Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Taking a photo a day is not only a significant commitment but it can get downright onerous at times.  The daily satisfaction was one thing but after viewing them a few times on New Year’s Day and sharing the joy with family and friends made me realize it was worth it. Still there were many days when it wasn’t easy.

I’ve noticed a few new members to this year’s pool so I thought it might be helpful to share a few tips that I found helpful in sustaining the project.

• Carry a camera with you all the time. This sounds obvious but it was a rare occasion I did not have my camera with me. I bought a simple carrying case that I hook on my belt. Ladies, your purse is your friend.

• Use a cellphone. While not the greatest quality, it became my backup.
• Shoot tons. You never know what will make a great photo. Sometimes I’d shoot the same thing 20 times using various settings to get something of interest. This is how you learn your camera.
• Determine a workflow. I tried to download photos everyday and was successful most days but the rare occasions I waited more than a couple of days meant culling through more images than I wanted. I’d rather take 20 minutes at most to view a day’s worth of images than having to go through dozens over a few days.
• Light editing is usually all you need. You can always do more but playing with levels and some basic cropping is usually good enough.
• Find an easy upload tool.  I use iPhoto and this tool is the best exporter to flickr I’ve found and it’s free.
• Tag within iPhoto. I didn’t do this right away but the exporter tool maintains all tags and titles so I now do it within iPhoto and flickr uses them too. In my previous life as a Windows user, I edited in Picasa and found this tool a nice way to directly upload from Picasa.  If all else fails, the flickr uploadr tool works too. It’s just one more step.
• Subscribe to the group.  After about day 9 you’ll start wondering what to shoot. Believe me, you’ll have many days like this. Feeding off the work of the entire group, you’ll find a great resource and inspiration.  I’m sure if you scan the pool you’ll see some similar shots. I think that’s a testament to the power of community. Without this, you might as well just do this on your own and forget the group.
• Have some ideas in your holster. Hopefully most days, you’ll always capture a few moments that have some real meaning but for those days when it seems like nothing happened, have a few ideas that are not time sensitive that you can use when you’re in a pinch. Otherwise you just end up taking photos of your ear.
• Involve your family and friends. If they know what you’re up to, they often provide inspiration and ideas for you as well.

I’ll also cross post this to the pool discussion forum. Feel free to add your tips or ask questions in either space. It’s really great to have more people excited about this effort.

If there’s anyway to summarize a year, this might be the best way. Thanks to D’Arcy Norman for encouraging this, I joined several others in attempting to shoot a photo a day for the entire year.

This was a fascinating endeavor.  I learned a number of things, some which I can articulate and some I’m sure are impossible to assess, quantify or measure. For the record, here are a few things about the project:

• I uploaded 2164 photos to flickr this year.
• I shot the most in June (395) and the fewest in November (65)
• I was able to shoot a photo and upload almost everyday. I did miss a few this fall and winter but used a photo from a previous day about 10 times.
• I shot most with my Canon SD 750 but also used my wife’s, daughter’s, father-in-law’s, my cellphone, a few screenshots, movie captures and scans. In particular I began using my iphone quite a bit since I got it in September. I usually carry my camera with me at all times.
• This was my most viewed photo.
• I look at my photos a lot.
• This photo received the most comments.
• This and this were my favourite from a composition standpoint.
• This graph shows how my photos were composed.

I’m not sure I’m going to do the same next year but I’m glad I did this in 2008. I know I shoot way better photos, look for great lighting, interesting angles and simply appreciate the world around me.  Many of my friends and family were aware of my project and began offering ideas for a great photo. Having a year of our lives captured so well is something really valuable.

If you’ve got a spare 27 minutes have a watch and listen. I used my daughter’s music as a soundtrack. At present I have the original so it may take a while to load.  Press, play, then pause and let it load. Go visit another site and comeback in a few minutes.

A Year in Photos from shareski on Vimeo.
Update: After watching the DVD of my photos with friends and family, they’ve encouraged me to do it again this year. In fact, my wife and daughter want to try it for themselves.

I’ve never been one to tell anyone how to use a tool and specifically a tool like twitter. It’s evolving and been re-purposed in more ways that I’m sure the developers had in mind. 

While everyone has their own construct about it, there’s no doubt it’s becoming a significant medium for many individuals and organizations.  Personally, I have to use some restraint as many conversations are only “twitter deep.” For me, that means I respect the limitations of a 140 character space to be limited to superfluous ideas at best.  Certainly a great link can be posted but the minute a tweet engages people in a meaningful way that requires any degree of unwrapping, my immediate thought is “get a room”.  Frustrations mount as complex ideas are squeezed into a simple text messaging tool.

Exhibit A
Discussions like this are not suited well to twitter or even plurk.  I appreciate how Darren has tried to capture it but again, the responses are disjointed and the limitations likely make it a less than satisfying learning experience. Even as I read the tweets, it requires so much clarification that it’s difficult to engage.

Exhibit B

Instead, I like how Will got frustrated in a recent discussion on literacy and offered an alternative.

My fear is that so many people begin their entry into social media via microblogs and rarely move beyond that.  Twitter cheapens deep discussions. You can only go “twitter deep”. Blogs or other unrestricted spaces offer a less time sensitive, character restrictive space to explore ideas in depth. You can go “blog deep.” Both are great spaces but there isn’t a one-size-fits-all space for every purpose. The idea of small pieces loosely joined is still valid. Many newcomers to social media are trying to cram all forms of thinking and sharing into a single space such as Facebook or Twitter. I don’t think that’s a good idea.  While I always encourage people to start somewhere, I don’t mean for them to stay in one space.  So if you’re new to social media you might want to think about adding another space to your identity.  Take the idea tossed around in twitter and take it deep in your own space. Even if you only decontruct it yourself or have a couple of comments I think you’ll find that a more satisfying experience that trying to follow short snippets of insight. Twitter is great but a steady diet of twitter is like only ordering appetizers. At some point, you’ll want a main course.

Image: ‘SMS: Text Messaging Gets Redesigned‘
www.flickr.com/photos/85515841@N00/706401207

Angela, Barbara tagged me and I’ll oblige.  I thought I had already done one of these but I guess it’s slightly different.

With the amount of sharing I do, I’m not sure if there are 7 things people don’t know about me, but knowing I’ve likely broke the TMI rule several times, here goes:

1. I never planned to go into education. I began my
undergraduate studies intending to go into journalism.  During my first
2 years, I spent time helping in a church pre-school program (I have no
idea how that happened). Several people recognized my love of kids and
suddenly I did too. Having a blog has rekindled my love of writing.

2. I took my daughter with me to University. I was married at age 20. We had our first child 2 years later while we both attended University. My daughter was born 3AM on a Saturday and I wrote a final exam at 9AM that day. The following year was my last year of school and when the babysitter bailed, I’d cart her to class with me. I don’t recommend it but it worked for us.

3. I taught grade 1 for 6 years. I love little kids. My wife says I relate to them very well. 

4. I cook. I never learned how to cook till I was married
and as two young people trying to figure out our roles, she picked
cleaning and I picked cooking. I’m not that awesome but in general, I’m
in charge of meals.

5. I have an outstanding memory of the trivial. I’ve pretty much memorized every Seinfeld episode, can recall yardages of golf courses I’ve played 10 years ago, and know that the winners of every major golf championship winner for the past 40 years. I’m not sure of all my kid’s birthdays.

6. My faith is of paramount importance to me. While I don’t think this is the space to share it, my faith is really the basis of who I am.

7. I’ve fallen out of love with hockey. For someone who grew up playing the game and even getting as far as tryouts with Major Junior hockey, I rarely watch and never play. I stopped playing about 4 years ago after 35 straight years and haven’t watched more than about 5 games in the past 10 years. I really can’t explain it.

I now tag,

Amy Bowllan

Clay Burell

Darren Draper

Lee Kolbert

Jeff Utecht

William Chamberlain is doing something rather unique. He offers a live stream of his elementary school classroom 24/7.  I heard about this about 6 months ago and finally had a chance to talk with Bill about how the idea started and what the impact has been.

 

 The Open Classroom [16:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (201)

For my pre-service teacher course I created this survey as my final evaluation.  15 out of 18 students responded.  Given they did not know it was an online and for most, they thought this would be basically a “how to use software” class, the results were fairly pleasing.  By the way, I loved how Google forms created a nice summary of my evaluation.

I also asked what ideas/resources they will continue to use. Here are a couple of responses.

• I’m not to sure what I will continue to use as time goes on, but I do know that I appreciated my blog, but I don’t always have stuff to say so I will like not being marked on the content. I will also continue to use my Igoogle I have created as well as all of the other aspects of google. They will be significant in the classroom.
• Google: igoogle, reader, earth, maps; I will continue to visit the classes I was mentoring; I will hopefully keep up with my blog; i will have a class blog in my classroom, and use the computers there often once I’m teaching; this class helped me to become familiar with many, many things regarding technology in the class, and lots of the tech tasks helped me to figure out how to do things that I will be more confident doing again; I also learned how to use some things I had used before better and in different ways; I have become more comfortable and familiar with blogging; I really enjoyed this class!!! I liked being at home, and learning so many new and useful things! Thanks so much Dean!!!

I asked what I could do to improve the course.

• I think that having the blog worth so much is kind of stressful. I think that a blog is something that takes adjusting to and having to do it so much caused me a lot of frustration because I didn’t always have stuff to say which kind of hurt my mark a little bit. I think that three hours a night was kind of rough to, I mean you can only stay interested for so long, and at night time there is always other homework that needs to be done so it caused a bit of frustration.
• It was a great course, but if we could have more knowledge of our marks or the marking structure as we go along, that would be really helpful.
• The blogging expectations seemed high like I didnt know how to meet the standards for the highest ones (of course aiming for the highest… but couldn’t possibly)
• To inform the students of blogging other than tech tasks right away as well as his expectations for blogging right away
• More time in the classroom at the beginning of the class to make sure all students were on the same page. Maybe go through things like smart boeads more as well.
• Dean’s great! i love the final project was so personal and flexible. I think there was a lot of assignments. I didn’t have time for everything. huge work load. but very worth it!
• explain clearer in the beginning about blogging: the min. # needed each week, and for commenting as well min. #, also about having non-tech task blogs and how they don’t count for the required number, maybe give some ideas of things you could blog about, maybe show some past students blogs; Maybe a few less tech tasks; maybe have one more face to face in the beginning of the semester so people can put faces to names/voices/blogs (i still don’t know some people from their face but i do know them from their blog/name/voice)
• not as many tech tasks so we are able to focus and learn from each one more.  I found the more tech tasks there were the quality of work for each assignment was not as high.

Having to teach again in a couple weeks, I already know a few things I’ll do differently.  Certainly I was unclear regarding my blogging expectations and perhaps weighted it too heavily. As much as I find value in reflecting and having a clear web presence, for many this was a challenge. The dilemma I have is that I need to have some mechanism to observe their reflections and thinking. Perhaps there is another way? Not everyone is going to want to blog as they enter the classroom but I do want everyone to share. This is where I’m still struggling. The mentorship and guest speakers continue to be a highlight as well as the pecha kucha night. I also need to rethink how to spend 3 hours in one sitting online. Even the best speakers can likely only hold attention for 30-40 minutes. I need to offer more interactivity and take advantage of breakout rooms inside Elluminate. One of the best classes we had was on bullying where students broke into groups to tell their stories. With a short turn around time, I may not have time to change much and I’m not sure I need to. This term I hope to work closely with Alec who will be teaching an advanced level of the course but we think we can combine a number of ideas.

What types of mechanisms to you use to improve as a teacher? Do you have great evaluation form? Any suggestions for me?

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “how to” style workshop. I’ve purposely shied away from them instead trying to move the conversations more towards, “what might you do that makes a difference for kids?”  I’ve been referred to by a local high school principal as “Big Idea Dean”. I can’t say for sure, but I take it as a compliment. I guess I’m trying to aspire to this:

The reason I’ve not done many “how to” or tool based workshops is simply because as an initial introduction to I don’t think it works. That said, I’ve done some in the past and do support teachers with just in time learning. I’ll get teachers and administrators asking about blogs. My first response is always “why?”. Without a belief and understanding of how it might help kids, it’s generally a waste of time. Instead I ask them to take a step back, do some lurking, determine what you want to do and then dive in. Backward by design. I’ve just seen my early approach of showing how easy things are to be less than successful. I’ve said it many times, just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean you’ll do it or that it has value.

So I do more of these “big picture” style talks, focusing on shifts, and often leave wondering if I’ve done any good.

Lately I’ve had a number of conversations that tells me maybe I have. One teacher in particular tracked me down in a coffee shop and told me, “I get it! I didn’t get it 2 years ago when you talked about it but now I do!”  She went on to talk about how she uses a wiki to provide learning opportunities for her students, about how their work is public and transparent, how the look after each other and how the learn from each other.  I’m less frustrated, less concerned when teachers are banging down the doors to make shifts in their classrooms simply because I or someone else has presented a compelling idea for change. For many these talks and presentations need time to sit and stew.

They are seeing the shifts all around them as well. Whether it’s network news talking about the impact of twitter on election coverage or simply their own experience connecting and posting content on Facebook, teachers are beginning to see how these things might impact their classrooms.

So if you’re out there and feel like you’re a voice in the wilderness, take heart, you’re seed planting.

Image: ‘Planting Seeds‘
www.flickr.com/photos/99015524@N00/2397251693

garrreynolds, leekolbert, danpink

Add this article to your delicious feed, then email it to every leader and teacher you know and you will have accomplished a lot today.

Will tipped me off to this article by Mark Pesce and it captures so much of what is critical and important in understanding what education must do to remain relevant.  You need to read it but I’ll give you a few snippets of what resonated with me.

He discusses RateMyProfessors.com and sums it up this way,

If we are smart enough, we can learn a lesson here and now that we will eventually learn – rather more expensively – if we wait. The lesson is simple: control is over. This is not about control anymore. This is about finding a way to survive and thrive in chaos.

Taking a page right out of Disrupting Class,

The administration has gone, the instructor’s role has evolved, now what happens to the classroom itself? In the context of a larger school facility, it may or may not be relevant. A classroom is clearly relevant if someone is learning engine repair, but perhaps not if learning calculus. The classroom in this fungible future of student administrators and evolved lecturers is any place where learning happens.

He ends with four recommendations. The first is Capture Everything.

I am constantly amazed that we simply do not record almost everything that occurs in public forums as a matter of course. This talk is being recorded for a later podcast – and so it should be. Not because my words are particularly worthy of preservation, but rather because this should now be standard operating procedure for education at all levels, for all subject areas. It simply makes no sense to waste my words – literally, pouring them away – when with very little infrastructure an audio recording can be made, and, with just a bit more infrastructure, a video recording can be made.

The second was has a special place in my heart, Share Everything. (He really meant share(ski) anything, but I’ll let it go)

The center of this argument is simple, though subtle: the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes. You extend your brand with every resource you share. You extend the knowledge of your institution throughout the Internet. Whatever you have – if it’s good enough – will bring people to your front door, first virtually, then physically.

Recommendation #3 is Open Everything.

Services like Twitter get filtered out because they could potentially be disruptive, cutting students off from the amazing learning potential of social messaging. Facebook and MySpace are seen as time-wasters, rather than tools for organizing busy schedules……All of this has got to stop. The classroom does not exist in isolation, nor can it continue to exist in opposition to the Internet. Filtering, while providing a stopgap, only leaves students painfully aware of how disconnected the classroom is from the real world. Filtering makes the classroom less flexible and less responsive. Filtering is lazy.

Finally, Only Connect.

…for all its drawbacks, connection enriches us enormously. It allows us to multiply our reach, and learn from the best. The challenge of connectivity is nowhere near as daunting as the capabilities it delivers. Yet we know already that everyone will be looking to maintain control and stability, even as everything everywhere becomes progressively reshaped by all this connectivity. We need to let go, we need to trust ourselves enough to recognize that what we have now, though it worked for a while, is no longer fit for the times.

Read the whole thing and then share it.

markpesce, willrichardson, disruptingclass