensely and certainly learned some new ideas.

Once the scene setting was complete I started as I so often do with some “where are you coming from” activities, including a question about current favourite search tricks and strategies.

 

Most of the session was taken up with brief explorations and opportunities to “play with” some of the search options that I had found interesting in the course. However there was also some discussion about how we see different results and even differenct tools depending on which Google domain you are searching through. For example the “.com.au” domain gives different results to the “.com” domain. My preference is usually to use “.com” so we looked at how to force this – Google is very persistent in forcing the search into your country domain, often just typing the “.com” domain doesn’t work and the domain reverts back to the country.

We took a look at some basic search points straight from the Google course these being choice of words and the order. Then we moved on to look at images (colour filtering and finding a specific image). Next we explored the right hand information panels that appear with some searches. These are not visible in search outputs from all Google domains. They can be seen in “.com” but not (at the moment) in “.com.au”.  We finished off with a look at the “SearchResearch” blog where there is regular weekly search puzzle and an image search on “Yarn bombing” – try that one yourself if you haven’t heard the term :).

The session worked really well – quite fast paced, with a blend of whiteboard activities, app share for examples and opportunities try out the tools. Certainly for me the hour flew by!

Conclusion

Both of these sessions were great to be part of. As always privacy issues are of huge concern to us all, so sessions on this are always very worthwhile because they heighten awareness. The power search session was fun and hopefully also informative.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday August 2nd at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday August 3rd at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic

Reporting on an Issue

Introduction

Just as with all the other written work you have done you will need to structure your Current or Environmental Issue report to make sure it contains all the information that the task asks for. Again in common with your other work you will need to do a draft first.

Your report

There are many different types of report and many different ways of structuring reports, it is important to have a title that tells you what the report is about and a clear structure with relevant headings. Make sure that you include:

1. An introduction.

  • a clear identification of the issue;
  • why the issue is significant.

2. A section that describes the issue in YOUR OWN WORDS – please do NOT copy/paste from websites, make sure that this section includes:

3. A section that states the main facts of the issue in YOUR OWN WORDS – please do NOT copy/paste from websites, this should include:

  • who are the key players;
  • who, or what are affected (area, place, stakeholders, groups, individuals);
  • why the issue has arisen (reasons).

4. A section for your opinion on the issue in YOUR OWN WORDS – please do NOT copy/paste from websites, remember to include:

  • your own opinion on the issue
  • reasons why you have that opinion (you can use some data to support your opinion – you must include the source of the data)

5. A conclusion which sums up what you have written.

6. A bibliography, this must be a list of all your sources of information including books, newspapers and  website links where you have used information from the Internet.

There is a template here that you can use to help you plan your research and your report. Click this link Research Planning Template to download the template.

An example report

The amount you need to write and the depth/amount of information you need will differ with the Certificate level you are completing. At the higher Certificate levels you will need to write in much more depth and detail than in this example. Please check with your lecturer if you are not sure.

Credits: Basket image: Vilseskogen, link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vilseskogen/3781517030/
Underwater image: photohome_uk, link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photohome_uk/1495438762/.

Report on the impact of shark attacks on the underwater basket weaving industry

Introduction

This report considers the issue of shark attacks on workers in the underwater basket weaving industry. It will consider the facts and give an opinion about the issue.

Shark attacks on underwater basket weavers

There is a long history of occasional shark attacks on workers in the underwater basket weaving industry. However these are becoming more common. The attacks are significant because of the economic effect on the industry – they:

  • increase staff turnover due to deaths so new staff have to be trained;
  • lead to the loss of  half completed baskets as they become soaked in blood.

The facts

The weavers, the industry managers and of course the sharks play a part in this continuing issue.

There are many effects from the attacks. The main effect is from the death of individual weavers in attacks. This affects the families of the dead weavers and reduces the profits of the industry who then have to replace and train new staff. There are also impacts in the wider community as regular shark attacks make tourists less willing to visit the area.

This issue has arisen because of a change  in the variety of seaweed used by the underwater basket weaving industry. In the past they used the species Fucus weavicus however a decline in the availability of this has meant the industry changed to Laminaria smellicus. Unfortunately, when this is cut underwater, sharks are attracted because it smells to them like fresh blood.

Opinion

This issue is very important to the industry. They need to search for a solution to reduce the number of underwater basket weaver deaths resulting from shark attacks each year. Because the industry is offshore it does not have the same health and safety controls as it would if it was land-based.

This my opinion because of the economic and human impact of the increased shark attacks since the introduction of the new seaweed in 2008.

Deaths of underwater basket weavers from shark attack 2006 to 2011

 

 

 

There was a large increase in the year of introduction and a continuing steady rise since. This needs action before it makes the industry completely uneconomic.

Conclusion

There has been an increase in the number of underwater basket weaver deaths from shark attacks each year since the introduction of the new seaweed weaving material. This has had many impacts on the industry. For the industry to continue a solution needs to be found.

Bibliography

Website of the Underwater Basket Weaving Industry. “Economic effects of shark attacks on the industry” Peter Profit.  http://www. UnderwaterBasketWeavingIndustry.htm Posted June 2011 Accessed June 2012

Underwater Basket Weaving Monthly. “A new seaweed for underwater basket weaving.” G. Economi. Weaver Publishing Co. July 2007

Website of South African Centre for Underwater Basket Weaving. Underwater Basket Weaving – Basic Information http://www.saunderwterbasketweaving/info.html Updated Jan 2009 Accessed June 2012

Website of Unsafe Work Australia. National Standard for Underwater Basket Weavers. http://www.safeunderwaterbasketworkaustralia.notgov.au/SafetyInUnderwaterBasketWeaving /NationalStandard.aspx Standard Updated 2010 Accessed June 2012

You can use the report above as a guide for how to put together your own report as a draft blog post.

 

Edublogs webinar overview – the Global Classroom project

Introduction

In this session, recorded as always, we heard from Michael Graffin about the variety of projects that have formed part of the “Global Classroom Project” (#GlobalClassroom) this year.

The Session

Michael took us on an incredible journey. He started with some background, firstly explaining how the Global Classroom came about and its reach both geographically and in numbers. Then moving on to the aims and ethos of the community.

For me the most exciting part was the project stories – Michael shared the project stories and some of the highlights of the year. We were lucky in that Lin-Lin Tan from Taiwan, one of the teachers involved in several projects was able to join the session. She told us a little about how the Global Classroom projects have affected her and her students.

Michael moved on to consider some of the impacts of Global Classroom on teachers and some lessons learnt. Finally he turned to the future with thoughts for next year’s #GlobalClassroom.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic session! Michael gave us a brilliant overview of Global Classroom and the projects. Chat was very lively throughout with many ideas shared and also links to many of the projects (thanks to Anne Mirtschin for her help in dropping links into chat). If you are looking to be both inspired and awe inspired then this is a MUST catch recording!

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday July 19th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday July 21st at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic

Edublogs webinars – two overviews

Introduction

Despite my best intentions I didn’t succeed in doing the overview for our most recent FineFocus webinar. So this overview is of that “Sharing our Pecha Kuchas”webinar and the Serendipity session from the following week.

Sharing Pecha Kucha

This session, recorded as always, was great fun! Over the past few weeks we have talked several times about Pecha Kucha and this session consisted mainly of sharing three very different first attempts at  Pecha Kucha and then discussing the challenges and the way we had each approached the development.

The three sessions were “Mad About Maths” by @philhart, “The Gifted Tweet Family” by @jofrei and “About the Webinars” by myself.

These were totally different from one another in content, content purpose, style, and in the way we each approached the development. The recording is definitely worth catching

Serendipity – “personal hubs” could Symbaloo or others replace iGoogle?

This week’s topic in our recorded Serendipity webinar was generated by the news that Google is closing down iGoogle. This was at the front of my mind when we started the session and so I suggested the topic. The preliminary chat gave a consensus to talk about this and the possiblity of using Symbaloo or similar as an alternative.

We looked at Symbaloo through an AppShare and discussed its uses briefly, this led to a short exploration of Sqworl which is also a visual bookmarking tool. Definitely one to explore in the future! The discussion moved on and I shared my own personal iGoogle to illustrate the many feeds and other content that I draw together into one place. Because I have used iGoogle for several years to help me manage content, feeds and links (anywhere, anytime and anydevice) and I have so many things in one place I think it will be hard to find a replacement. Another possiblity suggested was Chrome, again probably worth exploring, but of no use for this purpose if you have to have the Chrome browser installed first.

I have seen other alternatives suggested although we didn’t look at these – they include MyYahoo, Netvibes and Pageflakes. I am currently exploring the first two of these but haven’t worked out how to get GoogleReader to feed in (if anyone knows please let me know how). When I tried to access the third of them I could not as it was too busy so I have abandoned that one!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session where Michael Graffin  the Coordinator of The Global Classroom Project (#GlobalClassroom) will be sharing this year’s GlobalClassroom experiences. Join us on Thursday July 12th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning July 13th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.