Multi-faceted Refractions

For the third year, our high school cancels the regular schedule, in order to have a special event, Diversity Day. This day is student planned and organized with workshops centered around a particular theme. This year’s theme is centered around storytelling and pluralism. As was explained to me, what we are trying to ask studentis to examine stories of themselves and others that show our similarities and differences.  How do we learn about others if not through their stories: visual, oral, written, musical, etc.?

Due to the economy, we were limited to the number of outside people/groups that we were allowed to invite. So after a morning keynote from Robin Bowman who will be sharing her story of creating her book, The American Teenager (see story from NPR’s All Things Considered), faculty will be presenting a series of workshops on a wide range of topics from dance to quilting to hip-hop to poetry to taiko drumming.

While my session on Graphic Novels did not generate enough interest to be accepted, my Around the World in 140 Characters (the session I wanted to do), will have 17 students sharing a conversation about the importance of networking via social networks. In my session, I will try to:

The stories of our lives exist in fragments on the web, through looking at our friends list and seeing the networks and connections that created. How do people use the web to connect to people like them or learn about people not like them? How are stories spread and shared, through the rise of citizen journalism, such as the attacks in Mumbai? Participate in a social experiment where we try to create as many connections as we can during Diversity Day.

My plan, right now, is to begin to have them visualize the networks that they are creating not only from a social aspect, but from the power of those connections. I plan on showing visualizations of my twitter network, talk about the WE ARE SPARTA story from the AP Exam last year, and show Evan William’s TED presentation on the power of Social Networks. I am also going to share the story of how Twitter may have stopped a school shooting.

But then the fun will start. What I have done is created a Google Form which asks four questions:

1. Who referred you?
2. What is your city and state?

Using Twitter and Facebook, we will try to collect as many responses as we can in a 24 hour period. We will send the message, ask people to fill out the form, and then pass it along. Once completed, I will try to create a Google Map with the locations of all who respond.

Access the form

It will be interesting to see if between our networks, we can go viral. I am looking forward to see how far we can pass this forward.

This is an article that I was asked to write which was sent to the parents and friends of the school:

A students learning to write and speak has been one of the hallmarks of a North Shore education. Over the past fifty year, transmission of ideas has shifted to include more visual information, including pictures, images, movies, and videos. Over the past four years, we have made a concerted effort to develop a student’s visual literacy not only as a consumer, able to properly decode and interpret the information being consumed, but also as creators of new digital stories to share understanding and new ideas.

Students, from Senior Kindergarten through 12th Grade have been creating  digital stories as part of the their curriculum. In each of these cases, students are asked to answer a question. Students then are challenged to create a narrative that will answer that question by transferring their own passion and emotion. After planning using a script or a story-board, students then assemble the images, movies, music, and text that they will need to be able to create and craft their story. Through this process, they are learning to develop this aspect of their voice.

Amy Kenyon, third grade teacher, and I recently showed highlights of several of the projects at the Illinois Computer Educators conference last week in St. Charles, IL.  These projects include:

First Grade – Community Unit
Winnetka
North Shore

Third Grade
Classroom of the Mysteries
Colonial America

Eleventh Grade
13 Days that Changed American History
What Did Vietnam Mean?

There are several other stories in process, especially in the Middle School, that are not quite ready for public viewing.

On Monday, one of the language teachers, who has begun integrating cell phones into her curriculum, via Gabcast, reported that she had gotten a prompt saying that she could not record anymore audio without first paying. Knowing how this teacher has really used this service and being away from a computer to check, I assumed that her classes had exceeded the 200 Mb storage limit that her free account allowed.

Then, this morning, I got an email from a second language teacher who shared that on March 1st, Gabcast changed their service. On the front page of their blog, they announced:

Effective Sunday, March 1, 2009 Gabcast.com is changing its format.

The changes include the following:

No distinction among channel types (Free, Pro, Premium). There will only be one kind of channeland it will have all of the features that were previously reserved for Premium channels.

Telephone recording will become pre-pay, just like conference call minutes. Members that have used telephone recording in the past will have to purchase minute packs.

*** VoIP recording is FREE ***

Needless to say, this unexpected and unannounced change left a number of educators, who are beginning to use Gabcast as a positive way to introduce phones and cell phones into their classrooms. In the comments, we notes from a college course with 200+ students who were using Gabcast for a semester long project that still had weeks left to complete.

While I understand that using many of these “free” web 2.0 tools is risky, for the exact reason that a company may go out of business or is changing its business model, I do feel that there should have been communication ahead of time to let users know of the impending change.

Like many other great tools, like VoiceThread, it would be wonderful for them to develop a reasonable pay option for education. We are willing to pay a reasonable amount for a great service, even in these times of tightening budgets.

We have determined a way for our users to call into a “free” VoIP broker and continue to use Gabcast in such a way that our users will be able to continue to use the service. But we will research if there are better solutions. If so, it may be Gabcast’s loss. Which will be too bad, as it was a great little service.

Each year, we hold a Diversity Day for our students. This year’s Diversity Day is scheduled for March 17th and due to the current state of the economy, more teachers are being asked to develop workshop sessions for students rather than relying on outside resources.

When asked, my thoughts turned to trying to demonstrate, via an experiment, the power of the network. How do some YouTube videos go viral? How did the rise of citizen journalism and communication tools such as Twitter, allow for the spreading of a story, such as the attacks on Mumbai?

Below is the description of what I am proposing:

Around the World in 140 Characters
The stories of our lives exist in fragments on the web, through looking at our friends list and seeing the networks and connections that created. How do people use the web to connect to people like them or learn about people not like them? How are stories spread and shared, through the rise of citizen journalism, such as the attacks in Mumbai? Participate in a social experiment where we try to create as many connections as we can during Diversity Day.

How would you go about demonstrating the power of the network? I have some ideas, but would love to hear what others have to think.

Imagine trying to play a piano concerto with a piano which is being wheeled in and out and when it is there, it only has 47 keys. This is similar to what I experienced last Tuesday while trying to present a workshop at the ICE Conference.

I am glad that I had a Plan B while presenting on Collaborative Learning Environments. Fortunately, I had Internet connectivity, but the participants did not, so I was able to demonstrate and lead discussion on how these tools could be used. Effective, but not at all what I had hope to accomplish in this workshop.

So rather than create an experience that allowed me to have participants have large blocks of guided play using tools such as Google Docs, wikis, VoiceThread, Nings, I had to demonstrate and hope that they were able to carve out the time for play when they got home.

I want to thank Leigh Zeitz, Chad Lehman, and Alex Ragone for skyping in and sharing during the workshop. I know as the guide, I learned something from all three, so the day was not a complete waste.

So the morale to the story, always be prepared to use Plan B or Plan C if necessary. You never know when you are going to need it.