Social Semantics

Web 3.0 Conference  #web3conf

Day 1 notes:

• Web 3.0 (semantic web) - not clearly defined - eg Using machine agents to mine large volumes of data to drive personalisation and engagement...

Creating Elizabeth - for learning...

I find this interesting on many levels...



What if Elizabeth was a teacher, mentor or coach?

What if Elizabeth was a co-learner or collaborator?

How engaging will online learning be without someone like Elizabeth?

Exposing Minecraft Learning

Last Friday I visited a Minecraft Class.

It struck me how difficult it was to comprehend the extent and depth of learning that was taking place even though I was standing there.

The department of education strives to put "learners first, connected and inspired"... I was witnessing much more.

I saw learners as teachers, leading and inspiring others - globally!

 
Minecraft Class at Riverside High School 

The Freedom of Lockdown

Lastpass promises to be "the last password you need to remember".

I joined a few years ago but it was only a few weeks ago that I started to use it seriously.
And it's only since then that I've reaped the rewards...

• yes - far fewer passwords to remember....  and also
• improved passwords - all now random (and different for every account)
• faster logins - saving me a great deal of time logging in
• increased security with two-factor authentication
• simplicity with multiple identities for my different roles
• easy access across multiple mobile devices

While this may sound like an advert for Lastpass it really just advertises my naivety in having so many 'clever' passwords that I couldn't really manage. I got a 'Very Poor' security rating across some important services and gateways.

As our organisation moves to make informed use of a wide range of externally provided online services it's important to remember basic security principles to protect identity and information.

Feeding a Tablet

Presenting Department news, photos, videos as a dynamic glossy online magazine turned out to be easy.

This has been one of the advantages of integrating the new DoE website with selected social media channels that can be displayed through free apps such as Flipboard on tablet computers.

For this to work the end user with a tablet computer needs either the URLs of these channels or to have subscribed to (or 'liked') them. We currently use the following services:

• Blogger for:
• Ministerial Media Releases
• Department of Education Media Releases
• Department of Education News
• YouTube for:
• Department of Education videos
• Partner or student videos
• FlickR for:
• Department of Education photos
• Project photos
• Twitter for
• News feeds

They look great on Flipboard as an interactive one-stop-shop e-zine.

Facing Up to New Possibilities

The Tasmanian Department of Education has created a Facebook page.

Why?

Marketing Services have been approached by a number of staff over the last few months asking about using Facebook for community projects, collaboration with partners, schools and classrooms. In many cases good news stories and useful resources were being shared in vibrant online Facebook communities without any formal involvement of DoE staff.

Marketing and Communication Services were missing out on opportunities to promote great stories of engaged learning, active citizenship and global connections. So a Facebook Page has been set up that will link to ('like') existing Facebook pages related to learning and hopefully build an audience to share these stories both online and through traditional media.

We believe the creation of a DoE Facebook page will also

• Provide a strategic DoE presence and official voice in Facebook
• Model and promote good use of social media
• Facilitate the sourcing of good news stories from school communities
• Engage students and parents with their school communities
• Connect the DoE with its numerous partners and supporters who use Facebook
• Make the DoE visible to schools, colleges and business units with Facebook pages
• Build organisational capacity in the effective use of social media to achieve desired goals
• Encourage schools to engage with social media according to DoE policy and guidelines
• Promote participation through online polls and advertising events
• Provide opportunities to promote staff expertise

Our planning and implementation has been informed by a number of pilot projects in the use of social media in education and other government agencies as well as the work done in other states. eg the NSW Education & Training Social Media Guidelines. Initially posts will be hidden by default and only published after moderation using response processes such as those in this EDINA flowchart. We hope this delay will not frustrate frequent users of social media who expect reasonably quick responses. Comments will be monitored and hidden if deemed inappropriate. 

Through an Online Safety link we have provided users with easy access to quality national information and support on the use of online media and online spaces. 

Internet-Intranet Project Updates

We are now about 6 weeks away from launching the new Internet. The staff Intranet will go live at the end of the year. I've narrated some presentation slides that were used in project updates this week.

The first video (4 mins) summarises the history and thinking behind the project while the second (2mins) introduces some new features being developed such as eForms and a live sync of documents to a tablet computer.