PLN

I’m reporting, as promised, on the second parent workshop I led at my middle school. There were only 3 parents in attendance, but again, this allowed for more discussion and personal feedback. My district’s IT director and the middle school principal were also there, which led to a broader perspective on the topics being covered - our IT director was able to answer some of the more technical (hardware) questions and my principal was able to address some of the district policies in more depth.

We were yet again unable to get through the filters to visit some of the sites I planned to, but that didn’t stop us from having an excellent discussion about the technologies that are popular with students today. The parents in attendance were unfamiliar with web-based email, so I gave a demonstration of how to set up a gmail account. This was actually an excellent introduction to a discussion on how easy it is for anyone to create a new identity online, as well as how easy it is for students to create their own email accounts at home. The gmail demonstration led to a demonstration of instant messaging, which the parents were also unfamiliar with. I just used the chat feature available in gmail and sent out a cry for help to three members of my PLN asking for some sort of response to help with the demonstration. I was lucky enough to get a response from @brunsell - thanks Eric! It was very interesting to describe something that has become so much a part of my online life - the parents kept asking “why do you do this?” and “why would my child want to do this?”. These were excellent questions and led to a great discussion on setting limits on time online and the distraction factor of instant messaging.

In an attempt to demonstrate social networking without being able to access MySpace and Facebook, I showed the parents Classroom 2.0 and my page there. I think everyone in attendance was a bit shocked at how much information I put out online, as well as the fact that my picture is plastered everywhere. This led into a discussion on how I use social networking for my profession, and giving more information is necessary to gain credibility. I, as an adult, have the choice to offer this information as I see fit. Our students and children should not be given the choice - it’s the same as all of the other rights that come with adulthood. We also discussed parents putting pictures of their children online and whether that is appropriate or not - the parents in attendance were of the opinion that it’s not ok, and I explained that although I don’t put pictures of my children anywhere other than my invite-only online photo albums in Snapfish, many other parents DO make their photos public, and it’s a personal choice.

I look forward to working with parents more in the future, and it would be interesting to see how it would be different if there were more tech-savvy parents in attendance. It would definitely change the tone and level of the discussions, but I worry that the parents with less experience would be apprehensive about asking questions in that environment.

You can see the resources from the workshop on the Parent Workshop wiki.

I have been asked on twitter and various other places for links to this and links to that, and I just thought I’d make it easier for those of you who wish to follow my research on blogging, social networking, and other web tools. I don’t always have time to blog about the information I find, so here are some other ways to find out what I’m reading or watching:

1) Add me to your del.icio.us network - I’m kolson29. I tag everything worthwhile that I read, but I have to warn you that my tagging needs work. I plan to tackle that soon, I promise!  You can also add my del.icio.us feed to your aggregator.

2) Follow me on twitter - kolson29. I tweet many of the articles that I’m reading or resources that I find. If for some crazy reason you think I have REALLY great stuff to say or resources to share, you could do a tweetscan for kolson29. I’d be honored :-)

3) I am constantly updating my Parent Workshop wiki with links to social networking resources. I just added a section for educational uses of social networking. Right now the wiki is geared toward the sessions I’m leading at my middle school, but after that I plan to just keep adding to it for interested educators and parents. Please request to join if you think you have great stuff to share! If you are interested in just finding out about the new stuff when it’s added, you can create a wikispaces account and then visit the space-wide notification page to sign up for email notification of changes. If you don’t want to create an account, you can visit the notification page linked above and grab one of the feeds for your aggregator.

4) If you want to contact me, you can email me at kolson29@gmail.com or through the contact form on the About page on this blog.

I’m always looking for resources, so if you are on del.icio.us, add me to your network (see above) and tag links for me - I’d love you for it! Many of the resources I use for blog posts, in my courses, or on my wiki are from members of my PLN - thanks to you all :-)

I finally joined the hipsters and created a Facebook account this week.  I swore I wouldn’t do it, but here I am - one of the masses.  It’s not that I actually have anything against Facebook or any other social networking sites, it’s just that I really don’t have time for the social part of social networking - I was in college before the craze hit and then spent my subsequent years completely out of the cool-loop.  Oh yeah, and having archaic dial-up internet didn’t help.  I currently spend hours each day networking, but it’s of the educational nature.  I consider all the time I spend communicating with my PLN to be educational networking (as described by Vicki Davis), which therefore justifies the insane amount of time I spend on my laptop.  All in the name of my learning and development, right? 

Actually, joining Facebook IS in the name of research.  I’m going to be teaching a parent workshop at my middle school on “what kids are up to online these days” (working title, real one much more sophisticated) and although I’ve read post after post, done oodles of research, and watched “Growing Up Online”, I didn’t feel that I could honestly teach anyone about it without actually using it myself.  (Note:  I created a MySpace account several months ago for the same purpose.) Now, I’m not saying that I have to “master” Facebook to be able to talk to parents about it, but I should be familiar enough with it to be able to describe how to set up an account and find people.  Most importantly, I want to be able so show them exactly where their kids are (or will be) spending time and what they’re exposed to there.  I have no intention of saying anyone shouldn’t use Facebook - exactly the opposite.  But it’s just too easy to dismiss things as ‘dangerous’ or a waste of time if you don’t truly understand them.   So, down the Facebook trail I trot.

I know I’m a complete geek and it’s actually pretty late in the game to ‘find’ Facebook - is it even cool anymore?  From what I’ve read, it’s still the place to be for many people, so it seems to be worthwhile research.  When I tweeted that I was finally setting up an account and didn’t know if it would be useful, here’s what my PLN had to say via twitter: 

theother66 : @kolson29 - look me up in FB

SarahStewart : @kolson29 I dont use mine, its just another means of having a ‘presence’. Havin said that, a no of x students have contacted me using FB

garageflowers : @kolson29 I just set one up in Nov - don’t use it for anything other than, as @SarahStewart said, a “presence” -some kid pics & contact info

garageflowers : @kolson29 Makes networking easy - “find me on Facebook” - all they need to remember is your name! No email address, web site, etc.

MetaWeb20 : @kolson29: Kate .. I have a facebook account and I never use it .. although I did find some long lost contacts from childhood there.

garageflowers : @kolson29 I found a few friends from undergrad, but nobody from high school. In fact, a search for my HS & grad year only gets 4 results.

MetaWeb20 : @kolson29: The thing with Facebook is that you have to have an account and understand it because many students are there.

Now the cool part was when I went to find friend during my account set-up, Facebook searched my email contacts and brought back MANY members of my PLN whom I’ve been in email contact with.  How did we end up emailing?  Because we commented on one another’s blogs!  So, that was pretty neat - I ended up automatically having PLN people in my friends list.  Among the others that were automatically found:

• quite a few professional contacts who I know ONLY professionally - I didn’t add most of them as friends.  The fact that you email someone does NOT automatically make them your friend!
• my brother and sister-in-law - they’re the cool-kids.  Both in grad school at Duke, and I’m fairly certain being on Facebook is a graduation requirement?  Anyway, my sister-in-law is very active on FB (I’m sure it’s a welcome break from her grad nursing program, who can blame her?) and it was neat to get to communicate with her in a new way
• Several high school/college friends
• An ex-colleague/friend from my current life
• A long-lost cousin - she found ME, I’m sure because she found my brother…………

I honestly didn’t take much time to look up anyone else, I thought having 24 friends right away was enough :-)  It was AMAZING how quickly people responded to my friend request, maybe they were just sitting there waiting for me to join?  When, oh WHEN will Kate join Facebook………..right, I’m sure that was it.  Anyway, here’s my reaction to the experience:

***Some probably completely respectable 20-somethings put up completely inappropriate pictures as their profile pic. C’mon, are you thinking?  That’s the first line of your profile, anyone can see it - do you not GET that?  Even if it will never affect your professional life, don’t you have more pride?  I tweeted some rant to that effect and here’s what came back:

jesatiu : @kolson29 that’s a loaded question…but a good one-it reaches so far into human nature though…and drive and desire and media significance

garageflowers : @kolson29 I have to wonder if ppl in “the business world” have to worry about the same consequences as tchrs

taylorteacher : @kolson29 I’ve been out of twitter the last little while, so not sure what you’re talking about. But YES. People are stupid.

***I just don’t find the experience to be very efficient - way too much clicking to go see and the whole wall-to-wall thing seems kind of clumsy.  Maybe if I had FB open all the time it would be easier?

***I think I’m just too private to feel comfortable using Facebook for its true intention and sharing pictures there isn’t something I really want to do.  My sister-in-law has pictures of me up, though, which is kind of funny!  Just think of all her friends who saw me sledding……  I’ll save my thoughts on picture sharing for another post, though.  The wall-to-wall commenting is kind of weird for me because there are different groups of people in my friend list, and the comments stay up for anyone to see, so when my friend or family member writes something funny/family-related it’s just OUT there.  I know that you can change the privacy settings, but I have to work on which one is allows for communication, but not too much unnecessary sharing.  At least on Twitter I KNOW who’s ‘listening’, since I have my updates protected……….and yes I know anyone can copy/paste my tweets (as I did here) but since my twitter network is almost all edtech, there’s nothing I wouldn’t be ok with sharing with the world. 

Final conclusion on MY use of Facebook - I’ll check it every so often, but find Twitter, Classroom 2.0, blogging, email, and IM to be much more in tune to what I need for educational networking.  If I begin to use Facebook for true social networking with my close friends, family, I will remove all of my PLN contacts.  Just kind of a confusing world - where else in your life do these groups cross?  At the moment, Twitter is my communication method of choice - I’m in love…….

Conclusion on sharing Facebook info with parents at the PTA workshop:  I’ll show parents how to get there, how to set up an account, and get started using it.  I’ll also be sharing info on MySpace, as that’s where more of the middle school kids are.  One thing I will bring up is the fact that many of my 6th grade students have accounts under false pretenses - not old enough, and lied about age.  How do parents want to deal with this?  The fact that it’s ok with a particular parent doesn’t negate the fact that it violates the terms of use of the sites.  I’ll be sharing many resources/sites on cybersafety and we’ll be watching and discussing parts of “Growing Up Online”.  In no way will I be conveying that social networks are something to be scared of - I will be emphasizing parent awareness, monitoring, and open communication with teens and referencing much of Danah Boyd’s work.  You can check out my list of some of the resources I’ll be sharing at the workshop here and here (my del.icio.us links tagged parentclass and safety).

Warning - Here’s my personal rant on the subject!

I believe every parent (and TEACHER, but that’s another post) should at least understand what social networks are, even if they aren’t interested in using them for personal use.  Not because social networks are something to necessarily be worried about, but we need to understand how our kids work, interact, and think.  It’s just simply NOT ok anymore for parents to say, “I hardly even know how to email, ha ha” and have that be just cute and a sign of the times.  We need to wake up and figure out where this generation is spending time.  Remember those commercials that said something like “It’s 10:00 - Do you know where your children are?”  The fact that your child is in the next room does NOT mean you know where he is anymore.  Parents are scrambling to get cell phones for kids so they can find them anywhere, but are completely oblivious to where they are online.  Why didn’t the entire NATION watch “Growing Up Online”?  Why doesn’t every single school have parent education courses?  Why aren’t all teachers REQUIRED to learn and discuss how social networking affects learning and interacting with teenagers (students’ personal, not educational use)?  Now, I know many places DO have these things, but it needs to be mandatory and across the board, not just something for the more innovative districts to be jumping on. 

Stepping off soapbox now………………………thoughts?

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER READING

Some much more educational writings on social networking - just the tip of the iceberg, though:

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison)

The FB/SNS discussion continues (Allison Miller)

Educational Networking and Staying out of my Face (Sue Waters)

Who is the MySpace Generation? Why Do We Care? (Leigh Zeitz)

Warning: Blogging and Twittering May be Harmful to Your Health (Vicki Davis)

Growing Up Online (Patrick Woessner)

As a teacher falling under the fairly new PI-34 statutes in WI regulating new teacher licensing, it’s all about evidence of learning and reflection.  I’ll need to create a Professional Development Plan (PDP) before next fall and and decided to start investigating the specifics of this slightly-scary sounding document that must be completed for license renewal.  Here’s what PI-34, in all it’s glory, requires in the PDP:

1. Identified activities and objectives related to professional development goals, school or school district goals or performance goals identified by the educator.

2. A timeline for achieving the professional development goals.

3. Evidence of collaboration with professional peers and others.

4. An assessment plan that specifies indicators of growth.

(b) Successful completion of the professional development plan shall be documented. The documentation may include but is not limited to evidence of whole group and individual student performance as measured by state, local, formal and informal assessments; lesson plans; supervisor and mentor comments of classroom performance; journals documenting samples of pupil errors and analysis of teacher interpretations of errors; ongoing documentation of classroom management techniques and results; and curriculum adaptations for children with disabilities or other exceptionalities with related outcome measures. The documentation portfolio may also include evidence that identifies professional development activities related to the professional development goals. The evidence may be in the form of samples of pupil work, letters of recommendation; evidence of attending professional meetings, workshops, conferences or seminars; administrative or supervisory evaluations; peer evaluations; journals, diaries or published articles; action research projects and results; college, university or technical college course work; or evidence of in-district work assignments outside of the classroom.

I’m a little disappointed in the wording of this part of the statute - it’s rather antiquated in its definition of professional development and leaves me to believe that the mass quantity of time I’ve spent building my PLN, collaborating with educators from around the world, and learning how to use countless web tools/applications might not be fit to be labeled professional development.  Well, I’ve decided to interpret the part of the statute that includes “journals, diaries, or published articles” as license to utilize my blog as evidence of my professional development.  If nothing else, I’ll be able to refer back here when creating “real” evidence of learning, collaboration, and research. 

I believe it’s my job as a new teacher and member of multiple edtech communities to challenge this definition.  Who knows, maybe this summer when I attend my district’s “PDP’s Made Personal” course I’ll find that I can just throw in the url to Reflection 2.0 and be done!  Somehow, I’m doubting that.  At the very least I’ll have to fill out lots of forms and use lots of big words all relating to WI’s teaching standards, and I suppose rightly so.  Someone out there needs to ensure that teachers are completing meaningful professional development, and regulations typically involve steps, forms, and run-around.  I’ll just roll with it, since I’d like to remain licensed in WI! 

(And of course, I’m well aware that there is more to professional development than just technology, and I will be making sure to put my time in training in the multitude of other areas I’m sure I can learn MUCH more about to enhance my abilities as an educator.)

I’m going to start out by documenting my journey into web 2.0 and building my PLN, but it could take awhile, so I’ll be doing it in multiple posts.  Here goes:

• I attended a 3 hour Intro to Web 2.0 workshop at school presented by 2 of my colleagues.  At this workshop, we were introduced to terms such as Creative Commons, del.icio.us, edublogs, pbwiki, and flickr.  My highly esteemed colleagues simply didn’t have enough time to dig very deep into any of the tools, but we were given links to all the sites.  At this session, I created my first edublog, but didn’t get past getting logged in.
• Starting that afternoon, I began working with my new blog and explored several other blogs that were listed under “Blogs of the Hour” on edublogs’ home page.  One of these was Melanie Holtsman’s Once Upon a Teacher.  I really liked Melanie’s work and was really interested in all of the cool widgets (although I didn’t know that’s what they were called!) in her sidebar.  This was the first time I utilized RSS.
• In a journey to another blog I found on Melanie’s blogroll (can’t for the life of me remember which one!), I stumbled upon a blog with a Classroom 2.0 badge in the sidebar.
• This is where it really took off.  Classroom 2.0 opened the door to collaboration, new tools, and countless wonderful edtech people chiming in to help.  I loved the sense of community I felt when people responded to my post in the Introductions forum and made sure to set it up so I recieved emails every time someone added to the discussion.

I’ll continue my journey in follow-up posts, as this was just the beginning, but I challenge those of you who have been here WAY longer than I:

Do you remember your first taste of 2.0 tools?  Can you remember life without del.icio.us, RSS, blogging, twitter, and the like?  I’ve heard many a lament on twitter about educators who aren’t even aware of these tools, but we were all there at one point………let’s make sure to do our part to spread the word.

Stay tuned for Part 2………and more, I’ve learned a LOT since then!