Category Archives: social networking

Thinking About Media After the Marathon

21st Century Skills, Media, Media Literacy, social networking

I’ll start by thanking Chris and Melissa Bugaj for re-energizing my enthusiasm for podcasts. I used to listen to lots of podcasts but, for some unknown reason, stopped. Maybe it was just media overload, or switching to iOS from Android. After participating in the recent VSTE webinar (scroll down to find the archive) on integrating audio in the classroom, I installed the Podcasts app on my phone and iPad and added a few podcasts to my library.

On of my previous favorites had been On The Media, a program sponsored by WNYC. Brooke Gladstone takes an engaging, reflective approach to the workings of the media, often interviewing journalists involved in the week’s news about how and why they did the things they did. Not surprisingly, this week Brooke focused on the Boston Marathon bombings and the somewhat shoddy performance of the media in their seeming willingness to abandon long established principles such as confirming stories with multiple sources in order to beat others to the story. They reported erroneous information rather than wait to make sure it was correct because if they got it right, they would be heroes and if they got it wrong, they could just blame fluidity of the situation. That excuse ignores the important role of the formal media in our live: we rely on them to get the story right before they tell it.

But, there seems to be a very fuzzy line these days between journalists and bloggers and tweeters with journalists being lured away from their role as the nation’s fact checkers. Reporters are monitoring police dispatchers and, according to On The Media, those dispatchers were actually monitoring Twitter and reporting on things they heard. It became a closed loop where no one was doing any fact checking at all.

And, of course, there were the fake twitter accounts from the bombers that immediately got reported as real messages.

The program is worth a listen and, I hope, will prompt discussion about the role we all play in the exchange of information. Meanwhile, Slate offers some good advice about what to do the next time there is a breaking story. I’m planning to finally read Proust.

From the Twitterverse

Photography, social networking, ,

I am quickly approaching my 30th day of blogging every day.  I want to continue to incorporate blogging in my daily routine. One strategy I’m considering is having a meme for each day, much like Should Be Reading, one of the book blogs I follow. MizB encourages others to share in the meme on their own blogs or in the comments.

Here’s what I’m thinking about:

  • Monday Musings: A take off on Should Be Reading where she asks and answers a question
  • Tuesday: From the Twitterverse: a post about something I found on Twitter
  • Wednesday: Mid week news roundup from Google alerts
  • Thursday: Thinking Out Loud: a post on some topic generally related to teaching, learning, technology and education
  • Friday: Fun
  • Sat/Sun: Just one post on the weekends and it will be more arts related

So, from the Twitterverse today: an article identifying real and fake Hurricane Sandy photos. I got the link from one of my graduate students.

It’s a reminder of how easy it is to make and widely distribute photographs these days. Civil War photographer Mathew Brady was known to rearrange battle sites but he couldn’t do any post image editing and create a scene from whole cloth. And then have it shared instantaneously on social networks where there seems to be little thought about the veracity of the image.

What did you find in the Twitterverse today?

Technology Enhanced Gardening

community, Education, social networking, technology

I learned about the Window Farms project today and as I watched the segment on Growing a Greener World, I was excited by this powerful example of how the Web can support collaborative community, beginning with one person sharing a passion.

It demonstrates the local/global relationship that can be supported by the Web.  Home gardening is an intensive local activity, requiring lots of analog attention.  But, Windowfarms shows how individual gardeners, often solitary folks who spend much time among plants, can be part of a community where they are encouraged to make a positive contribution of their own ideas and experiences.  The assumption was that the first window farm, created by Britta Riley in a Brooklyn apartment, could be improved and modified, and through an open source community, the world is doing just that.  It is global problem solving to help solve local problems and is a model for collaborative research and development in the 21st century.

They are dabbling in a different business model as well.  Windowfarms is a business with a social mission, according to the website, a for-profit social enterprise. They have investors and sell some products.  But they take certain social and environmental factors into consideration as they do their business.  They used Kickstarter for fund raising, taking advantage of a more grass roots way to gather small investors.

So, here’s the question once asked by Ben & Jerry in the pre-Internet days: Is it possible to do good and make some money?  And with the advent of the Web can you afford to provide a free platform for collaboration as part of that mission?

And, for educators, the question remains: are we preparing our kids to live and thrive in this kind of world?

 

 

 

Surrounded by Community

community, online learning, Second Life, social networking, teacher quality, Twitter, vste, , ,

I spent most of yesterday online with educators, exploring the meaning of community.  Several hours were spent in Elluminate as part of Powerful Learning Practice‘s ongoing professional development program.  From there, I moved to Second Life for VSTE’s weekly meeting where we explored educational groups.  We ended the evening with a snowball fight and, as you can see from the picture below, I dressed for the occasion.  (Always wanted to have wings!)

Snapshot_002

I just felt energized the whole day, having access to all these fellow travelers without having to leave my house!  We shared both professional and personally; we learned; we had fun. It was the kind of experience I would wish for learners of all ages.

Besides being reminded of the power of online community, I learned some specific content.  I was introduced to Google notebook, a tool I had not explored before.  I installed it and was eager to try it out this morning.  So, I logged into Twitter, knowing that someone would have a link to a good article to read.  Twitter has increasingly become a big part of my virtual learning community in a way that I could not have imagined when I first joined.  I was not disappointed this morning as Will Richardson had posted a link to a New Yorker article on teacher quality from Malcolm Gladwell.   My primary job right now is working with pre-service teachers and identifying good teachers is always a concern.

I read the article and, as Will suggested, skimmed the football stuff.  When I got to the first paragraph that was really about education, I discovered that it had already been highlighted by someone else, using Diigo.  I moused over to read the comment and discovered it had been made by Michael Scott, who I had just seen last week in Roanoke and who is a member of the VSTE Ning.  I took a break from reading to add Michael as a friend in Diigo.  The next highlight and comment came from Clay Burrell, a fellow Twitterer whose blog, Beyond School, is always thought provoking.  All I could think of is what a small world it was since, according to the Internet World Stats, there are nearly 1.5 billion people online these days.

I think the lesson here is that online is a real community, as real as the face to face community I enjoyed at last week’s conference in Roanoke.  It’s something my non-networked friends just don’t understand.  And it isn’t something that happened overnight either.  But it is part of my life now, and as I sit at my desk working alone from home on a rainy day, I feel the presence of that community.  Thanks to you all!

Community Made Visible

blogging, community, online learning, social networking, Twitter, ,

I tend to be a loner.  I like to do things on my own, including learning.  Given a choice, I would always choose to work alone on a project or learning activity.  I’m comfortable in my own company.  Working from home has only exacerbated that tendency.

But, yesterday, as I headed out to vote and then, later in the evening, as I waited for the election returns, I found I wanted to share with others besides just my husband and the dogs. And, happily, there was my online community.  Over the past year, I’ve made an effort to become a more active participant in that community, and last night, almost for the first time, I could really see that it at work, mostly through Twitter.  During the day, we exchanged voting stories, how long the lines were, how we felt about what we had done.  Many people posted pictures and videos.  Then, as the polls began to close, we gathered to share our anxieties, to celebrate the milestones, and, finally, to take a deep collective breath as we realize what had just happened in our country.

Looking back, I can’t point to a specific moment when I joined the community.  It’s been a gradual process, one that I suspect will continue.  One positive step I’m taking is to do more with this weblog by following along with Teach42’s 30 Days To Being a Better Blogger.  I’ve only gotten through the first challenge, to update my About page.  I was surprised to discover that it was woefully out of date, like from 2006.  My other plan is to do more reading and responding to others both as comments and as blog entries as a way of making connections.

Another step is going to do more with the Ning community I’ve chosen.  I’m a member of VSTEOnline.  This semester, I had my pre-service teachers sign up.  They’ve been doing a great job posting their ideas and questions and interacting both with each other and the other Ning members.  Sad to say, I haven’t done much except monitor their progress.  It’s time to make this community a priority.

It is easy to get distracted by multiple communities, something John Hendron recently wrote about, so I’m going to try to focus my energies.  I’ll still Twitter, of course, since I’m rapidly discovering how much I’ve come to rely on those little updates from my tweets, and just last night welcomed several more friends to my Twitter world.

Thanks to all of you who make up my learning network…some of you know who you are, others have no idea. (But I’ll be sending out a few thank you notes so you may find out soon.)  Together, we are living, learning, and growing together!