This was my final presentation that I did at BLC08. I never ended up posting it and now I’ve just recently re-presented it for some student teachers at Simon Fraser University.

[Update: July 20th, '09 - new post with SlideShare available]

Afterwards, I had them contribute to a VoiceThread, just like I did with the TLITE presentations, and with my first – two presentations in Boston. Then I created a Diigo Classroom with them… (I should have spent more time on this final part!)

In my presentation, ‘The Ant’ is a metaphor for a networked learner. Ants work together and do so much more than they could as individuals or even as smaller groups. But, I’d call this the weakest part of the presentation… So how do I fix that? I let my network do it for me!

Here is what happened during the presentation

My (Twitter) Network in Action Part 1: The Shout-Out (Read from the bottom up.)

But that’s just a small sample of the power of a network. Sunday night Heather, a student in my session, sent me this e-mail:

Hey David

I have a quick question, i am going to do a wiki with my bio 11 students
with microbiology.  They have to go online and type in a virus and give a
whole bunch of information.  But how do i know which students did what?  I
did it with wetpaint.  And i have blocked all access just in case the
parents have issues with it.

I’ve never tried Wetpaint. I went to two different Wetpaint pages and didn’t have an answer for her so I went back to Twitter!

My Network in Action Part 2: Seeking Help (Again please read from the bottom up.)

It took just a few minutes to get help from someone in Thailand that I’ve never met face-to-face. We may not have met (f2f) before, but Jeff Utecht is in My Neighbourhood. I actually used the images from one of his posts for my Brave New World Wide Web Slide Show then Video.

Another Tweet by Jeff ended with “Let me know if you need any help”. Thanks Jeff, and thanks also to Jen Jones for inspiring this post! I used one of her blog posts in my presentation above.

And I’d like to say thank to Bob Cotter, Cheryl Oaks, Penny LindBalle, Steve Sokoloski, Maureen Tumenas, etalbert, Lesley Edwards, Mrs_Banjer, Derrall Garrison, Sue Waters, Amanda Salt, Elizabeth Lloyd, Silvia Tolisano, Ian Hecht, Neil Varner, James Gill, Kathy Cassidy, James McConville, Lorraine Orenchuk, Brian Crosby, and Dean Shareski for contributing to the networked ‘conversations’ above.

Ants are individually insignificant, but networked in a collaborative way, they literally move mountains! Networked teachers and educators like these I’ve mentioned are moving mountains too, and it is my hope that Student Teachers will see the value of becoming networked and having their students be networked too!

Tags: Amanda Salt, ants, BLC08, BLC09, Bob Cotter, Brian Crosby, Cheryl Oaks, datruss, David Truss, Dean Shareski, Derrall Garrison, Elizabeth Lloyd, etalbert, Ian Hecht, James Gill, James McConville, Jeff Utecht, Jennifer D. Jones, Kathy Cassidy, Learning Conversations, Lesley Edwards, Lorraine Orenchuk, Maureen Tumenas, Mrs_Banjer, Neil Varner, networks, pairadimes, Penny LindBalle, presentation, Silvia Tolisano, social networks, Steve Sokoloski, student teachers, Sue Waters, Twitter, Ustream

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 4:03 am and is filed under Learning Conversations, Pro-D, School2.0, connecting online, metaphor, networks, pairadimes, presentation, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.