Julie has a presentation coming next week for K12 online about the Flat Classroom Student Summits and what we've seen, but this is your chance to participate live with this year's student summits and talk to the kids about what they are learning. This is such a powerful experience for us as teachers and those who follow Julie or me on Twitter - we always tweet out invitations, but these are official and scheduled for you! We hope you'll join our students to hear how they have learned about the technological trends that are shaping our world and the powerful multimedia that they have constructed to tell their stories as well as experiences creating wikis with one another in authentic research!
As part of the Flat Classroom⢠Project 2009-3 we are holding online Student Summits in our Elluminate virtual classroom and invite participants in the K12 Online Conference to join us. These sessions will be 45-60 minutes long and participants will have the opportunity to interact with individual student presentations as they discuss their involvement and achievements in the recent project. Participants will also be able to see how a virtual meeting that includes students and educators around the world can be successfully run as a synchronous and virtual event. The focus is on the students, digital citizenship and online learning skills as well as cultural interaction and sharing of knowledge about the topics in the Flat Classroom Project.
Join our Flat Classroom⢠Projects Group on this Ning: http://k12online.ning.com/group/flatclassroomprojects
Come and join us at any or all of the following Flat Classroom Student Summit times: Monday December 14: Beijing (BISS) International School Summit #1 11am GMT, 7pm China, Timeanddate conversion Wednesday December 16: Beijing (BISS) International School Summit #2 12:30pm China, 4:30am GMT Timeanddate conversion Tuesday December 15: Westwood Schools Summit #1 10:30am EST, 15:30pm GMT Timeanddate conversion Wednesday December 16: Westwood Schools #2 1:30pm EST, 18:30 GMT Timeanddate conversion
Want to issue a special invitation for this event. It is so exciting that K12 online encouraged live, simultaneous events along with the presentations that were submitted. The presentation (a compilation of various thoughts on Digital Citizenship from the Digiteens) went live yesterday. You can view the full presentation on the k12 online blog and the video presentation is posted below.
Here is the invitation to see these amazing students present, also cross posted over at the K12 online conference:
As part of the k12 online conference 2009 and as a conclusion to the Digiteen Project #3 of 2009, students from Westwood Schools will be presenting their top socially connected sites for kids aged 8-12 (and some that they DO NOT recommend.) As part of Digiteen 2009, these students felt that many sites that are marketed to kids aged 8-12 are not appropriate nor safe and set out to review and test the best. They have been blogging and have a twitter account (@socialsafety) and will be presenting live in Elluminate on Wednesday, December 16, 2010 from 12:15 pm-12:45 pm and answer your questions about their testing experiences.
At the conclusion of the student presentation, from 12:45pm â 1:15 pm leading social internet safety expert, Anne Collier will reflect and talk with students about their findings. Backchannel questions will be included in the conversation.
Come and join us at any or all of the following: Super Social Safety: Sites for Kids Aged 8-12 Wednesday December 16: Super Social Safety Presentation12:15 pm EST , Time and Date Conversion
I hope you'll join us and join the students and Anne for something that I think will be very special. Take a look at their blog! http://supersocialsafety.blogspot.com
The k12 online conference is a wonderful event and many people have worked so hard to bring this free conference to you! It is the conference that keeps on giving!
As I work, I'm reviewing some of the Flat Classroom 2009 videos and as usual am awestruck at the creativity of these students (and how hard they have to work to get these done.) Feel free to join our Ning if you're an educator and leave comments! The judging is happening now and the winners will be announced at our awards show on Friday at 8:30 am EST -- we will share the link on our flat classroom twitter account and through our various networks.
This video has captivated me, particularly the dinner table scene with the whole family!
Remember, these students are collaborating globally to create meaningful multimedia on authentic research topics -- can your ninth and tenth graders do this?
Just sent this message to the Edurunners, which gives you a glimpse of how Daily Mile works and how we are connecting and using this to motivate ourselves towards fitness.
Hi everyone! We have 35 members of edurunners! That is so cool. Here are some suggestions to get the most from the group:
1) Connect -
See this as a way to find other educators or retired educators who work out, go through the membership list and add some as friends and then set your mind to encouraging them.
2) Care
After you've friended, encourage people in the group (and beyond) - it makes me feel good to get motivations and reminders when I'm not working out like I should and to see that all of us (event 12 mile Franklin D - the leaderboard leader of our group this week) might not feel so good.
3) Converse
Questions are being asked on our discussion board - PLEASE answer and help (like one this week about treadmills) - if you know a lot - share -- if you don't know a lot -ask and encourage. But do it! Just go to community and groups and head to edurunners.
4) Coach
If you know something help others - cybraryman1 on Twitter (who I think joined the group) is encouraging me everywhere.
5) Log it, baby, log it
You can log any kind of physical exercise except picking up a fork to lift to your mouth! While everyone else is getting fat over the holidays we are living on the fat of life that comes from having the endorphins of exercise helping us see the colors clearer, thinking more bountifully, and having an up beat mental attitude! Share and log it!
Finally, since I'm almost done with my little "preachy" note (which as much to me as it is to you) -- let's share the group and learn to use the power of social networking to improve our individual lives.
We as educators will be paid in an inheritance in the future -- it will be one of gratitude or looking down upon us thinking we missed it. We teach an obese generation and we, of all people, MUST BE SEEN to be working to be fit, shed the extra pounds that keep our minds and bodies harnessed to the limits which aren't really there.
I'm forty and started running and now can run five miles (or surely more) without stopping. Running is my salve and my drug - my addiction and my enjoyment - it helps me keep myself together.
I can't believe I'm even saying this! I will say that this group has become a great encouragement to me as we friend one another and plan to share this little email on my blog before I head to the grocery store!
OK, edurunners (or eduwalkers or eduworkouters) or whatever kind of edu-fitness person you are -- start connecting!
You all are amazing. Oh, and by the way:
Franklin D has 12 miles this week
Ted B has 10 and Alicia and Sheri are tied for third at 8 miles with Aaron having 6.
I'm having a tough week with only four miles, but then again, I do have today and tomorrow so watchout leaderboard!
Get out there and move it today!
I don't use half of the features of Daily Mile, but if you map routes, etc. this lets you map routes even if you don't have Nike+ipod, etc. I'm going to work on this, but it is a great tool!
So, if you are doing anything with fitness, consider this an invitation to join us! As you may know, I used the couch to 5K app starting the last week of July when I couldn't even run to the mailbox! Now I can run five miles without stopping and have as a goal to break a 10 minute mile and run a sub-30 minute 5K (will it ever be?) I feel SOOO much better and though I blog a little less, I'd a lot rather post three posts a week here and live another 20 years than post 7 days a week and die in 5 years! ;-)
What Couch to 5K does is that it tells you when to run and when to walk and at the end of 9 weeks, you can run a 5K! It is crazy but IT WORKS. Just search for it in the itunes store, and I use the one that is the brown icon. I'm asking for a Nike+Ipod for Christmas to get the sensor that can map even more detail.
There is a huge mind body connection, I mean our mind is part of our body. I find that I think more clearly and experience things so much better since running and in fact, somehow it has overflown into many areas of my life.
So, join us. Be a part of a network of encouragement, not only for our classrooms, but for the wellness of our bodies. After all, our students ARE WATCHING!
Connecting globally can give you some disconnection too!
Now that my students are so connected globally - literally EVERY class has them collaborating with other kids on a daily basis -- I spend so much time being the architect for their connections that my connections have somewhat frayed at the edges!
Is this how it will look in the future? The teacher is busy building the framework for things and has to struggle to stay connected themselves?
It isn't about a huge stack of papers any more but a chock full RSS reader with student assignments and a full email of items to do. Timebridge reminders and Google calendars, wikis to update, and websites to create.
Between this and my new passion for making this body last a while longer (I LOVE RUNNING - anyone on Twitter has heard by now, probably) and handling my three children's schedules it is quite hard to spend time here talking to you. I wish, by goodness, that I had time to do a weekly podcast or something to connect with you all, but this seems to be my time right now.
Just want to reflect that if this is about the students that this is OK. I may not be at the top of everyone's RSS reader with my twice daily posts any more but if there are over 500 students each quarter connecting in these projects now, that is something.
It is OK to feel personally disconnected sometimes, particularly when that means you are creating rich, vibrant, deep learning experiences for students around the world.
Just keep perspective and don't beat yourself up too much about how often you've blogged or tweeted. If you've got something to share, share it any way you can with the time you have and just don't sweat it. (And if you're wondering, you just got to hear what I'm saying to myself today!)
Have a great day and remember that teaching is a noble calling! Keep the faith!
I would like to share an article that two of my amazing pioneering students and I wrote about our experiences on Reaction Grid and in virtual worlds. I promoted these two students to estate managers of Digiteen Island and the F.L.A.T.S. and they have done amazing work with it. This was printed in the Fall Issue of the SIG Innovative Learning and Technology newsletter which I've embedded at the bottom of this post. If you're not on this Special Interest Group for ISTE and you love technology - you're missing out! You can see Trent and Tyler interviewed on Leon Cych's blog Post about the Open Source Virtual World Pioneers.
Virtually Open Source
by Vicki Davis, Teacher
Trent H and Tyler R, Students and Co-Estate Managers Digiteen Island and the F.L.A.T.S. (Flat Learning Area for Teaching and Sharing)
From Vicki Davis, Teacher- Moving My Class Into a Virtual World: Driven By Students to Innovate
When my 2008 Freshman class was brainstorming their ideas for an action project on digital citizenship, they kept coming back to virtual worlds. As part of the Digiteen project, they had to teach another student group about digital citizenship in a project of their choosing and design. As the teacher, I advise the student groups and help them find tools that we can use at school to accomplish their task. When looking at the profile of students that needed digital citizenship education, they kept coming back to the virtual generation (we finally called them Generation "V" for virtual last fall and since then, the Gartner group has also begun calling them Generation V. To reach these students we needed a virtual experience, my ninth graders said. So, we went down two paths with one group choosing Woogi World to teach fourth graders about digital citizenship and another using Google Lively to allow virtual interactive experiences for middle schoolers. They chose Google Lively because of the cost (it was free) and also because of how easy it was to get on (you launched a web browser.)
The Google Lively group embarked on an amazing experience, partially because they designed so many very robust rooms so very quickly and secondly because after one month and some elaborately orchestrated "performances" in Lively, Google announced they were shutting the world down. After helping my students express their opinions by creating a blog and hosting a Lively in-world protest (during which 3 minutes before a griefer came in and deleted half of the room and thus my students have a great concern for Gridizenship) my students could not let go of virtual worlds.
Trevor Meister from Canada read the students' blog and offered some space on ReactionGrid for them to build their Digiteen Island. (ReactionGrid is a commercial site offering PG non-commercial world using OpenSim with islands running about $25 a month. As full disclosure, they were an in-kind sponsor for the NetGenEd Project awards show this past spring.) The student vision was to construct a virtual world that would teach digital citizenship without a person having to be present through the use of smart objects. Smart Objects are objects placed in the world that have action and objects that teach. For example, they put boxes in Camelot in Atlantis (a castle with an underwater lake in the center) that would hand objects to teach students about copyright using a script on the box.
From Trent H - Teaching in a Virtual World and Gridizenship
There are two huge benefits to teaching in virtual worlds. One, people are more attentive to something when they are interacting with it. The second, there are so many ways you can make it interesting. For example, as you read a book in your literature class, you can be building the scenes as you read them. Not only does it make reading the book more interesting, but also it deepens your understanding of the book itself.
Another great example would be how you can use virtual worlds in a math class. In a virtual world, to build something you must have the correct x, y, and z coordinates. This is to make everything seem much more realistic.
Gridizenship is how you should act toward other people and the things that they have made. Gridizenship is extremely important if you want to help other people. For example, would you rather be taught by someone who is completely closed to your thoughts, or someone who is not only willing to hear your thoughts but also tries to help you put them into action? The answer is clear.
We have had more than one experience when people have come in and demolished what we have done. One, as Mrs. Davis mentioned, was in Google Lively. In Lively we were just about to hold a protest when someone, still unknown who, came in and deleted most of the features that we had added to the room. Although this proved to be a giant dilemma, it did nothing but arouse the entire class' morale and within a matter of minutes we had the entire room looking better than it had before.
The last thing that I have to say has something to do with humanity. When you have been in a virtual world for a few days you should have obtained somewhat of an extensive knowledge of how to move and act. The first thing that will pop into your mind when you see someone that has just started (you will be able to tell because the program starts everyone out with the same avatar) is,
"What can I teach this person that will enable them to bypass the troubles that I had?"
So, when you first start you will more than likely be extremely excited about the simple things that you find out how to do and want to try it in different DemoUrls, so don't overload the person. Simply try to find out when the person will be back and possibly set up classes when you can teach the person how to use the there newfound knowledge.
Tyler R- Smart objects and Avatar friendly environments
Now, smart objects are things that give people information. When you put a smart object into your sim you will do two things. One, you will make your grid seem much more inviting because you have something that tells the person where they are and what they can do. Secondly, you can potentially slow down your actions. This means that your moves may be slowed, or even stopped. (To help prevent this I suggest to try and befriend some of the administrators, they can bring your grid back up if it crashes.)
I was the person who constructed large 3D objects and found that the best objects were avatar friendly. Avatar friendly means that whatever the thing is, it doesn't hinder your avatar in any way. For example, when you are building a house, make the doors taller than normal and wide enough that you can get through with ease. Also in a grid like Opensim, you can fly. So to help you out with flying, make your building without a roof so you can fly straight up for a quick adjustment of scenery. Vicki Davis, A Teacher's Quick Tricks for Teaching in a Virtual World
To teach in a virtual world you have to understand the dynamics of the world. Three practices helped me considerably:
Feedback Boxes -
I designed a box that I placed in all of the primary work areas that had "Cool Cat Teacher" and a picture of my avatar on the box and "Click here for feedback." Then, I had a script that would hand a notecard to the student when they clicked on it. When I went into a virtual world area to assess the work of students, I would type my feedback on a notecard and include landmarks (coordinates that would allow students to go there) and sometimes even stray objects in the notecard and put it in the feedback box and then I would edit the script to change the color of the text floating over the box. When students went into their area to work, they would be responsible to go to the feedback box first and receive my feedback. This streamlined things greatly. (You can see these graphics scattered throughout this blog post.)
Students Hand in Weekly Activity Notecard Reports -
At least once a week (but often twice a week), the students would turn in a notecard to me to include:
1) Landmarks of anything they had made so I could go see it along with a description, objectives, and any issues or questions they had,
2) A copy of the objects that they created in the notecard so I could have a copy,
3) their working objectives for the next week,
4) the new things that they wished to learn and
5) Other avatars that they encountered that week that showed good gridizenship.
Eventually I created a notecard template so they could just fill in these items. We finally learned that we did not have to be in the same place for them to hand me the notecard but could just hand it to me through chat. So, during the last ten minutes of class, I would go to a blank area, sit still, and ask them to hand me their notecards so I could save them in a folder in my inventory.
Have Folders for Everything
I had folders for working groups, weekly activity reports, objects, inventory items, and scripts. This made it easy for me to teach and work with students without looking for things and also made it easy to teleport.
Sandboxing
When we had many scripts on the island we started having problems, so we have a sandbox area where all scripting is done and limited building happens. This is the DemoUrl for my office. Students have to test their scripts in the "Cool Cat Teacher's Scratchpost" first before moving them onto the grid. (We didn't call it a sandbox for obvious reasons. ;-))
Self-Teaching Office
I constructed an Office in the Scratchpost with four lessons including ones on scripting, building and other topics. These lessons were designed to be self teaching and used URL's. These are in the sandbox so a student could walk up to a lesson box, click the box, and then walk into a grassy area with no objects and learn the skills. I cleaned up the scratchpost frequently to keep it response and ready for students to "play." These self-teaching boxes also handed students resources, scripts, and modeled the types of things I'd like to see them do.
However, as my students and I learned together, I saw real leaders like Trent and Tyler emerge to teach and mentor me as well. Virtual worlds have incredible potential but we have to continue to share our best practices to help those who are teaching learn more about how to do virtual worlds efficiently. I look forward to the day when I can build an area and give it to another teacher and vice versa as we create legacy projects that can be inherited and built upon to allow students to immerse themselves in deep learning that we can barely imagine now.
Vicki Davis is a teacher at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia and blogs at the Cool Cat Teacher blog. She and her students were recently named OpenSim Pioneers.
"Well, I started out rough, but I was also totally off-kilter. And then, within the first two minutes, I started hearing rumblings. And then laughter. The sounds were completely irrelevant to what I was saying and I was devastated. I immediately knew that I had lost the audience. Rather than getting into flow and becoming an entertainer, I retreated into myself. I basically decided to read the entire speech instead of deliver it. I counted for the time when I could get off stage. I was reading aloud while thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts about myself and my failures. I wasn't even interested in my talk. All I wanted was to get it over with. I didn't know what was going on but I kept hearing sounds that made it very clear that something was happening behind me that was the focus of everyone's attention. The more people rumbled, the worse my headspace got and the worse my talk became. I fed on the response I got from the audience in the worst possible way. Rather than the audience pushing me to become a better speaker, it was pushing me to get worse. I hated the audience. I hated myself. I hated the situation. I wanted off. And so I talked through my talk, finishing greater than 2 minutes ahead of schedule because all I wanted was to be finished. And then I felt guilty so I made shit up for a whole minute and left the stage with 1 minute to spare."
Why were they laughing -- someone wanted her to slow down? What did she do? She sped up because no feedback mechanism was in place. Additionally, sexual slurs began smattering the backchannel.
When I use backchannels in presentations there are a couple of guidelines that I think are a good idea to do:
1) I don't like the backchannel on the big screen. Period.
It leaves people out in the audience. I was moderating a backchannel like this at NECC and was LAMBASTED by an angry person who didn't even read the comment I made and wouldn't listen otherwise. She couldn't respond and so hijacked the Q&A part of the conversation. I felt badly for her but felt a lot like Danah Boyd did in her current blog post.
Honestly, it was the worst presentation experience of my life and I played a bit part which was escalated to a HUGE part. I felt like Danah, wondering if I should even be presenting at all. It was unfair to those in the audience without a laptop and couldn't follow the stream and it was unfair to me as the moderator who had a comment totally misread! UNFAIR!
It would take something HUGE to convince me otherwise. Level the playing field or whatever, if you are presenting you are NOT in the backchannel and the backchannel can become a BACKSTABBER that you cannot answer unless you have someone moderating the channel and providing you with feedback.
If you have it on the "big screen" have a backup slide or two and be ready to pull the plug. Just be ready.
2) All presentation backchannels should have moderators.
Chatzy rooms, etc. - this makes sure that what is happening is OK and also allows the speaker to turn to this person and say "Hey, what is happening in the backchannel" and get feedback! If Danah had had someone to give this feedback during her speech, it would have allowed her to slow down.
When I have backchannels, I share the link on my slides and turn to my moderator(s) - {if more than 100 people I usually have 2} and ask what is happening and what questions they have. This is a GREAT way to include an audience with laptops while not making the others feel too left out who cannot respond because of the digital divide.
3) Backchannels Should be Part of the Presentation from the Speaker
The speaker should know about it, understand how it is going to work and be on board with what is happening. Period. Speakers are paid a lot of money to do what they do and if something goes wrong with the PRESENTATION it is on their shoulders and their reputation is at stake. (Here are the slides I use when sharing about how backchannels are to be used.)
4) Twitter makes a poor presentation backchannel.
I think chat rooms are definitely my favorite way to backchannel - everyone can participate and also you don't end up with the 140-character truncated version of what people were really trying to say.
If you truly participate in a Twitter backchannel it also causes a Twitter flood and if you follow your unfollow stats like I do -- if you backchannel in Twitter too much - YOU WILL BE UNFOLLOWED, temporarily by some and permanently by others. Actively backchannelling in Twitter will annoy your tweeps and could cause you to become marked as a Twitter spammer - it is not a good idea to do.
Really, a chat room is so much better for this anyway because it can be archived and allows more meaningful conversation and more extensive replies. Twitter has a place but deeper connections can happen.
5) Backchannels Should be Intentional
My goodness - slapping together backchannels without a plan and without communication with the speaker is RUDE. It doesn't make for a good conference and is just plain tacky. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Everything in a presentation should target towards the goal of the presentation and conference. Backchannels can be very useful when in a workshop, in small open source lab settings, or when you're trying to facilitate conversation.
My Take on Danah's Bad Day
One of my dear friends, Anne Bubnic, emailed me to let me know what happened to Danah. She was at NECC this year when my horrible Backchannel Bad Day happened and I'll tell you what - it didn't matter that I had 12 pretty good presentations at NECC -- the 13th one was very unlucky for me and made me feel like a total L-O-S-E-R! Totally. It was awful.
It didn't matter what anyone else said, it was one of the worst presentation experiences of my life.
Danah Boyd, I'm going to tell you something.
#1 You are brave.
Thank you for openly speaking about how you felt. And you don't need ot make excuses for anything, being backstabbed by a backchannel that you didn't really know was there and having no conduit for feedback to you on the podium is totally the wrong way to do this!
There are enough people who have worked through the pedagogy of good backchanneling that we should be able to have some good backchannel guidelines that work for speakers so they don't have to write in their contracts that no backchannels are allowed!
#2 Keep on plugging!
Plug ahead - keep going. My heartbreak over Kathy Sierra's experience with cyberbullying was that she STOPPED. We as women must show we are especially resilient. (Which is why when I received death threats on this blog that I didn't stop here!) But we also have to have supportive families, who usually react by wanting us to quit!
You know that there are things worth dying for. Freedom. Purpose. Cause. And my goodness, although I wouldn't want to die for my blog, sacrificing pride and going right back out there after a horrible experience is the kind of "dying to self" that I think is appropriate.
Don't quit, Danah. You'll come out stronger!
#3 You are now an ambassador. Use it Well.
Just as Kathy Sierra carries a lot of weight on cyberbullying - you can now speak and carry weight on backchanneling and how it can be best used. There are many people (like me) who would be willing to sort of codify some backchannel suggestions or guidelines or some alternatives that have worked for us so we can share them with those considering doing it.
You know if this happens once, then chalk it up to learning but this is NOT the first time it has happened. It angers me that we haven't learned from the humiliations of other speakers and improved how this is done. The Web 2.0 Expo organizers should be embarrassed that they didn't have better communications with you on this! It is a way NOT to do a conference.
Who wants to pay to go see speakers humiliated? If they want to do that, there are plenty of TV shows that do that - my goodness!
OK, so my little tiny thoughts are added to the cacophony, but Danah, I appreciate your sharing and your thoughts. Thank you for sharing your perspective, this is something I think I should do more next time when I have things happen, I guess, if appropriate.
Keep on going and moving ahead. In many ways we're still moving through the "Wild West" phase of the Internet, but you know what... you're still standing.
Keep on going and perhaps one day our paths will cross. And sometimes the very worst things that could ever happen to us, can end up being the best. The spotlight is not out on this one, my friend!
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Connecting globally can give you some disconnection too!
