I frequently optimize the very essence of the banal tweet. 

So when a stranger reads that anticipating they might glean some insight or wonderful resource, they're likely a combination of disappointed, confused or annoyed. Sure, if you're following me, you might now by now this is par for the course. I will post the occasional mundane tweet but hopefully with a dash of humor or cleverness. Not always, but I try. If I bring a smile to someone once in a while, that means as much to me as sharing a great link or insightful remark. For me it's purposeful, in the same way kibitzing in a staff room or with your friends is purposeful. Some call it social grooming. 

The whole notion of the word "social" and education is difficult to grasp when your experience with learning has been anything but social and void of fun. So rather than have people scared off immediately or having them figure it out eventually, I wondered if there was some way to give people a heads up, a twitter trailer if you will, on what they'll get should they decide to follow me. 

So I created this:

Using ifttt, new followers get a direct message asking them to take 90 seconds to preview the goods. I worried a little if it would come across as spammy or invasive. I still wonder that but I've received some great feedback from people saying they really appreciated the heads up. I even had one person say that really only were interested in the educational side of things and if they found my content too out of place for them, they'd unfollow. Fair enough. 

While I could have had a link to my blog, that to me, seemed spammy. The blog isn't a great reflection of my whole self. My blog is much more about my reflection and thinking as well as dumping ground of thoughts. Twitter is the blur of personal and professional. I realize everyone uses it differently and that's fine. The fact that I used a video and people hear my voice and see my face adds another layer of connection. I much prefer people's faces in their avatars. If I've heard them speak, I read their tweets with their voices, accents and all. 

So a month into this little experiment and I'm pleased with the feedback. It's likely a trade off, with a few people put off, thinking it's a little narcissistic, and maybe it is. But the pay off of potentially more informed and even more connected folks is worth it to me. 

My talented daughter is having to take a few more courses at the University of Regina to get her teacher certification here in Saskatchewan. She's taking an elementary science course and convinced her professor that perhaps she could combine her music skills for a major project. She's been using the Saskatchewan Science curriculum to develop songs as well as a songwriting guide for students. It's a wonderful blend of science, language arts and arts education. She's created 8 songs covering a range of topics. I'm bias but I do think they're pretty good. Not your typical kids songs but they are pretty diverse in content and style. 

She's currently building an epub book that we'll share soon. For a little preview here's one of her songs and the study guide to go with it. 

Here's the m4a version if you prefer. (still not seeing this show up on an ipad…any ideas why?)

Analyze

What did you learn about living things? 
How does a plant poo?
How do you know you are living?
What is the form of the song?
What is the rhyme scheme in the second verse?
How many lines long is the chorus?
Create 3 more interesting questions to analyze the song.

Songwriting Activity

Pre-write

1.) Choose a plant or an animal that interests you.

2.) Is it living? How do you know?

3.) Create 3 of your own interesting questions about your species.

4.) Gather your information on your plant or animal.

5.) Start song writing!

a) What will your song be about (big idea)?

b) What information do you want to include?

c) Does this information help to communicate the big idea?

Write

Form: Verse, Chorus

Rhyme Scheme: Writers choice.

Lyrics: Must be original. Refer to your pre-writing work.

Melody: Choose 1.

a) Parody. Use the melody from "Does it Poo?" or use the melody of another song.

b) Original. Create your own melody!

Edit

Does your song show what you have learned about your plant or animal?
What is your rhyme scheme/ schemes?
How is the feel?
Is the melody clear and "catchy"?
How could you improve it?

Perform

Perform your song for the class. Acapella (just voices), or with music if someone in your group can play an instrument!

That become the intro to this video I put together along with the help of about 75 others.

The Big Picture Learning Stuff

While at first glance it may be seen as simply fun, silly and maybe a wee bit cool but I think there's something more here. Lots of lessons perhaps around being connected may be extracted but I'm thinking about Shirky's notion of Cognitive Surplus.

These 75 people contributed about 5-60 seconds of video. While I know that it may have been a little more time the idea that cumulative of all this content could be pieced together for something of value and meaning is non-trivial.

I wonder if the more difficult the question the greater the strength and/or structure of the organizing principle required to make the results intelligible/useful? Meredith Stewart

in this case, Alec is a compelling personality that has made huge contributions to many. I could have easily found another 75 people and likely could have made 10 videos given his network. But we can certainly come up with compelling ideas that would benefit greatly from the contributions of others. This is why having and building a network, while not easy and magic, offers new possibilities for learning and change.

The Little Picture Technical Stuff

A few people have asked about how I put this all together so here goes:

1. Jon Becker sends out a tweet suggesting I do something for Alec

2. I create this google form.

3. I waited until I had about 70 entries. I'm not sure why I choose that number because as it turned out I had to do some fancy stickhandling to make everyone;s part fit.

4. I send out this email:

5. I was careful not to ask people to submit in a specific format since it may be another barrier for some. As entries came in I used MPEG StreamClip to convert any weird files (Windows type files) I used dropittomedropittome.com for people to send their video clips. This is linked to my dropbox account and was a very efficient way to gather the clips. They ranged in size from 989k to 70MB. Dropittome has a limit of 75 MB which was sufficient even for HD submissions of only a few seconds.

6. I began inserting video as it came in except for the parts with multiple video.

7. By Saturday night I had most of the videos and went at creating the final product in Final Cut Express.

8. I again used MPEG Streamclip to take the full Quicktime video to a more youtube friendly mp4 format.

That's it. I'd really like some more thoughts on the big picture part but am happy to answer questions or discuss the little picture part too.

Although he says the HDR Pro does not work with the latest iOS, it now does. So I spent the $2 to download the app. That's when the magic happened. During my walk tonight the fall colours were pretty spectacular as well as the sunset so I saw great images all over. Using the Pro HDR app, I snapped about 8 photos that each had me in awe. Outside of some heavy lifting with Aperture or Photoshop, you'd never be able to attain this…at least I wouldn't. 

Although I've posted nearly 10,000 photos to flickr in the last 5 years I don't consider myself much of a photographer as compared to many of my colleagues. They may or may not be impressed with this but when I look at the photos I've taken over the past few days, I'm rejuvenated by the possibilities. I have no idea if this has any implications for the classroom but as someone who has been learning about imagery and photography, this excites me.  I've not had this feeling since I learned how to create a flash button in Dreamweaver. 

Knowing that the end of the year I'll put together a montage, I started thinking about this immediately and testing out two possible methods. The first method didn't work at all for me. Thanks to some great feedback I think I found the best way to share the photos.

Either way, I didn't want to leave this to the end of the year as I've done in the past. So I figured I needed to establish a work flow that will take some of the sting and time out of production. Anyway, here's a continuation of where I left of in February and includes all of March's photos.

I'll write another post outlining my workflow.

I'm currently working on a video of all the photos which I'll post here on Friday but did a quick analysis of the subjects of my photos.

Nothing too surprising here much of the data was very much like last year. I did notice a few images that were very similar. All my photos of the day were named with a single word. That in itself was a challenge. It's hard to be creative every day. I haven't decided about 2010.  I'll leave you with my top photos of the year.

Last year's video was a great treat for our family and I'll post the 2009 edition here as well. If you're up for 25 minutes of more of this along with some great music by the young lady holding the coyote, we'll see you Friday in 2010.

• PLN (too inside baseball)
• 21st Century Learning/Skills (everyone has a different idea of what it means, plus how far into the century do we have to go before we stop using it)
• Web 2.0 (most people have no idea what Web 1.0 was)
• preso (I want to take a shower after hear that word, very used car salesmanishy)
• calling a movie a slideshow (happens when you create a video with a lot of stills)
• "at this point in time" (a fancy way of saying now)
• "that being said" (a fancy way of saying but)
• "could care less (wait. what are you saying?)
• 'za' as in let's get some '[piz]za' (I can honestly say I've only heard this used on very rare occasion but I would have to punch you if you said it. Almost as bad as 'coff" for "coffee")
• calling a blog post, a blog. "That's a great blog you wrote today"
• Speedy Creek (only SK folks will get that one, I could never call Moose Jaw, "The Jaw")
• LOL (this might well be the first time I've ever typed that)
• Peeps (I could never be cool enough to use that term, plus a barely know what it means)

I'm not losing any sleep or anything, just wanted to get that off my chest. Now it's your turn. Whaddya got?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by tomswift46

Lesley Edwards left me a really interesting link in her lastest comment. Google Image Labeler is something I hadn’t seen before. Here’s how it works:

You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will:

• View the same set of images.

• Provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see.

• Receive points when your label matches your partner’s label. The number of points will depend on how specific your label is.

• See more images until time runs out.

After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.

I’m already thinking of the classroom applications involving vocabularly, visual literacy and logic. In addition, you’re working at making the web better. Not a bad deal.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Carlos Magaña

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

Step Three: Watch and wait:

Step Four: End with laughter, joy and acknowledgement of a well completed task.

My life is pretty much an open book. For some that’s just too weird, dangerous or stupid. It works for me.  My network of acquaintances/colleagues/connections and yes, some friends, know a lot of odd things about me.

I received many birthday wishes but David Jakes (I linked to his blog so you’ll all head over and urge him to blog more) started this little beauty:

And the fun began.  I’m not sure I capture them all but I hope so.

For those who  have had the opportunity to observe my online nattering, I can see how some might find it trivial, self-absorbed and even perhaps useless. There’s some truth in that for sure. But I can say that much of this it isn’t far off from the way I approach teaching and learning. Wrapped around the glaze of foolishness lies the belief that you need to invest and embrace a level of vulnerability and be prepared to engage in idle chat in order to build community and in turn truly learn from each other. For me this means sharing silliness, exploring new ways to share and communicate and discovering that being playful and curious about other people actually matters.  I also think this doesn’t necessarily lose you academic credibility, although again, many would write me off because of my overt sharing practices. I hardly care. I’m sure there are other ways to do this but I’m quite happy with how things have worked out for me. Not that I’m seeking power but “the less you share the less power you have.” In a time of economic downturn, I have tons of social capital.

So with that I give you a really neat little gift that from some really cool people. They supplied the gift, I wrapped it up and put it in a box.  That was fun. (FYI, I uploaded this first to youtube but the rendering of the screen captures was pretty unreadable, vimeo does a much better job. There, you learned something)

Birthday Tweets from shareski on Vimeo.

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

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

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

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

I had no idea. She’s not getting that $20 either.

If you’re not familiar with Jessica Hagy’s site, start subscribing. Simple, fun graphs.

jessicahagy

“Dad, who is your favourite artist?”

“I”m not sure, I don’t really know much about art.”

“I like Van Gogh. I remember a painting he did with stars but I can’t remember exactly what it was. When I get home I’ll google him and show you. Dad, don’t you just love google?”

And while all this is easily dismissed as silliness, it demonstrates a number of things about networks. There are actually a few good ideas here.  I’ve often thought about a website to collect recipes. Yeah I know there are a gazillion out there already but getting a recipe from a trusted friend is always better. I liked Ramen Noodle Video link which I may even use on Saturday for a PhotoStory workshop I’ll be giving.  These things happen so much we take it for grant it. I’m blessed almost daily with great serendipitous learning experiences.

Clay Burell says:

Fun is fine, as long as you can demonstrate purposive learning at the same time. (I mean, come on, that’s the way I behave on Twitter – playful learning and sharing, sometimes pure socializing, other times pure teamworking – so why be a Gradgrind teacher and prohibit the same playfulness for my students when they network?)

I like to play and I like to learn. Play and learning go together well.

Technorati Tags: twitter, recipes, wikis, johnpederson, clayburell

I like the way this video combines Street View and humor. This is the kind of storytelling that works so well on the web. Short, funny and the remixing of familiar tools and themes.

Technorati Tags: streetview, davidjakes

My daughter’s shar pei, snagged my 2.0 GB SD memory card and destroyed it. Let that be another lesson for all you kids out there.

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One of those I interviewed was Scott Schultz of the Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders along with defensive line coach and Hall of Famer Ron Estay. In the light of their recent victory, I thought I’d republish their interview. I did publish the entire video a while back but wanted to showcase this one in particular.

Not only is it entertaining (don’t forget to watch the blooper at the end) but in many ways helps bring assessment ideas out of a strictly educational sense and demonstrates its value in life. Congratulations Scott, Ron and the Riders on a great season and their contributions to our community in many ways including helping us understand the value of assessment for learning.

Technorati Tags: scottschultz, ronestay, saskatchewanroughriders, greycup, assessment

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I checked my Canon SD750 and realized it had the feature. So let’s give it a try.

I set it up tonight while I prepared a meal for my family and our friends. The total time of preparation was about 50 minutes. I set the time lapse to shoot every 2 seconds. What you have is about 2 minutes which I cut down to about 80 seconds. If you look carefully you should see a spill, boy in underwear and puppies.

This will prove to be a valuable tool for me. Check your digital camera and see if you can do time lapse. I think it’s very cool.

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Trust it to Will, Jakes and Dembo to cook up some fun and learning at the same time. The three met in alocal establishment in Chicago tonight and tested out UstreamTV. This free, live streaming site allows anyone to broadcast live to the world. I used it a few weeks ago to watch my daughter’s new puppy when we aren’t home. Easy to set up. The potential of a tool such as this is obviously much more powerful than watching puppies. Remember when people used to (they still do but let’s presume some progress) categorize blogs as cat diaries? I think we’re better at understanding the power of these new tools as learning tools.

I had a conversation today with a principal asking how to make the next steps in using technology. I mentioned Ustream TV as a connecting tool. Her eyes lit up. Mine did too.

As I read a couple of posts today about blocking content I realize I’m blessed to work with an IT department that understands its role very well. They want to provide a great service for teachers and students. This means considering these tools in the light of both security, performance but more importantly quality learning. As a rather brash advocate of these tools, I work with them and they with me on understanding the issues. Not matter what the issue it usually comes down to, “How can we make it work?” But I digress…

So back to the streaming video. Many are going to look at this and say, “big deal”. I look at this and my mind is whirling with possibilities. Classroom presentations, personal tv stations, unconference learning….you fill in the blank. Will, David and Steve asked the same question, “How can we make it work?” The 30+ participants asked similar questions. Mixed with some good fun, this was a good way to spend part of an evening. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach claimed it was better than anything on TV. You can watch it all here.

I captured a couple of minutes of this. The fun part anyway. If you want to know the awkward way I did this, leave a comment and I’ll reveal my secret.

Technorati Tags: willrichardson, davidjakes, teach42, streamingvideo, ustreamtv

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[tags]twitter,ninja[/tags]

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[tags]missusa,speech[/tags]

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First, the Rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

1. I’ve never broken a bone in my body.
2. I wrote a university final exam 6 hours after my oldest daughter was born.
3. I can use Seinfeld or King of Queens quotes for almost any situation.
4. I love banana flavoured popsicles.
5. I would nap everyday….if my wife would let me.
6. I play the trombone.
7. I’ve been playing golf since I was 10…I’ve never bought a golf ball in my life.
8. One of favourite movies is My Life with Michael Keaton.

I’ll now tag the following:

• Alec C.
• Christian L.
• Chris L.
• Ewan M.
• Clarence F.
• Joyce V.
• Graham W.
• Robert Scoble…why not give it shot?

*I actually won’t leave a comment as the 4th rule states. I know some consider memes as a waste of time and not appropriate for their blog. I’m okay with that view. So I’ll let them decide if they choose to play. Also I love to see how many use Technorati or others to see what others are saying about them.

• 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.

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]

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.

Remember the sound of a modem connecting over a phone line? Remember when the existence of “emoticons” was actually worthy of a news headline? Check out this blast from the past, I suspect from the early 1990s, from a television station in Toronto, Canada!

Wow have we ever seen a lot of changes on the Internet in a short amount of time! Via Linda Uhrenholt.

	Tim Lauer …leaves twitter to play catch with Nando.
	Steve Dembo….corporate…claims he was doing a presentation at the time. I hope there’s a baby or Cub image now
	Alan Levine (uses a rotating image script of which this is one) seeking relief from the Phoenix heat.
	Stephen Downes…a true east coaster
	D’Arcy Norman …Mr. Maui…seeking warmth from the Calgary cold.

All have some other great images on flickr. As a subscriber to their photos, these come as no surprise. If you think you know who someone is by their reading their blog, try looking at their photos. What is that saying about a picture being worth…?

[tags]flickr,wallpaper,desktop,alanlevine,stephendownes,timlauer,stevedembo,darcynorman[/tags]