Back in August 2007 I wrote the following article about Twitter:
When Twitter first appeared on the scene, I thought it sounded like a complete waste of time.
But as more and people I respect started singing its praises, I thought I ought to give it a whirl.
That was a couple of months ago, and here are my conclusions.
People often regard me as something of a prolific writer (which I think is another way of saying I need to get a life!). Anyway, in case you’re wondering what I use to write my blogs, here is the lowdown.
In case you haven’t heard of it, or just to remind you if you have, The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book contains:
Web 2.0 case studies, from classrooms around the world. Great examples of innovative practice, and an insight into hurdles encountered and how they were surmounted. And it's all free!
Last year I was invited to talk to a group of school students aged 16-18 years on the subject of keeping yourself safe in online social networks. An easy task, you might imagine, except that it has two main difficulties.
What a weekend! From Friday to Sunday, the Reform Symposium Conference was in full swing (apart from the scheduled breaks, of course). A truly international conference, it not only featured presenters and enjoyed participation from all over the world, the organisers planned it such that events started at convenient times for people all over the globe. That made a nice change from having to stay up half the night to catch every session!
The Reform Symposium
Unfortunately, I was able to attend only a few sessions, because a malignant Fate, to use a phrase much-loved by Dornford Yates, decreed that my plans to work on Monday and Tuesday had to be brought forward to Sunday instead. The sessions I did attend were interesting. I especially liked one by Nicholas Provenzano called Everything I Learned About Tech Integration I Learned From Movies. I had to leave part of the way through, but it looked like an innovative approach to talking about educational technology, taking quotations from films and applying them in a new context.
Lisa Dabbs and Joan Young gave a practical talk called New Teacher Survival Kit, which I think should be essential viewing for anyone working with new teachers. I was slightly concerned when the whole focus seemed to be on being positive in a positive kind of way. What I mean is, I sometimes think that the most positive thing you can do is tell someone they’re mistaken, and in my experience there are some people who don’t get the key message if you package it up with lots of nice fluffy compliments. So I was pleased that Joan’s response, when I raised it as an issue, was to pretty much agree.
Steve Hargadon opened the conference with an interesting keynote about social media in education, and this was followed by a talk by George Couros called Identity Day: Revealing the Passions of Our Students, which basically said that in order to teach effectively you have to know your students. Absolutely. Teaching, like business and any other human transaction, is ultimately based on relationships.
I was honoured to have been invited to give a keynote, and spoke about using a project management approach to introducing Web 2.0 into your classroom.
The sessions were all recorded, and should eventually be available for viewing – some are there already, but others may take around a week. Go here for the schedule, and click on the link in the column called Webinar Link for the session you wish to view. I intend to look at all of them.
Top marks to the organisers Shelly Terrell, Christopher Rogers, Jason Bedell and Kelly Tenkely and their team of moderators for their tireless efforts, advanced planning and attention to detail. The odd glitch was handled deftly and virtually without anyone noticing. I was especially gratified when Phil Hart got my slides going despite some horrible error messages I kept getting whilst trying to upload the PowerPoint. Thanks also to my friend Peggy George, who took time out to show me some of the functionality of Elluminate, as it had been a while since I’d used it.
Finally, it was a nice touch to give presenters a certificate. You can see mine here.
Remember: check out the presentations! Whilst looking at them, think about whether they could be useful for you when running a CPD session. Don’t ignore the chat window: as is often the case, what’s going on in the chat is an interesting complement to the presentation proper.
Doug Woods looks at how technology can help learners ask questions.
Asking questions is very much a part of the learning process and there are ways in which we can use educational technology to support this. It is surprising therefore to see that the way questioning is handled in schools and colleges seems to have changed little in the last fifty years. Up and down the country, you will still see learners asking questions by first raising their hand and waiting for the teacher to acknowledge them. Is this the best way?
The first problem with having to raise your hand to ask a question is that you have to be physically present and make yourself visible to the professional (teacher, lecturer, etc.) leading the session. So what happens if the question occurs to you when doing homework or revising? What happens if you are absent and/or accessing the session remotely? In such circumstances, simply raising your hand is not an option and the ability to ask your question could be lost.
Then there are some sessions or lessons where you feel you can only ask questions at a certain time; usually at the end. A question may occur to you during a session but, when the lecturer finishes by asking ‘does anyone have any questions?' you find you've forgotten what it was! Or maybe you can remember it but there are so many other people asking questions that you do not get time to ask yours. Then, of course, there are those times when you want to ask your question at the end but you know that you, and everyone else, are simply dying to get away, so you stay quiet.
There are also times when a question occurs to you after the session. Perhaps you've been thinking about the session afterwards and something occurs to you, or maybe you read something elsewhere, which leads you to question something you heard, or thought you heard, during the session. How then could you ask your question? Maybe you experience something, perhaps from some practical work related to the session, which doesn't quite fit with what was mentioned in the session, how can you raise this?
Then there are those times when you want to ask a question of one of your fellow learners. How can you do that in a session if all your attention is directed toward the teacher/lecturer?
I daresay we can all relate to instances such as these, or we can recall times when we were dying to ask a question and, for some reason, didn't. Speaking for myself, I know that I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that every question I didn't ask would have been a serious one. Furthermore, I cannot be certain that, by not asking the question, I missed out on some new information or level of understanding. There is always the possibility, though, that had I asked the question(s) I wanted to, my level of attainment could have been better.
Having established the importance of asking questions and set out some of the traditional difficulties of doing so, we have to ask ‘how can educational technology help learners ask their questions?'
Ideally, I suppose we could be looking for a piece of technology, which could be used during a session and afterwards, for a piece of technology that can be used equally by those attending the session as well as those absent or accessing the session remotely. This piece of technology would need to be accessible and available to all, so that questions and answers can be shared and so that no advantage is given to certain users but not others.
There could be several possible solutions but one which I'd like to put forward is the use of online discussion forums. What I'd like to suggest is that every subject, every project or topic, should have a forum associated with it. I'd like to think that this could work at Higher, Further and Secondary school level (Key stage 3 onwards, ie 11 years old +) and increasingly also at Key stage two (7 to 11 years of age).
So, what advantages would having an online discussion forum bring? First of all, the discussion forum would be open to all learners, including those who might be absent at the time of the actual session and any who needed to access the session remotely. This would mean that all learners could pose their questions on the forum and feel disadvantaged because they might have been unable to attend the session.
Questions can be posted to the forum at any time, so learners doing homework, coursework or revision could pose questions as and when they occur.
Questions and answers can be shared among all learners. In a lesson, a teacher might respond to an inbridual learner's question singly (i.e. giving only that learner a response) not knowing that others may also require the same answer, on a discussion board the response is available for all who need it.
A question need not be only asked of the teacher/lecturer but can also be asked of other learners. Other learners can also give their response to questions; this might have some appeal as it could mean that the teacher does not always have to be on hand to supply the answers. It also affords an opportunity for other learners to demonstrate their learning.
There is an added bonus in that each time the forum is added to; it becomes a resource which can be used in follow up sessions this year or in subsequent years.
We have to acknowledge that discussion forums are not perfect. They can be abused, some people may tend to dominate discussions and some are reluctant to make posts. However with only a simple level of monitoring, moderation and encouragement, an online forum can become a very effective tool and future learning resource.
Doug Woods http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog says:
I'm a former teacher who's always been passionate and enthusiastic about ICT in education. I now style myself as an ICT in Education Consultant and Trainer, a role has afforded me opportunities to work in new areas of educational ICT for both public and commercial sectors. I have a keen interest in ICT for SEN learning, inclusion and for transforming learning.
This article first appeared in Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for ICT/ed tech teachers and subject leaders. Please see this article for details of three great prizes to be given away to subscribers. The next issue will be a games-based learning special.
Get writing!You know when a theme is developing in your life when the same sort of thing keeps cropping up. Well, I don’t know if twice in succession qualifies, but I’m going to go with it anyway. Yesterday I was catching up on my podcasts, and listened to a Grammar Girl episode entitled “How to get started blogging”. Then today I ran my blogarizer spreadsheet and was directed to an article entitled “10 must-use tips for beginning bloggers”. OK, enough already: I can take a hint.
Both articles are pretty good, in a general sense. Mignon Fogarty, the “Grammar Girl”, deals with knowing your audience, finding good, and reliable, information, and how to build your audience. Melissa Tamura, author of the 10 tips post, also talks about knowing your audience and, in essence, how to grow it.
I’d like to come at this from a different angle or, to be more precise, to emphasise different aspects of blogging. Here goes:
But the most important one of these, if you’ve decided or almost decided to start your own blog is the first one: just do it!
A couple of recent posts by Miguel Guhlin -- see Vastness of You - Plurk Me No More and To PLN or Not -- and a comment on the latter by Paula Nagle, made me think about personal learning networks, or PLNs.
A PLN can be great for supportClearly, it’s the group of people with whom one interacts, online in the first instance. I have to say I have a bit of an objection to the term, because it gives the impression of being rather self-centred, as though everyone in your learning network is there to help you learn. Help you learn. What about them?
We learn most when we’re discussing or teaching, and although that’s what goes on in PLNs, it’s not exactly explicit from the name. Perhaps Personal Interaction Network (PIN) would be better (which would no doubt lead some people to talk about their PIN numbers…).
I wonder if this term, “too large”, has any real meaning in an asynchronous world? I can put out a message on Twitter this morning, and have a response from someone over the other side of the world this evening. In that sense, is there such a thing as “too big”?
What is the qualification for becoming a member of someone’s PLN? For me, it’s having something useful and relevant to say. I don’t care if someone has been blogging for only five minutes: if their first few blog posts are interesting, I’ll follow them. I find it embarrassing, though obviously flattering, when people follow me by saying they really look forward to reading even more wisdom, or who, when I follow them in Twitter, express the hope that I’ll find it worth my while. We should try to get away from this sort of hero worship: it’s not healthy. It’s not even accurate: someone who has been active in the “edublogosphere” for five minutes can be just as “wise” as someone who has been here for years. Perhaps even more so, because they come to it all with fresh eyes. In fact, a member of your PLN could be the guy who runs the café down the road!
As Paula has pointed out (see post and comment referred to earlier), it’s wonderful when people in your PLN make themselves known to you – and vice versa – at conferences. A PLN can also be a great source of support, especially when the trolls are having a feeding frenzy.
So what are your thoughts on PLNs?
Must be a sign that certain ideas buzz around networks at a similar time, prompting a wide array of thoughts and ideas.
So says Graham Wegner in his post PLN Semantics – More Out There Thinking because, astonishingly, at least three of us posted an article about personal learning networks independently of each other on the same day!
Read Graham's PLN = Perplexing Linguistic Notion, and Jennifer Jones' Embraced by the Cult | PLN | Embracing the Cult.
Finally, the seemingly indefatigable Shelly Terrell has provided a repository of links and videos concerning PLNs, which makes a very good reference point.
As featured in the TES!
Find out all about the book from here. It’s free!
In case you already know about it, I have a confession:
And now for some up-to-date stats:
The Myebook version has been read 2,759 times.
The Slideshare version has been read 625 times.
The Scribd version has been read 586 times.
The YouPublish version has been read 14 times. (Come on, be fair: I only published it there properly last night, and I haven’t even told anyone about until now!)
It has been downloaded 15,143 times.
The Amazing book.Since its publication in March 2010, the Amazing Web 2.0 projects book has been:
Read more about it here.
Download it by clicking on the link below:
Thanks to Nyree Scott, of the University of Canterbury, for pointing out an error to me: Year 1 is 5-6 year olds, not 6-7 year olds. Don't know how I came to make such a daft mistake, but it's all corrected now!
This video is about ethical fashion blogging, but the matters discussed are clearly much wider than that. What do you and your students think about the issues raised?
If you blog for an audience, as opposed to simply for yourself, what are your obligations? I’d say the following:
Use manuals to help with tricky or confusing words.
For example, if you write about a product you have some connection with, especially if your report is positively glowing, then state that connection loud and clear. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true, ie if you don’t have any connection you should probably say so. I use the word ‘unfortunately’ simply because I think it’s a pity that some people think that if you like something, you must be getting a pay-off in some form.
Accuracy is another facet of integrity. Check facts, quotes and references. If you don’t have time to do that, make it clear that you’ve written what you believe to be the case, rather than present it as fact. Some people think that bloggers somehow naturally have more integrity than professional journalists, but I think integrity has to be worked at.
I know that one of the great thing about blogging is that it’s OK to air some half-thought-out idea, which on later reflection or in the light of further information may become regarded as less useful than it first appeared. I think that’s fine, as long you don’t try to sound as if not only do you know what you’re talking about, but that any other viewpoint is plain wrong. Why not just say: “I’ve only just seen this, so my initial thoughts are…”, or “I just had an idea that I haven’t had time to think through, but…” or “Here’s the kernel of an idea; tell me what you think.”?
Writing incisively shows through in the questions you ask as well as what you state. It’s not obligatory to always have an answer.
I think if you have built up a following, even if it’s only a dozen people, you owe it to them to write as regularly as you can. I don’t think you have to write every day necessarily, but reasonably often, like once a week.
(This is something of a counsel of perfection: I have only just managed to update my My Writes blog for the first time in months, because I have been concentrating on the ICT in Education one, which I update pretty much every day).
I realise that to a large extent good writing is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. What you find beautiful I may regard as too florid. Writing which keeps me engaged may leave you in despair at its starkness. That sort of thing is a matter of taste, and there is little if anything to do about that. But surely it is not unreasonable to expect – to take just one example -- that those who blog at least trouble themselves to check the vocabulary they use and not, for example, confuse ‘continual’ with ‘continuous’ or ‘uninterested’ with ‘disinterested’? Books which deal with commonly confused words are easy enough to obtain, after all.
I think if you write for yourself, you can be completely self-centred about what you write. However, in my opinion, as soon as you have an invited audience (which, by definition, you do have by making your blog URL known), you have an obligation to give them a reason to read your blog, whether that’s entertainment, enlightenment or simply stuff to think about.
We urge pupils to write for an audience, and to write differently for different specific audiences. Should we not also encourage them to develop a set of over-arching principles that would apply to all writing, for all audiences?
I suppose this is a personal thing, but I don’t like the idea of having swearing, or even implied swearing, on my blog, in case it offends some readers. That’s why I sometimes don’t publish comments expressing an opinion ‘robustly’. People are entitled to their opinion, and they’re entitled to express it forcefully, but if they do so by using expletives I’m afraid it won’t see the light of day here.
As Polonius said in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.” I think an obligation that each blogger has is to define his or her own set of obligations. That is, I think that if you’re going to write publicly you have to develop a set of rules by which to write by. They may be very different from the ones I’ve listed here, which clearly reflect my own value system, but I think the process of thinking about them is important.
Finally, I don’t think it’s necessary, or even wise, or useful, to pass comment on something as soon as it’s been announced. It’s good to be first with the news, but it’s also good to be among the first with well-considered reflections.
As Salvator Rosa said,
Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence.
What have I overlooked?
A couple of days ago I posted a short article about this free book, and where you can find it. There is now another location. Thanks to Peter Twining and his colleagues at OU Vital, it's now available online in HTML format (though you have to register -- free -- on the Vital website to access it).
Peter informs me that people can link to individual sections of the book within the vital community by copying the link for the section in question from the menu that is visible on the left of each page when you are looking at the book.
The Amazing HTML version
Amazing projects at an amazing price
This is an updated version of a news item published on 21st April 2010.
This fantastically useful and free book has now been downloaded 12,972 13,068 times, and that only tells part of the story. Others have made it available on their own websites, and I obviously cannot know how many downloads they've enjoyed. Also, some people have passed it on to many others.
Going by the poll I set up, the 40 people who have responded so far sent it out to an average of 77 people each, which if true of everyone would mean that over a million people have seen it so far. It's rather too small a sample to draw such conclusions though, and that mean figure hides a wide range. UNESCO, for example, has sent information about to to 5,000 people as well as placing a note about it on their website.
If you have downloaded and looked through the book, please complete the survey, which comprises three questions and involves hardly any typing!
If you like, you can access the contents of the book in three other ways, and even embed it on your own website. Firstly, there is a SlideShare option. The links are live, ie you can click on them and they work. Also, the subject-project list near the beginning of the book now contains hyperlinks to the projects cited. You’ll see the embed code near the top right-hand side of the screen.
Secondly, I have created a Myebook version. To obtain the embed code, you will need to open the book and then click on the Info tab. The advantage of this over the SlideShare version is that it looks and sounds like a real book, and you can zoom in to read it more clearly. Also, you can grab parts of the screen and email it to a friend. Unfortunately, though, the links don’t work, simply because I don’t have time to create them all manually - I’m waiting for a forthcoming automated version of the book builder to do that for me!
Thirdly, there is now a Scribd version. This, too, can be embedded in a web page or blog post, and shared over social networks.
You can download it from the Free Stuff page on the ICT in Education website, where you will also be able to read a sample of the nice things people have been saying about it.
In the UK at the moment we're in the run-up to a General Election, so we're being assailed in all sorts of different ways by various political parties. Given that some syllabuses require students to design a campaign, I think it's interesting to consider the ways in which technology could be, and sometimes have been, used.
Here is my 'back-of-an-envelope' list of ideas.
That's a tall order for a single person, but for a political party it should not be too much trouble at all. The list is based on four principles:
So on the subject of marketing, what is it that each political party is trying to sell? When it comes down to it, probably a set of values rather than a set of policies. Therefore, rather than try to inform the floating voter of the finer points of its manifesto, perhaps each party would be better off trying to create a viral video instead, or create a geocaching-based game of some description. Or some really great t-shirt designs with matching mugs.
So this raises at least three questions:
First, a marketing/philosophical/political question I suppose, rather than a technological one: does it make sense to try to sell a political party and its policies in the same way as you might try to sell a rock band or a can of beans? Or am I being incredibly cynical and ridiculous?
Second, in terms of the technology, what have I left out?
Three, if you're one of the people teaching a syllabus which requires students to design a campaign, what sort of things have they come up with that use technology in interesting ways?
This is an expanded version of an article published today in the Computers in Classrooms newsletter.
I thought you might be interested in some news about the Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book.
As of 5 minutes ago, it had been downloaded at least 11,928 times since the 14th March.
I’ve received and read some great comments about the book. You can view them here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/free-stuff/
If you can spare three minutes, please give me some feedback via a poll I’ve set up:
http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/cgi-script/csPoller/csPoller.cgi?cid=1&t=1&pid=70
(This is the link behind the 'Take our poll' text over on the right-hand side.)
It consists of just three questions, so won’t take you long! Thanks.
If you like, place a link to the poll from your own website or, even better, embed the poll using this code:
<span id="poll_70_1_v">
<script src="http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/cgi-script/csPoller/csPoller.cgi?cid=1&t=1&pid=70&js=1">
</script>
</span>
All you do is go into the HTML view of your blog post or web page, and put that code within the Body section, ie between the tags <body></body>. You should see the questions as they appear on the link above once you have done that. Once someone has voted, they will be able to see the results of the poll so far.
As the poll is actually hosted on my site, it won’t use up valuable real estate on yours.
I’m going to be announcing some exciting developments in relation to the book, and the contributors to it and the subscribers to my newsletter, Computers in Classrooms, will be the first to know about them. Here is one for starters:
I’ve set up two methods whereby you can embed the book on your own website or blog if you want to.
Firstly, there is a SlideShare option. The links are live, ie you can click on them and they work. Also, the subject-project list near the beginning of the book now contains hyperlinks to the projects cited. You’ll see the embed code near the top right-hand side of the screen.
Secondly, I have created a Myebook version. To obtain the embed code, you will need to open the book and then click on the Info tab. The advantage of this over the SlideShare version is that it looks and sounds like a real book, and you can zoom in to read it more clearly. Also, you can grab parts of the screen and email it to a friend. Unfortunately, though, the links don’t work, simply because I don’t have time to create them all manually – I’m waiting for the automated version of the book builder to do that for me!
Here's what it looks like:
Thanks again for contributing to this ebook, and for spreading the word about it. Judging from the number of downloads and the comments written about it, I think a lot of people have found it very useful so far.
I've just been checking my Google Reader subscriptions., and came across this interesting post from Social Guy. It contains 50 'netiquette' rules for students, categorised into General, Twitter and Facebook. Helpfully, there are sections devoted to job-seeking and grammar as well.
Substituting “2″ for “to” looks like you’re in junior high.
Well, perhaps, but it also saves one character, which could be crucial!
Another one:
You might think it’s nice to send an automatic message every time someone follows you, but it actually makes you look lazy and unengaged. Social media is about the personal effort behind the connection.
I agree, but not responding at all for a while also makes you look unengaged.
I shouldn't use this set of rules completely out of the box, but as a very useful starting point for discussion with students.
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved