I was recently asked whether I use social bookmarking and if so, which application? Although I have tinkered with using my blog and Flipboard, my main space for storing links and resources is Diigo. Although it is pretty straight forward how it works, what is not obvious are the challenges in getting the most out of it. Here then are some of the lessons that I have learnt through my experiences over time …
Think About Your Structure: Amy Burvall once described hashtags as the soul of the internet. The ability to collect and connect ideas and information is the biggest benefit of social bookmarking. This however has its challenges. I have found over time that it is better to over tag items as this can make it easier to find items at a later date. This includes adding the author as a tag. In addition to this, Diigo provides a means organise around outliners and collaborative groups. When I started I focused on subjects, with one category being 21st century learning. The problem is that most of my links end up in the 21st century so I think that I should probably unpack that a bit more.
Be Mindful: The biggest challenge with social bookmarking is actually remembering to add links when you find them. This is best done through the use of widgets and bookmarklets, although Diigo also allows you to email links. I used to have my Diigo connected to my Feedly via IFTTT. However, that recipe has been discontinued. While in regards to mobile, I could never master iOS. However, I have found Android much better, with the ability to connect between applications.
Don’t Have Expectations: I remember setting up a collaborative space for school. Most staff could not see the point in it. They felt that simply Googling information would suffice. Although this may work for surface knowledge, it does not necessarily allow you to dig deeper over time. Tom Barrett describes this mining of knowledge as the ‘resurfacing of ideas‘.
So what about you? Do you use social bookmarking? Why? Why not? As always, comments welcome.
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One of the biggest challenges in regards to digital literacies is who is telling your story? It can be argued that if we don’t take ownership of your own narrative, then someone will tell it for us. This is what is meant when people ask whether you have Googled yourself. Doug Belshaw talks about being mindful of the way in which tools shape the way we think and interact, I feel that we also need to be mindful of the way in which they tell also tell our stories for us.
One way in which we tell our story is by curating it. Heather Bailie suggests that in regards to digital literacies our focus has moved from the traditional idea of read, write and react, to a focus on being able to create, curate and contemplate. Often we talk about social bookmarking as a means for curating content and ideas. This could include sharing links to a digital magazine, like Flipboard, or adding to an online repository, such as Diigo. However, such collections have their limits. Although they may provide a means for communicating and commenting, they are often best considered as a resource you can mine at a later date. For a more extensive discussion of curation, see Sue Waters post.
A different means of telling your story is through blogging. As a medium, blogging offers so many different possibilities. Maybe you want to reflect upon things. Maybe you have media you want to share, more often than not you can simply embed it. Maybe you don’t like the structure and layout of the platform, then go find another one, there are enough. The reality is the possibilities with blogging are limitless and often only confined by your imagination. For example, a relatively new open sourced platform that I have started exploring is Known. I think that it offers something in-between twitter and long form blogging in my own space.
A medium which is a bit different to traditional blogging, but offering the same creative potential, is Storify. Designed to help make sense of what people post on social media. Not only does it provide the means to curate information from different platforms and places, but it also provides the means to fill in the story. Some of the different curations I have seen include:
Essay (see Heather Bailie’s essay incorporating a range of media types)
Although you can search for content within Storify, the tendency is to use hashtags to collect ideas and information. You can then either share the Storify product or embed it within a blog.
For a short guide to curating a story with Storify, watch the following video:
So what about you, what are the ways that you are telling your story? I would love to know.
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In a post exploring the challenge of gathering different perspectives, Tom Barrett spoke about Thomas Edison’s practise of convening a creative council. A group of people who allowed Edison to ‘cast widely’ in order to accelerate creative connections. Reflecting on this, Barrett poses the idea of having our own ‘creative council’. Not necessarily a group of literal people, rather an imaginary group who you could turn to answer such questions as:
What would…think?
How would … approach this problem?
What actions would … take next?
I have discussed the idea of turning to imaginary figures before. However, I had never really thought of a ‘set council’. What was interesting is that every time I started a list, I just felt that it did not have enough breadth either in time, experience or gender. I decided I needed a range of people including a religious figure, a scientist, an artist, a military strategist, a philosopher and a musician. Here then is my creative council, a group of people who I think would make for some interesting conversation:
Nicolaus Copernicus: Let alone for his breadth of work and experience, Copernicus persisted a truth that lie outside the view of so many others, even with the consequences it might have.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: As much as I think that it would be interesting to have Richard D. James at a table, I wonder what Mozart could add to the discussion. Like Copernicus, Mozart’s ability to envisage new beginnings and possibilities always intrigues me.
Jane Austen: I remember growing up with the BBC costume dramas, thinking I someone knew Jane Austen. However, like so many, I believe there is more than meets the eye with Jane Austen.
Leonardo da Vinci: It seems so odd that we still talk about many of da Vinci’s ideas and innovations so long after the fact. He seemed to have a knack of seeing the new in every situation.
Lao Tzu: I am neither sure that ‘Lao Tzu’ was a real person, not what he would add exactly, but I am sure the conversation would be better for it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Unlike those who spend their whole life justifying their position, Wittgenstein seemed to continually start again. I think that the willingness to not hold tightly offers a lot.
Hernán Cortés: Although I do not agree with anything that he did, I do think that anyone who is committed enough to burn his own boat certainly adds a different perspective.
Having thought about the real life influences on my thinking before, this was a different sort of task. I think that looking back over it, I feel it says so much about me and my thinking. Each of the people in their own way challenging conventions and breaking the mould. However, it also highlights many of many of my biases and prejudices. For one thing, whether intentional or incidental, many of the thinkers are male Europeans. Maybe this says a lot about my own background, I am not sure. I also feel that even though the different people represent various fields of work, they all seem a little bit similar, too familiar.
I wonder if such an activity is better suited within a context, a point that Barrett was trying to push towards in suggesting a ‘classroom’ creative council. For example, at Google Teacher’s Academy last year, it was often asked, “What would say or do Sergey Brin?” While maybe this might add a little more impetus to house systems, with those figureheads being seen more as a name. Allowing such questions as: “What would Fred Hollows think?” or “What would Caroline Chisholm have done?”
I also think that maybe the concept of a creative council is best thought of as an ever present growing organism with people coming and going. In his response, Bjorn Paige suggests that his PLN is his ‘creative council’.
For the times I need advice, consolation, or just an ear to hear, a constellation of educators fill my night sky, always pointing true north.
What about you? Who are those people, past and present, that you go to in your thinking? How do they push you deeper? What values do they espouse? Are there any biases? How do you challenge them? I know I have some work to do, more recruitment needed to be done. As always, feel free to share below.
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I have been wondering for a while about all the hype around the Reggio Emila Approach, an early childhood program that focuses on relationships, documentation, project work, personal expression and active listening. Initially my attention was sparked by Dan Donahoo’s keynote for ICTEV13 Conference and the notion of the digital village. More recently, Cameron Paterson piqued my interest. Firstly, with a post about the links between Project Zero and Reggio Emilia through his discussion of the book Visable Learners. Then more recently in a post exploring the use of documentation in the Secondary classroom. I have been left thinking about what Reggio might offer my own teaching practises.
One of the things that stands out to me in regards to Reggio is the power of play and discovery. The idea of students driving their own projects and inquiry with the teacher providing a space and documenting the various experiences has a lot of potential. Although this could happen in any context, I saw a real opportunity through the teaching of robotics.
I felt particularly challenged by Steve Brophy in regards to letting go. In a post talking about developing a Makerspace, he explained that:
From a facilitator point of view, I purchased everything but opened nothing. I left the whole process to the kids and was constantly amazed by how much the kids would ask “are you sure we can do this?”
Although I had brought in inquiry in regards to wondering about robotics, I was still reluctant to let go of control of the building process. What I noticed in reflection was that for some students this was fine. They liked the structure that I provided. However, there were some that just wanted to explore and I was only inhibiting, rather than harnessing, this.
As I could find nothing in the AUSVels documents that specifically said students must be able to build and program a NXT Mindstorm robot, I decided instead to provide them with the requirement to ‘make’. What unravelled when I handed out the kits was amazing. Some started with instructions, others tested and tinkered. Some explored programming, others making. Some scrapped the instructions part way through, while others picked them up after some initial open explorations. Some walked around to check what other groups were doing, while others supported different groups with their questions and issues. Although I answered a few questions and found some missing parts, I just moved around and documented what the students were doing. All in all, most students demonstrated a depth of understanding and engagement at the end of the first session far beyond what I had ever seen before in a building session.
in a recent post about play, Tom Barrett suggested that:
It is not simply the timeless nature of immersive play but also the way that physical barriers, and even the rules of physics, become non-existent. They are changed, thwarted and ignored. Superpowers ON!
What was so exciting to observe in the lesson was seeing students enact the greatest superpower possible, the ability to not only learn together, but to in fact drive their own learning.
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creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/16693027205
It has been interesting following the #28daysofwriting initiative organised by Tom Barrett. The premise behind it is that committing to a month of regular posts will hopefully help develop a sustainable habit of writing and reflection. I have not participated as I feel it best to commit time when I have it and also write based on need, rather than time. Sometimes this may mean going beyond the rudimentary four paragraphs every now and then, but so be it. Anyway, I digress.
One of the observations that has arisen is the lack of comments occurring amongst the various posts. A lot of people are writing a lot of things, but not many people are actually responding. The proposal that has been put forward is a return to commenting with #28daysofcommenting. Now I am not against comments, as demonstrated by my recent post. As I have said for a long time, responding is an integral role to reading. The challenge is making this visible to others. I have issues though with the argument that ‘micro engagement has killed off the edublogging community‘. I do admit that things have changed, but I wonder if blaming this change on micro engagement is missing something more?
In a post looking at issues with education today, Peter Skillen puts forward a range of arguments. One is that there can be no wisdom and development gained in one-line. Although I think that there is plenty of drivel out there full of excessive branding, self-promotion and back-slapping, as well as enough people engaging in what Doug Belshaw describes as ‘elegant consumption‘, I argued then and I would argue now, there there is still a potential to such interactions. Going beyond being a representation of our digital identity, Twitter offers a means for sharing the main idea, writing aphorisms and generating new ideas. It provides new beginnings if we are willing to take them.
To look at this from a different perspective, Corinne Campbell made the observation that, “creativity requires design constraints”. What is often overlooked with a medium like Twitter are the constraints at play. I think that it is easy to get lost in the flow of things and forget that Twitter can just as easily be seen as a form of creativity. A point that Dean Shareski makes so well. The issue then is how to make the most of such constraints?
As I have discussed before, there are different ways to share and respond. The easiest and quickest thing to do is to simply post a title and link. Something that Barrett puts in the red zone. However, in order to develop richer communities and smarter rooms, it is wise to include handles and hashtags. For me this includes both the author and anyone who I know the topic maybe applicable to. Going beyond this, I also try and post quotes rather than titles. For one it demonstrates a higher level of engagement with the text, but it also offers a different entry point for readers.
Both Barrett and Ewan McIntosh have reflected on the halcyon days when posts would get long streams of comments, where the initial idea acted as a start for a deeper debate. (See debate over Design Thinking for a good example.) Whereas now it is more common to get a retweet, a like or a +1, with little if any actual engagement. McIntosh wonders if “anyone cares about many blog posts any more.”
This move away from commenting was brought home to me by Steve Wheeler’s reflection on his most read posts of 2014. His most read post was Learning First, Technology Second. It received over 8000 hits, yet only twenty three comments, half of which were his own responses. When quizzed on the matter of hits to comments ratio, Wheeler suggested that it is often the more emotive posts which usually gain the most interaction. I wonder if this has always been the case?
A problem I have with comments is that with a move to mobile, they just aren’t as easy as they used to be. A majority of my digestion comes via Feedly. I then save posts for commenting later. Sadly, this does not always happen.
In addition to this, commenting does not always seem as interactive as other mediums. I write a comment and it is between myself, the author and anyone else who may come upon the response. When I write using a medium like Twitter, my response is shared with whoever is viewing and is more visible, meaning the conversation has more potential. For example, I was recently wondering about iPads in Prep and put it out on Twitter:
Fifty posts later and I was left with an array of thoughts and ideas. I wonder if a blog would provide such engagement?
This is where I feel that Blogger wins out over WordPress. I like the fact that comments are connected between Blogger and Google+. Lately, I have taken to sharing comments I receive just as a way of spreading great ideas.
As an alternative, although I may not comment, I do connect. What I do is remix other people’s ideas into my own writing. They will often lay dormant, waiting, then something happens, they connect and spur on a new idea in a new context with a different perspective. What is different about remixes as opposed to connects is that it allows for multiple interactions. Pingbacks then connect back, something missing with Blogger.
At the end of the day, there are many ways of continuing the conversation, whether it be Diigo, Facebook, Google+, Voxer, the list goes on. Although there may have been a reduction in direct comments, I wonder if there has been an increase in engagement overall? I love Robert Schultz’ endeavour to comment on at least one post a day, but I think if we are to move forward then maybe we need to look more closely at the problem? Is there a new idea that needs to be unearthed? What is your take?
I encourage you to continue the conversation here.
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When I started my PLN, content and connections came via Twitter. I found resources from those I followed and various hashtags, such as #vicpln and #edchat. Connections and relationships felt like they worked as I only had a small network. However, as the numbers of people I followed grew, the medium changed. Although there were more ideas being shared from a wider array of people, it started to lose something. Although lists offers one way of managing noise, I turned to Feedly as a way of managing connections in order to build stronger relationships. Feedly is a news aggregation application, which means that instead of going to different sites to check for updates, RSS allows you to keep track of updates. This is particiularly important for blogs and news sites which are updated regularly. Although I could subscribe to posts, I have enough coming into my email as it is. What I like about Feedly is that I am able to organise posts into categories, quickly flick through them on whatever device that I am on, as well as easily post links and quotes to other applications in order to share with others.
Feedly is not the only aggregator out there. Some swear by Flipboard and Zite (which was recently bought out by Flipboard), while Pocket also offers many possibilities, especially if you have subscriptions forwarded to it. I am also really taken by the idea of syndication as a way of creating a personalised aggregation. A great example of this is the Connected Courses community. Having dabbled with Paper.li, I wonder if this would be a better way of bringing a community together. Although this could be more easily done using something like Tagboard, not everyone in the community uses the same #hashtag, making it that bit more difficult.
Bookmarking
An alternative to aggregation and syndication is social bookmarking. Personally I use Diigo. I came upon it via the Ed Tech Crew group and my practise has grown from there. Some of the benefits include the ability to curate a personalised library of links, annotations, notes and tags that can include not only your own items, but also links to others as well. Like Feedly, Diigo provides the flexibility to work across platforms using a range of add-ons, extensions and bookmarklets, although I still find it easier to use through the browser, rather than on a mobile device. However, the most useful feature of Diigo is the ability to search for resources that you can’t quite find or have forgotten about.
There are other alternatives when it comes to curation, such as Delicious, Pinterest and Evernote. I could spend all day arguing why Diigo is the most useful or provides the best features. However, at the end of the day it comes down to personal choice. For a more extensive list of the alternatives when it comes to bookmarking and curation, see John Pearce’s extensive presentation. The benefit of curation, Tom Barrett argues, is not about whether you will continually use all the links you save, but about building a resource you can dig through and mine for ideas at a later time.
Sound and Vision
One of the complaints about Twitter is that due to constraints it does not properly grasp the personal and limits depth of dialogue. An alternative that has really taken off for me lately has been Voxer. A touch-to-talk application, Voxer allows you to communicate with a community via voice, text and image. Joe Mazza calls it his very own personalised podcast, This may not seem that revolutionary, but there is something slightly more humane about the human voice. I think that is the success of podcasts in general. In addition to voice, you can add as many contributors as you like. For more information, see Pernille RIpp’s post.
An alternative to Voxer is Google Hangouts. Hangouts allows you to connect ten people at once through video. In order to go beyond this, there is the option of broadcasting the conversation to the world and involving others through backchannels, such as Today’s Meet. This is the process used by Amanda Rablin and Roland Gesthuizen with their online ACCE Learning Network show. The other way of extending the conversation beyond ten people is by using MIT’s open sourced Unhangout platform. Based around Hangouts, Unhangout allows you to start centrally and then split off into various small sessions as needed. The only other feature that is sometimes overlooked when it comes to Hangouts is the ability to communicate via text. Like Facebook Messenger, these conversations provide the means to create quick and easy conversations with a wide audience without filling up the inbox.
Interestingly, last year there was a report published by Kathryn Holmes, Greg Preston, Kylie Shaw and Rachel Buchanan about ‘What Twitter Offers Teachers.’ They studied the tweets of 30 leading educators, as well as streams of some popular #hashtags, for their evidence. There findings were:
Twitter is a filter for educational content
Twitter facilitates positive, supportive, contact between teachers but not sustained educational conversations
Educator tweeters are not prone to tweeting inane meaningless comments
The majority of hashtag posts contain educational links
Hashtags enable access to a wide variety of web-based resources and news without the need to interact with others or to sift through the personal communications between others. Twitter offers connections with a network of like-minded educators
Twitter gives a user total control over the level of interaction and focus
The key characteristics of effective professional development could be accomplished through the use of Twitter.
Going beyond this list, what interests me is why just Twitter? Why not all platforms? Why not a focus on the connected educator, rather than just Tweechers? In the post script it is stated that more research is needed into the impact of Twitter on the classroom. However, I think that what is really needed is reseach into the impact of being connected as a whole on educators (and learners for that matter too). However, as Alan Levine pointed out while reflecting on Connected Courses, that the data which we collect and collate often misses serendipitous nature of learning.
Above anything, it needs to be remembered that there are many ways to foster connections and they don’t all need to be on Twitter, let alone online at all. Although digital tools make connections more doable, not everyone is comfortable being active in such spaces. However, this is not to say that they cannot or are not connecting. At the end of the day, what matters is why people are connecting. Maybe moving forward this should be our message moving forward? So, how are you connecting beyond Twitter, I would love to know. Your comments, as always, are most welcome.
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creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/16232366752
I was recently at Officeworks inquiring about iPad Minis. For some reason the cost had fallen through the roof and I was wondering why? The sales assistant informed me that Apple were basically trying to offload the first generation minis now that the newer version had come out. The catch, they only come in 16gb. This led to that and we ended up talking about storage and how there are so many unnecessary apps that clog things up. He then told me about a ruling in South Korea last year which stated that bloatware, those applications that are placed on the phone before you even get it, must be deletable. Of course, laws in South Korea are different to laws in Australia (or United States), therefore such rulings are yet to be made here. The assistant wondered though whether at some point of time this might not have an influence on mobile computing.
This idea of inherited applications however got me thinking beyond mobile devices and to the classroom, learning and education as a whole. What are those elements that we take for granted in the classroom? Those structures that simply get enacted each day, month, year? Who is making the informed choices? School? Region? Union? Government? You? Do we have a choice to stop and question such things? Should we? Are such habits and structures useful? Essential for things to keep moving? Or should there be a choice about what structures there actually are?
George Couros touched on this in a recent post in which he put out the challenge to see our schools with ‘fresh eyes’. Importantly, this is not just for those practises which we as negative, but everything. Every now and again, we need to stop and ask ourselves the question, “Why do we do this?” Couros also encourages us to also reflect upon our own personal habits and choices. This though, Couros warns, is to no avail if we are not willing to be persuaded into a new way of thinking.
I am not saying that there is not need for process and structure. For as Tom Barrett recently suggested, “By having a simple, clear, and shared process we actually offer some certainty amidst the planned doubt and mystery that is to come.” The question though is whose process is it and who is owning it. As I suggested last year, the new year offers a great opportunity to once again reconsider the baggage in the classroom.
POSTSCRIPT: For more ideas and inspiration in regards to seeing things differently, I also encourage you to read Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.
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