| Tag Archives: connections

Chipin Completed!

by Clarence Fisher 2 Comments

It looks like the Helping Global Kids Connect project will move to programming.

Thanks to 13 different people from around the globe, I have managed to collect $410 USD ($10 more than I had even asked for!) to move this project ahead and begin the programming that needs to happen.

It takes a lot of trust to send off your hard earned money over the internet to some guy you might never have met so a large word of thanks goes out to:

Phil Taylor
Heather Durnin
Stephen Downes
David Jakes
Susan Sedro
Brian Metcalfe
Susan Carter Morgan
Adina Sullivan
Gary Lewis
John Finch
Jeannine St Amand
James Stauffer
Jody Hayes

The second phase of this project is to hire a programmer and begin putting together the vision for this site. Hopefully, this can happen in the next few days and then we can move ahead.

As things happen, I will keep everyone updated on things that are happening.

Helping Kids Make Connections

by Clarence Fisher 12 Comments

As I’ve been enjoying my summer holidays, one thing I’ve been doing is expanding my twitter and blogging networks. I’ve been sorting through new channels in both spaces, trying to find new people who I can make connections with. While I’ve been doing this in a number of ways, one of the main things I’ve been doing is looking at the connections that are being recommended for me by different wesbsites.

Take twitter as an example.

Each time I find a new profile to follow, twitter recommends other people for me that I might be interested in looking at as well. This often leads me on interesting journeys as I click from link to link, looking for people who I might want to add to my network.

This has left me wondering why we don’t have a tool like this for kids.

While I certainly don’t have the the coding experience to do this, I’m wondering if anyone else in my network might.

This is what I’m thinking:

We need a recommendation engine for students that would help them find other students around the world that they can learn with. This might have a number of different looks to it, but a simple one would be to set up a website that is sitting on the code to bring kids together. For example, a teacher might sign up his / her class on this site, getting a password back of some kind. They would then have their students add the URLs of their blogs to this site, using the password they were sent to cut down on spam. The sign up process could be very quick and clean, asking students a few questions about their age, geographic location, interests, etc. Simple google form stuff. But as well as this, the website could have some code that would suck at the tags that the person uses on their blog, creating a database of information.

Once this site has been populated by people of different ages, locations and interests, it becomes useful. After signing in, students would be able to find others to connect with around the world based on a number of things. They could search for people in their geographic area (or a completely different area “I’m interested in Africa, I wonder how many student bloggers out there my age I can find to connect with), they could find people based on how they answered the initial interest survey, they could find people based on the tags they have been using on their blogs (“I’m looking for someone writing about music”) or the website could recommend people for them to follow based on the information it has collected. For example, the site could find students who are using similar tags in their writing or who have similar interests.

The site could also recommend people for you to follow based on holes it sees in your network. (“I notice you are following few people from south east Asia, here are some possibilities for you.”) Doing this with blogs might be a place to start, but the site could also grow to include twitter feeds, flickr accounts, etc.

The entire idea behind this site would be to help students forge connections with other learners around the world, to help them become more globalized in their thinking about issues. Too often, blogging and learning networks for students only consist of people in their classroom or of people their teacher can make connections with, this type of space would help that process to become much easier.

Thoughts?

Anyone have any ideas about putting something like this together? I’m willing to donate the webspace if other people can help out with the coding.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xanxhor/4052765588/sizes/m/in/photostream/

I think I have COMS… (Cranky Old Man Syndrome)

by Clarence Fisher 7 Comments

I’m 41.

That’s 536 in internet years.

I’ve been involved with edtech for more than a decade and seen a lot of tools come and go.

These days it seems I’m seeing a lot of tools come; but I’m choosing not to get involved with them. This has changed for me in the past 1.5 years or so. I used to get every account that came around. If it was new, I wanted in and I wanted in early. Beta tester accounts up for grabs? Yes please.

These days though, I find I am getting much more choosy about what I sign up for and spend my time with. Maybe it has to do with limits on the time I have to spend with tools. But there are a lot of spaces I’ve chosen to stay out of.

The most recent is Google +. While I admit that I am one of only approximately ten people in the Western world who aren’t on facebook either, I just can’t see a reason for signing up for this tool. The circles and hangouts seem more like a closed network that feels (as an outsider) like a high school popularity contest, and as for sparks, the item that Google advertises as “A feed of just the stuff you’re really into;” it’s called RSS, I’ve had it for years.

So what’s new? What’s different? I’m not seeing it.

But that’s not really different for me these days. That’s why I’m wondering if I’ve got a bad case of the COMS.

I’m not a facebooker. I’ve stayed out of Diigo. I dropped ning when they wanted me to pay. I don’t plurk or use voicethread in my classroom. The list could go on.

Meanwhile, some of the main tools that I use have been around for awhile. I love wordpress and all that is possible with it. While my google reader sometimes gets very full, I use it a lot as well. I will be in delicious until they shut the doors. Twitter has turned into a main space for me to find new people, new connections and new information. I’ve been a lot more choosy about what I use professionally and with what I use in my classroom as well, but I’m wondering about the consequences of this.

How do the tools you use effect the shape, size, and vitality of your network? How do the spaces you are part of effect what kinds of information you have access to? As far as I’m concerned, my network is meeting my information needs, but am I missing out on things / people / connections by purposely limiting my network and shaping it using certain tools? I am vastly in favour of open networks and connections, but at what point am I constructing a closed information ecology for myself by choosing fewer tools?

Building Informal Connections

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

I just picked this paragraph up from one of my student’s blogs:

“…We became friends and hung out on a site I introduced her to: Weeworld. We talked a lot on there, then she gave me her MSN (Windows Live Messenger). We somehow became the best of friends, two very different yet very similar girls. She is the reason that I first came to love learning about her country. She is starting to teach me Arabic… But I’ve only managed to learn a simple greeting: Hala – Hello…”

This is pretty casual. Two girls playing Wii and chatting. But one of them is in a small community in northern Canada and the other is in Kuwait. The girl from my end is from a quite strict Christian family and (I presume) the girl from Kuwait is Muslim.

These are the connections of our time. This is how they are made. They don’t have to be academic, or formal, or structured by an intervening adult. They are global, informal and made by anyone.

The rest of the blog post goes on to be an examination of Kuwait including some multimedia elements and is fully tagged and categorised. The post is the basic quality of anything I would have have expected as an introductory research assignment on a country. Only of course, even better since this girl did this all out of her own interest and choosing.

I’ve noticed a pattern lately of more students making international connections with others through MMOG ‘s or using their Wii or Playstations. A move to easier, more informal connections? I’m not sure at this point, but it is something to keep an eye on as it develops.

Connecting Assessment

by Clarence Fisher 10 Comments

I’ve recently designed a rubric for blogging that I shared in this previous post. I’ve been using this in my classroom over the past weeks and have found that the specific criteria and descriptions listed on the rubric have been effective at helping students to improve the posts they have been writing.

With this in mind, I’ve been working on another assessment to help students think about the connections and global understandings they are establishing. I’ve developed a rubric and a checklist to use in a classroom with middle school students. While I’ve not yet used this in a classroom, I will not use it to assign a grade to these activities, but instead to be a conversation starter with students. It could possibly be used in a small group setting or as a self assessment tool. I can also see sitting with students several times over the course of a school year (possibly once every two months?) and having a conversation with them about connections and global issues. Giving students the rubric and checklist will help them to work towards developing more effective connections around the world for learning.

As usual, please leave any thoughts or comments behind. Any and all suggestions welcome. The Google docs version is here.

Beginner

Capable

Accomplished

Expert

Commenting

- never comments on own or others work

- few comments approved in own space

- rarely comments on own or others work

- comments in own space approved late

- regularly comments on own and others work

- comments are approved in a timely manner

- often comments on the work of others-

comments in own spaces to build community

- comments ask questions and drive forward thinking

Developing a Global Understanding

- accesses information only from North America

- no understanding of global events and issues

- never creates own content about global issues

- accesses information from at least two continents regularly

- little understanding of global events and issues

- rarely creates own content about global issues

- accesses information from at least three continents regularly

- some understanding of global events and issues

- sometimes creates own content about global issues

- accesses information from at least three continents regularly

- shows clear understanding of current global events and issues

- regularly creates own content about global issues

Connecting and Networking

- displays rude behaviour online

- gives out personal information online

- only has teacher provided RSS feeds

- no thought given to creating or sustaining a network

- usually uses proper netiquette

- usually connects with others safely

- regularly reviews self chosen RSS feeds

- network changes only with support

- uses proper netiquette

- connects with others safely

- regularly reviews self chosen RSS feeds

- network sometimes changes, growing or shrinking slowly

- supportive of others online

- connects with others safely

- regularly reviews RSS feeds subscribed to

- deletes and adds feeds as needed

- network is flexible, changing to meet needs

Do you….

_____ regularly read and approve comments in your own spaces?

_____ regularly read and comment on the work of others?

_____ know what kinds of things have been written lately by people in your online community?

_____ read blogs when needed?

_____ listen to podcasts when needed?

_____ watch videos when needed?

_____ regularly review your RSS feeds, deciding which are useful and which are not?

_____ regularly look for new sources of information when you have something new to learn?

_____ talk to people from several continents?

_____ produce information of your own in more than one form?

_____ write comments that ask questions?

_____ know how to use a service to translate web sites in other languages?

_____ have news sources from other countries in your RSS reader?

_____ create content about issues that are taking part in other countries?

_____ create content about ideas that you learned about from reading / watching the work of others?

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