StoryChasers

I participated in a planning session on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 about StoryChasers with Wes Fryer from Moving at the Speed of Creativity. StoryChasers was founded by Wes and Kevin Honeycutt

This has been an effort spearheaded by Wes and Kevin that is very interesting and has quite a bit of potential to work with my students and our HSTE Project this year by affording us a place to publish our digital stories and interviews with Health Care workers in somewhere other than our HSTE Project Wikispace page.

The idea behind StoryChasers is to empower students by allowing them a platform to share their digital stories with other students, teachers, and others who are interested in creating digital stories and becoming digital journalists. Things like interviews, student news broadcasts, and historical projects or almost anything that you can think of.

I will post a link to the show notes and a link to the UStreamTV feed once Wes publishes it on his site.

StoryChasters Brainstorm Session #4

Until next time...

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Doing it first, making trouble and inspiring some change: Ewan Mcintosh

Ewan Mcintosh's recent post Doing it first, making trouble and inspiring some change is classic Ewan. One of the main reasons why I was so pleased to have the opportunity to meet him and make his acquaintance this summer in San Antonio, Texas at NECC 2008. Rarely, do I read something that Ewan has written that I disagree with and learn something meaningful from, the same holds true with this recent post by him.

Ewan will be starting a new job with channel 4 , 4ip, as the Digital Commissioner for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

It's time to reinvent the mainstream.

It's not television, it's not broadcasting. It's about harnessing the networks that are out there, virtual or real-world, and creating new models of interaction for an audience that, increasingly, is online rather than on the box."

Do it first
Channel 4 has become synonymous with pushing limits, and with our freedom we should keep doing just that.

Make trouble
While we won't make trouble for the sake of it, a season with no trouble is one with too little creative risk.

Inspire change
Channel 4 wants to challenge the views of the world and open minds.

Education continues to be a fertile area for new ideas and exploitations of technology, and learning and interacting with others on projects is still very much my passion. I'll continue to scour the landscape for ideas and edu.blogs.com will continue to be a place where I share those finds and my views on learning. But now, folks, it's going to be very much outside the echo chamber. You have been warned...

Being "a fertile area for new ideas and exploitations of technology" is, in my opinion, what is so exciting and challenging about education and how we as educators approach technology and implement it in our classrooms.

Make trouble
While we won't make trouble for the sake of it, a season with no trouble is one with too little creative risk.

I absolutely love this quote! If you are not willing to push the boundaries of what is the acceptable or the norm you will never be making trouble. You have to get into a little bit of trouble by taking that creative riskevery once in a while to challenge those who say "...but we have always done it this way."

Wrap your head around some new ideas, think outside of the box, push the edge of the envelope. Only then will you know what you are capable of accomplishing.

With innovators and mentors like Ewan Mcintosh out there giving us new ideas, who knows what is possible. And more to the point, what is possible for our students if we dare to make trouble.

I don't know what he will be doing so all I can say is Good luck Ewan, I will be looking forward to what you will be working on.

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Bell-Bounded Learning

Bell-Bounded Learning - Learning which takes place within the limits of a class period or a school day. Learning stops when students leave the confines of the classroom and they are no longer in an educational enviornment.

The definition of Bell-Bounded Learning above is one that I made up. Why? Because although I have diligently searched, I could find no other definition.

I first heard the term Bell-Bounded Learning at Edubloggercon "Live in San Antonio" at NECC 2008. I was attending a session called:

If the Leaders Don't Get It, It's Not Going To Happen - How can we best help school principals and superintendents move schools into the 21st century? What are their special needs and concerns? What are ways we should not approach training for these folks?

The session was large so we broke into some smaller groups to better facilitate discussion. Wes Fryer and Stephanie Sandifer were in my group and the term came up. I don't know who first said it but Wes talked about it and we all tried to get our heads around the concept. Later at the k12 Online Conference session facilitated by Wes, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Darren Kuropatwa live via UstreamTV from Canada, and others, Wes mentioned the term again and also talked about Unbounded Learning. You can see it in this UstreamTV feed of that session.

Obviously, Unbounded Learning is what we should strive for as teachers and we should not be Bell-Bounded Teachers.

I did find some interesting resources online on Unbounded learning that I will share:

Bounded and Unbounded Knowledge: Teaching and Learning in a Web 2 World. This article was written by Judy Nagy, Director DMO Program, Deakin Business School and Chris Bigum, Faculty of Education, Deakin Business School, Melbourne Australia.

Unbounded Learning is an international company. Their stated mission is to connect the virtual community between knowledge providers and seekers who are constantly on-the-go. We continue to architect and develop state-of-the-art technology that makes available knowledge and information on demand and by intelligent push to the users of average mobile devices.

Christopher Keesey posted this on his blog Blog 4 Learning on July 24, 2008 "Lively and Learning"

There are some more resources about Unbounded Learning out there and I will let those who choose to comment to the post add to this discussion.

I guess the key for us as educators is this. Are we going to break free from the traditional methods of teaching that we were taught by as 20th century learners, or are we going to accept the 21st century challenge to take a critical look at how we are teaching our students? Will we recognize that along with our students, we are learners as well learning right along with our students these new Web 2.0 tolls and technologies in able to bring them into the classroom?

I think that this year I will choose the latter. I am initiating a new project-based learning concept in my classroom called the HSTE Project. I have no idea what the final outcome will be at the end of the school year next June, but it is something that I want to try so as not to be a bell-bounded teacher, confined to a bell-bounded classroom with bell-bounded students!

I think I found a new Web Browser - Flock

Yesterday I came across a new web browser called Flock that was advertised as a browser for bloggers and those who use social networking sites. Well after a day and a half I think I indeed found a new web browser.

To make a long story short, I was trying without any success to embed a Ustream video that I had made for 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials, a new blog that I am launching. After trying many different things in Firefox and Safari, I opened up Flock and in less than a minute I figured out how to just drag the Ustream video into the built-in Blog Editor and it was finished.

One of the Flock tutorials I found on YouTube specifically addresses blogging.


Well I am impressed. I don't know all of the ins and outs of Flock yet, but I am going to enjoy learning more about it as time marches on.