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Sad to see @malexandrou Ultimate Category Excluder plug-in is no longer supported. Thanks for the work you did. Many in the #indieweb WordPress community relied on the plug-in. If others have a favorite category excluder plugin I welcome recommendations.
Source: quickthoughts
Paper publishing is so much slower than pixel publishing. In fact we incorrectly thought the new map would live at teach.webmaker.org and not here: https://teach.mozilla.org/teach-like-mozilla/web-literacy/. The article is paywalled but you can see a pre-published version here. We wrote and planned the document in the open but the needs of publishers required us to place our thoughts behind a paywall. To account for this Ian has added a series of interviews. Here is my interview:
We also published the the paper on Academia.edu and people noted that they thought our vignette was contrived. No way was a student going to unconferences and sharing his tale of #webliteracy. Well Ian interviews Garth here. We published Garth’s story not using a pseudonym but in the open.
Ian also interviewed Laura Hilliger and Doug Belshaw if you are interested.
Working with Ian, Doug, Laura, Tim, Mikko, Jess, Alvar, Ankit, and so many more was such a great experience. Much of what Ian and I discussed were the changes the community made to Version 1.1. I am very happy with the outcome. I argue we put the subjectives into what are loose objectives. We want the web lit to be used not to understand the web but to help build a web.
What is different?
Ian opened with a question on what is different. I used the metaphor of chimpanzee DNA again. Humans share 98% of our DNA with chimps but in that 2% you find the ability to simulate the future, genocides, and great works of art. Small difference matter.
Why is this important?
We spent some time discussing the Why. For me web literacy is the way we read, write, and participate in the Networked Society. There have been been great posts explaining the why better than me. Check out Laura Hilliger’s reflection to Marc Surman’s talk, and his recent post, and Ben Moskowitz. It really is about protecting the web for the next billion while also making sure everyone has access to a global economy. They all said it better than my babble.
What is missing?
Ian did ask me what is still missing. I struggled with this question. Specifically where do digital skills begin and where do web literacy skills begin. I used video production as an example. Does that belong?
I also wonder if we got at the artistry of the web. We split design from accessibility (a benefit to both competencies) but the skills are quite technical.
Using CSS properties to change the style and layout of a Web page.
Demonstrating the difference between inline, embedded and external CSS.
Improving user experiences through feedback and iteration.
Creating device-agnostic web resources.
Watching the Webmaker, Mozilla Learning, and Foundation repo’s on Github these skills all apply but still it feels something is missing. That eye for design, the debate over color and moods. Do these belong?
When to begin?
The last question focused on when to begin. For me I belive some level of reading, writing, and participating is required for basic civic and community engagement but passion has to drive the answer to this question. Not every kid wants to code. I am okay with that. Some will be into sports, cars, and knitting. Yet each of these crafts have been forever changed by the Web. Let passion drive what you make.
Wisdom in many ways is a collective. A tool communities can access but never really grasp. I have been thinking about Sternberg’s definition of wisdom often in these last few days. Especially in terms of online spaces such as #rhizo15 where we have been gathering to learn. How does this “application” and “common good” play out online?
I realized wisdom is curated and knowledge is communicated.
Which brings me to the Strong 21st Century Communication Magnet School in New Haven, CT. The staff invited me in to do a presentation on communication.
We had a great time. We focused on participatory culture, looked at examples of #ccourses, and then practiced how to #teachtheweb with x-ray goggles.
I usually dread these one hour PD sessions after a brief staff meeting. The real learning gets squished and the managerial details rushed, but today was different. The entire staff sat engaged and ready to learn. When the teachers got to play with the tools we discussed everyone jumped right in. They challenged my claims and demanded evidence.
Many were staying late into the night to collaborate with parents to advocate for a new school. They encouraged students to get involved in the democratic process by writing letters to the local Alders.
#NHV Alder Prez Tyisha Walker got some mail from Strong School kids. @NHRegister more here: https://t.co/9kL2HwXK2t pic.twitter.com/MVMKMkM17R
— Evan Lips (@evanmlips) May 18, 2015
Most importantly as a group the teachers seemed committed to the mission and vision of the Strong School (I did explain my aversion to “21st Century”). We had so much fun. It was fitting that I got to present in their discovery classroom. A room built for design thinking.
Please stop saying 21st century skills. Web is older than college students. We aren’t getting ready for tomorrow we are chasing yesterday.
— Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) May 13, 2015
I drew on the work Henry Jenkins and his team did around new skills for participatory culture:
Here is the slidedeck. While I did not get a chance to record the session I do have a YouTube video with really choppy audio. I was happier with today’s talk as we really dug into what it means to communicate knowledge (headless slidedecks are always bad video but thats a talk for another time).
I wanted to share some of the #connectedlearning online classes I have helped to shape. We discussed #walkmyworld and #questiontheweb. Each of these courses built on the Wisdom that has been curated from other classes such as #ds106, #clmooc, #rhizo15, and #ccourses. I wanted to communicate and share the knowledge that I shared in both projects (1, 2).
I believe we can do this in K-12 education. We have done it two years in a row with #walkmyworld. There is something unique in having these local nodes sharing knowledge and forking the wisdom of the collective.
We concluded the talk by highlighting Web Literacy as the primary mode of communication in a Networked Society. I shared the efforts of the Mozilla Learning and encouraged teachers to consider a Mozilla Web Club at the Strong School.
Then we hacked the news. Teachers love x-ray goggles. It gets them making in minutes and the pedagogical possibilities are only limited by the wisdom of their collective.
In order to curate wisdom we need to engage in participatory culture. This requires us to to communicate knowledge. All require students to read, write, and participate on the Web.
In her work with Native Communities, Megan Bang, mentioned that new researchers did not begin as ethnographers. Instead they had to visit a community and have lunch with the elders.
From the onset research was not done to a community. It was done for the community with the community.
I want to apply these ideas to my volunteer work with CoderDojoErode. I basically inserted myself into their community. I did not ask. Just set up a server space to see what happens.
What I realized was I was already a part of CoderDojoErode. I have spoken with the club captain and mentors for some time on Twitter. They followed my work and designed their learning spaces without me knowing. The boundaries of communities have expanded.
I do worry about exploiting local communities on the ground. This fear materialized most when I help to launch a fundraising efforts for CoderDojoErode. Successful fundraising takes stories but I am an outsider shaping the stories of others. Many who may not read English. I am also trying to rise funds so the story I tell has an emotional appeal built in. This appeal centered around economic disparities.
In order to protect the children of CoderDojoErode I gave admin rights to all the mentors. They can chane anyword I write. They have veto power over any post I publish.
They own the story. It maybe our community but it its their village.
I did not get involved with CoderDojoErode as a research project. I simply wanted to do good. I realize now I can do better by helping to shape a Formative Design Project.
The researchers in the podcast discussed the difference between action research and DBR. They focused on the idea that PAR may not have the same political motives. The speakers also discussed how par is smaller in both scale and scope. They mentioned how DBR requires distributed knowledge and teams
This is where I need help. I have no team and no funding. I do have IRB for my projects. That’s a plus. I am willing to join other squads or I invite young researchers, graduate students, or others with my passion to #teachtheweb to join me.
I have three concurrent projects with different threads of formative design weaved through in different ways.
The #WalkMyWorld Project is a social media project in which we share and connect online at Twitter using one hashtag. Groups of learners across the globe are connecting and sharing for 10 weeks using the #WalkMyWorld hashtag.
This is a unique project in the #ccourses spaces. Mainly because it has a global hub but there are on the ground local nodes being run by classroom instructors.
All of our iterations and planning have been done in the open. We were not deliberate from the off-set that it was a DBR project. We just wanted to good and have students learn. We iterate based on these goals.
I was impressed with Chris Hoadley’s work on retrospective analysis in DBR. I am going to push the facilitators to begin the restrospective review of our past iterations.
I have documented my difficulties with #QuestionTheWeb. Basically I was missing the distributed team necessary for the project. I am going to take the idea of getting the community more involved.
I am going to try and relaunch in the fall. By the time I got the curriculum and learning spaces designed and IRB approval SBAC and PARCC testing started. There were no computers available for projects unrelated to testing.
I have started recruiting school districts in Connecticut for on the ground sessions. I will also teach the class in the Open for those who want to join in. If you want to get involved let me know
We have a chance, the distributed expertise, the metrics, and the stories to make the Mozilla Learning Networks the largest worldwide formative research project. I want to fork my own little corner in Connecticut and be deliberate in design.
I am going to start the Elm City Web Club this summer with our GearUP students. I will continue to fork EDU 106 to align it with the Web Literacy Map. I am also reaching out to folks at #Edcampct, #ctedlead, and #ctedchat to try and encourage clubs to start up around Connecticut.
Personally in the Greater New Haven area I am trying to get clubs up and running at different schools and libraries. I keep trying for grants to fund this initiative but I will move forward on the cheap. People matter more.
I want to keep working with the CoderDojoErode but I want to ensure they want to work on co-designing the space together. I am trying to be very intentional of the ethics involved here. I think as long as we stay committed to co-learning and the mission of doing good. It’s all good.
I teach a class called EDU 106: Digital Text and Tools: New Literacies for Lifelong Learning. It fulfills our universities university’s liberal education program requirement for Technology Fluency.
I forked the Mozilla Web Clubs to teach this class. I began by creating my class hub. I wish I had the time to display the change archives. If you watched them unfold you would see my increased alliance with the Web Literacy Map and a reliance on the legacy tools.
I taught college age students. They are younger than the Web. Yet if anyone walked into my classroom they would immediately put an end to the concept of ‘digital natives.’ My students had basic use. They could share and pin posts and memories but they did not create for the Web. My students let other people own and control the places of their literary practices.
I sought to change this.
I joined my students as a co-learner. At the time I knew very little CSS. They knew very little about urls but could snap a selfie. We all had our basic skills to learn. It is important to model how you learn in the open. Try to do what we call think alouds if as you learn. Engaging in the same struggle with your club members helps.
This class had to meet strict objectives for our tech fluency requirements. I wanted to focus on the Web Literacy Map. So I looked for correlations. How could I meet my required pedagogical goals while preparing students to read, write and participate on the web? That was the pedagogical choice that informed all iterations.
We met as a hybrid class. Everyone had to attend on Mondays. These days would begin with a maker challenge. Some quick puzzle involving a little code or webmaking. I would then do an ignite talk or other short lecture. I would then demo a tool and get them making as quickly as possible. More Hack, Less Yack. That’s important. We called them #MakerMondays
The class originally met as a hybrid on Mondays only. However I quickly realized folks wanted more support. I began to offer “Maker Parties” every Wednesday. This was unstructured design studio time. I was there to rotate and offers support.
I always had a tutorial ready for whatever make we were designing. I have been having good success with the animated gifs. I put a series of gifs into a slideshow. Short screencasts help as well. Just remember 45 minute lectures are just as bad onlline as they are in person. Keep it short, start making.
I set every student up with a blog. I used blogger. I think learning requires reflection and telling stories. Next time I will try to move my club members to their own domains.
I enjoyed how we opened and closed the course. We began the class by doing a literary response activity using memes. Students had to respond to dana boyd’s book Its Complicated using memes and reactionary gifs.
Then I designed the final. That really is the wrong word. It was a portfolio, but that doesn’t fit either. Mainly it was a curation of makes. Something my co-learners could be proud of.
Since many of these new webmakers will be future educators I am proud they got the chance to learn in the open as the developed the skills to read, write, and participate on the web. Here are a few examples:
For many students this became another mandated tweet. Course feedback indicated students felt more comfortable with tech but also understood the balance. Very few students kept up a web presence every year.
I want to focus on not just skills to read, write, and participate on the Web, but also on the artistry of it all. The passion and failures. In formal settings, no matter how open the practice, the act of assessment changes motivation. I want my students to see past the numbers and look at what really counts.
Laura Hilliger, a scholar in building global classrooms, recently wrote a post about Open Fluency. She, as a contributor to Mozilla Learning Networks, is tasked with developing professional development materials around “Teach Like Mozilla.” Basically networked open pedagogy but branded.
I started by reading her wonderful post. I think trying to define Open Fluency through the lens of the Web Literacy Map is a stupid idea that may not be fruitful to our endeavor. As Laura noted this is a round peg and a square hole issue.
This would be like training flight instructors with a Driver’s Ed manual. Yes they are both transportation but flying a plane is vastly different than driving a car. The Open Web is no different. Open Fluency, which Laura defined as:
What do we need to cognitively understand? What behaviors do we need tomodel? How do we unite with one another locally and globally?
will require many of the Competencies in the Web Literacy Map (V 1.5) but we need to be informed by and not blinded by previous work.
Why this lens is problematic:
Oops I just wrote in threes. See driven to do that.In fact the Teach Like Mozilla training materials will probably involve three modules.
I worry we are trying to not find a unicorn but build a unicorn farm. Laura pointed out the Marc Surman in his original post called for leadership development and labeled this as fuzzy. I should know a little about Leadership Development. I spent my life in Boy Scouts, served in leadership roles in 100’s of organizations through college, and now play in online spaces. But I don’t. Marc is write it is fuzzy. Leadership is like porn. You can’t define it but know when you see it.
I do know leadership is central to networked learning. If we are going to deschoolify and democratize learning we need a system to develop leaders. As Illich wrote:
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
To me this captures what we are trying to do with “Teach Like Mozilla.” I just don’t know how. Want to help? Join Laura and a group of scholars as we try to define “Open Fluency” and create the training materials that will empower others to #teachtheweb.
Recently these efforts have taken me across the globe without leaving Connecticut. A group of volunteers in Southern India reached out to me and thank me for my work. From there a partnership has blossomed and I now learn with CoderDojoErode.
This huge high five really meant u only @jgmac1106…u #walkmyworld…event without ur presence ..#IndiansTwitter pic.twitter.com/qKr0RsFcfo
— Udhaya$achin (@udayhalo) April 7, 2015
CoderDojoErode is a group of volunteers helping to ensure the next billion people who come online can not only use but also build the Open Web. Erode is a district in the state of Tamilnadu located in southern part of India.
Six men from the same village came together after elders in the community placed personal data risk. Arun Shanmugam, Gauthamraj Elango, Govindasamy Rathinasamy, Mahendran Palanisamy, Prabu Kalaiselvan, and Udhayakumar Sathiyamoorthy were childhood friends who wanted to ensure the kids of Erode had opportunities in high tech classrooms.
The started a CoderDojo which is a volunteer open source network designed to teach coding. CoderDojo works closely with the Mozilla Learning Networks.
We al spndg tym #teaching fr d #secret of d #life bcoz v think it will bring us closr 2 d, one #thing we al want #edu pic.twitter.com/rNczuhlVaL
— Udhaya$achin (@udayhalo) April 13, 2015
CoderDojoErode first worked with the Mozilla Learning Networks to test curriculum being designed for Mozilla Web Clubs. The Goal is to start 500 other volunteer clubs around the globe in 2015.
Our mentor @spmahendran showin learns abt basics of computer they learned last week.Tks to him for sharing his laptop pic.twitter.com/Hrk5yrqkpZ — CoderDojo Erode (@CoderdojoErode) April 12, 2015
I helped the club set up their own learning network by donating Server Space. Now I offer technical support and explore ways to localise curriculum and celebrate local traditions. Mainly I just learn from the team. They have taught me so much.
@jgmac1106 Oh my! No words to say. Again Tks so much for your support. Let’s together #teachtheweb @udayhalo @CoderdojoErode @CoderDojo
— Gauthamraj Elango (@GauthRaj) April 7, 2015
This post was adapted from and originally appeared on the SCSU Education Department blog.
I guess I am an educational psychologist. At least that’s what my fancy diploma says. I consider myself a teacher and literacy researcher. Does that make me a learning scientist?
This question has perplexed me since watching Bill Puenell and reading about the grammar of Design Based Research. Bill set up the article as a dichotomy between educational psychologists and learning scientists.
This debate, while alluded to in the article, traces back to the cognitivists and situativists. The article set up an almost either or situation (as a side note manyof the words on the Wikipedia Article on Situated Cognition are still mine ours).
Can I be a Deweyian Pragmatist about this? Can I draw from both traditions based on my line of inquiry and more probably from the funding sources I chase?
Then I joined Chris Hoadley, Rafi Santo, and Dixie Ching to discuss Design Based Research in the field.
Seemed like mush of @tophe‘s cycle went theory>pragmatic change>supporting theory for the changes>next iteration #dmlcommons
— Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) April 14, 2015
I really liked Chris description of DBIR and the routes to iteration. My big question came about as post-reflective data analysis. This impacts #walkmyworld. We have been doing this project for two years and we iterate. We are not explicity DBR, maybe. We collected all of out planning documents, archived the emails, hosted reflective video conferences. The data is there.
What Chris taught me was to not just look between iterations but across all the iterations. I have some background with DBR. I trained with Dave Reinking on his ideas of Formative Design. I need to hash out the difference between Formative Design and DBR but I am seeing Formative Design synonomous with DBIR.
Then Rafi and Dixie shared their work from the Hive Research Lab. There methodology for tracking growth and development across different domains is mind blowing. I am going to steal it. One of my first joys was discovering Rafi’s work with Hive. I knew him from Twitter and XMCA listserv but had no idea he was involved in Hive. I have a long term dream of elevating New Haven to a Hive City
An overview poster when discussing formative design guiding metaphors: engineering and better practice #dmlcommons pic.twitter.com/k4RLVnSeAb — Greg McVerry (@jgmac1106) March 24, 2015
At the same time we were using Formative Design to develop Internet Reciprocal Teaching the tension between educational pyschologist and learning scientists boild over in my every day. Don Leu, my advisor, studied under Jean Chall. You can’t get more edpsychy than Dr. Chall’s work in reading.
This created a tension in the project that was a microcosm on the field. Plus many iterations in the porject had nothing to do with design or learning but with political power. As an IES grant there were strict rules as to what counts as research. We handled this by building in Formative Design in Year Two and empirical testing in year three.
Yet we were in local contexts. You can’t control the noise. You have to embrace it.
I am currently engaged in a DBR project. Well I might have given up. Not really. Just put the iterations on hold.
The project, #QuestionTheWeb was designed to create a learning space to build the critical evaluation of websites and argumentative writing.
Long term I want to create something like this. Short term I just needed to develop the reading activities and pilot test biased think-alouds.
Once again real life impeded design. By the time I got the learning environment built and the Institutional Review Board approval I bumped into Smarter Balanced Testing. Every computer in most Connecticut tools is no longer available for learning they have to be used for testing.
So here is where I need your help. If anyone wants to give me feedback, do some cognitive labs, on the the Think Alouds I am open to it.
I learned that DBR can’t be done alone. This isn’t unique to me. I am a researcher at a teaching university. This means no doctoral students, no centers, no senior faculty to bounce ideas off of or study under. Everything I do I am often alone.
Then there is the whole 4/4 load. (I am lucky here as I have release time for Gear Up and this semester I was given 9 credits for research). The University gives me the space to work. What I need now is the community. We did start a STEM center (who hasn’t), and our new Provost wants to elevate research. Our new Dean is also focused on external funding. Capacity is developing on campus but I want to look outside.
I think the future of DBR has to be distributed. We open scholars need to network and develop our projects outside of the usual channels. We need to play and hack together.
I believe the problems we face and investigate are to big for one person and to complex for one discipline. You need developers, instructional designers, ethnographers, learning scientists, and someone to do the all the paperwork.
We need to design the future together.
I am a believer in open annotation. Recently John Udell asked me to join the Hypothes.is advisory team. Simply means I get to complain a little louder. I joke of course. I believe in annotation and I also think educators need to support developers who live in and protect the Open Web.
One of my first contributions was annotating John’s blog post on how two different users can annotate the same PDF even if one file is on the Web and the other file is opened as a local file (a really cool feature).
Dan Whaley joined the party first. What I quickly realized, and my apologies to John for using his work, was educators can use Hypothes.is as a editing and revising tool. Teachers can in fact host Asynchronous Peer Conferences within the annotations tools.
Annotating for revising is different than annotating for close reading. You are talking to the author and critiquing their work in public. Recognize this fact first. You may choose to make the annotations public or private in Hypothes.is.
Understand the difference between revision and editing. I revise with a hacksaw and edit with a scalpel. One focuses on ideas and the other on grammar.
In this example you can see the three of us suggesting that John may have missed a targeted audience.
This is not something we did on John’s post. The annotations are self-explanatory. Teachers though can use tags to track student knowledge growth. So for example in the last annotation I could have added a tag “audience awareness.” Then my teacher could assess my understanding of audience by not just looking at what I write but examining the feedback I leave for other authors.
I just discovered a great feature of Hypothes.is. You can see how the original author revised their posts. As long as the section was previously annotated you can examine the changes.
@jgmac1106 @judell The blog text has changed since annotated. ‘Show differences’ alerts you to that, and reveals the text as annotated
— Hypothes.is (@hypothes_is) April 14, 2015
For example I questioned John’s original writing about not including a screencast and disappointing the audience.
Then John updated the blog post
As teachers this can be an invaluable tool. You see the dialogical relationship between author and annotator.
The embedding needs to be better. When you click share you just get a url. Currently I have to use an iframe and fool around with the width percentage and the height to get the display correct. Parent annotations are not included. So I have to add in each separate annotation.
If I click share I should either get an iframe (yes security issues) or a script that I can embed. All nested replies should be included.
I have not played around with the private and public annotation. A nice feature would be visible only to author (if of course the author is a registered user) and to the teacher. This would require some kind of Teacher Dashboard (already talking to Jeremy Dean about hacking this together using the Stream…that is the next post).
