Finding time to write in this blog has not been easy lately. I feel like I have been blogging everyday because of responding to the forums and participant blogs. I was thinking that I should gather some of my responses to the forums and post them in this blog. I do enjoy the back and forth in the forums, but only one or two people read them. Many forum responses get buried 4 and 5 posts deep and never see the light of a flickering screen.
Many of the participants are feeling over whelmed and frustrated with the amount of information they have to process and the software they have to learn. It was a good move to make each session 2 weeks long, I knew that the newbies would need more time to work with each session. To be really effective this should be a series of workshops each teaching only one Web 2.0 tool. Each workshop should be 4 weeks. I would start with setting everyone up with Firefox and Google tools. Then Skype, so that we could use voice and video to teach the other applications. This should be a school year long series of workshops with enough flexibility to allow participants to proceed at their own pace. As teachers new to Web 2.0 get more comfortable with using the tools they will naturally have more confidence in learning each succeeding tools and become more independent learners. Isn’t that what we learned about good pedagogy in graduate school?
After I wrote this post I read Vicki Davis’s blog coolcatteacher.blogspot.com. For those who don’t know, Vicki and Julie Lindsay developed the Flat Classroom Project. Vicki’s blog post is call The 5 Phases of Flattening a Classroom. As I read it I realized this not only applies to student, but also to teachers. The teacher becomes a student when Web 2.0 tools are introduced and moving from the classroom level of connectivity to more complex levels will give the teacher more confidence, just like students. I find that the rush to get every teacher up to speed quickly with technology fails because teachers are use to knowing and becoming a student again means not knowing.
The answer is NO!, according to Alan November. Alan made this point at the MassCUE Technology Leadership Symposium on 3/19/08. An example of his argument is that he has not found any high school that has students taking advantage of the free online courses at MIT, yet over 9000 people in Pakistan are logged on to these courses at MIT.
Dennis Richards, the superintendent of the Falmouth schools streamed the keynote live and now has it posted on Ustream. The video is not that great, but the audio works and that is what is important. As we lean how to use these tool more ineffectually their quality will increase. So take a liste
I have been working on the edtechleaders.ning.com social network the last couple of days. It has been fun customizing it. I would like it to be a place the educators from the Web 2.0 workshop can continue the conversation during and after the workshop is finished. When the Web 2.0 group begins the podcasting session I wanted to have some examples of successful edtech podcasts. The Moodle does not really have a good way to do that, so I created a new tabbed page for Podcasts and then found a podcatcher to embed into the new page. I am very proud of myself for solving the problem.
Just in case you did not know. Edublogs has made it much easier for teachers to create student accounts and/or blogs. I wish they had installed this feature before I spent a day creating 45 student accounts, anyway it looks very easy.
If you have not read Chris Anderson’s article in Wired titled “Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” you should. His article helped me understand why so many Web 2.0 applications seem to be free. I understand how Google makes money, but how is WordPress and Edublogs, which I am using right now, making any money? Chris has broken this economic model down to six categories. Anderson’s thesis is that because the actual cost of transistors (0.000001 cents for each in Intel’s quad-core), storage (off the self terabite for $300, or 0.0000000003 cents/bite), and an over stock of fiber optics makes these cheap enough not to figure into the cost of producing applications or content. I rewateched Anderson’s TED talk in 2004 where he introduced the idea of the long tail, which I did not really understand untill now.
Freemium - the subscription model for web software and services. A “basic” version of a service or software is offered and the 99% who get this version is supported by the 1% who purchase the “pro” version. I am using a free older version of Camtais, the company is betting that some of use will want to upgrade and purchase the newest version.
Advertising - one of the oldest means of generating revenue. The most famous is Googles pay-per-click ads, and there are all the banner ads and pop-ups. With digital technology, companies can gather data that allows them to more directly target an audience and thereby spend money more wisely.
Cross-Subsidies - this is the loss leader mode. Buy one get one free. Make up in volume what you loose on the cost of promotion. Some musicians are now allowing fans to down load free music as publicity for a concert tour, or grow a fan base who will purchase future CD’s.
Zero Marginal Cost - when information distribution cost is so low that the economics of scale make it virtually free. People have been have been downloading music for free dispite the best efforts of the music industry. Some musicians have accepted the fact and are now giving away music to tap into the model above, Cross-Subsidies. E-books, articles, magazines publishing costs are approaching zero and digital makes it even easier to share.
Labor Exchange - you help me I help you. Google is giving away $144 million in 411 services to build a data base that they figure will be worth $2.5 billion by 2012. By using their service now you are helping them build that database. Digg and Amazon have rating services create value by either improving services or creating information they can sell.
Gift Economy - making money is not the motivation for all web content generators. The open source movement is interested in building well designed applications and seeing other use them. Wikipedia uses labor exchange, you add content and get to see your work used by other. Freecycle is like a giant yard sale, except no money is exchanged. The value is in trading ideas and goods.
I know you have wanted to learn how to do something with a computer application; found an instructional video and then been disappointed because it went so fast you had to watch it 4 times to lean how to use the application. Or, the sound quality was so bad you could not understand most of it. Or, the images were blurry, small, or had nothing to do with the audio.
I was looking for an instructional video about how to setup student accounts on Edublogs using Google. I did find 3 videos on YouTube, but they were so poorly done I could not use them. So I decided to do it myself. This gave me a good excuse to try out VoiceThread, which I have been wanting to do for a couple of months.
I use the Print Screen function, which is on everyone keyboard (and most people don’t know how useful it is). I then wrote a script and practiced it. Next, I up loaded the image files to VoiceThread. Once I had them in the order I wanted, I started recording the audio. It took a couple of tries to get the timing correct, but once I had the general idea of how to configure VoiceThread it went well. Take a look for yourself.
If you have been following the presidential primaries at all, you must have noticed the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. He has exceed most political “expert” expectations and has a real chance to become the next president. Even from a distance there is a feeling of excitement about Obama’s messages of hope, change and Yes We Can. Our friend Noreen worked for Obama in the New Mexico primary and when he visited there, Noreen reported that she had not felt that kind of energy about a politician in a long time, since the Kennedy brothers.
To get a sense of the power of Obama’s message watch this video. After you have watched it go to www.yeswecansong.com and read about how Will.i.am came to make the video.
In an article in Sunday’s New York Times Frank Rich writes about the how the Republican Party of old white men is out of step with the rest of the country. The conservative press have been waiting in the shadows for a chance to pounce on Obama. They think that by painting Obama with the plagiarism brush they will bring him down. No one outside of academia cares about who took lines from a speech. By the way the lines are from a speech by his friend Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts.
Obama is offering HOPE and a true since of we are all in this together, something the powers that be don’t understand and can’t offer.
At the beginning of the school year I decided that I would blog at least one a week and I was able to up for about a month and as I got more busy I blogged less and less. I still have plenty to say, but less time. I still don’t know how some bloggers do it everyday. I know they are teaching or are traveling so it must just be the commitment.
I have been developing a Ning - edtechleader.ning.com to use with the Teaching and Learning online course I will moderated starting on the 25th. I am starting to “get” what Ning is about and the power of social networks.
Some students in the PREP program blogged for the first time on Friday. They posted to blog at a school in England. I am not sure they understood what they were doing until they saw their post on the blog. I didn’t edit them and a couple were pretty rough. Many misspelling and poor grammar. I am hoping that realizing that hundreds of people will read what they say will at least get them to have a teacher edit the blog post.
I happen to download a podcast from Alan November’s Building Learning Communities 2007 conference. It was the keynote given by Dr. Yong Zhao, of the Univ. of Michigan. I had never heard of Dr. Zhao (in China is their sir name the first listed?) but I have listened to his podcast three times now and I have been taking notes so that I can blog more about what he has to say. Because he does have a Chinese accent the more you listen the more you understand.
When Alan intorduces Dr. Zhao he warns the audiance that their mind will be broken, and Dr, Zhao does have some mind bending ideas about technology, society and education.
I have been trying to transcribe the podcast, even if I only take down the key point it is tedious. So, trying to find a more techie way to do this I discover that Dragon Naturally Speaking, which I have installed, will transcribe an audio file. All I have to do is convert the iTunes file to an mp3 file. To do this I purchase on line a program that will do the trick.
I convert the iTunes podcast to an mp3 and have Dragon transcribe. It is an hour long podcast so this takes awhile. I come back to the computer after dinner and it is transcribing away, except that none of the text makes any sense. It is not even close to the podcast. So I guess I will have to go back to the manual transcription process, because I do want to get down in written form many of Dr. Zaho’s ideas.
So that I can say I am blogging every week I am posting. The end of the quarter always brings more work to do then time to do it. We have extra work to do this time and April, our boss, has given us an extra week. But, we still want to get the report card and quarterlies out as soon as possible. Melinda, Alison and I are still trying to figure out the best way to do this, maybe by the end of the school year we will have a better handle on it. I feel lucky to be working with two great teachers, and three great para-professionals.
The sign-up for the Web 2.0 online workshop is going great. There are 15 signed up in 4 days. If more than 20 sign-up may there is a way to run another session latter in the school year.
I have several blog posts in mind and hope to get to them this weekend. I have been re-reading The World is Flat, 3rd edition, and thinking a lot about where I was 3 years ago when I read the first version and where I am now.
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