Goodbye Lee Baber

I've been determined to make the next time I wrote on my blog a reflection on Lee Baber and what she meant to my learning and feeling connected to my online experiences. Its hard to believe in the rush of time that she's been gone a month. I first had a chance to interact with her through the Webcast Academy and watched her help in sharing knowledge on how to set up Apple computers for webcasting. She was a good person to help think through a problem, a type of teacher that I enjoyed doing think alouds with.  I hardly knew her and yet I feel as if a path that I could have taken in my life is gone. So much I could have benefited from, her experience in music, her use of computers with students, her P-21 Second Life project, all will be left to where she left them frozen, sitting on some server somewhere. Looking back I understand more of the little bits of information and things she shared when we talked always on Skype, its funny that I rarely used the chat function with her. Speaking was the most common way when I communicated with her, it was the timbre of her voice the inflections and accent which I enjoyed. Although I remember one time when she couldn't talk and I had to use the Skype chat with her while I tried to walk through verbally what we were trying to do. Always I felt comfortable sharing and learning. Even up to our last few interactions she surprised me with her involvement and the breadth of her participation in the "edtech" community for lack of a better word. Even though we never met face to face, Goodbye Lee, my life will not be the same as what could have been, what should have been. You left too early and so many of us still had so much to benefit from your interactions with us.

Image source: Image: 'maze'
www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/2786241330

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Edubloggercon08 in San Antonio (just one many stories)

I arrived at the Edubloggercon 08 session start late and the room was not quite what I had expected with many rows of chairs facing the riser area where Steve Hargadon was facilitating a discussion on which sessions would be presented based on the pollster voting. There was also what looked like a professional video team whom I later found out were from Pearson and had posted on the NECC Ning their intentions to capture Edubloggercon with professional cameras and boom mikes as well, which added to the effect. I was a bit distracted as I was meeting people and trying to deal with my computer's inability to access the wireless. I spent most of the morning recognizing and introducing myself to people who I have only met virtually.

I went to two sessions before lunch. The first break out session I saw was on social networks. It was great getting to hear the many voices from people who shared their varied thoughts and experiences. The second session by the time I reached it was discussing Here Comes Everybody and was very animated. It doesn't seem to matter in some ways what the topic is because the discussions in trying to find the essential questions and problems begin analyzing road blocks to moving ours and other teacher's classrooms into a collaborative student centered environment. I noticed several times participants and one instance in particular Chris Lehman standing up for teachers whenever a discussion was moving towards accusing them of resisting and being unwilling to change. I have to agree because I don't know any teacher who when asked whether they enjoy and embrace this age of testing and multiple choice state tests wouldn't support change.

During lunch I met several more educators and took some pictures including my favorite of the day, Maria Knee who because she has done amazing work with Kindergarten students with such things as her classroom blog, holding up both her award for the Kay L. Bitter Vision Award but also balancing on her shoulder Trixster (hope I have that right) who has traveled to many different locations including several NECC conferences.

After lunch I was sitting working in the Blogger's Cafe when several folks walked over and because of the participants I wanted to hear what was being said. After a certain point several things happened simultaneously, smart phones started being brought out and an open fun exploration of the technology occured and Bud Hunt started streaming on Mogolus. Because it has the ability to stream and capture several sources at once I quickly set up an account and sent him my permissions. What Will Richardson and Steve Dembo were asking people to share on the edstreamtv wiki which was what and when they were streaming and to be able to coordinate, Bud was essentially doing in a spontaneous fashion. I think this is something I realized today that every time someone tries to organize and centralize some element of the edtech learning network that it sort of goes against what we are trying to do in the classroom which is to create more of a decentralized messy learning environment.

After the spontaneous gathering at the Blogger's cafe I set up for some more streaming with Alice Mercer and the Edtech Talk show It's Elementary. Unfortunately the wireless was cutting in and out and we couldn't set up the simultaneous video Ustream, chat room projection, speaker, and Skype conference call. What a fun and amazing day and there are still many days to go including attending for the Constructivist Consortium tomorrow (bad news is there is no wireless where it is held).

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Earth Day Webcast

Earth Day is finished and it was a challenging but very rewarding experience for both my students and myself. The students all did a great job presenting and each group was allowed to choose the visual component that they felt best expressed their topic choices. Overall I think the most effective student presentations involved the use of slideshare while the students gave their oral component. One group did a VoiceThread, and a couple of groups even did podcasts although they are not uploaded. This first 24 hour Webcastathon will hopefully be the first of many to come. Overall the variety of presentations from other classrooms and teachers was amazing as well as the participation from several different countries.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

0.0

TEACHER 0.0

STRANGER!
if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not
speak to me?    And why should I not speak to you? - Walt Whitman

If by chance we meet on a road. . .           along a path. . .                           or during an odyssey. . .


Use the skills you know to communicate, because the Read Write Web is every teachers' responsibility to know and help our students learn. . . learn to be creators and organizers of content=ideas not just passive consumers.

beyond the dots. . .


beyond the dashes. . .


Ones and Zeros first began with. . .
Morse code the 19th century and the transatlantic cable between NY and London that allowed for real time data and interaction.

And place no longer matters as learning is happening all over the world. Ideas from any one teacher everywhere can be available to everyone. A classroom project can be seen by everyone. This is what is called a flat world. . .



And the data and information and knowledge to become a 21st Century teacher is not decided upon or settled by any one teacher or place in the world. . .

TODAY



come write, determine, participate, and share the knowledge with us

go all the way to Timbuktu



chat speak listen respond write

    Teacher X.0!

I was in the chat in Classroom 2.0 and Lisa Parisi made me think of the importance of beginnings, beginners and being open to learn, and I've always tried to abide by that feeling too. The first time I learned of someone believing in this was when a teacher of mine quoted Albert Einstein "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed," for a "conceptual design" department (this link is from Stephen Wilson, who has been a constant presence) class in my art department. So I remember creating a small box with a view hole, plastic baby, mirrors, and cotton and taping to the side a walkman playing over and over "retain the child within you," and that's when "childlike fascination and sense of wonder," first came to form a phrase in my mind that I remember. Trying to find the A.E. quote I stumbled upon this page of artists reflecting on the word "wonder."

Lately I refer and share in many instances when trying to show, how we should work together to learn Web 2.0 tools, Carolyn Foote's Beginner's Mind. I used this and chose for my playful application Moolvl for a presentation I made for my school district.

photo sources:
Image: 'Roofie'
www.flickr.com/photos/49503155549@N01/238573192
Image: 'Peek-a-Boo'
www.flickr.com/photos/57038667@N00/476731882
Image: 'Tree path'
www.flickr.com/photos/32863204@N00/241899410
Image: 'Odysseus and Tiresias'
www.flickr.com/photos/36021911@N00/75102722Image: 'Holes'
www.flickr.com/photos/31426589@N00/119131442Image: 'dots'
www.flickr.com/photos/76014095@N00/400696203
Image: 'green dots'
www.flickr.com/photos/50367113@N00/17828926
Image: 'Ladybug (FI-22993)'
www.flickr.com/photos/57267425@N00/140266515Image: 'Red + White Ball'
www.flickr.com/photos/12074797@N00/17952630
Image: 'The Stronghold'
www.flickr.com/photos/95492938@N00/219852893Image: 'and who are you?'
www.flickr.com/photos/77467550@N00/290274557
Image: 'IMG_3453'
www.flickr.com/photos/54087404@N00/155629109
Image: 'geeks'
www.flickr.com/photos/54903723@N00/20318677Image: 'IMG_3454'
www.flickr.com/photos/54087404@N00/155629110Image: 'Who needs a hybrid anyway?'
www.flickr.com/photos/90832828@N00/1675538078
Image: 'volvo'
www.flickr.com/photos/37996575334@N01/288095
Image: 'Sum blu cawr'
www.flickr.com/photos/15245443@N00/1300476032
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flatland_cover.jpg/200px-Flatland_cover.jpg
Image: '6569'
www.flickr.com/photos/98572879@N00/276168731Image: 'First Impressions'
www.flickr.com/photos/15401080@N00/88760582
Image: 'Djingareyber Mosque'
www.flickr.com/photos/44124370103@N01/60323
Image: 'Angel Oak MK3'
www.flickr.com/photos/91178396@N00/470623754

Blogged with Flock

The Storm and Dangers that Took Down the Global Project

The ice storm took down the power grid for Scott Meech and his black out was nowhere in my radar of feeds or messages. Lucy Gray and myself exchanged a few chat messages and I played with Skype emoticons. Sundays are reserved for our ProTechT conference call on Skype. Later I thought about the fact that I don't even have everyones' cell numbers, addresses, etc. close at hand, but I assume it is accessible on the "net." And in a way, our connections are as tenuous as the wind, fragile but determined, and yet we are as close as we can be. I say that for the moment from a stand point of each members' abilities, and the fact that I can follow, if allowed, each members' status on Skype. No this project does not have the staying power of an ARPANET, we are each joined in a highly personal way, on computers that each of us must maintain, different hardware and OS. We are not at a distance from each other however, in that my concern would surface should anything happen to any one of the participants. Participants have already been sick and earlier Scott also had a very close connection to NIU. It has something of the miracle about it, a project living and breathing with its members. I always hope for my students something of a sense of "groupness," such as this.

And The bleeding edge of what we do doesn't help maintain clear communication and has many dangers in terms of misinterpretations should messages be truncated or too few words not convey the real meaning with conversations interrupted as software crashes or fails. I think there is the element of half empty and half full in ones relationships with others that allows something to grow with these types of activities. Following up on more perspective on Wesley Fryer's Ustream presentation for ProTechT - The wireless started cutting out and a third of the class didn't seem too bothered by it. They moved to the front of the room between the screen and my traditional science black countertop. They were following the chat as well as what audio they could as I kept reloading/refreshing the Ustream feed. The sound came back at the end of a period as if another class had been using up all the bandwidth, which unfortunately my school has a strong tie with iMovies, and was probably the case. There is no bandwidth management and some teachers still don't have good wireless. For the last fifteen minutes the sound was fine, but students, as one would move progressively towards the back, were now holding conversations and they were not listening but were engaged and listening and speaking to each other. So I was let down somewhere in the delivery system, each part not quite correct, but also a future non-issue. I may gain here though the experience in knowledge that sometime shortly will be obsolete, but you have to enjoy in some way or tip the scales to favor the successes over failure and along with all of it the messiness.

image sources: www.flickr.com/photos/9147703@N03/2243954328
www.flickr.com/photos/38819451@N00/84401047

Blogged with Flock

Can an Evolutionist and a Creationist both be part of one's personal learning network?

For myself I think there is still a disconnect in my relationship to others for whom I haven't met face to face but interact with online only. Just the same as my students this week who had difficulty being quiet when Wes Fryer was sharing his thoughts on his Ustream presentation for the ProTechT project because he wasn't a live speaker in our class. I feel a connection but also a certain distance to people I interact with on networks like Twitter, Second Life, and Ning.

I've enjoyed David Weinberger and many of his ideas on altering the hierarchical thinking of how we organize ideas and thoughts since I saw him for the first time giving the opening keynote presentation at the NECC in Philidelphia. He comes to mind because for his recent book he used the title Everything is Miscellaneous and for the most part I prefer listening to him speak of his ideas such as his presentation on the topic at places such as Google. During the New Hampshire primaries while the student Arthus was sharing his ideas on the political candidates via Ustream, the issue came up of one of my favorite edtech people being a Creationist, later on another of my favorite edtech bloggers took Arthus to task for not pressing the issue from an Evolutionist perspective and offered to take on the person in a debate. I myself don't feel a need to debate someone who believes in the Creationist philosophy and wondered if that is a justifiable passiveness on my part or a disconnect from these virtual relationships. I don't know of anyone in my circle of friends where I live as being a Creationist I do know that I have been emotional and very moved by direct messages and communication with people on Skype and Twitter that I haven't met face to face. The thought that came to mind is "if everything is miscellaneous," then is truth just another tag in the virtual universe with no more real meaning than the electrons it takes to create the text in displays? How can I as a science teacher not argue for further examination of the motivations of someone to side on one side of the argument which is in opposition to how I teach and believe in?

Blogged with Flock

Meme: Passion Quilt

Following the meme sent me by Miguel Guhlin, I'm posting my picture for what I am most passionate about to be part of the passion quilt. When my students use tools for learning such as computers I typically ask them to work and participate in teams. I used FlickrCC to find this image.




Caption for this Quilt Image: Project Based Learning and Teamwork

The five people I'm tagging are:
Ann Oro
Jo McLeay
Pam Shoemaker
Tom Barrett
Jeff Whipple

3 Simple Meme Rules:

• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about...and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt" and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

reference: www.flickr.com/photos/30864080@N00/131488403

Blogged with Flock