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!

Day 2--Lots of Work in Several Topics and Second Life

We started off discussing RSS, with a great assist from Joel (check back later for video!), who shared his enthusiasm for his new RSS aggregator of choice, Netvibes, then moved on to Google Alerts for email notifications keyed to topics. We went to FlipVideo pretty quickly, discussing the amazing little device and its uses in the classroom, from showing students their presentations or performances immediately after their work (via a television connected directly to the device) to uploading simply via the usb connected to the device (using the software installed on the device, not your computer) and editing quickly with the software's built-in editing software) and then doing further editing using the free Windows Movie Maker software. The movies in this previous post (click the pic above to view this movie clip) was done with that software between 7:45 and 8:40 or so this very morning, taken with a FlipVideo aimed at my laptop screen for much of the time and slapped together with explanatory slides in Movie Maker.

Our participants had a great deal of reflective time today, reflected (sorry for the pun) in the wiki. We are quickly populating the wiki with information that will be useful for teachers everywhere. While the teachers worked this morning I chatted with my San Antonian friend Jeremy Koester about Second Life (and First Life:) over Skype, ran a test call for my friend Elaine Shuck in South Dakota, played a portion of Ian Jukes's NECC 2007 presentation podcast and a portion of Maureen Yoder's presentation at the same conference, and answered questions from clearly fired-up, enthusiastic new Web 2.0 users. Check back here for more--I'm already wishing we had two weeks instead of just one! Maybe next year we do one week at the beginning of the summer and another at the end: That would be an interesting exercise.

After lunch we dove (dived?) headfirst into blogs and blogging. We looked at my own stable of blogs, and I shared that my own first blog was created during my trip to Japan in 2002. Since then, Blogger has evolved. As recently as just a few weeks ago, improvements enabling the addition of widgets to the navigation bar have made the experience of creating and maintaining a blog even more intuitive. A big difference between the first iteration of the Internet and Web 2.0 is that in order to create a webpage one used to have to have at least a working knowledge of html coding: Now, it's as easy as reading the computer screen and typing and clicking.

The introduction of Second Life to the assembled teachers went south pretty fast. A few amongst us were just plain confused by the whole notion of a MUVE. The driving question we will pursue, formulated by this first experience with avatars and virtual spaces, will be "What's the point?" We closed the day by viewing Josh Levy's "machinima" series of videos "Social Change in Second Life." Hopefully that may set the tone for our visit with my Second Life educator friend Jeremy Koester early tomorrow morning. Jeremy's the creator of the Second Life Google Group, "Gaming and Learning in Second Life," and he's working hard to develop the group toward benefitting teaching and learning. Let's see how, tomorrow. After Jeremy's visit, we'll be exploring professional (and avocational) discussion groups, along with an in-depth look at the "Discussion" feature of wikis. Then we'll choose from several alternative focii for the afternoon. I'm suggesting Skype, My Space, and a more thorough look at templates and widgets for blogs. We'll have the learner's needs driving that bus in the afternoon, now that they are becoming more defined.

View the wiki by clicking on its name in the navbar to the right. It's groooooooooowing!

I encourage you to comment on this blog if you find any of it useful, enlightening, or encouraging for your own work!

Day 1--Successful Entry into the 2.0osphere

Wow, tired but happy, I want to recap some of today's progress. For more information, check the Report-Out pages in the wiki (see sidebar!).

First and foremost, I want to thank my friend David Warlick for braving Skype video to come into the Middle School computer lab at USN to spend an hour presenting a stellar (if limited by time, and so truncated) version of his very well thought-out presentation on Web 2.0 and Literacy. See his post with all the details, including links to the PowerPoint and the "Twitteresque" chatroom record as well as many other Web 2.0 resource links. This man is the real deal, ya'll; and if you don't know that, just visit David's blog and his podcast, both linked from the URL just shared. Click the pic above to view a brief video.

That was at the end of our day. The day started with the PowerPoint I put together, outlining some basic concepts and history, some tools and some definitions, and ending with a good long foray into our wiki. Gratifyingly, exactly what I thought would happen began to happen: Teachers and administrators got excited, added links to the wiki, created their own Report-Out pages, started populating those, and began multi-tasking much like the digital natives it is increasingly their duty to educate. I'm going to delete my own Report-Out page, deferring to those of the hard-working attendees, and consider this blog my effort to keep up with the dizzying pace we are beginning to set. We haven't set our stride, yet, ya'll, but I'd wager we will by the end of the day tomorrow, when we'll begin with blogs (setting up our own, fiddling with settings, commenting on others') and continue explorations. During the day, I'll be sharing podcasts and some action in Second Life, the MUVE leading platform of the moment.

First Assignments! Complete by June 23! Smile While You Work!

I'm in a fantastic presentation at the Atlanta "online learning institute," a one day meeting tagged onto NECC2007; and I'm learning some things you need to see prior to the workshop. I'm blogging extensively from this conference, real time, after doing so from NECC--both at my personal blog and at the one I split off into Second Life educational shareshare.

Here are your current assignments, for those of you who want to go ahead and get started. Should I add something here I'll pop out an email to alert you.

1) Revisit that video I sent in email. If you haven't, or if you trashed the email, Here's the url for the YouTube video (you'll need to be at home: I'll get YouTube unblocked at school for the week of the workshop).

2) Check out Kathy Schrock's Web 2.o presentation resources page. This was shared real time with 3,000 teachers the other day at NECC. Look at her list of 2.0 applications. Sheesh, no wonder we need a week to explore...

3) Look at another video, this time one that you can use at school (WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT SCHOOL, ANYWAY?!!!) Wiki's in Plain English. Be prepared to laugh. Also begin to stretch your brain a bit to consider how you might use this tool not only with your students but with your teammates and friends.

4) Click "Comments" below and add a comment sharing your responses to these assignments. Smile while you're doing it. Be kind. Don't stress.

I'm going to have so much to point you to, and you're going to find so much more, that I want you to to start to think of this workshop as only a very, very tiny beginning. Begin at will.

Oh, in the discussion here at the "online learning institute" which followed Chris O'Neal's fabulous Web 2.0 Tools I shared a sucker-slap moment about my fourth grade teams' concern at sending home four sheets of paper to 18 households 36 weeks a year (also shared by the School Renewal Sustainability committee) I'm going to show ya'll a tool you'll want to use. You'll have to guess for now which one it is :)

Chris O'Neal has committed to Skyping with us during our week together. You'll enjoy meeting him and I'm sure he'll enjoy meeting you! I also have a commitment from Steve Hargadon, creater of the ning.com Classroom 2.0 professional community to chat with us and at least one other excellent potential expert. Kathy Schrock said that she'd be able to chat with us until I gave her the dates and she realized she'd be in "Adobe Boot Camp" that week--very intensive training in Adobe beta software toward reviewing it. There will be others: I'm working on a couple more "power mavens."

Cheers, and more later. Much, much more...