blog
This blog will be used to explore, exchange, and create ideas around 21st century collaborative learning and the environments and tools that make this learning possible--with the big goal of helping teachers and those who prepare teachers redesign teaching and learning for success in the 21st century.
Update: D’Arcy informed me that “the flickr link was just crawled by google or technorati - no magic connection.” One can dream I guess 
I just got a notification of an incoming link from a Flickr photo on my blog. I have to believe this is a new feature, am I right? Probably part of the overhaul they have been working on lately. I’ve never seen a pingback from a Flickr photo before, so when this photo (shown below) taken by D’Arcy Norman (which has a link to a post of mine in the description) showed up in the incoming links section of my blog, I was pretty excited. Think about it, we can now cite and reference blogs from within Flickr with links in descriptions to further connect these loosely joined resources online. Now, I wonder if it works in reverse as well—can you see a linkback from this blog in your Flickr account D’Arcy? That would be the kicker, wouldn’t it?
The image with the link to a post in the description:
The linkback notification on my blog:
And interesting development to say the least, Flickr just became a whole lot more powerful in my mind.
I can't tell you how disappointed I was when my Dr. told me my illness would not allow me to fly to Shanghai and join the conference. I had been planning for months, obtained my Visa, even bought surprises I had planned on sharing with Jeff Utecht and other friends when I arrived. Jenny Luca and I had even made plans to finish our planning for the Australian branch of the International PLP cohort while we were at the conference together.
Then I got the idea of still following through with the conference virtually. My thinking was that having a virtual presenter underscored the very spirit of all we would be discussing at Learning 2.008. Much to my delight Jeff, Jon Zurfluh, and committee said yes.
So the conference started for me with the making of this Ted Talks style video. It was a first attempt at such a thing and was unnerving. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Sheryl's Ted Talks Shanghai Style
Find more videos like this on Learning 2.008 Shanghai Conference
The sessions I offered were surprisingly well attended. I really didn't expect many folks to come due to the great minds that were presenting next to me in the flesh there at the conference.
All of my sessions can be found on my wiki and on the Learnng 2.0 community.
- The Dimensions of Change within Schools in the 21st Century Here is the Elluminate Archive of the Dimensions session and the corresponding wiki page with all the resources.
- Engaging Staff & Students:Leadership’s Use of Web 2.0 Tools for Global Collaboration
Here is the Elluminate archive of the Engaging presentation and the corresponding wiki resources.
My favorite session though was the one I did today. Implementing 21st Century Change. I delivered this session via Skype so there isn't an archive but the outline is here.
During this session we collaborated together to collectively build an implementation plan. It was high energy and participants were very active.
All the bulleted action items and other pics and generated data will be shared on this page shortly.
The group was amazing and in one hour they identified barriers to implementation, generated proactive solutions to overcoming the barriers and then crafted measurable action plan statements to implement and sustain the ideas they had generated. Amazing.
Big Thanks!
None of this would have been possible without the gifted assistance of Jon Zurfluh. He was my avatar. The in the flesh representation of me who carried out my instructions, pulled up videos and slides, and facilitated the implementation session. He is my rock star. Thanks Jon
So you may have noticed things have been a bit quiet on this Eduspaces site as of late. I just came back from a much needed vacation and am feeling renewed, refreshed, and revived (the ocean air can do that for you).
I am starting out a new school year teaching two sections of an undergraduate education course titled Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum. The course is a requirement for those students minoring in education and who are thinking about teaching students at the secondary level (US grades 6-12; ages 11-18). As I work through putting together a meaningful experience for all involved, I will be sharing ideas, observations and reflections about the course, the students, and other items as they arise.
One item I am keen on sharing is a new weblog I've been working on. I have always wanted to write a book about metaphors associated with learning and teaching. The catch is, I didn't want to write it in the conventional sense. I wanted "the book" to be a jumping off point, a picture book, designed to spark conversation, reflection, and debate. I wanted the book to be fluid, dynamic, editable on the fly, allowing me to add images as I find them. Perhaps a wiki might be a better option in terms of organizing content in a more user friendly way. On the other hand, I like the notion of simply browsing and viewing images at random. Please let me know what you think.
Finally, I am happy to announce that I have outlined my dissertation and have begun the blissful task of writing up the first complete draft. I should have this completed in about six week. I am standing here beside myself with happiness and cannot wait to share the results with you. Stay tuned!
Image: play station
I switched to mollom for antispam on my blog one week ago, using the wp-mollom plugin. I wanted to give it a week so it’d get a fair shake, and figured anything had to do better than Akismet and SK2 were doing on my blog.
There was an initial warming up period for the first couple of days - I didn’t realize this, but apparently my blog attracts a particular dialect of spam that is different from what had been seen by mollom before. After teaching it about these silly spammers (most appear to be based in eastern Europe, and use fragments of text from my own blog posts and comments to appear legit) mollom started to do pretty well.
The mollom service tracks stats on “ham” vs. “spam” and it is definitely doing better - unfortunately, the “ham” stats also appears to include comments that I had to moderate manually so the stats are a bit off kilter.
1 week of mollom antispam stats - "ham" appears to include legitimate comments and manually moderated spam.
The initial green spike of “ham” on August 6 was actually almost entirely made up of comments that got through mollom and that I had to manually moderate as spam. My current mollom stats indicate:
So far, Mollom has blocked or moderated 3803 messages on your website of which you moderated 4.92% yourself.
Over the entire week, there were only 35 legitimate comments posted to the blog. My current stats say there have been 3803 messages yanked as spam (either directly by mollom, or manually). That means over 99% of comments that were attempted to be posted on my blog were spam. mollom’s stats say I’ve manually moderated 4.92% of the spam comments - that’s 187 comments manually spanked. 26 per day. But it’s definitely getting better.
There are still occasional spam attacks (most notably by an apparent ring of eastern European spamroaches), but by and large, mollom is already outperforming both Akismet and SK2 on my blog. I’ll be sticking with mollom for awhile - hopefully the trend continues and it keeps getting smarter and more effective at dealing with the particular variants of spam that get sent my way.
The wp-mollom plugin could use some minor refinement - much of the spam I get reuses bits of text from my own blog posts and previous comments on that post to appear legitimate. It would be much easier to detect this if a link to the post was provided on the mollommanage page.
It would also be much more effective if the referring web page and user agent were indicated on a comment so I could see at a glance if it came from a spambot, or was sent by the various pagerank backlink checking utilities - both obvious signs of spamass activity.
I’d posted some previous feedback on the mollom forums, and it looks like the suggestions have already been implemented. That’s fantastic.
So I am on Twitter and looking at various posts. I see one about ScreenFlow and decide to Google it. I see a YouTube tutorial and decide to watch it. It is a Mac tool, but I like speaking both languages. So I click on the video above and like wow. Here is one of your students answering a question someone had about how to do something within the program. He is teaching it as well as any of us could.
Why do we need to understand the shift in education? Because they can learn and teach themselves anything they want to know without leaving home.
When you move from a classroom structure to a community structure- the students become teachers AND learners and so do we. 21st Century teaching and learning is about shifting classrooms to learning ecologies.
Here is another-
Can't get enough? Here is a 7th grader.
Let's quit talking about it and roll up our sleeves and change our classrooms and schools into meaningful learning nodes in our students' network of learning choices.
My life has been a whirlwind of activity since NECC and I have found it hard to keep up with blogging. I don't know why, but I feel guilty blogging when I have other deadlines looming. Do any of you experience that? Is it illogical? Should I blog anyway, much like we still get the day to day things done at work of home when we have extra tasks on our "to do" lists or should I take any free moment and put it toward the deadlines and follow Grandmas' rule of "work before play"?
I'd love to hear your take.
Disclaimer: Blogging is like play for me- sheer enjoyment. Not necessarily the writing, as for me the writing doesn't come easy, but the thrill of the hits and conversation that follows.
Community Driven System 
The purpose of stealing moments away from my already full agenda this morning though is to share the wonderment of the last week. This week I came to realized more than ever that I am a community driven woman. I believe in the power of the community, the wisdom of the crowd, that the network is more powerful than the node and that none of us are as good as all of us. I believe that School 2.0 means moving from a classroom system to a community system. And now more than ever I also believe that about PD and I mean all PD- conferences(e.g. K12Online08), workshops (e.g. most recently CABOCES Summer Instititue), ongoing, job embedded sync and asysn (e.g. PLP) and as a result I am going to start changing my keynotes even more to flow from a community model as well. As I reflected over the last week I realized even my family operates as a community rather than a traditional family model. I am no loan wolf.
CABOCES Summer Institute
One week ago I landed in Buffalo and was greeted by Rick Weinberg who took me to Selemanca where I would be spending the next week working with educators from the surrounding area. When the day drew closer to the conference Rick shared that unexpectedly numbers were down. I gave him the opportunity to cancel rather than bring me out for just a few people, (I am knee deep in buying my first home in Va and could have used the time) but Rick was firm that they wanted to move forward. I am so glad he made that decision because this week was an incredible week of learning for me personally.
Here are my take aways...
1. When you are focused on educational reform from a community perspective- more is not always better.
Monday- I had 10 administrators who were with me for one day. The small number enabled me to spend time personally getting to know each attendee. I invited Karen Richardson, Chris Lehmann, and Jon Becker to attend a panel discussion answering their concerns and questions. You can listen to the panel discussion here. The strength of intimacy because of such a small number of participants in the room made me realize that relationship is a more powerful tool when trying to leverage change than having large numbers of people in a room who are passively listening to you talk.
John Norton's wine glass metaphor rings true here- (He was drinking a glass of wine when it occurred to him- hence the name) that it is better to have small numbers of highly engaged people when influencing school reform than hundreds of folks who show up but walk away unchanged by the experience.
Also, on Friday when we knew our numbers would be minimal and we had such brilliant panel members coming from the community (Darren Kuropatwa, Kevn Honeycutt, Allanah King, and Mark Clemente) we made it a teachable moment. We spontaneously opened the Elluminate session up to the world (and they showed up) and we used Ustream and a chat channel as well to show if you offer quality the community will come to you- no matter how rural or small you are.
2. My belief was reinforced that for most newbies, teaching tools in isolation is too overwhelming and a waste of time.
Tuesday I tried to lay the foundation and set the context. I also wanted to help attendees understand the today's digital learner. Wes Fryer (Oklahoma), Laura Deisley (Atlanta), Meg Ormiston (Illinois), and
Sue Waters (Australia) talked about personal learning networks and the tools that support them (listen in here) on Wednesday. On Thursday my plan was to look more closely at tools and their pedagogy and how they best relate to various instructional activities and then on Friday to plan inquiry based instruction with an interactive model of building a PBL mini-unit. For the most part things went according to plan, but Thursday's tools, tools, and more tools left me feeling overwhelmed and tense. I know if I had been a newbie in that audience not having been given the opportunity to use the tools in a meaningful application would have been frustrating. The idea was to create an awareness, not mastery, so that on Friday when we created lessons using the TPCK model we would have a web 2.0 list of applications from which to choose. The result though was painful, at least for me.
I brainstormed with Rick Weinberg and Tim Clarke afterward and what we felt would have worked better was to have four tables- with one of us at each table presenting a tool. Our presentations would include the tool, an activity using the tool, and a chance to reflect on best uses of the tool. Then after 45 minutes we would break for 15 and then could present another tool. We would do that three times (12 tools) and participants could choose which tools they wanted to learn.
I really believe that the best examples of tool instruction are within the context of what you are learning. Like our heating and cooling system they should be invisible. The only time we focus on our heating and cooling is when they aren't working properly. Then we have to rethink the tool. Even Bill Fitzgerald (Funny Monkey) after his discussion on Open Source tools left the attendees with the idea of forgetting the tool- focus instead on what you want kids to know and be able to do- then figure out the right task and tool for the job to help them learn or do it.
3. What is most important to 21st Century educational reform is to listen to kids. 
On Tuesday I decided to create a panel of kids from 11th grade to college juniors and talk to them about their reflections on technology. It was the most inspiring part of my week long work. I am still learning from all they taught me during that hour.
Meet Gracie, Maegan, Ryan, Jay, Danny, Christian, Thomas, Caroline and Jesse. You won't be sorry you did.
4. Teachers need time to reflect, explore, and build in the safety net of your workshop.
Teachers, like kids, need you to model and then let them explore authentic use with you there to help. They need to understand how to create lesson plans that use the tools in meaningful ways, but then they need to actually collaborate together to build activities that they can use in school. Activities that leverage the potential of these new mediums for connecting and collaborating.
Typically, in my workshops I only have time to present the shift and the tools- never to actually jump to the most important step of helping teachers contextualize what they are learning. I walked away from this week realizing that this step is what is missing in school reform and why, in my opinion, that change is happening so slowly.
The most exciting time of the conference for me personally was to watch the groups choose a topic- create a concept web, a curriculum web, choose appropriate standards, an essential pedagogy, an appropriate tool and develop several lessons that all integrated not only core disciplines but fell together under a theme, project or problem. The creative juices really began to flow as we constructed together a killer initiating activity that would usher in our year long project and the lessons we would use to teach state mandated content from a passion-based perspective. The tools made sense because they were merely a means to an end- helping students learn about things that interested them from the perspective of a scientist, historian or author.
I am thankful to CABOCES for being willing to invest the time that allowed their educators to not only gain an awareness but to deeply reflect, discuss, and wrestle with the concepts while facilitators and the community stood close to help them make informed choices about change.
When you use a lot of technology to push the envelope and hang with others who do as well-- it is pretty amazing when you find yourself in awe of the tools. Darren, Wes, Dean and I continually use tools to collaborate since we all live so far away from each other. Wednesday night at NECC wasn't going to be any different than other countless K12Online virtual meetings we have had except that three of us would be together and Darren would be online- or so we thought.
We ended up at a pretty ritzy restaurant. Once we were seated Dean pulled out his laptop and called Darren on Skype. We made him full screen and sat him at the table across from ours. It made him seem as if he was eating with us virtually.
It was so dark that we had to use a candle to allow Darren to see us. It seemed a little like a ghost story moment. Dean took the laptop and walked Darren around with the camera on so he could see the RiverWalk and get a feel for what our surroundings were like. Someone walking by knew Darren and hollered out to him. It was wild, just like he was really there.
The waiter came up and greeted us all including Darren. When he found out he was from Canada he began to sing the Canadian National Anthem. Overall, it was an awe inspiring event.
Spotlight NECC08 Session with Will Richardson
This session will describe the work done by the presenters in creating
a sustainable model for ongoing professional development using 21st
Century technologies.
I have to admit that we were nervous about this presentation. Not the presentation part (Will and I do this "on stage" thing together a lot) but rather the what exactly do we share part. Will and I agreed that what we didn't want was a commercial or a presentation that smacked of "hey look at us-- we are the experts" or something that tried to imply we had *the*answer. What we wanted to convey was that we are all in this together. Here is what *we* know about using community for PD from our varied experiences- now share with us what *you* know and together-- we can get this thing figured out.
The session went well (if you do not count the room being 100 degrees) in that I think we helped folks think about how they could use virtual PLCs in their schools/districts to implement change. Some folks approached us about modeling the techniques and helping to lay the framework to get them started. Others were excited to have a place to start developing their own models.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on using community as a PD methodology and a way to implement sustainable change. Ideas?
Here is a Ustream and Live blog of part of the session. If you have a recording of this session to share please link here in comments.
I left the conference a little disjointed -- not sure why and decided to reflect transparently and see if any of you (my community of readers) can help me sort it out. Please comment below. I welcome your thoughts.
First let me say that meeting so many folks f2f (if I tried to list here would I miss someone) I had long admired or even had worked with on various global projects for the first time made my trip worth it. I enjoyed the human network element to NECC much more than any sessions.
I was looking back over the Tweets from NECC and saw a comment by Gary Stager, it was a push back to Wes Fryer (i think)- and I am taking it out of context -but it meshed with one of my take aways from the conference.
Gary said, "Contact doesn't matter if the connecting people are not doing anything. Don't you think?"
And while Gary often says things I do agree with, this statement left me shaking my head no. For me, connecting *is* the point. Connecting and listening to ideas and allowing this new contact to push my thinking beyond where I could take it myself, reflecting on what and who they are, and then deciding if it becomes part of my developing schema is in and of itself enough- regardless if we do anything beyond that connection. Alfred Lord Tennyson says that we are a part of all we have met. I believe that.
It was clear that NECC07 had an impact upon me in that I came to the realization that NECC08 was the anniversary of what came to be several key relationships in my life. But just as importantly, there are many folks this year with whom I connected and had a casual conversation with- that while they pushed my thinking in ways I had not previously considered- I will probably not do anything further. There may be tacit knowledge outcomes that will have a subtle impact on what I believe, but the meeting in and of itself was enough. These connections for me are much like watching a beautiful sunset. The beauty of the event is in and of itself perfect- there need not be any learning objective or standards met or end result- the beauty of the now is worth the time.
Why We Can't Go Back
I caught up with Vinnie Vrotny at the airport, he said something that I felt had deep meaning. I asked him if he had a good conference experience. He explained that this year's conference was different for him because he was different- he was in a different place. Others had approached me at the conference saying they felt this year's event had a different feel as well but attributed it to it not being the "love fest" last year's event became. One attendee told me she felt many of what she called "A listers" from last year had been saying they felt "D listed" this year. I must admit, I never have gotten this stream of thinking. Who exactly are the A listers? All I know is each new person I meet seems more interesting than the last. I am drawn to new ideas and quality conversation- regardless of how many readers you have online.
Class, gender, and race isn't something I naturally see. I tend to go straight to ideas- always have, even in high school. I am glad to have this type of blindness actually. However, I admit to feeling pulled at this conference. There were so many people I wish I had taken the time to connect with on a deeper level. I brought family and felt I was ignoring them when I spent time networking. I felt very ineffective. I am thinking that is what has left me in this funk-- of trying to figure out why I am not still high from the NECC experience.
So I am curious- did any of you feel similarly? Was it me? If you did-- why? Is it like Vinnie said-we are all at a different place so the conference should feel different? Or did I simply spread myself too thin?
Photo credit:
Texas Star- CSouthard
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csouthard/2622627476/
Ewan and Jeff at the Edubloggercon- DWarlick
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidwarlick/2618246017/
