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

Filling the Production Gap

PBS FRONTLINE's digital_nation is full of great clips and sound bytes. Addressed in that film by many of people interviewed as what Arne Duncan refers to as the "Opportunity Gap." This opportunity gap sounds very similar to what many of us are calling the "Production Gap." I have taken the important clips related to that topic from that documentary, added clips from a keynote speech by Alan November, interviews with Seymore Papert, and clips from old public domain ephemeral films from the Internet Archive. Combined, I feel it both explains and makes the case very well for addressing the production gap as a social justice issue.

Filling the Production Gap from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

View this clip on Blip.tv
View the abridged version on YouTube


While school filtration policies play an important role in sustaining the production gap because they limit our ability to engage students in tools and with information as content producers they are not the only issue. What is more important are practices of pedagogy and I think the video makes this clear. So, how do we fill the production gap? Here are four simple prescriptive steps:

1. Open access to read/write web resources (stop blocking blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking, and vodcasting sites like YouTube)
2. Create a learner-centered learning environment (tailor learning experiences to individual student interests, needs, and abilities)
3. Engage all students as content producers.
4. Provide all students with a thorough and honest digital literacy education so they understand the levity of what they post online and are able to manipulate the web to meet their academic and entrepreneurial needs.

What are your thoughts? Is the problem laid out here valid? What are the consequences of not addressing the production gap, especially for economically disadvantaged students? Would you change or add any steps to this list? Let me know.

Highlights and reflections from FRONTLINE's Digital Nation

This is by far my favorite clip from PBS's FRONTLINE Digital Nation:



I completely agree with Henry Jenkins on this point. The best way to deal with the "dangers" of the internet is by talking with students honestly, not by putting computers in classrooms, wiring them, then disabling their use.

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This clip makes me respect our Secretary of Education a little bit more:



It is refreshing to hear this message come from the top.

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Of all the clips in this program, this one probably bothers me the most.



I wonder if assistant principal Dan Ackerman realizes how creepy he looks spying on kids through their laptop webcams or how their acceptable use policy still reinforces the production gap in their school even though they have made tremendous gains using technology to help students learn.

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Another great clip by Arne Duncan:



He says opportunity gap, I say production gap. Either way, I agree, "Schools need to be places of opportunity."

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Regarless of how I feel about Prensky's notion of Digital Native/Immigrant I really like what he says about the type of learning activities students want and need to be engage in in this clip:



The second half of this clip where he says, "Schools are no longer the centers of education," is especially of interest and worthy of global conversation.

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This teacher describes a fantastic application of social networking in the classroom:

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In this clip James Paul Gee delivers what is probably the best explanation of school internet filtration policies and the fears people have that drive them that I have ever heard:

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Finally, Henry Jenkins on learning strategies needed in the age of information overload: