A heartfelt reflection

Thank you Jenn, for the invitation to write a heartfelt reflection. That is about the only kind I know how to write. I've been gone from the academic world for such a long time that my formal writing muscle is pretty lax.

There have been some real lows in my experience, mostly related to my anxiety about doing it (everything) properly. This is too bad, since I know just plunging in, and doing something advances my learning. In fact, I would say this experience has been transformative. I began my first on-line course at the University of Alberta very aware of some major holes in my knowledge base and here, at the end of this part of the journey, I have lots of new language, new ideas and new tools---all kinds of resources that will continue to impact the contribution I can make as a teacher.

First, the low points.

*My confidence plunged pretty regularly. I kept forgetting my intention to be playful in my learning. I kept forgetting to allow myself to be a beginner.

*Getting used to the online course was the first tech challenge for me. I took quite a bit of time to understand where things were and how to access them.

* I needed more human contact at the beginning. I was disappointed in myself for not just reaching out. (Every time I did I was encouraged and supported)!

*I found it very frustrating to spend so much time looking for things---again, when I asked for direction it was offered freely. I spent a lot of time feeling stupid (which is the antithesis of the zone of proximal development). A counter-productive use of energy.

* I loved and hated reading the other class blogs. I was impressed and amazed by the quality and variety of the offerings...so I frequently felt that mine was inadequate, which contributed to my mountain of self-doubt. Not that I needed any help with that! I thought a lot about the powerful experience of learning from others, the knowledge of the collective. I felt privileged to read my classmates' blogs.

* I struggled to get everything read--course readings, blogs, research. I appreciated receiving comments from others, but I struggled to find time to make comments myself. I thought a lot about making useful comments but again, didn't feel that I had new or insightful comments to share.

*I found the pace quite overwhelming. There are many things I want to go back to, to play with and learn more about, outside of the structured time-line. The RSS was especially confusing.

The Highlights

*One of the highlights was working on the wiki project with Elizabeth and Ronda. I learned so much from each of them. In one phone conversation we planned how to bring our different pieces of the wiki pie together. Because Elizabeth had created a wiki before, she jumped right in and got us started. She was also brave enough to change hosts when it became apparent that the wikispaces site was not too user-friendly. Ronda took the lead on the Asselin research article, summarizing and synthesizing a lot of dense material. Working together shifted my sense of isolation and I learned so much through the process of creating together.

*Following conversations on different wiki topics was eye opening. The posts seemed vividly connected to the real world of teaching. I preferred the wiki format to the discussion board because it was easier to follow the thread of the discussion--both visually and thematically. (The dense text on the discussion board hurt my eyes! I'm sure I will eventually learn how to make an adjustment to what I see on my screen, but this is another area where to figure out how to change the screen image, took time I couldn't find).

Things I loved about wikis--

*Having the ability to contribute from different places was amazing. This opens a whole new world of group possibilities.

*The shared conversation was powerful. Scheduling the presentations and discussions over several days brought a real focus to the experience. With the discussion board system our class conversation was more scattered, though once I realized I could follow a 'thread' I had an improved experience.

*As we moved through the different wiki presentations I felt more connected to others, began to see aspects of personality (which made it less intimidating for me). The personal stories are profound.

*I deeply appreciated the richness of reflection from teachers in the field--because I don't have all those teaching years behind me these professional conversations helped me gain a more current understanding of educational realities.


*At some point Jenn reminded me that the research based on my experience was valuable. I realized then that lots of people are like me--not technology experts, but open to the possibilities. The fact that researchers are actively seeking ways to help adult learners develop the interest and ability to use Web 2.0 tools is exciting. Being involved in an innovative area makes me feel like I'm making a useful contribution.

*I really got to love playing around with the blog. I love writing informally, with a focus on reflection. I enjoyed bringing my personality to the blog. Creating a learning log of my experiences will help me remind myself that I've come pretty far from where I started.

*Having my kids help me with different aspects of the class was amazing. Right from the start, Thomas helped me get going on the new computer, got me established with the U of A site, and was available for answering my frequently befuddled queries. Basically he helped me through a lot of stuff that the HELP desk never could.

*Daniel was my in-house go-to-guy.There are some deep chasms in my understanding of all things computerish. Daniel's calm, unflappable ways of talking me through times of intense distress when I 'lost' something I'd spent hours on makes me want to send him directly to the faculty of Education. The guy is a born teacher.

*Sarah was my Facebook and photo expert. She very gallantly let me use pictures of her in my Voicethreads piece. In fact, watching her play with my mac helped remind me that this technology stuff could be fun.

*Creating the podcast with all three of my kids was a real high point. Because Thomas is podcasting regularly he really knows the ins and outs of editing and posting. Trying a podcast without his support would be quite a different experience. Reading about the challenges and frustrations other classmates experienced as they fought to bring their podcasts into the world made me appreciate the gift of technical expertise he shared with me.

*I liked the regular, specific feedback. My entries improved once I had a better understanding of the format.

* Realizing how far I've come is the ultimate highlight. At the beginning of this course I didn't know how to create a hyperlink, or add a picture to my blog. I had never used any of the tools we explored. No photo bucket, no facebook, no youtube, no RSS feed... you get my drift. Just re-reading my own blog is a highlight!

My final highlight is the sense of gratitude and appreciation I feel toward my classmates and instructor for their company on this learning adventure.

Sharing the treasure--Welcome to Wikiland

This assignment has been bubbling away in the back of my mind throughout the course. I've been looking at the systems in place at school, the technology that is used regularly and creatively, and the places where it is just plain avoided. One thing I notice is the wide range of interests and abilities among the staff. At one end I see lots of teachers still struggle with the basics of using the First Class email system and the on-line databases. At the other end of the spectrum are the media teachers who are operating in another sphere entirely.

Since my own journey into techland only dates back to the start of this course, I know which group I will have the most impact on. I've been thinking about the best ways to demonstrate some of the possibilities of the new Web 2.0 technology tools, and how I might ultimately entice participation.

The web 2.0 tool that I would like to introduce to staff is the wiki. Most secondary teachers operate in (relative) isolation. I can see different departments using wikis initially to share resources, to organize themselves, and to communicate. Of particular benefit would be keeping a log of departmental decisions and goals from year to year.

Based on my experience, I know having support, the opportunity to play, and the incentive to produce something useful is motivating. The way I plan to lure them into playing with the technology is to offer to set up a wiki for different departments. Some departments are full of teachers who are already technologically inclined, using the internet in many creative and powerful ways as individuals. I would propose a wiki as a way to bring some of these web adventurers together for collaboration and as jumping off points for departments. I think that the collaborative possibilities will appeal to these teachers and that will lead eventually to an interest in using wikis with students.

Scenario One

The science teachers (10) share an office. They form a cozy little pod unto themselves. They already share resources, ideas and technology as it applies to their area. They don't frequent the library, but they have already created a web of support for each other. I think this department could use a wiki as a place to:

• house information for new teachers and interns
• schedule use of labs
• gather useful weblinks by topic and grade
• store literacy techniques and practices
• share the most successful lesson plans, best practices
• follow breaking news science stories
• publish safety rules for labs

With this group, a conversation and a bit of planning with the department head, followed by a short in-service presentation during a department meeting, would probably be enough to set them on their way to successful wiki use. I would offer to create the wiki and enter some initial information, but they are technologically savvy enough to take it from there.

In my presentation I would use the Wikis in Plain English video and references from my favourite source, Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms:

So let's take a minute and imagine the possibilities here. Your students, with just a little help from you, could create book report wikis, what-I-did-this-summer wikis, brainstorming wikis, poetry wikis, notes-from-class wikis, sixth-grade wikis, history of the school or community wikis, formula wikis, wikis for individual countries they might be studying, political party wikis, exercise wikis... you get the idea. And you could create similar spaces for colleagues to save research or do articulation or much, much more. Whatever topic might lend itself to the collaborative collection of content relating to its study, wiki is a great choice.

Scenario Two

The English Teachers have no common (physical) area to share, so the monthly departmental meetings are about their only chance to be together. The responsibilities of department head are shared by two teachers each year, and rotated through most members of the department. (There are a few lone wolves....) Full attendance is difficult since many teachers teach classes outside the timetable. They do some communicating by email, but this too, is a challenge for them. For the most part, these are not folks who enjoy using technology. Playing with technology will only happen under duress--- (and I believe duress invalidates the possibility of play!) These too, are creative people who would soon dream up hundreds of powerful ways to use wikis with students if their initial experience with wikis was positive. This is where I would bring my special gifts of empathy and gentle support onto the scene. I would offer to set up a wiki for them, and include some basic, useful information, like department literacy goals, which novels are taught to which grade, number of texts available, department meeting minutes, etc. Then I would spend time with each member of the group, exploring the document with the learner 'driving the mouse'.

My actions would be supported by the research we looked at on our wiki and by common sense. Just offering to check in with people as they learn how to use a new tool provides a bit of a safety net. I would never present myself as a tech-expert, but as a curious and interested companion for the adventure.

A final aside

There is a lot more detailed support for introducing Web 2.0 tools into the school that I want to gather and organize, but my time is gone, and I know that I'll never be finished. I resolve to take this next step of introducing others to these tools and concepts, sharing my (incomplete) knowledge and my enthusiasm. I know that by sharing I'll deepen my understanding, and by working with others intuition and synchronicity enter the equation and who knows where that will take us!

Blog Reading for Professional Development

I must admit that when our instructor, Jenn, asked us to establish an RSS feed from Google Reader, I did just that--but I didn't really understand what it was or how it was going to help me. I remember being a bit confused about just who to subscribe to, and just what it was I was signing up for. I remember checking through the weblinks provided on Blackboard and subscribing willy-nilly to anything that sounded remotely useful. And then I pretty much forgot about it as I lurched from week to week trying to figure out the new Web 2.0 tool du jour. Occasionally my google reader page would appear as I roamed cyberspace looking for suitable materials for my blog. Sometimes I even found something directly related to my task-at-hand, and began to think 'hey, this really is useful---I have to remember this'.

What I'm confessing is the fact that I didn't really understand that I was supposed to check this page regularly--daily even perhaps! At this point I'm only beginning to read particular blogs regularly both for pleasure and for professional development. The pleasure comes from enjoying the personal styles of the writing and the professional development comes from knowing that I am responding to the thoughts and themes of the gurus in the world of Teacher-librarians and Information Technology.

The gurus are key. One of the biggest challenges for me, is knowing I've found a reputable source. The volume of information on the web is mindboggling--- 50 million blogs already??? Who should I pay attention to and how will I find them? Plunging into this program, is key because I have an instructor I trust to show me the way. I have frequently felt lost and confused. Remembering that our instructor was available for amplification and re-direction helped tremendously.

A frequent experience for me of reading blogs for professional development is getting sidetracked. Because bloggers have the ability to add a hyperlink to their writing I am frequently lured away from the blog I'm reading to explore a connected site. This is both positive and problematic. Quick explanations and clarifications are available at the click of a key and that is a good thing. But the trip to the hyperlink can lead to another, and another, and pretty soon an hour or two has passed and I've read some very interesting things, BUT I haven't got through the material I needed to cover, and I'm still not sure what was essential. Nonetheless, I have gone a lot of interesting places on the web and the cumulative effect of all the reading I've done means that the language and themes are sounding less foreign. I guess I'm still thinking about this as an immersion experience...

One of my favourite sources is Lee Lefever, who along with his wife and partner Sachi, produce the In Plain English videos. Their videos are for those of us who are new to technology-land but ready to begin using some of the Web 2.0 tools. I recently heard LeFever interviewed on Spark, a CBC radio program and podcast. He explained that they try to whittle away the extraneous, to focus on how this tool can be used---not a detailed technical explanation of how it works.

LeFever writes on his blog how his own education shaped his thinking about effective ways to present information. He described the problems he encountered whenever new information and ways of thinking were presented without context.

Talkin' Bout My Education By leelefever on March 27, 2008 - 10:56am

Looking back, context is what I have always missed in education. If someone could put a new idea in the context of the real world or show me how it enables other things, I would get it. It's just my learning style - I need the big picture before the details make any sense. By diving directly into T accounts and least common denominators, I got caught up in trying to memorize instead of understand. What I needed to know was why - why this works the way it does - and why it matters to me.

So, I think the connection to our style of videos is obvious. They are based on all the things that don't work for me in education. When I see explanations on the Web, the remind me of school - they assume too much. They sometimes dive directly into how something works and spend little time on context.

For me, it's a big problem - a problem that I believe others feel too. When it comes time for me to try to explain something, it just feels right to look at the world from the perspective that would have made sense to me that first day of accounting class - build meaning with context first, then explore details.

Reading LeFever's blog has helped me think about the ways video can be used in education. The low-tech look of the videos models a way of sharing information that is accessible to students and teachers. I especially like the fact that you don't see any part of the speaker except his hands. We are so bombarded by perfect images of perfect bodies it is very refreshing to see how effective simple visuals are. In fact, I can imagine making a video in this style myself.

Joyce Valenza' s blog at School Library Journal is another that I read regularly. She helped my organizational challenges, by starting off the year with a detailed and hyperlinked list of major themes for school librarians and Web 2.0 technology. As I progressed through this course, looking at one new Web tool after another, I found myself returning to her site, and this particular blog entry, over and over.

That said, I do find the frequency of her posts a bit overwhelming. Maybe it's because of her high level of expertise and involvement in the field, but sometimes I don't really understand what she's writing about. She uses so many acronyms that don't mean anything to me (yet). A lot of her topics really remind me that she is writing about the school library world in the United States. I would really like to find a Canadian version of Valenza... For example, one of her recent posts explored copyright issues, something I'd really like to understand better, but I'm still wondering about the Canadian application. At this point in my learning, spending more time at her virtual library would probably be more useful to me.

Will Richardson is another blogger I like to read. Something in his style leaves me feeling more reflective, more part of the conversation. Maybe his posts are a little more philosophical. When I read Valenza I feel kind of frantic---like there is no way I will ever absorb all this important stuff, whereas with Richardson there is lots of new information but it is presented in a more bite-sized way. Of course I'm also fond of Richardson because I found his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom extremely helpful. Being able to re-read, and highlight the text is still works for me.


There are many more blogs out there to read, but for me, too many, quickly becomes too much. I will close with the insights presented by Mike Curtain, writing on RSS and Blogs as Professional Development, who acknowledges my blog fatigue AND reminds me that the complexity of the diverse voices ultimately will benefit me as a learner.

For a long time I’ve been looking at models of professional development that go beyond the one-shot after-school workshop. As I’ve studied models of adult learning and become more familiar with the ways that teachers are successful at improving their practice, I’ve realized that good professional development experiences share a few core qualities:

• They are sustained, occurring over weeks, months, or even years.
• They are gradual and incremental, involving a lot of short but connected steps with moments of reflection and integration in between.
• They are collaborative, involving questions, support, and conversation with other teachers in similar situations.
• They directly meet the teacher’s needs, offering solutions to real problems in our every day experience in the classroom.
• Over time, they change the way we see the world and therefore what we do with our students each day in the classroom.

As I become more invested in reading and tracking blogs through RSS, I’m coming to realize that those 15 minute sessions browsing headlines in Pageflakes and posting comments on blogs are starting to add up. Every day I have a little opportunity to see what others are doing and to ask myself why I do what I do and how I could do it better.

When a teacher starts using an RSS aggregator to keep on top of news stories, blog posts, and wiki updates, she is really taking the reins and becoming the editor-in-chief of her own professional development journal. “I want to learn about differentiating instruction in a social studies classroom and using a SmartBoard. I found six or seven experts in each area and they are going to be frequent contributors to my journal. When I don’t understand or disagree, I’m going to let them know and listen carefully to their responses and the comments of other people like me. At the end of the year, I’m going to know a lot more about these topics than I do now.”

The best part of it is that the singular voice of the workshop lecturer or methods text (shudder) gives way to a cacophony of differing agendas, viewpoints, backgrounds, and ideas. We are forced to confront the complexity of our classroom experience and to forge - and frequently thereafter to re-visit and re-evaluate - our own understandings and practices. Simple answers provided by gurus don’t long satisfy intelligent teachers: they need to pick and choose from a buffet of best practices and ideas. Our RSS professional development journal does just that.

RSS feeds --what are they and how do they work?

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a Web tool that helps us consume information in efficient and relevant ways. Will Richardson calls them 'The New Killer App for Educators', and he has devoted a whole chapter to this topic in his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

In simple terms, Weblogs (and an ever-growing number of other sites) generate a behind-the-scenes code in a language similar to HTML called XML. This code, usually referred to as a feed (as in news feed), makes it possible for readers to subscribe to the content that is created on a particular Weblog so they no longer have to visit the blog itself to get it....the content comes to you.

Remembering which websites I want to check in with regularly by going to the different sites takes time and a good memory. Even if I remember to bookmark useful sites, and arrange them by topic, I still get overwhelmed by the numbers and I run out of time. I'm never sure if I've read the most current information or just the top of my list.

The RSS feeds allow me to use a feed collector, a type of software called an aggregator.
Here's some more information from Wikipedia:

RSS

RSS
Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird
File extension	.rss, .xml
MIME type	application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)[1]
Extended from	XML

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" ^[3] or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.^[3]

RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator". The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91).

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,^[4] the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use in 2005/2006.

Of particular interest to me is learning about the icon , and learning to watch for it when I see a blog I would like to receive regular information from. Noting that the icon has only recently gained wide usage in 2005/2006 reminds my just how new this tool is, and that helps me be more accepting of my fumbles using it.

I found it easy to sign up for a feed reader from google, and at first I received a good flow of information (Okay, it was overwhelming but I was pleased that the tool seemed to be fulfilling its function). Then about the middle of March the information stopped flowing. I've spent quite a bit of time subscribing and re-subscribing, but no luck. When I can find the time, I will consult my local experts. I'm having that feeling regularly with the technology tools I've explored in this course. I'll need to go back and play with everything to feel more comfortable using Web 2.0 tools.

Video: RSS in Plain English

Lee Lefever does it again!