Question 95 of 365: What do teams solve?

Groups seem to be the holy grail of social networks. From Linked-in groups to the new Facebook communities to the millions of people self-organizing in Ning networks, groups have become the default setting for communication and collaboration. When you are in doubt about the effectiveness of your web application, throw groups in, and you will have a winner. When there is nothing left to hang your hat on, set up a team that will send out e-mails to everyone multiple times a day.

And it makes sense. People want to organize around an idea. They want to set themselves up to answer the problems that a single set of people have. Where it all goes wrong is that people start to believe that by simply setting up a team, they have solved something significant. They work so hard to organize themselves that the energy for action just isn’t there. Even in the ease of grouping within a hashtag, very little seems to be done that isn’t in the effort of maintaining the grouping rather than moving it forward.

Teams are meant to change, to be modified, to evolve. And yet, we are creating teams and groups online that have no ability to become something different than what they once were. Once you are a “fan”, the group doesn’t change. Once you are a member of a Linked-in group, the members are mostly stagnant. And that is sad.

I want teams with iterations. I want the ability to change the purpose for any given group that I am within. Restating our hypothesis continually is the only way that I know to create rather than persist. And that is why Friendster is dead. That is why Ning networks grow and die. It is why people can leave behind entire bodies of work online when they are no longer interested in having those same old conversations.

So, why not let groups evolve. Why not allow ideas to branch naturally, one from another until you are working with only the people that are as invested as you are in solving the problem at hand. Why does the process of self-selection have to be the last democratic act that you can contribute to a group?

Here is what I am proposing:

• Self-select into a group.
• State your bias and interest in associating with the group.
• Establish a great schism within the group because of either disagreements, reevaluation of needs, or interest in solving different problems.
• Split groups, rename both, and reestablish bias and interest for the new groups.

With this in mind, teams never become bloated. Lurkers don’t outweigh participants. People aren’t cc’d because they exist, they are informed for consent in decisions. People have ownership in their group, because they are continually in the process of remaking it. They need it, because it needs them to thrive.

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Truth in advertising…

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

A question

This is a really interesting question.

First, if you are looking for engaging videos to show for professional development, I would look here:
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/resources/videos-for-pd/

As for introducing the subject of engaging students with technology, I think that you would really have to find a good itch that you think all of the teachers want to scratch. What is the one thing that they can do with technology and students that they couldn't do before? Why should they care about technology?

Places like http://classroom20.com, or http://supportblogging.com, or even something as specific as http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/ would work well to figure out just how deep the topic goes with your teachers.

As for an article, I like http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=94, many of the posts from http://weblogg-ed.com, or any of the presentations at slideshare about educational technology.

If you are really interested in starting this conversation, I would recommend that you start up a discussion group over at Google Groups or set up a wiki for this purpose. Or, simply get an e-mail group going if that is where your teachers are at. Creating an avenue for this kind of conversation is the only way to make it last. Let me know where you want to go from here. Creating change is not an easy business.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

What does support look like in School 2.0?

Support is such an essential part of education, but many of us who are looking ahead to a technologically rich educational experience sometimes forget this. Because we are savvy, we expect others (including our students) to be savvy. I created this podcast in order to flesh out a few of the ways that we can support teachers who want to transition to School 2.0. The basic points that I came up with were:
1. All teachers need an aggregator starter pack.
2. School 2.0 must be framed in terms (and using tools) that most teachers understand.
3. Small groups of teachers must conduct relevant research within the specific school before many teachers will buy in.
4. School 1.0 teachers should engage in assessing School 2.0 products from the small group’s classrooms as a way of transitioning into a more collaborative model.

I have also decided to start including the chapter information and links as part of the show notes for those of you who do not have access to a podcatcher that recognizes enhanced podcasts.

# 00:00:00: Outdated Paper?
Dave Cormier’s Blog (http://www.davecormier.com/edblog/)

# 00:02:04: How does support look in School 2.0?
School 2.0 Wiki (http://school20.wikispaces.com)

# 00:04:20: An Aggregator Starter Pack
Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com)

# 00:06:16: RSS as Support
xFruits (http://www.xfruits.com)

# 00:08:32: Framing collaboration
Ourtenwords.org (http://www.ourtenwords.org)

# 00:12:20: Collaboration Take 2
# 00:13:35: Supporting Relevant Research
Terry Freedman (http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/db/web2/)

# 00:15:16: Flat Classroom Assessment
The Flatclassroom Project Wiki (http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com)

# 00:16:50: Summary and Conclusion
My blog (http://yongesonne.edublogs.org)

The Internet as Utopia

This was a discussion I had with my 8th graders about how the Internet could be used as a vehicle for creating a utopia in their everyday lives. I was truly surprised and intrigued by some of their responses. Many of the students believe that the internet is a “0.” Meaning that there are just as many bad things on the internet as there are good. One student also identified the three most influential groups for his (and other young people’s) life: The Governement, Celebrities, and The Internet. Another student proposed splitting the internet into different sections, so that no one who was looking for educational materials would be able to stumble upon to pornography and misinformation.

I am encouraged by my kids’ ability to think so abstractly on this subject, but I am disheartened to find out that so many of my students hold such a bleak look of the most amazing resource of our time. I wonder if each of them were immersed in a School 2.0 experience they would feel the same way.