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web 2.0

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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 29, 2007

Keynote to New Media Literacies Conference

Filed under: Education, web 2.0, educational technology, online collaborative learning, Blogging — Administrator @ 6:43 am

It is exciting to be here at the University of Prince Edward Island to participate in this conference. I am sitting at a “blogger’s table” with Harold Jarche, Sandy McAuley, and Stephen Downes with Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow hovering the background. Will Richardson is delivering the keynote and he is going through it to demonstrate how the world is changing and the social technologies that are being used by students, teachers, ordinary folks and even politicians. He points out in particular how Obama is using social networking sites in order to promote his campaign. Physical space can be transcended and we can now have meaningful conversations with people around the world. Will makes the statement that model of journalism has to change - we can add our own information so easily so instantly. I really liked what he showed about how a teacher was using twitter to teach about the student uprising in Myanmar just two days ago. Students were able to view photos and videos of Burma within hours after the incidents took place.

Will also looks at how business is changing and shifting as they exploit these web 2.0 tools. His wiki page is worth exploring for the information he has collected there. He reminded us, too, of the digital divide still due to socioeconomic disparities.

I like the way Will shows off his blog as a place where HIS learning takes place. “It is a powerful learning network.” However, there is a disconnect between this kind of learning and what is going on in classrooms. He also shows off FanFiction and MySpace (not a good site - he shows it as a bad model of how young people are using such sites).

Will and I both twittered before his session that the conference could be found live at edtechtalk.com with an invitation to join. Within a few minutes three of my twitter peeps had come back to say they were following us - Graham Wegner in Australia, John Pederson in Minnesota, and Alice Wells in Maine. How cool is that?

I particularly appreciated how Will put a focus on the importance of AUDIENCE. This is often overlooked as having any pedagogical value for students, but I think it is one of the most powerful and compelling reasons we should be using web 2.0 tools and environments. I have said it before - I think all student-created material should be up online. However, this is based on the premise that the material has authentic value. He mentions three great Canadian educators who have been so innovative in creating new pedagogies around these tools - Clarence Fisher, Darren Kuropatwa and Konrad Glogowski - and I heartily concur.

He challenges us to be participatory together during these exciting times - and to build our own learning networks. We also need to be modeling our own learning to our students.

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!

September 12, 2007

Let’s Go Global!

Filed under: Education, web 2.0, online collaborative learning, Blogging, women of web 2.0 — Administrator @ 9:41 am

Last night on our WOW2 webcast, we had an impressive set of teachers with us to describe their plans and involvement in global projects for this academic year. Kristin Hokanson was effusive in her enthusiasm for using web 2.0 tools and getting teachers connected and involved. Her “Connected Classroom” wiki is very impressive - check out the video she has embedded in it.

Cheryl Lykowski, with whom I have been corresponding for a few months now, has just won an award for her impressive work on a master’s thesis project involving her students (in Michigan) in a podcast project with teachers and students in Colombia.

Another teacher whom I had invited, but was not able to join us last night, is Jennifer Meagher, a teacher who involved her Sherbrooke Québec high school students in a collaborative project with teachers and students in Uganda using the tools and environment from TakingITGlobal. Although she has since moved to another province in Canada, she is an enthusiastic proponent of global partnerships and knows of several classes around the world that are seeking partners this year.

While on the local level in my own setting I know of few teachers who are flattening their classroom walls to communicate and collaborate with students outside of their immediate environment, I am encouraged that this is changing. Opportunities for global collaborative projects abound and the tools of the Internet have never been easier to use!

Other projects/portals worth mentioning: Life Round Here (by Chris Craft), The Global Education Ning, and Teachers Without Borders.

IMPORTANT!!! If you have a great project that has used WEB 2.0 TOOLS, Terry Freedman asks that you would fill out this form so he can show off best practices examples with the upcoming Coming of Age - 2nd Edition. Please consider doing so - this way we can all share our students’ great work using these neato tools.

Below is a slideshow of a presentation I recently gave at the Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century conference in New Brunswick. I include slides of my own three teenagers who each use the Internet in very different ways - yet in ways that I believe are typical of our generation of youth today. All three of them are using tools and environments which permit them to collaborate and share with others not in their own immediate location. I included them in my presentation to demonstrate how teenagers are using the Internet as a means of communication and collaboration OUTSIDE of educational purposes. They do so easily and naturally, not because they are “geeks” (they would quickly cringe at that label!), but because that is how today’s teens are having fun and getting connected with their friends.

Check out the other portals mentioned in the slideshow if you are looking for an Internet Project or Global Partnership this year!


September 4, 2007

Blogging - Not IF, But When, Where, and Why

Filed under: Education, web 2.0, online collaborative learning, Blogging, women of web 2.0 — Administrator @ 9:25 am

It has been much too long since my last blog post. When I lamented how far behind I felt in my writing recently to a friend, she wisely pointed out that my “life stress score” was probably pretty high. She went through the list - kitchen renovation, two parents and nephew in hospital, hosting a big family reunion, child leaving home for university, change of job, change of routine….. okay, okay!! I have been a little busier than usual in the last few months!

I don’t feel particularly stressed - everyone is now healing nicely, the kitchen reno went well, the family reunion was a big success and it looks as though I am going to thrive in my new job at LEARN. But there are times, recently, when I have found myself overwhelmed into paralysis.

Today, Dave Cormier asked me to read over his blog which is also a part of a presentation at the University of Prince Edward Island. It is a terrific post/presentation and should provide some good material for those of you who may have to make similar presentations. I decided to comment and the ideas just flowed out like a dam had broken.

Here is what I wrote:

    A great presentation/blog, Dave! I liked your visuals and the embedded slideshow as well.

    I have a few more thoughts about blogging for educational purposes - not if, but when, where and why, as well.

    I used blogs with my high school students for the last three years in a variety of ways. As an English teacher, I am always looking for ways for my students to produce writing in authentic situations. Most of us are reluctant writers to begin with, so writing purposefully for a real audience makes a big difference in motivation and effort on the part of students. For the most part, traditional samples of writing would have an audience of one (the teacher), maybe two (if the student actually proof-read it!). With a blogging environment, the audience can be larger than just the members of the class. However, I have found that my students would *prefer* to write for an anonymous audience over their own peers - so powerful is the social force of peer groups in the teenage years! What I also discovered consistently over the three year period, was that the quality of writing improved greatly both between samples handed in for only my eyes and over time.

    This was due, I believe, to a number of factors. First of all, the students were exposed to the quality of writing by the rest of the students. Suddenly the bar was raised. They could see for themselves what was good and mediocre (and just plain awful) writing. The students who perceived themselves as not quite doing a great job put a good deal more effort and care into their writing. I almost couldn’t believe the quality I was witnessing from some of those students! As well, they were also aware that they themselves now had an audience. This also motivated them to perform at their best.

    Last year, I asked the headmaster of our school to read my students’ blog posts - at times in response to his weekly address - and he agreed. The very fact that the students were aware that the headmaster was going to read their blog posts also motivated them to really dig deep and write critically and thoughtfully. I was very impressed with much of what they had to say.

    So when we talk about using online social spaces - such as blog or wikis - for communicating for educational purposes, I would have to say a very compelling reason is because of authentic audience.

    I am very impressed with the new Québec Education Program that has now been completed in its mandate to provide a new curricula for the students of Quebec in the 21st Century. It explicitly states that the notion of text is no longer bound by words on a page (be it webpage or hard copy) but we now read other texts for meaning - visual texts, audio texts, multimedia texts. Literacy is now about making meaning from all available texts. Most blogging and wiki environments permit these texts (as you have shown on this blog post with your visuals and slideshow) to habitate all in one location in order to foster meaning-making for its audiences. Our students exist in a world where they are saturated with these texts. They have themselves become the producers also of these texts. I believe it is fundamentally important that we give them opportunities to produce content in meaningful, yet appropriate ways. This is another very important reason we educators should be using these tools and environments within the scope of our instruction.

    I have also been blogging myself - though certainly not daily - for the last two years. I took it on as a way to prime the pump for my own thesis writing for a graduate degree. The discipline of blog writing has given me back much more than that. I have connected with educators I had no idea were out there. In fact, I am still surprised when someone says they are following my blog! The notion of an authentic audience who reads what I write is a powerful motivator; however, with it comes a responsibility of care for what I write and about whom. I work very hard not to betray the trust of my friends and colleagues as I write. It is very important to play nice and play fair when you are putting your thoughts “out there” on the Internet. This is about digital ethics - something I don’t believe we teach enough to our students. As they become producers of content, it gives them an opportunity to experience ownership of ideas - perhaps through this, it will give them a sense of the importance of copyright and avoiding plagiarism.

    Thanks for giving me a chance, Dave, to thrash through some of my ideas and beliefs about the uses of blogging in education!

Some of the above ideas are greatly influenced by Dave Warlick who presented at a conference I attended a few weeks ago. We are crossing our fingers that he will be able to be our keynote speaker at a conference in Montréal in February!

Tonight on our WOW2 webcast we have a number of really terrific special guests lined up for a “super admin” show - Dr. Scott McLeod, Barbara Barreda, Chris Lehmann and Miguel Guhlin. Please join us at 9 PM EDT on edtechtalk - who just moved to a new server yesterday!

August 21, 2007

Soon to Come on Women of Web 2.0 Webcasts

Filed under: Education, web 2.0, educational technology, women of web 2.0 — Administrator @ 11:28 am

Our Women of Web 2.0 webcasts have been on hiatus for the last few weeks, but we have been busy lining up guests for the next few months. Take a look at who we have joining us for our weekly conversations (chatroom and live stream):

August 21 (that’s tonight!) - we have a special back-to-school show with teachers as the guests! It will be a revolving door type show with much interaction and participation expected from our chatroom. Kristen Hokansan (Maine) and Anne Lawton (Québec) will be featured as teachers who are stopping by to share their vision for the upcoming school year.

August 28 - Dr. Mary Friend Shepherd (researcher on e-folios) and Dr. Robert McLaughlin (chair, ISTE SIG on Digital Equality)

September 4 - Administrator 2.0 Supershow - Part 2 of Men and Women from Administration - Miguel Guhlin, Scott McLeod, Barbara Barreda and Chris Lehmann will be joining us!

September 11 - Weebly

September 18 - Non-traditional professional development - Dean Meyer, Darren Draper, Steve Hargadon, Julie Lindsay

September 25 - Bud Hunt

October 2 - Diane Hammond - http://iss07.yesican-science.ca

October 9 - David Jakes and Ewan McIntosh

October 16 - Anniversary Show - David Warlick

October 23 - highlights from K-12 Online Conference

October 30 - Vinnie Vrotny

November 6 - Melina Miller - the Podcasting Principal

November 13 - Beth Kanter - Blogging in Cambodia

How is this for a terrific line-up of shows? Please be sure to join us for some great conversations!

Technorati Tags: womenofweb2 webcast podcast

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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.

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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!

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