Do you find it easier to share resources and ideas with like-minded people in your pln (personal learning network) than with colleagues in the next classroom who may not be as active online?

During a visit to the magnet school “The Science Leadership Adademy” in Philadelphia in April 2010 Bill Gates said that schools need to get better at spreading best practices. How will you share what you have learned at BLC10 with colleagues in your school?

I will be presenting on this topic at Masscue in October and would love to have your input if you would be willing to briefly share your strategies using the google form below. I will consolidate any responses and share them right back with you. Thanks in advance…

Picture credit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thaiqn/2870888905/

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I’m running out of post it notes…

I was inspired to finally read tribes after stumbling into an elluminate session with Seth Godin hosted by  Steve Hargadon. The archive of the session can be found here

In the last paragraph of the book, Seth asks “spread the word”. I intend to hand it on to my 17 year old as pre- college reading. In the acknowledgements and story of how Tribes came about, Seth credits the work of Cory Doctorow and Hugh MacLeod.  My son has enjoyed both of these writers already. He flew through Little Brother and  devoured “Ignore Everybody” in the car on the way home from a college visit. Yes, I get the irony. Hope you do too.

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Capturing ideas has been on my mind lately. I use evernote when working, but I often get the best ideas away from my computer either while on a walk or on a bike ride. I usually have my phone with me, I often message pictures to evernote, but I would love it if I could leave myself quick voice messages.

This email, dropped into my mailbox today. I have one question. Could it be any simpler?

So, I have created a drop and have the link to that in Evernote. No more lost and forgotten ideas.

Check out the message dropio left at http://drop.io/maynewsletter

Uses for the classroom

1. Calls from field trips

2. Use as a homework reminder

3. Use as a parent message

4. Record student responses to a special event or discussion and then embed calls on your class blog or webpage

5. Provide a daily class update

6. Have students call in with their project idea assignments

7. Check out this demo drop showing how a teacher can use drop.io as part of their work  flow at http://drop.io/mrdavidson

Below I embedded the voice message from that demo drop to show one of the many ways you can distribute drop content.

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After a tip off on twitter (thanks @thomasdaccord) I found out Daniel Pink was on a quickie book tour and was going to be at Borders in Boston Wed Jan 6th at 1pm.

Having enjoyed AWNM and Johnny Bunko-I’m so there, methinks.

Tosh, I have an online meeting scheduled for PLC work at the exact same time. Luckily said meeting partner was wise enough to ask the right person at her school, in order to come with me. It turned into a PLC fieldtrip, just the change of routine needed to motivate and inspire.
Daniel Pink was promoting his new book Drive. I had watched the TED videoand listened to the NPR talk, but hearing it in person makes it better. Free, was a big motivator too.

One of the reasons I like to go to author talks is I like to see how these professional writers/speakers engage audiences.

Audience participation was his opening gambit, in order to illustrate a few of the 1st drive motivations that humans have. He paid an audience member to hold up a copy of his book in the middle of the store. A small amount, but the guy was motivated enough to do it. The crowd was small (surprisingly) he didn’t use the podium or microphone and meandered amongst us instead of standing at the front. Every person to whom he talked, he asked them their name and repeated it in the ensuing conversation. I am just fascinated at how quickly everyone became his for the 35 minutes or so that he talked.

One story about the 3rd motivational drive was about the open source movement, the way he described it matched exactly the way the grassroots technology group operates at the high school I worked at. He talked about how the open source movement is made up of people who already have jobs, yet want to work on this project on their own time because it interests them, they want to achieve mastery, and then they give it away for free. This enables them to be part of a community of like-minded people who also want to not only use what they have created, but improve, refine and customize their ideas. Nobody pays them to do it, their is no carrot and stick, their motivation comes from within and matches his ideas about the 3rd drive. Similarly, the grassroots technology group meets on their own time (in school, but outside the hours required for their teaching and professional development requirements), the group is autonomous in its’ exploration of new ways to use technology in the classroom, and in addition, they share their enthusiasm and ideas in school-wide technology showcase professional development time, for free. This was a nice validation of the model that we set up a few years ago and is still working despite members coming and going.

For those who want learning in their school to become more engaging and authentic, identify who in your school is teaching in this way, get them together, give them time and autonomy to compare ideas and explore, and then ask them to share what they are discovering with others. If you don’t believe me, google “fedex days” or “google 20%”

Due to the small crowd it was easy to chat to him while getting our books signed. On returning home, the book was ensconced by another family member fan, so I have to wait to read it.

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Amazing things that happened in 2009

• Educon even only virtually
• Keeping up with my blog
• Staff technology showcase at school
• Henry Jenkins at MIT in May
• Going to NECC in June in Washington
• Meeting many pln peeps and tweeps irl
• Asking a question via twitter to Malcolm Gladwell on live radio
• It was fun to be included in the David Pogue book, the world according to twitter
• Listening to Peter Reynolds twice.
• Attending BLC edubloggercon with Sandy
• Presenting at the MTA conference with Rachael
• Presenting at MASSCUE with Rachael
• The follow up response to our presentation at MASSCUE
• Seeing David Gray, Eddie Izzard with Chris
• Going to England and being ok with practically totaling the rental car and tiny hotel rooms.

Challenges I faced in 2009 is a biggie…

My sister-in-law for wisely persuading me I was too ill to return to work in September

She was right, as soon as school got in I was hospitalized and after many overwhelming tests was diag with Takayasu Arteris

I got very sick in the space of 4 weeks, spent 4 months not being able to breathe, not being able to do anything until cardiac intervention surgery on Dec 1st within 4 days after surgery I was up and about. Within 4 weeks I had lost 5lbs and was walking further and faster than I have for years. I commit in 2010 to completely take advantage of that and get into the best shape I have ever been in by hiring a trainer. This is the time!

What is there to grieve about 2009?

(What was disappointing? What was scary? What was hard? What can you forgive yourself for?)

It was hard to quit working at school

It was scary to be so sick so quickly

It’s hard to realize that no one will ever really know what it was like

Need to forgive myself for not expecting such great support, but getting it anyway.

What else do you need to say about the year to declare it complete?

Okay, the next step is to say out loud, “I declare 2009 complete!” How do you feel? If you don’t feel quite right, there might be one more thing to say…

I need to say how freaking rock star like my cardiac surgeons are. I need to let them know that with every breath I take they really are with me. I think of them all the time and cannot imagine living life without their help in 2009. They rock.

“I declare 2009 complete”

My word for 2010 is RADIANCE. Image is my own collage (created pre-op), cut pics and words that resonate from old magazine, the resulting words read:

Breathing Space, imagine, a well-lighted path, find, freedom, rock-solid, radiance.

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The keynote below was published this morning and provided a great way to start the week.

Resources from the keynote are on the conference wiki.

Link to keynote.

Spread the word with teachers at your school by sharing the online flyer

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You can tell I’m a teacher, because one of the things I love about the holidays is being able to share the gift of reading. Yup, I’m the aunt that always sends books, the Mom that makes the Christmas Eve gift a book and the wife that points her husband in the direction of the book store as a hint.

Twitter Teacher Reader Recommendations

This week  I asked on twitter what book they would buy for their teacher colleagues, I am convinced that all teachers are readers because they responded and I got a wonderful list to add to my own personal reading list on shelfari, and to share here.

@jackiegerstein The Passionate Teacher by Robert L. Fried

@paulbogush The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer

@irasocol Borderlines by Peter Hoeg

@whatedsaid Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart

@quirkytech The Art of Possibiity by Ben Zander & Why don’t kids like school by Dan Willingham

@simplysuzy Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse

@mbteach Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

@snappity The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish

@kellyhines Wooden by John R Wooden

My Recommendations

A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Full keynote video

What the best college teachers do by Ken Bain

I heard Kathy Sierra recommend this book in a math webinar I attended and wrote about in October of this year.

5 dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lenconi

Really important to read this if you are involved in PLC’s in your school.

Teach like your hair’s on Fire by Rafe Esquith

I haven’t read this yet, it is on deck. I have heard many recommend this book this year.

Please add your own recommendations for educator reads in the comments.

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I was asked by a colleague if I still had a copy of a wordle I created last April for a school faculty that I no longer work for. I knew that I had emailed it, but I didn’t have access to that account. The wordle site works without accounts so unless you have the link it is hard to retrace your steps. I did have a hard copy in a journal I keep, so I was thinking of scanning it and sending it, however the scanning software had not been installed on my new mac.

After berating myself for 30 minutes for not keeping better records, it dawns on me. Didn’t I blog about that? A few clicks later, I find the post, and using the wordpress filter found images that I had uploaded during April 2009.

Sometimes you may wonder why you keep at it…My blog is my backup, my record, my memory, my resume even.

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I just added a new rss feed to my “all in one place” place.

It was one of those, why didn’t I do this sooner, slap head moments.

I got the idea after a brief exchange in a chatroom between Jackie Gerstein and Joyce Valenza on liveclass2.0 on Saturday. The topic of the day was diigo. Jackie mentioned how she often starts her morning in Diigo checking out the links that have been added to the groups she belongs to. Joyce replied that she does that too. I always learn something in the liveclass20 sessions. While I was in the online seminar to learn about Diigo, as usual, the experience sparked a completely random idea that could not have been predicted.

After the exchange, I’m thinking, hey, I have a whole network in delicious (a kind of PLN subgroup that has been neglected), I bet if I checked their additions everyday it would be useful and informative and would make me smarter. I like the idea of all these great educators saving their resources and me taking advantage of that, collaborating.

This is another node in the flow of information from my personal learning network. One that I have not been utilizing enough.

I can stay on top of my network the laborious way, by going to the delicious site, logging in and checking network…

OR

“I bet they have an rss feed for that” and I can add it to my “all in one place” place. So when I go to that place everyday it will be there, updated.

How to, with Pics

Go to delicious and click on your network

As you can see there are 102,000 bookmarks saved by educators in my network

Scroll down to the lower portion of the page, and you will see the RSS feed link

After you click on it you will get a url that looks something like this

feed://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/network/lindseybarlow?count=15

I actually edited the field and changed the count=15 to count=35, this will make the feed bring in the latest 35 bookmarks from my network. If it is an active day or I miss a few days, then I will miss some of the bookmarks. This is not a big deal, I mostly just scan through the titles and investigate those that look the most interesting. Often a bookmark will appear more than once as the educators in my network have similar interests they tend to bookmark similar sites, especially ones that are shared via twitter. As you can see in the screenshot from the top, netvibes (my all in one place place) conveniently shows who bookmarked the site and its title. Scanning is a snap with this set up and doesn’t add much time to my daily check on what is happening.

Extra Credit

If you don’t have much of a network

If you don’t have much of a network in delicious, don’t worry. There is a shortcut. You can still take advantage of this idea, by tapping into the stream of someone who does have a good network. Replace the lindseybarlow in the above feed url with the delicious name of anyone with an account and you will have created a feed to anyone’s network.

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Creativity is messy, doodling is good. Peter Reynolds, nominated entrepreneur of the year from fablevision has given 16 year olds everywhere the ultimate excuse (especially the one sitting in a messy room upstairs at my house).

I heard the good news during my massCUE conference highlight- a session with Peter Reynolds talking about creativity and imagination and by default-education.

Peter doodled on a wacom bamboo tablet in flash while talking to a crowd of over 100. It was certainly more interesting and off-the-cuff than watching a regular powerpoint presentation.

Peter recalled how painful it is to watch anyone trying to draw with a mouse, or with a trackpad and does recommend educators provide tablets for students to draw with. Showing how math is behind all computer art, after demonstrating the pressure sensitivity of the tablet while in paint mode, he then zoomed in and showed the vector points of the brushstroke, and neatly segued into the story of how his 7th grade math teacher was extraordinary for recognizing his strengths. How he concentrated on bending the curriculum around him (Peter), instead of bending him around the curriculum.

Favorite Quotes

“give the test a rest” – allow time for play and creativity. It made me wonder how effective it would be to allow students to reflect on lessons or units by giving them time to doodle. Seems to tie in with the annotated reading I saw students creating at the New Media Literacies Conference at MIT.

“if you’re an adult and can’t draw you haven’t been hanging out with me (Peter Reynolds) enough” – if you get the chance to see Peter talk at his many book signings, workshops and interviews, go and hang out, draw again, doodle.

Fablevision Generosity

The fablevision website offers so much for free for educators, Peter jokes that he has to rely on his twin to remind him not to give it all away or they won’t have a company, but check into a few of the highlights…

• Posters for your classroom drawn by Peter
• His book The North Star is free to read online
• Read 17 tips for a creative life-long learning journey online or download it to your computer

Storytelling

As twitter has become my main source of new tips and tools, I now attend conferences looking for new tips and tools, yes, but more lately I am looking to have the opportunity to listen to great storytellers. I want to watch and learn how they get their message across. This is the skill I need to learn as a technology integrator and professional development instructor. Peter Reynolds is a great storyteller.

Would love to be able to pull off a presentation using a tablet, a blank screen and a few ideas to doodle with? Something to practice.

Image from fablevision clipart collection

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