Monthly Archives: November 2009

21st century learning, Technology in Education

Twitter users bring perspective to classroom activity

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Last month I had the pleasure of attending at trip to Lawfield Elementary School. I wrote about some of the things I learned and observed from my visit in a earlier blog post. One of the highlights for me was meeting teacher Zoe Branigan-Pipe. We had a brief opportunity for an engaging dialogue that day about the integration of technology and social media tools into classroom activities, and since then have been following each other’s activity on Twitter.

This past week, an interesting sequence of events occurred. One of  Zoe’s students wrote a blog post about a recent assessment activity in which the students were permitted to collaborate prior to submitting their answers. The student’s blog post was considering this experience from two points of view:

1. Is this cheating?  Should we be approaching assessment in this way?
2. Is this collaborating?

You could tell from the blog post that the student was really struggling with ‘what felt right’, and was clearly surprised by the collaborating opportunity.

Later that evening, Zoe posted a comment on Twitter asking her educator based PLN group to have a look at the student’s blog post and provide some feedback (comments). Within a couple of hours, at least 12 people, myself included, read and posted comments on the student blog. The common theme of the posts were:

  • knowledge is important, but it is also important to develop other work and life skills too
  • collaboration skills are needed and used in the workplace
  • development of collaboration skills is important for future success
  • take advantage of opportunities to participate in collaboration and consensus building opportunities

I have not had an opportunity to touch base with Zoe to find out more about the student’s reaction to the comments, but I will have an opportunity to do so within the next few days. I thought this was a great example of a teacher using their PLN group to provide real life context to a classroom situation via social networking tools. Well done!

~ Mark

21st century learning, General, Leadership Perspective, Technology in Education

Social Networks: What’s cooking?

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Social media tools are having an impact in many ways in all age groups of society from pre-teens to ‘experienced’: retirees — it could be a lifelong activity, literally!   Let’s take a look at some current information.

KIDS/TEENS

In a recent surveys of teens,  38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort. Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 (jumping in earlier than the suggested age requirement) to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day. Although social networking sites have a minimum age requirement of 13, there is no easy way to check or enforce this criteria. It really operates on the honour system.

In my mind, this trend raises some important questions in terms of use from the parent point of view:

  • Are these sites being used in an appropriate manner?
  • Do parents/guardians actively monitor what their children are doing?
  • How are the children learning about safe online practices?
  • Do the children know to protect their personal information?
  • Are there daily time limits placed on usage?

As a parent, what is your level of involvement? See the Social Networks and Kids: How Young is too Young?  article at  CNN.

ADULTS and the WORKPLACE

In October 2009, the USA Today reported that that 54% of companies completely block Facebook, another 35% apply some form of access limits, leaving only 11% that don’t put any limitations on Facebook use in the work force.

Dr. Brent Coker, of the Department of Management and Marketing at The University of Melbourne, reports that  “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t.”

Point for consideration: Is surfing the net really any different than daydreaming or chatting at the water cooler? Some employees may benefit from a little surf time. Not everyone has the same needs in terms of being productive – that is for sure. Hmmm, maybe this is true for students in schools too!

View the full ‘Companies Ban Social Media = Bad Idea’ article at Socialnomics.net. Additional information from the  Australian Social Media study can be found at the University of Melbourne website.

What is happening at your organization? Leave a comment or  send a tweet.

SENIORS/Retirees

Facebook statistics show an increasing number of users in the 50+ age group – boomer connecting with high school friends and keeping in touch with their children. There is a major social connection occurring with users in this age group.

Related Reading:

Ivy Bean: Tweeting at the ripe old age of 104

Social Isolation and New Technology

SCHOOLS

Teachers and administrators are learning more about social networking tools – the good and bad. The bad is usually connected to student bullying issues. Staff at Boards of education are thoughtfully working through some of the key issues:

  • safe, ethical and responsible online activities
  • Digital Citizenship and Character Development programs
  • incorporating social media tools into curriculum delivery in meaningful ways
  • thinking about content filtering in an appropriate K-12 context

The agenda is definitely moving ahead – that is a good thing.  Teachers are developing online Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) through social media tools such as Twitter, Ning groups and blog reading/blogging. Many are really engaged in learning something new every day.  Certainly, this is an exciting time to be in education.

It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds. In the meantime, one can keep learning and participating! See you online 🙂

~ Mark

General, Leadership Perspective

Connecting in the Workplace

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Today our Business Services team held their semi annual PD session.  Over the last couple of years we have had a very focused agenda on team building, customer service and managing change to support our planned department reorganizations and workflow analysis.

Today we had the pleasure of hearing Mike Moore’s presentation: Connecting in the Workplace. Mike really connects with people and has a great message. He has learned a lot by observing people in his world wide travel to deliver his message. It is obvious he absolutely loves what he does! I won’t spoil any of Mike’s stories by referring to details here.

Mike’s presentation is centered around a few key ideas:

  • the fun factor is important, have fun at work
  • embrace and enjoy a little humour
  • take pride in yourself and value what you do
  • dignity is an equalizer

There are challenges at the personal, team and organizational level. Attitude is your dominate thought at any given moment – choose to make it a positive thought.

  • guard against destructive humour
  • find comedy in chaos
  • QTIP (quit taking it personally)
  • Turn Negatives
    • stress
    • turnover
    • absenteeism
    • low moral
    • low productivity
  • into Positives
    • communication
    • humour
    • attitude
    • recognition
    • mutual respect

Mike connects with the audience quickly and presents in a very personal way that puts one at ease. He keeps you smiling and laughing with his message and illustrative true stories. He throws in a couple of musical moments too to keep you engaged.

All in all, a great presentation. I would have listened longer!  See Mike Moore’s  website for more details about his presentations.

~ Mark

21st century learning, Leadership Perspective, Technology in Education

Twitter experience becoming richer

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From where I sit, Twitter use seems to be changing and evolving. When I first started using Twitter, it seemed that most Tweets could easily be placed into a few predictable categories:

  • general comments: updates regarding your current activity
  • web announcements: updated my blog at … or bookmarking site …. or read about something at …..
  • resource announcements: great smartboard resource at …..
  • asking a question

Some examples of these type of posts are:

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My observation is that people are now ‘more connected’ through Twitter. By that I mean that I see evidence of more ongoing dialogue within groups of users. Requests for information are responded to. People are connecting for specific purposes.

For example:

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To my way of thinking, this shows development in how Twitter is used. I feel there is a much greater sense of community – at least in the people in interact with. Users also have a better sense of harnessing the power of search terms and hash tags. Twitter is such a powerful tool to develop one’s PLP network. I feel fortunate to have a great PLP team to learn from and I look forward to the online dialogue that is an important part of every day!

~ Mark