Collaboration

Photos of the Week

photographer1

I really wish I had the motivation and dedication to do a 365 photos type experience.  For those of you unfamiliar with such an undertaking, the basic premise is to register with a group in a service like Flickr, take one photo a day, post the photo to the group’s stream, and repeat for one year.  It’s quite a tremendous way to get better at taking photos.  I’d recommend giving it a try if it sounds appealing to you.  It’s never too late to join a group like this if you’re interested.

For me, I know given my current schedule constraints, I would be an epic failure at such a project.  When all was said and done, I’d be lucky to hit 158 days over the course year.  I’d really like to try it at some point, but I know realistically, this is not the best time to give it a go (we’re potentially three weeks away from the arrival of our first baby, which as I’m led to believe, changes a schedule quite a bit).

So, I thought we might try to start a group for people who would like to work on improving their photography skills but didn’t necessarily want to commit to a picture a day routine.  I think something more in the range of a picture a week is right in the sweet spot of what I can aptly handle.  Of course, if you’re already in a 365 group, or going to give one of those a try, you’re more than welcome to participate in the once a week group as well.  Here’s the deal.

I set up a group in Flickr called “Photos of the Week.”  The basic idea, post your favorite picture that you took from the week.  We’ll post pictures every Friday, and you can post either one or two photos each week.  That’s it.  Easy as that.  I’m hoping the experience will help us all get better at taking pictures, and we’ll be able to support each other through the process.  In the end, we’ll hopefully have a really nice repository of pictures to peruse as well.

The group is set up, and I’m going to start posting my pictures this Friday.  I’m looking forward to the experience, and I hope you’ll join me.

Thanks to Shermeee for the Flickr image.

The Power of a Conference

I believe attending conferences is one of the most dynamic ways for a professional to develop.

I recently attended the IETC conference in Springfield, IL, and I left, as I typically do from such a conference, with the indelible notion that there simply aren’t many better forms of professional development in existence.  I find this of great interest, as typically, many school leaders do not seem to share my sentiment.

Perhaps one of the most oft cited criticisms of a conference by administration is the cost and potential lack of accountability for those in attendance.  As opposed to sending people to conferences, the alternative is typically to bring in an expert to address the entire staff.  Unfortunately, while in theory that allows more people access to the same information, in practice, it tends to be much less effective than planned due to a myriad of distracting issues.  Hopefully, someday soon, people will start making this part of their normal inservice routine to facilitate greater results.  Regardless, there are too many things working against the success of the mass inservice model (sitting everyone in terribly uncomfortable lunch tables or folding chairs, having speakers speak of the importance of allowing student movement and attention breaks while delivering said message in an uninterrupted 3 hour information marathon, really, really bad PowerPoints).

Seven years ago, a friend of mine won the Milken Educator Award.  A few months after he won it, he was being interviewed for a journal, and the interviewer asked her first question.  It was something to the effect of, “What has been the most instrumental factor in making you the excellent teacher you are today?”  His answer came without pause.  “Attending professional conferences.”  My friend said at that point the interviewer smacked the table, turned off the recorder and said, “You know, I’ve now interviewed a number of Milken Award winners.  Every single one had that same answer.”  She went on to elaborate that the reason this bothered her so much was that she used to be a principal, and she refused to send any of her staff members to conferences because she felt it wasn’t a judicious use of time or money.  I think that says it all.

Something significant happens when a person attends a conference.  All the daily noise of the routine gets silenced, and there comes a great sense of focus.  By being away from the classroom for a couple days, and away from the demands of everyday life, a person can truly become immersed in learning more about the profession to which they are so dedicated.  Conversations take place, connections are made, and a great deal of thought is given to what it is that’s happening in their own professional practice.  It’s incredibly refreshing, to be honest.

One interesting movement in the current conference model has taken form the past several years, and that’s the idea of a virtual conference.  The K12 Online Conference is a good example of this.  The idea is to encapsulate all the good that occurs during a conference and make that available to people anywhere at anytime.  I think it’s a noble effort, and I think some very good content has arisen from this idea, but I don’t think it will ever really be what some hope it could be.  While I know there are a great number of people who have gained excellent insight and value from the K12 Online Conference, I know there are a greater number who have never tapped into the potential learning opportunity the online conference presents.  Which is rather unfortunate, because there are some excellent thoughts and ideas coming out of the conference that are not being heard by enough people.  The problem with a conference format like this is that the attendees lack that away from the routine focus that occurs by leaving town and going to an event.  I think it’s a rather difficult sell to get teachers to really buy into the virtual conference idea.  I believe if you’re looking to try it, though, this is an excellent way to start.

I believe there’s one more element that a virtual conference misses.  The face to face human element.  There’s something so entirely unique about getting to sit down and talk with people in person, and the connection allows you to apply more accurate context to a person who you’ve only met virtually.  I know that I can’t avoid adding my own interpretation of a person’s personality while reading their communications online.  I’ve found that every time I meet someone I follow on Twitter, I end up paying closer attention to what they are saying, and I have a better context to apply when reading the words they write.  And I think this is one of the greatest parts of attending a conference.  The connections that are made.  It touches such an important part of who we are as social beings, and so often, the connections turn into the most invaluable of resources.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to attend a professional conference, remedy that as quickly as possible.  Take the time, be open to new ideas, be prepared to be somewhat to entirely overwhelmed at points, and don’t be surprised if it changes you in ways you never expected.

Thanks to supervillain for the Flickr image.

Building Better Backchannels

I remember the first time I heard the term, “backchannel.”  I was at NECC, and I was immediately struck at how the word seemed somehow geekily mystic.  It took me a bit to realize the term was really just synonymous with chat.

According to the define function of Google, a backchannel is, “the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.”  In practice, it is simply a chat room established to carry on conversation during a presentation.

I absolutely believe the concept of a backchannel has an inherent dual-edge sword nature to it.  As mentioned in my last post, there is a distinct danger to utilizing a backchannel.  The danger is that if not executed in the right fashion, the distraction and bifurcation of attention can potentially lead to a complete dismissal of the content being presented at a given venue.  I’ve seen occasions where there are no less than eight backchannels for a room of scarcely over 20 participants.  The result is noise.  Distracting noise that leads to a great missing of the point.

I could go on about my perceptions of the negative regarding this topic, but I’d rather not.  Because I think there’s more good here than bad.  I actually think creating a backchannel in the right way has the potential to be one of the biggest game changers we’ve seen in recent memory.  I’m quite excited about it, to be honest.

One of the most oft cited educational edicts in the past ten years is that we shouldn’t have our students sitting in their seats listening to a presentation of information for too long.  I believe this applies to adults as well.  Interestingly enough, this edict is often espoused by a speaker or consultant who has come in to spend a day teaching teachers this highly valuable bit of information, and they do so by having teachers sit at terribly uncomfortable lunch tables or folding chairs for hours without breaks.  I believe therein lies the definition of irony.

Think of the possibilities of establishing a backchannel.  People interact with the information being presented in a way that allows for an expansion of learning and information retention.  This could happen anywhere information is being presented for a prolonged period of time: inservices, classrooms, even churches.  I came across this article recently discussing how a church in Texas is using Twitter during their service as a form of a backchannel, and it simply solidified and validated how important this could be and how widespread this practice could extend.

Allowing people to interact with each other and the information in a focused way affords participants the opportunity to learn more and focus more on the content.  Instead of sitting passively, succumbing to the temptation to take mental meanders, participating in a backchannel brings a collaborative element that actually increases mental attentiveness.

This summer I started utilizing a backchannel with the courses I taught for my district, as well as for the graduate class I teach for Judson University.  That experience, along with my recent experience at the IL TechCon, has led me to conclude there is a right way to go about doing this.  I believe the following 3 guidelines should be followed when setting up a backchannel.

1.  Have a moderator.  I don’t mean a censoring, dictator-type moderator who is trolling the room looking for people to bust for saying inappropriate or perceived off-topic statements.  I mean a moderator who helps facilitate the conversation.  Maybe you want to call this person a facilitator instead of moderator, it’s up to you.  I think having an open-minded administrator take on the moderator role at a teacher inservice could help keep the discussion somewhat on topic, while also giving the participants at least a moderate level of accountability so the conversation doesn’t digress into a “Wow, this is cool.”  “Yes, it is.”  “I think it sucks.”  Don’t scoff, even adults can be reduced to this level of astute prepubescent intellectualism given the opportunity.  The moderator should also post frequent statements summarizing main points the presenter is saying.  Wes Fryer did this at TechCon, and I found it extremely beneficial.

2.  Have only one main backchannel.  Some people don’t like this idea.  They want everyone to have the freedom to create their own channel, but I think that is quite problematic.  I want as many people participating as possible so the greatest potential for added value and diversity in thinking can occur.  I think it would be great if a conference set up one main backchannel, with individual rooms for each of the presentations at the conference.  This way, everyone would know where to go for discussion, and there wouldn’t be too much cross-pollination of separate presentations creating too much noise in a single room.  Conferences could publish the url of the main backchannel site in the literature handed out at the beginning of the conference, and people could commence discussing at the outset and continue until, well, forever.

3.  Use a site that can be archived.  If done well, people will be dropping links, references, and suggestions in the room, and it would be most beneficial to be able to return to the room to access those resources again in the future.  It would also allow people to be held accountable for things being said, and positions could be defensible should dissenting opinions be presented.

I think the idea of a backchannel is very difficult for some people to embrace as they fear allowing people to discuss during a presentation will draw attention away from what is being presented.  As I stated above, that can certainly happen, but if this is all done the right way, I think that risk is greatly reduced.  In fact, I absolutely believe this could help our attention-deprived culture get more out of sitting in seats listening to the dissemination of information for hours on end.  I think doing this in the right way will most certainly lead to a reinvigoration of inservices, and dare I even say, classroom lectures.   Just think about it, and try it out for yourself the next chance you get.  I think you’ll find the results might just change everything.

Thanks to Wesley Fryer for the Flickr image.

Ed Tech Goes to Eleven?

*One author’s note for this post.  I began writing this prior to attending the Illinois TechCon 08 conference, and that experience resulted in a major clarification in my own thinking about this issue.  I’ll explain near the end of the post.*

Sometimes I feel like being in the Ed Tech community is a bit like being in a scene from Spinal Tap.  Specifically, this scene.

I’ve noticed this growing phenomenon of people trying to get “that extra push over the cliff” lately.  Any conference I’ve attended in the past year has been so over live streamed, live blogged, Twittered, Plurked, backchanneled, and podcast, that I’m starting to wonder if people are catching any of the content being presented.  Seriously, how multi can people possibly task?

Now let me be clear about something, I absolutely believe in the power of participation and collaboration in today’s learning climate, but I also think we need to find a bit of balance.  How about just keeping the dial right around 6?  Your voice added to the voice of the presenter can certainly bring greater understanding and depth to a conversation, and of course every conversation is made better when it is more than one person talking to a flat wall.  The problem comes when the voice of the crowd overwhelms the voice of the content.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted only to conferences.  I think it’s growing increasingly more evident in podcasts as well.  The last three podcasts I’ve listened to have had classic moments of pregnant pauses as someone reaches the conclusion of a several minute monologue where he/she spills their soul about something he/she is very passionate about, only to be met with silence.  And then a profound statement of affirmation from one of the other hosts like “right on” or “yep.”  The noise of a chat room or the lure of the web was too much temptation, and the attention of the other hosts was whisked somewhere far, far away from whatever it was their counterpart was just espousing.

I think this push to hit 11 is also an issue with emerging tools.  It seems that many people are working hard to make sure they know a tool, or even a list of 100 tools in some cases, that no one else has heard of, and they present the list as such at conferences, workshops, etc.  There is all this noise added, and the result is that people end up feeling overwhelmed and inferior rather than empowered.  I saw a presentation by Dave Jakes recently that I think was much more fitting to the way we should be engaging all this.  He spoke of the organizational approach we should be taking to collaborative tools rather than listing all the specific tools he thought we should be using.  By so doing, he effectively kept the focus where it should be, and he kept the dial right around a comfortable 5.

Here’s my point.  When does the use of all these amazing, emerging technologies become counterproductive to the goal?  Do we really need to have 20 backchannel chat rooms for a session with 35 participants?  Should you as a podcast host be trying to read everything that is happening in a chat room, while searching the web, while trying to focus on what your co-hosts are saying?

As mentioned at the outset of this post, I did have an experience recently that I feel really helped bring clarity to this issue for me.  Specifically, the idea of having a backchannel set up for people to utilize.  In fact, I think using a backchannel in the right way can absolutely make a conference, workshop, classroom, a much better place for learning.  Wes Fryer recently set up a Chatzy chat at the IL TechCon 08, and I think the way that he did it was dead-on perfect.  I plan to write more about this in my next post, but for now, I can say the way Fryer set up the backchannel at TechCon made all the difference in the way I experienced and learned from the conference.  I think it could possibly be the same for students in education.

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