Week 8: Getting Some Perspective

Waiting for Sir Ken. . .

I believe we are officially half way finished with your hybrid course. When this journey began, even I wasn't sure of the exact path it would take. What I did know is that I wanted to teach you all to fish in terms of using a PLN to grow as an educator. What I didn't know is that I would have grades K-12 represented in the course or that everyone would be doing the curricular unit. . .the 20% project is a good "hook" for many students to see the value of a PLN for personalized learning. However, if everyone could begin to internalize the concepts of what it means to truly cultivate a PLN, then the curricular unit could have been wrapped around the passion that inspires you. Many of your passions were about school/education issues. I'm not sure as to the level that this is happening. Another added benefit of a PLN is that it allows for more personalization of the content you receive. If you begin reflecting on your blog about what interests you, what fascinates you, what you would like to know, what you have learned, then I, and your peers can respond to you in ways that fit your unique learning circumstances. If you do not share what you are passionate about and instead wait for explicit instruction, then you are selling your freedom for comfort. I hope that in your mid-term PLN reflections (see assignment instructions in Edmodo), you can begin to devise a way to more deeply cultivate and personalize your learning. There have been some inspiring blog posts from many of you! I really have enjoyed reading and responding to most of them. There seems to always be a point in the semester at which a student finally "gets it" and lets go of the expectation that this will be a typical class of motivation controlled by carrot and stick. I look forward to this moment and often find myself questioning if it is going to happen. . .My experience says that it will. This transformation also involves trusting that when I say if you truly give your all in cultivating your PLN, in facilitating your own learning and sharing about it, you can choose your grade. I really want to create an opportunity where grades are off the table and the focus is on the learning.

Walking to the convention center from my hotel

Tonight, we are going to discuss some ideas on how to incorporate technology into your curriculum. I also want to share some of the new ideas and tools I discovered at CUE. . .and the ones some of you learned virtually. Hopefully, some of you would also like to share some tools that you find helpful or that you just think are awesome sauce!

This Week's Question: We gave some favorite songs about love a few weeks ago. If you have noticed, most of them are on a Spotify playlist on the class blog. . Tonight I would like to know what is one of your favorite breakup or heartbreak songs? What makes it so?

Week 7: #cue13 Your Virtual Conference

Hello from Palm Springs. Before I give you a conference update I want to thank those of you who have been tweeting and reflecting on your blogs. I know it takes courage to share yourself online and I really appreciate your willingness to put yourself out there in cyberspace! I would encourage you to give your peers feedback on their blogs and to see the process. I tweeted an interesting video from Seth Godin talking about blogging. . .I would like you to check it out (it's short but powerful):





I arrived in Palm Springs late last night and met my friend Kevin, the principal of Palm Academy (the one alternative high school in Coronado) this morning for coffee before the conference. As I have attended CUE for the last 13 years, I am always running into old friends and meeting new people. CUE is kind of the Mecca of the nerdy technology using educator circle. Yes, you can be a rock star in this group with a comb-over and a pocket protector ;-)  I'm actually writing this post in a session about Schoology, which is a LMS similar to Edmodo and might even be a better solution for classrooms with iPads. With that said, I would love to see you all participate in the conference virtually by adding the #cue13 hashtag to your TweetDeck. You should find links to cool resources and discussions of many of the topics we have discussed in class. One way to showcase your participation would be to create a Storify story about the tweets that interested you or one where you grabbed some cool resources.
Hope you all have a great evening with Dr. B. I will be with you next week to talk about ways to integrate technology into your curriculum plans.
jeff

Week 6: Blogging Highlights!