olco5’s posterous

For one year when I was younger, I took private swimming lessons. This
was in the stage after I had learned all of the basics with a bunch of
other kids my age. We could all do the breaststroke, tread water, and
do relay races for extended periods of time. And it was before any
official swim team existed for our age group. I saw potential in
myself; I wanted to do more advanced things than were going on in a
group, but I wasn't yet ready to compete.
 
The reason I am relaying this rather personal story is that I feel
like this happens often for educators. They get to a point where they
need some one on one attention in order to continue their learning.
They are ready to fine tune their skills, ready to move beyond the
simple strokes that all teachers posses. So, where do they get this
one on one help? If they have a personal learning network, they can
get it quite easily. They can ask questions and create a relationship
with another teacher who has just had the benefit of "private
lessons". But, if they see themselves as disconnected from all
teachers who aren't in their school, then this kind of learning
doesn't happen.
 
"Private swimming lessons" are much harder when everyone around you is
just treading water.

I just got word that the Chief Information Officer for Douglas County
Schools (my school district) is now on Twitter
(http://twitter.com/rmweldon). Allong with both McCains, I am the
third person he is following at the moment. I guess I'm not sure why
it matters, but there is this small part of me that is happy to know
that.
 
Not that he is following me, but that he is following someone... that
he sees the platform as one that is worth exploring. I don't expect
many tweets or that it becomes his main platform for asking questions
and getting answers, but I guess it does matter. It matters because I
can now ask him questions. It matters because he is a part of my
learning network now (because I am following him too).
 
So, I guess if you are reading this, please give him a warm welcome.
And Randy, if you ever read this, I look forward to learning from you.

I had a lot of conversation today about pilot initiatives within a
larger institution. it seems as though in each project that I take
part in, there is reason enough to get a small group of (semi)
dedicated people together who will try something out and report back
on their success. Whether that is moodle, gmail, google sites, dimdim,
or ning; it seems as though there is never enough at stake to require
all users to jump on board initially. While this is good in a lot of
ways: less kicking and screaming, learning from mistakes with small
group is better, and less chance of falling flat on your face with
everyone watching. But, it is bad in many as well: no ensuring that
the pilot will go further, no urgency in rolling out to everyone, and
all pilots are basically representations of the person who creates
them.
 
This last point is what I would like to focus this post on. What I am
finding as I do more pilot initiatives is that I am trying to model
the pilot on my own practice and workflow. I am taking what I feel is
valuable and important and I am saying that others should feel the
same way. At the end of the day, I am piloting a larger and more
unwieldy version of me.
 
While it is flattering that others would want to help beta test me, I
am not totally sure how smart it is. I am not a typical user of almost
anything. I want to break things open and push them to do what I
envision, not what they were intended for. While I may have a good eye
for what others may need, I need people who aren't using tools in such
ways to help design the pilots too.
 
I guess what I am trying to say is that I cannot pilot myself if I
want the pilot to actually do what it is supposed to: test whether or
not something will work for everyone. But, how do I ask those who are
less willing to try new things to become a part of a pilot. How do I
ensure that all voices are heard so that when things do go live, the
backlash from these users isn't fierce enough to shut it down?
 
Easy question, right?

So, this came across my tweetdeck today:
http://sites.google.com/site/goomoodleikiog/Home
 
It outlines in very specific terms one way of integrating Google Docs,
Moodle, Wikis and Blogs. I say very specific because one of the
general hallmarks of the 2.0 version of teachers is that we tend to
all be pretty good at explaining things in vague terms for others and
specific terms for our students. We tend to be able to project a
vision to the outside world and not be able to back it up with the
specific ways of getting there, the ways that we got there in our own
situations.
 
The videos at this space are concrete (in-progress examples of just
how a classroom can run). The pedagogy page is a brilliant explanation
of how all of these tools should fit together, and it may be one of
the first coherent things I have seen that isn't just a list of tools.
 
However the real reason for this post is not to talk about the site
itself, but rather the name. Goomoodlewikiog, although a mouthful, is
specific in terms of its purpose. It projects exactly what it aims to:
a collection of interrelated tools.
 
I believe that we should always be intentional in naming things that
we want to be associated with. We should always frame our
conversations in the terms that we want to be speaking about on a
daily basis. And although I'm not sure that I'm going to be using
Goomoodleikiog on a daily basis from now on, I am glad that someone
is.
 
My question is: what other terms do I need to make more concrete? When
is it time to drop Web 2.0 and start talking with language that
actually means something?

I was given the task recently of coming up with 15 questions to ask a
information technology director candidate during an interview. While I
missed the window during which this information would have been useful
to the person who solicited my help (moving is really hard), I would
like to provide it here. It may not be useful as a list in itself, but
I had a lot of fun coming up with it, and it may lead to more good
thinking if I ever care to answer these questions.
 
1. What do you see as the purpose of technology in education?
2. What is the one change that you would make to our institution that
would help students to learn in a more connected way?
3. What do you believe is the purpose for acceptable use policies?
What is your ideal AUP?
4. What should professional development look like?
5. Who is in your personal learning network?
6. What does your learning workflow look like, or how do you learn?
7. How should our institution archive, tag, and share information and
learning objects?
8. How do you plan on bringing all stakeholders to the table to make
technological decisions?
9. What role should open source software play in our institution?
10. What is your vision for mobile devices accessing our institution?
11. What does online learning mean to you?
12. What kind of technology infrastructure is essential in our institution?
13. How will you connect our institution to others in the state,
country and world?
14. How will you let our students take their learning identity with
them after they graduate?
15. What will we find if we google you?
 
Anyone think of any others?
 
Anyone want to answer these ones?

The other day I was working with the principal of our online school on
creating a workflow for contacts, email, and calendar that would allow
her to add, read, and create from anywhere, meaning more productivity
for her.
 
I am pretty convinced that we need to be addicted to creating a better
workflow for ourselves, but that is a longer blog post. The reason for
this one was that Chris Lehman left a comment on my last post
expressing that he had a similar idea of people who were just too
busy. His post is right here:
 
And here is my comment on it:
http://practicaltheory.org/serendipity/index.php?url=archives/361-Hardest-Working-Teacher-Syndrome.html
 
I recognize that this happens everywhere. I love that you have a
better name for it, though. (The hardest working teacher in the
building syndrome)
 
I know that you were talking about teachers when you wrote it, but I
really think that admin and IT need this post quite a bit.
 
The lack of help, support, and sharing that goes on because we are too
busy is truly troubling. Taking time to recognize that busy (or hard
working) is no excuse for not sharing what you are working on or
taking time to see what others are working on.
 
I think recognizing that an addiction to finding a workflow that
actually works is not optional anymore. If a teacher or admin is "too
busy", their workflow is probably out of whack. That doesn't get
talked about enough in our conversations. We just assume that others
aren't duplicating efforts all over the place because we don't.
 
If everything (our learning) is connected, nothing is out of place,
meaning that we don't have to add more, we just make it flow better.

There is a syndrome that I see from many of the people that I work
with, and at many times, it I can be guilty as well. It happens when
someone asks a question or has a request of you. They have a simple
thought that they would like to discuss with you, but instead of
answering, you put it off or say that you don't have time for their
tangent. You talk about all of the other things that you have to do
and you just don't have time for their little project.
 
While this may be strictly true, you are shutting any opportunity to
advance your relationships with those people who ask or your skills
with the tools that are required for the request.
 
I know this sounds that I am advocating for dropping everything you
are working on to fix other's problems, and I guess I kind of am.
 
If we have programs in schools that are called drop everything and
read for kids, I think we may as well have programs in schools called
drop everything and help for adults. I believe that if the culture
within a school or online space is based upon helping others to be
better or to know more, it is the only way to truly institutionalize
life-long learning.
 
When I shut people and their unique requests for help out (or put them
off indefinitely) I find that I stagnate. It take some going out to
help someone else in order to truly lean something new about what I
need to work upon.
 
I guess that I learn more and more that all learning is connected.
Even if I am not researching online schools when I am helping someone
to forward their email, it doesn't mean that it won't eventually end
up helping in the long run.
 
I guess all of the things in my brain really do have a long tail, and
it isn't until it wraps around something important that I notice.

Every night this week and last I have been packing. I have been
packing up my family to move us to someplace better, with more room
and more possibilities (and more than one bathroom). This move has
gotten me thinking a lot about what to keep and what to let go of.
Without extending a metaphor too far out, it has also gotten me
thinking about how to move an entire school or even a district from
digital learning systems that they currently use, to ones that have
more possibility and room to grow.
 
And, what can we leave behind in this move. When you move from an
email based system of communication to a feed and "friend" based
system of communication (twitter, facebook, or even project wikis),
what is no longer neccessary?
 
 
When you move from a server based architecture for storing learning
objects to a cloud based repository, what is gained and what is lost?
 
The specifics are becoming more and more clear to me as I pack things
up. As I pack up our assessments for the online school, getting them
ready to move again, we can leave behind proprietary formats. We need
to be able to plug them in anywhere and reuse them for many purposes.
 
As I pack up all of our content, I realize that we can leave all html
pages without an edit button on them.
 
And, as I try to put all of our tools and resources for collaborative
and connected learningn into their box to be ported over to a new LMS
or to new PD spaces, I am realizing that there is no box big enough to
hold all of them.
 
Every tool must be allowed to connect to others, just like every
person must be able to connect. If there are tools that do not
connect, they will be packed away permanantly and placed under the
stairs.
 
Well, I am off to pack some more, but I will continue to think about
what can and can't be thrown out when we make big shifts in education.
I hope to return to this theme soon when I figure more out.

I was thinking some more about Sloodle and Second Life in general
today and a thought struck me: why don't all conferences have a SL or
Open Sim component?
 
Why do we struggle to pull together people from all over the state,
country and world into 2d places like blogs, wikis and aggregator
pages when all we need is a decent SLurl to direct people to in order
to connect? Now, I know that the WebHeads in Action do Second Life
events all of the time, but as far as I know they do not have a
face-to-face component. As for the face to face conferences I have
been to, not one of them invited those watching the elluminate or
usteam feeds to join in on an SL roundtable.
 
Do conferences need to artificially separate those who can see one
another with those who cannot?
 
Why can't we put the usteams into a SL environment? Why shouldn't we
allow the hallway conversations to happen for virtual attendees?
 
In other words, I would like to do this soon. Anyone already tried it
successfully?

Earlier today I was talking with a colleague that I highly respect who was challenging the premise of my blog post from yesterday.
 
She was saying that if I truly wanted to recast education as a new character that I would need to define what it is that I can do with connected learning and technology that I can't do otherwise.
 
This particular teacher (and tech integration specialist) has a wonderful way of pushing me to think about whether something like google docs is really any better than butcher paper and different colored markers. Whenever she asks questions like this, I really do take pause. So I put it to you. What is it that we can do now that isn't just the logical extension of what has come before? What collaborative exercise is not just a gallery walk in disguise? (I have my ideas, but I would like to see if anyone wants to take the same bait that I was given.)
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