Cloudy Tag Thoughts

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

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 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

Jeff Lebow's WebstreamingUstreamChatting Unconference Keynote

Earlier in the week I was privileged to participate in an unconference keynote by Jeff Lebow at the NEIT and NYSAIS conference via a Ustream feed that also allowed me to interact and chat. The experience was pretty overwhelming, and I struggled the rest of the school day to understand and process what I had gone through. The vision and work Jeff put into what he was doing amazed and heartened me. It was as much about vision and utilizing what's available and pushing others into a conversation to help them understand as it was about perfection. The conference space bandwidth was quickly overwhelmed with what he was doing. But it worked, maybe not perfectly, but all these tools are available as open source or free. Yes, we see satellite feeds and video feeds all the time from TV networks, but what he did was on an open internet access point with tools available to anyone. Having the vision to dream of what these tools can do for education, playfully applying them without regard to trying to impress or sway anyone, and helping other educators/librarians/technologists learn about what these tools may/will do for the education field eventually by promoting conversation was the point. All the conference participants were expected to actively participate by any of several possibilities. What made this conversation different was that it was more a "digital conversation," as Lisa Durff points out, as it was a face to face conversation. As Durff also points out our students may have types of face to face conversations all the time but we need to help them move their digital conversations to a meaningful and organized level. Here are some of the web apps. that were used: Ustream, Meebo, Snapvine, VoiceThread, Twitter, Widgetbox to promote participation.

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Tags: jefflebow, unconference, neit, nysais, edtech, durff

End of Summer Meanderings

With one more week before I begin putting together and formulating lessons for this coming school year, little did I imagine thinking about my art history theories of my college days with implications of where my students will be as they grow up in this evolving cyberspace. I have always been amazed at the idea of typing a web address and seeing a major corporate media outlet and then with a few key strokes looking at someone's homepage. I should warn the reader I don't intend to step through a logical article here because I'm still on vacation and I'm not writing for some scholarly purpose. I'm merely connecting up a few glass beads that have been rolling around in my head. What if the Long tail is a realization of the Situationist's vision of creating a spectacle and history for oneself which was originally by the artists but now has been transposed to the everyday person? The spectacle not lived vicariously through old media forms but now individually within the network of connections or social networks. I wonder with the passing of DOPA are those of us that use social networking tools part of the counter culture? (A good site with information on what to do is here and to read more try here. ) I have this fear that those within education who are resistant to these social networking/web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and change in general, will feel relieved that they may not have to deal with them anymore with the passing of this bill.

Can we draw lines in the sand and simplify and polarize these issues even further? With mashups and content being reappropriated and downloaded online for free (in a virtual fulfillment of the Yippie dreams proposed in such books as Steal This Book) students are not paying for the content, but taking it and using it for their own means. The tools to do this are free and the content is free. How will congress look upon open source if the powers that be decide to label the tools as anti-capitalist? After all I just set up a Moodle site to use and I wonder what will happen now that Blackboard has been granted a patent on all things involving LMS or CMS? Do you look upon those who are hackers in a positive or negative light? I thought this video that I came across at youtube and posted below was a funny implication of what our students will be doing when they grow up and how this will frustrate the media powers. But now it seems to me to have a more sinister tone as if some people might really begin to think this way. What are the perceptions of our congress that would pass such blanket laws as DOPA, decide issues such as internet neutrality without understanding the implications? When Douglas Englebart looked down the avenues of Menlo Park and envisioned a computer of the future could he have envisioned how these tools in the hands of everyday people would be used? If the individual is creating their own spectacle (photos, video, podcasts, blogs) and distributing the work through the long tail has this not fulfilled so many avant-garde movements such as Surrealism which strove to connect up art with everyday life. My students using iLife to create content are constructing their own tower of Taitlin, dreams and constructions about their world, not some corporations vision to be consummed passively. And how powerful is the communication as the students' perceive it as available around the world. The urgings of these art movements was to free the individual of false overlays created by the societies' meaning makers or corporations, the rationalists who wanted to maintain the status quo for personal ends. Hopefully the students will inherit an internet that dreams are made of. We must help them learn the dangers and appropriate behaviors and learn with them how to best prepare them for the future, but we will not be able to if we cannot use the tools in the classroom.

Technorati Tags: edtech, dopa, education,

Do We Need a Mashup Camp with our NECC?

After reading about Jeff Utrecht's frustrations about what didn't happen at the NECC for him and Will's response which was measured and well thought out. I do feel as if I am still as a teacher looking at the tools meaning technology and trying to wrap my head around all the possible ways to use them. The first time I used a wiki I felt disoriented and lost not knowing what to do with a tool that could be almost anything I could think up for open communication. But now I'm looking for growth in how to use them. So for me, I have to say that the NECC was for a large part about the technology. I looked for solutions to specific problems in the classroom and hopefully the technology has become easier or more transparent to what I may have dreamed or not dreamed is possible. The meetup that so many people have praised was not the ideal setting for communication. The waitress that kept telling us to sit down, the live band which caused David Warlick at a certain point to say he couldn't hear. It was the idea of meeting with like minded passionate people coming together to have a conversation that we thrived on. But what if people presented what they have learned or information that they have acquired in a more systematic way? I certainly didn't get to meet and ask questions of all the people that I had wanted to.

An alternative for next year's NECC might be a mashupcamp or an unconference perhaps to run concurrently or as an offshoot in a designated area at the conference site. Here are three links to an event that is happening today from Wired, San Jose Mercury News, and Dave Winer. There is certainly enough organized information about what a mashupcamp is, how they work, and what the goals of doing them are. What if we looked at the mashup camp and changed it to meet our needs as teacher/technologists? What would have happened if after seeing all the open souce information this past conference we could have had a meeting to discuss it? There were several ideas that I became exposed to that I could not have planned ahead to learn about but wanted to learn more about and process as I was at the conference. With the accessibility of information on the internet aren't many people just as informed as the presenters? The style is called open space conferences and one of the guiding ideas is to document the session with a conference wiki. David Warlick has already successfully shown the value of integrating these wikis, such as the one he used at the conference for Telling the New Story, into the presentions.

Much of what is happening involves the idea that small companies or individuals can take the available free internet sites and use them for new ends. Isn't this what we are trying to do in using all these disparate parts and recombining them for use in our classroom. An article in Forbes that the mashup blog linked to caught my eye when the writer said, "Mashup Camp, aimed at programmers and software developers who want to create businesses out of combining free Web technologies from companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon.com, seems like the perfect place for a wee startup to make connections." But what if we replace the word programmers with teachers and businesses with classrooms and modify the list of companies a little (sound familiar). So this now reads:

            "Mashup Camp, aimed at teachers who want to create classrooms out of combining free Web technologies from open source, flickr, delicious, blogging creation companies, wikis etc. seems like the perfect place for a wee individual teacher to make connections."

Reminds one of the Cluetrain Manifesto when it was modified for schools doesn't it? The mashup wiki gives not only background for the event but also has links for more info.  Aren't we saying that our students have reached this point with all the communication tools such as IM, web accessing video games, etc. that we don't use them or are novices compared to our students? Could students participate in the mash up camp and teach the teachers how to use these tools? How do the students perceive these tools? How much more powerful would it be to have a panelist of students discussing their use rather than a powerpoint slide of statistics? It requires that participants be willing to participate in a more active role. Are we accepting of the traditional presenter model because we all come from a passive participation in media i.e. we sat and watched TV. Should we be modeling what we expect of the classroom? That if the students are changing in their needs that we should try to play the interconnected video games as David said, set up a my space account as Will recomends, and attend conferences in which the conference room is more like the model of the classroom that we percieve will be in the future with the students needs and students personality.

Hopefully if nothing else we can have daily meetings at the next NECC in a room, well lit, without live music. Do we want to be serious about this as a real exchange of information or as in this last blogger meetup should it stay more of an informal haphazard affair to unwind after the more formal day time events? Perhaps we need to worry about more districts shutting down and out, and centralizing information.

If I understood Siemens arguments in Connectivism with his June 27th article :

"When people first encounter distributed tools, the first attempt at implementation involves “forcing” decentralized processes into centralized models. We then end up with LMS for learning, learning object repositories to manage our content, corporate lock-downs on instant message, and district-wide bans on social networking tools."

He is saying that learning management systems are a step in the wrong direction (meaning centralized) for how to potentially use these tools (decentralized). If this is true then we need more solutioins on how to combine them in as effective a manner as a Moodle or Blackboard. If we should want to avoid being stuck with centralized learning modules and to truly take advantage of the decentralized tools than a radical solution other than the traditional conference model, (mashupcamps?) will be needed. Perhaps then teachers such as Jeff Utrecht will leave a confernence like the NECC wanting to come back, feeling that it is an extension of what we have tapped into with the tools we ourselves are using daily, rather than leaving with memories of what might have been.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc, reform, education,warlick,

What Does "publish to your weblog" Mean for an Elementary School Student?

I'm glad that the issue of technology and education is being addressed in the media. Articles such as the NYTimes piece on Bob Sprankle and now the CNET article on web-logging will bring greater exposure to what is severely lacking in our schools. In reading the comments of many of the readers of the CNET article the issue of why and what this classroom tool is being used for is questioned and discussed.

 

I was not completely comfortable with the weblink to the elementary school that the article used for an example. I have to say that visually the site looks good, I also use a Typepad account for these postings. While I agree with the idea of allowing complete independence for the students to write at the high school and middle school level I'm not so confident on how much freedom should be given to elementary school students. I've tried to always aim for the writer's workshop model with my students which balances the expectation for students to write but not always follow a written piece through to the publishing stage and the needs for assessment to show proficiency at writing. Anne Davis whom I respect and have read many times, has many good ideas in regards to web-logging that I have tried to take to heart. Some ideas that I've gleaned from her are to not limit the topics chosen and flexibility for the demands of when something needs to be published. Today I began to question how much freedom to allow elementary students with their web logs after reading the CNET article and the comments generated. Anne wrote a quote that referred to students, but I question whether for elementary students a modified expression is called for. She wrote that:

"I would rather develop a powerful medium for thinking than produce a polished product any day. That's the heart of writing/blogging."

Does publish=polish?

In looking at several of the interfaces I collected they all either implied the writing process or used language which implies a multistep approach to writing. In the process writing model I discuss with my students there are five steps.

1. Brainstorming

2. Draft

3. Revise (share with peers)

4. Edit (check spelling, punctuation, grammar)

5. Publish

Several of the student's articles I looked at seemed as if they had stopped at the revise step and the comments became what would normally be sharing with peers for questions, fixing and improving parts of the student's writing. In BlogMeister I typically assist the students during the revise step and ask students to focus on the parts of their writing related to their skills and abilities. Perhaps what is needed is for students to have essentially two parts to their weblogs. One part would be for sharing their writing with invited students to read and comment, and the second part would be for the publishing of work for a larger audience (parents, teachers, world) to read.

When ever I think I'm being too much of a curmudgeon I harken back to "Almost Perfect" by Shel Silverstein, especially the line "they never cross their "Ts just right, almost perfect but not quite." I'm afraid I was feeling that way after I looked at the J.H. Elementary weblog and what the students were posting. I saw errors that I would ask my students to fix before I would allow them to publish in BlogMeister. I don't accept the idea that weblogs are a "free for all" approach to writing. I don't expect my students to write perfect pieces, and I accept awkward sentences or occasional lapses in grammar depending on where that student's ability is. I try to look at each student and then proceed. I don't know developmentally where the students at J.H. House are but misspelled words or grammar mistakes that are taught at the earliest grade levels I ask my students to fix using the spellchecker in Appleworks. I try to discourage the “yo dude” approach to blogging while trying to validate the natural voice of the students.

Locked in this quandary of being the freedom seeking, enlightened classroom facilitator, and the hunched over, anal, cackling dictator smashing down rulers on the hands of students using their left hand instead of their write (yes, on purpose but a spellchecker mistake), I decided to look at the word publish or publishing, because I keep using it over and over in the interfaces that publish my writing, in teaching the steps to writing, and because a part of me thinks that elementary students need more intervention then what I think Anne is holding up as a good weblog model.

I also looked at the words writing and blogs. I realized in reading the article on writing that if we were using the lead stylus for the Roman method of scraping letters into a wax block that care and time would be ensured (material cost alone would be prohibitive), but blogs are so modern, convenient, and easy. I don't think all elementary students have developed the writing skills to be prepared to share their higher level thinking ideas and insights in a clear and understandable way without some form of intervention on the part of their teacher or peers.

Where am I going with this? I think that just as there were comments after the CNET article about the validity of using web logs in the classroom, so to will there be parents or board members who will look at blogs and see weak or poor writing and question the use of this tool. Many people including myself are still wrapping our hands around the potential for a tool that still uses the language for another older way of presenting ideas (draft, edit, publish). I still in my mind draw an analogy between written work for others to see and the word publish and excellence as far as the ability of the individual student. Is that the best they can muster? I know posting to a blog is not like sticking a piece of paper on the wall for open house, but if I'm still confusing the two. What will the person who doesn't know that blogs have potential beyond just being an on-line journal think?

Technorati Tags: blogs, education, technology, writing

Where am I going with this?

I'm back after a fun road trip to Texas and then southern California, and of course like so many other people I'm trying to read the new Harry Potter. Unfortunately I was right in the middle of trying to finish in a more determined fashion Guns, Germs, and Steel (now that a TV version is out), and GTD (Getting Things Done). I can't say I missed not using my computer or blogging for several days, but now I only have a week before school starts and my list of what I hoped to accomplish doesn't seem any smaller. I've really been trying to reflect on why I should sustain this weblog other than as a learning tool for the process. I think I understand the basics of how to do it but now the content is my current concern. Stephen Downes has posted a good overview on the process I've been going through as I learned how much I didn't consider and all the mistakes I've made which he warns the reader about. I don't want to just parrot other writer's ideas but there are so many good weblogs that I wonder were is my niche? I know that being an elementary school teacher places me in a minority relative to the weblogs that focus on using these tools for middle school and above. I did find a model for how I would like to use both weblogs and podcasts in Bob Sprankle's classroom and for teachers weblogs (Thanks to David Warlick's postings as usual). I wish I could get some feed back on a weblog that would be useful and fun!

Technorati Tags: blogs, education

Inspiration from so many Sources

Due to a concurrence of many experiences happening together I've started this blog. First I was reading about Eudora Welty and the garden that she used for so much of her inspiration and I finally had a concrete metaphor that I could hang my hat on to begin this education focussed blog. My thinking has been quite shifted since I have started my class blogging and begun using Bloglines and del.icio.us to interact with others finding information. I really thought that the problem with the internet was the lack of some grand structure as envisioned in say the Xanadu project.  But with the change to more of a social conversation such as what David Weinberger is talking about and combined with the inspirational happenings at the NECC conference which I experienced virtually through the webcasts here I am posting something at last myself.

Technorati Tags: education, NECC