Day 5--We Done It!

Wow, the last hour and a half of this week was enlightening for me, not to mention completely gratifying. See the wiki's "Report-Out" pages for a hint of it, but the informal sharing of reflection from the week was just the right thing. Yes, I have video: No, it's not ready to share yet.

The morning work with Gcast, Google Documents, and VoiceThread was fascinating and fun. I'm so glad that we didn't get into VoiceThread until the last day, because Joel and Sarah might not have gotten anything else done!

Right around 10 'til 2 we closed by (re)viewing"The Machine is Us," (YouTube link--won't work in school; view from home) the fabulous video by Mike Wesch, Cultural Anthropologist at the University of Kansas. My own closing comment: "I guess that says pretty much all we need to say."

It is my hope that the work begun here will "seed" interest amongst these fine folks's colleagues. It's really not that hard to look at some of these wonderful tools and see how they can facilitate collaboration and actually reduce the drag of the giant "T," Time, on our lives and our professional work.

Thank you, Vince Durnan, for encouraging me to make this happen.

Thank you , Steve Robins, Jeff Greenfield, and Susan Touchstone, USN division heads, for allowing me to solicit participation and for committing professional development funds for the week of work. I think we're onto something.

Thank you, David Warlick, Steve Hargadon, Peggy Sheehy, and Jeremy Koester for sharing your time with us. We know you're busy and we greatly appreciate your talking with us over Skype.

Thank you Wiz, Kathy Weiczerza, for the week-long assist. I always value your "read" on whatever technology I'm exploring and sharing. You help me identify the possible within the potential.

Finally, thank you to family members who released us from other commitments to be together for this week. I know that it's never the best time to let our needed loved ones go off to explore and to have fun: It really was hard work, too...

Move on in peace and collaboration.

Day 4--Heavy Sigh! Steve Hargadon and More...

We started out this a.m. talking about social networks, viewing a couple of thought-provoking videos and talking about MySpace and Facebook. Then we moved over to look at another kind of social network. No, let's use the new terminology: "Professional Network." Steve Hargadon's Classroom 2.0 at ning.com is an amazing piece of work, and a resource for anyone interested in exploring the use of the new internet tools in the service of teaching and learning. We talked about setting up new "nings" for all kinds of purposes, up to and including classes! We connected with Steve via Skype at around 10:00 (8 a.m. for Steve in Granite Bay, California) and we talked for an hour about the motivation for setting up this site, about his background (unique and thought-provoking) and about some other technologies (Joel: "What is your favorite Web 2.0 tool used in a classroom and how was it used?") and the ramifications of all of this for the future of education.

My HotRecorder program, a third party program for recording Skype calls, seems to have failed me, but I ran my Dell Axim recording off to the side. Unfortunately, I seem to have accidentally deleted that as well, relegating the experience to the realm of the ethereal. Good, I say, and I challenge the workshop folks to stop and review that amazing chat before time has a chance to erode its memory...

After lunch we chatted with my friend Jeremy Koester, an 8th grade math teacher in San Antonio, Texas and a champion for the use of games and gaming in education. He is the force behind the Google Group "Gaming and Learning in Second Life," and he had some stimulating things to say about the process of building online community around any concept.

Check back, and don't forget to check the growing wiki (see the sidebar to the right) for a more hyperlinked post here later: I'm hurrying to get this report up...

Cheers from Music City, USA!