Caution: Learner-Blogger

Frustration!  Almost finished with this post, then – boom – it disappeared.  I am in a rush, to get finished with this final Thing, and also in anticipation  of a power outtage.  I’m writing this in the middle of the extraordinary snowstorm of Feb 10, and apparently power is going out all around us …

Anyway, I did play with a couple of additional tools.  I have meaning to install Skype for ages.  I don’t see much use for it at work, but definitely at home.  Many of our family and friends are overseas so the attraction of free communication is obvious.  The drawback seems to be that you either have to make an appointment to chat, or rely on finding your target person online when you want them.

Much more exciting for me right now is Jing – which was used for a lot of the home-grown instructional videos for this 21C course. I can totally see making use of this to provide support for colleagues who are just getting started with  a new (to them) program or  tool.  For example, we are encouraging teachers to update their own website pages, but it’s uphill going and they need to be able to access tutorials whenever they need them.  So I’m looking forward to playing with Jing.  At this moment I don’t have a trial “capture” to share, but if I get one off the ground in the next few days I will definitely post it.

I’m also trying to get my head wrapped round Google Docs.  My limited experience with it as a user has been – just that, limited. You have to have a Google account (and most of my colleagues do not, nor want one) and I’m not seeing an easy way to introduce it school-wide for daily purposes.  However, I’ll persevere.

I’ve enjoyed this course.  For sure, I have a million more bookmarks, tools to explore, possibilities swirling in my mind – that’s a good thing, right?  A bit daunting too.  But – thanks, Sarah and 21C colleagues.

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As warned, I found browsing around in YouTube and TeacherTube quite addictive and a time-suck.  I think if I had a more genuine purpose (searching for a specific topic that I actually needed) I would be more focussed.  As it was, I thought about my colleagues who are not savvy about Web 2.0 and marked a couple of the oldies but goodies from Karl Fisch et al.  His classic “Shift Happens” made a great impression on me a year or so ago, is updated regularly — here is the latest 2009 version.

Shift Happens 2009

I think videos have to be shared selectively.  In my experience people have very different responses to them.  One colleague – on the 21C course (you know who you are) dislikes instructional videos intensely, but I find them helpful if they are well presented.  I have less tolerance for time-wasting (every clunky second spent in “um” or wobbly tech gets more annoying) – here is one recent offering about Web 2.0 (local, Philadelphia people)  that ought to be good but makes me tap my feet in irritation.

Friends Schools and Web 2.0

However, I also see the power of video, to share things quickly that forward understanding.

Like they say,  it’s an ever-changing landscape.

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Well, here it is.  Not very profound, and some frustrations along the way, but that’s clearly par for the 21C course.   A lesson to share:  you have to always be prepared to navigate around technical obstacles when you are using 2.0 tools.  In this case the recommended Audacity did not want to talk to Windows7  I recently installed on my new laptop, so my podcast is recorded much more simply in Vocaroo.    Thanks,  Sarah,  for giving me the workaround.

So for example when I have to respond to a document or presentation that someone has sent me, I can see voicing my comments rather than typing them.  That provides non-verbal vocal cues as well as content – which can be an advantage when the message is sensitive.  Once going with the more sophisticated Audacity, I can see using it for all kinds of PR purposes – enhancing the school website, FB page etc.

In general, I have a greater affinity for podcasts than video clips.  I am from the radio generation and still prefer to get my news, music and drama by radio than any other way.  I like being able to do something else while I listen.  I have a much greater tolerance for poor quality sound than video.   So what podcasts have brought is the ability to listen at any time (I do like my DVR too, I must confess!) which is hugely convenient.

I need to spend more time searching for podcast feeds to subscribe to – most of the ones suggested were not of great interest, given that I have a hard time already keeping up with what pops up in my Google reader.  I am happy to see that NPR (a favorite) has well-developed podcasting in which you can select by topic.  I listened to an interesting one by Alan Lightman, a Prof at MIT about the power of the unknown to challenge our intellect.  Scientists are happier when they get stuck, than when they find a solution – there is more still to figure out.  My greatest joy in this task was probably finding a podcast of The Archers, a daily radio drama that has been running in the UK since I was a child.  The theme music alone takes me right back to London in the 1960s.  But the parallel disappointment was finding that some other BBC podcasts that I would have liked to subscribe to were not available outside the UK.

Thing 21, check.  If you know what I mean., smile with me!

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I inserted this image from my slide show because I badly need some zen.

For some reason these Things on FLICKR and slide shows have taken me for ever, and the last straw has been inserting them into my Wiki page.  I just couldn’t get the alignment to come out right.

But I can see the value in some of these tools for my work in communications.  Clearly I could incorporate slide shows into our school  website, though I’m unlikely at this point to use other people’s images.

I still have to come to grips with the overwhelming number of tools and gizmos out there.  It’s mind-boggling – yes, exciting too, but I just don’t spend enough time playing around and actually using anything for long enough to be easy with it.

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I’ve been following Will Richardson’s blog posts and was really struck by the latest one.  He is getting ready to lead a  conversation at the Educon 2.2 conference which is being held in Philadelphia at the end of January (aside, I looked at the conference description for ages to figure out whether it is a virtual or f2f event – it’s the latter).  The core idea that “school” and “education” are going to become decoupled is a fascinating and provocative one.  It’s too late at night for me to offer trenchant thoughts about it all, but I wanted to share the links – especially with my 21C/Sarah B/23 Things colleagues (you know who you are!) -  in case you all were interested.

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I watched “Embracing Web 2.0 as an administrator” by Bill Carozza.  I saw the title and thought “Ha! that’s for me.”  It wasn’t super-helpful in itself – mostly just a listing of various 2.0 tools that I already knew about.  But I do intend to follow up on some of his sites and suggestions.  What I am trying to figure out is the  single best tool that will host a virtual learning community for our staff at school (all staff, not only teachers).  It needs to push out daily information, be a place to link, read, and discuss, and have a good shared calendar function.

The most helpful thing in the video was the advice to “pick one thing and delve properly into it” — I definitely have a tendency to flit around exploring things and not spend enough time getting to know them.  And he quoted a wonderful thought by Will Richardson, something like this – “the most sweeping change that the internet is bringing about is not the ability to publish, but the potential to share, connect, and create.”  Every time I hear that idea, I think both “of course!” and “… but how, in actual practice, will it be better for learning?”

(One cool thing that I’m getting used to doing is listening again to his presentation at the same time I’m doing this blog post – gotta love browser tabs!  Except that I  sometimes have so many open that I get muddled up!)

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I certainly relished the opportunity to sit in front of the fire wearing slippers and listen to the presentation in comfort.  It was an interesting idea to draw the comparisons between cross-cultural experiences of people who have lived in different places with the attributes required to be a student (and teacher) in the wired, global world we now live in.

Some of the points that Kim made were quite familiar, but others I hadn’t really considered before.  The idea of learning opportunities being “always on” made me wonder what the school day will look like in the future – not 8:30-2:30, that’s for sure.  And teachers will be teaching from home.  There’s an issue of boundaries that worries me a bit – maybe I’m just stuck in the mode of drawing lines between home and work, but if those kinds of boundaries are important they will be increasingly hard to maintain in the future.  Here I am working on my blog at home, and it definitely feels like homework – that I am looking forward to finishing and putting away so I can go and play.

I didn’t completely understand her point about “no fixed value” but what I do glean gives me hope that perhaps we are moving away from the age of accountability to bureaucratic and irrelevant authorities (norms and testing) to a world where the student-consumer has greater power to choose (purchase) an educational path that suits him/her.

In general I was struck with how many of the attributes described in part 1 of the presentation were consonant with those of Progressive education that we espouse at Miquon … personalized learning experiences, adaptability, flexibility, collaboration, portability, making connections … and on and on.

As I write this “homework” as hastily as possible so I can go out and play, I am struck with another thought.  At one level, I don’t really care about the quality of my post.  People can take it or leave it, the internet is full of terrible stuff, it’s just an exercise, right?   But at the same time, the knowledge that other people I don’t even know are going to be reading this is quite thought-stopping, and I realize that I am putting more effort into making this a coherent few paragraphs.  So perhaps I believe a little more in the self-regulating nature of learning in this way than I did a few weeks ago.

And I’ve got this far without even complaining about the egregious spelling mistakes and irritatingly crummy quality of the video!  I must be going soft in my, um, old age.

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Here’s a great post from David Warlick that both reassures and scares me to bits.

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Just changed the title of my blog to the above – and uploaded an avatar that is the L-plate that all learner-drivers in the UK must display on their vehicles until they have passed the driving test.  This feels like that … go slow if you have me in your rear-view mirror!

Filed by arabee at 8:28 pm under Uncategorized
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I am getting the hang of how to use my reader.  Part of what’s non-intuitive is that I am not a newspaper reader – never have been, preferring to get my news delivered by radio – but the process of scrolling through till something captures your attention is not unlike scanning the headlines of a paper.

I’m enjoying the daily factoids of Daniel Pink’s blog.  What do I like about it?

Daily is an exaggeration: he only posts every few days.

The posts are short.

Mostly, they are of interest.  This one is plain amusing.

And now – I’ve just inserted a permalink … ta-dah!

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