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Blogging – two years in

Today, it’s two years since I first began writing this blog. Quite honestly, writing has changed everything about how I conduct my life. To some extent I’m driven; when you start something and then discover you have an audience, you feel the need to feed it. In the early days I posted every day. Six months in I realised this wasn’t necessary and I started posting less frequently. One of the things that has kept me posting regularly is ‘School’s out Friday‘. If I do nothing else, I always do my best to get a post up on a Friday – I like having a constant, something that readers know will be there that adds levity to the usually serious nature of the postings here. I wonder, if not for School’s out Friday, would I be contributing as frequently as I do?

I’ve found it harder to come up with what I consider interesting posts. When I started, a lot of this blog was about finding new tools and talking about them. I think it’s become more philosophical; I feel a need to add to the conversations but I want to be contributing something worthy, not just fluff and nonsense. That brings with it it’s own pressure; once again, it’s the self inflicted kind. If there’s something I know about myself it’s that I am my harshest critic. I rarely begin posts and not publish them; most of the time I can get something together quite quickly, but it’s the thinking about them prior to the writing that eats up time.

But what wonders have befallen me since I took the plunge and exposed my thoughts to the world! I am so enriched by this experience. I’ve been able to interact with readers and share insights. I’ve had opportunities to present at conferences, I’ve travelled to Shanghai and met members of my PLN face to face, I’ve been invited to join a Reference Group informing the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) as they prepare a Digital Research Network, I’ve been the recipient of The John Ward Award from the School Library Association of Victoria, and, in 10 days, I travel to the United States where I’ll get to experience the wonders of New York City and the Educon 2.2 conference in Philadelphia. In April I’ll be presenting at ACEC’s Digital Diversity conference and in June, I will travel to the States again to present at ISTE in Colorado. None of those things would be possible had I not taken a bit of a risk and started to write this blog.

So, thank you, Lucacept. You were a little germ of an idea that I thought might be interesting. You’ve grown into a whole lot more, and now, you are a part of me. You’ve spawned a different life for your creator; I have no cognitive surplus, I’m thinking pretty much 24/7, but I like it. Stick around. : )

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Seth Godin on libraries – take heed

Seth Godin has written a brief, but pretty accurate in my view, summation of the future of libraries. I’ll post it in it’s entirity here, but make sure you start reading Seth. I do nearly every day.

The future of the library

What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?

They can’t survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.) More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That’s not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.

Here’s my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.

Once again, the net turns things upside down. The information is free now. No need to pool tax money to buy reference books. What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others.

It’s that final sentence that holds the key to survival of the Library profession, and it’s up to Library professionals to understand this and skill themselves up so that they are up to the challenge. If you’re a Librarian right now and you don’t know what Diigo or Delicious are, or how you use Twitter for real time search, or how to go about trying to find the experts out there who may be able to answer the questions your students are posing, then you better start rethinking what it is you are doing. Libraries are not going to be about the book collection forever; they’re not about that now in my opinion. They are about being a connective space; a space where reading, discussion and discovery take place. The professionals in those spaces need to be the information sherpa enabling new understandings of how we go about finding out what it is we need. It means letting go of knowledge and giving it up to empower others. Don’t see that as a threat, view it as an opportunity. If we don’t, the information sherpas in our school are not going to be emanating from the school library. Instead, they’ll be the educational technologists out there who will rise to the fore. Missed opportunities could mean a lost profession.

Joyce Valenza, Doug Johnson and Scott McLeod have all posted responses to Seth’s post. Make sure you visit these for their insights.

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School’s out Friday

The YouTube Australia blog has just released information about the most watched videos for 2009. My daughter was happy to see her favourite band, Short Stack, featured. They’re another example of a music group using a medium like Youtube to go viral and get themselves a record contract. The video above was listed in the top five most watched animal-related videos. And deservedly so in my opinion. Extreme Shepherding is quirky, clever and funny. Worth watching – do so and brighten up your day.

Hot weather here in Melbourne at the moment – looks like lazy days ahead coming my way. Hope you all have a great weekend. Make the most of it. : )

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Can the Web sustain free?

So many of us are grateful for the Web; it allows us seemingly unlimited access to information at the press of a button, and most of it’s free. I saw an interview with Bryce Courteney recently. He talked of how the Web has changed the research he conducts for the novels he writes. What used to take him 8 months now takes 7 weeks. I often think of my College days and the heavy books I would cart home and the hours and hours spent in the State Library of Victoria. Life as a Uni student must be markedly different now; so much is available with an internet connection and access to online resources from Libraries.

That’s why this is worth reading. We have to start questioning how sustainable all of this is if so much of it is ‘free’. Some valid points are raised about the effect ‘free’ will have on our economy; can people keep on developing new apps and products or give away what they know without being able to monetise their investment? I’ve quoted a sizeable chunk from the interview below, but would urge you to read the entire interview as it raises other interesting discussion points about the future of the Web and what it will mean to us.

“JARON LANIER: Well, you know, I would like to see us shake-in, instead of a shakeout, in the sense that it’s true that there’s a lot of junk online, and we have to filter it and so forth.

But, you know, the thing that really disappoints me is that we didn’t create enough jobs, just to be very blunt about it. Ten years ago, what I thought was that the Internet was becoming a major new American industry, and what that would bring with it was, in a way, a replacement for the fading American industries, like our auto industry and our display industry.

And we have reconceived of it as something that is in a sense de-economics. We treat it as this sort of frivolous way to send things around for free. And it’s all in the service of advertising.

RAY SUAREZ: Ah, but, Jaron Lanier, you keep using the word “for free.”

JARON LANIER: Yes.

RAY SUAREZ: Isn’t that why it didn’t create any jobs? If you turn people into unpaid journalists, photographers, painters, music video producers, that’s it. It’s unpaid. How could it create a job?

JARON LANIER: Or bloggers or popular tweeters, for that matter.

I think we really made a mistake in separating the Internet from capitalism in a certain way that is bad for our country. I mean, remember, just before that, we had made a — sort of a national decision that we wanted to be this intellectual property country, where we would have things manufactured in China, but we would do the design, we would do the creative stuff.

And now what we have done is, we have forgotten that that’s what we wanted, and we’re making the intellectual stuff more and more free. And, so, we’re sort of left with less and less. And it’s just not tenable. We have to decide one way or the other and really do something to earn our keep. And I think that’s a huge problem right now.”

via After Banner Decade, Peering in on the Future of Technology | PBS NewsHour | Jan. 4, 2010 | PBS.

Part of the problem lies with advertising and how many of us have become, as Steven Hodson describes in a post on The Inquisitr, ‘ad blind’. We’ve become inured to ads on our web pages and find ways to read without them. Take Readability as an example of this. Steven argues that advertisers need to rethink their approach to advertising on the Web; the TV method of, ‘throw it at a captive audience’, just won’t cut it in this new forum. I’ve been one who has bemoaned ads on networks like Ning. I still think ad free platforms need to be developed for education, but I do understand that we may not have access to these platforms at all if they aren’t able to find a way to create income from what they offer.

Perhaps we as educators need to do what people have suggested to me in Twitter conversations; accept that ads are part and parcel of the platform and use them to teach digital literacy. Our students need to understand the business model that permeates the Web and think about it as they browse pages, upload videos and download apps. Especially if they want a job in the future; taking notice just might help provide them with an income.

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Avatar – how did they do it and how would you use it?

By now, plenty of you would have seen Avatar, James Cameron’s newest movie. I was completely blown away by the movie, and that was before I’d watched the video above. After watching this, I’m even more blown away. This really does represent a new era of movie making.

Someone left a comment on Twitter about how watching the film reminded them of how they felt when they first saw Star Wars in 1977. I had the same feeling when I was watching Avatar. I also remember being so excited to see the new installment of the Star Wars movies, the introduction of Anakin Skywalker. I vividly recall being so incredibly disappointed while watching it. It didn’t represent movie magic to me; I knew most of it was a digital creation. Avatar is different; yes, there is computer imagery, but it’s the blending of the human with the computer imagery that makes it so much more sophisticated and watchable. (in my opinion, anyway!)

I’d really like to spend time discussing Avatar with a class. I’d like to see what students make of it; are they conscious of the sub texts in the plot? Can they relate what happens on the screen to modern day conflicts or even conflicts from the past? Is some of the terminology used in the film eg: ‘shock and awe’ familiar to them? Do they sense a message to us all about the environmental impact of the way we live our lives?  What do they make of the roles of male and female characters? Why is ‘the human being’ the saviour? In fact, what would be best is to pose no questions to them at all, and instead, let them brainstorm discussion points.

Another interesting way to look at it would be to have students search the web (or Twitter!) for links to items that would pose interesting discussion topics. One such link that came to me from Tony Hollingsworth the other day was from a blog called ‘Dark Roasted Blend’ and the title of the post was, ‘10 possible sources of Avatar in Science Fiction‘.  In it, they make reference to an Ursula Le Guin novella from 1972 entitled ‘The Word for World is Forest‘. Here’s their opinion and precis of the plot;

Similarities? Well, how about a forested planet with the deeply “connected” natives, a human military raid on a huge tree-city and a subsequent retaliation of natives… some scenes seem incredibly familiar, even though Le Guin plot is markedly deeper and more sophisticated.

It makes for interesting reading. Very good fodder for a book club discussion.

There are some scathing criticisms of the film out there too, and they would prove very useful for a class to dissect. Love it, just like it, or hate it, there’s plenty in Avatar that would make for an interesting examination of film making and how it relates to and draws from the human condition.

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School’s out Friday

Happy New Year!

Yes, Sydney do it better than anyone. Fireworks, that is. You’ve probably all seen this incredible fireworks display from last night, but if you haven’t it’s so worth watching. I have to admit to being a huge fireworks fan; I seek out a display and drag the family along to any that are nearby. It would be a real treat to be in Sydney on a New Year’s Eve to experience it firsthand.  Just might have to put some serious thought into that idea…..

Hope 2010 treats all of us well! Enjoy your weekend. : )

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The era of the everyman – but, you better be good.

Today marks the beginning of a new decade. Time for reflection, but also time for analysis of where we sit. I truly believe we’ve encountered the era of the everyman, the time for the ordinary individual to have the opportunity to achieve something extroadinary.

But, you better work at being good at what you do if you think you’re going to rise above the pack and achieve everything you want. Just because you can post a video to YouTube, connect through Twitter, write a blog, and use all manner of social media networks to get yourself out there, doesn’t mean that you’re going to be the next big thing. Yes, the everyman has the opportunity to come from nowhere and make an impact, but plenty of everymen and women out there are starting to catch onto this idea. That’s why it’s vitally important we teach our students to manage their online presence well and ensure that the quality work they produce and expertise they have, can surface and inspire an audience.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I saw a television interview about Danny MacAskill, a 23 yr old Scottish urban cyclist. When Danny was a teenager, he spent countless hours riding his bike and learning how to do things with a bike that are seemingly impossible, until you see Danny doing them of course. Why was Danny the subject of a television interview? Because his flatmate took a video of his bike riding prowess, posted it on YouTube, and it got 12 million hits. Did his school identify and nurture his talent? I can’t be 100% sure, but the interview suggested his bike riding wasn’t exactly looked on favourably in the community he lived in. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if he had have been encouraged to explore his talent to his full potential while at school? Thankfully, Danny’s now making a fully fledged career out of his talent, and is talking to students about how to do what it is he does. No doubt quite a few of those kids will take note of how he came to be living his dream and may act on the example.

I’m a little disappointed that the elective I proposed for this school year, Learning U, didn’t get enough interest from our student body to warrant a class running. (It was renamed ‘ICT’ in the elective handbook – don’t think that helped it any : (  ) The idea of the course was that students would explore their passion and use the tools of social media to connect and learn from others who also share a similar passion. I think it would have helped guide some students to understand how it is you can produce quality content that will help you rise to the top. So, how will I convey this understanding without the forum I was hoping for? I’m not quite sure yet, but I know I’ll be doing my best to help the students at my school to understand that you can use the available tools, and the connections that are possible with these tools, to your advantage. But they’ll need to remember, quality counts while you’re at it.

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iPhone perils

I posted a little while back about the iPhone and the love affair I’m having with it. That love affair continues, but not without a slight bitter aftertaste at the moment. Last week, the iPhone and I engaged in some heavy duty handling while I was in Sydney, and now I’m faced with, horror of horrors, restriction of service due to exceeding my credit cap.

(‘Colors’, by incase designs. Accessed from Flickr.)

I feel a bit stupid really. You hear about kids who get a phone and run up exhorbitant bills and here I am, a seemingly responsible adult, doing just that!

So, the upshot of all this is that I’ll be reviewing my plan and upgrading so that I can continue to check email, update Twitter, browse webpages, download and use apps, and maybe, just maybe, find some time to call a friend or two on the phone. It really is an amazing device. Take a look at Josh Catone’s post, ‘Back to School: Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students’. Some great Apps are featured and I think you’ll see why we should be embracing these devices and allowing use of them in classrooms. My son and daughter received iTouch’s for Christmas; to my way of thinking, they should be permitted to access school networks and use these devices in school for educational purposes. Now, just need to convince them to download a few of these Apps rather than Bubblewrap or Papertoss!

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School’s out Friday

Some Christmas lights for Christmas Day. Another person out there who’s put The Black Eyed Pea’s, ‘I’ve gotta feeling’, to good use.

I’ve sat through two Christmas dinners today, one of which I cooked. I think you can probably guess from this that I’m full to pussy’s bow. That’s something my Mother often says, and yes, those words were uttered today!

I hope all of you who read this blog have a wonderful Christmas and New Year with family and friends. : )

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What does free mean?

Free, in terms of this blog, means giving away knowledge. I’m quite comfortable with that, because I think the return I get is worth it. The return is not monetary, it’s a return measured by connections and personal growth. But I have to admit to thinking thoughts that are monetary in nature. I’ve realised I have accumulated a considerable amount of knowledge, and that knowledge is now probably worth something in the world beyond teaching.

Over the course of the year I’ve found myself in conversation with people outside the field of education and many of them are fascinated by the skills I’ve acquired. They can see how they are applicable to the business world they inhabit. I’ve shown parents the ning environment we’ve created for Year 9 and you can see the lights switching on in the heads of some parents associated with business. One man quizzed me at length and was going to home to check it out to see how he could apply it to his work situation. I have a relation who can’t believe I’m not exploiting this environment and incorporating ads and the like on this blog.

I’m not doing that because credibility means something to me. Monetising this blog seems to me to be a corruption of the intentions behind it. I suppose it’s because being a teacher is one of those jobs where you are putting others before you; your intentions are to disemminate information and help others. Chris Betcher has written a post recently about the requests he’s been receiving from authors, online companies etc. to promote their wares by linking to them or discussing what they do in a post. I get those requests too; I just ignore them and don’t reply.

Right now, I think it’s vitally important that we as teachers prepare the students we teach adequately for the world of work they will be inhabiting. This world of work is starting to use the tools we are exploring in classrooms. I want my own kids prepared and I want the teachers who have them in their care to be on top of new ways of doing things. So I’ll keep sharing my knowlege and hope it makes a dent in the thinking of others.

But that doesn’t mean monetising my knowledge hasn’t crossed my mind and will no doubt continue to do so. It’s a given that investing time learning, in the time you spend away from work, has it’s costs. Just ask any family member living with a hyper connected blogger. Free means time away from loved ones, and maybe they are costs worthy of reimbursement.