Pockets of Change

I’m a big fan of the KISS principle. Thus, my excitement to see that GoogleSites — already a simple way to create a website — now has templates. Could website creation GET any easier?? The vid below explains how to use them.

It’s not really new, per se, but it certainly fits into the theme of things here at Pockets of Change: an ultra-lite blogging platform. What could be simpler than click-and-post? Yep, I am definitely talking about a small amount of change that can make a big difference.

I’m referring to a new blogging sharing platform called Posterous. Yes, I realize I called it “blogging” in the title of the post, but on 2nd thought, I’m not sure that it’s “true” blogging. It’s really just a place to post and share things, without all the bells and whistles. If you are an educator who has been thinking about blogging but not sure where to start, or maybe you’re intimidated by all the “techie” stuff associated with blogging, Posterous is for you. Heck, even if you’re not an educator and you just want a quick-and-dirty way to share stuff with friends or family, it’s worth checking out.

If I were new to all this Web2.0 tech stuff for learning (which I’m clearly not, but play along, now), I think that Posterous would be the hands-down simplest place to start. I mean, seriously — you don’t even need an ACCOUNT. All you need to do is send stuff to them from your email address and suddenly you’ve created a page.  I don’t think it gets any easier than this! They say on their site it’s dead simple, and they’re not kidding.

Here’s what I did to try it out:

1. Went to their website.
2. Clicked the link where it says Step 2: email anything to post@posterous.com.
3. My GMail account opened, from which I sent a very simple message to post@posterous.com.
4. Within seconds, I received an email telling me that my post had been created.
5. Clicking on the links brought me to my new post in my new and ultra-sleek blog.

The lovely and simple email message from Posterous:

And here is the actual new post:

Now if that ain’t a pocket o’change, I dunno what is. Seriously — try it. You have nothing to lose but 30 seconds. It really couldn’t be easier.

And then the magic happens by Mark McLaughlin
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

I’ve always been an experimenter in the classroom. And luckily, I’ve always had pretty easy-going and willing-to-be-experimented-on students. So when I recently asked my Grade 8 students to try out different ways of creating a sociogram, they said, “Sure!”*

Here was the task: a sociogram of sorts to show the relationships between characters in Twelfth Night, part of our unit titled “For the Fun of It: Merry-making in Society.”  As you can see if you visit the post, I gave my students several choices with which to try out their graphic-organizer creation skills. Here were the general results:

• Inspiration was by far the most popular initial choice. You’ll note that I’ve emphasized the word “initial.”
• Gliffy was the second most popular initial choice (the risk-takers). 
• Few students tried any of the other options listed. I’ll come back to this issue later.
• Those students who tried Inspiration first were each met with a problem as soon as they finished their lovely diagram: the difficulty of exporting into a useable file for posting on their blog.

Now, I must assume that most students chose Inspiration first because it is so widely used in our school — I believe even our younger ES students use Kidspiration. So, by the time they get to me in Grade 8, they are pretty comfortable with the ins and outs of the program. But I am guessing they have never had to do much with their fancy graphics before, other than perhaps print them out.

However, those who used Gliffy found this step an absolute cinch. They finished the task in about one-third the time of those who used Inspiration and were then figuring out ways to export their images. While the “Gliffy group” spent a wee bit more time at the start learning how to use the tool — and, btw, they did teach themselves, as I confessed right off the bat that I had not used it before — once they finished, their images were uploaded lickety-split onto their blogs. In fact, the tool’s effectiveness even, I daresay, inspired a few members of the Inspiration Group to go back and start over again, using Gliffy instead. 

*Well, okay. They didn’t actually say that. But they didn’t complain either. They jumped-in without whining too much. I teach great students!

**Special thanks to both Sue Waters and Bill Genereux for counselling me through the logistics!

Last week, a colleague lamented to me about how overwhelmed he was with trying to integrate tech into his classroom. More specifically, he said, was how overwhelmed he felt trying to “keep up.” He wanted to start a blog, but didn’t know how. He wanted to update his wiki (which had begun beautifully) but was having difficulty embedding items into it and his attempts at finding a solution had left him frustrated because he didn’t know where to turn. He expressed an overall fatigue about how difficult it was to “do all these things” and teach his regular classes; yet he genuinely wanted to use all these tools because he sincerely felt they were useful for his students and their parents.

He is not alone.

Within 5 minutes, another colleague (from a different department) joined our conversation and before I knew it, questions were pouring out all over the table. Generally, both teachers felt they wanted to “do all this stuff” but didn’t know where to start. My response: Start small.*

“But what is ’small’?” they asked.

“How do I know where to start?” they continued.

I spent 20 minutes with them, during which I showed them a couple of different blog platforms, a few “key” edutech bloggers they might want to follow, and some great wiki examples. I (hopefully) calmed their fears a bit and allayed concerns about being so far behind in the edutech world. It was a great little mini-session, and not an unusual one, I might add. However, the conversation was a genesis for this very blog post because I hope very much that educators in their position don’t get overwhelmed and stop altogether!

My 5 Tips for Starting Small:

1. Remember: you can’t do it all. You just can’t. 
2. Choose one thing to do differently. When you feel comfortable with that one thing, choose one more thing. (Give each “thing” at least 2 weeks, incidentally. Psychologists already know that it takes 21 days for the brain to be rewired into thinking something is a habit.)
3. Read 3 or 4 blogs / websites of other educators you admire who are using tech in ways you want to. Note: I actually advise against reading some of those “big names” regularly when you are just starting your edutech journey. Why? Because they can be overwhelming! Remember, those Big Guys (and Gals) have been doing this for a while, and they often generally assume that their audience is up-to-date on the latest and greatest trends. Beginners usually aren’t. I instead advise finding someone to regularly follow who seems just ahead of you, not miles ahead. Success will feel more attainable that way. (Personal example: I am still continually overwhelmed and amazed by Wes Fryer – though I love what he does I often feel like I’ll never get there. However, I began my journey following people whose names are perhaps not as well known, but were doing things I thought were pretty dang cool. And I daresay their names are becoming “bigger”!)
4. Choose a platform to reflect and share on your process. A blog, Twitter, Plurk, the Classroom 2.0 Ning  – these are all easy places to start.
5. Keep doing it! And when you get discouraged, read Tip #1 again!

After a response about RSS on Beyond-School, it was respectfully pointed out to me (thanks, dear colleagues!) that perhaps others might like to know about the different ways the “average” teacher or student might use RSS to be more productive. First, an edited version of my original comment:

[RSS is] one possibility of many for gathering information. And it just happens to be a rather efficient one in terms of the amount of time it takes to set up, use, and then check. . . . Of all the tools I’ve shown to my colleagues, RSS has got to be the one they appreciate the most — “wow, you mean the information comes to ME?” I’ve not gotten into Diigo yet, but I use Twitter now, and two aggregators daily to “get” my info. (And iGoogle is always, always my starting place, though other people I know do not . . . find it worked for them.)

In response to your question: “What’s our purpose for teaching aggregators?” I find aggregators especially useful for following all sorts of things that have nothing to do with blogs. Some examples:

1 – Calendars of various types have RSS feeds. In my present school, this means I know when a laptop cart is available, or when I can book the drama room. I suspect (though am not certain) that other Calendar apps like Google Calendar or iCal have simlilar settings.

2 – Documents — I can add GoogleDocs to my iGoogle page and be notified any time there is a change to documents I share with others. Not related to Google, within our current school portal, I have RSS feeds set up for different storage areas so that I know when documents have been changed or added.

3 – Photos — RSS can be used to track photos on Flickr, Picasa, and any other number of photo sites, which is incredibly useful for various purposes.

First, The Basics:

To begin, I would like to recommend viewing Jeff Utecht’s screencast about RSS — that’s if you can view it. It will take a while to load (eons, perhaps, if you live in a developing country with <1MB bandwidth), and 15 minutes to view. If you can’t get to Jeff’s screencast, then you might like to watch this RSS in Plain English clip, which will take much less time: (Thanks to Sue for this!)

And now, the elaboration (and then some!):

Here’s the thing: Although RSS began a few years ago as a way to get information from blogs and news sites, it has evolved into so much more. I’m not suggesting that educators use RSS because they should read more blogs. That’s up to you to decide — maybe you want to, maybe you don’t. But RSS can be used for basic productivity tasks that will really make your life easier (I promise!).

Once you’ve got your reader set up (Google Reader, Bloglines, or even the one in Outlook), you can add ANYTHING that has an RSS feed. What kinds of things, you ask?

Back to my points above…

1- Calendars and basic scheduling

Calendars and basic scheduling v.1 — as I said in the original comment, we can use RSS feeds for the calendar on our Sharepoint portal at our school.

• What this means: Any time a teacher posts an assignment deadline, cancels their laptop cart booking, or adds their birthday, I find out about it without even having to ask.

Calendars and basic scheduling v.2 — Public calendars, or even just those shared between a few people such as in Google’s calendar, now have an RSS feed. Hurrah!

• What this means: When I’m not sure about American Idol’s showtimes, I can add them to my Google calendar and subscribe to my RSS feed so I know if it changes.

2- Documents and Files

Again, on a Sharepoint portal, every storage area has an RSS feed. For example, here is what one looks like on our English A Grade 7 area:

And, outside our school area, I can get an RSS feed from each Google Document I’m working on:

• What this means: Any time someone adds, removes, or changes a document or file I am working on or using*, I find out about it. My reader tells me, so I don’t have to be a control freak!

3- Photos and Videos

If you’re not yet using a cool photo website like Flickr or Picasa, well — what are you waiting for? Here are two examples of how I can use RSS to find out when someone has added images to my favorite places.

In Flickr, I have several Favorites marked. If you like my favorites, and want to know when I add another one, you can find the feed here:

And if I’ve created a photoset of a special event, and you want to know when more photos have been added, you might find it here:

In Picasa albums, you’ll find the feed at the bottom of the page on the right:

• What this means: When my crazy uncle Phil posts yet another photo of his souped-up ski-doo, I’ll immediately know! (Ok, so my uncle Phil doesn’t have a souped-up ski-doo — but if he did, I know he’d want me to see the latest photos.)

What about YouTube?

Want to know what the most viewed videos are of the day? RSS it:

You can also set up an RSS feed for your favorite user by following the instructions on this page. (A bit more complicated, but still useful if you want to track a particular user’s content.)

• What this means: I will (finally!) be able to watch every last Muppets video ever uploaded to YouTube, and will spend hours regaling my students of the virtues of learning-by-puppet.

And then some…

A few other nifty places I have found RSS feeds to be useful (both for school, and not):

• Movie listings
• Discussion Boards
• New Deals @ Amazon

I’m sure once you start using RSS, you’ll find more great ways to use it!

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