SpeedGeek Learning Version .1

Communal living

I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
they are saving up to buy a house.
 
For many years I have written about online communities as being an
essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
 
Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
from our community and what my community expects of me.
 
The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
learning activity with.
 
I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
I would like.
 
Or, to put it another way:
 
The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
little creepier than I wanted.)

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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

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

Anything that can be archived, should be.

I was teaching yesterday using xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/horizon) and edmodo. I found myself trying to justify why I wanted to archive all of the learning going on in the room. As if somehow there were people watching and asking why I was doing what I was doing.
 
I waited, but no one asked the question.
 
In the end I want people to challenge my thinking. I want other teachers to ask what the virtue of chronicling all of the thoughts of students is. This is what I would have said, if anyone had put my pedagogy to the test:
 
Learning is not tangible. It isn’t something that all students just come to and recognize easily. It must be made visual and reflective. It must be made into an object to be manipulated. If we are not archiving everything for our students (or if they aren’t doing it themselves), how will they ever be able to say “I can use this.” If it we don’t save our students thinking, how can we ever know that it really happened? How can we know if they or we did a job woth doing?
 
Learning is not for a day or a class period. We need to stop treating it like it were.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Create your own MobileMe (Sync Everything, at all times).

An aside: it is too bad that every post I write seems like an attempt to get back into the habit of posting, but I suppose until I start blogging consistently again, that is just how it is going to have to be. I have missed way too many things that I have been thinking about to ever fully catch up, but perhaps I can start anew. Anyway, here are my latest thoughts.

Before I go into the details of how to sync yourself completely, I want to tell you why I even undertook this idea. Well, our school system uses an extremely proprietary e-mail and calendaring system called firstclass. Every person that uses firstclass in our schools is locked in to using the firstclass calendar for appointments and things of that nature. But, because I have seen the light of using Google Calendar (open API, shared calendars, embedding, etc), I refuse. In fact, I was so obsessed with the idea of converging the two that I speant an entire weekend (when I wasn’t having fun with my family) on getting Firstclass to sync with Google Calendar, and then eventually my new blackberry that the school district provided for me.

So, this is how you sync everything:

Calendars:

Contacts:

Now, for the details…

(Update: I didn’t put this in the initial post, but I think it is worth mentioning that Firstclass does have a way to sync with both Palm Desktop Software and SyncML directly, but since my district hasn’t set either of these up, I thought it was important to try and find a better way of doing things… there are also third party services that do some of this, but I want a FREE workflow)

In order to get your first class calendar to talk to anything else, you will need to export it as a iCal file:

Now, you may look at this picture and ask, why I wouldn’t just export it as a blackberry file and skip all of the steps in the middle. Well, there are a few reasons. One, if I did this, all of the events would be duplicated every time I exported and imported. Two, because I am on a Mac I do not have any blackberry desktop software to make this sync work.

So, onward we go to iCal. First, you will need to set up your Google Calendar to sync with iCal, using this handy dandy tutorial from Life Hacker.

Now that you have your Google Calendar set up to sync, simply import into iCal your latest and greatest export from Firstclass:

Now, if this isn’t your first time doing this, you will end up with a lot of duplicates. If that is the case, just use the iCal Dupe Deleter. This is also a good tool for deleting duplicates from Google Calendar if you have ever found yourself with too many of one item.

Now, you have synced completely to your Google Calendar and you are ready to sync to your blackberry. Simply point your device to this address and download your over-the-air sync application.

You can now enter an event in Firstclass, iCal, Google Calendar, or on your blackberry and they will sync with one another. Pretty cool, right. But, we are not done. If you would like to have your calendar in an even more universal Format, you can put it on a SyncML server, like Funambol.

All you have to do is download their blackberry application and you can sync to your heart’s content there.

For Contacts:

I understand that MobileMe does a lot more than this, but I believe that if we can create a FREE workflow for each one of our teachers, students, and administrators that syncs information to the place that they need it, we will be able to have the conversations that truly matter. We will no longer be stuck trying to find information, it will always be ours. Although you may not geek out at all that I am proposing, I think there are some pretty heavy implications for continuity in the systems that we are creating. If you have figured out any more syncing tricks, please leave a comment and add to the value of our collective research.

Guest Teaching 10.29.08

Cores 1+4:

1. Write-on: 
2. How can we decipher the symbolism of Maus 2, extracting more meaning from only the images?
3. Frame analysis:

• Describe- Describe the frame in detail. Make sure you find even the smallest pieces of information that are hiding within the illustration.
• Explain- Explain the meaning of each of the objects and details in this frame. What do these things symbolize or represent? Why does the author use this image instead of another one? What message is the author trying to convey through this frame?
• Expand- Show how this frame and its different meanings relate to the rest of the book or to your own life.
• • Example 1
  • Example 2

4. Use Photo Booth to take a picture of the frame you would like to analyze.
5. Annotate the photo with description, explanation, and expansion using preview (after you have converted it to a PDF)
6. Go to Slideshare.net and upload your file… Make sure that you tag it with maus2.
7. Look at our greatness.

Cores 2+3:

1. Write-on:
2. Using a backchannel to discuss and ask questions about Animal Farm (While we read).
3. Text animalfarm and then your question or comment to 41411.
4. I also need a google jockey to get images that help to express what is going on in Animal Farm.
5. Read Chapters 9 and 10 of Animal Farm.

CAGT 2008: Technology and Community

Presentation (both live and PowerPoint):

Technology And Community

Audio Reflections:

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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

Helping myself out… by asking for help.

So I haven’t blogged for a little while because of all of the work I have been doing for our district’s online school, eDCSD. I intend to blog that out more fully in a separate post, but now I am at the TIE 2008 conference and I have some time to think about how everything (seriously everything) is fitting together.

Teachers are sitting around me trying to figure out Photo Story. They are listening to a man who knows something about building learning communities through new media and web 2.0 resources. This is right up my alley. Or, at least it used to be. I used to love listening to hear people talk about what to use in the classroom in order to create a more collaborative environment. I talk about it when I present. I demo visual tools (although mostly of them are web-based) for creating environments. Why doesn’t this mean something to me?

I feel different than I did last year when I talked to Bud Hunt, Will Richardson, and Karl Fisch. I don’t feel like I am a part of this conversation right now. I feel a part of a different conversation, but I don’t know exactly where it is happening.

I want to be a part of the conversation that is about massive creation. I want to be a part of creating something that lasts, not a singular experience. I want to feel connected to all of the people I talk to, forever. I don’t want to meet anyone new who doesn’t want to share and create with me. Why can’t it be easy enough to simply add people and create with them. Why is it not possible to look across the edubloggosphere and say, “you and me, let’s go.”

I want to be a part of that conversation. I want a creation station for all of us. Where is it, though? Where is the learning playground? I want to play.

So, I guess I will throw it out to you. Where is your playground right now? Where are you going to simply create learning with others (please don’t tell me that the most learning is happening simply through twitter… I don’t think I am alone in my for need something more robust to actually create conversations that last and that I can keep coming back to). Anyway, any suggestions for where my learning community is?