My wife, after spending the last 10 years as a teacher librarian is back in the classroom. She's doing a fantastic job and has committed to share her students work through her blog. I set her up with posterous and it's working really well. She's posted more than once a day sharing photos, videos and is getting great feedback from students and parents. She'll be shifting to students posting their own work soon. 

She told me interesting story today. Each week she does a little warm up activity called "Minute to Win It". She draws names out of a hat to determine the order. Today she realized that the one student that would not get picked today would not take it well. She knew the student  was going to cry.  Just as she was about to film the other student, the water works began with loud wailing. My wife turned to the student and said, "Do you want people on the internet to see you crying?" She was shocked when the student immediately stopped crying. She didn't need to say another word. She didn't think it would make that much of a difference but it did. Later the 8 year old came to her and said, "Did you erase the part where I was crying?"

​​It doesn't mean that 8 year olds should not be allowed to cry or show emotion. They absolutely should. But the idea that we see value in learning in public, even at 8 is an increasingly important idea for all. There's a time and place to cry act like a kid. But even kids need to understand there are times to "be on". A blog is a good place for that. 

If you don't think that kids get digital identity, guess again. This child goes home every night and sees all classmates and themselves online. They realize it's a public place and wants to show their best selves. A good lesson to consider, even at 8. 

"How long did it take after the birth of blogs or Twitter for you to begin speaking up? Before this, you had no cheap, easy, allowable way to speak your mind to the world. You weren't allowed. Then you were. And yet most people who use these tools took years to take action and start. "

I would add, "And still many either don't think they're allowed or can't figure out what they need to say."

Many schools and organizations would like to keep you from speaking up. When you speak up to question, initiate or wonder, you cause work and trouble because someone may have to respond, grant/deny permission or defend. The meetings where no one talks are short and efficient. Agenda items get passed, people get out early. Seems like a win-win. Schools are filled with enough challenges that you speaking up is unconsciously seen as trouble. But most of the meetings contain unexpressed thoughts and ideas that while complicating matters, could perhaps be exactly what's needed or at least suggest new possibilities. In most cases, people don't speak up because they're not allowed. Not explicitly, but implied by culture or past experiences.

That's why I blog and do the Twitter. You don't have to listen to me if you don't want to. I'm not afraid to say something stupid (insert smart remark) or play. I'm also not afraid to wonder or question. I'm also trying to model for others, fellow teachers and students they they too are allowed and that they have something to contribute.

I've written often about why I think blogging is a big deal.

• Becoming Narrative Champions
• How to Make Better Teachers
• What Stupid Will Get You
• In Search of Reflective Practitioners
• There Must be a Link
• Why Audience Matters
• Chalk up another one for Blogging

Godin's nugget reminded me that we/you are now allowed. Even if you work for some antiquated organization that says you can't participate in is global conversations, you can. Maybe under a pseudonym but your voice matters. I subscribe and read every person in my district that blogs or tweets. I hope I reach the point where I can't because there are just too many. At that point I'll work to make sure at least someone else is reading their stuff because it matters.

PS. Weird, I even felt like I was writing in Seth Godin style.

It's been over a year since one of my students wrote a very heartfelt post about his younger brother. The aftermath of this post was quite powerful and led to  a big change. Read the comments, a few of which aren't very nice to get the full picture. Kyle handled himself with integrity. I continue to point to this post as a great example of the power and potential of blogging. But the whole grading and honour roll thing continues to be problem-some, at least for me.

All my kids have been on the honour roll. For them the grades were motivating and to be honest, they didn't really work all that hard. Sure they studied and put in the effort but I know many students who worked much harder with poorer results. School came pretty easy for them. In the end, the real winners were the ones that learned how to learn, the ones that found a passion, worked hard because they cared about what they did and wanted to make the most of every opportunity. I'm not saying my kids didn't achieve any of these but it wasn't the dominant reason they went to school. My youngest, who is 12 is tired of me telling her not to focus on the grade but focus on the learning. But it's hard for her to think differently when everything around her tells her the grade is really the most important thing. We live in a system that prizes numbers and letters.

So back to Kyle's post. Last night Kyle and Jordan presented to my current ECMP 355 class on ideas that are still resonating with them a year after taking my course. One of the reasons I asked them to do this was to demonstrate that hopefully what they learn in my course has value, value beyond a grade but something they'll use for the rest of their lives. They did a wonderful job. Kyle spent a few minutes talking about that post and some of the inside stories around it. I posted it to twitter last night and my colleague and mentor Rick Schwier posted a comment that has been in my head for the day:

I have a son with a different kind of disability. He has Down syndrome, and he is 37 now. He’s the most academic of my three kids, and I mean it… not in some pathetic condescending way. He pays attention. He is a serious critic. He has no tolerance for fools. He remembers important things and refuses to internalize trivial things. He inspires. Honour rolls. Silly. Trivial. Unnecessary. And at their worst, soul destroying. The older I get, the less tolerant I’m becoming of the deleterious effects of grading and its offspring.

Wow. "…the deleterious effect of gradings and its offspring". Chew on that for a while.  

Want to instantly create better teachers? I know how. One word. Blogging.

Now before you roll your eyes or accuse me of oversimplifying the very complex issue of teacher evaluation and monitoring hear me out.

I began teaching in 1988. It was a tough job and thinking about getting better was superseded by survival instincts. Early on in my career, there were several documents that the province produced in support of improved professional development. I didn't pay much attention to these but one phrase I saw in those documents some 20 years ago stuck with me. Reflective Practitioner.  I sort of understood the concept but other than simply thinking about what you did in the classroom, I wasn't at all sure what to do with this term.
When I discovered blogs almost 5 years ago, I soon figured out what that term meant. Since that occasion I have sat down to write close to 1,000 pieces of reflection. While not all would be considered deep, most take me anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours to craft. It may not always look like it, these are generally borne out of the times I spent observing, thinking and working in classrooms. The reflective writing has been valuable but definitely the nearly 4,000 comments have been even more of a learning experience. This is the single best professional development experience I've had.

Dan Meyer, a Mathematics teacher in California

…blogging was the cheapest, most risk-free investment I could have made of my personal time into my job. You start by writing down things that are interesting to you, practices you don’t want to forget. And then you start trying new things just so you can blog about them later, picking them apart, and dialoging over them with strangers. Periods of stagnancy in your blogging start to correspond to periods of stagnancy in your teaching. You start to muse on your job when you’re stuck in traffic, in line for groceries, that sort of thing. That transformation has been nothing but good for me and it all began on a free Blogspot blog.

Thousands of other blogging educators could echo similar words. In fact, I’ve yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it’s been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement. I’ve no “data” to prove this but I’m willing to bet my golf clubs that teachers who blog are our best teachers. If you look at the promise of Professional Learning Communitiesthat our schools have invested thousands, more likely millions to achieve, blogs accomplish much of the same things. The basic idea of the PLC is to have teachers share practice/data and work in teams to make improvements. A good blog does this and more. While the data may not be school specific, great bloggers know how to share data and experience that is both relevant and universal so any reader can contribute and create discussion.

There’s a natural transparency that emerges. The teachers who blog as professionals in this reflective manner in my district invite anyone to look into their classrooms and you can get a picture of what happens on a daily basis. This goes a long way in addressing accountability concerns.

Teachers have for years had to fill in a plethora of reports and forms which in essence are accountability papers. For the most part they are of no use teacher and in most cases aren’t very valuable for administration either. Busy work.

So here’s my plan. Hire a teacher, give them a blog. Get them to subscribe to at least 5 other teachers in the district as well as 5 other great teachers from around the globe. Have their principal and a few central office people to subscribe to the blog and 5 other teachers as well. Require them to write at least once a week on their practice. Get conversations going right from the get go. Watch teachers get better.

Try that. If it doesn’t work after a year, you get my golf clubs.

PS. The only people allowed to criticize or challenge this idea are people who have blogged for at least one year and written at least 50 posts. The rest of you can ask questions but you can’t dismiss it.

	Shelley Wright. Shelley is a local teacher who recently started telling her story of change. If you want honesty, transparency and some inspiration from a classroom teacher making big shifts this is the blog for you. Start here.
Photo by Jschinker http://www.flickr.com/photos/63873121@N00/3706685823/	Zac Chase. Okay so there's a bit of a trend here in that these are both High School English teachers. Not that they write exclusively about their classes but Zac is just a smart dude that folks ought to pay attention to. Start here.
Photo by: Mola http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocturnalimages/5107811135/	Chris Kennedy. Chris is a rare breed. A superintendent who is doing some great writing, sharing and tweeting. Start here.

So there are a few folks who have grabbed my attention as of late. I could give a few more but I hope one, two or all three of these people might be people you add to your reader. You do use a reader right? Don't simply use twitter as your rss feed. You need to go on a bit of a journey with people and read more than simply a smattering here and there. Consider this your chastisement for the day.

What about you? Anyone I should be paying attention to? Bonus points if you find me someone from outside North America. 

Global education, diversity and multi-cultural appreciation are ideas that I believe are essential for our student's success. I also believe as educators we need to model this for them.  So when I used this tool to see where the folks that I follow reside, it was a little embarrassing.

A little North American centric ya think? While this tool only allows a sampling of 100 of your followers, (I currently follow about 700) it's likely a pretty reasonable indicator of who's got my attention.  Ewan's concerned about this as well. He blames time zones and short attention spans and he's got a point. Christian Long argues:

And perhaps — no matter how much Friedman and well-intentioned educators may want — the world defaults to hyper-local (scaled accordingly) rather than global when it comes to conversation over time.

While that offers some explanation I can't quite take myself off the hook. Add to the fact that a number of those outside North American are ex-pats I have to hang my head in shame. Clarence Fisher is doing wonderful things to help his students experience a global education all the way from northern Manitoba. He requires his student to have a diverse global network of students to learn with. 

So to appease my guilt and practice what I preach, I need to do some different things. By the end of the year, I'm going to find 50 new followers from outside North America. I may even look for random people as it could improve my creativity. I'm going to find 10 new bloggers from overseas and 5 new flickr contacts.  Okay, maybe there's more to do but that's a start. What about you? Happy with who you're learning with? Feel a need to expand? Have any tips or suggestions? Speak now and leave some great recommendations for new global blogs to follow.

Update: I should add the Jennifer Wagner wrote a very similar post last month which I did read and perhaps by osmosis, I've pretty much covered the same ground. I'd like to say "great minds…" but I'm not in that category. Go read Jen's post too.

My youngest daughter is known for asking these types of questions. She has actually asked that one but usually the questions are more about a favourite part of a movie, what's your favourite vacation spot, etc. That's pretty typical for kids and even adults. We love to order and rank things. I have many favourites. But when does it go too far? Are these lists of favourites personal or is their value in crowd sourcing our favourites?

I think there is a place for ranking. But not for everything. 

Trip Advisor is a great example of crowd sourcing and rating. It may not be definitive but provides a useful beginning in making a financial investment. Digg and Youtube are fine examples of places that use rating systems to determine popularity but not necessarily quality. That can be useful but not definitive. 

It starts to bother me however when we feel compelled to create list of greatness when it comes to people who, because of their generosity have chosen to use their cognitive surplus to share online. These folks, and I'm mostly speaking about educators, have joined a revolution of sharing and connecting and have worked together, mostly for free, to learn together. That's pretty darn cool. Deciding to rank and rate them is a little like having a potluck dinner and then having a vote at the end as to who made the best meal. What would be the point other than to single out a few and let others feel less than worthy. 

I love the social nature of the web. Anyone who knows me gets that. I also like recognition. I like to contribute and like to know I'm helping folks. I get that recognition from trackbacks, comments, Retweets, mentions, links and thank yous. I know how important they are to me and try to respond in kind, partly because it's natural and partly because it's the right thing to do and partly because it's how all this will continue to work.

I've been on a few lists of best blogs or whatever. I'll admit, it's flattering but I can't tell you how many times these lists are derived by a single person and looking deeper at the lists, many blogs appear that are inactive or are just plain bad. They always leave out many that should be included and in the end do little than cause controversy. I haven't linked to one of those lists in years. I appreciate a thoughtful comment much more than making a list. 

I do think that those who create the lists or awards mean well. I'm sure they either want to raise the profile of others or give recognition to those that have influenced or supported their learning. That's cool. But I think we've now reached a new way of filtering content.  Dave Weinberger talks about the power of folksnomy, tagging and personalized sorting. This is what makes the web great. Yet, our natural instinct is to rate and order and better yet,get others to agree with our rankings. I'd love great work to be promoted and shared more  but I'd like to see that done by using the tools of democracy that the web offers. Retweet like crazy, leave a comment, tell somebody but leave the rankings alone. 

We live in a metric obsessed world. Moreover, our education system is based on the ranking and ordering of students. Who's the top of the class? Who had the highest mark? Anyone involved in education know how silly that is and how it often fails to recognize many students who deserve recognition. We know our measuring tools are flawed and that at the end of the day we want our students to learn because learning is life and rankings aren't all that important. In the same way that ranking damages and can discourage those who don't get noticed, I worry we do the same for those who are just beginning to discover the power and value of sharing online. I can't imagine any teacher who introduced their students to blogging and sharing online start to have students rate and rank each other. It's hard enough to be transparent and open with your learning. To start to sort out the best from the worst borders on offensive if not unethical. If it's wrong to do with students, why would we do it with each other?  I'd hope that as educators we could model sharing, celebrating and learning that doesn't have to classified as "best", because best implies there's worst.  

This has largely been a think aloud post. I'm up for questions, clarifications or disagreements.

My pre-service teachers are required to blog. I take great pleasure as they take ownership of those spaces and begin to share their passions, question things and connect ideas with others. One of my students has recently purchased his own domain name and hosting space. I don’t expect everyone to do that but applaud his efforts.  The other day he posted a pretty compelling argument that questioned the practice at the school his brother attends. He did not identify the school. I’m sure a little investigation could have revealed the school but this was not the point of the post. His post was meant to illuminate a larger discussion of equity and student recognition. He got several comments and generated some good discussion.

A few days later the principal of the school called him upset with the posting but stated the staff was discussing changing the policy. The principal was upset that Kyle did not come to him privately to discuss the matter. I discussed it with Kyle and we agreed that by posting it online it likely garnered enough attention to warrant a staff discussion. A private conversation may not have.

So the question remains, should he have posted it? Did he break any ethical code? My instinct is to say no to both but I want to throw it out there. I don’t want us to hide behind our blog or use it as a place to rant but a place to converse.

These are the types of conversations and issues that should be discussed. I don’t want my students to shy away from controversy but tackle it. A blog is a great place to get feedback and insights that you may never get in your local context. I’d love all my students to post something that caused schools to consider to change.

Imagine it's 1991. A principal of a large school has students that are doing some really nice writing and art. Imagine of a large publishing company comes to the school and wants to try something different. They offer the principal a chance for every student in the building the opportunity to publish any or all works of their choice. They'll publish these books of writing and/or art and distribute them to libraries and book stores all over the world. And they'll do it all for free. The principal listens to their offer and says, "No thanks."

Now imagine you're a parent of children from this school and find out about the offer and the principal's decline of that offer. Would you be satisfied with that or would you be marching into her office and find out if she's gone completely insane?

Are we insane for not accepting that same deal that every school on the planet has been offered in 2010? I've heard a few arguments about publishing today but seriously, if your child, in 1991 was offered a chance to have their work published, would you not jump at that chance? I get that perhaps not all work is worthy of publishing but I can't imagine many students, principals or parents who would have passed up the offer back then.

When I discovered blogs almost 5 years ago, I soon figured out what that term meant. Since that occasion I have sat down to write close to 1,000 pieces of reflection. While not all would be considered deep, most take me anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours to craft. While it may not always look like it, these are generally borne out of the times I spent observing, thinking and working in classrooms. The reflective writing has been valuable but definitely the nearly 4,000 comments have been even more of a learning experience. As it's been said many times, this is the single best professional development experience I've had. Way beyond any one conference, workshop or even twitter.

In a week I'll be teaching an advanced technology course at the University of Regina. In the introductory course, I've had students set up blogs to get a feel for what it's like. Some like it, others tolerate it. This term I would like the students to do some analysis of quality, reflective blogs of classroom teachers. I'd like them to develop some criteria for what they feel is a great reflective blog. Hopefully they'll be able to start a journey of reflection that will carry them into their career and not wait 15 years to begin what is certainly a critical characteristic of a great teacher.

I have to admit I've been remiss in developing a list of great classroom teacher blogs. Most classroom teachers use their blogs as homework portals or classroom showcase blogs. Others have developed resource or tool based blogs. I'm not suggesting these are bad but they aren't reflective. Most of the reflective blogs I read tend to be from those outside the classroom. First off, these folks do have more time to devout to blogging but also they need to do the work I'm doing so I gravitate to them naturally.

Three bloggers who I love to read because of the way they reflect and analyze their own practice are Kelly Christopherson, Clarence Fisher and Dan Meyer.

Kelly is an administrator and teacher in Saskatchewan. He wears his heart on his sleeve. I don't always see things the same way as he does but that's precisely why I read him.  His struggles of late deal with the challenges of change and leadership. If you're a school administrator, you'd find his writing fascinating and I'm sure many times you'd be nodding visibly as you read and other times yelling at him.  He doesn't write to make friends, he writes because you sense he has to.

Clarence is someone I've known and read for a number of years. Very cerebral, Clarence makes clear connections between what he sees in his classroom and what is happening in a larger scale. He's likely most similar to my style but certainly his daily experience with middle schoolers keeps him very grounded. He practices what he preaches. Every teacher can learn lots from him.

Dan is a high school math teacher currently on leave and working at Google. That hasn't stopped him from continuing to have a highly practical approach to blogging. He is keenly interested in what works in a classroom and less with lofty applications to solving all the problems with education. With a niche for media, he takes pride in analysing everything from classroom management techniques to how to design a useful handout.

That's three. Three teachers who spend time reflecting and writing about their experiences and ideas. I need to show my students more than these three. So if you'd be so kind, leave a comment with a similar description as I've used here to tell me about your favorite reflective classroom blogger. So read this, retweet it and together we can create a list that you can use and yes, selfishly I can use with my students.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by shareski

This facebook/twitter posting by Chris Lehmann got my attention.

It's hard to argue with that statement and it raises some interesting questions and implications. It reminded me this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod (warning, Hugh as an affection for the f-bomb)

It's powerful statement warning about our ability to connect and yet wallow in shallowness and fluff. While I concur with Chris's concern I also think it's important to explore the nature and purpose of audience.

Placing a clustr map on your blog or receiving a comment from someone on the other side of the world is pretty amazing. Often in very contrived ways, teachers find these connections for their students and generally get the "ooohs" and "awwwws" for while. As Chris suggests this novelty fades. But I would argue the word "audience" has a number of connotations and uses. Understanding and leveraging them thoughtfully is the key.

Audience as Eyeballs

This is about pure numbers. Views on a youtube video, reads on a blog, traffic on a website. These tell students that others are watching.  That's important. Just as it's important when fans show up at a basketball game. It says what you do matters. What it doesn't say necessarily, is that what you are doing is any good.  You can put a video on youtube of yourself clipping your toenails and get 5,000 views. It says very little about quality and lasting value. In the end, the views are nice but won't lead to much more than a little recognition.

Audience as Teachers

This is when the audience suddenly participates rather than just views. Comments on a blog, emails, video responses are prime interactions. You have the opportunity to grow and get better. Fostering this type of relationship with your audience might be contrived as two classrooms decide to spend a little time on each other's space but even if it is, we know the power of peer review and assessment for learning. When students have to thoughtfully provide feedback and critique, both parties benefit. Even random, one off comments are useful and offer students new perspectives not otherwise available from their teachers and or classmates. Students will indeed have powerful things to say and share as they craft their messages and products under the tutelage of many teachers.

Audience as Co-Learners

When students now see themselves as teachers to others we have truly harnessed the power of the audience. This isn't about novelty anymore but authentic exchange between interested learners. It doesn't matter if it's only one person but the idea that your work or ideas not only matter but are important in the development of others learning.  A little anonymity and distance seems to be a good thing in some cases. It's less about personalities and more about learning.

The question that we need to ask is can this occur in our classrooms without seeking an audience from the outside? I suggest it's possible but not as likely. Great teachers may be able to make this happen under certain conditions but the reason we love the internet is it's ability to personalize, customize and connect our learning to world. To suggest that room itself has all it needs to learn and grow is simply false. Limiting learning to the walls of classroom ignores a possibility that's too great to pass up. Good work needs to be shared.

Our students deserve not only an audience who would watch what they do but one that would actively participate in their learning.

One final point. Given that I would estimate fewer than 25% of our students even have a chance to find an audience via their schools, I hesitate to be too critical of teachers who only offer an audience of eyeballs. I would hate for that to be the ultimate goal, however, as Chris states, this novelty will wear off. Audience for the sake of audience is fleeting. Audience for the sake of learning is lasting.

Claire Thompson left this comment on a recent post pointing to Jan Smith’s classroom blog and the disclaimer that sits on the left sidebar of her blog. This is a huge issue for many teachers considering posting work online. Not only are the worried about controlling content and concerned about how others will view the quality of the work.

Typically classroom bulletin boards are dedicated to finished, edited, polished work. Most classrooms do not want to draw attention to the mistakes or efforts of their students. They are comfortable with sharing the best products but would rather hide the process. While that may be a generalization, I would argue that it’s fairly accurate.

I’ve struggled myself when it comes to helping others recognize spaces dedicated to practice and at the same time finding places to set aside work that has been created, revised and reworked. Blogs in general often get a bad name from the public because by their very nature they aren’t intended to be definitive spaces, but rather conversation starters. But of what makes blogs what they are, is the ability to elicit comments. Ideally this should include critique and feedback to enable further learning. This is where most classroom and school relate blogs fail. They do not either have enough feedback from a variety of perspectives that includes both peer and outside responses or the feedback lacks depth and specifics. Creating a culture that encourages openeness and respectful, helpful critique is challenging and requires skillful teachers determined to build this meaningful community of learners.

By the looks of things Jan Smith is trying.

I’d love a response to any or all of these questions:

What have you done or seen that helps people understand how you’re using your online learning space?

What have you done to support your students in providing critique and meaningful feedback for each other?

How have you been able to bring in outside voices to give feedback for your students?

Reposted on the TechLearning blog

As a sports enthusiast it was painful. As a parent, it was exciting.

The gym was pretty much full of parents, grandparents and brothers and sisters crowded around the perimeter of the gymnasium. What struck me was the unbridled joy and encouragement for both teams and the cheers with every effort put forth. It kind of gives that warm fuzzy feeling inside, not often associated with sports. Parents and children well behaved and excited to be learning a new sport.

So I’m back to thinking about stages. I can’t say for sure but I’m doubtful any kids were left off the team because a parent didn’t want them performing in front of others. Even the girls who couldn’t serve the ball more than 10 feet were cheered for their efforts. It was clear to everyone in the building that this was a place of learning, a place for social interaction and fun. We will watch with amazement to see improvements with the next game and cheer even more loudly.

Why is it so hard for people to allow this to take place with learning? The mystery that occurs because work is suddenly displayed on a screen, accessible to the world makes people nuts sometimes. Even if the local TV station wanted to show this game, I can’t see any parent opting out. They might even want to have names sewn on the back of the jerseys (okay they are only t-shirts but still).

The sad part is that as a parent of 4 children, 2 of whom have graduated from high school, I knew way more about the sports and extra-curricular part of their school life than the academics. There was almost no way for me to interact or watch them learn other than the occasional homework assignment or parent teacher interview. The emphasis on most schools places extra-curricular at a way higher profile than the academics. Grant it, those are choices students can make. But shouldn’t we be working to a place where the day to day work and learning is showcased, celebrated and elevated to a higher place?

I recognize that with classroom work, the students don’t have much choice but by starting young and creating a culture where we share our work and seek encouragement and feedback I have to believe that is going to make for more engagment students producing better quality work.

I’m probably not done thinking about stages, I’ll just warn you right now.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by shareski

Discuss.

I’ve been listening to Chris Anderson‘s book "The Radical Price of Free" for free. It’s a long listen, over 6 hours and I’ve still got 2 more hours to go but it’s certainly helped clarify not only how free works, but how much money is to be made by free. Sound weird? Read/listen to the book.

My financial or economic knowledge is limited at best but as a consumer and producer I recognize a few things. While I make no money from this blog directly, I’ve been fortunate to indirectly gain financially and I owe much to the work and ideas that I share here and other places. Given that was never the intent of this blog, it’s simply a nice bonus. I recognize others try and utilize their blogs for financial gain either by ads or direct pay from outside interests. But for the most part this type of free seeks no compensation, it’s just free.

As any user of the web knows, there are oodles and oodles of sites and applications that appear free. Everything from google to yahoo, we roam around these internets and create, download, consume and communicate willy nilly with nary a penny exchanged. But it’s obvious there has to be a price. The book outlines the various ways this can work and some of those ways, such as ad driven sites, seem fairly obvious. Premium services is another common strategy. Some work well, others fail miserably. I’m glad I dont’ have to make those decisions.

Every term as part of my undergrad course, I ask my students to create a blog. I’ve used blogger, wordpress.com and edublogs. Each have their own benefits and downfalls. In general, here are my assessments:

Blogger

Pros: easy to setup, integration with google, customizeable, widget ready, easy to use, embedding capabilities
Cons: difficult to make pages, association with random blogs(although this can be removed), blocked in some schools

WordPress.com

Pros: Simple to use, easy to setup, some customization, open in most schools, great for page making, better for portfolios
Cons: embedding is limited,plugins limited

Edublogs.org (wordpress platform hosted and managed)

Pros: Associated with educators, some customization, open in most schools, great for page making, better for portfolios,embedding capabilities
Cons: lack of plugins, nagging ads to support

I’m sure I have missed some things but these are my observations. Feel free to correct me in the comment section.

My experiences is that most of them use this as a disposable learning experience. As much as I would love them to continue blogging, the vast majority do not. Some, pick up after a few years but by then they’ve moved to a new platform. For a new blogger, they have no idea of all the advantages or disadvantages of a particular platform, they just dive in because of an assignment or recommendation.

There have been many discussions about the value of institutions providing their own spaces for students.  Sometimes this isn’t an option and so part of my thinking is to provide pre-service teachers with the chance to discover alternatives.

This term I decided to have my students use edublogs. I know many teachers in my district who used edublogs a few years ago but have left because of performance issues. I was informed the performance issue had been resolved and was tipped off to the changes in the business model. It wasn’t until I began to have my students use it did it really hit me. The embedded ads make you feel as if someone else controlling your space and lack of plugins take away from the customizabilty.  I understand they need to make money. We can’t expect folks to continue to support these projects for Starbucks cards (although I don’t know how David Warlick does it) My issue is, and again, I’m not business person, just a consumer in this case, I personally will choose another option for my students to begin their blogging journey.  This is only my opinion and as much as I admire the work of James Farmer and Sue Waters, I’m not a fan of the free offering in this case. I’m not able to suggest a better, more viable model but given there are alternatives, I wonder if they might have to. Just one person’s humble opinion.

However, I’ve matured and I guess times have changed. So in the spirit of back to school makeovers and outfits, I’ve decided to put some new paint on my blog and go for a different look.

I wanted something a little cleaner, and more magazine style. I think the blog format of constantly having new work posted first, has its limitations. Subscribers see the new stuff via RSS but the newcomers often are unfamiliar with the format and often miss the best stuff. This particular theme called "Atahualpa" offers a "sticky post" feature. (Actually I think it’s standard in the latest version of WordPress, I just like the way it looks in this theme.) This way I can leave the more blog worthy post front and center and hide some of the usual drivel in the back so to speak. I really have to think about who actually visits my blog. I know that for me, most, if not all of the reading I do happens inside Google Reader. I rarely visit the site of my subscriptions other than to comment and even then it’s usually a quick in and out. If I want people to stay here, and look around, I have to make it an easy experience. The pages at the top remain the same and I do go in there and clean them up from time to time so the content remains pretty current.

I’ve maintained my rotating banner of my personal photos simply because I think it offers some insight into who I am and tells its own story. I’ve removed some of the old banners and put up some new ones.

So that’s my new outfit. I hope no one beats me up.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by shareski

In a word: “blogging.”

In seven words: “blogging and probably using a digital projector.”

The digital projector opened up my classroom and practice to visuals, which was a profound, if rocky and still ongoing transition.

But blogging was the cheapest, most risk-free investment I could have made of my personal time into my job. You start by writing down things that are interesting to you, practices you don’t want to forget. And then you start trying new things just so you can blog about them later, picking them apart, and dialoging over them with strangers. Periods of stagnancy in your blogging start to correspond to periods of stagnancy in your teaching. You start to muse on your job when you’re stuck in traffic, in line for groceries, that sort of thing. That transformation has been nothing but good for me and it all began on a free Blogspot blog.

Whenever I ask my pre-service teachers or classroom teachers to blog, it comes with a variety of reasons and purposes. Not everyone uses a blog to be reflective, but reflective practice in isolation has its challenges. There’s nothing like a solid testimonial like this to once again point to the value of open and transparent exchange of ideas.  This is also why I often hesitate to suggest twitter to folks wanted to engage with other educators. Not that it has less value but there’s no way twitter can replace blogging as a form of reflective practice. I don’t suspect many use it that way but when it’s referred to as "micro-blogging" I get a little worried about that comparison. Blogging isn’t about building a sizeable audience necessarily. It’s about finding enough critical friends to make you work at getting better. Thanks to all who have done that for me.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by shareski

Ever since the day I wrote my first blog post and received a comment, I knew that learning in public had huge potential.  That was over 4 years ago. Today I’m one of those who has embraced a lifestyle of learning that is founded on transparency and connectedness. I’ve wondered many times how and when learning should be private.  My belief that the pendulum for most of education sits way on the side of private and needs to move way more to public.  It does seem a bit odd to me since we have no qualms about student athletes or musicians or actors to perform in public. No athlete ever joins a team and suggests they just want to practice but don’t want to play in front of a crowd. For many, that’s part of the appeal. I’ve often talked about stages: athletic stages, artistic stages and then wondered about academic stages. We have almost zero expectations for students to publicly share learning. While I understand some people’s hesitancy to participate in online spaces, I believe the benefits are worth exploring even it it means some discomfort.

When can we begin to expect that just like our sports teams, drama clubs and bands, our students academic work will be publicly on display? Is asking pre-service teachers to post content online outside of a walled garden a bad thing? Is age a factor? Does it matter that I’m teaching future teachers? What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the best? (I already know the answer to this since it’s happened often during my various sections of teaching this course). I would value and love your input on this issue.

In the 2000 United States Open at Pebble Beach, Tiger Woods stood on the 18th tee in the second round and had just hit his tee shot into the Pacific Ocean. The TV cameras showed a disgusted Woods slam his club to the ground and reach out his hand to caddie Steve Williams to request another ball. Woods then proceeded to hit a perfect and went on to win the tournament and broke a scoring record in the process. What you didn’t know was because of a number of circumstances, that was the last ball in Woods’ bag. If he had hit that ball into the water, he would have been disqualified. Knowing the inside scoop adds intrigue and context to already exciting event.

With the opening of baseball season just around the corner I was thinking back to one of my favorite shows as a child, Inside Baseball. As much as I loved to watch the games themselves, I was fascinated by the stories and that took me inside the locker room and practice field to learn more about my heroes. Hearing Rod Carew talk about how he stole home four times in one year, having Bruce Sutter show how he threw a split fingered fastball all helped to make the game more interesting and meaningful. The more I knew about the players, the more I appreciated their on field accomplishments.

Today, DVD’s usually offer bonus sections on the “making of” the movie. We have many more opportunities to see process and get insights of artists and storytellers we previously only could imagine. While much of the magic and mystery may be gone, it certainly helps us better understand the finished product.

So what’s this got to do with learning and technology?

I”m currently teaching first year university students and require them to blog. There are many benefits for having them blog but I’ve found it to be one of the greatest ways I’ve been able to get into the thinking and process of my their learning. Asking them to describe their learning and thought process provides me with insight not only to appreciate their efforts but to inform my instruction and decide on what further supports I can provide to take them to the next level. This technology remains a powerful way for learners to reflect and share their thinking on a variety of endeavors. As much as teachers and schools say that process is as important as product, this often is more lip service than practice. Process takes time and talking about learning can be tiresome. The transparency of blogs make this a shared experience that no doubt can provide all students a greater opportunity to learn from each other. The advent of blogs in schools often is deployed as a way to bring technology into schools. That’s the wrong reason. I recently read this quote on Doug Johnson’s blog:

At a conference last week, Mark Weston from Dell computing stated that asking the question, “Does technology improve student learning?” is the wrong question. The question should be, “Does technology support the practices that improve student learning?”

That is a better question. In this case, a student blog can support the practices of feedback loops and student reflection not to mention the ability to connect with those outside the classroom that may be able to provide deeper and more valuable feedback than the teacher or classmates. While the final products our students create are important, getting the inside scoop and allowing places for us to explore ideas often provides a direct view not easily replicated in other ways. Having a place to explain in greater detail how a concept was formed or a product was developed in many cases is the more interesting part.

As professionals, it becomes a space to test out theories, share successes and failures and build relationships. Inside learning.

As we continue to see many join the publishing world, our role is not only to learn how to filter out the noise but to teach our students to be transparent in meaningful ways. Using blogs and other spaces to provide insights of deep, thoughtful reflection moves away from simply playing with the technology but truly uses it to support the practices that improve student learning.

amberblow, dougjohnson

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

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

Image Title: Cardboard Box by ahhyeah
http://flickr.com/photos/ahhyeah/454494396/

In the early stages of this course there’s no question that students feel overwhelmed. They are introduced to many new concepts and ideas that are pretty foreign to most. I wondered if a few of my students from previous sessions would want to share with my current students what, if anything, they learned and are using today.  I have spent a fair bit of time with Kyle Lichtenwald so while his responses were excellent, they were not all that surprising since he and I are fairly connected. Darin Janssen and Nicole Little were students in my Winter 2008 class. Both showed quite a bit of growth in the class and were two that continued blogging.  They shared some powerful lessons about many of the themes I’ve tried to focus on throughout the class:

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the work I do is that the more you can point to others who are doing the right work, the more powerful and applicable it is. Darren’s student voices is a great example of this.   Alan November has apparently discovered this as well. In other words, “don’t take my word for it, listen to these people”.

Listen to these three students share their discovery and application of networked learning.

[display_podcast]

Everyone once in a while you try something and it turns out far better than you imagined.

Photo: The Blonde, the Contrabass and the Microphone #5
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brtsergio/1275188911/

The day was well crafted by Ewan that included a series of short presentation type deliveries followed by opportunity to discuss and play.

As a group, we decided these were the most important ideas from the morning:

1. R & D is for everyone
2. Building Shared Awareness
3. Remix the curricula
4. Balance between structure and flexibility, saturation and overload
5. Importance of rules in play

The afternoon was spent exploring gaming and the concept of gaming as a learning tool.

One participant summarized his learning this way, “One mistake I’ve made is I’ve never played with a computer”. This was a telling statement about how we view ourselves as learners.

Lots of ideas were explored and my goal was that folks left willing to continue to innovate, explore, learn and share. Not entirely new but a fresh set of eyes always helps.

Working out a New Game photo: by Ewan Mcintosh

There is a new teacher or student blog created every 2.2 seconds. Okay so I just made that up, but the point is we are seeing blogs created at blistering pace with the hopes of connecting with the world and providing an authentic audience for writers. Sadly, many of these well-meaning blogs die a slow death after a smattering of posts. Well-intended teachers and students often lack perspectives need for success.

Blogs are easy to create. But just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it will stick. As someone who supports teachers in understanding and using digital learning tools, this is a pattern I’ve seen all too often.

So how does a teacher or her students find blogging success? Here are a few things I’ve discovered in both my own blog as well as with my work with students and teachers.

Blogging is mostly about reading
Blogging is way more about reading than it is writing. Many teachers don’t see this at first. Most classrooms provide a good balance of traditional reading and writing opportunities. Teachers recognize that in order to be a good writer you have to read good writing. Yet when it comes to blogging, most want to write immediately and sit back and wait for the world to pay attention. It won’t happen. Provide as much time for your students to read blogs as write. If you decide you want to blog or have your students blog, don’t feel badly about spending a few weeks or even months reading blogs. Look for exemplary work. Look for blogs that you relate to. Find blogs that have a different perspective on things you’re interested in Talk with your students about the blogs they enjoy. Before you write a post, be sure you are responding to something you’ve seen, read or heard.

To make a friend you have to be a friend
When I talk with students and teachers about blogging I liken it to the playground. How do they go about making friends on the playground? By waiting on the sidelines? Dominating the equipment? Students quickly recognize they need to interact and talk with others. Blogging is no different. If you want to have others read and comment on your work, you’ll need to begin reading and commenting on others.

On my own blog I posted a couple of times about something I’ve called an Updated CommPost Rating. It involves taking the number of comments you’ve left and dividing it by the number of blog posts you’ve created. You should have more comments than posts. Comments generally are clarifications, encouragements or challenges that usually involve less time than original posts. What’s the saying? You have 2 ears and 1 mouth. This should apply with blogging as well. Since I wrote this and began to walk the walk, my readership has steadily increased and, more importantly, so has my learning.

It’s personal
So once you establish a pattern of reading, thinking and then writing, you need to write about what you know. Teachers, who structure their blogging too much, lose the concept of conversation. It must flow from personal meaning. That’s why having your students find others who share their interests is so vital. The best bloggers are able to provide personal perspectives but also connect those personal experiences with others. Good conversations don’t simply involve stories about yourself but stories to which others can easily relate and contribute.

Hyperlink
In this effort to connect, hyperlinking is also essential. Hyperlinking is what makes the web work. It is the connecting vehicle. I can’t believe how many students and many teacher blogs neglect to hyperlink to other sources. Most see this as an advanced blogging tool. It isn’t. It needs to be utilized immediately; even with young students. Generally when I read a blog post that has no hyperlinking, I wonder about its validity. How many of us can write without crediting or referencing others? This is when blogs turn into online journals. Unless you are an outstanding writer with highly original ideas, a blog of this nature is not likely to last or at least not likely to gain readership.

Get Graphical
Finally, we have a wonderfully graphical web and are beginning to recognize that writing is only one way we express ideas and communicate. The use of embedded video, audio and images provides a rich communication that goes well beyond words. Text still has importance but allowing embedding pertinent, interesting media can express ideas like never before. Understanding the power of Creative Commons would be a great place to start.

Here are three resources that will provide you some additional tips:

• “10 Habits of Blogging That Win”
• “How to Comment Like a King or Queen”.
• Jeff Utecht’s K12 Online presentation from 2007.

If you’ve had struggles with sustaining blogging, try these tips and if you’ve had successes using other methods, what are they? After all blogs are conversations—so converse!

Purchasing your domain name will be, and is becoming a big deal. Even if you don’t blog or wiki or whatever. If you exist, you should be claiming your identity. Whether google is making us more stupid or not, it is almost the de facto standard for finding out about someone.

Google yourself. Do it now. What comes up? Nothing? Good stuff? Somebody with the same or similar name? If someone else is googling you, would they know the difference? For those that answered nothing, you might be safe for now. But as google becomes better and better at indexing, even the smallest digital footprint will appear. That small footprint might be a forum posting from 3 years ago. It might be a newspaper article. It might be something that really doesn’t reflect who you are.

Following the lead of Ewan and Will, I went out and looked for shareski.com and shareski.ca. shareski.com was already taken by a company that buys domains and sells them at inflated prices. Most domain registrars charge between $7 and $20 a year for a domain name. This site is asking $1300 for shareski.com. The only reason I can fathom is that my blog generates a bit of traffic. I did manage to buy shareski.ca and it now points to this site. I’m fortunate in that my name is not found much on the internet save for a few long lost relatives, it’s mostly me you’ll find on a typical name search. As stated by Robert Jones on Ewan’s post, if you’re name is John Smith, it’s not that easy to secure your name. However, it may not be that hard to establish your digital footprint. You may have to be a bit creative, find some other keywords, tags to bring with you but it can be done.

A mother on Will’s blog, stated that she purchased a domain for her young daughter. So when you google Sarah Wynne, this is what you get: a teenager taking control of her digital footprint. When any university, employer, friend or relative searches her name, they see the stuff that she intentionally posts as a reflection of her life. Smart parent, smart kid.

Kern Kelley and his high school bought all the graduates their domain name and left them with this powerful video.

So is $10 too much to claim your identity? The video demonstrates that the ridiculously easy tools that are available to create even a simple webpage can pay huge dividends. This is just another great opportunity to discuss digital citizenship and internet safety in positive terms. In the book Naked Conversations, they discuss the importance of companies to take control of the media and in fact be their own media but engaging their customers via blogs. In the same way, individuals need to be taking control of their identity and having a little understanding of google, rankings and metadata, they can.

As Stephen Downes commented,

And I have a domain for a very simple reason – I didn’t want my website address to change every time I got a new job. This was especially relevant when I had three jobs within a coupe, of years. Less so now, but it’s still good to have a personal permanent URL.

Everyone should, have one, and eventually, everyone will.

What are you waiting for?

I do appreciate the recent gestures that you are making with your blog.  I feel that it is good for students to be able to voice opinions and discuss items of concern for them.  I only caution them that the internet is never really as private as it seems and it is not as hard as you might imagine for people to find out who posters to the blog are so ultimately people need to be able to take responsibility for what they say.  (remember your teachers have been marking students writing for a number of years and can easily pick up on catch words and style – It’s kind of like a finger print)

I do admire your enthusiasm – and I just encourage you to remember with great power comes great responsibility – I think Uncle Ben said that!

I’d say he handled it pretty well.

I took a page out of Clay’s blog and added two new plugins/widgets. Both honor and promote commenters who play such an important part of my learning. CommentLuv is a nice way to allow commenters to have their work promoted. The comments are often the most interesting part of any blog as witnessed by my last post. When I find a gem of a comment or even one that irritates or engages me in some way, I quickly want to find out more about that person and their perspective. While linking their name is usually good for me, I’m guessing many may not think to click. This way it’s more obvious. Those who aren’t interested in the promotion can turn it off but why would you? Also Top Commenters is another way to credit frequent visitors.

The renovations my wife has in mind are intended to create a more inviting area to entertain guests and share with our friends. Mine too.

We met 12 times, 8 online and 4 in person. You can see the course outline here if you login as guest you’ll have full access.

Students were evaluated in five areas:

• 25% on weekly Tech Tasks
• 25% on their blog
• 25% on a final project
• 10% on Blogging Mentorship
• 15% on Social Learning

Tech Tasks

These were simply assignments in using the various tools we explored in class. Podcasting, setting up various accounts, watching and responding to K12 online sessions and digital storytelling were a few of the task. There were 13 in total. We spent our synchronous time considering pedagogy and for many of them the struggle was in the technology. The challenge of distance learning means you have less control over things like what software students have and their ability to download plugins and troubleshoot. One student struggled for quite sometime until a friend of hers realized she didn’t have Service Pack 2 installed. Students were basically given 20/25 for completion of the tasks and the other marks were subjective to the quality of the work.

Many students commented on the challenge of this but it also provided something very specific for them to work on. The balance between desktop and online applications is important. I may change some of the tasks but the concept works well.

Blogging

As many remarked during their self evaluations, this was a big stretch. Forced blogging is never the best way, however in a distance setting, this becomes my window into their learning. I encouraged them not only to reflect on class discussions but to chronicle their learning in other areas. It was powerful to watch the growth of my students in this. I realize most will drop their blogs the minute the course ends but others have said they’ll likely continue. Obviously a big hook for them was the comments for others within the class but in particular from those outside. The really saw the power of linking as they reviewed the k12 sessions and a number of the presenters were led to their reviews and left comments. I’m also coming to accept the fact that blogging isn’t for everyone but sharing is.

I’ll likely not change much in this area. Perhaps some more deliberate mentorships outside the class as well as focusing more deeply on exemplary blogs.

Final Projects

While most are still out there, the struggle here was the open-ended nature of the assignment. I strongly encouraged students to combine this with the work in another class. This seemed to make the most sense. About half the students have choose this route.

Grading will be tough as it’s difficult to rubricize the varying projects. Everything from live presentations, videos, wikis, podcasts is challenging to assess. I need to do a better job developing the assessment up front. Perhaps I’ll steal a page out of Chris Lehmann’s approach to projects.

Blogging Mentorship

I wanted my students to gain some experience inside a classroom in a virtual way. I invited these teachers to open up their classrooms to my students:

• Maria Knee (Kindergarten, NH)
• Lisa Parisi (Grade 5, NY)
• Kathy Cassidy (Grade 1, SK)
• Sandi Kerney (Grade 6/7, SK)
• Erin Remple (Calculus, MB)
• Clay Burell (English, South Korea)

These teachers graciously introduced themselves briefly to my students after Vicki Davis provided a context for what a globally connected classroom might look like. The success rate of this aspect of my course had the most variance. Partly due to the students efforts but more due to the set up. Many students were disappointed that these students never responded to them. My continual nattering about blogs as conversations, led them to believe everyone, including 6 year olds, think the same way. In fairness, both Kathy and Lisa have a large number of mentors and it becomes difficult for their students to respond. However, there were some outstanding successes. One of my students had a skype conference with Maria’s class. The impact for her, will be long lasting. I had two other students who stepped out of their comfort zone and had some very positive results. Although none of my students had any experience in calculus, one of my students emailed Erin and ventured into her class and provided some very insightful comments. Clay was very clear he was not interested in any type of forced mentorship. Because of the nature of his student’s work I had a difficult time helping my students understand his intentions. Yet one of my students did venture out and again, had a very powerful experience with one of his. I also know that Clay emailed her to encourage her. I want to thank all these great teachers for participating. Your willingness to share will have long term impact on these young people.

I have lots to think through on this assignment. Certainly the concept is good but the execution might require a bit more planning. I really didn’t line up these teachers until shortly before we began. I also wonder about the more focus on tutoring/mentoring one or two students rather than trying to spatter comments throughout the class.

Social Learning

If there was one area I emphasized throughout this course it was the importance of social learning. More so than any course they’d likely take, the expectation was they would learn together. Whether they were asking questions, answering them, commenting on each other’s blogs, texting each other or visiting each other in person, I asked them to document the way in which they contributed and received help from each other.

Other than the format and details of how they assessed this, this was truly a critical component of the class. Even their commenting progressed from “nice post” to challenging each other’s ideas. Certainly most classes don’t require much in this way. Perhaps the odd group work project but not as running thread.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working with these young people. Most of them will make outstanding teachers because they already recognize they are learners first. My main themes continue to drive my class and I hope many of theirs as well.

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity