Multi-faceted Refractions

I have been tagged by Lani Ritter-Hall for the K12 Online Conference Blog Meme.

What is a blog meme?

The Daily Meme provides a definition which accurately describes my understanding of the concept:

People often ask, “What is a Meme?” so here’s a more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so it’s rhymes with ‘dream’; some pronounce it so it sounds like ‘mem’ (from mem-ory).

First off, technically most of the sites here are not memes. The fact that most of these sites create new questions all the time removes the whole evolving viral concept of a meme. But most people call them that and I liked the word ‘meme’ so I used meme.

In the context of web logs / ‘blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it’s some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

What is the K12 Online Conference?

The K12 Online Conference is what I would describe as an open source conference, one which has been freed up from time, location, and cost. There are no excuses for not participating, even in a small way, since you can choose when, where, how, and at what level you will participate.

It is a group of 4 conveners, Darren Kurapatuwa, Wes Fryer, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Lani Ritter-Hall who volunteer to organize a conference. They manage a group of individuals who select 40 individuals who volunteer to create a presentation on a topic that they are passionate about. They also have others who help organize four live events, three fireside chats and one 24 hour gathering that allows educators from all over the world to connect and share ideas, thoughts, and experiences with each other around the topics covered during the two weeks of presentations. All an attendee needs to participate is time, motivation, and the energy to be challenged, connected, and engaged. And if you don’t have time during the conference dates, this year October 8th – October 27th, you can visit the presentations, which will be available in perpetuity, or when the technology evolves, which ever comes first. In short, a very long time.

K12 Online Conference Meme Rules

To share either three (3) reasons to participate based on your experience from last year or (if you didn’t attend last year) three (3) things you hope to gain from the experience this year.

My Responses to the Meme

1. My participation in the K12 Online transformed me in positive ways which I am just beginning to understand. It challenged my notions of what should be done to prepare students, faculty, administrators, and parents to prepare them for the shifts that I believe are happening in the world around us. I have begun to act up those notions in my professional practice.
2. The presenters last year mentored me to making a real commitment to  embed the use of these new tools into my daily practice. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the opening keynote speaker, David Warlick whose presentation pushed me to blog consistently for the past 11 month now, to Vicki Davis whose hands-on activity on wikis provided me with real experience as to how wikis can be utilized in the classroom, and to the contributions of other presenters such as Mark Wagner, Jeff Utecht, Chris Lehmann, and Ewan McIntosh.
3. Many of individuals who I got to meet during the As Night Falls (scheduled for October 26th – October 27th this year) I now count amongst my friends. They have provided me opportunities to grow and learn both professionally and personally. And from this group, I have been introduced to an even larger pool of people who now fall within my friendship group. I now feel that I can travel nearly anywhere throughout the world and know that I can connect and share with these great people.

Who is next?

I tag Alex Ragone, Darren Draper, Stephanie Sandifer, Charlene Chausis, and Joyce Valenza, and any others who wish to participate. Jump on in.

Technorati Tags: k12online, k12online07

One of the items that I was beginning to struggle with on this blog was that of voice and audience. I wanted to do a number of different posts, talking about new tools and projects that I find, talking about projects that I am assisting with, and discussions about the role of “embedding” technology (thanks Jeff Utecht) into our curriculum.

In order to keep a more consistent voice, I have spun off my discussions about new tools and projects to a new blog that I have created, Mining for Treasures. In this new blog, I intend on sharing the nuggets that I find that I think that my faculty, staff, and other teachers would find helpful in their daily practice. It is my goal to highlight one new tool, web site, or project each school day, creating a library of items that I feel would be helpful for teachers in the classroom.

My first post is about the Research Project Calculator, a new tool that helps plan for long-range papers, PowerPoint, and video projects.

I hope that you will come and visit the new site and feel free to make suggestion for future stories.

Or, How 140 Characters Enhanced my Tuesday.

140 Characters. My average sentence length, because I am usually wordy, runs at about 120 characters. Long enough to convey a message, but without a great amount of depth. (For those of you counting, the first three sentences contained 171 characters.)

On Tuesday, in the course of 10 minutes, I received three messages from three different members of my personal learning network. Vicki Davis, a teacher in Camilla, Georgia, wrote:

coolcatteacher Hey guys — someone come over here so we can check out google presentations – » link to Welcome to Google Docs & Spreadsheets about 22 hours ago from web

Darren Draper, a technology coordinator from Sandy, Utah added:

ddraper It’s a Google Presentations party. » link to Welcome to Google Docs & Spreadsheets about 22 hours ago from twitterrific

And Bud Hunt, a teacher from Colorado also added:

budtheteacher Learning about Google Presentations with lots of other folks. Come join us. » link to Welcome to Google Docs & Spreadsheets about 21 hours ago from web

Thus began one of the more interesting learning experiences I have had, ever.

With the announcement of Google Presentation yesterday, I filed the news away as something that I need to take a look at, but didn’t have a sufficient time during the course of the day yesterday to put it through its paces. But, I took the rish and clicked on the link and began an exciting journey and collaboratively learned about Google Presentation as a result of my learning network.

Upon the page loading, I noticed something remarkably different about Google Presentation. While someone was running the presentation which had been created, it did not take up the full screen. In the lower right hand side of the screen there was a chat window. Everyone who was collaborating on this document was not only testing features, but posting their findings for all to read. They were testing different fonts, adding images, importing PowerPoints, testing RSS feeds, you name it, all at the same time. Within a half hour of glancing at the progress, I was able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the program, due to the efforts of “the mob”.

At any point in time, there were 6 – 15 people working, testing, and most importantly, beginning to share strategies best practice, how this application could and should be introduced in the classroom and for professional development. There was a number of conversations about the chat feature, which can be saved, and posted, such as Vicki Davis did on her blog yesterday (Cool Cat Teacher – Google Presentation LIVE)

Collaborative project ideas began to emerge as other participants began to brainstorm about the uses of this product. And the conversation continues, 24 hours later, as we collectively try to make sense. Having finally joined the document as a collaborator, I have had invitations from a friend in Pennsylvania to conference later this afternoon via skype if I need additional help.

My transformative learning experience continues.

Technorati Tags: vicki davis coolcatteacher bud hunt budtheteacher darren draper Google Presentation learning

Today, Google released a new collaborative tool , Google Presentation, to round out its suite of products. During our Lower School and Middle School opening Faculty Meetings, I showed teachers Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets which can be used by students as substitutes for Microsoft Word and Excel. These are tools that would allow students to work via a web browser, which would allow for students to work both at home and school without the need to have the application on either computer or emailing work back and forth. It also would allow for students to collaborate on documents together, which opens up a range of possibilities.

To see an example of Google presentation, you can take a look at this presentation created by a group of teachers today (http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?fs=true&docid=ah4zsdj46b66_578cv4×7#)

Google Presentation is their first attempt at provide users the ability to create slide shows via a web browser, making a presentation application independent. This first attempt does have limitations. There are no transitions and limited templates, although this may be an advantage, since in most of the projects, students can spend more time look rather than content. At this point, you export the presentation into a PowerPoint format.

Advantages to this is that a project can be simultaneously edited. You can import PowerPoints, but there may be other solutions which may be better, such as SlideShare. It does keep a history so you can revert to a previous version.

Like the other collaborative Google Apps, Docs and Spreadsheets, I am guessing that this product is not finished and that additional enhancements will be added in time.

I think that his will be worthy of  use in many of current uses and the ability to collaborate will make this a powerful tool.

As I noted earlier this week, I spent a part of my weekend following the thoughts and ideas being shared at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai. Since then, several of the participants have taken the time to reflect and share their ideas and thoughts via their blog posts and podcasts of the sessions.

This morning, while reviewing my RSS reader this morning, I found a post from Kim Cofino, who is a 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School in Bangkok, Thailand.  In her post today, 20 Project Ideas Inspired by Learning 2.0, she outlines many great global project ideas that she was brainstormed with other teachers both at the conference and virtually.

With our goal at school to have our students to become more active and participating global citizens, I am hopeful our teacher will take a look at some of these opportunities to allow our students to connect with others. I look forward to sharing these projects.

Technorati Tags: learn2cn