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

Vintage Ads & Social Media Inspiration

This morning, I came across some "super-neat-o" vintage ads for modern social media tools. It took some time to discover the provenance of these ads, but with the assistance of Lisa Lane, I discovered posters advertising Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype are free to download from Maximedia.

In learning more about these 'historic' print ads, I also stumbled upon a vintage video in the style of narrated black & white educational films. Though campy, the production quality is very good and the tips are apt for members of the Facebook Generation.



In case you just want to engage your students in critical thinking about authentic vintage footage, your learners might be interested in investigating a modern viral video. The story of a time-traveler who may have inadvertently used a mobile communication device in Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film: The Circus, is certainly being used for promotional purposes. (The conspiracy has even found inclusion in the Wikipedia entry.)



By coincidence, as these vintage ads were being bookmarked, I responded to a minor commotion as our chaplain hung up a modern poster in the hallway outside of my office. Whether you're looking for a creative way to introduce social media, or are interested in leading learners to think in critical or creative ways, the works of advertisers have the potential to inspire a wide range of media works.

Image credit: Print ads downloaded and 'hung' courtesy of download from Maximedia

The Social Network

'The Social Network' is one of those trailers that seems to work one its own as a short subject movie. At the opening, the words of the choir over the computer screen close-ups are ethereal, intimate, and sad all at the same time.

Do you yearn to fit in? Do you need a digital channel to enhance your sense of belonging? Many of the quotes within this trailer help me to understand how individuals may be inclined to value their online social connections above all else.



While hundreds of millions engage in social experiences through Facebook and other social media channels, I wonder how many will engage in online conversations about this movie, rather than experiencing it first hand with real friends? The film opens in October... How many educators will see it as a piece of media worthy of consideration?


LATE ADDITION

A number of days ago, I came across this explanation of Facebook that might be worth considering as a teaching tool, especially when it comes to privacy settings and terms of use agreements.

A Movie for Anyone On FaceBook from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Bill Shakespeare Comes to Facebook

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with three students who created Facebook pages as a modern response to Shakespeare’s 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

Today, I’ve finally gotten around to sharing screen captures that act as exemplars of how Robin Goodfellow, Hermia and others might have experienced social networking.

If you’d like to see the lesson that spawned these pages, Dominic Dedato has agreed to share his differentiated lesson and rubric, suggesting that you are free to adopt, edit, or adapt it to suit your purposes.


How might your students demonstrate their knowledge of character development using modern tools? Would public Twitter feeds be preferred over a private collection of text messages? Might a collection of email correspondence from a bygone era be created? Maybe the characters would've maintained poster pages at ‘Glogster’?

Do you have similar projects or ideas to share? Perhaps our podcast interview will inspire you to consider providing your students with a similar experience...

Stories of Co-Design

Students and teachers alike, can learn plenty from the way today's technology leaders work collaboratively in designing solutions to our communications problems.

If you're like me, you've likely discovered that initiatives undertaken with peer support, that are developed with the cooperation of supervisory staff, tend to be the most successful. Similar ideas, pursued by lone individuals, struggle in contention for attention and funding.

In The Story of Co-Design, the potential of collaborative problem solving is engaged in order to meet the needs of the inhabitants of Panda Island. The metaphor can work for identifying the needs of a school community, a provincial ministry of education, or a network of users on the World Wide Web.


The Story of Co-Design from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

If you think you have a great idea, take heed of today's technology leaders, and engage others in collaborative planning & development:

1] Facebook Connect is allowing bloggers on various platforms, to build community by leveraging existing community of Facebook.

2] G-Mail now has a Twitter widget that allows users to access tweets alongside their inboxes.

3] TweetDeck, my choice for accessing Twitter feeds, is now working with Facebook, to refine an interface that allows cross-posting to both sites.

4] Twitter encourages developers to mash-up feeds in the deployment of a wide range of tools.

5] Beyond embedding Google's search technology in the address bar, Firefox engages developers on many levels to add value to their web browser through plugins.

With TechCrunch reporting that Google is in Talks to Acquire Twitter, I'm just happy to know that they're on good speaking terms. Besides the fact that our future communications habits may well depend on how nicely they play together, we can learn a lot by the way today's technology leaders work in co-designing our future.

Photo Credit: Jason Nicholls

14 Tools to Teach about Creative Commons

One of the most powerful, misunderstood and under-utilized tools for teaching 21st century skills, is the Creative Commons. Besides providing access to hundreds of thousands of media works that can be used to augment the creative process, the Creative Commons offers a legitimate way for students to license their own creative works, be they audio, video, text or hybrid products.

2 Creative Commons Toolkits
Creative Commons International Licenses
Creative Commons Content Directory

2 Great Places to Host and License Your Creative Work
Flickr: a place to host and license photo collections
Blip.tv: a place to host and license video productions

2 Video Explanations of The Creative Commons





2 Creative Commons Audio Sources
CC Mixter: audio remix and share resource
Sound Transit: a Global sounds cooperative

2 of My Favourite Open Source Projects
Open Thinking Wiki: Alec Couros'Digital Resources Collection
M.I.T. Open Courseware : free lecture notes, exams and videos from M.I.T.

2 Slideshow Explanations for Education

Creative Commons in our Schools

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cc copyright)

Open Educational Resources

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: iil08 downes)

2 Creative Commons Social Networks
The Creative Commons Fan Club on Facebook
YouTube Commons Creative

2 Late Additions
A Multimedia Explanation of Creative Commons
Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know

Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know

View more documents from Rodd Lucier.

Take Ownership of Your Identity

Who Are You?

Let me qualify that... Who are you to someone who Googles you? Educators may not realize this, but most of us have likely been Googled by students, parents or other educators!

In many ways, your participation in discussions within the blogosphere, and your presence on social networks, comprise your personal/professional portfolio. Recent posts by Doug Peterson and Tim Hawes have recently reinforced for me what I've been recommending for teachers for a few years now: "You need to have an online presence!"

Last week, the Globe and Mail reported that a Manitoba high school student was charged with 'impersonating his teacher' after he "allegedly set up a Facebook profile in the teacher's name, complete with a photo and biographical details."

Even though impersonation contravenes Facebook's terms of use' in which users agree NOT to "impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;", this type of activity is surely taking place within thousands of profiles.

What's a teacher to do?
Be proactive! Take ownership of your identity!

1] Google yourself on occasion, to see what your online resume currently consists of. (You might also consider Googling your children or others who are close to you...)

2] If you don't have a Facebook account, get one! You don't need to use it, but include enough information in your profile to ensure that you are the 'real one'. You might also want to register with other popular social networks.

3] Consider buying a personalized domain name. You don't have to use it, but if you have a domain that is www.firstname-lastname.com, you are ensuring that on one else takes your online identity. Who knows, it might even spur you towards creating a real 'online portfolio'. Getting a domain name is easy and inexpensive, and can do great things towards enhancing your online presence. If you're interested, check out godaddy.com, buydomains.com, planetdomain.ca, Yahoo domains, sibername.com or another service.

4] Develop a personal website. Start small by having a personal web page that you can use to post resources or ideas. A wiki page (at a such such as Wetpaint); or a personal blog (at a site like Blogger.com) can be very easy to set up and to update. You need not know HTML or complex coding, and you can easily redirect your domain name (see #3 above) to this personal page.

5] Demonstrate your professionalism to parents who may 'look you up online', by participating in meaningful professional discussions. To do so, you can either make regular posts on your own blog, or you can comment on the blogs of others in the edu-blogosphere. Note that anything you post to a blog will come up in a web search, provided you use your real name on such a post.


Photo Credit: Steve Mishos

Expelled for 'Studying' on Facebook

First year computer engineering student Chris Avenir is facing expulsion after a teacher at Ryerson University discovered a Facebook group set up to share tips and answers to an online testing system.

Will this action result in a culture of fear among students who participate in study groups online?

I agree with Jesse Hirsh who is quoted in on online Canwest article:

"The online culture is outpacing the curriculum and education system," said Jesse Hirsh, who has been studying social websites for more than a decade. "These students are being smart and using the Internet the way that it should be used. This is the future of education."

I find it ironic that The student is studying 'Computer Engineering" and the administration at Ryerson is upset that he and well over 100 of his classmates are leveraging technology to share strategies on beating the technology-based assessment system used at the Toronto school.

In stark contrast to traditional testing and exams, "Studio Learning" first caught my attention in November of 2004, when I read an article on 'New Jersey Institute Of Technology Pioneers New Way To Teach Engineers'. At the time, I was surprised that tens of thousands of dollars were being granted to a 'novel teaching method' that I'd been employing with elementary students for years! Read bioengineering associate professor Richard Foulds' take on the effectiveness of his approach.

Rather than come down on students who have designed creative solutions to 'beat the system'... It's time that universities join others in developing rich assessment opportunities that engage students in solving authentic problems.

Photo Credit: Grant Hutchinson
Teacher 2.0 Pocast: Cheating on Facebook

NOT Social Networks but Learning Networks

The phenomenon that is 'social networking', is not what forward thinking educators are doing. Most young people using My Space, Twitter, and Facebook are doing so only to continue conversations held in the real world. Many of the wall-postings and text messages that form the backbone of social networks, are simply attempts to see what people are up to 'socially' rather than to engage in conversations that lead to knowledge creation.

Teacher 2.0 on the other hand, is beginning to create networks of like-minded educators intent upon learning from one another. These 'learning networks' consist similarly of information exchanges, with at least one major exception: these networks are sharing information on a range of topics of definable topics of interest to the collective.

If indeed the issue of our use of social tools is as important as Will Richardson suggests , then we need to do a better job of describing what we do! It's possible that an appropriate moniker might address some of the issues highlighted by Danah Boyd in 'The Economist' debate.

What shall we call it?

There are a number of related terms that would be more appropriate than 'social networks' to describe this type of collaborative learning: 'social learning’; or ‘learning networks’; or even ’social learning networks’, would be more appropriate terms. Any which way you slice it, the term 'learning', is conspicuous by its absence when one is describing the phenomenonal sharing taking place via blogs, wikis, tweets and other read/write tools.

Is it even new?

Building social learning networks is something many educators have done for years via email/webpal programs. (I remember doing such a program working with ten classrooms scattered across North America via a 1200 baud modem via AT&T around 1990.) The difference is that we now have access to tools that give us instant access not only to text, but to video and audio as well.

It’s too easy in using the term ’social networking’, to focus on the everyday social communication that young people participate in via Web 2.0 tools. Absent a true learning purpose, such communications are simply social dialogue. Learning networks are different, let's begin highlighting the uniqueness of our dialogue by including, even highlighting, the word learning.

Community Learning in a New Year

A fresh start is never more than a number of weeks away if you work in a teaching & learning environment. A new school year, a new term, a new teacher... or in the case of tomorrow morning, the first day of school in the global 'New Year'. Over the holiday break, I had the opportunity to experience both good fortune and tragedy, but is was the latter that helped me to see this 2008 new year through new eyes.

The Kids are Alright. They may experience community differently than you and I, but their passions run deep, and their purposes are largely positive. With the Christmas Eve passing of a 15 year old friend of the family, I saw first hand how young people are leveraging Web 2.0 tools to share their grief. In fact, it was through the my 16 year old daughter's Facebook account that we came to know of the tragic loss of Michael whose family has grown up a few hours away. Michael will never be able to read the posts of his peers, but the tragedy of his loss is likely to be archived in the passionate posts of friends, classmates and relatives for a very long time.

It affirms for me that the youth of today, are by and large, responsible, compassionate and loving citizens; and the writings of 'random teens' reminds me that from within our evolving technological world, it is the people that matter the most. In the lives of netizens, the technology or the read/write web is a useful tool, but it is at its most powerful when it is used in the context of creating community.

So, here is a challenge for Teacher 2.0: Use available tools to broaden your learning communities. Make overt plans to involve others in your own professional work and in the work of your students. Reach out to the people that are important in the 'real world' lives of members of your learning community. Regardless of the stresses of school life in 2008, our humanity ties each of us to a number of communities of real people, whose impact on our lives is more significant than we realize. When we are engaged in learning that harnesses the power of these relationships, memorable, meaningful experiences can be the result for teachers and students alike!