doug - off the record http://dougpete.wordpress.com Thoughts and comments as the mood hits Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:14:55 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ en hourly 1 http://www.gravatar.com/blavatar/a909e87a56f409007048cbe697438709?s=96&d=http://s.wordpress.com/i/buttonw-com.png doug - off the record http://dougpete.wordpress.com The Right Tools http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/the-right-tools/ http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/the-right-tools/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:07:13 +0000 dougpete http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/the-right-tools/ ]]>

I had a number of comments thrown my way at the ECOO Conference about my blogging routine.  If you’re a regular reader, you’ll notice that I try to get a couple of posts every day.  Inevitably, the question becomes one of “where do you get time to do this?”  It’s a really good question, to be honest.  I’ve blogged before about how it becomes a routine.  Like most routines, the more that you do it, the quicker and more efficient it becomes.  It also helps to have the right tools.  I just want to comment today on a few of the tools that I use that help the process.

I am amazed that I’m able to do this.  After all, I hated writing in school.  I was the typical kid in class who asked the defining questions every time an assignment was given.

  • How long does it have to be?
  • When is it due?
  • How much is it worth?
  • What’s the penalty if I don’t do it.

If you’re an educator reading this, you’re probably visioning at least one of the students that you teach as you read this.  I can’t ever recall writing for pleasure like I do now. I think a lot of my motivation comes from the tools that I use to provide the inspiration and the functionality to do this.

So, let me share some of my reasons for doing what I do.  They may make some of my old English teachers gag on their morning crumpet because my reasons may be all wrong or out of proportion, but such is life.

People – By far and away, the motivation to blog comes from the people.  I’d like to highlight two areas.  The first are the folks that I follow on Twitter.  There doesn’t go a day that I don’t learn something new from the people that I follow.  That’s absolutely true and it’s this learning that makes me start to think.  When I think, I need to act on it almost immediately or I forget.  So, blogging is my way to document my thoughts almost immediately.

Secondly, I think that all bloggers have some sort of ego that needs to be fed.  WordPress helps me out in that area without a doubt.  The dashboard that comes as part of the management console is all that it takes to remind me that there are actually real people that read this stuff.  In the humble public, I’ll make statements like “I’m going this just to document things.”  However, the fact that people are reading it sure makes it worthwhile.  It only takes a little digging to realize that it’s not necessarily my thoughts that they come for.  Biggest single day had over 1000 readers when I shared my thoughts about Kanye West and Taylor Swift.  Second biggest day was talking about David Warlick and Amber MacArthur at the 2008 RCAC Symposium.  Those were definite celebrity draws.

While I’ll never have the audience of a Will Richardson, I’m quite happy bouncing between 90 and 150 readers a day as you’ll see in the graph below courtesy of my WordPress dashboard this morning.  You’ll notice the dip at the end…as I write this, it’s early in the morning and that’s the readership from a different timezone.  When the EST folks wake up and start checking in, it will move up.

views

Automation – Right after the where do you find the time comment comes this one – “What were you doing up at 2:00am?”.  Well, it wasn’t me.  It has part of my staff.  My staff has a robot at Delicious.com.  It’s actually tagged as an experimental feature.  The concept is that, if you are posting to Delicious, that the daily postings will be scraped and a new blog post created.  So, I did it.  At first, it was just out of curiosity to see if it would work.  It works beautifully.  As I’m reading and researching, I tag things to Diigo when then sends it to Delicious which then makes the post for me.  As I mention in my “Web That Works” presentations, my typical internet search starts at Delicious rather than Google or Yahoo! since I’ve already looked at and evaluated the resources.  WHy 2:00AM?  Just a dumb choice, I confess.  The timer is based upon UTC and I just picked a number.

delicious

Writing Tools – You could create a webpage using Notepad under Windows but it’s much, much more productive to use the perfect tool for web creation like Dreamweaver.  It makes everything so much easier.  Similarly, you can go online to the web and create a post using the editor that comes with your blog.  It’s not a direct correlation to Notepad but there are tools that make the writing easier.  I use a couple of tools.

Windows Live Writer – This is a terrific editing tool.  It’s a free download from Microsoft by going here.  You have all the speed and responsiveness of a local application while you’re writing online.  If you can use a word processor, then you can use Live Writer.  It only takes a moment to configure and away you go.  Click on Publish to make it go live.  Or, you can save a draft to finish your thoughts later.  I’m using Live Writer right now.

writer

ScribeFire – But I don’t always blog on a Windows computer.  Sometimes, it’s on a Macintosh or on my Netbook running Ubuntu.  In that case (or also on my Windows computer), there’s ScribeFire.  ScribeFire is an add-on to the Firefox web browser.  Just like Live Writer, it moves the writing process offline to your computer making writing available wherever I happen to be.  In the summer time, that location may well be on the patio during morning coffee.  You can save drafts, work on articles wherever and whenever the mood hits and then post them when you’re connected.  A real winning combination for ScribeFire is the built-in access to Zementa.  If you like to include images in your posts and can’t always create your own, Zementa takes a look at the text as you type and will offer access to various online services for a little bling to spruce up your writing, if you are so inclined.

scribefire

I wish that I had known about these tools when I got the inclination to start blogging originally.  I think I would have embraced them and become a more regular blogger from the get go.  Heck, I wish that blogging had been an option when I was taking my English courses in high school.  Not only is it a very motivating and forgivable medium, the power of writing for an audience and have that audience periodically comment on my thoughts might have changed a lot of things for me.

Having the right tools at your disposal can make all the difference.

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]]> http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/links-for-2009-11-14/feed/ 0 dougpete The Power of Conferences http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/the-power-of-conferences/ http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/the-power-of-conferences/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:46:24 +0000 dougpete http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/the-power-of-conferences/ ]]>

The ECOO Conference is done.  It was a great opportunity to do some learning and sharing with Ontario educators.  I had the opportunity to meet a large number of old friends, make some new friends, and put faces to names of folks from Twitter where friends takes on a new definition.  In the spirit of open education, I got the chance to meet Stephen Downes and Alec Couros who were readily available and open for conversation throughout.

I did a couple of presentations – one with Danuta Woloszynowicz about OSAPAC’s “Freshly Minted Software” where we talked about the latest and greatest titles from the Ministry of Education, and the other was my own “Web That Works” where I shared some of our success stories from the past year.  As an OSAPAC member, I had to sign up and put in my time at the booth in the exhibit hall.  As usual, our booth turned out to be a good gathering place just to stand around and chat.  It’s a pressure-free zone because we’re not selling anything except ideas.

I even got a chance to install the newly licensed Photoshop Elements 8 on both my Macintosh and Windows computer.

There was new (and old) technology and software at every turn in the exhibit hall and lots of folks to talk about it with.  Talented individuals working the booths give you that special insight into what’s going on with their products and how you could use it.  Some of it was immediately apparent and some seemed to be a reach.  With a jam packed curriculum and all of the other constraints, it would take some careful planning to make it all work.  It seems so easy to be able to ignore great ideas and concepts in favour of covering the curriculum.  Many of the people at the conference seem to be up to the challenge though.

The conference, in itself, is like so many other conferences.  There are great sessions and you get a chance to meet folks there, and between sessions, for a couple of minutes for some speed-sharing.  In many ways, it’s like watching a movie trailer.  You get a quick insight and then it’s time to move on.

There were a couple of opportunities to go deeper though.  I had a long chat with Mark Carbone of Mark’s Musings about what we need to make our worlds perfect.  In an imperfect world, the desires of the individual have to be weighted against the very public presence of the organization.  If we’re enablers, how do we address both ends so that everyone goes ahead at their own abilities and comfort levels?  It’s not an easy problem to solve.

Collage from the twECOO.  Thanks, @WindsorDi

Without a doubt, the richest of the events came from the Minds on Media and the twECOO meetup.  Instead of a formalized session, it was like a conversation with Mark, involving a lot of Marks.  The conversations were just as long as they needed to be, were unscripted, and allowed for a great deal of give and take.  I learned a great deal about being an administrator in a Catholic school system, met with part of my adopted family for PLP Ontario, talked about teaching Occasional teachers with respect, found new ways to tell digital stories, watched some opportunities to empower student voices, had it reinforced that the first stop on any literacy challenge needs to be with a teacher-librarian, shared with friends exactly how to use hashtags, found someone who not only reads the instructions but posts them to Flickr, and so much more.  None of this was on the conference menu.

I even found out that windsordi isn’t Windsor-Di as I thought.  It’s Wind-Sordi.  Who knew?  It reminded me of an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati with Les Nesman trying to pronounce Chi Chi Rodriguez.  You had to be there.

It was a complete package.  There were so many powerful moments and learnings over such a short period of time.  The challenge for all attendees now is to incorporate those learnings into better opportunities for themselves, their schools, — and their students. Such is the power.

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The most closely guarded secret in the city of Toronto yesterday had to be:

“Where is twECOO?”

It started as a concept about a week in advance of the ECOO Conference.  At the OTF event, @brendasherry, @peterskillin, and I just happened to, in conversation, wonder if we could arrange to have a little get together of people who had Twitter accounts.  So, a concept was borne.

It was right about that time that Twitter had incorporated the concepts of lists.  So, I wondered if I could build a list of people who might be interested in attending.  I let the world know in a blog post on November 6, inviting anyone who would be interested to indicate their intentions by completing this Google Form.  From the info there, I created a new list on my profile called ECOO-Twitterers.  The list grew to some 44 people.  An invite was also sent out on Twitter and it was properly re-tweeted so that the word got out.

With all this planning in place, the only remaining question was where do we hold this?  I knew, but there was concern that if we just Twittered it out, that the secret location would be flooded.  But, how do you let people know?  There was a plan to meet at the “meet and greet” session but not everyone was there.  Hmmm.  Those of us who were, knew and eventually got the key and headed off to the location, Room 1091, and waited.  It was kind of like waiting in a phone booth.  Then, Peter showed up and we decided to go for it.  It started with just a single message “1091″.  There were a couple of DMs sent to people that were specifically asking.

It truly didn’t take long.

Within 20 minutes, the place was full.  Most of the 44 showed and a few of Peter’s friends where there and knew they had to be Twitterers and created accounts on laptops and Blackberrys and iPhones on the fly.  There were little learning meetings as people got to it and learned all of the ins and outs.  It was great.  I put the question to @courosa and found out a bunch of information about the University of Regina.

twecoopic

The rest of the group was terrific.  Discussion groups just kept popping up as we solved all of the problems of the online world.  It was great to meet up with @rdelorenzo who couldn’t attend the conference but dropped by on his way home.  I’m not quite sure where he lives but his stories of traversing the freeways to and from work gave this non-Torontonian a sense that it wasn’t exactly in this neighbourhood.

We had some informal meeting of folks from the PLP Ontario network.  @courosa had indicated that he wanted to meet with as many of us that he could.  So, we did a little networking based upon that.  Rob and I had a great idea as we chatted about the Ontario Meetup series and Alec was approached to see if he would host an online session as a followup to his keynote address today and he agreed.  Look for times and dates to be announced shortly.

It was a great evening with learning and people connecting online and face to face over and over again.  Lots of pictures were taken; I hope that @windsordi posts her papperazzi efforts for all to enjoy.  The rest of us were using our portable devices to do the deed.  It would be nice to have a flash!

At the heart of all this though was the power of networks, networking, and communication.  The network was the thread that bound this group together to the point that they just wanted to follow through and meet.  It was the network that got the word out and achieved the desired results within minutes of determining that the location was going to be revealed.  It was the network that allowed us to reveal that closely guarded secret.

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Yesterday was the pre-conference event to the ECOO 2009 Conference.  At typical pre-conference days, you had an opportunity to dig deeper into a particular topic, usually in a hands-on setting.  This year, the conference wanted to try something different and I was asked to participate and I did.  I liked the concept.
 
The idea was put forth by @brendasherry and @peterskillin and is an interesting concept allowing participants to take control over their own learning.  You had to show up with your own laptop – the doors for the big Richmond ballroom which can be closed for smaller breakout sessions were opened and the perimeter of the room was filled with work centres.

Over here, you might have an area devoted to Comic Life; another to podcasting and storytelling; another for a look at Hyperstudio 5; another devoted to Premiere Elements 7; another to digital story telling; another to ActiveBoards; and so on.

After initial opening remarks, where I got to butcher Hall Davidson’s presentation of ChromaKey because I was wearing a green shirt and he wanted to put me in the middle of a rainforest (Thanks, Naz, for volunteering me…), the group headed off into a bunch of different directions to work with volunteers.  Some had full presentations; some allowed the audience to set the direction.

There were three or four of us that Peter called “Pedagogistas”.  Our job was to walk the floor help trouble shooting problems or just lending a hand where needed.  The major issue was popping circuit breakers but a quick exercise in load balancing solved that.

As an OSAPAC member, it was so exciting to see educators getting excited about Ministry of Education licensed titles like Comic Life, BitstripsForSchools, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Adobe Premiere Elements.  If you’re an Ontario educator in a publically funded school and don’t know about these titles, please find out at your earliest opportunity.

The activity in the room was electric.  There were Macs, there were PCs, there were Netbooks, there were highly skilled computer users, there were some people embarking on new skills and learnings.  Some folks tried to hit all of the stations; others were there to learn about a couple of things.  It didn’t matter – there were no rules or time constraints.  The only constraint was on how much you wanted to learn.  All the learning was contained in a single room – you just had to wander over to a location where you wanted to learn.

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As I blogged yesterday, David Warlick spent the day with Computers in Education School Contacts, Principals, and the IT Department in a “Visioning Session”.  The goal was to help us with our thinking about what possibilities exist for students and teachers who want to learn and construct with our current and future connectivity realities.

Now, this could have been a session where you come in, sit down, and start taking notes because you are about to get the answers.  Such was not the case here – the answers and potential lie within.


Me, visioning by myself – thanks, David Warlick
So, the ultimate goal, it would seem to me would be for folks to walk away thinking and pondering all that was done.  Judging by the artifacts generated yesterday, it worked.David always starts his presentation by sharing something that he didn’t know until the day before the presentation.  In this case, he shared with us the website Twitcritic where you could get the buzz from Twitter about what movies are trending and popular to help you determine you movie going habits.  Neat concept but I couldn’t help but wonder a couple of things – first I think it’s very appropriate to share your current learnings with others if you want to model the fact that we should always be learning – and secondly, if I’m involved with a movie, I’m going to do my best to enlist folks to twitter about my movie.

So, the table was set and the visioning continued throughout the day.  For some, it was new learning and thinking; for others it was an affirmation that they’re already on a similar track; and for others it opened the doors to new possibilities.

With that in mind, we engaged in the process of thinking and imagining.  There were few “thou shalt” moments.  The tables were turned and we were forced to think about what is possible in our own contexts.  Through a back channel conversation, an electronic message board, to a graphic organizer where activities and ideas were held up to Bloom’s Taxonomy, we we challenged to seek a vision for what might be possible.  Everything had to be expressed in terms of verbs.

Overnight, I checked in with some of the CIESC group who were appreciative of the opportunity and are already talking with their principals about things that need to change in their schools and what types of opportunities are good for kids.  For me, I went to teach my course at the university and we had a good conversation about things and the skills and attitudes that their youthfulness brings to the profession.  Then, it was time to drive to Toronto for the Minds on Media session today and my mind was spinning with ideas and concepts for the entire drive.

I really like it when someone makes me think.  Yesterday, it pushed the entire group in the room to think about the possibilities.  Yes, there will be challenges but we need to keep an eye on the target.  As our superintendent noted yesterday, we need to focus on our students.  What type of graduates do we want leaving our system?  What are the skills and knowledge that they need?  What will prepare them to cope with a future that is so hard to define?

There was a lot of thinking as we left the session.

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