Do you find it easier to share resources and ideas with like-minded people in your pln (personal learning network) than with colleagues in the next classroom who may not be as active online?

During a visit to the magnet school “The Science Leadership Adademy” in Philadelphia in April 2010 Bill Gates said that schools need to get better at spreading best practices. How will you share what you have learned at BLC10 with colleagues in your school?

I will be presenting on this topic at Masscue in October and would love to have your input if you would be willing to briefly share your strategies using the google form below. I will consolidate any responses and share them right back with you. Thanks in advance…

Picture credit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thaiqn/2870888905/

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Capturing ideas has been on my mind lately. I use evernote when working, but I often get the best ideas away from my computer either while on a walk or on a bike ride. I usually have my phone with me, I often message pictures to evernote, but I would love it if I could leave myself quick voice messages.

This email, dropped into my mailbox today. I have one question. Could it be any simpler?

So, I have created a drop and have the link to that in Evernote. No more lost and forgotten ideas.

Check out the message dropio left at http://drop.io/maynewsletter

Uses for the classroom

1. Calls from field trips

2. Use as a homework reminder

3. Use as a parent message

4. Record student responses to a special event or discussion and then embed calls on your class blog or webpage

5. Provide a daily class update

6. Have students call in with their project idea assignments

7. Check out this demo drop showing how a teacher can use drop.io as part of their work  flow at http://drop.io/mrdavidson

Below I embedded the voice message from that demo drop to show one of the many ways you can distribute drop content.

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The keynote below was published this morning and provided a great way to start the week.

Resources from the keynote are on the conference wiki.

Link to keynote.

Spread the word with teachers at your school by sharing the online flyer

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You can tell I’m a teacher, because one of the things I love about the holidays is being able to share the gift of reading. Yup, I’m the aunt that always sends books, the Mom that makes the Christmas Eve gift a book and the wife that points her husband in the direction of the book store as a hint.

Twitter Teacher Reader Recommendations

This week  I asked on twitter what book they would buy for their teacher colleagues, I am convinced that all teachers are readers because they responded and I got a wonderful list to add to my own personal reading list on shelfari, and to share here.

@jackiegerstein The Passionate Teacher by Robert L. Fried

@paulbogush The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer

@irasocol Borderlines by Peter Hoeg

@whatedsaid Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart

@quirkytech The Art of Possibiity by Ben Zander & Why don’t kids like school by Dan Willingham

@simplysuzy Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse

@mbteach Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

@snappity The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish

@kellyhines Wooden by John R Wooden

My Recommendations

A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Full keynote video

What the best college teachers do by Ken Bain

I heard Kathy Sierra recommend this book in a math webinar I attended and wrote about in October of this year.

5 dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lenconi

Really important to read this if you are involved in PLC’s in your school.

Teach like your hair’s on Fire by Rafe Esquith

I haven’t read this yet, it is on deck. I have heard many recommend this book this year.

Please add your own recommendations for educator reads in the comments.

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I was asked by a colleague if I still had a copy of a wordle I created last April for a school faculty that I no longer work for. I knew that I had emailed it, but I didn’t have access to that account. The wordle site works without accounts so unless you have the link it is hard to retrace your steps. I did have a hard copy in a journal I keep, so I was thinking of scanning it and sending it, however the scanning software had not been installed on my new mac.

After berating myself for 30 minutes for not keeping better records, it dawns on me. Didn’t I blog about that? A few clicks later, I find the post, and using the wordpress filter found images that I had uploaded during April 2009.

Sometimes you may wonder why you keep at it…My blog is my backup, my record, my memory, my resume even.

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I just added a new rss feed to my “all in one place” place.

It was one of those, why didn’t I do this sooner, slap head moments.

I got the idea after a brief exchange in a chatroom between Jackie Gerstein and Joyce Valenza on liveclass2.0 on Saturday. The topic of the day was diigo. Jackie mentioned how she often starts her morning in Diigo checking out the links that have been added to the groups she belongs to. Joyce replied that she does that too. I always learn something in the liveclass20 sessions. While I was in the online seminar to learn about Diigo, as usual, the experience sparked a completely random idea that could not have been predicted.

After the exchange, I’m thinking, hey, I have a whole network in delicious (a kind of PLN subgroup that has been neglected), I bet if I checked their additions everyday it would be useful and informative and would make me smarter. I like the idea of all these great educators saving their resources and me taking advantage of that, collaborating.

This is another node in the flow of information from my personal learning network. One that I have not been utilizing enough.

I can stay on top of my network the laborious way, by going to the delicious site, logging in and checking network…

OR

“I bet they have an rss feed for that” and I can add it to my “all in one place” place. So when I go to that place everyday it will be there, updated.

How to, with Pics

Go to delicious and click on your network

As you can see there are 102,000 bookmarks saved by educators in my network

Scroll down to the lower portion of the page, and you will see the RSS feed link

After you click on it you will get a url that looks something like this

feed://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/network/lindseybarlow?count=15

I actually edited the field and changed the count=15 to count=35, this will make the feed bring in the latest 35 bookmarks from my network. If it is an active day or I miss a few days, then I will miss some of the bookmarks. This is not a big deal, I mostly just scan through the titles and investigate those that look the most interesting. Often a bookmark will appear more than once as the educators in my network have similar interests they tend to bookmark similar sites, especially ones that are shared via twitter. As you can see in the screenshot from the top, netvibes (my all in one place place) conveniently shows who bookmarked the site and its title. Scanning is a snap with this set up and doesn’t add much time to my daily check on what is happening.

Extra Credit

If you don’t have much of a network

If you don’t have much of a network in delicious, don’t worry. There is a shortcut. You can still take advantage of this idea, by tapping into the stream of someone who does have a good network. Replace the lindseybarlow in the above feed url with the delicious name of anyone with an account and you will have created a feed to anyone’s network.

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Creativity is messy, doodling is good. Peter Reynolds, nominated entrepreneur of the year from fablevision has given 16 year olds everywhere the ultimate excuse (especially the one sitting in a messy room upstairs at my house).

I heard the good news during my massCUE conference highlight- a session with Peter Reynolds talking about creativity and imagination and by default-education.

Peter doodled on a wacom bamboo tablet in flash while talking to a crowd of over 100. It was certainly more interesting and off-the-cuff than watching a regular powerpoint presentation.

Peter recalled how painful it is to watch anyone trying to draw with a mouse, or with a trackpad and does recommend educators provide tablets for students to draw with. Showing how math is behind all computer art, after demonstrating the pressure sensitivity of the tablet while in paint mode, he then zoomed in and showed the vector points of the brushstroke, and neatly segued into the story of how his 7th grade math teacher was extraordinary for recognizing his strengths. How he concentrated on bending the curriculum around him (Peter), instead of bending him around the curriculum.

Favorite Quotes

“give the test a rest” – allow time for play and creativity. It made me wonder how effective it would be to allow students to reflect on lessons or units by giving them time to doodle. Seems to tie in with the annotated reading I saw students creating at the New Media Literacies Conference at MIT.

“if you’re an adult and can’t draw you haven’t been hanging out with me (Peter Reynolds) enough” – if you get the chance to see Peter talk at his many book signings, workshops and interviews, go and hang out, draw again, doodle.

Fablevision Generosity

The fablevision website offers so much for free for educators, Peter jokes that he has to rely on his twin to remind him not to give it all away or they won’t have a company, but check into a few of the highlights…

• Posters for your classroom drawn by Peter
• His book The North Star is free to read online
• Read 17 tips for a creative life-long learning journey online or download it to your computer

Storytelling

As twitter has become my main source of new tips and tools, I now attend conferences looking for new tips and tools, yes, but more lately I am looking to have the opportunity to listen to great storytellers. I want to watch and learn how they get their message across. This is the skill I need to learn as a technology integrator and professional development instructor. Peter Reynolds is a great storyteller.

Would love to be able to pull off a presentation using a tablet, a blank screen and a few ideas to doodle with? Something to practice.

Image from fablevision clipart collection

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Massachusetts Computer using educators annual conference takes place this week. To have one place to monitor, listen and watch what is going on I created a public page on netvibes that monitors the tags masscue and masscue09.

As soon as actual attendees post online via twitter, flickr, delicious, diigo, and blogs, it will feed to this page, making it easier to connect and listen to what is going on in sessions. I get so much more out of a conference this way, I lose that anxiety about choosing one session from the many great sessions on offer. I know that I can go back and check out links and bookmarks from most of the sessions, if and when I have time.

You can create a similar page for any conference, you may or may not be going to (just change the tag). The same ideas could work in the classroom, it would be just as easy to set up a page to follow any “tag” that is related to your curriculum topic. For collaboration and teamwork make your own tag & have the group post resources which are then aggregated automatically on the page.

Twitter search widget

This widget feeds every tweet that includes the word “masscue”. Helpful to connect to others on twitter and expand your personal learning network.

In the netvibes Add Content section choose twitter search from the essential widgets list.

Delicious and Diigo RSS feeds

To stay on top of what attendees are bookmarking in sessions, go to delicious and search for the tag you want to include. On the page with the search results you will see an rss icon. Click on that and copy the feed address (url). It will look something like this

feed://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/masscue?count=15

In netvibes, go to add content click add a feed, then paste in this url.

Blog Search

This widget will find all blog posts about a specific topic entered into the search. Add this content to your page using the blog search widget

Photos & media

To follow photo posts and other media being archived and tagged at the event, similar feed widgets can be created using

• flickr & rss,
• youtube & rss,
• slideshare & rss

If I was organizing an event, this would be job one, job two would be publicizing it. So, whether you travel to attend a conference in person or crash it via a netvibes page, share what you create & learn so others can follow you there, virtually of course.

Another blogpost with similar focus:

Create a listening dashboard for your organization

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They are then required to find the list of videos aligned to the textbook they are using

The result of the challenge is that the student has a clear indication of which resources to  study with what chapter of their textbook.

The resources can be used for topic preview or review, discussion starters and useful additions to their own learning creations.

Teachers were excited to share this resource with their students, responses included

“That Hippocampus is awesome. Really Good.  I am going to assign it to my sophomores.”

OMG, this [Hippocampus] is Awesome!!!!”

For other digital literacy challenges see here and our masscue presentation here

Extra Credit

There are a few other websites that I like that have similar teacher time-saving alignments to the textbook.

For connected math curriculum by the Boston Public Schools there is Select Math

Please let me know if you know any others via the comments.

Related posts:

1. How will you share BLC10?
2. Dropio and voice messages in the classroom

I was reading this brave post by Lisa Thumann “I just don’t like technology” about how to deal with a comment from a professional development participant that really threw off her whole presentation. Great title, about a teacher expressing her fears, her needs about technology. It was not about Lisa, or her activities for the day, although the fallout impacted everyone in the session. Anyone who has delivered professional development to teachers has at some time or another run into a few with this set-in-stone attitude.
After reading the comments, it stayed in my mind, wondering what I would do in that situation, what would the answer be?

Sunday rolls around and another post by Buffy J Hamilton on the unquiet librarian about digital literacy and reading e-books.
Short Stories + iPods= Happy Readers « The Unquiet Librarian
Buffy has a great photo showing one student reading a book and another reading on her ipod. Both can co-exist-of course..and then
in the last paragraph short and succinct, but so true.

“The kids know this—what part of this don’t the adults get? At the end of the day, our focus needs to be about meeting their needs, not ours.”

That was the answer that I was looking for, for the teacher that “just doesn’t like technology”. It’s not about you teacher….it’s about meeting the needs of your students.

It was quite the librarian weekend this weekend for me (and 80 others online). I spent time in the classroom 2.0 session with joyce valenza and buffy j hamilton learning about copyright and creative commons in the library. Archive here.

THEN the final piece of the puzzle was delivered. Joyce Valenza also wrote in School Library Journal about how to retool yourself, a roadmap for teachers to start to learn more, take control of their own professional development and start to remove their own blocks that prevent them from meeting the needs of their students. As teachers become more in control of their own learning, their resistance will drop away as they meet their own needs more easily and can tune it to the needs of their students. The learning network that I am immersed in is made up of most of the aspects mentioned in this article and will form part of a graduate course I am teaching on developing a personal learning network for professional and classroom use next February.

Ta da! PLN works for me, really. On it’s own.

(PLN=personal learning network)

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