Tech Ed-dy

I was aware that NECC was happening this week and feeling a little blue that my current circumstances prohibit me from just picking up and flying off to another cool conference.  Then I came across David Warlick’s great blog post called Gathering the Information at NECC, which explained how I could set up a search on Technoratti for the NECC09 tag and then subscribe to the search results via RSS.  It was like importing the NECC conversations into my Google Reader.  I was amazed at how many people were blogging their notes and reflections on the keynote speakers and individual sessions.  Here are some of my favourite finds from NECC 2009:

EdubloggerCon 2009 Reflections by Jeff Utecht.  I thought this post gave a very good overview of the main topics of discussion and some insight into the dynamics of EdubloggerCon.

Putting Gladwell’s Compensatory Model into Practice or NECC 09 Keynote Part 2! by Liz Davis.  This post describes the results of a brainstorming session aimed at figuring out what the Compensatory Model would actually look like.  Some interesting ideas and a nice way to move the conversation forward rather than getting stuck on whether or not he should have talked about Fleetwood Mac for most of the keynote.

Classroom 2.0: What is Web 2.0’s Role in Schools? I don’t know how Wesley Fryer managed to capture so much of the conversation in his notes (he obviously types faster than I do)?  He does a great job summarising the key points from a panel discussion that included Chris Lehmann, Julie Lindsay, Darren Draper, David Jakes, Steve Hargadon and Sylvia Martinez.  He also does a great job summarising the Tony Vincent presentation called Do So Much with an Ipod Touch.  The amount of details in his posts is amazing.  I suspect it has something to do with the meticulous way he prepared for NECC.

Thank you to all the NECC attendees who so willingly shared their sessions and reflections online.  I really enjoyed following along.

There have been a bunch of thoughts swirling around in my head over the past week that I really have to write down so that I can move on to other things.  My experiences as a teacher involved in the Digiteen Project this year have gotten me thinking alot about how to engage teenagers in meaningful discussion about how they interact online.  While I had these thoughts swirling around in my brain I listened to an interesting and maybe somewhat related podcasts.

The story was about my.barackobama.com or myBO.  I might get my facts a little mixed up but the gist of the story was about an incident this summer when a large group of Obama’s supporters disagreed with the way he voted on a particular issue to do with Phone Service providers and Phone Tapping.  They formed a group on myBO in opposition to his vote on this issue.  What I think was amazing is that Obama had three of his advisors go on the social network and they spent 3 hours taking questions from this group and explaining why he voted the way he did.

What I think is significant about this from the perspective of using social networks in education is the way dissenting opinions were engaged, not shut down.  Often as a teacher I find that my first reaction when faced with a situation that I am uncomfortable with or that I think might be troublesome is to use my teacher ‘power’ to shut down the situation, thus making it difficult for much learning to take place.  There is certainly a time and place where this type of response is appropriate, but I am becoming more and more convinced that the way to help our students learn the skills they need to safely and competently navigate online social realtionships is to be willing to engage them in dialogue.  Even if it is difficult.

This year I decided my grade 9 class would join the Digi Teen project, an amazing global collaborative project dreamed up by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. As participants in this project my grade 9 technology class is engaged in researching different aspects of digital citizenship and collaborating with peers from other countries to edit Wiki pages. They are also participating in a Ning Educational Network within which they can get to know their teammates and other students from around the world. It is the experiences both I and my students are having on this Ning that I want to share.

Story 1 – “The teacher and the chat room”

I was the most nervous about involving my students in the Ning as I knew that it had potential to ring alarm bells with the parent community at my small private school on Vancouver Island, and I took pains to do my due diligence in informing parents and having conversations with my students around issues of personal and private information, digital etiquette stereotypes. I also made sure to check in on the Ning periodically to make sure everything was ok.

During one of these visits I stumbled upon the Ning chat room and realised that somewhere around the world there was a class of students on the Ning and in the chat room. Most of the chat seemed to be the students saying hello to each other in various ways, but a couple of the comments were quite inappropriate. So, being an administrator on the Ning I did what I thought was best and deleted the chat immediately.

But the comments kept coming and I was pretty sure that some of the were meant to be hurtful to others. So I decided to join the chat. Heart racing I entered a comment something like ‘Hey guys I’m a teacher over here in Canada and I’m concerned that some of what you are typing isn’t very appropriate”. I knew it sounded pretty stuffy but was at a loss to express myself properly in such a limited medium. As was expected l got some quick replies along the lines of ‘we are just having a bit of fun’. So I started typing away trying to express myself when I started getting replies of a much different nature. More apologetic and thoughtful.

What had happened was that their teacher in Australia had gotten wind of the chat and had taken the opportunity to talk to the class about it. What a learning opportunity! To follow up I started a discussion thread on the Ning asking ‘Where do you draw the line between having fun online and being innapropriate’. And I was really pleased to see some of the thoughtful replies posted by some of those Australian students.

So what is the take away lesson from this experience. I think it is that there is a lot of value in allowing students to make mistakes in an environment like the Ning where they can make mistakes and learn from them. I was nervous about the Ning component of this project because of the potential for my students to make mistakes on a public site, but if they are never given a chance to really fully participate in real world experiences then how are they ever going to learn how to navigate these experiences successfully.

Story 2 – “The war in Iraq”

This story is much shorter. One of my students started a discussion thread on the Iraq war. A tricky discussion to have when schools from both the USA and Middle East are involved in the project. The response she received from a girl in Quatar was incredibly mature and balanced. You can find it here if you are interested.

This short story has really reinforced for me the power of these global collaborative projects, and it’s not over yet. I wonder what other teachable moments and wonderful connections will happen next?