Many of you will have already seen this, but you can now download the newly updated version of Copyright Matters.
Students and teachers now more freedom with images, music and other web-based works so it’s good news!
Check out page 12 which I found most relevant to my work in schools:
Originally Posted by Brenda Sherry on Apr 13, 2012 in Voices from the Learning Revolution, PLP Network
I’ve begun teaching an Additional Qualifications course for inservice teachers, about the integration of technology into their classroom practice. I’ve written about this new learning journey before, and I began revising and rethinking the course as soon as it got rolling the first time around. This is what I miss most about being a classroom teacher — the creative process involved in shaping learning environments that work!
In planning courses we continue to find that many of the resources we turn to for guidance are often traditional, text-based models of learning, especially in higher education. This doesn’t often sit right with me. My goal is to help teachers imagine new possibilities in their own classrooms as they begin to shift their practice.
In setting out to model some more innovative practices, I hope that by seeing a variety of options as learners first, teachers will understand the power of these new approaches and feel free to play with some of these new tools and then reflect on them with a critical eye. Most of the teachers who will join me in these courses are newly connected to social networks, and therefore my aim is to plan a meaningful experience that is not too overwhelming.
These newly connected educators often look for some advice about where to jump in: Twitter? Blogs? Facebook? Social networks for teachers? There are so many choices! As a result, I’ve surfaced some thoughts about the difference between the work I do with networks and communities and how I might advise teachers who are newly connected.
In an earlier blog post I was asking this question:
“I’m gravitating towards more collaborative work that involves a different kind of connection than something like twitter — what should I be recommending to others just starting down this path?”
I’ve been thinking about where I’m finding my best support for my own learning these days. While I’ve been going to my twitter network and saving links, resources, and graphics to help me plan this course, I’ve found that it’s actually my community of inquiry within Powerful Learning Practice that has lead me to the deepest learning along this new journey. Only a handful of these people are actually in the realm of my f2f connections and none of them are people I see day-to-day. Working virtually with people from my online community is just becoming business as usual!
As I begin teaching this course, I think I owe it to my learners to help them understand that while twitter networks might lead them to incredible contacts and resources, our classroom community will be where they can get down and dirty with some really messy learning.
Let me share a recent example. I was extremely lucky to be taking Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s PLP e-course Teaching Online: Becoming a Connected Educator back while I was building the first rendition of my own course curriculum. It gave me a source of feedback and critical friends when I was first drafting, asking questions, and pondering my next moves. Even now, 6 months after the PLP e-course, I am still in contact with several of those folks who I know would help me with revisions. This potential for an extended conversation about my work would not often happen on twitter, and actually I don’t know that it’s ever happened to me in a f2f context, either!
Next, something Sheryl recently posted in the PLP Community Hub caught my eye. It was a document that Howard Rheingold had shared, inviting folks to work on collaboratively transforming a course about social media for high school students. I had been cocooning a bit, thinking through my plans, and while following some of Howard’s links I discovered — a visual syllabus!
This was great. I already had the very (19th century) text-based one I’d created from the traditional University model I had been given as an exemplar. And I had the video version that I had made for my students as a course introduction for the first week. However, the ‘good’ thing about video is also the ‘bad’ thing about video…you have to watch it! You can’t scan it well. So a graphic organizer was just the thing I needed to turn the syllabus into more of an infographic. I got busy creating and came up with a first draft:
I posted this to my community inside the PLP Ning space, where Howard’s course outline is also posted, knowing that I would likely get some feedback, suggestions, and perhaps even a discussion wherein more folks share what they are doing in this area – and then BINGO – we’d be building collective knowledge.
Sure enough, the sharing began to happen almost immediately. Suzie Nestico posted a reply that caused me to think more deeply about some of the requirements that will need to be in place before my students will be able to understand the difference between “knowledge sharing” and “knowledge building.” This will help direct some of my next steps in planning.
While I learn lots and connect well with Twitter and my other networks, it’s my community of inquiry (both f2f and online) that helps me to dive deeper, which is where I like to be!
Posted in collaboration, learning, teaching, web2.0
Tagged communities, networks, plpnetwork, voices
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This past week was a wonderful celebration of the work of over half (about 31) of our elementary teacher librarians who gathered to share the projects they’ve been working on since the fall. I was lucky to be able to … Continue reading
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Whew! I’ve returned from a whirlwind of 3 days of learning at OTF’s latest conference: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century and as usual, my brain is full of new learning, not only from the keynote presenters, Will Richardson … Continue reading
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Sometimes it just seems to take me a while to put my reflections into writing but having attending another great RCAC Symposium this year, I thought, “Better late than never!” Thanks so much to Doug Peterson and Doug Sadler for … Continue reading
You’ll probably notice a Listen Now button on my blog, and a widget in the sidebar that allows you to subscribe to my podcast. It works in blogger..but I’ll have to find out how to get it on this new WordPress blog.
I’ve been getting ready to present at the AT4ALL
Conference in Milton next week 
and my presentation will be about literacy tools for the 21st century, thinking specifically of our students with special needs. If you are there, the session will hopefully go something like this:
This session shows parents and educators the new kinds of literacies with which our students need to develop fluency in order to develop 21st century skills. Web 2.0 tools like Google for Educators, blogs, wikis, rss, social networking, global projects, diigo and other online tools for literacy will enhance the education of our students with special needs, while allowing them to access collaborative tools that will be so important as they continue their education and move on to the workforce. This session will provide a practical look at some of the best ways teachers can motivate students and enhance their use of technology to improve their literacy.
I find this an important topic because while modalities available on the web are getting more and more diverse ensuring more and more access, it’s still a pretty text-based place. If you can’t read, it’s difficult to navigate deeply and go beyond “surfing the surface” as my co-presenter Peter Skillen, would say.
This week, while I was checking out a really good article about where to start with using cell phones on a blog called The Innovative Educator I noticed the Listen Now button and soon found out that Odiogo.com allows you to create text-to-speech podcasts from your RSS feed to ipod, iphone, and MP3 players as well as instantly reading your content on the blog in a really decent voice!
It’s called ‘talking your content’. Very sweet! Another way to open access to those who struggle with reading, or perhaps if you have a class blog with younger students who are non-readers this will be a help for you! It’s working great so far, although it seems to take a few hours to upload the feature to new blog posts, so we’ll see how it goes as I get using it. You can see how it works immediately if you click on my older postings for now.
I’m looking forward to learning about lots of new tools to enhance access for special needs students (and ALL students) at AT4ALL…hope you see you there!
Posted in web2.0
I’ve been giving Web 2.0 lots of thought this week as I become pretty much entrenched in the Twittersphere…and really liking it! I am absolutely amazed at the sharing that I see going on in twitter. It’s pretty incredible to read postings from people I know and technology leaders I’ve been reading about for the past 5 or 6 years.
Creating groups around your career or interests is a wonderful thing. It makes you feel pretty good to be exchanging ideas with people who think like you and have the resources that you have…but I do wonder whose voice is not being heard here? What, if anything, is the danger in developing ideas among like-minded individuals? Is there really a variety of voices and objective participation in most online communities? Are we missing out on some important voices? You’d think that you’d find a diverse group in the Twittersphere, but is the clustering that happens likely to promote a range of opinion, or a similarity that could cloud our view of what other people experience?
Quite frankly, some teachers just don’t have colleagues in their schools that are interested in collaboration around topics of interest in education. Or perhaps they are the only teacher in a particular subject area or with a certain kind of expertise in the school. Our choice used to be taking a course, which would give us a PLN we needed for a period of time. Now, I can take my professional interests online and look for like-minded educators to help me push forward in my learning, possibly in a much more sustaining way than a traditional course offering. This is why I got involved in blogging and wikis…I needed dialogue with teachers who were interested in new technologies and there weren’t individuals at my school who were exploring these ideas. Online communities seemed to be a much more practical and vibrant classroom for me.
In December, David Warlick talked at RCAC about the danger of students without access; he says the real danger is not so much about access to computers anymore, but understanding the power of collaboration, or not. I’m coming to understand, through my own participation online, that these learning networks may meet more of the needs of our learners and teachers than traditional learning spaces (time, choice, just-in-time learning, co-learning), and that teachers really need to be understand the usefulness of these very real and purposeful virtual environments. Now, the challenge of being open to the use of these kinds of tools in our often locked-down school network environments!
I look forward to learning more from my Twitter friends about how these networks work and their experience as participants.
Posted in web2.0
Hi Everyone,
I’m looking forward to learning a lot on the weekend and networking with teachers from around Ontario!
On Friday before lunch I thought I’d share two ways that I’m using wikis in my work with teachers at Upper Grand DSB. The first is http://www.tech2learn.wikispaces.com and it’s for Special Education teachers in our board to share ideas, tips, lessons and links about assistive technology. It’s been a bit slow having members collaborate, but teachers are now using the site and sending me things to post, so I guess that’s step one.
The other site is http://www.ugdsbtechcoach.wikispaces.com and it’s a collaborative space for teachers who are participating in a job-embedded PD opportunity using the lesson study model. For most teachers this is their first crack at trying to use a wiki and we have different levels of collaboration going on, but we’ve had great feedback.
See you on Friday!
It’s pretty exciting to hear the buzz in my Board of Ed. about Will Richardson’s presentation at the Ministry Gains conference this past week. It got me dusting off this blog and writing a bit. Richardson’s blog http://weblogg-ed.com/was one of the first that I read when I started blogging a few years back and I found his teacher-librarian background refreshing and practical!
There is a lot of criticism out there for social constructivist approaches like wikis and blogs, so I’m really glad to hear that Richardson was invited to a Ministry conference. I’m a little skeptical about the motives though, I must admit. Is the Ministry aware of the distinction between instructionist models (like elearning modules), and the participatory constructivist model of connectivism that is the basis of wikis and blogs?
One of the first edubloggers, whom Richardson sites in his work, is actually a Canadian called Stephen Downes. Here’s a talk he gives about the pedagogy of Web 2.0 tools, related to control vs. free learning environments.
It’s pretty academic, but if you stick with it for the first 7 minutes, he distinguishes between instructionist types of online learning (like elearning modules) and the learner centred, participatory experience of wikis and blogs, two quite different approaches. Learning by telling vs. learning by practice. Novice learners participating by immersing themselves in a community of practice; we write by becoming a writer, we learn math by doing the work of a mathematician…that kind of thing.
Maybe when Bill was wondering on Friday how we could use wikis in our board, the first step might be for the Curriculum Department to move our PLC to one! It makes your learning explicit, collective, collaborative and (in my humble opinion) I think it’s something that needs to be experienced first as a learner….before it can be modeled by a teacher.
How good would you be at teaching reading if you had never read a book?
Will Richardson mentions this ownership in the interview that Cathy shared with us here.
The pedagogy behind the Read/Write Web is personal learning.
I think that wikis and blogs (and web participation by youth in general) will really challenge our notions of how kids want to learn. The web is showing us strongly that kids want to participate, and that they can learn by themselves. This Net Day Survey mentions where Net Gen learners are going with technology right now…are we helping?
We are in many ways running to catch up with them…how will we change our role? Who will be doing the instructing? Interestingly, in the interview the ministry posted of Will Richardson, the title slide was called “Understanding Instructional Technologies” however, the description Will gives about the Read/Write Web is far from Instructionist. “Artifacts, publishing, connections, networks, learning spaces and life-long learning” are the words that he uses. I would argue that this is more about “Understanding Constructivist Technologies” than Instruction. This always seems to bring me back to Seymour Papert and his work as a pioneer of educational technology at MIT. Awesome, awesome, awesome!
I’m a little pessimistic about how this will roll out. My guess is that very shortly, educators will be trying to evaluate and mark wikis and blogs….and that this will reflect an ignorance about the process itself. My first experience in a wiki environment was an Knowledge Building course assignment at OISE; it was the strangest thing to overcome my fear of changing the work of others…all of a sudden it wasn’t MY work, or THEIR work, it was OUR knowledge that we were building. This is a real cultural change about school and learning. It was so hard to change what someone else had written, but that’s what wikis are about…building on the work of others. I would totally agree with Will Richardson, we need to ‘own’ it or have a personal understanding of the medium in order to be able to use it effectively.
However…if you find all this occasionally overwhelming…hopefully I won’t push you completely off the edge by sharing this Report: More Blogs than Humans on Earth It’s still important that what we are saying isn’t just blah, blah, blah! 
Posted in web2.0
