What I’m Learning: Creattica

I am so rediculously inspired by all of the designs on this site. This and Dribble make me want to stop whatever I’m doing and do site designs or make something new. I like that.

About Creattica – Creattica:

“About Creattica

Creattica is a gallery of great design and inspirational imagery. Anyone can submit their work for consideration and voting on items is open to one and all. The best work is accepted and featured in the gallery which receives thousands of visitors every day.

To start submitting your work simply create an account and then go to the Submit Form.Submissions take up to a few days to review depending on the volume of work coming in. To vote on other people’s work you’ll also need an account.

We hope you enjoy the site and find the inspiration to make some brilliant work of your own. And when you do, don’t forget to submit it to creattica!”

Question 99 of 365: What are we trying to prove?

I just had one of the best quiches I have ever tasted. It seemed to be puffed perfectly and filled with the most incredible egg and cheese concoction. I had my laptop out, but I really was only focused on enjoying the quiche. It looked like a crown, majestic and confident. I savored the quiche for the few minutes while I waited to meet with a man who could potentially help design and implement Open Spokes with our original vision.

The quiche proved its worth to me in a few seconds, and yet, it took Patrick and myself an entire hour to prove our worth to one another. We started with small talk, a little bit of personal history and shared knowledge about his wife (the connection that made this meeting possible). Then we dove right into pitching to one another from our different perspectives.

I was trying to pitch him on the idea of collaboratively answering questions through video and he was trying to pitch me on the idea that 3/4 of a degree in Computer Science was more than enough to work on the project, considering all of the other things that has done.

Proving ourselves wasn’t exactly a stated exercise, but it was pretty clear from the first few words that it is exactly what were working toward. I could see in his eyes that he was interested, and I kept on playing with that interest. I kept on trying to figure out just what he wanted to get out of working on Open Spokes. I kept trying to probe on exactly what he believed was of value in web development and in life. The hour was well spent because we did take the time to prove to one another that we could potentially have value to each other. We are now starting down the path of working with one another, but now what are we trying to prove?

After initially proving our worth to an institution or a person, what is our responsibility in continuing to prove our worth? Should we be proving other things as well in our relationships and our jobs? Is it possible that we start trying to proving that we are more than we claim to be once we have proven valuable enough to keep around?

When we prove our worth, we are claiming to be something. We are stating, for the record, that there are certain truths about who we are and what we can offer. And from that moment forward, we are trying to convince the people and institutions that initially put faith in us that we are more than that. We start trying to explore exactly what is possible given the limits of what we have claimed, and then we start to build out past those limits. We do this because we don’t want to be typecast. We do this because we know that to maintain the value that we claim, we must start meeting the value that others will need in the future.

If we become satisfied with what we have proven and what we have claimed to be, we will make ourselves obsolete in the process. We will continue to have that same value, but because others will shift their needs, we will become less valuable.

It isn’t that we need to continually prove our worth on the things that we said to start off the relationship. There is a level of trust that is build upon that initial proof. Instead, we must prove that we don’t have a limit to what we are worth. We will continue to be interesting and engaging. We will continue to be someone to connect with on the new things happening within an organization or a single relationship.

And that is why my wife is the most important person in my life. She is continually figuring out news ways to be of value in whatever I decide to pursue. She is the subtle pressure that I need to continue to think and imagine new projects and execute the ones that I already have going. She is the time away from those same projects when I rub her feet and sit on the couch to watch a Dexter marathon. The proves herself every day without even having to think about it because she is meeting me half way on everything we do together.

While I don’t need another wife or another relationship like a marriage, I want all of my working and community relationships to be this dynamic. I want people to constantly prove their worth to me, and I want to do the same for them. I want the moments that we have together to be filled with trying to see the needs that we have for one another and figuring out ways to fill them.

I want the companies and products that I interact with to see my worth and to know their own, and to never be satisfied with either set. I want to never feel taken for granted and I want them never feel that from me. I want interactive relationships that evolve over time, continually growing and contracting to meet my current interests and priorities. If all relationships were proven in this way, I wouldn’t have to agonize over where I stood in any one of them. I would never again have to push forward without the knowledge that I have a partner that is looking for give and take.

So, I’m glad I found it today, and I will continue to look for both quiche and people that I can have this kind of relationship with.

Question 70 of 365: How far will serious take us?

When I look at what goes viral, what memes consist of, or even what I happen to click on within my twitter stream; there is always an element of humor found within. Not all of them are laugh out loud funny, but in the way that they tickle my brain or make me think differently, they are funny. They are novel and different, incongruent with the rest of my day. That is why I am drawn to them on a regular basis.

That is why OKGO’s new video has seen 7 million views.

It is the reason why the word FAIL has come to prominence.

It is why Four Square is starting to matter for a great number of people.

All of these things have a huge element of play in them, and even though I am not a meme or virality expert, I can still spot something that will “blow up” quite easily (or at least has the capacity to do so). If something is humorous, novel, memorable, and doesn’t require a lot of effort to consume it will have the power to be passed around at length by the horde of folks trolling the internet for such things (which is a great many of us).

The problem I am having is that on the whole, I am a pretty serious person. The work that I do is pretty serious. It may be novel to some, but it certainly follows a tradition and isn’t really breaking with others’ daily existence enough to warrant being “passed on.” While some may remember what I do, if I stopped blogging or working on my own projects, there would be very few who would morn the loss of my voice in the conversation. And, in general, many of the things I do take a good deal of time to understand or grapple with. Not by design, but because I don’t have the time to continue drafting on each idea to make it palatable to everyone.

I have no doubt that these questions will not be the next meme. And yet, I am serious and methodical about how I do them. I think them through and get great joy from the act of asking and answering big questions.

Yet, how far will that take me? How far will these ideas reach if I can’t put them together into a package that allows for 7 million views?

And even more pessimistically, how far will being serious and complex take our values and our ideas about business, about education, and about networks? If we cannot do our work in such a way that garners mass support, how do we hope to get leaders elected or get skeptics to even come into the conversation. I think that it may be time for people who are not as serious, and who can design works of pop art or novel systems that cause people to jump on bandwagons to reengineer the ideas we grapple with on a daily basis.

Where are the education designers (real design, with an eye for virality)?

Where are the agile business practice advocates (ones who can set up mobile systems for engagement that are better than discussion forums)?

Where are those that can break through the filters that everyone has for their everyday life?

And to a certain extent, the answers are that we are them or we must become them. We must at least try to make our ideas work on a larger scale. We must design objects that can be passed around outside of our small communities. We must be humorous and novel in our approach. And if that is too much to ask, a certain cleverness will suffice.

And I do realize that this will take a lot of time and that there is a place for being serious and academic and driven by the community of thinkers rather than an external community. But, if we believe that even one of our ideas is needed to make the world a better place, we owe it to the idea to provide a package that makes sense to everyone else. We owe it to ourselves to not let ego and esoteric discourse get in the way. We owe it to one another to make sure that what goes viral has some of what we are thinking about embedded into it.

At least at this very moment, I think so.

SpeedGeek Learning Version .1

LiC Podcast: Design with Forever in Mind Archive

Design with Forever in Mind [ 34:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (989)

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:

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:

• Backup twitter with Tweettake

Exit Plan for Google Docs:

• Google Docs Download GreaseMonkey Script

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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New Responsibility

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

Piloting you!

I had a lot of conversation today about pilot initiatives within a
larger institution. it seems as though in each project that I take
part in, there is reason enough to get a small group of (semi)
dedicated people together who will try something out and report back
on their success. Whether that is moodle, gmail, google sites, dimdim,
or ning; it seems as though there is never enough at stake to require
all users to jump on board initially. While this is good in a lot of
ways: less kicking and screaming, learning from mistakes with small
group is better, and less chance of falling flat on your face with
everyone watching. But, it is bad in many as well: no ensuring that
the pilot will go further, no urgency in rolling out to everyone, and
all pilots are basically representations of the person who creates
them.
 
This last point is what I would like to focus this post on. What I am
finding as I do more pilot initiatives is that I am trying to model
the pilot on my own practice and workflow. I am taking what I feel is
valuable and important and I am saying that others should feel the
same way. At the end of the day, I am piloting a larger and more
unwieldy version of me.
 
While it is flattering that others would want to help beta test me, I
am not totally sure how smart it is. I am not a typical user of almost
anything. I want to break things open and push them to do what I
envision, not what they were intended for. While I may have a good eye
for what others may need, I need people who aren’t using tools in such
ways to help design the pilots too.
 
I guess what I am trying to say is that I cannot pilot myself if I
want the pilot to actually do what it is supposed to: test whether or
not something will work for everyone. But, how do I ask those who are
less willing to try new things to become a part of a pilot. How do I
ensure that all voices are heard so that when things do go live, the
backlash from these users isn’t fierce enough to shut it down?
 
Easy question, right?

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Why don’t our students create the Feltron report every year?

When I think about all of the ways in which students are measured and monitored, it strikes me that very little of the measuring is being done by the students themselves. Now, I know that others have written on this topic more than I have, but as I was reading through Dan Meyer’s second annual contest for designing of annual reports, I realized that he was doing all of the things that I wished my students would do. I wish my students would collect all of the things that they had done and learned over the course of the year and then construct a report that reflected exactly what they had accomplished. This would not merely be a reflection exercise based upon an e-portfolio, it would be a way for students to prove that they really could quantify their learning.

Rather than us having to assess their learning and turn it into numbers, let’s ask them to do it. Let’s give them the tools and time to create something as beautiful as the Feltron Report. Let’s guide them through the process of figuring out how to make learning concrete. Let’s truly have an alternative to the one sheet for CSAP results as the easiest and most clear representation of the student’s learning.

For examples of great Annual reports, I turn to Dan’s contest from last year. Arthus (who sadly no longer blogs), is a student who was able to visualize his learning:

The level of articulation it takes to construct something truly reflective of a year’s worth of learning is immense. If we start teaching this skill to our children early on, I can’t imagine what they will be able to express.

So, my questions for this are as follows:

1. Is anyone doing this contest with students?
2. What would you have them collect data on throughout the year if you were going to do this (and where would you track it)?
3. What tools would be the easiest to have them express their learning?
4. How could you help them to design their reports so that they are not simple graphs of number of blog posts, etc?
5. What added reflection would you have them do upon completion of this activity?
6. Where would you post them?
7. When would you actually have them do this (end of the year, first of the year, throughout the year)?

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.

links for 2007-11-27

• Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
  An amazing resource for logical fallacies.
  (tags: fallacies debate)
• Free WordPress Themes – Kate’s Theme Viewer
  An enormous amount of great wordpress themes.
  (tags: wordpress themes WebDesign Templates)