140edu Post-Conference Report

(photo by @ShellTerrell)

Earlier this month, two RPS students and I participated as panelists at the "140edu" conference in NYC. This conference was the brainchild of Jeff Pulver, an internet communications entrepeneur with a passion for connecting people and ideas, and Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of the inquiry-based Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

The conference was a two-day event hosted at the 92nd Street Y, and the call for proposals included the following statement:

“The changes in the way we live our lives must create change in the way we teach and learn. The real-time web should create profound changes in the way we think about what, how and why students and teachers can do, create and communicate. The very nature of what we consider “school” should be radically different given the powerful reach of the communication tools our students have at their disposal. #140edu is dedicated to exploring and expanding that change.”

The best way to get a quick feel for the conference might be to take a look at the list of speakers. All sessions were designed to be introductory, and each clocked in at 15 minutes, max. I was pleased that my proposal to bring two students and talk about ways in which the internet and its affordances have enabled us to “change our default settings” as learners was accepted, and on Tuesday, August 2nd, I met Niki Kakarla and Mike Fedorochko in NYC after one brief in person planning conversation earlier. (John Miller attended the conference as well; it was so nice to connect with you there, John!)

Here's the video from our session:

(Permalink: http://blip.tv/140confevents/140edu-8-2-11-shelly-krause-5474324)

(I’ve put in a request to get my second “e” back.)

We DID get some good questions and comments, so I was a little disappointed that those didn't make it into the video. Of the questions I remember, my favorite was, "Would you consider these students typical?"

To which I responded something like, "I absolutely consider these students typical in their passion and in their desire to do meaningful work. I think we all want to see ourselves as capable of making relevant contributions to our communities. But I think that Niki and Mike are probably ATYPICAL in the opportunities that have been given to them, and in the opportunities which they have created for themselves."

I asked Niki and Mike if they would take a few minutes to share their thoughts as well...

Niki’s after-thoughts:

“Being a speaker at the 140edu conference as a student was an extraordinary experience for me. As an audience member, I was surrounded by a room full of brilliant people who were all open to each other’s ideas. As a speaker onstage, there were so many enthusiastic people waiting to hear what I had to say. After the conference I realized just how many people wanted to talk about our ideas and how to move forward with them. This was probably one of the coolest things I could have been a part of. I was able to network, learn about new ideas, and meet people from different backgrounds with different perspectives.”

Mike’s after-thoughts:

"Our group spoke at Jeff Pulver's 140edu conference a few weeks ago to a crowd of wonderfully open-minded educators. Being one of the only real students at the conference was both refreshing and disappointing. On the one hand, I was given the opportunity to meet and pay thanks to the hundreds of extremely intelligent and committed individuals working to make the necessary changes in the way we approach education. On the other hand, the utter lack of student input and participation, even amongst such progressive and open-minded educators, was disappointing to say the least. As a rising senior, it's tough for me to come back to Rutgers Prep for my final year and not be envious of the students who have been given the opportunity to learn organically in an environment like that of the much-lauded Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. It is my firm belief that our schools are forcing students to become risk averse, training students to theorize instead of apply, and disenfranchising creativity instead of empowering it. The reality of the situation is that schools, parents, governments, and many colleges are trying to quantify something that is sometimes extremely difficult to quantify. As teachers, I urge you to keep an open mind, experiment with newer and better methods, and recognize and work to mitigate as much as possible the frustration many students feel with their education. I have been extremely lucky to attend a school whose faculty are so incredibly committed, and I simply would not be in my current position without the dedication and influence of Rutgers Prep faculty members. Thank you."

(Back to Shelley again.) I am grateful to have been able to attend and speak at this conference. Committing to presenting helped sharpen my thinking as I tried to figure out how to pull together something that the students and I could be proud to have shared. I’ve been exploring different conference structures over the past few years (I’m interested in the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of “containers” for learning), and it was a treat to be a part of this intense, engaging, and multi-layered experience and conversation. I’ve put in a proposal to facilitate a conversation at another edu-themed conference this fall, and if I get the nod, based on the positive feedback we received at 140edu, I’ll try to once again include students.

(The recordings of the other talks from the 140edu conference are here.)

edcamp Philly 2011

All but the first of these photos were taken by my friend Scot Wittman (aka @mapographer); it was so great to have someone from my school community -- and an actual photographer, no less! -- with me at edcamp Philly this year!

I've become something of an unconference fangirl.

@mapographer halfway down the stairs
at edcamp Philly 2011

(Chalk helps folks know they're in the right spot.)

(@kjarrett & co. welcoming folks)

Creating the schedule.

(@mbteach, facilitating)

(deciding on our next session;
plus me, in the yellow t-shirt, back left)

I am drawn to unconferences for some of the same reasons I am drawn to Quaker Meeting or a block party. I like the idea of creating a well-designed container for conversation and connection, without determining ahead of time exactly what those conversations will be about, or who will connect. More "hang out in the kitchen," less "sit in your appointed seat in the formal dining room."

I am also perpetually interested in the idea of what is required for these containers we create to feel genuinely inclusive. Watching Heather Gold's recent talk on "Tools for Tummeling" at WordPress reminded me again of the power of acknowledgment. We all want to be seen and recognized for who we are. But inclusivity doesn't just happen. Unconferences have a few structural elements which I believe lean in the direction of inclusivity. Unconferences typically have a non-hierarchical approach to planning and often recommend an explicit decoupling of interest from approval (just because I leave your session to check in on another one doesn't mean that I think what you have to say isn't valuable). These can make unconferences a better container for me than a more traditional conference structure. Unconferences have also helped me more clearly understand the elements of traditional conferences that DON'T work for me. (E.g. I'm supposed to know what I'm going to want to facilitate a conversation about nine months ahead of time?! And there won't be any wireless access?! What?!)

I am very excited to attend an event next week being curated by Jeff Pulver of 140 Characters Conference fame. The testimonials about his past events are pretty compelling. I'm also still a little shocked that I'll actually be speaking. And hoping my students and I can talk fast enough to leave room for some meaningful (if brief) connections with the other folks in the room.

(Our assigned time slot at 140edu
is at 3:45pm on Tuesday, August 2nd.
We'll be talking about "Changing our ringtones:
going beyond 'default' as learners"
And they're going to try to livestream it,
so do follow along at home
if you're not able to make it to the 92nd Street "Y" in NYC.)

Students v. Learners

Like Scott McLeod, I am struck by the simplicity and depth of this chart from a post by David Warlick:

	Students	Learners
Relationship with educators	Students are employees, required to obediently follow instructions.	Learners are citizens with a vested interest in the learning society.
Relationship with other “Students”	Students are competitors	Learners are collaborators
Motivation	Obligation: Students are culturally obliged to work for the teacher & for compensation (below)	Responsibility: Learners are motivated by an understood and realized “value” in their work, especially when it is valuable to others.
Compensation	Institution defined grades and gateways to college (another institution) and a good job (another institution)	A sense of ongoing accomplishment that is not delivered but earned, and not symbolic but tangible and valuable — an investment.
Mode of Operation	Compliant, group-disciplined, objective-oriented, and trainable	Persevering, self-disciplined, group- and goal-oriented, resourceful, and learning in order to achieve rather than achieving learning.
Why?	Compelled	Curious
Equipped	..with packaged knowledge and tools for recording packaged knowledge — prescribed and paced learning	..with tools for exploring a networked variety of content, experimenting with that content, and discovering, concluding, and constructing knowledge — invented learning
Assessment	Measuring what the student has learned.	Measuring what the learner can do with what has been learned.

Additional questions:

> What assumptions about where the young people in our learning communities fall on this chart do the adults in our communities make?

> What about parents?

> To what extent do we foster opportunities to share our pedagogical philosophies within learning communities?

> Have you undergone a personal transition from a "student" identity to a "learner" identity? If so, was that intentional? Accidental? Counter-cultural?

My Next Job

A friend with a knack for asking great questions

asked me recently what my next job would be.

Ummm...

My first thought may have been, "Do you know something I don't know?" This was quickly followed by thinking, "I'm still learning new things doing this one!"

Then, trying to go "blue sky," I talked about my desire to help make the hidden shared interests of community members visible. About my interest in creating opportunities for extended conversation. And wanting to be engaged in teaching our students about networked learning and empowered use of the intertubes.

But as I am something of a "slow-burn" thinker, it has taken me several weeks to come up with this fully-fledged description of my imagined next job. Or one of them, at least. :-)

So here goes:

Shelley Krause is the lead curator of her school's Learning Portfolios project. Used for assessment, reflection, and sharing of student & professional learning, Learning Portfolios were first used by the school's art department and students applying to undertake independent study projects, and have since have become an integral part of the way in which the entire school comes together and moves forward as a learning community. Shelley's responsibilities with the project include the following:

> assist with the design and implementation of the "New To Us" learner intake process for new members of the school's learning community

> help coordinate the design and implementation of the school's Learning Portfolio system

> ensure the portability and continued availability of access to projects selected for Learning Portfolio inclusion

> collaborate and guide team and departmental leaders in order to support portfolio-friendly curricular design

> help design and support the processes through which teachers and students select work for inclusion in their professional and learner portfolios, respectively

> keep up-to-date on current trends in ePortfolio design and use; serve as a resource to learners through scheduled portfolio consultations

> teach an elective class in digital presence and networked learning or English

> run periodic Portfolio 101 workshops for school parents

> curate the school's current and archival sets of public Learning Portfolios

> confer with the school's IT group about the evolving software, access, and storage needs of the Learning Portfolio program

(Sounds pretty great, right?

And you might want to check out

some of the portfolio sites I found

while researching this:

Shawnee Mission School District

Carmel High Honors English Projects

I'll let you know

if/when it becomes a personal reality!)

Powerful Learning Experience: 4th Grade Poetry

Two years ago I got hooked on a project I had assigned myself. A teacher in my building has long led her students in an intensive exploration of the lives of the people living in Appalachia, culminating in student-led tours of all kinds of demonstrations of the depth of their understanding.

I signed up for one of the tours and was absolutely transfixed by the power of the children's imagination. At about the same time, I had been seeing Google- and Slideshare-enabled embedded slide shows popping up in blogs I read. When I read the poems our fourth graders had written in the voices of the people they'd been studying, my immediate thought was for all the people who wouldn't have a chance to marvel at their work, and this is what inspired what happened next.

The students had initially illustrated their poems with drawings, but these had not been converted into a digital format, so I set out to find images that would reflect the strength and deep engagement of the students' language. This in turn led me on a whole exploration of issues of copyright and fair use in the digital age. Once I'd discovered the treasure trove that is the FSA/OWI federal photographic archive, I approached the classroom teacher with my desire to help share the students' work with the wider world, and she helped me think through issues like parent permission and timeline.

Then I hit the internet. I dove into Google Docs and figured out how to generate an embeddable slideshow (not that difficult, as it turned out). I printed out a copy of each of the poems I'd been granted permission to share, and went image hunting. During this process, even though I wasn't able to talk with the students themselves, I felt very much as if I was working collaboratively with them, since their words were providing the starting point for my research. Soon, I was completely taken over by the project. I got up early in the morning, I worked over my lunch hour, I saw images of coal towns in my mind's eye as I was lying in bed at night.

There were some false-starts as I figured out how best to keep track of my research; early on, I found and then lost track of some great images because I hadn't saved the url before moving on. I developed structures and procedures to help encourage more methodical record-keeping, and after a bit I got into a groove. I ask my students every year if they have area of interest or engagement that generates the state that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has termed "flow," a state in in which your whole being is involved and you're using your skills to the utmost. Working on this project was truly a "flow" situation for me.

What made this a powerful learning experience?

• I was working at the edges of my knowledge
• I was inspired by the "raw materials" I had to work with
• There was a collaborative energy contributing to the project
• A strong desire to help shine a light on others' creative work
• A relatively defined window of opportunity (I had my regular work to get back to!)
• I was drawing on both my artistic and technical skills
• I had the feeling that I had identified & was fulfilling an unmet need

(This is the last of three stories

of powerful personal learning that I wrote up

with an eye towards contributing

to Sam Chaltain's Faces of Learning project.

You could, too.)

Powerful Learning Experience: Shakespeare

(image via Brian on Flickr)

In high school, after my best friend's parents sent her away to boarding school and my parents didn't, school became a pretty lonely scene for me. Not only because of her absence and my grappling with my lesbian identity in a pre- Gay-Straight Alliance world, but maybe even more so because I was a wanna-be intellectual in a population where, in a typical year, only about 40% of the graduating class would go on to attend a four-year college. Being engaged with the wider world of ideas landed me in a pretty small club. There were sometimes opportunities to take courses at an honors or Advanced Placement level, but it depended on interest and ability -- my senior year, the AP English Literature course that I would have loved to take didn't "run." The rules of regular English let me test out of some of the units I could demonstrate mastery of, so Mrs. McLain found herself writing me pass after pass to the library, where I stumbled upon a video of a PBS special featuring a young Ian McKellen entitled, "Acting Shakespeare." I was absolutely spellbound.

(image by Steve Granitz,

courtesy of WireImage)

I watched the video over the course of multiple days and then, when I'd reached the end, re-wound it and started again. I even created my own index of what scenes appeared at what point in the recording -- effectively creating a "chapter selection" option in a pre-DVD world.

Somehow Mrs. McLain found out how I was spending my "release time," and issued me a challenge -- could I memorize some Shakespeare? She must have known by then that I have a positive orientation towards challenge -- I said, "Sure." It was the only time outside of drama classes that I'd ever been asked to memorize anything. For several weeks, then, I immersed myself in Shakespeare, watching the video during school hours, then scouring the plays at night for selections that I would want to memorize. Mrs. McLain was my spark and the ultimate audience for my memorized soliloquies, but she made sure to leave me plenty of room to make the work my own.

And to this day I can recite satisfying chunks of Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.

What made this a powerful learning experience?

• Again, a strong and warm connection to my teacher
• a move from feeling isolated to feeling connected
• a chance to revel in someone else's mastery (Shakespeare AND McKellen!)
• "opt-in" -- this was essentially work I assigned myself
• challenge
• customization
• immersion -- I was spending time on this both in and out of school
• resonance -- during what was an emotional time for me personally, I was able to engage with art that had strong emotional content

(I am working on several of these stories

of powerful personal learning

with an eye towards contributing

to Sam Chaltain's Faces of Learning project.

You could, too.)

Powerful Learning Experience: Backgammon

(Photo by Andy Schultz, on Flickr)

In high school, my best friend Claire taught me how to play backgammon. I had never even seen a board before; she had grown up playing her grandparents, and was really good. Once she taught me the rules, we went ahead and stared playing, but she was crushing me with dispiriting regularity – I didn't have a sense of strategy. Then we played the way she'd taught me, with one major change – after each of my moves, she took a moment to tell me what she would have done, had she been in my shoes at that second. I learned fast. I could tell that I was learning because of the increasing number of times that Claire said, "That's pretty much what I would have done." Eventually I even started winning now and then, at which point Claire stopped giving me hints.

For a while, even after that, I could still sometimes hear her voice in my head. In the end, my own experience built on those early games and her advice, and I became a backgammon player in my own right.

What made this a powerful learning experience? Here are some of the elements that seem like contributing factors:

• a strong, warm connection to my teacher
• learning was in a one-on-one setting
• immediate feedback
• tapped into my competitive drive
• "only a game" = low stakes
• lots of little mini-failures on the way to the big success

(I am working on several of these stories

of powerful personal learning

with an eye towards contributing

to Sam Chaltain's Faces of Learning project.

You could, too.)

What To Do When Colleges Say No

(I always appreciate my friend and colleague Patrick O'Connor's perspective on the world of college counseling. Earlier this week, he took a moment from his work at The Roeper School to share his thoughts on helping students deal with admissions rejections with the members of the NACAC listserv, and he has graciously consented to my posting his thoughts here.)

The Best Advice When Colleges Say No

School counselors know the real March Madness begins next week, when some of the nation's most selective colleges release their admissions decisions. As a pre-game warm-up, let's stick with the facts we'll need to comfort the Class of 2011:


* Most selective colleges are reporting a huge increase in the number of applications.
* This increase is due in part to more American students applying to college, and colleges seeking out more students from overseas.
* Since this also happened last year, many colleges enrolled too many students last fall. They'll have to make up for that, so many colleges will be admitting fewer students this year...
* ...and wait-listing more students. This increase means fewer students will be admitted from the wait list come May-and if they are admitted, financial aid will be scarce.

If none of that does any good, then just say this:


* 850.

No, this is not the high score on some new version of the SAT, and while it may indeed be the number of times Charlie Sheen appeared on TV last week, that (happily) has nothing to do with college.

850 is the number of valedictorians rejected last year from one of America's most prestigious colleges. These students represented the best in their high schools; they did everything they were "supposed" to do-and yet, they didn't even get to the wait list.

Once you share this with your students, ask them how these 850 students felt when they were rejected. Sooner or later, the right answer will come forward-"They probably felt like they put in all of that time and effort for nothing."

And there is the teachable moment.

It had to be hard to be turned down by a school they loved-but did all of that preparation really lead to nothing? Given everything these students had learned, the many ways they had grown, and how they overcame adversity and embraced creativity in making Plans B, C, and Q, did they really get nothing out of it?

If so, they have every right to be unhappy, but not with the college. They should be unhappy for letting the sun rise and set 1307 times from the first day of 9th grade to the day the college said no, never once appreciating all that each of those days had to offer in and of themselves.

They should hang their heads a little to realize, just now, the difference they've made to their classmates, their teammates, and the people they served in the soup kitchen.

And if they look back with a little regret on the many times they blew off a compliment from a parent or a teacher because the goal of college wasn't realized just yet, that's more than OK. They now know it was at that moment that the goal of fully living each day was conquered with a flourish-and understanding that will make each day all the richer at the wonderful college that had the good sense (and room) to take them.

It isn't easy to watch wonderful students work through the dismay and disappointment college decisions can bring, but if we remember the most important part of our work has nothing to do with who gets in and everything to do with who gets it, the disappointment will fade faster than the memory of the teams we had in last year's NCAA pool, and students can move forward with a better sense of who they are, and what really matters. Now that's college counseling.

(Thanks again to Patrick for letting me share this
with the intertubes. Readers, we'd love
to hear your thoughts in the comments!)

Click

(Image by Denise Carbonell,
used under Creative Commons guidelines)

Our son is definitely the most private person in our little three-person family. He will only wear shorts if they fall well below his knees. He has forbidden us to use the word “bath” in public. It’s an instinctive thing with him. When we first explained the concept of privacy to him – he was probably about three years old then – his affect was one of relief and deep recognition. He might as well have said, “Oh, that’s what you call it!” It was clear that the concept was something he already had an intuitive sense of; he just hadn’t had the language until that moment. Click.

As a third grader, I was passionately curious about codes and secret languages. I invented my own alphabet. (Geek points: I can still recite it!) I taught myself how to fingerspell from the line drawings of the ASL alphabet in our World Book Encyclopedia. But I was never able to find anyone else who cared quite as much about that world, and so I eventually moved on to other things. No click.

My life experience – maybe most people’s? – has included multiple instances of feeling cut off or estranged from the broader stream of life; like many people, I have a deep appreciation and longing for moments of connection. I tell the students in my life that if they blog, I’ll subscribe, so my incoming stream is slowly but surely starting to include the voices of these intrepid young people:

Best life lessons: It’s really is all about who you are with, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. It’s totally acceptable to not have it all figured out yet. You’re never too old to change your life. Career, marriage, and kids are not the end all be all. You’re 56 and want to go abroad with your husband? Do it! We met them in Cambodia. You’re 28 and don’t have a college degree, have been traveling for the past 3 years and want to travel for 3 more? That’s okay! We met her in Vietnam!

(Excerpted from a cross-posted entry of Sarah & Arielle’s. Click.)

I can't even say how much I am glad I did this show. I learned a lot, and some of it was awesome, and some of it made me want to rip my hair out. But I liked it so much that I think I've found the path I want to explore after college.

(Excerpted from Beauty and the Beast. Click.)

As an educator, I am excited about the possibility of helping our students build their capacity for connecting. I love witnessing someone experience that click as they find some of the deepest parts of themselves reflected in the world around them. Especially now that the world around them can be so much more than the world of their family, or school, or hometown.

And I wonder: is it an accident that so many of the examples I come across have little or no connection to institutionalized learning?

Anyway, beginning tomorrow I'll be a worry-free second semester senior. This will be the first time in my life that I will have the chance to learn for the sake of it. No pressure about advancing to the next class or worrying about what college will choose me...they'll make their decisions based upon my first semester. Essentially, I'll be living the good life.

(Excerpted from Welcome to the Good Life. Click.)

What are the necessary conditions for these clicks of recognition, discovery, and engagement? How can we foster moments in which students see, hear, read, feel, or experience something which causes them to think, “Hey! That’s like ME!” Or moments in which they try something new and are surprised to find themselves thinking, “I could happily do this all day.”

Are our learning communities focused on maximizing these clicks? What would they look like if they were?

(As usual, more questions than answers. :-D
This post is accompanied
by a warm shout-out for M.E. Steele-Pierce,
Asst. Superintendent and #edcamp Wonder Woman,
whose recent fantastic post on revolutionary professional learning
effectively bought me the time to work on these musings.
She's @steelepierce on Twitter, & you should
follow her up if you haven't already done so.)

What We Bring

(Photo by Andrew Forgrave, used with permission,
& it comes with its own fun story, too.)

This year I brought a kind of double consciousness to EduCon. It was my second year of in-person attendance, and this time I wasn't facilitating a conversation, so I was less nervous than I might have been the year before. This greater comfort level allowed me more time to reflect on what others might be experiencing, which in turn led me to put out a call for "Tips for Newbies." I am not generally someone who is prone to social anxiety, and I lived in Philadelphia for 10 years earlier in my life, but I was a little nervous about my first time at EduCon last year; I figured if I had felt that way, there must be plenty of first-time attenders this year who would be feeling even more nervous. I created a Google form made up of just two questions (what advice would you share & who are you?), and then tweeted out a link to the form with a request for help and an #educon hashtag. The response was immediate and gratifying; within just a few days, I had a terrific collection of tips to share with EduCon newbies.

I wanted to try to help folks feel comfortable and confident from the outset, not only for their sake, but for the sake of the overall experience; the more comfortable and welcomed we feel, the more likely we are to be able to let our guard down and truly participate and share in the experiences offered. Or at least that's how I think about it.

I wrote last year about the ways in which EduCon's self-definition & call for conversation proposals change the expectations, perceptions, and experiences of those who attend and/or facilitate conversations there. 2009 was, for me, a year of learning that "the genius is in the conversation," so when I attended EduCon2.2 in early 2010, I expected that it would be difficult to choose amongst sessions. I also anticipated that I might feel intellectually and/or emotionally overwhelmed by the more interactive nature of those sessions. And I was right on both counts. There was too much going on for any one person to take in. By a long shot.

Last year, as it became clear to me that many of those in attendance were already accustomed to sharing their learning journeys in some kind of internet-enabled way, I started to think that maybe all was not lost. The conversations I was so sorry to miss? Someone might share the slide deck and their notes. The people I spoke to for five minutes who I then wished I'd had an hour with? Maybe I could follow them on Twitter. "Will someone be collecting all the post-Educon posts somewhere?" I asked everyone I could think to ask. No, we don't think so, came the responses. But that's a great idea!

So I declared myself the unofficial digital archivist of EduCon and started collecting posts. Initially, I did it mostly for me, although I shared my work out because I am beginning to internalize the idea that if something is useful to me, it might be useful to someone else. Over the course of gathering posts, I became more invested in my collection of posts becoming a community resource. And this year I decided to reprise my role as "totally unofficial digital archivist" even before I set foot in Philadelphia. I was hoping that Liz Davis (@lizbdavis on Twitter) might also reprise her self-appointed role as "curator of the Twitter list of attendees," without which my digital curation of EduCon-related content would have been much more challenging. I checked in with Liz, and I was in luck... like me, she had previously seen a need and taken on the work of fulfilling it, and also like me, she had decided to reprise her role at EduCon 2.3.

Conferences remind me a little of weddings. You think about the big event for months ahead of time, you're all excited to make your little toast and see the people you know, and then with most of them you have these hurried five minute conversations that just end up reminding you why you wish you were spending more time with them. And then you go home. For the educators who have come to look forward to EduCon as an annual re-fuel & re-boot, the built-in limitations of the experience are a challenge.

Based as it is on the premise that conversations & connections are at the heart of what we do as educators, EduCon represents several distinct types of experiences every year. In some cases, newcomers and returnees might was well be attending separate events, as their reflections show. Questions of who is "in" and "out," who feels welcomed or ignored, are part and parcel of any human gathering with the kinds of limitations of space and time that EduCon wrangles with. What I'm trying to do, with my digital archive work, is to put a little stretch in the space-time continuum in order to create more space/time for the conversations that we want to be the heart of EduCon (or TEDxNYED, for that matter). Our time together in physical space may be limited, but our time connected in cyberspace can help us extend beyond those limitations.

I had a great time at EduCon. Then again, I came with baggage. I expected that I would be welcomed, and hoped that I had already contributed in my own small way to the overall success of the event. I came prepared. After having adjusted the previous year to people looking blankly at my name but grinning with recognition once they saw my Twitter handle, I took a page from Tom Whitby's playbook and brought a copy of my avatar photo to tape to my nametag. I knew that I wouldn't be able to take it all in, but I also knew that LOTS of people would be there working to make their own meaning from it all, and that a significant portion of them would make an effort to share their work out with the larger group.

And now, a victim of my own success, I STILL haven't finished reading all the Educon 2.3 reflection posts, over a week after the official end of the conference. It's a nice problem to have. I'll definitely be bringing some new ideas back into my life & the lives of my colleagues.

(My thinking around creating space for connection
has been inspired in part by the work of Heather Gold
and her band of merry tummlers.
Her January conversation with Tom Coates
gave me a chance to hear him say,
"The more you start finding the edges of
your philosophical view, the more you start spotting
how a new technology that comes along can fix or improve
something that's broken or doesn't work properly."
Among other things, EduCon for me
represents a great space for finding
the edges of my philosophical view.
Special thanks to @lizbdavis, @aforgrave,
@chadsansing, @chrislehmann (birthday boy!)
the cast and crew of SLA,
and all the EduCon folks who push my thinking
and share their own.)

Tools for Curation

Howard Rheingold got me thinking about curation a few months back, and I've been working to expand my understanding of the tools that folks are developing in support of this kind of sense-making.

The tools I've tried recently are Keepstream, curated.by, Prezi, and Storify, and I thought I'd be a responsible digital citizen and share my thoughts about them here.

Here's Keepstream's explanation of what they're about:

Keepstream Tutorial from Keepstream on Vimeo.

Keepstream lets you pull together a collection of web content around any topic you're interested in. Pulling in content from Twitter and Facebook is "drag and drop" easy, while other content is easily routed to your Keepstream account via a bookmarklet. The big positive of this site is its ease of navigation, but I ended up being frustrated by my inability to add sites to collections just by pasting or typing in a url. I also wanted to be able to re-order collections once I'd gotten all the pieces pulled in.

So I started a collection on Keepstream but then shifted over to curated.by (because founder @Basti was doing a good job of listening and invited me to check that out):



Like Keepstream, curated.by seems to start w/ the presumption that folks who are actively engaged in the real-time Web (mostly Twitter, in the current landscape) will ultimately have moments when they want to take a snapshot or paint a picture of a moment or series of moments in the stream. Curated.by held on to me long enough to enable me to actually finish a bundle, mostly because they have a "toss a link in this box" feature right there on the site. (My bundle is of a bunch of the posts & articles that have sprung up around the idea of iPads and learning in recent days.) So, for me, curated.by gets a few more things right... they allow you to drop a url directly into your bundle, in addition to having bookmarklet & Chrome extension options. They enable in-bundle commenting, so that visitors can add value with their perspective. They've also explicitly let us know that they're working on enabling collaborative curation, which seems like a smart move.

Prezi seems at first glance like it doesn't belong on this list. It's a presentation tool, right? But so much of what I do as I prepare to present is curation, and Prezi's non-linear orientation gives it a huge advantage over all three of the other tools mentioned in this post if what you're wanting to share is a cluster of related ideas, rather than a straight-line list. Automatic embedding of Tweets isn't there for Prezi, but auto-embed of YouTube is... what I really want is auto-embed of everything, which is part of why Storify is getting a big thumbs up from me today. Here's how they explain what they're doing:

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.

Storify is closer to my ideal curation tool than any of the others I've tried so far. It's in private alpha, but I asked nicely and received a DM'd login key within a day or so. The things that make Storify a winner for me are 1) drag-and-drop re-ordering of content (I can just toss everything on the table and THEN start thinking about what I want to lead off with) and ease of adding stuff into my stories, through bookmarklet, typed url, Google search, or auto-embed of Tweets, Flickr images, FB content, YouTube videos, and RSS feeds! (More on why that last one is so exciting to me later.) A input box in between each new piece of content enables the would-be curator to signal his/her intentions or provide additional context/commentary. I'm having enough fun creating a story there that it's not done yet... "sticky" = a good sign.

If you're wondering whether you should care about curation and how important it might be to your life going forward, you might want to check out the recent Jonathan Fields post Is Content Curation the New Black? (As is so often the case, the conversation in the comments is terrific as well... and now I know about PearlTrees & Scoop.it, which I guess I'll need to check out next!) Mashable just did a post on curation tools, too!

Hey, developers working on curation tools, here's some closing feedback from one avid amateur curator and archivist.

1) Give me choices. Don't assume you've figured out all the possible uses for your tool... instead assume that you haven't! Let me put it all on the table and figure it out.
2) Give me control. I can imagine curation situations in which I'd want to open up and ask for collaborators as I'm working, others where I'd want to enable comments once I've finished a first pass, and still others in which I'd want my work to stand alone. Could I do all that with your tool?
3) Let me mix it up. Nobody wants to look at a thousand collections, bundles, or stories that all look the same. We need to be able to make our curated materials visually distinctive, for both our sake and the sake of the folks we hope will engage with our stuff. If a collected/bundled/storified site doesn't come w/ a pre-fed image, I might want to snag one. How about font control? And I'm pretty sure everything doesn't have to be so straight-line... but more on that another day.

(Thank you for taking the time to read this;
would love to hear your thoughts on curation
and these or any other tools...)

Pocket Essay Editor

I finally finished my long-promised pocket essay editor. (Clicking on the small "square within a square" icon above will allow you to see the slides in full-screen and control the rate at which you move through them.)

Hope folks like it!

(If you have some oft-shared writing tips
that you think might have been good additions,
I'd love to hear them.)

iPad Test Drive Impressions

(Our boy actually fell asleep clutching his "loaner")

Our school recently purchased a classroom set of iPads, and I was offered the chance to take one home on loan over the break. This post reflects my impressions of that experience...

First impressions: Pros

+ There’s an app for everything!
+ Installing those apps is ridiculously easy
+ Dragon Speak has come a long way since the last time I played with it
+ Aweditorium seems like a great way to discover new music
+ the iPad’s touch-based interface is fun and intuitive (I don’t have an iPhone, so it’s all new to me)

First impresssions: Cons

- There’s an app for everything! (I’m feeling swamped by all the choices)
- The touch screen is constantly smudged
- It’s hard to wrest it out of our kid’s grasp
- Printing seems like it might be a hassle (of course this could be a good thing, if we're trying to be mindful about printing)
- I miss the haptic feedback of a real keyboard (although of course someone has already solved that problem for me, for "just" another $100 or so)

Further thoughts:

The iPad was introduced in April of this year; by July there were 10,000 iPad "apps" available for download. There are now over 325,000.

Similarly, there are thousands of online applications designed to help folks harness the affordances of the internet to move beyond consuming to creating and sharing. (See http://zoom.it/llz2 for a sampling.)

So how does a tool like an iPad fit into our hopes for our students? Beyond the possibility of it supplanting textbooks, how might we use it to support the development of curious, collaborative, intrinsically motivated and ethical lifelong learners? And if we could develop some apps of our own (we probably could), what would those look like?

Once you get over the not-inconsiderable cost hurdle and actually OWN an iPad, does the combination of the convenience of having an “always on” relationship to the ‘net, as well as the personalization available through all these applications (and the relatively low cost of most individual apps) make for lowered barriers to curiosity and connection?

We are still at the very beginning of figuring out what we could do... everyone has what the Buddhists call "beginner's mind" when it comes to the iPad, by definition. There are already some pretty interesting applications out there:

Christmas concert using iPads as instruments:
http://blogs.rockingham.k12.va.us/lpike/2010/12/iphoneipad-concert/

Using the iPad for formative assessment of student learning:
http://www.russgoerend.com/2010/12/in-early-september-i-wrote-post-about.html

Virtual frog dissection:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGukqXfrkY

Still, some Mac-loving & generally tech-positive edu-folks are struggling w/ the decision of whether or not to get one:
http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/1972
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/06/buying-stuff-wont-fix-your-or-my.html

Then again, as one of my online connections’ father likes to say, “"If everybody says it is a good idea, you're too late."

In closing (phew!), here are a few resources I found that might be helpful to folks who go ahead and "take the plunge":

How to get started: http://www.rexblog.com/2010/12/25/22166

Another “getting started” post: http://justanotheripadblog.com/ipad-tips-tricks/getting-started-with-the-ipad/

Apple’s own “App Store” link right on the main screen of the iPad is a good jumping-off spot

App Shopper’s list of top 200 FREE apps for education:
http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/education/free/?device=ipad

The Teach With Your iPad Wiki:
http://teachwithyouripad.wikispaces.com/

iPad resources for administrators: http://www.mhric.org/ipad.html

(This post was cross-posted on an internal
school Moodle site designed for in-community sharing
around professional development experiences.
I'm grateful for the opportunity
to be a part of this wave of innovation in learning,
and looking forward to continuing to share
and listen to others' perspectives!)