The EdTech Bach

I’ve been hopelessly derelict in blogging in the last few months. Work gets ever busier as staff & students begin to take to using Moodle and teaching and learning online. And my mind is just buzzing with ideas for course design, online communication, staff development, inter-institutional collaboration…. It goes on an on.

For a while I even got too busy (read: too frazzled) to attend to my PLN and be courteous to all my friends and connections who so freely share all their knowledge, expertise and insights.

So this Twitter Mosaic is to give credit where credit is due. Thanks!

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Am making an intention statement (Procrastination tip no. 4) that I will start a weekly themed post about stuff I learned that week. For two reasons really.

Connected learning

First, I want to make visible how much I’m learning from being connected. The last 24 hours is a prime example. Twitter’s replies function is still down, so last night I went on Plurk and in a few hours playing with the other eduTwitter immigrants, we learned its technicalities but also began thinking about its limitations, variations in microblogging and how interface differences changed our interactions. This morning I’ve spent one hour creating, editing and embedding our institution’s Wikipedia page and had to learn to create pages, create categories, learn a different wiki syntax. I can’t get over how many skills and insights you pick up and how fast, when you’re a connected learner.

Inspiration

My second reason is the blogging blues which hit me earlier this year. For me it’s easier to blog about the simple things like my Moodle Wishlists. Listing what I’ve learned in a week will be straightforward, easy and motivating. Hopefully it’ll give me the inspiration to tackle the other edu-balls-of-yarn in my head.

My blog is built around the metaphor of the kiwi bach which sits between the stable land and the changing sea. Educational technologists (technology intgrators, e-learning advisors, whatever the term) seem to fulfill much the same role, sitting on the boundary between the stable field of education and the tempestuous  technology. So in that vein, I guess this is the start of my beachcombing.

First beachcombings already in draft.

Friday evening, Project Runway on tv, lappie on the couch. Time to play.

Had some fun with Wordle. After playing with TweetStats yesterday, wanted to get those tags and use them in Wordle. Unfortunately they weren’t weighted. So result is a bit bland but still fun.

Wordle is set up to link with del.icio.us and because it does weight those tags, the result is much more impressive!

Embedding in a blog post requires a little editing of embed code – need to take out all the spaces.

Could be used to introduce a topic in class? As result of a discussion thread?

Only just found out (start of the academic year down under and swamped with course requests & staff support, I’ve been blocking out blogosphere and the twitterverse) but absolutely thrilled to be named Twitku champ. Twitku is one of my favourite Twitter projects and aching to show it to our teachers as I think it could be a neat in-class project for our ESOL students.

All that is a long-winded way of saying:

thanx/@twitku/575 xj

Peter Rock questions Twitter’s worth as a tool and Alec Couros invited us to chip in. So here’s my 2c.

Twitter is what you make it through sensible stalking. Who you are following and who is following you is critical to the quality of your Twitter experience.

Choose people who are exploring your field of interest (Wenger’s domain?) and pertinent thoughts, tools & technologies will come flying at you at the speed of light. You’ll make new contacts through them and hear just-in-time when events (webcasts, live conferences, or f2f conferences) are happening. It’s even possible to attend F2F conferences vicariously, as the edutwitterers discovered with this weekend’s Educon2.0. Additionally your followers are an informed peer group that can provide insightful answers to your questions.

But stalk sensibly, or end up reading a lot of “what i’m having for breakfast” tweets.

To find out who is tweeting about your interests, use a Twitter search engine like Terraminds.

What Will Richardson is to me:

• 3 Months ago – the author of a book I’ve read many times and a blog that I follow weekly. So disappointed I didn’t get to meet him in person when he was in New Zealand in 2006. Will never get that chance again.

• 1 Month ago (post-Twitter) – a fellow Twitterer whose daily tweets on ed tech are always interesting. I now also know what his kids are up to.

• Today – someone I’ve collaborated with on a wiki.

Tomorrow Will is presenting to a large group of teachers and wants them to “walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.” To this end he has asked his network to chip in and leave their best tip on a wiki. Read about it on Weblogg-ed and leave your bit.

Twitter entered my online life in Nov 2007 as part of a course in emerging learning environments. My workgroup wanted to pick a ‘really out there social networking tool that you would not think of using in education’ and take it for a spin. And we chose Twitter because how educational can answering the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters really be?

Well it turns out that not only is it educational, it is addictive. How? In a variety of ways. For instance by helping me find neat tools as today I discovered 3 new tools and Adobe AIR in the space of an hour.

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