Multimedia sharing/mashups 501 blogpost

Social Media 

My teaching duties are split between kindergarten mornings, and high school afternoons. At report card time, most ECS parents want to know how their children are developing socially, and what aspects of their childrens’ daily activities are progressing best. High school report cards are a different story. I remember the last high school report card night I sat at, when one parent in particular came into the gymnasium, where the meetings are held, and while waiting to speak with the teachers of their child, they talked to a client via a Blackberry, checked some documents on their laptop, and responded to a Mic Phone call. One of the questions this parent had for me, was why in the world their child cannot use a cell phone at school. My response was a deferral to school policy stating “no cellphones”, but the issues goes much deeper than a simple student policy.

I am familiar with the nature of that parent’s business, which is a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry. Having spent time with that gentleman, I know that early in the morning, that dad reads the news on his computer at home, checking emails, responding to client concerns, delegating work to subordinates, calling numerous suppliers about contracts, shipping, and, planning for trips that take him out of the country on a weekly basis. His office is his Ford pick-up truck, from which he manages several hotels, three trucking companies, eight time shares around the globe, and three VERY large, high-grossing, local concerns. On top of all that, he has six children that he keeps in contact with via LCD screen. His wife talks about how busy he is, and how much she wishes he were home more. For him to make it to parent-teacher night is almost astounding, but it is even more shocking for him. He believes that school should better reflect the duties and responsibilities that new workers entering the workforce will be expected to perform. His reliance on technology is not an isolate incident. For such a parent to visit a school, and see student work on paper makes him chuckle. Hoping that someday his children will be supervisors, managers, and office managers for the empire he built over a lifetime of industry, he asked me, “what are you teaching them that they can use to make money for me?” My response was candid, yet political, “Sir, you see, the skills we acquire in our classroom enable students to transfer their abilities across a range of interests…” He found this laughable as well. “I see, it’s not you, it’s the system. It’s hard for me to believe that schools haven’t changed in the past 30 years, but society has moved forward, leaving you guys behind!” And so the conversation went as I listened to his perspective about technology. I left report card night realizing there are many more skills our high school graduates need just to get hired by a respectable employer in the 21st century.

That incident took place a year ago, but this week while I was collecting research about social media I encountered Wayne’s (2010) article, Are you wireD?

“Are you wired, connected networked? Are you blogging, videocasting, and getting your feeds on your PC, not your plate? Seen any terrific mashup blogs lately? Recorded your weekly podcast to staff?

Or, are you an analog administrator drowning in a digital world? Regardless of where you sit on the speeding technology train, one thing is absolutely certain – the world of communication is changing. Just watch today’s college students communicate electronically with each other if you doubt the tectonic shift under way. These people are tomorrow’s public school parents.” (p.16) Wayne’s article emphasizes the simplicity and ease with which educators and education-based administrators can connect with the communities they serve via social media mashups, most notably through Twitter, Facebook, podcasting, and district websites. Thus, I am no longer skeptical about including social media in my teaching experience, because of the confidence I’ve gained from our Web2 course.

Sunday

Today was Trailfire day, and I really enjoyed the Social Media In Plain English video. I’m not much a fan of ice cream, and I wish Lee LeFever had used donuts to illustrate the effectiveness of social media, but the point was loud and clear:

Today I watched the video presentation about Animoto, and this seems like a useful, interesting tool. Unfortunately, my digital camera is broken, and I am unable to take pictures today, but I will ask a colleague if I can borrow a camera later this week so I can take photos and make an Animoto. At first glance, Animoto seems to be a web-based movie maker that assembles photos into a linear collage of still images, with options to insert video and audio files for diversity in presentation. I will definitely try to find some way to master this tool by the end of the week.

Voicethread has returned to our course this week! I wasn’t very receptive toward Voicethread a couple of weeks ago when I was hoping to create a simple podcast, and found that voicethread was much more than I needed to make a humble digital recording of my voice, along with a place to host the recording.

Despite the academic nature of our course, I am always interested in using my Web2 exploration to construct artefacts that represent my own personal interests, as well as meeting our course requirements. Like my own students, when I am personally connected to a subject, to a theme I enjoy, I invest more energy into my efforts, because the moment speaks louder when I can contribute to it. Stuart (2009, p.22) relates an important point about the value of engaging social media uses into a library’s experience, similar to my own desire to connect with Web2.0 use through personally relevant material, “Social media—the most popular are blogs, wikis, social network sites, and microblogging offer both opportunities and difficulties in the establishment of metrics: Social media adds a level of qualitative information to the quantitative data traditionally made available through web analytics. However, the quantitative information is often restricted and not easily comparable among sites.” I can definitely agree that, as a user, I feel validated in my contribution to online communities by the comments I share with others, just like the content I give back to the microadobe I live in with my brothers and sisters across the world. When others validate my comments, I am not only more likely to reside in that sphere, but also to bring others there as well. But, it isn’t so much because I am finding solace with like-minded believers to my ideas and ideals, but that my expression contributes to a body of knowledge about a given topic that is important to me. Wikipedia is a venue where I can comment (add knowledge) to several fields of interest that reflect the many aspects of my personality, and the diversity of my understandings. I don’t necessarily feel abashed when an idea or comment has been altered by another user, because that is indicative to me that there is another user who is more of a ‘specialist’ in that area than myself, and I typically follow the postings of such people so I can learn more from them. “The suggestions”, according to Marcoux and Loertscher (2009, p.7), “(and strong ones they are) for incorporating technology into our work so student interest in research and resources may flourish are only as good and as helpful as we make them. So take time to investigate what is out there, use what is most helpful to your situation, and know that this is a world that is rapidly changing. Focus on how to best serve students’ needs and you make the call as to what to use in your environment.” So, with that said, tomorrow I set off on a new journey to follow through with

Monday

Today I created my Animoto account, and I am impressed with how easy it was to get setup. I played around with the account, but my explo’ is limited because I don’t have photos or videos to upload, and I am still wondering what theme my animoto will follow. I watched the complimentary Animoto video a couple of times, partly because it is very well made, and partly because it has a theme I wish I could make mine after.

***Hold on, I think a short update is in order. Last September my digital camera, a Nikon D3000, got busted at school during a game the kids were playing. Last summer my GloFiish was in my pocket when I was fooling around with some of the guys, and the beautiful little machine got crushed as the wrestling match was just getting great and I was starting to win. The hard drive in my laptop recently fried beyond repair. My iPod fell from the seat of my Jeep when I was driving to Montana in the fall, and I didn’t realize my heel was crushing the screen for a couple of hours while on the road. I lost my DSLite at the university during my first summer residence two years ago, and the same week my bicycle was stolen, it was my beautiful Scott Sub20. So, I’m not having much luck with technology these days, and with the rising costs of dorm fees and tuition it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to scrape together the funds to replace lost, stolen and broken items. My hope is that by next year I will be able to get tech savvy, and be totally connected with my family and friends, and recent classroom acquaintances more often when my masters degree is done. I never realized how important it is to have effective tools to participate in an online community, and how difficult it must be for people who want to engage others in dialog, but feel the same limitations I am constrained with at this point in my life. I read Farkas’ (2009, p.35) article, Governing social media: Protect your library’s brand online with interest. I was particularly interested in how she echoed Joanne’s idea about the blurring of boundaries between public, private, professional, and personal identities across social media utilities: “With online social networking, the lines blur between the personal and professional, simply because one’s audience is often made up of people from various parts of one’s life. My network on Facebook and Twitter consists of family, friends from childhood and college, people from my professional network, and faculty and students at my university. As a result, it’s far more difficult to keep my work and private lives separate online. In a single day, I may tweet about the cute thing my infant son did and the project I’m working on for my library.” For me, theme plays an important role in creating identity, but the theme must also respect the boundaries I am willing to create about how much of my life is available in the webosphere.

So, back to Animoto…. Despite feeling disadvantaged at having few tools for creating the initial resources necessary to share blips about my life with our online community, I will try to find some artefacts to add to my Animoto account to create a project there that are, in the very least, reflective of who I am, and what I do.

Check I again tomorrow and I’ll show you what ideas I came up with!

Tuesday

Tonight was elluminate, and I really enjoyed our talk, and the sidebar chat we had, thanks folks! After two years of online study, my attitude and disposition toward online collaboration, especially online studies, has changed dramatically. Working in seeming isolation to get my work completed, and only to interact with others through delayed monologue has made the past two years very difficult. And, while I realize that this masters degree is an independent research program, independence is challenging when tackling research for the first time. And, since my present Web2 course requires about 35 hours each week for collecting articles, exploring tools, creating artefacts, and evidencing my own personal and professional growth through the utilities, I still have another 35 hours each week to dedicate to the other courses I am taking concurrently; (on top of teaching full-time, working as department head to establish our fledgling tri-lingual languages program, and lastly, to get some sleep at night). I won’t try to tally-up the number of hours I spend on each course, plus working, or it would make me wonder what I am doing to myself through sleep deprivation, nutrition deficiency, and lack of interpersonal, one-to-one social contact. When attending conferences, I have linked-up with peers who are in my course, and those who are completing options courses are feeling the same pinch as myself. Despite repeated reminders from friends and family that I need to “get out and get some fresh air”, I am already 20 months into my program, and I hardly think that now is the time for a break. After tonight’s elluminate session, I am even more impressed to share a blip about the need to be surrounded by positive people who can motivate and encourage one another to participate in discussions and jibes when times allow for it. It isn’t so much rhetoric about focusing on the goal, and staying one’s course to get work done that helps me to keep moving forward, and to immerse myself in learning and utilizing new technology. It is the nuances I find in reading my classmates’ postings that reflect their positivism, and the fluidity they develop in using technology that encourages and inspires me to be both persistent and tenacious in mastering our weekly explorations and postings. There are so many inadvertently negative influences in the world that can act as distractions against trying to stay focused on fulfilling my obligations to my academic studies, and my career. I try to keep my blogposts directed to the lighter side of life, as I spend each night at my computer, living vicariously through digital user interface with the rest of our global community. I have been fortunate to have traveled far and wide, and I never realized how important those travels would become to me when I was to become restricted in how much I could experience in life beyond the walls of the office in my home during this time. If my optimism sometimes seems too great, I can say with surety that Dale Carnegie was right on the mark, when he wrote that we should be “hearty in our approbation, and lavish in our praise.”


So, to continue with lavishing praise when praise is due, I would to say how much I liked what Joanne said about how twitter changed her life, and how she uses twitter as an indispensable form of PD when and she follows inportant hashtags from users who update others with their own PD experiences. I also like how Joanne commented that she follows, and has followers that reflect her own interests, and how she belongs to a community. I am still trying to find my own voice, and a community of similar-minded bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, tweeters, and Fbookers. Since Web2 tools are still very new to me, I am still learning how to use each different tool to express my voice and my interests with different communities I participate in.

Tonight’s elluminate session was great, but after a long staff meeting, and an elluminate session, I will have to provide an Animoto update tomorrow!

Cheers!

Wednesday and Thursday

Funny, tonight as I am using MSOffice 2003 I am coming to realize that too many words in MSWord 2003 spellchecker fail our new technology. I’ve found words such as blog, vlog, MySpace, Facebook, blogspot, LinkedIn, Gmail, Animoto, Ning, Skype, YouTube, microblogging, and, even folksonomy get FAIL from Word 2003.

Ah, and then there is Animoto! Animoto is anything but a FAIL in my books. I really like Animoto, and the free account allows users to create a 30 short video from photos in the Animoto photo album. Animoto reminds me of Windows Movie Maker that comes as a stock item on pretty much any PC these days, but Animoto hosts the video that users create, and there is no stress about which site will provide viewers to check out my artefacts.

Of course, I am simplifying the Animoto process, and it actually took me about an hour to figure out what tools are available via the free service Animoto provides (the number of tools is seriously restricted for free users taking advantage of the freemium service), but it still takes time to figure out how to use Animotos libraries.

I am pleased with my progress in Animoto today.

Friday

Today was a great day to get familiar with Voicethread again. I chose to use Voicethread’s media files supported by the New York Public Library. I narrowed my topic of interest to images of Staten Island from the turn of the last century, and the result was a success…kinda. I was unable to resolve two issues with Voicethread this week: 1) I cannot figure out how to import music into my ‘thread, in order to use music as a backdrop for the photos, instead of using my voice for narrative; 2) I was completely blind to the proper button or procedure about how to make my ‘thread public, and I cannot figure out how to make my slideshow available to all viewers. I will try this again tomorrow. The assignment IS complete, but I would like to have it clearly more functional than it is in its present state.

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

Learning about social media was an enjoyable process this week, I think in part because of my prior exposure to Voicethread a couple of weeks ago. Mostly, though, I enjoyed Animoto, and that made a huge difference for me. I was put off by pbworks last week, because I did get a sense of immediate gratification from seeing my works in final form immediately after setting up the necessary resources to make the creation happen. Followers and readers of blogs expect bloggers to maintain a level of daily interaction with their audiences. Stuart (2010, p.46) reminds us that, “In the Web 2.0 world, users have an expectation of a constant flow of new information. With everything automatically time stamped, it quickly becomes obvious when institutions are not fully partaking in the community.” A small amount of time devoted each day to exploring with a tool, and supplementation with academic research into the nature and changes of a tool make a world of difference with providing the how’s and why’s of a tool, but also permitting a user with incentive to add something new that they build upon, much like the eclectic nature of a quilt that is a collection of patches, or knowledge – all assembled into a connected, collective whole.

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning

My own personal learning, as I found out this week more than any other since beginning this course, is really connected to my own interest in a topic or theme, and directly proportionate to the level of satisfaction and gratification I get from using the tool or utility. I enjoyed using Animoto to create because of the simplicity it offers. I still have a lot of learning to do, and to create more projects using the tools I explored with this week. It is regrettable that Animoto offers only a 30-second short movie for free users, as it would be nice to have the option to create, say, up to five of each of the paid services before having one’s account limited to the 30 short, so a user could get a feel for how interactive and versatile the Animoto account really is (free users cannot access all of the features a paid account offers). Kniffel (2010, p.2) remarks that, “What’s happening is that the technology has become easier, so the technologically challenged can turn our attention to the content of our blogs instead of the novelty of publishing one.” Grensing-Pophal (2009, p.36) relates the experience of Patricia Fraser:

Personally, says Fraser, “I almost never turn to a company’s help desk or customer service department now because it’s faster to Google my question than find a number, sit on hold, and inevitably be asked 10 stupid questions before I get to ask my question.” She continues, pointing out that she feels that social media “is honest. Many times,” she says, “my problem is one that the company won’t admit, has ‘never heard of’ or just can’t answer properly. There are a lot of people out there willing to write down how they solved a problem or [who] have a workaround—including when they got a refund or replacement product.” Lastly, she says that the social media approach has a clear price advantage for customers: “It’s free. Too many companies won’t help you unless you are within a certain period of purchase or have paid support.” Social media is breaking down barriers by providing ways for individuals to communicate their experiences directly, in real-time with one another to provide a more accurate, more realistic model of customer-oriented business that is changing the way both beginners and experienced social media users are giving-back to society in ways unprecedented in previous generations.

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning

”For students in grades K–3,” writes Ramig (2009, p.9) “find ways to use online social networking tools with the entire class. Pair up with another school. Together as a class, post online messages that students in the other school respond to. For very young students, try a network such as VoiceThread, which uses recorded messages rather than typed ones. By second grade, you can move to blog or wiki sites that are text-based. Encourage parents to read what has been posted too. Have class discussions about social networking. Students even as young as kindergarten have heard of Facebook and Twitter, so seize this opportunity to talk about what these sites are and how they are similar to what you are doing in class. Discuss what is good to post online and what should only be shared with people the students know in person.” I am always looking for new ways to integrate new technology in my classroom that does not present me as the sole distributor of knowledge, but that allows students to participate in using the technology. Every classroom in our school has an interactive whiteboard, and using a computer in the kindergarten class is a collective effort of all students watching and learning together. IT is easier for students to use a SMARTBoard’s haptic features more successfully than the keys on a standard keyboard because of the still-developing fine motor skills of most students at that age.

I am very likely to incorporate Animoto into my class activities because the icons are large enough that my students could ‘press’ the buttons for everyone to see as a group learning activity.

-rob

References

Carnegie, D. (2010, January 4). Quote retrieved from http://dalecarnegie.com

Farkas, M. (2009). Governing social media: protecting your library’s brand online. American Libraries, December, 35.

Grensing, L. (2009). Social media helps out the help desk. EContent, November, 36-41.

LeFever, L. (Producer). (2007, August 6). Social Media in Plain English. Common Craft. Podcast retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/77918

Kniffel, L. (2010). Is technology catching up? American Libraries, March, 2.

Mercoux, E., and Loertscher, D. (2009). Keeping up with technology requires collaboration. Teacher Librarian, (37) 2, 6-7.

Ramig, R. (2009) Social media in the classroom – for kindergartners (!) through high schoolers. Multimedia & Internet@Schools, Nov/Dec, 8-10.

Stuart, D. (2009) Social media metrics. Online, Nov/Dec, 22-24.

Stuart, D. (2010) What are libraries doing on twitter? Online, Jan/Feb, 45-47.

Wayne, G. (2010) Are you wired? Leadership, (39) 3, 16-18.