Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
My Daily Bookmarks 04/08/2009
Telescopic Text © Joe Davis 2008
Teach students how to write more descriptively with Telescopic Text.
25 Apps that Add Form and Function to Twitter - The 2.0 Life
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Are You a Social Media Snob: My Response
First of all I must say that I never thought that my post would get picked up the way it did. I am absolutely floored by the tremendous conversation that has taken place in the past week over my post, "Are You a Social Media Snob if You Do Not Follow Many People on Twitter." I really enjoyed reading the views of everyone who commented on the post. I especially would like to thank the folks that were mentioned in the post that took the time to leave a comment (Dean Shareski, Lee Kolbert, Vicki Davis, Liz Davis, Kevin Jarrett (you are not the first to tell me I'm all wet ;-)), Lucy Gray, and Mike Sansone).
I found some interesting threads in the conversations that took place in the comments and would like to elaborate on the following:
- Twitter should be used as each person wants to use it.
- Most educators tend to follow others.
- I'm not calling anyone a snob.
Between what I posted in this post and "My Twitter Evolution" post I've made it pretty clear how I follow people on Twitter. I will follow most people who follow me on Twitter except for:
- Bots
- Marketers
- Spammers
- People who use offensive language (I read this at school too)
- People in the adult entertainment industry
The ability to personalize my use of Twitter is a big part of the draw for me. I don't mind some posts about people's personal lives because it helps me get to know them as an individual - not just professionally.
I hope that no one on the list felt that I was calling them a snob (despite the title of the post). I must say that the two individuals at the top of the list have contributed greatly to my work. I remember the first time I saw David Warlick speak at the Christa McAuliffe conference in 2004. I quickly ordered his "Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century" book as well as some his other works over the past few years. I have used (and suggested to many other educators) several of his resources on the web. I don't know of anyone in the edtech community that gives as much for free. His blog, podcast, and vast array of web resources demonstrates his dedication to the edtech community. I have also had the privilege to see Will Richardson present on multiple occasions. David and Will are the first two individuals I started following when I first set up my Bloglines account several years ago. I have really enjoyed reading their thoughts and stories over the years. If you haven't read Will's book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" you really should give it a look.
Despite my high level of respect for these two individuals I really find their Twitter numbers confusing. They both are champions of professional learning networks and demonstrate Twitter to thousands of educators every year but follow very few people. I think I mostly agree with Lucy Gray's comment,
"I guess I shouldn't be judgmental about other Twitterers (who really knows their circumstances and motives), but I am somewhat. I do think that if people are in the public eye with this stuff and are already tweeting, they should consider how they are staying in touch with the people that admire their work. We all should be learning from each other!"I don't have a problem with the fact that neither of them follow me (there are plenty of people out there that contribute more to Twitter than I do). I just question why they follow so few. As I mentioned above, I don't believe there should be "rules" to Twitter use so I'll just chalk it up to them both using the tool as they see best.
Thanks again to eveyone in my professional learning network for making this conversation so rich.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Are you Making it Easier or Harder to Use Technology?
I was attending a meeting today with a bunch of tech coordinators discussing extending Maine's laptop initiative into high schools. I always find these meetings really interesting. The technical people always want to discuss security of networks, locking down users' privileges and making it difficult for those little angels to screw up their machines.
One of the representatives from Apple Computer mentioned that Apple gives it's employees full access to their equipment (yes administrative access). It made me think about what I do as a technology leader in my building. I seem to have a different view of my role from some of the others in this meeting today. I see my role as one that removes the barriers from teachers and students to technology - not creating hurdles that they must jump over to get to the learning. Is it more important to have the most secure network and equipment or to have people pushing the envelope and doing great things with the technology? I'd rather see teachers spending their time planning innovative projects that use technology to improve learning for all learners than trying to figure out how to get around all the locks on their machines and the network.
If you're a teacher I hope you have a technology department that supports your ideas of using technology to improve student learning.
If you're a technology leader I hope you strive to remove the barriers between your teachers and their technology use in the classroom. If nothing is happening on your networks and machines it really doesn't matter how secure you are.
Image Attribution:
Image: 'Cardinal Health picnic'
www.flickr.com/photos/9031691@N08/2777266738
www.flickr.com/photos/9031691@N08/2777266738
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
My Twitter Evolution
I'm still thinking about yesterday's post, "Are you a snob..." and the great comments I received. It made me think of my own use of Twitter and how it's changed over time. I started with Twitter when it was very new after reading about it on TechCrunch. At that time the majority of my professional development came from the RSS feeds I was following and reading on a daily basis.
Phase 1 of my Twitter experience was about a year of doing pretty much nothing with it. I really just didn't get it. Over time my network started to grow on Twitter and I started spending more and more time following the discussions going on there. As I spent more time on Twitter I found more and more people I enjoyed following and some that just annoyed me. I saw Twitter as a stream of information that I had to read every piece of - like email.
Phase 2 of my Twitter experience followed shortly after this as my network grew and grew. I found myself spending more time on Twitter and really letting my RSS aggregator suffer (there's only so much time in a day). I started using separate applications to follow my tweets like Snitter and Twhirl.
Phase 3 has just begun over the past month or so. I have switched my Twitter client to TweetDeck which has changed everything. I learned so much from this video from Jesse Newhart on "How to Effectively Follow 15000+ Users on Twitter... ." I don't believe I'll be looking to get quite that high anytime soon, but the lessons I learned from him have really helped me gain some balance back between my RSS aggregator and Twitter.
I would imagine most people have different experiences with the use of Twitter and their evolution would have some similarities and some differences. I agree with the comments from yesterday's post that how you use Twitter is completely up to you. You must evolve with it to make it the most useful tool for you. I find it as a great way to keep up with great tools, thoughts, and happenings in the EdTech world. I feel that Bill Ferriter (aka The Tempered Radical) put it very well...
I think the trap that we fall into when we use any social networking application for professional work is forgetting that the tool is about facilitating learning, not being popular. Judging one's influence through numbers overlooks the real purpose for jumping into any digital conversation.
I don't use Twitter to see how many thousands of people I can get to follow me (which should be pretty easy to see if you visit my Twitter page). I use it to facilitate my own professional learning and to expand my professional learning network. I must agree that I really don't care if the 'EdTech Rockstars' follow me or not. I'm just glad they are sharing what they are doing on Twitter.
Image Attribution:
Image: 'Twitter bird logo icon illustration'
www.flickr.com/photos/73532212@N00/3383916444
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