Learning is Change

One of the more promising tools that I had seen in the last year was Flowgram. I had used it to do a few tutorials and to show people just how easy it is to create a learning path for people with your voice and few good links. However, now it seems as though that is all coming to an end. I received this e-mail this morning:

Dear Flowgram user:

Today is a sad day for us. We have decided to terminate the Flowgram service as of the end of the month (June 30th, 2009).  The service received excellent reviews and had an enthusiastic core user base. However, we were not able to demonstrate (especially in these economic times) that Flowgrams would ever be prevalent enough for us to adequately monetize the business, either though ads or subscriptions. This is obviously very disappointing, but building the Flowgram platform was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to see how many of you used our tool to express yourselves in a deep and meaningful way.

Although you won’t be able to play your Flowgrams after the end of the month,  you can export them to video by clicking “share” from the website or “more sharing options” from the Flowgram player and scrolling down to the export to video section.  It is very important, if you wish to keep your content, that you export to video and download the video by the end of the month.  Please let us know at support@flowgram.com if you have any difficulties doing this.

Again, I would like to thank you for your support, for your Flowgrams and for your good wishes.

Best Regards
Abhay Parekh (Founder) and the rest of the Flowgram Team

So it goes.

I definitely see more of this happening in the near future. In fact, I am basically scared for all of the tools I use, and at this point, I would like to flat out state that if the following tools would let me pay for their service, I would gladly do so just to ensure that there are there tomorrow:

1. Twittter
2. Screentoaster
3. Delicious
4. Google Reader
5. Youtube

So if any of these services are reading this blog:

Please develop a sound business model, or at least open up your platform so that others can keep it going after you have run out of money.

We trust that things will happen , that the projects we are working on
will eventually see the light of day.
 
We trust that by sharing our information and learning, good things
will occur. We trust that feeds are freedom and voice if virtue.
 
We trust that when we create something of value, that others will
recognize that value.
 
We trust that tomorrow will, in fact, be another day.
 
We trust that change will occur if we will it into being. We trust
that learning isn’t static.
 
We trust that a great many things will be stable, though too.
 
We trust that networks are not based upon the platform they were
created in. We trust that people will still be humane when faced with
the possibility of being so.
 
We trust that truth still matters.
 
Or, at least I do.

Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

For a week or more I have been conflicted about knowing what I can share from a class I co-taught this week on Best Practices for Online teaching and learning (yes, I know that I have blogged about there being no such thing as “best practices”). The reason why I am conflicted is because I do not own all of the rights to the content within the course and I have never tried to share the work of other adults amongst whom some are reluctant to have open classrooms. Because my district would like to take a look at running this course again and again internally and eventually running it for other districts as well, it would be hard for me to share the actual content of the course that I co-created (with my good friend Liz Walhof).

This saddens me because I am the type of person who has to share what is going on, has to add value to the work that is going on in changing the way education works. I really would like to share just how a hybrid course can look for professional development (we met on Monday, had asynchronous learning on Tuesday and met again on Wednesday with an extended skype session). I would like to share just how excited I am for people getting down to the business of making authentic learning objects with students and using Personal Learning Networks within an LMS. However, I respect the fact that I am not the only one who took part in the creation or learning of this class. I realize that I do not have all of the answers on this blog as well.

So, what I have decided to is to is to slowly take bits and pieces of things that I have learned from the course as well as things that were created during the course and share them on this blog. By doing this, I can satisfy my need to share as well as fulfill my obligations to show that there is valuable content within the course itself.

Here is the first set of objects, three visual representations of PLNs by members of this class:

I quite like how this activity turned out. I hope you do too.

So, without further ado, here is the Google Doc that gives the step by step account of just how to do it.

And, just to prove that it can be done in 25 minutes or less, I have included a screencast of the entire process that I used to revise the Google Doc and make sure everything works.

I hope it can be of use to you and yours.

I recorded this podcast a few weeks ago, but I have sat on it for that long in order to mull everything over for a while.

The topic for this podcast is all about how we enumerate the exact needs found within the classroom that would require us to be collaborative and use tools like Google Docs, Wikis or Blogs. Many of us feel as though these needs are self-evident, but in the face of resistance, we need to be able to write them out and share them with others.

I will let the psudo-rant speak for itself, but I would like to repeat the question/s that I ask at the end:

What do you believe the needs are for a collaborative learner that would lead you to using Google Apps? What was the needs analysis that you underwent that led you to believe that a collaborative space was necessary?

(This sounds like a ridiculous question, but I think that it actually gets at a small portion of Karl Fisch’s much larger and better questions, found here.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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I got a message on twitter that 5 posts from this blog are now available to anyone who is a part of Continuing Professional Development in Scotland. It appears as though this means that people will be able to read my blog for some kind of credit.

While I am intrigued that my writing may make its way into any type of curriculum, it makes me think a whole lot more about how we package learning materials from others.

Can we make anything into curriculum? Can we offer credit for any type of academic pursuit?

I think that the kind of work that brings outside resources into the realm of canonized professional development is just wonderful. But, since they are linking to me, perhaps I am little biased.

I have been quite energized by a lot of the basketball games that have been going on during the playoffs this year. There have been a lot of tight games and quite a few overtimes. As with anything that I am engaged in, I bring it back to learning.

It is my contention that there are a lot of really “close games” in education at the moment. With the amount of budget cutbacks and lack of consensus on what the best technology investments are for education, it is hard to see anything as coming out as a clear winner. The conversations are all happening (Online Learning, Technology Integration scaling, Netbooks, Cell Phones in the Classroom, Blended Learning, Student ePorfolios, Interactive Whiteboards, and a few others), but it remains to be seen whether any of them will make for long lasting changes in education.

So, what does winning look like?

When will we know that the inroads that Interactive Whiteboards have made are enough to change who controls information in the classroom?

Does winning look like the “No Cell Phones” Signs coming down?

Does winning look a 1:1 netbook program where the kids actually own the laptops?

Does winning look like every student having an ePorfolio filled with artifacts from their required elearning or blended learning class?

I really want to know.

(By the way, I do get the fact that “winning” isn’t really an appropriate metaphor for the kind of change we are looking to create. I understand that there are lots of competing factors, and not just two simplistic sides. But, my hope is that it will create some discussion at least.)

Today I will be working with a group of students at Ute Meadows Elementary on the idea of creating and tending their Digital Legacy (or what some people call their a Digital Footprint or Digital Identity). Here are the lesson plans for just such an event:

1. Write-on:
2. Types of Digital Legacies:

• The Good
• The Bad
• The Ugly
• And more Ugly
• The Most Ugly

1. There is a new type of reputation out there. It lingers and builds long after you you have stopped caring about it. Managing it is hard. Too many elements to focus on, and too little time to maintain them all. So, you do what you can.You look for just the right resources to update at just the right time to get you exposure. You believe that in doing some good, you will get recognized. But this kind of reputation doesn’t work like that. Your expertise can go unrecognized for years. So long as you have a well founded web presence, others will find out just how amazing you are, eventually.

   I often think about this digital trail that I am leaving behind. It is amazing to me to know that many of the ideas I am having right now will affect others years from now. I still receive e-mail about a band web page I put up when I was 16. It is scary how much the Internet
   has a memory. It is cataloging every keystroke I publish. And this is beautiful. The internet knows that my name is associated with my ideas. This makes me truly happy.

2. What do you want Google to say about you?
3. Design your ideal Google search page with the following items:

• 10 different places on the web that you want to (or already do exist)
• A one-two sentence summary for each of those 10 different places
• The total number of links to be found about you.

1. Who will help you create this digital identity/legacy?
2. So, if we are all writing a story together, weaving our Digital Identities together, perhaps we better start actually writing a story together. We may never know quite where it will end up, but you can bet that if you start with something that is good enough, it will always keep on growing.

I believe in learning all the time,  but there are definitely some things that I know nothing about (but would like to some day). I hope to cross things off of this list, but for now they remain:

1. Player pianos – how they work and why they aren’t more readily available.
2. Programming applications built on available API‘s – I would like to build applications upon Tokbox, Google Reader, and Twitter (i.e., Why hasn’t anyone built a twitter application specifically for educators?)
3. Making a to do list and then crossing of each item – I cross of all but a few and then I let the rest of them fester.
4. Creating a webserver without using mamp or xampp – I would like to know how you open and close ports and set up a server from scratch. I don’t want to be an IT wonk. I just want to know how to do it.
5. Reading music for guitar- I have tried so many times, but in the end, I always manage to simply rely on the chords I already know and write a new song without learning how to read someone else’s work.