WebedtecH

I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent chatter in the edublogsphere (made up word) about the “cocktail party” and “echo chamber” for writing and being read as part of this community. I think it’s time we shift our thinking. Rather than wasting time worrying whether the bloggerati (another made up word) are following what you have to say and the profound effect it is or is not having on the world at large, let’s focus on the the people we can truly make an impact with…the teachers and staff we deal with on a daily basis. Strategic planning and conceptual models are good for creating mission statements and visions but if they’re never followed up by operational discussions, implementation plans, and success reviews we’ve become nothing more than pointy-haired managers avoiding real responsibility and accountability for making a difference in education.

If you want something to write about of value, get away from the theory and “fluffy thinking” rampant in ed-tech and concentrate on the practical, tactical aspects of what can be done to deliver more value to the students and staff. Digital citizenship, immigrants vs. natives, and all the 30,000 foot discussions floating around the internet deliver little practical value to the students and staff members who are trying to make this stuff work day in and day out. If you want to be read write about something worth reading such as the successes you’ve had implementing certain technologies or better yet the challenges you encountered and how you overcame them.

Based on this I am stepping away from the theoretical discussions. I leave those to the experts. I’m a strategist with an eye for implementation and that’s where I’m focusing my time, my writing, and my blog from now on. As for the cocktail party…I’ll be down the street having a coffee at the diner.

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune - Teacher e-mails made public Annotated

tags: management, policy, privacy, teaching

Teacher emails released to “make sure they’re doing their jobs.”

“Based on our interpretation of the current state law, the public interest demands those e-mails be released.”

Bubolz said in July he made the request to see if the teachers were doing their job “… the way it’s supposed to be done.”

“People will know this decision is out there,” Jonen said. “The effect will be any public employee that does a personal e-mail at work is subject to having that released.”

“There’s no misconduct at all; they don’t want the public to feel they were misusing resources,” she said. “These are e-mails they wrote to their friends, spouse or kids. It’s a little unsettling they will be for public view.”

Couple of key points to this in my mind.

1. If they were sending personal email against district policy they really don’t have any recourse.
2. If they didn’t do anything wrong (something the article fails to clarify) then their personal correspondence should not be publicly available (see item 1 for the counterpoint however).
3. If this is the case and a member of the public can request the emails of a public servant (which is a bit of a stretch to define a teacher as) be made public then why can I say with great confidence that this is far less likely to happen to the school administration?

The Journal has a detailed article about some of the things you can do to get your administrations to buy-in to the concepts and benefits of social networking. Here’s some highlights:

So just to get started, you’ll need to find ways to broach the subject without scaring off stakeholders. That means focusing on the form of social media right for your school; tying a social media program into learning objectives; and finding the right ways to break the ice with administrators, IT/technology directors, and other teachers.

Identifying the social tools that fit with your school’s goals and objectives can go a long way to smoothing the adoption curve. Start with what the students will learn using the tools without identifying the focus on learning the tools themselves.

Just as businesses looking to implement social media solutions need to tie their programs to core  business objectives, classroom teachers, curriculum planners, and administrators looking to implement some type of social media solution need to tie their program to a learning objective. Is there a specific expected schoolwide learning objective that you’re trying to meet? Remember, you can’t effectively tie a social media program to a technology-based learning objective.The goal of a social media program is in simple terms to foster and enhance communication between people and to socialize learning; the technology skills needed by students and staff to execute a program of this nature need already to be in place, and if they’re not, then technology objectives (Netiquette, e-mail literacy, search literacy, basic multimedia literacy, password creation, keyboarding, mousing) need to be completed first.

I couldn’t agree with this more. Before you put the time, effort, and “political capital” into an educational network solution (much more palatable than social network) make sure the people who will be using it have the prerequisite skills necessary to make it work.

Wes Fryer over at MSC ran into a problem presenting at COSN:

Apologies for Ustream non-event today » Moving at the Speed of Creativity

My apologies that my scheduled session broadcasts over Ustream did not happen today at COSN. The sessions were held in the basement of the Hyatt hotel, where unfortunately there was not any cell phone data network coverage or service. Wired Internet connections were provided at sessions, but apparently the network at the hotel is configured to block ports used by Ustream for broadcasts. We never could get a computer to actually “connect” to a Ustream channel room for a broadcast.

We did, however, record both sessions with audio, and Steve Hargadon recorded my session on copyright with video as well. It was great to finally meet Steve in person My session on Cell Phones for Learning was well attended but fast: Just a 15 minute demo session. That was probably the fastest conference presentation I’ve shared to date

My son helped me with some audio recording, and he recorded the session “Unleashing the Transformational Power of One-to-One Computing in K-12? with permission from the panelists to share it later as a podcast.

While I do feel bad that Wes ran into this problem (and for those of us who present frequently it is always a lurking danger) there is a silver lining to the happening.

Wes’ son got an “authentic experience” in troubleshooting an unpredictable situation, adapting, and coming up with a solution.  This is the part we seldom proclaim as the victory in educational technology.  Normally it would be touted that he was able to practice audio recording.  While nice, that’s just the smallest thing of value in the instance.  Bring the young man to me in several years for an interview being able to demonstrate the problem solving skills he showed then and I’ll show you someone who will be employed…regardless of the state of technology.

A couple of important facts for your next discussion around, “Why should we be teaching our students this stuff?”

Some 54% of enterprise-size organizations use Web 2.0 technologies, as do 74% of companies with fewer than 500 employees, according to a study Web 2.0 technology adoption and the future of social-media initiatives in enterprises.

Blogs are the most-used Web 2.0 technology (87% of respondents), followed by communities, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking.

The most successful are blogs (44% of respondents), communities (42%) and wikis (39%).

96% say all Web 2.0 technologies they’ve used have been successful; 83% reporting no clear failures.

The greatest obstacle to Web 2.0 deployment is limited internal resources.

Some 64% of those using Web 2.0 technologies rely on a combination of internal- and external-facing media/tools.

“The Awareness research found that…28% of organizations with over 500 employees have budgets greater than $50,000 for web 2.0 tools or social media. The top tools planned are blogs and wikis (56%) but many are also planning to deploy online communities,” writes FASTforward’s Bill Ives.

Is there any greater recommendation or reason for a topic to be included in the curriculum of a school than the ability of that curriculum to help students get a better place in tomorrow’s workforce? Isn’t that the argument used all the time? Well…let’s make sure we use our facts to reinforce the need to use these tools with our students…NOW!

Trends in Adopting Web 2.0 for the Enterprise in 2007