Passion

The edchat topic from yesterday was all about passion and how do we encourage it in teachers. I hadn't had the opportunity to really participate in an edchat discussion lately (and if you haven't I highly recommend it), and this question in particular resonated with me. One of the reasons that I love my job, is that I am not only allowed but encouraged to engage in activities I am passionate about. I think what the heart of our discussion was the lack of freedom and the stifling of creativity that teachers feel in their schools. That all to often teachers try new things that don't go smoothly and give up. Tom Whitby counteracts with this that we should embrace failure and learn from them. That it is this challenge that we should be embracing. This immediately brought to mind a completely unrelated experience:

Imagine Bethany as a teenage softball player, she is good, but lacks confidence. She can hit home runs, but the minute the count isn't in her favor, she crumbles. With two strikes down, her Dad yells from the crowd, "You hit like a girl." In her head, she yells back, "What is that supposed to mean?!?!" as she hits a home run.

Now, my Dad wasn't trying to put me down for being a girl (in fact he is one of my biggest fans) but he knew I needed to get mad. That if I was just fighting with myself I would lose, but that if I had something to push against I would demand to be heard.

I'm lucky, I am in a situation where I can do what I love and advocate for change in the education world. But I'm not in the trenches, I'm not fighting it every day. But I have been there, and maybe Tom is right we need to be "undaunted by failures. In fact, a passionate teacher should be spurred on by defeats."

Educon 2.2

I promised myself I wouldn't read or post any blogs until I posted on my Educon 2.2 experience. So with my Google Reader Feed exploding, I am finally writing about my experience. And Educon 2.2 is definitely more about experience than anything else. There is something about being in that building and meeting everyone Face-to- face that is beyond anything I have experienced in a long time in education. But let me back track - what is Educon?

Educon is the brain child of the principal of The Science Leadership Academy (SLA), Chris Lehman, in Philadelphia. SLA is a charter school associated with The Franklin Inst and is an example (to me at least) of how charter school's can change the way we think about education. Educon 2.2 takes the best part of a conference - the conversations and focuses on them. It reminds me of how we say that edtech is about "Content not Tools."

Friday started with a very insightful personal tour from one of the students at SLA. Muhammad was so excited to show me around his school, and what he was passionate about. To me that is the best testimony you can have of any school - kids excited to share what they are doing and happy to be there. And isn't that excitement, that enthusiasm we have for school - don't we want our students to have that as well?

I had an incredible time at the rest of the conference discussing "What is Creativity?" or "What can we learn about learning from Play?" and even "How to stump Education Lawyers" but what it came down to me was the conversations I had with other both in and out of sessions. My Dad used to tell me how important it was to "network," and I never really believed him until I started creating and cultivating my own PLN. And what I've discovered is that these in-person connections at places like Educon make my online connections much more richer.

In the end - I think it is my interaction with people, especially Muhammad that I will take back with me. I believe my friend Jason said it best when he says,

What will you do tomorrow in your schools to help those around you ‘defy gravity? Will you merely return to school re-energized by meeting many of your PLN face-to-face looking to improve what you do? Clearly, that is one reason we attend a conference like EduCon but what about those around you? Will you reach out to the folks in your department, down the hall, even in a neighboring school across the district or in your state?

Ignite Raleigh 2: I survived

So one of the drawbacks of winning the Ignite Raleigh 2 voting is that you actually have to present, in front of people that you don't know (turns out there were 700 of them)! Now most of my job involves pushing faculty and students outside of their comfort zone, but it has been a long time since I felt like such an outsider. Now don't get me wrong I teach and present for a living, but my audience members are normally either 1) Captive, i.e. students or 2) Educators that want to hear what I have to say. Last Wednesday I felt like a Freshman on The Debate team, geeky, but not geeky enough.

Now don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful to have been apart of Ignite Raleigh 2, and my fellow speakers were fantastic, but they all seemed to know each other. It was more like crashing a reunion of social media experts, and to top that off they made me go first! However, the advantage of going first is that 1) I got it over with quickly and 2) I got to enjoy all the other presentations - which were almost all extraordinary.

Some of my favorites included:

NerdGirls Unite! Fact: Women Don’t Have to Be Lame by Charlotte Moore

I was completely impressed with Charlotte's confidence as much as her subject matter. As a "Nerd Girl" myself, I was excited to hear what she had to say and thought she did an excellent job.

Mayberry Modernism – Why the Triangle is America’s Hotspot for Way Cool Houses by George Smart

Did you know that Raleigh has the third largest concentration of Modernist houses? I didn't and now I totally want to buy one! George did an excellent job of telling a story about our area that was both interesting a compelling.

13 Reasons Women Should Take Up Boxing by Lisa Creech Bledsoe
Lisa aka (@glowbird) was one of the first people I followed on Twitter that was from Raleigh and not in education. I have always enjoyed her tweets and was interested to meet her in person. She was really nice to me back stage and a genuinely kind person - that is not afraid to beat you up in the ring. I may just have to take up boxing!

Overall, I really did enjoy my experience, but I'm not sure I would do it again. I'm appreciative of everyone that gave me their support and to the group of friends that showed up in person. We had a small edutweetup prior to the show where I got a chance to meet and talk with @PCSTech, @kellyhines, @msstewart , @cliffims, @ericcole, @keithledford among others. I am very appreciate to them for taking my mind off of the rest of the evening.

I hope to post the video soon. Right now the Ustream channel doesn't have the first two presenters. But you can watch it here just the same. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5167957

Ignite Raleigh

I have put my money where my mouth is and have thrown my hat in the ring (wow 2 cliches in the first sentence already :) to present at Ignite Raleigh.

I'm a fan of the Pecha Kucha style that Ignite Raleigh promotes of 5 minutes/20 slides. I've worked with a few classes to use this style for their final project presentation and it has worked great - if you combine it with Presentation Zen. So that is my presentation topic

Presentation Zen or How to not to be boring while presenting at Ignite

I was surprised at the lack of overall design and presentation style at last year's Ignite - so I hope my presentation will change all that :) So if you get a chance and are so inclined, please vote for me! Also - NCTies peeps - it is the Wednesday night of the conference, maybe we could get a group to go over?

The transformative technology of eBook Readers

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...

Setting up a Twitter account for your school

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.

Tweeting For NC State University

View more documents from Jason Austin.

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?

Using Prezi to create a Presentation

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!