While this remains my primary place of learning and contact, the fact that we continue to play and learn in other spaces makes the idea of a home or portal more important.

Last year I purchased shareski.ca but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. For a while I used it as a place to try [...]]]> While this remains my primary place of learning and contact, the fact that we continue to play and learn in other spaces makes the idea of a home or portal more important.

Last year I purchased shareski.ca but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. For a while I used it as a place to try and sell our house. This weekend I went ahead and built a portal page much like you see at flavors.me. I see Ian Hecht created one as well.

I’m not totally sure how this will play out, whether this will actually impact my identity or simply be something I use to point folks to when they want more than my blog. The simple idea of owning my personal domain name seems like something more people should be doing.

Anyone else explored this concept and figured it out?

Inspired by Doug Peterson, who was inpsired by ZeFrank that then inspired Stephen Downes and others I’ve created a little video of my life growing up in Morden, Manitoba.  Thanks to the every growing database of Google Streetview, it’s now reaching even small towns like the one I grew up in.

This one’s mostly for me. Yet, [...]]]> Inspired by Doug Peterson, who was inpsired by ZeFrank that then inspired Stephen Downes and others I’ve created a little video of my life growing up in Morden, Manitoba.  Thanks to the every growing database of Google Streetview, it’s now reaching even small towns like the one I grew up in.

This one’s mostly for me. Yet, it’s been interesting to learn about other’s experiences growing up. Lots of similarities largely due to a very different attitude toward safety and community. (By the way, I recall a blog post/website a few months back where someone detailed the changes in how far kids are allowed to roam from home, if anyone knows it please leave a link)

Besides the content, the use of Google Maps/Streetview as storytelling tools is largely underused as Alan Levine has said a number of times. Watching Jim Groom’s video, was like literally like going for a walk with him.

I created this with about 3 Jing movies stitched together and then uploaded to blip and youtube. One take. No rehearsal or editing, other than adding a title and one image I had handy. It lacks polish but most of our stories aren’t rehearsed, they’re spontaneous accounts of memory. I’m not advocating for us not to edit and craft our stories but we need to have room for many kinds of stories, some polished and edited to death and some a little rough around the edges. Bottom line is we need more stories about significant experiences. Google maps and street view is powerful tool for that. I for one would be happy to take a walk with people sharing significant stories about places that have meaning.

Here’s mine.

What’sWhere’s your story?

Part of me wonders if I should post this or not as most people tend to save their blogs for less personal, more professional stuff. Oh well, I’ve never been one to stick to the rules that closely.

After 7 years, we have to put our dog Rudy down today. It was a difficult decision, one we’ve [...]]]> Part of me wonders if I should post this or not as most people tend to save their blogs for less personal, more professional stuff. Oh well, I’ve never been one to stick to the rules that closely.

After 7 years, we have to put our dog Rudy down today. It was a difficult decision, one we’ve been delaying for quite a while but we realize it is the one we need to make. Having never really had a pet before, I was unaware of the attachment and affection you feel for these creatures. Rudy, a Jack Russell, was the runt of the litter.  We named him Rudy after the movie by the same name and discovered the meaning of his name is tenacious.  So appropriate. Like most terriers, so I’m told, he was very territorial, very full of energy. For the most part he was quite content to snuggle with one of us on the couch and until recently in a bed at night.  Rudy always brought smiles from people when we took him for a walk and like most dogs was thrilled to have his owners come home.

My greatest memory of Rudy comes in having him be my personal golf ball retriever.

No doubt my short game will suffer as a result of his absence.

I post this here for a few reasons. First I remember a few years ago Miguel Guhlin sharing the loss of his father on his blog (sorry Miguel, I couldn’t track down the post, if you’d like to share, please put it in the comments and I’ll update this). This is in no way compares to that but I did remember how grateful I was that Miguel shared a piece of his soul as I had been reading his stuff for a while.  That’s part of what makes blogging different for me. I read people, not just their ideas.

I’ve had the privilege of having Alan Levine present to my students and teachers on a number of occasions on his wonderful work of 50 Ways to Tell a Story. I have heard many times the story of  Dominoe and in the back of my mind wondered what it would be like to tell the story of a dog that used to be. Now I know.

Finally, I write this because many know that I often speak about my dogs in a love-hate way. I’ve shared photos of them, told stories about them and they’ll even had a place in both my classes and in the Edtech Posse podcasts. We live in this strange world where we share not only the great ideas we have, but our lives. I guess that’s part of community. Thank you for all the kinds words. I feel very blessed to be associated with people who I know are offering their heartfelt thoughts.

Rudy, you’ll be missed.

Last month I posted my first effort of picture of the day set to music. I had some wonderful suggestions on how to improve it and so I implemented the most common suggestion of fading in and out each track.

I switched to Final Cut Express since I have more control and can use multiple tracks. I [...]]]> Last month I posted my first effort of picture of the day set to music. I had some wonderful suggestions on how to improve it and so I implemented the most common suggestion of fading in and out each track.

I switched to Final Cut Express since I have more control and can use multiple tracks. I have to admit I still feel like a novice in that program even though I’ve used it for a number of projects. Keyframing in particular is something I don’t have quite right yet and need to learn a few more shortcuts to improve my work flow.

I also found it much better to use Audacity to edit each music clip and bring them into FCE after that. I would say overall this is a much better product but maybe you disagree. I’ll be happy to take further suggestions on improvement. It took more time I think so I’m weighing that as well. This isn’t even a full month as it includes the last day of January and photos up to February 20th.

I've been taking a photo a day for 763 days. Last year I added a slight challenge but only used one word titles. Mostly for my own amusement but it did serve to keep me more interested. This year I'm trying to attach a song to every photo. It's going to be way tougher and I [...]]]> I've been taking a photo a day for 763 days. Last year I added a slight challenge but only used one word titles. Mostly for my own amusement but it did serve to keep me more interested. This year I'm trying to attach a song to every photo. It's going to be way tougher and I can't say for sure if I'll be able to sustain it but I'll see. At the end of both years I've put together a video with all the images and used my daughter's music as a soundtrack. They've been a lovely keepsake for me and my family. So this year I thought I would cut the appropriate song snippet for each of my photos and put them together in a mash up.

I thought I'd try doing the month of January as a test. I'll be honest, I don't think it works. It seems sloppy, lacking any elegance.
Watch.

So while I plan to continue finding a song for each image I post, I'm not sure this will be the way to package it. I like the concept but not sure I can pull it off. I considered titling each image but thought that would simply add to the cognitive load. Maybe there is a way but I'm not seeing it. I could use your help. Can this be improved? Be honest. I can take it.

Tuesday evening I received a call from Rogers about my daughter's account. I was a bit shocked when she said the bill was over $900. After I finished hyper ventilating, had a very focused discussion with my daughter I sent out this tweet.

The truth is the bill over two months [...]]]>

Tuesday evening I received a call from Rogers about my daughter's account. I was a bit shocked when she said the bill was over $900. After I finished hyper ventilating, had a very focused discussion with my daughter I sent out this tweet.

The truth is the bill over two months as over $900 of which $764.13 was texting. She's had this account for 2 years and when we set up her account we used Rogers My5 plan where you select 5 numbers and get unlimited texting and calls to those numbers. For many teens 5 may not be enough but my daughter only has a few friends that she texts with so this was fine with her. I rarely look at my bill but simply pay online. During the fall, she made a few new friends and a couple of others changed phones. She never gave it a second thought and neither did I.  That was a mistake.

Bill from November:

Bill from December:

While I certainly admit this was our fault, everyone would agree that texting and data charges in general are a bit out of whack. At least 20 others were willing to Retweet my concern. Here's a few of them:

Rogers were made very aware of my issue and responded this morning with a message for me to leave them a phone number to call. Within an hour, a nice man named John called me for more details. He said he'd call me back in a half hour and he did. While we both agreed that technically Rogers was not at fault, he seemed to recognize the absurdity of the amount.  Rogers showed good faith in crediting my account all her texts from November and December.

So what have we learned here? Besides my own learning to increase communication with my daughter, the power of twitter as a super charged communication tool is growing. I can't say for sure that calling customer service wouldn't have had the same result but my gut says it would have been way more difficult, if not impossible. There are lots of stories about how companies are leveraging twitter but customers as well. My questions are:

Is this scalable? Given it appears Rogers has about 3 people monitoring twitter, are they able to provide customer service to all their clients? I purposely did not call customer service to deal with this issue because I had had some contact with Rogers on twitter earlier and they seemed quite responsive.  I thought I'd wait and see if they would respond which they did.  I still don't know if this is scalable.

Do those with social media experience have better social skills? I don't know about you but if you've ever called customer service it seems most of those who answer the phone either have limited ability to have conversations that stray outside their scripts or have little authority to make decisions and you enter a game of phone tag and hand offs. Many times, it's just not worth it. In this case, not only were the people I interacted with quick, they did not pass me off but were able to deal with my issue intelligently and efficiently. John wasn't able to make any decision at the moment but promised to call me back in 30 minutes and he did. The issue was resolved very quickly.

Are there any lessons here for educators? Okay, I realize that may be a stretch and that I might be overstepping my right to compare everything to education but the immediacy of handling a issue, the availability of support and the personalization of the problem seem to be qualities that might make schools better.  I'm trying hard to resist the temptation to make grandiose parallel to schools but I suppose I couldn't help myself. Sorry Dan.

Anyway, it's a good story with a happy ending.

365 photos with my daughter's music as a backdrop. I'm warning right now, it's 25 minutes. Maybe it will inspire a few more to take up [...]]]> 365 photos with my daughter's music as a backdrop. I'm warning right now, it's 25 minutes. Maybe it will inspire a few more to take up the challenge.

For the second straight year I took at least one photo every day. I published almost 2500 photos to flickr in 2009. I have no measurable way of determining if I'm a better photographer or not, but the value of cheap failure leads me to believe it's likely. That's certainly one goal of the project but [...]]]> For the second straight year I took at least one photo every day. I published almost 2500 photos to flickr in 2009. I have no measurable way of determining if I'm a better photographer or not, but the value of cheap failure leads me to believe it's likely. That's certainly one goal of the project but others include, documenting our lives, playing with images, seeing the world differently and learning from others.

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.

It seems every year that clothes gets put on the back to school supply list. Not by the school but by Mom’s and kids. (sorry for being sexist, I just don’t know of any men who think their kids need a whack of clothes to start school) I remember when I was a kid, you had [...]]]> It seems every year that clothes gets put on the back to school supply list. Not by the school but by Mom’s and kids. (sorry for being sexist, I just don’t know of any men who think their kids need a whack of clothes to start school) I remember when I was a kid, you had to be very careful not to wear your new clothes too early for fear you might be called out for appearing too anxious and taken out to the back of the school yard. It was cool to wear something a little tattered. In fact, wearing an "outfit" was often the equivalent of wearing a "kick me" sign.

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

Another Father’s Day is coming to a close. I’ve yet to call my Dad but I will soon. But I did spend part of the day thinking about how great my Dad is and how I continue to want to please him and model much of his life. I created tributes to him in 2005 and [...]]]> Another Father’s Day is coming to a close. I’ve yet to call my Dad but I will soon. But I did spend part of the day thinking about how great my Dad is and how I continue to want to please him and model much of his life. I created tributes to him in 2005 and 2006. Time for another one.

My Dad has many legacys. He was great husband (Mom passed away in 1996) and father and did meaningful work. Wrapped around all this was a strong faith that was the foundation for our family. One of my Dad’s greatest qualities is how he makes people feel. My father’s genuine concern for people and encouragement for them is easily observed. He’s curious, optimistic and caring.

I’m not sure who said this but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately as I work with teachers and parent my children and try to be a great husband:

"People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel." 

Our connection to each other is not totally based on the content we share or the work we do but how we share it and the relationships we build. I’m grateful for a father who lives this everyday.

Time to call my Dad.

I had one of the strangest events of my professional career on Tuesday night. Coming back from 10 days in Europe I checked my calender to see I was schedule to speak at a Parent night at a high school in a neigbouring district.  I remember being asked a few months early about speaking as part [...]]]> I had one of the strangest events of my professional career on Tuesday night. Coming back from 10 days in Europe I checked my calender to see I was schedule to speak at a Parent night at a high school in a neigbouring district.  I remember being asked a few months early about speaking as part of a 3 person lineup on Internet Safety. I was very up front with the organizer stating that I don’t spend a great deal of time on the dangers and lures of the internet but rather how to leverage online spaces for positive purposes. I acknowledge dangers but also utilize many research studies that debunk common beliefs about internet safety.

So spend part of Tuesday revamping and cleaning up a few previous presentations to fit into the 20 minute time slot I was given. I was called that afternoon to confirm my appearance with the school counselor and a local police officer. About 30 parents showed up which is pretty typical. While I recall being told about the scheme set up to test kids willingness to add friends in Facebook, I didn’t fully understand the concept until the counselor revealed the plan.  She created a fake profile and tried to get as many students to add her as a friend. The point was to show the parents and students how willing the students were to add strangers. She dropped this bomb on the parents and emphasized the dangerous behaviour shown by the students and how vulnerable they were to predators et. al.  Parents were shocked and their faces were filled with dismay, anger and concern. This went on for about an hour. The police officer who introduced himself to me by stating he didn’t know a lot about computers or the internet proceeded to present for almost an hour on how dangerous the internet was, how it was not policed and was a playground for predators.

And then it was my turn.

I immediately announced that I would be providing a very different perspective and that while I acknowledged some of the dangers and concerns I actually disagreed with many of the points made by the first two speakers. I’ll not post the presentation here, it wasn’t that inspiring but it contained similar content to this one done last summer.  I recognized the lateness of the evening but also wanted to provide hope and balance to a very one sided and what I believed to be somewhat misguided discussion. We had a brief Q and A afterward and many parents expressed their gratitude about hearing another side.

It was a weird evening to say the least. While I recognize the concerns of students acting badly online, these students, I presume are using facebook the way most are: posting a few photos, giving status updates and connecting with friends. I’ll restate this piece of research from the PEW Internet and American Life Project

Our research, actually looking at what puts kids at risk for receiving the most serious kinds of sexual solicitation online, suggests that it’s not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. It’s not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.

This completely contradicted what both the police officer and counselor were saying. I stressed that I wanted my kids stuff to be online and that sometimes that included personal things. My 10 year old writes about personal things. That’s what she knows. I don’t worry about her. My own kids see me modeling appropriate behaviour and we talk about what we do online. As Will writes, I want my kids to be found. I also stressed that my concerns continue to revolve around cyberbullying, understanding the changing nature of privacy as well as the lack of critical thinking and understanding of digital content and authentication of information. I also added this quote from danah boyd:

Why are we so obsessed with the registered sex offender side of the puzzle when the troubled kids are right in front of us? Why are we so obsessed with the Internet side of the puzzle when so many more kids are abused in their own homes? I feel like this whole conversation has turned into a distraction. Money and time is being spent focusing on the things that people fear rather than the very real and known risks that kids face. This breaks my heart.

I feel like I’ve posted about this too many times. 2 years ago, we had few educators using any form of social networks and thus the discussions were few. Today their is more information and we have more educators using Facebook and have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I’m perplexed about how to shift the conversation away from the fear. Fear is usually attached to the unknown. Most of these parents and teachers simply don’t know and it’s always easier to attach a quick label to the unknown. If it’s presented as a threat to children, well, you know the rest of that story.

Today this happened at the school.

That’s just not my style. I still haven’t fully comprehended what message was being sent other than don’t add strangers to your Facebook account.  It seemed like a lot of effort to spend on a quick emphasis to something that requires much more context and teaching and modeling. Maybe more discussion will follow. I hope so. But I’m not hopeful.

Dear Students,

Because of institutional requirements and societal norms, I’m required to give you a grade. This grade falls between 0-100 and in some way is intended to inform you and others how well you did in this course. The importance that number is given is appalling. While I do my best to provide you with some [...]]]> Dear Students,

Because of institutional requirements and societal norms, I’m required to give you a grade. This grade falls between 0-100 and in some way is intended to inform you and others how well you did in this course. The importance that number is given is appalling. While I do my best to provide you with some outcomes, indicators, rubrics and feedback I still feel my assessment of your learning is fairly trivial or at best a thin slice  indicator of what you’ve learned.  I realize many would love to believe that the number or grade you get is pure, accurate and will provide future instructors, institutions or employers an indication of your proficiency, understanding or knowledge. If anyone of these groups were to ask me about you, I could tell them what I’ve seen and observed. That may have value, the grade, not so much.

I also recognized that many of you took charge of your own learning, asking to change assignments, finding alternatives and creating meaning for yourselves. That’s what I wanted. While it wasn’t really an “anything goes” approach we were able to negotiate some ideas about what would be valuable for you to pursue inside the broad goals and guidelines of this class.

At the beginning of the term I told you I had 4 goals for you. I wanted you to see that:

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

I hope I succeeded in that. Don’t rank me from 0-100 but provide me with feedback and ideas to make me a better teacher.

As I’ve told you before, you all are the winners in our current system of education. You’ve come through 12+ years of education understanding what it takes to do well in school and please others. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, however if that’s all this class is, and the other classes you take, that seems like a waste. That system may have worked for you but it doesn’t work for everyone and certainly continuing to aid students in playing the game of school needs to stop. Personalizing learning and being able to take away clear and not so clear understandings, skills and ideas is what really matters. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to learn specific knowledge and skills but we have to move beyond that. I know that for most of you, you did.

So if you look at that number and it doesn’t make sense to you, I apologize. I try like crazy to make it meaningful but always get frustrated trying to make that happen. In the end, you tell me, what you learned. I would love to be like this guy and give you all A’s. Ranking you makes little sense to me. Helping and guiding you to become better at what you want to do is something I’m deeply committed to. I’m hoping I was able to do that and that we didn’t’ let a little thing like a number get in the way. Your challenge as future educators is to figure out how to minimize the meaning of that number and get your students to learn inspite of that. That won’t be easy. Will we ever have schools that truly model and commit to lifelong learning? I realize I’m dreaming but wouldn’t it be great if we could just learn because we want to?  Idyllic, I know but it’s worth pursuing.

Still learning.

Dean

ecmp355, assessment, grading

So that fact that your birthday is splattered in any number of places means some interesting things.  We get all kinds of well wishes from different spaces. It’s nice. It’s part of the glue of social networks, little bits of sharing to build community.

My life is pretty much an open book. For some that’s just too [...]]]> So that fact that your birthday is splattered in any number of places means some interesting things.  We get all kinds of well wishes from different spaces. It’s nice. It’s part of the glue of social networks, little bits of sharing to build community.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was a fascinating endeavor.  I learned a number of things, some which I can articulate and some I’m sure are [...]]]> If there’s anyway to summarize a year, this might be the best way. Thanks to D’Arcy Norman for encouraging this, I joined several others in attempting to shoot a photo a day for the entire year.

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

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

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

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

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

I like to share. That’s not a secret. I’ve been thinking about it a fair bit lately.  Several people keep it in their radar and it seems to be a consistent theme for me.

I like to play. That may be not be much of a secret either. If you follow me on twitter, you’ll know most [...]]]> I like to share. That’s not a secret. I’ve been thinking about it a fair bit lately.  Several people keep it in their radar and it seems to be a consistent theme for me.

I like to play. That may be not be much of a secret either. If you follow me on twitter, you’ll know most of my tweets are pure drivel.  At the same time, I actually do a lot of reflecting as I explore various new ways of sharing. I recently began using Qik to stream video from my phone. So far my videos have consisted of me wandering around my house and even sitting with my neighbour in his hot tub (It sounds worse than it was).

The thing I’m wondering about is, even though we live in a publish, then filter world, do I have a responsibility in what I share? I’m mean do I restrict what I share or do I rely on the user to determine what they do and want they don’t want from my stuff? Currently you can subscribe to this blog, my family blog, my work blog, flickr photos, shared reader, youtube videos, Facebook, wikis,and probably a gazillion other spaces where I’ve got content splattered. That’s a lot of Shareski, way more than anyone wants or needs.

When I’m working with teachers who initially want to set up blogs for their students, one question always comes up. “How do we tell the published, edited work from the everyday writing? Outside of using some tagging or categorizing or even separate spaces, it’s tough. Parents or outsiders looking in, might see a myraid of work from seemingly gibberish, text messaging type language to more polished, formal writing. Is that the parents/viewers job to discern? Can they tell what’s supposed to be exemplary and what is simply reflection or practice? Should we be posting play or practice?

So back to me (it’s always about me ;-0). I’ve recently begun to use a few different video hosts to put my personal stuff on. I have 216 subscribers on youtube. I’m guessing most are interested in my education videos, not ones of me hitting golf balls across a frozen lake. So I’ve tried filtering that out for people.  I realize that most experienced web users are comfortable opting out of subscriptions and content, but what about those who don’t? Do I need to help them? Inevitably the blurring of play, personal and professional gets in the
way I don’t know what goes where. Should I care? Should I filter or is
that your job?

Let’s get this discussion started.

For regular readers it might not seem like much has changed but I’ve switched hosting companies. After some long periods of downtime, poor support, it was time to move.  I’m just getting comfortable to my new surroundings and will post more on the move after I get “all my stuff” in place.

Image Title: Cardboard Box [...]]]> For regular readers it might not seem like much has changed but I’ve switched hosting companies. After some long periods of downtime, poor support, it was time to move.  I’m just getting comfortable to my new surroundings and will post more on the move after I get “all my stuff” in place.

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

Being part of the photo a day project has been for the most part a great learning experience. Prior to this year, I had been an avid flickr user and photography enthusiast. This project has elevated this and strengthened my appreciation for the power of imagery, composition and community.

Imagery

I’ve written at lengths and perhaps ad nauseum [...]]]> Being part of the photo a day project has been for the most part a great learning experience. Prior to this year, I had been an avid flickr user and photography enthusiast. This project has elevated this and strengthened my appreciation for the power of imagery, composition and community.

Imagery

I’ve written at lengths and perhaps ad nauseum about the value of imagery. But the idea of mindful seeing is certainly something that has become a part of my day. Good storytellers listen intently to others. They find beauty in words. I remember a few years ago reading about Barbara Ganley taking her camera on walks and her efforts to embed photography into her writing classes. The idea of always having a camera with me stuck. My family and friends know it’s always with me and they too are seeing things they never saw and calling on me to capture moments. This is actually one reason I’ve fought moving to a larger SLR and have stuck with my compact camera.

Composition

One of the greatest features of digital photography is the low cost of failure. Taking a photo everyday forces you to be creative. It’s been interesting to develop vocabulary and understanding of composition and at the same time playing without really understanding why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’ve taught several introductory courses on digital photography and can’t emphasis enough the value of taking a gazillion photos.  No doubt it adds to her workload but I’m better at culling prior to downloading. Yet it still takes time. I still use iPhoto as my primary orgainzer/editor. I’m comfortable with its funtionality.  On rare occasions I use Aperture or Fireworks but iPhoto is my mainstay.

Community

This is obviously the key to this project. I subscribe to all the members of this group and have pretty much viewed all their photos. Knowing we are all trying to learn together, and yet have no formal ties, makes this a really interesting community. I’ve definitely learned from many and at times consciously and other times subconciously have copied their styles. Why wouldn’t you?  The community has also done well encouraging one another via comments. Of the 52 members, I’d say almost all have kept up and are active and those who have not, who cares?

I’d like to set up something similar for our schools this year. I’m not sure how I’d structure it but knowing the value I’ve found in this along with my push to include more intentional uses of images in learning makes think I have to figure out how. Any ideas are welcome.

As I exited the NECC conference by exploding a cherry coke all over the Blogger Cafe, I knew I would have to take some time to provide a brain dump of the experience. I know that many discussions will continue to force me to reflect deeply over time. Hanging around with that many smart, passionate folks [...]]]> As I exited the NECC conference by exploding a cherry coke all over the Blogger Cafe, I knew I would have to take some time to provide a brain dump of the experience. I know that many discussions will continue to force me to reflect deeply over time. Hanging around with that many smart, passionate folks will do that you. So here for you is my reflections on the people and the ideas.

The People:

Of course the danger here in singling out people is the fear of leaving someone out so I’ll just begin but apologizing right off. These are just a few thoughts about people that I managed to spend a varying amount of time with. Some quite and others just a brief conversation.

Bud Hunt. I spent quite a bit of time with Bud. He’s one of my longest online connections and there’s a reason for that. He makes me think. Bud has a way of framing ideas and throwing curveballs that have just enough spin on them that you better pay attention. There’s only one complaint I have. He needs to publish more.

Scott Floyd and the Texans. While I was vaguely familiar with Scott, I didn’t really know all that much about his work and thinking. He’s smart and extremely politically savvy. He helped me understand much more deeply about the issues facing US schools and in particular why we need to be watching companies like Pearson like a hawk. I consider Scott one of my great discoveries from NECC. In addition to Scott, Paul Wood, Mike Gras, John Maklary and Brian Grenier put on an amazing BBQ and made me and others feel incredibly at home. So much so I almost was going to stay here for 11 more months. Paul went out of his way to pick me and and drive me to their hotel where I was whisked into a live netcast and stayed to have some great talks. Texas hospitality is alive and well.

Ewan Mcintosh. Ewan’s international perspective (I actually was considered international…but don’t have a buttery Scottish accent so I barely count) and fresh look at education always provides me with enough fodder for about a year. I just barely have gotten over talks from a year ago. This time I only have 6 weeks.

Jeff Utecht. He is batman. He’s everywhere. Even on the plane ride home I grab a magazine and who’s face is staring back at me? I actually had to crop him out of the Texas boys photos. He’s unstoppable. His energy and passion are electric. He just does stuff. I’m sure he’ll be in Bangkok before the technicians can return all his hacks and tweaks back to normal. Although if my idea takes root, he may still get away with more.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. She couldn’t be any nicer. I know she’s also brilliant and a tremendous facilitator but she’s all about people and helping others connect. What a treat to have a meeting on the river walk with Wes Fryer and Darren Kuropatwa. That was truly a highlight.

Konrad Glogowski. I’ve been reading Konrad for a while and although he lives 2,500km away from me, I can’t help by feeling pride that he is also Canadian and really exemplifies so much of what good teaching is all about. We had a great chat Saturday night about his upcoming travels and work in Africa with Sharon Peters. I’m sure it will lead to more highly reflective and challenging writing.

Craig Nansen. Craig lives about 4 hours from me in North Dakota. He was kind enough to invite me out with some other Distinguished Apple Educators for a lively discussion. Nice to know he and Chris Webb are just down the road.

Old friends. Will Richardson, David Jakes and Chris Lehmann continue to provide me with a solid pedagogical leadership. I rely on these gentlemen more often than most. It just so happens we have a lot of fun together too.

The blogger cafe was an ongoing series of “Hi-how-are-you-good-to-see-yous” and time was often the enemy of moving beyond that. I wanted to especially thank Lisa, Maria, Brian,Vicki and Julie who contributed in mentoring students and teachers. These folks do a great deal for me.

More acknowledgments and thoughts as my twittified brain goes into full gear about the week that was. Here we go.

Mark Wagner kick started my brain with a frank question…Laura Deisley will be a new and trusted friend…Brian Smith is older than he looks apparently…Wendy Smith is married to Brian Smith…Lisa Thumann sometimes shuts down like me….Did you Know Karl Fisch is very quiet but did throw out a great one liner (see what did there?)…Gary Stager never stops and is highly entertaining…Everybody loves Clarence….Having NECC in your hometown has its disadvantages…Doug Johnson is a funny guy….I think I’m stealing this paragraph style from Scott McLeod…Kyle Stevens isn’t sure if Chris is Christ…..Diane McCordell is short….Kurt Paccio is not…Lee Kolbert likes Plurk…Marcie Hull wants people to be afraid of her, but I’m not…Mark Pennington needs to post more photos….I saw the Tech Chicks but didn’t see them together…Was Al Upton sick or is his voice that raspy?….Stephanie Sandifer lied to me…I owe Jennifer Kraft $4….I’ll never remember everyone I met….Wes Fryer is also batman….I’ll never mention boiled ribs again…Barbara Barreda will stop at nothing to help kids….the riverwalk is awesome……John Pederson, Darren Kuropatwa and Christian Long shouldn’t be allowed to stay home…I wonder if I overuse the dot,dot,dot?…Ken Pruitt leads a nice session….Christian wins as best blogger not be be present at NECC….you can’t use a loonie to buy coffee in the States….flying first class isn’t that great…I used the phrase, “throw under the bus’ too often…I bet the Aussies would have been fun to hang with…Wagner broke more iphones than my dog chews electronics….I saw Jeff Boulton, who I work with once randomly Friday night and never saw him at the conference…Do you have any idea how long it takes to link to all these people?…Chris Lehmann started say y’all quite a bit…David Jakes likes Bill Lamineer….Will Dan Meyer attend NECC or any conference that has the word technology in it?….Joyce Valenza was surprised when I told her I read her blog. I didn’t know why…Wireless at conventions suck unless you have your own or know Mark Wagner or Scott Floyd…I saw Will Richardson demo Geopedia 17 times…. people are nicer than I imagined.

The Ideas

Now that the NECC love fest is over. (I know I was guilty of the discussing the edublogoshpere’s favourite subject, themselves) here’s where I go from here. These are four ideas, that while not new, I think I understand better now and hopefully can articulate. There were certainly seeds of other ideas that will grow but these ones I just feel better about.

1. Online communities exist for people to be together face to face. Being online is about being face to face. Shirky talks about the the ideas expressed in Bowling Alone. The idea of a society that has lost much of what it means to develop community and opportunity to be together. As many argue against the value of online communities and question there importance, it usually points us to being together. Having fun, working, building, playing, you name it.

We gather together because we like to, and because it is useful.[pp.195]…Meetup groups for virtual contacts shows that even online communication that emulates face-to-face interaction still leaves people wanting real human contact. [pp.199]

Even as we discussed the book and tried to see the connections to learning, it was evident that we wanted to be in the same room. The energy, the passion, the body language all make for a much richer experience. I would dare say many of the folks in my community have used the most current technologies that facilitate online discussion and I can’t imagine any of those tools coming close to the face to face experience. It’ll never happen.

2.Vendors are way off. I have to preface this since I never went into the giant exhibit hall even once but from what I heard and witnessed, these guy for the most part are out to lunch. Mike Gras told me of a vendor who was selling a product that could tie all your web 2.0 apps into active directory. While I barely know what that means, it demonstrates how so many are driven to control based products. Check out this ad from the NECC daily magazine. Basically we can shut everything down as tight than a monkey fist . Now grant it, they are just responding to what schools are asking for but you have to wonder if they don’t see the writing on the wall. How long will it be before raise the white flag of surrender and simply try and work and learn in real world, DIY environments? I know, I’m too naive. I’m not discounting the commercial component of schools and technology just the context of the presentation and marketing. Don’t even get me started on clickers.

3. I need to talk about student learning way more. In the fervor of all that is edtech and wonderful, the odd dissenting voice appeared. “Where is the student learning?” That question bothered some but it’s a good one and ones that need to be asked. As I made the most of my extra night, Christine, Mike, Paul and Scott I wrote down a quite piece of logic that helps me particularly as we consider the value of social networks, online communities and more specially K12 online. Let’s start from the students.

• We all want to help students learn more.
• Teaching and learning is hard.
• Professional learning is essential.
• Schools devote way too little time and money and much of it is not applicable or specific to each teacher in their quest for improved student learning.
• Enter online professional learning. which provides time shifted and customizable learning. Not only that but it’s about content combined with access to real teachers doing real work. This all can lead to your very own research team.

If helping a doctor become better is about improving patient care then professional development is about student learning. I’m going to be gentle but ruthless is selling that idea.

4. We have no idea how small we are. My guess is about 300 of the 17,000 attendees have any sense of what powerful online communities are all about. That would represent about 2% of an edtech community. These would be the teachers that you’d like have the best shot at building a network. Reading some of the teacher reflections in the last NECC daily made me shudder somewhat. The focus on buying stuff, teaching tools is missing the boat big time. It’s easy to understand why an average teacher would have no idea of how and why. While it’s been written about lots, when you see it in this context it’s quite amazing. If you believe in point #1 and #3 you see why I think this is important. So while I have my network who support me and challenge me not to mention the possibility of those outside my network who occasionally challenge me most of our teachers have nothing. Again, not a new realization but I got to see it first hand.

There, I feel better. (My first every blog post largely constructed from 30,000 feet. I might turn into Wes Fryer or Ewan Mcintosh if I became a frequent flyer.)

Konrad Glogowski photo by Will Richardson
Breakfast with Craig Nansen and Chris Webb photo by Kevin Jarrett

Reference:
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody. New York: The Penguin Press.

I’m not sure if this is “the” original but listening to the Spark podcast on the plane, I discovered this gem and had to share it.

The story behind how this site was discovered is interesting enough but the fact that Jamie Livingston took almost 7,000 photos for 18 years is astonishing. But the stories behind the [...]]]> I’m not sure if this is “the” original but listening to the Spark podcast on the plane, I discovered this gem and had to share it.

The story behind how this site was discovered is interesting enough but the fact that Jamie Livingston took almost 7,000 photos for 18 years is astonishing. But the stories behind the photos are gripping. In 18 years in anyone’s life, it will be filled with everything from highly emotional to extremely mundane. This is life. And death. Jamie, a filmmaker from New York city died in October of 1997 at the age of 41. Shortly before he died of cancer, he got engaged. This is the photo of the engagement ring and the blurred figure in the back is his fiance. You can sense the sadness and irony in this image.

So as I approach the half way point of my photos of the day for one year, I realize more and more that this is a diary of my life. Boring to most, but I’m trying to capture life each day. As I go through this process, I’m convinced more and more that visual literacy, images must be recognized by educators as more than icing on the cake of communication. Sometimes the addition of text can provide context, other times, the picture itself is enough.  Unfortunately our text bias schools continue to place photography and visual literacy well behind writing. More and more I know this to be misguided.

Listen to the entire story, you’ll be glad you did.

It’s not really for Saskatchewan eyes only, I just say that because it’s not likely those from outside the province or for that matter outside Moose Jaw would be interested.

My daughter is doing a concert on July 19th. If you like Nora Jones/Diana Krall/Joni Mitchell  you’ll like Meredith. Ticket information below. For those outside the area,  [...]]]> It’s not really for Saskatchewan eyes only, I just say that because it’s not likely those from outside the province or for that matter outside Moose Jaw would be interested.

My daughter is doing a concert on July 19th. If you like Nora Jones/Diana Krall/Joni Mitchell  you’ll like Meredith. Ticket information below. For those outside the area,  I might stream it but am not sure of the internet availability.

Disclaimer: Most people who would bother to read this blog might get this and most who don’t read this won’t.

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 [...]]]> Disclaimer: Most people who would bother to read this blog might get this and most who don’t read this won’t.

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?

On Monday, June 2nd, we lost a great man, Dr. George Falk. George was a great leader in education in our province who had a profound impact on many lives. George love of drama and music as well as special education will leave a legacy most of us could only hope to have.

George was a personal [...]]]> On Monday, June 2nd, we lost a great man, Dr. George Falk. George was a great leader in education in our province who had a profound impact on many lives. George love of drama and music as well as special education will leave a legacy most of us could only hope to have.

George was a personal friend and mentor to my eldest daughter. I spent much of the day producing a 12 minute video for the funeral which will be held Sunday afternoon. Here’s a snippet of the that video that includes the song my daughter wrote especially for George.

As a man of faith, George leaves us for a better place. He will be missed but not forgotten.

This post is not intended to spark a debate about religion or Christianity but rather draw attention to an analogy that might be helpful for some. I hope it’s a useful comparison of two huge societal shifts.

I had the pleasure of hearing Bruxy Cavey speak on Friday. Bruxy is a pastor and author of the book [...]]]> This post is not intended to spark a debate about religion or Christianity but rather draw attention to an analogy that might be helpful for some. I hope it’s a useful comparison of two huge societal shifts.

I had the pleasure of hearing Bruxy Cavey speak on Friday. Bruxy is a pastor and author of the book The End of Religion. The premise of his book revolves around Jesus’ attempt to stop religion, tradition and liturgy from being the foundations of belief and spirituality. He makes a compelling case for Christs’ desire for people to be free from the law and experience a life built around a person rather than a set of rules.

“What Jesus came to establish was a subversive spirituality outside the boundary markers of traditional religion, and in the process he made religion itself obsolete.”

As he was speaking I couldn’t help think of two educators: Stephen Downes and Clay Burell. Stephen has for a long time given up on the hope that schools in their current state can possibly achieve a true level of personal learning. His and others idea of deschooling is one that for most gets a nod but is quickly tossed aside as “it’s-not-going-to-happen-so-why-bother”. Clay’s unschooliness theme runs through his blog and I’ve stolen his quote many times to say I don’t like school but love learning.

“Personal Learning comes as a subversive education model outside the boundary markers of traditional schooling, and in the process makes school itself obsolete.”

So as I listened to Bruxy I was amazed at the number of connections between his idea about religion and my own beliefs about school. Without getting into too much detail about his talk and book, it became apparent to me that what many are fighting for is to not necessarily abandon school but to eliminate the structure and traditions of school that interfere with learning. This is hard work. Bruxy does many things to remove religion from his own church. Witness his recent podcast with the friendly atheist.

Because everyone on the planet has virtually all come to think of school and learning synonymously, it’s difficult for many to see beyond the structure of school. The people of the New Testament experienced the same thing when it came to religion. They only knew about God in the context of religious structure, not all of which was bad, but it had become the focal point of spiritual life and to tamper with it was blasphemous. Jesus is relentless in pointing out the hypocrisies.

Clay and Stephen and others do this often and often with contrary results. While I know Stephen has largely given up on schools but there is hope. Those of us working inside these institutions recognize that the boundaries imposed on us by the very structure of the organizations aren’t very effective. The structure of current schools was developed largely in an industrial age where it met a particular need at a particular time. So too did the religious structures. Jesus came to change that. In schools our need for change is precipitated by many things certainly access to information and people being a major force. Just as with many churches that are not purely focused on their religiosity, neither are all schools focused on schooliness. There are moments, individuals and leaders looking to make school more about learning and less about structure. When it comes to my specific role as someone charged with making technology seamless in our schools, it’s clear to me that just as there are those bound by structures of school there are those who see often see technology as the structure we ought to believe in. At times I’m guilty of this.

I need to see that learning is the goal. Okay so this may seem obvious but in the daily grind it’s easy to become the Pharisees of modern education. We have difficulty when students don’t respond to school the way we think they ought to. Personal learning has little place in many of our classrooms. The frustrations of those of us who recognize this hypocrisy grows every day. We are looking for someone who can change this. Someone with authority who can break down the traditions and structure that so often bind us from what learning should look like. There are certainly glimmers of hope.

Back to Bruxy. He was asked at the end of his talk, “How do you justify working in a church when you seem to be saying that Christ came to end religion?”. His answer was that it’s not that churches in themselves are bad, structure has its place but believing that the structure itself will save you is where you run into trouble.

He finished by giving the example of a thirsty person licking the outside of the water bottle. Obviously ridiculous. But the bottle represents the structure. What we really want is inside the bottle. Can this be true of schools? If so, no wonder our students are often left unsatisfied and go through the motions of what they think we want from them.

I’m sure you can poke holes in this analogy, but for me I was challenged but this idea and can’t help but doing a little pattern recognition and also practicing what Stephen preaches about expanding your network of ideas.

Technorati Tags: bruxycavey, themeetinghouse, clayburell, stephendownes, personallearing, endofreligion

There’s been a recent uprise in Diigo. I have been aware of it for some time but haven’t seen any reason to use it. So a number of folks in my network have been raving about it and since they act as my filters, I thought I’d give it a go.

As I signed up, I was [...]]]> There’s been a recent uprise in Diigo. I have been aware of it for some time but haven’t seen any reason to use it. So a number of folks in my network have been raving about it and since they act as my filters, I thought I’d give it a go.

As I signed up, I was taken to a page that ask if I wanted to see if I had “friends already on Diigo”. I logged into my gmail account and it displayed quite a number of my contacts already on Diigo. I simply clicked Add to Friends. What I didn’t notice until it was too late, was that below this list was the list of all my contacts not on Diigo. By default all these contacts were checked and so now all my contacts received a request from me to join Diigo. This is in effect spam. Thanks a lot Diigo.

Diigo may be a great service and I’m sure it is but I have spent much of my day responding to emails from people who think I’ve spammed them…which I have. Here’s one in particular that I received from someone I don’t know well but have had the occasional encounter.

Although I appreciate the thought, I would prefer if you would not use my email address in this manner without my consent. I am very careful with my email address and who I give it to and your casual use of it in this manner, although seemingly innocent enough, may result in my address being added to lists that I am not comfortable with.

In the future, if you have something that you think I would be interested in please contact me directly. Thanks for respecting my wishes regarding this situation. TTYL.

Earlier, my father calls me wondering what he’s supposed to do. Sorry Dad for spamming you. Diigo adds this little tag at the end of their invitation:

We’re still working every day to improve Diigo. We hope you’ll like Diigo. We do. And, it’s only going to get better!

I’m rethinking this service. It may be petty but this just seems like a no-brainer. You have a simple thing to improve that I think you could have figured out from the beginning. Don’t check my entire contact list by default! I have a bad taste in my mouth and it’s going to take a lot to de-sour me.

To all my contacts….my apologies.

Technorati Tags: diigo, spam

A dear friend of our family is in the battle of his life. Dr. George Falk is about to undergo some major cancer surgery next week. If you don’t know George, you must know that his passion and energy is contagious. Think of your most inspirational teacher and that’s George. He has inspired many and [...]]]> A dear friend of our family is in the battle of his life. Dr. George Falk is about to undergo some major cancer surgery next week. If you don’t know George, you must know that his passion and energy is contagious. Think of your most inspirational teacher and that’s George. He has inspired many and played a major role in helping our eldest daughter pursue a career in music.

Currently he’s at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon awaiting surgery next week. My daughter Meredith composed and performed this song as a tribute to George. The story she tells is one that we’ve shared many times about her wanting to quit choir and he ended up not only convincing her to stay on, but also join another choir. That’s George. So Here’s to You.

I’ve heard people claim that moving to digital learning can help eliminate “the dog ate my homework excuse.”

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.

Powered [...]]]> I’ve heard people claim that moving to digital learning can help eliminate “the dog ate my homework excuse.”

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.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Once again a tweet inspired me. This time it’s Mark Wagner at a conference presentation in California:

Will Richardson’s been talking for a while about having teachers examine their learning. Not necessarily their professional development but their personal learning. For many reasons, this is a major challenge. For people that are in the business of learning, it [...]]]> Once again a tweet inspired me. This time it’s Mark Wagner at a conference presentation in California:

Will Richardson’s been talking for a while about having teachers examine their learning. Not necessarily their professional development but their personal learning. For many reasons, this is a major challenge. For people that are in the business of learning, it can be really difficult to engage in this discussion at times. Perhaps because of the busyness, the daily grind, the pressure of teaching, teachers have a difficult time recognizing the need to learn beyond the subject areas and pedagogies they spend much of their day grappling with.

So I understand the frustration and in a sense, ground breaking idea of teachers thinking about personal learning. Without this discussion, our ideas of learning are inevitably confined to the structures and traditions of school. Thinking about the last time you planned a trip, researched a political candidate, compared vehicles you wanted to purchase or tried to learn a new instrument.  What did that look like?

I wonder if these two ideas are somewhat at odds?

• “Teachers do not need to learn the technology in order for kids to use them.”
• “Teachers need to model effective use of technology”

Will may not have said it explicitly but the personal learning he talks about involves using the tools of today to maximize learning. Connecting with experts, social networking, publishing ideas are all part of what effective learning looks like. While more and more teachers get this, they really don’t get it for themselves. They want their kids to blog, but they don’t. They want their kids to connect with others but they don’t. They want kids to use all kids of technologies, but they don’t.

I never was all that impressed with Physical Education teachers who were out of shape. It didn’t make sense. They are supposed to be advocates for healthy lifestyles and need to model that. Fortunately most do and those are the ones that will likely have the most impact on kids. Come to think of it, that’d be an interesting piece of research.

If learning is personal, there has to be an element of selfishness. Teachers aren’t very selfish in this area. I’ve posted the Big Ideas of Digital Learning on our school district’s website. I use Will’s Ten Things we May Need to Unlearn idea:

We need to unlearn the notion that our students don’t need to see and understand how we ourselves learn.

That’s way harder than it sounds. Silent reading advocates always demand teachers read with their kids. I was one of those guilty of grading papers or planning when I should have been reading. I guess I just didn’t think it was all that important. I was wrong.

I’ve always been an advocate for teachers to take stuff home and personalize it. That’s how I learned. That’s why today I have a hard time separating professional and personal learning. If I learn a new technique in videography, I play with and use it with my friends or family. It’s not long before eventually I bring it to teachers and students as a new tool.

If you’re a classroom teacher, tell me how do you show your kids how you learn?

Technorati Tags: markwagner, willrichardson, pln

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I’ve also appreciated the use of time lapse photography. From watching a flower bloom to the changing of seasons, it’s a powerful technique.

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 [...]]]> I’ve also appreciated the use of time lapse photography. From watching a flower bloom to the changing of seasons, it’s a powerful technique.

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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A local principal told me today she had to suspend 20 students from computer privileges for inappropriate use of school computers. Primarily Facebook. Specifically some of these students were engaging with bullying others socializing. She also suggested most of these student’s parents do not understand the implications of their actions, let alone what facebook is or [...]]]> A local principal told me today she had to suspend 20 students from computer privileges for inappropriate use of school computers. Primarily Facebook. Specifically some of these students were engaging with bullying others socializing. She also suggested most of these student’s parents do not understand the implications of their actions, let alone what facebook is or does.

While my initial reaction was to suggest alternate ways to handle the socializing, the bullying of course raises another issue. She did ask our IT guys to considering blocking Facebook. He was not prepared to make that call. We discussed it later and would certainly like to pursue educational opportunities.

I quickly fired up a tweet and received this responses(for those that do not understand twitter, it only allows 140 characters, thus the IMspeak) :

• cburell @shareski I’d be interested to read a post about that. If they violate AUP, how is it different from any other misbehavior?
• Durff @shareski I would revoke until they had passed bullying curriculum and parental meeting…then when they graduate from tha
• kwhobbes @shareski get them to explore the effects of bullying – do some interviews with people bullied, look at bullying in the media, seek out info
• kwhobbes @shareski work with them on the issue – on their own time. As for the socializing, isn’t that WHY most kids come to school?
• cathyjo @shareski where else but at school in safe env can kids learn to use FB & MS SN sites. Banning not the anser IMHO. Thy’ll jst do it @ hme.
• courosa @shareski: Bullying is against the law in jurisdictions, so let the law deal with, at the same time, let’s educate them, design a program.
• briangrenier @shareski Take away their Math books! No that doesn’t make sense either. Have them create and post a digital anti-bullying ad.
• lucychili @shareski the medium is not the message/problem
• duckie @shareski teachable moment -can they regain their privileges?I’m not to concerned about the social part just the bully part
• plivings @shareski – bullying .and. socialize – these 2 things should be separate and have separate responses imo
• mctoonish @shareski If it was just to socialize I would argue that that could be a part of learning. The bullying part changes everything IMO

All great responses and once again, the value of the network is evident. (For those still not convinced twitter has merit, how else would you get this type of response so fast? Grant it, these are bursts of support but still they are helpful to me) Definitely these are 2 separate issues and honestly I didn’t get all the details so I’m not sure how the students were dealt with individually. The information given by the principal was limited as this was not the intent of our conversation. But I’m trying to develop a response to this for future reference.

The cyberbullying one for me is almost the easier one to deal with. Part education, part consequence, part responsibility. This may involve the law as Alec suggests but certainly requires a well thought out response. The socialization one is the tough one. As Kelly writes, that’s why they come to school. I’ve talked with our administrators and teachers about social learning and its importance. I’m sure most don’t consider the use of tools like IM and Facebook to be a part of formal social learning. The problem is the lines between personal, professional and educational socialization is blurring. Twitter for example, combines the personal and the professional as well as any tool. Even bloggers get personal from time to time and that’s a good thing. Good teachers have always understood this but today we are more compelled to figure this out. I remember spending classtime talking about their personal issues be it sports, or the current event of the day that impacted them. I also recognized that as students worked together, they would engage in conversation not directly related to the work they were doing. And yes, they got off track and had to be drawn back to focus on the task at hand. But I could never think I could eliminate their efforts to socialize.

We have to consider how to provide learning environments where students can learn and socialize at the same time. As we move to a more personalized learning model it only makes sense. How we do this and how we help teachers get comfortable with this is a challenging task. Obviously, many are not ready to shift to personalized learning. But if we continue to ban these tools be it via filtering or simply classroom rules, we perpetuate the notion of irrelevant learning.

What does a learning environment look like where students can use things like IM or Facebook or text messaging in both an educational and social context?

[tags]facebook,contentfiltering,twitter,school,education[/tags]

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