Weekly Tech Tips - Crowdsourcing & Participatory Cultures

Weekly Tech Tip:

This past 8 days have seen two interesting turn of events that have by coincidence converged in my own experience of them to produce this week's tech tip. First was the announcement last week that Ning was going to phase out the free version of their highly popular social networking tool and the subsequent collective action of the online communities I am a part of to work together to find alternatives. The other was the publication of the TEDxNYED talks on YouTube. While the topic TEDxNYED was education most of the talks seem to revolve around this idea of participatory culture and crowdsourcing.

Additionally, for our teachers at EMID we are going to offer a PD course (optionally for Hamline Grad Credit) on "Web 2.0 & Connectivism" where participants will through the course of a year build their own personal learning networks and explore the potential of these technologies both in their own learning and the learning of their students. This course will also be available to non-EMID staff members as an online open course beginning May 27th. (online participants will also have the option of taking it for credit). For this open course synchronous sessions with EMID staff will be streamed online and asynchronous engagement will be facilitated online through social tools. I will post more information about this opportunity in the upcoming weeks.




Related links:

• Alternatives to Ning - Google Doc
• Clay Shirky:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPQViN...

• Jay Rosen:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGHw9G...

• Mike Wesch:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyCAt...

• Henry Jenkins:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa...

• George Seimens:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BH-uLO6ovI

• TEDxNYED
• Social Media Reading List for School Leaders

• Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Seimens (2004)

Link Stew:

• I urge every math and science teacher to watch Dan Meyer's TEDxNYED talk:

• TEDxOntarioEd - Tim Ludwig - 04/09/10

• Chris Lehman's talk at the #140 Conference:

• That's Why I Chose Yale

• Cell Phones in the Classroom : Learning Tools for the 21st Century

• mobiles - the 7th mass media
• How future historians will use the Twitter archives.
• u.nu - the shortest URL shortener, period
• Pew Internet: Teens and Mobile Phones
• Kaywa QR Code Generator
• QuickMark - Mobile QR code reader for your PC
  
• Cultivated Play: Farmville
• Classroom teaching in 2030 by Daniel T. Willingham
• View the wonders of the Ancient world in 3d
• PBS looks at motivation (and candles)
• Educational Networking - Wiki directory of educational social networks
• IceRocket real-time search

Blog Carnival:

• 5 Questions to ask BEFORE buying IWBs byBill Ferriter on The Tempered Radical
  
• Does teacher tenure have a future? by Scott McLeod on Dangerously Irrelevant
• IWB’s Help or Hurt? by tomwhitby on My Island View
• Interesting ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom by Richard Byrne on Free Technology for Teachers