By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder “Where is that post about ….?” and I find myself plodding through all the titles (the proverbial needle in a haystack).   If only I had used the tools available.  Categories and Tags serve the same purpose as Subject headings in the library catalogue – they allow us to filter and sort according to any criteria we set.

Categories are like chapters of a book; they provide a general overview of the topics you blog about. Whereas tags are more like the index at the back of the book and explode the topic into a million bits.

When your readers click on a categories or tag link on a post or in your sidebar it loads a page with all posts that use that tag or category.

http://help.edublogs.org/2013/02/26/categories-vs-tags/#Categories_and_tags_on_posts

By Mikael Häggström (Wikipe-tan image) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The ability to curate information is vital and we need to model, as well as teach, simple ways to make our online use of information more practical to our needs – more available at the point of need.  The Categories and Tags we chose will vary and adapt over time but they will provide us with a strong foundation for the future.

Tags and Categories: How Many Should I Use in a Blog and Why? from ‘We blog Better’ explains it better than I could and from a different perspective.

At a Teachmeet Melbourne event Tom Barrett of NoTosh presented an idea from his work at Rosendale Primary School “Tagging the learning” This brings another element to the use of tags:

Tagging the learning notes not only helps organise and archive them properly, making them more searchable in the future, the NoTosh and Rosendale team have been exploring this process as assessment as learning. The decisions around how children should tag their learning is an exciting and challenging discussion

http://www.dougwoods.co.uk/curation/tagging-the-learning-journey-at-rosendale-primary-school/

Tools such as Evernote, Diigo and Twitter are enhanced when we adapt and use them to our own advantage.  How do you use tags, categories or whatever you do to sort and classify your online library?  

The day after I returned, I was asked by my 84 year old dad (non-teaching background), “What was it all about?”. “Well, it was called EduTECH, so it was about Educational technology, but not really, it was more about how we have to change our schools and teaching because of technology.”

Other bloggers have described the content of the sessions in great detail and reflected on how this will impact on their teaching,  Kathy Turley and Simon McKenzie to name just two.   My note taking was too poor to produce such informative summaries for any readers here.  I was letting others on Twitter synthesise the main points and summarise the buzz (thanks to all #edutech contributors and summarised excellently here by Alex Semmens!).

So all I have to share are some of my ponderings :

• The message is that teachers have to change their views of their role.  I know we have been hearing “No sage on the stage” for a long time but it is getting louder and louder and more important.  Technology is not replacing us, but it should be making us change our tack on our craft.
• Flexibility seems to be one of the most important features of both schools and the teachers working in them.  Flexible access to devices, flexible working spaces, flexible timetables, flexible lesson structures, flexible mindsets amongst administrators, teachers and students.  Daniel Pink spoke of the power of ‘un-commissioned work’ – this does not happen in a classroom where time pressures are extreme.
• There is a strong push to change, however the reality of the assessment system we send our students towards is a large disincentive for many and excuse for others. The famous Dewey quote; “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow’, could perhaps be re-considered; “If we assess today as we assessed yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow”.  What can we do about this major issue?
• Students often don’t get enough credit – many presenters had examples of how amazing things can occur when we loosen the reins, this probably applies to teachers too!

PicTwitter from Lauren Batty
@LaurenBatty01

Overall, I was privileged to be entertained, informed and challenged by the ideas of Dan Pink, Sal Khan, Stephen Heppell, Ewan McIntosh, Alan November, Stephen Harris and Sir Ken Robinson.   I was just as excited to hear the story of Star of the Sea School Cleveland and Alice Leung and to chat amongst my colleagues about how any of this can translate into change in our varied workplaces.

In this blogpost, Ewan McIntosh summarises the theory of Guy Claxton;  The magnificent eight qualities of powerful learners and he expanded on that in his presentation.  The words viewed here might seem like catch-cries without the context but the message was strong.

The ‘big’ conference experience has also left me appreciating more and more the joys I experience at the far more intimate professional learning gatherings hosted by Teachmeet Melbourne.  There is so much wisdom in every school community, every local neighbourhood and definitely at every TeachMeet.  It is no surprise that we see responsibility, real change, choice, collaboration, respect and challenges at every event.

Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I am passionate about the Teachmeet movement.  My involvement has opened many doors to me and one of the most significant things has been the people I have met.

Earlier this year, at a de-brief session after a Teachmeet, one member (OK it was Mel) suggested that we could present about TM’s at the upcoming ICTEV conference. Everyone thought it was a great idea and as is customary in any group – one person was appointed, duly delegated, or dobbed in to the task of submitting the application (OK it was Mel again).  Well it must have been done well as it was accepted and the proposal became a reality – we were set to present, but that was in May, that was ages away.   A ‘planning session’ was allocated but the beautiful Japanese cuisine got in the way of the ‘planned’ planning, barring a few careful notes on a napkin. (Thanks Mel)   The only real decision that night was that it should be a joint presentation.  Teachmeets are after all, a shared, social  event, so the presentation would reflect this.

So, it came down to a few weeks before the event and opportunities for a group planning session were getting slim. A face to face meeting was getting difficult to manage.  Emails were flying to and fro.  After all, these are busy educators and women, there are lessons to plan, reports to write, essays to complete etc.   So what do any innovative, well rounded and resourced networked educators do ?  They ‘hang-out’.   Monday night, a fortnight before the conference, from lounge rooms, kitchen tables and bedrooms across suburban Melbourne a ‘virtual’ gathering occurred. Google Hangout proved a perfect arena for this chat and planning session.  After the bestowing of fake moustaches, crowns and tiaras (a fun feature of hangouts – now I am wishing I had some screenshots to share!) we were down to the important business, working on many screens switching between a shared Google Presentation.   A fine oiled machine soon had a set of ideas, designed and ordered.  A plan was constructed!   Elements were allocated to each member  and that was that.  We all attended to our allocated tasks and trusted that in the good old show business fashion, it would be alright on the night ! (or afternoon as was the case).

I am pleased to report that it went very well.  We stayed within our allocated 7 minute speed sharing limit, which is a practiced skill for any TeachMeet attendee.  We shared our message and passion.

It was a delight to be part of this small piece of collaboration.  Thanks to all involved. I wonder what we can do next ?

Come along to a TeachMeet event and become part of a wonderful group of people who want to share, question and challenge.

Our presentation – not the same without Brette’s questioning techniques!

I am encouraged to keep going and believe that students would find this a great way to post.

At the same time, I decided (due to an upgrade glitch) to alter the theme I have been using for many years.  On the recommendation of @suewaters of Edublogs I investigated some Mobile friendly themes.  More and more I see the necessity for this as we access our sites from mobile devices.  So I will see how this goes.  I prefer to set a theme and stick with it as it is the ‘branding’ of my professional space but change is good too !

Anyone who knows me, will know that I am far more introverted than extrovert.  This has not stopped me from feeling quite comfortable in an on-line professional world.   In fact, it is probably why I enjoy this learning style – I can lurk, browse and choose to contribute when I feel I have something to add.   At a face-to-face meeting with strangers, I will not be the quickest one to add my 2c worth to a discussion.  Although, I am developing confidence as I become more passionate and experienced on some subjects.

Every teacher I know has something to add to the conversation, how can we make those more reticent feel more enthusiastic to join in? I know that writing a blog post is not the way some people reflect (although I heartily recommend it), but I believe everyone could benefit from joining in, even if it is by simply reading and adding odd comments.   In a world, where we are encouraging, if not requiring our students to become more overtly reflective learners, I believe teachers can benefit from this too!

I don’t think it is going too far to suggest, that teachers who do not pursue some form of connection, further education/stimulus, awareness raising or self directed inquiry learning are doing themselves and their students a disservice.  The level of that involvement will naturally vary according to interest and time.   The time element is often the excuse, but when I see the involvement of those I follow and read I think, “If they can do it….”

As discussed in previous posts, Twitter is a tool that takes time to learn and master, but I think you will have resounding agreement if you ask teachers who have taken the time about the benefits.    Blogging, similarly can take time, time to develop a core library of relevant writers, time to feel confident to post your thoughts.

How do we convince those not yet convinced to jump on board?  I get frustrated that it is all here and could be much richer with an even wider contributing audience.  I prepared this graphic a while ago for another purpose but it summarises the benefits I receive from my involvement in an online network.

The 2013 Student Blogging challenge is about to begin and I am happy to say the baton is being passed on beautifully.  I have asked our ‘experienced’ blogger to mentor their new classmates and it has been so wonderful to watch the skills being passed on and enthusiasm transmitted.  Here, a comment from one of our new mentors commenting on the blog of  his younger classmate.    I love the  mixture of warm and cool feedback and caring style from this Year 6 boy!

I believe the success of this program can be attributed to a few things:

• a culture of blogging – these students have seen blogging modelled by their teachers through class blogging for a few years now
• gradual build up of skills – our students began their personal blogging with KidBlogs – simple, no frills blogs.
• support from each other – teaching and modelling appropriate academic commenting skills is a vital aspect of blogging.  Without the interaction with readers that comments provide, blogging can tend to feel dull.   Our staff and students regularly support each other with comments.  Staff also use Twitter to broadcast blogs for further publicity.
• blogging being embedded within classroom practice.  Staff provide regular opportunities for blog posts to be part of their writing activities, often using them to elicit responses and broaden their learning from experts.

Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, says ‘Student blogging is not a project, but a process. We are continuously striving to refine, improve and re-evaluate’.  As Silvia says, these students are learning to write in digital spaces- an important skill in my opinion.

Dean made a point about some re-thinking about the concept of publishing.  

“The [Publish] button should be replaced by [Share]“.  

 I have had a discussion recently about publishing student work on their blogs. Should we publish only ‘perfect, final drafts’ error free or should we allow their first efforts to be seen?  It became obvious to me – that we need to re-define [Publishing] and Dean’s [Share] option sits well.

Previously when we published it was our finished product, the result of a writing and editing process.  This was necessary and preferred as the printed results were set in stone (all-be-it ink in paper) .  Web 2 has altered the way we can go through the editing process, we can now [share] our unfinished thoughts, elicit feedback and constantly edit and re-edit.  

Clicking [Publish] does not mean we are finished working, finished thinking but simply exposing our process. Whereas, publishing, once referred to the final process in an exhaustive editing process.  

This brings me back to my previous post about why people shy away from blogging.  Our expectation that what we publish is perfect.  There is a concern amongst teachers of young students that we are weakening the conventions if we allow less than perfect writing to be published, that we are modelling poorly and I can understand that, but I feel that  the benefits of exposing our first attempts and our process  outweigh this risk.   Some re-thinking about how we view what we read on-line, how we evaluate it and what we expect of it may be required.  What do you think?

Four barriers to Blogging, by Ian Gray, suggests that Perfectionism and Procrastination are two major reasons why people don’t blog.   My thinking is that the Perfectionism is the major one: many people believe that they have nothing to offer or that others know more than them and therefore their contributions would be of lesser value.   I would like to encourage people to re-think their attitude if Perfectionism is hindering their involvement. I have mentioned this short clip before “Obvious to you. Amazing to others” but it remains relevant .

Are you holding back because you think you have nothing worthwhile to share?  If so, I would like you to re-consider, think about how you happily read other people’s posts and how ideas and fears resonate with you.  In my experience, the benefits gained from putting yourself out there far outweigh the nervous apprehension felt when your mouse hovers over the PUBLISH button.   I admit that blogging is a risky experience but so too are most learning opportunities!

“Nothing spectacular just my ordinary thoughts” – Derek Sivers

If you are new to blogging I congratulate you and suggest you persist, find a purpose (ETMOOC for example) and blog away.  Don’t be deterred by a lack of comments as sadly there is only a very small number of people who read and actually comment despite enjoying what they read!   If you are an experienced blogger perhaps you could add to the conversation?  Why do you blog?

So here goes …. my first MOOC which still think it sounds strange but so did Blog and Wiki a while ago!  It seems reasonable at this stage to ask the question, So what is a MOOC?

By way of introduction to the new #etmooc community, I am a teacher in a small primary school in Melbourne Australia.  This year, I am also taking on a coaching role, assisting schools to implement online learning and harness the value of ICT’s.    I have participated in online learning opportunities before, in particular, the State Library of Victoria’s Personal learning Network program.   This opened the world to me and was my introduction to blogging and Twitter, which have transformed my thinking as an educational professional.  The concept of sharing online was scary and still is at times, but the benefits it has given me far outweigh the discomfort I have felt.

I have participated in Reform Symposium’s online learning opportunities as well but never before in a MOOC !  I think this will be a wonderful extension of my previous experience and be another wonderful opportunity to extend my network. The first task is to introduce ourselves and this post and this short Animoto video are my contribution.