Ways of Working
I hope you've all been following the K12 Online Conference this year. There have been some fabulous presentations coming out of this year's event and, as usual, there has been a diverse collection of topics and ideas with something for everyone. You can check out the entire conference at k12online.ning.com
I had the privilege of being able to contribute to the conference again this year with a presentation called Ways of Working. I must admit that it deviated a bit from my original submission idea, which was to create a movie that followed the processes used by three different students as they responded to a task from their teacher. I was planning on looking how each of the three students used the web and social technologies to take a slightly different approach to dealing with the set task.
As so often happens, the intention of what I wanted to do was quickly drowned out by the time and resources I actually had to make it happen, so the presentation morphed into what you see above. It's not exactly what I'd planned, but I'm still pretty happy with it... it still looks at most of the things I wanted to include, but just not in the way I'd originally envisioned.
It was an interested experience to hang all this stuff off a single focus point, in this case, the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition that takes place in Sydney each October/November. I particularly liked the idea of using SxS as the core for the presentation because I know of quite a few schools that do actually use it as the basis for a thematic unit of work for their students so I know that it really does have a "real world" use in education. I was also quite fascinated with the way that social media and web technologies have infiltrated and expanded the event over the last few years, and I think it offers a great example of how the web and the real world can collide in a good way. I also liked the notion that the use of technology in schools can (and should!) be used to support real live physical events, and that technology really can be used to enrich a real world experience. And finally, because K12 Online is such an international event, I wanted to take the opportunity to showcase a little bit of Sydney, this beautiful city in which I feel so lucky to live.
Hope you enjoy the presentation, and that you take the time to check out the other 79 or so presentations that have been part of the conference this year.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The more I know, the more I realise I don't know
Crossposted on the Adobe Education Leaders blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/educationleaders/)
I remember the first time I saw Photoshop.
I think it must have been about 1993 or so, when I got a free copy that came with a scanner purchased by my school. It must have been a "lite" version of Photoshop because I seem to recall that it didn't support layers. Even so, I really enjoyed playing with it, and I ended up installing it on all the computers in the school computer lab (license? what license?) and I started teaching the kids how to create stuff with it. They just blew me away with what they could do with it, even without layers!
It was around the same time that I stumbled across an unused copy of Aldus Pagemaker in an out-of-the-way cupboard, and I convinced the school principal that we should use it to do the school yearbook; his agreement to my suggestion saw me suddenly escalated to head of the yearbook committee, a job that rolled on for many years and many issues beyond that. Of course, once you start working in Pagemaker (and now InDesign) there is a fairly fundamental expectation that Photoshop is a key part of that workflow.
From these accidental beginnings, I developed a long standing relationship with Photoshop. In the late 90s I was working with students to build collaborative websites, and of course all the graphics were done with Photoshop. We discovered all sorts of interesting features like batch processing, we learned to do decent colour corrections, to crop and manipulate images so that they fitted our needs. We discovered, often the hard way, about important concepts like pixel depth, image resolution, colour gamut, and of course the one that catches every self-taught Photoshop user out at some stage, RGB vs CMYK. We made images for the web and for print, we built graphics from scratch and we did weird things to existing photos. I'm just a teacher, not a graphic designer, but I've lost track of the hours and hours and hours I've spent inside Photoshop over the last 15+ years.
And here's the thing about Photoshop. Heck, here's the thing about pretty much all of Adobe's products... the more I know, the more I realise I don't know. Every time I learn some new technique or skill, the self-satisfied smug feeling of cleverness lasts about five seconds before I realise that there is just so much more I could know about it, that I could do with it. Whenever I taught kids a unit of work on Photoshop I used to conclude it with an in-class practical test, where I'd give them some images and a problem to solve - it might be to produce some CD cover artwork or a magazine cover, usually with a few constraints or requirements to make them have to think about it a little - and they'd just astound me at what they'd come up with. "Creative Suite" is a good name for these products, because they really do force you into creativity mode. Most of the time after one of these class tests, I'd spend the next few lessons getting the kids to deconstruct what they'd done, to teach me how they got certain effects. In my Photoshop classes I may have been the teacher, but we were all learners.
When I was offered a place in the Adobe Education Leaders program, I was thrilled to be part of it, and felt relatively well qualified to be part of it given that I'd spent over 15 years teaching Photoshop, Indesign, Dreamweaver and Flash to students. Of course, mixing with other AELs and seeing the fantastic things they do is a great way to reinforce just how little I do actually know, but it's still been an incredibly valuable association for me.
I got thinking about this lately because I've been checking out the tutorials on the newly redesigned Adobe TV. It's an awesome resource, with every application now having a Learn series, a set of basic tutorials that teach the essential skills required to get up to speed quickly... I wish this had been around when i started playing with Photoshop! As well as the Learn tutorials, there are a bunch of more advanced tutorials that delve into some of the trickier and more esoteric concepts.
And Adobe TV is not the only resource I turn to when I want to know more. There seems to be plenty of other places to learn the how-to stuff for Adobe's products. Some of my favourites are the Layers TV podcast with Corey Barker and RC, the Creative Suite Podcast with Terry White, Creative Sweet TV with Mike McHugh, Instant Indesign with Gabriel Powell, The Russell Brown Show... the list goes on. I subscribe to all of these through iTunes and they just drop onto my iPhone for later watching. It's a great way to learn. I'm sure there are many other fantastic resources for learning this stuff... perhaps you could leave a note in the comments about some of the resources you have found useful for learning.
Finally, I just wanted to mention a book I bought recently about Photoshop that is quite simply one of the most amazing Photoshop guides I've ever seen. It's simply called Creative Photoshop CS4 by Derek Lea, and I'm just stunned at how incredible this guy is when it comes to Photoshop. I've been working my way through some of his exercises and have been discovering something new on almost every page. When you can use a product for over 15 years, and still constantly discover new things, it says a lot about the depth of the product and the open-ended nature of what it lets you do with it.
I realise more than ever that there is so much I don't know about Photoshop (and most of the other Adobe products!) But I love that feeling of learning, of discovering, of digging deeper and just discovering that there really is no "bottom" to hit.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Staying On Message
Over the last year or so, I've been invited to present at a number of conferences, including a couple of keynotes. It's been an enriching experience, and one I enjoy immensely, although I do always end up feeling like I'm "a mile wide and and inch deep", to coin a well-worn phrase. I feel like I know quite a bit about a lot, but not a lot about anything. Despite the fact that I like to dabble in lots of stuff, I'm not sure I'm really a master of any of it.
This afternoon, I was asked to run some workshops for another Sydney school, to talk with some of their staff as they prepare to launch on a journey of 1:1 student computing next year. I took a workshop session with a small group for an hour, then presented a keynote to the whole staff for 45 minutes, followed by facilitating some planning and goal setting with a small group of teachers. I took an approach with today's sessions that I rarely do... I prepared nothing in advance. Normally when I present, I spend hours beforehand, collecting resources, planning what I want to say and figuring out the best way to say it. I assemble a presentation, set up a wiki page and so on, and go into the presentation fully prepared.
Today I didn't. I just rocked up, opened my Macbook and essentially asked, "what would you like to talk about?" There were reasons for that... It was partly because I wasn't given a lot of notice for these sessions, so I didn't have any time to put together something super organised. The other reason is that the brief was pretty open-ended, without a really firm outline for what needed to be covered. But mostly, I went in there ready to fly by the seat of my pants because I've come to understand that I can. I do actually have a good enough overall knowledge of technology, of education, of what I think is important, what I believe matters in education, and a pretty good mental catalog of what resources I have at my disposal. I find it relatively easy (and I quite prefer) to "make it up as I go along", just me and a web browser. Conversations can't be planned in advance, and I wanted these sessions to be more of a conversation than a lecture. In fact I started the workshop by opening a Google Doc, and asking the group "what do you want to talk about today?" Their responses - the differences between Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, the use of blogs versus wikis versus discussion forums, and useful Web 2.0 tools for the classroom; these were not things I would have predicted in advance, but were apparently what this groups wanted or needed. We explored a number of other ratholes, including an exploration of Wikipedia and how it works, along with some simple ideas for developing a PLN. I thought the session went well, and the feedback was positive.
But it was during the keynote that I actually learned a lot about myself. Again, I didn't prepare anything in advance, but simply had the topic "ICT in my school: Lessons learned" as a starting point. My reasoning for not preparing was that I live this stuff every day... I shouldn't need to "prepare a talk" to give this talk.
Having listened to a lot of presenters at a lot of conferences over the last few years, I've noticed that many of them have a consistent message. A theme. A common thread. Some, even almost a mantra. There are influential people within this ed-tech sphere that have their own important message to share, and they become almost synonymous with their message. They talk about all sorts of stuff, but they manage to stay "on message" all the time. I'd often wondered to myself, as I shotgunned around all sorts of interesting but largely unrelated ICT topics, "What's Chris Betcher's consistent message?" What is the one thing that underpins all the other stuff I'm interested in? It's easy to be a dabbling dilettante and be interested in lots of different things, but it's harder to have some sort of consistent structure that it all hangs off. I had no idea what mine was...
And here's what I learned about myself as I talked to this group today with no particular agenda. I do have a message. There were consistent themes I found myself coming back to over and over, themes that are really at the core of what I believe education is all about.
Trust in people. I honestly believe that, by and large, most people are good people with right intentions and will naturally do the right thing if given a choice. This belief has implications on how you treat those around you - colleagues, students and others. It affects how you manage your schools, how you build community, how you interact with your students, how you design learning tasks. My basic belief in people permeates every decision I make in every interaction with others. I was asked by a teacher today for strategies to help deal with kids in a 1:1 environment, and my answer, without even thinking about it, was "Build trust". I don't think it's the answer she was looking for, but I honestly believe that it was the best answer I could possibly offer. Trust your students. Trust that they will do the right thing because the work you give them is interesting enough and they want to do their best at it. Trust that they would much rather do the right thing than the wrong thing. I know that there are many who think this is a Pollyanna attitude; that you should plan for the worst rather than budget for the best, but that has never worked for me.
Have high expectations. I also believe that kids are far more capable than we usually give them credit for, and that by and large we present them with fairly small-minded tasks that require fairly small-minded efforts. We ask them to write a few paragraphs when they are capable of writing a short novel. We give them tasks that are too uninteresting, too unchallenging, too mundane, and we too often short-change their potential to be great. We need to set the bar high, expecting greatness from them, pushing them to exceed the capacity they, and we, often mistakenly believe they have. Trust that they will meet your expectations. I always expect the best, especially from kids, and I usually get it.
Understand what a teacher is supposed to do. I don't, and have never, believed that the role of a teacher is simply to "teach" students by imparting a fixed body of knowledge. We are so much more than that. Our job is to know our students well enough that we can find interesting things for them to do, things that help them see their world in ways that they have never thought about, then provide them access to the resources, tools and ideas they need to explore those interesting things, getting out of their way enough that we don't impede their own natural progress, yet available enough to help them when they require it. I truly believe this is my job. I'm not there to do it for them. I'm not there to watch them fail. I'm there to connect them and their interests to a world of possibilities they have not yet discovered for themselves.
I don't think teaching is all that difficult, and I suspect we usually overcomplicate it with a whole lot of stuff that just clouds the issue. There are standards and outcomes and requirements for graduating, sure. But the real focus of education is pretty simple. Help your kids find their passions. Trust that they can. Believe that they will. And get out of their way while they do it.
That's my mantra. That's my message.
Image: 'Slide'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11705469@N07/2047419687
Popularity: 2% [?]
This is Not Amazing
Amazing (adjective) astonishing, astounding, surprising, stunning, staggering, shocking, startling, stupefying, breathtaking; awesome, awe-inspiring, sensational, remarkable, spectacular, stupendous, phenomenal, extraordinary, incredible, unbelievable; informal mind-blowing, jaw-dropping
Sometimes I find myself dealing with people in circumstances that are completely unconnected, but which seem to have some kind of bizarre synchronicity that causes them to mirror each other.
The other day, I found myself in one of these situations...
Firstly, I was asked by a colleague to help edit some video footage from a recent school trip. I don't mind helping with such requests because I quite enjoy the process of video editing, so I attached the camera to my MacBook Pro, sucked the footage onto the hard drive and began dragging clips together in iMovie. My colleague looked on as I dragged clips around the timeline, clearly never having seen non-linear video editing before, and, with a little gasp of wonder in her voice, she remarked "That's amazing the way you can do that with video!"
Later that day, I got a call from another colleague who needed help with a mail merge of some spreadsheet data into a letter she was writing. She was aware that such mail merges were possible, but wasn't sure exactly how to do it. So I dropped by her office to lend a hand, and in the process of trying to sort it out I noticed that some of the data formatting in the spreadsheet was a little inconsistent. One of the columns had data with stray spaces in the text... no problem, I hit ctrl-F to call up the Search and Replace command, typed a few characters into the search field, replaced them with the characters I needed to fix the problem, clicked OK, and the changes rippled through the sheet fixing the problem in less than a second. As my colleague looked on, she remarked "That's amazing the way you can do that with a spreadsheet!"
The last example was from yet another colleague who wanted to assemble a short end-of-year slideshow of her students to send home to their parents. She was envisioning a PowerPoint full of pictures set to music. Because I know how much work that can be to create, I suggested a better solution. I asked her to give me all the photos she wanted to include and I uploaded them to Animoto.com, selected a piece of royalty-free music from their online collection and pressed the Make Video button. A few minutes later I downloaded the finished video, an impressive little piece that took me about three clicks and near-zero talent to actually produce. Her response to the final slideshow was, you guessed it... "That's amazing the way you can do that with digital photos!"
Can we get something straight here? NONE of these things were "amazing".
Having these three events happen back to back like that made me stop and think about how often I hear the "that's amazing the way you can do XYZ!" comment. (And just to be clear, it wasn't that they thought it was amazing because I was the one doing it, they thought it was amazing simply because it could be done). They were amazed at what computers make possible... editing video, fixing numbers, manipulating sound and pictures, etc... these things are still amazing to many people and I got to thinking about how often I hear the "That's amazing!" line from people who observe technology doing things they didn't know were possible.
I'm not for one moment suggesting that it's good to be completely blasé about the things that technology can do. There are plenty of totally amazing things that technology enables these days. Separating conjoined twins at the brain with complete success is amazing. Ditching a passenger jet in the Hudson and getting all the passengers off safely is amazing. Crashing a rocket into the moon to stir up dust and rocks to discover water there is amazing. And the fact that the law allows a Japanese man to marry an Anime cartoon character is, well, kind of freaky, but I guess still amazing.
The point is that, yes, there are plenty of amazing things that happen in our world, and its important to retain our sense of wonder and amazement at them. No question about that.
But seriously people... editing video, fixing some numbers in a spreadsheet, or making a slideshow from some photos is NOT "amazing". We, and by we I am particularly talking about the teaching profession in general, need to stop being so "amazed" at things that really are quite mundane. We need to stop seeing the most trivial, mundane tasks as being "amazing" simply because they were done on a computer. Being amazed that a spreadsheet can work with numbers just makes you look a bit silly. Worse than that, being clueless about what technology can really do just sets the bar of expectation ridiculously low for students, letting them believe that they can produce any old rubbish and yet still impress their teacher, who thinks that the PowerPoint their student made is simply "amazing". I haven't even seen that kid's PowerPoint, but trust me, it's probably not amazing.
The reason this irks me so much is that personal computers have been around for over 30 years now, and have been a significant part of most schools now for over 20 years. Most schools and school systems have been trying to provide some level of professional development, training and support for teachers for most of these 20 years. Even if a teacher resisted technology back in the early days of the PC, there's absolutely no excuse for not having embedded the use of a personal computer into their daily work over the past 10 years.
It's time to stop being so "amazed" at things that are just part of the technological and cultural landscape of life in the 21st century. It's not "amazing" that computers can edit video, manage numbers or manipulate digital images. It's not "amazing" that mobile phones can stream live video or GPS your current position. It's not "amazing" that you can make phone calls to the other side of the planet at no cost. None of these things are really "amazing" any more... they just "are". To be "amazed" at this sort of stuff is to fail to recognise the invisible role that technology plays in all our lives these days. To anyone working in education, working with young people, you need to realise that simple tasks performed with technology are not something to be "amazed" at, marveled at and gushed over. For our students, the use of technology as the enabler for such tasks seems as natural as breathing air.
I was in another meeting with some students and a teacher the other day, and the teacher was trying to show the kids about a Ning they'd had set up for a class project. The teacher was all effusive, gushed about the Ning's "amazing" features and wanting to show the students all the "amazing" things it could do... "Look! You can use it to leave messages for each other!", she said excitedly. One of the students confided to me later "I can't believe how worked up she was getting about that Ning... it's just a blog. It's like Facebook. Of course we know how to use it." It reminded me of that wonderful line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, where the people of Earth were considered a bit of a joke for being “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
Don't get me wrong, technology provides as with some incredibly useful tools. The rise of Web 2.0 and the read/write web has changed the world forever. Mobile technologies just keep getting more and more impressive. But let's keep things in perspective.
Save the "amazement" for things that truly ARE amazing, and realise that technology is not some kind of unexplainable black magic voodoo... it just "is".
Image: 'iPhone Glee'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45635774@N00/4135434552
Popularity: 4% [?]
Copyright or Copywrong?
I was in a staff meeting at school last week where we were given a presentation outlining 10 common myths about copyright. I thought it not a bad summary of what many teachers just assume to be true. Ironically, I'm reproducing it below basically word for word as it was presented to me, but I'm told on good authority that the original creator has authorised its use for reposting.
The other thing I really would have liked to have had included in the conversation was a little more talk about what the alternatives are. It's one thing to talk about what you can't do legally, but unless you provide a list of workable alternatives, simply making "though shalt not" pronouncements is a bit pointless. Copyright has a place, but in a digital world that place is changing dramatically. There is an obvious tension between the inputs and the outputs of copyright... if you are a content creator, you want the output of your work to be protected so others don't simply steal your stuff, however, unless you can borrow and remix content from others, you will have very little to work with in the first place.
If you've not seen it, take a look at an amazing comic book produced by the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University. Issue 1, entitled Bound By Law, looks at the copyright issues faced by documentary filmmakers, and is an extremely insightful look at the pros and cons of copyright and how it can often unintentionally stifle the very same creativity it is supposed to be protecting. I think it explains it very well, and it should be read by all high school students (and teachers!). You can download a copy (Under a Creative Commons licence of course) from www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics.
For another lucid overview of the real issues behind copyright law, you really can't go past the TED Talk by Larry Lessig (founder of Creative Commons) called How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law. His final summation of the tensions that exist between the extremist viewpoints of "Let's protect everything" vs "Everything should be free" is excellent, and he makes it very clear that, while the law might not be the ass we sometimes think it is, the notion of copyright certainly needs a good injection of balance and common sense if it is to remain relevant and workable.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here are the 10 myths about copyright, as presented by my school last week (and specifically applied to Australian copyright law)
1. It’s OK – I found it on the net
The fact that something is on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s not protected by copyright or that you can use it as you wish. Material on the net is protected to the same extent as anything on paper or in any other type of format. In many cases, however, copyright owners put a statement on to websites stating how people can use the material – the permission they give can often be quite extensive, but don’t assume that it will cover what you are planning to do with the material.
2. We can use it – it doesn’t have a copyright notice on it
While it is recommended copyright owners should put copyright notices on their material, it is not compulsory, and it doesn’t affect whether or not something is protected. We will have a compliance issue to deal with whether or not the material has a copyright notice on it.
3. We’re non-profit so it’s OK
In some narrow cases, the non-profit statues of an organisation can affect its ability to rely on exceptions. However, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material for non-profit purposes.
4. It’s all right we’re attributing the creator
If you’re using copyright material, you do generally have to attribute the person or people who created the material. This is a general moral rights obligation. However, you’ll still have copyright issues to consider; attributing the creator doesn’t change this.
5. We only need to worry about copyright if we’re charging money
In some narrow cases, the fact that an organisation is charging money can affect its ability to rely on exception to the general rule that you need permission if you want to use copyright material in one of the ways reserved to the copyright owner. However, there is no general rule to the effect that you don’t have to worry about copyright if you’re not charging people for the material you are using.
6. The copyright owner should see this as good promotion
Whether or not a copyright owner sees your use of their material as good promotion is their decision, not yours, and you can never be sure they’ll see the situation in the same light as you do. Also, even if the copyright owner does see your use of the material as good publicity, don’t assume that this means that they’ll give you permission to use it for free. Many copyright owners make their living from the licence fees they charge, and they will often want to know beforehand how you want to use the material. If you don’t get a clearance when you’re supposed to, you’ve still infringed copyright – which may, for the College, work out as bad publicity.
7. It’s OK – I’m using less than 10%
There is no general rule that you can use less than 10% without permission. If you’re using any ‘substantial’ part of a copyright owner’s material – whether you’ve made changes to it or not – you’ll have to deal with the copyright issue. In the context, a ‘substantial’ part is any part that is important, distinctive or essential. It doesn’t have to be a large part to be ‘substantial’ in a copyright sense.
8. It’s all right – I’ve changed it
There are two common, but wrong, beliefs in this area. First, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material if you change it by 10% or more. Second, there is no general rule to the effect that you can use copyright material if you make five or more changes. As noted above, if you’re using any part that is important, distinctive or essential, you have to deal with copyright issues.
9. It’s OK – we paid for it
The fact that the College paid a contractor for something – such as a report or a series of photos – will have a bearing on how we can use it. However, this is not by itself a guarantee that we own copyright in it, and can use it as we like. Similarly, the fact that we own a physical item – such as a painting or photograph or a DVD – does not mean you can use it as you like (such as copying it or screening it).
10. No one will ever find out
If you know, and your colleagues know, why mightn’t the copyright owner – or the collecting society that represents them – get to find out too? Organisations that infringe copyright are always at risk from disgruntled employees, let alone the other people they come in contact with. Also, copyright owners have six years to take action for an infringement – that’s a long time for information to come to light.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Argh you talkin to me?
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, maties!
Yes, it be that time of the year again. a time when all good pirates dig up the buried treasure an make those around them walk the plank.
I've absolutely no idea why the idea of talking like a pirate captures so many people's imaginations, but it seems to.
Dave Eggers. when starting his school, decided on a pirate theme. Apple always considered themselves to be the pirates of Silicon Valley. And the Pirate Bay is challenging plenty of assumptions about how software distribution works.
Argh. Just argh. Just because.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Using Twitter to develop a PLN
Another article written for Education Technology Australia. Probably not much new in here for regular readers of this blog, but I thought I'd post it just in case anyone found it interesting...---
Of all the tools to emerge from the Web 2.0 revolution, few are as intriguing as Twitter. When Twitter first appeared in 2006 it was one of those hard to define web tools that, on the surface, sounded silly and trivial. However, in the last few years it has risen to be one of the web’s most powerful simple ideas.
At its best, Twitter is the ultimate real-time communication tool, enabling ideas to spread across the Internet with unprecedented speed and reach. As a mechanism for gaining insight into the “wisdom of the crowds” it has few equals. During the recent elections in Iran for example, Twitter proved its worth as a vehicle for people in Tehran to keep the flow of information going to the outside world, even when official news crews were being silenced and censored by the government. Thanks to Twitter, the truth still had a voice.
At its worst, Twitter can be nothing but an embarrassing parade of personal ephemera, filled with people publicly sharing the most inane and trivial aspects of their lives.
Twitter was created in 2006 as a side project by Odeo Corp, but has since evolved into one of the web’s hottest properties. Thanks to its recent “discovery” by Hollywood stars and TV personalities, Twitter has experienced a massive burst of growth and visibility. It seems that everywhere you turn these days you hear about Twitter, and yet it remains generally misunderstood by most people.
So what exactly is Twitter? Think of it as a cross between SMS, email and blogging. Usually referred to as a microblogging service, Twitter enables users to send out short 140 character messages to anyone who chooses to “follow” them. Some people have thousands of “followers” reading their updates, or “tweets”, each supposedly answering the simple question “what are you doing?” Followers have the opportunity to engage in dialog with those they follow by sending a public reply - usually called an at-reply due to the Twitter convention of prefixing their response with an @ symbol - or to reply in private with a direct message, usually called a DM. These short 140 character bursts of text between individuals are generating thousands of simultaneous conversations that anyone can take part in.
Originally the domain of the geeky elite, Twitter has expanded its reach into far more mainstream uses. Celebrities are using Twitter to build their fan base. Marketers are finding Twitter powerful for spreading the word about new products and services. Companies monitor the flow of Twitter messages to see what people are saying about them. Politicians are using Twitter to converse with their constituents. It seems that many people are finding plenty of uses for a tool that lets you quickly and simply communicate you are doing.
But what about educators? What possible uses could teachers find for a tool like Twitter? As it turns out, quite a few.
The trend in professional development for educators is towards the development of a Personal Learning Network, or PLN. PLNs utilise the principle of just-in-time learning by encouraging teachers to surround themselves with others who share similar interests or knowledge. A teacher with a well developed PLN is able to turn to her network of colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, get feedback or find an audience. Many teachers have limited opportunities to surround themselves with like-minded others, either because they work in a small school, teach a niche subject, or simply don’t have access to people who think like them. Consequently, it becomes easy for many educators to feel as though they work in a vacuum, with limited opportunities to discuss ideas or get advice from others. Attending conferences or professional development days can be really useful, but these are usually limited to a few days a year.
By using a tool like Twitter to surround themselves with a network of other educators, and then using these networks to engage in ongoing conversations about teaching and learning, any teacher can have access to the “brains trust” of a larger groups of people at any time. Twitter can play a key role in connecting people together to form these personal learning networks.
Anyone can sign up for a free Twitter account at www.twitter.com. Upon joining Twitter, they will be provided with a list of suggestions for people to follow, but these are usually a random assortment of Hollywood celebrities, companies, politicians, musicians and sports stars… not exactly the right foundation for building an education-based personal learning network! Of course, there are no real rules about who you can and can’t follow - follow whoever you want - but remember that if you want to develop a Twitter network with an education focus then you should begin by following people who are already engaged in these conversations. During the signup process, Twitter will also offer to search your email address book to see if any of the people you know are currently using the service. If it finds any, it will offer to add them to your network.
The best way to start building your network is by following someone you already know and seeing who they follow. Clicking on the grid of icons will lead you to the Twitter pages of others, where you can read their bio, their latest tweets and see who else they follow. Once you find someone that sounds interesting to you, just click the “Follow” button to add them to your network. The real value of a Twitter network does not become apparent until you add at least 40 to 50 people, so continue this process of finding people to follow until you build this critical mass. When you follow someone, they receive an email notification about it and can then decide whether they want to follow you back or not. Don’t be to concerned or offended if someone does not follow you back immediately.
The other way to quickly develop a network of people is by using a list such as that found at http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com. This list, built using a wiki by Gina Hartman, a teacher from Missouri, contains organised lists of teachers who use Twitter to help make the process of building your network simpler. Similar lists exist at http://twitterpacks.pbworks.com, where you can search for all sorts of interesting Twitter-using communities. Another excellent list of education professionals to follow online can be found at http://c4lpt.co.uk/connexions. Take some time to explore these lists and you’ll soon find plenty of interesting, relevant people to add to your network.
Once you begin to build this network around you, you’ll find a constant stream of new ideas, new links and new tools to explore. People in your network will be sharing thoughts with each other, having conversations that you can join or simply eavesdrop on. With the right group of people in your network you will be exposed to more new ideas and suggestions each day than you would normally get in a whole year of regular PD. You will have a team of people around you that you can ask questions and get suggestions from. You can tap their collective wisdom. You can get perspective from outside your regular contacts. You can find people to collaborate with. You can find an audience for student projects. Having a global network of people surrounding you, enabled by Twitter, opens up a world of professional possibilities for your own learning and sharing. You will get a much better feel for the pulse of the web.
Unlike social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, Twitter has not become hugely popular with school-aged users and it remains somewhat of a place for “grown-ups”. Many specialist communities have adopted Twitter for their own uses, and education is one field which seems to have truly grasped the value that the service can bring to their community. Because Twitter is driven by short, to-the-point messages, it seems to be a place where content and conversation is valued. If you find particular users talking about trivial things that don’t interest you, or “overtweeting” - tweeting so often that it simply becomes annoying - you always have the option to unfollow them. You have complete control over who you want in your network. It is a very democratic environment… if people add value they find followers.
Once you start to use it more you will probably find the Twitter website a fairly inconvenient way to use the service, so there are some excellent Twitter clients - specialised software for using Twitter in an easier, more integrated way from your computer or mobile phone. There are many to choose from, but TweetDeck, Twhirl, Tweetie and Nambu are very popular. There are also plenty of Twitter clients tools that run on mobile phones - mobile versions of TweetDeck and Nambu for the iPhone, or Gravity for Nokia phones, enabling you to tweet from wherever you are.
If you haven’t tried it yet, give Twitter a go. Try using it to build a personal learning network of people you find interesting. You might be pleasantly surprised as just how powerful this simple idea can be.
Evil Twitter image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorsner/ CC BY-SA-NC
Popularity: 6% [?]
Footsteps
If you’re not blogging in this day and age, are you at a disadvantage?
I can see a day in the not too distant future (if it's not already here) where your "digital footprint" will carry far more weight than anything you might include in a resume or CV.
It's perhaps not so relevant (yet) in the public edcuation sector where the criteria for employment is not always totally just based on a meritocracy, but in the independent sector there is a definite awareness of an individual's digital footprint as a way to gauge their involvement, passion, engagement and understanding of their chosen field.
It may not yet be happening in the public sector because of unionisation and the existing promotional structures in place, but in the outside world where people are employed, promoted and recognised by their actual contributions and not just by the amount of time they have been in a given role, the notion of knowing about an individual because of the trail of ideas they leave behind them in their online networks will play a larger and larger role.
I'm certain that almost EVERY employer these days has Googled you before they call you for an interview. Many people in the private sector (and I'm not just talking about education) are being offered positions or getting headhunted because of the presence they have in their online spaces.
Having a blog, a Twitter account, even a Facebook... these things are not just about giving you a place to talk about stuff that no one is interested in... they are in fact building a "personal brand", as the marketers would say. You can say that's pretentious and that you want no part of it, but the fact is that the online persona and online presence you develop by creating this digital footprint is playing an increasingly important role in defining who you are (or at least who you appear to be).
Unfortunately, NOT having an online presence says a lot about you too. If I was staffing a school where a passion for education was valued, and I had free rein over who I employed, I would be very dubious about employing someone who had no evidence of any online presence. If I couldn't find any record of them being part of online communities, being involved in online projects, contributing to the global conversation about education, I'd be extremely doubtful about whether they were the right people for the kind of school I wanted to staff.
This is one of the reasons why we need to not just block kids from accessing network resources... The question is not whether they will have a digital footprint... they will. The question is whether it will say positive things about them or will it portray them in a negative way. We have a unique opportunity to provide our students with a digital footprint that says wonderful things about who they are, what they can do and where their passions lie, but unless we actively teach them how to make it positive it may not be the case.
And if we don't actively understand and engage with that process ourselves, we will most likely do a pretty ordinary job of helping our students do it right.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Better than Stealing
The Internet has made it easier than ever to find virtually any digital resource we might want. The ability to locate, download and use a piece of music, a passage of text, a video or a photo for our own use is so trivially easy to do that in the excitement of knowing we CAN do it, we sometimes overlook the question of whether we SHOULD do it. The idea of the Internet as a place where things are freely shared has become so much a part of our thinking that we sometimes believe we have a right to reuse whatever resources we happen to find online.
One of the casualties of this cavalier approach to sharing can be a loss of respect for the intellectual property of others. In a world where everything appears to be so freely available, it is easy to overlook the fact that someone, somewhere, owns these resources. We tend to rationalise our use of them, reasoning that if people put them on the Internet they must be willing to share them. And that’s not always true. Some people do not want you to take their work without asking.
On the other hand, some people ARE prepared to share their work. There are many who would be thrilled to think that someone wanted to look at their pictures, listen to their music or read their writing. The problem is that we don’t always know the author’s intentions. It would be nice to be able to tell, clearly and unambiguously, what the terms and conditions are for using their work.
This is precisely what Creative Commons sets out to do. Creative Commons is a set of conditions that clearly outlines the terms under which an author will allow their work to be used. All CC licences require attribution, or some acknowledgment of the author, usually with a link back to the original work. They provide a distinction between commercial and non-commercial uses, allowing the author to choose whether they will allow someone else to use their work to make money or not. CC licences also provide options for whether the work must be used exactly as is, whether it can be edited, adapted and remixed, and can also stipulate that a work must be shared under the same conditions as it was made available.
Applying a CC license to your work is easy. The Creative Commons website, found at www.creativecommons.org, provides a couple of simple questions to define the conditions under which author is prepared to publish their work, and then generates badges, computer-readable code and an easy-to-understand license document. It’s a very simple process that will help make it much clearer to anyone who wishes to use the works exactly what they are legally able to do with them.
The huge benefit for educators is the removal of the many barriers created by traditional copyright. Teachers are able to locate thousands of CC digital resources that can be freely used with students without worrying about violating copyright or interpreting the often vague “fair dealing” law. These digital resources can be used, remixed and, most importantly, republished back to the web, all without fear of a copyright violation since the terms of use are clearly and explicitly stated upfront.
Of course, not every resource will be available under a Creative Commons license, so students still need to be taught about traditional copyright and the responsibilities that accompany it. If suitable resources are not available under CC, and permission cannot be sought for its use, then all the usual copyright restrictions still apply. However, Creative Commons offers a viable alternative for the legitimate remixing of digital media, while providing an excellent environment in which to frame discussions with students about the legal and ethical responsibilities of being a good digital citizen.
This article was written for, and recently published in, Australian Teacher Magazine
Popularity: 1% [?]
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