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.

When I started grad school, my colleagues and professors discussed the separation between Academia (University-level teachers) and Classroom (K-12 teachers). The gap between research and application of the research to the classroom. To the teachers in our group it felt as if the professors or “Academia” we discussed just weren’t grounded in the real-world. We could read research paper and journals but it just seemed as if they were observing and not participating.

There was a gap and this gap made them separate from us - on the battle lines.

I am starting to see this gap develop between our classroom teachers and our new upper echelon of education technologists and bloggers out there. I think this was most noticed by the idea of “famous bloggers” from Scott McLeod’s post as well. It is also seen in the conversation taking place on Twitter and in the blogs of the new philosophers of the Web 2.0.

The group is adapting the new technologies so quickly for themselves and for the development of new communication for the edublogosphere. But, is it reflecting in our classrooms? Is it being shared by our teachers? Or are we getting so far ahead of ourselves that we are creating our own gap between research and reality?

I see communication on Twitter from the new philosophers (I like this title better than Famous Bloggers) asking us to provide them with teachers for conversations they want to have using the new technologies. I can see why it would be hard to find core teachers using Web 2.0 strategies like we use daily to communicate with one another! I don’t know of any teachers using Plurk or Twitter for that matter during the school year or even summer.

The blog conversations are so full of ideas and the push to “get our teachers onboard” and “motivate student learning” with these tools. Inspire them with collaboration and creativity! Really??!? That’s what our teachers need right now?

I am in the field. I know the push. I do. But frankly, it is getting embarrassing. I have tried most of the tools and even found a few I like personally. However, I don’t think most of my teachers would really give a flying flip about most of them or the conversations we are having. I think they see the great divide much more than we do. And that divide REALLY separates us from them.

For the past few months, I have played around the edge of the new philosophers. I have been reading their blogs, listening to the podcasts, reading the books they recommend, joining their Ustreams, and even observing the Twitter conversations about everything from baseball to new uses of technology. I have been an observer and an active participant.

But the gap is great and expanding. And I don’t want to go to their side and lose connectivity with the teachers I work with.

I wish I could Twitter and Plurk all day too.
I wish I could research blogs and contribute to the online conversation like they do.
I wish I could Ustream and connect with this global philosophy shift in live streaming.
I wish I could participate in their witty and fun conversations and travel tips they share all day and night.
I wish I could get online and ask for participants from your district because mine…well..they gave up on listening to me months ago because I am “too far out there”.
I wish I could read all those books you all talk about and listen to those podcasts while I get ready to take on a new day.

But I can’t. I have to work. I guess we can play together at NECC or TCEA someday.

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?

Technorati Tags: necc08 necc necc2008

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.