The TWAIN blog

I heard the story of these three grey whales in church this morning. The story was summarized from a book on worship by Craig Larson so I am not direct quoting it but summarizing the summary I received this morning.

In 1988, three grey whales were trapped under ice off the coast of Alaska. You may remember this item in the news as there was such an effort to help the whales move out to free waters. Under ice, the whales had no where to come up and get air. They did manage to find one small hole in the ice where they were gathered to share the air.

The whales were gathered around a small hole in the ice which they were using as a breathing hole. The rescuers drilled a hole in the ice about 6 feet down to expose another hole 20 yards away. The whales moved over to the new hole. The rescuers then drilled another hole 20 yards away again and the whales moved with them. This continued for 6 miles with the crew drilling holes every 20 yards for the whales to get access to a breathing hole. After six miles, the whales were out in the waters and no longer under the ice sheath.

Now, one could use this story to connect philosophies of how we need to put out more breathing holes for teachers to use to connect to global learning. But I choose this story to connect to my last post.

What if we - the ed tech community - are the ones bunched up around one breathing hole? We would need to spread out. I think we are all reading the same things to add to the same conversation that we keep having over and over. And we are all stuck under the same ice sheath.

I believe we need to spread out. We need to check for other breathing holes. Or as we heard at the NECC first keynote by James Surowiecki - we need to fill our groups with more diverse individuals. We need to listen to diverse thoughts and endulge in diverse conversation.

As discussed in my last post, I think we need to hear a little more dissention in the ranks. Its okay to get frustrated with what is going on. It is also okay to vent a little and let people know. I don’t think we all have to be pro-Twitter if some of us don’t think its useful for our teachers or students. I don’t think everyone needs to blog or wiki either. Its okay if you don’t listen to certain podcasts too!

I was not greatly impressed at NECC by the content of the conference. I was more impressed by the growing gap between the speakers and followers at the front of the room vs. the ones who just want to try in the back. The cliques of the Twitter crowd and the teachers/administrators who are just starting to untie their shoes to put in a toe to test the waters.

*I keep picking on Twitter only because I hear more people complain about it than anything so far. I pick because I love.

Lemme ask you this:

Have you read any divergent thought lately?

Who are you following on Twitter/Plurk?

Are you following education specialists?

What about small business owners? Media specialists? Mathematicians? Scientists? Innovators in other fields?

Are you following anyone in a field other than your own?

Can I make a suggestion? Go through your followers’ followers’ followers. You may find your own breathing hole further down the ice.

Another suggestion? Think about and post a thought that may be different than the group.

I post blog after blog and I read blog after blog. In our education circles, I read the same posts over and over. One person posts one idea and then their idea is reposted on everyone else’s blog until the next idea. And then they all comment on each other’s posts and it all ties them together more and more. It reminds me of junior high when all the same people dated within the same group. It just was a perpetual date it seemed with the same person over and over.

Find the divergent thought in the group and if it isn’t there, be the one to speak it first. Take the devil’s advocate point and see where the discussion goes next. Don’t jump on the bandwagon.

I don’t get it. But then again, I never liked crowds. I like my own breathing hole. Better than that, I like my own ocean to swim in. And I like the other creatures in there who may not ever get an iPhone or a Twitter account.

I used to teach classes of technology subjects to students. I wanted them to see how technology applied to changing simple, everyday items into new areas of comfort. Example, I would talk about the television and how someone got tired of getting up and turning the knob to change channels. So, they invented a remote but the remote was tethered. So they made a wireless remote but that remote didn’t work too far. So they made a different remote so the person could lie on the couch and change the channel…and so on.

We would do this with several items ranging from mechanical toothbrushes to even cell phones.

The next step was to diagram a current technology and list the “problems” that it had at THIS CURRENT MOMENT. We would then discuss our own $Million Dollar$ ideas for improving those products.

Great classroom discussions!

I say all this as an intro to learning about a new site today called Posterous - http://posterous.com which allows us all to post a blog without making a blog or blog account. Posterous lets you just email your text and/or attachments to one email address that then timelines it out in a micro-blog setting.

Back to my classroom discussion:

We have blogging. What’s a negative about blogging?
You have to setup a blog account. You have to log in to the blog. You have to then post your blog item.

Now:
No need to setup an account. You email your blog to the address. You can even send attachments and Mp3s to Posterous.com

Lesson for everyone: Take a concept in existence now. List the negatives of that concept. What’s your $Million Dollar$ idea?

Run with it.

Better yet, gather a group of kids and diagram a timeline of the development of a technology and how it developed. Get to the stop point of current. Have them decide the next level of development for the product. There’s the Million Dollar Idea.

Collaboration. Open Discussion. Creation. Evaluation. Planning. Strategy.

As for me, I am still waiting for a former student to develop the implantable cell phone to be located somewhere near our nasal cavities. The device would project sound internally so no need to hold a phone to our ears anymore. And by talking, the device would translate the movement of air internally into digital (and clear) voice for the others on the phone.

We did have a problem figuring out what a sneeze or a cough would do…..

A few posts ago, I posted a comment about the use of Twitter at the NECC conference. I used a word “Twitterati” that may be a new one to describe the method by which some people seemed to want to be the first to post messages about recent events on the Twitter timeline. Someone asked for a deeper understanding of the term Twitterati so I thought I would post about it here. Twitterati is taking the word “Twitter” and adding the end of “paparazzi”. I think it adds an element of being relentless to getting information posted as fast as one can to a timeline of communication.

I don’t want this conversation to be pulled into the “Famous Blogger” discussion that Scott McLeod brought up in his blog. This isn’t so much about the presenters as it is about the audience. I posted about how in several sessions (and dinners), there were people in the audience (or at the table) competing to be the first to post in the UStream and Twitter networks about the goings on in the different rooms. It was a nervous and almost frenetic energy in the audience to not just listen but to actively record and be the one to post the information.

And maybe it does tie back to the idea of a class system within our group that Scott referred to in his blog. I wonder if it is the value of the information that they were anxious to post or was it the feeling of helping the Famous Blogger that made it such a race. Which was the greater motivator?

I guess the next step in working with Twitterati is figuring out the meaning behind the race to share the message.

Is the message worth interrupting the social gathering to post on a virtual social gathering?

As I asked in my previous post: What happens when we allow the social networking (on our computers and phones) overpower the social gathering?

What are the new rules or etiquette guidelines for social networking in social gatherings?

Has social networking become the new society?

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I am watching the final keynote address from NECC08 from my office at home in Kerrville. I have a front row seat. I am watching the video. I am in Second Life.

Here are some shots in my Flickr account to give you an idea of this tool used in real time.

You can find them at my Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/techxas. Posting as we go now.

I am at the NECC conference in San Antonio. It is amazing to see so many faces of people I connect with through Twitter and our social networks.

This year, I am laptop-less. In fact, I am only posting this using my room-mates’ laptop while he is partying somewhere downtown about now. I have spent the past few days at the nation’s largest technology educator conference without access to a portable computer. It has been frustrating on a few levels but really positive on many others.

I have been regulated to taking notes with PEN and PAPER!! Not only does this help me focus more on the speaker but it also gives me a greater chance to really PEOPLE WATCH. And people are amazing to watch in these large groups.

The most amazing thing to me is the use of the technology by our technology education peers that makes it appear to something similar to paparazzi stalking a star. The “heavy hitter” celebrities of the blog world are following each other and sitting in the front few rows. They then Twitter, Ustream, and even blog about what is happening while it is happening.

Now to the audience participating globally in the conference, I can see how helpful this is. Its opening the conference and discussion to others in the world wide classroom.

But to be in the room and watching - its really distracting! People aren’t just discussing the topics. They are discussing their plans for dinner. They are discussing their inside jokes. They are posting commentary about the commentary. Some try to be more witty than the previous post and the conversations jump off the topics into their own little satires.

In our keynote this morning, I had a woman sitting next to me who was posting her blog. She was in Twitter. She was also adding to a discussion in Ustream. Meanwhile, those of us around her were distracted by the screen of her laptop seeing as the lights were dimmed for the video playing of the keynote. I watched her post about her experiences, watched as she answered emails, watched as she twittered to her friends about what they were doing in other areas of the state.

I didn’t see much conversation about the keynote. I didn’t see her really noticing that her tick-tack clicking of her nails during the presentation was disrupting the crowd around her. I don’t think she cared. She was in the Web 2.0.

I left the keynote today with the idea to watch the audiences more than the presentations. And while many conversations were on task and on point, there was still this strange race to be the first to post the information. People are taking pictures, filming, streaming, and blogging it seems to be the first to post the content. They want to be the source for the information first. It reminds me of a favorite media-news site I check daily called Ain’t It Cool news. Media news is posted with a commentary section for each item. The first few posts are the people visiting the items to post “FIRST” so they can get the recognition of being noted as first-posters. Paparrazzi? Nope. Webucators! First to Tweet. First to UStream. First to Flickr!

My questions:

What happens when we allow the social networking on the computer overpower the social gathering?

When do we give up meeting and sharing ideas locally when we get together locally only to be sharing those ideas with people in other rooms, states, or countries?

What is are the new rules or etiquette guidelines for social networking in social gatherings? or Are there any?

Does the social network become the new society?

I close with this. I attended a “Twitter dinner” last night. This was a nice dinner joining people from the Twitter-verse together. The dinner was great and we got to talk to one another. We hugged and shared that common feeling of knowing that we are on the front-line. Its interesting to meet the people you don’t see everyday but are in the same boat as you and to greet them with a hug. First meeting in person and hugging each other because we are in the trenches as comrades.

The party was swelling and then circled about as a group. People began taking out cell phones and Twittering while we were in the group. Then they began talking about the Twitter conversations. The social gathering was now guided by the conversations taking place from people not in the room. The party was over for many of us at that point. It was like watching people talking about a party I wasn’t a part of in the party that I was a part of. I was in the room with these people but they were in a party taking place in their cell phones.

That’s just one issue with Twitter. I guess the other is that it is constantly down…..

Find me there - mradkins

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