Monthly Archives: August 2009

Aug 21 2009

links for 2009-08-20

Aug 20 2009

links for 2009-08-19

Aug 19 2009

What’s in Your AUP?

Yesterday was a really hectic day.  I had a chance to go to Leamington and have lunch with the teacher and two of the three young ladies from the Grade 7 class that will be an integral part of our session with David Warlick on Monday at our board’s Vision to Practice Conference.  Then, it was back home to finish off the Teachers’ Essentials CD-ROM so that I can get it replicated in time for school.

What do these events have in common?  Well, both of the young ladies had their digital cameras and I got a chance to see their summer pictures.  One of them had to have 3-400 pictures and I just had to ask how much memory that she had in the camera.

“Oh, it’s 8 gigs.”

Now, that’s the type of response that you would get from a geeky person like me who does this for a living and I use the language all the time.  Here it was coming from a 12 year old who used it in regular conversation just like she might say “I went to the beach.”  It was natural for her and it was quite obvious that this was part of her life.  She went on to talk about aperture and how she was working to get special effects on her little camera.  It was just a delightful discussion and she sure knew her stuff.

Over lunch our conversations continued and I felt so much the richer because of it.

Then, I did go home and started working on the CD-ROM.  As I was going though parts of it, I stumbled upon the Acceptable Use Policy.  This document was created a few years ago when it was seen as something that every school board needed.  With a couple of edits, the document remains the same as it was originally created.

At my university course, one of the assignments that I give my class is a review of an Acceptable Use Policy.  The responses are generally the same.  I give them a number of different AUPs and they inevitably end up rating a couple of the examples very highly.  They like the ones that have lots of “You shall do this” and “You shall not do that” and “These are the consequences…”.  I know the documents and how they are revised annually to incorporate the ways that students find to break the rules.  So, the answer is to add more rules.  I swear that sometimes these things are longer than the offer to purchase a house with all the party of the first parts and the party of the second parts and so on.

So, why don’t we have to revise our document annually?  We have kids and kids do tend to find their ways into places that we never would have imagined in our wildest dreams.  I think that it goes back to our original intent.  With my superintendent at the time, we had a discussion about the use of the internet and came to the conclusion that inappropriate use of the internet is just inappropriate actions for students.  Just as the case where two students sit side by side and one reaches over and starts to type on the other’s keyboard, it is just wrong and there are consequences.  I also remember the conversation at the time.  If we draw up an AUP for internet use, it will have to be constantly revised as new technologies come along and there will be a time anyway where students will be so fluent that this will just be the way that we do business.

After all, we don’t have an acceptable use policy for the use of javelins or pencils or lined paper or calculators or bristol board.

It seemed so much like risk taking at the time.  But, it’s proved to stand the test of time.  Students are embracing these technologies and they know the difference between right and wrong.  They really do. 

This morning, I read David Warlick’s post and he talks about the need for students who “can invent answers to new questions.”  It’s because they are so fluent with technology that he can lay these expectations on students and the educational system.  We need to be finding ways of enabling instead of laying out rules to solve old questions. 

To do otherwise, means that you’ll have to revise the rules next year.


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Aug 19 2009

links for 2009-08-18

Aug 18 2009

My Community

Yesterday, I read this story from Mashable.  If was titled “If the Twitter Community were 100 people”.  I was intrigued by the title and so clicked over to see what was up.  The mathematician in me knew that we were just going to be talking about percentages here, but it was a catchy title.  I know people who have signed up and then abandoned Twitter accounts so I thought that would quantify it for me.  The results were in graphic format.

For me, there were some surprising numbers.  I would have thought that there would be more dead accounts.  I like the definition used for “lazy”.  After all, if you are going to be part of a vibrant community, you need to be active.  I also liked the analysis of the Peak Days and the Peak Hours too.  I though that the weekends might have more activity and certainly more in the evenings.  I can understand the peak around lunchtime and towards the end of the work day.

Based on the 100 users of Twitter, I started to wonder about myself.  How do we statistics stack up?  So, with the power of Twitteranalyzer, I spent some time figuring this out.  Now, as a warning, this is nowhere near typical or scientific or has any value other than I’m just taking a peek at my own statistics and drawing my own inferences.  My 1226 followers pales in comparison to the Twitter total of 20 Million but I do get to pick and choose and block.  It’s also an excuse to look at the beautiful visualizations of Twitteranalyzer – so this is a good thing.

Active Users
It appears that my followers are a pretty active group.  Over 70% of them have been active in the past 10 days.  I have a good group of folks!

You can’t get better than that.  That little slice that haven’t been active for 60-70 days worries me.  Hopefully, it’s a group of educators who have taken a holiday from their keyboards and will return in September.  I think the message here for those accounts is that periodically dead wood should be trimmed to keep things active.  I wonder if Twitter itself purges accounts that are overly inactive.

Quality of Tweets
I’m not sure how to qualify this one.  I checked out my history for the past couple of days and I hope that you’ll agree that most of the comments fall into “chatty” and “good”.  “Spam”?  I suppose re-tweeting is a type of spam but maybe it’s good spam?  I hope that not too many of them are considered inane or egotistic.  I’m going to draw the line at saying none, because we all have our moments.

Peak Days
Nothing really to see here.  It’s summer time and my days are erratic.  Sometimes I’m at a computer, sometimes I’m not.  Sometimes I have a computer but no internet access.  So, it comes as no surprise that I show no distinct pattern here.

I have looked at this sort of thing during the school year and I definitely peak on the weekends.  After all, I do have a day job but jump into conversations in the evenings.  Weekends are just so convenient.

Reach
One of the interesting statistics that’s provided is your “reach”.  How many people are reading you?  Thank you so much for the 8,600 that read me on August 14.  What a great birthday present.

Hopefully, that date has been bookmarked so that you know to send gifts next year!

Thanks to the original Mashable post.  This was just the inspiration that I needed to take a second, deeper look.

Aug 18 2009

links for 2009-08-17

Aug 17 2009

Another List I’m Not On

The most generous compliment that you can get when you send a message to Twitter is to be re-tweeted.  Essentially, it means that someone likes your content so much that they want to share it with their followers.  So, your reach goes beyond those who would follow you to a greater audience.

Typically, it’s got to be good stuff.

For example, yesterday George Siemens tweeted about an article that appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail.  In the story, a number of Canadians lined up in Sarnia and mooned a surveillance balloon that “carries a $1-million camera that U.S. officials say is sensitive enough to read the name of a ship from about 14 kilometres away.”  I thought it was a cute story and was really interested in


Image by Matthew Burpee via Flickr

the lens that would do that and so I retweeted it so that my followers would know about it.  Well, Todd Lucier saw it and was of a like mind and he retweeted it.  Then, ValenciaPR saw Todd’s post and retweeted it.  Then, Sarah Urban saw ValenciaPR’s post and retweeted it.  Who knows how many people read it from George’s original group?  More importantly, how many more people read it because of  all the retweeting?  Such is the concept of viral.

It would stand to reason that some people are so interesting that they’re constantly retweeted and that’s the list I’m scanning this morning.  It’s on the “dailyRT” website.  Here, you can see who’s been retweeted recently but I’m looking at the top 50 folks most retweeted.

There’s no way that I can be online enough to make this list.  It’s somehow comforting to scan the last and realize that the top retweeted are not necessarily people.  Often, they’re news or sports services.

It’s an interesting list in two ways.  First, it’s a good summary to see who’s providing the best, or at least most interesting, of the content on Twitter.  Secondly, if you’re looking for interesting people to add to your stream of information, you’ll know that the masses have found their content so interesting that it’s retweeted.  It makes them prime targets to add to your list of folks/things to follow.

What better compliment for someone interesting to follow?

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Aug 17 2009

links for 2009-08-16

Aug 16 2009

From the Field


Image via Wikipedia

Ah, the joys of open access.  I know that some folks protect their updates and choose those that they let follow them wisely.  Just as email has become the breeding ground for spam and unsolicited offers, there’s that side developing on Twitter as well.

I do check my followers because there are some really interesting folks out there who I would like to follow and learn with.  In the beginning, it was easy to do since you could just use a service and automatically follow folks.  I now manually check out each account when I get a chance.  Sometimes I make an unfortunate choice.

I do tend to automatically ignore folks with a bunch of numbers in their names; avatars that advertise things other than what I’m interested in, and I feel somewhat validated when I do follow a link to get the “move along, nothing to see here” screen.

I really do like it when I find a follower with a friendly looking avatar, a homepage that’s got a link to an interesting blog, a complete profile, and a quick history of interesting looking messages.

Yet, some things do get through.  Here’s a sampling…

  • Thanks for Following – I look forward to your Tweets!;
  • Earned $152 so far today! Will update more Later!!!;
  • Thanks for following – click here to do…;
  • Thanks for following! If you like social media then checkout my site …;
  • hi do u know if its poss to make money online?;
  • Thx for the follow,when you have time,can you please check …;
  • Thanks for following me. Let’s be friends on facebook too;
  • Thanks for following on Twitter!;
  • what’s your phone #?

Some are from good people and some were from some unfortunate choices.  It’s all about the literacy.  I continue to wonder how we can raise a generation of online savvy students when we miss the opportunity to teach good from bad in schools by blocking access.  I understand those that are concerned.  I really do.

But, I know the challenges that I have and how I can be tricked at times and I’ve done more than a few laps around a keyboard….

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