I would like to thank the following people for contributing so much to my learning. I’m only nominating in categories where the impact has been powerful and potent. I’m also going to cheat and add a few ‘honourable mentions’: These may not mean much to the Edublog Awards, but they mean a lot to me, (if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll already know that I follow my own rules that work for me in my own learning space).

My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards are:

Best individual blog: Stephen’s Web

I actually almost never go to Stephen Downes’ blog, as I read his daily email updates. Since his is the only daily read that I do, and since it leads me all over the web and exposes me to so many other ideas and points of view, I can’t say anyone has had more of an influence on my learning this year.

Best individual tweeter: @courosa

So much of what I end up sharing myself has been introduced to me via Alec Couros. He is integral to my PLN (Personal Learning Network – and – Professional Learning Network).

Honourable mention to: @SueWaters since Sue will always step up and extend a hand to anyone in her network, and @ShellTerrell – Shelly is the Queen of ReTweets, she finds gem after gem and shares them.

Best new blog: Mr. Jackson’s Blogosphere

Bryan Jackson is a wonderfully reflective teacher and he has a fantastic job working with some of the most gifted kids in his district. This gives him a great playground for bouncing around innovative ideas and his reflective nature produces wonderful insight.

Best class blog: Huzzah!

I love this caption from the blog, compliments of teacher Jan Smith: “Please notice our successes, not our mistakes. Our blog is a invitation to see what we are up to. Some of our work will be polished, and some will be in draft form. Please honour our attempts.” Jan makes student blogging a learning experience that it should be, and not just an exercise in doing old things in new ways. Don’t just visit her blog, go to her student blogs and check out what they are doing!

Honourable mention to: Clarence Fisher‘s Idea Hive. I’m sure there are other classes doing work as meaningful as Jan and Clarence but in my eyes they are in a league of their own. Like Jan’s students, Clarence’s students deserve a visit and a comment.

Best resource sharing blog: Larry Ferlazzo’s Website of the Day

Yes he is probably nominated already, but his is the resource sharing site I most often end up on.

Most influential blog post: 10 Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers

Liz B. Davis‘ brilliant post that helps others to lead the way with teachers new to tech. A MUST READ POST!

Honourable mention to: Would You Please Block? My favourite line from this wonderful Bud Hunt post: “Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem.” Be sure to skim the many comments too.

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: Blogworthy Tweets

I love the opening sentence by Claudia Ceraso: “These tweets of mine need not be noteworthy, except that I want to make a note of them. To make sure they do not vanish in cyberspace. They deserve a spot in this personal learning scenario.” What strikes me with this post is the realization that some of these less-than-140-character thoughts are deserving of more thoughts and discussion. These are not truly a series of tweets but I have a bias in that it was posts like this by Claudia that got me onto twitter.

Honourable mention to: #EdChat I haven’t been on twitter too much to join in recently, but I peek in occasionally and it is always a rich conversation. This isn’t a blog, but worthy of mentioning.

Best teacher blog: Always Learning

Kim Cofino continues to be my teacher and I’m a big fan of teachers who help other educators. Kim is tireless in her attempts to promote globally connected teachers and students.

Best librarian / library blog: The WebFooted Booklady

Lesley @Bookminder Edwards is going to retire soon, yet she is leading the way for the next generation of teachers. I want to be as inspiring as her when I reach that part of my career. She may be stepping away from schools, but I hope she doesn’t retire from sharing her wisdom online!

Best educational tech support blog: The Edublogger

If you are a blogger, you’ve probably used some advice found here, or shared here first then modeled by others. Sue Waters consistently brings sound blogging advice and direction to readers.

Best elearning / corporate education blog: elearnspace

Sorry, no corporate blog here, George Siemens brings you up to speed on the latest ideas in e-learning. If you don’t know what connectivism is, it’s time to sign up for his weekly email.

Best educational use of audio: Seedlings

Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes and Bob Sprankle not only offer great interviews, they support new teachers on their Ning network too!

Honourable mention to: Bit-by-Bit by Bob Sprankle on his own. He has recorded so many presentations worth listening to!

Best educational wiki: PLN Yourself!

It’s Sue Waters again. This time offering an easy launching point for people who want to expand their Personal Learning Network.

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So there are my nominations. Besides Stephen Downes, who only follows one person, I’m connected to every one of these educators on Twitter and I’d be remiss in not mentioning that. In reality, I have seldom opened my RSS reader this year and so the list above was greatly influenced as a result of my connections to some amazing people on Twitter.

I enjoy the Edublog Awards because they always expose me to blogs and connections that I would not have had otherwise. I don’t believe there is a need for competition amongst edubloggers, but I do believe that highlighting the people you admire is worthy. Thanks again to these wonderful people for their inspiration and for being my teacher… I look forward to learning and sharing more with you.

“I can do that without technology” -Actually no you can’t!

Here is the Slideshare.

This was the presentation I first created for BLC08, and I wrote about it here.

I’ve finally edited it for the web… a tedious task as I tend to use a lot of slide transitions that do not convert well to individual slides. I shared a few presentation notes on this Slideshare, but not too much. This is a great feature I’ll probably use more in the future.

Here again is the Ustream: This version was done for student teachers at Simon Fraser University. As a video, it has a slow start with student teachers discussing a statement, and sharing ideas until about the 13 minute mark. Also, the slides in this video won’t match perfectly to the Slideshare above as I had to explain some of the slides for the stand-alone slide show, but it would be easy to connect the two presentations.

I’ll be using some of this presentation as the intro to one of my BLC09 presentations:

The P.O.D.s are coming!

What are PODS? They are Personally Owned Devices, and they are already infiltrating our schools. For now they get tucked away in lockers and backpacks, but as the saying goes, “If there is an elephant in the room, introduce it!” Students are bringing small machines with huge potential into our schools. It is time to introduce these tools into our classrooms and also to make sure that we have the knowledge and the infrastructure to use them to their fullest potential.

And I’ll probably link to this post in my PODs presentation. I first discussed PODs here.

It’s nice to finally be able to share this presentation and as always, I’m offering it with a CC license:

Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.

My Learning

Yesterday marked 3 years of being a blogger. What a wonderful journey it has been!

I may be over exaggerating when saying my blog is my Phd, after all people like Stephen Downes have done this much work and still don’t have one. Furthermore, the focus and intent of my writing has been far from such a standard, and sure to be rejected as a dissertation… BUT…

I know a few people that have a PhD and they have all shared comments like, “I’m never going to school again!”, and “What a painful experience”, and “I’m sooo glad that’s over!”, and even “I’m Done with learning!”

Meanwhile, I’ve never been so excited about learning. and I’m far from done, I’m continuing my journey and 3 years of ‘work’, of reflective learning, has done nothing but broaden my horizons and make me excited about what’s to come.

Personalized Recognition

So for the fun of it, I’ve personalized my journey with a PhB: A Blogtorate of Philosophy.

So what’s this worth? Personally it means the world to me, I wouldn’t trade my blogging/learning experience for any other, but what would this document get me in the ‘real’ world? We are now throwing (very deserving) accolades to DIY / Edupunk – Leaders… yet we don’t really ‘credit’ them in a quantifiable way.

Accreditation

So how do we credit all this very real, very meaningful learning? How do we credential-ize the learning that people are sharing online… Things happening outside of classrooms and credits and courses? Who does the next big company want to hire, the Harvard Graduate or one of these ‘candidates’?

What is my blog worth in the world of academia?

Does it really matter that what I’ve done hasn’t been for marks? What’s the big deal if this ‘work’ isn’t counted toward some (archaic) institution?

After all, it has been shared with colleagues around the world;

It has been peer reviewed, and quoted, commented on, and even presented… furthermore, it has an extensive bibliography.

Does this count for anything? Should it?

The real value…

This blog has provided me with an opportunity to share my learning, and more than anything else it has challenged me to be accountable in a way that no other professional development ever has. It has reminded me that I love to learn and it is part of a learning process that I truly love. My blog may not get me any more letters after my name but more than anything else, it has set me on a journey I’m going to continue, not for some external reward, but rather for the intrinsic value and for the love of learning.

Appreciation

And now having said all this, I’d like to thank you!

Thanks for being a part of my Personal Learning Network; Thanks for joining me on this journey; And/or thank you for contributing to my learning!

Confession #1: I had planned on calling this post, “Edupunk or edubunk?”

That was before reading this simple, but very powerful post by Jen D. Jones. Now I need to change my approach. My main point sits under Confession #3 below.

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Confession #2: I am not an edupunk… I’ve always been too much of an edunerd to qualify.

That said, I’ve always sat ‘outside the box’ looking in. I’ve always felt like a square peg in a round hole. I’m an ‘A’ student who went through my first university degree with a ‘C+’ average. I handed almost everything in late (and almost always with no marks off)¹. I ignored criteria and wrote what I wanted. Sometimes this was rewarded, most times it was punished. When I was disinterested in an assignment I walked a fine, and I might add brilliant, line next to what would be considered plagiarism, it was a great strategy that got me through the mundaneness of many useless assignments. I crammed for exams, and I’d stay awake for 3 days (usually after the due date) writing an essay. I’d go into the library and end up half an isle away from the resources I needed, reading something ‘unnecessary’… my pre-FireFox tabbing.

On my transcript there is a ‘A’ that I got in a course where I didn’t do an assignment worth 25% of my mark (do the math) and there is also a mark of ‘Zero’ for another course. I appealed the ‘Zero’ and then refused to follow the terms of the accepted appeal. I felt the Appeal Board was scolding me with terms I specifically said would make the timeline for completion difficult for me. I punished myself by refusing to meet their requirements on principle… the irony is not lost on me here.

I spoke up and I spoke out- I never bit my tongue in class. I worked my butt off in a warehouse the summer before university and decided that I was going to get my money’s worth while at school. It always amazed me when I’d ask an obvious question or ask for an explanation because “I’m lost”, and students would thank me after class… “I was so lost too, thanks for asking”… Why didn’t they speak up? What were they afraid of?

It didn’t matter if I was in a class of 20 or an auditorium of 200, the professor knew my name by the second or third class… sometimes this was to mutual benefit and sometimes purely my own… but I was not intentionally disruptive and I certainly never ‘sucked up’ though I often had to endure the stares of Marshmallows² who thought I was sucking up… I didn’t care.

My favourite learning experience in school was not from a course. I had a Wednesday night class in the second term of my first year, and after the first class I was invited to join a few people for coffee. (As I tell this I have to chuckle at the fact that I have no recollection of what the Wednesday night course was.) We were a motley crew that spent the next 12 Wednesday nights discussing Religion and the Meaning of Life over a cup of java. Present at these coffee-shop-talks were a third-year student who was Atheist, his second-year devout Catholic girlfriend, a 35 year old ex-Hare Krishna of 14 years who served as their head chef for nine of those years, and then there was me. My values and beliefs were challenged beyond any classroom ever challenged me. We had our own Socrates Cafe where Big Questions were asked and we all took turns trying to answer them.

As for classes, well I excelled at classes such as the one on Educational Leadership where the The Tao of Leadership was the text, and topics of study included holistic learning. Meanwhile, I floundered in courses like Environmental Geography where I was lectured to from class beginning to bitter end. I have a box somewhere in my garage with some impressive doodles created in that class.

I remember taking a Philosophy course on Plato in my first year. Whenever I made a point contrary to my professor, or asked him a challenging question, he would respond with, “Well I think Plato would say…”
So, I was no longer disagreeing with him or questioning his ideas, but rather Plato’s instead! I lost all respect for him after he marked a paper with a comment that went something like this:

Very well thought out,
excellent arguments,
too short! C+

I knew the word count quota, but felt I’d said all that I needed to³. So I guess that if I had added about 150 more words of fluff, then and only then would I have earned an ‘A’ or at least a ‘B’ on this philosophy paper? To my Plato-Wanna-Be professor I was no Aristotle. By the end of the term he hated me… that was another fine line that I walked!

My dissent towards criteria was even evident with my Master’s Terminal Paper, (that I finished just two years ago), which is now used as my advisor’s example of what not to do (…of going too far, and being too long). At one point she asked me to shorten my paper so I edited one paragraph by about two sentences and then widened my margins.

So, am I an edupunk? To me, the answer is still ‘No’. I’m not a rebel, I didn’t buck the system. I was just a stubborn learner who let my surrounding environment determine when and if I chose to learn… not a lone wolf as much as a disgruntled sheep. The truth hurts, but I’m a big boy now and I can take it.

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Confession #3: I don’t like the term Edupunk

Stephen Downes loves the term. Alec finds Meaning and Identity:

…I am going to take Jen’s advice seriously when she says about edupunk “Don’t dissect the metaphor“. Edupunk, if nothing more, has got many people talking, exploring their beliefs around education, and in some cases, reminiscing of day’s long past. The educational community is much too diverse, as it should be, for anyone to cling on to one single metaphor for meaning.

Well, it certainly got me reminiscing, so what’s wrong with the term?

These are not Edupunks, they are Educational Leaders! The reality is that anti-establishment, Do-It-Yourself, transformative, collaborative, networked teachers doing new things, in new ways, in new wall-less, time-zone-less, textbook-less, standardized-test-less classrooms are paving the way for a new kind of schooling. I’ll say this again in a different way:

These are not Edupunks, they are Educational Leaders! They are our role models paving a new path to a more meaningful educational experience in our schools. They may be on the fringe, but they are also at the forefront. They are leading the way.

When I went to ContinUO we read Surfing the Edge of Chaos. Here we can find the appeal of Edupunks, but we can see that in reality we are speaking of our new Leaders.

“The fringes are the source of most truly innovative ideas in cultures, economies and organizations.”

But a problem arises in,

“…recognizing when the fringe has created something so important that it no longer deserves to be fringe.” (Alex Trisoglio, pg.31)

Our so-called Edupunks are figuring out a new path as they go… this isn’t about rogues, it is about adult learners who are trailblazing without a map.

“As a general rule, adults are much more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than to think their way into a new way of acting.” (pg. 14)

Also in the book, Monsanto’s CEO Robert Shapiro speaks of Foresight (seeing ahead), Insight (seeing deeply), Speed, and Courage (pgs. 82-85). These are all things that I see in the educators being called Edupunks.

Let’s not put our leaders into fringe categories. Let’s recognize them as the trailblazers they are. They are Surfing the Edge of Chaos (or should I say educhaos)… and what they really deserve is our appreciation, thanks, and respect.

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Footnotes: As a teacher…

I guess you could say that at times I too have ‘acted my way into a new way of thinking’. My actions as a learner influenced my actions as a teacher, as these footnotes suggest.

¹ As a teacher, I don’t take any marks off for something coming in late. It is my job to make sure that students demonstrate their learning and meet the learning outcomes during the year. All time lines within the year are arbitrary (and usually teacher determined) and not a requirement worthy of penalty. Exceptions may be made where either Personal Planning or Goal Setting are part of the outcomes.

² As a teacher, I am very vocal about students needing to speak up and ask questions. “Don’t be a Marshmallow!” was a saying that I took from my Grade 10 English teacher Mr. La Point who used it to symbolize placid students sitting in his class and choosing not to speak up. At first being called Marshmallows in my class was funny, but soon students would catch on that they were not meeting expectations when they were being Marshmallows!

³ As a teacher my response to ‘how long does this assignment need to be?’ has always been, “It needs to be as long as it needs to be.” Students hate this answer, but after a while they get it. In a nutshell: I’ve read three brilliant sentences that have said more than three long-winded paragraphs.

The first time I saw the term ‘B.G.’ referring to ‘Before Google’ was in Karl Fisch’s ‘Did You Know’ presentation. Tonight that term came to life for me.

Here is an eye-opening statistic I discovered about myself today:

Total Google searches: 3633 (Since April 30th, 2006, and only counting when I have been signed into Google.)

I did some quick number crunching: On average, I use Google about 450 times a month, which also averages to about 15 times a day. I really do have to ask, what did I do B.G. – Before Google?

If you have a Google account you can check out your own history here http://www.google.com/history/

Have a look at my Googling trends: (The secret is out… I am a night owl!)

Above and beyond this chart, there is actually quite a lot here that Google knows about me. Add to this the things I choose to RSS into Google Reader, the things I choose to Star and Share there, the sites I sign up with on Gmail, the people (and information) I e-mail, and basically Google could start to make decisions for me.

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A.G. – After Google

How far away are we from having Google prioritizing items in our e-mail and RSS feeds for us? Or providing us with personalized search results? I wonder how far this could go?

Will there be a truly semantic web? Although Stephen Downes says ‘no’, and makes a very knowledgeable and compelling argument, I wonder if he isn’t looking at it from a paradigm that will change?

Stephen states:

But the big problem is they believed everyone would work together:
- would agree on web standards (hah!)
- would adopt a common vocabulary (you don’t say)
- would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)

But I think of the sophistication of Language Translators today and wonder if standards and vocabulary will have to be stringent? Perhaps there will come a time when it will be enough to have a somewhat common vocabulary (congruent semantics within different languages)… and so ‘loose’ standards become beneficial since if you choose to follow along, you reap greater benefits. Or perhaps the same way Mashups scrape information from multiple sites a semantic web could be built by information scraping?

How many billions of dollars were spent on laying down fiber cables in the few years before wireless access mushroomed?

How many experts thought blogs would fail? Without RSS blogs would never have become so prolific. Blogs came first, but they might have drifted to the fringe without the ability to have feeds go to the reader.

Is a semantic web really doomed to fail or is it inevitable? Web4.0 – your webmodality.

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C.E. -Communal Era

I’m not changing my behavior because I have become aware that ‘Google is watching’ and tracking what I do.

And yet I’m not fully trusting either. How accurately can they pinpoint my interests and focus Google ads towards me? (With a last name of Truss this would be refreshing… Yahoo always shows me Roofing and Bra Support ads.) Furthermore, who else can see my information? Who decides this? How secure is my information? All these things concern me, yet I’m still using Google.

There is an option to ‘pause’ the history tracking and also to ‘remove’ an item in Google History, but do these things actually happen or just disappear from my view? (I recall some issues with Gmail not ‘deleting forever’ after such a request was made.) Yet I’m still using Google.

With OpenID and Corporate ID (Youtube is Google, Flickr is Yahoo) I am going to be sharing my information regardless of how much I chose to ‘pause’ or ‘block’ or ‘remove’ information from the web. My information is communal/shared to a very large extent!

What really concerns me is how this information about me will be used to “help” me? Will “smarter” searches force like-minded ideas on me? Will they stifle my creativity? Will I suffer the ‘Dumbness of Crowds‘?

Will a semantic web shield me from an onslaught of unnecessary information or will it insulate me from possibilities and learning opportunities?

Here is a great thing to do with your online students: Donate Free Rice to help end world hunger… (and improve their vocabulary while you are at it!)

Here is a news article about it, in case you would like to use it for current events.

Advertising at the bottom of the screen changes with every question to promote the companies that donate the rice.

Level 50 is all but impossible to get to without a dictionary, which I encourage… After all, what is the harm in having students looking up words in the dictionary? This is also a good time to introduce using Google as a dictionary.

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On a similar (Social Responsibility) topic, check this out:

“Make Your Difference is a contest to empower youth to impact the world through creating a new possibility in their school, community, city and beyond into positively impacting the world.”

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We really can make a difference, especially if we help our students recognize that they can make a difference!

Spring brings new beginnings just as a school year comes to an end. As a teacher it is difficult not to be reflective in June.

Special moments remembered, peppered lightly with what could have been, and never transpired. The nostalgia seems to loom more so this year as I contemplate a move after my nine-year career in a single school.

Two things I have come to realize: I have been fortunate to have worked with some amazing people in an amazing school, and it is time to move on.

My stint has not been without changes:

• the school changed from a 7-9 Junior High, to a 6-8 Middle School

• 2 principals and 6 different vice principals

• only 3 teachers have been there longer than I have

• I have taught in 6 different classrooms

• I’ve taught 2 different grades

• I’ve been both a Humanities and a Math/Science teacher

• I’ve only repeated my same course load twice in 9 years

My stint has not been without challenges: With a wonderful student dying in her sleep days after she finished Grade 9, and job action (twice), being two of the more emotionally draining experiences.

Yet my stint at this school has been wonderful in so many ways. Imagine being hired right out of the education program and put into a school with 13 other brand new teachers – about half the teaching staff! We had an unbelievable year of learning from each other. Every time you walked into another teacher’s room you were ‘wow-ed’ by what you saw… and in the spirit of learning, there wasn’t a sense of one-ups-man-ship that can happen in such a situation, but rather a desire to offer an equally engaging experience in your own classroom. The people I shared those early teaching experiences with are now my closest friends.

And now it is time to move on. I said that four, three, two years ago, and last year too, and still find myself at the same school because it has offered me so much, and yet this time I am sure that I will find another ‘home’.

I have posted on a few very different High School jobs, including English/Socials in a Gifted Program, a Math 9/10 position, a Planning 10 and Graduation Transition Coordination position, and a Leadership/PE/Student Services position… each one desirable for many differing, but equally intriguing reasons. I already know that I won’t be offered the first one, thankfully as it will also be taught with Grade 12 English, (which I have no desire to teach). I was encouraged to apply for that job by a parent of a gifted student in my class going into the program, that in itself was a wonderful compliment. I have just spent some time preparing for interviews, happening tomorrow, for the next two jobs I posted for. I have a passion for Math, and know that I would enjoy focusing all of my attention into one subject area… (hopefully with some access to technology:-) I would also love the opportunity to contribute to the developing Graduation Transitions Program in a school, and perhaps use wikis to coordinate some of the large scale school-wide events organized in order to meet the graduation requirements of every student. Also, I would be interested in implementing an e-portfolio into the Planning 10 course. The final posting would include teaching Leadership at a High School, a position I have wanted to do for years, and something that would make my Grade 5 Leadership/Transition Retreats easier to expand into a district initiative next year.

It is a bit boggling that my interests could take me in so many different directions, and yet I feel ready for which ever path I have the opportunity to follow.

Images by Roman Edirisinghe on Flickr.

An honest look at my blog.

The Good: • This site, elgg.net, is not going to be called EduFilter (seems my e-mail wasn’t the only complaint). Elgg is now EduSpaces, a name a number of us recommended – though I bear no claim to my voice being listened to since I also offered a dozen other alternatives.

The Bad: • All my links to the site need changing, this isn’t necessary since elgg rather than eduspaces in the address still works, but I would rather that my Flickr, Curriki, LinkedIn, & other blogs etc. all had my updated links.

The (I wish I was) Indifferent: • My Technorati URL needs to change. THE BIG QUESTION: Why did this bother me?

There are two reasons that I can think of: TIMING and EGO.

Timing:
My blog is getting more attention than it ever has. Some noted bloggers: Stephen Downes, Scott McLeod, Wesley Freyer, Miguel Guhlin, and Vicki Davis (on EdTech Talk ) have all given my Web2.0 Prophecy: an Adventure a plug and linked to it with my old elgg address. This attention has doubled traffic to my site and I thank them for this! Yet I sit here pretending it didn’t bother me that they are linked to my old Technorati address rather than the new one. This leads to the main reason the URL change bothered me…

Ego:
I while back I e-mailed Scott McLeod in response to his top edublogs? post and wrote this:

Here comes the honest part: I like to go to my sitemeter and see where people visit me from. I like seeing the dots grow, in number and in size, on my clustrmap… and I like when I see new links in Technorati. Why?

The fact is, that I want to be well read, and I want my blog to be recognized. Scott McLeod says it best at the end of his ‘top edublogs?’ post:

1. Square Peg, Round Hole – a collection of other people’s ideas around schools not fitting kids that I have been adding to until recently, now a second post is in the works.

2. Portal Needed to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students and the accompanying wiki fieldfindr, (yesterday fieldfindr had more hits than my blog… almost a month after I created it as a mock-up to go along with the post). When will someone make this a reality?

3. The digital native, the digital naive, and the digital divide – among other things, the idea that maybe students of this generation aren’t fully at the digital native stage… yet.

4. Leadership Lesson Plans – found in my files rather than my blog. Thanks mostly to Curriki, these get visited and downloaded a number of times daily. I am glad I can offer these resourses that I have found useful in teaching Leadership.

And in my opinion, the most under-rated post: School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto – Manifesto’s are big in education and schools2.0 but they mostly focus on the changes needed to the system. Here, I look at the responsibilities of the learner- remember them?… the people we are ‘doing this stuff to‘. (ok, that was a bit cheeky!)

To anyone reading my blog for the first time, Learning Conversations is a post that quotes a lot of my other posts and gives a sense for what this blog is about, and what it means to me.

The Good:
•Quality. I take pride in my posts and although I still do them primarily for myself, I am keenly aware that I have an audience. This has made me a much better writer… (and it can do the same for students!)
•Recognition. My site is slowly growing in readership. Fear not ‘A list’ bloggers your position is safe, I’m not tilting the blogosphere on its’ head here, but I do consider myself an agent of change, and I will make my world a better place!
•Meaningful dialogue. I have enjoyed the learning conversations that I have had online. I have not been this excited about learning- ever! Was it like this in school for anyone? Not me.

The Bad:
•In-click/Out-click. I am amazed at how ridiculous some of the Google Searches are that lead to my site. For example I have the phrase ‘Webkinz-dot-com’ in a post that happens to touch an image of a (totally unrelated) bridge. 2-5 times a week I get hits from Webkinz (stuffed animal) image searches – Hardly what I would call a meaningful hit.
•Time. I spend too much time on the computer. I can’t keep up with my feedreader. Both reading and writing are slow processes for me. I started highlighting ‘New Voices’ but have stopped recently because I haven’t read any recently. I resolve this by sleeping less, but I can’t keep this up much longer. Who is doing all this well? And what is your secret???
•Comments. I spend a bit of time each week commenting on blogs… continuing the conversation. But I seem to generate very few commenters on my blog. This might be a result of my next point.
•Post length. I am long-winded. Most of my posts are lengthy. Are readers even getting to the end of them? I think it was Vicki Davis who wrote ‘write it, then cut it in half.’ I have to learn to do this… it won’t be easy for me. Even this post is probably too long!
The Indifferent:
•Technorati. It took a few days but I’m over it. I really don’t mind that I am starting over. I will enjoy watching the links grow again. I have never gone to Technorati to see someone else’s ranking and judged their site as a result. In fact, in a comment on Christian Long’s post Stop Blogging Because You’re An Educator I state: “…Warlick and Richardson seem to be more about post-cards than edu-posts.” I’ve noticed that many of the really meaningful posts that I have read recently have not come from the ‘big boys’ but rather the boys and girls- like me – that are in the trenches, trying to make sense of where schools are now, and where they need to be.

Images: Foster City Reflections and Under The Bridge 2 are both by Peter Kaminski on Flickr.

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Wesley Fryer is scaring people with Karl Fisch’s presentation “Did You Know” remixed by Scott Mcleod

Will Richardson is ‘Stuck’.

“There’s nothing new here, really. I know. What’s new for me at least is that if feels like my lens for all of this is changing. And that’s why I’m stuck as to what to write about here. My learning and classroom learning look very different. I will never enter another physical classroom as a “student” again, and that’s by choice. That physical space just doesn’t cut it. And schools are all about physical space. And control. And content.”

Kelly Christopherson feels stuck too.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach sees schools with more walls than windows. (Read this!)

Tangled in the web I find Stephanie Sandifer, who thinks Action Plans are Overdue. She points me back to Sheryl and Will (whom I had already read), as well as Miguel Guhlin, who in turn writes about Sheryl’s post.

Miguel’s post (overall) is more upbeat… yet this paragraph sticks with me,

Miguel’s optimism comes later when he says, “…let their voices, that of the learners, ring throughout our schools, voices that speak of relevance, authenticity, and human connections…in ways that cannot be denied.”

This sounds like my friend Dave Sands who says ‘it is students who will change education’. But it isn’t coming fast enough, there are too many ‘walls’ denying our students, too many flame snuffers.

This isn’t new. I’ve been here before.
From my first post:

To my first collection of other posts, where I found so many people writing and talking about how schools don’t fit kids: Square Peg, Round Hole… Time and again I am finding myself in these lulls of impatience, frustration and dissatisfaction.

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What spurred this comparison on? My thinking can jump around quite a bit, it went something like this:
We are reaching a group consciousness around ‘where we are’ compared to ‘where we should be’ with the use of technology and schools… ‘reaching a group consciousness’ reminds me of the 100th Monkey Effect… actually, this is like a web version of the Age of Aquarius… which reminds me… what were the ’9 Ideas’ or ‘Agreements’ I read about in The Celestine Prophecy about 10-12 years ago?… No wait, they weren’t Ideas or Agreements, they were… (Google search the book)… ‘Insights’! …(reading) …Wow, I can really see some parallels here!

So, here is my comparison. I will box in the text about the Celestine Prophecy Insights from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celestine_Prophecy, Monday Dec. 12, 2007 – I’m just realizing that a date is essential when quoting a changeable text). I will then put my slant on how ‘”WE” are progressing through the insights in relation to the ‘WEb’

The Web2.0 Prophecy

A New Web Awakening

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Time’s Person/People of the Year.

Professor Michael Wesch shows US that WE are the power of the web.

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The Struggle for Power: Elitist -vs- Ubiquitous

On the one hand we have Four Eyed Monsters’ video

“Humanity Lobotomy”: Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary

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Web Mavens rather than Mystics

We have the pioneers: Vicki A. Davis has soared, so has Darren Kuropatwa.

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We are Connected

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THIS IS WHERE WE ARE STUCK!

On the bright side:

We have the Creative Commons;

We used to only dream of flying,

and;

We see the potential for providing wisdom to others.

But we seem to have impediments to our dreams; challenges and limitations that stall our dreams.

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THIS IS WHERE WE NEED TO BE NOW!

We need our ‘guiding coincidences’ to be ones that are nurturing and powerful.

We need to collaborate, empower one another, and see potential rather than roadblocks. This is important for our children/our students, but it is equally important for us. Our ‘synchronistic message’ can’t be “impatience, frustration and dissatisfaction” as I mentioned earlier.

We need financial support, visionary leaders, moral compasses, inspiring role models, enriching professional development, and meaningful collaboration. We also need minimally restricted content and unlimited access… these are all building blocks that ‘increase the frequency of guiding coincidences’… these are the things that inspire us, fuel us, connect us, and allow us to see the potential in ourselves and each other. We truly can ‘Be the change we want to see in the world.’

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Web3.0 or Web3D

Gary Hayes has some ideas about where are we going next.

My question to you is this: When we are stuck, when things aren’t coming together, when our universe is not unfolding as it should, how do we make things FLOW?

I ask this since we are heading map-less into new, and uncharted territory.

I have been participating in this on-line conference for the last few days (or rather nights!) This is the introduction to the conference that convinced me to participate:

“The evolution of teaching and learning is accelerated with technology. After several decades of duplicating classroom functionality with technology, new opportunities now exist to alter the spaces and structures of knowledge to align with both needs of learners today, and affordances of new tools and processes.

Yet our understanding of the impact on teaching and learning trails behind rapidly forming trends. What are critical trends? How does technology influence learning? Is learning fundamentally different today than when most prominent views of learning were first formulated (under the broad umbrellas of cognitivism, behaviourism, and constructivism)? Have the last 15 years of web, technology, and social trends altered the act of learning? How is knowledge itself, in a digital era, related to learning?”

The gem of the ‘Learning Conversations’, that have happened so far, has been a discussion thread started by presenter Bill Kerr tittled, “a challenge to connectivism”. A considerable amount of the discussion is theoretical and I will admit that some of it is ‘over my head’ in that I have a lack of background knowledge to fully appreciate all that is being said. What I have enjoyed in this discussion is the healthy discord that has occurred. Stephen Downes, web guru and another presenter at the conference, posted in this discussion thread, ‘What Connectivism Is‘. This spurred discourse after Tony Forster said in a post reply to Stephen, “I am disturbed by your statement…”

Two things have made this enjoyable:

1. The fact that at a Connectivism conference the very definition of the topic is open for debate by the presenters. This speaks volumes to the unchartedness/ the newness of this way of connecting to one another, and it embodies the idea that knowledge is both fluid and reconstructed/remixed in this new connected world. We are continually Synthesizing and Adding New Meaning as we connect in new ways.

2. This discourse is something that I have seldom seen in the world of educational blogs. There seems to be an unspoken etiquette about being non-confrontational when discussing ideas on other’s blogs. Essentially teachers don’t criticize others’ opinions. Even when there is disagreement it is often polite, reserved and… well, annoying. On the other hand, there seems to be thoughtful discord and discourse happening in the Connectivism conference forums.

I think that our concern that discourse and discord are forms of argument sometimes prevents us from having meaningful, healthy discourse. In their book Metaphors We Live By, Lakeoff & Johnson consider the metaphor ‘ARGUMENT is WAR’. This is the metaphor that often prevents us from having meaningful discourse.

Formal debates also fit neatly into this metaphor: point-counterpoint/attack-defend.
As a society, we aren’t going to change this embedded metaphor any time soon, but we can separate argument from discourse. Discourse, discord and disagreement need not be argumentative.

It is fascinating to me that in the blogosphere there is a noticeable shortage in meaningful discourse. Teachers encourage critical thinking, challenge students to consider alternative views and encourage meaningful discourse in the classroom… and then walk on proverbial egg shells when commenting on blogs.

Now, I am sure that there are some wonderful counter-examples to my point, (and I encourage anyone reading this to send me links:-). But I do wonder if it is just me- and the circles I hyper-surf around in- or do others notice this subdued politeness that hinders meaningful discourse?

I am encouraged by the healthy discourse and discord that I see happening at the Connectivism conference; I think a lot of new, innovative and creative ideas/concepts/theories can and will be born out of it!

So what is Connectivism?
George Siemens, conference organizer, says in his Connectivism Blog,”Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age… For me – call it whatever you want – connectivism, social constructivism, navigationism (pick your own)…learning today must be seen as social, knowledge distributed across a network, capacity enhanced by enlarging the network, learning/knowledge as multi-faceted and complex, incorporating technology, etc. I’m generally not in a mood to argue against other learning theories (though, at times, it’s required simply to achieve a frame of reference). I’m much more interested in arguing for effective learning representative of what learners require in order to stay current today. Evangelizing connectivism is a secondary concern as compared with discussing effective, relevant, “sustainable” learning.”
In another post, he adds this interesting point about connecting in new ways, “Dialogue does not need to be direct in order to be effective. Dialogue of greatest value is what I call parallel, or dialogue of awareness. At this level, the comments and views of others are within our cognitive network (i.e. we know they exist) and their influence weighs in our reasoning and thought formation.”

In my small contribution to the discussion thread I say,
“My limited experience in blogging suggests to me that it is the cross-disciplinary meandering and hyper-linking that brings us deeper levels of understanding, as well as peripherally participating with a mentor or expert. In fact, I think innovation and meaningful learning/synthesis of ideas comes from the fringes… connectivism isn’t about the theory- the great body of knowledge to be shared, it is about the ability for any Joe (or Joan) Schmo to meaningfully add to the learning conversation. (As I hope this Schmo has )”
[Note: This has actually been adapted from my original post. Another contributor disagreed with a specific point I made- and I agreed with him! Originally I said 'as opposed to' instead of 'as well as' (italicized above)]

Please feel free to disagree!

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Reference: G. Lakoff & M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By. The University of Chicago Press.(Paperback edition, 1981, *pg. 5, **pg. 4)

Image Credits:

“Arguments Yard, Whitby” by David Hastings (Flickr username: dr1066)

“Definition of Discourse”: Mac PowerBook Dictionary Version 1.0.1(1.0.1) Copyright © 2005 Apple Computer, Inc.

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Excerpt from My Feedback/Reflection post on the Connectivism Conference, (Feb. 10th, 2007).

About me:
Well I still have to look at/listen to the Stephen Downes presentation before I would feel comfortable saying that I have come close to concluding with the conference. As I say in [this] blog post, I have found both the discourse and even discord refreshing. I think best when I am surrounded by people who challenge what I say and what I think. At more than one point I felt misunderstood and had to clarify myself… but I believe that ‘the meaning of your communication is the response that you get’ and so I take full responsibility for my lack of communication. In an effort to clarify my words, I do the same with my thoughts… isn’t that what being a life-long learner is all about? This conference has provided a considerable amount of fodder for me to chew on for a while. I have had many opportunities to synthesize and add meaning to ideas both new and old alike. I have also found many new friends!

Thank you all for contributing to my learning!

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