Twitter

The whole world’s a Twitter …

REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING

Twitter is certainly becoming extremely popular on the web. In fact it was talked about so much in the media last year that I even set up my own account and gave it a try about a year ago. I set up the account and within a day I had one of our distance learning teachers following me. I was impressed to have someone follow me that quickly. I followed a handful of people and tried several tweets but after about a month of trying it out I really did not “get it” so I stopped using and following it.

When our class started I made a decision to really give it another try. Perhaps I was just missing something my first time around. Maybe I was not following anyone that had anything to tweet about. Surely if I followed the people that were suggested in the course outline I would get a better understanding of how to effectively use this. One of the first things that I did differently this time was to look for and add several people to follow. By doing this several people started to follow me as well.

Since my initial trial of Twitter I have gotten a cell phone (yes I know that I am a bit late getting into that too) and have found it wonderful to use SMS text messages to keep in touch with family. I love this technology and the restriction to 140 characters in Twitter appears to be very similar to text messaging so I thought that this would now make more sense to me.

I also did a much more thorough job at looking at my profile and the settings in my Twitter account. I had not paid much attention to the settings in the program and I wonder how many others blindly go about using this and similar services without much thought about these settings and the privacy or lack there of that is inherent in the system. I updated my profile and included a picture of me. I think this is important to include so that people have a better idea of who they are actually talking to.

I did not go so far as to have tweets sent to my cell phone. I worried about the amount of data I would get sent on my phone and the resulting charges. Another consideration was that my phone would be constantly buzzing indicating new messages and I would lose the messages I valued in the forest of tweets that were less important and not as meaningful to me.

By following as many people as I did this time I learned some of the language and finer points of Twitter. I learned things such as how to use @reply to reply directly to a tweet. I learned about the use of hashtags. This is where #tag is used to identify a group of similar tweets.

Even with the addition of all of these new people to follow I was still struggling with using Twitter. I think for me the way I had it set up was limiting. I did not have new tweets being sent to my cell phone as explained earlier and thus the only way I could follow tweets was to actually go to my twitter.com page and look. Well this does not happen on a regular basis for someone that has a busy schedule. I did a bit of research and found a few suggestions for some add in software. The one that I installed and have been using for quite some time now is Twitteroo. This software is small and easy to install. It runs when your computer is turned on and alerts you when you have new tweets. Not only does it alert you but it displays the tweets in a little pop-up window. You can customize the way it displays and responds. It is very good in that I don’t have to now consciously remember and take the time to go look at my Twitter account and I don’t have to run it through my cell phone. By using Twitteroo I have been able to stay on top of the tweets coming from the people I follow.

The YouTube video here discusses How to use Twitter.




One feature they talk about is a Twitter gadget for Windows Vista. The gadget is similar to Twitteroo and would be helpful but it is only for Vista so I will have to wait until I upgrade my OS to give it a try.

Another piece of the learning for me has again been the trailfire for twitter. In particular I found that a very useful link from the trailfire is a link to a web page called The Twitter Guidebook which explains everything you need to know about Twitter. In particular I liked the description of the language being used with Twitter. Don’t get me wrong. I said I liked the description of the language. That doesn’t mean I am a big fan of the “cute” little names and the use of “tw….” For everything that is done. Just too much!!!

Twitter is still in its growing phase and I think that the world is just trying to figure out ways in which to use it effectively. This story illustrates how law enforcement has found a way to use twitter.

This YouTube video discusses 100 twitter secrets and talks about the website http://twittinsecrets.com/

PERSONAL LEARNINGS

What do I see in my future with Twitter? Well I haven’t given up on it just yet but I think that I will start to follow more famous people and use it more as entertainment and news than work. It really is becoming more and more prominent and I don’t go a day without hearing about the latest person to be on Twitter and encouraging people to follow them on Twitter. I have not given up on it just yet but I am finding it very hard to follow at this very busy time in my life. Perhaps when things settle down a bit and I am through with all of these classes I will be able to use and enjoy it.

It is interesting to note that my 3 children have no interest in Twitter at all. They are very aware of it but just have no interest in setting up an account and using it for their own use. Perhaps this should not be too surprising as Wikipedia reports that “Just 11 percent of Twitter's users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore.” With demographic usage like that I really wonder if it will be able to continue to grow and find new audiences and usage. I suppose that it is still quite new and institutions have not really started to use it. Perhaps as they go through school and university in the next five years they will be expected to use it as part of that. The fact that they have no desire to use Twitter is interesting also since they are rabid users of text messaging which is basically the same thing. Perhaps over time these two separate parts will merge and they will be using Twitter in new ways.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

I can see how some people have really taken to this but I still find that much of the content of Twitter is a huge waste of time. I think my feelings on this were validated when I read about the results of a study regarding Twitter in Wikipedia

“Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and separated them into six categories:

· Pointless babble - 41%

· Conversational - 38%

· Pass-along value - 9%

· Self-promotion - 6%

· Spam - 4%

· News - 4%”

This study showed that 79% of the tweets were pointless babble or conversational in nature. That is a lot of “stuff” to sift through for a busy person and I think that is one of the reasons why it is difficult for some people to take a liking to the service.

One of the most active people I have followed on Twitter has been Dean Shareski. He actually works in the school division adjacent to us and although I have never met him many of my colleagues no him. He is at the extreme end of using technology. I think that by him using twitter he has become quite well known. In fact when I was in San Antonio we were discussing it at our table and one of the teachers with us from the US said they knew him and followed his Twitter. This is an obvious example of how it can be used to become known worldwide.

Also at the ASCD conference I attended a short breakout session on Web 2.0 tools in schools. One of the people I sat with explained that his wife is a teacher and tweets homework and messages for parents. It is quite well liked and appreciated by her parent community.

Also the use of hash tags within twitter was highly present at ASCD conference. In one of the sessions that I attended we all participated and provided ideas to the session using twitter, the workshop leader’s friends and followers participated in the session. One lady was in Florida sitting on her deck enjoying a coffee while following us and adding her insight into the discussion at the San Antonio conference from the comfort of home. This is one of the applications that seems to appear in a lot of the readings I have done on the use of Twitter.

The following Youtube video discusses the use of Twitter in Education

Young (2010) describes the way a professor at Perdue University is using Twitter. He opens up the class and invites comments through Twitter though out the class. The article describes how doing this is quite a risk for the instructor as there is a definite loss of control. I tend to agree that this is one of reasons that twitter is not being taken on in schools as quickly as in other realms.

Ferriter (2010) writes an interesting article where he highlights the use of Twitter to allow for and facilitate differentiation of instruction. “We can use digital tools

to differentiate learning experiences for students.” I never thought of using it in this regard but it does provide that opportunity. Differentiation is one of the hot topics in education these days and I think that teachers struggle to know how to do this. If Twitter can be a tool to allow for it I think that teachers would be very eager to hear how it could be used to accomplish this.

Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools provides additional arguments for the use of Twitter in schools and the Science Based Parenting website has an article that provides some suggestions for twitter in schools. Here are the
TOP TEN SUGGESTIONS FOR TWITTER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

1. Keep it simple – No more than two tweets a day – unless there’s an emergency. Twitter should be used sparingly, patterned after the morning and afternoon announcements. Parents who sign up to follow the school system’s tweets don’t want to be bothered with unnecessary text messages.

2. Keep it smart – The tone of the tweets should be professional. Use of txtng shorthand should be avoided. Attempts at humor and casual folksiness should be avoided. Keep the messages short, simple, and direct.

3. Guide the parents – Plan on providing parents with an explanation of twitter and instructions on how to set it up and use it. Let them know what it is, how it works, why you are doing it, and how they can get started. Focus on the fact that it is free and simple.

4. Prioritize your data – Snow information, important news, and emergencies should take precedence. Then offer reminders about sports, clubs, and activities. Don’t saturate the flow of data with irrelevant nonsense.

5. Be useful and efficient – Administrators should be careful not to favor one sport or activity over another. Choose events of significance to tweet about, such as a reminder about the homecoming game or the soccer team’s regional championship. Don’t abuse twitter with random noise… nobody cares that the baseball team is playing an away game three counties away.

6. Protect your source – There are risks that the tweeting source will be compromised. Administration should be extremely cautious to restrict the tweet source to one person such as the school secretary or public relations director. The benefit of twitter is that the information tweeted to parents and students comes from one source, so as long as that source is careful not to lose his/her cell phone… all will be well. Try to keep your source confidential if possible.

7. Be timely – Try not to tweet during school hours unless it’s an emergency. It would be inappropriate to disrupt a class in the event that a student has neglected to turn off his cell phone. Save tweets for before or after school and resist the urge to send a tweet on weekends, holidays, or over the summer (except in the weeks before the 1st day of school).

8. Combine your tech – Use twitter as a way to link to the school blog and/or official web site. This allows parents and students to read more information if they are particularly interested in a specific tweet.

9. Use it as a resource for parents AND students – Invite the parents to allow students to register with twitter, so that messages can be received by students on their PC or cell phone. Reassure parents with a pledge to continue enforcing a ban on cell phones in the classroom. It might help to remind them that twitter can be used as a way for parents to keep tabs on their children and to communicate as a family. Be understanding when twitter is viewed with cynicism as just another tool to distract their kids with more gadgetry. The decision to follow tweets ultimately boils down to parenting style and is not the school’s concern since the service is optional.

10. Sell the concept to the community – Push the idea aggressively in the local media. Parents need to feel confident in the technology, and they need to adjust to the idea. Twitter is not new to tech-savvy net surfers, but parents will probably be unfamiliar with the format and skeptical of it’s benefits. But once they try it, they will like it… you just have to get the message across that it is useful and easy.

Yet with all of this advice and potential Twitter really has not taken hold at all in our school division. If it is being used it is not a part of the school day. I have not heard of anyone using or even requesting to use it. I just don’t think that teachers see how it can be used effectively in a classroom. They see it more as something that you might do for fun outside of school. Adding to this lack of knowledge are the roadblocks to the use. These are sites that are often blocked by school filters because those decision makers are even less likely to see how it can be useful. Adding to this is the continual fear and sensationalism reported in media. Just a couple days ago one of the lead stories on our local news was about a person that had been robbed. They blamed the robbery on the use of social networking sites (not twitter but it could have just as easily been that). It seems that media have a particular bias to report negative aspects of these tools.

Unless there are major changes in attitudes towards twitter in schools I really don’t see it becoming a part of a regular classroom. There may be some experimentation and real tech savvy teachers may use it to communicate with parents but beyond that it really is not being considered at this time.

References:

De Groot, J. (2010). Trailfire: Twitter. http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/77917

Ferriter, W. (2010). Why Teachers Should Try Twitter. Educational Leadership, 67(5), 73-74

Young, J.. (2010, March). TEACHING WITH TWITTER. The Education Digest, 75(7), 9-12.

http://sciencebasedparenting.com/2009/01/08/10-suggestions-for-twitter-in-public-schools/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Social Networking

Social Networking is changing our world in ways never before imagined. The following quotes from Quotesdaddy.com regarding user’s feelings about Facebook illustrate the impact it is having.

“This is a small world, and Facebook make it even smaller.”

Reed Nandawan

“Every single one of you are on my friend list as a result of a conscious decision. I am not only glad to count you as friends but also as family! You can't choose family but... you can choose friends..♥ ♥ ♥ Thankyou for your friendship”

Paulette Sedgwick

REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING

My learning regarding social networks began at the start of this course. When I started this course I had not used Facebook or any of the other social networking sites at all. My oldest son at university and my grade 12 son along with my wife had a Facebook account but I had not been convinced of my need for it. They had each been using the account for perhaps a year and often my wife would tell me of people we knew that she would be in contact with. I found that she would spend a lot of time on her Facebook account but I was never ever that interested in checking it out. I had heard things about it; like the site had some security issues and you should not be sharing your personal information.

When this course started we were encouraged to try out Facebook and explore what it had to offer. I signed up for an account and have been using it ever since to try to learn as much about it as possible. I recall when I was setting it up I was quite concerned about what information I was displaying about myself and who would be able to see my information. I did not realize that you could see almost anything from almost anyone when on Facebook. You are able to see into pictures of friends of friends etc. so without too much effort you can be looking at pictures or information about complete strangers. I guess I was a bit naïve and thought that it was a lot more “locked down” than that.

I soon found that you could restrict access to all or parts of your profile. I went in and added some information to my profile but not too much as I am still concerned with privacy matters. You can go in anytime and edit your profile easily. I then went in and explored the Privacy Settings area. This allows you to control who can see what. Although this is a very good think and helps protect a person’s privacy there is not a lot of instruction on how to do it and the importance of doing this. I can’t help but wonder how many people even know they can and should do this?

I searched out some friends that I knew were on Facebook and sent them a friend request and they soon replied. Before long I was getting requests to be friends with people that I had known in my past. These ranged from family members I have not seen in a while to friends from high school and former students. My list of friends quickly grew and I was able to explore their sites and pictures. This was a very interesting and enjoyable experience.

I also uploaded a picture for my profile and another one just to explore and learn how this was done. Many of my friends had several albums of pictures that they obviously upload on a regular basis. Soon after events occur you are able to find pictures of it on Facebook.

Another feature I tried out and was not familiar with prior to this was the ability to chat with others that were online. I had some great chats with long lost friends and my son who is away at University.

There are many features that I stumbled across. For example, I was met with a flurry of birthday greetings. It seemed that everyone on Facebook knew it was my birthday and sent greetings my way. Many of my friends were trying out Farmville and encouraged me to join. I even tried this out and have myself a nice little farm started. If you want to see it I think it is open for anyone to look at. Perhaps you could send me a gift. I like chickens but am having trouble getting my shed built. This is kind of a fun little add on but would be a real distraction to some.

Another feature is the groups feature. You can find a group to join with people of like interests for just about anything. If one does not exist you can create your own group. It was real interesting to explore some of the groups that my friends belonged to. One of the groups that I joined was the EDES 501/544 Winter Cohort group for this class. There are 10 members in this group. There have been a few posts but I suspect most of the members are classmates and like me tend to look more than add content.

I also had a couple classmates request to be my friend. We have had a few discussions and shared a mail or two. By the way there is email built into the system as well. Since I use gmail and I am very pleased with it I have not used the Facebook email very much at all.

Another site I explored was the Ning. I went to Ning.com and signed up for an account. I explored the sites there a bit and found that you could join existing Nings on a wide range of subjects. I think that they are much like Facebook groups. You can also create your own Ning if you choose. I did not really “get it” however and have not done much with my Ning account.

PERSONAL LEARNINGS

Facebook and social networking sites in general definitely have a great place in my future personal use. I have enjoyed my experience using Facebook and have found many surprises along the way. Within a day of signing up I was being asked to become friends with a guy that used to be a very close personal friend. He was actually part of our wedding party but has moved to Kansas and we have lost touch. I have not heard from him for about 5 years and within hours Facebook had us reconnected. I have made contact with so many friends that I have lost touch with. I am able to send messages to them directly, have the occasional chat with them, share my pictures and look at their pictures of family and fun times.

My son is away at University and I will often find that he is online whenever I sign in. We often have a short chat and stay in touch that way a bit. I also can go into his site and see who he is hanging out with and enjoy keeping up with the happenings of all of his friends. (Not sure if they are happy that I can do this!!)

I found it interesting that my daughter has been following what I am doing in the class. She saw me using Facebook and Farmville in particular and wanted me to help her get an account set up. She is in grade seven and several of her friends have a Facebook account so I agreed to help her set it up as long as I could make sure she was not giving out too much information. When we tried setting it up it would not allow me to create her account. I had used her actual age and they must have an age restriction on the site. This is very effective because it has prevented all of her friends from getting accounts as well. (remember all of her friends had access) In order to get her set up we used a false date for her age so now she has a facebook account that her father monitors closely. It is quite good for her since she is able to communicate and chat with her cousins that live in distant cities. She even has access to it with her ipod. Times are a changing and I don’t think there is anything we can do in education to stop it.

In the Web 2.0 for Schools book, Davies and Merchant (2009) talked about Second Life. I did not have any time to explore this but it is something that I have heard a lot about and I am fascinated with. I can see myself becoming a member of this when my classes are complete and I have some addition time to explore. If any of you have any comments or advise on this I would love to hear from you.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

As we have been trying all of these Web 2.0 tools I have been checking with our e-learning teachers and determining how they are using the tools in our school. They have always been very positive about the web 2.0 tools and are the first to look for ways to incorporate the tools in our classrooms. They are our advocates for technology and argue those that want to prevent, block or stall technology applications in our schools. Even this group very tech savvy web 2.0 allies do not support the use of Facebook in our schools however. I have given the tool a very good try and really struggle myself to see how it can effectively be used in our schools. I do not support blocking it and feel students should have access to it at school but I have not had any good ideas or insights into how to use it in the classroom.

I did a search of journals through the U of A library to try to find pros and cons of using it. I did not find any real good examples of how it can be used in classrooms but found one article arguing for its acceptance in schools at least. Farr (2009) argues the call to prevent social networking sites is not new. He likens it to being similar to preventing Mad magazines, calculators, and other new inventions through the years that have been initially banned or restricted. By not allowing access to technology at schools, education is at risk of becoming antiquated. He lists three reasons why schools and teachers are reluctant to embrace this.

1. Afraid of the loss of control
2. Concern that not all students will have equal access
3. Unfamiliar with the technology and therefore uncomfortable with students using it.

He refers to this YouTube video “What if…?”

On the other side of the issue it is not difficult to find articles and opinions that do not support the use of Facebook and social networking sites in schools. Fodeman (2009) founder of Childrenonline.org says that Facebook is one of the two most popular sites for student’s grades 4- 12 and explains these ten main concerns he sees with its use.

Concerns

1. Use a lot of bandwidth
2. Takes a lot of time
3. False sense of privacy
4. Thousands of scams targeting teens in their social networks
5. Spyware and Adware concerns result from Facebook add-ons
6. Screens act as a moral disconnect from many of our students
7. Students have little knowledge about how much they are being marketed to, how their purchasing decisions are being manipulated, how their personal information is being used and how valuable their personal information is.
8. Teens are increasingly using telecommunications technologies to avoid difficult face to face conversations.
9. More and more children are turning to making friendships online.
10. The meaning of the word friend is changing for our students and this change puts them at risk in several ways.

As I read this list I kept thinking that these are the things that I keep hearing over and over. I am torn as I continue to hear more and more negative aspects but then see more and more people using. Just this weekend we saw on the news and messages from our IT department warning of fraud emails trying to get passwords / personal information from you Facebook accounts. We constantly hear stories (urban legends perhaps) of employers checking up on prospective applicant’s Facebook activities before hiring. We need to be careful of what we make public when we are young. It may have a lasting impact.

On the other hand we have seen it become more and more used. Recently we saw it used by major television news networks when Haiti and Chile had earthquakes. Their first pictures and reports were based on Facebook accounts of these disasters. We also saw the past presidential election heavily influenced by the use of Facebook by Barack Obama and along similar lines Prime Minister Harper used a YouTube video last week to transmit a message. Social networking is becoming the norm but is having a very difficult time finding its niche in the education circles.

The following quotes from the trailfire on social networking seem to sum it all up.

http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/forum/topics/your-thoughts-on-the-use-of Karon Lippincott “social network used in school should be closed/private. Students should be able to access it from outside of school, but it should be secure. We cannot put our students at risk for predators or any other social ill by foolishly making a school-run social network public. It is a quick and easy means of basic communication...snow days, late starts, sports scores, club reminders, book picks, etc.”

In response to whether teachers should have a Facebook account – “I, personally, see nothing wrong with belonging to Facebook, etc. but we must be prudent with what we post and what we choose to make public. If you cannot manage your FB account to keep your private life private, then you shouldn't have an account.”

And finally from The Blue Skunk blog -

Every website shall remain unblocked until proven to be "harmful to minors."

References:

Davies, J & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools learning and social participation, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

De Groot, J. (2010). Trailfire: Social Networking. http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/61581

Farr, G.. (2009). Mad Magazine to Facebook: what have we learned? Teacher Librarian, 36(5), 30-32.

Fodeman, D., & Monroe, M.. (2009). the impact of Facebook on our students. Teacher Librarian, 36(5), 36-40.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7025.pdf

Multimedia Sharing / Mashups

Multimedia Sharing and Mashups? What is this all about? With a name like that one can only guess what it is all about….

REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING

As I started this unit of study I found myself wondering what this is all about. I have never ever heard this term, never heard of any of the sites mentioned and certainly had never ever used any of these tools. I started the week as a pure rookie!

To start my learning I went through the trailfire set up for our course again. The two sites that were explained here were Animoto and Voice Thread so this is what I decided to try out.

I went to the Animoto website and poked around a bit to see what I could discover. I noticed that the site seemed to be a bit more on the commercial side of things than other sites we have explored. I then decided to jump right in and give this a try so I set up another account for myself. There were lots of ads to sell me a feature that will allow me to create full length videos. The free service only allows you to create 30 second video. Beyond that you need to pay for the additional services. I did not sign up or try that so do not know how expensive it would be.

I looked at some of the sample videos and decided that I would create one of my own. I used pictures of my recent trip to San Antonio to create a video of the basketball game that we went to.

I found the site easy to use and very quickly I was able to create a very neat short advertisement type add for the basketball game I had attended. I uploaded a few of the pictures that I took along with a short video. These were then selected for inclusion. A short length of the video was also selected to include as well. I then rearranged the images and added text. The next stage was adding music. This was made easy because you could either upload your own music file to use or simply use one of the free to use pieces of music that were arranged by category and you could also preview the music. Within minutes I was waiting for the final product to be displayed.

I was impressed with the set up of the site and the fact that as the final product was being created you were encouraged not to wait around but to move onto some other project or work and when it was finished it would email the final product to you. When it was completed you were then prompted to view, share, upload to YouTube, or embed code for the video into a blog etc. I have embedded that code below and you can watch a short commercial like video of my trip to see the San Antonio Spurs basketball game.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

During my work this week I found some samples of Glogs which I thought might also fit into this category. I went to Glogster and signed up for an account with them as well. I found Glogster to be easy to use and similar to Animoto except it creates a poster or “Glog” that is not animated. Again I thought that I should try this and created the Glog of my San Antonio trip. I uploaded pictures from my computer then used them in the Glog I created. I found that only about half of the pictures that I tried to upload actually worked. Several of them would not upload and gave an error message something to the effect that they were a file type that was not recognized yet they were exactly the same file type as the ones I used that were successfully uploaded. Anyhow here is a Glog that I created. (Please don’t be too critical of my artistic side. I notice I am lacking in that regard and see that the Glogs created by grade 4 students are of higher quality than mine.

I also explored Voice Thread a bit. I went to their website and watched the introductory video on what it is and how to use it. I then signed up for the k-12 membership and continued my exploration. I must say however that although I found the application to be interesting and I think has some potential, I struggled with this site a lot. I did not create my own thread and simply played around a bit with some of the threads that were there. Perhaps I will need to give this another try another time. I think I may need to spend more time with it to really get a sense of its usefulness.

PERSONAL LEARNINGS

I thought that this week’s exploration allowed us to explore some of the “neat” features of Web2.0. I created the Animoto video with some of my pictures from my trip to San Antonio. I showed this to my wife and she said “hey that is kind of neat!”. This is no the typical reaction I get from her when I show her my pictures so I see this a way of creating a sort of value added feature to personal pictures. It is a lot more interesting to look through several pictures in an animated display with music playing in the background. When I am through with my masters classes and have some time on my hands once again, (will that ever happen?) then I plan on taking some more of our pictures and creating Animoto videos with them. I will have to explore the costs of joining because the 30 second limit may not be adequate.

Animoto and Glogster are simple programs that I will share with my kids. I am sure that they will be able to make use of these in some of their classes to support some of their assignments in schools. Jensen is constantly making posters for her classes and I think she will just love the creativity that Glogster will unleash.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

These programs are not used at all in any of schools. I suppose it is a matter of teachers being aware of them and then having the confidence to use them. I plan on sharing these sites with our team of E-learning catalyst teachers and having them work with teachers to start to explore how they might be used within their schools. We often have teachers use posters to summarize themes and by having them work with these programs it will take the poster to a much higher level.

As I was creating my blog on wikis I came across this Animoto video that was embedded in the wiki Soar 2 New Heights. It is an example of how Animoto can be used with and elementary class.

Another one of the wikis that I came across used Glogs created with Glogster. Students from around the world contribute Glogs that they create about their part of the world. The site has grown quite a bit and you can see glogs and contributed by students from around the world. Your class could contribute their own glog or you could use the site to learn about other countries.

References:

De Groot, J. (2010). Trailfire: Social Media Sharing /Mashups. http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/217496

Wikis

Wikipedia is amazing but why is it so hard to have success with other wiki sites. The world is rapidly moving to creation through collaboration yet the education community seems to be stalled. What is needed to give3 it a kick start?

REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING

Every one has heard of a wiki, right. I certainly thought I knew quite a lot about them. Wikipedia is my first source of all information on the web. I use other wikis at work. I thought that I had a good understanding before heading into this weeks work with Wikis. It turns out that there was a lot for me to learn.

As with most weeks, my learning started by going through the wiki trailfire for this course. I am becoming a big fan of the common craft videos that are embedded in the trailfire. They are a great starting place because they provide a simple yet detailed explanation of the topics. I found this video on wikis to be particularly useful in learning about wikis.

My learning then also turned to another familiar and reliable source. I read Chapter 8 “Wikis: The Death of the Author” from Davies and Merchant (2009) as well as Richardson’s (2009) Chapter 4 “Wikis Easy Collaboration for all”. These two resources provided me with the background knowledge to go move forward and explore aspects of wikis on the web that I had not jumped into before.

My first stop was a closer look at Wikipedia. I have used this source many times and have come to trust its content but I guess I have just taken it for granted. I recall the grave concerns about accuracy of information from this source early on in its development. I must say that I have not heard much about that lately and I think people are starting to feel more and more comfortable using it as a some of information like an encyclopedia. As our children grow up using this it will become more and more acceptable and will replace traditional sources of information altogether (my humble prediction).

The first section of Davies and Merchant (2009) chapter 4 discusses the traditional sources of information such as encyclopedias. They were respected because of the expertise of the author but what was provided for in expertise was lacking in up to date information. Although wikis do not guarantee any expertise the information can be updated constantly and accuracy can be challenged continually by a group of experts the world over. To me this will create a much more valuable source of knowledge that is up to date. And if it is not then you have the ability to update it!!

I have used Wikipedia a lot over the years but have never edited or contributed anything to it myself. I thought that to learn about wikis I should actually try this. I thought that I would add a part to Wikipedia’s article on Swift Current add to that the fact that we are about to host the 2010 World Women’s Curling Championships as the current article has no mention of that. I do not have an account so I thought that I would create one and then do this editing. When I tried this from my office I was not allowed to create a new account or do any of the editing because my IP address was blocked. The following message appeared:

“Account creation from this IP address has been temporarily restricted. This is probably due to persistent vandalism from the IP address you are editing from, which may be shared by many people if you are connected to the Internet via a proxy server (used by most schools and corporations and some Internet service providers) “

I did not get a chance to do the editing but will try to do that later when I can try from a different IP Address. By doing this I did learn however that editing is not as open as critics might expect. There is obviously some attention paid to who is editing and blocking of sites does occur. I also think that vandalism is not as big an issue as it might be because many people are uncertain and uneasy in making changes. I wonder what percentage of Wikipedia users ever try to make changes to its content?

My next learning took me to the other side of wikis. Where Wikipedia is tremendously successful my experience with more local wikis has been consistently the opposite. We have tried to use wikis in our school division and I have been invited to join a few wikis as well. Within the Chinook School division our e-learning team has created wikis and templates to support teachers within the division and to foster collaboration across our vastly spread out geographically challenged school division. This would seem like the ideal setting for a wiki to take hold and flourish yet it has not. Most of the contribution to this wiki has been by our e-learning teachers as they set this up. The site is called Chinoowiki and is a wiki that is housed inside of our school division portal. Teachers have been provided with in-service on how to use it but it just doesn’t seem to move forward. I have been involved in creating parts of it and must admit that even with that level of commitment I do not utilize it very much personally either.

My learning then took me to exploring some of the wikis that we have access to provincially. I am a member of Wikispaces and have been for a while. I took some time to explore the features that I had access to and found that it is similar in many respects to a lot of the other social networking memberships I have signed onto this winter. Although I have been a member I never even knew that there was a home page for members where they could control and see the wikis that they are members for. In my exploration I realized that I was a member of the Saskconsultants wiki but had never used the resource. This was a resource that was set up by a division coordinator in Saskatchewan to allow us to communicate and share information with each other across the province. Again we are spread out and it is difficult to get together so this would be a logical way of doing this. Again I found that it is very unsuccessful. There is only one contributor to the site thus far.

A similar wiki that I had been asked to join is https://sasklearningleaders.wikispaces.com/.

This site has provincial information that is useful to all divisions. Again When I explored it a bit I found good information but a lack of participation and thus the site is limited.

A final piece of my learning journey regarding wikis came about due to my attendance of the ASCD conference. One of the speakers I listened to at the conference was Don Tapscot. His topic was a discussion about the net generation. A quick internet search has found his web page http://dontapscott.com/ and he referred to two books that I plan to read as they sound fascinating. One of these is “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” and the other is titled “Grown up Digital” During his speech he talked about how things are changing and mentioned that California has launched an initiative to have all of their textbooks created using wikis. Is this the direction that we are heading???

PERSONAL LEARNINGS

The use of Wikis in my personal life at this point is restricted to Wikipedia. Although that sounds small it is quite significant. I use Wikipedia with as much confidence as I have ever used encyclopedias, dictionaries or other traditional sources of knowledge. This is the starting point for learning about new things with my family. When working with my daughter, helping her with homework etcetera we often start with a visit to Wikipedia. She has grown up with this as a resource and I do not think that she even has a clue about how it is created, who creates it and whether it is authentic information. I plan on having a discussion with her to make her aware of this and although we have not added anything to this resource yet we may do so to illustrate to her that the people adding to it may not be the experts that she thinks.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

As my introduction suggested I have seen two very different sides to wikis. The idea of collaborating with large groups of people to create web content has been extremely successful with sites such as Wikipedia. At the local level however there are roadblocks to this success. We often have a lot of efforts put into the initial setup of a wiki but interest quickly trails off and since nothing new is added by anyone then people eventually stop visiting the site altogether. This is a challenge that we must overcome if we are to tap the full potential of the wiki as Wikipedia has.

We have great potential for sharing information with colleagues in our province and across Canada for that matter. As mentioned earlier in my blog, we have a wiki called Saskconsultants that was set up to allow school division consultants to share and pool ideas across the school division. We also have another wiki set up by the provincial ministry called Sask Learning Leaders. This wiki has provincial information including:

1. Articles that Rock Your World
2. Assessment
3. Curriculum Documents
4. Curriculum Reports
5. Early Learning
6. English Language Arts
7. First Nations, Inuit and Metis Content, Perspectives and Ways of Knowing
8. Instructional Strategies
9. Literature Reviews
10. Mathematics
11. Policies and Administrative Procedures
12. Science
13. Unpacking Outcomes

Another valuable use of the wiki is for planning events such as conferences. This can be especially useful when the members are spread over a large area. The recent ASCD conference that I attended used a wiki to help plan the conference allowing individuals from around the world to contribute to the planning of this very large conference. We could certainly utilize this on a smaller division or provincial scale for similar planning.

Perhaps one of the best uses of wikis for me to date has been by simply reading about and viewing other wikis. I get the Wikispaces Newsletter emailed to me (I think it is monthly). The newsletter for January 2010 highlighted 3 of the Best Educational Wikis-of-2009. Check these out

Greeting From the World

Arjana Blazic’s wiki bridges different cultures and continents by allowing educators and students to share their stories and cultures with others. Using tools like Glogster, students from around the world interact with their peers through images, videos, and text.

Soar 2 New Heights

Katie Heissenbuttel created this wiki for her fourth grade classroom. Over the past year, Katie has enjoyed watching her students’ discussions develop. Initially, students only answered Katie’s questions on the wiki but they soon began to comment and respond to their peers’ postings.

As you visit the wiki, you’ll find student podcasts covering recent news events and individual pages showcasing each student’s work. Katie’s students are always excited to share their latest projects with their parents and parents really love the page of upcoming homework assignments. It’s a great example of how a wiki can transform learning into a community process

HUMS3001: Censorship and Responsibility

Ben Miller, a teacher at the University of New South Wales, wanted his students to build learning materials for his course. He decided a wiki was the best platform to capture the group’s work over the semester. Ben chose to create his wiki on UNSW’s Wikispaces Private Label siteas it gave his students a university-branded environment for their academic work.

Students loved the wiki and after several weeks, were building most of the content for the site – summarizing theories on free speech, arguing their viewpoints, and highlighting censorship cases that they wanted to further explore. The final product was a rich body of knowledge that helped the students prepare for their end-of-year exam.

References:

Davies, J & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools learning and social participation, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

De Groot, J. (2010). Trailfire: Wikis. http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/61579

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2nded. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

http://blog.wikispaces.com/2010/01/best-educational-wikis-of-2009.html

Podcasting

With the advancements in internet infrastructure and in the era of instant access to videos about any subject that you can imagine, why bother with podcasting? Is there a place for this in Web2.0?

REFLECTIONS ON LEARNING

I am starting to sound like a broken record with this introduction but when I started this unit I was again at the starting line with no background knowledge of podcasting at all. I really had no experience with creating and even using podcasts.

My first experience was at the beginning of the EDES 501 course where Joanne DeGroot created a podcast explaining some of the expectations and content of the course. I recall thinking that after a lot of reading it was a very nice break from that and I rather enjoyed just listening instead of having to do the hard work of reading. In hindsight though, I find that the information she presented in that form was harder to recall and it was difficult to go back and locate specific parts of the podcast unless you really paid close attention to its relative position. At least with text you can often skim to find important parts and reread.

I started out learning about podcasts by reading from Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. It was there that I discovered the relationship with ITunes. My children had used ITunes with their IPods but I had not ever paid much attention to that. It was off to the computer to explore ITunes. I easily located the link to the podcasts and found to my surprise that there where podcasts available for any subject under the sun. In my searching I found and subscribed to the following free podcast programs.

Stuff from the Science lab - a podcast from howstuffworks.com

The Math Dude Quick and Dirty Tricks to Make Math Easier

Math Guy podcast

SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast

The Teacher's Podcast: The New Generation of Ed Tech

David Warlick

Teachers Teaching Teachers

One thing that I found frustrating was that I was not able to copy and paste text from within the iTunes program so I had to go to each of the above websites and copy and paste the above information.

Another hint that I got from Richardson was to download and use a program called Audacity to allow me to create a podcast. During the download I got my first hint that things may not be so simple. It warned me that I should also download and install Lame to allow me to convert the files I created into mp3 files. I set this up on my computer and played around with Audacity. The program is quite easy to use as a complete rookie was able to create a few short audio files in no time at all. I was even able to figure out that the audio could be edited and was able to do a bit of editing by adding in parts that I had missed and removing parts that I did not want. I was then able to save the file and export it as an MP3 file.

I tried to upload the MP3 directly to my blogger post and I thought it was going to work initially but it never did work after a lot of fussing with it. I tried several things and was unsuccessful. Just about the time I was about to give up I came across a suggestion in our discussion area from Bradlee McDiarmid to use a site called VoiceThread to upload my MP3 files to and then use that site to create links to the files in my blog. (Thanks Brad)

I have included a link to my Intro podcast here. You can hear my very short podcast by clicking on this link to it. It is a short podcast but I wanted to include a sample to illustrate that I was able to accomplish this. My original idea was to create most of my blog as a podcast but after the initial struggles I had I decided to just include a bit of a sample and stick to the typed word.

Another valuable source of learning was the trailfire on podcasting. Of particular value to me was the Common Craft video “Podcasting in Plain English.”

PERSONAL LEARNINGS

I have found that the idea of podcasting is an area of the Web that has grown to be quite significant without me even being aware of it. I think that there is some potential value in podcasting for me personally but I would suggest that it will not have a significant impact.

As I mentioned earlier, I have children with ipods. None of them have used these at all for subscribing to or even just listening to any podcasts. I plan to show my older boys about this and how they might use it as they are attending university to listen to experts in their areas of study. One is studying Engineering and the other wished to become a dentist. I believe that they would be able to find great podcasts in each of these areas. They also enjoy humor and I am sure they will be able to find some humorous podcasts to enjoy as well.

My daughter is younger and just in grade 7. She still wants and needs help with her iPod. In the past she has relied on her brothers for this help and support but I am becoming more confident and think that I will introduce her to podcasts. She may find something that is of interest to her and can then subscribe and download podcasts to her iPod on a regular basis. We travel often and this will be one more item she can use for entertaining herself on those long drives.

As for me personally I find that I drive a lot and there is not anything great on the radio these days. If I can find some podcasts and get myself an iPod then I might just start listening to these on my travels. There are lots of great professional podcasts as well as entertaining ones.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

I think that an easy starting point for introducing podcasts to our staff would be to utilize them as teacher professional development. We have several employees that just like me, spend a great deal of time travelling and thus could listen to podcasts of various educational materials as they drive. As teachers become familiar with this they will then move to the next step which would be to create their own podcasts for use with students. This has the advantage over video in that it is a lot easier and less intimidating to create.

One issue related to podcasts is that a player is needed. The most popular player these days is the iPod. If students do not have a player then they will be disadvantaged by not being able to access the podcast outside of the school setting. This problem may disappear with time. Although iPods are the main tool right now other companies are trying to gain some of this market. An example of this is a product called Zunes. According to Wikipedia “Zune is a Microsoft entertainment platform and portable media player” that is similar to an iPod. Gargano (2008) describes how Microsoft has partnered with some schools to provide them with Zunes. Teachers create and share podcasts of their classes. This is an example of how business and schools may partner to change the face of education.

Another major issue with podcasting is the use of our limited bandwidth. We have had some serious issues in our schools with bandwidth lately. Our internet speeds have been decreasing and in some cases they are hardly usable at times. Our IT department has done some monitoring of this issue and has placed the blame for this on the ever increasing drain from iPods that students are bringing into schools. For now they are working at trying to lock down our systems to the point where iPods will not be able to function off of our systems. This would greatly hamper the use of podcasts in our classrooms.

My initial thought on podcasts was that they would not be effective. I would think that students would want and even demand video with the successes and ease of access to sites such as YouTube. Not only are the videos readily available but today’s players such as IPods, provide incredibly good viewing quality of these videos.

While researching the use of podcast in classrooms I discovered a research paper published by Putman & Kingsley (2009). They suggested that “Podcasts offer opportunities to introduce or reinforce information from the classroom, to remediate students who need additional instruction or access to content discussed in the classroom, or to feature content experts or guest speakers under the guidance of a teacher external to the actual school building.” They studied a group of grade 5 students where podcasts where used to enhance and develop the vocabulary of students in science. They found that the study showed that there was definite improvement in student learning resulting from their use of podcasts. Their result “confirms that there is potential for using podcasts for vocabulary development.”

We have created recording of students reading as part of our literacy initiative in my school division. We have not however, gone to the next step and created podcasts of this reading. I think that students would be interested in doing such a thing.

Perhaps there is a use for this tool in education. There certainly is a need for further experimentation and study into how to effectively use this tool but I now feel that it has a place in our classrooms. The challenge will be to create the required skill set in our teaching staff.

References:

De Groot, J. (2010). Trailfire: Podcasting. http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/61577

Gargano, C. (2008). Listen and Learn: Students Put Zune Players to the Test. EContent, 31(7), 18-19. Retrieved February 28, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1556481821).

Putman, S., & Kingsley, T. (2009). The Atoms Family: Using Podcasts to Enhance the Development of Science Vocabulary. The Reading Teacher, 63(2), 100-108. Retrieved February 27, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1879774671).

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2^nded. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune