Picture This! Assignment

Final Self Reflection

At the end of our group project, I feel that it went quite well and that we accomplished what we set out to do. We had a rocky start the first week, because we didn't quite know what we were doing and everyone had different ideas about what should be done. I think in the future we would do much better if we set up group roles and responsibilities from the beginning. If everyone knew what their role was, it would be much easier to divvy up the work fairly and without too much discussion. We did end up with different roles within the group, but it took some time to actually get that figured out and that felt like a lot of wasted time.

What I did really like about our group is that we were very efficient when we finally settled into our group roles. We did our work quickly, then came back together to go over it. We are all secondary teachers and so we didn't worry too much about how the site looked at first, we were mostly looking at making it simple and realistic for high school teachers. As we moved through the project we also made the site interactive for students. I would definitely focus on making the site user friendly for students from the get-go next time, since that makes good sense for high school.

I also learned a lot of new things about Blogger by working through this program and it makes me excited to have my students do projects on their blogs because they are so good at figuring out technology as they go. I think they will really excel at helping each other learn the technology and that will be a positive experience for them.

Reflection on Group Work

Designing a project with a group can be a very daunting task. There is not only the project to design, but you also have to take group dynamics into consideration. I think our group ended up working quite well together even though we had a rough start. Our group had a lot of strong, opinionated individuals who have strong ideas about how things should be done. Since we didn't have a cohesive idea of what we were doing, we ended up with 3 different ideas about what we were doing. I don't think this is actually a bad thing. It just makes you find ways to work within your strengths. We found that dividing up the work and working separately, then coming back together for evaluation and feedback was the most efficient way for our group to get work done. It turns out that our ideas merged pretty well in the end and we were all able to work together.

I do think that this can be a problem with groups of students as well. Anytime people care about something there are usually strong opinions associated with it. If students are working on something they love, they are much more likely to be motivated and engaged, but it may also cause more conflict if they have disagreements. This is a good real-world skill to learn as we always have to work within our schools, communities, and families.

Group Work and Project Based Learning

Last week I started a class about Project Based Learning. I had actually never heard that term before, but had an idea since I've been around teaching for awhile now. The first week was really difficult. I felt so stressed out at the end of every day that I thought I was going to explode by Friday. Throughout the week and over the weekend I tried to evaluate why the class was so stressful for me so that I could handle it better. This is a two week, three hour a day course, so there isn't much time for decompressing between classes. I think the stressful part of the class for me has been twofold - not having a good outline of what I am expected to learn, and navigating interpersonal relationships when I am also dealing with a lot of interpersonal relationship issues at home every evening as well.

I find that I need time to organize information in my mind and I need to get a general outline of what I am expected to do so that I can work efficiently. I do well with having work modeled or having examples so I can get a good idea of the big picture. I don't do well when I have to work blind because it doesn't have any real meaning for me.

What I have realized is that I need to make sure I give my students lots of modeling before I expect them to do a project.

Technology in Our Lives Today

I believe that technology is progress. It may not be perfect, but it isn't going away and we need to find the best way to use it. We need to use it to add worth to our lives instead of taking worth from our lives. In addition, as educators we should be prepared to teach our students to use technology in healthy ways.

The following slideshow is a compilation of quotes about technology that were interesting to me:



So, what are appropriate, healthy uses for technology in our time? I don't have a good, solid answer for that in each and every situation, so all I can say is that I know it when I see it. And I also know when I see technology being used in unhealthy ways.

Here are some good examples of healthy technology use that I have seen in my online life:

• Word of Mouth Bistro opened last year in Salem, Oregon in a location that has had notorious issues with businesses going under. They not only have survived, but people often wait for 20-40 minutes for a table because it is just that good. In addition to being a well-run, tasty restaurant they really did rely on word of mouth to spread their name. One of the only forms of "advertisement" they have used is an email list and a Twitter account where they advertise their daily specials. When something looks particularly mouth watering people will repost their tweet and it gets passed on that way. This is a thoroughly modern word of mouth approach and it has worked amazingly well for them. (@wordofmouthOR)
• La Capitale is another restaurant that has used social media to build their reputation. The restaurant opened a couple of years ago and has gained an amazing reputation. Most of the key players in the restaurant such as the owner/chef, bartender, hostess, etc, have their own Twitter accounts and have built relationships with other local Twitter folks. Unlike Word of Mouth who uses their account to post specials, La Capitale has just worked on building relationships with people through their accounts and then those people try out the restaurant and spread the word around town.(@kidcapitale @robdrinkenstein)
• Melina Tomson is a real estate agent in Salem who has a very active and informational blog about living in Salem, Oregon. She focuses on building a site which will draw people who are moving to the Salem area, who then contact her to help them find a home to buy. 
• Karen moved to Salem from out of state and didn't know anyone in the area. She has used Twitter to meet local people and build friendships. It also functioned as a place to share her feelings and the struggles that came along with uprooting her life and trying to start over in a new location.
• Online classes! This has allowed me to get my Master's while still working and being a self-sufficient adult. Even though online classes will never compare to face-to-face instruction for me, I think they really have their place and make life so much easier for working people who want/need to go back to school.
• The eatsalem.com blog was started because Salem had almost no online presence. There was no place to go online and find good, up-to-date, real information about restaurants in the area, so SalemMan (online alias) started it up and it is one of the most well-read blogs about Salem. After seeing the success of eatsalem.com, SalemMan started the salemites.com blog as a place to compile all Salem related blogs and websites. Neither one is particularly pretty and certainly not perfect, but they do the job of consolidating Salem related websites in one convenient place for local residents.
• Personally, Facebook allowed me to reconnect with an old friend from childhood who had moved to Kansas. We recently went on a girl's getaway trip to Arizona for a long weekend. We had been out of contact for over 6 years before that and it was through Facebook that I was able to find her phone number and reconnect.

I'm sure there are countless other instances of technology being used to enhance lives. As long as there are human beings there will always be a dark side to new inventions, but that doesn't make the whole thing a terrible idea. Yes, as Jaron Lanier says in You Are Not a Gadget (2010), online anonymity can create trolls out of people, but that doesn't mean it has to. I think a combination of changes in the technology we use, teaching online social etiquette, and changing laws governing technology would go a long way to making the future a better place for humans and technology to reside together.

Adding a Presentation to a Blog Post

One of the great things I've learned about blogging recently is how to add a presentation (PowerPoint style) to a post. I've been working with another teacher to set up a training blog for a program we are piloting.

Here is how it turned out.

One of the major problems we ran into was the fact that YouTube is blocked on our computers and so the videos we embedded didn't work on the student computers.

We made this presentation in Google Documents. Here is a little rundown on how to add it to your blog.

• When the presentation is finished click Share in the upper right hand corner
• Click on Publish/Embed
• Choose the size and slide time you want
• Copy the code that is given in the box at the bottom of the screen
• Paste the code in your post on your blog
• Tada! You have a presentation on your blog. 

Multiple Author Blogs

I've been learning a lot about multiple author blogs since I've been working with the eatsalem.com restaurant review blog. It has been a real learning experience. Running a blog with multiple authors takes a lot of organization.

What SalemMan and KandN (online names for the two people who run eatsalem.com) have done is to open the blog to all the writers, but then there is a "scheduler" who decides when the blog articles should be published.

So, as a writer, I will go into the blog, write my post, save it to drafts, and then I am finished. KandN is the scheduler, so she decides which post to publish when and sets them up on a schedule with a time for them to autopublish. I didn't even realize you could do that on blogger until I got involved with this project. You set up some time in the future that you want to publish a post, and then you just sit back and watch it publish. What I like about this feature is that you can plan ahead if you are going to be busy and you don't have long lapses in your postings.

I've really enjoyed working with eatsalem.com. It does get a little difficult to keep up with all the blogs and homework, but it is a really good learning experience and one that I hope to continue working on.

Things I've Learned About Blogging in 2010

Here are a few things I have learned about blogging and about myself while taking this Blogs In Education class.

• First and foremost, don't bite off more than you can chew. Apparently, keeping up three blogs as well as a full-time job, Master's classes, and some turmoil in my personal life is a little more than I can chew and I feel like all of the projects have suffered a bit this month while I have tried to balance them. I started writing food reviews for eatsalem.com as well as keeping up my Salem blog and this blog. I also have a blog for work that I've been trying to keep up for my students. 
• Non-bloggers have a different perception of blogging than I do and that is probably okay. Not everyone needs to blog. 
• Blogging is a big enough thing these days that it is being scientifically studied. Who knew? Not me. I didn't realize how much interesting research and how many journal articles I would find when I started looking into it. 
• What my students are doing in class, although it is on a blog, may not fall into the category of "blogging." Blogging is more than just writing an online journal. Although I knew this, I couldn't put it into words like some have. Blogging is analyzing information on one subject and writing about it on a consistent basis over a period of time. Some of my students probably fall into the actual blogging category and others are less advanced in their abilities and are just practicing their writing skills, not really delving into the higher levels of thinking needed to analyze information.
• Keeping up with comments doesn't work as well in Blogger as I would like. It is difficult to have actual conversations in blog comments because the other person may not know that you have responded. I think WordPress might be better at this because it gives you an option to get an email when someone comments after you. I started to put up a WordPress blog, but I'm going to have to hold off on that for now.
• I am very social. Therefore even my online social networking ends up being a truly social real life experience. Apparently this doesn't happen for everyone and some people end up feeling cut off from "real life" by their online activity.

Commercial Blogs

Lately, I've been really interested in commercial blogging and what seems to work in that genre of blogs. (Sidenote: can I apply the word "genre" to different types of blogs or does it only apply to literary works?) There are a couple different types of commercial blogs. The type many people think of when they think of commercial blogs are the blogs that make lots of money off of advertising because they have a huge audience. The type I would like to focus on are the commercial blogs that are used to enhance an already existing business.

Here are a couple local examples that I really like:

The Real Estate Jumble
William Bragg Photography

Now, how does this tie into blogs in education, you ask? Well, I've been thinking. These people care a lot about enhancing and adverstising the business that is their livilihood. So, if the classroom is my livelihood, how can I use a blog to enhance that business? Perhaps we need to think like these business people in order to figure out the best way to use blogs for education.

Some things I've noticed about these commercial blogs are that they strive to become a place where people go for information about all things that relate to their business. That way they become useful to their audience, who will then think of them whenever they think of that business in general.

I think the idea of being useful is the key for education blogs as well. Is my blog useful for my students? Their parents? Other teachers? If my students are blogging, are their blogs useful to other students? Their teachers? Their parents?

This is just a concept I thought I'd put out there.

Measures 66 & 67 in Oregon

Since I have quite a bit to say about these measures, and since Denvy had some of the same questions I had, I decided to just write up a little post about them. I am certainly not an expert, but I will do my best to pass on the information I have been given.

I was concerned about farmers as well. I have been hearing about how this could put them out of business. After getting the facts, I can only assume they are misinformed about the measure. First of all, only C corporations will pay taxes on their gross sales. Most small businesses fall into one of the five other categories of businesses such as sole proprietorships, limited liability corporations, or S corporations. Those five other types of businesses will be subject to the new $150 minimum tax, but will not have to pay anything on their gross sales.

C corporations are generally meant for businesses that plan to have many investors. Most C corporations are big businesses and some of them will have to pay the 1/10 of 1% tax on their gross sales. Yes, they will have to do this even if they don't have a profit. I was concerned about this until I figured out how much this was really going to be. Let's say a company has 5 million dollars in gross sales, but claims no profit. They would have to pay $4000 in taxes in Oregon. Well, that is about $333 a month. If a company has $5M in sales a year they are running about $416,600 through their coffers every month. A small amount like $333 is going to be chump change for them in the scheme of things. I seriously doubt it is going to break them. A bad shipment or a minor loss of any kind would set them back more than $333.

Oregon has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the country. This is a tax on gross sales in Oregon so many businesses from out of state will actually be the ones paying this tax. If you own a C corp. business that sells mostly out of state, you won't have to pay this tax on your sales out of state. This tax will still leave Oregon as one of the lowest corporate tax states in the nation. It is definitely lower than either Washington or California, our closest neighbors. I don't think this tax is going to keep any corporations from locating in Oregon. Now, an unstable economy and a lack of social services to the community and their employees might keep them from locating here, but 1/10th of 1% in gross sales probably won't. Just sayin'.

The personal income tax just makes sense to me. If you make much more than the average citizen, you should pay your fair share. I like the Biblical saying, "To whom much is given, much shall be required." It just seems right. I pay a rather large portion in taxes, and I can afford it because I don't have any dependents. I don't like it, but I do feel that it is only fair.

I think it is really important to have social services and a stable environment for businesses to grow in. Business doesn't flourish in areas where people are worried about basic survival. I think we need to take care of each other, and sometimes this is done through government services and schools. AND, we need to find a stable way to keep our budget balanced so these services can continue. This way may not be perfect, but I think it's a good start.

My Week in Social Media

Do I use social media too much? Let's see.

Monday, I made plans via Twitter to get together with some blog and twitter friends for happy hour after work. We met at Allesandro's in downtown Salem and had a lovely chat, along with some food and drinks. After I left Allesandro's, I headed to the Ike Box for a meeting on Measures 66 & 67 that I had been invited to via Facebook.

When I got home from the meeting, I posted on Twitter that I was planning to vote "yes" on 66 & 67. That started a slew of comments and discussions on Twitter and ended with me agreeing to go talk to some people on Thursday about their decision to vote no. We'll be meeting at the Beanery tomorrow if anyone wants to buy tickets to the debate let me know. Just kidding. I think it'll be a civil discussion...I hope...

In the meantime, I saw on Twitter that there was an earthquake in Haiti. I called (yes, I used the old fashioned cellular telephone to do this!) my friend whose sister is living in Haiti currently. He didn't answer as he normally doesn't at work, so I left a message there and then also posted a message on her Facebook page. My message went up on her page with about 20-25 other messages from friends praying for their safety. I then got a text message in the middle of the night telling me she was safe, checked Facebook this morning, and was directed to two online news articles that told of their escape from their crumbling building.

And here I am blogging away. This is my life 2010 style.

What Does it All Mean?

I have been working with blogging over the last year and a half. Most of that time I have spent trying to figure out the technical details of how to make it all work and connecting with other bloggers. What I haven't spent much time on is the theoretical questions about what makes blogging work, how does it affect society, is it useful and how so, does it change our society significatly, etc. As I started thinking about these things I realized I just DID blogging. I never really thought about what it meant in the bigger scheme of life and society.

I have heard a lot of people wondering about the accuracy of information in blogs. It's true that there is no real regulation of what is written. Then again, if people find out that the information is bad they will often stop reading a particular blog and will find one of the millions of others out there to read instead. And if no one really reads a blog, then it kind of becomes obsolete.

Vanessa sent a link in a comment that was an interesting discussion of how people choose to read information that is close to their own outlook. So I wonder how that affects the information people get? Is it easier to find information that matches your own opinions when there are so many blogs to choose from? What do you think?

Links

Here are links to some of my other posts:

My introduction of myself is here.

My personal experiences and thoughts on blogging are here.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Such

I admit it. I use all of these. I've been blogging for the longest, but last summer I added Twitter and Facebook. I mostly added those two because I wanted to know what they were all about. It's interesting because they all fulfill different roles for me. I blog to be active in my community. I Facebook to catch up with old friends. I Twitter to make new friends, connect with people I don't know as well, and get information from sources I don't have in my "real" life.

I do think that society has changed somewhat because of these online communications, but I really feel like this is just an extension of the natural urges of humans to connect with others. We have always had social groups and clubs. Now we just have them in a virtual world instead of a physical world. Before the advent of the internet and social networking sites, people met up in clubs like the Elks, Boy Scouts, book clubs and other social clubs. This hasn't completely changed that real world meeting of friends, but it has affected it. I think that people have a tendency to meet first online now, and then eventually form groups that meet-up in person to establish friendships and networks in real time.

One thing that I think has changed with online socialization is the level of disclosure people are comfortable with. I found some research awhile back about a study that was done on how honest people were online as compared to face-to-face contact. It was amazing how much more honest people tended to be when they couldn't see another person's face. I can't remember the numbers, but I remember that the level of truth-telling skyrocketed when people were chatting online. There is something about being a little bit anonymous that seems to give people the freedom to really let it all hang out. Now, is this a good thing? Maybe, but maybe not. I, for one, don't want to see social graces exchanged for indiscriminate truth. Sometimes a little mystery is a good thing.

I think the way that social media has changed us the most is that our networks no longer have to be bound by geographical distance. In a split second I can be chatting with my friends who are teaching English in China, even though they are half a world away in a completely different time zone. Because of this ability to interact no matter where in the world we are, I think people are more willing to move, travel, and generally be mobile because it doesn't mean losing touch with people who are important to us. So in a way, social media has taken away the loss associated with moving, changing jobs, etc. I think this makes people more willing to take those risks.

I think people will always strive for ways to connect with other humans. I believe that we have seen a shift in how that happens in our era, but I imagine it will continue to change and grow as technology advances. What doesn't change in all of this is the basic need to people to have friends and connect with others. Human nature doesn't seem to change dramatically just because technology does. Ah, the great mystery of humanity. :)