Web 2.0 for US! Session at Martin Professional Development Center 101910

I had a great time yesterday facilitating an all-day Web 2.0 (and beyond) session for 18 MNPS teachers. The participants were a very nicely balanced mix of elementary, middle, and high school teachers and we got right into it at 8:37 a.m. The class was supposed to get underway at 8:30 but my watch (this has never before happened) inexplicably stopped at 8:16 and I kept glancing at it thinking, "we have a few more minutes" until I thought "It's been 8:16 for quite some time. Has time stopped?"

Off we went. The session was guided by the PowerPoint/GooglePresentation embedded here and underscored by dialog in a live chat room at http://chatterous.com. I have now pasted the chat log into slides at the end of the pressie and added a few replies to questions or comments I didn't see because I was sharing my little heart out up front of the room. The final slide shares a bit of my own reflection on the day's work.

Please take a few minutes (11, which you will not regret) to view the Ken Robinson presentation we started the day with, because as I said, "I want you to know where I'm coming from..."

Thanks again to all my wonderful new colleagues and my hearty encouragement to you to keep the faith and keep your change moving in the right direction. On of our main support structures at Virtual Learning is "Do the next right thing for our students." You know what it is. You are good teachers.

Here is:

USN Summer Camp Offering for Educators!

My school, University School of Nashville, offers a number of summer opportunities each year. The building some weeks seems even busier than it is in the school year. This coming summer, I'll be offering a week-long, half-day experience for teachers to give them the opportunity to explore social media and Web 2.0 tools under the guidance of moi and in the company of like-minded pioneers. You can find the description here and register for the workshop at the USN Summer Camps website, and you can investigate a bit more about the content matter at my "Web2.0forUS!" wiki. The week is limited to 16 attendees, and we expect seats to go quickly, so register soon!

The path to register is a bit long and circuitous, set up as it is mostly for children's summer camp opportunities, but I hope the following directions will help:

1. Visit the Summer Camps website
2. Click on Register Now
3. Select Adult from the pull-down menu
4. Scroll down and check the box for Social Media and Web2.0 for Educators!
5. Create an account as a Non-USN StudentFollow the prompts to select payment options and register!
6. If all this is too daunting, email me at smerrick@email.usn.org with the subject header, "I want to learn Web2.0 this summer!"
   
   

07/19/2010 - 07/23/2010$225

Adults 18 and up

Social Media and Web2.0 for Educators!

1. Instructor: Scott Merrick
   8:30 - 12:00
   
   Come spend a week of half-days with Scott Merrick, University School of Nashville's Lower School Technology Coordinator for 11 years and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Core Volunteer Leader. We'll get hands-on experience with social media of all kinds every day and explore the life-long learning potentials that these offer the tech-savvy educator. Scott will guide you through the intricacies of social bookmarking, media sharing, blogging, and podcasting. You will leave the workshop with your very own Professional Learning Network jump-started and energized for the future, wondering why you didn't get started with it sooner but glad that it's underway.
   
   See you in the summer!

Virtual Teaching and Learning Starts with Quest Atlantis

I'm going to begin journaling my personal experiences with Quest Atlantis here in order that I might pull out perhaps publishable bits for print later on. So stay tuned here (and I may cross-post at Oh! Virtual Learning) for that. This is an exciting time for me and I hope to share it prodigiously.

It's been interesting this past year, learning about and experiencing the powerful way that immersion into a 3 dimensional internet experience (3Di) can lead to engaged learning. Most notably, I think of Peggy Sheehy's powerful presentation at the Second Life Educational Community Conference in Tampa, a gathering about which I've already blogged, and I'd also send you to Fleep Tuque's marvelous roundup at her blog, Fleep's Deep Thoughts. Funny, I use Second Life names and "rl" (real life) names interchangeably. Fleep is Chris Collins "irl" (in real life) and Peggy is Maggie Marat. I noticed in Tampa that folks tended to lean toward addressing one another using avatar names. There's a Masters thesis in there somewhere, ya'll--the whole issue of identity extension into digital realms. Thankfully, I don't have to write it here.

Peggy is THE pioneer in leading young students into immersive learning experiences via 3Di in the Second Life Teen Grid. This is a realm I have never visited, since I've as of yet failed to hook myself into a project, a required criteria for approval for adult entry into the TG. I hope to progress into the TG, and after listening to some of the success stories at the SLEDCC, I have every faith that I will. Meanwhile, I'm beginning my foray into VE with Quest Atlantis. The journey looks promising.

Quest Atlantis is a 3Di environment that has been working with students and teachers on a global scale since 2004. The extensive website that supports the teaching and learning states "Over the last four years, more than 10,000 children on five continents have participated in the project." I was introduced to it years ago and never got around to really digging in, that is until my relatively new friend Jeff Agamenoni, a teacher of special needs middle schoolers in Great Falls, Montana, needled me to investigate it.

Jeff's another story altogether. I met Jeff in Second Life, when he sought me out to add his new blog, "From Mr. A to Mr. Z" to the ISTE Island Blogger's Hut, a facility I maintain for the International Society for Technology in Education in Second Life. His avatar, Henny Zimer (that's "zymer," with a long "y," for those audial learners in the readership). We became friends. We Skype occasionally, twitter back and forth, and generally co-explore new technologies, especially social ones, together. We share a fascination with the new ways technologies are flattening the globe, and I respect his opinions, fresh as they are with the eyes of a newcomer to the field.

First Steps
I visited the QA website. I clicked on the "Educators" tab. I checked out the Professional Development (PD) schedule, and was appalled to see that qualifying for QA participation requires teachers to spend a month learning about the platform. PD sessions run weekly, about 2 hours a week, in the evening. I immediately set about trying to perform the equivalent of "testing out" of the training, sending an email to the website managers stating my prior experience with the 3Di, my various statuses as blogger (SL blog, contributor to the "official" Second Life Education blog), and my newly hatched LLC, MUVErs, dedicated to helping education and the 3Di "play well" together.

I received a prompt and polite response that I had to do the PD.

A little huffy, I thought to myself, well, I don't have time for that. My Google calendar, by the way, is pretty much a nightmare. My lovely wife, Lee Ann, and I have weekly meetings to make sure we're on the same page about our commitments, personal, familial, and professional; and it doesn't help that process much that I have two paying jobs--one as Lower School Technology Coordinator at University School of Nashville and one as "Teacher-in-residence" at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach--and a start-up company that's currently knee-deep into high stakes negotiations with a large Mid-west America university system to help provide 3Di simulations for online learning. "NO WAY," was my thought.

Then one day last week I was inspired by an online conversation with Jeff to go look at the schedule again. I spent a bit more time at the QA website and complained to him that I'd missed the first in the September training sessions. He encouraged me to register for the rest, saying that he'd missed the first of his sessions but since it was basically introduction to VE, he was sure I could do the same. Here comes the nail in the coffin (perhaps an analogy with undue negative connotations, but such a graphic one I can't help but resort to it). I twittered a question:

Who wants to partner with me in Quest Atlantis training? 2 hours each Wed. Oops, there goes my audience, LOL

I did not expect any reply.

I went about my work irl. In a few minutes, I checked my tweets. The usual suspects had posted random, often helpful and informative thoughts, including this one.

@scottmerrick I do I do I do! 08:54 AM September 16, 2008 from web in reply to scottmerrick

It was from Peggy Sheehy, MaggieMarat on twitter, and my dear friend. Maggie, btw, was one of my 8 co-presenters in last summer's "SLedupotential: Educational Potentials of Second Life and Virtual Environments" at NECC2008 in San Antonio. Like quite a few friends I've met in Second Life and grown to know irl, Maggie/Peggy feels to me like a childhood friend never lost. What did I call her, a "dear friend?" I mean that. Later, friend Malinda McCormick (Joie Despres in Second Life) replied with a query about which session I was registering for. I hope that means that she'll join us! Malinda and I are "pagemates," a joking reference to our sharing a page in ISTE's "Leading and Learning with Technology" print and online publication this past summer as featured members of that 85,000 member international organization.

This may be time for a little aside. This is another Masters thesis topic, the strong bonds created by individuals who first meet "virtually," or "online," and then get to know one another personally and professionally and form amazingly strong relationships in both domains, maybe many domains. I will hypothesize here that the relationships are forged by common interests and predelections, not a half-bad way to start relationships, and further that these beginnings would never have happened at all without the mediating technology of the 3Di. Educational sage David Warlick and I have become friends for the very same reason, as he noted in a Skype chat with my teacher participants in 2007's Web2.0forUS! workshop: "Scott and I are not friends because of our geographical proximity. We are friends because of our ideas." I have never had so much as a cup of coffee with David. But when we meet irl he greets me like an old friend. I feel greeted and I return that greeting. I feel priveliged to know him, as well as to be known by him. That's what friendship is, or at least what supports it. It's powerful.

I must get back to my little journal.

Okay, well, tonight at 7 pm my time I will login to Quest Atlantis, using a new username, MisterMerrick, and my password that I set when I confirmed my participation in the teacher PD program, and I'll fire up Skype and get a voice connection with Bronwyn Stuckey, a teacher who leads QA PD from her home in Australia. The journey begins.

More later :)

Wow, Chatting with Steve Hargadon Today Was Stellar!

In my workshop today, the one-week thingie I have created and promoted to give teachers time to explore and learn about the Read/Write Web, we chatted with Classroom 2.0 creator Steve Hargadon via Skype for over 20 minutes. Early in the day I noticed Steve on Skype and asked him if he could pop in to help us understand his huuuuuuuuge ning, which any moment now will achieve its 10,000th member.

I just checked. Having converted the nearly 1 Gb .mov file my Kodak cam recorded to a smaller (42 or so Mb) .mov file for the internet, it's housed at Classroom 2.0. View it now!

Check out our wiki for lots of fun!

Having a blast with Web2.0forUS! workshop

I just want to say how freakin' fun it is to spend time with 6 heretofore complete strangers, dedicated public school teachers all, who are now colleagues-in-teaching and to have the wonderful Caroline Blackwell, our school's Director of Multicultural Affairs, join us today. We spent some serious time expanding our awareness of Web 2.0 tools and had further time to explore on our own as I multi-tasked up front and shared video from David Warlick and Clay Shirky. Life(s) is good.

All of it is chronicled at the workshop's wiki, so keep up, pilgrim, if you're interested. If you want to know more about how to bring this experience (or at least one like it :) to your school or district, see the Web2.0forUS! wiki.

Cheerio!
Scott

Speaking to a group of students at Peabody College Grad School--Web 2.0 for Us

Just to chronicle a diversion in my normal path in working with teachers, upon the invitation of a colleague at my school (the wonderful Genie Tanner), I stepped into "higherhigher" education Friday early evening. More or less successfully tailoring my Web 2.0 for Us evangelic message to the assembled group of 15 or so graduate students in the College of Human Development, in a class entitled "Advanced Information Systems," I struck out across the street armed with a wiki page I'd slapped together in the morning as a fulcrum. The tools I share are so dynamic and immediate in nature, somehow locking down a talk about them into a framework of sequential bullet points seems counterproductive.

I explained early on to the mostly business-centered students that I was trying to wean myself from PowerPoints. I predict that I will return to presentation software someday, but I'm not going to use it at all for a while.

See below for the simple wiki notes page I made, and the one Genie put up on their own wiki during my interaction with the students . Both of us were 'sperimenting :). Here's the interesting thing, at least to me: Compare the two and you'll see how my non-linear approach enabled me to play off questions and ad hoc insights to share more than I may have shared with a traditional PowerPointy presentation. If you are in the presentation "game," how do you pull it off? Are you grounded in PowerPoint? What else works well!?