Opening shots across the bow

The K-12 Online Conference appears to have begun (I haven’t worked out the time yet, but most of the pods appear to still be teasers). What an excellent resource this looks like it’s going to be - if only I had access to broadband at home - so lot’s more time spent at work downloading and streaming… still lots to great conversations with “like”-minded individuals, lots of sharing, ideas, revelations!

So far I’ve only made it as far as David Warlick’s PreConference Keynote. David makes mention of the Twitter steam and I still have to make sure I can get it to work (hopefully via Google’s Chat feature from behind the school’s firewall).

Why blog? Because I can! Because it’s a way to “vent”, to expand, to express, to organise. I can write knowing that my words are on nobody’s required reading list. I can write knowing it’s not cost anybody anything but the time it takes to click on to the next feed in their aggregator. I have never checked on my “page rank” and don’t intend to start, no matter how tempting. I might imagine / dream my blog is placed somewhere in the middle of popularity – more read than some, less read than others… but that’s just a dream. I can write my blog when I want to write just for fun. Mostly I’m writing for myself and have a collection of posts I’ll probably never published. Anyone who writes regularly might recognise that the writing process can be either extremely, excruciatingly painful or just as extremely pleasurable, and I can be just as much a hedonist as the next correspondent.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

— Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), The Note Book

I’ve just begun to dig into the depths of No Time4Online conference hosted by Core Education. So far I’m about halfway through the opening keynote address by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (Keynote 1: Keeping Up with the Net Generation). I missed Sheryl’s presentation to Tuanz07 opting for Rotorua so I’m looking forward to the next few days. I like the idea of an online conference that can be dipped in and out of over two weeks (28 May - 8 June).

The conference splash page promises us explorations and examples of collaborative online learning and the application of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning. There is access to audio and video links and support material, and participate is called for the collaborative areas. Pre-conference previews are available now, with a ‘Time2 Explore’ cafe (forum), blog, and wiki areas. Derek Wenmoth is the closing keynote.

I’ll be looking for any ‘clues’ as to how I can integrate Web 2.0 into my senior classes doing NCEA. Not so many problems integrating the technologies into the junior classes, but I don’t have any this year…

I must ensure I join the conversation in the forum after each presentation.

When I first created this edublog I made a commitment - to attempt to post on a daily basis (with an unspoken disclaimer of “as often as possible”). My day-log would suggest I have not achieved anywhere near that target… however I’ve just looked at my drafts folder and I currently have over 30 unpublished posts.

It’s probably not best blog practice, but I guess I’ve yet to get over my old work practice of never publishing anything unless I’ve checked double checked everything before releasing it. This doesn’t mean mistakes don’t get through, but if I don’t like the flow et. al. I won’t pass it.

[EDIT] I’ve decided I’m going to publish each and everyone (eventually) based on the orginal draft day.

Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice.

I have recently finished a Unit of work with my NCEA Level 1 class looking at using the Internet for searches (re)searches. While demonstrating/discussing the concept of “what is truth” on the internet - and showing the class examples of haggis hunts, spagetti harvests and tree octopi - I stumbled across the work of Hyungkoo Lee, and his 2006 exibit Animatus… does that mean Looney Toons were documentaries?

My favorite is Buggs:

…closely followed by Roadrunner:

Powered by ScribeFire.

While sorting through my old texts I stumbled on the thin tome - Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Now I probably haven’t looked at the text for over 20 years, and on a re-read found a slew of jewels within:

“The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.”

See New York Review of Books.

OMG, it’s all so Web2.0.