My good friend and new blogger Rob Mancabelli writes about the challenges of schooling in a world of extended, global connections and information in terms not just of the literacies this more complex environment demands but the emotional toll as well. His thoughts come on the heels of a conversation with a principal who was concerned that

students were seeking out and locating more and more emotionally packed information on their own time, often by themselves, causing them to come to our schools each day laden with a plethora of undiscussed feelings, questions and ideas.

It’s an interesting point, and not one that I’ve thought about much in terms of my own practice. In the six years that I’ve been slogging away at this now, I’ve come to a place where the underlying emotional messages of much of what I read get sifted out through a filter, though that’s not always the case, obviously. But to really get empathic and sit in the shoes of a teen-ager (or younger) with all of this, I wonder what types of coping mechanisms he or she might have.

Which brings me, once again, to the larger point: who is teaching them how to cope as self-learners both on an intellectual and emotional level? And can we as educators teach them if we ourselves aren’t coping? I’m in no way belittling the question that principal poses, but if she herself is working to solve these issues in her own practice, would she not better understand the pedagogies for teaching her students how to deal with the stresses? A lot of rhetorical questions, I know (which will once again make Tom Hoffman glad he’s not reading my blog any longer.)

I find it kind of interesting, also, that the one part of that quote above that really jumps out at me is the “often by themselves” part. At first blush, that seems pretty innocuous, but since much of what I read and access is brought to me through my network, as is the case here, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing this by myself as much. Rob has already lent some of his perspective and analysis to this, which in some ways, helps me cope with my own reaction to it. That’s the power of this in my life, and one reason why the whole concept of networked learning resonates so deeply for me. And why we need to teach our kids how to build networks of trusted sources they can turn to themselves for intellectual and emotional support in the process.

But how can we do that if we ourselves don’t?

Technorati Tags: literacy, learning, education, teaching, schooling

As I said earlier, I don’t have high hopes for this being the year that schools begin to embrace social software in systemic ways and that 2007 may pose more challenges to that thinking. Case in point a couple of items in the aggregator this morning. First, from Michael Stephens, it appears that Illinois is going after DOPA: The State Version. You know the drill…no social networking in libraries, schools, outhouses, etc. And this won’t be the last bill or the last state to try to put it through.

Second, Chris Lehmann points to an article in the New York Times yesterday titled “Teenagers Misbehaving, for All Online to Watch.” As you can imagine, it’s not a great advertisment for the transparency of the Web these days.

Most suburban teenagers, it seems, can rattle off a litany of the latest teens-gone-wild offerings as though they were the local multiplex listings: boys holding cellphones under the lunch table to photograph up girls’ skirts; an innocent kiss at a party posted out of context on an ex-boyfriend’s Web site; someone bursting in on friends who are in the bathroom or sleeping, drinking or smoking; students goading teachers into tantrums; assaulting homeless people.

Lovely.

Chris expresses his concerns about what this all means, and notes, accurately, I think, that the stakes are getting higher, and he says that schools have to play a bigger role in educating kids about how to make “smart, safe and ethical choices.” The more I turn this in my own brain the more I get to the fact that this is cultural. It’s societal. And those of us who have whatever limited enlightenment into the workings of the world about these matters need to do more to educate all of our constituents.

Before any of this is going to get better, more folks who don’t have any concept of learning in social networks need to at least be shown the possibilities. Whether they embrace them into their own practice is something different altogether.

Technorati Tags: learning, DOPA, education

Oh. My. Goodness. I really don’t know what to say about this. Barack Obama (or someone in his campaign) gets this stuff. At MyBarackObama.com you can begin your own social network in Obamaland including but certainly not limited to creating a blog, connecting with friends, making groups, tracking your fundraising, leaving messages for one another… It’s politics 2.0. And on his main site, he’s got the video thing goin’ on, the blog, links to Flickr, YouTube, Facebook. I mean “Get outta here!”

Now I know we are a long ways away from the election, and there is much left to learn about all of these candidates, but is anyone else feeling a little excited by the prospect of this candidacy. A former educator. Someone who seems to have his brain around what’s happening with technology. Someone articulate and, from all accounts, pretty level headed.

What a concept.

Technorati Tags: obama, politics20, social

Pew’s latest report on tagging doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises: 28% of Internet users tag, 7% on a typical day. Things on the folksonomy front are definitely taking some root. But even here there is evidence of a divide: taggers with broadband outnumber those without almost 2:1, and the higher your income and the better your education, the more you tag. (Interesting, though, that the race/ethnicity with the highest percentage of taggers is black, followed by Hispanic. Wonder what that means…)

Worth a read as well is the interview about tagging with David Weinberger that comes with the report. A couple of pull quotes to whet your appetite:

Maybe the most interesting thing about tagging is that we now have millions and millions of people who are saying, in public, what they think pages and images are about. That’s crucial information that we can use to pull together new ideas and information across the endless sea we’ve created for ourselves.

And:

We’ll also undoubtedly figure out how to intersect tags with social networks, so that the tags created by people we know and respect have more “weight” when we search for tagged items. In fact, by analyzing how various social groups use tags, we can do better at understanding how seemingly different worldviews map to one another.

The whole self-organization meme is really interesting me of late. It’s crucial that our kids get their brains around it in effective ways. This quote from Donald Tapscott’s book Wikinomics speaks to it as well:

We are shifting from closed and hierarchical workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaborative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from inside and outside the firm (240).

I love the way that’s stated. Networked learning requires self-organization. I’m still constantly tweaking the way I tag and sort all of this information, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’m as effective as I could be. But it’s the process I learn from, and once again, the way I’m doing it now looks little like what’s happening in most classrooms I see…

Technorati Tags: tags folksonomy Weinberger Pew learning education

So one of the reasons I’ve had no time to blog of late (or read for that matter) is that life is getting crazed once again. Seven weeks off goes much too quickly, but I’ve gotten into some very cool projects that I hope to blog about in short order.

Meanwhile, in case any one is interested, here is the link to the presentation that Rob Mancabelli and I did at FETC on Friday. I’d be really interested in any reaction from those of you that might listen and watch (sort of) it.

Technorati Tags: fetc07 social read_write_web

Oy.

From ZDNet:

Reining in social-networking sites: Last summer, over the objections of civil libertarians, librarians and educators, the House overwhelmingly approved the Deleting Online Predators Act, which would restrict ambiguously defined social-networking sites in schools and libraries that receive federal funding. The proposal ultimately died last year, but on the first day of the 110th Congress, Sen. Ted Stevens, a veteran Alaska Republican, reintroduced identical language in what he portrayed as a renewed effort to protect children online.

Anyone have any details? A quick look at the Stevens homepage makes no mention…

Technorati Tags: dopa social_networking education

So it turns out that just about 150 feet from where I’ve hung my shingle in Flemington, NJ, one of the pre-eminent “experts” on children’s software, Warren Buckleitner has a shingle of his own. Warren writes and publishes the “Children’s Technology Review,” is a periodic writer for the New York Times, testified in front of Congress last year regarding the ratings system on games, and, most importantly, has two daughters who ride horses at the same farm as Tess. (We’re “Barn Dads.”) Warren is also the founder of MediaTech which is drop in community technology center in our town library, and we’re embarking on a cool new project for next year that you can read about here if you like.

All of which leads me to the fact that Warren was interviewed for a story on Club Penguin that ran on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last week. It was a pretty good piece that discussed this relatively new territory that is online multi role player games for tweens. Here’s the money quote from Warren:

By playing these games they are sort of like training wheels for starting to participate in the digital culture that’s certainly here already.

I like that metaphor. Now if I could just get Warren to start blogging…

Technorati Tags: games culture education social learning

Daniel Pink has it right about design being an important literacy in a world where we are able to publish so easily. To that end, I’ve been noticing that a lot of us, myself included, have been putting more and more photos and graphics in our posts. Many of us are also reading Kathy Sierra’s blog which always offers up some compelling graphics, ones, however, that seem a bit out of reach for my scarcely artistic brain.

So I need things like Thumbscrew (MAC only) which lets me take a picture, like this one of Tess, and in about a nanosecond give it just a bit of a twist to make it all artsy and stuff and, hopefully, enhance the design of this blog. (Watch out…that’s my kid.)

Now I know there is a danger of over-design here. (I know I’m on the verge of getting over-widgeted.) And I also know that many times vanilla is better than a whole bunch of flavors mashed together. Good thing my wife is a designer and has promised to kick me in the right brain if I get out of hand…

Thanks to John Pederson for the link.

Not sure why it took me so long to finally dive into Library Thing but, despite the imminent demise of books as we know them (smile) I got hooked in maybe 27 seconds. In fact, I might say that I found LT to be among (if not the) most intuitive, easy to use, fantastically fast interface of any social site I’ve seen yet.

Basically, Library Thing allows you to easily catalog all of the books in your personal library which, in turn, leads to all sorts of social goodness. I can easily find out who else is reading the books I have, see what’s in their libraries, and start conversations with them about what they are reading and recommending. Of course, I can tag the books in my collection, rate them, write a review, add comments to the listing, and access all of the Library of Congress information about the book in an instant. (They just added their 9 millionth book to their database.) There are widgets to add (scroll down and see mine in the right hand column) and it has a great zeitgeist page that gives an overview of all things…um…Library Things. (For instance, the largest collection is 14, 954 books…whoa!)

Obviously, this is a great way to not only track what you’re reading but find other stuff to read (although one look at the stack of books next to my bed and I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.) But I also thing it’s a wonderful example of the social potential of Web 2.0 in a very concrete way. I mean del.icio.us is a powerful tool, but I’m not sure how many people really “get it” without some bit of brainwork. This is easy and obvious, and let’s face it, everyone has a library…right?

Technorati Tags: library, books, reading, social

Nice find by Christian Long of this short little blurb in Fast Company titled “Social Networking Evades Schools.” Seems NSBA surveyed schools and found that most don’t have a policy in place regarding the use of social networking sites, and, as you can probably guess, of those that do, most said the policy is to block access. Go figure. But the good news is that NSBA’s executive director seems to be getting it:

It is important to keep in mind that just blocking access to social web sites at school is not the end of the story. Most of the misuse of these sites takes place at home, but still affects the classroom. We have to teach our students about the safe and proper use of social web sites.

Well, that’s a start. Certainly, MySpace and Facebook should be in the curriculum to facilitate the conversation about everything that could go wrong. But what about to talk about everything that could go right? What about teaching them how to use social networking sites to connect to potential teachers, to publish their ideas, share content? What about making sure that they know how to leverage what MySpace offers?

The problem is that most educators still don’t “get” what these sites represent. But I found this excerpt of Steve Hargadon’s new podcast interview with Plano Assistant Superintendent Jim Hirsch to be spot on:

Our students of today, because of access to media, the internet, and instant messaging ‘no longer rely on a historical perspective to make decisions.’ The rely much more on their friends…

The social interactions that our students are having online are steeped in information gathering of one sort or another, as well they should be. Aren’t ours? Whether they know it or not, they need to understand the ins and outs of reputation networks and filters. And I’ll ask it again…who is teaching them?

From a parent perspective, I’ve started thinking about how social tools can be a part of my kids’ practice from early on. Yesterday, I set my seven and nine year old kids (and, um, myself) up with Club Penguin accounts, and in the context of doing so, we talked about what it means to be interacting with other real people online. Yes, they need to be careful, and we went through the don’ts. But they should also be willing to find friends to chat with, to play games with, to communicate with. When they’re old enough, I’ll help them set up their MySpace accounts, or whatever the social networking site du jour is. And I’ll also help them with del.icio.us and their blogs and whatever other online tools might serve them. (I just bought them their own .name domains yesterday…they’re gonna need a collection point.)

Point is, we have to do more than unblock. We have to do more than just teach them what not to do. We have to help them leverage the tools.

So, what’s in your policy?

Technorati Tags: club_penguin, social, education, filtering, learning

You may have noticed (or you may not have) the daily bookmarks posting that has been showing up here for the past few days. It’s a list of all of the sites/posts that I have been saving to my diigo account, which in case you haven’t heard of it, is a social bookmarking tool that feels like a combination of del.icio.us and Furl plus a bit more.

With diigo, you can do most of what you can with del.icio.us in terms of saving links with various tags, connecting to other users who have saved the same post or used the same tag, and tracking either users or specific tags (or specific tags of specific users) via RSS. Even more, however, is that like Furl, diigo captures a copy of the page, so if it disappears from the Web at some point, you can access it in your archive.

But what’s really different is the diigo allows you to highlight certain sections of any Web page you’re on, and also gives you the ability to attach sticky notes to the site. Those highlights and notes are then visible should you visit that page again. But even better, if you have a diigo account and I have “forwarded” the page to you, you can see them add your own when you visit the site as well. Think digital feedback on student work.

Now while the diigo user base is much smaller than del.icio.us, quite a few people are adding some interesting links and resources. And one other nice feature is that when I add something to my diigo account, it also gets added to my del.icio.us account. By the way, C-Net has a review of diigo that highlights some of the good points.

There are a lot of applications for classrooms here, and I’ll try to expound on them the more I experiment with it. Bottom line is I’m starting to like this tool more and more, and I’m wondering who else might be playing with it.

(Image from diigo)

Technorati Tags: diigo, delicious, social_bookmarking

A recent article in School CIO magazine discusses the use of social networking in schools, highlights one school that is trying to find the middle ground with the blog and wiki abilities of Blackboard, and quotes another school as not going down the Read/Write Web road because none of the teachers have asked to. (Oy.)

“Together, these two tools could give the student the ability to experiment with blogs and wikis in a safe, secure environment where they would receive feedback from their teacher and classmates that was monitored and attributable,” says Paul Regnier, community relations coordinator for Fairfax County Public Schools.

Um, yeah but…are they also being taught to navigate these environments outside of school so they have the tools to stay safe in the no so secure real world? Aside from the inherent problems with using Blackboard, the bigger problem is using it to avoid the difficult responsibilities we have to our students these days. Anyone know if Fairfax is not only banning MySpace but teaching it as well???

technorati tags:education, learning, shifts, schools

Jonathan Seal points to an article in this week’s US News magazine that is a comprehensive discussion on both sides of the MySpace issue. The bottom line is the same: yes, there are dangers, but if we teach our kids, we can make them safe. Oft quoted Parry Aftab says that “parents are chicken” when it comes to MySpace, and I would only add that most educators are as well. But as the article points out, it’s just not something we can afford to be afraid of. In some way, shape or form, we have to teach MySpace or at least the social networking concept that it represents.

technorati tags:myspace, social, education, weblogged

Just a quick update on the Digg for educators experiment. In four days we’ve had about 2,500 views, are averaging over 110 unique visitors per day, and aggregated over 50 articles. There ave been over 100 votes for stories too, which has pushed Steven’s “Adults and MySpace” article to the top of the heap. So far so good.

Remember, if you are going to play, try to make sure that the articles are specific to Education 2.0, meaning that the articles deal specifically with the the Read/Write Web and education. And please, do play. The first few days have been pretty interesting…

technorati tags:social, digg, education, blogging

Doug Noon posts about an interesting paper from Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel titled “Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy” that does a nice job of framing the difference of mindeset between the traditional view of the classroom and the emerging view.

I think the underlying premise between the two mindsets is interesting: “The world is much the same as before, only now it is more technologised, or technologised in more sophisticated ways” vs. “The world is very different from before and largely as a result of the emergence and uptake of digital electronic inter-newtorked technologies.”

I know I keep coming back to MySpace, but if nothing else, what’s happening there should be a starting point for just how much the world really has changed. The ability to network widely changes everything, and the kids and adults at MySpace are showing it.

technorati tags:connective_reading, connective_writing, social_network