Teach42

Steve – I think you’re right. Without a network of people to ask for support, what good is it to show Newbies all the cool tech stuff they can do?

What would you think about starting them out with Twitter? I’m leading a session on PD for the busy person. I was just going to show them how to read blogs through aggregators, but I’m going to throw in Twitter as well. I know that a lot of my personal learning comes from Twitter as much as it does from my aggregator.

There’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir – sometimes they need to hear it. And there’s nothing wrong with preaching to the congregation, either. But sometimes you have to go out into the field and preach from the streetcorner on your soapbox. And finding the right corner to preach on can be quite difficult, indeed. Preach on, brotha-man! Preach on.

I’m starting to teach Twitter as an “introduction to web 2.0″ as well. Call me crazy.

While I’m a card carrying member of the “critical preaching to the choir” club, I’ve come to see it in a different light. Between Twitter, Ustream, and these live shows/podcasts, while we are repeating and regurgitating the message, we are more importantly sharing *HOW* we are delivering that message in our lives.

Last week when I did that impromptu streaming of Warlick, I quickly became uncomfortable that I was violating an unspoken norm in the “presenter/attendee” conference circuit. I looked at the crew attending virtually…all choir members. What we were learning wasn’t knew, except for a few technical and a few “norms of the new connected world” issues. But I did see a few lines of chat referring to the way Warlick used inflection in his voice to drive a point. Myself, I really love the way Warlick shows newbies how “aggregation” works.

The concept are still preaching to the choir. We’ve all had the Kool-Aid. We are all now teaching to the choir with these new opportunities.

Another take on my mind lately has to do with “rigor, relevance, and relationships”. It’s key jargon to many high school reform movements and of big speakers. Rigor and relevance are really easy to nail down. (Higher order thinking + real world examples.) Few are talking about relationships because it’s hard to teach and/or demonstrate. Look across your Twitter network. It’ s the answer to relationships. You know have something concrete to show others.

John: Interesting points. And you’re right. I was watching Warlick that day, but I wasn’t watching him to learn about blogs or RSS, I was watching him to learn about other ways to do distance learning, what impact live streaming might have on professional development, ideas for how I might do a similar broadcast differently and so on.

Point well taken.

And Susan, I do agre that there is something comforting about hearing the message coming from someone else. And there ARE different levels to say the least. For example, I doubt Will would want to attend a session about how to get started in blogging. But a new blogger might just to get some extra tips. Or someone who is thinking about doing a similar presentation may get some ideas out of it. Thanks for pointing that out!

In best practice early literacy instruction, teachers are asked to cultivate for students making connections–to self, to text, and to world–to build schema for higher order learnings. I see this as no different. Unless we as educators cultivate the connections, and model our connections, 2.0 tools are meaningless. As a teacher librarian, I became very discouraged several years ago about presenting at “our” conferences. So I promoted to our “network” that we branch out and begin presenting our topics that were truly relevant to all educational content area conferences. I do know some of my fellow teacher librarians here in SC are doing this, but still there is much to do. I too had that pang of guilt from attending the fireside chat, as I had plugged, proodded and pushed many of my own school’s teachers to join in the conversation. While I did not host a fireside chat back at school, I did have many tell me they planned to log in and join. When I came to school the next day, i was dismayed to find that none of them were able to get in. Then I felt guilty as i read comment after comment on some of the K12OL blog and in the ETT chatrooms about those who were also unable to get in. I truly felt guilty since I was in last year and this year, and probably could have quoted verbatim and spoke in cadence with Warlick at some of his reflection–i’ve heard it so many times before. If we are to spread the fire for this, we need to scaffold our newbies learning, and make sure to support and reinfoce their success. I could have done that easily by not joining the FS Chat, making someone else who still doesn’t get it able to join and experience the power of networking. After all, just like in early literacy instruction, the learning builds on those connections made.
Cathy Nelson
South Carolina

How do you confront the questions about online privacy/transparency? For example: Teacher uses Twitter for school related microblogging. Then, they add their personal friend, who likes to post in NSFW (not safe for work) language. Without having separate accounts (making Twitter much less useful), how can that be addressed?

I’m sure that’s a reason many teachers don’t adopt web2.0 yet outside of personal use. It’s the same old story of mixing business with pleasure.

I think that person needs to make a decision, is it for personal purposes or for professional purposes? I made that decision long ago. Blog, Twitter, Flickr, and so on, all have to be safe for work. That’s not to say I don’t put some personal things there, it just means that it’s all safe for work. In fact, I take it a step further, it has to be safe for school age children to see.

I’ve had a few people that I follow use profanity on Twitter. I stopped following them and privately emailed them letting them know why. I didn’t ask them to change their habits, because that’s their prerogative.

I’ll take it a step further. I believe that teachers are role models. When I would go out on the weekend, if I was in an area that I knew my students and families frequented (festivals in Chicago for example), I’d always be aware of my behavior, just in case I ran into a student. It was just the nature of the gig IMHO.

I totally understand where you’re coming from, but I think the personal/professional issue is a consideration for people in just about every profession.

As a baritone in your choir I have tried three times to get into Twitter but just can’t do it.
Just heard this on a podcast today:
“It must start with the individual. In order for people to use web 2.0 technology they can’t start in the classroom. Forget about the classroom. If you try to teach people how to use blogs, and they don’t understand how to use blogs or how to use wikis or how to use podcasts in their own personal lives, if they do not understand how these technologies change who they are as a learner and how they go about educating themselves and being a member of our society, then trying to get them to do it in real time in front of twenty-five kids with all the technology issues and support issues that are going on is a bar we will not get under.”
I will be changing my presentations to teachers in the future…it makes so much common sense.

I put one foot in twitter, SL, blogs, etc. and found myself (I’m not a slouch when it comes to technology) many times an outsider. What was that conversation? I don’t understand what they are doing? Maybe this is a clique and I’m not invited. I still check twitter but if I miss a day I can’t figure out who’s talking to who.

If I feel this way, just imagine a new teacher or administrator who is pretty tech savvy. I love the tools. And what Sylvia and Kevin created with VoiceThread is a great model on how to use this tool and a helpful tutorial on SL. Maybe a newbie will add their thread. Maybe. Maybe not.

I appreciate everything everyone is doing and will follow along. My path is different and pretty exciting and growing in its own way. One comment said not to start at the classroom level but maybe that’s the only way you’re going to get some teachers to join in. 220 teachers from LAUSD Arts Education Branch as part of 37 new communities were set up in eCoach. There will be 1300 more soon. The coaches have control and are learning strategies to help their teachers to connect and talk about art, teaching, learning, sharing their own way. Some twitter – some on LinkedIn. Maybe they could have done this in Ning. Sure. But many of the tools still take some tech knowledge and guts to jump in.

Working with BTSA, new administrators, and more. Maybe it’s starts top down but grows bottom up. Then it takes off on its own.

You have to make it easy, uncomplicated, personal, relevant. Then they can connect after they feel comfortable.

Very interesting! I do happen to agree with you, about the ‘clique’ sort of thing. It looks so easy to people who are already on the inside.

“Look! I just post a question on Twitter and I got 10 responses in 3 minutes!” But if a complete newbie tried to do the same, they wouldn’t get 10 answers in 10 days. It’s one reason that I try to make a concerted effort to follow every educator who follows me (provided they keep the language clean). That way if they shout out to me, at least I’ll know it.

I think if we’ve learned anything from the least few years, it’s that while it may seem like there’s too many social networks out there, different people like different flavors. Who’s to say which is the best? I certainly won’t. I know what flavor ice cream I like, but I wouldn’t presume that to be your favorite as well. Some flavors may be more popular than others, but that doesn’t meant here isn’t a place for the rest!

Thanks for sharing Barbara!

Steve, enough with the food metaphors, you are making me hungry!

I have nothing to add to this thread, but I got a lot out of it! I am doing an inquiry this semester into web tools used for teacher mentoring and induction, and the whole time I feel like a fraud because I don’t have a clue about implementation or how to bring administrators, mentors, and novice teachers into the fold. All I have so far is a great list of “tools” and a million reasons to use them to support novice teachers and to grow relationships between mentors and their proteges. But the thought of presenting a laundry list of fancy tools to folks in my school system. . . well I just get queasy thinking about it.

Your point about “show them how to learn” and “how to build out a network” is well taken.

Steve:

On point as always! There are a few simple things you can show right now that will ‘jazz’ people into joining in. I know that a lot of people trashed ‘Animoto,’ but I have received more traction from that with teachers in my district than with anything else in the past year. Why? Because it is simple. I even had one of the Assistant Principals send me a link to his Amimoto that he did using the pics from the camping trip with his family. You add the next piece, which is showing them how to ‘embed’ the video into a web page or blog and you have them hooked! That one piece transfers so quickly for most that that is enough to get them going.

Great being on the Office 2.0 panel with you! Hope things are going well and maybe we’ll come across each other sometime soon!

Kyle Brumbaugh

Steve,
I think that social networking in this Web 2.0 world is like any other type of socializing…you can’t just step into a room of strangers and expect everyone to come over and start including you in the conversation. I have been hanging around the fringes for awhile now..absorbing…asking questions…learning from what I hear, and sometimes being totally lost because the conversation was so far over my head. Slowly I am building my network, and even though I sometimes still twitter and get no answers, there are times when I DO get the answers I need- it is like any other type of learning curve- it takes time.
I don’t think I am a part of the choir yet- I am someone who stumbled in the side door of the church and heard some music that I liked..so I stayed. Now, I am showing other people the door- last week an SL bud was nice enough to do an impromptu Ustream session, which opened the door for 6 people who would have never come in on their own. Now I can’t get on my computer without having one of them Skype me! I could not have predicted that any of these teachers would have opened their minds to this stuff 6 months ago
I guess what I am trying to say is…sometimes you never know who is standing on the fringes…..listening to the choir…..learning.
BTW-thanks for following me on twitter:)
~tansmom

[...] happens.  I can’t imagine that I will have anything earth shattering to say here, but a recent post has me thinking about how I can help bridge the gap between the techies and the newbies-  Do you [...]

Steve-

You post some challenging thoughts here…and I appreciate them very much. Especially given that I’m about to convene as the facilitator for a small “Web 2.0″ study group at my school. We’re going to meet in person 2-3 times, virtually 2-3 times, asynchronously several times, read/discuss a book, and form a collaborative presentation to share with other teachers at our school. I really like the idea of starting out w/Twiiter…I am a twitter newbie, and it my network is very, very small right now (mjmonty on twitter-I need that plug!). But it is growing and a few really cool ideas have come from my participation in Twitter.

~Matt

[...] just read Steve Dembo’s post http://www.teach42.com/2007/10/18/building-out-the-choir/  and I realize he is right. So many of us here in the “Blogosphere” are connecting with each [...]

Teaching newbies to web2.0 tools can be overwhelming if you try to show too many tools at one sitting. Starting with Twitter or Plurk to establish a network of peers can also be too much for some. I agree about the clique idea, so invite, invite and invite others or message those who are just starting to include them in the discussion. Just one comment to a new person might give them more confidence to post their expertise and we could learn a lot from someone else.

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