My wife was out of town for the weekend, and a good friend of mine just so happened to be going to DC for the annual American Library Association conference. He had an extra bed in his paid-for by work hotel room and invited me to join him. One bus trip later, and I’m in DC.

Something many people don’t know about me: I was a teenage librarian. In high school I spent a year working after school in my high school’s library, and then two years working in my town’s public library in their children’s department. It was a formative experience that definitely helped set me on my future career path as an educator. Given that, I spent the $25 for the exhibits floor pass.

In a lucky coincidence, I saw that Melissa Techman was going to be in DC on Saturday for the conference. A year ago at NECC, I went down for a day and had lunch with a bunch of special educators and a few other “friends of sped,” Melissa being one of said friends. In some nice symmetry, this year I got to go out to lunch as a friend of libraries with Melissa, Diane Cordell (a long-time Twitter friend that I finally got to meet in person), Gretchen Caserotti, Cathy Jo Nelson, and Kathy Ishizuka. We had plenty of good food and better conversation, as was the case last year.

Kathy is the Technology Editor for the School Library Journal, and later wrote me an e-mail asking for my impressions of the conference. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

It’s funny, this is the second year in a row that I’ve been to the Washington Convention Center and only been able to see the exhibits floor for a conference. The floor is pretty much like the floor of any other large convention: it’s heavy on the free stuff and phony marketing interactions. On the plus side for ALA, this convention didn’t seem to have any strange cult-like booths like the SMART booth at NECC last year.

As a special educator,I was really disappointed on the floor by the assistive technology pavilion, which didn’t seem to really have much in the way of assistive technology at all that I could see. I’d imagine that people with reading difficulties are one of those underserved populations that could stand to have more opportunities for access, and there wasn’t much of that there.

I noticed a definite trend toward making friendlier spaces for the visiting public. Lots of furniture and shelves that look cozy and inviting. I noticed in one booth they were featuring gaming stations to try and get the teenage demographic back into libraries. In the same tone, it was nice to see a good-sized presence of companies that produce comic books and graphic novels there.

On a side note: I’m somewhat surprised by the number of companies that specialize in moving libraries.

Just from the bits and pieces I picked up on from talking to some people and listening in on some others, it’s interesting to see many of the same shared anxieties that teachers and librarians share right now. Increasing technology and decreasing tax revenues are big stressors on both groups, and I very much get the feeling that we’re in the midst of a major reordering of the way the world works for all of us. I think the concern for both groups at the moment is to get out in front of the changes to help guide them in a positive fashion.

I think that I chose appropriate terminology there, because my performance was admittedly rocky in following weeks. The last two weeks in particular, I found myself not so happy with my performance on the first day of the session, and more pleased with the repeat the following day. Would more practice have been more beneficial? Quite possibly. But having never really on my own developed a scope and sequence like this for adults, I think I also kind of needed to see the places where people got confused the first time so that I’d have a better handle on it the second time.

I ended up choosing a sequence of Docs > Diigo > Reader > Twitter, figuring that I’d move them increasingly from a position where they can just interact with people in the building to further interaction with a larger community.

General observations, in no particular order due to impending brain implosion from too many things running through it*:

• I scheduled an hour for each session, but I should have probably made them each at least 1.5 hours. The first day stretched naturally to 90 minutes without complaint, but the later sessions people had places to go and I had to let them go at 60 minutes. Especially the last two sessions, I have absolutely found myself kicking myself with the stuff I didn’t have a chance to get to, especially in regards to the important parts about really interacting with your larger PLN
• Seeing the teachers “get it” is just as awesome as seeing the lightbulb turn on in a child. I knew I had hit something today when one of the teachers in my group independently started to send @ messages to the other people in the group, which got all of them then sending messages to each other. Serendipitous.
• There is an awful lot of vocabulary to explain to a bunch of technological neophytes.
• My Twitter network is awesome. I asked for some shoutouts yesterday, and over 90 people responded. Brilliant. More than anything else, the international tweets truly wowed some of my group.
• When you’re showing off Twitter to your audience, it’s pretty comical to open it up just in time for them to see Ira Socol calling Diane Ravitch a “war criminal.” and then have to explain that, no, he’s not joking.
• I loved it when they realized that someone took really good notes in Google Docs, and they could ask her to share it with everybody at once.
• Some people had to miss the session today but asked if I could still show it to them anyway next week. So they want to know!
• I’m honestly not sure how many will go on to use these tools on a regular basis. If I get one or two regular Twitter users out of the 15 or so people I started with, is that a success or failure? Sure, it’s two more than we had before, but that’s a pretty horrible ratio.
• Piggybacking on the last point: could I have done more to get them using the tools, or is exposing them to the tools enough?

I have a lot to reflect on, and I’m sure I’ll have more in another week or so when I get the Evaluation Form together on Google and ask them to fill it out. Right now I’m a bit worried that they’ll be too soft on me and not point out stuff that I need pointed out to me. Conversely, I’m also worried that they’ll confirm my worst fears about doing a terrible job. For the record, I don’t think I did a terrible job, which is why it would be terrifying to find out that I actually did so. When I get some results back, maybe I’ll post a followup assuming that I haven’t died from mortification.

*Big big announcement coming real soon. I might explode from not telling the world yet.

After a year of taking pictures, I’ve done it. Slightly over a year ago I received my first digital SLR camera as a super-generous Christmas gift from my parents. I knew from the start that I wanted to really get in a lot of practice with my camera, so I committed to participating in Project 365, in which you attempt to take at least one photo a day for an entire year.

Here’s the first picture I took of my brother right after I pulled my camera out of the box and had fiddled with the settings to ensure the one thing I knew I wanted to do, shoot in RAW:

While I was totally blown away by the quality of the photos from this camera, I still had a long way to go in learning how to use it…this was shot in P mode, which is fully automatic. I knew that I loved the “blurry background,” but had no idea how to do that. I was really flying blind. Fortunately, I brought my network with me. I got a lot of starter advice from Craig Nansen, who helped me understand a lot of the basics to using a DSLR. As time went on, I also got several pieces of advice from my good friend Brian Taylor.

Speaking of the network, here are the most important pieces of advice I can give to somebody who wants to do a 365. Join Flickr. Then be sure to join at least one group that’s dedicated to doing a 365. Submit your photos to the group every day. For me, I topped it off by following the RSS feed for one of those groups in Google Reader. If, like me, you check your RSS feeds every day, following your group’s feed will constantly remind you to take your picture every day. I would have forgotten many times if not for my group posting their pictures, and I thank them immensely for that. When I started to realize that I would sometimes get comments on my photographs, I also started to follow my activity feed. Feedback from other users will make you look forward to posting your better shots. While I got plenty of great comments from people over the course of the year, I especially have to call out Kathy Onarheim for her consistent efforts at commenting on my pictures, and, I’m sure, the pictures of many other people. I also got a lot of nice comments from Damian Bariexca.  When I paid for my Flickr pro membership, I did it specifically because of the community.

Over the course of the year, I actually ended up taking over 7000 exposures on my dSLR. That’s more photographs than I had taken in the previous 7 years of owning a digital camera combined. It’s overwhelming to me how many pictures I took this year, and, more obviously, how much I disliked so many of them afterwards. Looking at my “favorites” smart folder in iPhoto, I seem to be really happy without about 6% of the photos I take.

I first knew that I was understanding how to actually use my camera about 3 weeks after I got it. We went to dinner at a hibachi place, and I got this shot:

It took some serious playing around on my part to get the shots just right, so i felt pretty proud of myself after seeing how this one came out. I’m still learning, but it surprises me that now, when somebody recently asked for advice on how to take pictures of fireworks, I was able to point him to some of my shots from Independence Day at the Art Museum and rattle off the settings I used.

One of my favorite parts about having completed the project is the ability to look back at a year of pictures, and see some of the themes I returned to over and over again. So, to conclude this post, some of the more common themes and subjects I used in my 365:

Pictures of animals, most frequently my cats: 64

Pictures related to food in some way: 50

Pictures of buildings: 41

Pictures of complete strangers: 34

Pictures with a nature theme: 30

Pictures featuring my wife, Beth: 19

Self-portraits: 12

Pictures of my godchild, Nora: 8

Pictures of my nephew, Julian: 3

Pictures of Abe Lincoln:2

Finally, I had to know the most important answer of all:

Yes, it’s fun to play around with, but this kind of tool could be incredibly useful for our students and is definitely something to keep an eye on.  As opposed to links, it’s pure data and information.  It’s a search engine that will solve math problems for you and provide definitions for words.  I really do recommend you check out the gallery of examples to see the huge scope that this engine provides already.

My favorite bit is definitely when he wants to save the image, but realizes he doesn’t have a folder to drag it to.  But every single point is spot on when comparing the interactivity of the learning experience when reading hypertext vs. plain text.

Now, I love a good book, as seen here:

But we need to face facts: texbooks are incredibly lame in comparison to hypertext.  I’ve had to attend a lot of reading trainings the past couple of years as my school fights for AYP, and the key point that’s always made is that good readers interact with the text.  The whole point of a hypertext setup is the interaction.

Of course, this doesn’t need to be just on a computer.  Earlier today I read an interesting writeup by Seth Godin in which he describes changes he would make to the Kindle.  Relevant ones for education in particular:

3. Anytime I send someone a book (see #1) or recommend a book, let me (with the other person’s consent) see the comments they write in the margins of the book as they read it. Imagine being able to read a novel this way with your book group, or a sales manual with your department.

6. Demolish the textbook market as soon as possible by publishing open source textbooks for free.

7. Give publishers the ability to insert quizzes or feedback. This creates a certification or continuing ed or textbook opportunity far bigger than a book can deliver.

In particular, #3 is just the kind of thing that would be awesome for a classroom environment.  Teachers could see the notes that students are taking to help them see if the students understand the material, and students can see what everybody else wrote to lead to a richer understanding.  Add the ability to do a quick gogole.wiki search for any word in the text, you have instant, limitless, connected, and relevant knowledge.

I also very much enjoy the idea of destroying the textbook industry.  Having recently listened to the audiobook version of A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (please note: that there is a link to the apparently full text of the book.  For free.  Awesome!) and also being a fan of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, I can pretty safely say that, at least when it comes to history, there’s a lot that can be improved there.  Being able to quickly and easily look up more information, possibly from a very different perspective, would be a huge improvement.  Science and Math books need some serious improvement, too, as Dan Meyer likes to point out.

This post started as just me wanting to embed a funny video.  Funny how my brain made all these connections as I worked.  Hyperthoughts!

A year ago I didn’t have a PLN.  I took the plunge early this year as I started to check out some more educational blogs and found a lot of good stuff.  Those blogs got me into Twitter.  I had signed up for Twitter back when I first heard about it because it sounded interesting, but, as I would imagine many people do, I hit a brick wall early.  I didn’t know anybody on Twitter, and couldn’t convince anybody to join me.  When I discovered the same people writing the blogs I liked to read also tweeted, I jumped back in, following them.  Then I started following people that they were talking to, so I could understand more.  Things kind of snowballed from there.  

While I still continue to follow blogs, and use diigo groups a little, at the end of the day, Twitter takes the crown as the most important piece of my PLN.  I interact with so many different educators from all around the world, getting links, resources, and advice.  I share my own knowledge as well whenever possible, but I get back so much more than I could possibly give.

Some wonderful things that make Twitter so worth it to me:

• As stated before, talking to educators living quite literally on the other side of the world, like Jeff Utecht in Thailand
• Talking to some great local educators I never would have talked to due to them being in different districts, such as Kristen Hokanson and Diana Laufenberg
• The strange near mind-melds I occasionally get with Damian Bariexca and Chad Brannon
• Talking about students having laptops in the classroom with Jackie Ballarini, Chris Champion, and Karen Janowski.  Should we put them into the IEPs?  Should students bring their own laptops?  Can they check them out?
• Early this morning, thanks to Mr. Tweet, I started following Craig Nansen.  he follows me back, notices I’m asking about DSLRs, and gives me tons of really helpful information as I try to figure out exactly what to ask for on my Christmas list.
• The generally goofy humor that occurs when a bunch of nerdy teachers interact, providing some at times much needed comic relief to my day

So, thank you fellow edutwitters.  You’ve given me so much, and I hope to continue to provide back in kind.  Thanks for giving me new material, for stretching my thinking about a wide variety of topics, and, in essence, helping me to develop into a better, more knowledgeable teacher.  Thank you.

1. There are too many resources!  I’m up to nearly 400 bookmarks now, which is simply too much to keep efficiently organized in my bookmarks menu.
2. Not wasting my efforts.  I’d see something at work that I’d want to review later at home, or I’d find something at home that I could use at work with my students.  Online bookmarking solves that problem handily.

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A few months back, after checking out the options available, I switched over to using Diigo.  It offers more options, and has some nice grouping features.  Also, I primarily use it because it can send links to delicious every time I make a new bookmark, and would import from delicious when I started, but delicious doesn’t offer the same options.  This way I have a backup of my bookmarks, as well as access to tools that interact with delicious.  This way, too, if I’ ever someplace that blocks one but not the other, I won’t find myself lost in the middle of a lake without a paddle.

Like most of the social networking tools, I more or less exclusively use it as a professional resource.  I do the personal posting thing in Twitter to some degree because everybody does, and it’s what makes the community a way of getting to know people, but I’m really there for interacting with other educators.  This blog primarily, but not always, deals with education.  Any nings I belong to are education-related, and of the major social networking sites, the only one I’m on is LinkedIn, a professional resource.  Diigo is the same for me.  It’s all about things tangentially related to education.

One of the ideas I hit pretty early on, and have become increasingly consistent about, has been using my online bookmarking as a kind of developing online resume.  Now, whenever I comment on a blog, I always make sure to tag it with commented.  This way, every once in a while I can go back, take a look at the things I recently tagged that way, and go back for followup discussion.  No more asking for e-mails of followup, which clog my inbox.  No more subscribing to another RSS feed for only one thread of comments.  I know some people use CoComment to keep track of this stuff, but it doesn’t support Safari.

Any other tips out there for getting the most of these kinds of tools?  I know I need to start looking at the social part of social bookmarking a little bit more, but I’m sure people use them for all sorts of clever things I’m not thinking of.

As a bonus, here’s a Wordle of my tags:

Click to view full size

It really blows me away how some words (just) are a total crux of my writing, which for some reason seems awful to me.  I had to edit that sentence in my mind 3 times to get rid of the word right then, and had to do it a couple of times for this sentence alone.  Agh!  It’s also fun to see the people that I send the most @ replies to, and I would like to point out that regardless of word order there, the following words do not normally appear in sequence when I Tweet: