Tag Archives: Networking

Full Cup

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I am officially full. No more room for blog posts, news articles, or youtube videos. No more funny photos or heart breaking stories. No new bands, new sounds, new anything.  I don’t want to contribute to the noise anymore. Not even sure why I am typing these words, perhaps to let out some of the clutter. I want to create some silence, some space.

Image from Jordandouglas

There is so much disorder in the walls of my head that it will take a much more diligent person than I , to clear some space to simply sit and breath. Is this the future we are preparing our students for, a world where we are nothing more than overflowing cups of knowledge and information? Are these the skills we so champion? We have access to more information than any other time in the history of the world, but so what? Once we are full, then we are full. The information then simply spills over the lip and disappears. Why aren’t we teaching our students how to breathe and make room for their souls? Why aren’t we teaching our kids how to disconnect and simply watch the clouds? Why aren’t we teaching our kids life beyond the screens? Why aren’t we teaching them to how to empty their cups?

I know what I need to do, but I find it harder and harder to do so. I understand that there needs to be a balance. But this sense of balance is becoming more and more difficult to find in the enthusiasm of Ed Tech cheerleading. Sometimes it just feels like all of this is too much. I often find myself needing to make time to reconnect with myself, before I can venture back into cyberspace. As an anti-social creature, I have a hard time putting on the happy face deemed necessary for social networking. How do we expect adolescents and children to make sense of so much networking?

I am starting to think that networking with strangers is not necessarily such an important skill to have. Surface level exchanges of information do not seem, to me, to be such a crucial talent. We need to be concentrating more on building communities, teaching our students as well as ourselves how to connect to other people on a more human level. But is this what we are doing? Is that possible on Twitter? Is that possible through this text?

We have all read at length about what it takes to be a networked learner, but what are the skills needed to be a good community member? How do we truly get to know people? I need something more than to be connected to nodes of a network; I am looking to instigate a cultural shift that connects people based on common goals and interests. I want nothing less than a new human paradigm. I want peace and connectivity, not another link to new tool. I am tired of talking about what the 21st century will look like, I want to talk to you, create art with you, and change the world with you. I am tired of reading about what you know, I want to know what you fear, what you dream. I want to become more human with you.

Technology is only useful if it connects our humanity and moves us forward as a community. Anything less is simply data overflowing from a full cup. Come join me, leave a comment, let’s chat on Skype about a topic other than Ed Tech, let’s create an art project together, and let’s build a community.

MicroBugger

6 Replies

I just read a great blog post by Jason Chambers, an international educator I recently met at Learning 2.008 in Shanghai, in which he says

One of the problems with the modern ability to publish is that if you’re going to choose to publish a poetic journey through your each and every thought, then you may want to look at which channel/forum/genre you choose to do this with. I’d like to introduce a new word into the discussion of microblogging: “microbugging” – a proclivity to share every thought with one’s social network, as opposed to actively editing one’s thoughts in order to relay and collect useful communication.

I prefer to surround myself with positive, balanced individuals. I’m not interested in receiving a ‘stream of consciousness’ relay of someone else’s every thought, doubt, or question. It’s time for us to filter – both in terms of output, and in terms of input.

I am quite certain that I am one of the people he is referring to, if not the only one. His post has got me thinking about my use of Twitter, my involvement in social networks, and people’s expectations of me as a member of their networks.

I have always had a hard time differentiating between the personal and the professional. For me, the idea of a purely professional network is boring. There are only so many links to new tools and blog posts that I can handle. I have been slowly moving away from the Edtech network and trying to merge different ideas and people into my feeds and interactions.

I don’t feel I have much new to offer the Ed-Tech world, at least not right now. So does this mean that I shouldn’t participate? People have different ideas of what these networks could or should be. I am simply trying to carve out a small community of like-minded educators from the larger network of people. It is a long and tedious process, but like most human interactions, I feel that the more open and honest I am, the more fruitful the relationships will be.

For example, I have been sharing a lot of personal blog posts with my Twitter network. Why? I think these personal insights add to my online persona. While, I am starting to understand that this type of poetic journey through my each and every thought is not for everyone, I still think that it is important to

… present fragments of ourselves online, as if offering cyberspace a random set of pixels, will somehow paint a clear picture of who we are.  We use blog posts, Tweets, Skype calls, profile pics, book lists, photos, podcasts, and music sharing sites to scatter pieces of ourselves into a giant void, hoping that maybe somebody out there is picking up the pieces, and what’s more we hope that once they have assembled some sort if idea of who we are, they will like the image enough to start building a community around it.

The reality is that we cannot befriend the entire world, nor should we be trying to. The only thing we can do both professionally and personally is put ourselves out there and try to make meaningful connections.

I am not criticizing Jason, and while at first I was a bit bummed out that he cut me off, because it appears we have a lot in common, I can now see that he is absolutely right. How we filter our networks is a choice that each person makes on his/her own terms, after all we create these networks to function for our individual needs. His post has definitely got me thinking. Maybe I am misinterpreting how to use these tools. Maybe it is time for me to filter – both in terms of output, and in terms of input. What do you think?

Like most people, I am still in the process of learning how best use these tools for my own learning. I want to thank Jason for making me reflect on my use of Twitter. Curious to know what you think. Becuse even as I spill my ‘stream of consciousness’ relay of every thought, doubt, or question, people keep following. That has to mean something right?

Identity, Avatars, and Future of Humanity

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Frozen in fear every time we appear
Im not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong
Go walking by
Here come another guy…

Elliot Smith

I was sitting in a closing session at Learning 2.008 with Ewan McIntosh and a group of teachers, and the conversation became very free and loose. The session was designed to be an open gathering, a place to discuss any lingering ideas and end the conference. People were throwing out ideas, while others either let them drop or set them up for a volley. I don’t remember everything we discussed: something about being able to download your brain some time in the future, buying domain names for your children to be sure you are in control of their web presence, and Facebook profile pictures.

Ewan joked about how he couldn’t understand why people would change their Facebook profile picture every other day. The room chuckled a bit as he made the comment, but I smiled uncomfortably. I have changed my profile picture 31 times in the last year.

At the time, I didn’t have the energy to explain why I felt the need to constantly update what I look like, but recently I have been thinking a lot about the idea of profile pictures, avatars, self-expression, and the online social networking community. I think I may have a response.

These ideas began to germinate in earnest last week after two separate incidents. The first was after a talk I had with Bud Hunt regarding the difference between a network and a community, and the second was after I started to look at avatar creation sites for my students. I am the computer club teacher, and I will soon start the Web 2.0 network journey with a group of ten 4th-6th graders.

What do the pictures of ourselves that we present to the world mean? How can a simple profile picture affect a person’s place within a community of strangers?

You may be thinking that a topic likes this is at best superficial and at worst a study of narcissism and vanity, but I ask that you bear with me.

The  wikipedia article on Self says:

The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive representation of one’s identity. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology stems from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in psychology diverge greatly from this early conception, positioning the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity.

The article about Self-Portrait goes on to say:

The self-portraits of many Contemporary artists and Modernists often are characterized by a strong sense of narrative, often but not strictly limited to vignettes from the artists life-story. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, roleplaying and fiction.
The self-portrait can be a very effective form of advertising for an artist, especially of course for a portrait painter.

The self-portraits of many Contemporary artists and Modernists often are characterized by a strong sense of narrative, often but not strictly limited to vignettes from the artists life-story. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, role playing and fiction.

Finally Jay B. McDaniel says:

When one attains enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, at least two things are realized. First, one realizes that the deepest level of one’s life — what in Zen is called the “true self” — is always here-and-now. And second, one understands that this true self, even though here-and-now, is always changing.

What does this all mean to me, and what does it have to do with my network avatars and profile pictures? This is what I took away from the quotes above: The self is a key construct of one’s identity. Self-portraits are characterized by a strong sense of narrative. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, role-playing and fiction. True self, even though here-and-now, is always changing.

In other words: Our sense of identity is derived from the story we tell the world and this story is constantly changing.

In an online world, the images we present of ourselves can be the most powerful representations we offer. I see myself as more than a static promotional portrait. I am a being in a constant state of flux, and I feel it is crucial that these transformations be presented to my equally malleable network.  After talking with Bud, I realized that our social networks can never really know exactly who we are, and let’s be honest even our closest friends can only guess. How can we build community, if each individual member does not really know who any other member is?

We present fragments of ourselves online, as if offering cyberspace a random set of pixels, will somehow paint a clear picture of who we are.  We use blog posts, Tweets, Skype calls, profile pics, book lists, photos, podcasts, and music sharing sites to scatter pieces of ourselves into a giant void, hoping that maybe somebody out there is picking up the pieces, and what’s more we hope that once they have assembled some sort if idea of who we are, they will like the image enough to start building a community around it.

An online community is nothing more than a group of people sharing the same puzzle of online debris. I guess my philosophy is that the more open, honest, and raw I can be, the clearer picture I can paint, thus creating the most authentic community for myself. As my resignation from my job proves, this openness is not always the best route to take, but it is the only one I know. I believe in web 2.0. I believe open honest communication is one of the best tools we have to building a better world.  All of this talk about technology and collaboration means more to me than mere talking points. I need this. Humanities needs this. Our hope in the future lies in teaching young people to learn to express themselves as honesty and openly as they can, so we can begin to tear down the walls that have been constructed by generations of cultural, nationalistic, and religious engineers.

I am still evading why any of this is relevant to profile pictures and avatars. The portrait is one of the most powerful ways to share ones identity. The tiny picture next to each Tweet is the first impression many newcomers to any network will see. I get excited when I see people change their photos, because I feel that they are real, changing, and growing.

I am not the same person one day from the next, so how can my picture stay the same month after month. I felt a bit uncomfortable after I changed my picture to a computer-generated avatar. It felt as if I was cheating somehow. But after a few days, I am starting to feel more comfortable with the image, because I know that it too will change. This is simply a stage of who I am at this stage of my life. I love looking back and seeing all of the people I have been:

If I am a collage educated father and teacher, and I am still dealing with these kinds of identity issues, imagine what our students are going through. In an image-saturated world, they need to be having conversations about self, identity, and community, especially if we want them to be participating in a world where they may not meet every person they interact with online. We need to teach them how to sort through the debris and construct the puzzles of the people they encounter online. More importantly we need to teach them how to express themselves as clearly as they can, so they are able to paint the most authentic picture of who they are.  An avatar or profile picture should mean more to us than some throw away superficial exercise in vanity. These pictures are who we are online, so they deserve thought and attention.

Learning 2.008

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I am sitting in an unconference session called “Echo Chamber.” To my right Brian Crosby scratches his hair as Clarence Fischer, who sits to my left, proposes that an echo chamber may sometimes be a good thing, a source of rejuvenation. I can’t seem to articulate what I find disconcerting about the echo chamber. David Warlick occasionally peaks out from behind his laptop and offers some insight. I am a bit star-struck, sitting in this room with just the four of us; a few teachers from ISB stroll in and make me feel more knowledgeable. I want to say that communities need to be occasionally shaken up and infiltrated to keep them up to date. I am stuck in limbo between feeling respect and admiration for these men and then contemplating the fact that if I know that I am just as good of a teacher as any of them, then why do I feel inadequate in their presence. This back and forth plays with my emotions, rendering me unable to get my point across.

Don’t get me wrong; I immensely respect these men along with all of the presenters at Learning 2.008. An hour before I was listening to Ewan McIntosh talk about how tech tools are not transformative. Pedagogy is transformative. I have skimmed Ewan’s blog for months, but not until I saw him speak did I truly understand where he is coming from. Later, I would listen to Alan Levine discuss the Horizon project, and later still take notes on a back channel as Julie Lindsay extolled the virtue of mobile devices.

If Learning 2.008 taught me anything it is that digital networks are nothing more than real human beings trying to figure it all out. I am not sure I can define what “it” is exactly, but that is part of what we are trying to do. We can read each others blogs, talk on Skype, or follow Tweets, but these tools will only paint an abstract picture of who we really are. No matter how easy the new web makes it for people to communicate and build networks, we still need that authentic human interaction. We still need to watch body language, pay attention to tone of voice, and make people laugh to really connect with other human beings. Thank goodness for that.

It was refreshing to see that we are more than blog posts, avatars, and @names. The participants of this conference, by their presence alone proved that we are a group of diverse educators determined to find better ways to learn. No one truly knows the secret answer, because there is no secret answer. We, and I say we with pride because I learned that I too have ideas to offer, are simply trying to find ways to educate children as best we can. Technology is not the answer. It really doesn’t have much to do with technology at all. It has to do with community and the sharing of knowledge and ideas! Technology is simply a way for sharing ideas.  The questions that kept resurfacing at every session I attended was- how can we convince teachers to use technology? I think we need to help teachers learn how they can become members of vibrant communities, so that they can teach their students to expand their social networks as well. This can be completely outside the scope of technology. Jennifer Jones says it best,

“Before we connect globally, we need to connect locally, whether we use technology, or just step outside.  I feel this is critical to change in our systems.”

Technology is just a tool that at this time in our evolution is the most appropriate for creating wide, far-reaching, cooperative communities that foster, promote, and encourage learning. This conference taught me that communities take time to build and that they must be unique for each member. Session after session, time spent out at dinner with twitter friends, and time spent chatting over food with fellow tech enthusiasts, taught me that my network is like a garden, in that it constantly needs to be tended.

When I first started blogging I wanted nothing more than a robust interactive audience. I wanted the largest number of people to read by posts. Like my students, I wanted to watch the little red globs infect my cluster map like a cancer. I constantly examined by statistics to see how many people had read what I wrote. I wished that the “big” names would read my work, realize my genius, and catapult me into the upper echelon of the educational blogosphere. In short, I felt that the quantity of readers would directly reflect the quality of my network. To return to the garden analogy, I wanted to transplant myself into a pre-made heirloom garden of specialized thriving plants. I was reading the names I had been told to read. I was following the people I was told to follow on Twitter. I had been sold a perfect network, and I thought that all I had to do was sit back and let the learning community sweep me away.

The conference taught me that, I can read well-known bloggers, I can even sit with them in a room and discuss the echo-chamber, but to truly feel the power of the network I have to plant my own garden and tend it religiously. It is not enough to simply use twitter to get to know someone, you need to meet them, and laugh over Chinese food, take a walk in Golden Gate park, share a cab. This conference proved that I don’t need to be connected to the network, or a network, but that it is more important that I build my own functioning network of like-minded teachers and students.

“Audiences drive by while communities drop in.”

As Clarence’s quote elucidates, I learned that it is not enough to simply copy and paste the nodes of a generic network and expect it to be fruitful. We must build communities. This takes time. This takes honesty and passion. This takes effort and patience. This takes dedication and hard work.

“You write where people care! Small passionate communities matter.”

I am sure hundreds of blog posts have already been written about what Learning 2.008 meant to the various participants. What do I have to say that is any different? What do I have to say that is relevant or meaningful in anyway? These are questions I often find myself asking myself as I blog. The longer I swim around educational blogs, the more I realize that I am not as intelligent as I like to think. People articulate their thoughts more effectively than me; people write better than me, people comment more insightfully than me. In short, I often feel that the network would be fine without my little musings in this tiny corner of the Internet, which I have etched out for myself.

So why do I bother? I may not have the credentials or the talent, but after talking with teachers from around the world at this conference, I realized that I do have some things to say that others want to hear. This is the beauty of the network. Day in and day out I am threading my own narrative and trying to somehow tie it to others. I am carefully and deliberately tending my garden.  Leaving Tweets about music and politics, never afraid to stand behind my ideas, using a raw and honest voice with an infectious enthusiasm, posting videos to youtube and photos to Flickr, I will keep sowing my seeds in my corner of the Web. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes through a roar, I will wait patiently hoping that my tribe will find their way to my doorstep and together we will move forward.

Trust and Community

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I first met Lindsea in February of 2008. The details of our meeting can be found here, but I am quit certain Lindsea’s name isn’t new to anybody well versed in the Edublogosphere. She has become one of the Web 2.0 poster children.

Since our first online, meeting Lindsea and I have kept tabs on each other’s comings and goings through Twitter, our blogs, and Skype. We have had Skype chats about music; we exchanged Tweets about film quotes and song lyrics and coming events. In short Lindsea and I have become good friends. I feel I have more in common with her than most of the teachers I deal with on and off the Internet. I am not sure what that says about my maturity level or Lindsea’s for that matter, but I am certain that the future of education relies on crossing our generational boundaries and speaking about our future with young people as often as we can. We need to speak to them, not about them!

One day in May, I think it was, we both realized that we would both be in San Francisco in July. I am not sure about Lindsea, but for me, there was no question that we should meet. I have never officially taught Lindsea in a classroom, but after all the contact we have had online I feel as if I know her as well if not better than any “real-body” students in my charge.

After a few Tweets and phone calls, we arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Chestnut Street on July 11th. A nagging paranoia and fear of what could happen when a grown man meets a teenage girl he has “met” on the internet face-to-face. I could see the headlines now, “Straight A student and star of the Web 2.0 world accuses radical teacher of…”you fill in the blanks. Teenage girls have done stranger things.

How did I know this girl wouldn’t just mess with me and ruin my already precarious career with some bogus allegations? The Internet fear-mongerers work full-time to keep us weary.

I was driving over the golden Gate Gate Bridge on a perfect Northern California day blasting Sun Kil Moon when it hit me- I believe in human beings! I trust them, and because I trust them, I believe in the relationships I build with them, whether in person or online. If I truly have faith in 21st century learning and the new web, then I must trust that these tools, when used responsibly, will help maintain valuable and trustworthy networks. Any mistrust of this philosophy will only diminish the integrity of everything we are doing here. A network becomes a community when you have faith in its members and trust that they have communal goals in mind. You cannot achieve this level of confidence without a creation level of faith.

I will not get into the play-by-play of what we did and how it all felt. I will leave that for a future post or maybe Lindsea can pick-up on that. Instead I will paint a very abstract sketch of how it all went down: the two of us met, drove around the city, watched a drum circle near Hippy Hill in Golden Gate park, went shoe shopping, went to an herb store in The Mission, took in the view at Twin Peaks. We blasted music by local Hawaiian bands and Modest Mouse in the car driving through The Castro. We talked about- Adolescence, sustainability, education, music, Hunter S. Thompson, responsibility, hypocrisy, politics, capitalism, apathy and revolutions. I thought about how- I wish my daughter would grow up to be as wise as the young woman by my side, who hours before was reading Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered whether or not I could ever meet her mother and thank her for raising such an amazing young woman. I relished the thought that I have a group of young people who I am cultivating worldwide to aid in the revolution and how that is all I have ever wanted from teaching. I wondered why I didn’t have teachers like me when I was Lindsea’s age. I probably would have avoided a lot of confusion, but then again maybe it is in that confusion that I learned the most important lessons.

It was a good day.

After our meeting, we promised to write blog posts detailing every facet of our meeting, but as it so often happens, we both let life steer us towards other priorities, other projects. That is until last week, when we re-connected and had a chat on Skype. We recorded the hour-long talk and below you will find my first Podcast. Lindsea is also on a Monday deadline to post her Podcast. I am very curious to see what she found important to highlight and how she will view our talk.

This is my first Podcast, but I am sure it will not be my last. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. I hope that after listening to it, when people ask you to explain what you mean when you say 21st century learning, or web 2.0, you can guide them to this post. Tell them that Web 2.0 is about trust and community and collaboration and understanding the spaces between people and finding ways to close those spaces. The jargon may change, Web 2.0 just the latest buzzword, it is nothing more than a tool that help us learn to become more human and organic.

Please comment and leave feedback!


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