I knew from personal experience that commenting on blogs is a crucial aspect of blogging conversations for achieving the greatest learning. Trouble is factors often limit people’s commenting practices so they don’t experience this learning and fail to appreciate it’s value.
Kim Cofino, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and I hoped a challenge that involved a month of focused commenting would help participants appreciate it’s importance and the benefits of learning as a community.
The behind the scenes tasks have left me little time to write my own reflections so I thought today I would play catch up using Comment Challenge Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned So Far but reflect the three lessons I’ve learned from my experiences so far in terms of being a coordinator of the Challenge.
#1 Commenting & Participation in Online Communities
It didn’t surprise to me that many participants response to “How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?” was rarely. Concerns of saying the wrong thing or feeling their comments mightn’t be worthy were the main factors why they rarely commented. This surprised me because I assumed time was the main issue since majority are bloggers and use twitter.
90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute)
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time
1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs
The 4 Cs are an attempt to illustrate the fact that most people appear to operate predominantly in one or other of the phases in their journey to becoming online citizens, and that there is some sort of progression that characterises this growth.
Lots of food for thought with no answers but definitely a greater understanding, after 7 days of observations, of why people do/don’t comment on blogs.
#2 Technorati Continues To Mock Me
With over 100 adult participants and 12 student groups (over 200 students) , combined with the desire to encourage the community aspect, an RSS feed from Technorati was the easiest method for helping participants easily find each other and interact (we have the feed coming into our wiki). Best way to do this is to agree on a common tag term prior to the event.
Mistake #1 - Make sure the tag term is unique!
(DUH Sue!) I should have done a technorati basic search for the tag term comment08 because unfortunately test comments from cocomment’s blog were picked up with this search term.
Mistake #2 - Test Technorati easily picks up the tags prior to starting such a large project
After quite a bit of research over the weekend I discovered that technorati wasn’t picking up posts unless:
Participants had joined and claimed their blog’s at Technorati
Technorati hasn’t been pinging their blog (some of the blogs hadn’t been pinged for 90 days which meant we weren’t seeing any of the posts they were writing)
Also I discovered we had to refine the Technorati tag search to ensure it found all posts.
If we had known all this prior we could have given more detailed instructions to participants on how to tag (for each of the different blogging platforms) and for ensuring their tags were picked up by technorati.
True I did know this but have been pleasantly surprised, with the right circumstances, how rapidly this can develop considering it has only been 8 days. It’s impossible for me to showcase all the examples however I think what happening with video and video commenting — and the increased connections as a results — is pretty cool.
Would love to hear about the connections you are making, and the community learning that is happening, as a result of the Challenge. Also your thoughts on online participation and commenting (and off course how you are going ).
For all those waiting for me to post my true thought on Facebookthis video sums them all up but my words are a bit stronger. Perhaps not a good idea to show it to your kids .
Ocean of Know uses videoconferencing and Internet-based monitoring/control systems to connect kids from NYC schools to this research facility. Once linked, kids and teachers learn through a series of projects and routine farm maintenance - as if controlling an aquaponics facility via the Internet can be considered routine! You only have to spend a few minutes on this site to see how creative and engaging the lessons are.
My workplace provides training for the maritime industry; encompassing fishing operations, seafood processing, seafarers & engineers on the large ships, marine tourism, marine science and aquaculture.
Putting it simply we employ highly qualified people from a range of maritime industries, with wealth of experience and we have great facilities – plenty of opportunities for educators to connect their students to learn about the maritime industry.
Check out the short video below that I created to give you show you aspects of aquaculture I could share. I’d even be prepared to talk about Goldfish with your students :).
Where I’m At
So as I said I need your help to move it from the idea into making it work :). I’m hoping if I list my thought process you can provide suggestions.
Here’s my thought process so far:
1. Simple Lessons and Provide Information on Aquaculture
I’m thinking we could develop simple lessons, similar the concept they’ve used on Ocean of Know, which educators could use with their students plus provide access to us using Skype, webcams, videos, Ustream etc and obviously site tours for local schools.
Happy to involved international schools as students from throughout the World train at our centre.
Can you tell me whether/how this might fit into your curriculum?
2. Getting Others Involved
Ideally it would be good to get K12 educators involved especially with lessons.
Who should I contact? Science Teachers Association? Curriculum Development at Education Department? Who else?
3. What Type Of Site To Use
I’m thinking of keeping it simple using a wiki because it’s probably better suited and provides an opportunity to showcase various Web 2.0 tools to new educators.
My preference is wikispaces. Your thoughts? Wiki? Wikispaces? Or not a wiki?
4. Forum Facility
Want include the ability for students/educators could post questions –the discussion tab isn’t the best for forums — could embed a forum? Ideas?
5. What haven’t I thought of?
I’m bound to have missed something. But what?
FINAL THOUGHTS
My managers can see merit in my idea — even if they don’t quite understand where I’m going with it. Who can blame them I’m still working it out myself.
I’d really appreciate it if you’d take the time to help me out by leaving a comment with your thoughts and ideas; so that I can start to make it happen
Al Upton and his Principal meet today with representatives from DECS (Department of Education and Children Services) and AEU (Australian Education Union) to discuss the report prepared by DECS Special Investigations and what needs to be done to get the Al’s students blogs back online.
Background Information
For those unaware Al Upton was asked to close Al Upton and the miniLegend blog (and the student blogs) on 14 March while investigations regarding risk and management issues were undertaken. Main concerns were issues relating to use of student images on blogs and potential for cyberstalking because global adult mentors were interacting students. For more information on procedures Al used to set up his blogging program refer to this post.
Outcome of Today’s Meeting
This post is a summary based on the UPDATE 3 that Al has just posted on his blog which relates to his meeting today. Al’s whole mentoring and global collaboration is under severe threat – what he wants is constructive helpful comments that Al and his Principal can use to develop an action plan for student blogging.
Based on their discussions today DECS do not have any specific ‘blog’ policies or guidelines; responsibility (and liability) ultimately rests with his line-manager/principal assuming that he/she endorses the methodologies.
Some of the points raised in the meeting today included:
Any communication between students and adults overseas was strongly advised against by both DECS and AEU representatives. Appears there were also concerns with even the idea of closed collaboration with classes in different countries
Student identifiers e.g. photos/names/maps etc are a concern/risk. Student photos can be manipulated. Recommendations were that these need to be reduced as much as possible.
Parental consent forms need to reviewed and reissued with a range of options for use of student images or avatars
Individual student blogs were questioned with a general indication of that not being a good idea
My points are a summary of Al’s recollection of the meeting — you do need to read his update 3 on his blog.
Developing The Action Plan
Al and his Principal would appreciate the support of the community so that they can develop the action plan by taking into account all issues. They are after constructive helpful comments and thoughts; and a balanced discussion of the issues.
He would appreciate constructive comments/posts on the mentoring program, use of individual blogs with students, student images/avatars/pseudonames etc.
The conversation was beamed out via Ustream with global participants joining the ustream chat and Skype conference call. And I’ve decided, it’s official, I’m not the best at maintaining my thoughts while also following chats (easily distracted) but fortunately there was lots of other great conversation happening via Skype and Ustream Chat.
You can access the Ustream recording from the session here and Alec will be posting it as a podcast on his blog later. The Ustream chat is 13 pages long in Word, which is too much for this post so I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing snippets below.
Private/Public Blogs & Guidelines For Educators
Colette Cassinelli highlighted her thoughts that we don’t want private blogs because that defeats the purpose of a global community.
Ryan Flood directed us to Clarence Fisher’s Is Blogging Dangerous? post to highlight the reality that Al’s situation isn’t an isolated incident and has happened to other educators in the past few years.
Laurie Gatzke said she had heard some time ago that the consent forms are a distractor. They would have a hard time standing up in a court of law.
Laurie Gatzke agreed that many of us are moving ahead faster than our districts can keep up. However, in our district I think it is a small percentage. There are not guidelines for this. As a parent I can understand that. We want to protect our kids.
Risks/Reality of Online Stalkers
Rob Wall asked “How much of a risk are online stalkers? More or less of a risk than taking a field trip on a bus, for example? Any answers? What are the actual, documented risks that students are exposed to by having their name, picture, blog, etc. online? And how many of the face to face predators find kids online? Jim Ellis agreed that Rob’s questions are very important and that no one can answer them properly because he didn’t there were real figures.
Doug Symington said it’s important to address these issues to avoid “chill” re:web in education.
Images, Avatars & Pseudos
Colette Cassinelli suggests that kids less than 13 can draw photos of themselves instead of posting photos; a lot of primary teachers using scanned drawings for avatars for VoiceThread. Doug Symington thinks that hand-drawn avatars, as an example, might be better than actual photos of youngsters. Laurie Gatzke said students in her class just made videos without any faces appearing on them. All of their props etc were either hand drawn or done in some other creative way.
Lisa Durff recommended Portrait Illustrator as a good way for students to create their own avatars. Her belief is all minors should use pseudos and says the parents think she’s too severe with this online identity thing however she feels online safety of the child is above all. bircherd-1 said I make my student use nicknames in the class blog.
The risk is with teachers do not own the tools first. Teachers should use the tools first personally and professionally BEFORE they use them with kid. Kids that learn to use the tools within the safety net of a tech using teacher’s classroom are safer than a kid who gets online outside that safety net at home.
Bottom line this whole issue should serve a signal to all of us that we need to be able to advocate for the tools we use and why. Yes, but if a parent had complained about something he said in class or a book he used.. would the reaction have been the same? Part of the advocacy piece needs to be with us helping to educate parents as to the changes. I want to teach my students discernment so they know how to make right choices. I explain the choices I make and why.
By doing these kinds of things we can teach and model digital citizenship. As educators we need to help teach the kids the responsible ways to use the tools. Lincoln said.. the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next generation. Part of our job is to indoctrinate in this case — responsible use of the new technologies.
We teach them not to talk to strangers and not to answer the phone when parents aren’t home. Educators traditionally have had the responsibility of helping the next generation understand how to use the tools safely.
As Dennis Richards said kids are using the internet without guidance. If we don’t give them guidance, they will never develop it.
Where Now?
We need to continue to debate these issues, find the research and develop our thoughts. Plus, as Alec Couros pointed out, we need to move this discussion, and what we learn, from the blogosphere to educating parents, other educators and decision makers. Any suggestions on the HOW?
Parental consent was obtained prior to Al setting up the program. His permission form clearly explains why he blogs with students and encourages parents to consider the issues to decide level of online identify they feel comfortable for their child.
For our own class use, it would be excellent if all students are able to upload photos, videos and audio (sound) of themselves to share with each other, folks at home and the classes/educators we collaborate with. Invited educators and classes can add positive comments on our learning.
Please consider carefully the following and tick which boxes you are comfortable with.
It is true that students can feel ‘left out’ if their images and voice are not included yet the rest of the class is. It is very important that this does not sway your choices below. Strategies can be sought to include all students – e.g. only photograph the back of their head.
Since beginning at Glenelg in 2004 all but one student were given full permission and this decision was respected.
I make every effort to teach ‘safe and savvy’ internet use and limit references to your child (eg first name only) on educational sites and will use (where possible) password protected sites. I have researched appropriate sites at some depth and feel confident with my choices.
He also encouraged them to regularly check out the class blog and look with their child on the class computers once a week.
Those parents that did take the time to check his blog would have seen his excellent explanation of permission and consent form. His post highlights: the need to get student permission; include/inform parents, caregivers, line managers, site leaders (and he also likes to inform departmental leaders of progress and intentions because it’s better still seek their interest and involvement); and look to official site, district, Department and government policies and supplied/required forms.
Al provided these South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS) Policies, Acts and Regulations:
I asked my twitter followers to check out their local Education Department to locate policies or guidelines relating to use of blogs with students. Some were able to locate Acceptable Internet Usage documents (I’ve listed these on my wiki page) but none of these provided any guidance for educators on blogging with students.
Several of my readers raised concerns on student images being used:
Gary Barber “As a person extremely heavy involved with the internet industry I would NOT recommend putting pictures of kids, group shots or otehrwise on the web. Picture where they can’t be identified, like back views are okay, but anything else parental permission or not. In fact I wouldn’t put pictures of any child under 16 in a public area. They just become too open to digital abuse.”
Kate Foy “There is no doubt though, that photos of kids online would be ripe for abuse … sadly. This is reality”.
Lynn Crowe “have to say I was surprised at his use of student photos to promote this - does it matter what a student looks like?”
I picked up a copy of the local paper to see my son on the cover…Full name, clearly identified. Did he give permission to have the photograph published? No. Newspapers have a policy that they must print full names of anyone photographed. They’ve been doing it for years.
Our schools meanwhile try desperately to protect students from any chance of identification online.
Ridiculous isn’t it - parents do everything they can to get little johnnys picture in the newspaper but mention the word ‘internet’ and pedophiles will surely track down your children!
When we started the first YoMo website I spent hours looking into regulations for using childrens photos online - what I found was no consistency at all - policies ranged from hysteria to nothing! Last week there was an article on BBC about a school photo published online where they had actually blocked out the faces of everyone!
We take thousands of photos a year of young people and upload hundreds online. On parental consents and booking forms we clearly state that photos may be used online and in publicity with the option for parents to opt their child out of photos and films. Only 3 children have been opted out in 8 years (all because they had been victims of abuse), and two groups have requested that we don’t use photos (similar reasons).
The best guidance I’ve seen for using photos is to make sure full names are not used and also nothing that can link children in them to where they live (like street names).
The reason why Al prefers to use student images not avatars is because he believes the students benefit from seeing their own images.
Use Of Adult Mentors
Lynn Crowe remarked in her comment that maybe mentors need to be other students but a few years older. Part of the reason why Al decided to include adult mentors this year was because he saw first hand how much his miniLegends benefited last year, from interacting with experienced adult bloggers, when they were involved in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.
Online Predators, Cyber Bullying and Cyber Stalking
Many school-aged children spend unsupervised time on home computers. Conscientious parents are alarmed by stories of online predators and cyber bullying but don’t have the skills or knowledge to instruct their children in digital safety. The classroom is the logical place for students to receive safety instruction and participate in guided practice.
Our children and teen-agers must have fluency in communication and collaboration to be successful in the world they inhabit. Rather than encase them in armor, we should arm them with knowledge.
Michele Martin recommended checking out Study Debunks Web Predator Myths which discusses the results of a study published in the February/March issue of the journal American Psychologist and titled, “Online ‘Predators’ and Their Victims: Myths, Realities and Implications for Prevention. Definitely worth a read because it highlights many of the concerns are myths and that “there is no doubt that Internet predators are real, and do pose a threat. But the real danger is the public’s deeply flawed understanding of the problem.”
It’s impossible to cover all the comments written on my previous post; please take the time to read them and thanks again everyone for your input.
Al would like us to embrace this as an opportunity to promote the value of blogs, online learning and debate good practice guidelines for blogging with students.
I’ve set up a page on my wiki with links/extracts of bloggers reactions and the twitter network to the Order for Closure. I hope these links with my clarification of additional information will allow us to continue to debate the issues.
Unfortunately Al and his miniLegends have had problems this week; the end result being that today he was given an Order of Closure by Risk and management/Special Investigations Unit from the South Australian Education Department to remove his Al Upton’s MiniLegend class blog.
What happened was a few parents became concerned over the use of student images on blogs and potential for cyberstalking because global adult mentors were interacting students. Al had followed all the right procedures and obtained parental consent.
Al would like us to use this opportunity to inform/educate parents and Education Departments of the value of blogging for learners and to discuss the true realities of cyberstalking /bullying. Please take the time to leave your comments, thoughts and links either here or on Al’s blog.
My strongest belief is we must separate the debate on the educational use of social networking totally from whether Facebook should be used in an educational context. These are two totally separate issues.
Facebook is just one form of social networking; the educational benefits of social networking shouldn’t be devalued because managers and educators base their views on social networking solely on their own personal limited knowledge and/or experience of sites like Facebook and MySpace.
It’s about Educational Networking NOT Social Networking
I totally agree with Vicki Davis — It is about Educational Networking NOT Social Networking. There is huge difference between social networking and how we use these social platforms in an educational context; educational networking is a far more appropriate term for educators to use than social networking. Read Vicki’s excellent post for a better understanding of the difference!
The Personal Nature of Social Networks
We each have varying levels of personal connection to different social networking sites, and spaces that we want to keep private and personal, and this needs to be taken into account when considering the use of sites for educational networking. I’ve no personal connection to my own Facebook account; and happily connect to anyone, including my students, within Facebook. Yet my twitter network is extremely personal to me; it’s my personal space, I don’t want to interact with family or students in twitter.
My personal belief is that Facebook should be used only as a personal network; where educators and students can choose if they do/don’t connect with one another, and if learning occurs it is a result of informal networking and support. If we want to encourage educational networking then we should be using social platforms such as Ning community; where we can make the distinction between personal and education networks.
Banning of Web Sites
I believe it is far better to educate appropriate use than ban or block web sites. As educators, we should be treated as professional, and not have to justify reasons why we want to use a web application.
The shame of the Facebook debate in the TAFE sector actually has more to concerns that adminstration staff will waste time inappropriately; then concerns of how we might use it with students.
FINAL THOUGHT
Allison Miller has asked the following questions to ponder from this discussion which I’m unable to respond back to in this post; however we would love it if you added your thoughts to the conversation.
What are the POSITIVES of Social Networking? and what are the NEGATIVES of Social Networking?
Why do Educational Institutes ’shy away’ from embracing ‘Social Networking Sites’ - and ‘block’ them?
How do we entice Educational Institutes to ‘value’ Social Networking?
Do Educational Institutes have an ethical responsibility to be ‘guiding’ their students through ‘how to operate’ in SNS?
How do we ‘measure’ and ‘demonstrate’ the educational value of SNSs?
How can we gather the data to show the ‘ROI in terms of relationships’ and ‘ROI in terms of information and learning’?
So here are my thoughts for 2008 - they don’t fall in the category of predictions since they aren’t novel, a surprise, or unexpected - but are important to educators because they’re challenges most of us continue to face.
# 1 - Misunderstood
Many educators will choose to use technology with the students in stealth mode, within their own organisations, for fear of being ridiculed, misunderstood or told their wasting too much time using technology and not doing their job. My personal favourite was being told that the failing literacy and numeracy levels of students was directly correlated to my use of technology.
# 2 - Firewalls and Blocking
Inability to access web sites will continue to frustrate educators forcing them to use alternative options or encourage their students to access sites from home except for Australian students who may need to visit other countries to access websites if the Great Firewall of Australia is implemented.
# 3 - Bandwidth
For many educators lack of bandwidth will drive them insane; once again forcing them to encourage students to access sites from home. I can only hope that this will start to change in Australia, with our new Government, as it has one of the most slow, one of the most expensive broadband networks in the developed world however rolling out accessing high-speed national broadband network to educational institutions will take time.
#4 - Long Term Support
Organisations that develop strategies for long term support & reward of their educators, and recognise that it takes considerable time for their staff to progress from learning how to use a tool to being able to apply it’s use in an educational context, will be continue to achieve higher e-learning success than those that take an ad-hoc approach. From experience this support needs to be structured and scaffolded in terms of years, not weeks or days.
# 5 - Mobile Devices
While mobile devices will continue to proliferate, especially those able to access the mobile web, most educators will continue to be prevented from accessing their educational potential due to school or Government policies. Check out Ewan McIntosh’s thoughts on UK’s largest Teacher’s Union stance against mobile devices.
In terms of challenges us educators face - I am definitely bound to have missed key points! And it is highly probable challenges faced by educators in 2008 will be influenced by local conditions. What are your greatest challenges?What are your tips and advices for solving some of the challenges we face?
We should be having these conversations and helping one another!
that each sheet should take someone from not knowing what a particular social media tool is, nor how they would use it - to at least having taken the first steps to using it in a sensible and sustainable way. And it should do that in no more than one side of A4.
The Guides can be downloaded as either a PDF for printing or a Word document which you can edit and adapt for your own purpose provided you:
Credit Practical Participation including their URL (www.practicalparticipation.co.uk)
Whether we like it or not, there will always be people that we will need to use text based material with initially. We could use placement of these series of guides, in a various locations within our organisations, to increase the perception and interest in using these technologies. Also they would be ideal for people who are too scared of asking questions because they are worried that they are asking “dumb questions.” (Image from Tim Davies)
Here are the links to the One Page Guides that Tim has produced so far:
What an amazing week! Last month working with Kim Cofino, Silvia Tolisano and Michele Martin we created the concept of the Comment Challenge which started this month.
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