Tag: Social networking

Posted on

The tweet that led to Mirka Mora: Part two.

Last week I wrote about sending out a tweet on twitter asking if anyone had a connection to Mirka Mora, as my daughter and her friends were doing a project about her and would love to get the opportunity to interview her. After some help from Lauren O’Grady,  Gina Milicia very kindly responded and set the wheels in motion. Mirka was happy to be interviewed, and my daughter and her friends conducted a phone interview that was recorded and posted to YouTube and on the wikispace they had created for the project.  At the end of the interview Mirka remarked to me that she was impressed with their astute questions and would like to invite them to afternoon tea.

Well, that very kind invitation was taken up this afternoon. My daughter and her friends, and a colleague and I, spent a very pleasant hour and a half visiting Mirka’s home sharing cheesecake and lemon tea.

Mirka Mora 001

Mirka welcomed us with a loud chorus of classical music and a warm smile. She is such a  generous soul, full of wisdom that she imparted to us over the course of our visit. One of the first things she said was that we should always praise ourselves; in other words, exhibit self belief. The stories she shared demonstrated her ability to take risks and do things that she was not always confident about. This self belief led to great success and opportunities for Mirka. She was friendly with some of the great Australian painters and recounted stories about her great friend Marcel Marceau.

Mirka Mora 017

Mirka’s home is full of memorabilia and artwork. In  her studio she had three art works on the go and she said this is how she paints. She likes to move to where she feels best able to extend her creativity.  It was such a privilege  for all of us to be invited to her private space and be able to see what Mirka is all about. And what is she about? Life, and living it to the full, pure and simple.

Mirka Mora 010

Mirka and her pet snail! Her beloved cat died two years ago.

Mirka shared a story that epitomised what she is about. Her doctor told her a few years ago that she should have a walking frame when out and about. Mirka would have none of that. Instead, she invested in prams and now has 16 or so that she uses when out shopping. One day she was out and saw a woman with four children, one of whom was very young and struggling to keep up. The mother looked harried. Mirka approached her and gave her the pram she was using. She told us how they shared a moment together; they were united in the shared experience of motherhood.  When telling us this Mirka’s eyes were teary and I have to admit, mine were too. 

Mirka Mora 023

This has been a wonderful learning experience for our students (and my daughter!)  I think it safe to say that Mirka found it equally powerful. I think she was genuinely impressed with the students’ questions and with the fact that she is having an impact on our younger generation. It’s an example of Network Literacy; teachers using social media tools to connect our students to the subject of their research. I know that these students will never forget Mirka Mora and they know what led us to her. As we walked away today from from Mirka’s home one of them said,  “That’s it. I’m never dissing Twitter again.”

A great experience for all. Thank you so much Mirka for your graciousness in allowing us into your home and for sharing your life with us. We are all the richer for it.

Posted on

SlideRocket statistics – lessons our students need to learn?

I’ve been extolling the virtues of SlideRocket for some time now. For the past year and a bit I’ve been using this online presentation tool and I’ve been really impressed with what you can do with it. But I know I’m still no expert. There are plenty of features I haven’t found time to explore yet.

Last week I embedded a presentation I gave about Ning onto a wikispace site I have and this blog. Since then a couple of other people have embedded it into sites they have too. I made the presentation for public viewing and allowed for the code to be embedded should people want to use it. The other day I remembered that you could view the statistics for your presentation. In other words, you could see how many times it had been viewed and by how many people. Here’s a screenshot of what I discovered;

SlideRocket_viewing_statistics

Now that is pretty cool. First up, 386 views by 156 different people demonstrates the reach you can have by sharing what you do. Secondly, I am blown away by the fact that I can pull up details of the location of where those people are who have been viewing the slides. I’d be interested to know who the person is from Newport Beach is California who spent 15 mins with them today!

I used this data today at my school to sway our Tech committee around to the idea of getting a school site subscription to SlideRocket. They are offering schools with under 1000 students a site licence for $449.00 US Dollars. My argument was that we need to be exposing our kids to the kinds of tools they may find when they hit the world of work. They certainly need to understand that the social nature of tools like SlideRocket add to your  understanding of  networking and how this kind of sharing can have positive side effects. The message was well received and I am hopeful that we may see our school population exploring this tool next year.

Fingers crossed!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

Friending your students – a researcher’s perspective

When I was in Form 6 (today’s Yr 12) I had a teacher who gave us his phone number so that we could contact him if we needed clarification about the work we were doing out of school hours. We knew that on certain nights he had umpire training and wouldn’t be home until after 10.30pm.

Did I ever call him? You betcha I did, and so did the other students from our class. Even after 10.30pm on some occasions. He was an extraordinary teacher; a real father figure who guided us and believed in us. Did we ever abuse the privilege and hassle him? Never. We respected him and would do anything he asked. I still hold him in high esteem and hope that I am modeling the kind of good teaching practice he lived and breathed.

Danah Boyd, Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society , has recently posted on her blog this post, ‘When teachers and students connect outside school ‘.   It’s a common sense post in my opinion. Refreshing really. There is so much she says that I see as valid when it comes to this discussion. She makes these important points;

The fear about teacher-student interactions also worries me at a broader societal level. A caring teacher (a genuinely well-intended, thoughtful, concerned adult) can often turn a lost teen into a teen with a mission. Many of us are lucky to have parents who helped us at every turn, but this is by no means universal. There are countless youth out there whose parents are absent, distrustful, or otherwise sources of frustration rather than support and encouragement. Teens need to have adults on their side. When I interview teens who have tough family lives (and I’m not talking about abuse here) but are doing OK themselves, I often find that it’s a teacher or pastor that they turn to for advice. All too often, the truly troubled kids that I meet have no adults that they can turn to for support.

I worked in a tough Govt. school for many years. (The same school I attended as a teenager as a matter of fact!) Many of the students there needed supportive and well intentioned adults around them who were looking out for their best interests. In quite a few cases, the only people in their lives who met that criteria were their teachers. These were the kids who’d turn up at school on pupil free days even if they’d been suspended the day before.  School was the structure lacking in their lives. There were kids there who I gave my phone number to, kids who needed a supportive adult who would be there for them to listen when life was tough. Not a whole lot of those kids rang me, but I know they appreciated me showing them I cared. 

One of my former students is my hairdresser now. She convinced me awhile ago to join Facebook and become a member of the school’s alumni group. So many of my former students have added me as a friend and left kind messages. Quite a number of them are the kids who would put you through the wringer in class. These are the kids who say, ‘Hey, great to see my fave teacher here.’ It’s amazing really. You see how much influence you have had, influence you may have never realised without a forum like Facebook.  

Danah offers this when discussing whether or not teachers should be adding students in social networking sites;

Teachers do not have to be a student’s friend to be helpful, but being a Friend (on social network sites) is not automatically problematic or equivalent to trying to be a kids’ friend. When it comes to social network sites, teachers should not invade a student’s space. But if a student invites a teacher to be present, they should enter in as a teacher, as a mentor, as a guide. This isn’t a place to chat up students, but if a student asks a question of a teacher, it’s a great place to answer the student. The key to student-teacher interactions in networked publics is for the teacher to understand the Web2.0 environment and to enter into student space as the mentor (and only when invited to do so). (Translation: teachers should NEVER ask a student to be their Friend on Facebook/MySpace but should accept Friend requests and proceed to interact in the same way as would be appropriate if the student approached the teacher after school.) Of course, if a teacher wants to keep their social network site profile separate from their students, they should feel free to deny student requests. But if they feel as though they can help students in that space, they should be welcome to do so.

I have had current students request that I be their friend on Facebook and I’ve hesitated. I haven’t added them, but I’m not sure it would be problematic if I did. I’m highly conscious of my online behaviour and enter these spaces as a teacher, first and foremost. One of my students is on Twitter and I follow her. I do so to support her in that online environment and we often speak at school about something that may have popped up on Twitter. It is a mentoring role and because I use Twitter as a professional tool for learning I feel very comfortable about this.  

It’s a debate that will continue I have no doubt. I encourage you to read Danah’s post and reflect about what you feel is appropriate. Danah leaves her post with these questions;

What do you think is the best advice for other teachers when it comes to interacting with students on social network sites? When should teachers interact with students outside of the classroom? What are appropriate protocols for doing so? How can teachers best protect themselves legally when interacting with students? How would you feel if you were told never to interact with a student outside of the classroom?  

I wonder what your answers would be. I’d love to hear them if you care to leave a comment.

The comment thread on Danah’s post is interesting to read. John Heffernan shares this (and I’m sorry John, there is no link to a blog that you may be writing. Are you,  I wonder, the John Heffernan who writes children’s books in Australia?) ; 

I wonder if Socrates was walking in the Agora, would he stop and talk to his pupils outside of teaching time?

Teenager’s Agora is now predominantly online.

If Socrates was alive today, where would he sit and would he still be charged as “corruptor of youth”?

 

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

Stephen Downes – learning is distributed

I saw Stephen Downes present on Monday afternoon at Wesley College here in Melbourne. As I anticipated, it was an interesting and informative presentation focused on the importance of recognising that learning has become distributed. The message was that learning consists of interacting in communities of practice; we want students to engage with learning communities from an early age so they know how to navigate them, giving them the ability to take charge of their learning. 

You’ll get no argument from me in regards to that message. My engagement in these networks has led to enormous personal and professional growth. The challenge that exists is how to convince other teachers to join the show and then how we transfer this to the students we teach. I feel like I’m working towards the realisation of this for my students in as much as I’m testing out the formation of an internal learning community with our Yr 9 Ning. The sheer fact that I recognise that I need to find ways to extend the reach of my students by having them write in a hypertext environment puts me one step ahead of most I’d think.  I still have to work towards the realisation of that.

 I asked Stephen, “How do we scale teacher involvement”. His reply was model and demonstrate. I’m not entirely sure that the audience on Monday night were ready for the message. Stephen spoke about the formation of learning networks from an intellectual standpoint and I’m not sure that the audience came away realising that he was talking about the formation of human connections and not computer hardware connections. Perhaps modelling and demonstrating what one of these networks looks like would have been a wise move to get the audience understanding where he was coming from.

It was Stephen’s birthday and thanks to a Twitter connection I managed to go the dinner after the talk. At the end of the evening one of the people there asked me if I’d managed to get my work done during the presentation as I’d had my laptop out. When I explained that I’d been sending out tweets via Twitter about the presentation she was amazed. It brought home to me how many people really have little idea of these means of communication and just how much work needs to be done to help people gain an understanding of learning communities and the power of sharing ideas and insights.

Model and demonstrate. Let’s all remember that message and keep at it!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

Using Social Media to effect change

 I presented  today at a conference for students that was held at my school. My presentation was ‘Using Social Media to effect change’. I’ve been trying to embed it here but the code is not cooperating. I used SlideRocket to create the presentation and was once again impressed with this tool. Being able to search within the application for creative commons pictures from flickr made it easy to find the pictures I needed to create impact. (at least I hope I achieved that anyway)  The theme for the gathering was ‘Global issues and women’ and students from Yr 11 were in attendance from my school and other schools in our vicinity.

I think it went well. I know the teachers accompanying the students were impressed. Probably the most powerful part of the session was being able to demonstrate the Twitter network. I presented twice and on both occasions put out a Tweet asking people to say hi and tell us where they were from. We received over 20 replies on each occasion and the students were able to see the array of locations where the tweets were coming from. They were really amazed that people in Beijing, Montana, Ho Chi Minh city, Bangkok, Maine, Nottingham, Sydney, New York, etc etc were replying to them. It certainly demonstrated what it means to be globally connected.

The other part that had impact related to building your digital footprint. Many of them had not considered the possibilities of being googled by employers with their only web presence being a myspace or facebook page. I think they left the day considering what it is they need to do to create a positive digital profile for themselves.

During the day they were presented with information about various causes they could get involved with and do something to support. I’m hopeful that some of them will join Working together 2 make a difference and chart their progress there. In doing so they’ll be helping to generate that positive digital profile!

(I’ll persevere with trying to get it embedded -think I need to try to post it with vodpod but I’ll have to reinstall the button again. So annoying to have your computer reimaged!) 

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted on

Social networking help when you need it!

Steve Campion has a site called Library Stream (so-called because of the flow of ideas coming from the site – clever, huh!) This is what he says on his ‘about me’ page;

‘I’m the system trainer at a large public library system in the Pacific Northwest, a teacher of social web literacy since 2006, an advocate for integrating social software into the dialog with our public, and a voracious reader. I hope I can marshal all those hats into an interesting blog so that LibraryStream can contribute to the discussion about social software, training matters, and library issues in general. I’ll probably post book reviews and attempt humor from time to time, too.’

This site does just what he says and is worth looking at. If you’re new to social tools like flickr, delicious, wikis etc then it’s worth reading Steve’s explanatory posts. They’re very straight forward and allow readers to work through ‘a series of self-paced discovery exercises for library staff venturing into the social web’. You don’t have to be a Library staff member to learn about these things – all educators will find these tools useful.