Category Archives: Homepage

My 2,000th Blog Post

by dogtrax

I find it hard to believe, but technology never lies, right? According to my blog dashboard, this post is my 2,000th post that I have written and published here at Kevin’s Meandering Mind. Oh sure, I write in other places, too, but this is my digital home — the place where I see the most of own online identity. The screen for my voice.

2,000.

Good Lord.

That’s a lot of writing, and while I notice the trend of many other bloggers stepping back from their blogs with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, I still find blogging a useful venue for reflection and sharing my thinking about teaching, writing, music, books and more. I still find it useful to have folks out there in RSS land who read what I write (you’re a bunch of saints, my friends, and there are close to 4,000 comments approved here) and I give thanks to those colleagues and acquaintances of mine who periodically add their own thoughts to the conversation.

I began this blog after a week-long technology retreat with the National Writing Project back in 2006 (I think), thanks to the encouragement of my friend, Maria, from DC, who knew I was blogging with my students and asked why I wasn’t blogging as a teacher. Why not, indeed? I jumped in, and never really stopped writing and blogging since. I’ve since added podcasting, and video production, and more experiments than you can shake a virtual stick at. Even with the uncertain future of the NWP, I still have many of those NWP folks in mind whenever I sit down to write. What sharing can I bring to the table? What ideas can I garner from them? That reciprocal nature is how I envisioned this blog, even if a lot of days it is just me typing for myself.

Thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate your company.

Peace (in the posts),
Kevin

PS — it was just by chance that I peeked at my Dashboard this morning. Otherwise, the celebration post would have come and gone with no notice from me.

It’s the Connections, not the Technology

by dogtrax

Jim Moulton icon

This is a sort of follow-up post from Thursday’s TEP Conference here in Western Massachusetts. I wrote the other day about Alan November, and the second keynote was by Jim Moulton, who was one of the planners behind Maine’s 1-1 Laptop Initiative, is a former teacher, and is now is an educational consultant for Apple.

Moulton focused his talk around Maine’s laptop program, and he argued that putting devices in the hands of all middle school students has changed the ecology of the educational system in his state. This doesn’t mean that every element of teaching and learning has been transformed, but Moulton said that putting the tools of creativity in the hands of students, and their teachers, have established collaboration, audience and creativity has key components to many classrooms and libraries in the Maine school system.

While some worried that technology might replace teachers (or the need for good teachers), Moulton argued that it is, in fact, quite the opposite. The technology has opened up even more doors of opportunity for teachers to work with engaged students.

“The (technology) device drives a profound need for human interaction with kids. It’s a return to a Socratic method of teaching,” Moulton explained, and although he did not refer to the Digital Native/Digital Immigrant dichotomy, he is right in debunking the perception that young people “get” technology and know how to use it wisely.

The heart of Moulton’s talk was not about the devices, although he is now an Apple consultant in a state that has bought all Apple products (through a bidding process), but about the networks of connections of people that spring up around the technology, and how powerful those connections can be for teachers and students.

He cited examples that were born from the 1-1 initiative, such as regional technology integrators’  meetings to share best practices, teacher groups coming together to explore and plan curriculum, connections from schools to many other organizations (around science and history), partnerships with universities to support the technology learning and the students themselves. An annual conference at the end of the year brings together more than 1,000 students to share their work around technology with each other.

“We have the technology, but that’s not enough,” Moulton said. “It is about the social networks that spring up and the way we choose to leverage the unbelievable resources in our schools” for student learning and achievement.

In other words, it is not about the device. It is about the learning. He cited a recent ad campaign by Apple that seems to drive this home. (Remember, he is an Apple consultant now). The advertisement’s focus is that when technology becomes invisible, incredible thing are possible. At the risk of sounding like I am endorsing Apple, I wanted to share the ad Moulton referred to. Sure, it is selling the iPad, but the message is interesting.

Peace (in the invisibility cloak),
Kevin

The Shift to Common Core in Massachusetts

by dogtrax

common core1
Our state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released information this week on its schedule to merge the Common Core curriculum with our own Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. The focus is on college-ready literacy and mathematics, with emphasis on informational/persuasive writing and content-area reading. Narrative writing takes a back seat to expository writing, I think. The actual frameworks are not yet out, but will be soon.

Here are  a couple of slides from the state’s report, which shows that we are in a transition year next year and then quickly, we will be right into a Common Core-aligned curriculum. Many of us are wondering when our standardized test will reflect the shift, and it looks like a partial implementation of the new test will be next year, and then a full implementation the following year.
common core2
common core3

As it turns out, I will be talking a bit about the Common Core shift on Thursday, when I co-present a session entitled Technology Across the Curriculum with two Western Massachusetts Writing Project colleagues (Tom and Tina) at a new conference entitled Technology in Education Partnership (TEP), where Alan November is the keynote speaker. (And can I say that this conference seems very vendor-driven, so I am not sure how it will be.) We’re happy to have an event like this in our part of the state, however.

Peace (in the core),
Kevin

More Thoughts on Nurturing a Community

by dogtrax

iAnthology Wordle april10
After writing a post the other day about what DIDN’T work for an online writing space that I am part of for the Massachusetts New Literacies Initiative, I realized that I probably should come at the topic from the opposite direction: What DOES work for creating a strong online network?

Here are a few ideas that I have mulled over in my role as a participant and facilitator of various spaces. Some of the concepts here also stem from a book that my friend, Paul Oh, recommended many years back. The book — Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Spaces, by Derek Powazek — was published in 2002 and the world has changed considerably since then (of course). Still, much of what Powazek wrote about lingers in the back of my mind.

My ideas for creating and supporting and extending an online writing community:

  • The most obvious idea is that users need to have some sort of shared connections. Disparate interests might bring folks together for the short term, but unless they find things to write about, to learn about and to share about, it seems unlikely that the community can last for the long haul. The thread that binds us together in online communities is the thread that leads us back there again and again. Sometimes, this might be groups within networks, or the entire network itself. We yearn to self-identify, don’t we? An online space can meet those needs that we have to be part of something meaningful.
  • One of the ideas that Powazek writes about is the idea of a gated entry, which is the concept that a user must go through some process (registration, answer questions, etc.) before becoming part of the networking space. While you might assume this is to keep spam bots out, Powazek contends that by having a person invest time in the process, they are investing themselves in the network. Once invested, a person is more likely to think of themselves as part of the network itself, and not just a fly-by-night passerby. At the time I read this, I th0ught it to be counter-intuitive. Don’t we want the walls to be low? But over time, I have come to believe that he is right. A little work goes a long way to envisioning the importance of membership. Otherwise, you have people dropping anchor and never really becoming part of the network. They just take up virtual space.
  • An obvious element of a strong network is the concept of the “welcome wagon,” which is someone who says “hello” to newcomers, offers some advice on where to begin and is available for questions. Steve Hargadon did this at Classroom 2.0 in its early years, and I thought it so important that in the networks that I manage, I always have that in place. This gives instant feedback to new folks, and lets them know there are people who care about them in the space. In larger networks, you’d have to deputize folks to help with the welcome wagon. But don’t push it aside. It gives a humanizing approach to a virtual community.
  • Design matters, and you want the design of a site to be friendly, reflective of the values of the connections, and (even with the initial membership obstacle discussed above) easy to use. Most people don’t have patience. It’s sort of like a first-impression. Make it difficult to add a post, or submit a comment, and you may have already lost the battle for folks already uncomfortable with technology. The trick here is that most of us (me) are not programmers, so we use sites that have built-in templates, with some wiggle room for changes. Even so, we can make choices that reflect our communities.
  • I find it useful to have some sort of notifications of new activity going out to users. The trick is to find the balance between useful information and blabber that will turn people off. But notifications are a good tool for drawing someone back to a site for participation and reminds them of why they joined in the first place. It’s beneficial to allow users to opt out of notification alerts, too.
  • Create paths for leadership by being open to members becoming leaders of the site you have created. This can be difficult if you have a vision for the site, and then suddenly, you realize that users have a much different vision. But their leadership and activity is what keeps the space alive, not you (not me). At some point, you need to slowly give up some of the reins if you want your site to be more than just a kingdom in which you are the undisputed ruler.
  • The corollary of that point is to be ready for change and accept it as a natural progression of a site. This has sort of happened at a writing site that I helped create, in that the places that I thought would be high interest are not always high interest, and an unexpected idea has suddenly flourished and thrived. It took me the longest time to realize, “this is what our site is about right now,” but that realization gave me satisfaction, too. The members spoke their minds with their actions.
  • Activities matter, particularly when a site is built around the writing of users. Having regular activities that folks can participate in provides them with an invitation to come back and contribute. Many people will respond to that kind of invitation. We can’t expect that folks will constantly live at the site (unless you are a Facebook community, I suppose).
  • While we are shifting into the age of multimedia, the fact is that writing is still the main form of communication for most networking sites. A good site allows for images and video and audio, but still provides an easy way to write and respond to writing. In a few years, this may no longer be the case that writing is the center of a network, but it is right now. Make sure a user can tap into the inner writer.
  • Remember that most sites have a lifespan, which means that your site (your idea) might die out naturally. You might go through the grieving process, and even get frustrated at your members. Don’t. I can list a few blogs and communities that I have been part of that were valuable for a time, but then, disappeared off my radar. They served a purpose for the time and then, didn’t. That happens. Be ready for it.

I hope this is a bit more positive than my last post, and it sure has helped me think through more things related to online communities. I value the ones I am in and look forward to the ones I may be in and fondly remembers the ones that I was part of. What more can you ask for.

And, of course, what have I missed? What works for you in your networks?

Peace (in the reflections),
Kevin

Design, Usability, Size of Online Writing Spaces

by dogtrax

The other day, I saw a notice that mentioned that the English Companion Ning space, started by Jim Burke, now had more than 20,000 members. My first thought is: that’s a whole lot of English teachers in one place. It reminds me of the first Ning I ever was part of – Classroom 2.0, created by Steve Hargadon — and the growth that took place there over fairly a short period of time. That site now has more than 53,000 members. Those are like small cities of teachers.

In both cases, the size of the community has come to dwarf my interest in the sites, and I mostly have dropped out of both of them. The very elements that I initially liked about the two communities — the ability to connect with other teachers, to follow threads and learn from examples, to share and gather resources — has become less and less like discovery there, and more like a navigational chore. I become overwhelmed by sheer numbers and feel like a little pebble dropping into the ocean when I go there, so I don’t anymore. Which is not to say that neither site has value — I still tell folks to head to both for their first forays into networking. They just don’t have value for me.

Here’s what I like: a smaller-scale community that experiences slow, but steady, growth. A Ning site that I facilitate with my friend Bonnie Kaplan for teachers in the National Writing Project still feels like a home for me as a writer and teacher. We have a little over 400 teachers, but we all have connections to the National Writing Project. We get a few new members each month, with more at the end of each summer, and many folks join us in weekly writing activities. I still know and write with many of the original members of the network.

It reminds me of a side conversation that I took part in at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, where we were talking about the “ideal size” of a networking space, where it is small enough to have connections with others and large enough to have enough diverse thoughts to make it interesting. We settled on something around 500 people for a network. I still stand by that number.

Ning has gotten a lot of grief in the past year as it moved from a free model to a paid one, but they do keep adding more and more features that allow a manager of site to make it their own. You can do as much or as little as you want to make the Ning site welcoming and reflective of your community, which in turn supports the work of the members of the community. That’s how design works hand-in-hand with nurturing a networking site.

Which brings me to another online forum that I am now taking part in with the Massachusetts New Literacies Teacher Leadership Initiative. We’re moving some discussions into the online portal (MassOne) of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I know all the reasons for using the MassOne site: it keeps discussions under the banner of the state, which has graciously funded the year-long initiative; it archives our discussion; it is  a place where every teachers in our state has an account.

But I personally find the site unfriendly, from a design and usability standpoint, and I truly wish we could have launched our own stand-alone space that is easier to use and more design-friendly.Here are some of the things that bother me:

  • First, if I make a thread or a discussion, I can’t edit or delete it once it is posted.  I made this mistake the other day, as one of the leaders of a forum, and had to email another teacher leader, who had to email a forum manager at the state education offices. That seems awfully inefficient to me. And I was so frustrated that I could not make any changes to my post. It was as if I had tossed a badly written letter into a bottle and tossed it into the ocean, only to remember I forgot to put my name on it. Too late. Your words are lost.
  • Second, the interface feels like it was designed in the mid-1990s and was never revamped to keep up with the times. There’s something to be said for a clean look with little flash but this is extreme. It’s like writing in a virtual version of the dentist’s office. At our Ning space, we try to keep things simple. A good, thoughtful design invites people to write. A friendly look extends a friendly invitation to folks to be part of the community, and giving them some tools to make the space their own provides a path towards ownership, which leads to more interaction within the community. This MassOne has none of that. Zip.
  • Third, there does not seem to be any way to change your email for notification updates. As one of the forum leaders, I want to know when folks in my teacher group are posting, so I can respond and nurture the discussion in a timely manner (another element of a good site — quick, thoughtful responses). For me, this means that I have to keep checking my school email as opposed to my personal email. (I suppose this is done to verify that we are all teachers in the Massachusetts system but still, I find it annoying). There is an RSS button in the forum space, and I thought: Perfect! But it didn’t work. Darn it. (And if it did work, the RSS seems to cover the entire MassOne system, not just my forums. How is that helpful? It’s just a stream of information that I would still have to wade through).
  • Fourth, there is no real way to personalize myself in the space. I can choose an avavatar icon, but only from the preset ones.  I can’t upload anything — no images or screenshots or anything — and the threads only show my author-name as a shortened version of my email. Talk about impersonal. A good, nurturing space gives users the options for staking out some ground. I don’t want to be one of the masses.
  • Finally, the fact that we are writing under the Department of Educational umbrella means that folks may be guarded, and might fear honesty. When you know high-level state folks might be wondering what we are up to and can quickly check in over your shoulder, you pull some punches (if you have them).

All that being said, I’m interested to see how this experiment goes. We held an online conference the other day and our teachers are now being reminded of their responsibilities of moving discussions online into the forum space. As of this morning, though, not one of the 20 or so teachers in the group I am facilitating had posted a single thing (of course, it is the start of vacation week).

Peace (in the networks),
Kevin

Why Widgets?

by dogtrax

This is another activity in the Edublog Teacher Challenge taking place the last month or so, and the focus is on Widgets, those boxes of stuff that we attach to the sides of our blogs. I’m going to sound a bit cranky here, but I often find widgets too distracting and wonder why people go overboard with them.

I know, I use them, too. I’m guilty.

A look at my blog shows a Twitter widget, an informational widget for my Teaching the New Writing book collection, a link to my Boolean Squared webcomic site, an internal search engine and links to posts on my blog.  Arrrr. I remember the first time I found out about widgets in my blog dashboard. I went a little widget crazy. I had a whole line of things running down the spine of my blog – maps, counters, videos, etc. Later, I removed most of them. But even now, every time I see that side bar of my blog, I think: that’s just too much stuff floating around.

And I often think the same thing when I go to other blogs for a visit or a comment. Widgets can produce information overload, and when we start thinking of design elements of blogs — of what makes an online site work from the visual and information angle, and what detracts from the site — I can’t help but sometimes think that widgets are nothing but clutter that can get in the way of understanding.

And yet … having a space for static information is good, right? I guess. And it gives a blog a certain identity, too. What we choose to include leaves our own mark on our blog sites, which most of us (me) don’t code or create ourselves. We (me) use templates. Widgets can give our sites a little personality.

I do have my widgets here for a reason, and that reason is that I want to provide easy-to-access information and links to my readers.  But this morning, as I was trolling through my RSS reader, it occurred to me (and not for the first time) that I almost never actually see a blog itself. I see the feed. For the most part, I don’t even know what the blogs I subscribe to look like (for example, I went to a friend’s blog last night for the first time in who knows how long and saw that he had completely redesigned the thing. I didn’t know. Did it matter?), and so, I don’t really see the widgets either.

Maybe you never see mine, either.

Peace (in the crankiness),
Kevin

Laughter and Chatter: Remembering Kindergarten

by dogtrax

Kindergarten files
We had one of the funnest, most laugh-infested Circle of Power (Morning Meeting) sessions in my class the other day, as one of my sixth graders brought in a book that she and a bunch of others published when they were in Kindergarten with my colleague, Gail Poulin. (See her wonderful class blog and her own reflective blog).

My students shared, with permission of the others, drawings and stories they had either written or had transcribed. As is often the case with Gail, the stories were nicely published together. The theme for book was about “I Have  Dream” (inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.) and another packet was when one student is “star of the day,” the others write nice things about them and draw cute pictures.

Even students who did not have Gail for their kindergarter teacher had a great time with looking at the drawings, and listening to the stories, and remembering a bit about their own kindergarten experiences. It was an unexpected surprise, and we all had a good time.

Thank, Gail, for making memories that can impact us up here a the other end of the building. And thanks to the rest of our wonderful kindergarten team, too, who do such a fantastic job with the youngsters in our building. The things they do in those younger grades sets the stage for the learning we try to do in the upper grades. I know I appreciate their hard work.

Peace (down the memory land),
Kevin

Eavesdropping on Norris Tech Team

by dogtrax

The other day, I wrote a post about a meeting of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project – a sort of eavesdropping into the topics of the gathering. A few days later, I was in a meeting of our Norris Elementary School Technology Team and took some notes. Here are some of the topics we talked about. The Tech Team is comprised of our principal, our district’s technology coordinator, and teachers of various levels and disciplines in our building.

  • We spent a chunk of time talking about Facebook and pondering our school’s presence there. One of our team members created a Norris School FB site in the summer and he maintains it, but the principal wonders about the line between “official school news” and someone posting items to the Norris School FB wall, seemingly as official news (but not). I imagine a lot of schools are struggling with this. While I am not FB fan, I do see the value is connecting with the community that does use FB. We didn’t resolve much here, except to research if a post to the wall can be held in moderation before going public.
  • The last few meetings, we’ve aired some difficulties and frustrations we are having with staff members using and taking care of equipment that we do have available. Computer carts don’t get signed out; individual computer get taken off the carts; wires and cables disappear; digital cameras are scattered about. So, we are moving towards a Google Calendar system so that the sign-out process for the three computer carts (two PC and one Mac) will be all online. Ideally, this will allow everyone to know where the carts should be and when they are available. We’ll see how it works when the concept gets rolled out in a week or so. Our tech coordinator is working to provide a Google account to all staff members in the building, and then constructing shared calendars.
  • The flow of Promethean and other interactive boards into classroom is continuing but the training has not yet followed. What this means is that some teachers with boards don’t know how to use them, even in basic terms, and some have not yet even opened up the software on their new Macs (and some have not even used the Macs at all). A training session is taking place next month, led by a teacher here at our school and another teacher at another school in our district. I think we’ll be needing much more than that — I think a Mentor System is the way to go. We’re not there yet.
  • A series of workshops around using our new set of iTouch mobile devices, and the Thinkfinity site (which paid for the devices), is coming up in late March. Teachers will learn how to use the devices for at least some podcasting and publishing in the science area, as a focus. The grant also provides a stipend for participants, and they get to take use the iTouch during the time periods. We’re hoping this gets folks interested and engaged. But, we worry about use and care of the devices (see previous points).
  • The principal noted his commitment to sending our entire Tech Team to an upcoming technology conference in nearby Holyoke (with keynote speaker, Alan November). He supports the idea of going together as a group, then reflecting afterward on how we can use ideas we gathered here at our school. (This is the conference that I am sending in a proposal to for a workshop on Technology Across the Content Areas.)
  • Our tech team misses our Ning site, which we used a lot last year to connect but then abandoned because of Ning’s cost shift. I may look around for an alternative or try to get our principal to pony up the $20 for the basic Ning setup. It really made a big difference in our communication as a team.
  • Our principal left us with a little “fun homework,” as he called it. We are to come up with one interesting idea of technology that might inspire us, our school, to make a step forward. He suggested it be something neat, or fun, or engaging. I have more ideas than I can think of, but one that came up the other day is how some school districts create “virtual snow days” for students to connect with the school even when the school day is called off for weather. This appeals to me because of the lack of consistency these past few weeks, although I wonder about hurdles of implementing ways for students to work (and teachers to monitor) from home during snow days. (See article about this at The Answer Sheet.)

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Images and Multimedia: The Teacher Challenge

by dogtrax

I seem to have fallen behind a bit with the Edublog Teacher Challenge, but that’s the beauty of online work — there’s always another day. I’ve missed two of the activities: thinking about how we use images on our spaces and thinking about how we embed media into our sites.

First, I use images as a partner to text, mostly, but this is something I have been rethinking or at least, wondering about. Am I using images with blog posts for the way it looks or for the way it means? I’d have to admit: it’s all about the visual. I guess that’s not that unusual or all that bad, but given this age of multimedia, am I doing enough thinking and reflecting around why I use a specific image and what message does it convey?

This had me thinking a bit about Bud the Teacher’s annual month of poetry picture prompts, in which he posts an image and asks folks to be inspired to write a poem. Each morning, I found something unusual and would let the image spark some words and thoughts, and then I would write. I love how that visual element really got to the heart of creative inspiration.

Here’s an image he posted about refrigerator art:

magnetic poetry

And here was the poem that he inspired for me, looking at some art of my young son on our fridge (Creative Commons License photo credit: surrealmuse):

Oh, Luke, how could you
flash that light saber at your father like that,
there, with your stick arms and fat head,
drawn from some innocence yearning for conflict
and placed right next to the phone numbers
of people whose numbers we should remember anyway.
Luke, you’re not going anywhere anyway,
not with that magnet stuck to your head,
and I hope you don’t mind sharing your space with a report card,
a few coupons,
a reminder or two,
and that flier for a summer camp.
Space has become a cluttered place, Luke, and you’ll have to make do
until the Force of gravity releases you.

The next Teacher Challenge activity was all about embedding media, which I do quite regularly. I am always trying out things and sharing my process as best as I can here at my blog. I figure learning is an adventure, and the more I can reflect, the more I know about what I am doing. Media such as videos and interactive applications are becoming more and more portable, allowing us a chance to engage our readers in different ways. There is also a wide range of skills that go into creating a multimedia piece, and embedding them into our blogs gives us wider publication.

Since we’re on the poetry kick, I figure I would embed a Voicethread that I had created when I did a 30 poems in 30 Days project a few years ago, and asked folks to add thoughts or comments.

Peace (in the kickstart),
Kevin