Add a New Word to Your Dictionary — Skypecast

Back on July 10, I posted about the Alan November sponsored Building Learning Communities conference that ended yesterday in Boston. I was lamenting how much I wanted to go, and how expensive this conference is, and that it would be impossible for me to go. Woe is me was the theme of that post. But I report today that I indeed did get to attend this conference, though it was a “virtual visit.” What do you mean, virtual, you might ask. Well it appears the big bloggers of the blogosphere were already planning to make this an even better conference than the NECC 2007 conference. I did attend that one, and the big idea I walked away with this year was the POWER of tagging blog posts, pictures, links, or anything. There were so many attendees live blogging, tweeting, and even skypecasting sessions, that I was blown away! I was amazed each evening back at my hotel room at how I could log into my Bloglines and relive the days’ events, and even glean information from sessions I missed. Skypecasting was sort of introduced at NECC, and there is argument that it really is not even a term with a definition. But let me try to describe it. Someone begins a Skype chat while sitting in a session. Anyone with skype can join in, and all you need to know is who to “dial” or “look up” in your Skype, and request to join. This can be done in either direction, either from the originator of the skype chat or you. Generally the participants chat back and forth over the main points that the presenter makes.

So at the BLC conference, this was the biggest thing going on at each session. David Jakes, author of “The Strength of Weak Ties,” posted on his blog just before going to BLC in Boston that he planned to Skypecast many of the sessions he attended, and anyone interested in joining in could chat in. He provided his skype name and a rough agenda of what sessions he was attending.

So I took him up on his offer, and skyped to join into the chats going on. At different times there were as many as a dozen folks, some right there in the same room and some (like me) from all over the world trying to be a part of this wonderful conference. I met and made friends with some absolutely amazing people, like David Jakes (an instructional technology director from Illinois), Barbara Barreda (a K-8 parochial school principal from Los Angeles), and Ewan McIntosh (a consultant from New Zealand who says he specializes in being a teacher and a social media specialist!). [Correction July 22, 2007: Ewan McIntosh let me know he is from Scotland.]

What did take from my virtual attendance at BLC?
• Today’s students have the power of creativity in them
• My favorite session—without a doubt the Marco Torres one
• The tools more now than ever are available to tap into learning that is authentic
• Conversations and networking can quadruple the effect of presentations & professional development
• There are also several posts in my TechnoTuesday Blog about what I have learned, and I encourage readers to see that blog too!

I was absolutely amazed at Ewan McIntosh. I was involved in a group skyechat going on for the Mitch Resnick/Angela McFarlane Keynote, and before McFarlane, the second speaker, left the stage, Ewan had already posted a summary of both in his blog, posted pictures in Flickr, had participated in the skypechat, AND opened up an image editor to make nifty pictures for his blog posting about the conference! Ewan, who also presented, even blogged while presenting! Later on, I was involved in another session, and the presenters, Chris Lehman and Christian Long, were not only presenting, but in the Skypechat that was going on during their presentation! They were contributing to that secondary conversation, and even incorporating the commentary by answering questions or addressing points from the Skypechat. This conference has truly changed the way those who participated enjoyed the presentations. It’s one experience I will never forget.

Here’s how Ewan summed up the conference for Alan November:

The obvious remarkable factor is that this was not a ‘Boston conference’ as it had been in previous years. Through people making messages on the web and through their mobile phones on Twitter, to the scores joining in on seminars through Skype with their questions, arguments and counterpoints, from the comments on blog posts written in almost real time to the rhythm of the conference, to the many comments that will continue to discuss its contents in the weeks and months to come, this conference has been one for the (relative) masses.

I know this is a long post, and I apologize. But if there’s one thing I want readers to take away from this, it’s how to track conferences that you cannot possibly attend. Go to David Warlick’s Hitchhikr site, and subscribe to the RSS feed from the conferences you are interested. Its been almost three weeks since NECC, and there are still many blog posting coming out related to that one. BLC has a Hitchhkr feed too, and there are well over 1000 posts about that conference too. It’s great professional development that you get to pick and choose from. I also want to take this opportunity to publicly thank David Jakes again, for he made it possible for me to find a way to experience a great conference. Now if I could only find a way to document the hours of time spent reading, skypechatting, and posting reflective comments on blogs for renewal credits!

Written by Cathy Nelson

Alan November’s Building Learning Communities Conference Soon

Building Learning Communities Oh how I wish I could attend (or even afford to attend) this conference. It takes place July 18-20–just around the corner, and sinfully I’ve been coveting the sessions and assorted other activities planned for this conference. Alan November was at our last SCASL Conference just in case you are wondering who this man is. I’m a huge fan, and just read who is presenting! It is almost a laundry list from my aggregator!

Dr. Tim Tyson
Marco Torres
Alan November (of course!)
Ewan McIntosh
Marc Prensky
Will Richardson
Bob Sprankle
Dr. Mitchel Resnick
Dr. Joyce Valenza
Daniel Pink

Someday I’m going to skip NECC just so I can attempt to attend this conference. I guess I’d better start saving the $$ now, since it is expensive. I plan to follow closely using HitchHiker during this conference. I’m so glad there is a way to follow it virtually until I can attend as a real-live participant..someday.

UPDATE Monday, July 16, 2007: David Jakes is graciously offering to skype in friends so they can virtually attend the sessions he attends. I’m so on that!

Teaching Zack to Think: Developing Critical Thinking Skills on the Net – Alan November

Internet is the dominant medium of students for doing homework. We should be thinking about redefining how reading is taught since most students are reading online.

Question: When you do a search for November on Google, why is Alan November #4? We should be able to explain why this site is at that location as easily as we can explain why a particular book is on a particular shelf in our libraries. Dewey and the alphabet are important in storing and retrieving print – we need to know how the search engines work to help our students.

 Average person who does a search on Google just looks at the first screen – comparable to only looking at the first shelf in the library.

Good site to teach critical thinking about information is the martinlutherking.org site. (Note – this site is blocked in my district) Things to ask about this site:
1. Who put it there?
2. Who wrote it?

At the bottom of the site, it says “civil rights library” – actually put up by stormfront.org, a white supremist group. David Duke has a podcast from there?

 Who controls the information? If we can’t answer that, we are at a loss.

How do you find the author of a web site? Go to http://www.easywhois.com – copy and paste url, and it will tell you who the owner is. Each web site has to be registered and someone has to pay an annual fee to register the site. This site will tell you who the owner is.

In a book, there is a title page, and we teach how to find the author, publisher, etc. We need to know how to do a comparable skill on the Internet because there are no title pages on the internet. We have to unlearn some of the ways we have been doing things. You can’t go to the internet with a book mentality. You have sometimes have to leave the web site itself to find out who owns it.

Alan November believes the role of the librarian is more important than ever.

Comment by AN – of all the books published, most are terrible! After a huge gasp from the audience, he explained what he meant. Of all the millions of books published, we only select about 1% to purchase for our libraries. Up until about 5 years ago, librarians were trusted to provide books needed for information gathering, now anybody can go to the internet and look for whatever they want. Since we can’t “control” the access, we need to teach critical thinking. When “we” controlled the information, “we” didn’t need to worry about critical thinking. This is one reason we are more important than ever – we should be teaching critical thinking.

 How sites make the cut in google:
1st cut – domain name matches what you enter as a search term
2nd cut – name of the web site matches what you enter as a search term
3rd cut – content on page
4th cut – links coming into the site – the more the site is linked to, the more it goes up in google.

 AN’s site is http://novemberlearning.com/ 

There are two types of hyperlinks – first is the forward links on the web page, second is the back links that come into the web site that you can’t see.

Example, to find out who links to the martinlutherking.org web site, first go to www.altavista.com
Then enter link:www.martinlutherking.org into the seach box.

To narrow this search to find out if any education sites link to this site, add host:edu to the above search term.

With books, you just read the book – you don’t ask who else has read the book, but on the internet, everything is connected and you can take advantage of that connectivity to build patterns for analysis.

 Another example is to look for information about General Gage and the American Revolution in altavista. Most of what comes up are American sites. To get the British perspective, add host:ac.uk to search strategy. Interesting lesson would be to have students use skype to debate with students in Britain, record it, and post it on your blog.

 Audience discussion about all the sites that are blocked in schools -even this SCASL blog seems to be blocked by some districts. AN says we should write a memo to try to get unblocked, important to not give up this fight.

Talk to students about how everything on the internet is saved. Show Way Back Machine http://www.archive.org/web/web.php to demonstrate how all web pages are archived every couple of months. Remind students that if they put stupid things online, they will be haunted by the web pages forever! Be careful!

 Good search engine is www.answers.com only pulls from about 100 or so reference sources. One really nice feature is that citation information is at the bottom, and students can choose MLA format for bibliographies.

Dialogue with the experts @ lunchtime

Dr. Sam Hastings kicked off & introduced panelists Alan November and Stephen Bajjaly.  Alan demonstrated Skype — Cathy Nelson called in to him   Funny moment – real/virtual combo.  How do we introduce global perspective?  Demonstrated using host country in search (example — host:tr to limit to Turkey).

Question to panel: How do we as info specialists stay current? 
Stephen — Most professions are worried about this. Implication — lifelong learners
Alan — people are NOT lifelong learners.  Overseas he finds a hunger for learning new things that outstrips what he sees in U.S.  Rome??? Complacent???
(1) Change staff development:
No more teachers going to a tech workshop unless they bring 2 kids with them.  The teacher has to watch the kids learn.  STOP TEACHING TEACHERS TECHNOLOGY.  We have to teach teachers to manage kids using a lot of technology.
(2) Determine problems using data — apply technology to defined ed. problems. Ex:  don’t give a blogging workshop, give a workshop for math teachers on using blogging.
(3) Social bookmarking – del.icio.us  is an example.  Tagging (every kid becomes Dewey  
Philosophy — work of the individual becomes the whole.
Patty Bynum asks — technology is one part of public school system — curric design important — school culture important. It’s discouraging because we get excited about a new technology, but go back home to many other aspects of education.  How can we stay excited and current IN OUR REAL WORLD?
Stephen:  recognize 2 aspects of tech in schools — (1) what kids need to learn for real world and (2) student learning outcomes in other areas — technology is just a means to an end. What is the content? 
Alan:  Read Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink http://tinyurl.com/2bpy89 – go to Alan November Weblog <nlcommunities.com/communities/alannovember/default.aspx> to find the podcast in which Alan interviews Daniel Pink.  Can get on his blog, or via iTunes. (iTunes great resource for teachers.)

Question — where can you learn about these new social technologies?  -ask kids  -Wikipedia -professional journals & association as gateway to new things.

Ida’s Question to Alan — what types of audiences do you work with?
Involve students in teacher inservice.  Get parents to request access and technology and services.

Question: How to grab kids’ attention about what they post online?

Wayback Machine — Web pages are archived every few months.  Search and get URL for a page no longer available.  Type that URL into Wayback machine to locate in their archives.  www.archive.org   Message to teens:  Whatever you put on the Internet will follow you for the rest of your life.

Dr. Sam:  Keep this discussion alive!