Create your own real-time SMS to Twitter service!

For the past month I have been trying to figure out an elegant way of having an entire audience all tweet to the same account using text messaging on their phones. While I can think of a good number of reasons to want to do this, my main concern was in creating a twitter backchannel for presentations that anyone could participate in, regardless of their experience with twitter or backchanneling. I believe in the power of the audience and I want them to be able to ask questions and make comments on what is going on. I also thought it would be quite powerful to show people just how easy it is to harness the technology that most of us carry around in our pockets.

So without further ado, here is how you can give anyone a single number to send an SMS to and have it post to twitter on the account of your choosing.

Step 1: Sign up for a new twitter account using the gmail address+ feature.

While you may think having a bunch of people posting to your twitter account would provide you with a bunch of content, it is a really bad idea to let just anyone in the audience to put words in your mouth.

So, go to twitter and sign up for a new account, but instead of having to have a different e-mail address, all you need to do is to use YourGmailUserName+YourKeyword@gmail.com. This will still send all follower e-mails and direct messages to your Gmail account, but it will allow you to filter it out if you don’t want to receive any of it.

Here is what that looks like:

Step 2: Go into your Google Voice Account and turn on SMS forwarding to e-mail, which is a checkbox in Settings in the SMS and Voicemail tab (if you don’t have a Google Voice account, let me know, I have a few invites). It looks like this:

Step 3: Go into your Gmail and set up a filter account with the following parameters:

Subject: “SMS from” (without quotes)

Has the words: (whatever you want your keyword to be. I was using the twitter account name as a hashtag, so mine is SMStoTW)

Doesn’t have: (you can filter out any text message with a swear word or any words that you think shouldn’t be sent to the twitter account… this is a feature that I am really excited about)

It looks like this:

Then, click next step and have the filter put the message automatically in the archive as well as forward it to a YourKEyword@twittermail.com address, like so:

Step 4: Tie Twittermail to your Twitter account by going to http://twittercounter.com and clicking the “Who are you on Twitter?” link in the top right corner and then allowing it to access your new twitter account (make sure you are logged in as your new account and not your public account here). It looks like this:

Step 5: Change the twittermail address to be your keyword by clicking in the twittermail settings, typing in your keyword, and saving the settings. Like so:

If you did everything correctly, anytime that someone sends an SMS message to your Google Voice account with the keyword (or hashtag) somewhere in the message, it will post it instantly to your account. Like this:

Other implications of this workflow are that you would be able to update all of your twitter accounts via text message simply by including your own keywords in your SMS. Your keyword could be as small as a single character with the pound sign so you wouldn’t be wasting any of your 140. I am very excited about the potential of crossposting to multiple twitter accounts using multiple hashtags. I also like the idea that we could use it to engage the community with questions and comments, even away from a presentation setting. But, I’m sure other folks will figure out better ways to use this process that I haven’t even thought of yet. Comment on the post if you come up with anything or if you have specific questions about getting this to work.

Question 58 of 365: How are local and crowdsourced opposing forces?

The folks in my local network are amazing. They are the ones who will babysit for my children, or hang out after work with my family. They are the ones who seem to share a lot of the same values with me. After all, they moved close to where we live for a reason, right? They are really the ones that I should be turning to with my problems and with my questions.

But, they aren’t. In fact, there are so few local people that I turn to on a daily basis, that I am almost scared by it. Other than a few key people (my wife included), my local network is a wasteland of e-mail threads and empty projects. Whenever I have a new idea, I don’t put it out to the people that I work with on a daily basis. I send the idea out to anyone who cares to take a stab. And more often than not, the only people with that inclination are anything but local.

It is counterintuitive to think that people who do not share the same space and time with me (or even have a previous personal relationship with me) would be more likely to join in on a project than their local counterparts. In fact, it is almost unfathomable that my local network would be so silent on some of the issues that I seem to face all of the time.

My local network does not see the value in commenting back and forth. They do not see the value in Twitter or Buzz. They are not plugged into the conversation. They are not ready to avail themselves of crowdsourcing activities. And, I guess that is the difference.

The local is striving to stay local.

The crowd is striving to be a part of the crowd (or, at least, and individual in the crowd).

The only way to stay local is to be unplugged and uninformed. If you are engaging in conversations that are universal, you will become international, even cosmopolitan. If you are striving to connect, there is no choice but to connect with those outside of your local network.

While I would like to bring the local to meet the crowdsourced, the only way for that to happen would be for the people near me to adopt the methodology of the crowd. they must be more public with their work. They must strive to answer passionate questions. They must stop placing so much value on people that they can “have a beer with.”

Being a source for someone’s crowd is valuable because it means that they will be a source for you as well. There is a certain level of reciprocation that we can expect from the crowd, even if it is only a feeling about such things. Again, this is counterintuitive. It should be that the locality will produce more reciprocation because of proximity, but instead it breeds a lot more competition. If you are doing something of value, it will be noticed among the crowd and leveraged to everyone’s benefit.

If we are able to bring more people along from the local to the crowd, we may be able to change the very nature of what it means to be local. We may be able to change the expectations for how much participation is possible and what level of investment is guaranteed. We could change local to mean all kinds of connection, not just face to face.

While, I see a lot of drawbacks to crowdsourcing, when it comes to asking my own questions. I am directing them more toward people I don’t know than people I do. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the most interesting opportunities and people have always come from outside the local, and not from within. Is that a function of the web, or is that just the way that it always has been?

Condensation

I was at a restaurant this morning with my family and my wife’s
fingers were getting stickier and stickier from the leaky maple syrup
container. After a while she started looking for some water to wash
them off with. Her water cup was empty but the condensation on the
outside was still there so she used it to clean her hands.
 
I’m not sure why this sparked something in me, but the act of her
using only the water that was on the outside of the glass made me
think of what is happening in many school districts that I see around
me.
 
We can see the water, the life giving liquid inside, but we have to
settle for the small beads collecting around the outer edge.
 
We know that the bandwidth that is needed to fully share with one
another the media, ideas and resources of our district is available.
It exists for businesses and other entities out there, but in
education we are stuck with the runoff from those large high speed
pipes.
 
We need a straw, but we are stuck licking at the glass.
 
(The preceding metaphor is stretched pretty thin, but I did want to
get it out there just in case someone else found it useful.)

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Making moving easy…

Every night this week and last I have been packing. I have been
packing up my family to move us to someplace better, with more room
and more possibilities (and more than one bathroom). This move has
gotten me thinking a lot about what to keep and what to let go of.
Without extending a metaphor too far out, it has also gotten me
thinking about how to move an entire school or even a district from
digital learning systems that they currently use, to ones that have
more possibility and room to grow.
 
And, what can we leave behind in this move. When you move from an
email based system of communication to a feed and “friend” based
system of communication (twitter, facebook, or even project wikis),
what is no longer neccessary?
 
 
When you move from a server based architecture for storing learning
objects to a cloud based repository, what is gained and what is lost?
 
The specifics are becoming more and more clear to me as I pack things
up. As I pack up our assessments for the online school, getting them
ready to move again, we can leave behind proprietary formats. We need
to be able to plug them in anywhere and reuse them for many purposes.
 
As I pack up all of our content, I realize that we can leave all html
pages without an edit button on them.
 
And, as I try to put all of our tools and resources for collaborative
and connected learningn into their box to be ported over to a new LMS
or to new PD spaces, I am realizing that there is no box big enough to
hold all of them.
 
Every tool must be allowed to connect to others, just like every
person must be able to connect. If there are tools that do not
connect, they will be packed away permanantly and placed under the
stairs.
 
Well, I am off to pack some more, but I will continue to think about
what can and can’t be thrown out when we make big shifts in education.
I hope to return to this theme soon when I figure more out.

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

A list of tags…

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?

The Ripe Environment: The Most Powerful Learning

The Ripe Environment: Most Powerful Learning Podcast [ 12:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (174)

Although the podcast (which was somehow not recorded because I had the device set for line-in rather than mic… I am quite mad about it actually) for this post explains this prerequisite for The Ripe Environment pretty well, I would like to further outline it for those of you who don’t have 15 minutes to listen (or who can’t imagine all of the things I would have said, had the microphone actually worked).

I would like to start by saying that I do not actually have any problems with conferences, meetings, or workshops. In fact, they are one of the premier places that The Ripe Environment can exist. However, my contention is that The Ripe Environment cannot simply stay in that space. It has to transfer over into the times when no one else is around. It has to transfer into the individual mind, so that your own mind is a Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning. I know that probably sounds a little hokey, but I believe that there are many ways of thinking things through, some of which are more productive than others.

On the podcast (which, once again, is only in your imagination at this point) I use the metaphor of class time and conferences being a typewriter. Conferences exist in one particular place and time, as does the typewritten words on a page. They cannot be copied and disseminated in the ways that a blog post or wiki edit can be. There is something quite beautiful about words existing in only one place and an experience only being a singular event. Even in the capture of the backchannel, live-blogging or streaming of an experience, the experience held in one time. However, the true learning happens when one reflects upon the process, upon the environment.

The Ripe Environment does not end when the session is over. It never ends. The learning extends over the boundaries when it is made personal. When the singular experience is built upon with an eye toward a personal set of circumstances. Learning occurs when a resource is appropriated for your classroom. Learning occurs when a link is made (hyperlink or a synaptic link) to a website or person. Learning is occurs when an e-mail is sent off requesting a follow up or an invite to a google document is sent out.

These moments are not held in time. They are ongoing. They make sure that the Environment stays ripe rather than withers.

The Ripe Environment: Backchannels exist.

Whether we provide students or teachers with a backchannel, one will form. So long as there is more than one voice in a learning environment, the need to be heard will be undeniable.

Students may pass notes or they may text message in their pockets.

Teachers may point to a highlighted passage or simply make a face of disgust.

These things are not meant to stay in the background. They are essential, and as such, must be elevated to their rightful place in the classroom. The backchannel must influence the front-channel and must become the front-channel if the discussion and learning going on there is more important.

But, before I get too ahead of myself, let me set my definition of a backchannel:

A backchannel is the running commentary (critiques on, questions about, distractions from, references for, resources under) the dominant information stream. This dominant stream could be a lecture, discussion, video, or any other attention getting activity that would normally occupy the majority of the learners.

This may sound like quite a distraction. Why should we bring the note passers into the discussion? Why should we encourage distraction? Because it is how we learn.

Kelly Christopherson does a really great job of highlighting how a backchannel actually functions in a Ripe Environment, but I think the hardest thing to understand about a backchannel is balencing the two things that inherently have to go on within an classroom, but are not always so center stage. He says it this way:

Watching the crowd made me realize that we have a long way to go as educators. Many people in the room seemed to be having difficulty with the two things going on at once. Maybe that is why so many educators become frustrated with the use of cellphones or laptops in their classes; they don’t see how the two things can be going on at once.

The rapid fire writing down of resources, texts, or quotations is all well and good during a class or PD session, but what about questioning those things. When does that happen? If all learning is conversational and requires relationships, when are those relationships born and when do those conversations occur? They occur during the backchannel, if and only if one is set up and is relevant to those in the audience.

The experience that Kelly describes above is one that happens far too often. Those who do not find the backchannel relevant write it off as distracting, or worse, destructive. They want the front-channel to be the only channel, even though their brains and pens are commenting non-stopped on what is being said. We need to teach the value of commentary, fact-checking and questioning. We need to construct The Ripe Environment for the backchannel.

The Ripe Environment: Collaboration as Instinct

I sat at the over-long table, as I always do on Mondays and thought about the next time I would meet my students for Extended Learning Time (our version of a multi-discipline course without any set curriculum or standards to give guidance or restrict us).

“Well, it is earth day in a couple of days.”

Immediately, my colleague and I started a Google Document called Earth Day 2008. We started dropping in links to pages we found.

“Oh, I did hear something about an event on the National Geographic Channel. Did you hear about it. Something about the human footprint.”

We were pushing hard now, 25 minutes before kids arrive. Link after link being proposed as a starting point.

“What is the question we are really trying to get our kids to answer here.”
“Is Earth Day important and why?”

And we we started writing out a discussion, a plan of attach. We eventually came to the conclusion that there were others who were interested in asking this same question, experts even. And yet, within 30 minutes we created an authentic question and activity around it. Our instinct was to create and collaborate, rather than offer worksheets as an attempt at lesson planning. This is our Ripe Environment, and the class that the students came into that day was Ripe too.

They couldn’t wait to see who had the bigger footprint. They couldn’t wait to collaborate on their own weekly or monthly collection of soda cans or milk jugs. This process of not waiting to be told, of instinctively knowing that it is the right thing to do, that makes it truly authentic.

So, how do you foster this instinct for collaboration. Well, by saying yes to it as often as possible. It is my personal belief that there is never too little time to create, too little time to collaborate.

If you have only a minute:

1. Put a request for a resource out on twitter.
2. Do a delicious search instead of a google search (it is a community of people waiting to help).
3. Link to someone who is talking about it.

If you have a half-hour:

1. Start a google doc and invite a few others to join in.
2. Search technorati for new blogs, videos, and people who are interested in the same thing.

If you have a longer:

1. Start a wiki and get people to contribute.
2. Start a blog and get people to contribute.
3. Start a movement and get people to join.

The Ripe Environment: Connecting more than two dots.

There is a severe lack of time in the air. It pervaides every conversation I hear on many days:

“No, I don’t have time for that collaboration right now. Maybe after this quarter is over.”
“Are you sure that it has to be due tomorrow. I really think that having the weekend when I don’t have games or practices or school would make more sense.”
“I don’t even have time to think.”

Hyperbole aside, this lacking is palpable. I think it is one of the only times that a lack of something can be more heavily felt and deeply understood than the presence of it. Many people, though, have just gotten used to having no time to connect the disparate parts of their working or waking lives. It has become the film upon our skin that always coats our interactions but can’t be rubbed or cleaned off.

I am not one of those people, however. I believe that connecting the dots and creating time for that process is possible. I believe that it is all about creating a Workflow of Passion (requires a better name, but that’s all I’ve got).

When I say passion, I do not mean that you must be equally in love with every assignment or task that you come across. Instead, I mean that there is something meaningful within each thing that you do. There is some meat there, no matter how hidden it may be in the luke-warm soup of “other stuff.” The only way to craft the time to connect that meat to something else equally meaty is to plunge your spoon in and not be satisfied with the carrot or water chestnut you come up with the first time. (I would like to apologize to both the literary crowd who sees the metaphor being stretched thin and the vegetarian crowd who beleives that no one should be looking for meat within a vegetarian soup.)

So, what does this spoon plunging action look like. Well, I have recently taken to a maxim for resolving the issue of time suckage and distraction in the classroom and out.

“Use the tool that has everything you want, and nothing you don’t.”

Although the different image settings in Photo Booth are cool, the distraction factor is so high that it is nearly impossible to use it as an instructional tool (for kids or adults).

Wikipedia provides a cornocopia of educational resources, but blind searches are still stabs in the soup that lead to less than appetizing results.

The Ripe Environment is anywhere that makes information clickable, that sets the path of least resistance to learning as the norm. The Ripe Environment is a place that doesn’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t matter. It is a place that the workflow always works for the user, according to their needs and passions.