HeyJude

Series of posts for the ASLA Online 2008 conference.

It’s interesting to look at blogging as a form of communication - in the broader context, not just in education. Blogging has become a highly interactive experience, and permiates so many parts of society, not just education. The media have adopted blogging, companies have adopted bloging, mums and dads have adopted blogging - the world is certainly changing.

Lets’ take the Sydney Morning Herald as an example. The Herald has quite a number of blogs throughout the site. You can see the full range at Blog Central! When you looks at the Herald’s most viewed items, blogs are amongst the ones that are covered.

The uptake of blogging in the media, and the corporate world accentuates the importance for teachers and teacher librarians to stop, recheck, then adopt blogging in some form or another. The Read/Write web is with us, and citizen reporting is a crucial part of the developments taking place globally.

Moving Forward is an excellent wiki that covers many aspecst of our mulitmodal education journey. On this wiki you will find that key Blog Posts have been archived, so that you can revisit some of the foundational or provocative blog posts to date. These posts have generated significant discussion in the comments section and/or in the blogosphere as a whole.

But back to the broader context! If you haven’t already seen it, then this video from the Commoncraft Show explains how blogging emerged and how blogging now fits into our world for fun, hobbies, family, news and more.

If you’ve discovered something new, or would like to add to these ideas, please share it by adding a comment to this post.

MySpace, Facebook, Beebo - in fact all similar social networking sites are a ‘big’ topic of conversation amongst educators. The conversation more often than not revolves around filtering or blocking access to such sites at school. I am unhappy about being the ‘MySpace’ police - shouldn’t I and my fellow teachers be MySpace teachers instead? Here are a few words on the topic from Will Richardson.

Creativity and innovation go hand in hand with a Mac. At the recent forum in Sydney with Will Richardson, it was clear to see that all the innovators there were fused to a Mac for creating their message and actualizing their inspiration. In fact, it got so people actually apologized for having a PC

Mac in front belongs to Chris Betcher (who’s taking the pic), next up, myself, Will Richardson and Westley Field, and in the background is Dean Groom.

Tells a story doesn’t it…bloggers, innovators, champions of change, creators of 21st century learning. Using a MAC of course!

Since the emergence of Web 2.0 - the Read/Write web - we have seen the establishment of a new kind of ecology of technology enhanced learning that focuses on open access, collaboration, and professional exchange which has given us a chance to make a real difference in education and lifelong learning.The shift in professional practice has been profound for those of us who have been willing to step into the Read/Write web - and because we have experienced the extraordinary benefits for ourselves and for our students, I invite you to join the global transformation in learning.

I am forever grateful for those early adopters who have been promoting Web 2.0 within education and library circles. We have all had our own ‘epiphany’, inspired by someone - because the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is still not necessarily obvious to all so we continue to need help! My kapow! came from Stephen Abram of Stephen’s Lighthouse fame. I soon discovered Will Richardson (raced out to buy his book) and Michael Stephens. I have a long list of ‘good reads’ ready for you to discover on my blog. The connections have continued since then. Whether it’s the awesome Stephen Downes or the teacher or teacher librarian down the road, there are hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, and librarians online - and each of them brings a particular dimension to the learning landscape that IS our world.

I am convinced of one thing - the future is being shaped by the multimodal world that our students occupy. Our teaching and professional practice is being moulded by the multimodal opportunities that surround us.

What’s so important about blogging for professional learning?

I know that blogging was the prime ‘lead’ for me to become an active participant in the future world of work and play of our students - a multimodal way of thinking, acting, sharing, knowing, and enjoying. My life as an educator will never be the same - and nor will yours.

Welcome to readers from the ASLA Online 2008 conference. I would like to take the opportunity that this conference presents to me to reflect a little on blogging and professional learning and hope that you will join me in conversation along the way. I will track my posts on this topic with the tag “aslaonline08“, which you can collect by searching that tag, either on this blog, or through Technorati.

So why are you blogging?

Like everything online these days, while this post is the first in a series of posts for the ASLAOnline III Virtual Conference -it is also a post in response to Christopher Sessums question “so what are you blogging for?” That’s how things work these days! We’re all talking and sharing together.

Oh….and a message to Will - I wish we had better bandwidth to share with you at the seminars in Sydney and Brisbane. What we lacked in bandwidth was made up a hundred-fold by the magic of working with you, and seeing you share your experience, vision and enthusiasm with good ‘ole aussies who love your work! Your blogging transforms our understanding.

If you have a view about blogging as a professional learning tool, please add your thoughts for readers. Watch for other posts in this online conference thread too.

Blogging: The Staff Experience

Photo: Writing online

For all those people attending the Syba Signs presentations in Brisbane and Sydney - the links to sites mentioned are available in the slideshare presentation below!

[A note to the conference attendees: I have been alerted that the slides have not uploaded well to slideshare this time. Some scrambled, some hyperlinks not showing etc. I am going to reformat and load up to slideshare before Friday's session. In the meantime, some of the links are readable for your investigation. ][update- still having problems with slideshare. New version now, but some slides are still scrambled though the links do work. Will try again tomorrow]

Will began his by reflecting on citizen journalism - media, skype, ustreamTV, live tv shows from basements - by kids who are just entering high school. Will is going to take a group of keen teachers and teacher librarians on a wonderfully weaved journey through the read/write web. Retire, and make more by selling ads on your blog than you did in your day job!

Will reflects on the transformation taking place that is as radical a change as that which took place as a result of the invention of the printing press.

Will is providing all the links to his presentation via his wiki http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com/.

Copyright? this discussion is now global. what do we do when content is free, easily copyable, and easily distributable. It’s a different place for business too. http://www.surfthechannel.com/ Pick up any TV show! anything you like. These guys are in Sweden, they don’t run servers - they don’t believe they are doing anything wrong

The story of Wikinomics is one that we all need to take note of. IBM has 24,000 blogs - they are sharing, collaborating, and being transparent about their jobs. Even governments are changing - there is a pressure for transparency,

But education, by and large, is not changing.

It’s 9.00 am and we are all looking forward to our day with Will Richardson! followed by a few good Aussies talking about Australian initiatives. Westley Field will enchant the audience with Skoolaborate; I will do my usual bit; and we’ll hear from Christine Mackenzie about the work at Yarra Pelnty Regional Library in Melbourne. The end of the day will have a panel discussion - which will be streamed to the world at 3.00 pm AEST via Will’s Weblogg-ed TV .

Something new to try out! Will this be one to watch? Like a Web 2.0 content management system - for your school, between schools, between you colleagues, and just sharing. Will this solve some problems for schools, or just create new ones? Check the Yahoo Teachers info page and register for your own beta invitation.

Quite a few things today reminded me of the parallel information universe that I live in. This morning a wonderful meeting with mothers at the school - to introduce myself, my new staff and our new vision for learning 21st century style. We talked a little about the MySpace/MSN world of our boys, and how best to deal with pull of technology - sometimes in the wrong direction.

A good question was about plagiarism - what can a mother do to help her son who is cutting and pasting information for an assignment, and playing with fonts, keywords and more to ‘hide’ this capture. My response is always the same - pick your opportunity! The key thing to remember in mentoring our children is to focus on knowledge creation, the discussion of ideas, the veracity of information, and the value of what is being read in helping to understand the topic under study. This means that a parent can ‘let go’ of the process so often promoted, which I suggest is wrong. I’m sure you have heard this said many times…..”put it into your own words” …..which of course is actually a highly complex action.

Much better to let that go. If a task/assessment has been set that really is about making a student learn some facts - then so be it. No different to giving dictation, or asking a student to copy notes from the board. The thing to do is to engage a student reflecting about the value of the material they are ‘copying’. Once a student begins to question, weigh up, challenge, consider and reconsider information and knowledge - then the matter of plagiarism is half way to being solved.

Some of the mums expressed a keen interest in learning more about the online world - safety, online tools, research and more. I have offered to run sessions, course or whatever parents would like to help them in their own understanding about the possibilities of 21st century learning online. By the way, through it all, I emphasized that literacy and reading (in all forms) must underpin the work of myself and the team in the Resource Centre at Joeys.

That was one parallel universe within my daily work at school!

The next parallel universe was revealed late in the afternoon in the foyer of a hotel in Brisbane. A group of us met with Will Richardson to begin to prepare for the Why 2 of Web 2.0 seminar tomorrow (join the ning to take part in the conversation).

Lots of fun discussion about places, people, and events related to leading in a Web 2.0 world. And there it was - the division. School libraries, or libraries in general and teachers and education in general. This is a particular pet hate of mine. We should all be on the same page - or at least on one of the pages in the same volume It’s rather like my blogroll - many of the people in one group know nothing of the research, publication, blogs or other initiatives of people in the other group.

A good example? Well I suggest that in Australia schools we all need to know of the work of Will Richardson (education) and Ross Todd (library). Both are world leaders in education. I know that you can think of equally good examples!

In schools there can be no excuse for this. My role is to operate effectively and efficiently as a teacher, a leader of e-learning, Web 2.0 online learning, and teacher librarian. Stop and take a look at your professional practice - and add a bit of knowledge from your teacher or librarian friends - then branch out from your own zone of comfort into other sectors or disciplines. Go on. It’s very worthwhile.

What got me started on this idea of this parallel information universe was prompted by an excellent article with the same title by Mike Eisenberg, which has the by-line “What’s out there and what it means for libraries”.

In a way that’s part of my topic at the seminar tomorrow. But the article itself is an excellent look at Web 2.0 tools, providing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a host of tools. This article is a great discussion starter for you.

Journal articles like this remind me of the intensity of change needed - so that parents, teachers, and teacher librarians can actually understand the world of learning as it is becoming, and work together rather than in parallel in forming global blended learning environments.

This is much more than co-operative program planning and teaching by teacher librarians. This is much more than teachers asking the teacher librarians for help and guidance.

What it IS about is creating strong personal professional learning networks that draw information and expertise across sectors, disciplines, and fields of creativity - where Will and Ross know [of] each other, blend their knowledge and research, and can then inspire we teachers and teacher librarians to newer heights

Time to think out of the square everyone, and stop living in parallel universes.

Photos: 3D cubist kites, 無敵大合照啊