Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I’m about two thirds into my first endeavour teaching an online course and certainly have learned much about the process. First off, even though I only have 14 students, it’s been tough to get to know them. The ones I know best are those who have been blogging and commenting and allowing me to follow via RSS. Their blogs make up the bulk of their work and reflection of the content. It’s taking a bit but finally some are showing some good stuff. Some are still reluctant and haven’t quite figured out how to dive in. Here’s a couple of examples of good work:

• Amber’s post on Cellphones and the impending discussion
• Nicole’s discussion on creating her digital story
• Ronda’s post on why technology means money and following discussion
• Brian’s digital story

We’ve also had some great sessions using Elluminate. Currently students are working with Jeff Utecht’s Plymouth State Students in Developing Wikis. A few weeks ago, David Jakes and Wes Fryer added a wealth of information to our digital story session and the results are evident in their work.

Six weeks is a very short time to build communities but given past experiences I’ve had with workshops and even longer term work with teachers, I’m confident many of these students will continue to utilize a variety of tools effectively. Their enthusiasm is generally pretty palatable. Anytime they’ve had others comment on their work, it’s been a big boost. Comments rule. They validate work and can push learning further. If you can relate at all to this feeling head over and leave a comment on one of their blogs; even better add them to your aggregator.

Kyle
Gillian
Jane
Crystal
Amber
Ronda
Stepan
Nicole
Stephanie
Katie
Kelly
Janine
Erin
Brian

[tags]uofregina,elluminate,davidjakes,jeffutecht,wesfryer,cellphones,digitalstories[/tags]

This post is part confession, part request, part exploration.

The Confession: If you don’t blog but have some significant ideas, learning, teaching to share, I likely may not know about your or even follow your work. Which is to say that my RSS aggregator has become the primary means by which I learn. During my time at BLC, I was privileged to listen to Marco Torres and his students talk about their work. I had heard of Marco before but only through the blogs of others. To my knowledge Marco doesn’t blog. He has great stuff, phenomenal stuff to share but I don’t tend to use his resources as much as I should because he doesn’t blog. Only when others attend a conference where he is speaking am I reacquainted with his good work. I’m introduced to books, music and ideas this way. I certainly don’t think this is a good thing to rely so heavily on my network but with RSS, I get a better sense of who people are, what type of work they are doing and am apt to use their work more in my learning and sharing. Blogging allows even authors to share their work beyond the scope of their book. Case in point is the Freakonomics blog. I loved the book and the writings of Levitt and Dubner and am happy to follow their adventures via their blog. It keeps the work of their book fresh in my mind. They continue to expand on their original ideas and of course allows me to contribute as well. I feel a part of the learning in a much more invested way.

The Request: Please blog. That means folks like, Marco Torres, Tim Tyson, Marc Prensky, (hasn’t blogged in a year never allowed for comments) and Dan Pink (he does blog but should do more and without comments is it really a blog?)….I could go on. Blog because it adds a personal touch to your work. Blog as an extension of your work. Blog to market yourself. Read Naked Conversations if you don’t believe me. Don’t tell me you don’t have time. You all spend lots of time in great offline conversations and experiences, simply bring these online. People are interested. I don’t have the time to check your websites periodically to see if you’ve got something new. I’m being selfish but you have to  come to me. That’s what RSS is for!

On a side note, do these people even subscribe to any feeds? Will they know I’ve challenged them to blog? My guess is no.

The Exploration: I had this discussion with Will on the bus and he told me that I’m in the minority in terms of where I get my learning but I’m wondering how else we can stay connected to the great work out there without blogs and RSS? If RSS is the Killer App that many claim it to be, when it takes off as email did, will that force folks into blogging? That’s maybe a reach but I’m trying to figure out how else people will be able to have the knowledge and understanding of important work or will people simply choose a small number of people and ideas to focus as they have done prior to all the web 2.0 stuff?

I’m just saying, this is how I learn. It’ maybe not the best way but I in our world, I don’t know how else.

I need you to be a feed before I read.

[tags]rss,feed,marcotorres,freakonomics,timtyson,marcprensky,danpink,nakedconversations,[/tags]

I had the privilege to present at this amazing conference. It was also great to have a number of my friends in my session as well as some new ones. While I felt a bit limited with the time and the speed of my connection, I had many positive comments (People are so nice).

Bob Sprankle was good enough to record the session and post it on his website as well. While I didn’t use a traditional slideshow, I do have the notes on my wiki.

Also, David Jakes posted his SkypeCast notes.

Flickr Image courtesy of Trevor Smith:
http://flickr.com/photos/10184657@N03/844482409/

 

 Moving Beyond the WOW in Google Earth: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

To illustrate the past 2 hours of my day have a look:

• 10:00 Began an Elluminate session with Jeff Utecht, his Plymouth State students, mine and Alec Couros
• 11:00 Clarence Fisher starts a chat session with me using Google Chat about his current visit to Moose Jaw. I invite him to talk to my students in a couple of weeks.
• 11:15 Session comes to a close as Jeff tells me his Skyping with Chris Lehmann…I send a chat message to Chris just to say hi
• 11:20 Tom Turner responds to an earlier “twit“  I posted about my golf swing…requesting the raw footage
• 11:25 edit and upload a 2 second clip to archive.org
• 11:25-11:45 Commenting on my students’ blogs
• 11:45 Comment on Christian Long’s image from today’s ball game
• 11:45 Preparing for an upcoming workshop on Digital Storytelling I check my del.icio.us feed to see a great digital storytelling resource by Alan found by Will

Connected and learning all the time. I’ve got a great crew working for me.

Google is putting together an interesting, fun project demonstrating the power of connection.

A few of us on the Gmail team came up with an idea to stitch together a bunch of video clips that all share one element: someone hands the Gmail M-velope in from the left of the screen, and hands it off to the right. Put them all together, and they form one long chain of hand-offs. We thought it would be fun to let everyone in on the action. Just go to http://mail.google.com/mvideo, where you’ll find directions on how to submit your clip (including a PDF of the Gmail M-velope you can use in your video). We’ll be accepting clips until August 13th. We’ll then take a selection of the submitted clips and edit them together into one final video, which we’ll release to the world on August 20th.

Wouldn’t this be a great idea to piggy back on in the classroom? We could get very creative here. Simple and yet creative.
[tags]gmail, video, connection[/tags]

Imagine this: Take a dozen or so people who spend much of the personal and professional life immersed in technology put them together for three days and guess what they’d spend most of the time talking about. If you said technology or computers you’d be wrong.

BLC featured 600 educators from around the globe focusing on learning. That’s what the discussions in large part focused on. I was privileged to be able to spend time with the likes of Barbara Bareda, Bob Spankle, Sharon Peters, Ewan Mcintosh, Darren Kuropatwa, David Jakes, Joyce Valenza, Will Richardson, Trevor Smith, Chris Lehmann and Christian Long. These folks all represent passionate thinkers and educators who at almost every turn will speak about making learning better for kids. While they worry and lament about bad teaching and schools, they truly are excited about the possibilities.

Here are a few highlights:

• Bob Sprankle…Podcasting with a Purpose…you don’t miss a chance to hear arguably one of the founding fathers of educational podcasting. Bob and Tony Vincent likely represent the finest example of how to use this powerful tool with kids.
• Darren Kuropatwa…Darren and I have done a fair bit together so hearing him present live wasn’t really a new experience. Spending time outside the sessions is where he really shines. Smart, articulate, Darren is determined to make school and learning authentic and engaging for his students.
• Joyce Valenza….if you’re a teacher librarian, you ought to pay attention to what she says. She spent some time with me explaining her concerns with the lack of use of the “invisible web”. Lots for me to ponder.
• Chris Lehmann and Christian Long…Chris Sessums called them the “wonder twins”. Talking with Christian for a couple of hours on Thursday forced me to take a nap. High energy and deep thoughts. He’s headed back to the classroom this fall. All I can say to his students is BUCKLE UP! Chris Lehmann is a principal who’s got it right. My favorite line of Chris’ after he told us about a teacher who was complaining about something, Chris said, “Yeah, but you get to teach!”
• Trevor Smith…I convinced Trevor he needed to come to BLC back in spring and I’m hoping he’s glad he did. Trevor and I work together and he’s got some great plans. Trevor’s been moving forward with things for a while now and I sense things are beginning to get clearer. Not any easier but clearer. Trevor and I were able to touch base a few times and we’re both excited about some of our upcoming initiatives. Watch for good things from his school.
• Will Richardson….I had met Will before and Will has been gracious to support my work in the past but I challenged Will to continue to push the envelope. I did attend his session where he broke form a traditional presentation and challenged the audience to look beyond the tools and coolness of Web 2.0 to what was really important: connecting learners, ideas to fully develop the concept of lifelong learning. I hope Will continues to make people a bit more uncomfortable. We also had our talk about the optimum number of feeds you need to read. I was right
• David Jakes…is grounded. He knows what he believes about learning and isn’t afraid to tell you. He’s calls it like he sees it when it comes to artificial, fluffy student work and offers ideas about how to make learning authentic and meaningful. You also get the sense that he’d do whatever it takes to help kids learn. You have to love Jakes.
• Ewan Mcintosh…Will Richardson called him rock star. He pretty much is. I just love the way in which he crystallizes complex ideas and makes them simple or least I’m able to ponder them a bit more. See Will’s example about his photography lesson. Ewan and I had a great conversation about the lack of myths in North American education. I hope he blogs about it if he hasn’t already. I certainly think that our curriculum and education systems are much more closely tied than that of US.
• Being able to present ideas about Google Earth was important especially after all the hype about Second Life. Google Earth is to me the more critical tool for kids and teachers to focus on. Being able to discuss the implications of learning and developing location-based learning will be a valuable skill for our kids: See Pool Guy Story.

I never went to camp as a kid and my wife suggested this was the closest I’ve ever come to that feeling when camp ends. I don’t know if that’s true, but lest you think this is a post about my sappy experience, think again. It’s about the power of face to face learning combined with great online tools; People and ideas connecting to form the basis of social learning. Each is an important ingredient. All of these people are committed to help kids and not just the ones they get paid to help. Almost all of them have worked with teachers I associate with and work for and have given hours of their time to make learning better for others. They do it because I ask them. That’s how they roll.

There was nothing at this conference that rocked my world in terms of new technologies or even new ideas. Most of these have been roaming around my brain for a while. Some were pretty solid, others needed tightening and still others need some loosening. Both of this was accomplished. The conversation that Darren and I had with Christian really focused on some key questions. Christian asked, “What if all the technology was suddenly taken away?” What have we learned from all this and how do we sustain and develop the connections and beliefs about learning? Hmmmm…..

At one point someone said, “We’ve got to stop talking about all this, and start doing something about it”. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I can’t wait for summer to end.

Flickr Photoset.

[tags]blc07,alannovember,boston,conference[/tags]

After my post about easypost, I received this pleasant surprise in the mail:

Thanks Willem 

Thanks Wes for guest blogging. As usual, your prolific blogging is something I can match but nice to have you showcase your talents.

I’ve been traveling for the past week and am now in Boston at the BLC conference. (I”m actually in Will Richardson’s session as I type). I’ve got some things I should write about and don’t want to lose them. Here’s a few:

1. Why the Amish are an example of a great community
2. The tools in action….mixing and matching a million tools
3. Fenway rocks
4. Meeting Seeing old friends for the first time (Darren, Will, David, Barbara, Joyce, Ewan…still having seen him yet, Bob and more)
5. Elluminating learning with David Jakes and Wes Fryer

My head is full but that’s a good thing.