Browsing articles tagged with " public"

Strategic vs. Slow

Dec 16, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  2 Comments

Am I just imagining things, or are more and more educators using the term “strategic” when they want to move slowly? Since when does having a strategy mean that there is no hope for reason to feel urgency.
 
I believe in research and I believe in planning, but these things do not seem to have anything to do with how quickly you can get things done.
 
I have had major conversations about making sure that everyone is on the same page before we move ahead with an initiative or roll out a new tool. While I seem to agree in principle, I think it is much more about our wish for everyone to be great, rather than it is based in reality. In reality, you will never have everyone on the same page. In reality, you wouldn’t want all teachers to be doing the same things in their classroom, only reaching the same kids. Why shouldn’t we let the truly exceptional work and ideas be what they can be? Why shouldn’t we run with a great, well thought out proposal, even if it doesn’t fit in with a strategy of standing still.
 
Now, I am not interested in only my ideas. I am not so egotistical to believe that I have a monopoly on change. However, it is my contention that the glacial pace of educational reform is not in place because of a lack of good ideas, but rather, it exists because of a lack of urgency.
 
How do we show the immediacy of how powerful connected learning is? How do we make sure that all of what we say has an overwhelming sense of need? I love the direction that our schools are headed, but I worry that we are going to strategize ourselves out of options for saving public education and reaching our kids. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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“Hope Online” Professional Development 11.14.08

Nov 14, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

Do Not turn off your cell phones and laptops.
If you have them, use them.

(Throughout this workshop, you can ask questions via text message by texting hopeonline and your question to 41411. You can also add to our questions without a cell phone by going to http://www.textmarks.com/HOPEONLINE)

I am not here today in order to introduce to you a brand new initiative that will require extensive amounts of training and make your life busier before you see any real benefit. I am also not here today to say that there is any one tool or strategy for making the ways in which you work actually work.

Rather, I am here to ask you a lot of questions, mostly about what you are spending the most time with in your job. What are those things that take away from what you would rather be doing, the rewarding experiences of working with kids and other adults who are working with kids.

In order to do this, let’s get one thing straight. Information is infinite. Attention is finite.

You gather a seemingly insurmountable amount of information every single day from e-mails, voicemails, web sites, student data paperwork and many other sources. It can be even more daunting to think that there is more information out there about how to organize that information. With your attention stretched so thin, it is hard to think that there are ways of getting any of it back. We are still going to try, and for the most part, we are going to look at solutions that are already in your workflow.

Well, I would like to present you with a few possibilities for a different way of organizing information.

The first is I would like to use my voice to listen to my e-mail, create e-mail, put an event on my calendar, send myself a reminder, create a text, and post to my blog. While this service has a name, I would much rather you think about the strategies that I am using in order to create more time for other things. Because I am able to use my voice to do these things, I can make efficient use of my drive time (of which, there is a lot).

Dial2Do – A way to use your voice to get things done on your cell phone.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to next highlight the use of short messages to capture information. Many times, I need to be able to capture information from myself and others, but there is no time in order to send out an e-mail. I need to be able to capture it now. So I send a text message to a service that aggregates the information for me and for everyone else who I invite:

TextMarks – A way to both capture information and share information through SMS.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I use e-mail a lot. Well, perhaps that is an understatement. I am available by e-mail about 20 hours of any given day. With that in mind, I would like to be able to use e-mail in order aggregate archive the most important things that I am sending out. I want to be able to attach anything I want and have the archive understand it.

Posterous – The e-mail blog that don’t even have to sign up for.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Now, if I am on my computer and I want to capture information on a topic. I want to capture it as I am doing my research, not go back afterwards and document what is going on. I want to be able to simply highlight text and pictures and have them all simply show up in a webpage that I can e-mail to someone or share with somone for them to add to.

Google Notebook – Collect text, pictures, and movies from webpages in order to be shared later with others.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Well, what if I want to show others exactly where to go on a webpage using my voice. I would like to guide people through a series of webpages that I think are important. I want to do this in less than 5 mintues too.

FlowGram - Create a screencast of webpages and archive it to send to others.

An example of using this trategy to create something.

Now I would like you to figure out what you would like to be able to do in terms of aggregating and storing information. Brainstorm things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you gather information now and how you would like to change that to be less attention heavy and more information heavy.

Now that we have all of our information gathered and stored, we will want to collaborate and talk about that information. The easiest way to do that is to meet face-to-face, but for much of the time, that requires significant driving and serious scheduling.

So, I want to come together with a few others to talk something out. I want to be able to see, hear, and write with them. I don’t want to have to set up log in to anything. I just want to hit a power button.

Tokbox – Always on Video Conferencing.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to work on the same spreadsheet with someone else so that I don’t have to send e-mails of the same document back and forth and get lost in the versioning. I would also like to be able to have information be entered into the spreadsheet via a form that others can fill out so that I don’t have to do as much data processing tasks.

Google Docs – A truly collaborative version of office

An example of using this strategy to create something.

NaNoWriMo(2)

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Humor olco5

Finally, I really want all of this stuff to be accessible in one place. I would really like to not have to remember exactly what all of these sites are. I just want one place to go to where it makes sense to find all of these things. Almost like a well-maintained professional development environment for hope.

Our IQity classroom - A one stop shop for learning tools, collaboration, and further professional development.

Now I would like you to figure out what YOU want collaboration to look like at Hope. Brainstorm
things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you collaborate now and how you would like to change that to be less
attention heavy and more information heavy.

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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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Live Blogging With AHS students.

Jan 28, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  13 Comments

On
Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to some of the most
unique voices in the discussion over Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.
These voices did not come from an “expert” being paid thousands of
dollars for a breakfast engagement. They did not come from a literary
analyst who picked apart Pink’s prose with perfect clarity and wit.
They came from Arapahoe high school students that were eager to create a conversation, expansive and intense. Check out the discourse for yourselves.

We
took a look at one of Pink’s chapters specifically: Story. I especially
liked how the conversation evolved over the course of the hour that we
blogged. It seemed to start from a place of pure story, then it evolved
into something about the future of the workplace. Then we got very
theoretical. We started talking about how story can influence memory
and how memory influences story. Even though Pink devotes quite a bit
of time to this idea, I really like the way the students were able to
incorporate it into their thinking. It really got me to start
reflecting on what the purpose of crafting learning environments can
be.

If we create an environment that is ripe enough to learn
within then we are creating an experience; we are crafting the story of
that learning. In turn that learning becomes a memory, one that will be
told over and over as a story if it is good enough. So, in truth, we
are trying to create learning memories for students, ones that they
will hold onto long after they have forgotten the names of their
classmates or what day of the week it was on. We want to create
memories that are so lasting that the events take on mythical
proportions, they start living on as stories of their own.

Is
there a way of analyzing the ways in which we tell stories about our
high school experience to our friends from that time period? Is there a
way to know whether or not those experiences were learning based or
extraneous (not that they were bad things, mind you)? My question to
those students, and to anyone who reads this blog is what is a learning
memory that you have? What is the one experience in an authentic
learning environment that you will never be able to forget?

(Special thanks to Karl Fisch for setting up this amazing opportunity. More of this kind of collaboration and conversation is needed desperately.)

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The Social Networks of Tragedies

Dec 18, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
The Social Networks of Tragedies Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (197)

July 05, 2007 07:52PM

 

This podcast is pretty heavy:
I was in Osawatomie, KS for the 4th of July. It flooded earlier in the week, and my sister-in-law lost her car and her apartment due to this natural disaster. This event really got me thinking about how we can use the technology that our schools provide (especially in 1:1 programs) in order to create social networks for a community. I hope that we can start putting together ideas like Steve Hargadon’s Public Web Stations (link below) in non-crisis times. If you have any ideas about how to do this, please shoot me an e-mail at benwilkoff@gmail.com
I am also interested in knowing if you would rather I don’t include links and pictures with my podcast, but rather simply upload the mp3 file. If you have an opinion either way, please post a comment on this podcast.
Show Notes:

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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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Why do I want to work here?

Jul 17, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic

Well, this is the official podcast about my interview with Littleton Public Schools. Although I was passionate and had a great experience in the interview, I was not offered the job. That made my decision to leave the classroom much easier. I still think that this podcast is relevant to anyone else who is thinking about leaving the classroom. I also outline the idea that passion and vision are the two elements that will allow you to progress professionally and personally. I think that I will continue to explore these ideas in the classroom next year, and I am extatic that I will have one more year to impliment all of the ideas from this podcast into my practice.

Show Notes:

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The Social Networks of Tragedies

Jul 6, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
This podcast is pretty heavy:

I was in Osawatomie, KS for the 4th of July. It flooded earlier in the week, and my sister-in-law lost her car and her apartment due to this natural disaster. This event really got me thinking about how we can use the technology that our schools provide (especially in 1:1 programs) in order to create social networks for a community. I hope that we can start putting together ideas like Steve Hargadon’s Public Web Stations (link below) in non-crisis times. If you have any ideas about how to do this, please shoot me an e-mail at benwilkoff@gmail.com

I am also interested in knowing if you would rather I don’t include links and pictures with my podcast, but rather simply upload the mp3 file. If you have an opinion either way, please post a comment on this podcast.

Show Notes:

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The Would-Be School 2.0 Advocates

May 6, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
The podcast episode is based upon the idea that teachers will listen to someone who has a lot of experience teaching without technology and then stumbled upon the effectiveness and authenticity of technology and became an advocate for change. They will not listen to someone who grew up with technology, and for who it naturally comes to. They need “one of their own kind” to bring them on board with the School 2.0 movement.

I also decide that we need a School 2.0 plank in the 2008 presidential election. No matter who wins, I want our commander and chief constantly thinking about how technology can influence learning in public schools across the nation.

Show Notes:

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The Great Remix Debate

Mar 28, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
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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