Musings - Just Learning

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!

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.

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)

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!

Powered by ScribeFire.

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.

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.

Last week, we were thrilled when George Siemens came along with us on our webcast to discuss connectivism. The podcast is now available at podomatic. I am still cogitating actively on some of the discussions generated from the show. And tomorrow night, some of my colleagues and I will be discussing how to develop skills in our students in an age of connectivism.

Today I met with Scott Morrison, a teacher from Selwyn House just down the road from my school, to collaborate together on a conference presentation we will be making at the Quebec Association of Independent Schools Symposium next week. Our session is titled “The Three C’s of the Interactive Internet - Content, Construction and Collaboration” and we will be using a wiki as our shell for information and links. Scott and I plan to pose questions about web 2.0 (what is it? Why is it important for teachers to know about? What are some pedagogical practices? What are the dangers?) and present our viewpoints (at times odds with each other) in our presentation. Next week, I can share the wiki we create with you - right now, it is a work in progress. I like the idea because it demonstrates the power of collaboration and negotiation as we grope for meaning and understanding.

Tomorrow night, we have an exciting and potentially controversial theme for our WOW2 webcast - the Potential of Virtual Worlds for Teaching. Our guests are Beth Ritter-Guth is a pioneer who is teaching literature in Second Life (SL), and Dr. Allan Webb who is the founder of literaryworlds.org. This is the very new, cutting edge frontier of education and the topic should certainly provide lively conversation in the chat room.

I have visited SL a few times (my SL avatar name is Heloise Chevalier), but as I really don’t have even enough time for my first life, I am not sufficiently interested to invest a good deal of time in SL. Perhaps if I were to be convinced of the educational potential, I would be tempted to make that investment. I have been invited to a few teachers’ gatherings and meetings and will likely follow up on those invitations soon as I always relish the opportunity to meet educators from around the world.

Join us tomorrow night at our webcast and learn more about virtual worlds and their potential for education!

I used to think that the issue of cyber-bullying was an issue that affected only young teens.

Sure, there was such a thing as flaming going on in controversial usergroups and online discussions (something my husband regularly faces, but then that’s what happens when people are discussing evolution or poorly executed magic tricks!).

Personally, I have been blogging for almost two years and have been very active in online environments for over a decade and have rarely been exposed to very much flaming activity amongst professionals.

However, the recent events of the harassment and death threats against another blogger have brought the issue to the forefront of just about all discussions taking place in the education and technology blogs in the last few days.

I read Kathy Sierra’s post describing the harassment and was outraged. Beyond words. Incredulous. And very angry.

It is a violation of her privacy and of her own freedom of expression.

It is unacceptable behaviour that would be punished severely in any school and is (or should be) certainly a breach of the legal system in the developed world.

More information about cyber-bullying and resources to educate our students and other users can be found at the social networking site created by some of us in the last few days. Please consider joining this group.

Here you can listen Kathy’s interview by an ABC news broadcaster (care of Vicki Davis - The Cool Cat Teacher Blog).

If you are a teacher, please consider giving your students a refresher in netiquette practices. More than that, we need to be making it clear to our students that online bad behaviour is inexcusable in ANY online environment (instant messaging, blogs, forums, etc.). It very well may be thoughtless careless behaviour that will come back to haunt them in the future as employers will find and use such abuses as reasons to not hire or fire.

Anything digital can be forwarded, saved, downloaded, manipulated, copied and pasted and be passed on and on and on…..

Let’s make digital ethical behaviour part of our lifestyles and school curriculum.

Critics of blogs and online social networking have been quick to point out the dark sides. I say that technology tools are neither good nor evil in themselves, it is how WE CHOOSE to use them.

Please support the Stop Cyber-Bullying Campaign.

technorati tags: stopcyberbullying, digitalethics, blogging, Kathy Sierra

Although my jet-lagged brain is struggling to keep up after a wonderful week-long vacation in Costa Rica, I couldn’t help myself when I saw Steve Hargadon’s new initiative today: Classroom 2.0. The ning software environment is a brilliant mashup of blogs, social networks, videos and forums. Please take a look and consider joining. We need each other.

Below is my first blog entry for Classroom 2.0 and I want to simulpost here on my own blog.

Social Networks - Challenge and Fun!

It has been an exceptionally busy 9 or 10 months. Although I have long finished my course work for a graduate degree in educational technology, over this time period I have developed richer and more meaningful relationships with like-minded (and sometimes not so like-minded) educators who have contributed to my growth as a teacher and mentor of my students.

I did not consciously or deliberately set out to create or extend a professional social learning network (not even sure it was in my lexicon!), it all sort of just happened. Like many of us, I am an early adopter of what some are calling web 2.0 tools and it is through these tools (again, not consciously) that I developed relationships. I would meet so-and-so, usually at a conference or other face-to-face meeting, and keep in touch through chatting or skype, and they, in turn, would introduce me to another so-and-so or to large group online synchronous get-togethers. I was challenged with new ideas and presented with new tools. Okay, I was even invited to be a part of Women of Web 2.0 and what an exceptional privilege that has been! And along the way I was having a great deal of fun. Challenge and fun certainly kept me coming back for more!

Several months ago, it occurred to me that I was a node in an extensive social network of educators from around the world. Professional development and growth were ongoing and I was being exposed to a high calibre of expertise and information that could not be provided by my school or administration or even a one-shot week-long conference. And I was meeting other educators who were experiencing the same phenomenon.

A Better Way

My observations about this phenomenon led me to believe that this was a new way, indeed a better way, of experiencing professional growth. As I was creating a conference presentation to discuss these ideas, I was challenged by some of my peeps with the most important question implicit in professional development for teachers - Were my students experiencing learning benefits from my exposure and participation in social networks? This is the real litmus test - and difficult to measure. Fortunately, I favour qualitative research that is based on researcher observation (with admitted involvement and possible bias). My own sense was that, yes, my students were engaged learners who were improving in their writing practices and in their critical thinking patterns as a result of my tweaks and changes through exposure to other ideas and practices.

However, I thought it might be interesting to throw that question out (and other such questions) to other educators who are involved in social networks. I planned to include the results in my conference presentation. A questionnaire was created using surveymonkey and, through my own social network tools (blog, podcast, webcast, email, and chats), I invited other educators to share their responses.

Influence of Learning Gains on Students

Some of the results were surprising and the open-ended questions provided some very interesting reflections and insights.

While there is no silver bullet solution for learning gains of students through teacher professional development, one cannot overlook the positive experiences of these educators regarding the perceived learning gains of their students.

Value of Access to a Social Network

When asked about the value of access to a social network, here are some the comments of the participating educators:

(I added the boldification)

I could not have stated these ideas better myself! And that is another key reason for social networks - we no longer have to be innovators on our own. By developing a social network of relationships with progressive-thinking educators from around the world, we are collaborating together to create the best possible learning environment for all of our students.

So finally, what are the compelling reasons for social networks for educators’ professional growth?

We are merely scratching the surface of the issues, implications and great potential. I welcome your thoughts as we continue the conversation about this important possibility.

Our school enjoyed a long weekend and it was much needed for me as I was juggling a great deal of extracurricular activities, my regular teaching duties, and the Connectivism Conference last week. Phew!

LCC Blogs

The four students who are on exchange to schools in Melbourne, Australia arrived safely and, to my great delight, are using the blog that was created for them to chronicle their adventures. My 14 year old daughter is good friends with the students and she noted how much of their personal voice was evident in their sharing of the same events and experiences. I found their writing skills to be solid, informative, and much more forthcoming than some of their “academic” assignments. One more piece of evidence, at least to me, that writing for an authentic audience increases student motivation to produce better quality and quantity of writing.

Please drop by their blog and leave them a comment - it would be such an encouragement to them!

I am hoping to use their blog posts as learning opportunities for the rest of the students in the class. Some questions I would like to ask - how would headings help the reader? Should they have broken up the text into smaller paragraphs? What questions or issues does the writer leave with the reader? What is an appropriate response for a comment?

Looking Forward to the 2007 IOC

Tomorrow, the 2007 Illinois Online Conference begins and I am going to find it interesting to compare it with the Connectivism Conference of last week (also online - both using Elluminate as a conference-sharing environment). The sessions I am very interested in attending are noted on my Google Calendar and mostly have to do with web 2.0 tools or Second Life. I was very interested to see that two sessions about educational uses for SL are offered; one of them is about how to create educational objects in SL to share with a class - wow! Can’t wait for that one!

Second Life generated a huge amount of interest (serendipitously and perhaps unanticipated by George Siemens) during the Connectivism Conference. Unfortunately, my schedule did not permit to join any of the self-organized groups which toured SL.

My own presentation for IOC takes place at 14:00 (2 PM) EST on Friday. The presentation is about how social networks, through the use of web 2.0 tools, are being used to foster and promote professional growth.

Survey Measuring Educators’ Uses of Web 2.0 Tools for Professional Growth

I created a survey to measure the kinds of web 2.0 tools educators are using for this purpose.

If you have a minute or two, could you please help me out and take the survey? I intend to present the results as part of my presentation on Friday.

Click here to take survey

technorati tags: Connectivism Conference 2007, George Siemens, Second Life, 2007 Illinois Online Conference