It's been said and discussed often here and many places that a real shift for educators is moving from teacher to learner. Not so much moving, we still need teachers, expertise matters but until we see ourselves as learners and intentionally show are students we can't be the educator our students need us to be. 

Last week I began my ECMP 355 course with largely freshman pre-service teachers. My usual introduction to my course reminds them that they are the winners of education. They were successful students because they were largely compliant and knew how to survive and thrive in a system that values a "mind your own business" style of learning. Do what you're told, when you're told to, and you'll be fine. Learning isn't very self directed in this system. Students wait to be told what to learn.

I'm trying to get them to consider something new. I truly believe that the best coaches in sports aren't usually the best athletes. They are often the bench players, backups and lesser known players who end up becoming the best coaches because they truly understand and can break down the subtleties  of the game.  Understanding not only how you learn but being able to articulate it and express it is a skill I'm not convinced all our teachers have. 

Last year i read Ewan's post about a 100 hour challenge. I tucked that post away because I knew I'd come back to it. So with that idea in mind, I'm asking my students to take 25-50 hours and learn something new. While Ewan's goals were somewhat different, I want my students to explore a few things.

1. Learn a skill, concept or idea you know very little or nothing about but that you're interested in learning

2. Document the learning. Write about it, video tape, audio record, whatever.

3. Consider all the sources you use to learn. Collect those resources. 

4. Take a early baseline snapshot of your understand at the beginning and another one at the end. Compare and analyze. 

That's it. As the quote above says, make your learning transparent.  I've never done a project like this with students before. it's not really about technology and yet it will be as students share their learning and consider people who can be their teachers. I feel like I need to participate in this as well. So I decided that I'd like to learn to play the guitar. I love music, have some musical background but have never learned to play the guitar. Starting with my daughter as one of my teachers, I completed my first lesson.

I'm really looking forward to my own learning but also watching others learn as well. If you have any ideas on how to make this idea/project better, let me know.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/langwitches/3500044331

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courtesy my John Pederson via my Google Shared Feed.

Have a listen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working out a New Game photo: by Ewan Mcintosh

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?

Our school division will be hosting a day long event with Ewan Mcintosh. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ewan’s work, he is outstanding advocate of social media and has been involved with Scotland’s very progressive curriculum innovations.

Here’s a some more information about the day:

Scotland meets Saskatchewan Outline

9:00-10:30
Presentation: Scotland’s story: how curriculum meets innovation
The new curriculum, developed with the profession and parents over several years, has ‘allowed’ more teachers to break with tradition and take up new technologies to facilitate children’s learning. The curricular moves share much in common with Canada’s states’ and provinces’, so what are the similarities and differences in technology, professional development and the way students learn?

11:00-12:30
Roundtable:Assessment is for learning and making the links through new technologies – share experiences from both sides of the pond.

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00
Practical workshop:Thinking Out Of The (X)box
Scotland is leading the way in some respects of games-based learning. Experience some of the methodology and ideas in this practical workshop.

6:00-7:30
Focus on Leadership Dinner: Ewan will focus on leadership and explore Scotland’s approach and experience with leading change.

7:30-9:30
TeachMeet08 Saskatchewan
An unconference for teachers, by teachers. Share something from your classroom or professional learning in a seven-minute micro-presentation, two-minute nano-presentation or simply be an enthusiastic lurker.

To register, email me shareski.dean at prairiesouth.ca by June 22.

$75 Covers your cost for the day. If you planning to attend the evening meal, please add another $25.
Make your cheques payable to: Prairie South School Division and send them to:

Prairie School School Division
Attn: Dean Shareski
15 Thatcher Dr.
Moose Jaw, SK
S6J 1L

This is going to be an outstanding day!