This page outlines how we are sharing video on the Horizon project this year. After literally hours of testing to overcome the "youtube barrier" we have worked out how to use Ning as our video sharing and embedding platform.
Using tools like a firefox plug in that allows downloading of any video AND zamzar, these 7 videos literally show you how you may "snag" and edit any video. Just remember to follow copyright laws when you do this.
This innovation was quite an epiphany for us and the videos were our effort to make it easy and take the video sharing aspect of the project out of the teacher's hands.
This handy music player converts between ALL formats of music. I needed to take a song to put into a movie and converted it here. There are some robust tweaks that let you make your music sound better that I haven't even gotten into. (Hint, convert your mp3 to .wav to put in a movie.)
Here are some upcoming events (some free and some not) I'd like to share with you. All of them have live elements that you may want to join!
Sounding Board Informational Meeting Kim Cofino Wed April 30th at 11:00 am UTC (see local times here). You can access the session via the link on the Sounding Board page. There is still time to sign up your classroom to be a peer review classroom for the horizon project. Innovative Uses of Technology in the Classroom Friday, May 2nd 10:30 am - Noon EDT Free Ustream of Panel Discussion This Friday, May 2nd, I'm very excited to be at Princeton this Friday at "Students and Electronic Media: Teaching in the Technological Age"on a panel with Kevin Jarrett (about Second Life) and Daniel McVeigh (Ocean of Know). I'll be ustreaming our panel and we'll have a backchannel chat (check my blog Friday morning for instructions)
If you're near Princeton, this is free and registration is still open. (I think.)See the agenda here. (Kathy Schrock and some other amazing people will be there too!)
Planning Meetings for Online Course for Digital Citizenship Wednesday, April 30 12:30 pm CST (1:30 EDT) Thursday, May 1 7:30 pm CST (8:30 EDT) Kate Olson is hosting two "planning" / idea meetings about the opportunity to create a free course for parents, students, and anyone interested in learning more about digital citizenship, safety, and success. Elluminate links are posted at the Ad4dcss blog.
The First In-Person Flat Classroom "Course" with Julie Lindsay and me Tuesday, July 8 - Wednesday, July 9th See full schedule. Yes, we will ustream some of this (probably the opening and closing) but the rest of the time, I hope you can understand, Julie and I will be focusing on those who are attending.
We've talked for two and a half years now about truly sharing and teaching what it takes to "do" a true Flat Classroom/ Horizon Project collaboration. Honestly, if the movement is going to grow (as it is), it will require many more teachers and schools understanding how it works and doing it themselves. Truly sustainable, culture altering movements such as we believe flat classroom should be, cannot be monopolized by anyone. The shifting world-view that we see in our students needs to be shared with others.
This arose out of a discussion I had with Steve Hargadon at IL-TCE about how Julie and I wanted to do this but didn't have the time to plan it... so Steve, who always does things up to the standards that Julie and I also aspire to, is planning this event for us.
And Elizabeth Helfant in St. Louis has Julie and I spending some special time with her school and selected schools in her association on Monday and is letting us continue on in her amazing facilities through Tuesday and Wednesday. We've created a wiki and will be sharing what we do for this on an ongoing basis. (If you're interested, registration information is available on the wiki. Who knows if we will do this again, but this time will be very, very special.)
NECC Presentations Edubloggercon Saturday, June 28th I wouldn't miss it for the world. This is my favorite PD event FOR ME! Listen and learn from many amazing people. I'll never forget last year as Julie and I were talking, having met for the first time and Jeff Utecht from China plops down in the seat between us. Talk about amazing moments! Wikispaces Monday, June 30 8:30 am - 9:30 am at NECC Adam Frey, cofounder of wikispaces and I will share updated information on wikispaces and I'll talk about how we use the site in projects.
Exploring Classroom 2.0 Panel with Steve Hargadon Monday, June 30 12:30 - 1:30 pm, NECC Flat Classroom "Birds of a Feather" Monday, June 30 2:00 - 3:00 pm NECC Join Julie and I as we facilitate discussions between people interested in creating "flat classroom" style projects. We will be grouping you in ways to facilitate meaningful connections.
Flat Classroom "Mini" 3 hour workshop Wednesday, July 2, 8:30 am - 12:30 pm For those going to NECC, Julie and I are doing a workshop on Wednesday Morning sponsored by SIGTel. There are some slots still open, I think. We will work to include external participants in some of the work as well via ustream and wiki. Stay tuned.
Panel Discussion on Viral Professional Development Wednesday, July 2, 1:30 - 2:30 pm (San Antonio Time) We've been planning this for some time and will be putting the finishing touches on this exciting panel discussion over the next several weeks. This WILL be ustreamed AND backchanneled.
Please say "hi" The toughest thing about these conferences is in finding the sufficient time to give a decent "hello." I hope if you say "hi" that you'll have your business card in hand a note on the back about anything you'd like to discuss in the future. I try to make these notes myself but am notoriously without a pen (perhaps why I type everything.) We may then be in touch via e-mail later.
Take time to say "hi" and know that I'll do my best to take a minute. I do so love meeting other people just like me. I look forward to these events like edubloggercon and the Flat Classroom workshop where we'll be able to kick back and spend a little more time in conversation.
This webinar is Monday about Web 2.0 and I'm co-presenting. If you attend, you'll receive a 3 month free trial subscription to Atomic Learning. Preregister here.
This will give you access to the series I did on Web 2.0 and how to set up an RSS reader, etc. Also, the new one I've done on Flattening your classroom will be available as well.
Happy Birthday to Me! Wow! Your twitters, skypes, little e-mail notes and more have really made today special. In addition, my family was wonderful and my amazing husband sent me flowers. Although I still have a stack of grading from here to Qatar - I had a good day.
So, I thought that today, I'd give 38 presents to you for you to open and enjoy. One for each year of this amazing blessed life the good Lord has seen fit to give me.
All of these are free and so so cool! I challenge you to pick a present today, open it in my honor, and let me know what you think!
Songbird - This is THE cool opensource alternative to iTunes and it is connected with Skreemr, the music search engine.
Timebridge - This scheduling system plugs into google calendar or outlook and lets you invite people to a meeting, select four time alternatives, and then it books the meeting time that everyone can attend and puts it on your calendar. It reminds them and it rocks!!
Get Atomic Learning Free for 3 months -- I'm copresenting in a webinar with Atomic Learning and Technology & Learning on Monday. If you register AND attend at 4 pm EDT, you will get 3 months FREE from Atomic. This will give you not only the seminar I did for them on Web 2.0 but also, the one that is coming out soon about how to flatten your classroom.
Diigo - This cool tool has transformed my bookmarking, blogging, sharing, and twittering. Install it, set it up to send to your delicious account. Join the educators group (getting close to 400 members) and ad4dcss groups -- when you send things to the group, make sure you select at least one of the tags that "pops up" (these are from our tag dictionary.) Also, go to tools and set up a nice little daily autoblog based upon a tag you specify. (Some just put the tag "blog" for everything they want to go to their blog that day!)
To get the most out of it, you definitely should use firefox and install the cute little bookmarklets. This is a definite tool for those writing papers!
Zoho Notebook -- This notebooking service completely and utterly rocks! Zohonotebook gives you the ability to EMBED video and web pages as well as snag notes from many places. It is an amazing tool! (Check out some of the pages I demoed in a workshop a while back.)
Google Forms - Google spreadsheets has a cute little tool hidden in the Share tab, the ability to create a form. We're using this for the Horizon Project managers to submit their weekly reports. It is so fast and easy and a great way to pull information into a spreadsheet. I even have my national honor society students entering their service time for me into the spreadsheet.
Firefox - If you're still stuck in Internet Explorer, you simply must try firefox. Give yourself a present! The plug ins are incredible. My favorites are: the diigo plug in, technorati tag plug in,
If you're in Princeton come to a free Conference next Friday, May 2nd - Can you tell, I love free? I like to do work with people who provide their services to the general public and openly share information. This conference on Friday is chock full of amazing speakers and I'm going to enjoy being on a panel with some of them to talk about Flat Classroom.
Twitter - Again, try this one. Some say they don't "have time for twitter" or don't "get it." Just sign up, add me as a friend, and then go in and see whose talking to me, add some who sound interesting and then reply to their messages by saying @theirID -- so to reply to me, you'd say @coolcatteacher -- You may just find yourself conversing daily with some of your heroes.
Hulu.com - I've been beta testing this beauty which lets you watch all kinds of TV shows. Now, you can watch too!
Mogulus - Do you want your own 24/7 TV station? You can do it here. Schedule things to play. Merge videos from other places on the Net. Very cool.
AFI Screen Nation - The Amazing American Film Institute has a new site where your students may upload video and be evaluated by REAL producers, actors, and directors in Hollywood. Their curriculum is totally amazing and I use the videos that come with my united streaming account to teach digital film & movie making. I love the AFI digital storytelling curriculum and highly recommend it.
Toondoo - Make cartoons. This continues to be one of my perennial favorites for cartoons.
Ning (for VIDEO sharing) - I LOVE Ning in the classroom and just found a super cool new feature. If you upload video to ning, it automatically converts it to the most compressed, appropriate version for the web. You may then embed the video anywhere else. This is solving a lot of our access problems for the horizon project b/c schools just unblock the Ning and have access to all of the movies!
Intel Mashmaker - This lets you mash together all different types of websites and I am enjoying working with it. There will be some things I share soon. This is supposed to be a lot like Microsoft PopFly, which I've not tested yet.
Skype - This is another MUST have APP. If you haven't tried it yet, get over there and take a look.
Classtools.net - Embeddable graphic organizers of every kind for your wiki or blog. I Adore this site and use it all the time in my classroom.
Gmail - With the most robust spam filter anywhere, the ability to filter like a fiend, make folders, and import all accounts into one place, this account is a dream come true. Even if you use another service, you can enable pop on that account, set up a gmail and pull all of your accounts into one. And if you use firefox, they have a better gmail firefox extension from lifehacker that is a must install!.
Gcast - I'm really enjoying podcasting from my cell phone -- just a lot of fun!
FriendFeed - A cool little service that I'm really beginning to enjoy to help me follow just a few people.
Technorati Watchlist - A must use for bloggers watching those responding to their work and just to follow the things you want to know more about. The RSS from the search for your blog belongs in your RSS reader.
PhotoBucket - THE place I put my private photos. I like Flickr, but somtimes I just want to make a really cool flash page for my website or do something neat with photos, and photobucket has more robust tools for my photos than I've found other places.
Big Huge Labs for Flickr -- This has some amazingly hilarious Motivational Poster makers and just about everything you can imagine for your photos. Make monster posters, make labels, make anything. If you have photos, this is THE place to PLAY!
Feedburner is a must use for any serious blogger or school Webmaster. You can burn the feed to feedburner, which will let you move your feed from place to place without losing readers! You may also use Feedblitz to e-mail your blog posts to anyone who is "afraid" of RSS. Feedburner has so many other features that serious bloggers will appreciate.
Statcounter - This is my favorite place to track links, traffic, and more. Just a very reliable, accurate site.
Google Reader -- My RSS reader of choice for linear, sequential RSS reading (down the page aggregation), Google Reader now lets you download google Gears and read your RSS offline!!!!
Netvibes - For single page aggregation, I use netvibes as my RSS reader although my home page starts up with iGoogle, I go to netvibes. Their new Ginger version allows you to publish your pages and share with others. I teach my students this handy RSS reader for their Personal Learning Networks.
EdTechTalk - Although I co-host a show here, I always get pumped when I listen to these shows. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.
Creative Commons Searching - This is THE place to look for images, graphics, and audio. It is a must use for students!
4Info.net - I get the weather texted to my phone each morning. Every time a Georgia Tech football or basketball game ends, I'm texted the score. You can have stock tickers, rss reminders and more texted to your phone. It is amazingly cool.
When I shared this in Maine, one guy jumped up and yelled, "I LOVE YOU!!!" It is that useful!
Newsmap - When I want to take time to read the news, this is what I use. I adore NewsMap. I teach my students to use it to get abreast of what is happening in the world. If you have 1 minute to read the news, go here.
Classroom 2.0 Live Conversations - Steve Hargadon is hosting these amazing sessions. Simply excellent. Another place to "get pumped" and have some great ideas.
My year long PD IS the K12 online conference -- Go back and watch some videos (I love Silvia Tolisano's presentation). I believe that you should consider requiring teachers to view at least one of these presentations and "report back" to the group.
Cool Cat Teacher Wiki - All my presentations, handouts, archives, and STUFF are there. I love to get out sometimes and when I do, I want to capture it.
Slideshare - I LOVE this slidesharing site. It is very useful.
VoiceThread - If I could pick ONE tool for elementary ed, this is it, hands down.
My blog - OK, I know this is ME and you're already here. However, really, I don't know which is more the gift, your gifts to me in the form of comments, links, twitters, and e-mails or my being able to share with you what I'm doing. If you're able to live life a little better, make it through when you're at your wits end, and learn something that improves your life, then I've done something.
And although this post took me three days to write, I'm still leaving the date for this past Friday.
And for those of you who've sent me e-mails. I will get caught up, I promise. Something has happened because I had my e-mail down to zero a week and a half a go and now have over 600 emails! I'm trying not to drown!
Thank you all for the kind tweets and messages and I hope you enjoy these presents!
Microsoft Popfly lets you make mashups and build web pages without knowing code. I am to the point I don't teach the detailed web site creation coding I used to. I teach RSS, embedding, creating wikis, uploading media of all kinds, but I just don't know how important coding is any more at the basic level.
This is a fascinating blog post about how Alfred Thompson used PopFly to create a mashup activity for a classroom demo for teachers. He also took this document from word into Live writer to make a blog post.
It is important to look at many ways to do things. I found this information very insightful and cool.
Excellent overview from Jeremiah about the use of twiter to backchannel at a conference. Backchanneling is something I think that is very important, but there is very definitely a best practice.
Here were my comments to Jeremiah:
"I am a classroom teacher and LOVE the backchannel (they are great for test reviews -- like group notes and more) and won't do a conference presentation without one, that being said, I wouldn't use twitter for it.
Like you said, many people don't use twitter or get it.
I like to create a "backchannel room" so that it is archived and recruit ahead of time at least two people:
1) A backchannel "moderator" - they answer questions and I call on them several times to ask for their summary of what is going on in the backchannel (this is when I'm the main presenter)
2) A google jockey -- they drop the links I'm talking about in the backchannel chat.
I also like to ask the people in the backchannel to share best practice and what they are doing. I've had people comment that the one hour with a backchannel and me presenting was more meaningful than a whole day at a conference. (More compliments to the backchannel, I'm sure.)
I've seen backchannels handled very poorly and it was TERRIBLE. It was chaos. And actually downright rude to the speaker. (More like backstabbing than backchanneling.)
I've also seen it used well and it was incredible!
The archiving of the backchannel gave me rich links as a presenter and participant AND also feedback on the session which I referred to later as the presenter.
The backchannel is great -- I just like to use a backchannel ROOM especially for the session (inviting "friends" from around the world who are also watching on ustream) -- and then creating an archived copy of it.
I think backchannels are very important and you've hit on the core of what is happening in the evolution of professional development and conferences. "
I spent the day with Emily Vickery, the teacher/administrator at Montgomery Academy in AL, responsible for their PD. This is her wiki, where she shares with others at the school what they are doing. We talked about using RSS and diigo to give links. She is doing great work and will be presenting at NECC on July 2nd -- her students are going with her!
This is a website where tv enthusiasts are sharing videos and collaborating. This is an example of how television and all of our entertainment is evolving to become more customized.
In addition to creating personal learning networks, we will also be creating personal entertainment networks (PEN's) -- all via this amazing thing we call RSS. Understanding RSS is not only important for learning but just living your life.
Intel Mashmaker is a tool that you download and "mashup" sites together. It is supposed to allow average everyday people to be able to mashup google sites, flickr, almost anything with what programmers call an api.
Kevin Jarrett talks about his week at one of the leaders in innovative technology, suffern Middle School. An excellent read to see what this digital revolution is all about. Wow!
Just found this citation from Anthony D. Williams about flat classroom project and how "mass collaboration changes education." It is an older article, but makes a lot of sense.
Let me Fall! Inspirational Song & Performance by Cirque du Soleil
Monday, April 21, 2008
In this, I see so much of what happens when I work with students. Sometimes, we do our best to warn students and yet, they make mistakes and fall. But we love them anyway.
The classroom should be a place where mistakes (of the non life-threatening kind) are allowed and welcomed. If they already know it all, then why are we teaching it?
Excellent article for conference organizers from David Warlick. He has some great recommendations and links to the works from a conference in California this week.
Conferences are setting up social networks as a best practice. As these handy sites go mainstream, effective use of such networks seems to be increasingly an important understanding for students as behavior on these sites is very different from the "social" social networks in their personal lives.
We're starting a video contest -- nominate the videos that you think best advocate digital citizenship, safety or success in schools. We plan to have some surveys in the future to let you vote.
Encyclopedia Britannica is now free for bloggers from an article on 4/18/08 -- yet another reason for our students to blog. (I have students blogging publicly under pseudonyms.)
This is fascinating, but also interesting to see how Britannica is playing catch up to Wikipedia in the market it once owned. I wonder, which would be more authoriative to you, a wikipedia quote updated daily, or Brittanica updated less often that doesn't display the authors of its content?
Also, I plan to make an appearance at the free Parent Seminar the night before (May 1 from 7 - 9 pm,) although I have no formal part, I want to see how they handle this and discuss it with parents.
The conference on May 2nd has the following purpose:
" Electronic media has become an integral part of studentsโ lives and a major point of interest for educators. Questions about the impact of electronic media on student learning and wellbeing have led many school districts to question how and why they should be using technology.
The purpose of this conference is to showcase innovative uses of technology in the classroom and provide school district with ways that they can enhance their classroom curriculums and professional development programs. An overview of the research regarding electronic media and its links to achievement and social development will be provided as well.
This conference is designed in conjunction with the latest journal issue of the Future of Children "Children and Electronic Media". This issue, due to be released in April 2008 shines a spotlight on Electronic Media, focusing mainly on its impact on childhood wellbeing and policy implications."
What are the 10 best videos for promoting educational change?
Friday, April 18, 2008
We are working to add the 10 BEST videos on educational change to the wiki. What are they? Where should they go (looking for the best on each topic.)
When we give people these videos, we're giving them something that helps them "sell" what they are doing . I suggest showing these videos for professional development, school boards, and anyone who cares about education.
We've started a page for your nominations for the best videos. If we get too many, we may have some sort of voting thing (which would be great to have that much interest!)
This is a wiki being built for a digital literacy program for teachers within a school division. This approach is a great one for districts and is a way to reach everyone with current information. I also wish they had a blog to compliment it, but sharing these sorts of websites are great.
It would be nice if we had a template of information that people could copy to get started.
Open professional development by Darren Draper and Friends. These opportunities will let you open up your classroom and join in with others to learn collaboratively about blogs, wikis, and more. Take a look at it.
Amazing deep learning on a sick day! This floors me!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Just got home late from a track meet and came in to check the Digiteen and Horizon Project nings. I found this amusing blog entry from Nyomi L at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education (NYC - USA) entitled "Sick Day."
"Alright well, today I missed school to go to the doctor to deal with some breathing problems that I've been troubled with and after that, I happened to see a copy of Wikinomics staring at me from behind a Barnes and Nobles window. It wasn't actually on display but someone had left a copy near the window.
Anyway, I took it as a sign that I should take it upon myself to buy and read the book. After all, if I really didn't like it, I could always return it after I finished. Well, I started where I had left off in ITGS and found myself surprising interested. I read it all the way home and for the next couple of hours and found myself interested, inspired and far more excited about the Horizon Project than I've ever been. It's quite an interesting read and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet, especially people involved in this project."
How is that for a sick day? This student was SICK and yet was so engrossed and curious about this project that her SICK day became a day of very deep learning and change for her.
It is an exciting world and I get to be a part of one that helps excite and inspire teenagers from all over the world like this!
It is not without its stresses. I got a twitter from a good friend today about how someone said there was an inappropriate picture on one of the sites. I stressed at the track meet and all the way back.
I got back, ready for the worst. What I found was very mild, if anything. I deleted the pictures that I thought might be offensive, but it was simply one girl kissing another on the cheek as is often done in teenage pictures. Not appropriate for public display and yet the teenager may not realize that.
There are those, however, that may not like the exuberance of kids who are excited about the tools they are using. But, I'm seeing that my students are getting excited and really learning about things.
I feel like that for Horizon that the vehicle is cresting the hill and about to take off. I'm becoming reminded of why this sort of thing is important. It has been very very hard work getting here, though!
This site claims to be the largest student arts gallery on the web! Looks fascinating. Not sure how they use first names and locations and get away with it. I'd like to know what those who have used it think about it.
An excellent project for 4th - 6th grade sudents from Jennifer Wagner called the Prince Caspian project which will allow teachers to collaborate with other teachers around the world about the book and the upcoming movie "Prince caspian."
A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)
Think.com's safety lesson with nets standards. Think.com is excellent to use with younger students and is very walled and has an excellent profanity filter. I highly recommend it and have personally used it for a summer blogging project. Excellent site. It also requires an extensive verification process by the participating schools.
Dean Shareski has done an outstanding job at creating a college level distance-learning course including many people around the world. See his honest reflections and statements about what his take on the class was. I applaud Dean for transparency and was very impressed with his set up and work.
Confiscating and looking at information on cell phones by school officials is still not clear. This is a very interesting case study for those working with digital citizenship issues at their school.
What I'm seeing is that people are just joining in with what fits best with their daily tasks and vision.
I'd really like to see some people begin talking about creating a flyer or handout on Digital Access, which is the first of the 9 aspects of Digital Citizenship as we have outlined on the wiki.
What can you do? Well, we're really trying to compile things now. I need a little help on the wiki for someone who understands RSS and also, we need some people to start putting thumbs up on the links coming through diigo so they'll start having more meaning. (Our way of "vetting" the sources.)
Will you take 5 minutes and go through some of the links and add your thumbs up -- if you see an important link missing, please send it to the group AND use the tagging standard we've set up, in addition to any other tags you wish to add!
Thank you for caring. This will probably be my last full cross-post on Cool Cat Teacher, if you want to follow this effort closely, please subscribe to the Ad4dcss group blog.
Beware of numbers I'd rather have 1 committed person than 100 people just putting their names down, and that is what we've got. We've got some amazing, hard working, very BUSY people who don't have a lot of time, just bookmarking a little smarter and tweeting and talking towards a common purpose.
The Cat on the Hot Stove Some, I think have the cat on the hot stove syndrome.
If a cat sits on a hot stove, he jumps up. The only problem is that he will not ever sit on the stove again... not even a cold one.
I think that so many of us have gotten involved in something just to see it peter out. Just to see it go "poof." So, we don't want to get all involved and invested in another "poof project." We just won't sit on the stove!
Well, if I'm trying again, so can you. I've jumped headlong into thing that went "poof" before too, however, I will say this... every time I have, I've come away with more learning and meeting new people. Even the "poof" projects haven't been to waste.
However, I'm going to predict something. I believe that there are going to be some newcomers on this project who are going to become well known very fast because of their amazing efforts. I'm already seeing it.
If you're a beginner and you don't know where to start... our virtual volunteerism and cooperative efforts as educators are just now getting started. Join in where you see fit. And if you really want to be "in the know" sign up for the Google group and get our daily digest.
On my to do list is to e-mail some amazing bloggers that I know. I've really been waiting until we have all of our wiki edited, feeds coming in and people's names on the list and going so that when we approach the disillusioned who've been doing this a lot longer than I, that they'll know that there is something here.
Teaching is a noble calling and this is a noble cause. This is a connecting point. A facilitation and linking in a common cause to help us. This is grassroots organizing. We want to see you as a part of it!
Webby awards voting is open now. Very cool. Voting closes May 1st and some cool things are there. How about having students vote (but check the sites in a category first!)
Bud the Teacher and Stephanie Sandifer are planning an I read blocked blogs day. This is going to be an event for educators advocating access. It would also be a great time to talk about ways to monitor when you provide access.
This also happens to be the first aspect of ad4dcss and we've listed it on the wiki. They have shirts that people can get and buttons for your blog.
Phenomenal page about integrating ICT into the classroom witha wide variety of rubrics based upon Bloom's taxonomy. You'll see blog journaling, wiki editing, threaded discussion, bookmarking rubrics, search rubrics, podcasting rubrics, audio conferencing, data analysis, and collaborative rubrics. I haven't been through all of these but would love it if we could go through them and work on them.
They are in PDF format, but it would be great to share and edit them collaboratively. Very nice website.
This is an excellent article that has been reposted. It includes a lot of the information that outlines WHAT web 2.0 is. This includes videos and many important hyperlinks. Excellent article for newcomers to web 2.0 to pick up on.
Website that lets you make logos. I could picture students using this to design logos for their projects. I often have my team design a logo like a crest to represent things about the team. It forces them to think deeply about what they want their team to do.
Just a quick update on this. I'll still keep my focus over here, but we're starting a group blog that I think will end up being much bigger than I. We're looking for a few passionate bloggers to join the group over there with me. Drop me a line!
The wiki uses the links we create in diigo and feeds the resources to the 9 major categories of digital citizenship that we're addressing. (See wiki for those.)
This blog is where we'll list major announcements AND resource links, so it will be a good place to follow the activities.
Where YOU can volunteer
We have a donated Moodle space and Kate Olson is organizing an online course done BY educators for people wanting to know more about Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success. We are planning a preliminary meeting within the next 7 days, however, we're discussing using the 9 areas of digital citizenship as posted on the wiki to serve as our starting point.
We're working on a logo and have a volunteer who is working on this.
Wiki Work - We're working on pulling in the diigo links RSS to the wiki page so that the diigo group will automatically feed the bookmarks to the appropriate category. We could use some help putting those RSS's on the page. (Much of this is being done w/ people giving 30 minutes here and there.)
I would personally love to see the wiki have some basic information, but remember, we're working to create things to go offline so it is about resources, handouts, and useful things.
THE BIG THING YOU CAN DO NOW! - Besides telling people about this (include ad4dcss in the twitter or blog post and it will aggregate on our netvibes page so we'll know you're there.)
We NEED people to join the Diigo group and USE THE STANDARD TAG DICTIONARY. We also need people to go through the bookmarks and thumbs up or thumbs down the best resources so that we may start using that feature. This will sort of be our way of "vetting" the sources.
If you could spend just 10 minutes going through your bookmarks on digital citizenship and tagging them.
We're also talking about several action days a year about different points and I know a lot of you have already broached this subject. Access, digital safety, blogging, so many different things we could do.
Is this some sort of political thing? Well, honestly, we don't know what this is yet. Any organization of people that becomes effective ends up having a political impact, however, we're not starting off that way.
We're starting off to create useful things to help YOU take the discussion of these tools offline. Handouts for boards of directors. An online class for anyone to take who wants to become educated.
When we have large numbers of people, then we'll have more clout on the political end.
But for now, we have a growing list of charter members who are going to tweet, bookmark, do a little wiki work, and share their ideas. How do "we" decide where to move? I think that some fresh faces no one has ever heard of will emerge to lead the charge on some things that we'll sit back and say "now why didn't we do that before."
So, what my role is that when there is a group of people who says to me "we want to do this," I'm using the reach and network of mine to help facilitate and give them the resources to make it happen (and a little geeky programming stuff in the background.)
Power of Newcomers! Newcomers are perfect for this effort because they more clearly see the obstacles that are holding newcomers from joining in and learning more. They clearly see the other side of the fence because they can remember the other side of the fence.
I wish I had more time to tell you more.
We are looking for a few more group bloggers. So, join in. Speak up. Share.
Following are some comments from students on the Horizon Project
They are making great points. Again, when we involve students in discussions, we get some fascinating answers and points. (They sound a little bit like us!"
Dan Tapscott, Horizon Project 2008โs keynote speaker, gave me insight and inspiration for the project. His knowledgeable comments on the baby boom generation were incredible and it amazed me that he decided to make his entire living on the study of the digital generation, the generation that I am a part of.
I am a part of the generation that is an โunprecedented force for change,โ and we are actively inducing and creating change that will be beneficial and relevant to the world today and tomorrow.
I agree that technology must be at the center of this change in order for it to be effective.
Enter technology; students can learn from each other by collaboration through technological advances such as wikis, blogs, You Tube, Facebook, and projects such as Flat Classroom and Horizon.
Teachers are no longer โtransmitters of data,โ but active participants in the studentโs learning process.
with our advanced, technological world, we must not only acknowledge the new technologies emerging but we must gain knowledge on how to use them.
Student #2
If school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great. If we all focus on change and ways to make interactive learning better we could reach so many people! Not only can we interact with each other but we can raise awareness and pose solutions on the many issues regarding education.
Student #3
I really agree with both of what you two are saying, but my question remains, (in an attempt not to sound too cynical): how is this going to happen? I know that Dan Tapscott seeks to view change in the education system, but my question is, how is this going to happen?
but the real issue is, in so many places education is rigid and all about regurgitation of information. How do we look past that? Is it a mindset that we need to learn how to transgress, or is it a gradually changing aspect?
I just set up a gcast podcast channel. I don't have time to record and edit podcasts, but gcast lets me make phone calls to you and that is what I did last night.
I wanted to give you insight into why we need Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success and a little background on some of the people involved in the initial conversations as well as my ideas for what may need to happen.
Teens are really moving a lot of their relationships to cell phones as Danah Boyd said recently on a Wow2 show. This example of teenage habits of sharing photographs on cell phones is an example. Discussions of cell phone use should be a part of what parents and teachers do with kids. This makes me think twice about allowing cell phone cameras on my children's phones, but I'd rather help them be wise in using it.
Since I have not yet responded to the Passion Quilt Meme, I've been prompted yet again. This seems a time to unleash my biggest passion for teaching today's students.
This news show outlines what happens and talked to a psychologist.
My Prediction We have a small window of opportunity to suggest and create structures of what WE, the educators who use these technologies, suggest we should do about the whole digital citizenship, safety, and success issue.
Then, we will be TOLD what to do because of our lack of action. And we know how that goes.
This came up Sunday Morning, when many of us came together in a little impromptu meeting with Sue Waters and Al Upton in elluminate (I'll post the link to the recording when it is released.) These are the brainstorming whiteboard pages (unedited). NOte that there are a lot of things on there WE WOULDN't do, but sharing the brainstorming screen will help summarize the things we talked about.
A lot of us are passionate about it. And we're sick of "talk" about cooperation on the matter.
So, here is what we have:
A Google Group to serve as an easy-to join e-mail based network for discussing what we're doing. I suggest subscribing to a DAILY DIGEST to prevent getting too much e-mail. For now, the group is named Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success.
A "tag" to serve as our focal point to "collect the conversation - ad4dcss
Everything updated is being put on the Conversation Aggregator page I created on Netvibes. (Note: This comes from some comments from Jon Becker and Kate Olson -- wishing that we could "control" and aggregate a conversation. This page is being set up to track all of the things tagged ad4dcss. We cannot control the conversation but we can certainly work to include newcomers and ANYONE interested in the topic... even the Non-Geeks. And this was important enough to set up the tags and tracking.)
Why did we pick that? Well, it sort of came up as an accident and aggregation of everyone's thoughts, but it stands for Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success.
We're beginning to pull together some activities, much of which will just happen from the fact that everything is aggregated! If you us ad4dcss in your twitter post it goes to the netvibes page and I've found that the most useful thing so far!
Some things already spotting through this new looking glass are:
Professional Learning Board is helping us set up a Moodle Training site for Advocates and others interested in this topic -- we need some volunteers to help Kate set it up.
Group blog - This is for those who want to share discussions around this topic. If you're interested, contact Vicki by leaving a comment here. It is meant to be a resource for Advocates and those interested in this topic.
We will have some upcoming impromptu and planned sessions. If you want to hold a session and you have an elluminate room or online place to "meet" -- let me know and I'll give you some talking points of groups that are forming.
Current action items are:
Listen to the elluminate recording
Ask educators interested in forming a grassroots organization to promote online AND OFFLINE action advocating digital citizenship, safety, and success to join this group - http://groups.google.com/group/ad4dcss
Global Action Days ("Flash Point" Projects) - eVents, Student projects, bringing out the student voice en masse on these topics.
Develop of a curriculum wiki by teachers on these topics
Online professional development
Talking points documents that may be printed and shared offline to administrators, boards, teachers, etc.
OK, so my question to you is this. Do you want to be an advocate? We are focusing on sharing resources ONLINE so that we may all be more effective OFFLINE. We've got to take this out.
We all have different areas and ways that we may share, so share in the way you feel most comfortable.
Hinges of History But I'm going to say something here. Some of my favorite books are the Hinges of History books.
We swing upon a hinge of history at this moment. IF you are online now and getting comfortable with this technology, there is a reason. And it is probably so that you may do your part to advocate wise, safe, successful use of the Internet in your area.
We are all too busy and can work together to create materials and other things to do this. If you want to be an advocate, for now, we're open for anyone signing up as long as you want to join in the conversation AND spend a little time ACTING on it. Find a group, organize a group -- ACT.
I'm busy too, everyone. But, I've already bought the domain names and am going to let this be my "virtual volunteerism" project.
Perhaps we are made for a moment such as this. But I'm telling you, I'm tired of this happening and ready for some SUSTAINED efforts on this area. If we don't do it, people who don't understand the Internet nor our students will tell us what we will be doing.
In five years when you are implementing those edicts, don't come complaining if you didn't at least try. The debate over the word "digital" Now, there has been some debate over the word "digital citizenship" and "digital literacy" because after all aren't these subsets of citizenship and literacy. My answer is, OF COURSE THEY ARE.
However, at this point, the mass of educators has not yet understood nor accepted the fact that they are a subset and for that reason, now, we are stuck appending the words "citizenship" and "literacy" with the words digital so that we may be clear in our meaning and laser focused in our efforts.
Maybe someone can debate that elsewhere, but I believe we need to birth some cooperative efforts that will accomplish something.
So, what do you think AND what do you want to do. What are your friends talking about "doing." Let's not just do SOMETHING but do the RIGHT THING, in effective, meaningful, thought out ways.
So, I guess I should tag some people for the passion quilt meme that I hijacked for something I'm really passionate about: Kate Olson, Jon Becker, Sue Waters, Alfred Thompson, and Vicky Hennigan (another newcomer) AND anyone else who wants to!!!
Who's joining in? Who's already doing things? Let's get it started!
Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn aboutโฆand give your picture a short title.
Title your blog post โMeme: Passion Quiltโ and link back to this blog entry.
Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce etc.
An example of annotated linking of your blogs comments
Sunday, April 13, 2008
I've officially said, I want to move on from this particular topic, HOWEVER -- I want to point out how one can export annotations from diigo. I scheduled this to post yesterday and decided to leave this on Sunday's post docket anyway.
I want to demonstrate the power of annotation -- click the annotated link above - -however, I'm "dissecting" and including the comments from the post from yesterday that generated a lot of comments. (The trick to doing this and sending it to your blog is that you have to highlight the person's name who said it.) -- See at the bottom for how I did this.
I also disagree that the edublogosphere is a closed party because I feel the blogging is a lot like teaching and that we get out of it what we put into it.
I don't feel that any of the names mentioned act or feel like they are better than me and have even included me on many conversations
I do love when you say, "if one person reads our blog and get something out of it.. it is important." I try to keep that in mind all the time. Numbers don't matter..people do.
Great response to a burning question/statement that most of us (well probably all of us)feel at one time or another.
Many of the people that I have learned the most from are not the ones involved in the "cocktail party" but rather those in the trenches doing what I love to do each and every day, just like you!
Re: the depressing aspects of 'comment intensity,' I actually meant it to be an affirming post rather than a depressing one
I think that the comment intensity idea is important in this respect: I often see laments from bloggers that they don't get many comments on their posts. What the table above shows is that even those of us who are fortunate enough to have large readerships often don't get many comments. My personal median over the past 20 posts, even WITH the big spike of 89, is still only 2.5. Ewan, your blog and Vicki Davis' are similar. The point is that many, many posts don't get a lot of comments, even those by the more widely read bloggers.
Thanks for bringing this up. This has been an issue for me personally as well. OK, so nobody's IN, but the (pseudo?) community nature of blogging makes it feel that way.
But, like other artists, we have to work a little every day whether we feel like it or not, and whether we get validation that day or not.
I think many of us are working at blogging because there's an element of self improvement, which implies self evaluation. Without feedback from others it's easy to be hard on ourselves.
For me, the conversation is hardly closed; it is simply a matter of having something to say, something to share. The emotional commitment is another aspect of the conversation that is easily glossed over.
I've found (both with myself and those educators I've worked with in their blogging starts) that the edublogosphere is open and welcoming -- but as we engage in any cultural group (even offline), patience really is a key.
Still, we sometimes measure our success by the interaction from those we look up to (esp. teachers - many of whom were probably the best students in their class, yes?)
Sometimes we don't see the comments -- because the talk happens offline.
I get very few comments on my blog but see through the clustermaps that I have readers each and every day, so continue to feel that the blog is benefiting me through reflection and may even be benefiting others as well.
the whole cocktail party analogy is just a grown up version of the kickball line-up in elementary school.
In the blog world, change is effected by good content, and while good content isn't always noticed at first, it does eventually get a respectable position--sometimes because the cocktail group points them out.
How could I think to be in the same boat as John Scalzi who started in 1998 if I've only been blogging since 2007?
I found your blog, Vicki, because a project you do for Atomic Learning mentioned you, and your name is on the movies they use.
Oh yes, I have felt the cocktail chill at times. I'm a norwegian edublogger, that have been following your brunks (blogdrunks) for a while. To start with - in
2005 - you were the only ones out there to follow
Wes told me once I twittered, that nobody should twitter alone and I could not agree more - so I don't.
So, from the outer side looking in: Anybody stopping by in Second Life tonight (which is today for you) for a virtual edu cocktail? I'm aka Kita Coage at Eduisland II, waiting to cocktail connect with you c",)
For most of us, blogging is very much a personal venture.
I suspect that we all have a deep desire to be heard and to be accepted. The longer I'm involved in the edublogosphere, however, the more impressed and encouraged I am by the level of acceptance that there is here.
It is a good thing that we don't always agree with each other. Disagreement is often at the heart of constructive conversation
At the same time, we are no different than the kids in our classrooms. We educators need to know that we will be accepted, no matter what we have to say and no matter how well we are able to express it. I think we help to make the edublogosphere a "safe place" for each other as we try to keep it positive and as we take advantage of the numerous opportunities to be affirming.
I don't at all feel excluded from the blog "cocktail party", because just like a real cocktail party, I am drawn to the people who have something important, and engaging to say and I am content to listen and learn from them. I have seen a few of the "big names" at conferences, and even met a few of them in person. I have emailed several of them and others, or left an occasional comment, and I have been very pleasantly surprised at the thoughtful responses I have received.
I read many blogs, but comment rarely, and I suspect that those who read my blog do the same. So I don't feel at all excluded. I'm just happy to occasionally be part of the conversation.
When I was at EduBloggerCon last spring I felt quite the outsider. There were famous people there and I was unknown. I still feel that way in the broad edublogsphere. But honestly the broad sphere is not who I am blogging for. I blog for a niche - computer science teachers. The event for that niche is SIGCSE and there I (blush) feel a bit like a star. Few of the people there know the edubloggers with much larger readership or Technorati ranks. And really reaching the CS teachers is my goal not reaching everyone who teaches general subjects.
There is, I believe, room for more at the top if only because the number of teachers reading blogs is still very small but we all hope it is growing. We are still at the ground floor. That makes edublogging different from tech blogging I think.
I think we need to all remember our focus for blogging. Mine is for reflection. I use my blog as a tool to improve my teaching. If others start to read and can learn from it, great. To my knowledge I am the only one seeing my blog right now. Which is fine with me. I don't think blogging should be a popularity contest and having a large number of readers is great, it must mean that you, and others, have something to offer that others want to emulate.
prof v said
I think you could have added three additional points. First, a suggestion on how to increase readership. I think new bloggers (myself included) are still trying to figure out how to make the connections that allow for conversations within blogs. I go back to your list of 10 tips for successful blogging, and still find things I never noticed before
would love to see an updated list that perhaps would include how to make sure your blog is part of an RSS feed and how to set up subscriptions for potential readers to make it easy for them to subscribe to your blog.
I think even you have realized that it is more difficult to break into the edublogger field as there is now so many new bloggers (just in the last two years).
Finally, I am surprised that you did not point out how you have helped new bloggers by both asking for new voices and then publishing them in your own blog. I think this is an indication that you are trying to open up the "party".
Isn't the whole point of web 2.0 is that it exudes democracy and equality? Those that get all concerned about rankings and ratings are, as you've suggested missing the point.
We often quickly want to find ways of ranking. Reminds me of the evils of current assessment practices. We tell kids to do their best and work on improving performance and yet continue to use ranking systems that is clearly a mixed message.
Anonymous said.
I'm new to this world as of Monday...yes, 4 days of immersing myself in as much ed. tech, web 2.0, online collaboration "stuff" that I can. (thanks to Lisa Thumman at Rutgers U.) Cocktail party or not, your blog and the comments people have left have increased my list of people to follow. Even a discussion about "being on the outside" has led me to the "inside". I'm thrilled to be in the company of such great minds and promise to start contributing once I wrap my brain around it all! Thanks to everyone for sharing! cmtvarok
I believe that this "post" has been made stronger by the comments, which have added to the post greater depth of meaning.
All over this conversation I see the change in society. We are all going through the emotions of becoming accustomed to something new... kind of like I first experienced when the Internet first came out.
And while, when I began blogging, I didn't really set my sights or aim for a large readership... now that it is here, I will seriously consider and appreciate each individual reader and take my job seriously
@tennessee -- Those in the trenches are my most important reads... I just wish there were more of us. It seems as if many teachers view blogging as a way out of the classroom when they should see it as a way to improve the classroom!
@scottmcleod - I believe the comment intensity is highly correlated to controversiality AND immediacy. If a lot of people SAW someone recently, they want to interact and comment (immediacy.) If someone says something very emotional or controversial, people want to comment and interact (controversiality.) While I guess looking at these stats are fine, I've found in my very short time blogging that looking too much at numbers of any kind removes my focus from what is important. When I focus intently on conversation, my blog traffic and numbers just grow. I always say "whatever is watered, grows." If I water my investigation of stats, I become a good statistician... if I water my blog but also commenting and participating in the blogosphere as a WHOLE, I become a good blogger. I'd rather be the latter. And while the post was meant to be encouraging... I have to admit I'm a competitive perfectionist and always have to reign in that aspect of my nature.
@christophersessums - I think the emotional nature of something is like the proverbial elephant in the Net -- it is there. It always stuns me the number of people who discuss their feelings on this when it comes up... it means that many of us are experiencing the same thing.
I just pulled out some of the comments I thought were important by doing this -- this lets you "extract" what you think is important and easily create a blog post -- I think that researchers and college students should definitely be using this feature. It is in Diigo and under your information, you'll see tools. You may also click Send in the diigo toolbar and send an annotated page to your browser and it will do this as well.
Cool summary of an article by Liz B. Davis -- Liz took the article and extracted the most valuable bits to her using google Docs. This methodology is fascinating, but even moreso the fact we may all begin doing this together with Diigo.
Wow -- this longitudinal study shows that all generations show "google generation" traits with over 65 year olds spending 4 more hours a week online than some of the younger ages.
It argues that libraries must adapt to the digital mindset AND that young people are lacking in information skills!
This is an important study for all educators, business leaders, AND students on the Horizon project. Another reason to remind ourselves that we base practice on RESEARCH not STEREOTYPES!
Added some annotations to this -- I highly suggest that bloggers don't close comments! The conversation belongs to all of us and should take place anywhere it takes place. See Kate's blog for more.
**WARNING - EXPLICIT LANGUAGE IN THE LINKED VIDEO**
This is an example of a very successful youtube show that many teens are watching and viewing. WARNING - there is explicit language here, however, I find this "question of the day" on Wendesday, the 606,954 views and the 20 video responses and 777,000 teen responses interesting.
Again, this is NOT a video to show your classes, however it IS a video to understand how teens are talking about and trying to make sense of the world. Step back and look at what is happening... and notice, who is not included in the equation!
Also, I do not advocate what this guy suggests doing! I do advocate holding people accountable for what they've done and that needs to happen in this case. The blame should go squarely on the kids that did it, for when it doesn't, people know they can get away with anything and not be held responsible. It would set a dangerous precedent.
"we control our screen instead of watching it as our parents did. Kids around the world use their voices through YouTube, blogs, and wikis. We work together to showcase our opinions on what is happening to the world.
Collaboration is not just a word in the dictionary that we have to recite to a chalkboard. Itโs something that we have become accustomed to; it is as natural to us as breathing.
We collaborate daily with our peers, classmates, and sometimes even our teachers. Instead of looking at a list of instructions in a book, we figure things out by learning together.
In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."
Sarah's prophetic and insightful words (she's in 10th grade!) really resonate with me as I see one of the latest movies making the rounds. (hat tip Scott McLeod).
Iโm going to do the classy thing and close comments here - go show Jon some blogger love and tell HIM how you feel - heโs the one who started all of thisโฆโฆโฆ."
I think that again, Jon is going through the typical feeling of all of this. For example, Flat Classroom project has generated a lot of conversation. I do not control it, I do not try to track it all. I cannot!
The whole mentality of how this thing works is not the idea of someone bringing their favorite toy to school and then hording it in the corner during playtime saying, "Mine Mine!" These conversations are not owned by anyone.
I don't like the idea of ever closing a conversation on a blog post -- I still get comments on very old posts and it also makes me realize that sometimes I need to revisit a topic.
This is about a new place for conversation and we cannot be everywhere at once! It is about sharing conversation and ideas and if any of us don't like the idea that our things might be remixed or talked about somewhere else, then we need to rethink participation in the blogosphere, that is the way the whole thing works!
I'm planning to rewrite 10 habits of bloggers that win to help newcoming bloggers understand how to track these conversations (using backlinks), and how to know that they shouldn't move their blog and how authorities work, etc.
"My posting rate here at Dangerously Irrelevant waned considerably over the past two months...
The interesting thing to me is that Iโve missed it, that I actually have felt sad that I havenโt been posting more. I think that speaks to the power of blogging for many of us โ that we have the very human needs to express ourselves, to get feedback on our ideas, and to be connected with others. Of course blogs can be an excellent way to do that, particularly those of us who donโt have anyone around us locally who understand or care about our interests and our passions."
For those not blogging, perhaps this blogging discourse is tiresome, but I think for those just starting out, understanding expectations is important.
There is a whole emotional side that no one has really been talking about as those of us who have been islands become connected. When the lone wolves join a pack... I guess we all still are a bit of a ... lone wolf in some regards?
Thankfully, Scott goes on to say:
"This is something I have to do. So Iโm back in the game."
I know just how he feels as I reflect in my own comments over on his blog:
"Scott, I went through this as well. I think it was at a time when I was internally rebelling at what I thought people wanted me to be. I just want to be myself and when I hear people talk about me in a certain way, it is intimidating.
Do I want to blog? Do I want to share so much? Is there anything left for me? Is there anything left for my family? These are things I've thought about and gone through.
But I feel like that the people that read me... and read you... read because of the person. That is why I've really stayed away from the guest blogging thing unless it is to encourage and bring in a newcomer.
If you read about personal brands, that is really what a blogger has... a personal brand. You ARE "Dangerously Irrelevant." And if we're in this for the long haul, sometimes we'll blog and sometimes we won't... but as long as YOU are there, many of us will be reading because we're here for you.
The popularity thing is a losing ballgame -- for some time now the technorati thing has become more and more, well, irrelevant, as mass market blogs move into the blogosphere, the daily, hourly blogs are just going to edge out the individual blogger. At some point, I'll probably drop out of the top 10,000 -- I've not changed and have more links than ever... what has changed is that more people are blogging. (Will Richarson is at 3,000 something -- for some reason, I thought he WAS in the 2,000's but I could be wrong.)
For that reason, it is so important just to do as you're doing... sit back, examine motives and if this whole blogging thing is really adding something to our lives. Then, just relax and live with it.
I for one, cannot live with the stress of feeling I'm in a perpetual horse race, I'm just going to live and let blog."
And I love the response to yesterday's conversation by Stephen Downes, perpetual godfather of the edublog, when he says:
"I'm sympathetic; I often feel, as Vicki Davis does, that I'm on the outside."
I think that the discussion that has spun into the edublogosphere from Jon Becker's blog (uhm, Jon, lets see those stats now!?) is a good thing, albeit on Monday, we'll all be focused back on the classroom.
However, I truly feel the emotional aspect of this whole thing is what our kids are going through! We see this playing out in the desire of teenagers to be Youtube stars. We see it everywhere.
When we experience it, we begin to recognize it in others.
Perhaps that is why many edubloggers report that they relate so well to their students. We are experiencing what they are experiencing. I see a lot of truth in this.
Ok, gotta run to take some food to a funeral and go to a baby shower. Ah, the joys of living in a small town... fresh air, lots of family, and lots of good long stories over coffee!
Another reflection from a blogger -- I love this quote, "It's lonely outside the box!" It has been very insightful to share information on how people of all types feel about the edublogosphere.
I'm reading some great posts from students about the keynote. This one in particular was very captivating.
In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."
Be twittered has a gadget AND a moble gadget for twitter -- I'd love to hear how you like it. This means you may add a gadget to your homepage of igoogle to keep up w/ twitter on your start page. The mobile gadget allows you to put the app on your cell phone to track twitter. This is from 32 hours.
The students will be interacting and communicating their thoughts via the wiki and Ning. I personally appreciate Don's willingness to bring attention to the issues in education. We need broad support from leaders such as him to get the message out about the need for global collaboration and changing system of teaching.
Some points I believe are very important:
1) This generation is different from the students we've had in the past.
2) The education system has remained basically the same although the students have changed.
3) It is time for educational evolution to match today's students needs AND the need to collaborate globally.
4) Having the students envision the future, as they are with the Horizon Project is IMPORTANT!
He applauds their efforts and I DO TO!
What you can do!
I hope you'll share this keynote on your own blog. (please put this tag at the bottom of your post: hz08_keynote )
We need volunteers! Encourage educators and business leaders to volunteer as experts and judges -- we NEED YOU!
A netiquette note And, when you ask to join the wiki or Ning -- state your information to me so I won't have to e-mail you and find out "who" you are. We "check out" the participants we involve in this project. Once you're added to the wiki, add your name to an untaken place!
Peer Review Classroom Sign up going on We also are actively recruiting sounding boards which are being chaired by
These are classrooms elementary and higher (even college) that take one class period to evaluate videos and provide feedback. Peer review is part of the new ISTE Nets standards! If you hope to do something like this in the future, you should certainly introduce your school to the idea by taking a class day!
What all of this means We are seeing increasing interaction between business leaders, authors, and education. We saw it with Karl Fisch's project. It seems to be that the teachers who are able to set this sort of thing up are very often the bloggers.
Blogging gives you power and REACH! You are able to link to and reach out to those within your area of expertise and connect them to your classroom like never before.
Blogging makes us better as professionals but it also makes our classrooms better. Connecting and mass collaboration of educational professionals is in its infancy! Join in now! Every day you wait is another day you miss out!
This keynote is for your students too It is a level playing field. Because this keynote is delivered asychronously via Youtube, your students have the chance to interact and speak out also. Everything that is tagged hz08_keynote in delicious and technorati will be linked to the keynote page today. (I have to have some items in there before I may link to them!)
Your students have equal opportunity to reflect, discuss, impress, and share what they think about this keynote and the changes in education in a way that WILL BE HEARD.
We need to have our students talking about and understanding mass collaboration. Some classes are going to record podcasts of their 'popcorn" discussions and others will blog -- just tag it to delicious (via diigo if you wish) OR technorati and it will come through our aggregation!
Join in! Everyone welcome!
I cannot write this post without a heartfelt thanks to my co-planner and friend, Julie Lindsay in Qatar, without whose common vision this project would not exist.
Is the edublogosphere a closed, elite cocktail party?
I noticed Jon Becker's post responding to Scott's post about Comment Intensity. I really try to stay out of the contest of measuring the "biggest blog" -- I think it is a waste of time.. and in 5 years it will change anyway.
But I had to respond to this note from Jon. He says:
"I think where Iโm going with this is that I worry that the ed. tech. blogosphere is reasonably saturated. Related to Darren Draperโs post on Twitter Set Theory, I feel like there are some central figures whose spheres overlap considerably and a whole lot of us outsiders trying to penetrate that inner circle. Itโs as if folks like Will Richardson, David Warlick, Wes Fryer, Vicki Davis, Dean Shareski, Stephen Downes, Chris Lehmannโฆ(and, yes, you Scott) are having an awesome cocktail party conversation and Iโm standing on the outside staring over their shoulders and listening in, trying to get a word in, but not penetrating that conversation at all. I know there are LOTS of us on the outside looking in."
This was my reply:
The "perception" of some sort of "cocktail party conversation" is just that a perception. I rarely even chat with those guys and although they are awesome, only a few of them make my weekly MUST READ list.
I FEEL out of it ALL THE TIME. I feel like an outsider ALL OF THE TIME. I don't feel in the know. I feel left out a lot. And supposedly everyone THINKS -- I'm in.
The fact is that NO ONE is in. This is a big, massive microcosm that no one controls and few of us even understand. We struggle with having time to do it all and coming to grips on all of this blogging and global audience thing.
So, how would you take this personally? I went for a week with no comments -- did that mean no one was reading? I left and didn't blog for a week -- does that mean I'm suddenly irrelevant.
We are all relevant but the emotions you're feeling with all of this are something I very often feel and I believe most people struggle with. I LOVE it when I get links and I Live for comments.
It is never enough, though, and I find that I have to focus on my real life in order to achieve satisfaction. Most people here don't know cool cat teacher exists.
Keep perspective and know why you blog... if you blog to make a difference and inspire... you will. If you blog for some sort of validation... you're not going to get it on an Internet that likes this person today and moves on to another tomorrow. If you want to be loved, pet the cat, hug the spouse, enjoy the kids. And you might want to take a read at the poem I shared today.
You are an excellent blogger. Just remember, people post most often on emotional issues, not on the technology issues that they actually use.
Scott's post on comment intensity was a real downer for me -- I mean I must be worthless if I have a low comment intensity!? But hey, we can talk all day about who is important and who isn't. But if one person reads our blog and get something out of it.. it is important.
I'm to the point that I could care less about my technorati rating, my comment intensity or link count -- I might check them every two weeks. I care more now (hopefully it is maturity) about connecting with people and doing things that make a difference.
But, I'm not perfect, the comment intensity post really got me down and made me want to quit blogging. And remember this, Jon -- AFTER 3.5 months -- I HAD 7 READERS!
7 READERS!
It takes time. Time and doing it for the right reasons. If I had a blog that looks like yours after 3.5 months, I'd count myself very proud... but I didn't. I didn't know what I was doing and was completely lost!
You've come a long way... don't be so hard on yourself!
There are a lot of us on the outside looking in. But, the outside is the inside. This blogosphere is like nothing else we've ever seen. Crowdsourcing and mass collaboration is a new thing and we all have new emotions to deal with
Many thanks to Britt Watwood for twittering that he took this poem from yesterday's post and made it into something to "hang on the wall."
I asked him to forward it back and it again moved me to tears as when I wrote it... it is just so how much I feel and is almost ethereal, like I didn't even write the thing.
I took it and am sharing it with you using a cool new site that lets me embed documents called docstoc.
This site lets us upload and share all kinds of things. And image this -- if we actually come up with a tagging standard and all begin to agree to use something like lesson_plan -- then we can find lesson plans from one another. Free sharing!
I am not an avatar nor am I an id I am not my twitter nor my SL identity I am not my diigo and wikis aren't me I'm a mom and a teacher in all simplicity.
Tis easy to get caught up in "being something" more when what I am to be is often the two feet on my floor. No one else can hug my kids nor wipe a wet tear love the unlovely or calm the raw fear.
The pressure from "somewhere" to be some kind of star is deceiving and distracting from helping us be who we are. Balance, perspective, focus, and time offline will become successful habits of the overachieving mind.
Reject the invisible hand that pushes you to stress think what you want and how time should be spent best. Choose your life's course, don't just flow with the stream, you can be more...but it should fit with your dream.
Words from my heart I love my true friends through the Internet. The amazing teachers and "real people" out there who are just the "salt of the earth" as we say in the south.
So many amazing people who are just wonderful and thrill me with their presence. I enjoyed unplugging last week during spring break so very much. I was literally offline and disconnected for 6 days! I really was able to spend time with my family and think.
When I returned and looked at my inbox, I saw it through a fresh lens. I am 37 years old and at this stage in my life, I already gave up one career to be a stay at home mom. My focus has to stay my family or I'll give everything up again!
This is what I saw:
A ton of Diigo invites and friends -- not a lot of "stuff" and pretty easy to handle, but still it was there.
The effort of setting up a "new" network. Someone needs to handle this friend thing or there is going to be an inherent obstacle in starting something new. Now, I weigh heavily my decision to join anything. A lot of us do. This just reinforces that and although I believe Diigo is definitely a place to join, I will continue to think twice about where I join and what I recommend that others join as well!
About 10 emails from people I've never met, that have never commented on my blog and as far as I know don't participate in our educational communities ASKING to be a guest blogger on my blog.
At this point, I have had one guest blogger. I share everywhere and I'm glad Louise made such an amazing post, however, I really feel like the one place online that is truly ME is this blog. This is me and who I am as best as I will share publicly, I guess.
Having a blog that is gaining readership is exciting, but I still think that 1 comment is probably worth more to me than a lot of readers that might just have added me to their RSS in some workshop but never take a glance.
I'm inspired by Dale Carnegie and remember sitting in my bathtub as a 6th grader reading his book How to Win friends and Influence People and not being able to put it down. Across the years he spoke to me and helped me.
If I cannot help people, I don't want to blog. And when I hear from readers... the real people it means something. If I hear from people who are genuinely interested in education and me as a person, that is great too. If they want to tell their story, I love that.
However, if I'm just someone that they want to use to accomplish their own thing and don't care a rip about me or my readers... just our pocketbooks... get lost.
It is about authenticity and caring about real people.
Some comment spam - I had a few people who had good comments and several who just commented and had a link to their own work. The comments were like "nice blog, see what I'm doing here." Again, poor netiquette and comment spam.
I can tell everyone from personal experience that this blog has been built upon my own commenting in other places and not just stingy posting here. Haven't had time to comment or read much lately, but I'll be doing that again soon!
Some cool messages and stories. I love those. I'll never forget the message someone e-mailed me from a coffee shop in Virginia about how a post had gotten to her at just the right time. She was discouraged and the post had her crying in her coffee with joy. Wow! To be a part of something like that means a lot to me. Those stories keep me blogging when I get discouraged.
Requests for appearances, workshops, etc. This is where I feel somewhat of a double edged sword. I'm booked through December of this year and that is fine with me. I'm very excited about the fact that Julie and I are working out the final details to offer a TWO DAY intensive Flat Classroom Workshop in July in St. Louis. We'll share more later.
I want to help people and do things and meet people, but I'm only going to take three appearances a semester. I just have to do that. I want to be here for my family and my students and have done the travel thing. I don't want to go on the "rubber chicken eater" circuit (as Doug Johnson calls it.) I want to stay home with my children and run around on the farm. So, although many ask me when am I going to quit teaching... I can tell you... it ISN'T happening any time soon.
I am contemplating the types of work that I will do when I do something... when I get out, I personally want it to be with the people who have the vision to do something with what I'm sharing. I think that more teachers are going to have such opportunities and it is important to be choosy or else you will just feel very, very burnt out.
A few freelance articles -- This is what I love to do... write! Writing, web appearances and a few in person things... that is fine with me. I dream of having my book on the rack in my books a million and on having an article that helps people understand technology in Woman's Day. Silly dreams, but it could happen.
So, you ask, why do you even share this stuff?
Well, I share it because there are some other teachers out there who may be struggling with being "sucked into the vortex." This vortex of educational change is like a wild stallion... you can jump on his back, but if you're not careful, he'll control your destiny and you'll not master your own.
There has got to be some common sense with all of this. (and lots of prayer) Everyone having instant access to everyone else is sometimes NOT a good thing, particularly when some of the people want to use you.
If you are just starting or really becoming "known" in educational circles, I just want to encourage you to learn from what I'm experiencing:
Know your friends. They are often the people who talked to you and others when you were "nobody" and just starting out. Do they talk to beginners?... if not, watch out.
If you're starting out, see how the "established" people treat you. If they treat you with respect, they're worth following.
Filter Spam ruthlessly - Spam might be e-mails. It might be people who IM you constantly. It might be wasteful twitter accounts.
If it is email and you use folders, filter that person or account if you really have to read it to one place so that you will not be distracted. If it is facebook or some other place, replace the e-mail with RSS. Take time to look at every e-mail and apply filtration rules. Can the spam and take back your life.
Filter focus ruthlessly. I follow the time honored strategy of having a top 10 - to do list daily. I have a master list with the rest of the items, but this gives me focus. And yes, blogging was on my list today!
I find that I have to take a hard look at the places that "suck me in" and won't let me go. And, when I go there (like twitter), I use a handy timer widget on my desktop that I downloaded from Google Desktop.
I also made a folder in Google Reader called @HOTLIST (the @ puts the folder at the top of the list -- some people just name this Aardvark but that is a little silly.) This includes my 10 must reads of the day. This too is a secret, but I'll tell you that I often focus on those people who I know and work with pretty frequently as well as a few other sources who are dissenting or different viewpoints.
Invest your time in things that save you time. I've been having a little trouble with airset, so I set it to synch to Outlook. I set outlook to synch with Google Cal and then started using an amazing site called Time Bridge to schedule my appointments. It lets me invite people to a meeting and give 5 times that work. People RSVP and it sets the appointment AND puts it on my calendar for the best time. Then, it reminds everyone automatically. Isn't that amazing?
I also love using the diigo auto blog posting feature and replaced the delicious posting with this one which allows me more characters and thoughts for each bookmark as well as tagging and annotation. I'm not sure what I think about it yet and may set it to not post daily. Still thinking on this one. I don't know if I like the autoposting of the links. Before, I just spliced delicious into my feed only, and now my blog looks a little "linky" -- I wish I could customize the blog post from diigo a little more.
I also love that I can twitter and access the standard tags for the Horizon projects from within diigo. All of these things make it a HUGE time saver for me.
I have also used twitterfeed to post the things I KNOW I will post anyway. It just saves me time. This includes, the Wow2 show, Wow2 links and my blog posts. That is it. I've seen some use it to excess which means I unfollow their twitter in a heartbeat!
A good old dose of common sense - When I feel like all of this "stuff" is stressing me out, I listen to myself. That is when I send myself offline. My mile wide rebellious streak kicks in and I take an little vacation from it all. This is why I refuse to get a blackberry. Online is PART of my life it is not my ENTIRE life! It will have its place and its limit or it will be gone. Period.
In this period of overchoice, we must learn how to make choices that make our lives better and help us further our dreams and mission in life.
It is OK to disconnect. It is important to remember that popularity comes and goes and not to get hung up on it. Be who you ARE not who you THINK people want you to be.
I guess it always bothers me when I see someone twitter
"I'm reconnecting with my long lost cousin"
or
"I'm seeing my grandad for the first time in a month."
It niggles at my mind that perhaps their fingers should be off the cell phone and their eyes and hearts should be connecting with those they love.
Like the mother I saw a couple of weeks trying to fly a kite when her son while talking on a cell phone... we still need the humans in our lives. We need to do a better job of focusing on the things in front of our noses.
If us tech-heads cannot achieve balance, people won't want what we have.
Today on horizon, my students set up their PLN (personal learning network) in their RSS reader -- we use Netvibes although some switched to Google reader.
Here is how I will assess this:
I am assessing the students on this by having them print the page out and turn it in -- I'm also checking over their shoulders in lieu of printing -- but I may not get to everyone. -- In this blog post, I've REQUIRED 6 things on the page -- each is worth 10 points -- with 2 of those points being for a properly edited title in Netvibes (so that they may see what is what!) -- and then I have them find at least four additional sources of information for another 10 points each.
Knowing how to set up a PLN for a topic of study is a VITAL skill for the 21st century researcher. I like Netvibes because it is very simple -- one page interface.
A webcast with Diane Hammond, organizer of Yes I Can Science about her experiences organizing a blogging project between middle school science students and an astronaut on the space station. She has some interesting insights on the importance of active teacher involvement and engagement of the classroom.
This lets you create an account to make ipod tutorials. This is free and there are several educational videos already there including this mogo on how to use mogo from the 18th ITSC 07 (Innovative Technology Schools Conference).
Education is moving to ipods and cell phones -- it is the next major progression. Perhaps 1:1 ipod projects are next?
I likethis graphic from Darren about the traditional classroom. I would tweak it a bit but wanted to preserve this, particularly for the students examining the impact of connecting people and usercontent on the classroom with the horizon project.
Envisioning microsoft surface application in libraries -- I think that there are exciting opportunities here -- we'll have smart tables instead of computers -- every flat surface being its own computing device as computers merge with everything around us.
The educational "pack" of twitterers -- join this wiki and add yours -- this helps newcomers find twitterers grouped along a common topic. I'm exploring to find people in other areas to learn from!
Youth twitter site where students are usingtwitter to communicate with one another in short 140 character bursts. I always see fascinating things here.
This mathematicious video took a long time to make. I love it! Math teachers will love this.
This is something for the horizon project student to review. This is Funny but it is an example of how videos can be made on any topic -- a math teacher could have students see how many of these terms they recognize.
This is an excellent article in education week discussing the copyright issues and how it is causing problems in schools with digital storytelling and video making as part of their work. Some recent court decision strike fear in the heart of teachers.
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have helped me truly understand the societal dynamics of all of these things.
