#KiwiFoo 2013

My head is still scattered so, at this stage, thoughts on #KiwiFoo 2013 are best expressed by others (although I can just about stretch to a wee spot of curation)…..check out my Storify collection for a flavour of this rich unconference. Massive thanks and hat-tips to Nat Torkington, Janine Torkington, the hard-working crew, Mahurangi College, the sponsors, the participants, & my fab mate Claire….

[http://storify.com/virtuallykaren/kiwifoo2013]

I’m not quite ready to synthesise the goodness and bring it home to work or passions. I need some sleep first. But until then…..

grab-bag of take-aways / ponderings / wonderings….

• There is huge value in bringing together people from cross-disciplines – science, politics, education, tech, community, social. Throwing yourself in gains usually hard-to-grab opportunities to meet, connect with and learn from others who I would never had a chance to meet.

• The ‘so what’ of how people apply their skills: connections to the community, giving back, paying forward are what turns potential navel-gazing into meaningful projects.

• the value of immersive, hands-on learning (thinking here of the prototyping and robot-making sessions, as well as walking-the-talking in the collaboration across companies session) – the power of physical data visualisation

• The Makerspace movement as a pathway for learning – and prototyping, using methodologies from Stanford, to generate ideas through empathy

• The Electrum sculpture – Lightning Dreams – Gibbs Farm

• ‘A Pattern Language: Towns. Buildings. Construction’ by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein – and the concept of pattern language within educational professional learning and practice

• John Seddon and his thinking about the service industry – what would this look like in an educational context or in the way we develop organisations as systems?

• The open research movement and its potential to enhance participatory / action research / critical theory models as well as revolutionise the way in which we ‘judge’ quality, crowdsource new hypotheses and generate relevant questions.

• Stunning ideas to explore: Chalkle, Innocentive and PledgeMe (crowdsourcing), Ministry of Awesome (Christchurch), Goodreads (great books via social networking), Stone Soup (storytelling), finite and infinite games…

…..and there is another list of stuff I can’t get to right now….another time….

When the talk walks…

Today I completed my final Core Breakfast session for 2012 – a warm, enthusiastic session with a Dunedin crowd, exploring the possibilities for personalised (and connected – see image) professional learning that can be afforded by easily available technologies. This session was similar to the spotlight I facilitated at the Ulearn conference.

And at both of them, an interesting ‘meta-experience’ (real word? it is now..) highlighted for me the potential of the technologies that I am exploring with schools.

Story 1: Coming to you, live and direct!

The Ulearn session was streamed live and was freely available to anyone not at the conference, including one teacher who was tidying her classroom, somewhere in New Zealand.

She tweeted that was enjoying watching the session; a participant in the room with me showed me the tweet – and I was able to include her in the session, directly addressing the camera, illustrating the connecting power of the tech as it happened.

It may have startled her in the middle of tidying her desk (I imagine the pencils tumbling to the floor as she hears me talking to her from her laptop..) but what possibilities this offers for the future of professional learning are incredibly exciting.

While this has obviously been done before – one-to-many streamed TV shows offer interactivity via Twitter or similar, this is not a model that is common yet to PD but increased access through ultra-fast broadband will make this a reality in the coming years, bringing us:

• …live, multimedia synchronous sessions
• …interactive participation that can be tailored, personalised, meaningful
• …responsive and collaborative learning that is not bound by geographic constraints
• …the ability to record, replay, embed, transcribe and share – Universal Design for Learning and accessibility in action.

Story 2: Leveling our learning playing field

In this mornings’s breakfast session, one of the participants, Anne Kenneally (@annekenn), tweeted out that I was sharing resources from Dean Shareski (@shareski) – and included him in the tweet. He took the time to reply immediately, looping in both myself and Anne, as the session played out.

The double-loop that such online networks can create here, instantly connecting us to those people we admire and whose work we espouse, illustrates powerfully:

• The immediacy of access to others in our profession
• The leveling of the expert-student playing field – we are all experts, all learners, the reciprocity of akō in action
• The potential of the knowledge-based network

Both of the stories excite me – the irony that, at the moment of facilitating on the power of blended, networked professional learning, it plays out in the room in ways that add value for the participants and illustrate the talk in action.

This is the way we can de-silo, connect, and tailor our learning for our personal inquiries, all with an eye of sustaining our learning in ways that utilise the rich, developing, global networks of educators.

Our profession is founded on the sharing of knowledge with others.

Let’s make sure we share it amongst ourselves, too.

[Image source: "surprised kawaii cube"  by Jenn and Tony Bot]

Online professional learning: Punch above your weight

Here’s a story:

Sally is a primary teacher, who has had some exciting shifts in the way two of her students are learning to read. She rushes down the corridor to tell a colleague in the staffroom. Her colleague listens, is pleased for Sally, and spends a few minutes reflecting with her on both of their classrooms and how they teach literacy. Occasionally they return to the conversation over the following weeks. The end.

I use this as the start of an activity in the sessions I am running throughout this year on how blended/online approaches to professional learning can change the ending of this story. Sally’s story is the ‘BC’ version (before connectivity), although I know that it is still the norm in many schools.

I have been exploring why and how the social web, when it’s used strategically by educators, can make Sally’s story go further so, as a group, we can:

• build a shared articulation of practice
• make visible for others our reflective inquiries around ‘what works’
• create spaces for a collaborative approach to inquiry
• offer opportunities for professionals to make connections with each other, using visible online networks
• curate learning to build a lifelong digital portfolio, against which to reflect and discuss
• create expression of our practice to enable comparisons with others, to clarify what the key stories of effectiveness look like.

I am facilitating these sessions as part of the CORE Education breakfast series throughout 2012, and also at the ULearn12 conference in October.

Meanwhile, here’s me giving an overview of this trend, created for the 10 trends series:

[Image source:  Beverly & Pack]

Placing a value on community

My head is very much focused on communities of practice at the moment, as much of my work involves facilitation and co-ordination within a professional-social network for educators (the VLN).

I struggle, to be honest, with the tension between the natural evolution of communities of practice, grassroots-up, driven by members’ needs and wishes, and a community space that must show value, be accountable, justify the time and effort to facilitate and support it.

Who am I to assign a value to another person’s learning?

Two interesting papers I have read recently that have helped to clarify this potential dichotomy for me have been:

Feger, S. & Arruda, E. (2008).Professional Learning Communities:
Key Themes from the Literature. Brown University: Education Alliance.

This has provided a useful overview of communities focused on teachers’ professional learning, reflecting back to me some of the issues I have been pondering regarding measurability and accountability:

“Fullan (2006) asserts that there are many examples of PLCs that are implemented superficially, without an awareness of the depth that is needed for producing an impact on learning. He proposes that the effectiveness of PLCs should be judged on how well they are able to create cultures of professional learning on a system scale. Similarly, Stoll et al. (2006) made note that researchers assume that PLCs are effective when these practices are observed, that these characteristics in and of themselves are used to denote a successful PLC. While confirming impact is not necessarily a challenge for PLCs to tackle, establishing positive impact of PLCs has potential to alleviate other challenges faced by PLCs.” (p. 10)

The 2011 paper from Wenger, de Laast and Traynor – Promoting and assessing value creation in CoPs and networks: a framework - has been extremely helpful. It walks the tightrope between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’, acknowledging the situation in which folk like myself find ourselves, but providing a useful, Kirkpatrick-adapted framework for capturing the layers of value that a community might create.

Neither paper has resolved issues for me, but, if value must be established, then to work from that which those using the community value seems to be the best starting point.

[Image source: 'Crowd thinking by fotographic1980 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

#eqnz

The Christchurch earthquake – and the tragedy unfolding in its wake – has stunned us all. But, in between the stories of bravery, local heroism and national response, there have been occasional moments where something has caught my attention because it is odd or unusual.

For me, it was the moment in Parliament on Tuesday 22 February, when Bill English asked people to stay off the phone lines and use texting instead. And it was the moment when a bizarre email from a friend made me think something had happened – and Twitter was my first source for immediate news. Both were, even at the time, in the midst of the devastating news, an odd reminder of the way technology is part of how we communicate.

This infographic from Mashable highlights the way online networks are now firmly centre stage during times when news is breaking; when the person in the street is at the heart of the story; when good, and bad, news travels faster than ever before.

If anyone still doubts the power of an online community, a social network or 140 character messages to have real impact on people’s lives, they have only to look at the messages coming through on the day of the earthquake, and still streaming through in the days afterwards, to be persuaded otherwise.

 

My Principal tweets: A report on leaders and social networks

We know that when leaders get involved in professional learning – when they walk the talk – their staff and community are much more likely to follow and be inspired to join in.

The report  - School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies, and Realities in 2010 – highlights the importance of school principals getting hands-on experience with social media tools, like Facebook and Twitter, in order to understand how it might support collaborative and networked learning.

The key findings of the report include:

• Principals who have active and personal experience of social media are far more likely to be strong advocates for its educational potential, and for e-learning in general.
• Many principals believe that there are possibilities within social media – but their schools do not have a strategy for its use.

The report recommends three key actions:

1. Greater active involvement in social networking is required for school leaders – and sites like EdWeb, ASCD Community and Google for Educators can provide a context that offers obvious benefits quite quickly if Facebook and Twitter don’t strike immediate chords.
2. Models of good practice are needed to show the potential of social networking in education
3. School policies need to be more effective and based on real-world contexts. They should extend beyond whether sites should be blocked to incorporate students and community in authentic digital citizenship conversations.

Schools look to their leaders for guidance and inspiration. What are they seeing at the moment?

Original link for report: http://www.edweb.net/fimages/op/PrincipalsandSocialNetworkingReport.pdf

Unrequited love on Twitter: are they really worth it?

You on Twitter? Then you’ve been there…that moment when you realise that the person you’re following just doesn’t love you back.

I’m not talking about “I follow you, so you follow me” (which is just not how it works) but those people (and they’re usually super famous, in marketing, or celeb-types) that hardly follow anybody…but everyone follows them.

Find these people  (and they’re often the ones you find when you’re just starting out as a newbie-Tweeter:”Look who else is here!”) – and you have a dilemma.

Follow them – and be just a statistic, one of the herd? One of 1,174, 349 if you admire @stephenfry?  One of 5,770,814 if you adore @ladygaga?

Ignore them – and miss out on their ideas, erudite comments or the latest goss from LA (“summer has finally hit LA and I got a cold..WHAT????!!!!” gasps @mrskutcher)

Or, you can take the third way – and try to charm them with your own ideas, erufite comments and goss. Good luck with that.

I’m not for a moment suggesting that Stephen or Ms Gaga, are in that category (although I’m disappointed in Elmo). But I’m wondering (from my clearly ‘collaborative’ point of view) if someone is all about broadcast, are they worth following?

Barcamp 2010: It’s the people, stupid!

Today I attended the BarCamp 2010, on online communities, organised the wonderful folk at Ideasshop in Wellington. It felt like a wee homecoming, talking with other people who ‘get’ the online community passions and pitfalls. Largely Comms and PR folk, there were also some very switched on Gen-Y+ students (have you worked on your personal brand yet? They have.) and a smattering of Marketing and social media consultants.

Chatham House rules being what they are, I will stay schtum on some juicy details but the key themes that seemed to emerge were:

• Don’t even start to create content, websites, media channels or a single tweet until you are very clear on who you are talking to and why. Keep them involved, collaborating and co-constructing the journey.

• Personas/user information are a great way to remind us that we do NOT own channels or communities – and that it’s the people, and their needs, that matter most. What do they want? When do they want it, and where? What are their mindsets at the point where they engage with you?

• Despite risk aversion, successful models are de-centralised and high trust with a clear line of sight to the business goals. Different voices for different channels. Remember that businesses do not intentionally hire idiots, so trust your staff to talk to your customers; they may be your strongest advocates.

• Mass broadcast is yesterday’s paradigm; local, specialised, personal is where it’s at.

• Websites are not information brochures but relationship management tools, controlled mutuality. Why do your users want to have a relationship with you?

• Social media is a different paradigm. We are pulling people to us, not pushing our message. Find your community and find your conversation. Where are your people, where are they hanging out and what are they saying? Listen to them.  [Some great tools for this: SocialOomph, GoogleAlerts, Flock, Tweetdeck,  Surchur, Technorati (influencer ranking), Radian6 (sentiment), and a plug for the local boys, NetEmpathy ( sentiment)]

• Engage with their communities first then use the community chats to leverage traffic to your own business.

All that, plus some relaxed people, enough sugar to put us all on the ceiling, and some good contacts for the future. Nice one.

Get the party started on your community page

Have you got the sound of tumbleweed blowing across your online community? Too many lurkers and too few livewires? In short, just because you’ve built that online community space doesn’t mean they will come (even if it looks beautiful).

Why won’t they talk to me?

It’s a real challenge when people feel exposed online. People perceive that there is a risk in displaying and committing to one’s thinking if they are not sure of something.  In many ways, it is scarier than commenting on an issue in a meeting because it is more permanent and requires time to frame and express thinking concisely and accurately. For you, the online facilitator, it requires a re-doubling of the kind of efforts and supports you put in place when facilitating face-to-face discussion:-)

8 ideas to get started

So, how can we bridge these issues and create a safe place to chat? You have an advantage if you can leverage face-to-face contact that you have.

1. Discuss a relevant, timely issue that has already been discussed face-to-face. If you don’t see people face-to-face, contact them, send out a survey, bribe them, do whatever you can to find out their burning issues. Work from evidence if you can.

2. Co-construct a question with them to consider between posts or workshops so that they have a vested interest in it. Build the discussion into their work or interests. Target their need and build from there..

3. Give each thread a clear value: i.e. I am more likely to participate if it is a co-operative, sharing exercise (e.g. ideas/resource sharing and we all benefit from adding a comment). The most active forums I have been involved in have been the ones based on exchange of information and ideas. Marketplace rules. Supply and demand.

4. Provide online guidance for contributors: i.e. brief comments (100 words-ish), they can build on what the previous person said, they could add a useful link with a comment. And remember the all-important protocols for the ne’er-do-wells.

5. Put up something for them to critique (e.g. what’s wrong or right with this picture?)

6. If you have a captive audience, or a large group fo people already in a face-to-face community, start several threads, one for each small group of supportive peers, rather than having one thread for a large group of people. Smaller numbers = less risk for them.

7. As ‘the voice’, keep getting in there (on or off line and PRAISE, encourage, keep the positive vibes flowing, keep working on adding and reaching for the value comments and creating a safe place for people to be.)

8. Send email reminders and show them how to set up forum notifications. This slow steady stuff is an investment for further down the line.

And if in doubt, free ice-cream and party hats might just break the ice;-)

Image source: http://stengel99.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/party-hats1.jpg