Mike’s Musings

For now this a placholder for when I come back to do my slideshow. I’ve been away from this course for 3 weeks due to a death in the family.

I have to be honest. Thing 11 did nothing for me except get me frustrated in terms of trying to  pick a topic or theme that relates to my job.  Although Flickr has millions of pictures, I think most of them are useless. I think Flickr is useful for some people in their work. However I am not one of them. I do think Flickr would be useful on a personal basis for organizing all my photos and interests. I think the exercise of posting images into a blog was very useful. Learning about Creative Commons and give attribution is also a worthwhile exercise for my future work.

What I liked about Flickr is that I found some people that had real interesting blogs based on links from their pictures.  I also liked the fact that you could do slide shows and use RSS feeds.

One of my goals when I retire is to visit every ACC football stadium when Boston College is playing. Thus my initial Flickr image is of Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill.

  Game Time at BC

Image by Lorianne DiSabato

Creative Commons will make me think more of material I present in the future. Since I’m not teaching in the classroom I don’t have as much material to present these days. My presentations are limited to Professional Days for staff where I present material to try and get them enthused about technology. I have to admit I had not heard of CC or noticed it on websites. When I used material, I always cited the source not knowing how to get permission. I have done some more traditional web 1.0 sites and question my use of images. These are mostly for special interest groups like my condo association, non-profit  clubs, golf leagues, etc. and I always went to image sites that allowed public use.  I think the only violation I used was to lift pictures taken of certain golf holes from the public golf club’s website where we play, to use on my golf league’s site.  I tried to look for the owner but couldn’t find anything.

My background is software engineering from private industry and the open source concept. The web has been a godsend to software people because it is so easy to search the web and find an algorithm for a problem and code that you can just cut and paste.

Frankly, even if we teach and remind students about CC, I don’t think they will adhere to it. Until the world approaches this problem like the professional rules of golf, where you follow the rules to the limit or you can get disqualified, it won’t work.

This task was very addictive and time consuming because I could not restrict myself to 3-5 Wikis. I tried them all and delved into different links on them.  My wife thinks I’m having a network romance with some one since I’m on the computer every night so long. This task is affecting me following the Red Sox. The wikis that caught my eye initially were Code Blue, Grazing for Digital Natives, and the Westwood Schools Computer Science.

I was attracted to Code Blue because my wife is an emergency room nurse. I loved this site because of the humor that the kids used in trying to get their information presented (Medical Maniacs). My wife has told me many humorous ER stories. You have to have a sense of humor to survive in that environment. I think their Home page could have been done better, explaining the site, purpose, etc. but the participation of all the students was great along with their links to good info.

The Grazing for Digital Native attracted me because I have given presentations to all my school staff on Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. However it was almost a little too resume-like and a marketing tool for Jen Dorman but it had a lot of excellent material (Digital Natives).

The last site Westwood Schools Computer Science attracted me because I was a Computer Science major in college. My complaints about the site were that there was just too much extraneous material (Awards, Hall of Fame, etc). I know Vicki Davis does a lot of good material but I’m not sure it should be part of her class material. I did like the student work on Convergence As We Speak that showed creativity on the student’s part.

As for my professional use at my school, I just became a mentor for the school’s robotics team, so I think it would be great for the 25 students involved in documenting and collaborating on the project

The last week has been fun trying different feeds for a couple of days, then re-adjusting my list.  After learning about this class at the BLC08 conference I thought that Alan November’s blog would be interesting.  My conclusion is that Alan is too busy traveling around the world instead of contributing to his blog so I unsubscribed to him. I tried Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed because there are regular updates but not an overwhelming amount and they also have diversity in their content. For example the  post  on Reading Online is Not Reading On Paper  was interesting to what we are trying to do in this class.    

The other thing that I did this week was try and decide how RSS feeds could help clean my desk. You may think this is a strange question but you haven’t seen my desk. As a school IT director I get all kinds of  free monthly education publications. Since I am a procrastinating digital immigrant, I am always way too busy to read them so they pile up on my desk and under my desk, etc. When I do read them, I peruse the table of contents for technology articles. So this week the “light ” went on about RSS and I subscribed to the magazine’s  RSS feeds on technology and started to cancel my paper copies. As Kermit says “it feels so good to be green”.

I loved Thing 5. I had heard of RSS before at a seminar by Will Richardson over a year ago. After the conference I even setup my Google Reader and subscribed to RSS feeds for my favorite football team, the Boston College Eagles. Then with all the other factors in my life and at work, I went back to my old ways and I never actually used the reader. This Thing 5  task has really made me understand RSS and aggregators much better.

Since I have been taking this class, I drop tidbits of what I’m learning with Web 2.0 tools to a couple of my fellow teachers who are curious about the class. With this in mind I was naturally attracted to the article on Interactive Tools from the Tech Learnimg feed. I sent them the URL to the ClassTools.net site and expect them to try them in class this week. The best part of these Tasks is the “doing”. You can read forever about RSS but until you setup your reader with feeds and view themt, you don’t appreciate it.

In reviewing the blogs from Thing 4, I noticed that all the blog writing styles are different. This is not bad but you have to get used to a particular writer’s style much like getting used to a book’s author. For example Tom Clancy has a unique style in his writing.

Blog reading differs from other types of reading because you may have to jump around because of digital links. Similarly blog writing can be a more dynamic experience than serial experience if the author tends to use links. There is a lot of self-expression or opinions in blog writing. This self-expression tends to encourage comments because everyone has an opinion. The more controversial the blog writer is, the more comments are usually solicited. The blog post can be very simple as in  Duck with a Blog but generate many interesting comments.

Blogging can facilitate learning because it makes you think and through the use of links, you are exposed to much richer material.

As I reviewed the different blogs for the assignment, I had a funny thought that Andy Rooney from CBS 60 Minutes could be a great blogger.  He dishes out great topics and waits for people to respond with letters or emails. With blogging you could get almost instant feedback with him. That’s the beauty of blogs. It’s almost interactive and instantaneous so you don’t have to wait to learn something.

Web 2.0 has changed my practice just by the fact that I’m taking this course. As an IT Director for a vocational technical school I see so much computer equipment that is not being used effectively. My responsibility includes the typical IT things like web-based student information system (attendance, grades, scheduling, etc), the network infrastructure( T1 lines, LAN,switches, firewall, email, virus protection, etc), computer infrastructure(desktops, laptops, servers, etc), application software for the nineteen vocational areas and state reporting which we have a ton of in Massachusetts.  We have a technology specialist that does not report to me that isn’t given the opportunity to integrate technology by the administration. I have fellow administrators as well as teachers that are afraid of “real” technology. I think my challenge is to educate the staff as to what is happening with Web 2.0 and how they can use it in both the academic and vocational technical areas. I have talked to a number of the newer teachers who are very eager to participate in Web 2.0 tools with their students.  I envision the day where the IT Director won’t have to worry about loading all the software that departments need because it will all be web based and exist somewhere on the web. I envision the day that students will be vodcasting what they learn in the automotive shop, cosmetology salon, culinary department, etc in which they are documenting what they are learning to help themselves and their classmates. I envision the day where the shop instructors are merely the facilitators of expert material and their trade experience and they let the students learn by doing and documenting among themselves. Some of this paradigm does happen today in the shops but without the use of web 2.0 tools. The basic fact is that most teachers and administrators are digital immigrants. However we must find some sort of bridge to get the students and staff talking the same language.

One of the good things about vocational learning is that the 21st Century skills of collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking  are part of the basic education model. For example teams collaborate (work) on projects whether it’s repairing a car, preparing meals for the public dining room or working on a multi-disciplined robotics project. The use of Web 2.0 tools can help these students collaborate more efficiently and do some problem solving among them selves, without the instructor, much like they would be working as a team solving a problem in the outside world.

Lifelong learning is something that I have practiced throughout my career. Unlike most people taking this course I am not a school system teacher by trade but I now work in a school system as an IT Director. Over the last forty years my career has been in “high tech” as a computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, Director of Engineering, etc. Since things change so rapidly in “high tech”, I have always been a lifelong learner by necessity in order to survive and succeed. My favorite expression with staff members past and present is that “people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan”. This saying is very similar to what I think will be one of the easiest habits for me of “Begin with an end in mind” (Habit 1). The other habit that I am most comfortable with is “ Have confidence in your self as an effective learner” (Habit 4). This comfort level  simply comes from experience in leading many new projects over my career.

The most challenging habit for me is habit 5, “Creating my own Learning Toolbox”. I currently have many tech tools that I have accumulated over the years and I find it difficult switching to new ones when the old ones work. Also shifting to a new paradigm which is what Web 2.0 represents upsets my old toolbox.  As you get older you get more comfortable with that “Old Sweater” and I have many old sweaters in my toolbox.

 The most important habits for me as I work through this course are habits #7 and 7 ½. My current plan is to retire from my current position a year from now and work in my district as free-lance technology integrator to “teach and mentor others”.  This was part of my “Begin with a plan in mind” when I came to work in my district eight years ago and I convinced my Superintendent to buy into the plan. To me all of this will fall right into habit 7 ½ “Play”. For me this will be fun and exciting.