The Thinking Stick » network

2,669 Downloads of Reach!

Jeff Utecht — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:43:34 +0000

Thank you for helping to support the launch of my first book Reach.

Here are the final numbers of the downloads in case you were wondering.

This Blog: 2,151

Completely blew away any expectations I had on giving away the book. I appreciate your support, your comments, and your help in getting the word out about Reach.

Sharing Podcasts across your Network

Jeff Utecht — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:52:44 +0000

I had an idea the other day (don’t laugh…I do get them once in awhile!) that seems to be paying off.

We have these nice older iMacs sitting in our ES HUB (a.k.a. Library). We use one to sync our 10 iPods that the PTA bought for us last year and….well….that’s it. It’s sitting there with a 150GB hard drive and all that’s on it are audiobook files.

So I had and idea while running the other day that I could download podcasts to that machine and then share the library over the internal network so that any teacher or student could access them. In doing this we allow students and teachers access to the podcasts for learning, but do not take up precious space on their local machine’s hard drives. Students…who can’t save anything locally to the laptop cart machines, would still have access to the wealth of information in the podcasts.

This is legal….as far as I know…because the podcasts are all free to begin with. We are not sharing any music or the audiobooks that are on that machine. We’re only sharing the podcasts.

So here’s how I did it:

On a Mac: Go to iTunes- Preferences
On a PC: (I believe it is Tools-Options)

Now we’re lucky as on our computer image we already had checked “Look for Shared Libraries” on all our machines. So by sharing this one library it automatically appears for the users.

Here’s what they see:

Then of course comes the fun part of finding podcasts (and putting out a call to teachers on what podcasts they like). So far here is what we’ve added.

(All links are to iTunes Store…click on them will take you to iTunes where you can subscribe for free to these podcasts)

1. Apple Quick Tips: A must have for any Apple School (do a search in iTunes…no store link)!
2. TEDTalks Video: We have some teachers addicted to these!
3. Students Teaching Students: Our very own podcast from 5th Graders.
4. CNN Student News: Found this while looking through the store…looks good!
5. SUPER WHY!: From PBS for kids (Great website as well).
6. Teaching with SmartBoards: Great videos…we have a SmartBoard in every room…do I need to say more.
7. SOS Podcast: Yes shameless self promotion…but hey I’m making the list!

So that’s where I’ve started. Anything else you would recommend adding to the list? Remember the audience is Teachers and Students.

The last thing I need to figure out is some way to organize them as they just come in as a stream with the newest download on top.

I’m pretty excited about this. A great way to spread PD across a school.

Offloading Knowledge

Jeff Utecht — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:49:38 +0000

As I’ve been reading the book Knowing Knowledge the concept that George Siemens presents of offloading content and information into the network is finding a place with me.

I’ve been thinking about this for days now and how my netvibes page has become my network of information. No longer do I have to learn something just in case, but instead the skill of being able to find information when I need it is what I need to learn how to do.

Today was a great example. I’m getting a teacher all excited about creating digital stories. We were talking about me coming into the classroom to teach the students how to create the stories when I remembered that I really don’t know the ins and outs of Photostory3, the program we’ll be using. But I do know where to go to find that information. So a quick check of my PLN and my network of information and I found my del.icio.us bookmark to David Jakes Photostory 3 Tutorials.

It’s this notion of offloading information into the network that makes, in my opinion, RSS feeds to be the #1 best web 2.0 tool for everyday users, and should be the #1 tool we start with when teaching teachers. Once you are connected to nods of information, and understanding how those nods create a personal network for you, do you take the next step and start becoming a nod for others.

It would be interesting to see how many people started reading and collecting their nods of information before they became a nod themselves. I remember setting up a Bloglines account and adding feeds. Once I saw how amazingly cool this new tool was I was hooked and 3 weeks later I started this blog. I wanted to take this new network of information I was creating and add to it, remix thoughts, and add my voice to the conversation. Some people feel that way, others just read or read and comment using their network. Blogging isn’t for everyone (as much as I push everyone to do it) some people just don’t feel comfortable with it. (Fair enough, I don’t feel comfortable reading books)

So as my first semester technology classes come to a close I’m starting to think about how I want second semester to run. I’m dropping Moodle all together in favor of the WordPress MU site I just finished setting up earlier today, and of course I have a blog on the new network as well. (Just what I needed….another blog). The first couple sessions of class we will set up our personal learning network. We’ll probably use netvibes as I have found kids really like the interface and being able to add other tabs for themselves once they get into it is a plus. Once we have our network and our nods on that network established we’ll set up blogs. I’m looking forward to this, the possibilities for students to make more digital stories and embed them in their blogs, to create podcasts for assignments, oh the fun.

On thing that I started doing this semester was taking the first 10 minutes of every class for students to read through their network (RSS aggregator via Elgg). We then do a “What’s New” session where we talk about anything cool the students found while they were reading. Everything from the latest music release, to Google buying YouTube have been topics. The students enjoy it, and we get to discuss different items relevant to them every class period. If I were a Language Arts teacher, this would definitely be a daily routine. Think of the exposure these students are getting to the written word. CNN, BBC, and TechCrunch are three very popular sites the kids get their news from. Some days I give student time to write on their blogs about the news they’ve found, why they found it interesting and what it means to them. Being in a culturally diverse class makes it even more fascinating. As one boy from America follows the New England Patriots so we frequently get updates on how his team is doing. One of my Filipino girls follows the news out of the Philippines, another out of India.

It’s this notion of moving knowledge to the network that should relax some people. I get teachers all the time come to me and say “I can’t possibly learn it all” and you shouldn’t. Allow the network to work for you, we are still caught thinking we need to “know it all” when what we really need is to “Know how to find it”. That’s a change for education. As George Siemens put it:

The content needs to be findable at the learner’s point of need, as compared to learning being provided just-in-case. p. 37

We need to help students and teachers build these networks of findable knowledge and quit teaching just-in-case knowledge. Your network will gather the information for you…you just need to know how to find it.

[tags]Knowing Knowledge, George Siemens, offloading Knowledge, nods, network, RSS, photostory3[/tags]

Technorati Tags: Knowing Knowledge, George Siemens, offloading Knowledge, nods, network, RSS, photostory3