Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Will begins a great conversation about others grabbing his feed including ads to profit from his writing. I’ve had this happen on occasion but always viewed it as a compliment. Will thinks differently about it. The comments bring more complexity to the conversation. (including a Tom Hoffman zinger. BTW, is there a way to subscribe only to Tom’s comments?)
I don’t know what to think. There’s just too many smart people making great contributions.

Flickr has become an essential in digital storytelling. This group uses 5 photos to tell a story.

This would be a great and simple way to introduce digital storytelling to your students. We used to call it sequencing but digital storytelling sounds much better. There are many great and not so great examples.

Tim Wilson discovers a wikipedia citing tool. As with http://citationmachine.net/, wikipedia offers many formats and flavours for your choosing. Here’s an example for Moose Jaw:

Bibliographic details for “Moose Jaw”

• Page name: Moose Jaw
• Author: Wikipedia contributors
• Publisher: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
• Date of last revision: 10 March 2004 13:31 UTC
• Date retrieved: 28 July 2006 17:28 UTC
• Permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282
• Primary contributors: View the list
• Page Version ID: 16357282

Please remember to check your manual of style, standards guide or instructor’s guidelines for the exact syntax to suit your needs. For more detailed advice, see Citing Wikipedia.

Citation styles for “Moose Jaw”

APA style

Moose Jaw. (2004, March 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:28, July 28, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282.

MLA style

“Moose Jaw.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Mar 2004, 13:31 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 Jul 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282>.

MHRA style

Wikipedia contributors, ‘Moose Jaw’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 March 2004, 13:31 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282> [accessed 28 July 2006]

Chicago style

Wikipedia contributors, “Moose Jaw,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282 (accessed July 28, 2006).

CBE/CSE style

Wikipedia contributors. Moose Jaw [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; 2004 Mar 10, 13:31 UTC [cited 2006 Jul 28]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282.

Bluebook style

Moose Jaw, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282 (last visited July 28, 2006).

Bluebook: Harvard JOLT style

See Wikipedia, Moose Jaw, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_Jaw (optional description here) (as of Jul. 28, 2006, 17:28 GMT).

AMA style

Wikipedia contributors. Moose Jaw. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. March 10, 2004, 13:31 UTC. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282. Accessed July 28, 2006.

BibTeX entry

@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = "Wikipedia",
title = "Moose Jaw --- Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia",
year = "2004",
url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282",
note = "[Online; accessed 28-July-2006]"
}

When using the LaTeX package url (\usepackage{url} somewhere in the preamble), which tends to give much more nicely formatted web addresses, the following may be preferred:

@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = "Wikipedia",
title = "Moose Jaw --- Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia",
year = "2004",
url = "\url{http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moose_Jaw&oldid=16357282}",
note = "[Online; accessed 28-July-2006]"
}

I’ve set up my wiki for my digital storytelling workshop on Monday and Tuesday. I really struggled with the format, the tools and the pedagogical approach.

The format:

How many activities/projects can be done in 2 days? I know many workshops will focus totally on one project. They’ll spend much of day one setting the stage for digital storytelling and then spend day 2 on creation. After posting about my last workshop, the great comments helped me confirm my instinct for balance. I’m hoping to interject pedagogy and philosophy in the midst of the various projects. Wes’ idea about constantly providing opportunities for participants to reflect as well as create is a good one. Not that I’ve never done that but I need the reminder. Secondly, I’m choosing to use day 1 to create 3 mini-projects and day 2 to create single larger project. My thinking is since I believe digital storytelling is much broader than most think, I want to give them experience in a few different approaches. Even at that, we’ll only be scratching the surface but only creating a single project doesn’t address the myriad of possibilities

The tools:

I had a great Skype conversation with Miguel last night and he described the discussion he’s been involved with about the tools of digital storytelling. For a number of very good reasons, they’ve chosen to go exclusively with Windows Movie Maker.  David Jakes and others prefer PhotoStory and of course Mac users love iMovie. PowerPoint, Audacity and various image video editing tools are possible tools for digital storytelling.

I’m going to focus on Movie Maker and PhotoStory. I would have likely focused solely on PhotoStory but because my participants are wanting some experience with video, Movie Maker is required. Also, Miguel made a great case for Movie Maker because of the ease of audio recording and editing right within the program, negating the use for another audio editor. (their approach also is about oral storytelling, so there is no written script)

The Pedagogy: 

Miguel’s oral storytelling approach, really interests me but I think I need more time and expertise to pursue that. Also, I know many groups including the story center, focus exclusively on personal narratives. These are powerful and will be the approach for the day 2 project but I think it’s also important to discover academic or content stories. These will be done with the day 1 projects.

I’ll likely piddle away at it between now and Monday and also try and create a decent introduction. Miguel asked me to record it so hopefully I’ll remember. If you have any other ideas, comments or suggestions, either drop them off here or over at the wiki.

Yes it’s true.

Today I facilitated a workshop on Social Software. While the comments were all positive and I sensed excitement about the tools and new considerations for learning, I know I talked too much.

I began the workshop with an introduction to Web 2.0 and the changing classroom. I wanted to set the stage for day and provide context to all the tools we’d look at. I know Alan recommends “showing the demo” but I’ve too many times shown someone how to blog without talking about why to blog. As a result, I spent easily as much time today dealing with pedagogy as I did with hands on experiences. That bothered me.

One comment was that it could have been a three day workshop. That would be ideal, but three days is a lot to ask for teachers when they are volunteering to give up a warm summer day in Saskatchewan. So as usual, I tried to cram in as much stuff as I could. Should I have done one day on blogging? Perhaps. Yet many commented that the most useful parts of the day was the time spent on RSS and Bloglines and others got very excited about the possiblities of services like Flickr.

As I walked through portions of my wiki, I would constantly revert to stories regarding pedagogy and things I’ve either witnessed personally or read about via blogs. I designed the wiki so that participants would be able to go back and revisit all the “how to” parts and work through them on their own. What I fear they won’t have is the context. The context that I’ve been experiencing in depth for the past 18 months.

Today Wes emailed me and thanked me for guest blogging. He also gave me some insights about things to keep in mind during my upcoming trip to Yellowstone. He didn’t go into great detail but provided me with some helpful tips. Is this the same way I should have facilitated things today? Maybe but the difference is while I’ve never been to Yellowstone, I’ve had some experience travelling. I can figure out many things on my own. But what if I’ve never gone on vacation? What if I’ve never crossed a border or booked a accomodation? In that case, his advice would be less helpful because I’d have bigger concerns. That’s where I think many of our teachers are at. They are so new to everything that the Read/Write web can do that they need more context. They need to understand clearly why and how they should be using the tools.

I’ll stop talking now.

My workshop which I’ll be delivering on Monday, is now posted as a wiki. It’s not exactly the way I want it but I hope my participants will help shape it up.  Feel free to make any changes or suggestions.

I subscribe to a Technorati feed for Moose Jaw. I’ve learned many interesting things about my city. Most of the postings are of travellers passing through my town.

Today I across this blog. It appears a single mom from Cincinatti is adopting a child from China. She decided to make a quilt called “100 Good Wishes”. She’s invited others to submit a quilt square with a message for this child. So far she has 8 squares with the 8th square contributed by a quilter in Moose Jaw. What an amazing connection between people of common interests! This is what we need to show our students. .  Reminds me a bit of one red paperclip except in my mind more important. Everyone in this project is making a significant contribution using their skills and experiences
Isn’t this what we want the web to be?

Found this via Stephen Downes. It didn’t embed as nicely as I’d hope so I had to resort to my vPIP plugin.

Play Flash version