DD Shift

I am hearing the song “Trapeze Singer” by Iron and Wine. I don’t have a good link for it. The version that you get on their albums is awesome– and the version in the live show at NPR is also super. Once again, I never really thought about the lyrics until now…

I just played around with Google’s Sites feature. It seemed quite comparable to Wikispaces. You can select different themes, add text and media, organize pages, select templates… But, there is one option that really stuck out in my mind here. It is a real frustration that I have with both this blog and Wikispaces… You cannot indentX2 or X3 or X4 unless you muck around with the HTML. And, in the spirit of wiki, that is too slow for me. Google’s sites solves that little issue in no time flat. Does this mean that I am going to jump into the Google boat?

Not yet. I’m not convinced. It stresses me out that Google is this centralized online app powerhouse. I’m all for a loose federation of applications as opposed to a centralized suite of apps owned and supported by one vendor. Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach… I realize that. And, I don’t want to say much more on the subject at this time. Perhaps another day when I have more time…

I am hearing the song “Naked as We Came” by Iron and Wine. I never really thought about the lyrics until now.

My task this week was to review Google’s word processing application. I thought that it was a fine, rudimentary word processor. Here is my (quick) evaluation:

• Tables default to middle vertical alignment. It should be top. It would take additional training to help students understand where to look to fix this.
• Image placement is rudimentary. You can set alignment, but there is no behind-the-text alignment or free positioning of the image (at least not obviously).
• There are two views: “Normal (plain) view” and “Fixed-width page view”. The default is Normal… I prefer the Fixed-width.
• Hanging indentation missing.
• Copy and paste of image from one document to the Google document does not work. You have to go through the file menu to insert an image.
• It has spell check with any easy-to-select other languages (much easier than Microsoft Word)!
• It has word count. Very useful.
• It does do page numbers, but you cannot preview them as part of your in-work document. They are part of the print settings.
• You can add a header and a footer. Yay! But, you don’t have control over them from page-to-page. So, once you have set up a header and footer, you are stuck with it.
• I do like the idea that it automagically saves a version history for you.

I am hearing the song “David Duchovny” by Bree Sharp. It’s quite appropriate, actually, since the new X-Files film is opening soon. It’s really quite by accident I’m listening to the song, though. My husband left and took his computer (our normal source of music). I had to dig out my little guy (my old iBook and alternative, emergency source of music).

I have thought a little bit more about wikis from a teacher perspective. I did have my students put together a wiki earlier this school year. They were SO INTO IT with a few notable exceptions which I address in another post. But, when it came down to evaluating the blogs– even though I had a set of clear criteria by which to judge the quality of their work, it was difficult marking their work.

Why?

1. Instead of working directly in the wiki environment, students felt more comfortable typing up their work in a Word Processor and then copying and pasting. You couldn’t really use the history to see how much they contributed, so the dream of being able to see how much effort they put in was dashed…This is not too, too much of a problem. After all, for other types of group-based assignments, you do not have visibility of all of the group effort that went into the project. You can use the tried-and-true evaluate your and your group-members’ effort to get a feel for who really contributed.
2. Students, despite the fact that we covered copyright explicitly and were actually very conscientious about the media they used, still inadvertently used copyrighted materials in their work without citation. As a compensation, I sat down with each one to talk about the problems to help clarify the issues. For some, they didn’t even worry about the issues. For others, they had very good arguments as to why they thought the media they used was within their rights.One thing that I did was require them to cite their sources in MLA style (school standard). I have to rethink this. Citations in this format online seem unnatural. Perhaps in the school we could agree upon some citation strategy that ties more closely to hyperlinking (a more natural attribution method online).
3. Going through the pages (all 90 at the end of the project) took an insane amount of time. And, I felt that I did not give each of their pages justice. It was clear both from the history and the care with which they set up their pages that I should have spent more time there evaluating.This one is a struggle for me. I will have to think carefully about how to structure future projects like this so that it is:
   – more tightly organized so that it is easier to find student’s work, and
   – either control the way the pages are laid out or the number of pages that they are allowed to create.
   It’s tough for me to limit this way. I don’t think that it is natural for online wiki development– although I could most likely tie it to good user interface design. I will have to think about this more.

I was hearing the song, “Let the Mystery Be”. This is going to take a bit of explaining, and I want to remember this, so this entry will be dedicated simply to music.

Back in the 90’s sometime, Natalie Merchant was in concert. I think, technically, she was still with the 10000 Maniacs at the time. Ms. Merchant announced in the concert that they would be doing “MTV’s Unplugged” in a few weeks. Anyway, I found this CD at a random, off-the-beaten path music store a long, long time ago (store no longer exists). I paid about $40 for it. I gave it to my husband (who is a huge fan of hers). The concert itself is fine. They play a lot of their more popular music. But, there is an outstanding part where Ms. Merchant covers two songs:

1. “Everyday is Like Sunday” (by Steven Morrissey) – It is quite possibly the best cover I have heard of this song.
2. And, “Let the Mystery Be” by Iris Dement. It was the first time that I had heard this song.

I have looked up and down for that CD. It is gone, gone, gone (thanks to our many moves, I’m sure). But, on the CD Ms. Merchant asks for requests from the audience. People call out “Peace Train”, and she gives her little speech about why she does not sing that song, but she does follow up with “Let the Mystery Be” which she felt very good about singing…

I woke up with that song in my head– the live CD version. It is not the version that she later did live as a duet with David Byrne. Actually, in this concert CD she does a duet with a female singer. The singer does the harmony (and, very, very well, I might add).

So, I thought that I would look up Iris Dement. I can hear in my head Ms. Merchant saying Ms. Dement’s name quite clearly. One of the first hits that I saw was for Youtube for exactly this song… Hooray! I got to see what her voice sounds like.

I will admit, her interpretation is subtly different from Ms. Merchant’s. Ms. Dement’s version is a little more playful which actually adds character to the song. And, if you look at the lyrics, it quite a playful song. But, I do like how Ms. Merchant’s voice matches the song… I’m going to have to see if I can find if I have that song somewhere…

One of the side links at the Youtube site that caught my attention while listening to Ms. Dement. It was for a song that often gets stuck in my head: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. This link was a very different version that I am used to. I really like the beginning half of this version. Ms. Dement is one of the performers in this group. I will have to figure out where this came from and look at the other songs available on this album.

Looking in the Youtube links, I also found that this song has been covered by a ton of people. I do realize that it is a classic, but who knew? I would mention all of them, but this list would be too long. I have to say that I was taken by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon’s version. But, I think my favorite this morning has to be the one posted by Kikumasa00. They have pickers, fiddlers and the right attitude!! I love it!

My favorite version of all time, though, comes from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It’s actually from Volume 2 of their “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” album. It was recorded in 1972. It is a great album. According to Wikipedia, volume 1 was more widely acclaimed. I will have to check into it.

One of my favorite parts about the album is that you can listen to the commentary of the musicians in between the music. Maybelle Carter’s voice is unmistakable. Listening to the commentary, you kind of get the feeling that it wasn’t really a recording session, but rather a random get-together of few [great] musicians where they just happened to create something great. According to the Wikipedia article about this album, there was a little more conflict in the music scene of the time than comes out in the final cut.

I have the song “Virus Alert” by the great Weird Al Yankovic. I have spent two days working with people who have had some nasty viruses on their computers…

Naja, where was I? This week (actually the past two weeks) we have had to work on wikis in class as a group project. I think that’s perfectly fine as a project from a student perspective. The experience is fine as a project for class.

Since my group had never worked together before, and the majority had never worked on a wiki before, we weren’t really adept at developing a smooth process for communication and posting information. It wasn’t for lack of trying. That was, in fact, one of the things that we were supposed to do first. And, we did this to a certain extent. But, since we had never been through the whole process, it was hard to guage how to work together best.

I have actually had my students work on wikis in the classroom, but it was mostly individual work with very controlled updates from peers. I think that if I would have students work in groups on a wiki, I would set up fairly firm guidelines of “how” to do the wiki– how to interact, what the things that we must discuss before we develop a wiki from scratch, “finishing”. In this way, they would have at least one example of “how to” wiki.

So, what are the steps?

1. How will you communicate?
   – What communication tools are built into the Wiki?
   – Will you use email?
2. What research needs to be done before deciding on topics?
3. What are the major topics for the project? Who will take “responsibility” for those topics?
4. When is the first draft for the topics due?
5. What should the style of the wiki be?
   – Who is your audience?
   – What sort of language? Formal? Informal?
   – How will you organize the pages – one shorter pages with more links?
6. What about images?
   – What kind?
   – Where can we get them legally?
   – Who can create them, if necessary?
7. If we edit other group-members’ writings, how will we know what is ok to edit and what we should leave alone?

I’m not being critical of the way that we did this in our class. But, I think in working with younger students it is important to help work out how to manage a new type of teamwork scenario. I might do part of this by getting them to come up with some of the rules as a class. Or, I may simply give them guidelines and then have them check in at different points to make sure that they have it all defined. My approach would depend on the maturity of the class.

I did a quick online search looking for group work tips for wikis, and I came across this page from Seattle Pacific University on “Using Wikis in Collaborative Learning Projects“. If you look at the questions on this page, they are all answered in the Powerpoint that is linked on that page. The Powerpoint seems to agree with the things that I discuss above, and gives a couple of other items as food for thought.

I am hearing the song “Love Kills” by the Circle Jerks. Yes, this is part of my former-day teen-angst song list. And, it was in the movie “Feds“. One of my students actually has a t-shirt that says this on it.

I followed a Youtube link that Kelley Connolly recommended about How to Use OpenId. The introduction to OpenId is very easy to follow, and the concept seems very practical. From there, I also watched a presentation on Identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt which was very interesting. He was presenting about the same issues that I have recently identified in my blog about over-bloggedness. In the end he identifies a number of other options to OpenId and during the course of the presentation he identifies why Passport (Microsoft’s original attempt at universal, single signon) didn’t work.

I think that I am ready to try the OpenId. I do have concerns about security. The concept seems simple. You log into one site and then you use that login in several sites. At the different sites that support OpenId you have the option to use your OpenId user name. You enter that and are taken to your OpenId site, you tell the OpenId site that you want to allow this application to access your credentials, and then you are in.

I have four concerns:

1. How does this work on public terminals? When does my OpenId login session end? Does it vary from OpenId to OpenId provider? Or, is there a standard that is enforced? What do I need to know as a user to protect myself?
2. In transmitting data from the OpenId provider to the other, is it transfered with at least https?
3. As a school IT administrator, do I host my own OpenId service? Or, do I rely on one of the providers that are out there? How, as an educator, do I ensure that my students and their data is “safe” if I go with an external provider? Admittedly, using an external provider would be less administrative overhead for me.
4. Is OpenId here to stay? I looked at the OpenId site, and they have a page dedicated to listing all of the sites that use OpenId. There are currently over 10,000.

I am hearing the song “These Eyes” by Guess Who. Why this popped into my head, I will never know.

One of my favorite independent filmers of all times is Robjn Taylor. He and his friends have a blog. I’m marking it for posterity and convenience here. He put together a film back in the day called Pistachio Pudding. I have to grin when I say this film is inspiring.

I am hearing the song, “What a Difference a Day Makes” by Dinah Washington. I first heard that song in the context of the movie “Lola Rennt” years ago. My colleague evilly said to me this afternoon, “what a difference a year makes,” then she looked at me directly. I couldn’t stop it… “24 little hours” filled my head. She knew I would be trapped into the song…

So, I started looking into ways to simplify things for my kids. I noticed at some of the blog/wiki providers that are out there, they have this thing called OpenId. I started looking into it… It looks like a way to have one login and password for many different sites (blogs, wikis, etc). I haven’t figured out exactly how to set it up yet, but that is just a matter of time…

I am hearing the song (quite against my will) “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne.

I found a cool blog that gave me some inspiration to learn more about the blue/green screen in filming. The blog is called Knight Shift. Mr. Knight spent some time with a group of elementary school kids and did some creative things with it. I have seen tutorials on how to use the screen with one of the pieces of software that I have, but I wasn’t inspired until I saw his blogs on the matter. I think I will try it out this summer!!  I need a relaxing project.

I am hearing the song Sweet Dreams covered by my grade 9 students on our recent trips. I think they were covering the Marilyn Manson (scary) version. He was covering the original Eurythmics version.

In our readings for class, I came across an article from the Washington Post about teachers and social networking sites. I’m one of those teachers. Here is an article on the topic from NEA. What is my online responsibility as a teacher?

I have to admit: I am hyper-careful with my social networking presence. At the first hint of anything inappropriate, I delete without thought. But, I have to ask myself, is that how I want to live my life? In general, I want to be out there in the social networking world to keep up with friends. I have found a unique side motivation: to model good online behavior for my students.

But, there are some days (like today) when that is not so easy. I want to come home and broadcast to the world this thing that I have to say. I want to be sarcastic, derogatory, ironic and vulgar. I want my words to sting the page. I want my social network to ask me why. I want the cathartic freedom of flaming in cyberspace- but, wait, I’m a teacher.

As a teacher I realize that I only feel this way because I do not have the immediate social feedback that I would have if I would be venting in a circle of colleagues. As a teacher I know that the barrage of insults and accusations that I would feel compelled to post would not be professional, nor would they be productive in affecting change.

As a teacher in the social networking frontier, do you need to be on your best behavior? Should you model the “right” behaviors online all of the time? Or, do you get to shed your teacher facade every once in a while and just be human?