Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

I ran across this post about Seven Habits of Highly Connected People on Stephen Downe’s site awhile ago and been saving it in my drafts until I had a chance to write and reflect.  I highlighted ideas from each habit to share but you should read the full article and his explanations at http://www.downes.ca/post/44261

1. Be Reactive

The first thing any connected person should be is receptive. Whether on a discussion forum, mailing list, or in a blogging community or gaming site, it is important to spend some time listening and getting the lay of the land.

Posting, after all, isn’t about airing your own views. It’s about connecting, and the best way to connect is to clearly draw the link between their content and yours.

2. Go With The Flow

When connecting online, it is more important to find the places to which you can add value rather than pursue a particular goal or objective. The Web is a fast-changing medium, and you need to adapt to fit the needs of the moment, rather than to be driving it forward along a specific agenda.

3. Connection Comes First

In almost all fields, connecting with others online is the work. The papers you write, the memos you read and toss-all have to do with connecting with people.

If you don’t have enough time for reading email, writing blog posts, or posting to discussion lists, ask yourself what other activities you are doing that are cutting in to your time. These are the things that are often less efficient uses of your time.

4. Share

The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return.

When you share, people are more willing to share with you. In a networked world, this gives you access to more than you could ever produce or buy by yourself. By sharing, you increase your own capacity, which increases your marketability.

5. RTFM
RTFM stands for “Read The Fine Manual” (or some variant thereof) and is one of the primary rules of conduct on the Internet.

What it means, basically, is that people should make the effort to learn for themselves before seeking instruction from others… Taking the time and effort to look at this work is not merely respectful, it demonstrates a certain degree of competence and self-reliance.

6. Cooperate

Online, people cooperate. They network. Each has his or her own goals and objectives, but what joins the whole is a web of protocols and communications. People contribute their own parts, created (as they say in open source programming) to “satisfy their own itch.”

7. Be Yourself
What makes online communication work is the realization that, at the other end of that lifeless terminal, is a living and breathing human being. The only way to enable people to understand you is to allow them to sympathize with you, to get to know you, to feel empathy for you. Comprehension has as much to do with feeling as it does with cognition.

This past year I finally feel more comfortable in my “online persona”.  Before that I  considered myself a “lurker”.  I subscribed to quite a few blogs and followed folks on Twitter but it wasn’t until a year ago did I really engage in the conversation.

As Downes states above, we need to be reactive and share.  It’s not enough to just read an interesting post and say – oh, that’s interesting.  Blogging is about being part of a conversation.  I’m guilty of not responding to people who posted comments on my blog or at least said “thank you for taking the time” (sorry).

I respond @yourtwitter name more often this year too.  Last month I made a Wordle of my twitter posts and realized that edtechvision was one of my top tweets.  Maybe I was spending too much time promoting my blog posts instead of saying “hey, check out so-and-so’s blog – there’s an interesting conversation going on there”.

Many of the new face-to-face connections I have made this past year has been because of my online connections.  I hooked up with the out-of-towners before Google Teacher Academy which resulted in many friendships (you know who you are!).  When I showed up to ILC 2008 several people came up to me and said “hey, I follow you on Twitter” and then -bam:  instant connection – and we spent the rest of the conference  sharing and connecting.

On Twitter Alec Couros shared his networked web from http://twitter-friends.com.  Now this man is highly connected!

With plenty of opportunities this year (NCCE, NCEA, NECC) to connect f2f with my PLN, I hope to not only be inspired by highly connected people but also give something back to the edtech community.  I thank you.  I am learning each and every day and love what you have brought to my life.

Years ago when I taught 4th grade I participated in a classroom exchange called “Postcard Geography”.  My students eagerly awaited postcards that we exchanged with schools all across the US.  We created a large bulletin board with a map of the US and  pinned the postcards next to the city is came from.  It was fun to read about the area around the school and we often referred to our postcards as we studied the regions of the US.

This summer I was searching the Internet for collaborative projects and I came across the Postcard Geography project again.  I considered doing the project with my 7th & 8th grade computer classes.  I figured with all the online resources at our fingertips, the project would be a lot different than the past.  Little did I know ….

Welcome to the 21st Century!  We received our first postcard last week and the students immediately went to the  Internet and Google Maps to located the town.  As they were zooming in on the small town in Texas, it dawned on me that we could “pin” the location on the maps in Google Earth.  So we switched to Google Earth and found the exact location of the school.  As I read the postcard aloud to the class they zoomed out to locate neighboring cities that were mentioned, commented on the amount of trees by the school and the layout of the town.  We calculated distance to the Gulf of Mexico and followed a river near the city that emptied into the Gulf.

One student suggested that we write the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of our school on our postcards so other schools can find out exactly where we are located.  I opened up the discussion to the students of how they wanted to participate in the project.  Everyone agreed that they still wanted to send the postcards the old fashioned way but also create a digital postcard that could be emailed.  There were lots of ideas of making a movie, taking photos around town and embedding them onto a map, designing original postcards, and making a narrative slide show.

The enthusiasm was endless.  I felt like I just presented an idea to the class and they took hold and went with it.  None of the students realized how many geography skills they reviewed during the Google Earth activity (and in computer class – gasp!) or how many computer skills they suggested for upcoming projects.  I will allow the students to choose how the class will send “digital postcards” to the other school but I also have plans for using Google Earth to create a virtual field trip to “visit” some of the school and teach them how to read a GPS device.

I really enjoyed participating in the Postcard project the first time around but this time around the technology makes this project more authentic and real.

I overheard two students discussing the Texas school while they were viewing the map on Google Earth …

Student 1:  Look how many tennis courts they have at their school.

Student 2:  Well, the weather is nice in Texas (compared to the rain in Oregon) so they probably go outside more.

Student 1:  Yeah, but it gets real hot there.  Good thing they aren’t too far away from the Gulf.

You would swear they were talking about a place they had visited before.  They gathered all this information from looking at a satellite map.  I can’t wait until we receive news from some schools in Australia, Taiwan and Spain.

Collaboration – (kuh-lab-uh-rey-shuhn) n. the act of collaborating. Working together for a common end.

Every class can benefit from enhanced collaboration among students and between students and instructors. Learning is social. Course assignments that encourage collaboration are effective way of encouraging interaction and discussion among students. Unfortunately, collaborative projects can also have its problems. With multiple students working on one project there can be issues with limited access to the materials or resources. While some of the learners are engaged in the project, others wait their turn or just don’t participate.

This past school year I incorporated Google Docs and Spreadsheets in my beginning Computer Applications course to facilitate communication and collaboration among my high school students. Google Docs and Spreadsheets is a free and relatively easy web-based tool for creating and collaboratively editing online documents in real time. It is well-suited for student collaborative projects because previous versions of the document are always accessible and it is easy to see who made which changes.

Our collaborative project was called “What’s For Lunch?” The goal of this project was to collect data about student’s eating habits at lunch and analyze the information for nutritional value, cost and how much waste was created. For one week, every student photographed a variety of student lunches and interviewed students about their food choices. The class compiled their photos together and began the task of analyzing the data. We decided to assemble data about nutrition (calories, fats, carbohydrates), cost of the meal, and we also created a point system to tabulate the amount of waste each lunch produced.

I set up a Google shared spreadsheet to gather the data. Each student created a Google account (which can be separate from a Gmail account). Although anyone could view the spreadsheet the students needed to be invited to edit and collaborate on the spreadsheet. Once the students accessed the file, they could begin to add their data to the spreadsheet all at the same time! Each user is color coded during collaboration and the document is automatically saved after each edit.

I have never witnesses such enthusiasm and excitement for entering data into a spreadsheet before. Every student was engaged and involved in the documentation. Students could immediately see the edits being made other students which encouraged them to share nutritional information with each other. The whole process was motivating, easy and fun. From a teacher’s point of view, I could easily see a history of the revisions to determine who participated and how many entries they added. I also could add comments directly to the spreadsheet if I needed clarification of the data or more information.

After all of the data was collected, the spreadsheet was exported to an Excel spreadsheet where students wrote formulas to analyze and compare the data. Unfortunately, the data showed some poor eating habit by our student body. Another concerning element was how much garbage our students threw away from their lunches. Students graphed the results and created posters to try to influence the eating and recycling habits of their classmates. The posters included the lunch photos and data and were hung around the school.

During this same unit students used Google Docs to write letters to local state representatives concerning their opinion about a bill that would ban junk food in all public high schools. After writing their first draft, students invited collaborators and used peer editing to review the drafts and make corrections on their Google doc. We also set up a Google spreadsheet to collect the names and addresses of Oregon Senators and Representatives. The spreadsheet was exported to Excel and the addresses were adding to the letters using mail merge.

I continue to find many uses for Google Docs and Spreadsheets throughout my curriculum. Having the ability to work together on a document at the same times ensures that every student will be engaged during collaborative projects. Keeping the documents stored online provides access from both home and school and the automatic saving feature prevents losing work. The revision history allows documents to be restored to an earlier point and also makes students accountable for doing their part. Google Docs and Spreadsheets are just one of many exciting products from Google that you can use in your curriculum.

Resources:

Google For Educators: Using Google Docs and Spreadsheets http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs_spreadsheets.html)

Some ideas on how to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in the classroom
Elementary school students collaborate to

• read the same book and write a collaborative book report.
• share their reflections of a field trip.
• create a story from a story prompt
• collect favorite poems for a class anthology
• publish a weekly newsletter about class happenings
• track profits from magazine sale

Middle school students collaborate to

• write a science hypothesis about an experiment.
• recreate an historical event.
• develop a word math problem.
• keep track of homework assignments
• collect weather statistics

High school students collaborate to

• create articles for the school newspaper
• write a script for play
• debate a current event
• analyze data from US Census bureau
• manage sales and profits from school store

“…we should be teaching skills laid on the foundations of creativity, collaboration, & critical thinking”

I ran across this line in Durff’s blog last week and I’ve been pondering about it all week and it made me think to myself, what if school was based on the 3 C’s (I’m not throwing out the 3 R’s). What would school 2.0 look like in my classroom if that were true?

Creativity: Students would be given opportunities to express themselves in ways that are creative and true to themselves. Even though I might demonstrate a technique I would NEVER expect a student to feel like they need to complete the task “my way”. I encourage individuality and applaud risk-takers and those who are willing the share their ideas and work. Students could work in a variety of medium (print, audio, visual, etc..) and also be encouraged to stretch themselves and try something new.

Collaboration: My students walk into my computer lab and are very territorial about where they sit. It’s like “this is my computer and this is my space – stay out!” First of all I want to get them out of their seats and walking over to teammates workspaces. Next, I want them to share and comment on each other’s work. This year my advanced graphic design and video students will each have individual blogs to share the process of how they created each project and show samples. Students will be broken into small groups and will be required to dialogue and comment on (at least) group member’s postings. We will also continue to use Moodle, wikis, google docs and shared bookmarks for collaboration.

Criticial thinking: This one is the most important! Computer classes are not just about “learning and doing”. AND it’s not just about the end product – it’s about the process and all the small and major decisions that were made during the project. I want to make sure that I give many opportunities for students to evaluate, research, synthesize, write, revise, create and produce meaningful work that is authentic and has value.

Teaching at a private high school I feel like I always have to battle the 3 G’s (grades, grades, grades!). Giving students opportunities to express themselves in ways that are creative and authentic and asking them to work together with classmates on challenging and interesting assignments will keep the focus on LEARNING and expressing their views in a way that is valuable and real.