Destination Mars May 6, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Edubloggers.add a comment
Brian Crosby is taking his kids to Mars on Wednesday, May 7th, and if all goes well, you’ll be able to go along with them as he has plans to Ustream the event.
Here is the Ustream link: Marsopolis 2008 Reno, Nevada, Ustream.TV: 350 fourth grade through eighth grade students participating in. Education
Here is the Learning Is Messy blog post link: Learning Is Messy - Blog » Blog Archive » Marsopolis … Messy Learning … And I’ll Ustream It?
Happy Birthday Cool Cat Teacher - We Get the Presents! April 27, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Link Collections.add a comment
Cool Cat Teacher is celebrating her 38th birthday, and we are the ones who get the presents! Vicki Davis has decided to post 38 great tools to celebrate her birthday, and the list looks like a terrific ‘best-of’ collection. The list is linked and annotated, so it would be a terrific list to pass along to anyone interested in getting started.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/04/38-birthday-presents-from.html
Baby Steps for Beginners March 8, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Edubloggers, Link Collections.1 comment so far
Vicki Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher, has started a series of articles for web 2.0 beginners. In the first installment, she provides best practices resources by making very effective use of tagging in del.icio.us and encourages others to set up their own accounts. This is a terrific list of links. She also suggests listening to podcasts while working on other things. I actually got my own start this way, listening to Bud the Teacher, EdTechTalk, Bob Sprankle, and others. Vicki also recommends setting 3 goals for yourself for the coming week to help focus on next steps. This probably would have helped save me many months of just trying to soak it all in without knowing what to do about it. Great resources and I hope Vicki follows up with many more parts to this series.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/03/baby-steps-for-beginners-part-1.html#links
Colorado Conversation: Roundtable With Barbara and Clarence February 23, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions, Edubloggers.add a comment
This conversation is run through http://www.mebeam.com/alpharoom.php?room=colearning
Barbara Barreda - K-8 principal from Los Angeles, CA.
Clarence Fisher - 7th and 8th grade teacher from Snowlake, Manitoba
B- our students have a limited view of the world. Working with C’s students has expanded their horizons.
C- B and I met over the Internet, through blogs, through Skype
C- we wanted ‘Thin Walls’ to go beyond an online project. A lot of it was experimental. We started off with VoiceThreads. We went from there to blogs. We did a novel study together. We’re learning to be facilitators, to get out of the way, to develop the tools as they are needed.
B- my students live below the porverty level, but in a private school, our parents make a lot of sacrifices. We work to get computers donated, we use open source solutions.
C- we’ve found that the open source and web based solutions lend themselves to collaboration better than the commercial tools.
C- we’ve worked on common rubrics, some common grading standards. It is difficult to assess (through existing standards) manners and collaboration. We’ve had to develop many of the tools ourselves.
B- some of our teachers have shifted to assessing skills.
B- we’re going to be working on that global understanding through the rest of the year.
Are you seeing a change in the writing skills of students who are collaborating online? C- they become writers of their own account. They learn the authentic voices of that are their own. They learn about voice and audience. We live in a world where experts are going away and everyone has an equal voice. B- we have a better idea of students’ thinking than we would in regular classroom interactions because we have the whole conversation. C- the ability to access and review the transcript provides a window we don’t have otherwise.
C- students are IM-ing each other, but we haven’t see much social networking. B- I have a MySpace account and haven’t seen much interaction on the part of the students.
B- we’re trying to show that these are learning spaces, not just games. C- active mornitoring on the part of the teacher helps students learn to be good digital citizens.
C- the Asus eeepc’s we got were flying off the shelves for sustained silent reading. To me reading is reading.
B- give them (teachers) permission to make mistakes and time to try new things. (I think this applies to students too!)
http://colearning.wikispaces.com/Thin+Walls
Edubloggers Directory February 19, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers.add a comment
By way of Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog, I’m adding information to the Associations page of this blog to include the International Edubloggers Directory.
http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com/
Great Lists of Publishing Resources February 17, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Link Collections, Tools.1 comment so far
Langwitches has posted a great list of student resources for the classroom. Her list is inspired by the work of Larry Ferlazzo, who has his own collection of student resources for publishing. Both are linked below.
Langwitches classroom resources: http://www.langwitches.org/blog/2008/02/17/inspired-by-larry-ferlazzo-the-listmaster/
Larry Ferlazzo’s ‘best way to create online content’: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=best+ways+to+create+online+content+easily%2C+quickly
My own short list of publishing links on del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/publishing
2008 Education Blogosphere Survey January 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data, Edubloggers.add a comment
The title kind of says it all. If you are an edublogger, take a survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6StV_2bQlONrIuhBYx3O3cEA_3d_3d
Edublog Awards for 2007 December 12, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Link Collections.add a comment
The 2007 Edublogs Awards have been announced. Awards like this are a great way to find the best of the best if you are looking to jump in some place. From the looks of the list of award winners, I have a bit of jumping in to do too.
http://edublogawards.com/and-the-winners-are/
Students 2.0 December 11, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Edubloggers.3 comments
A new student-focused blog portal has arrived on the scene, called Students 2.0. In there own words:
This blog is an attempt to give students a voice in where the future of education is headed. But do not let the idea of listening to students turn you away: for everyone here is also a teacher. We are a team from across the globe: the cream of an immense crop of students, and this is our time.
There are several worth while posts to read and respond to. In particular, I was impressed with “Global Villages” that compared a virtual social network to a small town. The quote below gives you an idea of the tenor of article:
A critical step forward for schools would be to embrace the social villages of students and faculty alike. Schools should be developing portals and websites which take into account the social aspects of our lives. Even more importantly, once those networks are developed, the users should have the ability to welcome others into their village; too often we see systems which further isolate the school community from the larger social community.
http://students2oh.org/2007/12/11/global-village/
Edublog Award Finalists November 26, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Edublogs, Link Collections, Tools.add a comment
Looking for great blogs? Try the 2007 Edublog Award finalists.
http://edublogawards.com/edublog-awards-2007-finalists-announced/
Annotation September 29, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Edubloggers, Tools.add a comment
Clarence Fisher, in his Remote Access blog posted an interesting activity about annotating text as an exploration of literacy. This seems like a terrific activity that brings those automatic skills good readers exhibit up to a more conscious level.
For a better description of the activity see his post here:
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/09/annotate-a-te-1.html
Just a few days later, Vicki Davis posted an interesting exploration of what I’ll call annotated text on her blog, Cool Cat Teacher Blog. I was struck by the similarities between Fisher’s example image and example number 6 from Davis.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-text-only-enough-for-todays-students.html
Another example of posted deconstructed or annotated text can be found on the Remote Access blog here:
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/09/blogs-complex-s.html
It looks like you could use JKN (http://info.jkn.com/) or Trailfire (http://www.trailfire.com/) do accomplish something similar with web pages, though I haven’t used either and suspect there may be even better tools available.
Internet Safety Summit 9-21-07 Keynote Part 1 September 21, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions, Edubloggers.2 comments
I’m attending an Internet safety summit and was pleased to meet Bud Hunt, also known as Bud the Teacher. Nice to meet someone whose work I’ve followed online.
Our first speakers were US Attorney for the District of Colorado Troy Eid and Deputy Attorney General for the State of Colorado, Tom Raynes. http://www.ago.state.co.us/InternetSafety/SafeSurfing.cfm was provided as a page with safety resources. Mr. Raynes describes the Internet as the playground of today, and calls for that playground to be a safe (and fun) environment.
In Colorado, first offenders for child pornography are sentenced to an average of 6 years in prison.
Phil Bremmer (sp?) reminded us that unless we keep up with technology use patterns by our children we won’t be effective in the effort of Internet safety.
Troy Eid described tracking a single child pornographic image as it is traded online just in the boundaries of Colorado. Turns out it was housed on 50,000 servers. An expert group had only predicted around 5,000.
The students responsible for the Colorado iCrew podcast on iTunes were presented with video iPods. Nice to see their work rewarded.
Stephen Downes videos September 6, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Edubloggers, Tools.add a comment
Stephen Downes has a nice collection of video training sessions listed with Google Video. One in particular seemed very helpful in understanding what it means to adopt a transparent life online entitled “Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning Development.” I’m experimenting with embedding the video below. The link will take you to his collection of other videos on Google Video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5431152345344515009&hl=en
Top Edublogs - 2007 August 1, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Data, Edubloggers.add a comment
Dangerously Irrelevant has posted a new listing of the top edublogs for 2007. This is an interesting look at the process behind creating the list, which includes combining rank and authority. I think it is an interesting inside look at how data can be used in different ways to yield different results. This blog comes in at number 1944 out of 3634.
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/08/top-edublogs—.html
TIE 2007 Session 2118 - RSS June 20, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions, Edubloggers, Tools.add a comment
2118 – RSS Connecting ideas and knowledge – Will Richardson – 6/20/07
Points to his PDF article on weblogg-ed.com – RSS Guide. RSS – real simple syndication. This is similar to subscribing to a magazine or newspaper for web pages. In the digital world, these RSS subscriptions are free. An RSS subscription comes from a content producers RSS feed. RSS feeds are common for blogs, wikis, photo sharing, etc. The good news is you can be more efficient keeping track information online, the bad news is you can easily get overwhelmed collecting feeds.
Starts with Google Reader as an RSS new aggregator. Collections are organized in folders. New posts are indicated by bold and the number of new items. RSS works best when we self-organize. Google Reader lets you star, share, email, mark as read, or edit tags that describe the post. Will’s reading has changed. He’s no longer reading every word. Quick scanning lets him organize information for later detailed reading or discarding. Uses Performancing to assist with the blog proess. http://performancing.com/
And http://performancing.com/performancing-firefox/performancing-firefox-1-1-delicious-technorati-release
How do you collect feeds? I find most of them from other feeds to which I subscribe. Will checks frequency, authorship, number of incoming links, etc. You can also search by keywords. Check frequently visited we sites for a feed link. You can also now download your Google reader content using Google Gears. Sometimes it is as simple as the traditional link with RSS added. For example www.nytimes.com/rss provides a list of all the RSS feeds they provide. You can also unsubscribe. In Google News, you can specify a topic and a source to generate an RSS feed. This is important. http://blogsearch.google.com/ and technorati can be used to search for blogs.
Social bookmarking. The web2.0 directive includes sharing the good stuff. Del.icio.us. He looked a little bit at IBM who has implemented social tools big time. Tags are really important. Again, we’re organizing ourselves, where folks create the taxonomy – naow called folksonomy. David Weinberger, “Everything is Miscellaneous” http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Miscellaneous-Power-Digital-Disorder/dp/0805080430
David Weinbergers blog: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/
Will walked through the steps of saving a bookmark on smartmobs, adding tags (use a unique tag for easy reference by your students) and save the link. This tag includes an RSS feed. You can even subscribe to a network from del.icio.us.
Will also used flickr to demonstrate tagged photos. Example: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/darfur You can also subscribe to YouTube tags for video.
Starter pages, pageflakes, netvibes, can be built with RSS feeds, but shared with others. These are already familiar to me and are included in my presentation notes for my session on Thursday.
RSS to javascript, www.rss-to-javascript.com lets you create a javascript that can be pasted into any web page.
There is also an RSS calendar (http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/ ?), librarything is another cool inclusion, http://www.librarything.com/.
Teachers can monitor their student published work through RSS, or you could set up a system that requires approval. Best is probably up front education where everyone knows that what is published needs to be appropriate. Parents, teachers, students, all need to understand that they are publishing publicly and objectives and expectations were clearly understood.
It is important to avoid the ‘echo-chamber’ to only subscribe to feeds that affirm what you believe.
