Cool Cat Teacher's Cool Sites of the Day! 04/12/2008

• The comment that became a post | Do U C What I C - Annotated

  Another reflection from a blogger -- I love this quote, "It's lonely outside the box!" It has been very insightful to share information on how people of all types feel about the edublogosphere.

  tags: education, edublog

• Modern Day Revolution - Horizon Project 2008 - Annotated

  I'm reading some great posts from students about the keynote. This one in particular was very captivating.
  
  In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."

  tags: hz08_keynote, education, brightideas, hz08, usercontent, hzmeta

• BeTwittered : 32Hours

  Be twittered has a gadget AND a moble gadget for twitter -- I'd love to hear how you like it. This means you may add a gadget to your homepage of igoogle to keep up w/ twitter on your start page. The mobile gadget allows you to put the app on your cell phone to track twitter. This is from 32 hours.

  tags: twitter, edu_newapp, brightideas, education

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Don Tapscott speaks out on education -- Keynote for Horizon 2008

a simulpost with TechLearning

Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital agreed to keynote our Horizon Project and has delivered his keynote address on the wiki.



The students will be interacting and communicating their thoughts via the wiki and Ning. I personally appreciate Don's willingness to bring attention to the issues in education. We need broad support from leaders such as him to get the message out about the need for global collaboration and changing system of teaching.

Some points I believe are very important:

1) This generation is different from the students we've had in the past.

2) The education system has remained basically the same although the students have changed.

3) It is time for educational evolution to match today's students needs AND the need to collaborate globally.

4) Having the students envision the future, as they are with the Horizon Project is IMPORTANT!

He applauds their efforts and I DO TO!

What you can do!

I hope you'll share this keynote on your own blog. (please put this tag at the bottom of your post: hz08_keynote )

We need volunteers!
Encourage educators and business leaders to volunteer as experts and judges -- we NEED YOU!

A netiquette note
And, when you ask to join the wiki or Ning -- state your information to me so I won't have to e-mail you and find out "who" you are. We "check out" the participants we involve in this project. Once you're added to the wiki, add your name to an untaken place!

Peer Review Classroom Sign up going on
We also are actively recruiting sounding boards which are being chaired by

• Kim Cofino- Bangkok, Thailand
• Graham Wegner - Australia.

These are classrooms elementary and higher (even college) that take one class period to evaluate videos and provide feedback. Peer review is part of the new ISTE Nets standards! If you hope to do something like this in the future, you should certainly introduce your school to the idea by taking a class day!

What all of this means
We are seeing increasing interaction between business leaders, authors, and education. We saw it with Karl Fisch's project. It seems to be that the teachers who are able to set this sort of thing up are very often the bloggers.

Blogging gives you power and REACH! You are able to link to and reach out to those within your area of expertise and connect them to your classroom like never before.

Blogging makes us better as professionals but it also makes our classrooms better. Connecting and mass collaboration of educational professionals is in its infancy! Join in now! Every day you wait is another day you miss out!

This keynote is for your students too
It is a level playing field. Because this keynote is delivered asychronously via Youtube, your students have the chance to interact and speak out also. Everything that is tagged hz08_keynote in delicious and technorati will be linked to the keynote page today. (I have to have some items in there before I may link to them!)

Your students have equal opportunity to reflect, discuss, impress, and share what they think about this keynote and the changes in education in a way that WILL BE HEARD.

We need to have our students talking about and understanding mass collaboration. Some classes are going to record podcasts of their 'popcorn" discussions and others will blog -- just tag it to delicious (via diigo if you wish) OR technorati and it will come through our aggregation!

Join in! Everyone welcome!

I cannot write this post without a heartfelt thanks to my co-planner and friend, Julie Lindsay in Qatar, without whose common vision this project would not exist.

tag: hz08, education, inspiration, reform, innovation, societal change, Don Tapscott, hz08_keynote

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Is the edublogosphere a closed, elite cocktail party?

I noticed Jon Becker's post responding to Scott's post about Comment Intensity. I really try to stay out of the contest of measuring the "biggest blog" -- I think it is a waste of time.. and in 5 years it will change anyway.

But I had to respond to this note from Jon. He says:

"I think where I’m going with this is that I worry that the ed. tech. blogosphere is reasonably saturated. Related to Darren Draper’s post on Twitter Set Theory, I feel like there are some central figures whose spheres overlap considerably and a whole lot of us outsiders trying to penetrate that inner circle. It’s as if folks like Will Richardson, David Warlick, Wes Fryer, Vicki Davis, Dean Shareski, Stephen Downes, Chris Lehmann…(and, yes, you Scott) are having an awesome cocktail party conversation and I’m standing on the outside staring over their shoulders and listening in, trying to get a word in, but not penetrating that conversation at all. I know there are LOTS of us on the outside looking in."

This was my reply:

The "perception" of some sort of "cocktail party conversation" is just that a perception. I rarely even chat with those guys and although they are awesome, only a few of them make my weekly MUST READ list.

I FEEL out of it ALL THE TIME. I feel like an outsider ALL OF THE TIME. I don't feel in the know. I feel left out a lot. And supposedly everyone THINKS -- I'm in.

The fact is that NO ONE is in. This is a big, massive microcosm that no one controls and few of us even understand. We struggle with having time to do it all and coming to grips on all of this blogging and global audience thing.

So, how would you take this personally? I went for a week with no comments -- did that mean no one was reading? I left and didn't blog for a week -- does that mean I'm suddenly irrelevant.

We are all relevant but the emotions you're feeling with all of this are something I very often feel and I believe most people struggle with. I LOVE it when I get links and I Live for comments.

It is never enough, though, and I find that I have to focus on my real life in order to achieve satisfaction. Most people here don't know cool cat teacher exists.

Keep perspective and know why you blog... if you blog to make a difference and inspire... you will. If you blog for some sort of validation... you're not going to get it on an Internet that likes this person today and moves on to another tomorrow. If you want to be loved, pet the cat, hug the spouse, enjoy the kids. And you might want to take a read at the poem I shared today.

You are an excellent blogger. Just remember, people post most often on emotional issues, not on the technology issues that they actually use.

Scott's post on comment intensity was a real downer for me -- I mean I must be worthless if I have a low comment intensity!? But hey, we can talk all day about who is important and who isn't. But if one person reads our blog and get something out of it.. it is important.

I'm to the point that I could care less about my technorati rating, my comment intensity or link count -- I might check them every two weeks. I care more now (hopefully it is maturity) about connecting with people and doing things that make a difference.

But, I'm not perfect, the comment intensity post really got me down and made me want to quit blogging. And remember this, Jon -- AFTER 3.5 months -- I HAD 7 READERS!

7 READERS!

It takes time. Time and doing it for the right reasons. If I had a blog that looks like yours after 3.5 months, I'd count myself very proud... but I didn't. I didn't know what I was doing and was completely lost!

You've come a long way... don't be so hard on yourself!

There are a lot of us on the outside looking in. But, the outside is the inside. This blogosphere is like nothing else we've ever seen. Crowdsourcing and mass collaboration is a new thing and we all have new emotions to deal with

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Thanks Britt Watwood! Here's the masterpiece on Docstoc

Many thanks to Britt Watwood for twittering that he took this poem from yesterday's post and made it into something to "hang on the wall."

I asked him to forward it back and it again moved me to tears as when I wrote it... it is just so how much I feel and is almost ethereal, like I didn't even write the thing.

I took it and am sharing it with you using a cool new site that lets me embed documents called docstoc.


Remembering Who I am - Get more documents

This site lets us upload and share all kinds of things. And image this -- if we actually come up with a tagging standard and all begin to agree to use something like lesson_plan -- then we can find lesson plans from one another. Free sharing!

tag: docstoc, Britt Watwood, inspiration, poetry

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Remembering who I am

Remembering who I am

I am not an avatar nor am I an id
I am not my twitter nor my SL identity
I am not my diigo and wikis aren't me
I'm a mom and a teacher in all simplicity.

Tis easy to get caught up in "being something" more
when what I am to be is often the two feet on my floor.
No one else can hug my kids nor wipe a wet tear
love the unlovely or calm the raw fear.

The pressure from "somewhere" to be some kind of star
is deceiving and distracting from helping us be who we are.
Balance, perspective, focus, and time offline
will become successful habits of the overachieving mind.

Reject the invisible hand that pushes you to stress
think what you want and how time should be spent best.
Choose your life's course, don't just flow with the stream,
you can be more...but it should fit with your dream.

Words from my heart
I love my true friends through the Internet. The amazing teachers and "real people" out there who are just the "salt of the earth" as we say in the south.

So many amazing people who are just wonderful and thrill me with their presence. I enjoyed unplugging last week during spring break so very much. I was literally offline and disconnected for 6 days! I really was able to spend time with my family and think.

When I returned and looked at my inbox, I saw it through a fresh lens. I am 37 years old and at this stage in my life, I already gave up one career to be a stay at home mom. My focus has to stay my family or I'll give everything up again!

This is what I saw:

• A ton of Diigo invites and friends -- not a lot of "stuff" and pretty easy to handle, but still it was there.
  
  The effort of setting up a "new" network. Someone needs to handle this friend thing or there is going to be an inherent obstacle in starting something new. Now, I weigh heavily my decision to join anything. A lot of us do. This just reinforces that and although I believe Diigo is definitely a place to join, I will continue to think twice about where I join and what I recommend that others join as well!
  
  
• About 10 emails from people I've never met, that have never commented on my blog and as far as I know don't participate in our educational communities ASKING to be a guest blogger on my blog.
  
  At this point, I have had one guest blogger. I share everywhere and I'm glad Louise made such an amazing post, however, I really feel like the one place online that is truly ME is this blog. This is me and who I am as best as I will share publicly, I guess.
  
  Having a blog that is gaining readership is exciting, but I still think that 1 comment is probably worth more to me than a lot of readers that might just have added me to their RSS in some workshop but never take a glance.
  
  I'm inspired by Dale Carnegie and remember sitting in my bathtub as a 6th grader reading his book How to Win friends and Influence People and not being able to put it down. Across the years he spoke to me and helped me.
  
  If I cannot help people, I don't want to blog. And when I hear from readers... the real people it means something. If I hear from people who are genuinely interested in education and me as a person, that is great too. If they want to tell their story, I love that.
  
  However, if I'm just someone that they want to use to accomplish their own thing and don't care a rip about me or my readers... just our pocketbooks... get lost.
  
  It is about authenticity and caring about real people.
  

• Some comment spam - I had a few people who had good comments and several who just commented and had a link to their own work. The comments were like "nice blog, see what I'm doing here." Again, poor netiquette and comment spam.
  
  I can tell everyone from personal experience that this blog has been built upon my own commenting in other places and not just stingy posting here. Haven't had time to comment or read much lately, but I'll be doing that again soon!
  
  
• Some cool messages and stories. I love those. I'll never forget the message someone e-mailed me from a coffee shop in Virginia about how a post had gotten to her at just the right time. She was discouraged and the post had her crying in her coffee with joy. Wow! To be a part of something like that means a lot to me. Those stories keep me blogging when I get discouraged.
  
  
• Requests for appearances, workshops, etc. This is where I feel somewhat of a double edged sword. I'm booked through December of this year and that is fine with me. I'm very excited about the fact that Julie and I are working out the final details to offer a TWO DAY intensive Flat Classroom Workshop in July in St. Louis. We'll share more later.
  
  I want to help people and do things and meet people, but I'm only going to take three appearances a semester. I just have to do that. I want to be here for my family and my students and have done the travel thing. I don't want to go on the "rubber chicken eater" circuit (as Doug Johnson calls it.) I want to stay home with my children and run around on the farm. So, although many ask me when am I going to quit teaching... I can tell you... it ISN'T happening any time soon.
  
  I am contemplating the types of work that I will do when I do something... when I get out, I personally want it to be with the people who have the vision to do something with what I'm sharing. I think that more teachers are going to have such opportunities and it is important to be choosy or else you will just feel very, very burnt out.
  
  
• A few freelance articles -- This is what I love to do... write! Writing, web appearances and a few in person things... that is fine with me. I dream of having my book on the rack in my books a million and on having an article that helps people understand technology in Woman's Day. Silly dreams, but it could happen.
  

So, you ask, why do you even share this stuff?

Well, I share it because there are some other teachers out there who may be struggling with being "sucked into the vortex." This vortex of educational change is like a wild stallion... you can jump on his back, but if you're not careful, he'll control your destiny and you'll not master your own.

There has got to be some common sense with all of this. (and lots of prayer) Everyone having instant access to everyone else is sometimes NOT a good thing, particularly when some of the people want to use you.

If you are just starting or really becoming "known" in educational circles, I just want to encourage you to learn from what I'm experiencing:

1. Know your friends. They are often the people who talked to you and others when you were "nobody" and just starting out. Do they talk to beginners?... if not, watch out.
   
   If you're starting out, see how the "established" people treat you. If they treat you with respect, they're worth following.
   
   
2. Filter Spam ruthlessly - Spam might be e-mails. It might be people who IM you constantly. It might be wasteful twitter accounts.
   
   If it is email and you use folders, filter that person or account if you really have to read it to one place so that you will not be distracted. If it is facebook or some other place, replace the e-mail with RSS. Take time to look at every e-mail and apply filtration rules. Can the spam and take back your life.
   
   
3. Filter focus ruthlessly. I follow the time honored strategy of having a top 10 - to do list daily. I have a master list with the rest of the items, but this gives me focus. And yes, blogging was on my list today!
   
   I find that I have to take a hard look at the places that "suck me in" and won't let me go. And, when I go there (like twitter), I use a handy timer widget on my desktop that I downloaded from Google Desktop.
   
   I also made a folder in Google Reader called @HOTLIST (the @ puts the folder at the top of the list -- some people just name this Aardvark but that is a little silly.) This includes my 10 must reads of the day. This too is a secret, but I'll tell you that I often focus on those people who I know and work with pretty frequently as well as a few other sources who are dissenting or different viewpoints.
   
   
4. Invest your time in things that save you time. I've been having a little trouble with airset, so I set it to synch to Outlook. I set outlook to synch with Google Cal and then started using an amazing site called Time Bridge to schedule my appointments. It lets me invite people to a meeting and give 5 times that work. People RSVP and it sets the appointment AND puts it on my calendar for the best time. Then, it reminds everyone automatically. Isn't that amazing?
   
   I also love using the diigo auto blog posting feature and replaced the delicious posting with this one which allows me more characters and thoughts for each bookmark as well as tagging and annotation. I'm not sure what I think about it yet and may set it to not post daily. Still thinking on this one. I don't know if I like the autoposting of the links. Before, I just spliced delicious into my feed only, and now my blog looks a little "linky" -- I wish I could customize the blog post from diigo a little more.
   
   I also love that I can twitter and access the standard tags for the Horizon projects from within diigo. All of these things make it a HUGE time saver for me.
   
   
5. I have also used twitterfeed to post the things I KNOW I will post anyway. It just saves me time. This includes, the Wow2 show, Wow2 links and my blog posts. That is it. I've seen some use it to excess which means I unfollow their twitter in a heartbeat!
   
   
6. A good old dose of common sense - When I feel like all of this "stuff" is stressing me out, I listen to myself. That is when I send myself offline. My mile wide rebellious streak kicks in and I take an little vacation from it all. This is why I refuse to get a blackberry. Online is PART of my life it is not my ENTIRE life! It will have its place and its limit or it will be gone. Period.
   

In this period of overchoice, we must learn how to make choices that make our lives better and help us further our dreams and mission in life.

It is OK to disconnect. It is important to remember that popularity comes and goes and not to get hung up on it. Be who you ARE not who you THINK people want you to be.

I guess it always bothers me when I see someone twitter

"I'm reconnecting with my long lost cousin"

or

"I'm seeing my grandad for the first time in a month."

It niggles at my mind that perhaps their fingers should be off the cell phone and their eyes and hearts should be connecting with those they love.

Like the mother I saw a couple of weeks trying to fly a kite when her son while talking on a cell phone... we still need the humans in our lives. We need to do a better job of focusing on the things in front of our noses.

If us tech-heads cannot achieve balance, people won't want what we have.

Master time lest it master you.

tag: teaching, education, inspiration, Timebridge, airset, Google, Google calendar, twitter, wow2 show, twitterfeed, hz08,

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Links for the Day 04/08/2008

A Threat So Big, Academics Try Collaboration - New York Times  Annotated

tags: hz08, hzmeta, collectiveintelligence, collectiveknowledge, connectingpeople, science, education

Fascinating article about cross-disciplinary collaboration. This is becoming something that is possible through new means of using the Internet.

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Links for the Day 04/07/2008

Setting up your PLN - Horizon Project 2008

tags: librarian, hz08, hzmeta, mashup, ubiquitousplatform, virtualcollab, education, bestpractices, curriculum, edu_news

Today on horizon, my students set up their PLN (personal learning network) in their RSS reader -- we use Netvibes although some switched to Google reader.

Here is how I will assess this:

I am assessing the students on this by having them print the page out and turn it in -- I'm also checking over their shoulders in lieu of printing -- but I may not get to everyone. -- In this blog post, I've REQUIRED 6 things on the page -- each is worth 10 points -- with 2 of those points being for a properly edited title in Netvibes (so that they may see what is what!) -- and then I have them find at least four additional sources of information for another 10 points each.

Knowing how to set up a PLN for a topic of study is a VITAL skill for the 21st century researcher. I like Netvibes because it is very simple -- one page interface.

Women of Web 2.0 Show #44 | EdTechTalk

tags: wow2, education, hz08, hzmeta, connectingpeople, science, virtualcollab

A webcast with Diane Hammond, organizer of Yes I Can Science about her experiences organizing a blogging project between middle school science students and an astronaut on the space station. She has some interesting insights on the importance of active teacher involvement and engagement of the classroom.

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