Will life be a drag after EDES 501?

What does this dragstrip video have in common with EDES 501? Probably more than you might think! On your mark, get set, go!

So here's the deal: I am the driver in this video -metaphorically at least, and the 46 seconds represents the nearly 4 months journey called EDES 501.
Preparation is the key...in the video you'll see the preparation as the warming up of the tires (the "burnout") and getting to the line... in the class my preparation included joining Twitter setting up this blog and following blogs and Twitter folks, and reading the two assigned books prior to the class.

The books are a great staring point for this course. I believe there is a synergism between these books as Davies and Merchant in Web 2.0 for Schools are documenting the phenomena of Web 2.0 tools and talking about them from an academic point of view while Richardson in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts ans Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms primarily explores the tools themselves and relates practical classroom applications for each tool.  A good example of this difference is Davies and Merchant (2009:89) postulates that the wiki could be the death of the author while Richardson (2009:55) praises the wiki as a great collaborative tool. Richardson also uses more screen shots of computers for examples and discusses in greater depth the use and application of the web tools as they apply to practicing teachers while Davies and Merchant pose more theoretical and ethical questions. Together these texts are great companions for one another as they broaden the scope of the conversation regarding the use of Web 2.0 tools in education. I was one of the lucky ones who had the books early as I had ordered my books from Amazon and had them to read over the Christamas break. Having a basic understanding of the Web 2.0 world from these readings I moved toward the starting line  and was ready to begin the course.

Moving down the light tree is how a drag race is started...moving through a list of set-up activities is how I started EDES 501. The start for me in EDES 501 was exactly like the start in the drag race...things seemed to be going very smoothly, for a while at least...that first week I set up my Twitter account and "followed" the people I  found on the assigned list and tried to add others (this became easier after tweeting for a while as I made connections for peole to follow through blogs and other tweets), created my blog, my aggregator (Google Reader) and Classsroom 2.0 for my Ning. I already had a Facebook account so that part was completed. Then I completed the "Getting to Know You" form for the discussion forum as our class introductions to complete my start-up procedure.

Then just like in the drag race things started to get hairy!! And just like the video of the race there were unexpected twists and turns and steep and shallow learning curves... at times I felt like that car in the video veering out of control not really knowing how to handle the power of the machine that I was operating...the number of web tools that I never used before was the main reason that I felt out of control at times...it wasn't the difficulty of each tool, but rather the short amount of time that I could allow for the exploration of them. The toughest tool for me  personally was Twitter...I really didn't get it. There was a lot of digital noise surrounding Twitter that was meaningless such as the Starbucks seat episode and "I am now at the airport in ..." tweets. Then I loaded tweetDeck and this made the journey through Twitter that much easier...Learning the language of Twitter and the use of hash tags was a big step and similar in nature to other tools we looked at. Flickr is a good example of learning enough about the tool to get by but one that I need to revisit to learn in greater depth...I have an idea about using it to collaborate on my yearbook next year...I think if I set up an account for the school name then anyone can add pictures that I could then decide whether or not to use them for the annual....such is the way with the pace of this course though...I think after this post I'll take a break from these tools let my experiences with them move around in my brain for a while and see where in my professional and personal life I will be able to apply them.

Professionally I  see that these tools have great value, as I said above I can see making the school yearbook a more collaborative work by using Flickr not only to upload pictures to but so the students themselves are creating captions and sorting the photos using tags....this is usually an immense job taken on by one teacher and a few dedicated "yearbook club" members. Using Flickr can give ownership to many more students while lessening (I hope) the workload for the people directly involved in the production of the book.

Student journals can also be completed using blogs that can be shared with a very broad audience which could include all members of the educational community or those who have a stake in education. Realistically Web 2.0 tools would completely tear down the walls of the classroom and expose our educational practises to the entire world....a really good way for true openess and accountability in education unlike the ranking of schools on one time provincially mandated skills tests that we currently have in British Columbia.

Podcasts can be posted to school websites for students who miss lessons, wikis and nings can be set up for discussion groups within classrooms or between schools in a district or beyond allowing many educators' ideas to be shared with colleagues and students. There truly is an endless list of applications from the tools that we learned in this class and through reading blogs taking part in live sessions through nings such as Classroom 2.0 I feel confident that my professional growth from this course will be one of the many legacies from my course work in the TL-DL program.

The potential of these tools of course also comes with the risks that are inherent on the internet. As Nicola Kuhn pointed out in her blog on Facebook she tries to keep separate her personal and professional identities when dealing with Web 2.0 tools. Many companies and some school districts have teachers write disclaimers that what they are presenting on the web does not necessarily represent the school or district but is the teacher's own work, opinion or view. The social nature of these tools makes the identities easily blurred and it has been pointed out in my earlier post that we must be very aware of what we are posting as it will be seen by someone somewhere. Leah Betancoourt discusses ways to protect your online "personal brand" to prevent these types of problems.


Despite any pitfalls we must move forward and use these tools to strengthen our commitment to making meaningful, educationally sound choices when inspiring our students to be life-long learners because just like the race car inthe video they will have their squirrelly moments, but we can be their crew and help them along their journey. Like my dad always used to say "If it doesn't kill ya, it makes you stronger!" Well I have survived and may I boldly suggest thrived the "Very, Very Wild Ride" that was the journey through EDES 501  and feel much stronger for what lies ahead in teaching, learning and sharing with my educational and personal networks.