Bronwen Clune on Heutagogy

Heutagogy is the process of allowing learners to decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn it and when they want to learn it. It enables the students to become responsible for their own learning. The project aims to use Web 2.0 technologies to engage and motivate the students and then mentor and support them while they complete a project based outcome. The word for today is heutagogy. Read more about this from Bronwen Clune!

what you bring forth will save you

"If you bring forth what is within you", Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, "what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Sounds like a riddle right? But it's actually pretty simple. The potential to free yourself --- or ruin yourself--- is entirely up to you. And just maybe instead of focusing on the destination, we ought to look at the journey. Jodi Picoult - from the interview with the author at the end of The Tenth Circle.

Weikert: Happy frog

Weikert: Happy frog Originally uploaded by shersteve Are you sitting happy like this frog? Content to be where you are. There maybe something preparing to disturb the water and rock that leaf that is so comfortable. What have you learned today to prepare you for the new world? Jump over to the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog and see what is happening there.

K12 Online Conference - "Playing with Boundaries"

Boundaries? There are boundaries? Oh, those are opportunities! The “K12 Online Conference” is for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.” The conference just announced their line up of speakers and presentations. The presenters by strand are: Classroom 2.0: Silvia Tolisano “Travel Through Space and Time” Drew Murphy “Step by Step- Building a Web2.0 Classroom” Chris Harbeck “Release the Hounds” Vance Stevens “Motivating Student Writers by Fostering Collaboration through Tagging and Aggregating” Wendy Wolfe “If All My Classes Did This” Konrad Glogowski “Assessment and Evaluation” Anne Davis “Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools” Dean Shareski “Design matters” Jeff Utecht “Sustained Blogging in the Classroom” New Tools: Liz Kolb “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools” Frank Pirrone “Collaborative Concept Mapping - Breaking the Bounds of Location and Time… for $0.00 per Seat” Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr “Flat Agents of Change” Anne Davis “Learn to Blog : Blog to Learn” Jason Hando “LMS 2.0 - Engaging Learners Using More Advanced Techniques and the Odd Mash-up inside Moodle” Sharon Betts “Oodles of Googles” Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez “Second Life: K-20 Educators Exploring Virtual Worlds - Panel” Kurt Paccio and James Gates “The Electric Slide! Twenty-First Century Style” April Chamberlain “Trailfire” Professional Learning Networks: Jen Wagner, Cheryl Oakes, Vicki Davis, Sharon Peters “Webcasting for Educators: Expanding the Conversation” Brandi Caldwell “Creating PLE’s with TLC” Kevin Hodgson “The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology to Tell Stories” Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Thomas Locke “Building Online Communities for Youth” Jeff Utecht “Online Professional Development” James Folkestad “Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities” Sharon Peters, Vincent Jansen “Building a Yardstick for PD Success: Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Web 2.0 Personal Optimized Learning Environments” Vinnie Vrotny “Expanding Horizons - Engaging the Adult Members of your Community (Teachers, Administrators, and Parents) through the Use of Personal/Professional Learning Networks” Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover “EdTechTalk: A Network of Homegrown Webcasters” Obstacles to Opportunities: Patrick Ledesma “The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools” Ben Wilkoff “Starting From Scratch: Framing Change for All Stakeholders” Karen Richardson “Crossing the Copyright Boundary in the Digital Age” Shawn Nutting “Creating a Paradigm Shift in Technology” Lisa Durff “Pushing the Envelope or How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools on a Shoestring” John Pearce ”Me blog? No way!!!” Sylvia Martinez “Web 2.0 Share the Adventure” Joseph Bires “Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0” Sylvia Martinez “Challenging Assumptions about Technology Professional Development” Check out the full posting on conference blog.

Choices for 100 Bloggers

The theme for the month of July is choice over at 100 Bloggers. Phil has set out the objectives. Now what shall I choose to write about? Stay tuned here, and I'll let you know when it is ready.

Podcasting Info

I get asked from time to time about what I use and how I do my podcast. This is an updated attempt to describe what I use and how I do it. Equipment I use one of two devices for my recordings. 1 - I obtained an MP3 at PodCamp Boston from Adam Weiss who was making podcasting starter kits available. It is an iRiver MP3 player with a mic and an instruction booklet that Adam wrote to walk you through the set up of the iRiver device. Adam blogs and podcasts at Boston Behind the Scenes and at Adam Weiss Podcast Consultant Adam has a good posting on mic placement The kit details can be found here 2 - I also have a headset for the computer which I use to make the Skype phone calls that also records very nicely directly with Audacity. I use a Plantronics DSP-400 Audacity is open source “free” software that manages the audio creation and allows for editing with far more capability that I currently know how to utilize. You can also use your phone. It will work nicely to create the "in the moment" environment. Adam has a good posting on mic placement Other sources of podcast info Online MediaTips The PodCamp Boston wiki has information from the sessions held last year Check the schedule to see if there is a PodCamp coming to your area Podcast Content An overview of all that I use to blog can be found here As an update to this posting from November 2006. I have created a formal pod cast for Passionate Runner. It is registered with a couple of pod cast directories including iTunes. I started an oral history project recording my father telling the stories of his life; Jerry's Story. This is not yet registered with iTunes but it is due to be. I have a poetry podcast also in the works. I'll update this when that is ready for prime time. Visit the podcast directories listed below http://www.apple.com/podcasting http://www.podcast.net http://www.podcast.com http://www.podcastalley.com http://podcasts.yahoo.com http://www.podzinger.com

Diploma

Diploma Originally uploaded by shersteve Is that all you get from Harvard? No, not really. The network created by attending and completing this program is immense. Connections are important. But with all due respect, Harvard is not the only place to make connections. Do you leverage your connections?

No tire swing today

No tire swing today Originally uploaded by shersteve The tire swing at Winthrop House, Harvard University, was pulled up and out of the way to layout the tent for the commencement activities for the Class of 2007. It is good to see that even a "stuffy" institution like Harvard allows their students to have some fun.

Law and Implications for Bloggers

A good common sense reading of 12 points that apply to bloggers as we navigate the law of the land with what we do today. Found this via the IWDaily newsletter: Titled "12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs To Know," the piece goes well beyond just trotting out the normal platitudes about the ways that laws governing traditional media relate to cyberspace. Instead, in plain, nonjargony English, the authors lay out the potential problem, explain the current law, and provide helpful hints on how to stay out of trouble. Ambiguities in current law are carefully documented. This is required reading for any blogger or indeed anyone involved in creating content for or managing a Web site. Read all the details here.

May Day - look for goodness

Today is May 1, may day. May flowers are blooming here in New England. Look for goodness around you. Look for good news at the Good News Network. Look, see, learn... And then share what you have learned with someone!

forts and boxes

"I became aware of another variety of playacting several years ago. A graduate student at Leslie University made an appointment to see me. When me met, Mark tolld me that he had taught at a Montessori school nearby. He said that he was intrigued by something he had observed during the children's lunch hour. Both boys and girls would go into the woods and build makeshift "forts" out of tree limbs, rocks and brush. ... I was indeed intrigued by the idea of forts because it was a facet of child life that I knew nothing about, despite many years in the field." From The Power of Play by David Elkind As much as I loved the book, this is one section I found surprising. David, where have you been studying kids at play to not know about forts or about related structures that kids love to build? I recall using blankets and pillows on our bunk beds to make a private play space. It became a fort when one of my brothers or sisters try to enter. We moved a couple of times and each time my daughters and their friends loved playing with the moving boxes. On the last move here to Franklin, the arrangement of boxes; large wardrobe, big dinnerware, and smaller book boxes all became quite elaborately connected with Duct tape. There were doors, windows and tunnels. Then the outsides were decorated with markers, the floors were covered with extra area rugs or old towels. It became something of a kids Taj Mahal made of boxes. And what family has not seen some little kids opening presents on either their birthday or around the holidays, where the kid has been more enthralled with the wrapping paper and the box than the toy itself? Sometimes the simplest box can become the most fabulous toy! When was the last time you played with a box?

ordinality

"The next stage of ordinality comes from children's being read to. When children hear a story several times they learn the order of the words, and want to hear them again and again. They are acutely sensitive to this order and get upset if it is not followed exactly." From The Power of Play by David Elkind I can attest to this from experience with reading to my daughters. We had a routine for Allison and Carolyn to each pick a Golden book to read before bed. Some nights, when we had time, it would be two or more. Some nights we picked something other than a Golden book. There were periods of the same book (for what seemed) weeks on end. I know I can still pick up the "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear" and get back into the flow of reading it like we did once upon a time. Little Red Riding Hood was also a favorite. When we found Jim Trelease's Hey! Listen to This: Stories to Read Aloud, we also found that there were variations on this classic tale. Lon Po Po is one the girls liked but from the Trelease book the favorite was far and away "The Gunniwolf". The Gunniwolf story provided repetition which the girls enjoyed, and variety when they let me. The first time repeating the story, it had to be exactly as the original. The second and third time as well. By the fourth time, I started to stray a little and the "pit a pat" of Little Girl's footsteps started to venture off the trail. Initially, my girls would have none of this variation. I had to stick to the book. Gradually, they found that going off the trail could be fun. They found that they could suggest something and sure enough, the "pit a pat" would take Little Girl there. Of course, the wolf's "hunka cha" would follow but that was only natural. Alas my girls are young ladies now, they don't fit in my lap together anymore. We still do read together for special times (like Christmas). If there would be one single thing a parent should do with their children, for my own experience, I would recommend a routine of regular reading.

playful handle for lapses

"Young children have the same problem with many other rules we try to inculcate, such as putting their toys away, picking up things they have dropped, not getting up from the table, and so on. If we appreciate that these lapses reflect intellectual immaturity rather than stubbornness, or rebellion, we can handle them in a playful way. When we do this the child is more likely to learn the rule than if we criticized the child for something he cannot help." From The Power of Play by David Elkind David goes on to mention a few alternatives to using this playful approach. As parents, we need to be mindful that they (as children) are intellectually immature and that the best approach is the playful one. If you chose the punishment route, you are just starting on a path of more escalations which are doomed to failure because the child is intellectually immature. They don't comprehend the rules. They are looking to play. If you play along with them and set the rules by playing, there will be successful development of the behavior you are looking for.

Review: The Power of Play - David Elkind

The Power of Play by David Elkind is an insightful book. We all recognize that our children are the future. How do we help them learn well? David writes: "Learning is most effective when it involves play, love, and work. ... Children are not naturally motivated to learn from formal instruction. This motivation comes first and foremost from the ways in which literacy, math, music, and sports are introduced. Formal instruction is work. Parents and teachers are most effective if they build on children's love of stories, contrasts, rhythm and rhyme, unexpected facts, and humor. If we introduce literacy and numeracy with the use of these techniques, we build on children's spontaneous motivation and learning interesting and fun. At the same time, we also win the child's respect and affection and thus make the instruction a matter of play and love as well as work." Can we also apply these best practices on how they learn to how we learn? Aren't we still kids in some ways? In many ways, yes. I think if we look at how we learned best, we will recognize the same combination of play, love and work present at those key learning moments. If these components were there, then in order to continue to learn, we should try and replicate the same combination of play, love and work in all our learning situations. I would suggest that this combination of play, love, and work is what is behind the efforts of Sandra Dickenson and selearninggames is what is driving the efforts of the Joyful Jubilant Learning group is what is motivating the folks to create PodCamps There maybe other examples. These come to mind from activities I have been involved in. I recommend this book to all those wanting to know more and especially to those who appreciate understanding how to learn. For parents in particular, David closes the book with suggestions on how to beat the system. You can create opportunities to play the "Dumb books Caper", the case of the missing use, how to break the report card code, and tips on how to utilize the neighborhood tutor. These tips are worth working your way through the book. They will be fully appreciated (and balanced with play, love, and work) by the time you get to the end. Trying to get ahead of the "game" by going directly to the end defeats the purpose as you'll have missed the all important framing. I have written a series of posts around other quotations from this book. The series is collected here.

The Power of Play - Quote Series

The following posts were centered on quotes from The Power of Play, David Elkind, Ph.D. play, love, work iconic literacy the diamond test skill mastery and innovative play cooperation, competition The full book review playful approach ordinality forts and boxes sharing passions sharing experiences

Skill mastery and innovative play

Once children have mastered a skill by repetitive play, they want to innovate and push the limits of their newfound skill. Watch a child learning to climb up the top of a slide and go down. Initially the child will repeat the process over and over again. Then, extending the limits of what he has learned, the child may try climbing up the slide rather than the stairs; some children try going down on their stomachs. Once children feel confident walking, they want to run and to jump. In the same way, an older child who has learned to ride a bike will then experiment riding without hands, going on one wheel, and so on. Adults too, when they have mastered a skill, want to push the limits. That's when skiers are likely to break a leg. From The Power of Play; David Elkind, Ph.D. Doesn't this resonate? Doesn't this ring a bell? How many playgrounds or groups of kids have you seen where this has occurred? How many times did you do this yourself as you grew up? Do you still do this now? If you have achieved mastery, do you push to the limit? This is NOT a bad thing. It is a natural thing. Let's look to take advantage of it.

the diamond test

Earlier I made the point that children's verbal facility often gave a false impression of their level of mental development. Language simply develops more rapidly than thought. The test I proposed was to ask the child to draw or copy a diamond. This task requires the age of reason. In order to draw a diamond, the child has to understand vectors --- the idea that one and the same line can move in two directions at the same time. This is the same issue we have seen over and over again as separating the child who has attained the age of reason from one who has not. In drawing a diamond he child has to make the line go down and out at the same time, and that is a problem for the presyllogistic child. Many highly verbal children have great trouble copying a diamond. From The Power of Play; David Elkind, Ph.D. Dolores, my wonderful wife of 25 years (this August), is in her joy each day teaching kindergarten. As we were discussing this quote, she said something interesting. She doesn't use the word 'diamond'. They prefer to use the mathematical term rhombus. The shapes she has for her friends to work with are either big rhombus or little rhombus. They also use hexagons, trapezoids, circles, and squares. I wonder: the fairly catchy TV and print ads "Diamonds are forever", will these kids understand? If not from the class lessons, maybe from other sources? Hmmm...

iconic literacy

... what we are seeing, particularly since the advent of computers, is not so much a new way of thinking as a new form of literacy --- iconic literacy. In many respects, the new media have reintroduced us to the rich world of pictorial icons and memorization that dominated the preliterate world. An icon is more than a picture or drawing because it is functional and is used to perform some task. You just have to look at your computer screen desktop, your cell phone, your BlackBerry, or any computer game to recognize the extent to which icons permeate our world and our thinking. In contrast to adults, who have to struggle to remember what all these icons mean and do, young children are preliterate and have an intuitive grasp of, and memory for, icons. This intuitive iconic literacy may be one of the reasons children take so readily to electronic media. Whether this form of literacy supports, inhibits, or has no effect on print literacy is yet to be determined. From The Power of Play, David Elkind, Ph.D. This helps to explain the youthful advantage to figuring out icons and the hesitancy of adults to interact with the same icons. It also raises questions on how you can introduce new icons. The icon needs to be in the context to be used. It needs to be representative of the action you must take and also indicate the results you will get. That is, do this and you will get what you want (search results, next page, bigger picture, etc.) This is where design, research, understanding the user, and the situation will definitely come in to play before hand. If you rush this, you'll fail and maybe loose the chance at winning the user. On the other hand, working with some "friendly" users can help to figure it out before putting it out for the "real" test.

Lessons from the Icicles

Icicles Originally uploaded by shersteve. The front porch railing has new ornaments this morning. The melting snow on the roof dripped over the edge and fell to the railing below gradually, drop by drop, forming this series of icicles. If the melting was allowed to continue (the roof is south facing) with the air temperature stil hovering around the freezing mark, these icicles would continue to grow downward and then outward. If left long enough, they could fill in the gap between the ballisters, creating a frozen window. Alas, this may not happen today. The south facing may heat up too much to allow this phenomenom. I admire Natures persistence. It will drip, and form, and continue to do so as long as the conditions allow. It will not give up because it will be too warm today or if it were to realize the action would be futile. Are you as persistent in your learning? It only takes a little effort each day to be open to learning.

accidental

lots of things happen by accident, some by luck, I guess it all depends on your perspective. I wrote about preparation and work this morning. I was writing about an "accidental yogist" and instead of saving it in draft, it got posted, by accident? I can't wait to see!