Reflections on Baby Steps

Needed to sit down and post these reflections on my presentation now, before it gets absurdly late to do so. Funny how a week back in the grind me in total manic mode. Not that that's a bad thing...

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In prepping for the session, I ended up using Dan's "start with handouts" first tip. I tried to build handouts that had plenty of white space for taking notes, included a few of the key quotes / points from the preso, and were also aesthetically pleasing. Busted out gridlines to make sure everything lined up Just So!

I'd already had the idea to use a sandcastle example to illustrate procedural vs. navigational learning. So when I went to the handout, it just seemed obvious to find a sandbox and slap it on there as a background image. The fact that it was a turtle just made it all that much better. Animals Rock!

I think I overplanned so much on the slides & handouts because I really had no clue what I was in for. And just like in teaching, when you've got a lesson you want to go over really well, you control what you can and cross your fingers about the rest.

Amount of time we're talking about, from researching the preso to building the handout, slide deck, website, and talking it through to my plants? Wow. Gotta be close to twenty hours I reckon.

Another reason I did so much planning was that I didn't know what sort of audience I'd have. Would they be teachers who already dabbled with wikis but wanted more ideas / experience? Or would they be those who are truly fearful of new technology, but were willing to come to a tech conference to try it out?

I ended up having the latter - which meant that they had LOTS more questions than I anticipated, and we needed to spend lots more time going through the specific capabilities / drawbacks of a wiki. Not a bad problem - just meant that I had to go slower and whiz through the RSS section of the preso.

I was really grateful to the IT support staff at KGV, they had a few extra laptops on hand ready to go, which was needed as a number of people in the session didn't bring their own.

Something that fortuitously worked out was that the desks were arranged into pairs. Learning a new tool it is always easier to do when you've got a neighbor to turn to for a quick fix.

I was also glad with how I managed to overcome my nerves. This being the first time I was presenting in front of my peers, I just told myself, "you're about to make ten new friends." So when everyone came in, even though my brain was running through the preso, I shook hands, introduced myself, asked about what school they were at, all that stuff. This also put them at ease with me, giving me a much more responsive / receptive audience.

Why do I think I did a good job? Well, those numbers on my last post should say something. And then when people were leaving, a couple grabbed extra handouts for their colleagues. But what was the best moment by far was the person who seemed to be looking at her handout instead of paying attention to a panel discussion by some BigShots. See, this teacher had excused herself from my session about halfway through - her own laptop couldn't connect to the network, and the pc she was using from the classroom ran out of batteries. I kinda thought it was a polite way of getting out of a session she didn't enjoy. But then, to see her later checking out the handout like she had said she would - sweet.

Although it's possible she was looking up a note she had written to herself on my handout about something completely unrelated...can't let hubris get me too much.

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And of course the big reminder to not get too far ahead of myself was that on Monday I was asked to share some of my preso to the rest of my colleagues. Does it need stating that teachers who have elected to spend a Saturday on a holiday weekend at a technology in education conference are going to be a better audience than a group of fifteen teachers on a Monday afternoon after a long holiday weekend, five of whom are leaving the school at the end of the year, all of whom were told off by the principal first thing Monday morning for not doing the paperwork we're asked to do?

Sigh.

HK 21C Learning: It's Done

Well, it came and went. My first time to stand up in front of an audience of peers and be granted the gift of one hour of their time.

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Here's one way of looking at the preso...by numbers.

28: Number of slides in the deck
4: Number of pages in the handout
20: Number of handouts I brought to the session
5: Number of handouts I came home with
10: Number of people who joined my one hour session
5: Number of people who took an extra handout with them
1: Number of times I saw someone looking at my handout during the panel discussion instead of listening to the Important People on stage
4: Number of static pages I created on a wikispace built just for the workshop
2: Number of static pages I actually needed to build
0: Number of times I presented this to another live person before the actual go-time
3: Key sources of inspiration

9: On a scale of 1-10, how good I felt about the preso.

More detailed reflections to come. Meanwhile, check out the wikispace here:

http://web2babysteps.wikispaces.com/

And to top of yesterday, it ended with a wonderful surprise, something completely unrelated to the preso but completely awesome.

Nice to be on top of the world, ennit.

HK 21C Learning: Almost Ready

Well, after two online research sessions and two public holidays spent creating a slideshow & handout, I think my presentation for Saturday's HK 21st Century Learning conference is just about finished.

I first posted about this back in February, but it really wasn't until the last couple of weeks that I buckled down and pounded out the workshop.

Titled "Baby Steps into Web 2.0: Wikis & RSS", I'm gearing my presentation at classroom teachers new to / hesitant about using these Web 2.0 technologies. I've designed the session to involve lots of time to mess around with these tools, following the premise that teachers need to be comfortable with using new tools for their own personal learning BEFORE they can use them in the classroom.

I got a lot of help in my thinking from the following three posts:

First, Karl Fisch's great photo of his seven year-old daughter multitasking on a laptop and cell phone provided a perfect visual for a short segment on the digital native / immigrant analogy.

Then, my friend Justin forwarded me Wes Fryer's brief yet cogent piece on how to introduce new technologies to teachers. Provides a nice theoretical framework for the "learn by doing" parts of my workshop.

And lastly, Dan Meyer is the root cause of all my hours spent in front of the computer. Without all of his posts on presentation design to look through, I would not have had anything as aesthetically pleasing and well-constructed as the slide deck and handouts I've (hope I've?) arrived at.

Now's the time to do a few final talk-throughs with the slide deck. Tomorrow I print off the handouts. Saturday, 9.00 AM HK time, it's Go Time.

Coming up soon-ish: the actual preso. Coming up after Saturday: the presentation gets online.

Shakespeare on Facebook?

Peoples, think with me, please.

7th graders just started to read Romeo & Juliet. Not gonna plow through the whole original text...I've gotta abridge some of it or their brains will asplode.

Skimming through the feedreader last night, found this sentence on LeaderTalk:

The good teacher is encouraging students to create mashups, to build social networking pages devoted to Romeo, to create discussion groups to second guess Juliet, and to figure out why Shakespeare separated lovers in two feuding houses in the first place.

How can I get Web2.0 on Billy Shakespeare? Could I have the students make profiles on Facebook / MySpace? Do we jump into Second Life on this one?

Juliet Capulet, hometown Verona, age 13.
Mercutio, interested in dreams and swordfights.

Or, do I take the profile pages from those sites, pull out the internet cord, and do them the old-fashioned way - pencil on paper?

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Right now my brain is stuck on these three questions:

1. Could this work?
2. How on earth would I assess this?
3. I'm not the first person to think of this - where is it on the web?

(in answer to number 2, seems to me that this needs to be done as we read the play - formative not summative assessment. and number 3 - i guess i just need to be a bit more persistent with my hunting.)

Spring Cleaning

Maybe there's something in the water, the fact that I've had more than 8 hours of sleep a night for the past four nights, or that I've finally parted ways with whatever flu-ish bug was keeping me down...but I am in the middle of a Cleaning Binge.

OUT:
...two weeks of rubbish, since my maid is on holiday in the 'pines.
...cigarettes - why do they have to be so enjoyable, addictive, and harmful to the body?! if there were cigarettes that didn't poison my lungs i would smoke a carton a day.
...staying up past midnight more than once a week (playing pool doesn't count against this rule).

PACKED AWAY:
...winter clothes - which in HK means anything thicker than a few millimeters and/or long sleeves.
...all those pants & jeans my waist won't fit into anymore. but SOMEDAY i'll lose the inches off my waistline!

DEBATING:
...exercising. i thought that could be my goal for april, to get into a routine, but seeing as it's april 6 and no routine, hermmm...
...whether i should be "friends" on facebook with anyone who has ever called me "mister pierce". frankly it makes me uncomfortable - do these students remember that they've friended a (current/former) teacher? ...then...why am i NOT on a limited profile? sorry, but i don't want to even see a notification that you posted some drunken photos. right now i'm thinking of setting up a separate account that's just for my former students...but that's a tough call to make, as there are a decent number of students i used to teach whom i'm actually glad to keep in touch with and hear from regularly. guess i'm joining a group of folks starting to get fed up with the fact that facebook is everywhere and everyone is on it.

IN:
...a shopping spree to fill out the empty spaces in my closet.
...writing - not just on this blog, but fiction, short stories. there are a few contests out there that give me a clear goal to work towards, and i've still got a few drafts lying around that need finishing up. must admit i'm gutted to find that the Shiva Naipaul Prize, which was my most recent spur for writing, looks to be finished / finishing up.
...reading for fun. since "the wire" finished a month ago, i've yet to start watching another television series (which incidentally has had a positive effect on both my sleep and social life). while i was home sick this week i finished reading "Bone", by Jeff Green - it's a graphic novel, the perfect transition from moving images back to good old fashioned wordsonapage. maybe it's time to reread something from Graham Greene..."Quiet American"?

...and last, but certainly not least:

nine more weeks of Teaching My Ass Off - can't give up on the students, even the ones who have not once tried to do any work in my class. Nine More Weeks. i got this.