This is the first time in a few years that I did not attend NECC
virtually. I have never attended physically, but I have anticipated
all of the thinking and writing that happens during this conference.
This year, however, I am on vacation. I have not taken a vacation from
thinking or pushing myself in all things ed tech. Rather, a vacation
from the competition for attention. A vacation from large halls with
standing room only (for even virtual attendees). A vacation from
second-hand commentary standing for research.
Really though, this vacation isn’t about escaping NECC. It is about
sleeping on a hammock with my daughter and waiting for the warm Austin
wind to take us away from everything that plugs in.
Staying away
2 Comments.
Twitter and Google Reader for Productivity
(All quotations are not exact, but paraphrases of much better words that were in the mouths of the participants – These are notes, but I think that they might have benefit to others, so I am posting them on my blog as well)
I just wanted to use this space in order to make sure that we take note of all of our discussion surrounding how to use twitter and google reader for productivity.
“We don’t want to jump on the bandwagon with all new products. But, where does iGoogle, twitter, and blog feeds fit in our district’s overall vision.”
“Just because things are free, doesn’t mean we should be using them and promoting it.”
“Conceptually, the idea of everything coming to you is very inciting, but we need to look further at it from the Google Reader perspective and Twitter.”
“The real question is where do we spend our time? What is really of value?”
“Television news is too slow. I want to be able to know more about the things that I am interested in. I want it to be hyperlinked.”
“I don’t have enough time to consume things in a serial manner. I don’t want to know what happened yesterday before I know what happened today.”
“White papers are specific enough. I want relevancy and making sure that it is current.”
- Decide on your purpose for using feeds. What information would you like to be able to access that you can’t currently?
- Topics to look at:
- Stimulus and education
- CDE does a good job of talking about the stimulus, but they don’t have a feed.
- Broadband and education
- Virtual Learning Environments
- Making your reading relevant: What are the topics that you would like to come to you?
- http://surfmind.com/lab/msn/opml/
- http://monitorthis.info/
- Google Reader Bundles
- How do you want information to come to you?
- Phone
- Go to http://reader.google.com (on your phone)
- Set up google alerts for terms that you are interested in and have them come directly to your e-mail (http://google.com/alerts )
Virtual attendees unite.
I was thinking some more about Sloodle and Second Life in general
today and a thought struck me: why don’t all conferences have a SL or
Open Sim component?
Why do we struggle to pull together people from all over the state,
country and world into 2d places like blogs, wikis and aggregator
pages when all we need is a decent SLurl to direct people to in order
to connect? Now, I know that the WebHeads in Action do Second Life
events all of the time, but as far as I know they do not have a
face-to-face component. As for the face to face conferences I have
been to, not one of them invited those watching the elluminate or
usteam feeds to join in on an SL roundtable.
Do conferences need to artificially separate those who can see one
another with those who cannot?
Why can’t we put the usteams into a SL environment? Why shouldn’t we
allow the hallway conversations to happen for virtual attendees?
In other words, I would like to do this soon. Anyone already tried it
successfully?
Posted via email from olco5′s posterous
Community requires tending.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a story mostly about tyranny and the corruption of utopian ideals, but in the very beginning there is a passage that means something very different to me. It deals with the leadership of Mr. Jones before the rebellion, before the animals decide to take the farm into their own hands.
“The fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed.”
This quotation represents all of the things that happen when Mr. Jones gets too distracted to work, to maintain his environment, and to make life better for all those involved. To me, this is about not tending the community. It is about letting things lie fallow which must be uprooted and overturned to see what is underneath them.
Our communities are just like this I think, both in our classroom and outside of them. The communities within our classroom, especially the collaborative ones that we are all striving for, require an immense amount of tending. The Discovery Utopia wiki that my students are working on (and the reason that we are reading Animal Farm in the first place) is not an exception. If I do not constantly draw attention to the great things that are going on there, the community seems to just pass right on by them. If I do not look for the troubling points, the issues that nearly every student seems to be struggling with, students stop using the community. They find other ways to occupy their time. And that is one of the most interesting parts about our communities. They are communities of choice.
All communities of choice are ones that can be thriving in one minute and vacant in the next. So, how do we tend for consistency? Well, we feed the animals (is it weird that I am referring to my students as animals). We put up new buildings for them to play in. We design the space so that it is inviting and provokes the best kind of authentic creativity: their own.
I think that the lesson is pretty clear. If we do not tend to our communities, they will fail. The inhabitants will rebel and either stop using them, or turn them into something that rejects their purpose. And, if Animal Farm is any indication, the inhabitants of a untended community will become just like us and not tend to their communities. I mean that in both a virtual and real-world sense.
I hope this comes across as something other than a Language Arts teacher’s metaphorical analysis.
Learning 2.0: The Colorado Conversation (The Reminder)
My anticipation is rising. The time is drawing near when Learning 2.0 will be here. I will not attempt to recreate Karl’s amazingly concise post (if you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know that brevity is not always my first priority).
The purpose of this post is just to keep the awareness at an all time high that things are happening in Colorado. We aren’t trying to be the EdTech mecca, just to have a unified (whatever that means) voice for change. Let’s see what happens.
“Just a reminder for those of you attending – either physically or virtually – that Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is coming up this Saturday, February 23rd, from 9:00 am – 2:30 pm MST. If you registered, you should’ve received this email a few days ago with some updated information. And here’s the schedule for the day’s activities.
For those of you interested in attending virtually, we will be attempting to Ustream the seven sessions – channel info here.
Please keep in mind that our first priority is pulling off the physical
conference, so if the Ustream happens it will be a bonus, but we’re
going to give it a shot.
We have about 170 folks registered,
although I imagine a few will change their minds at the last minute.
The weather looks like it’s going to cooperate, everything is planned
out and we think (emphasis on think) we’ve thought of everything. It’s going to be interesting . . .”
Working with Online Elementary Teachers
Today I am working with elementary teachers who are writing courses for an online school. Whatever your stance on virtual schools, the most resistance is in the elementary sector (a totally subjective statement, by the way). Many of these teachers (who haven’t even started writing their curriculum) have had push-back from colleagues on the issue of kids’ social and developmental needs. But, when I asked the teachers at the beginning of the session why they wanted to be a part of this project, these are the reasons they gave:
- Why should we limit the opportunities? There is no way for all students to benefit if we have a one-size-fits-all model.
- There is something to be said for working with kids who may fall off if we aren’t there. The kids are already on the bleeding edge. We need to meet them there.
- Students are not engaged by redundancy. They are engaged by novelty and by authenticity.
- Survival isn’t for only the fittest, most savvy, or greatest players of the “education game.” It is for all.
- If we aren’t worried about including the curriculum, the students, the pedagogy, the technology, or the authenticity that matters, what are we worried about?
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Digital Sticky Notes
Feedback continues to be something that requires a lot of thought to do right. I want to provide my students with as much timely feedback as possible, but I don’t want to have to resort to the methods of printing out blog posts and putting paper sticky notes on them. In this podcast I explore the possibility of giving student feedback using web annotation tools. If anyone has any good ideas for tools like this (other than diigo) please e-mail them to benjamin.wilkoff@dcsdk12.org
- 00:00:00: Intro to Feedback
The Podcast Blog - 00:01:33: Feedback Methods
- 00:02:56: Revision-based Writing
- 00:06:03: Collaborative Tools for the Individual
- 00:07:21: Virtual Stick Notes
- 00:08:55: The Outsourcing of Grading
Steve Hargadon’s Blog - 00:11:51: Looking for the Tool and Conclusion
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