Llamas in my back pasture…

I’ve got llamas in my back pasture

This snippet of conversation between a couple of American conference delegates, overheard at breakfast last week in our hotel in South Korea, has stuck in my mind and will not budge from my memory. What made it stick so? Perhaps it was the drawling accent, the over-the-top bragging volume, or the stage whispers from our team of possible ointment remedies for such an ailment. The joyous kinaesthetic feeling of spitting out coffee, followed by crying with laughter with team-mates, undoubtedly helped to cement the memory. To seek such an experience was not an objective of the trip to Asia. It was just a piece of incidental and spontaneous humour that is now impossible for me to forget – and that has driven me to action in writing this post.

For me, the incidental, informal learning that took place over the course of seven days in South Korea between 14 teachers is equally as powerful- and sticky a memory as the planned experiences for fulfilling the trip’s objectives. In some ways, it was not a big deal. People chatted quite naturally, sharing ideas and exchanging experiences. Some learned how to edit a Flip video, others used Prezi, Wallwisher or VoiceThread for the first time and everyone had a go at broadcasting live over the internet using Ustream Producer. Conversations ranged from evidence gathering techniques in Foundation Stage and their application across the whole school, to the use of puppets to engage and inform pupils. The learning was informal but dynamic nevertheless – BLT sharing in action.

It felt a bit like a face-to-face version of Twitter – a drip-feed of ideas and inspiration that teachers can use as they see fit. Twitter is low-key and informal but potentially powerful at the same time. I hope some of the teachers from the Korea trip will start to make use of Twitter. The learning was ubiquitous and it seems a shame not to find some way of continuing to enjoy the dynamic and to develop it with other teachers in Northants and beyond. Twitter could be an answer.  It’s got to be better than a llama in your back pasture

Education needs fewer rockstars, and more rockstar ideas

Mack Collier’s ‘Social media needs fewer rockstars, and more rockstar ideas‘ makes some really interesting points about how, in his world of social media, ideas are often valued on the basis of how prominent (in terms of followers/subscribers etc) the author is the online community – the so-called ‘rock-star’ effect. This makes the threshold too high for getting new ideas from new folks out into the effective thought- and collaboration space online.

This is not only a concern in the world of social media but also in the world of online education.The online education echo-chamber has preoccupied and frustrated me from time to time over the years. Edublogging celebrity even drove me to poetry a while back.

When I first seriously started using Twitter almost 1000 tweets ago, I thought it would be the antidote to the ‘rock star’ effect. For me, it wasn’t primarily about following people. It was about following conversations. You were afforded a glimpse into conversations that people were having with folks that you weren’t following, building a learning network organically as the conversations turned to areas of interest. Then Twitter changed the default behaviour of the technology so that you could not see the conversations that your followers were having with others outside your network. Twitter became a ‘fishbowl’ for me at that moment.

The only real way to further build the network is to throw numbers of people into your bowl in the hope of building conversations. I must say at this point that I am incredibly happy with the drip-feed of ideas, humour  and experience that my small fishbowl of 200 followers provides. However, I wonder how easy it would be for say, a bevy of Northamptonshire teachers, new to Twitter, to get their ideas heard or to get an effective following that would allow them to make use of the rock-star audience techniques of calling for responses for stuff they are doing in the classroom.

I have always waxed lyrical about the beauty of potentially-global, online collaboration and communication, enjoying its benefits in my classrooms and schools. It is brilliant to connect with like-minded individuals from around the world, at a Teach-Meet, or on a Sunday evening video conference. How though do you take those principles and apply and implement them across a county or region? My bluff has been called after all these years in my new job! How do you bottle the scatter-gun of enthusiasm and collaboration from around the country/world and make it happen in your immediate locality? How do you ensure that regions are producing people and ideas that are feeding in the online educational ecosystem, widening and embedding the principles of TeachMeet or ETRU throughout the local level?

Recognising that this is the $ 64000 question, I of course do not have the answer but I’m sure Mack Collier’s advice is part of the solution:

Listen closely to new ideas from new voices, and magnify both when you hear them. So many of us complain about the ‘fishbowl’ mentality in the social media space. A great way to counter that is to bring new voices with fresh takes into this space. Introduce your network to someone they might not have heard of previously. Yes we all know who the ‘rockstars’ in this space are, so show us who’s next. - Mack Collier

Taking Mack’s advice on board I’ve wiped my blog subscriptions clean (yet again) and am on the look out for ideas from people I haven’t read before and also from disciplines outside education. My twitter fishbowl will keep me ‘ticking over’ educationally while I make a foray into new areas to see what ideas and conversations they offer up. Perhaps I will find the answer to my $64000 question. I’ll be sure to let you know who I meet along the way. If there are any edu-rock stars out there with a rock-star solution, I’ll download your next album

I’m a TwitPic Poet

I didn’t mean to write a poem today. When I fired up Twitter this morning I noticed that Leon Cych had already been out and about taking photos in the snow. Somewhat intrigued, I took a look at his photos and left a quick comment.  They would have made good material for writing a topical poem about snow with my students. When Leon fired me a tweet with a link to a poem, ‘Handwriting Exercise’,  he had written about the snow 30 years ago, the material and surrounding backstory became excellent inspiration for writing a poem. If one of my schools had been open and visiting Silverstone then I would have written with them. Shame they weren’t really!

It was then that I remembered that Leon is a ‘proper’ poet and his excellent writing reflects that but he is also a good guy so will be suitably pleasant when he reads my limited poetic response, ‘Snowscape Escape’.

What struck me about this whole process was that it was very easy with a low entry threshold. It  reminded me both of the spontaneity that seemed possible when I was a pupil at primary school and of some of the ‘off the cuff’ adventures I had with my classes as a teacher years ago. For example, I read a poem online by Laura Sheffler from UC Berkeley and next morning was opening it up to my class for their own responses, opening up authentic collaboration with the poet in the process.

Gareth’s writing offers me some insight in why it was such a buzz for me as a teacher using technology to create today.

It’s grasping the nostalgia of how learning takes place: constructionism, experimentation, trial and error etc, and relating a technology to these forces that makes it powerful and relevant.

What I’ve experienced today is the nostalgia for how some of my my most memorable  learning took place in the past and how technology can make it relevant as a means for learning in the future.  I’ve always been a TwitPic poet baby – you better believe it!