I was scanning over Sherman Dorn’s blogpost on Co Creating with Web 2.0 which resonates with my dream project of getting teachers to co-create learning objects to enrich the curriculum here in our country. But of course, we are currently still in a place where we do not even have a culture of sharing learning materials and co-creation is, at this point in time, just a far away dream.

But I do take encouragement from Sherman’s vision: “Co-Creating may become one of the most powerful engines of change and innovations that the education world will experience. Co-Creating with other educators across the nation is like tapping a knowledge pool of similar interest, a reservoir of creativity that may emerge through an enthusiastic wealth of talent producing warehouses of digital curriculum.”

This statement does however,  ring a slight warning, though. Warehouses of digital curriculum, does not turn me on. We have in the past, even here in South Africa, been hard at work in creating just that. Think of the Thutong portal, which I am glad to report is starting to morph into dedicated spaces where teachers can upload (much improved) and discuss resources. Discussion is the first step to co-creation. If teachers could collaborate in setting tests and exams, just think of what value and time saving mechanism that could turn out to be!

Maybe co-creation could be the missing link? It has been my main frustration to get teachers to share, never mind discuss resources. I know the issue of time is a distinct barrier, but if we could go straight into co-creation, it could address the time issue as well. It is worth a try. With the prelims coming up, maybe we can give it a shot? Any volunteers?

I haven’t even blinked and we are halfway through the first month of this year already! I trust that everybody are rested and ready for a year of innovation, learning and creative teaching incorporating Web 2.0 tools in our everyday lives. So I better get cracking otherwise I will not reach my goal of getting 200 teachers blogging this year. Jip, I will continue my blogging crusade  as I think that through blogging we can learn about a whole variety of other tools by embedding it into our blogs (Slideshare, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Voicethreads…).

So the first thing I would like to do is to create a “gated blog” where we can all blog in one place (co-authers). At our workshop we discussed  that as a way to create a private learner blogspace for our classes…

I will also start going into all the nitty gritty of, for instance, when to create pages and when to do posts, where do categories and tags fit into a blog…

Social networking is still the flavour of the day and I think it is time that we address some of the issues, pros and cons that are associated with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. We will also look at some other platforms for creating your own social school network, like Ning and Ecto.

So little time…so much to do….

I am only getting to make a summary of what transpired at our blogging workshop now as I have been “virtual-less” due to a burglary at our house (while we were sleeping) But, I am back online now, which already make me feel  better! So provided that my AAADD (Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder) have not erased too much of what I remember from the workshop…here goes… 

We decided to have the workshop on a school day as an experiment to see if principals will support informal professional development for their teachers. It was sad to see only a few (but enthusiastic) souls at the workshop and all of them were from private schools, even though we were hoping to see some governmental teachers there as well. Don’t know if they couldn’t manage to “get off” or if the marking and end of year preparations just got in the way? 

It would be just our luck that the internet was particularly slow on the day, which allowed lots of time for Face to face discussions. We started off by looking in general what a blog is and discussed the advantages of blogging. It can act as a way to improve writing skills and as learners can take ownership of their blog it can teach them critical thinking skills as well as responsibility. As it can potentially reach a wide audience, it can motivate them to become more involved. It can also be used for class projects where it can act as a central organisational space to bring together tools and resources for the learners to use and explore. A blog can also be used as a personal journal which could lead to reflection. We talked about how great it would be to learn from what other teachers are doing in their classrooms and Wilna and Sandra shared with us how they are trying to use it as a reflective tool and mechanism to keep track of what they are doing in their classrooms. As it does not require any special web programming skills, it is relatively easy to use and provides for great interactivity as you can add videos (www.youtube.com), mindmaps (www.bubbl.us , pictures(www.flickr.com, www.picasa.com ), slideshows (www.slideshare.net) , games and more to your blog.   

This took as on a pathway to go and look at a few web 2 tools land as always (isn’t learning great) we got slightly sidetracked to look at various pressing Web 2.0 issues, like…

• Our learners are crazy about Facebook…how can blogs be incorporated into Facebook
• The privacy issue…and we generally decided that we need to educate our learners about privacy issues in their use of all Web 2.0 tools.
• Issues inhibiting us from using web 2.0 tools (teachers (lack of) ICT skills, internet access, computer theft, curriculum pressure, technical support, lack of management support, we feel inadequate compared to our learners who know much more about Web 2.0 use, the burden of staying up to date with new technologies, lack of time to investigate and get to know new technologies)

We then got stuck into creating our edublogs and ran into the usual problems of not being able to remember user names and passwords and not being able to access e-mail in order to activate our blogs. But eventually we all got there (give or take) and managed to create our blogs and add some pictures. We also looked at how to add interactive widgets to our blogs using (http://www.widgetbox.com). 

We want to thank IT schools (http://www.itschools.co.za/) for sponsoring a great lunch and Brescia House for hosting the workshop! The photos of the workshop can be found here… http://www.flickr.com/photos/maggiev/sets/72157603336650771/  

This is just a reminder that there will be a very good free online seminar on tonight on the topic of Tagging (I know we have been looking at topic trees- and I must say I rather feel that Tagging (as in communities of teachers creating tags) is the way the go….”Due to the relative simplicity of tagging, there are few instructions available on how to get the most out of the activity, or indeed if there are any individual benefits to tagging whatsoever. This leaves it up to each person to figure out for themselves if and how they will use tags. The presentation I will be giving this week will try to shed some light on tags in general, and how they may play a part in academic life. Some of the questions to be addressed include…·        

• What are tags?
• What are the advantages to tags?
• Where is tagging appropriate to be used?
• Where do tags fail?
• Whats all this about Tag “Clouds”?”

…. This is all happening at 8 o’ clock (22 November) our time in Elluminate. It might be a good idea to set up your computer before the session and go through the previous live session to see how things work. .The previous live session can be found at: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/internal/launch/play.jnlp?psid=2007-11-13.1036.M.17041726D52CD6EBF6DDE85D1FFEE8.vcr but I have also made a summary at http://maggiev.edublogs.org/2007/11/19/social-media-in-education-live-presentation/Just some background from some of the discussions about tagging (keywording): (the whole discussion can be found at http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1029

Some comments about tagging: 

“Tagging also seems to be the ONLY way I can stay on top of information”

“Tagging has become a language, a way to identify people - look at someone’s tags in del.icio.us, GMail and other tools and you can tell a lot about them, and not just what they like by what they tag. Rather, by reading the actual tag and not what was tagged, you can get an insight into what they are thinking, their language skills, idiosyncrasies, and other characteristics. It’s almost more interesting to read the tags themselves than the sites or messages that were tagged. Do they use just a single tag or do the use multiple tags that are cross-referenced in some way - do they build “clouds” of tags around a subject? All of these give insight into the person. A very cool thing.”

“For educators however, I will suggest another angle, that tagging offers a means for your students to take part in the classification process themselves, and that through the tagging of online resources, they can begin to create their own mental model around a particular domain or topic. ”

“I am currently involved in teaching both at the K-12 and occasionally at the university level, and I agree that tagging is a great way to get the kind of higher order think that I, as a teacher, hope to encourage. All sorts of metacognitive processes take place during tagging and that kind of thinking about thinking is what makes students into learners. Just observing other people’s tags sometimes starts great new lines of creative thought. I’m a big advocate of involving students in creating and tagging online content”.

I am having so much fun with tagging. I find myself “trailing” the gurus in my field of interest and this has become a learning experience all in its own. For instance, I add the gurus or colleagues that i know are as passionate about education/technology as me, to my network, and they do the same for me. We then post good bookmarks to one another or I create a rss feed to their tags which keeps me up to date effortlessly. I find that instead of Googling something, I first go and check what my gurus have tagged “for me” and it is ALWAYS more relevant than anything that Google can dish up for me! And it comes with their own personalised descriptions…

This live session forms part of the 3-week Social Media in Education seminar. No registration required. No fee. Just show up!

To go into the Elluminate room and participate (or lurk):
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=727&password=M.F05A7C5A7AEB2BD674D498FF4D595D

   

Ps  I keep my tags at http://del.icio.us/maggiev 

Welcome teachers of Crawford Pretoria School. Today we will:

• Say hallo to our future learners,
• Change the way we think about learning
• Define what web 2.0 is and how it will result in school 2.0
• Explore the differences between web 2.0 and web 1.0
• Slideshare (what to do with those powerpoints…)
• Play with some cool web 2.0 tools
• Become lifelong learners and dynamic teachers (if we are not already!)
• Start our web 2.0 learning and sharing journey……

Workshop content may include….but it is up 2 u….

• Del.icio.us (Tag collaboratively)
• Flickr (create an online photo album)
• Social Networking platforms: (Facebook | Ning )
• Voicethreads (create a picture voice scrapbook)
• Make a cartoon
• Help create a mindmap
• Create a Youtube video and upload it
• Slideshare
• Ectolearning (Virtual learning environment)
• Mobile learning and Mxit

 This morning I had a very inspirational learning moment(s). I quickly hopped on my laptop to check my e-mail when one of the teachers from the Champions-4-ICT community “popped up” in my chat window. We started chatting about Moodle and Joomla and I remembered another one of the teachers asking me about Moodle. As she happened to be checking her e-mail as well and was online, I added her to the conversation and we all then shared a learning/sharing moment of collaborative learning! which made me realise that the future is about informal learning opportunities. (see chat: chat-moodle.txt)

During the discussion we realised that we did not have all the answers and varying degrees of expertise, but concluded that we will figure it out together! And then, while we were chatting, I found that I have just received an e-mail advising me that a slideshow has been posted to my slideshare space. The slideshow was about how Moodle can jumpstart learning. Now how is that for “on demand” learning?

[slideshare id=169934&doc=jump-start-dynamic-learning-with-moodle-1195302250504897-2&w=425]

Some of the ideas from this slideshow also provided me with the connection of why web 2.0 is such a great vehicle for dynamic learning. And it made me realise what sharing can do. A domino effect of learning…

Scope: Week 1 Summary 

As I have been lurking in quite a few of the Scope seminars, I found my way around quite easy. I firstly went to check out their wiki (see links), added myself to the Frappr Map (I had to join first: www.frappr.com ) and then went to leave an introduction on the voice widget from Voicethread (www.voicethread.com) I had trouble getting my voiceclip to record and it also did  not want to upload my picture (maybe I should try a younger picture?). I then went to add my blog to the collection of other scope bloggers and got stuck into reading some of the discussions. 

It started off with the normal introductions and I found myself in the global village with fellow learners all over the globe…and if you peruse the global workshop map (http://www.frappr.com/?a=constellation_map&mapid=137440135642) you will see that the world is indeed flat and we are all connected 

The first week is dealing with the theme of the social media landscape in education. A real-time presentation was done in Illuminate on Tuesday, I missed it but it can be viewed (which will give you some kind of idea of how powerful this platform is for live presentations) at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2007-11-13.1036.M.17041726D52CD6EBF6DDE85D1FFEE8.vcr .  

Paul facilitated a very informative discussion with Tia Carr-Williams and  Truls Henriksen looking at what exactly is social media, how we are using it as well as the needs and challenges of social media for educators and their students. Tia introduced “Big questions” which I think is a great place to start for us here in our country as well: 

1. What are the implications of social media (SM) for educators? For learners?
2. How will SM change the learner experience?
3. What are the pro’s of using SM in education?
4. What are the cons of using SM in education?
5. What effect will social SM on learning environments?
6. How will educators have to adapt to use SM in their learning environments (classrooms)?
7. What are the responsibilities of educators using SM?
8. What are the responsibilities of learners using SM?
9. How will the use of SM change the educator- learner paradigm?

Truls (from Ecto) pointed out that students are using all these new SM tools and are developing new skills and competencies outside of the normal school environment. He said that schools are putting a lot of energy into policing  the use of SM during school time (in
South Africa most schools are actually banning it!) and that the need for a safe environment for learners and teachers to interact in, lead to the creation of Ecto (www.ectolearning.com), a free learning environment.  Ecto, according to one of the participants, can be used “to teach, to track student work, to manage staff, to enlist high school students in a national literary magazine from around the country, to manage staff, and to communicate on consulting projects, using both the forum and the content sections. Some are using Ecto to support project based learning. Truls explained that Ecto creates a personal learning environment where you can create your own  account which then provides you with a dashboard from where you can organise your learning experience. It allows students to be “enablers” and content developers. It uses pages that have “mash-up” capabilities, allowing it to bring in content from sources like YouTube, Flickr etc as well as feeds, which then gets combined in a “content wrapper” with tagging, rating and timestamp capabilities. It also provides for grade books and rubrics. Sounds wonderful, will go and check it out and give feedback….. 

The group also looked at what tools are being used and it seemed that most people who were part of the discussion are engaging in most of the SM platforms, with a few actively using it in their classrooms/learning environment. A few of the tools, uses and thoughts were:·        

• SM is great for distance learning ·        
• Wiki’s can be used for project development·        
• SM fits in constructivist, reflective learning environments ·        
• The “tone” of SM provides for a less formal, community building kind of environment where connections can be made on different levels·         .
• Skype can be used to bring people together in real time to get them to converge.
• Some are looking at using social media for marketing and student enrolment activities as well as alumni engagement, recruitment etc.·        
• Some use SM to gather websites in order to filter information for their learners and manage the internet·        
• Some  of the younger learners are already making use of their own SM platforms, so do we use their platforms (like Facebook etc) or should we create our own. What is the role of the institution in social media? ·        
• Social software gives teachers back creative control ·        
• Safety and firewalls?? Apparently this will be dealt with in detail in week 3.·  
• Schools must be part of the process so that we can  make it a safer place by educating the kids·        
• Your material can be anywhere on the web and by RSS and other means you can pull it together in an online portfolio·        
• The issue surrounding WebCT came up: Once an e-portfolio is zipped up in WebCT it is lost to the learner which is why learners don’t buy into this.

As you all know, at the moment there is a free “webinar” going on at Scope about the
implications of the use of social media for educators and learners.  (see http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=668)

For those who are too busy to attend (end of year marking….) I will try to do a weeekly summary of the seminar discussions that are floating around. At the moment I am just desperately trying to catch up myself…