Monthly Archives: February 2011

Brevity is the Soul of (t)Wit

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barkingskull

I’ve had a busy weekend. I started a podcast and a Twitter experiment. I’ve added a page to my blog with my podcast feed but my podcast is hosted on my website which you can find here. My main purpose for setting up my podcast is to learn about podcasting, but my secondary purpose, which is probably more important, is to share ideas with teachers in short manageable pieces.

My second weekend project is a little more ambitious. Ever since I followed Such Tweet Sorrow last year, I’ve been giving some thought to what I could do with it. I liked the idea of distilling a play down to its most basic components and I also liked the improvisational, real-time, experimental feel of the project. Prompted by a Facebook message from a friend of mine I decided to revisit the idea. A while back @ChrisKevill and I were tweeting about Hamlet and I half-jokingly suggested that we mount a Twitter Hamlet, but then I thought, not very many of my theatre friends are on Twitter. This weekend it occurred to me to approach it from the other direction: how many of my Twitter friends would be into Hamlet? I’m pretty jazzed about the idea of combining social media and theatre. So far I’ll have to wait and see how many responses I get before I can move forward with this project but I have a good feeling.

If you want to read more about this project, check out my Brevity is the Soul of (t)Wit website at www.brevity.danikabarker.ca.

If you want to be part of the project, fill out the “audition sheet.” I’m quite confident I can find a role for everyone!

I don’t feel like an English teacher

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shoesphoto by aforgrave

(Or, “How I spent last Saturday”)

I came across this realization during a hazy, post #OTF21C car ride back to London. The nerd-endorphins were still buzzing through my already caffeinated blood stream, so I’ll grant that any epiphanies I may have had at that time may have just as easily been hallucinations.

What I mean is that when I first started teaching, I was passionate about English–literature in particular. The literacy side of things seemed a little tacky and boorish. I liked my students, but I think my approach to teaching was modeled on movie teachers like John Keating and that’s … not helpful.

And now I find that when I talk to other English teachers, and they get giddy and starry eyed when discussing the ways in which they instill a love of literature in students (whereas I don’t even know if that works grammatically), I don’t get it anymore. Now don’t get me wrong, I love teaching English, but I don’t think I love it for the same reasons they do.

Last Saturday I had the privilege of being Will Richardson’s Girl Friday (which is probably an inaccurate and un-feminist term. Deal.). Not that he really needed any help. Still it was a good excuse to hang out with and learn from somebody I really respect and admire. Every once in a while I’d catch myself thinking, “Two years ago this was all new to you and now you’re hopping on Will’s laptop to show the teachers Edmodo and Ning. You are so lucky!” It was bit surreal, but it reinforced for me how much has changed for me as a teacher. I blogged about this in the previous post so I won’t belabour  the point, but this is a pretty big deal for me and so I want to remember it.

Thank you to my OTF and ECOO friends for including me. This has been one of the most memorable and meaningful experiences for me as a teacher that I’ve ever had.

Here are some links to my friends’ (mere Twitter contacts no more!) reflections on this fantastic event:

Colin ‘s reflections

Doug’s reflections

Rodd Lucier’s brilliant and groundbreaking tome, featuring the indomitable Andy Forgrave (I sometimes use fancy words to justify all the money I spent on my English degree).

Andy Goes to the Apple Store

View more presentations from Rodd Lucier.
Jamie and Lexie Weir Skyped in by Andy

Jamie and Lexie Weir Skyped in by Andy

photo by aforgrave

Will Richardson

Will Richardson

photo by Colin Jagoe

Me rocking the microphone

Me rocking the microphone

photo by Colin Jagoe

Super Tweeps!

Super Tweeps!

photo by aforgrave

My screen shot of a pretty cool tweet:
Dalton

Coming Full Circle: Reflections on Technology and Connectivism

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spiralPhoto by Jim Moran

Two years ago I went to an OTF and ECOO sponsored conference called Expanding Our Boundaries. When I attended that conference with my amazing and supportive husband (@reed_man on Twitter), I was relatively new to the world of web 2.0, social media, and theories of connectivism and constructivism. I know that for a fact because I have a digital record of it. Here’s my blog post from February 27, 2009.

It’s amazing to me to read how giddy I was about learning about hashtags and Twitter’s potential. I was a recent convert to Twitter, but still pretty much “new” to it. I had been blogging sporadically for about a year, but I was just starting to see what a valuable tool it was for my own reflection and professional development. (Boy do I get that NOW!) I was also particularly silly about the fact that Will Richardson had responded to two of my tweets.

Then if you go to the next post, I had to find a blog post to read and comment on in my own blog and then tweet about it. I also put in a video that I recorded that morning, and to my delight I can see people I now know like Zoe Branigan-Pipe! How amazing is that?

So today, because I’ve been lucky enough to form great connections with people like Doug Peterson, Cyndie Jacobs, and Brenda Sherry, I’m back at the very same conference with Will Richardson, but this time I was a panelist on last night’s discussion about social media in the classroom. I’ve been able to help other teachers who are newbies like I was, and I’ve been able to connect with people who I follow on Twitter.

Today’s most amazing moment came when Will was showing everyone how people shared links in Twitter and found that George Siemens was about to start an Elluminate session with his class so Will just clicked the link and had George talk to the entire room about Connectivism. I tried to record it on my iPhone, but it didn’t turn out very well. It was a pretty incredible moment for teaching the power of the network. It was also pretty fun when George tweeted some hellos to us.

It’s astounding how much can change in two years. Truly astounding. It’s hard to imagine a time where I didn’t have a network of brilliant and talented people who help me solve problems and provide me with inspiration. It’s equally hard to imagine a time when I didn’t actively reflect and question my own pedagogy. I feel very lucky to be where I am right now. I’m can’t wait to see where I’ll be two years from now.

“Coming Full Circle” is probably not an accurate title for this blog post, because nothing is being brought to a close here. It’s more like a spiral. You get the idea.

Wow.

Deep breath.

Let’s keep learning!