Google+/-

So, what are the negatives of the new Google social network? Is it all pluses? Nothing is all positive. So, because I am not yet invited to the Google+ party, I started looking for those who are looking critically at the new cool kid on the block.

One such person I found was Ira Socol in his Eduptopia post on this matter. I found Socol's perspective to be interesting but not really where I would sit in the opinion camp. Socol's hesitation with celebrating a (soon-to be) new social media leader has largely to do with his concern for the groupings, Google+ calls "circles", Socol believes these could lead to greater segregation and elitism when he writes,

"Social networking sites like Google+ present powerful classroom opportunities, but they are also designed to create hierarchies... The power to "friend" and "unfriend," to draw groups which include and exclude, is a difficult thing to resist, online or off, for people who have very little power over any other part of their lives. And so I thought about bullying as I began to use Google+ over the last few weeks. I thought about it every time I dragged a name into one circle or another, or chose not to do that at all. I thought about it when I left a trail of who I'd been "hanging out" with."

While I share Socol's concern regarding the potentially harmful use of social networking, I am again newly motivated to guide and equip young people in skills of critical thinking instead of condemning new media. Google+ will boom or bust based on an incredible number of factors, very few of which are related to being nice or inclusive to all. This argument against social networks could also be made against books, they don't necessarily promote unity or understanding unless the author instills such messages.

While Socol does not condemn Google+ entirely based on the concept of grouping friends by circles, it seems to be the sticking point. He writes, "Circles have no sides, except inside and outside. And the students in your classrooms will be on one side or the other." I appreciate the poetic device here, but must contend that life does not have sides either. I think that human being DO in fact live in circles and Google+'s articulation of this is an opportunity for critical discussion and learning. In my media literacy course, we openly discuss the differences between the criteria used in choosing "friends" and "Facebook friends". I've enjoyed the puzzlement on students faces as they attempt to articulate their criteria, and the friendly debates that take place between students (friends or not).

I welcome the "new" circles component of Google+ as it simply asks people of all ages to reflect, choose, and practice different levels of relationship as opposed to "friend" or not. I think this can be a healthy, thoughtful action that students can learn, adopt, and apply to other spheres of life. Opps, I got 3 dimensional there.

Google+'s circles, much like any other media tool, need not be necessarily exclusive or bad. Circles can combine, overlap, and compliment one another to create a much richer realistic picture of life.

"Christmas Bokeh 2" image by "no3rdw" http://www.flickr.com/photos/no3rdw/3131851573/

Google+ or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Bomb

Online profiles...

How many do I need?
How many do I check regularly?
How do I know which one is best?

These questions come at dizzying speed as I try to grasp what Google+ really is in relation to me. And the questions really don't stop.

Is Google+ just another "next big thing" in a long line of things to come? Maybe.
Goes Google+ seem like it combines a number of awesome things into one big awesome thing? Yah.
Do I have the desire and time to change over to a new social network? I don't know.
Could I save time by being on an improved social network? I don't know.

I've been reading about Google+ most of the afternoon and still have a very limited grasp on whether I want to be on it. That said, instead of reading ad nauseum, it's possible that a more practical use of my time would be to sign-up and explore it? I'll give it 30 minutes, then 30 more, then...

Please post any comments you have regarding Google+, I am all ears.

Are You Listening?

It's an important question at times, "Are you listening?" It's also an important skill, as the old saying goes, "We've got one mouth and two ears because listening is twice as important as speaking."

As an ELA teacher I try to develop all 6 modes of communication: reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. However I am keenly aware that I (and the world at large) have favourites communication modes. My students have their own favourite communication modes like texting and IM that are sometimes challenging to more traditional modes. And I dare say that across our society the mode of listening is largely undervalued. I must admit that in planning my courses, listening is often an underlying skill to others. By its nature, it does not compete for the attention of others like speaking or representing, but is more akin to reading and viewing. Interesting enough, listening is often a skill that people wish others were more proficient in, but how well do you know your listening abilities or care to improve them?

In a recent TED talk, Julian Treasure presents 5 exercises to improve the quality of listening. I found the video version to be thoughtful and an excellent resource for my classroom practice, but also for any person in any role as well.

The first of Treasure's exercises calls for 3 minutes of silence a day, to allow your listening abilities an intentional rest and recalibration. The second exercise he calls "channel listening", referring to the channels of an audio mixer. The goal of this exercise is to identify each sound on it own as if it were an individual channel. The third exercise Treasure calls savouring sounds or "the hidden choir", where an individual focusses on a commonly heard or mundane sound, but tries to delve deeply into the richness of that sound experience. The fourth exercise refers to changing listening positions, examples of which are active/passive, reductive/expansive, and critical/empathetic. These positions are like changing the intent or purpose of your listening. The final exercise involves the acronym RASA which stands for the 4 phases of quality listening: Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask.

If listening is an underlying skill that is required for success in countless other fields of skill and knowledge, we need to address and strengthen our students' listening. I am very interested in including some of these exercises in my classroom this coming semester, as they appear to be simple but are more so simply important.

Challenging for Change

I found Chris Lehmann's recent "Education is Broken" speech from TEDx Philly both inspiring and challenging. Lehmann's main beef is with the state of western education seems to be schools' institutionalization for the production of future workers, and the subsequent removal of individuals' interests and passions in favour of broad curriculum. While I haven't heard of any district heads specifically target the removal of passion for their schools, Lehmann focusses on this resulting from heavy curricula and an outdated assembly line modal. He suggests there are many well-meaning but ineffective teachers but that is not necessarily the fault of individuals involved with education, but the system itself. Here are a couple of my take away thoughts culled from Lehmann's presentation and other web presences: His blogPractical Theory and the school at which he is principal, Science Leadership Academy.

People want to follow their talents, interests, and strengths. I agree that this notion of individual choosing should be at the center of a modern education. Nearly everywhere else in our lives, people get to make their own choices. What do you want to be when you grow-up? Do you want fries with that? While school is a place where young people develop a general set of skills, the specific, specialized tasks that are often stressed when teachers merely "cover curriculum" do not apply to the vast majority of students' futures. Lehmann's S.L.A. school appears to avoid that pitfall quite well.

Creation is ownership of learning. Early education does a great job of creating learning products, then we begin to take our learning too seriously and focus on comprehension by recall and standardized testing. Creativity is supposedly one of the most important and sought-after employable skills and yet we reduce the opportunities for students to create, except for "the creative" (arts) types. Making students accountable for demonstrating their learning through the creation of "something" is another of Lehmann's school's central tenants.

Good stuff in my mind. Good, challenging, seemingly systematically opposed stuff. Well... if radically improving educational practices wasn't challenging, it probably also wouldn't be worth it either.

Admongo

Admongo is a real treat for teachers who want to discuss media literacy and advertising in their classrooms. One issue I often come up against in such an undertaking is students' diverse understandings and vocabularies relating to ads. The Admongo website was created by the Federal Trade Commission, which may sound boring, but is anything but. The Flash heavy interactive sight allows young people (or young at heart) to create a character/avatar to explore the land of Admongo. There are various areas and missions requiring students' characters to locate, read, and analyze a number of advertising media.

I think this site could be wildly popular in the classroom and the key is its game playability. The look and feel of the entire environment is a gamer's world and kids will likely be instantly able to jump into the action. Once the interface has kids hooked, the content is made much more accessible. Types of media, their varying purposes, techniques as well as vocabulary are all explored in a non-linear game format that is inherently challenging, but not too difficult to navigate.

The site's additional resources are offered to parents and teachers including a number of free lesson plans (see my previous post), videos and media examples. The media examples have to be my favourite add-on to the game, as the advertisements, ranging from print, web, and video, all are creative and well-developed ads for teens.

My only beef with the whole site is its heavy reliance on Flash content, which will not play on our class iPads. Still, with so much exploratory gaming and solid content for critical thinking I much prefer Admongo to Angry Birds anytime. Following some play time on this site, students would be better versed in the language and ideas of advertising. Thank-you FTC.

Check out one of the ads below (all are downloadable/embeddable at Admongo)

Collegiality Redefined, Scrutiny Maintained

Collegiality is something I truly value about the teaching profession. As a student teacher, I recall being amazed by the range and reach of collegiality. I would arrive at a school a novice and stranger, marvelling how many seasoned veterans would openly share their resources and insights. Occasionally I would also be confronted with a hoarder, someone determined to keep a good thing all to themselves. I quickly picked which side of the fence I would stand on and vowed to be a resource sharer for the entirety of my educational career. Being the father to two young boys, sharing is a topic I get reminded about a lot.

But until recently, my sharing practice has been relatively localized. Resources would be shared with teachers within my department, or acquaintances from within the division. Much to my delight our school division recently began the use of a portal site which allows teachers to post and exchange resources they have developed. But these days, I really have to ask myself if I want to limit my idea fishing to only my division? Why not cast an even larger net?

Well, the immediate response is that the Internet is swamped with things calling themselves "resources", many of which are bunk or simply not applicable to my instructional goals. As an example the query, "Teaching English" results in Google returning about 40,600,000 results (0.15 seconds), so that's a bit of an overload.

Thankfully Todd Finley's recent post on Edutopia entitled, Radical Curriculum Sharing at the Open High School of Utah, gathers a number of valuable links that promote what Finley calls, "drag-and-drop curriculum planning". And while I am excited about the lesson plan swap opportunities being highlighted, I feel like there's still no fast-track to classroom use. As much as I trust my department colleagues across the hall from me, I've never been able to take another teacher's lesson plan and use it verbatim. This I suppose is the part of sharing resources that will always be the same with me, I critically scrutinize everything (my own work included).

While completely re-inventing the wheel is sheerly redundant and overly time-consuming, tweaking and refining an existing wheel makes for a smoother ride. Looking out at the horizon of increasingly good educational resources, it seems to me there's a lot of wheels out there. Maybe they've always been out there rolling around, and the simple practice of sharing online seems to make it easier to kick tires and see which will work.

Photo by Mykl Roventine http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/3265009300

Old School Vs. New School

Martin Weller's recent Ed Techie posts build a strong argument for digital scholarship but still leaves me questioning whether the old guards of academia will really ever give equal footing to tweets and journal publications? At this year's EdMedia conference in Lisbon, Weller had ten minutes to argue for the following motion: "This house believes that in the next decade, digital scholarship (in open journals, blogs, and social media) will achieve the same status in academic settings as traditional scholarship".


As his narrated slideshow demonstrates smart graphics and thoroughly interesting ideas, it also relies entirely upon a great deal of imagination. Now don't get me wrong, I love imagination but if this was his side of a debate, his argument's thrust seems to be, "maybe it's possible?" Pretty light stuff for a debate.


To clarify, I am very much on board with the seven pressures supporting the presentation, I dare say even gung-ho about them. I just wish that Mr. Weller had come packing some heavy duty data set that would silence the staunch old critics. I know, ironically it may seem that I'm still drawing rather heavily on an old-fashioned scholarly model, but conclusive proof is not the sole property of traditional academics. I used to be a bit more radical with my ideas, but these days I would go against Audre Lorde's notion that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House". I would even say that the publication of articles in support of digital scholarship in peer-reviewed academic journals would be a good idea for the cause. Perhaps this is beginning to become a splitting of theoretical hairs.


I think that the day will come when many in academic circles will recognize digital scholarship. Will it be in the next ten years? Will it be across the board? Based on Weller's argument and my own skepticism, I'd say probably not. Honestly I also think the debate is a moot point, as the critical mass for the digitalization of many traditions is building even in academic circles. When will the digital wave crash over all opposition? I can only say that it will be before some another wave rolls in to change the entire landscape once more.


Digital scholarship debate

View another webinar from Martin Weller