Web 2.0 | Tom's Two Cents

An opportunity for TwHistory

September 2nd, 2010 No comments

A few months ago I helped a friend win the Pepsi Refresh Challenge, which gave $25,000 to one of my favorite music associations, the Associate of Redlands Bowl. The following month he did it again, this time at the $50K level. The basic idea is that there is strength in numbers. So TwHistory has teamed up with other groups to form an alliance by supporting each others’ projects.

We are competing for a $25K grant for TwHistory and we have a month to collect all the daily votes we can. It’s simple: if we are in the top 10 with the most votes at the $25K level at the end of the month, we get the funding. We are currently ranked #16 out of over a thousand entries, so we are definitely in the running. Here are our deliverables:

10 lesson plans built around historical documents
1 example of a virtual historical reenactment (Sinking of the Titanic)
1 ‘how to’ video posted on our site for educators to learn the TwHistory process

Vote early and often

Vote for TwHistory and its partners here. You can sign in using your Facebook account, so it’s really easy. You are allowed to vote for up to 10 projects each day, so please vote for our partners as well.

Extra Credit:

You can also support us by texting the following numbers to Pepsi (73774):

Create virtual reenactments via Twitter
Text 102066 to Pepsi (73774)

Complete a Sculpture Garden & create Public Art with the REV Wildcats!
Text 102048 to Pepsi (73774)

“Lay a Foundation of FITness in our Community”
Text 101377 to Pepsi (73774)

Develop programming and curriculum for a free multi-arts school in MN.
Text 102340 to Pepsi (73774)

Without Vision a People Perish; provide quality fine art performances
Text 102320 to Pepsi (73774)

HEAL THE NATION: Featuring inspiring student role models & heroes
Text 100511 to Pepsi (73774)

Creatively fund community needs through the arts.
Text 100505 to Pepsi (73774)

Save thousands of animal lives with new low cost spay/neuter clinic.
Text 100506 to Pepsi (73774)

Open POP! Performing Arts Outreach Camp Program for Underserved Kids
Text 100843 to Pepsi (73774)

Support underprivileged children and their dream to play sports.
Text 100847 to Pepsi (73774)

Build a new playground for some very deserving kids in Las Vegas.
Text 100216 to Pepsi (73774)

Thanks for voting! For daily reminders and links, add me to your Twitter or Facebook. Forward, march!!

Categories: Mobile Learning, Openness, twitter, Web 2.0 Tags: twhistory

Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0

April 8th, 2010 No comments

Let me start with a video clip. I came across this video by Soomo Publishing, a group I learned at the Connexions 2010 conference. (Soomo is in the business of creating “ready-to-use collections of rich web assignments” using a student subscription model.) Soomo takes some liberties at the end of the video, so if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool historian you may want to skip over this one.

I think this clip is brilliant.

It is exactly this kind of virally catchy, think-outside-the-box content that can pique students’ interest in a particular historical event.

But this is only a hook.

With the proper questions and encouragement, a teacher can help students unpack the meaning of something like the Soomo clip on the American Revolution. Video is not just entertainment. Viewing the clip can lead to some interesting classroom discussions if the teacher is willing to listen as well as lecture. Master teachers are able to adapt last year’s lesson to this year’s students. This kind of teaching takes more effort than one-way lecture because it requires giving students more control, more two-way interaction.

That’s the whole point of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 gives users more control. It’s a 2-way “conversation” that starts with a web page projecting information in one direction and allows the audience to respond with comments, ratings, user-generated video, status messages, etc. Some of the most successful sites have figured out how to give their users more of a voice. They are no longer simply readers, viewers, or users. They are contributors. Schools can learn a great deal from the Web 2.0 movement. People (including students) want to participate, not just watch or read.

Don’t stop there.

I think it would be great if students could dig into some of the great online sources to research and collaboratively create a reenactment of a particular historical event. A project I am involved with is helping teachers to do just that. TwHistory.org helps teachers, students, and history enthusiasts to create historical reenactments using Twitter. More info for teachers is available on the TwHistory teacher’s corner. Are you concerned about the implications of using Web 2.0 tools in schools? So am I. These tools have huge potential. I would even compare it to the invention of paper.

Let’s ban paper too.

Blocking Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites is like banning access to paper in schools because it could be used to read, write, or draw something inappropriate. I taught at a public high school, in a computer-based classroom for 5 years. I understand the issues. Educational consultant Chris O’Neal said it well at the start of a YouTube teacher tutorial he made for Edutopia: “I think of YouTube as, like a giant video flea market. Lots of cool finds mixed in with a lot of crazy junk.” So let’s start by unblocking YouTube in schools (or perhaps finding a suitable alternative, such as TeacherTube, SchoolTube, or Edublogs TV). Social media sites like YouTube are today’s creative canvas.

Categories: Web 2.0 Tags: education, history, learning, public schools, twhistory, web 2.0

Relief 2.0 Conference at Stanford: Agile Crisis Response

March 3rd, 2010 No comments

Most folks don’t realize that some aspects of crisis response can be done from anywhere in the world using social media tools. Donating money is important, but it’s not the only way to help. I participated in an education panel at the Relief 2.0 for Haiti conference at Stanford last Friday as part of Stanford’s eWeek. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of talented people, united by a desire to help more efficiently using various forms of technology. There were folks from Google Health (I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing), Harvard Operational Medicine Institute, ESRI (Geographic Information Systems experts), and many others (list of speakers and links).

There were many great ideas and projects shared — too many to mention them all (although I tried to capture many of the links using delicious tag “rlf2haiti“). One example of how technology can be used in agile crisis response is the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Operational Medicine Institute’s use of iPhones to collect patient data. An existing app, iChart, was modified to allow relief workers to collect photos as well as electronic medical information in clinics. One specific need was the ability to locate amputees in order to provide follow up visits once prosthetics become available. Representatives from Sutter Health also shared expertise on ambulatory electronic health records. (Interestingly, Sutter Health also recently made the largest disaster-relief donation in the history of the health care system. Now that’s a company I want as my health care provider.) A group called CrisisCommons shared several project at the conference including WeHaveWeNeed, a site for connecting resources with needs in Haiti, and Tradui, a Kreyol to English mobile app.

How I track reuse and let my Flickr photos wander

October 20th, 2009 No comments

flickrlogo Photography has been a hobby of mine for a long time. From developing the old black and white photos in my basement darkroom to today’s tiny digital cameras. One of the things that is much easier with digital images is sharing. Uploading photos to a site like Flickr makes sharing photos with family and friends very easy. I used to email photos to friends, but now they can go to my Flickr page and view them whenever they want. It changes sharing from a “push” to a “pull” technology. People can set up notifications or use RSS if they want to know when new content becomes available. I also have it set up to put a little blurb on Facebook when I add new photos to Flickr.

I also like seeing the different ways my amateur photography gets reused by others. For example, one of my photos of the Crab Cooker restaurant in Newport Beach, CA was reused on Wikipedia. Two other images were used on a travel site called Schmap.com. But my favorite reuse photo is one showing a row of three identical houses, all for sale in my old neighborhood in Redlands, California. It really captures the essence of housing crisis, and it has been reused in at least five different places.

Reuse & Reputation: Can they be tracked?

They say the more you give the more you get. While my photo sharing isn’t likely to generate anything more than a simple satisfaction of being appreciated, it has implications for reuse in other areas as well. Openness can pave the way for increased reputation in your profession just as easily as in your hobbies. But how do you know if you are making progress? Tracking reuse can be fairly simple if you have a fairly unique username. I have set up a Google Alert to crawl the web and notify me anytime my Flickr username (caswell_tom) pops up somewhere. Of course, this won’t track reuse in print or on password protected web pages, but it’s a start. As my collection grows I keep track by adding a “reused” tag to each of the photos (here is what I have so far). I also add a comment on my image with the URL where the photo was reused. Flickr makes adding tags and comments to your photos very easy.

Does greater openness = greater reuse?

I have learned that unique of obscure photos get reused far more than common ones. And while greater openness does not necessarily translate to greater reuse, I have noticed that people started reusing my photos around the same time I assigned an Attribution-only Creative Commons license to all my photos. It’s just anecdotal, but I didn’t not have any cases of reuse until I made the change from CC-BY-NC to CC-BY. It seems logical that a less restricted license would be more appealing to an online journal, magazine, or other site. Of course, adding metadata also helps. I usually add a few descriptive tags to my best photos. But just as important is my willingness to open up my CC license by only asking for attribution without adding a bunch of other conditions that make reusers nervous. The truth is, I really don’t care if people use my photos commercially. And the odds of them being used for something really offensive approaches zero.

I collect reuse like some people collect coins. I think it’s fun to see what happens with them. You never know where they might end up. If you have your own story of tracking reuse, please share!

UPDATE: I just found out that my friend, Julià Minguillón from Barcelona does the same thing! He posts all the places his photos have been reused to delicious, and he has over 160 cases of reuse. Wow!

Categories: How To's, Openness, Web 2.0 Tags: copyright, Creative Commons, flickr, license, Openness, Reuse, tracking

Learning with Twitter is Taking Off!

October 10th, 2009 1 comment

Carla Federman, US History Teacher at Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School, is teaching her Cold War class with a new twist this year. She will be reenacting the Cuban Missile Crisis using 15 different Twitter accounts. You can follow the tweets at http://thea.micds.org/twitster/index.php, or if you use Twitter you can follow the individual characters here. TwHistory was the brainchild of Marion Jensen, and started with a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg earlier this summer (press release here). My colleagues at the Open University of Catalonia have been doing interesting work on microlearning with Twitter, including interesting work on using Twitter in language learning by Graham Stanley. They were even able to interview Jack Dorsey, CEO and founder of Twitter, about using Twitter in education (here and here). So what are your thoughts on microlearning using Twitter?