Monthly Archives: January 2010

Jan 11 2010

How Many Do You Know?

Do you have five minutes to spare?  Do you pride yourself on geographic knowledge?  Then, have I got a deal for you.

Head on over and take this quiz.

You’ve got five minutes to type the names of all of the countries that you know.  Hint:  don’t waste time typing England and Scotland like I did.  My apologies to the political structure that is the United Kingdom.  I was panicking.

My best score after four tries was 111.  The others were 25, 51, and 91.  The first two really shouldn’t count because I was trying to figure it out and had some pretty pathetic scores.  Oh, and I have a bandage on my finger.  Oh yes, I haven’t finished the morning coffee.  How are those for excuses?

I wish that I’d paid more attention in Mr. Middleton’s class!  What did you get?

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Jan 11 2010

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Jan 10 2010

Constantly Reinventing Yourself

This article from the Toronto Star on January 5 focused on the Toronto Public Library’s latest initiative which, this time, provides free wireless internet access to its visitors.  It’s tough to be a library or a school.  You’re very visible, very expensive, and your initiatives attract a great deal of attention.  Of all things in society, these are two that are prime targets for criticism because everyone is an expert.  After all, of all of the things in society, these are things that everyone has personally visited and everyone has experiences to share.  As a result, these institutions are always reinventing themselves to stay current and address the needs of their clients.

Growing up, my brother and I had weekly visits to the Clinton Public Library to pick up a couple of books to read.  It was very important to our parents that we did that and it was something that I always looked forward to.  The fiction section of the library was always a fun area to visit.

As technology evolved, libraries were both quick and slow to respond.  Some jumped in quickly with electronic cataloguing and search while some were incredibly hesitant to venture into this area.  Eventually, the common sense and economics won out and you’ll see cataloguing features everywhere and students in schools learn how to search and find resources as well as how to check out and return their materials.

True librarians understand the need for resources and information at levels that far surpass the rest of us mere mortals.  There isn’t a librarian worth his/her salt that can’t rhyme off the list of latest additions to their collections or know immediately which database that the Knowledge Ontario, Resource Ontario, or Our Ontario resources best hold the key nugget of information that you need.  They know how to get the answer for everything!

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Libraries are also defined by the librarian.  Walk into any library and you’ll know immediately the priorities and personal focus of the librarian in charge.  There is no one size fits all solution and these centres are all the richer for it.  A common thread, though, has recently been a bank of computers for patron use for researching and identifying resources.  When first added, these machines moved libraries to the forefront.  Imagine – high end computers with internet access!  But, those days have come and gone and kudos for the Toronto Public Library for recognizing it.

For a number of reasons, the bank of computers just doesn’t cut it any more.  There are never enough machines available to meet the demand during peak periods.  I think, more importantly, though that computing needs have changed.  With the drop in prices, having your own personal computing device(s) makes a significant impact upon how our computing habits and researching needs are shaped.  Computer are more personal than ever.  Those that know me know that I’ve been around so many of these things over the years and I get a kick from constantly learning.  But, I feel uncomfortable with your computer.  I don’t like your desktop settings; I hate that you have shortcuts and documents all over your desktop; I can’t understand how people can work with a start menu that’s not sorted alphabetically; you don’t have the tools that I do to handle my daily tasks; … I’m sure that you feel the same way about my computing devices.

By extending wireless in this manner, patrons can bring in their own device and get what they need on their terms.  I really like the concept.  I know that there are smaller locations that have offered the same opportunities but this is the first of this magnitude that I’m aware of.

I hope that the initiative is successful and that it spreads throughout the province.  All libraries and schools need to sit up and pay attention to this initiative.  If you are in one of these institutions, what are you doing to reinvent yourself?  If you aren’t why don’t you drop in to a library or a school to see what they’re doing to stay in touch.

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Jan 10 2010

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Jan 9 2010

Twitter in Action

I was reminded a couple of times this week of the power of collaboration that makes teachers part of such a special group.  With the connections that Twitter provides, and the innate desires of teachers to be helpful, Twitter can really be a powerful tool.

In the first case, Neil Stephenson posted this message.  His Grade 8 students had designed a survey and were looking for world-wide input.  What better way to get the message out than to ask for a little assistance from Twitter?  You’ll note that his original message had been retweeted 37 as of this capture.  This says nothing about the number of retweets of retweets that have been made by other educators.  When last checked, he claims to have over 1100 responses.  You’ve got to admit; from a world-wide audience that’s a pretty impressive number that a Grade 8 class would have a challenge to garner otherwise.

Neil promises to make the data from this survey public upon its conclusion so it will be interesting to see the results.  It won’t stand up to the scrutiny of statistical methods and appropriate sampling but it will give the students a substantial body of data to analyse as a result.  I took the survey and can immediately think of the inquiry opportunities that this would afford students.  Excel, Fathom, Tinkerplots activities immediately spring to mind for me.  Neil has promised to make the data available for others so we’ll all benefit from this exercise.

The other example takes a geographical spin.  Dean Groom posted this simple message.

A quick check of his blog to determine which Sydney he’s referring to reveals that his message had done quite a distance from the original Australian location to my hotel room in Toronto.  I helped out by RTing it and you’ll see that the original has gone out 46 times but a Twitter research reveals much more.  I know that it made it through Florida as my fellow Vikings fan kimberanna_com had passed it along.  This modern day chain letter has spread like wildfire among great folks just wanting to help out.  Again a Twitter search where you can “Follow Conversation” shows the scope of this activity.  Since this is a little easier to participate in, I suspect there will be more responses.  I think it will be interesting to see the end results plotted on Google Maps.  It would also be interesting to see a connected node map on this one.  Not only would it demonstrate the power of the original message, but it would show the reach of individuals along the way.

Kudos to both of these progressive educators for bringing the power of Twitter into their classrooms to show the potential to students.  In both cases, it will require some work at the conclusion of the project to get some desired results but it’s all good.  These are great examples of thinking outside the textbook and bringing real life experiences to the students.  Way to go.

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Jan 9 2010

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Jan 8 2010

Visionary

At the Ontario Educator’s Meetup last night, those in attendance were treated to a presentation about Education Beyond Borders by Sharon Peters.  It was an inspirational hour with lots of motivation and respect for the work of the organization.  Those in attendance learned a great deal about the challenges of education and professional development for educators in South Africa and Kenya.

If you were unable to attend, you should be able to relive the experience when Rob posts it to the Ontario Educators’ Meetup site.  The imagery and happy faces of the children still resonate with me as well as Sharon’s many experiences.  It’s interesting to envision exactly how it would work.  It’s also motivating to see how Kenya, in particular, is bypassing the experiences that we have with desktops and laptops and are going directly to mobile phone technology.

I was in a hotel room in Toronto to enjoy the presentation and had choppy internet access at tmes and then things went completely dead with 10 minutes to go so I’ll have to go in and playback the session to see how it ended.


The view from my room – maybe the snow cut the internet connection?

I entitled this post “Visionary” and it certainly applies to the inspiration content that was delivered by Sharon last night.  However, I’ve got to give acknowledgement to Rob DeLorenzo for pulling this off.  Over a year ago, he had an idea to try to provide online professional development for Ontario Educators and then just made it happen.  He stuck with it and has a loyal following of educators from all over the province attending the sessions on a monthly basis.

Thanks, Rob, for continuing to make this happen.  We really appreciate it.

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Jan 8 2010

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Jan 7 2010

A Very Special Meetup

The Ontario Educators’ Meetup series has been around for over a year now.  Approximately once a month, a group gets together online to experience professional development together and followup discussion on various educational topics.  Tonight’s session will be led by Sharon Peters.

I’ve “known” Sharon for a while now.  My first contact was through Twitter where I was immediately engaged with her interesting and intriguing messages.  Then, on a summer night a couple of years ago, she put out a message asking if anyone who had ever used a SMART Board in a manner other than as a projection screen to join her with a group of teachers with her in Africa in a Skype conversation.  I jumped in and had an interesting conversation with Sharon and people unknown.

As a result of this, I became aware of Teachers without Borders.  I was able to find out more about this project by attending a presentation by Konrad Glogowski where I received even more details about this project.  I actually had a chance to meet Sharon for the first time at the NECC Conference in Washington where she hosted a poster session and at the reception at the Canadian Embassy.  She’s not hesitant to share her passion for this project and I learned even more.

One of the things that I learned over time was that she was a Windsor girl.  What a small world!  As it happened, she was in Windsor during the break and we met for breakfast and continued and expanded our conversation for at least a couple of hours.   My respect and admiration for her and her projects continued to grow.  It occurred to me that she would be an excellent host for a future meeting and made the suggestion to host Rob DeLorenzo who made it happen.  So, tonight it will.

Join us and other educators from Ontario and other places for the January 2010 meetup by going here at or before 8:00ET and entering the meetup room.  Sharon will be talking about Education Beyond Borders and the XO Laptop.  It promises to be an interesting session.

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Jan 7 2010

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