Mast reflections by DonGato CC Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative works.

• Tying in with Michael Horn’s keynote, DisruptingClass: How Disruptive Innovation is Changing the Way the World Learns, web 2.0 tools and the young field of DL are part of the current disruptive innovation.  Horn says that to be successful, disruptive innovations must be allowed to be separate from the status quo and not judged by the current/old norms.  My take–Don’t force your DL program to be like the regular school program; let your DL teachers and admin experiment and innovate–they have the potential to help many of those kids whose needs are not currently being met in schools.
• DL schools don’t necessarily fit with the rest of the school system
• there is as shift to teaching mastery: a DL environment is the perfect place for this
• More educators are finding that tools like Elluminate Live! can be very powerful, especially with math instruction and tutoring.  (**A Province-wide license means that Elluminate Live! is free to use for all BC educators–go here to find out more)
• A surprising small number of DL educators are on Twitter, but perhaps more will be after Ellen Wagner’s keynote
• A surprising number of delegates have not yet dipped their toes in the web 2.0 waters
• There is a shift away from the tools to the pedagogy of teaching and learning in a DL environment
• No two DL schools are alike–some offer only synchronous programs, some offer asynchronous and continuous enrollment, some are 12 month operations, some are big, some are small, some offer special ed, some don’t…
• More people are willing to share their stuff; not just their ideas, but the things they have created.

My last point is BIG.  Two years ago when I went to the predecessor of the VSS conference, the BC Ed Online, the mood was one of competition.  We were all competing for the same pool of DL students.  Talk was of how to protect what we’ve created, not how to share.   I’m glad for the change in perspective.

My brain will be mulling over the VSS sessions and discussions for quite a while to come and this post was a chance for me to finally put down my thoughts.  The conference will inform the direction my school takes over the next little while, and that is pretty exciting.

The Last Words
My questions for you are, (1) have you noticed a shift towards sharing?  I mean, it’s so gosh darned easy now to share what you have created in the digital world, shouldn’t we all be sharing?  Doesn’t that give more value to what you’ve spent time creating?  (2) Are you starting to notice a shift away from the tools and towards best practices in this increasingly digital world?

As always, thanks for reading!

This week I’ve been participating in a KnowWeeks course called ‘Browserless Blogging ‘ with Grant Potter.  One of our tasks has been to try out a desk top blog editor.  I think that this just means using something other than your blog’s own editor that can post directly to your blog.  So writing your post in Word and cutting and pasting it to your blog’s editor doesn’t count.  And if you’ve read Sue Waters’ post on this you’ll know that that is a bad idea anyway.

As I was going through the list of options there was one that I had tried; Flock’s blog editor.  I wasn’t crazy about it as it lost all of the formatting when it uploaded to edublogs; though maybe I needed to tweek some settings.

Anyway, as I was going through the list and trying to decide which other blog editor I’d like to try, it occured to me that Google Docs has a ‘post to blog’ feature.  I like writing my posts in Google Docs, because that it where I do most of my writing.  When I went to check out the ‘post to blog’ feature today I realized that when I tried in the past, I hadn’t been able to get the setting right.  When I looked at it today I realized that the blog URL I had put in was in the wrong format.  Another post by Sue Waters helped me to figure it out.  To post from Google Docs to Edublogs you use the following URL: http://YOURBLOGUSERNAME.edublogs.org/path/to/xmlrpc.php

So this is my test of posting from Google Docs.  I know it won’t add tags or categories, but I’m gonna give it a whirl.  Where do you post your blogs from?

Blog (detall) [sic] by Lady Madonna Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Favourite Blogs

All of the blogs in my reader are great, but with over 200 unread posts, there are a few that I ALWAYS stay up to date on. In alphabetical order they are Drape’s Takes, dy/dan, Hurrican Maine, and Practical Theory. Combined, these people are challenging me to reconsider how I teach and how I use technology.

Lately Louise Maine (Hurricane Maine) and Dan Myer (dy/dan) have been really influential. Louise posts great stuff about what she is doing with her biology students. She is a queen of the wiki and does engaging project based learning with her students. This post of Louise’s is a particular favourite of mine. Louise inspires me to share what I do and make the learning meaningful for my students. Dan Myer writes great posts and asks the questions that need asking. His dy/av video series this summer was amazing. At the beginning of September he posted his entire Geometry curriculum on-line, complete with his slides in PPT and other formats. Add to that he’s a fan of The Wire and The Office–what more could you want?! A recent post of his that has caused me to get it into gear was this one where he lamented the lack of Web 2.0 technology that is transforming math instruction. It made me realize how few blogs in my feed reader are by subject specialists sharing what has worked for them in their practice.

Time To Kick It Up A Notch

The influence of the four bloggers that I mentioned above has caused me to re-evaluate what I’ve been posting here. A lot of what I post is about my experience with blogging and with the technology. I think this is to be expected from a new blogger. This is a way to reflect on what I’ve been learning. As I near my one year blog anniversary though, it is time to kick it up a notch. This weekend I probably put in 3 hours preparing a resource for a 45 minute class!?!! Add to that it was for a mixed grade class (gr 4 – 7), where I will see the grade 4s for 2 more years, which means I can’t use it again for 3 years. This is not being efficient!!! However… if I share what I did so that others can use it, well, then the time investment was worth it. I will post on this lesson soon.

How ‘Bout You?

If you blog, are you content with the focus of your blog? Or are you like me, re-assessing what you do. Love to hear from you!

Choosing a Theme

It can be daunting choosing a theme, but luckily Sue Waters at The Edublogger wrote two posts back in July which were really helpful; What To Consider When Choosing Your Blog Theme and The 100 Edublog Themes Separated Into Categories To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier. Using Sue’s posts I decided what I wanted in a blog theme and started checking out the ones that seemed to fit. Well, after lots of thought and consideration I went with the theme that I really liked… the same one that Jan Smith is using (Ocean Mist by Ed Merritt). They say that imitation is a form of flattery, and Jan’s most recent post is titled Steal This, Please. I have personalized the theme though–right now that’s a photo of my youngest running through the spray at a water park.

Some Bumps Along The Way

I’m finding that a few things got lost in the transfer (like Clustr Maps) and I’ve been trying to re-jig things. I took my blogroll out of my sidebar and given it a separate page to try and reduce clutter. I’m still playing with the layout so that it works for me.

Your Thoughts?

What do you look for in a blog theme? Are you a 1, 2, or 3 column type of person, or does it depend on the blog content? Have you considered changing up the look of your blog? Do you have any suggestions to make my blog layout/set-up more reader friendly? As always, I’d love to hear from you!

Image: Bump, bump, bump by gwen

Mobile Learning the Future?

Photo by AdamLogan
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This morning I read a post by David Truss where he talks about the future of technology in education:

I predict that in about 5 short years almost every Middle School student will own an iPhone or its’ equivalent, and they will be connecting to our wireless network via bluetooth for absolutely free. Students will be ready, willing and able to use these tools in our classroom… will teachers be ready enough to maximize the opportunities and learning experiences these tools (coming to our classrooms for free) will provide?

Really?! I feel that I am terribly out of touch with what mobile technology middle and high school students use today. I have a cell phone, but it is basic. I have a pay-as-you-go plan which runs me about $11 a month. I don’t text. I don’t have a data plan. For a period of time when I was homeless this summer I looked in to getting a beefed up plan, maybe even upgrading my phone (I do covet an iPhone). Basic iPhone rate here in Canada is $60 a month.

Surely the majority of middle and high school students don’t have a $60 a month plan?! I know I’m missing something though, because David is talking about students connecting to the school wireless internet for free.

I would love a hand-held “internet machine” (who coined that term? I know I just read it a few days ago…) that could pick up free wireless. Where I live there are a reasonable number of places that have free wifi (Starbucks, Safeway, schools).

What Do You Think/Set Me Straight

Do you agree with David Truss’ prediction? I like the vision that he paints. Do you have the piece of the puzzle that I’m missing?

Background

As I mentioned in my last post, I was preparing for a talk that my colleague, Jodie, and I were going to do at the Virtual School Society conference in Vancouver entitled Get Your Google Glow On. We were focusing on how free on-line tools like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Notebook can foster collaboration and enhance communication with colleagues and students.  (And no, Jodie and I are not employed or affiliated in any way with Google–we just love their stuff!)  Well the conference was last week and Jodie and I felt really good about how our presentation went. It was a small room, but it was packed and the talk seemed to be sparking some good dialogue.

The New Blog

To help support our conference talk and hopefully continue the discussion, I created a new blog on Blogger called Tech Pro-D Tools.  (Clearly I need to work on having a catchier title!)  I debated using this blog, Clarify Me, to support our talk; it was appealing to think of drawing new people into my blog.  However, I am doing a summer pro-d session, Blogging 101, where I’ll be getting participants to set up a blog using Google’s Blogger.  Blogger is such an easy interface to use when you are starting to blog (though it does not have the functionality of Edublogs / WordPress).  It just seemed to make sense to set up a separate blog for the conference talk and to support my summer pro-d session.

Blog Warming Party?

So here’s your invitation to check out the new blog.   If you already use Google Docs, Calendar, and/or Notebook you’ll hopefully find some useful tips and links.  If you don’t but are curious, there’s something there for you too!  Oh, and if you’re wondering about the best blog warming gift–it’s leaving a comment