Like Spokes on a Wheel

As the ETMOOC gets underway in earnest, many of the participants will be blogging about their learning, some for the very first time.  As participants draw connections between their ideas, these blog posts will rub up against one another, and like spokes centred on a common central idea, we'll all be able to move forward together.  This, in spite of the fact that reading habits, (and consequently writing habits) are changing.  These ideas led me to the two minute reflection below...

Related Posts:
We are Called to be Open Spokes in a Fidgital World by Ben Wilkoff
Imagining a Classroom without Blogs by Clarence Fisher


Photo credit: Spokes by kozzmen

Ontario Edu-Bloggers Please Stand Up

I recently discovered Chris Kennedy's blog, Culture of Yes, after watching his talk at TEDxVancouver. In his most recent post: Buy Local, Chris identifies edu-bloggers from his home province. In so doing, he can't help but wonder why so many voices seem to be centred in and around Coquitlam.


In the hope of inspiring more teacher-learners to share their opinions, experiences, and ideas, I feel compelled to do what I can, to introduce provincial colleagues to as many local teacher voices as I can. The first step, is finding Ontario teachers who blog:

What is Blogging? Live from the G20 Summit

How did my genes come to be at the G20 Summit? Well, my twin brother, Todd Lucier is over there as one of 50 global bloggers invited by G20 Voice to cover the event. What a coup! Here Todd explains what blogging is all about, and though many of the bloggers there know this, his explanation serves to contrast the differences between traditional journalism, and online journalism.



How Todd came to be in London, and what he's discovering about social media, made a good audio story for CBC Radio: Sudbury.



Coincidentally, this explanation is exactly what was missed when I attended "The Future of News" with another brother, Tom Lucier, earlier this week in Windsor.

If you're interested in following more of what's happening at the G20 Summit, you can follow Todd's on-the-scene posts at Climate Cafe. If you tune in at the right time, you can also catch live activity via the G20 Voice webcast or via Todd's Qik site. On Twitter, you can follow @g20voice & @toddlucier among others.

How to Blog

Condescending? Arrogant? Quick-witted? Outspoken? Honest!
"Say it in a Voice you Believe in!"

One thing Merlin Mann is great at, is "Getting Things Done". If you haven't seen Merlin Mann speak, it may be worth getting past the emcee (scroll ahead 5 minutes...) to check out his recorded talk from IzeaFest.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet...

Has Twitter resulted in the decline of 'serious' blogging. Will Richardson's recent post "What I Hate About Twitter" raises the issue:

"...it feels like the “conversation” is evolving (or would that be devlolving) into pieces instead of wholes, that the connections and the threads are unraveling, almost literally."

In reflection, here are Five personal thoughts about the evolving tool that is Twitter:

1] Twitter is not a blogging tool: It is a jumping off point. It is the easiest way for new educator to discover the wonders of the edublogsphere. By sharing a combination of resources, links and personal updates, I hope to provide potential avenues for learning. It is in the hope of finding similar nuggets that I continue to check in. The number of live feeds and back-channel chats I’ve engaged in this year would not have been possible otherwise.

2] Twitter is a tool for building and maintaining relationships. That is why social tweets are valuable. Knowing that we have lives outside of education, somehow makes each of us more ‘real’ to one another.

3] Twitter is close to LIVE. With the GPS and photo technologies built into current phone technologies, I believe that we are engaged in crude use of a tool that will continue to evolve into a richer reporting and sharing tool.

4] Twitter is not a conversation tool, but is an elevator chat room where you might be invited to dinner; nudged to attend a workshop; or asked a question. Never knowing who will be on the elevator, the traveler cannot predict where he or she will be engaged.

5] The openness of the content to other developers and aggregators is what gives Twitter a big advantage. The many competitors trying to leverage similar platforms, will have to add value in order for large networks to jump ship. Tip to developers: Develop GROUP tools, allowing me to send semi-private messages to chunks of followers (family; teachers; local; conference-goers; workshop attendees…), and you just might get my tweets.


The comments appended to Will Richardson's post, are well over 100, and model the type of rich discussion that just isn't possible in Twitter's 140 character posts. It seems that Twitter still touches a nerve in real blog readers... To help further the discussion, I've highlighted excerpts from a few of my favourite comments:

1] Mathieu Plourde
"I consider Twitter to be a gateway to becoming an active 21st century web citizen."

2] Gina Webster
"I realize that my interactions and experiences with Twitter really inspired me to set up this blog, to design a new, more interactive webspace for my students and to participate in numerous Web 2.0 discussions in forums I’ve never visited before."

3] Ewan McIntosh
"Twitter’s not for conversation, it’s for shouting out. It’s for finding some friends in a foreign city who want to share a beer with you. It’s for being snarky so your blog, which for me is personal property, can remain snarkiless. That’s it for me: Twitter is transient (yet permanent) fun and intrigue, which belongs to the community who are there, at that minute or that day, and my blog belongs entirely to me, is more permanent and is where conversations *I* am part of belong."

4] Clay Burell
"Beyond that, I tend to jump in, swim around like a fish in a wine barrel, then flop out to dry up for a few days or weeks. Then jump back in again. I love the playfulness, the sharing, the relationships."

5] Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
"That said.. if an intelligent conversation spontaneously breaks out - anywhere- I say be in the Zen of the moment and go with it. I tend to have those kinds of conversations at the most unexpected places- cabs, waiting for a plane, etc. And the truth is that after having a conversation like that with Gary and those of you that also chimed in (thank you by the way)that I will go blog. It is those little bursts of informational inspiration about things that really matter that act as the catalyst toward helping me find the time to blog in my busy day."

6] Gary Stager
"One thing we learned more than a decade ago at Pepperdine is that you need a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous communication opportunities online in order to support a variety of teaching styles, learning styles AND a range of different activities."

7] Kerry J.
Ya’ know - sometimes it’s NOT about bringing about world peace or changing the lives and learning of your learners. Sometimes when you’re having seemingly innocuous conversations about the mundane, the divine breaks out.


Teacher 2.0 Podcast #100 reflects on Twitter as a way to expand the audience of learners.
Image Credits: Rodd Lucier (building on the work of Yiying Lu); Brian Solis

Blogging Voices Quieted

A classroom blog of 8 & 9 year olds is closed, and the blogosphere responds by the hundreds.

Mini 16 tells part of the story: "When I new that my blog got blocked I thort that all my work was gone! But al said that it was’ant gone. good because it is fun."

If you haven't heard the story yet, you can head over to Al Upton's Minilegends update page to read an overview of the story so far. The short story is that the primary school blogging project in South Australia has been taken offline, but in text, Al seems pretty upbeat suggesting that we should learn what we can from the experience and acknowledging that the story is not yet over. When you consider the 166 comments as of present, There is much to read, and Al is promising at least one more update on the blog.

Even though this story makes it easy to imagine the sad faces of primary students, there are countless thousands of students (and teachers) out there, who have yet to discover the blogosphere.

When a teacher is willing to take a risk with blogging, I guess we have to be prepared for even unimagined consequences. So how do we ensure that ventures of this sort can be safely undertaken? I'm thinking that we should harness the collective wisdom of the blogoshpere in supporting Al Upton and other teachers who are willing to take the leap into using the read/write web as learners.

To facilitate the gathering of blogging policy/guideline resources, I've created a wiki page where educators can share known resources and ideas that might be used by teachers or school boards as as scaffolding to develop and refine policy frameworks related to classroom blogging. On this page, you can share your expertise or ideas for how a teachers and students can safely explore blogging. If we can harness even a fraction of the many who responded to the 'minilegends', I'm sure we can help ensure that student voices can be safely heard.

If you have suggestions for what a good policy might include, or if you know of policies that can be shared, your contributions are most welcome!

Blog Sketch Credit: Frances Copozzi

Networks over Nodes

A few hours with Will Richardson spread over the past few days in London, helped me feel for the first time in a long while that "I'm not alone!"

In my work as an e-learning teacher and consultant, I was already aware of del.icio.us, Twitter, WetPaint, blogs, wikis and the many GoogleTools we tabbed through to consider the salient points of building networks; New to me was the fact that these many tools could be networked themselves, drawing upon common content courtesy of RSS.

Even so, what stood out most powerfully for me, was the fact that so many present in the room had so few questions about the relevance of what we were doing. Even Will's 'wait time' failed to illicit many questons or comments, due in large part to the fact that so many of us were on the same wavelength. I was physically immersed in a community who not only 'got it', but seemed to agree that we had to do what we could to connect with one another, and to bring others along for the ride in harnessing the tools.

Will's blog post of today put it very well I think:

It’s different now, somehow, than it was a year ago. It’s more immersive. It all feels deeper, closer somehow. Even more important. Maybe it’s just the glow of the prospect of being home for a month. Or the buzz of spending a couple of days with some folks who seemed to, on some level, get the fact that this really is about more than learning the tools. It’s about creating connections, intellectual connections, for sure, but potentially more.

In a year that I've traveled a fair bit in promoting e-learning across southern Ontario, I appreciated the fact you took leave of those closest to you, to assist others in strengthening their own professional and personal networks. You may not have been the first to state that "The network is more powerful than the node." but you were the first in a long while to engage this learner in high level thinking about the collaborative use of the read-write web!