Cloudy Tag Thoughts

Edubloggercon08 in San Antonio (just one many stories)

I arrived at the Edubloggercon 08 session start late and the room was not quite what I had expected with many rows of chairs facing the riser area where Steve Hargadon was facilitating a discussion on which sessions would be presented based on the pollster voting. There was also what looked like a professional video team whom I later found out were from Pearson and had posted on the NECC Ning their intentions to capture Edubloggercon with professional cameras and boom mikes as well, which added to the effect. I was a bit distracted as I was meeting people and trying to deal with my computer's inability to access the wireless. I spent most of the morning recognizing and introducing myself to people who I have only met virtually.

I went to two sessions before lunch. The first break out session I saw was on social networks. It was great getting to hear the many voices from people who shared their varied thoughts and experiences. The second session by the time I reached it was discussing Here Comes Everybody and was very animated. It doesn't seem to matter in some ways what the topic is because the discussions in trying to find the essential questions and problems begin analyzing road blocks to moving ours and other teacher's classrooms into a collaborative student centered environment. I noticed several times participants and one instance in particular Chris Lehman standing up for teachers whenever a discussion was moving towards accusing them of resisting and being unwilling to change. I have to agree because I don't know any teacher who when asked whether they enjoy and embrace this age of testing and multiple choice state tests wouldn't support change.

During lunch I met several more educators and took some pictures including my favorite of the day, Maria Knee who because she has done amazing work with Kindergarten students with such things as her classroom blog, holding up both her award for the Kay L. Bitter Vision Award but also balancing on her shoulder Trixster (hope I have that right) who has traveled to many different locations including several NECC conferences.

After lunch I was sitting working in the Blogger's Cafe when several folks walked over and because of the participants I wanted to hear what was being said. After a certain point several things happened simultaneously, smart phones started being brought out and an open fun exploration of the technology occured and Bud Hunt started streaming on Mogolus. Because it has the ability to stream and capture several sources at once I quickly set up an account and sent him my permissions. What Will Richardson and Steve Dembo were asking people to share on the edstreamtv wiki which was what and when they were streaming and to be able to coordinate, Bud was essentially doing in a spontaneous fashion. I think this is something I realized today that every time someone tries to organize and centralize some element of the edtech learning network that it sort of goes against what we are trying to do in the classroom which is to create more of a decentralized messy learning environment.

After the spontaneous gathering at the Blogger's cafe I set up for some more streaming with Alice Mercer and the Edtech Talk show It's Elementary. Unfortunately the wireless was cutting in and out and we couldn't set up the simultaneous video Ustream, chat room projection, speaker, and Skype conference call. What a fun and amazing day and there are still many days to go including attending for the Constructivist Consortium tomorrow (bad news is there is no wireless where it is held).

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Tags: ebc08, necc08, edubloggercon, edtech, necc

Earth Day Webcast

Earth Day is finished and it was a challenging but very rewarding experience for both my students and myself. The students all did a great job presenting and each group was allowed to choose the visual component that they felt best expressed their topic choices. Overall I think the most effective student presentations involved the use of slideshare while the students gave their oral component. One group did a VoiceThread, and a couple of groups even did podcasts although they are not uploaded. This first 24 hour Webcastathon will hopefully be the first of many to come. Overall the variety of presentations from other classrooms and teachers was amazing as well as the participation from several different countries.

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Tags: earthday, earthcast08

0.0

TEACHER 0.0

STRANGER!
if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not
speak to me?    And why should I not speak to you? - Walt Whitman

If by chance we meet on a road. . .           along a path. . .                           or during an odyssey. . .

Use the skills you know to communicate, because the Read Write Web is every teachers' responsibility to know and help our students learn. . . learn to be creators and organizers of content=ideas not just passive consumers.

beyond the dots. . .


beyond the dashes. . .

Ones and Zeros first began with. . .
Morse code the 19th century and the transatlantic cable between NY and London that allowed for real time data and interaction.

And place no longer matters as learning is happening all over the world. Ideas from any one teacher everywhere can be available to everyone. A classroom project can be seen by everyone. This is what is called a flat world. . .

And the data and information and knowledge to become a 21st Century teacher is not decided upon or settled by any one teacher or place in the world. . .

TODAY

come write, determine, participate, and share the knowledge with us

go all the way to Timbuktu

chat speak listen respond write

    Teacher X.0!

I was in the chat in Classroom 2.0 and Lisa Parisi made me think of the importance of beginnings, beginners and being open to learn, and I've always tried to abide by that feeling too. The first time I learned of someone believing in this was when a teacher of mine quoted Albert Einstein "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed," for a "conceptual design" department (this link is from Stephen Wilson, who has been a constant presence) class in my art department. So I remember creating a small box with a view hole, plastic baby, mirrors, and cotton and taping to the side a walkman playing over and over "retain the child within you," and that's when "childlike fascination and sense of wonder," first came to form a phrase in my mind that I remember. Trying to find the A.E. quote I stumbled upon this page of artists reflecting on the word "wonder."

Lately I refer and share in many instances when trying to show, how we should work together to learn Web 2.0 tools, Carolyn Foote's Beginner's Mind. I used this and chose for my playful application Moolvl for a presentation I made for my school district.

photo sources:
Image: 'Roofie'
www.flickr.com/photos/49503155549@N01/238573192
Image: 'Peek-a-Boo'
www.flickr.com/photos/57038667@N00/476731882
Image: 'Tree path'
www.flickr.com/photos/32863204@N00/241899410
Image: 'Odysseus and Tiresias'
www.flickr.com/photos/36021911@N00/75102722Image: 'Holes'
www.flickr.com/photos/31426589@N00/119131442Image: 'dots'
www.flickr.com/photos/76014095@N00/400696203
Image: 'green dots'
www.flickr.com/photos/50367113@N00/17828926
Image: 'Ladybug (FI-22993)'
www.flickr.com/photos/57267425@N00/140266515Image: 'Red + White Ball'
www.flickr.com/photos/12074797@N00/17952630
Image: 'The Stronghold'
www.flickr.com/photos/95492938@N00/219852893Image: 'and who are you?'
www.flickr.com/photos/77467550@N00/290274557
Image: 'IMG_3453'
www.flickr.com/photos/54087404@N00/155629109
Image: 'geeks'
www.flickr.com/photos/54903723@N00/20318677Image: 'IMG_3454'
www.flickr.com/photos/54087404@N00/155629110Image: 'Who needs a hybrid anyway?'
www.flickr.com/photos/90832828@N00/1675538078
Image: 'volvo'
www.flickr.com/photos/37996575334@N01/288095
Image: 'Sum blu cawr'
www.flickr.com/photos/15245443@N00/1300476032
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flatland_cover.jpg/200px-Flatland_cover.jpg
Image: '6569'
www.flickr.com/photos/98572879@N00/276168731Image: 'First Impressions'
www.flickr.com/photos/15401080@N00/88760582
Image: 'Djingareyber Mosque'
www.flickr.com/photos/44124370103@N01/60323
Image: 'Angel Oak MK3'
www.flickr.com/photos/91178396@N00/470623754

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Tags: flickrcc, edtech, photoblog, beginnng

The Storm and Dangers that Took Down the Global Project

The ice storm took down the power grid for Scott Meech and his black out was nowhere in my radar of feeds or messages. Lucy Gray and myself exchanged a few chat messages and I played with Skype emoticons. Sundays are reserved for our ProTechT conference call on Skype. Later I thought about the fact that I don't even have everyones' cell numbers, addresses, etc. close at hand, but I assume it is accessible on the "net." And in a way, our connections are as tenuous as the wind, fragile but determined, and yet we are as close as we can be. I say that for the moment from a stand point of each members' abilities, and the fact that I can follow, if allowed, each members' status on Skype. No this project does not have the staying power of an ARPANET, we are each joined in a highly personal way, on computers that each of us must maintain, different hardware and OS. We are not at a distance from each other however, in that my concern would surface should anything happen to any one of the participants. Participants have already been sick and earlier Scott also had a very close connection to NIU. It has something of the miracle about it, a project living and breathing with its members. I always hope for my students something of a sense of "groupness," such as this.

And The bleeding edge of what we do doesn't help maintain clear communication and has many dangers in terms of misinterpretations should messages be truncated or too few words not convey the real meaning with conversations interrupted as software crashes or fails. I think there is the element of half empty and half full in ones relationships with others that allows something to grow with these types of activities. Following up on more perspective on Wesley Fryer's Ustream presentation  for ProTechT - The wireless started cutting out and a third of the class didn't seem too bothered by it. They moved to the front of the room between the screen and my traditional science black countertop. They were following the chat as well as what audio they could as I kept reloading/refreshing the Ustream feed. The sound came back at the end of a period as if another class had been using up all the bandwidth, which unfortunately my school has a strong tie with iMovies, and was probably the case. There is no bandwidth management and some teachers still don't have good wireless. For the last fifteen minutes the sound was fine, but students, as one would move progressively towards the back, were now holding conversations and they were not listening but were engaged and listening and speaking to each other. So I was let down somewhere in the delivery system, each part not quite correct, but also a future non-issue. I may gain here though the experience in knowledge that sometime shortly will be obsolete, but you have to enjoy in some way or tip the scales to favor the successes over failure and along with all of it the messiness.

image sources: www.flickr.com/photos/9147703@N03/2243954328
www.flickr.com/photos/38819451@N00/84401047

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Tags: edtech, protecht, wfryer, global, classroom2.0

Can an Evolutionist and a Creationist both be part of one's personal learning network?

For myself I think there is still a disconnect in my relationship to others for whom I haven't met face to face but interact with online only. Just the same as my students this week who had difficulty being quiet when Wes Fryer was sharing his thoughts on his Ustream presentation for the ProTechT project because he wasn't a live speaker in our class. I feel a connection but also a certain distance to people I interact with on networks like Twitter, Second Life, and Ning.

I've enjoyed David Weinberger and many of his ideas on altering the hierarchical thinking of how we organize ideas and thoughts since I saw him for the first time giving the opening keynote presentation at the NECC in Philidelphia. He comes to mind because for his recent book he used the title Everything is Miscellaneous and for the most part I prefer listening to him speak of his ideas such as his presentation on the topic at places such as Google. During the New Hampshire primaries while the student Arthus was sharing his ideas on the political candidates via Ustream, the issue came up of one of my favorite edtech people being a Creationist, later on another of my favorite edtech bloggers took Arthus to task for not pressing the issue from an Evolutionist perspective and offered to take on the person in a debate. I myself don't feel a need to debate someone who believes in the Creationist philosophy and wondered if that is a justifiable passiveness on my part or a disconnect from these virtual relationships. I don't know of anyone in my circle of friends where I live as being a Creationist I do know that I have been emotional and very moved by direct messages and communication with people on Skype and Twitter that I haven't met face to face. The thought that came to mind is "if everything is miscellaneous," then is truth just another tag in the virtual universe with no more real meaning than the electrons it takes to create the text in displays? How can I as a science teacher not argue for further examination of the motivations of someone to side on one side of the argument which is in opposition to how I teach and believe in?

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Tags: edtech

Meme: Passion Quilt

Following the meme sent me by Miguel Guhlin, I'm posting my picture for what I am most passionate about to be part of the passion quilt. When my students use tools for learning such as computers I typically ask them to work and participate in teams. I used FlickrCC to find this image.

Caption for this Quilt Image: Project Based Learning and Teamwork

The five people I'm tagging are:
Ann Oro
Jo McLeay
Pam Shoemaker
Tom Barrett
Jeff Whipple

3 Simple Meme Rules:

• 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 about...and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt" and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

reference: www.flickr.com/photos/30864080@N00/131488403

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Tags: meme

They May Look Different, but the Message is Still the Same.

It's been interesting to follow the discussions on using other microblogging tools such as Pownce besides Twitter. Some writers have sounded somewhat defensive and upset over having to try one more thing. I don't think I could entirely explain what this jumble of PLNs, chats, and teleconferencing apps. means in the long run. I would have said Skype instead of teleconferencing, but I was invited to try out Grandcentral, which alleviates the need for paying for the Skype-In feature and it may have some other features I can use in place of Skype. Each of these apps. seems to have their own following or people experimenting with what is possible. I've never been bothered by using multiple tools interconnected to get the most out of each one, rather than dealing with multiple weaknesses of just one tool. After all doesn't this really come down to communication and the most effective method to carry out a discussion across the internet, one's network,  and to also get enough people aware of your ideas that someone responds? In the case of webcasting for me it is that more people participate through listening and also exchanging ideas in the chatroom.

This whole quest to interlink these PLNs and chatrooms began now that I've become involved with the Webcasting Academy, I noticed that there are usually 2 or 3 or even more people posting tweets about events happening live on Edtechtalk. If I happen to be following the twitter stream I usually try and participate. Most of the time the chat room has between 10 to 40 participants. There is no shared calendar function in Twitter, so unless a person is following the calendar through the website or someone happens to post to a shared chatroom they rely on the haphazard method of following closely their twitter stream. Also when I check to see if someone has responded to something I've asked in Twitter, again I must be careful about keeping track of someone writing back. I'm fortunate now because I can use  Snitter  to manage and make up for deficiencies in several aspects about the Twitter website and stream I'm trying to follow. When I check the tweets, I notice several possible means through which people post either as a general message, using the @, or by using the direct message method. Again I rely for the most part on Snitter to help me keep track of everything that is happening within the Twitter stream. Pownce has two features built in such as a direct response to a post as well as a calendar for events to be shared by others in the network, built in, and this could help, but this isn't the point really of why I use it.

Someone sent out a tweet the other day about another app. called MoodBlast. It has a fairly simple interface and allows a person to simutlaneously post to several different points on the internet at once. I was impressed because they've built in a way to post to a service such as Facebook and omit words that will still be posted otherwise to Twitter, Tumblr, and Skype. So what is the point of learning all these different tools? Well I would like to see events that happen on Webcasting Academy and Edtechtalk to reach a greater audience. I would like to see the continued development of tools such as MoodBlast to make the need to stick with one PLN such as Twitter no longer necessary. Why would someone be bothered or mind just signing up for other tools if they can post their 140 word Twitter posts and yet someone on Facebook or Tumblr or Jaiku can still read what they wrote?  Part of the problem for now is following all the sites, but I envision a time shortly in which this bother of which tool to use for one's PLN will be of less and less important as the forwarding will work both ways between sender and receiver.

Yesterday, I began to interlink as much as possible the different services. Facebook seemed to have the most options to bring in other social netorking tools such as delicious, twitter, and flickr. I had set up an account with Jott a couple weeks ago and yesterday I posted to Twitter and then it was automatically picked up and posted on my Facebook front page.

Now, I'm trying to get in an invitation to Jaiku, if anyone has one. There is a feature to use small icons to indicate what the micropost is referring to either music, writing, etc, possibly a way to let the reader elliminate posts that they are not interested in. It may look different but the message shared between it and everything will be the same.

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Catch the Buzz

Haven't posted anything in several days, but I noticed many educators getting excited about this web site.

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Tags: edtech

The Incredible Mr. Limpet and Second Life

Having been enjoying the many resources available in Second Life, I realized that the environment is growing on me. I was trying to think of what in my childhood were some of the experiences that could have prepared me to accept its "cartoonish" nature. I thought back to one of my strongest emotional experiences involving cartoons and that had to be when I watched the movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, one night at my aunts while all the adults were having a discussion at the kitchen table.

In the movie Don Knotts wants to be a fish, and in this instance his wish is fulfilled. But for a child like myself that loved watching cartoons, here was someone who got to become a cartoon. Relative to Mr. Limpet, the creators of Second Life have chosen flying rather than swimming as a primary way to experience the new physics of this environment. Swimming here seems more like the video games in which after you've fallen off the path you have to move slowly through a sludge like environment. Perhaps someone will come up with a "penguin" mode so a person can sail through the water.

I remember being caught up in the movie as the two worlds of Limpid collided and interweaved, but the essential message was that being a cartoon underwater was a place were one's dreams could come true relative to the harsh and unfair real world. He becomes a hero, falls in love, and with the help of his friend Crusty, defeats the Nazi submarine navy. At the end of the movie as Limpid swam off in the sea and his "oogah" sounds faded off I remember the tears welling up in my eyes and feeling sad. Was it because the two worlds that he had been in were going to forever be separated? I can't be sure because getting back to how I felt I only remember the sadness.

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The Importance of Personal Learning Networks

This is my second attempt at writing and trying to explain the deep feelings I've felt after watching Jeff Utecht's preso on personal learning networks. Last year I went to the NECC in San Diego and came away energized and excited for the school year. I learned about ideas and teaching tools that I either had no or a little exposure to. I thought about implementation of these tools as I started meeting with some of the other teachers at my school. My Bloglines account was up to about 220 feeds and that was after I trimmed it and even lost all my RSS feeds while trying to set up NetNewsWire (I've since switched to using Google reader and Netvibes). I was determined to bring onboard at my school more of the teachers on my 4th and 5th grade team to the triumvirate of blogging, wikis and podcasting. As the school year started I slowed up on my reading to set up what I was doing and helping other grade levels with and stopped blogging all together by the later part of September. I wasn't too bothered by this as within the RSS feeds that I subscribed to were some of the most brilliant, thoughtful, connected and cutting edge teachers that I could find. I started a few blog posts about some idea that someone had written about, or examples of what I was also reflecting on based on current edtech events, and by the time I was ready to publish I would usually see 4 or 5 references to what I was writing about only articulated in a much clearer way than I could muster. I didn't fret too much about this as I keep a writing journal that I write and scribble on with an old style fountain pen with "sea blue" ink. By the time the December break came around I had met someone whom I'm now engaged to and by the beginning of March we were talking on Skype every day for at least an hour and my RSS reader was piling up with articles. I went to the CUE conference in Palm Springs and got to see Will Richardson for the second time since the NECC give a keynote address, saw David Thornberg and his amazing reflections, and got to see Steve Hargadon in the Open Source area. Over the course of the school year I felt more and more disconnected to the writers whose thoughts and experiences I had followed for close to two years. I wasn't an active participant in the conversation but had become a passive observer and reader. I didn't know how to reconnect. But two things altered my understanding of what I was doing wrong in my professional development. The first flash of understanding has come with my signing up for the Webcasting Academy, listening and interacting at Edtechtalk,  and a few friendly and welcoming chat messages from Lisa Durff . And it wasn't until I saw Utecht's preso that I really understood why I've felt so connected over the past few weeks. I've been stumbling and fumbling but beginning to build my personal learning network. And as Jeff says this isn't the same as a learning community. I've been signed up for a long time with all the communities I could find on Ning, Yahoo groups, Google groups, and newsletters, that seemed pertinent like Edutopia, Edtechweek, Discovery Education Network, Technology and Learning etc. for a long time. I'd occasionally post a comment or reaction. They are a part of the information I need along with my RSS reader, but it was the PLN that I was missing. I've been needing the interactions that were more like a true conversation and personal either through chat, or Skype or Twitter. It makes me want to cry to think of what I was not understanding. Perhaps for some of us because we become the go to person or source of information for some tech or computer question that we lose the understanding that we have needs as well as fulfilling the needs of help others around us. Start now, build your personal learning network. Watch Jeff's presentation. Unfortunately many of us exist in a place where most of the other teachers around us may not be ready for Twitter, and chatting, and Skype and Ustream, but don't make the mistake I did and let yourself be fooled into thinking that a personal relationship with a staff at a school or the district office can substitute for what you need deep inside for your own learning. Don't limit your conversations to those whose views you are trying to move into the 21st century. Unfortunately our colleagues around us may take a long time or perhaps never reach the same level of understanding of what we feel so passionately our students need to keep learning and the classroom relevant for them.

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Tags: edtech, k12online, utecht