This fantastic presentation by Dyane Smokorowski (Mrs. Smoke) was shared at the PodStock 2009 conference in Wichita, Kansas, on May 1, 2009. Dyane is an instructional technology coach in Andover, Kansas, and is one of the most enthusiastic advocates for telecollaboration in the classroom you’ll likely ever hear! The official description for this Podstock09 session was: Telecollaboration refers to the activity of engaging learners in intercultural exchange with students from other countries through the use of online learning. The learning outcomes of these exchanges can be both powerful and enlightening with an amazing potential for language, data collection, and global awareness. The best part of these projects is they are easier than ever to implement with the use of Web 2.0 tools. Here we’ll explore different collaborative projects and how your classroom can open the door to global learning.
Podcast321: Getting a Global Perspective - The Power of Collaborative Projects by Dyane Smokorowski [01:00:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (882)
Friday’s CNN article, “Army hopes interactive videos make smarter soldiers,” could be more aptly titled, “Army using interactive games to teach problem solving to new recruits.” These were the sentences which caught my attention in the article, and suggested the US Army is proactively addressing social networking challenges:
…In the 21st century, the Army was sending younger soldiers into an arena they had little cultural experience in, and at the same time, new social networking sites were poised to broadcast their mistakes to the world…. Today, a third of the men and women the Army has deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are between the ages of 20 and 24, and Custer believes the military has now entered the age of the “strategic private” — a young soldier reared on video games. And because of social networking, that private is now armed with the ability to severely cripple a mission and spark the kinds of reactions that the world saw after the Quran shooting.
Unfortunately, despite these accurate observations, this article does not explain how the Army is addressing the social networking challenges posed by soldiers’ access to blogs and social networking sites. It basically explains that highly-realistic video game simulations are used to help soldiers learn problem solving skills applicable to a Middle-Eastern combat zone. No mention is made, however, of Army policies or training specific to social web tools. I thought it was interesting as well as disappointing that this CNN author (Suzanne Simons) raised the important issue of the Army addressing social networking dangers and propriety issues, but did not explain how its leaders are addressing them.
My impression is that mil-blogging, or blogging by military members, has been significantly curtailed in the past few years by military authorities, especially from members serving in combat zones. Two years ago, in April/May of 2007, the US Army published new directives which required soldiers to get their commander’s approval before they posted ANYTHING to a blog. See my March 2007 podcast, “Powerful and Meaningful Connections from Blogging International Students, MilBloggers, and Others (An interview with Angie Fryer)” for more background on mil-blogging. I’m not entirely sure how the military’s policy (or policies) on blogging have changed since 2007, but I’d like to know.
He [Troy Seward, a first sergeant in the New York Army National Guard] describes one blog he runs with other Afghanistan veterans as a way to give troops headed there a resource to learn about what the country and culture is like and other valuable tidbits to help them adjust.
Seward pointed out that several higher-ups, including generals, have started blogs, which junior officers and enlisted troops have noticed and view as a sign that it is OK for them to blog what’s on their minds.
“We are a society of freedom of speech, and soldiers have an opinion. I think [blogging] gives soldiers a chance to express their opinion,” Seward said.
Former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne thinks the best solution may be to let the troops themselves document the story. “We need to make sure we capture the news cycle by providing our troops with something like a combat blogger,” Wynne tells Danger Room.
But that means changing the Defense Department’s often-schizophrenic approach to bloggers in uniform. Within the armed services, there’s a growing recognition that average soldiers are the most trusted voices the military has. But leaders are squeamish about letting their troops publish online. The result: Army secrecy regulations, read literally, make it next-to-impossible for average soldiers to blog — while leading generals, deployed to war zones, are keeping online journals of their own.
I think Michael Wynne is right to advocate for a proactive approach to mil-blogging. While operational security must be maintained, the power and impact of the social web on military affairs and international perceptions of not only the U.S. military but the United States more generally around the world is undeniable. The WikiPedia article for “Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse” provides plenty of evidence, if you’re in doubt about this. Those actions by U.S. military members were, in my view, as damaging to the national security, international image, and foreign political efficacy of the United States as the acts of convicted traitors like Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard. Of course it is not simply horrific that the criminal, illegal, and immoral acts perpetrated by military members at Abu Ghraib and other facilities were photographed– the fact that they took place at all, and were permitted to take place, is a travesty. One positive thing I can note on this subject is that the US military has acted to bring those responsible to justice, and is keeping prisons/detention facilities in Iraq open for scrutiny by outside organizations. The same cannot be said for Iraqi detention facilities, unfortunately. (I searched to try and find a link to the article I read on this last week, but unfortunately I’m not finding it.)
President Barack Obama has reversed a decision to release photos showing abuse of “war on terror” detainees, saying he feared it would cause a backlash against US troops abroad… Obama said issuing the photos, which were used as evidence in criminal investigations of US soldiers accused of abusing detainees during George W. Bush’s administration, would “inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger” without shedding any new light on past abuses. “The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefits to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals,” he told reporters.
In this climate, where social web tools have been and will continue to be used to shape and influence public opinion about a wide range of topics, I think Michael Wynne’s view of supporting proactive military use of blogs and other social media tools is on target. He’s essentially making a case for military storychasers. Will such a proactive view take hold in the military and in our current U.S. administration? I’m not sure. Whether it does or not, however, I commend Wynne for making the suggestion.
These are my notes from Ginger Lumen’s presentation “Students as Self-Advocates: Why/How Learners Should Craft Their Own Digital Footprints” at PodStock09. This is the wiki link for the presentation: http://digicitizen.wikispaces.com
- Ginger is presenting this today with her students, I am audio recording for later podcast and also Ustream webcasting/archiving. Here’s the archive - this is just partial, I had some connectivity problems at the end.
I don’t want to live in a world of fear
- sometimes in presos, I go to that fear button to get people to pay attention
- we are talking today about making our digital footprint something we can craft to benefit ourselves and our students
This page I am really excited about! ClaimID
- this is about branding yourself
- I want TPLC to have a place in that world
- wiki page for crafting your own online identity
THIS IS REALLY FANTASTIC STUFF! GREAT WORK COLBY! AND THANKS FOR SHARING THIS!
I began crafting my digital footprint with respect to 3D design and modeling
- we were given $10K by ESSDACK and our school district to redesign our school
- our team won the contest
- used Google Sketchup to design with the free version
- some photo-realistic rendering (is a plug-in which allows you to get a real sense of what it looks like, plug-in is called “podium”)
- this room WILL look like this when it is done
- I just imported the table, chairs and TV, designed everything else
When I was looking for furniture, I noticed it wasn’t there, so I chose to create furniture that I could share back to the community
- designed an IDEA VEJMON coffee table
This is something that is a passion of his, Ginger did not teach him to do this
So this is one way I’m crafting my digital footprint
I created the following image using Twitter Mosaic and stitched the images together from separate screen captures using SeaShore. This is rather overwhelming, particularly when I consider how FEW educators (overall) are utilizing social networking tools like Twitter currently.
Storychasing is using digital recording devices to create, archive and share digital stories on the web. Story Chasers, Inc. is a new nonprofit, educational organization incorporated in the state of Oklahoma which presents the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices oral history project in partnership with a variety of other Oklahoma organizations. In this podcast, recorded on the road with a Sony ICD-UX70 mp3 audio recorder, I provide an overview of ten reasons learners of all ages should consider becoming storychasers in their local communities. These ideas will be presented this coming Friday, May 1, 2009, at the PodStock conference in Wichita, Kansas. If you have feedback, ideas, critiques, or suggestions relating to these ideas, please let me know so I can incorporate them in my presentation Friday! The top 10 reasons to be a Storychaser discussed in this podcast are: 1- Touch hearts and win over parents, 2- Develop literacy skills, 3- Develop critical thinking skills, 4- Provide a window into learning, 5- Preserve family and local history, 6- Model constructive uses of digital and social media, 7- Develop digital citizenship, 8- Develop digital literacy and 21st century skills, 9- Inspire creativity, 10- Catalyze the learning revolution locally. Overall, of course, another great reason to be a storychaser is to have FUN!
Jay Garant is the Coordinator of Business and Community Partnerships for Fairfax County Public Schools
- jay [dot] garant [at] fcps [dot] edu
NPR ran story on book about scientific ways to be persuasive (“The Science of Getting a ‘Yes’”)
- having someone else introduce you adds credibility
Ground rules
- more fun if this is a dialog
- I’m going to put you to work
- no right or wrong answers
Stand up if you’re considered “the life of the party”
- point to someone else if you think they are
(JAY ASKED A SERIES OF QUESTIONS TO FIND SOMEONE WHO IS EXTRAVERTED / DRAMATIC TO PARTICIPATE IN A ROLE PLAY IN FRONT OF THE GROUP)
- What kind of car do you drive?
- age of car?
- showing pictures with text: typical PPT format (I’m thinking all about Presentation Zen as I watch this!)
First few minutes of a crisis are very important
messaging mapping is all about speaking
- clearly
- concisely
list of 77 questions commonly asked by journalists during a crisis (here is a PDF of the same questions Jay is discussing, a different handout, but the same questions)
Columbine just went through its 10th anniversary of its shooting
- I dealt with the Virginia Tech Shooting when I worked at Fairfax Public Schools
- 5 students from our school district were killed, 1 of our students was the shooter
- we had 86 different news outlets bombarding us from all over the world
- it was crazy
- the shooting happened off campus
- news agencies were calling people beyond the “district communicators”
I THINK SHARING THIS STORY IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING JAY CAN DO TODAY AND IS DOING, BECAUSE IT IS SO PERSONAL, MEANINGFUL AND RELEVANT.
Message maps are scripted and proven
- used in the first hour of a crisis
amount of time which is the benchmark of communication for the community: within 32 minutes
- think back to Virginia Tech, that is how long it took them to get a message out (they were slow)
School district did not have a message alert system (which you have 2 vendors here selling these)
- Twitter is now being used for crisis communication
- which one is better, I don’t know
PARTICIPANT SAID: HAVING ONE IS THE KEY
You need some flexibility
- you don’t just run with what you have, you might change some words
- you have groundwork for an effective message
Target messages for 6th to 8th grade level readers
- be crystal clear
So select for each situation
- the key message
- supporting facts 1, 2 and 3
example situation could be a tornado
- can do this pre- and post- event
“In an emergency, our future may hang on a few words, provided by someone in authority, as we face a fateful decision.”
- Risk communication expert Baruch Fischoff, The Washingtonton Post
Question from Jay: who is your key communicator
- best if that is your superintendent
- ask your superintendent if they would like to be “that person”
MY THOUGHT: KEY COMMUNICATORS ARE WHOEVER HAS THE ATTENTION OF THE MEDIA
realize you are not
risk communication is scientifically based
- Dr Vincent Covello helped developed message mapping (here is a link to a PDF document by Dr Covello about message mapping)
- Rudy Giuliani used message mapping after 9-11
- Here is a related PPT from - Here’s a preso I found on this topic, not provided by Jay: “How to Message Map Your Way Out of A Crisis” Friday, November 14, 2008 by Gerri Allen, Washtenaw ISD and Kristin Tank, Muskegon Area ISD
Question to Rudy, “How many have died?”
- one answer he gave: “Too many.”
Message maps can work if you have credibility
- gist is to “create the playbook”
Goal 1: teach you to create a pre-scripted “playbook” of messages, tailored to specific crisis scenarios
Goal 2: review and vet your message content with colleagues (both internal and external) and thoroughly research (ie focus groups)
Goal 3: Once complete, share it with multiple agencies
Do it together. We’re going to do this now.
27-9-3
- you have 3 key messages, you tell it in 27 words, you
It is so important to just stick to the facts with no elaboration
- don’t use terms which can be interpreted to communicate more than you’re able to
The nexus between factual information and you ability to communicate: this is why you are paid as a PR professional
- we are trying to make that curve more shallow
Selecting works is so critical here: “shots fired” rather than “a student has been shot”
- “a student has been injured” instead of “a student has been shot” if you cannot confirm a student has been shot
interesting how the journalism side of this comes at situations differently than PR
public may be starting to expect a new level of honesty
tension between being completely honest and trying to protect the public / not incite a panic
- THIS IS THE SAME REASON GIVEN FOR US OFFICIALS NOT DECLASSIFYING INFO ON UFOS
I RAISED THE ISSUE OF HOW THE SCHOOL IS PLANNING TO SPEAK TO DIFFERENT AUDIENCES DURING THE CRISIS: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT GETTING A MESSAGE OUT TO THE NEWS MEDIA AND PARENTS. THIS IS ALSO ABOUT STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS IN THE BUILDING, ON THE CAMPUS WHERE THE EVENT IS HAPPENING. OTHERS CONSTITUENTS TOO.
Many schools are locked down from Facebook and other tools so PR people and administrators can’t use them
- get these unblocked readily in a crisis
I MAINTAIN THESE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES SHOULD BE UNLOCKED NOW, NOT JUST IN A CRISIS. THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL SHOULD BE WHOLLY DIFFERENT THAN THAT OF A PRISON. THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT SHOULD INCREASINGLY REFLECT THE REAL WORLD OUTSIDE. THIS IS A BALANCE OF CONTROL - I AM NOT ADVOCATING FOR NO FILTERING. OF COURSE WE NEED A BASIC LEVEL OF FILTERING. THE ASSUMPTION IN MANY SCHOOLS TODAY, HOWEVER, IS THAT A DRACONIAN / TOTALITARIAN LEVEL OF CONTENT FILTERING IS ACCEPTABLE, GOOD, NEEDED, ETC. THIS IS WRONG, NOT RIGHT, AND NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. THAT IS THE FOCUS OF “UNMASKING THE DIGITAL TRUTH.”
lock down doesn’t translate well into Spanish, for hispanic community members
- translation issues for these messages are absolutely critical
- largest audience for OKCPS is hispanic
Some schools and police agencies changing “lock-down” to the term “stay put, stay tuned”
I AM THINKING THIS CONVERSATION BUILDS A GOOD CASE FOR STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND OTHERS TO USE A COMMON TWITTER HASHTAG. THERE IS NO DOUBT WHEN KIDS AND ADULTS ARE IN LOCKDOWN IN A SITUATION TODAY, THEY ARE GOING TO BE ON THEIR CELL PHONES, TEXTING, ETC. IF YOU HAVE SCHOOL CONSTITUENTS ALREADY TWITTERING USING A COMMON HASHTAG, THEN THE SCHOOL COULD MONITOR THOSE TEXT MESSAGES AND ACTUALLY GET INFO “OUT” OF THE SCHOOL FROM THOSE ON THE SCENE. OF COURSE THE MEDIA AND OTHERS CAN AND LIKELY WOULD BE DOING THIS AS WELL.
Interesting question at our table: Do you want to update your marquee / sign out front of the school with a message about the crisis?
- you may not want a reporter doing a standup report in front of the sign, if it says there is a school shooting
MY THOUGHT: YOU HAVE DO PUT MESSAGES ON YOUR SIGN OUTSIDE WITH THE IDEA THAT IT WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHED AND PRESERVED. IT WOULD BE BEST TO HAVE A PRE-SETUP MESSAGE FOR YOUR SIGN THAT ASKS PEOPLE TO REFERENCE YOUR ALERT MESSAGING SYSTEM (WHETHER THAT IS JUST YOUR WEBSITE, TWITTER, A COMMERCIAL SMS PLATFORM, ETC.)
Now we are role playing different situations, participants are in pairs, quickly coming up with responses
Does anyone have a police radio in your office? You all should have one, and it should be on, on a charger.
- $60 at Radio Shack
FairFax public schools is so large, they have some kind of bus accident every day
When do you begin to act? Once you have an “incident”
- then notify the community, that is reportable
“I think the biggest lesson learned from that whole situation at Virginia Tech is don’t wait, once you have an incident. Start notifying the community.”
- Carols Holmes, Spokesperson, Delaware State University said.
Now listening to a vendor talk about his SMS alert messaging system
- they have all their hardware in-house, they don’t use any 3rd party products
- Twitter and other digital tools are never better than the power of your voice, your superintendent’s voice
These are a few notes I jotted down on my iPhone using EverNote during our opening “networking” activity at the Oklahoma School Public Relations Association conference today at Quartz Mountain. This was the format: Everyone was given a slip of paper with a number and seven different numbers in a random order, which corresponded to tables in the room. Leaders read a question, and then each table had seven minutes for everyone to talk: 60 seconds per person. The leader used a stopwatch and announced when 60 seconds were up for each group. We rotated to seven different tables, although there was one person at each table who just stayed. This was a GREAT way to start the day, we got to know many new folks and also start discussing the issues on peoples’ minds today. SOME OF MY LATER REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS.
Issues that came up right away as critical for public relations success in schools:
- Integrity
- Transparency
- Authenticity
Control issues for logo important in some cases
- stopping teachers from making their own flyers
Question: What one communications tool would you like to have if you were stranded on a desert island
- UK crank charger for phones are available now!
- we agreed a satellite phone or mirror would be excellent
Which is more important: face to face relationships or social networking
One participant: I’m not about to put up school facebook page, how can we control it?
Question setting up which is more important: face to face or social media
- I THINK THIS IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY. SOCIAL MEDIA IS ONE TO MANY AT TIMES, BUT IT IS ALSO FREQUENTLY ONE TO ONE AND IT’S ABOUT CONVERSATIONS AND TRANSPARENCY, NOT ABOUT TRADITIONAL BROADCAST COMMUNICATION.
We do polling so we are in control of what students voice
Rogers state, OU, used Twitter this past winter for alert messaging
How do you know the info is accurate? That is why you must trust a tv station
Program yammer instead of edmodo
- you can create groups for text alerts
Importance of telling your own story to higher ups
Vital importance of work metrics and project tracking, documenting individual contributions to projects
Importance of making relational connections with students, retreats, making connections
You cannot be friends with the media
It is always on the record, never think you are off the record
Great networking activity, labeled tables with numbers
Chamber of commerece has program for creating random numbers
Good question: Tell failure story
Lessons learned:
- ask more questions, figure out what people really want and need
- learning to say no, ties into justifying your existence
- instead of saying no, say “we can do that if….”
- idea of a triangle: time, quality, budget - client can control 2 of those, you get the other one
- be a good listener
- give selective advice to your superintendent, knowing when to give
- be the pulse of the community
- do more than what is expected of you
This podcast is a recording of a presentation shared by Beth Knittle titled, “All a Twitter about Twitter: Micro-Blogging as a Professional Networking Tool.” Beth shared this presentation on November 19, 2008, at the MASSCUE 2008 conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I helped out a little bit sharing some ideas too during the session. The official program description was: Twitter is a free social messaging service for staying connected in real- time, using the web, your phone, or IM. It is a cross between chat and micro-blogging. Twitter can play a key role in developing a learning environment. Participating in the network can provide just-in-time support and continued learning, and it facilitates a better understanding of the people you collaborate with. Come discover some tips and tricks to make Twitter work for you. (We’ll also examine Plurk, another Twitter- like tool.) Wesley Fryer, a world-class Twitterer, will join the discussion.
Podcast310: All a Twitter about Twitter: Micro-Blogging as a Professional Networking Tool by Beth Knittle (MASSCUE 2008) [01:03:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1540)
I have not made time the past several weeks to listen to and moderate new VoiceThread comments which others have left on digital stories my children and I have made on the site the past few years. Since we’re on Spring Break, my girls and I took some time to go through the VoiceThread comments today. We have 226 new VoiceThread comments to listen to from the past 3 weeks– most of these VoiceThreads have the default “comment moderation turned on” so we have to click “show comment” for these to show up for others. The vast majority of these were text comments. I’d estimate less than 25% are audio recorded comments. Only 1 was an attempted video comment: I have yet to see a successful video recorded comment on a VoiceThread I’ve created or my kids have made. I’ve successfully left video comments on VoiceThreads created by others, so I know the technology works. I think it is relatively rare for kids and teachers in schools today to have readily usable webcams, or to feel comfortable leaving video comments on a website.
We have now received hundreds of VoiceThread comments in all, and of these I’d say we’ve ONLY received three or four which are offensive or not appropriate. We do receive a fair number of “practice comments,” which very well could be the first comments students and others have left on a read/write website like VoiceThread. Some of these are just doodles on the slides. My practice is to delete comments like those, but leave any comment which is appropriate and reasonably on topic / addressing the VoiceThread itself in some way. I posted earlier about the issues raised here back in January 2009, on “VoiceThread Vandalism and our need to encourage constructive media creation.”
Today we came across a very mean and inappropriate comment, and I am sharing it (in a partially censored form) for several reasons.
At the outset, let’s remember we have received OVER 500 comments on VoiceThreads, and about 4 of them have fallen in to this mean / inappropriate category. That’s less than 1%, about 0.8%. Too often when it comes to social media situations, people have a tendency to overgeneralize on “the outliers” and as a result reach out-of-balance conclusions which are inaccurate. I’m sharing this story not so readers will conclude, “Gosh, social media can be really scary, we shouldn’t ever do this at our school or with our own children.” Instead, I’m sharing this to discuss the realities of social media interaction and discuss how many tools today permit content moderation. Particularly in our litigious U.S. society, I think comment moderation on classroom VoiceThreads and other social media sites is an imperative. The last thing any social media educational innovator wants is for a negative comment like this to go public just as a student blogging or digital storytelling initiative is getting started, and have parents and/or the media take an isolated incident and interpret / perceive / amplify it as “the norm” for social media sharing.
That said, one of the key ideas I hope you’ll take away from this post is that COMMENT MODERATION is ESSENTIAL for publicly posted social media projects by students. VoiceThread turns on comment moderation by default, and I think this is a good policy. What VoiceThread still lacks, and I hope they’ll add sometime soon, is the ability to “flag” someone’s comment which is inappropriate so VoiceThread administrators can attempt to take appropriate action and notify the individual’s teacher, if that person’s account is registered under / as a “child account” of an educator VoiceThread account. Since there is not an option to flag offensive VoiceThread comments like this, my procedures to deal with this were:
Do NOT delete the comment. Keep it hidden via comment moderation. If you delete it, the “evidence is gone” and VoiceThread admins can’t readily find it and research it to attempt some kind of communication with the author or the author’s teacher.
Copy the direct URL to the VoiceThread comment. I track VoiceThread comments using the RSS feed for comments which is provided in the VoiceThread user account area. I track this RSS feed as one of several I monitor in my desktop Safari web browser. Each comment has a direct URL which can be copied to readily alert VoiceThread admins of exactly which comment needs attention.
Since there is not an option within VoiceThread to flag a comment like this and notify the site admins, I sent a FlickrMail to Steve Muth, who is one of the VoiceThread co-founders. (Karen Montgomery and I interviewed Steve and Ben Papell back in January 2008 about VoiceThread on the Technology Shopping Cart.) I sent Steve the URL to the offending VoiceThread with an explanatory note.
In the past when this has happened, Steve initially coached me to NOT delete the original VT comment, so it could be tracked. In at least one past case he’s been able to contact the teacher who the student user leaving the VoiceThread was registered “under,” so that teacher could address this with the student. In this situation today, Steve reported that the account from which this comment originated was a freely registered one, so there is no way to tell who it belongs to. He banned the user from VoiceThread, which automatically deletes all comments they’ve left on the entire website, but that same person could (of course) simply create a new account and again leave offensive comments for others.
This situation is inevitable and unavoidable, in my view, on a website which permits open and unmoderated registration. It is very important to note that in addition to addressing this by MODERATING submitted comments to VoiceThread and other social media sites, this can also be addressed by having your students (and even parents) participate in a social media environment where membership is moderated. Ed.VoiceThread is an example of a commercial site which provides this. Everyone in the Ed.VoiceThread community is a KNOWN entity: There are NO anonymous accounts. Our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community, which we’ve created on the website Ning, is another example, since our project administrators MODERATE new members. In both of these cases, there are NOT any “anonymous” members of the learning community / social network. Anonymity and the perception of anonymity is often a basic problem which can lead to issues like these with inappropriate social media comments. By maintaining an accountable learning community, perceptions of anonymity can be more effectively addressed and hopefully curtailed.
I want to conclude this post by providing some examples of how WONDERFUL it has been and continues to be, on balance, for my children to receive feedback for their ideas and media creations on VoiceThread as well as our family learning blog from a social media audience. This is one of the new comments which we read and listened to today which was submitted to Rachel’s “Getting a New Haircut” VoiceThread by a student at the Kamehameha School in Hawaii.
How wonderful to receive positive feedback like this! My daughter Rachel, who is now 5 and created this VoiceThread two years ago when she was 3, really enjoys listening to many of the comments which people have submitted to this digital story and hearing us read the text comments to her.
There are now almost 300 approved comments on the “New Haircut” VoiceThread, and it would take a LONG time to listen to or read them all. For this reason, tonight I used Audio Hijack Pro to create this short, 1 minute and 47 second sampling of comments from visitors on Sarah’s “Who Was Helen Keller?” VoiceThread and Rachel’s “Getting a New Haircut” VoiceThread. I uploaded this audio file (for free, of course) to my account on edublogs.tv. I amplified several of the recordings in Audacity, which I used to piece these recorded mp3s together. Note the last comment I included is shared first in Spanish, then in English. Several of the commenters on these VoiceThreads are people living in foreign countries. This may not seem like a big deal to our students in twenty years, but at this point having international feedback on a project or on your ideas really IS a big deal because it is so unusual. (At least it is for kids in our Oklahoma schools where my kids attend.)
Youth Voices is a meeting place where students and their teachers share, distribute, and discuss their inquiries and digital work online. It’s a space where teachers nurture student-to-student conversations, collaborations, and civic actions that result from publishing and commenting on each others texts, images, audio and video.
Our kids need social networking sandboxes to publish content and learn together in, alongside teachers, librarians, administrators and parents. This was a key recommendation of the 2008 “CREATING & CONNECTING / Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking” report by the National School Boards Association. If students in your classroom already have a school-connected social networking sandbox website to utilize and publish within, kudos to the classroom and/or community leaders who have supported that web environment. If you don’t, this is an important conversation to get started and continue in your school community.
This podcast is a recording of Bob Martin’s presentation at the 2009 COSN Conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11th. Bob is a technology leader for MORENET, a nonprofit providing a variety of technology services (including connectivity as an ISP) for over 500 schools in the state of Missouri. MORENET is part of the University of Missouri. Over the past year, Bob and others at MORENET have led a series of roundtable discussions with a variety of educational stakeholders in Missouri, talking about the issues surrounding the use of web 2.0 technologies in schools. Through their research, which Bob summarized and synthesized in this session, MORENET leaders have identified significant disconnects between the vision of educational technology and school change leaders regarding web 2.0 technologies, and the framework / outlook of many other educational leaders in schools who have and continue to enact policies which (in many cases) obstruct the effective use of web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. Many thanks to Bob and others at MORENET for conducting and sharing these research findings. We need more dialog about these issues in our schools, and organizations like MORENET are ideally situated to catalyze these conversations to get school leaders thinking differently about the ways communication and collaboration tools are being leverated (or not utilized) by students and teachers in their schools today.
Podcast307: The Challenges of Integrating Web 2.0 in Missouri Schools by Bob Martin [63:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (920)
These are my notes from Dawn Danker’s presentation “SINGing the Praises of NING” at the Oklahoma Technology Association (OTA) on 11 February 2009. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.
My heart is with kids and with educators
- background as an early childhood educator,
- helping shape human beings for the future
We believe in creating the environment in every school where you would want your child to attend
- we are not another thing to do, we are HOW you do it
- it does not cost anything to join our network, it requires a commitment
Ning has opened up a wonderful Pandora’s box for us in A+ Schools this year
- Ning is an online platform for people to create their own social networks
a social network is people connecting, collaborating together, with the same goals but perhaps different contexts
- like small communities
Why did we start a Ning?
- we were looking for ways to collaborate
- we are all about networking
– 52 schools across the state
– collaboration is one of our “essentials”
Research
- we have lots of research which points to the benefits (which does include raised test scores) when people
Remember the person Will talked about in his keynote (Kansas political candidate) who raised a lot of
Purposes of OK A+ Ning
- networking
- common purpose
- collaboration
We heard lots of responses
- why do that?
- it is just going to be another thing we have to do!
Clear goals
- celebrate the network (gives everyone a chance to share and pat others on the back)
- online professional development (asynchronous PD)
- establish a PLC (professional learning community) across the state
Collaboration may sound great, but there is often a lot of apprehension about it
We created the A-Team for Oklahoma A+ Schools (teachers would receive a new MacBook laptop to use if they agreed to the following things. We had 10 teachers say yes, we had 10 Macbooks to use)
- participate in at least one training session per month
- contribute to team plans and ideas toward developing new workshops
- commit to two hours per month for personal study and research to contribute at monthly meetings
- providing at least one professional development workshop to A+ schools
hosted PD is very expensive for us: travel, food, hotels, supplies, etc.
A-Team Objective 1:
- to explore, understand, and apply Apple computer software and Web-based applications
A-Team Objective 2:
- to develop training and workshops to provide to the A+ network
Technology foci: Google Docs, Ning, iPhoto
- had some initial, preliminary training face-to-face
- even basics of password tracking, protection, and recovery
Then we gave teachers 1 month to play with their MacBook and then got back together
- let the teachers showcase what they discovered
- we had everything from the Finder file structure, to someone who actually posted an original podcast online
- now we had a classroom with
Asychronous learning
- kept things as broad as we could without being too specific, because we didn’t want high-end users to feel like things were being too watered down
Assignments
- post integrated unit information into Google Docs
- collect at least 5 photos of the A+ Essentials in practice, correlated to your integrated unit(s) as you identified in the Google Doc
– use a digital camera or the photo booth on your Apple MacBook
- Utilize iPhoto to enhance/improve each image
- In the Ning, resond to discussion 1: What techniques did you use in iPhoto to enhance and improve….
…more…
we only jumped in when no one responded in 24 hours in discussions
Another hiccup
- in some schools the IT and superintendents in the district had the Ning website we created blocked
If you have a Ning website used by teachers and students in school environments, you can ask to have the ads taken off your Ning site
- you can pay to have ads removed from your Ning site, then, in about 24 hours
I DID NOT KNOW THIS!
We still had some people say we are not going to unblock it
- understand a Ning is NOT the same thing as Facebook, has a different purpose for the Ning we’ve created
- our Ning is being used as an educational platform
In many situations in education we are using umbrella statements to try and cover all situations
Bullies
- what is it like at recess? How do you handle playground bullying?
with a Ning you are able to moderate groups
- like you do as a classroom teacher, being a facilitator for learning
liability concerns
- we have to exercise due diligence to investigate if there is a question about bullying and it being tied back to schools
Predators
- how is a predator going to get on your network that you have to give people permission to join?
- it is very unlikely that a predator is going to get onto your network?
- bigger question: how do we protect our kids from predators?
– we talk about stranger danger
– we have dialog with our children to help prepare and protect them
CIPA and AUP
- both an be our friend in many ways
CIPA simply says protect your children / students from pornographic images
- it does not mean block your students from the entire Internet
we have made CIPA into this BIG overarching conversation
- bandwidth is not part of CIPA
- neither is email archiving
We need to educate ourselves on exactly what the law says
- then make sure your AUP backs that up
- AUP is in place for consequences based on user behaviors
Teachers need to be treated like adults
- they need to be trusted more than students on the network
If teachers or students violate the AUP, then there needs to be consequences
- here is the layer few people thing about: if you deny a teacher access to the Internet if they violate your AUP, how will they submit grades? Do attendance?
Best way to provide a controlled social network is to use a Ning
- you can control access by invitation, or moderate
35 teachers in Wellston, Oklahoma
Oklahoma City: 79 different campuses
- regardless of size, we need to be collaborating
CIPA and AUP
discussion in groups about the value of collaboration just within your school
- someone talking about collaboration within media specialists within Oklahoma City Public Schools
- it is almost impossible to get everyone together at the same time, in the same place
Teachers like everyone else need a goal and a timeline
- we need deadlines and being tied to a deliverable date
Some of our reactions at the end
- we had started to use the Ning in our office
- some didn’t see the value because there were not any defined objectives
- when we turned that loose on the “A Team”
– they never want to be in the room with us again!
– they are dying for their next assignment
A new group is now coming on board
- those educators who have been equipped and been in the network are creating lesson plans, ideas, videos, [AND OTHER DIGITAL MEDIA ARTIFACTS] which can be used by everyone in the network
Web 2.0 tools
- are so very important in education
- many of us listened to Dr. Scott McLeod at the OU K-20 Midwinter conference
- what did he say he saw coming for education: eventually the door will be opened for us to really use these tools in education (our excuses will be removed)
discussion time
- we are excited about netbooks!
- perhaps we are NOT too far away from realizing the potential of using these tools in our schools
Web 2.0 tools can be overwhelming
- Scott McLeod said at K-20 Midwinter “Our kids have tasted the honey”
- after eating lots of bread and butter sandwiches, our kids are now craving the things they have tasted digitally
- kids are powering down when they go to school, they are powering up when they go home
There are so many advantages of using the environment which students
same stones are obstacles
- bullying
- predators
- CIPA
- AUP
I mentioned a Ning to our youth minister at church
- it took 15 minutes to setup a Ning and groups with images
- now the preacher is blogging there, and his podcasts are being updated there
“If you are not prepared to be wrong — you will not come up with anything original. People are being educated out of their creative capacity. We do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it. As far as education for children, we need to educate their whole being. Picasso said “All children are born artists.” - Sir Ken Robinson
How do we remain artists as we grow up?
- discussion
I THINK A BIG PART OF THIS IS NOT JUST STAYING IN OUR COMFORT ZONE
discussion
- don’t let fear hold back your imagination
- play
- hard fun (that is the way to get kids attention - Dr Seymour Papert)
Action steps
- how can web 2.0 tools help you become a better teacher
- how can you connect to teachers with similar issues
- how can you work smarter not harder
push back on PLC movement: I don’t have time
- this can integrate well into our busy lives, it can be near-realtime
Get a network!
Get a professional network
- Twitter
- TeacherTube: make an account
- follow people
- sign in to make a blog, it doesn’t have to be a school-based blog
Begin building your PLN (professional learning network)
1- Join a professional social network
2- find and follow blogs
3- join a microblogging network
4- Lurk for awhile
5-
Remember you can also follow ISTEconnects on Twitter. We’re using the free Wordpress plug-in “Twitter Tools” to automatically post new blog entries over on Twitter. I like the plug-in, but it’s a bit of a hassle when you need to edit a post, as you must de-activate and then re-activate it to avoid a duplicate tweet.
I referenced this in my post on the iPhone Ustream application, but it bears repeating here as well: Remember Educon 2.1 is coming up this weekend in Philly! Even if you won’t be able too attend in person, there’s gonna be a whole lotta Ustreamin’ goin’ on there I’m sure. Now with a WiFi connection, virtual attendees will simply need an iPhone and the free Ustream application! Amazing.
I received “Twitter spam” today from four different educators whose Twitter accounts were compromised in some way, either by a phishing scheme, a website with malicious operators which solicits Twitter credentials, or hackers. What are the lessons learned here?
Use a secure password on your twitter account and change it periodically.
Be VERY wary of EVER putting your twitter password into a website that isn’t the official Twitter site, or into a program you run on your computer or handheld that you can’t verify to trust. Just like bank and credit card phishing schemes, people are now phishing with fake twitter sites, so beware of links to Twitter you receive in email.
If your twitter account has been hacked, try to login and change your password to something secure immediately. Then follow the above suggestions to KEEP it secure and private. If you have lost control of your twitter account, then contact the Twitter support team directly for assistance.
I blocked the user accounts from which my Twitter spam originated today, and appear to have been compromised. I am hoping that will mean I won’t receive further twitter direct message spam messages from their accounts. So far, so good. I also tried to contact the individuals whose accounts were sending spam either via email or leaving comments on their blogs or social networking pages. 3 of the 4 people included website links in their public Twitter profile, so I was able to attempt electronic contact to give them a heads up. One person said she’d been inundated with emails from friends about it, because evidently they had also received the spam direct messages via Twitter. She hadn’t used her Twitter account in four months, since August, so I’m not really sure how someone managed to take control of her account.
Alan Levine touted praises for “Andy M’s Yahoo Pipe for putting your twitter followers locations on a map” this evening, but with all these examples of Twitter phishing I’m reluctant to put my Twitter credentials into ANY website other than Twitter.
Anyone have suggestions on how to decide which new websites to trust with your Twitter credentials, and which ones are better to avoid? I’m thinking the conservative path of not trusting ANY of them with Twitter credentials (including a password) is the best policy. I still am going to keep using Twitter Karma, however, unless I hear or read of a problem with it– I LOVE its functionality and haven’t found another site to match it yet.
Most people probably need some reminders and proddings to follow good password security procedures. The Joomla Installation Guide (PDF) by Andy Wallace includes a list of guidelines as good as I’ve seen anywhere regarding password security. On page 13 under “Secure Password Thinking” he writes:
Any password you create for Joomla!, MySQL, Apache, or in fact any passwords you ever create should be
made as secure as possible.
Typically this would mean:
using a minimum of 6 characters -the more the better but 8-10 should be an ideal
a mixture of upper and lower case alphabet characters, numbers, and permitted special characters
for example -, _, *, $, !, %, although the use of these may be governed by the host settings on
shared or virtual hosted, remote servers
do not use easily identifiable passwords for example, birthdays, children’s or family names or words that could be easily associated with you
in fact try not to use real words at all, replace letters with their numeric equal so the word ocean could become 0c34n (yes – I know it is a real word and there are only 5 characters but it is just an
example) try 0c34n!c – and no do not now use that either
another way is to think entirely off-the-wall. Think of a favourite novel for example, The Hitch-hikers
Guide to the Galaxy, and then take say the first and last letter from each word giving a sequence of
letters (as indicated by the underscores):
Example 1. t e h s g e t o t e g y
this clearly means absolutely nothing but it could still be traced – eventually – by a determined
cracker so let us mix it up a bit more:
Example 2. T 3 h $ 9 3 t 0 T 3 g Y
but you can now see that it would be a pretty illogical logic that would need to be applied to even
come close to cracking that and when the additional security features of the various platforms is then
laid over the top of this – we would not want to say it is impossible to crack, but they would take a
very long time, and of course you should regularly change your passwords anyway.
if you keep a written record of your passwords always ensure they too are kept secure and safely out
of the way of prying eyes
despite the temptation, try to avoid using the same password for all your various access
requirements, both at home and at work
When I went to work for AT&T in 2006 I was amazed and a bit shocked how many different passwords I had to create for different accounts, and how often I was forced to change them. In many cases, employees were/are FORCED to use secure passwords and change them often. This is not popular, but it is smart, both for organizations and for individuals.
It’s time for us all to “act smart” when it comes to password security, for Twitter and for other sets of login credentials. The next time someone takes you on a fishin’ trip, make sure it’s the kind that starts with “f” and not “ph!”
This Lee LeFever / Commoncraft Show style 5 minute video by Wendy Drexler paints a descriptive picture of how students can learn in a connectivist style, and the role of the teacher in this new learning landscape.
Near the close of the video, Wendy uses the following terms to describe the role of the teacher in a Connectivist learning paradigm:
Learning Architect
Modeler
Learning Concierge
Connected Learning Incubator
Network Sherpa
Synthesizer
Change Agent
I love these terms, particularly the use of architect, concierge and sherpa to describe the facilitative leadership role of the 21st century teacher.
If you are not already subscribed to Wendy Drexler’s blog, “Teach Web 2.0,” I highly recommend you add it to your aggregator. The Teach Web 2.0 Wiki she helped start and continues to shepherd is a fantastic resource for teachers, offering a wide variety of teacher-created reviews of different web 2.0 tools and websites useful in classroom learning contexts. For a short (12 minute) summary of the website and how you can utilize it to form a local “web 2.0 consortium” at your school with other teachers, check out Wendy’s K12Online08 presentation in the Leading the Change strand, “Teaching Web 2.0 - Everything you need in one place.”
Thanks to Wendy, this morning on my way to work I learned about Museum Box, a site providing:
..the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box.
If it is possible to gain good and useful information in an informal way then why do schools try so hard to discourage teachers from participation in a PLN? [Professional Learning Network] Some schools go so far as to tell teachers that they cannot even use Facebook on their own time.
(The above link is my own addition, it was not in Beth’s original post.)
What do you think are the best explanations for this sort of behavior and policies by schools and school officials? I perceive that lawsuit fear and a lack of vision for 21st century learning requirements can explain a great deal. Particularly with larger school districts, but sometimes with smaller ones as well, a fear of lawsuits seems to pervade many discussions relating to technology and social networking. When you consult some school lawyers for their opinions on issues relating to technology, often you will receive very conservative advice. “Block it all.” “Institute a policy which bans all cell phones from student use, in as many contexts as possible.” “If you don’t have a policy which bans the device or the technology, then you can’t enforce disciplinary action for misuse as easily.” These are all things I’ve heard school lawyers give as advice to educators regarding interactive, social digital technologies.
I think a lack of vision explains a great deal as well. I continue to be taken aback by the WIDE gulf which separates the “digitally connected” from “the disconnected” in our schools and communities.
It is not an exaggeration to say that those who are digitally connected today are literally living in a different world compared to those who are disconnected. In this context, “using email” does NOT qualify one to claim “connected” status. Just as my trip to Shanghai a year ago in September introduced me to a country and culture completely different from any other I’d previously experienced, the digitally connected world is in many ways just as foreign and formidable to many adults today who may regard themselves as digital conscientious objectors.
David Jakes as well as Gary Stager are two educators I’ve heard challenge the idea that there are “new literacies” for the 21st century. I agree with the contention that critical thinking and higher order thinking are not “new” ideas or skills. I think it’s hard to disagree that the information landscape has changed and continues to change in fundamental ways, however. In a different landscape, I don’t think it’s a stretch to conclude that new navigational strategies and skills are needed to effectively get around and communicate. We need to help our educational leaders understand both the nature of the changing information landscape, as well as the ways educators as well as students need to be supported in practicing old as well as new literacy skills in this dynamic context.
Besides lawsuit fears and a lack of vision, what else do you think might explain school officials’ policies which ban the use of social networking technologies that support professional learning, both at school and at home?
Wesley Fryer is the author of Moving at the Speed of Creativity. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer(s). See my disclosure policy for more info. I am wfryer on Diigo.
Podcast321: Getting a Global Perspective - The Power of Collaborative Projects by Dyane Smokorowski [01:00:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (882)
Flickr/wfryer
Myspace/openingthedoor
Facebook/Wesley Fryer
Linkedin/wesfryer
Twitter/wfryer
YouTube/wfryer
Del.icio.us/wfryer
Wikipedia/wfryer
Wishlist/Wesley Fryer
Technorati/wfryer
EyesRight/wfryer
