March 29, 2010
Post 8: Thing 11 — Flickr’ing
Arg….I just lost a post trying to upload an image from Flickr commons — a 1903 shot of the Sultan Ahmet mosque that I found and thought was a great image to compare/contrast with images of the structure today (which I have in my personal collection). So let’s try this again.
This image comes from the Brooklyn Museum collection and can also be accessed via
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/2806275327/
Now the question is: How does one insert text below this image?
Let’s try this
And this
Ah, now I’ve got it. Hit “return” multiple times!!
On to the task at hand: commentary about Flickr. I can truly say that I am a convert. I hear students reference this site and I’m pretty sure I’ve been on it myself a few times but I never knew of the common access content and how extensive it was. This is a really awesome resource in the truest sense of the word — HUGE. Without a doubt I will tap into it. And it is so easy to use. I may even upload my own images since I see no immediate reason to keep them captive on my computer.
Post 7: Thing 10 – Creative Commons
Having just viewed two clips about Creative Commons, I am newly acquainted with idea. I have thought very little about copyright when it comes to the web, largely because I have not shared content on the web. I have, however, used video clips (etc.) in my teaching. I have perhaps wrongly assumed that this was okay given that there is/was a 10% rule that to my knowledge governed the use of print matter for classroom. The video clips that I viewed about Creative Commons did not really clarify for me what is okay to use outside of the “cc” realm, so I am still operating under the 10% assumption for other resources….but now I will look into it further!!!
Mainly, I am wondering about the ways students use the work of others. So many of them download movies, video games, and the like, knowingly violating legal and ethical guidelines. Also, I am wondering about how I can get student work into the broader realm and have it available to others to see but also protected on some level from being copied wholesale. It seems that cc is the way to go.
March 16, 2010
Post 6: Thing 8 — Thoughts on Wiki-ing
I read Vicki Davis’ blog post Wiki Wiki teaching, which is about 5 years old at this point. I mention the date of the post because I think that since this post (which conveys great excitement at student construction and enthusiasm for Wikis), the notion that Wikis can be a tool for student learning and studying has become commonplace. So at the risk of sounding “ho hum” in my response to her post I want to say that even a web 2.0 novice such as myself has a sense of the potential of wikis. Indeed I have participated in the creation of a wiki with a colleague as part of our Model UN Team planning process in 2009 (go Switzerland!). I have used Wikipedia, warned people about Wikipedia, and then used Wikipedia again and again, ignoring my own warning at times, and at other times taking steps to check the credibility of an entry. It would seem then that Vicki Davis’ blog post is no longer novel. So what now? Rather than add my own blog post here conveying total excitement at the potential of the wiki in education, I will take a few moments to convey some thoughts about Wikis based on perusing a few sites as part of a Web 2.0 course:
From a child/student-centered perspective, the wiki is a wonderful tool – emancipating in many ways from the teacher-centered approach: students can become participants in a large community on the web, and teachers can take a facilitating role. Certainly, this is how Vicki Davis approached her Wiki activity with students. A second “ideal” associated with the wiki is that everything seems possible. The world of the web is suddenly accessible and one can imagine having a global audience – what power of communication and what a neat way to express oneself (it can be textual or filled with images, videos etc – very holistic!). But when I visited some of the wikis that teachers and students have constructed, I realized that while some of these wiki projects took off as planned, many did not. In some cases, their content was quite variable. Even the super Brazil glog (not blog) at Greetings from the World (which, by the way won the 2009 award fro best edublog), did not coexist with other quality glogs. Its neighbor, Argentina, was glogless. Some teachers set very high expectations for their wikis. Did Mr. Monson really intend for his 5th grader blog to capture the attention of enough people on the web to consistently gather 1000 responses to questions his class posted regularly at the Thousands Project? Perhaps not and in fact he intended to engage the students themselves with the questions they posed or to drum up enthusiasm for the project in neighboring classrooms (it would appear that most respondents were from the same school in some cases). The bottom line is that many websites I scanned hobbled onward but were not able to establish the forum they had intended. Is it that the goals of the teachers and students are too lofty, that they soon find that the time and energy expended on the wiki is not paying off? Is it that many of these wikis are intended to be short-term “in-house” kinds of ventures aimed at facilitating particular events (such as my Model UN wiki or the nicely done 100 counting project? Yes, yes, and yes. And yes, I do see the potential for wikis in my own teaching. Indeed, I am initiating one related to a seminar course I am teaching. My hope is that the wiki will have realistic expectations and moderate participation….and of course that I’ll be able to manage it without too much struggle.
February 28, 2010
Post 5: Thing 7a – More on RSS
It occurs to me that I am attracted to some of the material fed to me by way of my RSS subscriptions because it is so irritating, so provocative that it gives me cause to gripe. I gripe not because I disagree with the basic sentiments of the authors (for example, I agree with some of Mimi’s points in her rant session about age-old topics — teachers, pay, and job security) but because it is so spewing that it reminds me of the letters to the editor in the local paper (and perhaps the rants of the dreadful Michele Malkin in terms of the way in which the sentiments are presented) that I cringe when I read. The point: My RSS feeder brought me a post on the so-called “Shabbyblog” called “Its not all flowers and sausages,” and it was filled with stuff that, in my view, detracted from the actual sentiments by calling attention to the author and her shock-value language. The good thing here — I can UNSUBSCRIBE, just as I can drop the local paper or complain to the letters to the editor people. So shabbyblogs contributors and readers can continue along as they do and I can get off that train. Don’t get me wrong. Mimi has the right to write as she pleases, but I just wonder if the web is becoming so very full of so very informal stuff that soon formal commentary will itself be novel…or antiquated, stuffy, and obsolete? The irony — by blogging as I am in this way, I am part of this very process!
Post 4: Thing 5 Task – Blogging about RSS Feed item
Time consuming — this is what strikes me about receiving….and reeeaaaading these feeds. I simply cannot scan very well, and even when I do I find that I am so sincerely interested in at least one of the tidbits that shows up that I end up spending far too much time investigating an article….and then a link from that article to something else. I suspect this will take care of itself once this spate of snow days lets up: I simply won’t have the time to peruse and get caught up in something that is fed to my reader. Or I’ll become more selective.
For now, I will concede that the time-consuming aspect of reading the feed items is balanced by the fact that I feel I am back to being more connected with world news. Our local newspaper is so limited in its global coverage (and certainly has little in the way of education-related substance) that having this newfound method of selecting news I find relevant and satisfying is worth spending just a bit too much time “scanning” the news.
Today I found many pieces in my feed about the Chilean earthquake. It was interesting that it was covered in the education-related feeds as well as the general news feeds I subscribe to. I hadn’t expected the former and was pleasantly surprised to find techology tools (seismic interactive maps for example) highlighted on one site that linked to CNN . I had searched for just such a map when addressing the Haiti quake a few weeks ago and wish I’d known about this resource!
February 20, 2010
Post 3: Thing 4 Task – Blogging about blogging
This blog post concerns blogging. I viewed 5 blogs, and from this small sample I came to some conclusions about the variety of blogs and their potential to capture the attention of the reader. The blogs/posts I viewed are:
Dear Kaia & Skyelar: This, This, That
A father helps his little girl to look for beauty in things that are ordinary, ugly or thrown away.
CoolCatTeacher (Vicki Davis): Spies Like Us
Vicki Davis talks about the realities of teaching in a society where every cell phone is a recording device. Vicki Davis is someone you want to know about!
Students 2.0: Teaching Brevity
The author of this post is a fourteen-year-old. The Students2oh blog was collaboratively written by a group of outspoken, articulate high schoolers from across the U.S. and beyond.
A Really Different Place (Carleigh): One Family’s Story of Survival
A sixth grader who blogs as part of a classroom community of writers shares a story about the recent plane crash on the Hudson River.
A Simple Desultory Dangling Conversation (Skydaddy): The Upside Down Pop Quiz A teacher rethinks and reworks the traditional “pop quiz” to provide an incentive for students to really learn what he wants them to learn.
Overall, I found the blogs to be more informal than most of the reading and writing that I do and assign to students. This was refreshing for me; I found myself more engaged in some cases because I felt as if I were allowed to scan the material without the pressure that can come with formal reading. Also, the blog titles were in some cases enigmatic and therefore enticing. Some, such as “This, this that” and “One family’s story of survival” are compelling because of the human subjects who are documented. Others, such as “teaching brevity” and “the upside down pop quiz” are appealing for their educational content (they each challenge common pedagogy). And then there is the wonderful cautionary commentary by Vicki Davis, “Spies like us,” which reminds all of us that with technology comes exposure and new ethical questions about how empowering technology can indeed disempower those who are perceived as the powerful (i.e, the teacher) by capturing them in compromising situations. The story about the light saber boy (Davis blog) is a frightening example of how a person can unknowingly become a victim of one little behavioral slip (caught on film, edited and posted for the increasingly small world to see). In essence, this array of blogs illustrates that indeed many types of conversations can be accessed and that they can appeal for a variety of reasons.
February 19, 2010
Post 2: Thing 2 Task – Commenting on Web 2.0
This post contains some of my initial thoughts about Web 2.0 and its role in 21st century teaching and learning.
I have so many thoughts that it’s hard to know where to begin. I guess my first gut reaction is EEK, there is so much out there and the entire language of web 2.0 is indeed a new language. My second gut reaction is more of a question: Who is driving this new era? It seems almost self-propelled — a radical and kind of bottom-up world in which people grab onto new mechanisms of communication and use them as they will. I know it’s not that simple (so often the idea that things are “consumer-driven” ignores the reality that there is a top down element). And then there is the question of whether it should be self-propelled, at least to the degree that it is now — certainly with respect to the student population which is very pop-culture oriented by design and which often needs guidance about responsible use of technology. This is the key for me as an educator. If it is not us, then who will help kids to understand how to use technology to their advantage — and no, this comment is not intended to imply that “kids don’t know what’s good for them” — they are quite saavy in some respects. Still, kids often seek guidance and many know that they need some help navigating the world of web 2.0, at least those aspects with which they are not familiar. So I see myself incorporating web 2.0 into my curriculum and modeling good use/teaching how to engage it. I also see myself as a learner. Students often know how to use the technology and so can be excellent sources of information on one level (the technical level). If we can all engage in learning how to use it (technically speaking), then we can move on to the more vital task of figuring out how to eliminate the “garbage in” phenomenon that can give web 2.0 a bad name! These are my somewhat rambling/stream-of-consciousness thoughts on web 2.0 for now. Enjoy.
Post 1: Thing One Task – Web 2.0 Course
This post concerns the presentation “7 1/2 habits of highly effective learners” These habits are:
Habit 1 Begin w/the end in mind
Habit 2 Accept responsibility for your own learning (actively seek out, practice, problem-solve)
Habit 3 View problems as challenges
Habit 4 Have confidence in yourself as a competent effective learner
Habit 5 Create your own learner toolbox
Habit 6 Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7 Teach, mentor others
Habit ½ Play!
My goal here is to identify:
- Which habit(s) may be most challenging for me to employ as part of my K12 Learning 2.0 experience?
- Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for me as a lifelong learner?
- Which habit do I think will be most important for me as I work through this course, and why
Challenging habit to employ: I’m going to diverge from the 7.5 habits listed above and add one: Being positive about new technology and ideas. It is not that I am inherently negative about new material, but that I am naturally cautious and try to assess all possible sides of employing new technology. It is naturally difficult for me to wholeheartedly embrace something about which I know little and to overcome years of education (Geography/Env. Studies) in which “small is beautiful” was an important mantra. So for me, to be positive about this new era of web 2.0 is a goal and a challenge. I must say though that I am already seeing the positive applications of these new tools! So perhaps it won’t be too difficult.
Easiest and most resonant: Use technology to my advantage. Isn’t this what it’s all about. The goal is to be effective, to convey and contribute and receive information in a way that is positive. By learning how to use web 2.0 applications, it seems that one is empowered to pick and choose what will serve students and oneself. I can already see how, once one gets the hang of this, it could be efficient and time-saving. One example: I will soon begin a blog that will serve to display ideas and images from a recent grant-funded trip to Turkey with the Turkish Cultural Foundation. To live up to the expectations of that grant, I can create my “Portrait of Turkey” project as a blog and get it “out there” more effectively than an in-house performance or display of all things Turkey — which is a one-shot deal. The advantage is clear –I get the information to a wider audience, The TCF is well-served (one hopes) and I have a wonderful model for use in the future!
Most important habit: This has to be the teaching/mentoring. To cement the web 2.0 tools, one has to use them. One way to use them is to teach others to use them. For me, this will highlight things I DON’T know and will push me to delve deeper into the tools. The benefit to the students is that they will learn to embrace tools beyond texting, for example.
