Organic Learning

I’m currently developing a course for content developers on using Web 2.0 tools in Moodle. It’s important to not get too engrossed in the tools, but rather concentrate on the learning. But the tools make learning interactive and add such a rich environment to the online learning environment. Here are some of the tools I find embed very nicely into Moodle (as well as wikis, blogs, web pages, etc.)

Embeddable Applications

• Slideshow presentations - Google Presentations or SlideShare
• Multimedia Digital Storytelling/Video – Animoto, Voicethread,
• Interactive Timelines – ie Dipity, xTimeline, Mnemograph, TimeToast, or OurStory
• Maps – Google MyMaps
• Graphic Organizers – Bubbl.us or Gliffy
• Documents and Forms – Google Docs, Scribd’s iPaper, and/or Docstoc
• Collaborative Whiteboards – Twiddla, Sketchcast, Skrbl
• Screencasts – ScreenCastOMatic, Jing Project
• Audio Interaction – Gabcast, Gcast
• RSS – (Using the tag feature in Google Reader) - RSS to include feeds from blogs, news, social bookmark tags.
• Web Page Clips and Annotations - Clipmarks
• Quizzes - MyStudiyo, Quizzlet
• Backchannel - CoveritLive, GoogleDocs

Add to this the ability to embed rss feeds from blogs, news feeds, social bookmarks, videos, audio, and images and the learning environment becomes interactive and dynamic. Moodle also allows you to bring in any web page, so wikis, published Google Docs, and other online content can be brought in to the learning environment.

The wealth of learning resources makes designing the online learning environment rich and engaging.

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Jeff Utecht, in his post, Schools: Take control or forfeit your profile, points out that many schools carry an online profile, from entries in places like Wikipedia and FaceBook, that needs to be monitored and maintained. Many schools aren’t even aware of this online presence, or might dismiss an article in Wikipedia as not trusted, so not a priority.
It got me thinking about really reading some of the wikipedia articles about our schools.
These are the schools that I could find that have an entry on Wikipedia:

Bell High School
South Gate High School
Huntington Park High School
South East High School
Maywood Academy
South East Middle School

You can tell that some of the schools have student created entries. Some of the articles are really quite good, but need some editing. Others need quite a bit of work. All haven’t been updated in quite some time - probably since our external IP was banned from Wikipedia. There was abuse to Wikipedia articles from our domain, so Wikipedia has blocked the entire domain from editing. This was a few years ago. As far as I know, no one can update Wikipedia articles from within our district firewall since then.

This causes a problem. If no one is updating these articles, then they will never be of high quality.They will never reflect our schools for some of the great things that happen there. Just this morning, there was an article in the LA Times written about an outstanding new teacher at South East Middle School. (Thanks Paul B. for telling me about it.) That should be linked to the SouthEast Middle School entry.

Since students and teachers can’t access the editing features from within the firewall, maybe we need to find other means of updating and maintaining these entries. Maybe students should have this responsibility as part of their homework. For those with internet access, they could be writing about their schools. What could be more authentic? They could also monitor the pages. This could be a shared responsibility between students, teachers, all staff and parents. The community could join together for something positive. This could be a very positive step into beginning to “get” 21st century literacies.

Thanks, Jeff, for posting this article to spark my thinking. I will be calling together interested educators from all our schools to see if we can figure out how to make this work as an authentic learning experience for all of us. I think this is extremely important.

.. Now if I only knew how to find profiles on FaceBook. All I see are students from those schools, but not much about the schools. I’m sure I’m missing something…

Note: After looking at the history pages of all the entries, it is apparent that some editing and revising has taken place recently. However, there certainly isn’t enough there to represent the schools well. It was interesting to see the discussion on the Bell entry. An alumni from the graduating class of 1965 had entered that the school colors were purple and white, and it had been changed by a more recent graduate. It’s interesting to see how those that contribute collaborate on the writing.

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There’s a whole world of learning out there that lately I haven’t had much time to tap into. I’ve been “teaching” classes lately -after work, and there are only so many hours in the day. Some of those hours need to be spent with the family. It is exciting to share my learning with others about the connections I’ve made in the Web 2.0 world, and it’s so rewarding when you see some get started…but I need a break so I can do some learning on my own. I want to share all my learning with others, but there seems to be a paradox there. When I’m formally facilitating courses, I don’t have much time left to learn myself. I look forward to the next few months. I’ve decided not to teach any extra courses until after February. I need the break. I think instead, I’ll try to blog about what I’m learning and share my learning that way.

I’m always in awe of those in my personal learning network. They work all day at their day jobs, and still somehow keep up with their personal learning. For instance, I think of those that make up the writing team at the TechLearning blog. Absolutely every one of them is outstanding in their depth and breadth. They do their day jobs, teach extra courses, and still find time to write quality articles and share their learning in so many ways. Congratulations to them for receiving the well deserved award as the best group blog at the Edublog awards.
It’s humbling to surround yourself with so many smart people who have the energy and passion to make a difference. The Tech Learning group of writers are just a few of the hundreds of very smart people I surround myself with by subscribing to their blogs, seeing their tweets in twitter, marveling at what they bookmark and podcast or webcast or ustream or voicethread or capture in images or video or …teach and share with the world. I’m so thankful that I have found this network of educators with whom I share a passion for learning. I look forward to the next few months.

Photo credit: flickr photo The Flag of Times Square by Stuck in Customs

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This afternoon is the last meeting of the year of the Local District 6 Ed Tech Leadership Cadre. As part of the sharing we will be doing, we will be talking about communication tools that can be used in the classroom. We will be connecting through Skype to Local District 5’s EdTech meeting, where Jose Rodriguez will be talking about how Skype can be used in education. He is a great practitioner and even got tips from THE Jeff Lebow on how to make the best connection without feedback. …I’m thinking about how to present some of these tools this afternoon. Of course, the best way is to give examples of how they can be used for learning.

Skype

A free way to connect to anywhere in the world, from computer to computer. Can include video calls with one person, or it can connect up to 10 people through audio, with accompanying chat. I hear examples of people using Skype almost daily through podcasts.

Many edubloggers use Sype to conduct interviews and conference with colleagues. They record their conversations for a podcast.

• Most of the quality podcast interviews that Steve Hargadon does on School 2.0 seem to be conducted through Skype.
• Dean Shareski just released a one-year follow-up interview on Telling the New Story; with Kathy Cassidy, an elementary teacher, Clarence Fischer, a middle school teacher, and Darren Kuropatwa, a high school teacher. These outstanding teachers reflect on how their teaching and learning has changed with using collaborative tools.
• Wes Fryer uses Skype frequently. Today, I listened to an outstanding leadership interview with Dr. Scott Mcleod of Dangerously Irrelevant and LeaderTalk. Dr McLeod is leading the way in offering opportunities for learning for school administrators through blogging and collaboration. This has significance for me as I strive to provide the tools for my own local district instructional staff as they form Professional Learning Communities.

Many teachers are using Skype in the classroom.

• The one example that always moves me is how Brian Crosby used this tool to bring a student, Celest, that was confined to home with Leukemia, into class to interact with the other students. Watch the video his 4th grade students created to tell the story. The good news is that Celest is feeling much better and is able to now attend class in person.
• Vicki Davis often uses Skype to invite experts into her classroom. One memorable podcast was an interview with nanotechnology expert, Earl Boysen, who visited her class through Skype.

YackPack

I was thinking about showing the YackPack plugin for PBWiki, that acts as a walkie-talkie, but having heard the recent comment by Darren on the Telling the New Story Podcast, I wonder about the usefulness of having a walkie talkie on a blog or webpage.

More useful would probably be the YackPack player. This allows users to post a recorded message on a blog, wiki, or website. One educator, Christine Tomasino, shares her ideas of how YackPack could be used in the classroom.

Similar to YackPack is Evoca, which is a tool for posting audio on a website. My favorite example is the keynote presentation by Karl Fisch on the Horizon Project, a collaborative project by students in diverse geographical areas, exploring the possiblities of the 2007 Horizon Report .

Vaestro

I think this software has great potential for student learning. You can create a channel and leave it on your website or blog where students can record messages for each other or for the teacher. In turn, the teacher can leave audio messages for the students. Wes Fryer writes about Vaestro in a recent article, Asynchronous Online Audio Discussions. Darren Kuropatwa tried it out. It sounds like it could be a great tool for learning.

I don’t want to overwhelm our group with too many tools, so this might be enough for today. How are you using audio communication tools in the classroom?

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Tonight, I read one of the most inspiring blog posts I have read to date, by Jeff at The Thinking Stick. In his post, 1 year and counting, Jeff talks about his personal learning journey this past year as a blogger. He talks with passion about how the connected world of edublogging has helped him grow. I too, have learned more this past year than I ever have before. But unlike Jeff, I haven’t written and reflected enough about that learning. I read so much that I don’t find much time to write. Writing, for me, is a laborious process, that feels like work. Also, as Steve Dembo expresses in his recent post, As a blogger, how do you define success?, sometimes I worry that what I say might not be always good for my career. So I procrastinate…really well. After reading Jeff’s post, I realize that I simply can’t put off writing any more. There’s no excuse. As Wesley Fryer, David Warlick, Will Richardson and others have said, learning is conversation. It’s time to learn and contribute.

Thank you, Jeff, for the inspiration and the very moving words. I, too, was in San Diego at the NECC conference, and had the pleasure to meet you and so many other bloggers that I so admire and respect at the edubloggers meetup. I was in awe. That is an occasion I will always fondly remember.

Jeff’s post, like many others I read about the incredible learning journey we are all experiencing, reminds me that our passion for how these new tools can be used in education makes it exciting times to live in, indeed.

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I didn’t get to blog the workshops. That is a skill I will need to work on. I admire those who did. How wonderful to visit the conference through the edublogs.
So far, I’ve read the posts of David Warlick , Kelly Dumont at The Educational Mac, (two great people I had the pleasure and honor to meet), and Vicki Davis at The Cool Cat Teacher blog, who wasn’t even there but did an excellent job of commenting on what she had read.
I am always in awe of the capacity of educators to share their knowledge. It’s what makes being in this field so rewarding. Now through the community of blogs and podcasts, you have a finger on the pulse of what is happening and what is relevant to teaching and learning in the 21st century. Thanks to all who share their ideas and thoughts so that we can all learn and do a better job with our students.
More to share later. Now, I’m getting ready to go to beautiful Ojai, CA for the next few weeks as LAUSD educators spend time learning together in the Teach the Teacher Collaborative at the breathtaking Thacher campus. This week, I will be doing several sessions on podcasting, and next week on the Read/Write Web. I’m looking forward to it.

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I first used my blog to write notes for my presentation at InfoTech in March 2006. It was a good place to start, but now I know that the better tool is a wiki. I’ve moved my notes about Web 2.0 in education to http://readwriteweb.wikispaces.com Please visit and add to the conversation.

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I’ve created a wiki on using podcasts in education so that participants in my workshops have resources and also a place to collaborate. Visit it at http://lausdpodcast.wikispaces.com.

The people at Wikispaces are so great to teachers! They offer ad-free, protected wikis for free to educators. Thank you, Wikispaces!

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