Transparent Learning

Recently I traveled to Australia, which entails, at least from my part of the world, 33 hours of travel (counting layovers and one 14 hour flight). Although I think of myself as a seasoned traveler, I worried about how I would "endure." My husband has traveled much more extensively than I have (he has only one continent left - Antarctica - before he has been to them all), his recommendation has always been to take less, not more. If he had his way, I'm sure we would have only brought enough stuff for 2 days and washed every other day, but I digress....

I had been interested in eBook readers for awhile, but this trip seemed like the perfect catalyst to see if I would really use one. Luckily, the library at my university has a lending library of eBook readers with various titles, including the Kindle & Sony reader, that I was able to use for 1 week to see if I would invest $300 in this device.

Now there have been multiple reviews of eBook readers, of the Kindle and Sony devices, of the DRM issues, etc, etc, etc. But I needed to decide what was good for me, my reading habits, my travel needs, and my bank account. In the end I settled on a Kindle, and with a few reservations it has been a truly transformational technology. And its not for the reasons I thought it would be.

The Kindle is transformative to me because of its ease of use. Its ability to decide to read a book, and buy it within the same minute. To read a 800 page book (which I am now) while lying in bed without a neck cramp. To stop reading one book and pick up another with ease.


And that is what makes technology transformative - when I don't really even think about using it. I just do because it makes sense. When we talk about being relevant to our teachers - this is what we mean. Technology no longer is an afterthought - but the first thought. There is no way to think of doing something without it.

Oh and as for my trip to Australia, I walked on the plane with just my purse - which had my Kindle and my iPhone (for movies and music). It was a freeing experience...

After almost 2 1/2 years of using Twitter personally, my college is finally to the point of implementing a Twitter account. In the begining I was completely hesitant, but after the popularity of our Facebook Fan page - I believe we are ready to start with Twitter (ncsu_ced). NC State, especially the techie side, has been twittering for a while. They've even created a great page http://twitter.ncsu.edu/ to aggregate all of the "official feeds" from the university. Yesterday, I attended a university training about Twitter, as well as some guidelines for having an official Twitter feed. Jason Austin, Tim Jones & John Martin.

Now we currently don't have any "official" guidelines, but they did have a few recommendations. High on their list was looking at the University of Florida's social media guidelines (PDF), which really showcase best practices.

Twitter — Best Practices
Writing and Engaging Followers
• Post regularly – Three to four tweets per day. Provide consistent, ongoing and relevant content. Committed, ongoing effort over several months.
• Be retweet friendly — Limit tweet characters so that your message can be rebroadcast or retweeted. This will allow your message to be virally sent out and still refer to your original site.
• Retweet — Retweet relevant material from UF and external sources. It builds a
relationship between other media sources and followers and establishes you as a valuable source of information.
• Acknowledge followers — When possible, a direct message thanking a follower for following your account builds rapport.

Standards
• Account Name — Name of profile should reflect name of UF name/unit, not the person updating feed. Use the website and profile description to add further content about your unit and its mission.
• Bio Information — Provide account owner/manager name in your Twitter bio - this provides transparency and accountability. If you use an application like CoTweet to allow for multiple managers, develop a standard of signing tweets so individual manager's contributions can be quantified.
• Following — University Twitter feeds are encouraged to follow the feeds of other University units.
• UF Policies — All produced content must adhere to current UF policy, including (but not limited to) the Acceptable Use Policy. Always remember that as an official UF Twitter account, you are representing the University.
• Registration — Register with Web Administration in order to be added to a list of official Twitter accounts. This will provide a means of gaining followers and will also be an official verification of UF affiliation.

Branding
• Avatar — Create a branded avatar that represents both the University and your unit.
• Background — Develop a Twitter background that reflects your University branding and that of your unit.

John Martin from OIT had some guidelines about purpose. He suggested that you consider not only your audience, but also categorize what you want to tweet about - if it doesn't fit into those categories - don't tweet it. His are:

• Advertising
• Announcements
• News

We're getting our feet wet with what we want to accomplish with Twitter. I personally am trying to figure out where my personal account ends and the college one begins. I'm hoping that some tools like Seesmic will help me keep up with the multiple accounts.

How have you handled school accounts?

A few weeks ago it was Open House on NC State's campus and for the first time I was asked to talk about the technology we have at the College of Education. I dutifully made my "Presentation Zen" style PowerPoint and showed up for the rehearsal. I had completely forgotten that I had taught the other presenters how to make PowerPoint Zen-like and they wanted to know why I wasn't push the envelope! I was even challenged to use "something like Prezi" to make a big splash. Now I already had my presentation finished, so I kept that as my back-up and decided to try out Prezi.

First of all, I found Prezi to be unlike any other presentation tool I had ever used, and I mean that in a good and bad way. For the first time in a long time I found myself going through the tutorials and watching the videos to see how this thing worked. It was almost a blessing that I had already done my PP, because without that organization I would have been lost. Prezi really does force you to have an outline before you start. Once I got going it was fairly easy, but it still took a while to work out the kinks.



My lessons learned are:

1. I tended to use words more with Prezi than I typically do. But words almost as "art."
2. Images that do not have hard edges, or have a white background that matches work better (Think every image of a Mac you've ever seen :)
3. You can group objects utilizing frames, otherwise it just zooms into one object in particular
4. When you rotate an object on your grid, that is what causes the camera to rotate and zoom. In other words, it may be angling to the left on your grid, but during the presentation it will zoom and look upright.
5. The Prezi style doesn't fit every presentation

The last lesson is the most signifigant for me - there are times when Prezi really just won't organizationally work. I really like using more visuals, and that just didn't seem to suit this program. I still want to play with it a bit more, and I do have to say that the "Wow" factor during the presentation did make it worthwhile, but "Wow" factors fade eventually.

On a side note, several furture students and their parents came to talk to me about Prezi, and one student had even made one before! How cool is that!

I have been a bit missing from the blogger and twitter world lately. I'm not sure if I just needed a break, if the begining of the semester was just too much, or if my upcoming trip to Australia (more later) was too daunting. I have had so many blog ideas, but never a time to write them in a timely fashion. I promise upon my return to the States, I will be a better blogger, really, I will!

Now onto the fun stuff - I am going to Australia!!!! The frequent flyer miles of my lovely husband are taking the both of us to Australia for 17 days. We plan on splitting our time between Sydney & Melbourne and everything in between. I *hope* to blog our adventure (depending on Internet access) at :

http://bethanyandbrenttraveltooz.blogspot.com/

Wish us luck and will talk to you all soon!

Although I love my job, and feel that I am extremely fortunate to be in the place that I am, but I miss having a classroom that is my own. Every once in awhile I get the opportunity to work with middle or high school students again, if only for short periods of time, but this summer I had a classroom again for an entire week. It was good for me to experience the good and the bad of classroom management, technology issues, and all around classroom antics.


But mostly what I loved was working with kids to BUILD & CREATE something! I am a creative spirit at heart and find that I learn more about geometry by making a quilt, or more about Physics by making a car. This summer I had students for an entire week (in daily 1.5 hour sessions) and decided to build mousetrap cars. I wanted a hands on project, but also one that required an understanding of science to work well. I found lots of examples on building MouseTrap Cars, or them being used, but found very few sources that were rooted in the scientific process (that I didn't have to pay for). The best video was actually from a John Hopkins University - and worked as a good introduction or inspiration for the class.



As a subscriber to Make magazine, I had known about Instructables, but found their tutorial invaluable. My goal was to make these cars out of everyday household items for as cheaply as possible. I didn't want to go the "pinewood derby" route and have blank kits that are offered by several companies, including Doc Fizzix.

I found that the PBS website Games People Play also gave me a good place to start, but really didn't focus enough on the science, while the Boise State University Engineering project had a bit more than I wanted. In the end I checked out some books from the library, and used the Vernier Logger Pro video software to collect data (I mean I can't do a lesson without technology, now can I :) for acceleration & velocity.

All in all I ended up having a wonderful time, I got to really connect with a group of kids, and hoped I showed them a bit more about what Physics is all about. I created a Wiki page with my lesson plan at http://bethanyvsmith.pbworks.com/mousetrap and have all of my resources linked at http://delicious.com/bethanyvsmith/mousetrap.

I highly recommend you build a mousetrap car, either for class or just for fun!

I missed the Sunday Keynote of Malcom Gladwell, so my first real day at NECC was on Monday. Since I was staying for friends I navigated the metro in from Maryland to the convention center. I was extremely grateful that NECC not only has an online planner, but that I can subscribe to the feed on my iCal & iPhone. I didn't have to carry my program around, I could just look at the calendar on my phone & see where to go. The only drawback is that it doesn't designate who the presenter was - so it was hard to decern where I wanted to go.

My first day was mostly tied up with meeting with the University of Texas at Austin about their College of Education 1:1 laptop program & meeting with my fellow presenters for our Ning presentation the following day. I atteneded about 30 minutes of an Ian Jukes session - but he said "Digital Natives" just too many times for my taste. I missed Scott McLeod's session, that everyone raved about, but luckily it was recorded on http://www.istevision.org/



The best part of the day was getting a chance to meet Lee & Sachi Lefever of Common Craft and talk about their creative process as well as how their videos are used in schools. I also discovered that Lee grew up a few miles from me in Kernersville, NC before moving to Seattle, WA - whereas I was born in Seattle & moved to Winston-Salem. It was great to talk to them about their travels and their process and I hope they enjoyed their first education conference!

One of the reasons I love EBC is getting to meet with the people I follow and talk to on Twitter. Jon Becker is one of the those people I was looking forward to seeing and talking to face-to-face. His Edubloggercon session reminded me of what I wish every graduate course had been like. An informed and honest discussion about the state of education. Specifically his session was titled, "Where School Reform Meets Madonna: Can public schools fundamentally reinvent themselves? (Jon Becker & All the Cool People) [NOTE: anyone who mentions a tech. tool has to stand on a table and sing "Loving Feeling"]"

Because even though technology is what this conference "is all about" - really it is about changing our schools. We had an honest and frank discussion about the changes we wanted to see in education and the reality that it may not come to pass. What interested me is all these pockets of innovation that never really seem to be accepted into mainstream education. That innovation is not a new idea and so many of these ideas about changing the status quo have been around. So why not? Can change come from the inside? Does there need to be an outside event? Do we need another Sputnik? And if so - does that leave educators with our hands tied behind our backs? It was almost a bit disheartening, but then you realize that all the people in this discussion are "Fighting the good Fight," and I like to think we are making a difference, but can we make systemic change - I'm not sure .

Oh and Kristen Hokanson mentioned a tech tool - but didn't have to sing :)