Browsing articles tagged with " choice"

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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New Responsibility

Apr 12, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

I was thinking about waiting until I got a little further into the
project to start blogging about it, but since I made the choice to
start blogging daily, I have really found that this forum let’s me
think through all of the things that I need to.
 
So the new responsibility is this: I have been put in charge of
administrating multiple moodle installations in our district. The
reason why this new charge I have been given is so strange to me is
that up until 2 months ago, the only “official” moodle installation in
our district was at a high school in parker, which I had little to do
with.
 
 The reason for the shift is nothing short of an economic and
pedagogical perfect storm. Our district had slowly been building the
capacity for more and more teachers to start asking for a way of
teaching and engaging with their students online, and with the failure
of our bond election, the only choice for an LMS was to have someone
who was already working in open source to implement and support a
solution like moodle.
 
The best part is, however, that no one I have talked to thinks that we
are settling for something. From all of the initial conversations, all
stakeholders believe that professional development, online learning,
and blended learning fit well within a vision of moodle that includes
outside assessments and google apps for communication.
 
I guess the only reason for this post is to ask for advice. If you
were asked to design and implement learning environments for an online
school, a professional development program, and a blended model
(online and in centers/schools) using moodle, what would you make sure
to do (or not do)?
 
While I have a definite vision for the way forward, I am not the
smartest person in the room (considering that I have no idea how big
this room is). I want to know more… Always more.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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Almost the same.

Feb 16, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
Drupal
Image via Wikipedia

Whenever I see somone talk about their brand new LMS, CMS, or collaborative learning product, I tend to be very skeptical. No matter how good it is or how open the architecture is, if it doesn’t have the community built around it, it isn’t worth it. Drupal isn’t powerful because it has so much flexibility to expand into any organization, it is powerful because of the community that supports every single module that is created. Google docs isn’t powerful because of how much collaboration can happen when you share a document, it is powerful because of all of the people at Google and around the world that are using the product and thinking of new uses for it.

I don’t need to see a demo or know how well integrated with our other systems it is. I just want to know who will be there when it breaks. I want to see the wiki where I can add to the learning that I am a part of. I want to know the people in the forum. I want to believe that the learning product I am using will be there tomorrow, not because of how well the company is selling it, but because the community invests enough in it to make sure that it grows and becomes better each day.

So, while I will check out this “open source product”, I am not going to hold my breath because I don’t know the community, because my network hasn’t mentioned it (although, other networks have apparently). No product is worth a lack of community (even blackboard has a community around it, even if it does seem to be self-loathing). So, while I will be open to using something less than community-driven  if I have to, I will say to you, it is only almost the same as a well supported open resource, almost.

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A list of tags…

Jan 5, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

The EdTechTalk delicious site has a wealth of relevent tags. It has so many in fact, that it may be THE resource for tags about Educational Technology and learning in general. I love being able to select different tags and find out what other people are categorizing within this rather large community. However, what if you wanted to use those tags somewhere else? What if you wanted to add those tags to the choices in your own blog or search according to those terms?

What if you wanted to categorize all of your ideas according to what the community has deemed worthy of their time? Well, I did want to do that. I wanted to use the common tags of our community, so I have made all of the tags in EdTechTalk (at least up until today) into a comma separated file for easy import into anything I would like to use them for.

Here is the file: edtechtalk-tags

Pedagogical implication: I think that it really makes sense for us to start using the same words to talk about learning. Coming together on a group of tags that we would like to use for aggregation purposes is something that we have neglected too long. The community is far enough along to put get into a discussion about just where we want our folksonomies to go. We need to take ownership of terms like elearning and make them more specific. We also should be teaching our students to come together on terms to use so that all of their work can not only be found later, but also grouped according to topic, theme, or even skill level.

Think about if we had a way to group student work according to a self-reflected score (of effort, of achievement, etc.). What if we could use exemplars and organize them according to the tags that they have self-selected.

Where else should we go with our community of tags?

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Guest Teaching 12.05.08

Dec 5, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

Cores 1-4:

  1. Discuss-on:
  2. Brainstorm ways in which you would like to “reframe” A Christmas Carol:
  4. Well, let’s talk about how we will be reframing A Christmas Carol using animation and microblogging.
  5. First, XtraNormal will allow us to completely create the scene, choose the characters and their actions, and even add background music, all without having to record a single video frame or sound file. Let’s take a look.
  6. Next, Edmodo will allow us to have some conversation around what we are creating and learning. It will allow us to all think out loud without having our thoughts become too entangled (or having it get deafeningly loud in here). It is the way that we will honor the process of creation and not just the product at the end.
  7. The conventions of microblogging are as follows:
  • Write down exactly what you are choosing to do with your project (which scene you are using, which characters, etc.)
  • Write down why you are making the choices you are making (why put Scrooge on a beach, etc)
  • Write down questions that you have about your project (why is Scrooge so angry; does he have to be in our reframed version?)
  • Reply as much as you can to others.

As for the requirements for the movie, please use the following guidelines:

  • Have no fewer than 5 dialog exchanges.
  • Do not copy and paste words from the book/play. Rethink the dialog so that it is appropriate for the scene that you have created.
  • Block out the entire scene before you click Action!
  • Don’t forget to have tell your microblogger what you are thinking.
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    CAGT 2008: Technology and Community

    Oct 10, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

    Presentation (both live and PowerPoint):

    Technology And Community

    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

    Cell Phone Back Channel and Idea Network:

    Audio Reflections:

    Subscribe Free Add to my Page

    Topics and Links from the presentation:

    1. Make the Community Visible
    2. Make the Community Inclusive
    3. Make the Community Public
    4. Make the Community Always-On
    5. Make the Community Lasting
    6. Tending your community
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    Online Learning and Web 2.0: OL Teach 2008 (Secondary)

    Aug 5, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment
    Online learning is not about computers, the internet, or learning from home. It is not about giving kids a different educational option, or even leveraging the power of digital natives. It is my belief that the goal of online learning is to make learning ubiquitous. It is about pushing our education to include everything, from the context of the everyday to the workflow of original thought. This presentation aims to explore this notion of ubiquitous learning. Please, push back at these ideas, it is the only way they will get any better.

    The Presentation:

    Secondary (OL Teach – Take 2)

    The Collaborative Podcast:

    The OL Teach Text Messages:

    Get your own at TextMarks!

    The Backchannel and Moderated Discussion:

    The Voicethread for Sharing Ideas:

    The Links for further learning:
    Preserve the learning links:

    Creation as norm links:


    Authenticity as expectation links:

    Please feel free to leave comments or questions (video, audio, and text) on this blog post, you can also reach me by e-mail at ben@learningischange.com.
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    Online Learning and Web 2.0: OL Teach 2008 (Elementary)

    Aug 4, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
    Online learning is not about computers, the internet, or learning from home. It is not about giving kids a different educational option, or even leveraging the power of digital natives. It is my belief that the goal of online learning is to make learning ubiquitous. It is about pushing our education to include everything, from the context of the everyday to the workflow of original thought. This presentation aims to explore this notion of ubiquitous learning. Please, push back at these ideas, it is the only way they will get any better.

    The Presentation:

    Elementary OL Teach

    The Collaborative Podcast:

    The OL Teach Text Messages:

    Get your own at TextMarks!

    The Backchannel and Moderated Discussion:

    The Voicethread for Sharing Ideas:

    The Links for further learning:
    Preserve the learning links:

    Creation as norm links:


    Authenticity as expectation links:

    Please feel free to leave comments or questions (video, audio, and text) on this blog post, you can also reach me by e-mail at ben@learningischange.com.
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    Community requires tending.

    Apr 11, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  4 Comments

    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.

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    The Great Remix Debate

    Dec 18, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
    The Great Remix Debate Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (142)

    March 28, 2007 04:56AM

     

    I give all of the credit for this podcast to my amazing students. They were the ones that kept a debate on intellectual property, remixing, and mash-ups going for nearly thirty minutes. They were the ones that came up with the amazing examples to support their points. They were also the ones to inspire many thoughts on creating rules for how we use content in the classroom. I am now convinced that each classroom of students should decide for themselves just what they want to be done with their content. Should teachers be able to use it for next year’s class? Should teachers remix their content into more polished work? We need to be asking the students to come up with what their own boundaries for intellectual property are, and we need to be teaching them where the boundaries are drawn already. I have decided to split this podcast up into about 40 chapters because that is how many different ideas were thrown around (mostly by different students). I have attached each student’s blog to the chapters in which they spoke. The one request I have is that you comment on this post and tell us which side won the debate. (Although, I’m sure my students wouldn’t mind if you commented on some of their blog posts either.)

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