Sunshine Award Post

Audrey McLaren tagged me (nominated me) to write a Sunshine Award Post. I have not been blogging here lately - more in other places - but this seemed the best place to answer. Here are the steps we're supposed to follow once nominated:

Step 1: Acknowledge the nominating blogger:

I so respect Audrey as a reflective teacher. She is passionate about finding the best ways to reach her students and continually adapts her approaches.

Step 2: 11 random facts about me:


1. I am an avid recorder player. I have many recorders from a Garklein (which I never play - it is so high you could attract the dogs from all around) to a great bass which is about my height which is tall for a recorder but not for a person (about 152 cm or almost 5') - the photo below does not show my entire collection!

2. I love to read and maintain a web site for my book group. I've been a member since 1995.

3. Summer isn't summer without a week at CAMMAC for Early Music Week. I have been attending since 1988.

4. Chocolate is essential to my life. 80% Camino (organic and Fair Trade)

5. My spouse and I often play Boggle. We have changed the rules, playing bilingually (English and French) and don't use a timer.

    

How many words can you find?

7. I just joined a group that meets once a month to read a Shakespeare play

8.I bought my first computer (a Franklin Ace) and it sat on my desk for 2 weeks before I dared to do anything with it - was afraid I would break it.

9. I became a widow at 32 - it made me grow up fast and change the direction of my life. 

10. Have become an avid photographer. I treasure the online relationships that have grown out of my posting on Flickr. 

11. Being a single parent has forced me to find my inner strength. Have I made mistakes? Many - but I am proud of whom my children have become even though they have chosen paths that I would not have chosen for them. 

Step 3: Answer the nominating blogger's 11 questions:

1. What's the last book you read that had a profound impact on you, personally or professionally - fiction or non-fiction?

Often it's whichever one I am currently reading. I love books that make me want to find out more, that send me to the Internet to explore the subject in greater depth
Fiction lately - Toby's Room did that to me. I love a well-written book.
Mindstorms - many years ago by Seymour Papert left a lasting impression and currently reading Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom

2. What is your number one most-hated-pet-peeve grammar mistake that when you hear it you want to scream? If you can't decide on one, I'd LOVE to hear them all!

It's so fun.

3. How many careers have you had?

I guess about 6 not including Mother

4. Are you the same person face to face as you are online?

Mainly yes - though who I am changes with the context - same is true online.

5. What celebrity are you certain you could be good friends with if you ever had the chance?

I'm not at all into celebrity culture - my celebrities are in the Early Music scene and some are already my friends!

6. Everyone says pedagogy first, edtech tool second, but has it ever worked the other way around for you?

I think as I explore edtech tools I think of the pedagogical uses for them - so in that context it is tool first and then pedagogy. But I don't see the point in using a tool just because it is there.

7. What are your desert island foods, record albums, movies? (That only counts as one question.)

Music - a good supply of baroque and renaissance music. 
Food - chocolate plus enough healthy food to sustain me. (oh and some coffee would be great)
And I would rather have a big supply of books rather than movies.

8. Who/what always makes you laugh?

That's a tough one - I don't laugh easily. 

9. Do you spend any time at all playing something - alone or competing with others?

I spend a lot of time playing music alone and (definitely not competing) with others.
I play in Flutissimo, another large recorder group: Flûtes et companie (I didn't name it!) and a quartet Les Promeneuses. We play occasional concerts.

And Boggle (see above)

10. What was the best professional conference session you ever attended, and what made it the best?

Hmm - I spent a week in Stonington where we played - crickets, programming, microworlds... which led me to take part in two week-long sessions on robotics. Hands on - great teachers/colleagues - playing to learn. One hour conference sessions can be inspiring, but learning takes time.

11. Have you ever watched or heard of the movie Être et Avoir? If not, what do you consider to be the best movie about teaching?

I did see it - I found the teaching a bit too directive. As people they were warm and compassionate. I think that and M. Lazhar both show that it is not always the way you teach that is important (though I am a firm believer in hands on learning), but it is the respect you give to the students that makes them feel they are in a good place for learning.

Step 4: Ask 11 questions:

1. What is something you would really like to learn?

2. If you could live somewhere else - where would it be?

3. What led you to blog?

4. What is your biggest concern about the world today?

5. What brings a smile to your face?

6. What is one way your teaching has changed since you started?

7. What is one piece of advice you would give to a new teacher?

8. What book have you read recently that you would recommend to others?

9. How do you de-stress?

10. What is one place you think everyone should visit?

11. Favourite social media tool?


Step 5: My nominations for 11 bloggers:

Not sure who has already done this. I hope you all don't mind being nominated (again if that's the case), and I truly look forward to reading your responses, if you decide to do this! Please don't feel any pressure - we all have our own priorities!

@colemama
@SSpellmanCann
@kernkelley
@plnaugle
@EHordyskiLuong
@grammasherri
@lparisi
@jenwagner
@langwitches
@kathycassidy
@mariak

A story with POP!

It has been fun to experiment with digital storytelling. I had fun with popcorn


A little story to share. But what did I learn - (thinking about digital literacy after today's talk by Doug Belshaw).

Be patient - skills learned before transfer to new situations. This was my cognitive aspect kicking in.
I wanted to communicate an idea.
There is definitely a cultural context.
I constructed a video before remixing it via popcorn
Definitely an ounce of creativity.
One part of the message was about friendship - a message about good citizenship - sharing a place where young and old play music together (and not in the video - CAMMAC functions in French and English and no one cares, or knows for that matter, whether you are a doctor or a secretary).
I was not afraid to get my digital fingers into the "pie" and mess around - a bit of confidence.
And sitting back I have a better idea of what popcorn can do - and will think critically about how it fits into what I want students doing.

Week One Learning Creative Learning

I'm really challenging myself being in two multi-user courses at the same time. But there are not marks. I'm not really answerable to anyone but myself and I will get out of each what I can. The good thing is that so much is archived, so the course can continue long after the actual finish date. So much to read and think about. And the connections I am making are valuable - so many people to learn from and with.

In terms of Learning Creative Learning - I am not new to many of these ideas, but as I believe learning is a spiral, I am here to reflect more and to deepen my understanding.

In Mitch Resnick's paper: All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten, he talked about the spiral nature of learning  - imagine, create, play, share, reflect, imagine - a recursive paradigm.

This should be true of all learning - but the stages sometimes take on a more formal structure. Imagining may need more formal planning (storyboards for digital stories, plans for construction). Then after creating, testing of hypotheses may lead to revision of the imagining stage. It is not a linear path. Sharing, too, may be done in more formal ways. The tools of today allow for public (on the web) sharing via pictures, posting of projects, even Skype calls to present to others outside your classroom. But sharing should only be a stage that allows for feedback and self-reflection. There is not an end. Reflection leads back to new imaginings or re-imagining.

I was fortunate enough to be involved in using Crickets with my students when I was teaching. Students created wonderful products - from mobile art to vehicles to whatever they could imagine. They were used in class and in an after school club. The talk that went on as these students tested their creations, discussed problems and ways to solve them was rich.

Today I happened to catch an interview with Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons who spoke of schools in Finland. He also spoke about the importance of play - something we don't encourage enough in our schools. It is through hands on play that we learn - just ask any cook! Schools, particularly in the US are moving the opposite way - spurred by testing (and the huge lobby of the testing industry). But testing is usually of lower level skills on Bloom's taxonomy. Sahlberg spoke also of schools as a place to develop self-fulfilled individuals. Through playing in a variety of subject domains, students can find their niche in the world, the place where they will be happy working and creating.

Thoughts on Tools

I've been thinking about the challenge of using a variety of tools to tell the same story and I'm not sure if that is the best approach. It does help you understand what each tool does, but not every tool lends itself to every story. As I have written before, it is important to look critically at the affordances of the tool to think under what circumstances the tool would work well.

• Can you use the tool collaboratively? 
• How much control do you have over the look? 
• When is this important?
• What medium or combination of media best tell the story?
• How do I want it shared?
• Do you just want something quick and easy? (for what purposes)
• Do you need the story to be hyperlinked? Is this possible with the tool?

These are just some questions to ask. I would love to have you add questions below.

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and some more playing

Five Card Story: Where Does it Lead

a #etmooc story created by susanvg

flickr photo by dmffryed

flickr photo by mrsdkrebs

flickr photo by mrsdkrebs

flickr photo by cogdogblog

flickr photo by debbie.fucoloro
Travelling down a learning path. Sometimes I feel alone, an anomaly in my face to face community. I travel on this voyage of discovery, piquing my curiosity and creativity. Looking for new vistas. Online I find community - fellow seekers. I howl with joy as I find my pack in this wide open space. Serenity in the knowledge that I have fellow travellers.

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Explorations

I really enjoyed the post by Brendan Murphy on rhizomatic learning. He talked about deep learning and how to encourage that both for himself as a learner, but also for his students.

I am experimenting with a variety of tools - feeling a bit like a groundhog - popping up to read and get ideas and then back in my burrow to experiment. Maybe rhizomatic learning for me is also "groundhog learning"

I played a bit with Haiku Deck, a free presentation tool for ipads. It was not quite what I expected - more of a visual powerpoint for ipads. It exports as a powerpoint so I had to turn my 6 word story into an image

I visited Susan Angel's blog. She inspires with her incredible visual sense. My quick attempt at an animated gif using Gimp can be seen below.

What you don't see is the back story - this was part of a concert - with the two in the back singing an aria. I'm thinking hard about how I want to create a meaningful story - what tool would work best for it and why  - about a place that changed my life.

I enjoyed Darren Kuropatwa's session today and really appreciated his parting words - that the most important thing is the story. It doesn't matter how many bells and whistles we add - a story without substance is a bad story.

In these two weeks, much is about playing and experimenting. Erin Luong commented on my last post who said "....however sometimes when we are learning the tools our stories may be more shallow. Thoughts?"

My reply: "

I do agree that as teachers when we play with these tools, often the stories will be shallow. That is because we are concentrating on the tool and thinking about how we can use it with students. Our purpose for using the tool is not about the story but in seeing potential. But when we ask students to produce digital stories we need to emphasize the story and explore together how the tools can make the stories powerful. Students also need time to play and explore - but final products should demonstrate that good choices were made because the story speaks for itself.

I also think that this is about scaffolding. When students are young, we introduce fewer tools. But as part of the process we talk about why the tools are good for certain things - developing a critical sense in students. Later students need to have more leeway to select the tools that best fit their needs and be able to justify why they chose a specific tool."

So above are a few explorations about tools - not so much about story. Writing a good story, deciding on which tool to use, which layer will tell what part of the story requires serious work - time that will have to be spent when I am not in the flurry or reading, exploring in the fast lane of etmooc.

ETMCHAT on a Wednesday evening

I participated in Wednesday's etmchat. I'm getting better at watching the tweets fly by, stopping to read some, skimming over others. It's a test of brain power. As I get older, I keep reading about doing activities that keep the brain flexible. Tweet chats have to qualify with the enormous amount of processing, multi-tasking and connecting.

As I read, I quickly click on links to be visited after the chat. So here are some I explored later.

Someone mentioned cowbird
http://cowbird.com/
I love their byline: Stories: How we make sense of our lives.
Later someone pointed us to the stories of Barbara Ganley on cowbird
http://cowbird.com/barbara-ganley/

The premise is simple - an image and a story. I've been doing that through a photo blog I have, though the story-telling has diminished a bit. It was an interesting process as with each image I was inspired to try different genres from story to editorial writing to poetry.  I started doing the photo blog because I firmly believe as teachers - if we ask students to write, we have to write too.

Bryan Jack shared a post on digital radio http://bryanjack.ca/2012/12/07/web-radio-in-the-k12-classroom/http://bryanjack.ca/2012/12/07/web-radio-in-the-k12-classroom/
I loved listening to the story behind DS106 - linked from his post http://cogdogblog.com/2012/10/21/ds106-radio-rockumentary/http://cogdogblog.com/2012/10/21/ds106-radio-rockumentary/

Someone else shared http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.ca/2011/08/58-sites-for-digital-storytelling-tools.html 
I'm always a little wary about the lists of tools - concerned that the emphasis is on the tool and not on the content. I love digital storytelling - but we have to put the emphasis on the storytelling with the digital being the way we can make the stories more powerful - adding images, video, transitions, music with a purpose - so that each layer strengthens the story. We have to be cautious to avoid the powerpointlessness syndrome of animations and transitions that add nothing to the message. I have spent time reading Joe Lambert's Digital Storytelling Cookbook and one thing always stood out for me - "the gift of your voice"
Don't get me wrong - I love these tools - but we have to look at them with a critical eye and think about what each offers and how they can be used for specific stories. While I like Animoto - I don't like the fact that so much is canned - that most of the creativity is given over to Animoto. Not bad for a quick upload to show off photos from a day at school - but not great for a deep story.

Winter in Quebec

  Not sure if this link was shared last night - but from Wes Fryer http://teachdigital.pbworks.com/w/page/19791043/ds I highly respect the work he has done. His book Playing with Media has many great ideas for K12 schools

Some stories I have loved to share in workshops:
I adore Connor's story - a great place to explore and think about what the student had to do to prepare for this production. And think about what his voice adds!
http://www.dtc.scott.k12.ky.us/technology/digitalstorytelling/connor_T1.mov
 Visit SFETT - started by Marco Torres. There is a large collection of student made videos
or visit the youtube channel of the Center for Digital Storytelling (adult made stories).

So much to explore. So much to learn. Keeps me young!

Walking the Talk

I think one of the reasons I joined etmooc was to force myself to "walk the talk." I give workshops to teachers - one of which is on digital storytelling. I know about the power of story and encourage teachers to help their students to become more powerful storytellers. We talk about the use of the different layers of the story. Each (image, text, voice, music, timing...) should compliment each other, adding a new dimension to the story. But how many digital stories have I made?

So here is my iMovie attempt. I'll be exploring other ways of creating stories over the next couple of weeks (iPad apps, online apps...)

Comments Feedback Grades Self-reflection

Single Slice Photo by Pernilla Rydmark under a CC license

As we each carve out our slice of etmooc, I know that I am just nibbling on a slice, not eating the whole pie (nod to Darren Kuropatwa's vlog about moocs. I guess we each have to think about how this fits in with our lives. One idea that has been percolating in my head is the difference between grades, feedback and comments.

Grades end conversations. It is a long time since I was in school, but I do remember that virtually anything that was graded was quickly filed in the garbage can - no discussion, no reflection, no going back to puzzle out the why of the grade. So sad that our society seems to thrive on grades without understanding what they do and don't do for learning.

Feedback is an improvement. Hopefully teachers give feedback to help a student on his/her learning path, to point out ways of improvement, to start a conversation with the student about ideas. Does the teacher expect a  response to the feedback or is it one way? What does the student do with the feedback? Feedback is often about the form and not necessarily about the content of a student's work. While this is important to becoming better writers (or scientists...) too much emphasis in our current education system is on those things which are easily measurable. After all, it's good for the testing industry which has a lot of money invested in this way of thinking.

Comments are conversation starters. I find as I write, it is the comments that drive me to write more. And what kinds of comments are most helpful - those that deal with the ideas not just the "I like the way..." I don't always find blogs the best place for these conversations. Sue Waters has been pushing us to go back and read the comments, to continue the conversations. In my experience, often once a comment is made that is the end. I have enjoyed using Google+ more because it is easier to go back and discuss, to follow a threaded discussion. Comments create connections

Comments are important because they help us examine our ideas. Mulling them over, revisiting them and remixing them because of the input of others as well as because of our own thoughts leads to clarity. But learning requires more than that and etmooc is a great place where self-reflection is essential. Not only do we have to think about ideas, but also about how much and how we will interact with them. This requires strategies.



And it is that self-reflection that is most important. Julie Balen shared a post on How Metacognitive are You. Self-reflection is involves setting goals, thinking about strategies to meet those goals and always revisiting and refining both the goals and the strategies. We all need a tool kit of strategies to help us learn in a variety of situations. Learning isn't just about the skill we are acquiring or the knowledge we are assimilating, but it is about the processes that get us there. Still working on those... but then life is about always learning.

Finally Got the Nerve

As an educator I am always encouraging students, workshop participants to risk. It is through mistakes we learn. When I was an ed tech teacher I had a sign in my lab

"An expert is a person who has made the most mistakes in a very narrow field - Niels Bohr"

Mistakes were celebrated as an opportunity to learn. Yet how many teachers risk and are willing to make mistakes. Our culture doesn't seem to celebrate those.

While I am not a risk taker in terms of sports, I have always pushed myself out of my comfort level when it came to trying new things with students, allowing myself to say to them, "I don't know, let's figure it out." And since I left teaching I have blogged and joined all kinds of social networking sites just to see what they were about. But a video blog! Oh no!

So here is my first - not inspired, but a first attempt and a willingness to put myself out there. Isn't that what we have to do? Learning isn't about doing over what we already know, it's about confronting our beliefs, listening to others, pushing our thinking and trying new things even if at first it is beyond what we thought we could do. Isn't that how we learned to drive or to learn any of the many things that our now in our repertoire.

So here it is.
.
.
Much to learn but I had to start somewhere.

Getting Organized

I jumped into ETMOOC without much preparation. So now I am going back and thinking things through. 

What do I want from this experience?
* I am hoping this will push me to try out some new things - to push myself to put myself out there.

Some years ago I was involved in teaching philosophy for children. One of the notions we tried to get across was that once an idea is put out there, it is there to be examined. A disagreement, a building on it, can be done by anyone including yourself. Funny how as teachers we often ask students to do things we don't ask of ourselves. So I will have to put my ideas out there - to be examined, critiqued, and expanded upon. And be willing to examine them myself and, after thought, may retract or change them. It's not only OK to do this - this is the path to growth.

* I have been toying with blogging for a number of years and have wanted to do more reflective blogging. I get started and then peter out. I hope this will push me to write and reflect more, both on my own ideas and those of others - getting inspiration and seeing where it takes me.

In terms of technology -

• I want to use twitter more, both as a contributor and consumer.
• I want to explore curation tools I have not yet used - storify, livebinders - how to keep this flow of information and ideas organized...

* I want to make more connections with educators who are thinking about the changes needed in education. How can we make those changes real (and not just grumble about the current situation).

____________________________________________

Some thoughts on curation.

I have been a long time user of delicious and then diigo. I really appreciate social bookmarking because I can easily re-find articles, sites etc. that I save. I can also create lists of links on a specific tag or tag bundle and embed them on a web page
http://www.diigo.com/tools/linkrolls

e.g.

My Diigo

This is one way to supply links on a specific topic.

I have played with Pinterest. While I like the visual aspect, topic curation can get unwieldy, especially as more and more sites are added. What seemed like a good way to organize at first may have to evolve. The advantage of social bookmarking is that the multiple tags allow you to sort in multiple ways.

I have also been using Scoop.it. Again - it creates a nice visual artifact. If you are not tagging large quantities or sites on a specific topic (e.g. favourite reads on digital storytelling  http://www.scoop.it/t/digitalstories/ ) this is a nice tool. I have used this when giving workshops. However, I discovered that you can only have 5 topics with the free version, so that really limits its use.

I'll be exploring other possibilities and share my reactions. The amount of information being shared through etmooc is massive. I need to keep organized.

Ripples

I've been thinking about sharing. I participated in last night's etmchat -an interesting challenge as the tweets quickly scroll by. One topic had to do with one's PLN and sharing and I wrote

PLN like rings in the water - different levels get different contributions - links, blog posts, direct contact

I started to think about my online presence and my PLN. It seemed to me that I am different things to different people and what I share is different in each sharing space.

There are overlapping circles each spreading their own ripples. I sometimes feel alone, but the experience of writing and sharing, whether photos, personal writing or thoughts on education has helped me grow. Will I ever know how far those ripples reach? Perhaps they barely reach out just to that first degree of separation, but perhaps a little farther.

 I started blogging over 6 years ago and experimented with different blogs from reporting (critiquing) on the many early music concerts I go to, to blogging some of my travels. I vowed I would have a professional blog and share there and started this one in 2005 but I never managed to sustain the writing. That is definitely a goal for this etmooc course.

I had been on Flickr for quite a while when, in 2009, I discovered groups of educators who shared a photo a day. As I am always up for a challenge I joined and decided to blog as well - a way to make me write (it has helped me explore a variety of genres of writing, even getting the courage to share some poems). Each step led to other steps.

Each foray into social media, whether Flickr or blogging has helped me build the confidence to share more. While my digital footprint is large and my online relationships have been increasing and deepening, I still haven't consistently added my voice to the education community. I have lurked. I have even interviewed people in webcasts through edtechtalk and been able to virtually touch some amazing experts - but I haven't really shared a lot of my thinking.

I think an issue with many educators is isolation. Many teachers teach behind closed doors. Sharing is not part of the culture. I spent 18 years as an ed tech teacher. I was not always able to connect with others doing that kind of job. Some questions I would like to think about:

• How do we get teachers to see the need for community - for a sharing and caring place?
• What should those spaces be? Look like? (surely not one size fits all!)
• Do teachers join more if they have colleagues who join? or when they feel isolated and need to find like-minded educators?
• How can an animator help grow a community without becoming too directive?

I'm sure more questions will come to mind. In the meantime - I have blogs to read, comments to leave to start building some connections that may help me answer some of my questions.

About Me

This voicethread will help you learn a bit about me.



I also have many more interests.
I'm an avid photographer, having really started when I got involved in a photo a day in 2009 on Flickr. I also started a photo blog. Although I no longer post every day, my photo blog continues:

I am very involved in music, especially early music (baroque era and earlier) and play a variety of recorders. Here are some of my instruments.

I'm a reader, a would-be writer and lifelong learner. I hope through etmooc I will learn from and with others, and hopefully, they will learn from and with me!

A New Adventure

I decided I needed to polish up some skills and be part of a larger community so I joined the etmooc course. One requirement is blogging. Though I have had blogs of one kind or another since 2005, I have never sustained a professional blog. This is the challenge for me over the next few months. It all starts tonight. And then serious blogging begins.

Kansas City Library: photo by Jonathan Moreau

Reposted from LEARN blog

There has been a lot written lately about curation in education, specifically digital curation. Here is a definition from Wikipedia

Digital curation is generally referred to the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets for current and future reference  by researchers, scientists, historians, and scholars.

I never saw myself as a curator, but realize that, in using a variety of digital tools, I am acting as one. Although I am not digitizing the content, I am making selections, collecting and organizing. Curation adds value. In an age of info-glut, finding and then being able to easily re-access web sites and articles that I have found useful is essential. With the social aspect (being able to tap into what others whom you respect are curating), my PLN (personal / professional learning network) multiplies the possibilities of finding just what I need.

I started with  social bookmarking sites, where I collected and tagged sites I thought would be useful later. I became part of a network, joining groups in Diigo and I now receive recommendations from other curators; these people are now part of my network. This brings me interesting links in subjects of my choice. I also share some of what I tag to appropriate groups. The advantage of tagging (attaching key words to the item) is that I can easily find articles later. For example, I have been using the key word "curation" and have easily found these items. In addition to tagging, you can add notations. Learn more about social bookmarking at the LEARN site.

I have recently been experimenting with other curation tools and thinking about ways they can be used by teachers for their own work and their work with students.

At a very basic level, teachers may curate websites on a specific topic and share them with their class via a website or document.This is important when you have specific sites you want your students to visit, when the goal is to access the information, not to learn how to find the best sites.

Many librarians curate on topics and publish them as LibGuides. You can find many at this site on a large variety of topics. The sites are vetted by librarians, so the student knows s/he can rely on the information there.

One tool I have been experimenting with is Scoop.it. When you "scoop" an item it is added to your topic. The resulting list looks somewhat like a newspaper. Here is a sample of a topic I have been curating: Visual Literacy. If you want to supply your students with a small number of articles, this is a nice option. Too many articles and it would be unwieldy. There can be a social media aspect to this tool as you can follow topics to get recommendations (and be followed). Here's an interesting blog post about Scoop.it. It might be interesting to have high school students curate "magazines" on specific topics to share with the class. This could be a magazine which reflects different view points on a topic. Students should be able to justify why they chose specific articles for inclusion.

Another interesting tool is Pinterest. I don't recommend it for teachers to use with their students as they can come across questionable material. However, it is a place where educators are "pinning" links on a variety of educational topics. You can follow everything a person pins, or just a specific topic.  One aspect that distinguishes Pinterest is that it is image based, not text based. I've only recently started pinning, but you can get an idea of what Pinterest looks like by viewing my boards. Teachers and and administrators are pinning on topics such as teaching in various subject areas, classroom management, educational technology and books to read. Here's what one blogger shares about Pinterest.

Listen to what some curators say about curation:

What is Curation? from Percolate on Vimeo.

There are many more tools, each fitting a specific purpose. I'll be looking into this more. Are you a curator? Please share how you are using a curation tool. Is it for personal use? for use with your class? or with your colleagues? Is there a tool you love and why?

How are you Reading

cross-posted from http://blogs.learnquebec.ca/

I bought an iPad in May and it has definitely changed my reading habits. While I am an avid reader and my house is filled with books, I have started to read books on my mobile device. Why am I switching?

I’ll be moving this year and am looking at the many books on my shelves. They take up an enormous amount of space. While I love to see them and remember the hours of pleasure they afforded me, I also think about how they will fit as I downsize. The books I buy now don’t need to fit on shelves, just on virtual shelves.

I like the pluses of electronic books. I can easily highlight sections, add notes and bookmark parts I want to go back to. I recently read Lorna Crozier’s biography, “Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir” and reveled in her poetic language. I highlighted favourite passages and can easily go back to them. (I read this one with the Kobo app).

I love to read in bed and my partner loves to sleep! Now I don’t have to switch on a light to indulge in my simple pleasure. My current read is “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, which has been revealing as well as a trip down memory lane as I bought my first computer in 1983 and have owned Apple products ever since. I am using the iBooks app that comes with the iPad to read this one.

I can adjust the font and font size to the way I feel most comfortable reading. This is great for students too.

Travelling becomes lighter as both the books I take to read while on holiday and the travel books themselves are all on the one device.

If you have students who struggle with reading, the iPad can read the text to them. They don’t have to be held back by their difficulty deciphering the words. And for those who read, but still need some words defined, holding down on the word opens a dialogue box. One of the choices is define and the word’s definition is readily available.

The biggest bonus comes when reading books that were written for mobile devices. They can be embedded with links, videos, animations. Then reading takes on new dimensions. I have been reading “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing” by Wesley Fryer. It is a great way to learn about digital text, audio and video editing and where to post it. As I read, I can watch the videos which provide step-by-step instructions. This book is a great place to start if you are just getting into using digital media with your students as well as for the more tech savvy of you who want to broaden your knowledge.

Many libraries are now loaning ebooks. You can download the book and it disappears from your device after the loan period.

In a future post, I will share a bit about how your students can become creators of ebooks. Consuming and creation are two sides of the ebook revolution.

What are the downsides? I can’t pass my books on to my 93 year-old cousin who is still an avid reader. I am not patronizing our few local independent book stores as I buy the books online. With my choice of an iPad vs one of the less expensive ebook readers, I won’t be taking it to a beach to read.

Do I read everything on a mobile device? No – I still buy books which I want to share. I have a collection of children’s books and love to sit with a child to share the text and illustrations. Though, recently I came across an amazing children’s book that was created for the iPad, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. I still buy professional books. I like to take them to workshops and pass them around to inspire others – hard to do with a digital device.

How are you reading? I’d love to hear about how you feel about the switch to digital books. What device are you using? Would you recommend it to others and why or why not. Are you using eReaders with your students?

And, of course, share your favourite titles.

John Grierson

Living in Montreal, I grew up with films from the National Film Board of Canada. My father had a 16mm projector and my brother rented films for a group of his friends. I got to watch with them. I became a huge fan of Norman McLaren and of course, learned about John Grierson as the first head of the film board. When I was in university, I had the privilege of taking a film course (appreciation of films, not making them) with the man. He was already in his early 70s, but his passion and depth made the course compelling. It was just a couple of years before he died.

The NFB has made its films available on line and today I was pointed in the direction of a film about John Grierson. Well, I just had to watch it. It was worth every minute.

He talked about telling stories -
Walter Winchell  asked how people could know everything about everything in the modern world. Grierson thought about how he could help spread knowledge.

Grierson initially was interested in the press - but "if you dramatized things..... as distinct from giving information you might find a way of illuminating the world" Then he got interested in movies. It was he who coined the term documentary film.

During WWII, he was invited to Canada and it was then that the film board was founded. He was an innovator ahead of his time. I think of how we are helping students tell digital stories. They could do well to watch some of the many films available from the NFB to see how the masters, many of the early ones schooled under Grierson's directorship, plied their craft. Grierson knew that the best way to educate, to inform was through story.

Reaching out to the Network

I just watched two keynote presentations from this year's K12 Online Conference: Playing in Public   by George Couros and The World’s Craziest Educational Videos Featuring ds106 by Jim Groom and Tom Woodward. One thing that struck me about both was that they reached out to their networks to help tell their stories. Each is part of a network of learners and they are prepared to do their learning in public.

Jim and Tom describe their experience teaching and learning with DS106, an open course that has participation from people both enrolled in the course and not. People share their work, comment on and help each other and even set assignments which anyone can choose to do. All those who contributed, spoke of this as a life-changing experience. In some classrooms, where peer-editing and conferencing is encouraged, some of this goes on. In DS106, educators are experiencing the "learning in public" that they expect of their students. I'm intrigued, but not yet ready to jump in. I've been part of the Flickr education groups and just keeping up with my own photography and writing in my photo blog,  as well as commenting on my contacts' work is time-consuming. I am not yet ready to commit more time.

George Couros' talks about putting learning "out there" - to connect and create ideas with others. Here is his blog post where he asked for feedback. He muses on play being about engagement (and isn't that what we want for our students). He pointed to educators who are posting their learning online and who are modelling what it is to be a lifelong learner. In the video, Dean Shareski points out that teachers have to be learning experts, not just teaching experts. Teachers need to model that learning, to show students that it is not about having the answers, but knowing how to find them, whether through books, the Internet or through our connections.

We have to play together, to connect with others and share our learning. And we have to make sure our students have the same opportunities to connect to learn in the larger community.

Howard Gardner at the Global Education Conference

I had the privilege to hear Howard Gardner interviewed by his son, Andrew Gardner, at the Global Education Conference. I did not have to go to the conference; it came to me through Blackboard / Collaborate.

I was aware of Gardner’s work on Multiple Intelligences. I was not aware of all the work he has done on ethical issues. He is part of  Project Zero at Harvard.  Two projects, Good Work and Good Play were of particular interest.

Good Work http://www.goodworkproject.org/

“The GoodWork™ Project is a large scale effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work – work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners – and to determine how best to increase the incidence of good work in our society.”

He talked about the three "E's" – technically Excellent, personally Engaging and carried out in an Ethical way. This is very pertinent in today's society.

Out of this project came their Good Play project which looked at people participating in new media. The five aspects they looked at are

• What does it mean to have a sense of identity in an online world
• What happens to a sense of privacy
• Ownership and authorship
• Trustworthiness and credibility
• What does it mean in the digital era to participate in a community

This project led to a digital ethics curriculum aimed at high school students: Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World. The book is available to be downloaded in pdf form under a Creative Commons license. http://www.goodworkproject.org/practice/our-space/

It looks at the issues listed above through moral dilemmas.

From the introduction

"Our Space is inspired by the belief that young people need to think habitually about online life in
ethical terms.
In this casebook, we define ethical thinking as the capacity to think about one’s roles and
responsibilities in the communities in which one participates, offline and online. Such thinking requires the capacity to think abstractly about one’s roles; to do so in a nonpartisan, disinterested way; and to consider the impact of one’s actions beyond the self and on a larger collective—such as one’s school, community, state, nation, and world. Research conducted by the GoodPlay Project suggests that young people rarely think in ethical ways about their online activities

Part of the problem is that young people have had little mentoring in living in the digital world. In the Our Space Curriculum, there are suggestions to teachers as to how to use the dilemmas and guide discussions. It is not enough to tell students that things are wrong; the discussions around these dilemmas will help students to see the multi-dimensional aspects of these issues. I think this will be a valuable asset to teachers.

You can watch and listen to the session here.

https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.ED21ED4435E02E4D78111D742981E2&sid=2008350You will be asked to download an app which will then give you the recorded session in Blackboard Collaborate

Some of Dr. Gardner's books include:

Frames of Mind (1993)
Five Minds for the Future (2006)
Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2001) with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon
Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century (2011)

He has written many more.

Links to all archived sessions from the 2011 Global Education Conference

http://globaleducation.ning.com/page/2011-conference-quick-links

Learning any time anywhere

One Day on Earth

As the seven billionth child has been born to this planet I've been thinking a lot about the Earth and the state of people on it. While I sit in a warm and comfortable home, there are many whose lives are very difficult. Studies have shown that happiness has nothing to do with affluence. We need an attitude shift in the developed world to see that acquisition is not the road to happiness.  I know that we will all have to simplify our lives so that the constant consuming does not drain the world of the resources and so that we limit the pollution spewing into our atmosphere. While we downsize others around the world are "upsizing" - gaining access to goods that were once out of reach. We need to even out the divides.

This year for the second time everyone has the opportunity to participate in One Day on Earth.

From their web site:
"On November 11th, 11.11.11, across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and other inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour period and contribute their voice to the second annual global day of media creation called One Day on Earth. Together, we will create a shared archive and a film."

I would love to see students take up this challenge and share their voices. And then - follow up by viewing and discussing the stories told by others around the world. Another way to help our students become global citizens, sharing and learning from others. They need to see the view from other parts of the world and in many cases, other parts of their own country.

Learning 24/7

 Cross Posted from LEARN

As money gets scarcer, it becomes harder to get to conferences and other professional development events. In the twenty-first century, this is not a reason to miss out on professional development.  There are more and more alternatives both synchronous (you meet in a virtual space at a specified time) or asynchronous (the session is recorded and may be watched / listened to at any time). Each has advantages. All the virtual conferences listed below are free – and in this case the price does not reflect the value. Top educators from around the world have contributed to these conferences.

Preconference Keynote: November 21
Week 1 sessions: November 28 – December 2
Week 2 sessions: December 5 – 9
For the past five years, I have been participating in the K12 Online Conference. I have learned so much from the many educators who have freely shared their practice.  Most of the sessions are asynchronous – not more than 20 minutes long. All sessions have been archived from 2006 to the present. You can watch at your leisure, learning from teachers and other educators from around the world. You can download them or watch online. It’s great to watch some sessions with fellow educators to spark discussion. This year the sessions will be posted, starting with the keynote on November 21. The following two weeks will feature 4 new presentations each week day with sessions aimed at every level of technology user. The thrust is pedagogy and education in general and how technology can help provide powerful learning situations. (Disclaimer – this is the second year that I have been on the organizing committee).
 November 14 – 18
The Global Education Conference will be held for the second year between November 14 – 18 in Blackboard (a kind of virtual classroom).  Sessions are synchronous, but all are archived so they can be watched later, but, or course, you would not be able to participate in the chat room to ask questions. From their site “ Sessions will take place in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days. The 2010 Global Education Conference had 15,028 unique logins and presentations from 62 countries.” I managed to attend some sessions last year and they were of very high quality. The chat room also gives you the opportunity to interact with other educators and perhaps, find partners for projects. Last year’s archive is still available.

November 2 – 3
A new conference this year is the Library 2.011, taking place on November 2 and 3. It is sponsored by the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. Although it is not aimed specifically at K12 Education, I am sure there will be many sessions of interest to school librarians. The schedule should be available shortly.
LEARNING 2.0: The Future of Education January 2012
A new conference is on the horizon, spearheaded by Steve Hargadon. It will be held in January. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more. Steve Hargadon hosts a series of interviews with educational leaders. You can learn about upcoming interviews and  listen to the archives of past shows here.
 Classroom 2.0 Live is not a conference, but a weekly show (though it is on hiatus for the month of October). Each week there is a guest educator who shares classroom practice often around the use of technology. All shows are archived as well as all the resources the guests provide. I know there are some Quebec educators who have participated (I’ve met them when I have been there) and whose students have profited from what their teachers have learned.
Learning can now take place any time, anywhere. It can be done in small increments (20 minutes for a K12 Online session) so you don’t get overloaded. You can watch a session more than once if you missed something or just need a refresher. I know I have watched a few several times as I have either needed a refresher, a boost, inspiration or wanted to share with a colleague. You can pick and choose the sessions that are of interest to you and watch them at a time convenient to you.
One teacher in Shanghai held a LAN (local area network) party, inviting his colleagues to watch sessions together along with food and drinks. It was a great way for colleagues to learn together in an informal atmosphere and to have discussions about education and about changes they wanted to see in their own schools. I have used his model and invited colleagues – it resulted in some great conversations. We want to help our students become lifelong learners. What better way to show them that learning doesn’t stop when you leave school, than to model it ourselves.
Have you taken part in an online session – synchronously or asynchronously? How did it contribute to your learning? Please recommend some sessions you have watched.
Susan van Gelder