Browsing articles tagged with " art"

Question 229 of 365: Who started it?

Aug 18, 2010   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   365 Questions, Blog, Uncategorized  //  1 Comment
Illustration depicting thought.
Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes the best ideas are not our own. Definitely not mine, anyway.

Sometimes when we check into our communities, we realize that they have gone on without us. They have brilliant ideas about what should come next and they don’t require us for much of anything. The ideas abound. Ones that we would have never considered, or at least considered useful. Others can and do create what we would have thought too difficult to manage or attempt.

And yet, we can and do jump in. We take one look at the big plans that others have started in motion and we take part. We tend to our communities and it becomes something that is a part of us as well. I’m okay with the plans that others people have for me, or the ones that we co-author over time.

Today, I checked in on one of my communities and they were working on creating a broadcast, of the community itself. How is it that they came up with that idea before me? How is it that they started developing it, sharing phone numbers and emails? How could they have figured out how to advance the community beyond the current set of messages going back and forth?

And yet, I injected myself into the conversation. I created a collaborative document for them to help plan. I encouraged them to fill out their roles and their ideas for the project. I gave them ideas about how to broadcast and which tools would help them to make it valuable to the rest of the community. I made myself useful, sure. But, it wasn’t my idea in the beginning. I didn’t start it.

And that is a pretty wonderful feeling, all around.

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Question 116 of 365: How much power is in the absurd?

Apr 27, 2010   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   365 Questions, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

Tagging has always been an art form I am a little embarrassed to appreciate. Even before I understood the graffiti in downtown Cleveland, I think I understood that people were making their mark on something in the hopes of immortality or at least bragging rights. Even in suburbia, tagging was valuable. By developing a tag, you were able to declare just who you were and what you were all about. Most of the coolest kids I knew had developed tough tags that they were proud to scrawl onto the backs of the chairs in Social Studies during the 2nd viewing of Tora! Tora! Tora!. They had beautiful curved letters, and sometimes, even blood pooling at the bottom or interesting characters within the design. And everything within the tag meant something. Every letter represented a part of the person drawing it. It was a thing of suburban beauty.

My tag, however, was absurd. I am no graffiti artist, and I could not come up with anything rugged or overly intimidating. What I came up with was GPSAF, written with angles, kind of like this:

And what menacing ideas did GPSAF stand for?

Giorgio Perogies, Scrooberdeeds, and Freakinbobins.

That’s right. A food item that I have never tasted and two made up words that have no reason for existing. This absurd abbreviation was simply the work of my imagination and my interest in using non-sense to make the world seem just a little bit more sane. In those days, I did not have a well-defined passion. I did not have direction or even something concrete to rebel against. What I had, instead, was placeholders for those things. I had Scrooberdeeds and Freakinbobins. I had the alternatives for swear words, the search for significance, or simply the need to belong to something that I didn’t quite understand yet.

It was the absurd that allowed me to fake my way into understanding the need for identity. It let me be original without having to stand for something. It also allowed me to try things on to see if they fit.

I continue to try absurd things on when I’m not exactly sure what else to do.

Last night, I was taking an aptitude test for a summer program I am applying for. In this test, I was given 4 minutes to come up with as many uses for a tin can as possible. Along with using it to cut fruit and making an old-school walkie talkie, I may have written an entirely absurd suggestion of making love to it. Now, clearly I do not want to make love to a tin can, nor do I really understand how that might be done. What I do know is that by placing that type of a response into such a test, I am able to try out the boundaries of the question itself. By figuring out just how good of a sense of humor the graders have, I can see if I would like to be a part of the program or not. By suggesting the impossible, everything else seems like an incredibly good idea. Or, at least I tell myself that.

For me, the power of the absurd is about letting me have a choice to either dive in completely and invest myself fully or back out without losing too much face. It is about short-circuiting or sabotaging the process so that I can be in control. I’m not sure why it matters that much, but I think that having the control over whether or not you are going to take something seriously is invigorating.

This is why I don’t type out “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” whenever I sit down to a new blog post. Instead, I type out things absurd strings of ideas that will inevitably spark something new. It is why I didn’t learn the names to chords on a guitar. I simply made oddly grotesque finger shapes on the fret board that made music I was proud of. It is why I always start with questions when I am talking to a group of people. I am looking for the absurd answer, the one that I cannot possibly anticipate or pre-formulate a reaction to.
I sometimes get those answers too and that is when I know that my mind is working right. It is when I can actually replace those absurd suggestions and ideas with things that really matter. It is when we can move beyond the silliness and see what the real values of a tag can be. Because at this point, we don’t have to abbreviate nothingness. We all have the character that will stand up and claim its rightful place, so long as we have put something temporary in first. If, instead, we have put in ideas and beliefs that we only kind-of agreed with then it will always be a process of walking back what we have said about who we are.
If we claim absurdity, we will always be given a second chance. If we give a false claim, we will always be considered charlatans.
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Response to Paul (on PD must be better)

Nov 20, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

This post is in response to a comment on my last post which went something like this:

As I read your list I went back and forth agreeing with you.

Do you ever question if it is not how we do PD but the audience that we have hired and put into the “seats?”

Do you think we could stop “doing PD” if we simply hired a different caliber of professionals?

Do you worry that we have to “give(!!!) context, meaning and perspective” to teachers?

Here is my response:

I do think that it has to do with who we are talking to and what messages they will accept. However, I really do believe that if given enough reason to change, everyone will. I believe in the power of people to see something great and to become a part of it.

I also think that we could stop “doing PD” once people start thinking about networks as PD, but I still think we need to give people time away from their classroom responsibilities to actually create that network and to do their learning. We are passionate about learning what is “new”, but not everyone is. Others have to be given the time to do so, even if they are able to be a networked learner. They need to have the space to network.

All learners need to be given a space that has context, meaning and perspective. While I may create a lot of the context for what I do, I live it every day. I cannot expect people who do not blog to understand the context of blogging. I cannot expect people who do not use twitter to understand the context and meaning of a twitter conversation. And, I cannot expect people who do not use wikis and revision history to create a perspective to gain that perspective by doing anything other than actually using wikis and looking at revision histories.

When I say give, I believe that I am giving an experience. The experience is what matters to me. It is what will allow them to start creating context, meaning and perspective. Nothing else will do this and expecting them to create that experience on their own is just a little to harsh for me.

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SpeedGeek Learning Version .1

Nov 9, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
I am pleased to announce the following features within the first prototype at http://speedgeeklearning.com:
I would love it if you would test out all of them and see what there is to see. I would also love any feedback that you can provide this prototype, either by simply e-mailing it to me or by leaving comments on the Planning site (if you don’t have access to that yet, let me know).

The other two things you can do to help the project at this point are as follows:
  1. Think of any way that you could use the SpeedGeek Learning platform within your own work. If there are any videos that you use and would like to collaborate upon, let’s set you up with an instance of your own. If there are certain big questions you would like to answer, let’s answer them with video and collaborative documents. Start to think about pushing the platform to be what you would like it to be. I am up any ideas you have. Just let me know.

  2. Spread the word that the prototype is available. I would love to get as many people answering these questions in the collaborative document and passing the link around as possible. If you feel the need to blog about it, do so. If you feel the urge to tweet, please do so. I pushed out the initial idea, but this is the first version that I can actually show off.

Thank you so much for your continued interest. I can’t wait to get to phase two, which will include:
  1. Recording your own videos within the interface.
  2. Analytics about individual video views
  3. Greater collaboration with the presenters of the sessions
  4. More ways to organize the sessions
  5. Further design work to flesh out the platform
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As things come together

Jul 10, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

As we meet to talk about bringing all tools under one roof, as we
start to work toward a single solution, as we start to use the same
language to discuss learning, as we get on the same page with
professional development models, as we create in the same formats, as
we pull from the same information and databases, as we get into the
same ganntt chart and project plan, as we start to realize the same
vision…
 
As we begin to all of these things more and more, I feel as though we
may lose some of what makes pushing boundaries seem so right.
 
 I believe that there is value in scope creep, so long as it is
reflective of the needs of learners.
 
I believe in not choosing a final solution.
 
I believe that disruptive innovation comes when fast moving ideas are
allowed to move fast.
 
I believe in knowing whose shoulders we are standing on and whose feet
we will support.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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LiC Podcast: Design with Forever in Mind Archive

Jun 26, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Professional Development, Uncategorized  //  1 Comment
Design with Forever in Mind [ 34:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (988)

Although I was thrown a whole bunch by not having wifi for the first 45 minutes, I think that the session was worthwhile. Here is the archive of all that we have done. I am also including my planning podcast from my drive up to copper mountain.

Presentation:

Drop Box:

drop.io: simple private sharing

Important Links:

Ben Wilkoff Links:

  1. Learning is Change Blog and Podcast>
  2. Twitter Page
  3. Other Presentation on Thursday (The On Button: Instant and Always-on Collaboration)

Presentation Links:

  1. Foreverism
  2. Math Casts
  3. Web 2.0 Game Over

Exit Plan for Vocaroo:

  • Wav files backed up to a hard drive/server

Exit Plan for Drop.io:

  • Everyone who downloads the podcast will have a copy.

Exit Plan for JamGlue:

  • Mp3 files of mixes

Exit Plan for Screencastle:

  • Download Direct Link to File and store on hard drive/server

Exit Plan for Screentoaster:

  • Mov Downloads before uploading to screencastle site

Exit Plan for DimDim:

  • Download and build own DimDim server and store recordings there.

Exit Plan for Twitter:

Exit Plan for Google Docs:

Ustream Archive:




Twitter Archive:

  • CosmoCat: @bhwilkoff was great to learn about screencasting and audio recording! Hope you enjoy Audioboo! #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 09:46 PM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: Thanks to everyone for adding value to my session #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 09:40 PM GMT ·
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    forevertie09: http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/ #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 09:13 PM GMT ·
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    toniobarton: Learning needs real purpose and real audience. #cotie09 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 09:08 PM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: How do you capture learning? Add to the spreadsheet: http://tr.im/pvz2 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 09:05 PM GMT ·
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    villagegreen: #forevertie09 http://screencastle.com/watch/b0c8a1b0ac6aa37d179f945721ee4400

    Jun 23, 2009 08:40 PM GMT ·
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    CosmoCat: I’m searching for #forevertie09 live on TweetGrid Search – http://bit.ly/4A1lo3 (expand)

    Jun 23, 2009 08:19 PM GMT ·
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    care507: I’m searching for #forevertie09 live on TweetGrid Search – http://bit.ly/4A1lo3 (expand)

    Jun 23, 2009 08:13 PM GMT ·
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    forevertie09: I’m searching for forevertie09 live on TweetGrid Search – http://bit.ly/MVxM0 (expand)
    #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 08:13 PM GMT ·
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    forevertie09: #forevertie09 Devonee – Technology Integration Specialist from Mesa County

    Jun 23, 2009 08:12 PM GMT ·
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    forevertie09: I’m searching for #forevertie09 live on TweetGrid Search – http://bit.ly/4A1lo3 (expand)

    Jun 23, 2009 08:11 PM GMT ·
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    villagegreen: #forevertie09 to back channel: I’m Matthew Woolums, Integration Coordinator from DPS. My blog: http://villagegreen.edublogs.org

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    matthewadennis: SpEd in middle school in NW Denver. #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    jcope50: #forevertie09 Hi! Jill – Skyline HS Teacher Librarian- St. Vrain – just moved to CO on Saturday from CA!!!

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    toniobarton: #forevertie09 first year HS Computer Teacher from Manitou Springs High School

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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  • Sara24lynn: #forevertie09 Hello! I am a library media specialist in a K-5 school in Greeley, Colorado.

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    lbreed: #forevertie09 Hi! Lisa from Evergreen Middle School! I am looking forward to learning about authentic assessments.

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    matthewadennis: Name is Matthew (obvi). Work in DPS. #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 08:08 PM GMT ·
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    Sara24lynn: #forevertie09 Audioboo.fm is an audio tool for iPhone My audioboos http://audioboo.fm/profile

    Jun 23, 2009 08:07 PM GMT ·
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    matthewadennis: @forevertie09 mind being blown; didn’t realize so many tools out there that I didn’t know about. Not in the know at 25?? #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 08:03 PM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: How do you use audio to capture learning? Call 646-402-5701 x 25286 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 08:00 PM GMT ·
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    McTeach: #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:54 PM GMT ·
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    McTeach: I’m getting real-time search results at TweetGrid http://tweetgrid.com/ #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:54 PM GMT ·
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    RickTanski: @jenwagner Slide 10 on http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/1117 #cotie09 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:51 PM GMT ·
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    toniobarton: #forevertie09 I like http://www.vocaroo.com/ recording website, easy to use.

    Jun 23, 2009 07:50 PM GMT ·
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    dlevesque: vocarro does not work on a eeepc #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:47 PM GMT ·
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    erhubbell: @bhwilkoff Hi everyone! Looking forward to great conversations today. #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:39 PM GMT ·
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    matthewadennis: Will the iPhone be forever, Ben? #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:31 PM GMT ·
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    McTeach: @bhwilkoff was giving it rave reviews! RT @courosa: @zemote I see Edmodo on the screen at #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:29 PM GMT ·
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    sroseman: #forevertie09 how do i get rid of the echo

    Jun 23, 2009 07:29 PM GMT ·
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  • zemote: @courosa awesome!!!! thanks for letting me know #forevertie09 , if anyone has questions, forward them on

    Jun 23, 2009 07:28 PM GMT ·
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    courosa: @zemote I see Edmodo on the screen at #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:27 PM GMT ·
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    courosa: #forevertie09 re: learning that lasts 4ever,think about boyd’s media attributes” persistence,replicability,searchability,invisible audience

    Jun 23, 2009 07:25 PM GMT ·
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    dlevesque: #forevertie09 why last forever?

    Jun 23, 2009 07:23 PM GMT ·
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    RickTanski: @bhwilkoff Hello from an office in Colorado Springs :-( #cotie09 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:22 PM GMT ·
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    McTeach: @bhwilkoff Hello from Sunny Northern California! #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:22 PM GMT ·
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    ericolsen: Will the computers ever work?#forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:20 PM GMT ·
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    courosa: #forevertie09 Hey Ben, hi from the St. Louis airport, soon to get back to Canada.

    Jun 23, 2009 07:20 PM GMT ·
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    villagegreen: Sitting in on design with forever in mind at tie #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:20 PM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: Say hello to all of the folks at #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:19 PM GMT ·
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    RickTanski: @bhwilkoff 3 hour session! I’m going to kill some bandwidth bits for sure. #cotie09 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:10 PM GMT ·
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    mjmontagne: tuning in to a bit of @bhwilkoff ‘s workshop #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 07:09 PM GMT ·
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    debh2u: RT @bhwilkoff: Session wiki page http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/1117 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 10:53 AM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: Session wiki page http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/1117 #tie09 #forevertie09

    Jun 23, 2009 05:55 AM GMT ·
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    bhwilkoff: Creating a hashtag for my session tomorrow at #tie09. Come and Join in the session with #forevertie09

    • Jun 23, 2009 05:54 AM GMT ·
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    Communal living

    May 10, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

    I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
    and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
    they are saving up to buy a house.
     
    For many years I have written about online communities as being an
    essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
    close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
    learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
     
    Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
    now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
    from our community and what my community expects of me.
     
    The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
    need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
    attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
    twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
    people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
    learning activity with.
     
    I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
    not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
    online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
    I would like.
     
    Or, to put it another way:
     
    The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
    work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
    little creepier than I wanted.)

    Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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    I won’t buy anything that only does one thing

    May 3, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

    I have been thinking a lot about this recently: I don’t want anything to do with a device that only does what it was advertised to do. It is something that I have slowly realized as over he last few years as I went through the experience of using a Smart Board, CPS clicker system, an iPod touch and an Apple TV. The two former products are meant to do one thing well. They are advertised specifically for educational purposes, and they work. But the two latter products are meant to do anything that the community makes them do, and they are not specifically marketed as educational components.
     
    The latter products I keep on coming back to because they can do more and more as the community supports future development, and I guess that this is the difference between products I want to use and ones I don’t. The ones I care to use for education, are the ones with built in communities. They are the ones that get pushed to their full potential.
     
    So I guess what I am saying is that if I am ever put in change of large purchasing decisions for a district or school, I will be choosing to purchase and support products that connect together and have a community surrouning them.
     
    For example: I am right now using my iPod touch with an open source program called boxee (remote on the touch and the full program on the Apple TV) that is a full fledged media center in order to watch powerful TED talks in high definition on my TV using WiFi to stream the content. It is all connected.
     
    Shouldn’t it always be this way?
     
    (As an aside, I realize that this example is filled with apple products. I don’t believe that apple has a monopoly on connectedness or hackability, it happens that this is the community that I associate with most easily. I would actually love to hear about other devices that you keep on coming back to because they increase in value over time.)
     
    Sent from my iPod

    Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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    Truth in advertising…

    Apr 19, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

    I have had quite a few people follow me on twitter recently that weren’t exactly people. They were organizations and schools. They were large groups of people that all somehow are tweeting with the same account. This, is a little unsettling to me and I’m not sure why.
     
    I guess it is partially because I believe it is a little less than genuine to have a single voice represent an entire entity. I also believe that many groups are joining twitter simply to advertise that they are on twitter. This is even less genuine.
     
    To me, an organization should encourage all of it’s members to become a part of a learning network. It should ask all of it’s employees to have heir own voices and then stream them all into a single place. The school should aggregate the conversation about learning in their space, not merely give updates as to the merits of their latest program changes.
     
    You raise the level or discourse about any topic by giving that discourse an official channel. By asking all participants in an organization to tweet on behalf of that organization, you can actually find the pulse of what is going on. Which is, after all, the major goal of Twitter.
     
    Sent from my iPod

    Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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    The cost of not doing anything…

    Apr 18, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

    I was in a great meeting this week where we were considering whether
    or not to go ahead with a full scale implimentation of the Moodle LMS
    for assessment purposes in our district. It was a great meeting not
    because of the topic but the way it was being handled.
     
    We were talking about the absolute costs of an open source LMS and of
    staying with a custom-built assmessment solution. We were really
    looking for a venn diagram moment when one of the curriculum and
    instruction representatives said something really smart: “There is a
    cost to not doing anything as well. It may not be a dollar cost, but
    it will cost the teachers the ability to know more about their kids’
    knowledge and it will cost the kids some learning opportunities.”
    (Paraphrased by me.)
     
    Too often we do not think about the cost of doing nothing or of doing
    things too slowly. Does appathy in the face of huge choices cost our
    kids the best learning years of their lives?
     
    So, it got me thinking: What are the costs of doing nothing (or doing
    very little) to change school?
     
    Share an idea if this makes you think as much as it has made me.

    Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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