Thought we should revisit April Fools’ Day for this week’s School’s out Friday post. This was the effort from the BBC – a really well put together promo for a supposed documentary about a colony of Penguins with the abilty to fly who migrate to the rainforests in the Artic winter. If you want to check out other online practical jokes that took place this April 1st, follow this link to April Fools’ Day on the Web.
Professional Development – not shameless self promotion.
Are you like me? Is your head swimming with everything that is now possible in our world as a result of the Web and the ease of transfer of information? We are so connected in today’s world. I can get onto Twitter and make connections with educators around the world and share ideas – I can find out what’s new and add my two cents worth to the conversations taking place. I read feeds coming to me in my Google Reader and am in awe of educators who are willing to share their knowledge to empower others. I am thankful to software developers who are willing to provide open source products that are making our lives easier to manage and our classrooms more interesting. I feel like I am in a constant state of professional development and what has it cost me? Time and an internet connection. What has it cost my school? Nothing this year – I haven’t been to one PD session and yet I feel like my knowledge attainment has been exponential. How will this benefit my school? Plenty. I have knowledge and am willing and eager to find ways to share it – writing this blog is one of vehicles I am using (just hope some are reading!).
I’ve been mulling this around the last 24hrs after reading Liz Davis’ post where she reflected on how she wondered if alerting people to her blog posts via twitter was an act of shameless self promotion. The post resonated with me because I’ve shared these thoughts – is what I’m doing a way of grandstanding? Look at what I know- nah nah na nah na! I’ve talked it over with friends who aren’t a part of this network and they tell me they are learning from what I am writing so I feel like what I’m offering is worthwhile and not self serving. I think people who are blogging about educational technology should be giving themselves a bit of a pat on the back – what I’m finding from my reading and conversations is on mass Pofessional Development for free!
One of my colleagues in the Library I work at passed this YouTube video from Charles Leadbeater onto me today. It’s called ‘We think’ and is companion to a book he has published exploring the potential of the Internet in today’s world. It fits with what I’ve just talked about. Our world is changing and the way we attain knowledge is central to the change. Our students are going to benefit from this – no longer is knowledge in the hands of the few. It’s open to all to consume and produce – the playing fields are opening up and the game is on!
School’s out Friday
This week’s School’s out Friday post is for my son. It’s school holidays here in Victoria and my son has been listening to this song by Flo Rida and T-pain for the last few days. It’s called “Low” and I have to admit to it being my fave song at the moment as well. If it’s on the radio when we are in the car we all break out into song and we dance as well as we can in our car seats – we’re enjoying the moment together despite what other drivers on the road might think of us! Enjoy your weekend and dance in your cars – it’s my only venue now seeing as I don’t frequent the nightclub scene anymore.
School’s out Friday
Yes, school’s out today and it’s Good Friday. Time for a feel good video. Easter is nigh and Victorian schools have broken up for the first term holidays. My husband sent me this video during the week and my kids and I have enjoyed watching the special moment that occurs between John Rendall and Ace Berg, two men, who, in the late 1960’s brought a lion named Christian from Harrod’s Department store for 250 Guineas. They reared him for a year in their London Apartment and then enlisted the help of George Adamson, of Born Free fame, to introduce him to the wild at Kora reserve in Africa. He was integrated into a pride and John and Ace returned to their life in London. After a year, they decided to return to see Christian. George Adamson reported that he had not been sighted for nine months and the chances of Christian recognising them would be slim. When they arrived, George told them that Christian had returned the previous night and could be found on his favourite rock in the park. Watch the video and judge for yourself whether or not a wild animal has any recall of their early life. It’s a feel good video and one my children and I have returned to again and again. Enjoy Easter with your families and share feel good vibes this video brings with it.
School’s out Friday
Are you looking forward to the weekend? Do you need something to lighten your spirits at the end of a tiring working week? I do. Especially after staying up until 1.30am last night watching Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s keynote address at a conference in the US via ustream. You’ve got to love the fact that you can do PD these days from the comfort of your own bed! Loved the backchannel discussion as well – a great way to establish networks.
Time for the fun. Home grown aussie talent this time. A couple of weeks ago I featured an Australian comedy program, The Chaser’s War on Everthing, and their Life is a Musical routine in a Bunnings store. Today’s post is from Joel Gilmore, who very cleverly chased the chasers and enacted his own ‘Life is a Musical’ routine at a book signing the Chaser’s team were appearing at. Funny stuff. Thanks for the laugh Joel.
Big Think – Web 3.0 in action?
Newsweek writer Tony Dokoupil wrote an article this week called ‘Revenge of the experts’. In it, he asks the question ‘Is user generated content out?’ The byline of the article is;
“The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals.”
The article champions the idea that we are moving into a new phase of the internet – internet 3.0, where the wisdom of crowds (web 2.0) is being supplemented by another layer “of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined.” (Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis) The article uses Google’s Knol (still in development), About.com, who employ guides to find relevant results for search terms, and Mahalo, a people powered search engine, as examples of the new direction the web may be heading in.
Another featured new entry into the market is BigThink.com, “a self-styled “YouTube for ideas” backed by former Harvard president Larry Summers and others (It) debuted its cache of polished video interviews with public intellectuals.” I took a look and I liked what I saw. The videos are arranged into topics including History, Business and Economics, Science and Technology, Media and the Press, Truth and Justice as well as many others. Our Year 10 students have, ‘What makes us human’, as an overarching question for their study of English for a semester. Low and behold, there’s a video on this site dealing with exactly that question. I could see that this site would be an easy sell to the sceptics out there who doubt YouTube. (Personally, I love it!) Most of the videos on BigThink.com are less than seven minutes and offer the hook for stimulating class discussion. You can register into the site and contribute to the discussion surrounding ideas they are talking about. A great classroom activity and one I’d like to try with my students. Definitely worth a look.
I really like the final quote from the article from Glenn Reynolds, author of ‘An Army of Davids’.
“There’s always a Big New Thing, but the old Big New Thing doesn’t really go away,” says Reynolds. “It becomes just another layer—like we’re building an onion from the inside out.”
I certainly hope we don’t see the demise of user-generated content. It’s one of the things I love about the web – its democratic nature allowing all to have input. Appeals to my upbringing.
Twitter made simple (or is it?)
This is all over the Web at the moment and plenty of people in the blogging world were heads up to it four days ago when Lee Lefever posted it on his Common Craft site and YouTube. One of the ways they found about it was from the topic of the video; twitter. Twitter is a means of social networking. You answer the question, ‘What are you doing?’, in 140 characters or less including spaces. You follow people in your network and are privy to both the mundane and useful answers to that question. I’m following people in the edublogging/education world and look at twitter throughout the day to see if there’s anything happening that I should make myself aware of.
I have to admit to having a few problems with Twitter. (I know – plenty of you out there are devotees and love it). Most of these relate to the need to achieve the right balance in our lives. I get worried about the addictive nature of feeling like you need to know everything instantaneously. I keep reading Will Richardson and his love of Twitter is obvious – he uses it as the supreme networking tool and it obviously has its advantages for someone whose working life is this Web 2.0 world. I’m a wife, mother of two relatively young children, hold down a full-time job managing a library as well as teaching English, try to keep a house in order and maintain connections with my extended family and friends. To top it off now I’m writing this blog in my spare time! Just discovering Twitter has further complicated the work/life balance I was already struggling to navigate. I know – I can already hear you out there saying, ‘No-one is twisting your arm to do this. If you don’t want to, just don’t look at it.’ And if you’re saying this you’re absolutely right. It’s up to me to find the balance I need to be comfortable doing what I’m doing without letting anything (or more importantly, anyone) drop off my radar. I almost feel like it’s the wrong time for me to be immersing myself in this world- eight years down the track and my kids would be pretty much self-sufficient (maybe!). Can’t really do much about this now – I feel like I’m in deep and actually am loving learning again. I don’t feel stale when it comes to my working life and am excited about what education can (will?) look like in the future.
Wow. That was a fairly indulgent piece of self analysis. I don’t blame you if you switched off halfway through, but if you didn’t, thanks for listening. Needed to get that one off my chest.
School’s out Friday
This week’s School’s out Friday post is dedicated to Clay Burell, who’ll be getting hitched tomorrow. Perhaps Clay and his fiance could practice quickly and Ustream a routine like this after the ceremony! All the best Clay, and thanks for some brilliant mentoring this week.
(For those interested in response to Project Global Cooling from our students. First meeting today – really good turn up – lots of enthusiasm. Keep you posted.)
Skype to the rescue.
Launch day for Project Global Cooling.
Was I nervous?
Yes.
Did I fear a breakdown of Technology?
Yes.
Was all the worry warranted?
No!
Pleased to report all was successful. Bill Farren’s video ‘Did you ever wonder?‘ set the scene and got our student’s thinking. Our Skype calls worked, a bit of break up but nothing drastic. Chris, a teacher from Lindsea’s school Skyped in as well on a webcam – the kids loved seeing him – you could see they were impressed with what was happening. Clay Burell joined us along with Patrick from his school. Lindsea then joined us with a webcam and you could sense the instant recognition from our students – they connected with her Skyping from her bedroom. Some students asked questions – Lindsea could see them thanks to my fantastic AV guy who went out of his way today to make all of this work. Thought we might be losing them towards the end but was surprised by the interest coming my way from the kids who can’t make our follow up meeting tomorrow.
Left today feeling energised and positive about tomorrow. Can’t wait to see where the meeting will take us. Our kids were expressing their frustration today with adults who talk about making changes to improve sustainability but then nothing happens. Today we’ve given them an opportunity to make change – I hope they rise to the challenge.
Just finished listening to and participating in the backchannel of Jeff Utecht’s SOS podcast (even if I couldn’t figure out how to change my Ustream number to my name, despite another listener trying to help me. I am still new to all this stuff!). Really interesting discussion about how we connect. Recommend that you listen to the podcast when he posts it.
Project Global Cooling here we come (and I’m on YouTube!)
Tomorrow we launch Project Global Cooling with our students. This has come about as a result of this blog and having the ability to make connections with Clay Burell and Lindsea of Project Global Cooling. We have a very short time frame when it comes to the goal of staging a concert on April 19th. You never know, our students may very well pull it off – the energy and drive of young people can be quite awe inspiring when it kicks in. Hopefully the project’s goal of raising awareness about issues regarding sustainability and the future of our planet will resonate with our student population and we will be able to maintain global connections and build on the start we have made.
Tomorrow we are going to have a Skype conference call with Lindsea and Patrick (and maybe Clay??) from Project Global Cooling. Patrick is a student in Seoul and Lindsea ia 16 and at school in Hawaii. This call is scheduled to take place during our launch and how powerful is it going to be having students motivate students to get involved. I know the students at my school and am pretty sure they are going to want to run with this. I hope so anyway. I’ll keep you posted as to how we go.
Today we had a practice run with Lindsea via Skype in our Lecture Theatre to see how it all would go. It was great – hope we have no technical hitches tomorrow. Lindsea, nextgen specimen that she is, recorded the run through and posted it on YouTube. Never thought I’d see the day that I would be featured in a YouTube post. It’s pretty exciting from my perspective but it’s a given that it’s never going to gain viral video status! (Check out my Picasso look at the end of the video – very becoming!)
Looking forward to tomorrow and what it may bring.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 