I would like to propose a meet-up for anyone who is blogging, podcasting, or tagging at VSS2007. Please comment on this post if you would like to be a part of this. We could meet at a session or simply eat at the same table at lunch. I would love to know what other bloggers are seeing at their sessions.
I hope to see you soon.
VSS Blogroll so far:
Technorati Tags: VSS2007
Point #1:
“The people that complain are our best customers, not our worst.” –Jackie Huba
In the keynote for NACOL VSS 2007: Jackie Huba, an advertising consultant and blogger, is talking about creating learning evangelists. Her idea is that word of mouth is all powerful. The students and parents that complain about learning are the ones that may be the biggest evangelists. They are the ones that care enough to put forth ideas. They are the ones who want a better product. For every complaint from them, many more complaints exist (she says 26).
What does this mean for us as teachers on the cutting (sometimes bleeding) edge of education?
Well, I think that we need to be able to pay attention to our critics and frame our ideas in order to make them into evangelists (I would call them advocates). We need to be solving issues of content and access so that our students and parents see that we are listening.
If we are listening to our stakeholders, we need to do something about it. Pushing further and further out into the blogosphere and online learning without listening to what is working and what isn’t will never create the kinds of advocates that we need. So, my next question is: How do we listen well? How do we use what we hear to change, or possibly, keep doing something that is working.
Point #2
“Google Never Forgets.”
If you post something, write something, create something, google will remember. Bad press matters, as does bad research, bad marketing, and bad framing. I want to make sure that I don’t make any missteps with my identity. Is that possible?
Technorati Tags: VSS2007
I am at NACOL’s VSS 2007 in Louisville, Kentucky today. Here are my sub plans.
Cores 1-3:
Core 4:
If and when you finish working on your essay, you can start/continue your Academy Authentic work.
This is my first time blogging from in on an airplane. My daughter, Isabelle, may be the cause of that. She is cleverly intriguing, so much so that it is difficult to be very reflective when she is saying “da da da” at you. My trip today, and the reason for this blog post, is to find out what the North American Council for Online Learning has to add to the School 2.0 conversation.
I was not the only one with this idea, however.
I just so happened to sit next to Kathryn Knox, Ph.D. (Senior Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Colorado Virtual Academy) and we struck up quite the conversation about online learning.
My favorite part of the discussion was when we stumbled upon community as a tenet for a successful online school. She put it this way: “Without community you don’t have a school. You have a program but not a school.” This idea really caught me and it hasn’t let go yet.
Are we trying to create programs that are viable and sustainable, or are we trying to create communities that constantly need tweaking and guidance. The first is easy: Set up the systems, install the software, write the content. The second is terrifyingly hard: engage all stakeholders, listen, change.
I really need to keep looking at the Academy of Discovery to make sure that I am not just creating a program, I am creating a community.
Technorati Tags: VSS2007
This is our first attempt at a video podcast. Because not all of our students have agreed to have their pictures posted online (and because I hold security at a premium), I have obscured their faces somewhat with CamTwist. This project is about creating new words and putting them into our modern lexicon. Please feel free to use these words in your everyday speech. Also, Please comment on this project.
Core 1:
Core 2:
Core 3:
Core 4:
I have always shied away from making absolute lists of resources. They are dated a few months after they are penned. I much prefer the enigmatic, socially tagged nature of a delicious account. Why take one person’s word for it, when you can see exactly how many people have found a resource to be a good one?
But…
More and more I am coming to realize that most people are not looking for this. They do not want a searchable database of thousands of Web 2.0 offerings. Instead, they want a well organized document that makes the connections from technology to pedagogy for them. Most teachers are not trying to find a new way of mashing up two web pages so that it gives off a split screen effect (if anyone knows of something, let me know). Most teachers would say that is pretty geeky. And each and every one of them would be right.
I have made peace with my idiosyncratic geek status in the education world. I don’t want to be defined by it, but I am still proud of it. I think it is about time that I stop trying to make others like me, though.
Our model of success should not be to see how many people we can get to be WebHeads. Our model should start somewhere more along the lines of Step by Step: Building a 2.0 Classroom. Or prehaps, as simple as a series of documents. Something that could exist as paper, that could still have value in the analog world.
So, about a month ago I started working on such a document. The document is supposed to be an introduction to the essential tools and resources needed for creating an authentic learning environment online. It is not perfect, and it is not finished. When I started sharing the early version on Starting from Scratch, quite a few people contacted me wanting to know if they could use it. Please use it, upload it, change it, but keep me a part of the conversation.
If you missed the link to the document above: 101-resources-ver-2.pdf
Please let me know what you think.
Core 1:
Core 2:
Core 3:
Core 4:
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As my students work more and more in the non-fiction realm due to their new found niches, they have a tendency to lose sight of just how descriptive and beautiful their writing can be. As a blogger, I have found that some of my greatest pleasure is derived from my ability to string together an image or a particularly well described passage.
A blog is informative, but stylistically so. The ability to craft a unique image within the information is a virtue that we should all be striving for. So, in an attempt to put these words into practice, here is what I am talking about.
Topic: Cell phones and iPods in the classroom
With his two fingers pushed together, carefully spreading them outward across the screen, one of my students was doing something that I had never thought of a couple of years ago. He was blogging from his iPod. Immediately, we gathered around the gadget, pondering its significance. It was distracting and powerful: the ability to blog about anything at any time. Just think if twitter wasn’t blocked at school.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around cell phones being used for things other than voice. I have been saying for quite a while that we need more laptops in the classroom, as many as there are laps. But can’t we get done most of what we need with our plans from verizon and AT&T? Watching the mini-safari browser spin into action leads me to believe that we aren’t far off from this reality.
I want my students to be thinking about how they can utilize their cell phones in my classroom not how they can sneak a look at what time it is on the display when I am not looking. Their cell phones are bejeweled with authenticity. In many cases, their cell phones are so representative of their lives that given the choice of losing a cell phone or a limb would cause them to pause to think.
Where is the research that says cell phones are great for the classroom. Well, mostly it doesn’t exist yet, at least not that I know of. If anyone has seen any great studies or has done some great work with non-laptop ITC, please share. All I have right now is anecdotal evidence from my classroom and the presentation from K12 Online 2007. Surely there is more to it than that.
I have italicized (for my students) the moments where I intentionally added imagery or description in order to make a potentially boring subject interesting (at least to me). My hope is that blogging moves closer to this style and further away from the dense writing of academic papers. Let me know what you think about either idea.
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