Infinity

As I explored I could quickly see Wiki’s in my future. I also immediately saw that not all Wiki’s are equal; not everyone is using Wiki’s to their full collaborative potential, in some cases they seemed to act more like a blog than use the power of  the Wiki space.

I visited Small Stones first, a site made from an AP calculus class. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and felt as though it was true collaborative work with input from the teacher as well. The idea of creating a portfolio of work/ideas/information that is in a commons space and produced by the class is a very compelling use of a Wiki space. It was organized like a journal of the course with information about each lesson as well as links to key definitions and theorems. It was raw not polished and it was authentic. I could see how my students would use such a resource. We encourage collaborative work but that rarely happens outside of the classroom, a Wiki gives the potential for collaboration outside of the traditional setting.

All of the Wiki’s I visited proved to be quite different from each other. I looked at Math 12V Outcomes Portfolio, Kindergarten Counting Book, Primary Math, Welker’s Wikinomics and Grazing for Digital Natives.

In the Math 12V outcomes portfolio I found a list of curriculum goals with explanations and links to sample test questions. I think this one had been awarded. I did not see how it was utilizing the Wiki power but rather seemed a series of information links. The grazing for Digital Natives I found intriguing, it was a private site with a clever animated video at the onset, felt like a video game with characters but behind it there was a strong educator.

The two Wiki’s I visited for younger students ( the kindergarten counting book and the Primary math) I found different due to their audience and quite intriguing. In the Kindergarten Counting book I found a classes exploration of numbers from 1 to 100. I could see the evolution through the year as they progressed from 1 to 100 over time and see how the students ability not only to see big numbers but to organize them came through. It proved to be a fascinating portfolio of work over time.

I will publish this now but probably edit later.

Well, I have to admit I have not yet developed a good reading habit BUT in the interest of time I will comment on one feed  Fun with Acrostics which while amusing and sparked my interest I found it a dead end and was a little let down. perhaps there is more I am not seeing. I understand about reading the feeds but like with books ‘you cannot tell a book by its cover’ with feeds the title may lead you to a place you did not expect, sometimes better sometimes disappointing.

After writing this post I visited classmates posts for 7a and found remarkably few completed. I went to one woman’s blog which was very interesting on neuroscience and the next blog I went to I noticed they referenced the first I had visited and I was impressed that we had visited the same ones … then I realized there were not that many 7a’s completed to choose from, so it was not so astonishing after all.

I for one am ready for this snow to end and to get back to school! I cannot remember another time in my 47 years of ‘going to school’ in the North east when we have had 3 consecutive snow days!

In retrospect, I think I found this assignment on reading feeders to be the most grueling and the thing I have found that I have the least to say about (yet). I will keep feeding and reading (and deleting).

I can see both the benefits and limitations of RSS feeds. I enjoyed signing up for feeds but quickly realized that I had overloaded the feeder and it (or I) was about to implode. On the positive side, being able to keep track of various sites without visiting each is powerful, it is sort of like a much more powerful version of the old ‘abstracts’ from articles I read in College libraries but RSS feed leave everything at your fingertips and immediately accessible.

Among the any things I read I ended up spending some time with a feed from ‘free technology for teachers’ called Record Setting Earthquake Interactive Map . I could see immediately the possibilities within the ‘classroom’ and how this redefines the ‘classroom’. This feed had many additional links (and ads) which made it multidimensional.

I have read blogs before but this is the first time I have read several ‘random’ blogs in a row to think about them as pieces of reading and writing. I found it fascinating to hear the different voices come through in very different styles. On blog was very informal and ended up being written by a middle school student, another was extremely formal and basically an essay on better use of power point presentations, another was more in diary form.

The reading of a blog feels different in that I do not feel compelled to read from beginning to end nor to read sequentially in that way I am reminded of one of the first videos we saw in this course which referred to digital text as being nonlinear. I felt as though I was reading  in at least 3 dimensions.

The writing of a blog (by no means my blog writing yet) is therefore dimensionless with unlimited possibilities.

In reading the blogs I was also struck by the importance of the comments and often after reading the comments I had new insight into what had been expressed in the blog or even perhaps a different view on the topic than what had been expressed.

The blog that I found most ‘different’ and gave me greater insight into how blogs could be used to facilitate learning was SP -817 math blog ‘boeun’s scribe for dec 4th’. I saw in this that having a student scribe on a topic in this multi-dimensional way had profound possibilities for their own learning, but also the learning of others through the commenting.  I also found the blog Dear Kaia and Skyelar ‘this, this, that’ intriguing in how the blog was being used by a father and daughter not only to learn and explore but to record that learning.

Isn’t it interesting that we read before we write?

In our language acquisition, in my observations, we recognize and interpret long before we produce written words.

In the development of technologies over the years we seem to have ‘read only’ before we have ‘read and write’: CD players versus burning CDs, DVD players vs. recorders, the ‘world wide web’ vs. web 2.0.

I was struck by the comment in Steve Hargadan’s article “Web 2.0 is it the future of education” that the answer to information overload is to produce more information. That one comment resonated with me not only as simple and profound but also as absolute truth. I remember being told in school in the 70′s that I was growing up in the ‘information age’ and there was a sense (similar to today) that no one knew were this would head. I had the sense then that many had a sense of pending peril since there would be so much information and no way to manage it.  Well, Web 2.0 is the antidote, the cure for information is to produce more information.

After getting this assignment I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show, and while I have heard her say it before I was struck anew when she said something to the affect of … her goal was to create more (useful) information for us all in order to help us understand and interpret the existing information.

I have always thought of myself as a life long learner. I am eager to try new things but often get stuck in the old time trap, that is to say there are often so many things on my plate I need to make the time for the new things. That said, climbing Mount Everest is not in my future even if I had the time. Perhaps someday there will be a way through Web 2.0 to climb that mountain (whether figuratively or ‘literally’) while sitting at my dining room table or while tending my backyard garden.

When asked which habit was most important I left a voice thread on #7.5 “play” , I do believe that play and the ability to play is central to all learning and really encompasses the 7 habits discussed before it. When asked now to consider which habit is the most challenging, the easiest or more resonant and the most important for me in this course about web 2.0 I have to answer ‘play’ for all three. This is challenging since it requires giving real time to exploration. time is often hard to find and the learning and play can get short changed when there are other things weighing in on our time. ‘Play’ is most resonant because I thoroughly enjoy play and believe in learning through play and discovery; there is a lot to e learned from a good preschool classroom which encourages open play and provides a rich environment in which to play. ‘Play’ is most important to me in this course not only because it is te most challenging and most resonant but also be cause I believe it encompasses all of the others. To play is to accept responsibility for your learning, to view problems as challenges, to use technology to your advantage, to create a toy/tool box and to have confidence in your ability to play and learn. Play often involves collaboration which can include teaching and mentoring others. Play can involve beginning with an end in mind, but good play allows for changing and adapting as you play and allowing yourself to up in a place you may not have thought you were heading.

Play!