Monthly Archives: May 2010

May 22 2010

Who Should Be on Twitter

TechCrunch provided an article quoting Biz Stone at Chirp indicating that there were 105M users on Twitter.  It’s an interesting article digging into the sheer numbers.  That’s a great deal of bandwidth and potential for communication.

What that doesn’t really tell us is the truth behind the numbers.  How many of these accounts are actually active and contributing to the conversation.  Fortunately, in that respect, the Twitter community handles that for us in a way.  Just click on any link for #FollowFriday or #FF and you’ll get a sense of the number of recommendations for others to follow.  You should get a list of people currently contributing to the conversation.  That’s one way to separate the active users from the inactive based upon the voices of the experienced.

In the great scheme of things, what does this give you?  Unfortunately, it’s a very small subset of people that I think really should be on this free service.

At the RCAC meeting this week, we had a discussion of the many ways that have been attempted in the Province of Ontario to try and bring educators together.  There have been considerable attempts and much money invested in these services.  We talked about the “Electronic Village” and “ENOREO” and the “ELO eCommunity”.  By themselves, they reflect the technology that’s available at the time.  Unfortunately, despite all of the efforts of those promoting this, they command in actuality only a small number of people.  For those that make the effort, these initiatives can be very rewarding.  For those that don’t get involved, they just miss the boat.  Link many initiatives in education, if you can just stay the course, this too shall pass.

Educational initiatives make it difficult to get involved.  Trying to stay even with a district’s take on the initiative takes time and effort.  Educational initiatives make it crucial to get involved.   Unless you’re having the discussion, you’re really on the outside and underinformed.

Despite all of this, there is another initiative that goes unspoken.  It is the global connectedness that current technology enables.  Students are connected.  Teachers are either managing well or struggling to stay up.  Regardless, this is not something that is going away.  It’s the Village, it’s eCommunity, it’s well, it’s everything.

It’s open; it’s transparent; it’s free; it’s rewarding; it’s a shared frustration; it’s inspirational; it’s a confirmation of direction; it’s anything you want it to be.  Unlike most other attempts to bring educators together, it’s unwalled and that’s a little disturbing to some.  It’s unwalled and that’s perfect for others as a forum for continuing the discussion.

From the big pool of 105M, how many are educators actively engaged in the discussion of the day?  Singlehandedly, this isn’t the answer to every question.  But, it is a start and the current best of breed communication medium to discuss the changes  needed to stay current.  It’s the only forum that’s available freely and to all educators.

I don’t need to close this post by summarizing who I think should be on Twitter, do I?

May 22 2010

links for 2010-05-21

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
May 21 2010

What I Learned About Snakes

Yesterday was quite an interesting experience for me.  I decided to focus my blog entry about a couple of Snake Lanes that I knew about in Essex County.  The mathematician in me was intrigued by the concept of a long winding road that really goes a relatively short distance when all is said and done.  Probably in the big scheme of things, it had just mulled about in my mind categorized as recreational mathematics.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with mathematics just for the fun of mathematics.  In fact, I’d hazard the guess that if more mathematics was seen to be recreational, fun, and for a purpose that more people would enjoy it.  When I compare the passion for mathematics with some of my greatest teachers, it’s inspiring.  They attack a problem with a flourish and finish a problem with a sense of pride in something worthwhile accomplished.  Then I think of some of the other settings, it’s a matter of doing the odd numbered questions on page 37 for tomorrow and we’ll spend half the class taking them up.  I suspect that most people’s memories fall into the latter.

So, back to my snakes.

Thanks - Eric Bégin - CC - A NC ND

I was just inspired by the concept and so, like most blog entries, decided to flesh it out in case I ever needed to use the concept again.

The other thing that I need to point out is that I try to make my blog entries as widely available to folks as I can.  So, I use Twitterfeed to take announcements of new entries to those on Twitter who would follow me.  I also have announcements posted to Facebook as there is a different set of people that I interact with there.

And, there are people who either visit this blog or had it loaded into their RSS feeder to see what kind of nonsense that I happen to be writing about on any given day.

So, based upon this, I write things, with any luck there may be the odd person that knows about it and reads it.

So many people, I suspect, just do a quick read and then move on.  That’s a pretty common way for folks to interact with blogs.  I confess to doing that sort of thing; I read a great deal of blogs but don’t always, OK seldom, leave a comment.  That doesn’t mean that I appreciate things less – just that I’m inherently lazy I guess!

My snake post is now public.  My most loyal and faithful reader, my daughter, was one of the first to respond.  One of her greatest attributes is that she doesn’t pull any punches.  Her comment as it appeared on Facebook was “Were you bored this morning???”.  Hmmm.  Apparently not inspirational enough for her.  It warranted three question marks!!!

A number of other checked in – friends from the mathematics community – who could see the educational application.  I also received some emails and a whole bunch of new Twitter followers and a re-tweet by @ReptilePlanet.  You’ve got to love robots.

Ultimately, what did I learn about snakes?  Probably not a great deal more than I knew going into the process.  However, the response is something that I try to tell all people who are wavering on the edge of blogging or not blogging.  Go ahead and blog.  When you get into a routine, it only takes 10 minutes of your day and your thoughts are shared with anyone who cares to read them.  You might also get a quick refresher lesson.  Thanks, Ross.

May 21 2010

links for 2010-05-20

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
May 20 2010

Blogging About Snakes

Yesterday, my first stop of the day was in Kingsville.  Now, if you know me, you know that I’m an early riser and that can pose problems.  While a school visit from me brings my vast knowledge <yeah, right, Doug> and witty conversation <grin>, I’m tough to take during regular school hours.  It’s much less at 6 in the morning.

As I head out, the sun is about to rise and I’m headed towards the east and decide to drive through Harrow and look at the windmills.  I’m in awe at the huge size of these things and they’re that more impressive when clumped together in a farm.  I get my fill of that and then decide to take Heritage Road into Kingsville.  This is one of the great drives that you’ll have in Essex County as it takes you right along the north end of Lake Erie.  You’re just metres from the lake and recent weather has brought out the “Water Over the Road” signs.

To get from Harrow to Heritage Road, there are a number of ways.  I decide to take a fascinating drive.  There’s a road called Snake Lane that takes you part of the way.  It’s a twisty turning road that’s fun to drive and takes you very close to the crops that creep up to the side of the road.

As I’m driving it, I’m reminded that this isn’t the first Snake Lane that I’ve driven on this week.  Earlier, I had driven on a Snake Lane in LaSalle.  It’s another twisty drive with some incredible scenery.  Not only does LaSalle have a Snake Lane, if you look closely, they also have a Short Snake Lane.

As I drove, I wonder how many other Snake Lanes there might be world-wide.  I also wondered why Lombard Street in San Francisco wasn’t named Snake Lane.  After all, it has all the attributes.

It can lead to some interesting conversations about transportation and roads and mathematics!

Just like a real snake, a Snake Lane takes you from beginning to end, a relatively short distance, via a considerably longer route.  Brainstorming with students leads to some interesting discussions about how to determine the distance of that longer route.  It’s Fit Week in Greater Essex County so suggestions like walking it with a pedometer seemed to be natural.  Having just driven that, the odometer on a car would do the trick as well.  That’s all fine and dandy, if we are interested in straightening that snake out.  How about the direct line distance from start to finish?

Google Maps offers an interesting opportunity in terms of measurement.  In the bottom left corner, there is a scale that allows for some easy measuring.  While the Kingsville students might be familiar with the Harrow Snake Lane, they may not be aware that there’s the one in LaSalle.  Or, there are lots to be found by searching.  And, for the ultimate challenge, how about the distances in Lombard Street?  Or how about determining the snakiest of Snake Lanes?  That could be a calculation of the ratio of total distance versus straight line distance of the lane.  Crows versus snakes?

There are certainly some interesting things that rattle out when you blog about snakes.

May 20 2010

links for 2010-05-19

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
May 19 2010

A Look at Innovation

It was a post by Stephen Downes yesterday that led me to investigate this resource.  EducationEye is a visualization that attempts to map innovation in education.  Once you get past the opening defaults, it’s time to get serious and do some searching.  So, I decided to check out Stephen and did a search for “Downes”.

Interesting arrangement of results.  They are colour coded by type.  The green dots represent inspiration; the purple practice, and so on.  The legend is a flyout on the left.

So, how about me.  I did a search for “dougpete” and got this.

Hmmm.  No inspiration but lots of industry.

So, let’s get past the ego search and look for a topic.  I’ll do a search for “education”.

There are filters to zero in on relevancy and a timeline.  I like the concept and am going to spend some time working this.  If it works as promised, it could be a quick launch for finding and classifying relevant educational resources.

May 19 2010

links for 2010-05-18

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
May 18 2010

Web Motivation

I had a unique opportunity yesterday.  I visited the same school twice in the same day.  With 60 elementary and 16 secondary schools, this is really a unique happening for me.  Our Century Secondary School is one of the secondary schools that I’m aligned to for our secondary school PLC building capacity project so when they wanted some support, I was happy to help out.

One of the goals for all teachers is increasing student performance.  One of Century’s core beliefs is “We believe that all students can learn, given sufficient time and appropriate support.”  All year, Chef Robert has been building upon that by the incorporation of web activities into his class.

On my first visit, it was essentially to trouble shoot.  In addition to the blogging that has happened with this particular class, they have been very interested in bringing in guest chefs to talk and work with the students.  It is rather difficult to bring speakers into class and so they have been working with alternatives.  Recently, they had had a chef Skype into the class and that was OK but they were looking for something more engaging and richer for the interactive experience.

Consequently, I had created an Adobe Connect account for the teacher and he was having difficulties getting it to work and so I had a chance to hop over and talk about it.  The problem was little on my end but big on his but we resolved that quickly.  We were working through the situation in the excellent kitchen facilities there.  The class was preparing for lunch and so as we were working through our issue, there was a milling about and discussion of the luncheon menu and what would be created.  It was organized chaos just like I would have expected any kitchen of this size but the questions and interactions made it clear that the students took great pride in what they were doing and wanted to do their best.  I was even privvy to a discussion about whether relish was a vegetable or not!

So, the situation solved and I was about to leave when Chef Robert indicated that he was going to give Adobe Connect a shake down with Ms. Middleton’s Media class over the lunch period.  I invited myself to the class and set about to finish some of the other tasks at hand in different locations.  In the meantime, a group of students connected their digital video cameras to a television and showed off their interviews with staff members about the importance of eating healthy.

I was back for 12:30.

We set up the chef with the administrative account in the library and brought the class into the room.  We introduced the students to the software and got them to log in.  Chef Robert learned how to manage entry and exit into the private meeting room and it wasn’t long before everyone was connected.  Some were on school machines on the wired network, another student was using one of the school’s netbooks, and another young lady had her own personal pink Toshiba.  So, it had to be connected to the wireless guest network. But, that’s just details.  The web was the tie that bound them all together.

Of course, the first thing the students zeroed in on was the chat area.  There’s no way to head that off easily with teenagers so we let them have a little chat a thon to get started but interest quickly turned to the whole collaboration deal when we enabled the webcams on the pink Toshiba and the school netbook.  The audio chatting was a nice feature too.

Then, we started to talk about the collaboration opportunities of the environment.  We used the collaborative whiteboards, at first for doodling, but then turned to education.  We started a topic of a menu item and the students jumped in to add to the list of ingredients, etc. that would be needed to make the item.  (in this case it was pizza)

The chatting and talking in the room was pretty amazing.  The students were focused on the activity and, even me, the guest for the period was warmly welcomed to the group and we talked about a number of different things and ways that this could be used.

It was also interesting to see the different approaches.  The big people in the room were concerned about control and setup of the application and getting right to the educational value of the application.  The growing people in the room hopped right into the environment and were working together to “get it to do this” and “how do I get it to do that”?  Left alone, it wouldn’t be educationally successful.  The big people needed the growing people to use the application in a responsible, educational manner.  The growing people need the big people to enable them to use the environment for the collaboration.  Each needed each other.   Isn’t that the standard by which all of this should work?

The next steps will obviously be to master the meeting room on the part of Chef Robert but I left feeling the excitement that everyone knew of the possibilities.  It will be interesting to follow this and see what happens when they invite a real chef into the classroom.  Perhaps David Adjey?

May 18 2010

links for 2010-05-17

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0