Learning is Change

I have a goal I need help with.

Hey, its Katie from your digied group.  Next year 2009/2010 I would like to use the ability to blog and skype in order to communicate with other middle schoolers in other countries.  The things I need help with are: a good blog site, how to really set up and skype with a Mac laptop, and how to find schools in Europe, Japan and South Africa that we could communicate with?

This is for sure an awesome project that you are starting.

I would say that there are a few things that you would want to consider in starting this project. What kind of blog are you looking to take on. Do you want to only have your own work posted on the blog and then have other’s comment on it? Would you like the ability to add students to your blog and have them create content on it? Or, are you really just going to use the blog as a way of connecting with these students from other countries (i.e., would you rather have a micro-blogging site that allows you and others to write specific messages back to one another)?

If you are looking for a really good and stable blogging platform with a lot of features that is not blocked anywhere, I would recommend edublogs. You would be able to blog and have other’s blog on your site by setting up accounts for them. I used edublogs for a couple of years before I decided to move everything on to my own server.

I would say, though, that if you are looking to have a lot of collaborators and such, you may want to take on a microblogging format, meaning that all of the messages would be short (140 characters or less, usually). This would allow for a rapid exchange of information and connection from students. It would also allow students to exchange longer works with each other as files, while keeping their reflections and reactions nice and short. I would recommend either Edmodo (which sets up a private classroom or project space… here is an example of what it looks like in a classroom) or ShoutEm (which sets up a more public space where students have to set up logins, but the whole world would be able to see it easily).

As for setting up skype with your mac laptop, there are couple of good resources that I like: http://newley.com/2007/10/08/how-to-use-skype-a-tutorial/

or

Both of these are pretty good at helping you through any of the snags that may come up in setting it up. The PDF link also has some follow up resources for skyp in education.

As for finding schools and teachers to collaborate with, I found a pretty decent list of places to look for collaborators at Wes Fryer’s wiki.

  1. ePals (http://www.epals.com/)
  2. iEARN – International Education and Resource Network (http://www.iearn.org/)
  3. Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) Collaboration Center (http://www.cilc.org/c/community/collaboration_center.aspx)
  4. Global Schoolhouse Projects Registry (http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/pr/index.cfm)
  5. TWICE Videoconferencing Collaborative Projects and Exchange Projects (http://www.twice.cc/projects.html)
  6. K-12 Online Conference (http://k12onlineconference.org/)

I would also add Teacher’s Connecting (http://teachersconnecting.com/), which is Ben Hazzard’s (of the Smart Board Podcast fame). Abviously, you only need a few takers, but I really think that sending out a wide net is a great idea.

I would love to talk more about your ideas for the project. Where do you want to take it?

Waiting on something big.

I have to say that as I am preparing to write and create my presentation for Educon 2.1 (http://educon21.wikispaces.com), I am struck by the need to do something very big. I really would like to have all of my efforts to instill an attitude of change in those around me come to a significant point. I would like to have a moment to sit back and reflect, which is what this blog is supposed to be all about. In fact,I have been doing far too little of that recently. Perhaps the doing is getting in the way of the thinking.
 
I had a meeting earlier with the head of the Digital Educator program in our district, and we spent probably about 2 hours meandering through tools and never pinning down what is truly important to pursue with teachers. Is it really important that teachers be able to know how feeds work? Is it really valuable to create a social network for this particular project? Or, is it vitally important that we help everyone create their own networks? Why is it so hard for me to solidify my ideas of what is truly mastering the art of conecting and collaborating with others?
 
So, as I go forward with this presentation, I will be pursuing the big reflection, but not at the expense of the small reflection. I would say watch this space, but until I say something of value, odds are that it is pointless to say something like that. We are only as valuable as our most recent idea, right?
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Posted by email from olco5’s posterous

"Hope Online" Professional Development 11.14.08

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.

I'm holding my son…

I’m holding my son right now and talking to my WordPress blog and I am considering whether or not this is going to be a great way for me to start blogging regularly again and thinking a lot of different things in order to get my mind out there and produce something.

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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:

If you are also looking to sync your contacts, you can simply use your Blackberry or iPod touch to talk to Funambol using their built in programs (search for funambol in the App store, or use the above link to download the blackberry funambol application).

Then you can sync your contacts with the funambol server.

As for your Mac, you can use the Preference Pane sync.

This will let you put your contacts on your mac, on the funambol server, or on your blackberry and they will all sync.

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

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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.

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

    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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    Online Learning and Web 2.0: OL Teach 2008 (Secondary)

    Online learning is not about computers, the internet, or learning from home. It is not about giving kids a different educational option, or even leveraging the power of digital natives. It is my belief that the goal of online learning is to make learning ubiquitous. It is about pushing our education to include everything, from the context of the everyday to the workflow of original thought. This presentation aims to explore this notion of ubiquitous learning. Please, push back at these ideas, it is the only way they will get any better.

    The Presentation:

    Secondary (OL Teach – Take 2)

    The Collaborative Podcast:

    The OL Teach Text Messages:

    Get your own at TextMarks!

    The Backchannel and Moderated Discussion:

    The Voicethread for Sharing Ideas:

    The Links for further learning:
    Preserve the learning links:

    Creation as norm links:


    Authenticity as expectation links:

    Please feel free to leave comments or questions (video, audio, and text) on this blog post, you can also reach me by e-mail at ben@learningischange.com.

    Online Learning and Web 2.0: OL Teach 2008 (Elementary)

    Online learning is not about computers, the internet, or learning from home. It is not about giving kids a different educational option, or even leveraging the power of digital natives. It is my belief that the goal of online learning is to make learning ubiquitous. It is about pushing our education to include everything, from the context of the everyday to the workflow of original thought. This presentation aims to explore this notion of ubiquitous learning. Please, push back at these ideas, it is the only way they will get any better.

    The Presentation:

    Elementary OL Teach

    The Collaborative Podcast:

    The OL Teach Text Messages:

    Get your own at TextMarks!

    The Backchannel and Moderated Discussion:

    The Voicethread for Sharing Ideas:

    The Links for further learning:
    Preserve the learning links:

    Creation as norm links:


    Authenticity as expectation links:

    Please feel free to leave comments or questions (video, audio, and text) on this blog post, you can also reach me by e-mail at ben@learningischange.com.

    Keynote for leadership meeting

    Our superintendent is speaking about the morivators for students: parents, teachers, and technology.

    He is highlighting video games and cell phones.

    He made an HR person play guitar hero (didn’t do so well). Then he had a 4.0 student play (very well).

    He talked about android. He is talking open source cell phones in education.

    This is the kind of leader I love working for.

    “We want to get into the kid’s heads.”

    We have to use the tools that they are using, but we have to lead them. Is that possible? Yes.