Onionskin

I have been tagged by Skip Zalneraitis for the “Seven Things” meme. I am grateful for this, first because it’s so nice to have friends, and second because my blog needs a jumpstart — again.  (Yes, I tend to be very dependable in my blogging, if you count once a month as dependable.)

The “Seven Things” are intended to help others get to know you, and are supposed to be things your PLN doesn’t already know about you. This provides quite a challenge for me, as I have encountered (and initiated) some deeply personal conversations with my plurk friends. Is there really anything they don’t already know about me? Hmmm.

1. OK, here’s one that only one or two people know if they have met me in real life. Where others may proclaim to be “directionally challenged,” I am volume-and-distance challenged. When I add milk to my coffee, I add it until the color is right — which often results in the cup overflowing. I also have difficulty estimating distances, being only able to compare them to things I know, such as the length of a football field, or the height of our ceiling. My husband would undoubtedly add that this volume-and-distance disability applies to our family budget, but this is MY blog, not his, so…

2. I’m soon to be a grandmother of five. I think all of my plurkbuddies know a lot about my two sons, but when I met my husband 20+ years ago, I met his adorable 7-year-old son Brian. Now 31, Brian and his beautiful wife Sara live in the southern California desert and have a blended family of four gorgeous and smart children. Newest Baby Mulford is due this summer. If you ever want to hear an unbelievable story with gut-wrenching twists and turns and cliffhangers — just ask me about their visit to Illinois last August.

3. I was a foreign exchange student to Germany in high school, and my host family owned one of a very few summer cabins in the Austrian Alps that were surrounded on all sides by nationally-protected areas. We hiked five kilometers in from the road to reach a tiny hut with no power or water. Not being much of a camper, I didn’t appreciate the charm of bathing in an icy waterfall, but it makes for a good story these days. (And yes, I did belt out every single song from “Sound of Music” while I was there, much to the chagrin and amusement of my host family.)

4. As a 9 year old girl, I attended a 10-week class called “White Gloves and Party Manners”. My father’s new wife had been tasked with making my sister and I into “ladies,” so I was promptly signed up for this class, ballet, piano, violin, and French. I rebelled by learning German (see above) and preferring blue jeans and sneakers for life. (Do you suppose I would have been more prone to acting ladylike if they hadn’t cut my beautiful long blonde hair into a “pixie” for easier maintenance?)

5. I’m a firm believer in the payoffs of a serious scholarship search. I received excellent advice on this from my high school counselor in the late 1970’s, and shored up 27 of the 29 scholarships for which I applied. While the last thirty years may have produced some modifications in the process, I believe the formula for success is still the same. We’ll put that to the test in the next two years for my oldest son and let you know if my theory stands.

6. As the daughter of a public high school teacher, it was both an honor and a terror to be sought out by an Ivy League college. My father’s chest swelled to the point that his shirt buttons strained, and the family budget suddenly strained even more. There was a “need-based” process for financial aid, so a tremendous portion of my tuition was paid by alumni donations. However, the work-study program was demanding, and the student loans were a definite challenge to pay off. My husband was so pleased when we actually accomplished this that he turned my framed diploma around and proudly displayed the letter stating that the loan was paid in full.

7. My parents spent my third Halloween night with the California State Troopers, scouring mountain ravines for their lost daughter. Apparently my mother thought it was a good idea to let me Trick-or-Treat with a neighbor lady who had a larger group of kids than she could keep track of.  I can’t imagine the conversation that took place between the neighbor and my parents, as the neighbor returned to my house to report that she had lost me somewhere along the way. I can only imagine the surprise of the other poor woman who turned around to count noses in her station wagon and found that she had one too many children — and that this small “Indian Princess” (with long blonde braids, LOL) didn’t know her last name or address or phone number…

Whew! Coming up with those “Seven Things” took me almost a week. (Thanks for your patience, Skip!)

And so now… I have to tag others. This will be a great challenge, as much of my PLN has already been tagged. How about the following – consider yourself tagged!

@athorp
@scarter
@caffeinatedelf
@abeam
@yoyosciteach
@vanishingpoint
@kolson

Most Twitter users casually refer to this tool as a “social networking tool,” but by-and-large, the connotation within my PLN is that we connect with other educational technologists in a chatroom-like environment that mimics a social gathering at times.

In fact, if and when we actually meet some of these people at an ed tech conference, big smiles and hugs are the standard greeting — amongst people who have never been in the same room in reality.

Recently, a small informal group of us “introduced” our children via a smaller and carefully controlled Twitter group. Exchanges between the Twitter-8s has been choppy and sporadic, largely due to the busy schedules of the parents. But the kids have pursued the interest, often bumping parents off the computer “for just a few minutes” so they can tweet their virtual “friends”.

Yesterday, warm weather and an ease-up in schedule allowed the first scheduled F2F (face-to-face) meeting of a couple of these kids. The boys had a grand time riding bikes and scooters, flying kites (well, trying), feeding ducks and geese. As will happen with boys, each ended up with a minor scrape or bruise, but they are looking forward to seeing each other again.

All of the Twitter-8s were invited, but you know how weekend activities tend to swallow up the free time. Disappointment was evident in the responses of those who couldn’t make it this time. We’re hoping to get the others to join us for future gatherings. After all, this is all about social networking!

As I mentioned in my last post, there has been a resurgence of interest in the low-cost alternatives to the big name manufacturers of interactive whiteboards.

I’ve been listening to some of the Twitter-chatter regarding this subject in the past week or so, and discovered a resounding lack of satisfaction with the fact that most of the low-cost alternatives are only Windows-compatible. In a remarkably well-timed e-mail follow-up, Jim Flanagan forwarded to me this February post from Uwe Schmidt. The comments on this blog have continued for three months, so be sure to scroll down and see all of the updates!

It’s spring, and Ed Tech Directors across the country are looking at how to “spend down” those budgets.

I spent the afternoon with some of my favorite smart people, a spirited group of Technology Directors from the northwestern suburban school districts of Chicago. The collective knowledge in the room is overwhelming — not just on the “techie” level, but on the historical knowledge of where education has come from and where it should go to next in Illinois.

One colleague shared her board’s intense interest in SmartBoards^©, and quasi-linked it to a recent article in the local paper regarding a neighboring district’s enthusiasm for this product.

Other Tech Directors in the room nodded sympathetically. One questioned the use of this type of a tool as anything that increases student learning; it is all teacher-directed, and seems to be a fancier way to do what we’ve been doing (wrong) for so many years.

I referred to Will Richardson’s presentation a few weeks ago, in which he mentioned a much cheaper solution that was developed by Johnny Lee, a doctoral student at Carnegie-Mellon.

By some odd coincidence, my Twitter network tonight included an informal announcement from a colleague at the University of Delaware: “Built my Wiimote whiteboard pen and almost have it working!”As others added comments and followed other threads of discussions she continued updating every few minutes:

“I can barely solder and made a fair pen in about 1/2 hour.”

“Then you have to play with the software for awhile.”

“I’m doing it on Mac and trying Darwiin Remote and Wiimote Whiteboard.”

“It’s going to take a bit of practice.”

“Let me know how it works out for you. I’m still playing. Not as smooth as the videos ”

“$10 parts to make light pen, $50 Wii controller, free software almost creates a smartboard…”

It was exciting to know that what I had heard in theory could actually take form. I wondered if my colleagues in neighboring school districts had the resources, manpower and patience to experiment in this way. Yet, who can afford to ignore the potential savings if the Wii version — if indeed it delivers what the pricier out-of-the-box versions do?

Stay tuned… My University of Delaware friend and another university-level educator have been challenged by me to create video tutorials of their “amendments” to Johnny Lee’s original post.

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A convergence of events has resulted in an exciting experiment!

First, my son posted his VoiceThread. Second, people from my Twitter network whom I had met face-to-face at recent ed tech conferences were kind enough to comment on it. Third, the Twitter chatter before or at that time revealed that several of us had offspring that are currently eight years old.

One Twitter friend wanted her son to comment on the VoiceThread, a more authentic and age-appropriate critique than the ed tech folks that kindly responded to my request. My son’s response? “Does he have e-mail? Can I meet him? Can he come over and play?”

Tweets were exchanged. Moms checked out options. (We didn’t like Youth Twitter, for those of you who wonder, because the Tweets are ALL public. Unlike our Twitter, there’s no @ function or DM.) But we really wanted to harness the power of this interest in connection among our own kids.

So we set them up with their own Twitter accounts – protected and followed closely by us. We struggled through the details, like if we follow them, they see all of our exchanges with our friends. (No, no, no. That’s not what I had in mind!) We closely monitor their Twitter time, and we happily deny requests for followers that we don’t know personally.

Funny thing is, within ONE DAY, the number of Twitterers in this small group had doubled. Now we have FOUR kids of ed tech geeks – none of whom have met each other – vying for computer time with their parents, just to see what their Twitter network has to say.

So far the messages have been somewhat tentative. There have been few repeated exchanges. As parents we agreed to let them “spell creatively” for the time being. (They are, after all, in about second grade.) Then again, one really geeky parent pointed out that his child already knows how to “ff” for spellcheck. (I didn’t know about that option… thanks!)

Also, one parent noticed that her child really wasn’t into messaging these kids that were strangers, thus far. Just wanted to send Tweets to Mom. (Awww, how cute!)

On my end, I found it fascinating that my son wanted to dictate his Tweets to me, rather than type them himself. (He types letters and e-mails to people all the time!) I went along with this request for the first day, so that he could see how the process worked. But then I told him it was his Twitter, and the other kids need HIM to write his own Tweets – spelling and capitalization errors and all.

Last observation… it is hard for my child, a talkative boy with a great vocabulary, to fit his thoughts into 140 characters. Does anyone else experience this? (And I’m talking to the adults here…) We may have to use two or three Tweets in a row for a while. That’s OK. No one minds. These four are rarely online at the same time anyway!

So… What topics dominate this beta-group of Twitterers? Surprisingly childlike topics… the “Ironman” movie… the PC game “Age of Mythology”… kite flying… ice skating.

And it’s nice to know that kids – even kids of ed tech geeks like us – will still stay kids. (At least for a little while.)