Thoughts

Disheartened

/ Cole Camplese / 8 Comments

Last week I went to beautiful Bedford Springs, PA to speak to Superintendents from the Allegheny Intermediate Unit … it was both intimidating and exciting. I am always a little nervous speaking to K-12 educators because I always make the mistake of thinking our worlds are so different. It was exciting because I always end up finding out how similar our problems and issues really are. This was no different. I went in thinking I was out of my element and left with a new found appreciation and confidence in my understanding of our shared issues.

I shared a mix of stories and statistics that described how social computing is being used (typically outside of formal learning environments) to create new and engaging online conversations. I was surprised that this group didn’t come at me with the typical doom and gloom questions — they instead were (for the most part) eager to embrace what was happening in the “real world” and engaged me in a pragmatic discussion over what to do. One of the things that was funny was that many of my answers seemed so basic, yet created so much more thinking. I was particularly struck by a question over how teachers should use social environments … as I answered I heard myself talking about how critical it is for teachers to understand how the environments work. If you are going to use youtube for teaching, understand how related movies are chosen, know when to embed a video instead of using the youtube page, and make sure you can navigate the environment. Talking about facebook felt similar … we stressed how important it is to know how the privacy features work, how to really use the environment, and again, just know how to move around. Not earth shattering ideas, but ones that surprised me how much they resonated.

This was a smart group of K-12 administrators who are striving to do great things for their teachers and the students in their districts. They, in general, were very open to new ways of thinking and wanted me to assure them that the teachers we are producing at PSU are prepared to deliver the kinds of educational experiences that will ultimately make students successful in higher education and beyond. We spent a lot of time talking about how important it is for new teachers to foster feelings of creativity — even in the face of strict state standards and the constraints of the no child left behind initiative. I was a little worried about the emphasis on new teachers and not just teachers, but in general I was heartened to hear it and felt like our schools were in good hands.

I contrast this with the experiences I am having with my daughter’s public school education. I hear very little mention of innovative practice and I am certainly not seeing the ability to be flexible in the delivery of curriculum. I am not pointing fingers at teachers I am just seeing a system that wants so badly to be agile and effective, yet is trapped by red tape and outmoded methods. I don’t see anyone openly discussing learning styles, embracing digital literacy, digital story telling, or portfolio thinking. I mentioned reflective practice to a teacher in my daughter’s school and got a very strange look, as if she were saying, “why do that?” I want so much for my daughter to love school — she is still only in first grade … and I want her curiosity and creativity to be promoted, not stunted. Unfortunately what I see is a path that has been walked on for decades being the only direction, that change in thinking isn’t going to be tolerated, and that a push to the middle is the only option. So, with all the hope and promise of administrative leadership comes the realities of the trenches and I once again realize just how different my environment is than theirs. I am disheartened.

New Conversations

/ Cole Camplese / 19 Comments

I have been making the argument lately in my talks that what is beginning to happen (in a more general sense) is that the web is finally starting to fulfill its promise as a platform to support and extend conversations. I know this isn’t news to all of us, but its emergence recently to a larger audience is very interesting in several ways. As an example, I’ve been using a handful of youtube videos that at first glance seem insignificant, but upon further investigation leads you down a path towards the discovery of rich online conversations. I’ve been showing “Charlie bit my finger – again” as an illustration of how something as simple as a home video can generate not only millions of views (53 million of them), but more interestingly, thousands of comments and video responses.

My claim is that this activity is at the heart of the ever expanding understanding of the web as a platform for extending conversations. I am asserting that these are real conversations that happen in real time on a global scale. If you’ve been paying attention to the merging of technology and politics the last few weeks you may have noticed things like Current TV’s Hack the Debate mash-up, the explosion of media supported embedded video across the web of candidate interviews, and the Election Twitter mash-up site. This to me is an indication that what was recently seen as a waste of time is being viewed with new lenses.

I have an Op/Ed piece for the Christian Science Monitor appearing today that attempts to make the following as the central point:

It’s easy to criticize the rise of participatory social media as a giant waste of time. And it’s true that a fair amount of what’s being created is adolescent. But that criticism misses the point: This trend is setting the stage for greater long-term engagement. It’s an indicator that people are working to find new ways to collaborate and to be part of something larger than they are individually. The sheer immensity of the participation is the story.

No matter if you agree that the social web is a place that supports open conversation, open learning, and open connections you should see the fact that popular media is getting it. Once the mainstream embraces what we’ve been watching for a half a dozen years (or more) it will become the norm to connect with, until recently, unconnected friends and family in places like Facebook and Twitter. I think the entire space is set to explode and I think it is a good thing. Thoughts?

My Identity. Some New Thoughts

/ Cole Camplese / 12 Comments

I am seriously conflicted about the state of my own digital identity. On one hand I am thrilled to see the wealth of social sites out there filling specific niches, giving us new ways to share and express ourselves. But, to say that I am a bit underwhelmed by the lack of meta connections these sites afford is an understatement. I have a few thoughts that are really beginning to pull me in new directions.

I’ll start with Twitter as an example of my overall frustration. I use it, not as much as some, but I am usually paying attention to the stream and even update a handful of times each day. It is what it is and I know I have written many times in the past about how much I do really like it. One problem is that there are new services that are moving beyond it and people are noticing. Maybe the features it doesn’t have is what keeps people there — there is something to be said about simplicity. But the only thing that keeps me from jumping ship all together are the people. So the community is the only feature of Twitter that really keeps me there. I know it has provided a tangible result in the binding of the learning design community, but it is missing some of the things that could really make it powerful. The second thing that bothers me is that I am investing a lot of 140 character identity pieces on a daily basis. These things disappear and are not long-term artifacts. No matter, the people keep me there.

Flickr is another example of a place I post pieces of my identity on a regular basis. The features are nice and I really like the simplicity of the environment in general. In this case it isn’t so much about wanting to leave to try out new environments (only because I still think it is the best social sharing photo space), it is that my established network is there. I would never be able to drag them out. So, again, the people keep me there.

I could go on with other spaces, but I’ll spare the review of these other environments. At the end of the day I stay because of the people and the connections.

But, help me envision something that looks a little different. I have a blog — I am guessing you know that as you are reading this post here. I use my blog to act as a bit of a hub to my online identity, but I am very concerned about where all this leads. I am still willing to pay $25.00 a year for my Flickr Pro account, but when they go, so do my pictures and my network. I found out the hard way that Twitter doesn’t keep real historical records of my old Tweets … I wanted everything I Tweeted during class last Spring to use it as part of my research. The network remains, but the pieces of it that I want are gone — the evidence of community growth no longer exists. So, what I am proposing is to not abandon the social sites, but to leverage the network while using my own blog (or personal publishing platform) as the place where everything begins and ends.

So if I post a picture I do it at my blog and my blog also posts it to Flickr — it grabs the meta data, uses my post preferences, gives it a title, and all the other things that would happen at Flickr but in this case the photo still lives in my personal space. Same with Twitter, Facebook, status, and so on. What if it started in my space and ended up in those spaces? I could even choose to show or hide that content in my own blog space, but I would have overall ownership of my stuff — in one place. I’m not asking the network move, I am moving my content from my space to the places where they are. As I want to explore new environments, I can still keep it all flowing from my blog out to those places. It can’t be that hard … who knows how this could help keep our content for the long haul. As I try (and leave) more and more environments I am depositing small identity artifacts that I can no longer track and I am feeling like I am fracturing my it more and more along the way.

Tell me why this is ridiculous and why it won’t work. At the moment I can’t figure out why we wouldn’t want it to work this way.

The Hallway

/ Cole Camplese / 10 Comments

Sometimes I love the things that my Google Reader shares with me from down the hall … this afternoon I jumped into my feeds for the first time since very early this morning. One of my favorite things to see is the little new article indicator next to my ETS folder. I love to see fresh content from those in my own team … just warms the heart. There were a couple new ones today, but the one that caught my attention was from my colleague, Elizabeth Pyatt. Elizabeth is an Instructional Designer in our group who brings great insights into literally everything we do. Elizabeth was instrumental in starting and executing our blogging community hub so she gets the community thing in a big way. Her post today really made me step back and think.

What is funny about it is that her post is about a whiteboard. You see, about a month and a half ago the whiteboard we ordered for the Cafe ETS space showed up and it was way too big. Instead of sending it back I asked that it be installed in our hallway so it could be used for ad hoc conversations, announcements, or really anything else people wanted to use it for — within reason I suppose … my general rule for anything around the office is to not spew hate (a good rule to live by). I’ve watched the whiteboard since it went up and it has been used for all sorts of things — pictures of me, polls, announcements, and more. I’ve liked it all and haven’t given it too much thought. I did notice when we first had it installed that someone asked (via the whiteboard) what the policies governing it are. I didn’t respond, but did put a fictitious item on our all staff meeting agenda to address that. We didn’t.

The Whiteboard

The Whiteboard

Elizabeth notes some things that only now am I growing aware of — people want to know what it is there for. The funny thing is that I really don’t have a concrete answer. It is there to be there … if that is too abstract then so be it. Chalk it up as another grand experiment.

The other thing she notes is the Twitter stream running on a display in the same hallway. We all tweet with our personal accounts and they end up showing up in our hallway. I usually always enjoy reading them when I get off the elevator and I do feel like it provides an interesting insight into our organizational DNA. But as Elizabeth points out, some of the tweets are probably not aligned with our organizational perspective (maybe … not sure about that). Again, it is an interesting look at social interaction … another grand experiment. I am honestly intrigued by the way we are all navigating both online and physical social platforms — and yes, I just called the whiteboard a social platform.

The Twitter Stream

The Twitter Stream

So what the hell is this post about? Well it has a little to do with who we are as a group and the kinds of things we are all thinking about individually — and really how they add up to form an organizational identity. It is also about how we are walking in the open without the old rules — whatever they were. The new school technology of Twitter has brought a strange view into the collective (even if not everyone contributes to it), while the whiteboard seems to have caused more questions. I’m not sure if we are more forgiving with our use of the new school stuff or not. I do know one thing I can answer with certainty for those who are wondering — I am not the one erasing stuff. I am leaving that to the community to deal with … if I erased I would violating one of the things I believe in — communities self correct. Even on whiteboards.

Change of Seasons

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

Spring has always been my favorite time of year. There has always been something about shifting out of winter and seeing the hope and promise of new opportunities. The new green grass, the buds on the trees, and the extended hours of daylight all seem to recharge me. Historically I’ve been less bullish on Fall. I always seem to dread the move from Summer into Winter, often ignoring the fact that Fall in PA is a wonderful time of year. But for the second year in a row I find myself really excited about the change of season … it never used to mean much to me, but I am strangely eager to see the leaves change. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

Yesterday I went to the opening PSU game and took my daughter along. We had great seats and unlike the game we attended last year, she made it well past the first three minutes. She seemed to look at it all with very different eyes this year. I think she is seeing the spectacle of it through new lenses … the energy of the crowd and the power of the student section in particular really seemed to perk her interest. At times I caught her paying quite a bit more attention to the fans and the surroundings than the game itself. But, since at one point she said, “Daddy, I only cheer when all the people in blue do” I figured the game of football hasn’t quite made it into her conceptual framework. No problem … Beaver Stadium is quite the place to take in the sights and sounds of the experience.

Pass Attempt

Pass Attempt

It dawned on me as I prepare to see her off to first grade this year that answering the bell in the Fall is one of the things I’ve started to look forward to. I tend to measure my life in semesters for the most part — spending two decades in school and now a third as a member of the higher education community, my view of time is influenced heavily by the academic calendar. Maybe that is why my interest in Fall has started to take over — I see huge promise in the start of a new year. Not sure, but I like it.

It also makes me realize that I am feeling a real sense of belonging … I am now more than ever convinced that my choice to be in higher education is the right one. If I am eager to hear the school bell ring at the start of a new year, I must be in the right place. I’ve struggled with this choice for quite some time, but feel proud of the fact I spend my time here. I am watching with great anticipation as my daughter heads off to public school to see how long her enthusiasm for school lasts. I hope it is a lifetime.

My Time Machine

/ Cole Camplese / 6 Comments

For one reason or another Twitter has come back into the center of my digital life in a big way. I know it started at ELI 2008 in San Antonio. There were so many people that I try to follow at the event who were sitting in sessions sharing thoughts that I decided it was the best (only) way to keep up. It has sort of brought back the feeling of being connected to both the larger education technology community and the one right around the corner here at PSU. Another big factor has been teaching this semester and seeing my students showing up in my Twitter stream … I have to admit I am getting to know the students in my class who are twittering on a regular basis a little better — not sure if “better” is the right word, but they are quickly becoming a component of my Twitter community and I am a little more tuned into what they are thinking about.

With my interest in Twitter returning I find myself updating on regular basis again … I enjoy the renewed feeling of connectedness. I did something this morning as I was reading a particularly refreshing post from one of my students — I set out to find my first Tweets and blog posts about the service. I am not sure if Twitter was intended to be used as a personal content management system of sorts in the way I use my blog and my old fashioned analog journal, but with the frequency of Twittering I was doing a year ago it is obvious it is a great way to look into the past. So I did just that and turned up what I was doing at this exact moment a year ago. I was also able to read through my Twitter tagged blog posts and see that we were thinking about some interesting uses of Twitter way back in the day (last year) that I’ve seen put into use at conferences, events, and by organizations. When I asked Twitter what I was doing literally last year at this moment it was able to tell me … not as easy to search as the blog, but the results turned up the following:

twitter_timemachine1.png

So I am feeling like it is more important than ever to keep the thinking moving forward and to keep documenting what is going on in my day-to-day life. As with blogging, I feel almost like I am leaving little anthropological records of my own thinking for my own reflection in the future … so I’m sorry if I tweet about things that seem odd, disconnected, and even irrelevant, but most of it (when looked at from a meta level) gives me solid insight into my own thought development. I’ve been saying it for a while now, but it is becoming very clear to me that all of my online identities are coming together to form not only my self in the present progressive sense, but also as a sort of time machine for me to return to the thinking that is forming my research, my organization, my thinking, my relationships, and so on. In essence, Twitter is always asking me to respond to the simple question of “What are you doing” when I am now seeing it as an amazing opportunity to travel into the past to understand the answer to that question in a more reflective and holistic sense.

Reading Thoughts

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

As I sit at my counter on a lazy Saturday morning with Jazz playing in the background I am struck at how nice it is to see the thoughts of my students streaming before my eyes. Now that I am finally home after what feels like weeks on the road, I am taking a little time to get caught up on my RSS feeds. The big difference is that I’m not reading my typical array of Apple news or Enterprise 2.0 stuff … I’m going through entries my students have made in their own blog spaces over the last few weeks. What I see are a lot of really insightful thoughts as they relate not only to the assigned readings, but to all sorts of things they are thinking about. What I am struck by is that none of my students in the past have taken the time to post thoughts unrelated to a course in an CMS/LMS such as ANGEL or BlackBoard. I wonder why that is …

This isn’t really news to me as I’ve used blogs in courses I’ve taught before, but the combination of our own PSU Blogging platform, an interesting course topic, and a more mature group of students is creating some interesting results already. I recall a few years ago in a small study I conducted with my colleague, Bart Pursel, we asked students if they were more motivated to post in the blog environment compared with ANGEL and they overwhelmingly reported that they were. I am very interested in seeing how these students continue down this path.

Google Reader CI597C Tag

What does this give me? I am already learning so much more about the way they think, write, and discuss. The fact that there are more artifacts for me to begin to build my impressions of them is amazing to me. One of the themes of the course we are teaching is identity … with that in mind I find it interesting that I am already able to create a stronger sense of who these students are by not only interacting with them in class, but by reading their blog posts. Makes for a stronger sense of community (which is another one of our primary themes).

So, as I sit here and read the thoughts of my students I know there is something important about giving students their own place to think out loud. I am also struck by the fact that I would rather read their thoughts than those typically clogging my google reader on a lazy Saturday morning. I’ve shared out a Meta-Blog of my students if you are interested in exploring with me … you can always check out what is happening in the class by visiting the Pligg site. We’ll also be posting our first class podcast as soon as I can get it edited. Until then I have some reading to do.

CommentPress in Action

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

About two months ago I was spending quite a bit of time talking with Brad Kozlek about how we might more fully explore CommentPress … we had great conversations, but as the holiday approached it sort of slipped into the background. Much to my surprise I saw a great post by my friend Alan Levine that has gotten me excited once again …

Leave it to CogDog to make amazing use of the CommentPress theme for WordPress — and to do it in such an interesting and meaningful way. He worked with what looks like a couple of people to take WordPress MultiUser and integrate it with CommentPress to create a community based publishing engine … at least that is what I’ll call it. The paper is well worth a read, but the geek in me is fascinated by the implementation of the technology. With WPMU it is so easy to instantly create a new blog and by adding the CommentPress plugin it appears trivial to create a site that supports multiple documents that are easily organized and commented on. What is so interesting is that it automatically seperates each paragraph so comments are maintained within this small context. It appears to do an outstanding job of keeping everything in a very readable and structured model.

CommentPress is a WP theme dreamed up by the folks at the Future of the Book … from their webstite:

CommentPress is an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text. Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with CommentPress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation. It can be applied to a fixed document (paper/essay/book etc.) or to a running blog. This site is presented in “document” mode.

I can think of dozens of ways this could be used in education … and now we have a killer example of it to show off. Anyone care to share some thoughts on this?