Teach42

Blogging from a workshop again. I should probably rename this blog to “LiveConferenceBlogger.com”. I mean, this is getting out of control. Today I’m in Downers Grove, Illinois. It’s a two day workshop about blogs, wikis, rss, social bookmarking, podcasting and more that is being hosted by David Jakes and features David Warlick.

I missed the first day, which is really too bad because I would have liked to see how they introduced it all. It’s a heck of a lot of content in a short time and I’ll be doing something similar at next year’s ICE conference in all likliehood.

We’re starting off the day doing a little reflecting and people have asked some good questions. “I’m used to searching for websites and information on the web, but how do I find blogs that I might want to subscribe to?” That’s a really solid question that I ran into when I taught some of my teachers about this stuff at my old school. That’ll be fun to explore.

Someone else asked whether anyone had commented on the blogs they created yesterday. Interestingly enough, John Pederson is doing a similar workshop right now in Proctor Minneapolis. He’s having his ’students’ refer to this summit and the two David’s are doing the same here. Hmm…. I wonder if we can get a Skype call in and combine our efforts. Would be kind of fun.

A few links for you. The workshop’s wiki can be found here and there is an ongoing set of del.icio.us bookmarks being created here.

Warlick is explaining the long tail theory and something just hit me; the long tail is one of the reasons that podcasting is so darn popuplar. I always call it the ability to reach niche audiences, but that’s just another way of saying that it’s the long tail. I mean, when you get right down to it, the consumers who make up the long tail are niche audiences. I wonder why that never connected before?

Time passes… About an hour later now. Basically we gave everyone a chance to play, to ask questions and just mull some of this stuff over. Now we’re on to podcasting.

Warlick is going over what a podcast is and how you create one and he’s actually showing us how he creates his own. He has Garage Band open and is actually going over how he creates his music as well! I had no idea that he did all the music using the built in music loops! Wow. I am so impressed. I thought he actually created it all from scratch on a synthesizer, I didn’t realize that he was just mixing and mashing. Very very cool.

I’m doing a pretty fair amount of talking on the subject, so it’s awfully hard to blog effectively. Mostly it’s the podcasting 101 spiel.

Right now everyone has split up into small groups. Each group is discussing practical applications for different tools in schools. Groups are discussing blogs, wikis, social bookmarks, Flickr (photo sharing), and podcasting. What I find interesting is that each group is typing up their notes on the summit wiki. All the notes are live, anybody can add to them and when they go home they can refer to them easily. It makes total sense to do it that way. After a little while, the groups rotate around. The group that was discussing and writing notes about podcasting now starts discussing wikis. After 5 rotations, every group has had a chance to talk about and write about each of the five technologies. Dig that. Instead of just having each group report their findings, every group gets a chance to work on every section for a brief amount of time. And when they start working on it, they begin where the previous group left off. Very nice.

Picture NECC 2006. Every workshop has its own wiki. People are encouraged to post their notes to their blog or if they don’t have a blog to create a new page on the wiki and link it up. All that knowledge is aggregated and archived along with the session itself. Add on the audio file and you’ve really got an absolutely amazing resource. For each session, you have a questions/answers page on the wiki along with a place to post extensions. It’s all about keeping the conversation going. Even if people may not be doing that just yet or may not be ready to do it, make it available to people. Give them the opportunity. It may take time, but if you have the tools around and train people to use them, I get the feeling we’ll be seeing some amazing conversations happening.

We’re doing some reflecting right now and Warlick is recording it all. I don’t know when it’s going to be posted, but you can keep an eye on his site for a link to the audio once it comes out. We’re talking about possible uses for each of these technologies. I like the fact that as people come up with each idea, Warlick is asking whether this idea is something that could realisitically be done “Today or tomorrow?” Some of the ideas are clearly stretching both technology and policy, but others could be taken right into the classroom. Great way to identify which ideas are theoretical in nature and which are practical.

“The literate person in the 21st century is someone who can learn, unlearn and relearn.” Good quote, who said it? Quick Google search says the actual quote is from Graeme Daniel and Kevin Cox, who said “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” (via Kairosnews).

I haven’t heard of Epic 2014, but it’s pretty darn interesting (scary). “You’re about to watch a future history of the media.” It starts off in the late 1990’s and continues through the year 2014. Gives you something to think about.

I think I’m going to wrap this one up. Everybody is going to write up a general reflection on their own blog before they go. If you want to read along, you can check out the Technorati feed for posts from the workshop.

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