Tag: learning u

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Blogs – how to set one up and write a post that gets you noticed (maybe!)

I created this presentation for Students 2.0. Blogging can be a very powerful tool for young people who want to explore their interests and connect to others with similar bent. All too often I come across student blogs that are set up as class assignments and you can feel a lacklustre involvement with many of them. It’s one of the reasons I don’t get my students writing blogs. I think that blogging is an art, something that is best pursued by people who are passionate about what they are doing, people who write because they love their subject matter and want to share it with others.

That’s the best scenario in my opinion, but I do think there is worth in exposing students to ideas about what can be achieved if you choose to push yourself out there and share your thinking with others. Particularly for kids who have specific interests and don’t realise that you can advance your cause by connecting with the right people.

I visited a school a couple of years ago where students were given the task of putting together a ‘pitch’ to a company about something they were interested in. One student was a go kart racer and had real potential to make his way to the higher ranks where you could eventually become a formula one racing driver. I was very impressed with the effort he put into his ‘pitch’ and the dedication he gave to the task. It mattered to him. I watched the teacher thank him for his efforts, but I couldn’t help but think there was an opportunity wasted at that point. If he had a teacher who understood what blogging can do for people, he could have been encouraged him to start his own and create a profile that may get noticed by those who make decisions. He could have created the digital profile he needed.

What we need in our schools are teachers with skill sets that enable our kids to be exposed to social media tools that will help them take their learning outside of school walls and give them an opportunity to connect with others. My fear is that teachers with the necessary skill sets are few and far between. Hopefully a presentation like the one above will help some teachers relay an understanding to their students.

The Elluminate session was recorded. You can follow this link to listen to me expand on the ideas presented in the slides if you so choose to.

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RSS – Bringing information to you

This is the presentation I prepared for the second session of the Students 2.0 Learning Web 2.0 series. Not a huge number of people were in the room, but hopefully there will be teachers and students out there who will find this presentation useful in their classrooms. This is the first time I’ve uploaded a presentation to Slideshare. Usually I create presentations using SlideRocket, but Elluminate likes the PowerPoint format so that is what I used this time. Doing it this way means I can upload them to Slideshare and can regularly check in to see if they have been viewed or if anyone has left a comment.

I’ve uploaded this presentation to the Learning U wiki I’ve created to support this series. On the RSS page there are other great presentations from Slideshare and YouTube to help people gain an understanding of what RSS is and what kinds of options are out there for receiving RSS feeds.

Hopefully people will find this a useful resource. It took a fair bit of time to put together, so I hope it sees sunlight somewhere!

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Student’s 2.0- what’s it all about, Jenny?

On January 1st 2010, I wrote a post called ‘The era of the everyman – but you better be good’. In it was this paragraph;

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.

Last November, I went to a dinner with Steve Hargadon, John Pearce and Jenny Ashby. While there, I talked about the Learning U idea. Steve was interested and we’ve continued to talk since about how it could be realised. The result of those discussions is Students 2.0. Here’s what it’s about;

Students 2.0 is a network for learners to connect independently with other students and with mentors–to shape your own educational paths and experiences outside of traditional institutions. It’s a place to explore passionate interests, find people to help you, and build professional competencies. Soon you’ll be forming your own virtual “Personal Learning Network” (PLN)!

I’m going to be running a series of ‘classes’ helping students to learn how to use the tools of social media. The times for these are detailed on the home page. I’m doing this not because I think learning online is all about the tools, but because I think an understanding of these tools will assist them to understand how they can use them to shape their learning experiences. I want to see students find a way to explore what it is that interests them, something our school curriculum might not be doing. It doesn’t have to be a purely academic pursuit, there are kids out there who want to be pro skaters. The fact is, whether you want to discover the cure for aids or become a pro basketballer, you would find some benefit in understanding how you use social media to connect with people who share your interests and learn how you can make your voice heard.

The network is up and running and we have seen a number of teachers join. The challenge will be developing the student community. I suppose we will be working on the ‘if you build it, they will come’ concept. Effectively, this will mean relying on teachers to inform students about its existence and leave it up to the students to decide if they join or not. The fact is, students are under pressure themselves with the expectations of school, sport, family and their social lives. This network is not going to appeal to everyone, but there are kids out there I suspect who are looking for something like this. If we can help some of these kids realise their potential in a field that interests them, then it will be a job well done.

That’s my take on Students 2.0 anyway. It’s kind of strange to read my words from January the 1st, and be contemplating at the start of April what might be possible now. Hopefully, it will evolve into a useful resource supported by teacher mentors and experts in areas of interest to the students. It’s somewhat of an experiment, and the hope is that it will prove beneficial. It may even provide a teaching model that schools can tap into. We’ll see what evolves.

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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.