Thoughts on Readings - Week 1

I thought Prensky's readings deserved a post of their own. This post will capture my feedback on the rest of the readings for my Digital Media in the Classroom course for Week 1.

Week 1

1. Lamb, Brian. "The Online Classroom is about to become a noisier place".
Slightly dated, but the gist is that audioblogging and podcasting will offer a new medium for educators to "transmit knowledge and foster communication". Agreed. This is already being done in a variety of ways. Teachers listen to podcasts like EdTechTalk to learn about new topics and strategies in the classroom. Students listen to podcasts that they subscribe to and download from iTunes. Teachers are encouraging students to record their own podcasts to build frameworks for creative writing, express interests in various topics and more. To hear some examples, watch my video on Social Networking in the Classroom.

2. Budin, Howard. “Self-Publishing on the Web and Democratic Education”, Chapter 16, Social Studies and the Press.
Unfortunately not available on the web for you to access, so I'll mention the highlights here. Basically Budin argues that the ability to self-publish on the Web offers a unique opportunity to teach students about democracy in another way; a way that goes beyond traditional lectures on government and citizenship. He speaks about Dewey's conception of a democratic education followed by a description of tools for self-publishing. These include things like blogs, discussion boards, cartoon creation sites, sites that solicit youth wriing, shared writing sites, wiki's and sites that allow for student work to be published. But why are students interested in self-publishing? The same reason I am and you probably are and many others are too.
a. Free expression (a highly democratic value) - "I can reach the world".
b. Self-discovery - Discover your own interests and learn to value your own point of view.
c. Anonymity - Express yourself honestly and forcefully, without being judged.
d. Blending of communication and expression - Provides instanteous feedback.
e. Participation - Ability to share and get involved.
I personally have experienced many of these since I've started self-publishing, especially free experience and self-discovery. Budin explains that educators will need to use these tools in certain ways to teach elements that are essential in a democratic education: communication, information gathering, decision making and diversity. What was most interesting to me were some of the ideas that Budin suggests for using these tools in the classroom. Obviously educating teachers on these tools is the first step. Beyond that he suggests enhancing in-classroom discussions with asynchronous online discussions outside the classroom, creating class blogs and websites and maintaining online personal journals, working on collaborative projects and goal-oriented real world involvement.

3 Rosen, Jay. “The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism”
This article, like Budin's chapter, discusses how self-publishing is a democratic form of journalism. Specifically focusing on blogs, Rosen illuminates how journalism has changed with the advent of personal blogging. Both formal journalistic reporting and blogging record history in the "struggle against forgetting". One of the advantages he highlights is that amateurs and random citizens can "speak in the same public space" as professional journalists, CEOs and celebrities. At least for now. My question is: Why for now? Will that change? If Obama could change long standing rules and keep his Blackberry, why would a simple thing like shared blog spaces change? Weblogs give anyone and everyone who wants it a voice to be heard thoughout the world. I believe it can, and should, stay that way.

4 “Personal blogging and eduation".
I wasn't too impressed by this reading. It basically describes what a blog is, how personal blogs are differentiated from others and briefly highlights that blogs will be useful in the educational realm.

5 Alan November, “Teaching Zach to Think”.
A scary but relevant account of the dangers of assuming that everything you find on the Internet is true. This was a great reading to help educators to help their students learn to critically assess the sources of information they find online. There are three evaluation methods that we, as educators, need to teach students to use when referencing online material.
a. Purpose - What is the goal of the website? Make sure students not only know the purpose, but also know that it may not be immediately obvious.
b. Author - Is the author an authoritative source? Make sure students check Google or other search engines to evaluate the background of the author. What are they qualified to speak on? Do they have biases that cloud their judgement?
c. Meta-Web Information - Is the site valid? Where does it fall in the context of other sites? Make sure the students know how to tell if a website is really a personal home page. Also, make sure they research what others sites link to it. They can do this by entering link:url into the search string at AltaVista.
Lastly, encourage students to look "beyond the Internet for sources of authentic information" include 1st person accounts where possible.

Stay tuned for more reviews over the next few weeks.

My Online Presence - Part I

I knew that my online presence was fairly large but until I gathered this lengthy list of social sites for my Digital Media class, I don't think I realized just how visible I really am.

Here's where to find me and my view of these social media outlets.

Blogs
Gadget Girl's Education 2.0 (Blogger) - Everything having to do with educational technology.
Rockin' Robin (customized Blogger) - My Sun Microsystems blog focusing on Web 2.0, cool stuff that Sun does and more.
Kinderguarded (Wordpress) - The blog and website for my current venture. Kinderguarded is an online safety consulting firm helping families and schools to keep kids safe in the digital world.
Lloyd's Land (Wordpress) - A blog I maintain for my Dad - hosting podcasts of his childhood. He only managed to record one before he passed away in Sept '08 but I promised I'd keep it going and add to it.
On Blogger vs. Wordpress - I really like the ease of use of Blogger and the ability to add lots of different widgets to the site quickly and easily. I chose Wordpress for Kinderguarded solely due to it flexibility in creating multiple pages for a more complete web site approach. Adding new posts in both is very easy, especially when compared to the customized Blogger used at Sun which requires knowledge of HTML to post anything pretty or useful. I also wanted to note that there are some educational specific blog tools that are worth investigating. Edublogger is a for-fee blogger site for teachers and students. Classblogmeister is a free alternative. I have not used either one personally but know of teachers who have and they love it.

MiniBlogs
Robin611 (Twitter) - My main twitter feed, especially focused on ed tech tools.
Kinderguarded (Twitter) - Twitter feed for online safety.
Web2Sun (Twitter) - A twitter feed I just introduced to discuss Web 2.0 at Sun Microsystems.
On Twitter, Twhirl and more - I'm addicted to twitter. I have been since day one. I immediately saw the usefulness, particularly from a professional development standpoint, having made connections with other Ed Tech professionals, teachers and more. I'm still trying to figure out where Twitter might be effective as an educational tool for students. Twitter tools that I use include Twhirl - a desktop application for twitter which really helps me manage the influx of tweets (at least when I'm at my laptop). I have Twitter updates sent to cell phone for robin611 - but unfortunately can't set it up for two twitter accounts to the same number. My twitter feeds are also widgets in 2 of my blogs. Lastly, I use MoTwit on my Palm Centro. It pales in comparison to TwitBerry but I hated the Blackberry and love my PalmOS. I also use TweetScan to find any tweets on educational technology, online safety or other interests. Lastly, because I was tired of missing so many potentially good tweets containing links I wrote a Yahoo Pipe (Twitter_URLs) to capture these links and send it to my Google Reader. Since I thought this might have some value to you, I've published the pipe for your use. You just have to login in to Yahoo, edit the pipe to include your username and password, and select your favorite reader.

Facebook & more
Robin Wilensky - Facebook for friends.
Robin Goldfarb Wilensky - Facebook for work.
On Facebook - Are you sensing a pattern here? I like to keep my online presence separated by life function. No offense, but my work colleagues don't need to know what I'm doing over the weekend or at night and my friends don't need to be bogged down by the trillion Sun annoucements and events that show up in the mini-feed. BTW, I'm also addicted to Facebook. I love reconnecting with old friends and distant family. I've also created a Page for Kinderguarded - become a fan! I also have a MySpace account and a myYearbook account but to be honest I only use these to understand how kids might be vulnerable online and explain to parents how to safeguard the accounts.

Ning - Make your own social networks
Kinderguarded Online Safety - No surprise here. This one I created.
Digital Dialog - Encouraging regular communication about safe, appropriate, and fun uses of digital technologies.
Classroom 2.0 - The community for educators using Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies!
College 2.0 - Online Learning and Web 2.0 in Higher Education, social network with blogs, forums and RSS feeds
Passionate Teachers - A special group of teachers, who consider teaching as a mission and not just a job. Add to it your drop of knowledge.
Sun Alumni - A social network that I was asked to create to facilitate networking among those who were formerly employed by Sun. Yes, I still work there.
Sun-ISIG - A customized Ning site for Sun and it's work with Immersive Education.
On Ning - I have to be a fan of Ning since it was founded by Marc Andreseen, founder of Netscape. It makes a lot of sense to me to form social networks around topics of interest. It's kind of like a virtual Meetup. I've listed the Ning communities that I'm a part of.

Since this post is already quite long, I'm going to end here and pick this up in Part II. But, before signing off you might be wondering why I've labeled this as an Online Safety topic. The reason is that if you are going to keep yourself safe, you'd better start with knowing where you are online. First step: Google yourself. And, women - don't forget to also google your maiden name... :-)

Twitter Links for the Security Conscious

Addicted to Twitter

Great! But, do you know who’s following you? I mean, sure, you know their twitter ID but what do you really know about these people? Or, are they "people"? There are many direct marketers and other less-than-savory folks out on twitter. To protect yourself from these unfriendly followers, try using TwerpScan. The caveat is that you need to login to run this. Twerpscan will provide a list of followers they recommend blocking.

Another handy Twitter tool is TweetEffect. TweetEffect will let you know why people are choosing to follow you based on your latest tweets.

Lastly, if you want to check out the profile of a specific Twitter follower, try SocialWhois. For example, if you enter Robin611 (my Twitter id), you’ll see my self-defined Twitter description, what I’m interested in and where to find me online. SocialWhois is limited by the fact that information either comes from SocialWhois itself, Twitter or FriendFeed.

Teaching the Art of Kindness

Last week I attended the International Stop Cyberbullying Conference and one of the main themes was about whether or not we should be teaching things like kindness and respect in all grades, not just kindergarten or even elementary school. With the advent of the internet comes exacerbated problems like bullying. Except bullying in cyberspace can be done anonymously and is sometimes less obvious. The other big problem these days is kids wanting to "get famous" using iTube and the like by exploiting and bullying other children on camera.

So, what do you think? Should part of our jobs as teachers be teaching kindness and respect? Teaching kids how to be "famous" in good and productive ways like helping others? Take for example, TeenAngels. This is a group of teenagers (and Tweenangels for Tweens) who get educated on all aspects of online safety and then work on community projects to help spread the word to their peers. These groups have gotten lots of attention and met people like Oprah & Tyra. How about that for famous?

P.S. Lots of great educational resources for teaching about online safety and respect were shared. See next post for these great links.