The twitterfall requests for my session

Just before my session “Beyond Classroom Walls” at LT2009, Moolooba commenced, I asked my twitter firends who were online to respond to my audience with a hello, to show the potential power of my personal learning network. They came from many different countries, including USA, Thailand and Israel. Some came from conference participants, but the most special of all was that one of my students responded back at school. How precious is that! Below is the twitterfall:-

1.  colwar @murcha Hi Anne, from our session at #lt2009. I met you via Twitter & we finally met f2f at this conference!
2.  ErnieEaster @murcha #LT2009 Hi from New Sweden, Maine, USA. Settled 1870 by Swedish immigrants. Love Twitter & my PLN with all their resources.
3.  skytrystsjoy @murcha Hi Ann, I’m Simon Brown at #LT2009 at Mooloolaba – mostly I’m from Brisbane, Oz
4.  nzchrissy @murcha Hi Anne! from a kiwi teaching in Thailand
5.  zecool #LT2009 @murcha Bonsoir Anne, from New Brunswick Canada, where I just tucked in my daughter for the night. Twitter is my PLN par excellence.
6.  hshawjr @murcha #LT2009 Sidney, Maine, USA it’s going to rain tomorrow
o 
7.  jamescroft @murcha #lt2009 current news? I’m desperate for more news on Google’s Chrome OS. I need a wave-style demo video
8.  digitalfprint @murcha #lt2009. winchester UK. rainy, wet, dark! Marking essays in the warm!
 zecool @murcha Bonsoir Anne, from New Brunswick Canada, where I just tucked in my daughter for the night. Twitter is my PLN par excellence.
 njtechteacher @murcha Hello from drizzly New Jersey. The temperature is actually not too bad for this time of year 57°F/ 14°C – enjoy your session!
9.  susant @murcha Hello participants @ #LT2009, I’m in Israel, time 02:55, temp 13%C looks like some progress made on release of Gilad Shalit
10.  NancyWhite @murcha Hello from downtown Mooloolaba (had online mtg, on my way over!!) #LT2009
11.  hurricanemaine @murcha from western PA. Cool rainy day but inside at a wizard of oz musical at college alma mater. Hello to everyone.
12.  congerjan @murcha Hello from Collegeville, PA. USA (57-raining) watching the Syracuse University/Cal State basketball game from Mad Sq Garden, NYC
13.  azapetersen @murcha G’day Anne and everone at #LT2009. I’m in Melbourne and I’m looking forward to today’s cool change!
14.  tonnet #LT2009 Saying hello to all @murcha’s listeners. Tweeting form the Garden State sometimes and some other for NYC. Glad to meet you all
15.  tomgrissom @murcha hello from Illinois farm country
16.  @murcha from you ITA class at hawkesdale college and the school’s been shut down because of gastro and water contamination
17. melanieh @murcha #LT2009 Hello from mega hot Sydney City. Top news items include the current heatwave and tips to keep cool.
18.  RobinThailand @murcha Hi everyone at #LT2009 from Bangkok, Thailand. Cool morning here – 23C. Latest tech news: http://bit.ly/fimG8
19.  ashleyproud @murcha Hello participatns at #LT2009 You are at the Sunshine Coast aren’t you?

Disaster strikes our global class mates

Natural disasters seems to be striking our Asian class mates. Several weeks ago, it was the earthquake in Western Java. Last week it was a typhoon and floods in Manila. Sometimes our virtual classroom linkups with Claret school, of Quezon City, are not possible, if Manila is enduring typhoons.  The school canbe closed during these forces of nature.

Typhoons are something that we do not experience where we live in Australia, so it is difficult for us to imagine what it would be like to witness them directly. It was with great joy that I got an email response quickly from Rox, my online teaching friend, to say that he was okay, as were his students and school as they lived on higher land when the recent typhoon and heavy flooding occurred. His school was going to be used as a relief operation centre and as such would be closed to students for two days.

See the horror of it all in this  video. If you can, please give generously.

One of the amazing stories to come out of this is of @mariak who I follow on twitter.  Here are a selection of her tweets during the typhoon.

Sept 13th   Just got an email that my daughter arrived safely in Manila.On her way to Cebu Island for marine research.

But next….

• Sept 28th  Trying 2 get news on my daughter Abby who is in Manila w research team.Haven’t heard from her in 2 days.Need help from anyone.retweet plse.
• @manilaflood Trying to get info about Univ of Phil. campus status. Have a daughter visiting there w OceanGenomeLegacy research team. Worried
• is there anywhere i can call to get updates.Any elec. or phone service in Manila. thanx for your tweet.I’m a worried mom.
• Thank you. My daughter is safe. A tech teacher in Manila found her at the University and sent me a message.
• http://twitpic.com/jjv08 – This is one of the pics I received this morning from the wonderful teacher in Manila who located my daughter.

That tech teacher was my friend Rox. How proud I am to know him! This again shows the power of web2.0 where tweets, email, skype, mobile phones, video cameras can  achieve almost impossible results. The other wonderful person in this story is Lorraine Leo who introduced me to Rox and who has also shared classrooms with all of us. It was Lorraine fjrom Boston, USA, who connected with Rox on the basis of @mariak’s tweets.

Mad Mondays

Mondays are crazy or mad days for me, as I teach every possible lesson ie 6 periods for the day. After lunch, I have the Ping music project, where I have the two year 7 groups combined. The students who have attended our school since primary school are conversant in technology use and web2.0 tools, but 1/3 of them are new to us this year, and have limited or basic expertise. This means that I need to be super organized and cater for all skill levels. Before each class, I list on a tick sheet what the students need to complete for the double session, with spare activities at the end to challenge those students who complete their work quickly.

Today, was not so ‘mad’, in fact so many interesting developments took place. In period 1, my year 11 class experimented with xtranormal One of our students completed the movie and it successfully embedded in his blog. Perod 2 was year 11 accounting and as the cd that comes with the text did not have the correct case study, I had to quickly think of an excercise that  students who had finished their work could work on. Budgeting was our theme, so students worked on an xtranormal movie to explain the concepts of budgeting.

Scheduled for the pod and working with my year 12 class for Information Technology Applications, we had a fascinating lesson today. Studying virtual teams as part of their set coursework, I set up a data projector and speakers to show them some of the  virtual teams that I work with. First site was twitter. People quickly responded from various countries and many of them from Australia. One interesting response came from @susanwrites who is an author.  @susanwrites @murcha Hello to year 12 students from an author in California. 7pm in the evening here, it’s still light out and perfect spring weather.

When I explained that we were studying virtual teams, Susan responded with:- “You and your students might want to check out freshbrain.org It’s all virtual – technology, leraning and fun, kids 13-18 ” Before I could blink, students in my class who did not have a twitter account, were registering. Next minute this tweet came up on the white board:-774melbourneCFA launches http://www.cfaconnect.net.au/ 

One of my students said to me that she was part of the pilot program for this project. How amazing was that, that the tweet came up at the very time we were online! It must give her satisfaction in that the ground work has now contributed to this launch and she was part of it. Plus, she heard of the launch as soon as the media release went out.

Then came my double year 7 class after lunch. I had  been rung up that morning to ask whether we could videoconference with some student teachers in Parkville, Melbourne and as Ajax was with them (our Ping organiser) we used this session. This is the first time that we have used skype or videoconferencing with another party in Australia!! As we were in the computer lab, my facilities are limited. I used my laptop and its inbuilt camera. It was placed on an old printer that was placed on a table at the front. This would allow a view of the classroom for those who were participating.

External speakers and a usb mic were used for a start but we had to revert to a headset and its mic. My laptop worked on wireless internet which was not quite strong enough to keep both videos going. So, we turned the video on for the people who were talking. Again, I was amazed, that the most challenging of students volunteered to come up to the microphone and talk to their skype audience. These students often struggle with written media and literacy but confidently speak to an unknown audience. Questions were asked and a number of students went to the web camera to speak about where they live and what they enjoyed about Ping.

The rest of the double lesson was used for writing a story without pictures and words. Julie Lindsay from Qatar academy is working with the same topic ,as her students have WWW – a week without walls. Some students are off to Italy, London and Turkay. Those students who remain behind are completing an alternative program which includes music sessions in the lab. Julie’s students will also produce ’stories without pictures and words’, featuring Middle Eastern instruments. The best will be uploaded onto the Ping blog for us to share.  My students will try and compose a story with an Australian influence – where they live, their favourite holiday destination, the outback etc How exciting is that?

Twitter – back in time and forward in space!

Having holidays at the moment, allows me to spend some precious time online. So, I have been able to watch the updates on twitter. How cool are these for teachers? Following them must  bring some great teachable moments.

I like the idea of museums and others being on twitter. The migration history centre is on twitter and below is their latest tweet.

MigrantHistoryObjects Through Time showcases significant objects, collections & places that tell the story of NSW migration history.

The next is a really fascinating one – follow the tweets of an astronaut whilst  in space. He is @Astro_Mike who will be one of the space astronauts up in space. See article

Follow MarsPhoenix for the first updates from another planet. I enjoyed reading this post on 10 extroadinary twitter updates.

My class was all a-Twitter

It has taken 18 months  using twitter for personal  use, to realise the power it could have in my class with students!! Twitter provides untapped opportunities for use in the classroom with students, that will only be fully utilised with time and experimentation. Potential uses include:-

• teachable moments
• research and quick answers to questions on all manner of topics
• learning, in real time, of world events as they occur
• sharing work, blog posts
• establishing student networks etc

My year 11 and some year 10 students are part of the netgened project, where students are studying the future of education. One of the topics is the “Personal Web”. As students are struggling to add to the wiki and to come to grips with some of the concepts, I decided to show them my experience with twitter two weeks ago, when I experienced the Melbourne earthquake, in real time, with my Melbourne tweets. Students were genuinely fascinated and one curious girl immediately went onto join twitter. To my utter amazement, it was unblocked. (It has been blocked for over 8 months).

So, sensing a teachable moment, I asked my twitter PLN  to say hello to my students. To their amazement, responses came in from Thailand, USA, Sth America, Portugal, England, Canada and NZ. Some added snippets about the time of day and the weather. Discussions turned to the potential of twitter in their class and ensuing education. Spot all the teachable  moments that exist here.

• jplaman@murcha I think every student should begin building a PLN. Twitter happens to be the first thing I turn to in the morning to learn.
• emapey2@murcha Greetings from Uruguay , in South America
• mbarrow@murcha Greetings from England. It is 40 minutes past midnight here and I should be asleep rather than twittering. Hope you’re having fun
• edueyeview@murcha Love Twitter! Hello from coastal Maine, US. Welcome to the conversation!
• lnitsche@murcha Hello from Chester Springs, Pennsylvania USA where is felt like spring today at about 65F
• damian613@murcha Hello from Perkasie, PA, USA! It’s about 8:30pm here and 13 degrees C.
• classroomqueen@murcha Hello from a very, very cold Regina, SK, Canada. It’s warmed up to -21C or -35C with windchill. This am it was -47C with windchill.
• Inpi@murcha Hello from Portugal! It’s 22 past midnight here, I can’t introduce my students!!!
• nzchrissy@murcha Hello fabulous students in Victoria from Bangkok Thailand where it is very hot at the moment
• chetty@murcha Hi Vic. Nice to meet u. I’ve just realised we can use iGoogle + twitter app to tweet from NSW. What are you working on?
• jeffwhipple@murcha a chilly evening to you and your students from New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada…twitter is about connecting and learning
• MelissaShultz@murcha Greetings from America via twitter! I love AUS! Especially those Collingwood Pies!!
• KarenJan@murcha Greetings from Boston, MA, USA!So, the students sensing a learning moment, asked me to tease out help for them on the semantic aware applications and geo-everything in education.

Some responses started to come in and here is one really interesting one:-

• ajep@murcha learning games to change the world http://tinyurl.com/bh4nvm

Unfortunately our bell went but it gave me much food for thought. What if the students were studying climates, or Portugal or Thai cultures etc?  Imagine the real time response that could be gleaned from Twitter colleagues and self directed learning that might occur. My students will come up with some queries this week to try and tap into the global knowledge and expertise that exists and is now accessible 24/7/365 for them to complete their pages on the netgened wiki.

Have you used twitter in your classroom? If so, I would love to read  your comments or any comments that anyone may have on this post.

Postscript: Upon going home that night, I tweeted that my gmail was down, and was anyone else having problems. I got the solution to my problem from a fellow tweeter – my curious student, who had joined twitter after the class!!?? Technology never ceases to amaze me.

Some interesting twitter related sites discovered this week:-

• top ten twitter tips for higher education
• Storytelling using twitter = story tweeting
• twitter fan wiki with interesting applications for twitter
• why you should follow everyone who follows you on twitter

See also this great post learning with twitter by Steve Wheeler

Victoria – where it all happens ‘naturally’!

Friday night is shopping night. It is also an opportunity to call upon my mother-in- law and check upon her status  and wellbeing.  However, being tired from a busy week at school, we decided to come home early after getting our groceries.

This gave me a chance to logon to twitter and see if any interesting snippets of information were being divulged.  (I have neglected twitter of late). A tweet by Clare @craff2008 caught my eye, saying she had experienced earth tremours, amounting to an earthquake. So,  I immediately responded.

Continuing on I read the preceeding pages only to find most of my online Melbourne twitter friends had experienced an earthquake. This was approximately 9:05pm. By 9:30pm, the radio 774 had broadcast the event  and by 10:30pm pm the TV had a section on it. However, well before the broadcasts, my twitter friends had informed me of all sorts of information :-

•  who had experienced it, where and how!
• the size of the earthquake
• The tweet updates to @774melbourne came from everywhere.
• The location of the epicentre in Gippsland on google earth, tagged with a  pin.

@mrpbps Retweeting @774melbourne: Google Maps approx epicenter of Melbourne earthquake http://bit.ly/HQQ8S + USGS on 4.7 quake http://bit.ly/5NuwH 

The fact that the Herald Sun published an online article within 30 mins (but did not publish anything on it the next day)

ldumicich http://bit.ly/reqq5 Herald Sun has article on earthquake

 My good friend Julie Lindsay,  from Victoria, now teaching in Qatar but presenting in Londonat a conference,  was following it all from London.

@julielindsay Reading tweets from people in Melbourne, Oz….are you OK after earth tremor

Soon, a tweet appeared informing us of a volcano erutpion in Indonesia and next my friend @Durff told us of an earthquake in Greenland of 6.6 in severity. Within a month, Victoria has experienced bushfires, galeforce winds, financial difficulties and an earthquake. It was time for me to go to bed!!

Some profound tweets came through re the power of twitter and social networking and they speak for themselves:-

suz01wow, earthquake or something in melbourne strongest Ive ever felt..

suz01still feeling tremors

elearningnews They earth just moved for me! Earthquakes in Melbourne?

michele_berner earth tremor quite strong – south east suburbs

mysterbey Bushfires, earthquakes, what next? Krakens?

SueJ1@taniasheko Yes, tremor went through here too .. 25+ tweets from Melbournites in twitter search.

bookjewel Looking for news on earthquake/tremor in Melbourne

pamelaj Yes Tania. I’m in Upwey and was talking to my brother in Croyden and he felt it too

   suz01 just shook my glassware up, no danger at all. funny though, they are so rare here I didnt even think of moving into a doorway….

bookjewel I’ve experienced a few and that was the worst yet! My whole house shook for what seemed like ages 

helenotway Yes the earth did move…. I thought it was my dog under the bed! My girls thought it was dodgy building works at home!

ldmicich Man that was a bit scary earth tremor     

hbailie@taniasheko Did you notice the earth tremor? I didn’t!

  Lilylauren 3AW saying power is out in a few suburbs

edubeacon The central heating hasn’t exploded – it was an earth tremour. Quite strong

fatticus 96 km (59 miles) SE (137°) from Melbourne, Australia — USGS #melbourneearthquake

ldumicichRT @abcnews Volcano erupts in Indonesia: Interesting!

mrpbpsRetweeting @774melbourne: Google Maps approx epicenter of Melbourne earthquake http://bit.ly/HQQ8S + USGS on 4.7 quake http://bit.ly/5NuwH

geekscape(uɐɥıuʎoɯʞɹɐɯ@ ɹoɟ ʇdǝɔxǝ) ǝuop ǝƃɐɯɐp ou ‘xɐlǝɹ #mebourneearthquake12 minutes ago from web

taniasheko@hbailie yes, I was sitting on the couch and I was moving a little for about 5 or 6 seconds. The bookshelf behind me was creaking.

hbailie@taniasheko Neither of us noticed a thing here. My couch must have good suspension!

taniasheko10.27 pm first time channel 7 reported Melbourne earthquake!

says Thanks to @rgesthuizen for seizmic image of last night’s earthquake http://tinyurl.com/dgghlf http://plurk.com/p/iit6f

 

 

The backchannel in education

One of the sessions I enjoyed most at the flatclassroom conference, was run by Vicki Davis and involved project based learning for the teachers and students attending the conference. We were placed into small groups of four or five (four was the ideal number) with a student as our project manager. Our student was from Ethiopia and the staff from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Australia.

Each group’s project was written on a slip of paper placed on the tables. There were 9 topics in all, all web2.0 related and were all tools that might be used in the classroom. See the wiki http://vflatclassroom.ideationnation.net/Day+3+Web+2+Tool+Project for further instructions and a complete list of the topics. Within a timeframe of 45 mins or so, our task was to research our topic, briefly explain it, say how it is currently used in education and then elaborate on other potential uses. We then had to choose a spokesperson who would go to  each of the other groups and in 4 mins pitch the topic and ’sell’ it to the others.

To my surprise, our topic was one that I have thought about using but just have not yet, due to conservatism – backchannelling. http://vflatclassroom.ideationnation.net/1A+Backchannels  For the entire conference, the back channel chat, ‘chatzy’ had been used where both staff and students who physically and virtually attended the conference. I discovered that even parents of my students, back in Australia, were in the backchannel. So we started our topic with great determination.  However, most of my group had not logged onto the wiki and spent most of the time trying to get access. We then all tried to help each other, explaining how to use a wiki, and then all started editing at once which ended up in a ‘wiki war’. That meant that we lost copious amounts of work. Therefore googling time was limited and we all felt the kind of pressure that students/workers must feel at times as we were just not going to be ready. In desperation, I turned to my wonderful backchannel, my twitter network who immediately gave me some great backchannelling sites. Here they are and thanks to my personal learning network, we were able to throw a 4 minute pitch together, on:-

1.   3 ways in which teachers are currently using backchannels -

• whilst watchin.g a film, students can start discussions immediately on scenes, reviews etc,
• whilst listening to a presenter, can post up supporting url’s and
• general classroom use to post questions on topics not understood for other students or the teacher to answer .

3 future possible applications for using it

• Collaborate with other schools around the globe – using for asynchronous chatting
• Create a poem or song together, each school responsible for the alternate lines
• For quick research and advice from experts

 rashkath @murcha Hi, an example using backchannel http://tinyurl.com/avpq3p 11:34 PM Jan 26th from web

 caroldaunt @murcha try these for Twitter egs in education: http://tinyurl.com/25u2cx & http://tinyurl.com/5hbusc 7:58 PM Jan 26th from web in reply to murcha

lenva @murcha @gkat Use and LOVE http://todaysmeet.com for backchannel 7:18 PM Jan 26th from web

Darcy1968 @murcha http://tinyurl.com/2yye5g hope this helps :O) 7:10 PM Jan 26th from twhirl

gkat @murcha backchannel post http://is.gd/6BpH #FC09 7:06 PM Jan 26th from twhirl

Vicki Davis had used project based learning with all of us,  making those those present experience, firsthand, the benefits of project based learning. Many staff had not heard of many of the web2.0 tools so they quickly learnt from their investigation of the topic and/or from the pitches from the other groups. I, for one have come home determined to trial the backchannel in my classe

Read a great post on the backchannel and another on Uses of Backchanneling

Just been caught by a big phish!

I am yet to write  a post on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly as part of my reflections for 2008. However, I am going to write about the UGLY in this post. As life has been so busy over the past month, my time on twitter has been extremely limited. Imagine my surprise and then horror when I started to get a lot of DMs (direct messages) with the craziest of messages – the first being “Hey, look at this blog with your photo on it” When the link was clicked, it took me to the twitter login where I consequently entered my user name and password. I was then back in twitter!  Strange and so I tried again.

To my absolute horror many more DMs came along and fortunately some good ones, informing me that I was part of a phishing scheme and should change my password immediately. However, it was 12 hours later, that I realised the impact and changed it and many of my twitter friends had by this time got bogus DMs from me. All seems resolved but tweets have been coming in all day, telling others that they are now part of the scheme and to change their password.

Whoever, set up the scam, has chosen a target that can get ‘phished’ very easily as twitter is such a popular PLN.

Twitter have set up a blog post to inform their members on what to do and below are some of the DMs.

Twitter, ICT and Professional Respect at Conferences

This post is in response to some of the  negativity and complaints about the use of laptops, lack of professional respect and twitter at the recent ACEC08 conference, which has appeared as a thread on one of my mailing lists.

 When attending the ACEC08 conference, I was guilty both of using my laptop and sending tweets over twitter.

 My reasons

•  I can type a lot faster than I can write
• my notes are not lost in the bag, the ‘wash’, neglect etc
• quick to retrieve
• Some excellent quotes were made by keynote speakers, and I added them to twitter for the globe to share.
• interesting urls were also shared

Having attended the Learn 2.008 conference in Shanghai, in September, I have now participated in  a true ICT or technological conference. It featured

• a ning for all interactivity including conference program, alterations, uploads of speaker notes etc
• absence of any paper. All attendees were given a usb drive with timetable, sessions, activities etc and plasma screens in the lobby alerted attendees to timetables, alterations to timetables and unconference sessions.
• attendees of the conference were encouraged to register for twitter (a micro blogging platform) This allowed sharing, interactivity and suggestions for unconference sessions that were held at various times during the day.
• all particpants had latptops, took notes and then were encouraged to reply to the speaker page of the ning, so these notes could be shared with those who did not attend.
• many speakers shared a twitter tag that could be added to any tweets made during their sessions, so that they could upload them live to personal blogs or wikis. So the use of  twitter was actively encouraged.
• Julie Lindsay of flatclassroom projects, asked us to use an online backchat tool, chatzy, and at certain intervals, stopped and asked whether any questions, shared urls, other interactivity had arisen for her to add to in her presentation.

The problem of the glare of my laptop distracting other participants will be looked into, to see whether the screen might be lowered etc.

The absolute power of interactivity and the use of web2.0 tools should not be blocked.  Conference participants do need to be mindful of digital citizenship and potential outcomes of online negativity. The nature of our world, our classroom and professional development is changing.

This has been added as a note from a tweet by @gkat on an article from ”Business Week” on “Twitter Distracts and Annoys“  Perhaps I am wrong after all?!!

 

 

 

I dont really know you ….or do I?

Two of my twitter friends – Jo McLeay, John Pearce (both of whom I met f2f for the first time) and my dear ‘real world’ friend and teaching colleague, Jess McCulloch.

At a recent conference in Melbourne, I was rather excited at the prospect of meeting some of my online twitter friends. My online friends are very much a part of my friendship group and I regard them with great fondness.

However, I had some difficulty recognizing them. Why? Well… like me they put their best photos up or an avatar. My photo is 4 years old now, but I like it. Yet, my hair is cut differently and I have probably aged “10″ years in that time.

One of my friends @bookjewel told me on twitter that she was going to be there but I could not trace her at all and assumed she may not even have come. When I tweeted her the next week, she was there but also said she did not recognize anyone. However, at one stage I got up on the podium and spoke about the online conferencing and social networking that I have been involved in. Why did I not find @bookjewel?

1. I did not know her real name
2. She has an avatar for her online presence
3. I have a user name of murcha, but my real name is Anne Mirtschin
4. I have my best photo up as my avatar.

I guess that means that basic cyber safety rules and procedures do work. Kim Cofino has written a recent post on the same topic of virtual friends and this makes an interesting read as well.

When I reflected on this on twitter, @adrianbruce gave me this reply….

yr used to seeing the u in the mirror ie inverted. When u c urself on cam its da way the world sees you – someone did a study on it.

I look forward to meeting even more twitter friends on Saturday at the ICTEV conference in Melbourne – ie if I ‘recognize’ them.

Are there any comments or other enlightenments on this interesting phenomena?