I finally renounce my life of crime

Many years ago while holidaying in South America, my friend and I were robbed at knifepoint. We had ignored advice and ventured into a deprived area of town. The young men who surrounded us were probably disappointed, however, when, wrenching it from my wrist, my Rolex fell apart in their hands. Sadly for them I was not a rich mark, but rather a cheapskate buyer of counterfeited goods.

[caption id="attachment_96" align="alignright" width="306"] Pirate loot[/caption]

My history as a pirate began many years earlier and I feel it is finally time to confess. Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have recorded hundreds of albums on cassette tape; I have bought bootleg LPs; ripped CDs; torrented music and movies. As I have moved to new destinations around the world, I have quickly learned where the illegal DVDs are sold and how the local authorities tolerate the trade.

Nor in my work have I been scrupulous. I have downloaded videos and music from YouTube; used photos without attribution; uploaded past exam papers to the public Web. I have done these things for what I thought was the benefit of my students. I turned a blind eye to colleagues who did the same; in fact I taught them the mantra: Everything is acceptable in the pursuit of educating young minds which is a sacred task. I didn't try to find out what the rules actually were; I assumed they were complex and inconvenient. I was confident that I wouldn't get into trouble. When a bounty hunter working for the IB got some of the exam papers taken down, I shrugged.

There may have been more (did I mention the Converse All Stars that weren’t? The boxed set of The Wire?), but that's more or less the size of it. Amen. I did it because I could, because it was easier and because I got away with it.

As we are often quick to tell our students, it's not relevant whether other people are doing something wrong too. I wasn't trying to make money, I just repeated the mantra and carried on teaching my students. I have learned over the years that, whatever they say, in many cases, people are more motivated by the fear of being caught than ethical issues.

I have, at least, always been respectful of writers and have given credit for the words I have used. But, as members of society, we shouldn't just make up rules to suit our own prejudices. Even though there are cases in life for civil disobedience, disregarding the intellectual property of other people is not one of them. The ownership of the products of one's creative labours is an important right and the fact that "in the digital world the one fact we can't escape is that every single use of culture produces a copy" (Lessig) does not mean that copyright is unimportant.

[caption id="attachment_95" align="alignleft" width="355"] Licensed under Creative Commons by Silvia Tolisano[/caption]

Surprise, surprise, it's not actually that complicated. Clever explainers like Larry Lessig and Silvia Tolisano have helped me to understand what I need to know about Creative Commons and why it is important. Lessig is a modern-day hero who has applied his creative legal mind to the new situation where culture embraces the remix. Tolisano (left) has provided a superb and useful summary of the precise recipes we can employ for almost every situation we find ourselves in. Inspired by their work, I am contrite and I shall perform three immediate actions.

In the past, my attributions have been inconsistent, but now I am going back through my writings (at least on this blog) to put things right.

Secondly, for some time I have been creating my own images to illustrate my blogs and presentations. I shall begin to use Creative Commons licenses for these artifacts to make clear the re-use I am happy to accept.

Lastly, I shall delete the pages on my old website which the "anti-piracy" man working for IBO has failed to find. It doesn't matter that the papers are old, freely available elsewhere and useful to teachers and students, nor that my goal is purely educational, the IBO has a right to keep them to itself if it wishes. We can't pick and choose.

So, why are our students bad at respecting copyright? There are various obvious reasons (such as a lack of modelling from their teachers), but we should ask ourselves: "What is their incentive to observe others' intellectual property rights?" when being 'good' is inconvenient, time consuming and, in general, there are no adverse consequences if we're bad.

My colleague, Becky and I have discussed how best to instill this important attitude in our Grade 6 students. After explaining the mechanics of Creative Commons, we have set a task for the students to make their own creative work (a personal logo). At the end of the unit, they will all obtain their own Creative Commons license for the logo, making personal decisions about attribution, sharing and derivations. We are hoping that seeing themselves as creators with rights, they will more readily appreciate the rights of others.

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Footnote: So I have put a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License on this blog (see below) which is the most permissive, only requiring attribution. it covers everything on the blog that is mine. I'd be very interested in any comments as to whether I have made a good choice and done the right thing (for example, what is that copyright sign doing there?).

An educational revolution? Really?

You say you’ve got a real solution

Well, you know

We’d all love to see the plan (Lennon and McCartney, Revolution)

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, a huge political upheaval changed the educational landscape in the UK. The state system had been academically selective, funneling children into different schools on the basis of one examination taken at the age of 11. I never took the 11-plus exam; the system was abolished and all of the children in the area where I lived were sent to the same school. One year earlier, it had been a selective school for girls with teachers who had grown up in that system and had never expected the rug to be pulled from under their feet. Suddenly, the tide of academic girls was replaced by a tsunami of undifferentiated boys and girls. Leaving aside the question of whether or not the decision was just and educational, the teachers had not been prepared for this seismic change. I remember many who rose to the uninvited challenge and I have been influenced by their inspiring teaching to this day. But some teachers stubbornly declined to adapt to the new situation, floundered, and took early retirement as soon as the opportunity arose. I have great sympathy for those women who could not get their heads around the ‘new normal’. They were probably highly skilled in the task they had been doing and it was unfair to assume that, without any preparation, they would thrive in the new environment.

We are experiencing a similar moment, but this time it is not implacable government which is declaring a new paradigm, it is technological change in society. While it is clear to industry, services and business that they need to embrace new technologies, the argument for using computers in education is more nuanced. There is no consensus about the purpose of education, and your attitude to the use of computers in the classroom depends on your answer to the question: “What are schools for?”.

127 ideas enough for you?

“A revolution is taking place... we are living on the future edge” (Global Digital Citizen Foundation video). Really? The majority of teachers are not revolutionaries and such talk scares or annoys them. When many teachers hear these enormous claims in dramatic language, it puts them off.

Our children are Digital Natives living Globally Connected Lives. Their schools are Learning Organisations in which teachers Flip the Classroom; teach 21st Century Skills; and the students Own the Learning. Technology is Redefining learning tasks. The picture is appealing but these models do not always live up to close scrutiny. My students could be regarded as digital natives, but many have a small vocabulary and the strong immigrant accent of their teachers does not impair their ability to communicate. When models and metaphors are used as if they were facts rather than opinions, it puts teachers off.

My teaching life has changed greatly in the last decade. I have developed resources using wikispaces, Google Drive, OneNote, Evernote, Edmodo, Twitter and many more. Maybe I could write a blogpost introducing “Six Tools Every 21st Teacher Should Use”. Or do you think there are enough of those already? Articles which are lists, repeatedly retweeted, contribute to an avalanche of apps which puts teachers off.

Why are many teachers put off? Simply, they are not revolutionaries and do not like to be told that the world around them is changing unrecognisably. It’s not what they see and it’s not what they want. Furthermore, when they are told that they must teach differently to stay relevant, they feel devalued. They know they are good teachers already.

Undeniably, new technology has unveiled an era of amazing potential, but it has not decreed that everything must be different. More realistically, it offers the opportunity for good teachers to adapt and evolve by adding new approaches to their repertoire. Most teachers who are reluctant to learn skills are not refusing. They have been put off by excitable and impractical language and the uncritical attitudes of technology advocates.

They are already expert teachers who understand how children learn and we need them on our side.

What we mean when we talk about privacy

Have you seen this video?



It demonstrates how far we have come in a short time, that these people receiving week-old news remind us of Rip van Winkle.

So we bemoan our loss of privacy. We expect Facebook to allow us to join its network for free and then complain that we don’t like the deal. It’s too late to claim sanctimoniously that “the line between our private lives and the public persona are blurring.” (unnamed author on The Rebel Yell). You don’t have to be on Facebook (no, you don’t). If (like me) you do choose to, don’t claim you weren’t aware that it is a transaction.

“Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.” (Brittanica.com)

[caption id="attachment_86" align="alignleft" width="167"] SW: Site of antisocial media[/caption]


So that’s easy. Just don’t use Facebook, or refuse friend requests from everyone but the very closest. You can also fix it so that no-one but you can post anything about you on your timeline and if you have been tagged elsewhere it won’t be seen by your friends. The drawbridge to your castle is well and truly up; anything which leaves is scrutinised by vigilant guards. Thankfully, your friends are not quite so cautious about their information, otherwise Facebook would be a much more boring place than it is. You can still check out what is going on in your network including the uncurated serendipities you stumble upon:

“Oh interesting: I didn’t know those two knew each other!”

“That acquaintance is in town; I’ve always wanted to know him better.”

“My son shouldn’t be doing that at parties!”.

“Everybody lurks. Only the blithe let on.” (Elle Hunt in The Guardian)

It does seem a bit unfair, though. The world gets your controlled brand whilst you enjoy their warts and all adventures. Maybe you should refuse to read stuff about other people which you wouldn’t tell about yourself. Presidential candidate’s unguarded comments? No thanks, I wouldn’t like anyone releasing my candid chats. Private emails? Hands off, they were hacked.

When we talk about privacy, it seems, we may be more concerned about our own than other people’s. Surely it works both ways, though. In the real world, when you hide yourself away in your room, you don’t see anyone else. When’s the last time you were offline for a week? A day? Even a  waking hour? Our students may never have experienced a time in their lives when they were unreachable.

[caption id="attachment_87" align="alignright" width="300"] Image licensed under Creative Commons by Brad Higham on Flickr[/caption]

When I think back to pre-email visits to friends, I wonder how we arranged it at all. I’m not saying those days were better, just that something has occurred which has profoundly changed ...er... something. I’m not sure what it is that’s changed, though. My children do not live near to me, but we speak at least once a week and exchange messages pretty much daily. Contrastingly, when I left home, I heard new music only on the radio or from friends; read one physical daily newspaper; learned the lessons my teachers chose to teach me. I regularly communicated only with the handful of people I actually met. I was often alone and had no knowledge of what other people were doing at that time, nor was I following world events minute by minute.

Last year, I went walking across the Belgian Ardennes for seven days. I didn’t go online at all (though, pathetically, I had my phone with me “for emergencies”). On Day 5, when I thought I’d listen to a podcast, I swiftly removed my earbuds again as I found the disembodied voices disturbing in a woodland setting. Since then, although I came home with a restful feeling, I haven’t had another Internet-free day.

For the new generation, the connected environment is the only one they have known. No doubt they find our reminiscences about house phones and encyclopedias quaint. As their educators, though, we must do our best to evaluate the advantages, but also the losses. I relish the permanently online world and its expanded horizons, but wonder whether another species of experience has become endangered, if not extinct.

Sometimes the only way to know what you have is to remove it for a while. I have tried the experiment in my leisure time, but I am curious what effect it would have in a classroom if I were to ask my students and colleagues to work without any technology at all for a time. We could analyse what difference a Screen Free Week (or day?) made to the learning without attaching a value judgement.

Every experience has value and the pre-Internet situation embodied a kind of empowering ignorance (you don’t have to know everything right now, especially about your friends). Furthermore, in experiments where participants were deprived of constant stimuli, “boring activities resulted in increased creativity” (Mann and Cadman). One of our responsibilities as educators is to ensure that through exposure to a variety of experiences our students come to know how they learn and live best. We want them to see technology as an addition to their learning toolkit, not just a new normal.

[caption id="attachment_88" align="aligncenter" width="775"] Image: SW and public domain mashup[/caption]

Digital contrails

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignright" width="299"] SW: freely modified from Pixabay images[/caption]

Last week I overheard a conversation between some students. They were discussing one of my colleagues. A student had found his Facebook profile, and via someone else who had tagged him in a photo, they had got to some pictures of a visit to a strip club. The teacher hadn't visited the club himself, but the association had been made in the students' minds. And they were telling their friends. Teachers are sometimes dismissive of their search skills, but do not underestimate students' tenacity when they are motivated.

Like many of my colleagues, I believe that schools are well-placed to help students to make the most of the digital world. Do we have the answers? No. The best we can do is to jump in and learn along with them.

So I had a look at my Facebook profile as the public sees it (it's only three clicks away) and apparently I changed my settings a year ago because that's when the visible posts dry up. Before that, anyone who is checking up on me will see that I had just met old friends in Barcelona (and someone mentioned alcohol in the comments); I was recommending a lot of movies and books (many with challenging content); and talking about my favourite music (some really unfashionable artists). Interesting to me, but boring to almost anyone else. But should I be so relaxed or must I worry that "someone could always dig it up and use it against you" lifehacker.com?

When we talk about our 'digital footprint', this is one of the fears we have: that we inadvertently reveal information which can harm us either by our own carelessness or by the oversharing of other people in our network. If you followed me around all day in the real world and caught snatches of my conversations with all of the people I meet, you would learn things about me I hadn't intended you to find out. Along that road lies paranoia, and one solution is to have little or no public online presence at all. But that's not for me. I would rather you saw me as a rounded (even fallible) human with diverse (sometimes messy) interests than a carefully curated brand.

[caption id="attachment_79" align="alignleft" width="491"] Firefox and Linux user from Greece. They didn't ask permission, they just took it.[/caption]

Your deliberate online presence is something you are in control of. But there is a much more pernicious element to the data-set that has been generated about you that makes me think not of a footprint but of the contrail left by an aircraft. You may think you've come to this blogpost anonymously, but the server has recorded when you came, where you are in the world, what browser and computer you're using, which webpage you last visited (yes! none of their business, I know, but it's all there in the server log and accessible to the owners of the site). Those widgets that count visitors know all those things about you because your treacherous devices have told them.

"Every time you "like" something, share something, tag yourself in a photo, or click on an article on Facebook, the site collects data on you ... They also track what device you used to log on, what other app you came from, other sites you've visited, and much more." Manoush Zomorodi, Note to Self podcast

Facebook does not make it too hard to confirm that they are reliant on our data. Explaining their cookies policy, we read that cookies help Facebook to serve ads; measure how often we click on them; and gain insights into our behaviour. I learned from Note to Self that I could see what Facebook has inferred are my preferences. Most of it was accurate, though I learned that they had identified interests in alabaster and anarchism. I keenly await that targeted ad.

But Facebook's knowledge about me is tiny compared with Big Brother Google. Again, it is easy to understand why Google is interested in my data. At myactivity.google.com, I see that today, on a number of devices, in 3 different countries, I accessed 170 pages which covered this blogpost, the news, some maps and the usual aimless surfing. You'd know a lot about me if you had access to that information every day. Furthermore, have you ever been to your Google Timeline? There is a calendar and I can relive any day in the last few years including a map of where I went that day and the photos I took. Here is their almost accurate world map of my recent years on earth (they logged my 2 US roadtrips but missed the Asian trip (thanks, China!)).

[caption id="attachment_76" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Where Google thinks I've been in the last few years - mostly correct[/caption]

In his Theory of Everything podcast, Benjamen Walker observed that an ad which was "following me around on the Internet", stopped once he visited the shop and tried out the product. The thing is, it is easy to be paranoid when every day, like a jet-plane, we emit a billowing cloud of data which reveals our locations, our interests and our secrets. It is worth the while of organisations with astronomical means to recombine these scattered particles into the story of our journey though, sadly, most of their impressive effort only goes into making a bit more cash.

If we let our justifiable qualms force us into hiding behind Privacy Settings or into holding our tongue for fear of being too public, then we are the poorer for that. If we only communicate our fears to the students instead of our enthusiasm for the potential of humankind's great invention, then we fail as teachers. Whether we like it or not, our students do not have a choice about engaging in the online world, so we must make sure that we use the battery of skills we have as educators to show them how to leave a footprint that enriches their lives.

"That's kinda crazy. They don't know they gonna die one day and that stuff's still gonna be on the Internet? I wanna make something I gonna be proud of" rapper Danny Brown on the All Songs Considered podcast (at 21m 50s).

 

Plain sailing hits the buffers

[caption id="attachment_70" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: dreamstime.com[/caption]

Everything was going smoothly. I was enjoying taking part in CoETaIL; my ideas about education were being gratifyingly confirmed (like a lot of memorable PD, it's about the affirmation as much as it is about any new learning). Ideas for my project were coming together: a chance remark picked up at ISTE; the CoETaIL concepts; my new invigorating Theory of Knowledge teaching assignment. One week to go. Plain sailing. And then I hit the buffers.

The kids didn't get the memo. That's my main idea for this project. We adults (teachers, administrators, many parents) can see that education needs a reboot. We talk about it a lot (some of us) and have developed a few overlapping frameworks, succinctly captured in George Couros' 'Today's Classroom'. But, like old-fashioned Parent-Teacher Conferences, the subject of the discussion is not in the room. The adults sagely ordain how well the child is learning and what should be done to improve matters.

"Why do we have to be creative?" asked one of my students last week when I returned a piece of work in which I had asked them to "make an imaginative digital document". "Because that's what we've agreed young people need", I did not say. This exchange of views reinforced my determination to introduce my students to the ideas which we as educators address daily, but which, although they see the effects of our thinking, the students do not explicitly hear much about. (A disclaimer, here: maybe this is not your school, but it applies to several I have worked in).

"Thoughtful and knowledgeable people may disagree" about essential questions. Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design, 2nd edition (2005) p342. Here's ours:

 

What education do today's teenagers need?

I was wrong to assume it would be plain sailing from there. I hit a mental roadblock. Every time I sat down to think about the activities which would serve this question and the goals I had set, I found myself planning things which I would have found boring if I were in the class. Moreover, when I checked with the rubric:

"Use of technology enhances the Unit Plan by using the computer as a research, collaboration and publishing tool, as well as a communication device", (CoETaIL project rubric)

I was in the embarrassing position for an Ed Tech Coach of trying to fit the technology into the unit and make it look like it was integrated (the mistake we counsel our teachers daily not to make). This went on for days as the deadline loomed.

Then on Friday evening, while enjoying a great jazz concert, a new idea shot into my mind. I had been devising activities which the students and I would do together in the classroom. That's not an authentic audience! But if I could get the students to express knowledgeable and reflective views on contemporary ideas about today's classroom, these could be shared with educators around the world. Someone I read this week (I've lost the source, I'll add an attribution if I find it again) explains how listening to music can help some people to concentrate by providing a low level of distraction which prevents petty thoughts from intruding on the mental activity. I can say that it definitely works for me. If you're looking for inspiration, here is the Mário Laginha Trio.

Since then, I have thought a lot more and written a lot. My UbD plan is on another page on this blog. The thinking behind the lesson is in the slideshow below.


You can read the details in the slides, but the part which I know very little about is the final "Likes League" in which I challenge the students to share their work on social networks and see who can make the greatest impression (I shall play too). I am not prescribing any medium in particular: Twitter, for example, which we educators love, is lagging behind even Google Plus as measured by our school's routers, while Snapchat is the queen of the networks (but for how long?). I would rather see the ingenuity and skill which the students give to the task than attempt to constrain them.

Will it work? I have no idea! This activity is slated for 10th to 16th November and I have been wondering if I can get other classrooms elsewhere in the world involved. I still have to think about things like hashtags and whether all Likes (Favourites, Upvotes) are, well, alike, but I'd love to have company as I set out into the unknown. I am looking for colleagues who would like to join in, or who know how to improve it or who are sure it won't work. If you know someone, please ask them to contact @steveweatherell.

[caption id="attachment_71" align="alignright" width="300"] Egret image wikimedia[/caption]

I have a few options in mind which will develop in different directions depending on the outcome of earlier activities. We must discuss the responsible use of social media. One of the upcoming topics is 'Memory as a way of knowing' and in an age where nothing online can be forgotten, the subject of digital footprint is very relevant.

In fact, even though I would be able to teach the unit tomorrow, there is a month to go, and there are areas, like the rubric which has already been through a cycle of teaching and improvement, which could still be tweaked to align with this particular assignment. That's the way it goes: you're plain sailing, you hit the buffers, you avoid the roadblock, you take flight.

Way of the SAMR eye

Steve talks to himself...

- So how did the lessons go, Steve?

- Which ones?

- You know what I mean. You’ve been procrastinating.

- I don’t call it procrastination when I’m busy with other things.

- I’ll just let that excuse hang in the air.

- OK. I’m still chasing the last five students, but all the 12 pieces of work I’ve received I’ve given feedback to and I’m very happy with them. There was the full range of grades on the IB scale, from 7 down to 1.

- I’m actually asking you to evaluate it.

- That’s what I’m doing. We finished the planned activities, and my fear that the ‘imaginative document’ I’d requested from the class would default to Google Slides in all cases proved unfounded. I got a Canva, Prezi, PDF, Pages, jpg and the rest were in Google. I gave them a mark out of 8 on the rubric I had shared at the start and commented briefly on strengths and weaknesses for each student. I haven’t shared it back to the students yet. I’m waiting for the lesson when I see them next.

- So that’s an evaluation then? Was it a good learning activity? Would you do it again? How would you improve it?

- I’m definitely keen to do it again - if only because I spent a lot of time preparing the materials; I’ve got things I would change, but I see what you’re getting at. If I’m going to evaluate it, I need to have values to compare against.

- Yes. Evaluation is more than just thinking about whether it went well or badly. You should have some sort of process.

- Well as luck would have it, I picked something up from Twitter which might help. My former colleague Matt shared an article last week while he was at Learning 2 in Vietnam.

@steveweatherell @svermeulin @irene_tanya @Txpated Another for you… (Steve, I know your love of ed tech models) https://t.co/EXRGsMs1k6

— Matt Broughton (@broughton_io) October 6, 2016

- Yes, I've heard you questioning SAMR, you heretic.

[caption id="attachment_63" align="alignright" width="331"] SAMR, TPACK, TIM, trudacot, PATER[/caption]

- My problem with SAMR is that it gives you wide abstract terms which categorise desirable outcomes, but no help with what it would look like nor how to get there. Redefinition becomes a goal in itself, when we even have difficulty defining what we already do! I tried to help my colleagues realise that every project may contain elements from S through to R. We even started a gallery of SAMR examples both from our own faculty and around the world. But it hasn't stuck as a helpful concept for teachers beginning to work with ed tech.

- And if I forced you to look at your lesson through a SAMR lens?

- Then I'd say I Augmented the task. Whichever culture in society they chose, the students had instant access to first hand accounts of the beliefs and practices. Also, they had an unlimited range of ways to express themselves imaginatively. And when we discuss the work in class and when I repeat the activity in the future, students will be able to easily consult many exemplars both in the classroom and at home. But looking at the rubric and task, I can't claim either Modification nor Redefinition since in essence it was just a written task for which students were encouraged to be creative.

- Right. So TPACK?

- To be honest, I've never used it before though it always comes up when models are discussed. As I understand it, my lesson did combine knowledge of Content (I wanted the students to consider cultures in society); Pedagogy (I considered how I would get their interest and how they would engage with the concepts); and Technology (I found the stimulus online; presented it using TED Ed; the students' work was created, shared, assessed and returned without using paper).

- But just because you are in the Sweet Spot of the Venn diagram, is that enough to say it was balanced or a good application of the three knowledges?

- No it doesn't. Now you're going to ask me about TIM, in which case I would say my learning environment was Active and my level of integration was between late Adaptation and early Infusion.

- You're being very brief with those models...

- Yes, I know, but I think they are built more as a framework for evaluation of a teacher or school's general practice. As Morpheus says, a model is not a recipe. You have to use it in the right way and although my lesson survives their scrutiny and I can think of ways in which it could score more highly, that would not necessarily make it better.

- So ditch the models...

- No, because there was another process described in the article. It's called PATER and it made a lot of sense to me.

- Aha, finally an acronym which spells a real word! So where are you on the PATER scale?

- I'm everywhere at once.

- ?????

- There is no scale, it's a cycle through Purpose, Activity Structures, Tools, Evaluation and Reflection. It recognises that we are not starting from scratch, but we are reviewing our teaching activities which already exist. Although our templates suggest that planning always starts with goals, that is an ideal which for many reasons, both practical and accidental, does not always happen. I love it when it does, but...

- That's a big topic you could perhaps cover in another blogpost. What about the 'Is it a Culture?' lesson we are discussing?

[caption id="attachment_65" align="alignright" width="300"] Those 7 elements in full[/caption]

- Right. Well by considering what my goals were for the lesson, in order to evaluate it, I realise that there was never a time when I wrote them down. There were seven ingredients which fed into the activity and each dictated a facet of the teaching and assessing, but none of them is an a priori goal. The outcome was dictated by the rubric which I adapted. The other elements all played their part too, but if we were to believe the theory, I should have stopped at number 1, identified all of my goals and then determined whether the other 6 elements were appropriate (and if they weren't, re-write the rubric, find another stimulus and so on...).

- So...

- So what PATER has helped me realise is that I didn't do it perfectly according to the template. I let the rubric dictate the teaching goals. But I don't have to feel bad about that and I shouldn't pretend that it happened otherwise. So long as I learn from it.

- Hurray!

"Finding out why we are doing what we already were doing is an exciting moment." Welcome to Night Vale by Fink and Cranor p99

[caption id="attachment_64" align="aligncenter" width="300"] SAMR + eye = samurai[/caption]

Survival of the Twittest

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782484974352080897

When talking about Twitter, there's only just enough vocabulary to write a nonsensical haiku. Knowing the lingo can get you on the first rung of the ladder. Yet not everyone gets it. I wanted to find out why.

I confess... I don't do Twitter very well. I mostly lurk; when I post, the ripples are negligible; I overthink retweeting. My total number of Tweets is in between my Follower and Following counts. My Likes broke single figures, but most of them are probably me. And I've got zero Moments (I don't even know what that is). Imagine what it would be like to have a K in one of those numbers!

But I do get it. I think I know why others love Twitter and why my work would benefit if I could fit it into my life. This week, I have been reading a lot of the good advice around, looking for the specific pieces which will help me to move up a level.

routine

"You've got to make some time to use it" (Ted Cowan @tedcowan7 quoted in Twitter: A Cultural Guidebook by Raisdana @intrepidteacher and Beasley @klbeasley).

"I skim through posts for 20 minutes each morning and afternoon." (Ferriter @plugusin in Why Teachers Should Try Twitter)

Whenever you try to fit a new activity into your busy life, something else has got to give. Let's make sure it's not sleep that gives, but even brief and immediate Twitter won't work for you if you don't give it the time. I will have to be deliberate and build it into my routine.

"Monitor the most popular hours for your Twitter followers, then concentrate your most important messages in those hours for more effective tweeting." (The Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

No. Life's too short.

patience

"Be patient, and you’ll build a group of valuable followers." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

"The trick is to keep putting it out there" (Louise Phinney @louisephinney in Twitter Cultural Guidebook)

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782500144335974400

curation

"I have easy access to a stream of customized information and ideas that motivate me" (Ferriter)

"Check out the follow lists of people you find interesting and connect with them." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782504199405858816

There's no excuse for a boring Twitter feed, but it doesn't happen by itself. I have been learning from other users' tricks. Interesting people follow other interesting people. Hashtags, chats, trending topics, events, lists are all places to go to find a greater concentration of quality which you can divert into your own stream.

But I follow fewer people on Twitter than I have Facebook friends and that seems the wrong way around. Twitter is not even mutual; you are unlimited in what you can choose to let in. The famous Couros brothers, followed by a quarter of a million Twitter users, also follow between them more than 100 000. They seem to me to have a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning of Twitter.

production

"(As a lurker,) you still aren't sure what is worth sharing and you filter yourself often" (Raisdana and Beasley)

"The real magic happens when you share, too." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

Everyone has their own Twitter landscape. Lurking is an option and if I hadn't, I would not have discovered Jing at a very early stage, nor some really great lesson ideas which I now use frequently. Others only ever seem to retweet lists. Who are we though to criticise someone else'e Twitter? But there is a distinction between the consumer and the producer and that is the line I feel I should force myself to cross. One of the beauties of Twitter is its restrictions and learning to express myself and to attract attention is a new challenge.

understanding

Technology is understood largely by metaphor. Most of its language is appropriated from other walks of life (amazingly, a lot of it pre-Gutenburg: scroll, tablet, stylus, file etc). Understanding Twitter also requires some good analogies.

"You have to view Twitter as a river. Whether you’re in it or not, the river is going by. When I have a chance to go dip my toe in, I catch a few big fish. I don’t need to know what I missed." (Patrick Green @pgreensoup in Raisdana and Beasley).

This metaphor has long appealed to me. You only see a small amount of the huge stream that flows by, but so long as you trust that it will continue and that the interesting voices will be amplified so that a great tweet you missed may well be retweeted, there is no stress in the times when you are not busy with Twitter.

But the Twitter river image also has its limits, because the feed is not just linear, (as Manuel Lima says about trees) it is also a network with links along more dimensions than just the arrow of time. What strengthens these links is the power of an idea, what Richard Dawkins called memes. By appealing to other users, everyone's ideas, including your own, are subject to a version of Darwin's Dangerous Idea: The Survival of the Twittest.