Welcome to the brand new home of the old ‘Human’! (please adjust your subscription/links details, tell your friends too if you please, thanks).
I am still messing around with layout, pages etc. but all in its good time.
To celebrate the occasion at the end of an amazing year I sat in a pub one long afternoon, racked my brain and came up with a list of people I have either connected with for the first time this year, extended a face-to-face or online relationship in 2009. Symbolically, the list is 140 ‘characters’ long to represent that 2009 was a sort of “The Year of Twitter” for me.
This list is awfully unfair to MANY people whom I don’t mention below but with whom I have learned, laughed, argued, annoyed, had my stuff passed on by (re-tweet) etc over the year. The 140 names below also isn’t some sort of ranking of all-important leaders with thousands of followers (many of these guys have only a handful of followers!). If your name is NOT on the list .. please don’t shoot but let’s strengthen this amazing web of people.
I am going to show this to anyone who doubts ‘social media’ and its potential. This is investing in the best possible resource there is – PEOPLE!
Have a safe and merry Christmas and a great New Year 2010!
And now, my longest ever Christmas card (a #follow2010 of a kind) … Enjoy đ
It’s over! Our four day school Web 2.0 Expo extravaganza over the last few days of school year was largely (and I don’t use the word lightly) adjudged as ‘a success’, ‘eye opening’, ‘interesting’, ‘informative’, ‘fun’, ‘enjoyable’, ‘a bit crazy’, ‘unusual’ by a range of people around the school (eclectic and funky as our cover clip đ )
For four days, three teachers (Simon Carabetta, Jaeik Jeong & myself) and about a dozen student-helpers (13 to 15 years old), put on a ’23 things’ of a kind for our school community to inform, teach and stir about ‘Web 2.0’ and its culture-changing potential that is starting to be realised in our societies yet (still) largely outside school walls.
To ‘walk the talk’, we not only set up stations, but also created the event’s wiki (largely student work!), even a Ning (well, sort of … đ ), got a bunch of students to start up their blogs, Twitter, set up RSS readers, fooled around with Skype, Etherpad, Twiddla, Moodle etc.. We had a number of educators from around the world dropping in virtually via Etherpad (copy of excellent contributions here, thank you SO MUCH to all who have contributed), we had encouraging tweets from around the world … all in all, we were ‘doing’ Web 2.0.
But out of the four days of messing up, playing, teaching, learning, succeeding, working together, guessing and generally having a ball, the last day will remain seared in my mind forever.
Until the last day, we had very few staff that came to the expo. They would bring groups of students down but then (most of them) didn’t quite engage with the expo in any way. “That’s for the kids, not for us…” was the general sentiment, with few notable exceptions. With the whole thing PRIMARILY for staff, we weren’t making the dent. The matter was raised at our regular morning ‘war briefing’. We made the decision that the last day was going to be ‘catch-a-teacher’ day.
It was pretty simple really. Student-helpers were encouraged to approach a teacher, invite them to the expo, try to work out and ask what the teacher might be interested in to learn…then demonstrate, teach and help them learn (about) a particular Web 2.0 tool and how it could be useful to them (the teacher). We also asked our student-helpers to note down on the central ‘tally’ board what teachers they taught what.
Students took up the challenge very seriously and we had them literally chasing teachers down the halls to invite, talk to, teach the teachers. With most teachers agreeing to come (even if out of courtesy if not curiosity) it was an incredible sight.
Catch-a-teacher … liveCatch-a-teacher … come in
And this is what the tally board looked like after only a few hours!
21 teachers, 10 different tools, 4 hours – ALL by students!
Yes, I repeat: teachers are far less likely to say no to a student than a ‘tech integrator’ with a resonable (tech) proposition for teacher’s problem/idea in class. It just works!
Another highlight of the day was the technically so damn easy yet so profoundly different (to ‘regular school’) Skype conference of our ‘helpers’ with a good friend Ira Socol. I saw Ira tweeting, hooked up over Skype and within seconds the whole class said ‘Hello” to Ira and his dog (“with a weird name Sir…”) in Michigan. We soon shared a screen with Google Earth on it where Ira literally showed us around his neighbourhood, place he works, we zoomed out to see and learn a bit about the Great Lakes (some of the kids watching have not been further than a few blocks from their place in their life!), cracked a joke or two and after a few minutes thanked Ira for his time. After the event Ira tweeted:
I read the tweet aloud to claps, cheers and hollers of approval at our post-expo ice cream ‘debrief’ (yes, we did treat the awesome crew đ
Yum! Well deserved.
The sense of community, appreciation, working together, problem solving, the JOY of learning, particularly on the last day of our Expo was palpable. Many of our student-helpers ‘got off’ on it, dare say far, far more than many a lesson in the year just finished. There it was, a working rhizome of education I dream of, where roles/status/label/credit did not matter, only what we can learn, share, help, improve. Sure, it was quite an intense day, but one where the students saw the potential of what many of us have been banging on about for … years now.
Before we took our parting group photo, I asked the student-helpers is they would like to attend a school organised and run a bit like our expo – passionate, hard-working, following people’s interests, funny, a bit messy and unexpected, unclear at times but always valuing learning of all kinds: “Yes, sure, we’d love to…” I replied with just a line: “Demand it for your own kids.”
Just imagine! Or as a colleague quoted in his farewell speech yesterday: Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will get you anywhere.
And since I mentioned farewell speeches – I delivered mine yesterday too (copy here). I will miss the people of Belmont City College (and my first Moodle, my baby đ ). They matter.
Today, we kicked off a Web 2.0 Expo at our school with two main aims. The first one is to make staff and students see and reflect on the changes in online world that are rapidly transforming and building communities on and offlineâŚand all with a slightly pointy educational bend (see clip below). The second aim is to go hands on and start to dabble in or improve on âWeb 2.0â with a helping hand nearby â a modified â23 thingsâ of a kind.
While the expo is the brainchild and organisational baby of âthree amigosâ (Simon Carabetta, Jaeik Jeong & yours truly), it is the students as volunteer helpers that are the real drivers and superstars.
During the first day, we had a bunch of kids creating blogs, wikis, even a newly born Ning dedicated to the expo. We had a wonderful but usually very withdrawn student, who doesnât have Internet access at home, absolutely flourishing after setting up his Gmail account (first ever) and within 45 minutes TEACHING (!!!) five other kids how to set up RSS through iGoogle (very âhole-in-the-wallâ-ish). We had teachers saying things like âwow, this Skype is really neat!â, or âdo you think we could set up a Ning with our pen pals in Hawaii?â (OK, we had our share of stuff-ups too :-P)
When asked about Ning, I simply pointed my colleague who asked the question to a self-appointed âNing specialistâ among our student helper crew and 30 minutes later I saw them in deep conversation about âsettings and updatesâ.
I said it before and I repeat â magic happens when students help teachers. I have not seen a teacher who refused help with tech when a kid says âdid you know Miss thereâs a really good way to do ⌠Do you want me to show you?â
If I said it, it would not stick nearly as much (if at all).
For the occasion, I made an âintroductionâ clip about Web 2.0, based on a fantastically funky YouTube clip by Kutiman (Thru-You-01 Mother of All Funk Chords) . The wording is appropriate because it is through the changing web (shhh, donât mention Web 3.0 yet) and through the people that I for one hope to see the changes happen. Real ones.
I hope you enjoy the re-mix, feel free to share (see CC licence). I knew we were onto a good thing with it when a Year 10 student clapped when he saw it first. Students â the yardstick that matters by far the most in things âeducationalâ. (if YouTube blocked, version here)
PS. We are hoping to bumble through our next few days just as well đ A message to people who were happy to âdrop inâ â look out (& pass onward if you like) for tweet(s) with a drop-in link. Sorry, but itâs a little âcrazy good as we goâ. Any line, sound, tweet, comment from âthe outside worldâ will be read and appreciated, thank you.
(If you see an ad on top of the post… not my idea(l) đ Sorry)
I can’t claim some sort of exclusive on this line, I think it belongs to Michael Wesch, collected through Twitter (where else!). But I just had to put it in a strip comic this afternoon.
The tall person in the comic is meant to be a teacher, the small one a student. On the ground, where it matters most, questions like these stick more than seminars full of ‘gurus’. No, this isn’t some book-bashing, it is about seeing education as a part of OR divorced from the society it operates within, draws from and sustains.
Speaking of seminars, our school will be running a ‘Web 2.0 Expo’ for four days next week (Tuesday, 14 Dec to Friday, 17 Dec; 9.00 (9am) to 15.00 (3pm) UTC +8 world clock here). The three amigos Simon Carabetta, Jaeik Jeong and myself plus 15 student volunteers who have signed over the last few days through our school forum will try to live our expo slogan: “This is not about computers, this is about people.
We will showcase ‘Web 2.0’ and demonstrate what it runs on – people, their care and their ‘cognitive surplus’.
For that reason, we would love it if you or anyone you know might be interested to drop in via Twitter, Skype or other ways to meet, share, laugh, ask, learn. For now, if you could tell us your location, contact (you can tweet me @lasic, leave a comment below or email me moodlefan at gmail dot com), when you could drop in and maybe a mode (Twitter, Skype, your choice…) it would be FANTASTIC!
I have been thinking about and scouring the net for ‘best’ models of trying to get teachers to use Moodle for some time. I have tried a few things myself with mixed success until the most obvious thing hit me.
There are gigabytes of info on ‘growing gap between the teachers and students in using technology’. And what do we mostly do? We get âexperts’ (adults) and fellow teachers teaching the newbies, reluctant or otherwise. Yet the biggest resource and pool of experts sits right in front of our nose – our students!
Oh, the orbital language of â21st century skills’ and âleadership’.
If you are an educator keen on using technology and wanting others to join you and benefit from it, don’t try to get them to move into “21st century” – just get them to move 10 minutes ahead to the point where they have just learned something simple and useful that will work in their class.
Use the gamers approach to learning – easy entry, easy win then level up and try again. Move them as a colleague, with empathy (“walk in their shoes”) not sympathy (“oh, you poor thing”).
This is an attempt to organise many thoughts after spending an amazing weekend with a number of passionate and wise âed-techâ people at and after the SICTAS symposium in Sydney last weekend.
It may have been an âecho chamberâ a little at times butâŚit felt wonderful. The gathering was passionate, informed, engaging, motivating and hopefully fruitful when our recommendations come to the top echelons of public service in Canberra. A big public thank you goes to people at Education.au for pulling it all together.
Good news travels fast. âStickyâ ideas even faster.
In her recent comments, fellow teacher and moodler Mary Cooch (known also as @moodlefairy) mentioned how the staff at their school spend a couple of minutes of their weekly meetings talking about their use of Moodle in the classroom. I loved the idea and in the brief email exchange that followed hinted that I will try to use it here at our school too.
This afternoon, I had a cryptic staff meeting agenda item called âShareâ.
When I got my turn to speak, I simply asked:
âCould you please share ONE thing or strategy you have found Moodle useful for in your classroom.â
Silence. Tick, tock, tick, tock â 15 seconds.
Then it opened. What followed was just about the best 8 minutes of my three years at this school – 10 short stories, 10 people, 10 different uses, 10 different skill levels. Genuine, specific, relevant, encouraging … and more we haven’t heard because of the crammed agenda.
As I write this, an email popped into my inbox from a colleague Aaron. This is the last sentence from it:
âWhat took place in todayâs staff meeting is exceptionally rare, so from one colleague to another, well doneâ
I find myself happy and sad at the same time.
Sad? Because, as Aaron says, it is exceptionally rare. Making such things standard practice wonât change a few staff meetings â it will change the profession we are in.
This afternoon a staff member walked up to me and said: “Tomaz, I have been meaning to see you about Moodle. You really need to teach me about how to use it.”
This of course is music to my ears as the resident moodler. But then I returned what is now becoming a standard line and a sure tickler: “I couldn’t possibly!”
She stood there stunned but polite. Huh, did I get her attention.
I did continue:”I would love to have a chat with you about Moodle and show you around but first – have a look in our Sandpit what Moodle is [the “Moodle explained with Lego” clip] and then the sort of things you can do with it [the ‘How can Moodle change a school] clip(s)]. This will give you a broad idea about Moodle before starting to poke around. When done, come up to me with a classroom problem and we’ll solve it together, step by step. How does that sound to you?”
“See you on Monday at the workshop!” was the immediate and enthusiastic reply.
Too often we approach teaching of things like software applications with a “these are the features, click here, click there…” and then leave it to people’s imagination how they are going to use it. Doing so, we tend to break one of the most important rules of communication – we make it about the software not about the people. We own the information, they merely borrow it.
By turning things around and solving a real-life classroom scenario, challenge, problem, idea people suddenly own the solution. They recognise themselves in the picture – “Hey, that’s me”!
Teachers are a very pragmatic lot and love to borrow good stuff. Give’em a good one in Moodle and they will come! If a science teacher has a great solution using Moodle for a problem or idea her class and say, an English teacher sees it and ‘gets it’ – you can bet the English teacher will at least try or ask how to go about it. And coming from a colleague and a fellow ‘struggler’ is a much more powerful thing than coming from the school’s main Moodle peddler like me. The bigger the struggler the more potent the message, even at the subconscious level (“If she can do that I reckon I can do that too!”).
‘Classroom solutions (with software)’ versus ‘Software solutions (in classroom)’. I know which one a regular chalkie would go for and why. Do you?
As a coordinator of a senior school course called Career & Enterprise at our school I have decided to take a different tack on the often over-worked career exploration, life and work balance, resume writing, job finding and similar themes of the course in the past. This year the focus is on ICT and the way it has been changing our social and professional lives. The course aims to be innovative (eg. major projects are set in the community, students running ed-tech workshops for interested staff) and looks to sometimes challenge a few ‘sacred cows’ of mainstream schooling (eg. teachers and students will often switch roles). For brevity and those interested, here is the link to the syllabus.
‘That sounds interesting’ you may say but that ‘interesting’ bit could be like the (oft misused) Chinese proverb. Why? I am taking a big gamble here – and I need your help.
