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social computing

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September 30, 2007

Visionaries and Innovators from the Grassroots

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, educational technology, online collaborative learning — Administrator @ 11:04 am

In a very short compressed space of time of the last few days here in Charlottetown, I have met some cutting edge educators who are changing the face of education from the grassroots level.

Dr. Sandy McAuley is using the latest iteration of the former CSILE knowledge-building environment with his students at University of Prince Edward Island. He provided a demo of the environment for all of us to explore. It takes a sort of concept-map building approach to a content management system-like environment. While it has its limitations in being a very closed system, I particularly appreciated the tagging/keyword system that it uses. Another disadvantage, however, is that it is not possible to export the knowledge that is created there. Sandy worked with Scardamalia and Bereiter at OISE in the early 90’s developing and using the earliest iteration of CSILE up in the Canadian Arctic communities.

Sandy and I had a few conversations about whether new pedagogies were required to use the latest web 2.0 tools and environments or whether we were reinventing the wheel and ignoring the important research that has already been completed about the creation of knowledge and learning in online environments. As I have reflected upon my students’ conversations and multimedia products in the last few years, I have returned to the published research that has explored the benefits of online learning spaces. Much value has been documented along the way. On the other hand, it has remained in silos as web 2.0 tools and environments have proliferated in the last two years. Educators without any prior experience with online learning environments are discovering the tools and using them in very innovative ways. Accessibility to the research is sometimes prevented or not encouraged. There has been a huge disconnect between the teachers in the trenches and the researchers in the white towers. In the meantime, critics are quick to point out that little qualitative or quantitative research has been done on their use in the classroom. The fact that they have not been developed exclusively for the education domain makes them even more dubious. Those of us who see the benefits should draw upon the pioneers of online collaborative learning environments from the 1980’s and 90’s.

I also met the creator, Mike MacAdam, of Chuala, a language community and web-based pronunciation application that shows great promise for learners of other languages. My own son’s resistance to learning French could certainly be helped by this great tool.

Elana Langer was also at this conference as one of the presenters, but she also was with Dave Cormier from the beginning in creating the goals of the Living Archives. Besides being a videographer who will create a documentary about the project, she teaches in New York at SUNY and is also involved in the One Laptop Per Child program. Her involvement with the OLPC was what fascinated me in particular and I had an opportunity to have a couple of conversations with her about that. We actually audio-recorded our conversation in Dave’s pantry as he and Jeff were webcasting live in the living room!

The developers behind the XO (the machine for OLPC) have created a new platform for the machine (Sugar) which is based on a new pedagogical approach to education. Elana explains it much better than I can try, so you are invited to listen to the podcast (soon to be posted!). She has also agreed to come on to a WOW2 webcast on December 8th as our special guest, so tune in then to hear her live!

In the meantime, OLPC has just released an offer to purchase/give the XO laptop. For $400 a person will purchase a model of the XO and finance one to be sent to a developing nation. I am dying to see the XO for myself and play around with it to see how it can be used pedagogically in a school community.

Earlier this afternoon I was also able to help out with the WorldBridges videocast from Dave’s livingroom and then later capture a video interview with he and Jeff Lebow that will be featured in our WOW2 K12 Online conference presentation in about three weeks. Jeff Lebow’s vision for WorldBridges is more than 10 years old and it was fascinating and inspiring to hear his convictions and passion for webcasting at the grassroots level.

And, of course, we were all here in Charlottetown, PEI, to support the Living Archives Project which is a brainchild of Dave Cormier, who is himself also a visionary of education. Originally, he had wanted to use Second Life as the environment to support the project’s goal of student-created villages of digitized historical content. Due to the young ages of the student participants, he was not able to use SL so, undeterred, he has since discovered OpenSim. This program allows him to install and host the virtual world platform on his own server or even computer. Islands can be connected and disconnected with each other by user control. This provides him with a great deal more control and ownership over the project. The students appeared very enthusiastic when they saw the virtual world the other day. Students in Virginia also were invited to look over the virtual world and are watching this project carefully in the hope they can build their own world too!

September 26, 2007

What!! This Presentation will be Videocasted??!! And other developments….

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, online collaborative learning — Administrator @ 1:31 pm

Little did I know, some 11 or 12 months ago when I first heard of the proposal for the Living Archive project (yes, I made a few editing suggestions to the grant proposal - really, nothing much!) that I would be heading off to Charlottetown to participate in a conference to help carry out the goals of the project!

Kudos to Dave Cormier for pulling off a seemingly impossible and daunting task of a project - having young students collect and digitize content that would later be reconstructed in a virtual world (very short summary!)! It is student-driven social constructivism at its very best in concept.

I am honoured to be a part of the New Media Literacies Institute taking place at the University of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, PEI) Sept. 28-30th. Other (much more) notables include Jeff Lebow and Will Richardson.

What they *didn’t* tell me was that the presentations would be videocasted! And that Stephen Downes would be there. Okay, now I am a little … intimidated. Please note that both Will and Jeff are presenting simultaneously to me (phew!) and make your own choices!

This week I was able to finally finish and post the teaser videos to my K12 Online presentations. Please note that Vince takes most of the credit for our teaser on professional development. It was his idea for the scenario and he provided most of the slides for the opening and closing of the video. He also had a fun time screen capturing and editing together all the bits in movie-maker - a new experience for him.

See you all in PEI, Canada!

September 19, 2007

Jeff Lebow - Technology and Leader of the Year award nomination

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, educational technology — Administrator @ 9:34 am

Jeff Lebow

I am joining a few others who have been blogging their endorsement of Jeff Lebow for the Technology and Leader of the Year award: Jen Maddrell, Dave Cormier, Alex Ragone, John Schinker, Jeff Flynn and Lee Baber.

My words are not nearly as eloquent as theirs, so please do check out their endorsements as well.

Jeff Lebow is a world-class educator who possessed the vision to establish WorldBridges, a community of communities which serves a variety of educators from around the world. He has largely done this on his own initiative and has provided much of the funding for the servers and hosting of the necessary technology elements over the past few years of its existence. He has also provided training and support to a large group of educators who have wanted to learn how to webcast over the Internet. The training was provided at a distance through asynchronous and synchronous tools and environments found on the WorldBridges sites.

In essence, Jeff has freely and graciously provided his considerable expertise to train educators so that they, in turn, can teach and build networks of support for other educators and learners. Thousands of educators have accessed the WorldBridges sites where audio files (podcasts) from shows hosted by the educators are stored.

My own personal involvement with WorldBridges began over a year ago as I would listen to some of the shows hosted by educators who had been trained by Jeff. About a year ago, I started to host a weekly show for educators along with three other educators (the Women of Web 2.0). Later I would receive training from Jeff from the Webcast Academy so that I could myself handle the technical aspects of hosting a live audio webcast over the Internet. We have now had over forty weekly shows which feature guests who are innovative leaders and thinkers in education from around the world. We are aware that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have since accessed those audio files.

Without the leadership and vision of Jeff Lebow, these shows would not be possible. WorldBridges provides the infrastructure and environment which supports a large network of educators who are seeking to learn and grow from each other.

I heartily endorse the nomination of Jeff Lebow for this notable award because of the positive impact his efforts, through WorldBridges, have had on so many educators around the world who have, in turn, influenced the next generation of learners.

Sharon Peters

M.A. (Educational Technology)

Pedagogical Consultant

LEARN (Leading Educational and Resource Network, Québec)

September 18, 2007

The 5 Cs of the 1:1 Laptop Environment

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, online collaborative learning — Administrator @ 5:10 pm

The 5 Cs of the 1:1 Laptop Environment

This conviction about the 5 Cs of the 1:1 Laptop Environment came to me when I was in New Brunswick last month making a presentation to teachers who were teaching to students who had just been given laptops. It comes from my own observations from teaching with the use of laptop myself for the last four years and in being in a 1:1 environment for two years.

Tonight I listened to Gary Stager’s presentation at Learning 2.0 in Shanghai (care of Wes Fryer) just last week. I agreed with MOST of his presentation. He stated that the most important activity the laptop permits is that of construction (creation). It is certainly a very important goal within that environment and, as a social constructivist who has been inspired by the work of David Jonassen, I would agree that this is an important goal in a 1:1 environment.

However, I would say that given today’s super-powered Internet tools and environments, that while we educators have done a fairly good job of fostering the ability to collate, create and construct, we have NOT done such a good job at providing opportunities to communicate and collaborate given a ubiquitous wireless environment which always accompanies a laptop environment. (I realize I somehow left out connect, but that sense is there, I think!)

It drove me CRAZY in the last few years that we would inflict digitally-based projects on our students, they would submit them (often over the built-in email service), we would evaluate them, and poof! that was it, they were gone. Unless the student self-consciously saved their projects themselves, usually the project was doomed to be flushed out at the end of the year because the server space needed reclaiming. No vision for sharing that project with a larger audience or preserving it as a portfolio artifact for the future. No sense of reflection about progress over a period of time. No idea that another audience existed who could benefit from this constructed knowledge.

I also believe there is a great deal of value in socially-constructed knowledge and even better if the collaboration has to include a distance education component to it. Many of our 21st Century learners will have to do this as part of their future education or employment - or just for pleasure.

I would love to hear from other educators about *their* opinions on this issue!

August 21, 2007

Recollections from Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, educational technology — Administrator @ 10:58 am

David Warlick in Fredericton NB

After battling a virus I picked up somewhere on my travels last week, it is good to get back in the driver’s seat and recollect my thoughts on last week’s conference in Fredericton, New Brunswick - Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century - designed for teachers who are heading into the classroom soon in a 1:1 laptop environment. This initiative is province-sponsored and one of the growing numbers of schools who are moving in that direction.

Dave Warlick was the keynote speaker and it was exciting to see him presenting to a group of educators who are going out to the front lines of education very soon. I have heard David speak many times before (via podcast and videos), have had conversations with him on a few occasions, but had not actually ever seen him present live. He is so well-organized and sensitive to time issues! This was his second visit to New Brunswick - he had been quite a catalyst for change for many teachers during his last visit back in March. I was fairly familiar with most of the tools and environments he shows off - but even so I am a very small minority in an audience of teachers. He was very kind to use my blog as an example during one of his presentations. I realized then how difficult it was to find the rss link on my new blog layout….. gotta change that!

Dave was experimenting with chatcasting during his presentations and while only a few of the teachers chimed in, some very good ideas and thoughts were expressed and new conversations started. Dave later adds his own comments to those posted in the chatcast which further continues the conversation. I like this idea and hope he (and others) will continue to explore the use of backchanneling in such lecture-style deliveries - it challenges participants to become active, not passive, participants. We have so much to learn from each other - in this situation, we are all professionals with our own sets of valid experiences and seasoned wisdom. Let’s harness the tools we have at our disposal and get them to work for us to share, collaborate and learn from each other.

Vince Jansen also presented on the topic of virtual school environments. I caught only a few minutes of his presentation, but certainly saw most of it morph from a collection of various ideas and concepts to a well laid out set of concept maps of virtual environments for groups and personal learning environments for individuals. We have had many conversations about web 2.0 tools and spaces in the last number of months and it has been astonishing to watch how quickly he has grasped the significance of these tools for the education landscape. He has been working with technology in education for dozens of years and was very ready to make this move to the new transparency and facility of web 2.0.

I made my own presentation about online international collaborative projects (wiki) and have built on some of my previous ideas. Along the way, I included a description of how each of my own three kids uses the Internet - on their own, apart from educational uses. None of my kids would call themselves geeky; they very naturally use the Internet to find new friends, socialize, share their thoughts (and poetry writing!), and collaborate to accomplish goals (online gaming). This is typical of most teenagers today, I am convinced.

Dave Warlick pointed out the need for an appreciation of this new literacy for the 21st century. He even went so far as to say we should redefine literacy and that we should stop integrating technology and start integrating literacy. I agree entirely! I would like to completely avoid the “T” word, as I call it. The laptop (or such tool) should be invisible and ubiquitous. Our students are not asking themselves what technology they are going to use today - they just pick the most convenient method of communicating and socializing with their peers. They also have discovered that they can be producers of content and long for an audience. Facebook’s popularity is a perfect example of this.

During the conference, I witnessed a good deal of apprehension about what to do about Facebook. Some expressed interest in getting an account, others felt it should be left to the kids, others wondered how to get students to represent themselves appropriately while they were using such social networking sites. While I don’t have much time to maintain my Facebook account, with two daughters using the site, I have decided to be there at least as a presence. I even have a few friends! To me, it points out the pressing need for educators to be using social networking sites in an educational context so that these issues of appropriate representation can come up very naturally.

A special thanks to Jeff Whipple for being a fantastic host and for his invitation to come along to this conference.

Powered by ScribeFire.

August 10, 2007

Global Projects begin with Globally-Minded Educators

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, Blogging — Administrator @ 7:31 pm

Or does it??

That thought just came to me as I was putting together a presentation for teachers in New Brunswick next week. I had been at it for hours - collating way too much material for a one-hour session. How can one share the rationale, the experiences, the opportunities, the tools, … the great benefits of global projects in just one hour?? How can I adequately describe my daily experiences with global educators through the tools of the web? On a day-to-day basis, it is quite typical for me to communicate with an average of 10 other teachers or educators from around the world. I just realized this the other day. In my world, this is the new normal - most of my online peeps would probably say about the same. Is this an echo chamber? I don’t think so. I am meeting new teachers (often very enthusiastic about these emerging technologies) every week and it is encouraging to see new faces and hear new voices.

It has been suggested that the global projects might come from the students. In fact, I was going to show my audience next week, how my three children use online environments and tools to communicate with friends from around the world. What do you think??

This past week provided a feast of experiences for me as I communicated, collaborated, shared and socialized with other educators from around the world - all from my backyard patio, where I sit now, writing by candlelight on a beautiful summer’s evening.

First of all, it was just plain wonderful to catch up on my blog reading this week. Since NECC and BLC, I have come across some bloggers who have shared solid insights and chewed on issues that I have often wrestled with - or offer new ones. It has been a particular treat for me to read Dean Shareski’s blogs. I kick myself later, many times, for not leaving comments on the blogs I read - I should teach myself to do it right then, because I never seem to get back to it.

While the blogs have been stimulating, it has been twitter that has been the highlight of most of my days. While others scratch their heads over twitter, I try to point out that it is not the tool, it is the QUALITY of the network of users that makes this work. The educators that I have linked with in twitter are exceptional, dedicated, innovative thinkers who freely share resources, offer feedback, provide emotional and intellectual support, pose thoughtful questions, stimulate interesting discussion, and, very importantly, often make me laugh. We are an inclusive community.

The real treat for me this week, though, was participating in the chatcasts to augment Darren Kuropatwa’s conference sessions in Denver, CO for a group of public school teachers. Darren was introducing the tools and pedagogies of web 2.0. He invited other educators (open invitation on his blog and twitter) to come along for the ride by participating in a skype conference chat during his presentation. Many of us had “backchanneled” like this at the Building Learning Communities Conference earlier this summer (where I had the pleasure of meeting Darren). I was unable to listen to Darren’s live presentation, but I did participate in the chatcast which he later posted on his wiki to the presentation. Once again, the chat was lively, interesting, relevant, supportive, reflective, and helpful, I hope, to the educators who were present there watching the chat emerge live on a projected screen. Talk about being risk-taking by a presenter!

Yet here was another example of globally-minded educators sharing, engaging in discourse, supporting, and collaborating with their peers - what a wonderful example for our students! What a privilege it is to hang with such innovative, boundary-pushing, articulate and creative educators (who are still learning)!

On the topic of backchanneling, I mentioned to Terry Freedman that my own daughter had used that technique a bit during her grade 12 math and science classes last year (even backchanneling her own father for help with math!), and he requested an interview with her which she granted. Her 18th birthday was celebrated just a few days ago and I am very proud of her articulate and intelligent responses to Terry’s badgering….. I mean… interview techniques. Just kidding, Terry! You and Elaine were very good interviewers!

Dr. Cheri Toledo and I had a skype conversation earlier this week which turned to this subject of backchanneling (instant-messaging during a lecture or presentation) as well. We decided it was a topic worthy of academic research and will start soon collecting data about it, possibly for publication in an academic journal. So many of us see some value in exploring this technique with our students - even in K-12 education. Unlike Miss Manners, I think it is not boorish behaviour second only to heckling. Please certainly add your comments to this discussion. Worthy of academic practice and study… or opening a Pandora’s box?

I have also been in contact, this week, with Noble Kelly, of Teachers Without Borders Canada, and hope to be able to provide some global partnerships to classes in Canada and South Africa. As well, I am trying to find partnership opportunities for some teachers who are looking for global collaborative opportunities in the upcoming academic year. If you are interested, or know of some opportunities, please contact me!

July 20, 2007

BLC - Day Three

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, Blogging — Administrator @ 11:34 am



Bob Sprankle

Originally uploaded by Edublogger.


What a fun day of stimulating conversation and exchange of ideas!

Last night we enjoyed an evening of entertainment and levity on the Boston Harbour Dinner Cruise. I spent most of the dinner with new colleagues from LEARN finding out a bit more about my new job environment. Later I enjoyed some conversations with new friends who I had originally met at NECC.

I made it through most of the keynote session this morning by Dr. Yong Zhao who showed off a number of Internet trends such as youtube and Second Life. The compelling part of the session, for me and a few others, was the skype chatcast that quite a few of us were adding to. This phenomenon of backchanneling during sessions was even part of the topics we discussed. Yes, we poked a little fun at each other along the way (while David Jakes once again kept us on task), but we also enjoyed some powerful discourses about the speaker’s topic, the conference and the role of web 2.0 tools at such a conference.

I attended two sessions later in the morning - Darren Kuropatwa (New Tools, New Pedagogies - Developing Expert Voices), and Christian Long-Chris Lehmann (Designing High School 2.0). Again, we brought in a number of people into a skype chatcast (who were both in the session and off-site) and had amazing discourses about not just these sessions, but some others that were going on. Many said later about what an invigorating experience it was to have so many voices chiming in with their ideas, responses, experiences, and even dissents. I have to say it was one of the most intellectually stimulating experiences I have had for some time. Definitely a high point was when George Siemens came into the chat and we had a lively discussion about sustainable change in an educational environment and the affordances of a laptop as a tool.

Later, at lunch, I had the great privilege of having Bob Sprankle - Podcast Guru - show me how to use Garage Band on my new MacBook Pro. Wheeee! Imagine having private tutorials with Dave Warlick for pro-blogging tips and Bob Sprankle for podcasting tips all in one summer! Somebody pinch me!

Much more so than NECC 2007, I found most of the sessions promoted or used web 2.0 tools for educational purposes. One would certainly get the impression that a LOT of educators are using these tools in the classroom. However, in many of the audiences of the sessions I attended it was clear that many, many teachers (who were attending this tech-oriented conference) were NOT familiar with these tools and were clearly not using them. We have certainly not reached any kind of saturation point with comprehension of such things as rss feeds, podcasts, and skype. We have a long way to go, baby.

July 19, 2007

Über-bloggers and even more reports on BLC

Filed under: ICT issues, Education, social computing, web 2.0, educational technology, online collaborative learning — Administrator @ 11:59 am

While I have been here at BLC, I have watched the evolution of the über-blogger. This term refers to those bloggers who are no longer satisfied with merely taking notes for a later blog post, or even blogging on the fly. No, bloggers have now found each other. They have moved beyond the private experience of writing their own takes on the sessions to the social experience of back-channeling the sessions using either skype or twitter. I was invited into a skype conference with several bloggers who were either onsite (even sitting next to me) or were vicariously experiencing the conference through the collective notes of the attendees. David Jakes has been sharing some of these skype conference chats. I think this practice is another development that has arisen out of the Bloggers’ Café phenom of NECC 2007. To me, it is is a very valuable learning opportunity (that even our own students should be encouraged to use). We learn more through the collective experience in the moment than by writing our own thoughts, then asynchronously responding later.

More session reports:

Joyce Valenza - School Library Websites: State of the Art Information Landscapes for 21st Century Learners (audio-recorded)

Joyce is a tremendously passionate and dynamic speaker and presenter and her session included a wealth of perspective and resources. I found her paradigm of using student pathfinders (wiki-based resource pages) to organize a library webpage to be very appealing.

Her notes and resources can be found on the schoollibrarywebsites wiki.

She believes it is no longer an option for a school to not have a library website - it is a MUST for our 21st century students.

Ewan McIntosh - “We’re Adopting” - An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in Education (audio-recorded)

Five point strategy:

identify key user groups
identify and understand your key users and influencers
let key users evangelise
turn evangelists into trainers

emergent behaviours

lead by example
lead by reminding
provide adequate support
lead by mandate (never had to do this)
personal and school benefits complement each other

It’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach.

More Notes from BLC

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, online collaborative learning — Administrator @ 11:35 am

I am seeing a recurring theme here at BLC. In the last month before I left school, I said something very radical, but what made a lot of sense to me. I have becoming convinced that we should be putting all our students’ products and projects online. Everything. Essays, multimedia projects, photos of that which could not be made digital. I got some strange looks from the senior administrators, although no one responded.

And so here I am listening to stellar presenters from around the world who are demonstrating best practices and showing amazing student work - all posted online. What are they using? Flickr, youtube, meebo, podcastpeople, the list goes on. The value of sharing online is now becoming widely recognized. However, I would say we are not yet at a critical mass.

More session reports:

Bob Sprankle - Podcasting with Purpose - (audio-recorded)

Benefits for Writing (podcasts)

Students Decide
Peer Teaching
Guiding Questions from Teacher
Team Writing Benefits

Research Skills
Teaching Others

Purpose to work - Podcasting creates purpose - relevance, audience

(So the wind won’t blow it away) creates artifacts to return to

podcasts can be part of living portfolio

writing for a global audience

George Lucas says we have to do away with learning in isolation

information literacy, relevant learning, global communication

Great to hear Cheryl Oakes’ voice during this presentation = great interview with real elementary students!

self-directed learning - students are very self-aware.

These teachers have let go of the control of their class and their students and permitted students to create their own ideas for podcasts -

Bob mentions - A whole new mind - mentions the importance of “design” - podcasting fits this need

He also mentions The Book of Learning and Forgetting - now on my book list.

We learn from the company we keep - quote from book.

What podcasts are we listening to? What blogs are we reading?

Teachers and learners become information artisans - DAve Warlick

Bob says that artisans today are the blog writers

Bob describes the instance of his class with the wikipedia lesson that Dave Warlick shows off at a presentation/blog - someone challenged the lesson - students respond - the process is iterative

The Medium is the Message - how podcasting has changed us - more personal

digital world - two kinds of people - producers and consumers - power will go to producers - quote from an adult visitor to room 208

Data - does the data show learning gains? Watch what they are doing - when they are teaching what they ahve learned - they are showing that something is happening.

Ewan McIntosh - Is your public body public? (audio-recorded)

identity 2.0??

The kind of spaces we have:

Secret Spaces - Mobile sms im

Group Spaces - beebo, facebook, tagged

Publishing Spaces - livejournal, blogger,flickr, phtobucket

Performing space - secondlife, world of warcraft, f2f in school

Participation Space - marches, meetings, markets, conferences

Watching Spaces - television, gigs, theatre, youtube

how implicit or explicit is your digital life?

(forced to write this) things I like:

citrus scents, summer days, a clean house, driving along the lake

Things I don’t like:

being late, paying bills, running out of milk for coffee

I work on creating curriculum and sharing ideas with educators - I also look after the needs of three teenagers and a busy household.

viral success cannot be planned

fear: always loathing?? - school 2.0 not happening because educators are afraid of trying it out -

love the fear, don’t loathe the fear

overplanning - room for serendipity, are you allowed and able to fail?

do you allow students, teachers to make mistakes??

why bother?? 2007 - this is the year that 16 year olds were born in teh same year as the web browser

are we ready for this? something has changed, we have to change

Will ICT have any impact - where has it made the biggest impact?

emerging technologies make the biggest impact - IWB’s has less impact on than when implemented 5 years ago

word count of - CDs = 0

emerging practieces - ways to share it all - make the biggest impact

ways to share it all - ie blogs??

don’t incriminate yourself - just don’t speak

take the 5th amendment - influence of the blog

bloggers are flattening out

wikis - another way for teachers to share it all

shares a wiki with what teachers created best practice guidelines for staff blogs

blogs are conversations - so converse!

who do you consult? roman army or wirearchy

track them - see what people are saying about ..you, your conference, your org

finding bottom-up culture; losing permissions-based culture

don’t do a me-too! look at your own cultural context, why they don’t accept the way things are (for me - what is it about Québec? )

do you want everyone to blog? why? examine why you want these tools

he likes very social public body

opens doors to a communicative body - a connected public body

Thoughts and Notes from Building Learning Communities 2007

Filed under: Education, social computing, web 2.0, Blogging — Administrator @ 8:46 am

I am so glad I came to BLC this year! This conference has quite a different feeling from NECC which I attended a few weeks ago in Atlanta. True, I had something like five public presentations while I was at NECC and I also got swept away by the Bloggers’ Café opportunities for social sharing. I had arrived in Atlanta the day after my last day of school - so I was quite exhausted during and after.

The week before NECC I made an impulsive decision to attend the Building Learning Communities Conference - mostly because of the reasons stated above. I had scanned the names on the presenters’ list and knew this was going to be an opportunity for some very rich and engaging stimulation. And I have not been disappointed.

Tim Tyson, principal of Mabry Middle School in Georgia was the opening keynote speaker. Below are some notes I had sketched out during the presentation. He is a modest, articulate, engaging speaker whose passion for his students, his teachers and his school clearly shines through.

Tim Tyson discusses the importance of relevance in education - how project-based learning that connects students with other people and places in the world is RELEVANT and how the evaluation of it is authentic to both the learner and the teacher.

He stressed the importance of having students make meaningful and valuable contributions to the world - when do we contribute something meaningful or significant - when we are adults - or is it right now (for students)? Let’s make it a choice rather than default.

Tim gives example of authentic relevant learning, the student video of stem cell research - alarming topic - but students were on fire for the topic. They were challenged to create a video that would capture the importance of the issues and communicate that to the audience in a 2 minute video.

The first session I attended was Reel Celtic Connections by Ewan McIntosh. I audio-recorded the presentation and hope to have that podcast up and available soon. I had read Ewan’s blog and listened to a number of podcasts where he has shared his ideas, so I was prepared for some solid depth. The title can be misconstrued. His presentation focused on the educational changes that have taken place over time in Scotland and how he strongly believes we need to be addressing this generation of students who have been raised in the era of the Internet. Ewan also stresses that changes to educational systems have to be done at the LOCAL level - there is no one size fits all - but the culture and situation of the system should be taken into account. He is not a believer, he says, in school 2.0 or classroom 2.0 for this reason. This challenged me to take a critical look at my own cultural situation in Québec that need to be examined as we reshape our educational landscape to better suit our students.

Ewan’s presentation was augmented with video clips and a google earth visit to Scotland. One big take-away for me was the government inspectorate report that Scotland recently released that summarized data which demonstrated that emerging technologies are making the biggest technologies impacts on schools! We need to get that word out!

Will be collating my notes to the other sessions I have attended soon! Two more days to go! Wow!

On a social note, I am having a grand time meeting such peeps as Darren Kuropatwa, Dean Shareski (fellow Canadians), Ewan McIntosh, and others - some of whom I was able to have dinner with last night.

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