Wednesday, October 21, 2009
National Standards - It's About Time!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Bloggers Unite for a FREE IRAN on Mon. June 29th
Source: http://www.bloggersunite.org
Objective:
Bloggers Unite for a FREE IRAN on Mon. June 29th.
Bloggers Unite to support Human Rights in Iran on Monday June 29th.
Violence, arrests, crackdowns and media blackouts continue to increase in Iran in the aftermath of the recent presidential elections.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests
To discuss this event: http://www.bloggersunite.org/discuss/entry/what-can-we-do-to-help-in-iran
Tweeting? Use Hash Tag #FreeIran
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Reflections On This Class and My Project
Alyson - I also posted info on my project to your "inbox" on the class web. Thanks for all your help and insight!
Dan
Friday, May 1, 2009
Wrapping Up "Digital Media in the Classroom"
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Print vs. Blog: The Many Faces of Cultural Journalism
Print vs. Blog: The Many Faces of Cultural Journalism
Village Voice Publisher Michael Cohen, Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, Alana Taylor of Mashable.com and Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist, discuss the current state of arts and cultural journalism. Has the rise of online periodicals and cultural blogs eroded arts reporting? Will alternative print newspapers survive the economic downturn? What will arts aficionados read in the years to come? Join us for this fascinating look at the changing landscape of arts journalism.
Political Twittering, Kindle Snobbery & more
My latest blog post is here. I'm beginning a series called "This Week in Social Media". Today's topics are Political Twittering, Kindle Snobbery and more...
Enjoy!
-Robin
A Twitter Love Story
A Twitter Love Story
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Blog postings
Here are my last two blog postings.
This is the video I created in class on Saturday: me on Digital Media in the Classroom.
This is my posting that I created based on my shadowing experience yesterday: My Life as a Shadow - Part IV.
-Robin
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
YouTube Symphony Observations
Posted some observations on last week's YouTube Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall. Looking forward to seeing everyone on Saturday.
Dan
Cloud Computing...
http://www.glidedigital.com/
Social Media Part 2: The Effect on Education
The second installment of this post is now up. Check out the Social Media Effect on Education.
-Robin
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Social Media Part 1: In the News
My latest blog posting on Social Media. For our Music Ed teachers, there's a little something in it just for you... Please use IE if you want to view the embedded video. It doesn't seem to work in Firefox.
-Robin
Exercise Your Right To Vote
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Webby WebQuests
Webby WebQuests
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Facebook Music Video
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Thoughts on the class and final project ideas
Now whether we as individuals used these tools consistently or sporadically, we thought it important that through collective inquiry we would not only collaboratively explore but question the meaning and the organization of our thoughts over these past weeks. From speaking with most of you privately and in our live sessions we learned this has been a real challenge! We had hoped to use this blog as a collaborative ‘classroom’ space to discuss various questions posed from week to week, and to have you use your personal blogs to develop your final projects, spurred by the readings, sites given at the outset, and your visions for the potential of these tools. In not all cases did it seem clear to everyone where comments should be posted or what the differences were(even when we’d say reply here to the weekly classroom questions!). So organization of our content on the class blog was our clear challenge to explore for future classes.
In addition, as TC doesn’t offer a robust enough online learning/dissemination space, our use of tools was relegated to those in a commercial domain (Facebook for social networking has gone commercial, and Blogger is owned by Google, though Twitter for status updating is not for profit and there were many more possibilities for platforms discussed in our latest online session). School teachers face the same issues and more…some school districts entirely ban these tools from their networks which causes real barriers to those early adopters among you who want to teach using them. So a project which explores tools and barriers to their use would be a helpful project exploration.
In last week’s email, Howie sent invitations to try our site on Ning, and hopefully some of us will be able to contribute their thoughts on the differences, benefits and drawbacks. (This would be an appropriate project too by the way.)
We also thought it might be helpful that this part of our investigation and project follow through should give consideration to the initial questions posed in the syllabus based on the following premise; that a broadened spectrum of digital learning technologies brings along new possibilities for transnational education across cultural boundaries. Which of these tools holds the most promise to you? … this topic was the essential question with which to explore on your blog as a project foundation.
Social Networking and Communities of Inquiry
If social networking spaces such as facebook, Second Life, G-Chat, IM, Twitter, and YouTube, alongside handheld devices, cell phones, text messaging, email and voice mail -- have become an integral part of the lives of young people looking for new ways to engage in online digital sociability, we asked how education might tap into that collective and devoted this blog space as a community of inquiry to discuss this and other issues.
A community of inquiry depends on sustained communication and collaboration so that participants can share their insights- it is both a collaborative and iterative experience that prepares students for planned as well as unintended paths. Collaborative inquiry goes past simply accessing and incorporating information , and this concept seems a bit out of the comfort zone for many. One of the first articles by Prensky may have at the outset seemed to describe any number of us as digital natives. At the end of this class are you still in agreement with your initial opinion of where you fall in his continuum? Those of you who are interested in reconsidering might want to explore counter arguments to Prensky’s paper from David Buckingham in Children of the Technology Age? an article in the Electronic Journal of Communication (1998), Beyond Technology (2007) and Neil Selwin’s article Digital Native, Myth and Reality: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9775892/Digital-Native for your final project.
According to Dewey, educational inquiry is an iterative process of investigating problems and issues, not just memorizing solutions. Inquiry focuses on intended goals and outcomes that are self guided, self directed and task based. Our task at hand for the project asked us to:
1- Define the question(s) posed in the original syllabus as they pertain to your own experiences with Web 2.0 and social networking tools.
2- Search for relevant information and use the tools as an experiential base
3- Formulate new solutions, assimilate the uses you see modeled elsewhere
4- Apply those solutions as appropriate to a lesson plan or concept for using the tools
5- Reflect on solutions through discourse here and on your blogs
We also began and will end with the following quote from educational philosopher Maxine Greene:
“Passions, then engagements, and imagining. I want to find a way of speaking of community, an expanding community that will take shape as people speaking as who, not what they are, come together in speech and action, as Arendt puts it, to constitute something in common among themselves.” (Maxine Greene as quoted in Baldacchino, 2008)
As Greene’s notion of community implies taking the risk of imagination it was hoped that this class would be that imaginative space for inquiry and for sharing your ideas. What were the successes or challenges for you?
Referenced information on collaborative inquiry from: Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines
D. Randy Garrison, Norman D. Vaughan
Old Growth Media and the Future of News:
http://tinyurl.com/bq2tu8 and then the update to the speech written recently:
An excerpt: today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
You Tube and Colleges: Link to the Net
College classroom doors open on YouTube, offering free taste of higher education
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/On-the-Net-College-too-apf-14891018.html
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Facebook Revolt
Live Mobile Blogging Application on BlackBerry App World
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CellSpin-Launches-Video-Audio-prnews-14868918.html
Monday, April 6, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
I'm Still Here
How Tweet It Is
I found this article and thought you would all like to read it, especially those of you who are still unsure about why you would want to use Twitter. It's an interesting read about how Twitter was founded and what it is has become. For me, the most compelling line of the article is this: "To its loyal users, Twitter is an invaluable part of their daily lives." I'm not quite there yet, but I can see myself using it daily as an educator.
Text messaging vs. phone calls
A few thoughts... as text messaging of lots of teens can approach and exceed 1,000 texts per month and minutes are limited to 450-600 per month are we now implying that speaking and verbal person to person communication are going to fall behind?
What is it about this kind of immediacy that might lead to some out of the box thinking about the propensity to use these types of devices for communication?
So if you want to get important information to someone fast you know what to do! http://tinyurl.com/6kvkgg
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The 6 stages of Twitter media coverage hell
The 6 stages of Twitter media coverage hell
http://burnurl.com/CaZVuq
Next Online Session Scheduled for Tuesday April 7th
Sunday, March 29, 2009
This week's social media thoughts
Also, in the same Facebook article, regarding facebook's connectivity, Mr. Zuckerberg recalls the story of Claus Drachmann, a schoolteacher in northern Denmark who became a Facebook friend of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s prime minister. The teacher invited his Prime Minister to speak to his class of special-needs children; and the prime minister did just that.
Do stories like this illustrate facebook’s power to cut through arbitrary social barriers or are they just good fodder for publicity ? Zuckerberg says “This represents a generational shift in technology,” and adds, “To me, what is interesting was that it was possible for a regular person to reach the prime minister and that that interaction happened.” Do you agree that this is more than a random exception or does this medium really allow for the public to get closer than ever to representation?
For other articles about participatory media this week in Sunday's NY Times you might want to check out 3 articles: the Wikipedia story from the Week in Review section, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/weekinreview/29cohen.html
the one about the fact that widespread anger and collective passivity exist side by side: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/opinion/29venkatesh.html
and and the article on Facebook's growing personality... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/internet/29face.html
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Adobe Connect session
Is anyone else having trouble logging in? It keeps giving me a message that the host has ended the meeting...
-Robin
What about the Prez Virtual 'Town Hall'?
Is it the same message or different way its put forward that makes it important?
Is it what President Obama says or are the nature of the questions asked more important because its the public asking the questions instead of the media?
Can they discern the central interests of the public via questions posed on the internet?
Is it a 'sense' of participation or is it true participation?
What does the internet offer that network television doesn't? Is this 'transparency' in government?
Does the president risk overexposure?
Based on the Network television election coverage can you make comparisons to our discussion this week on Web 1.0 vs. 2.0?
What can we learn from this online virtual Town Hall experience? Is learning more interactive this way and how can we convert this experience to our own practice as educators?
Watch it on http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and lets hear from you!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
More on Web 2.0 tools
You can also check out my entry all about Twitter.
Week 3 Web 1.0 vs. 2.0
Web 1.0 is more a technology of static web-sites; one
supplies many.
Web 2.0 is a participatory read and write s in practice based on open-source software, where content is provided by the users and the platforms on which to share it comes from Web publishers.
Differences between Web 1.0 and 2.0:
http://leighhouse.typepad.com/advergirl/2007/10/web-10-vs-web-2.html
A graphic representation:
http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/08/18/web-10-vs-web-20-the-visual-difference/
A Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BAXvFdMBWw&feature=related
Thoughts to ponder on the class blog this week:
The range is from ‘accessible’ to ‘personal’ and ‘expert voice’ to ‘peer credible’ – the web learning that’s available and can be categorized Web 1.0 and 2.0 each have its benefits and its drawbacks. Using the examples from Advergirl, the graphic and the video above, as well as your knowledge gained from using various sites, share your thoughts on the positives and negatives for the concepts behind web 1.0 and 2.0.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A small digression about Twitter
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Marc Prensky- Digital Natives
In terms of legacy and future, a classroom can benefit from the introduction of new learning techniques that rely both on the utilization of philosophical reasoning, abstract thinking and logical analyses, and visual, fast-paced, immediate-goal-oriented techniques.
Social networks can facilitate the process of feedback from peers, exposure of ideas etc. Inter-connectedness can lead to the development of knowledge and skills that belong both in the legacy and future category. Social networks and interconnectedness can be the means and the end in themselves. Means to the spreading, feedback and exposure or traditional/nontraditional types of thinking and the end of improving the quality of communication.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Feedburner
Last night we had a great online chat. For those of you who missed it we suggest checking out the recording here:
http://webconf.tc.columbia.edu/p97183472/
Among some of the questions that came up, from this week's activities a few might have become overwhelmed by all the things feedburner offers .
On Saturday April 25th we are all meeting live, and our guest Richard Jochum will illustrate the benefits of feedburner. This program becomes an important addition when using video and audio podcasting because it helps them syndicate correctly through a program called 'smartcast'. Hopefully the assets of feedburner will register with everyone when he does these elements together.
For a sneak peek at this go to http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/000812.html and look for the FAQ's
Thursday, March 12, 2009
On Prensky article's

Hi everyone,
After reading the 2 articles by Prensky, I was inspired to add a post to my blog. Why? Because I don't believe that there is a clear line that defines a digital native versus an immigrant. In fact, I believe that I am in fact a digital nagrant. I put together a little chart to show you why I think so.
Click on the image to go to my blog and read more...
-Robin
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Random thread for random yet great info on social media to pass on
here's one from the WSJ online: Mars Snackfood says it redesigned the site to better connect with its core teenage audience, which spends a lot of time using social media. "The teen audience relies heavily on their peers for advice on products. This is a unique, unexpected way to engage and to be a part of the conversation," says spokesman Ryan Bowling.
Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media
Candy's Site Is Built on Consumer-Created Content From Twitter, Facebook on WSJ site: http://tinyurl.com/dcoc32
Sunday March 8-14 Lesson 2
This week March 8-14: ‘Feedburner’, ‘Add This’ and ‘RSS Feeds’
We will subscribe to a number of other blogs and ‘feeds,’ and allow others to follow and subscribe to our sites.
What are RSS feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.
Activities: to sign up for RSS feeds, making blogrolls and for this week's specific readings have been mailed to your columbia email accounts. Postings to these questions are due by Thursday morning March 12 so we can use them in our conversation March 12 evening. Please adhere to deadlines.
1. For this week, questions to respond to are based on some of the questions that come up with respect to creating blogrolls and using RSS feeds. How do they work and what are the benefits of adding them to my site? How can i use them as a classroom resource and to my blog's best advantage? Reply to this question after engaging in the readings and signing up for them.
2. Question 2 comes from classmate Brownie (http://djb44tc.blogspot.com/) who is posing his based on increasing student collaboration in the teaching of Music. Suggestions and responses to his questions and comments posted on his very thoughtful blog should be posted here as a reply:
how can we help one another to envision "collaboration with students to develop a model for online communication and reflection that gives students a more active role in the direction of daily rehearsals."
(please note, the following week March 15-21 there will be no formal lecture/activity for spring break though you may continue to post here and to your blogs)
Introduction
My name is Javon. I'm a in the Intensive Masters program for Technology and Education. I'm taking the class to get up to date and learn the various sites that people are using for personal and educational reasons. I'm not currently teaching, but when I get back into the classroom I want to be well equipped to teach my students. We are living in a age where this is part of their daily socialization so to be able to use it in an educational form is great.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
A couple of interesting videos on social networks
Social Networks: Everyone Knows Everything About Everyone:
http://fora.tv/2009/02/18/Conversational_Marketing_Conference#Social_Networks_Everyone_Knows_Everything_About_Everyone
Danah Boyd on Social Networks and Immersive Environments:
http://fora.tv/2008/07/04/Danah_Boyd_on_the_MySpace__Facebook_Phenomena_1_of_3#chapter_01
Oops
brownied again -
Here is the link to my blog so you don't have to copy and paste...
http://djb44tc.blogspot.com/
My Blog and Intro
Dan Brown (brownied) here, and I recently set up my blog.
http://djb44tc.blogspot.com/
You'll find my intro there. Look forward to working with everyone!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Facebook vs. Twitter: How will you stream your world?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10189959-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
EAP
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Marc Prensky, Social Networks and Interconnectedness
— 1. How can we re-envision the educational potential which exists in the burgeoning number of social networks – the new media of interconnectedness? What role, if any do they play in education?
To answer this I started with a definition of social networks. I like this definition from LenovoSocial: "Social networks connect people, not just information. They power interaction instead of delivering information, giving participants the opportunity to do almost anything they would in a physical community via the Internet." Coupling this with some of the concepts I've learned in my Cognition courses, students (and people in general) learn best (remember more, transfer more) when they learn concepts in real-world situations with hands-on exploration. Sounds like a perfect match to me. Social networks, and their interconnectedness of peers and experts alike, offer a unique opportunity for educators to bring the classroom outside the school. Leverage the multitudes of virtual learning environments, imaginary worlds, multimedia self-publishing tools, interactive educational games and more to deliver an engaging teaching platform that develops higher level thinking skills critical for 21st century learners.
— 2. What has been the wider social, educational, cultural, and political impact of these new media for inter-connectedness?
In some ways I think this can be summarized best by Obama's campaign platform of CHANGE. I honestly believe that one of the biggest contributors to his win was that he was the first candidate ever to run a campaign on Facebook, Twitter and other social tools. Ok, maybe this wasn't the only way he won, but he did capture the votes of many Digital Native voters through these mechanisms. Political campaigns will never again be sucessfull without using these new social interconnectedness tools. The impact goes far wider than just politics though. As Prensky indicates in "The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native", these new media effects the way the future will communicate, share, shop, exchange, create, meet, learn, evolve and develop. his can't help but influence social, educational and cultural aspects of society. Another way that I see this interconnected already changing society is through the intense passion Digital Natives have for environmental cleanup and ecological reform. There are so many online conversations and organizations focused in this important area that it's easy for people to get connected to other people who care about these "Green" issues. More is yet to come...
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Robin on Social Media - Part I
Enjoy!
-Robin
Introduction
I just wanted to let you know that I just posted my introduction on my personal blog. Check it out! Looking forward to learning all about you too.
-Robin
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Evan Willams at TED 2009
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html
Friday, February 27, 2009
Anyway, check out this blog post...
A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter
For week 1:
Assignment For week 1 Personal site:
1. Create a personal and/education related blog at http://www.blogger.com
2. On your personal blog: Post an introduction of yourself and some thoughts about why you are taking this class, the experience you bring to the group and provide some insights on the potential for social and digital media in your class. upload a small photo if you'd like. Please do take the time to read and respond to your classmates.
During the week:
3. Complete readings and use them to inform your responses to the questions posed above (to be posted on this class site). Instead of the main discussion board in Blackboard we will use this as a class blog where we will discuss as a group your posts regarding the use of social media.
4. Sign up for the various sites listed here
The following are some suggestions of sites to sign up with and try for yourself. In Blackboard you will find a document labeled signups which will list them in full description. Some of you may already participate in a few of these social media, so for the purpose of this class if you have a personal Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) account and want to separate your thoughts in another account that covers the course topic areas feel free to start another blogsite...otherwise keep and build upon your current site.
Except for a blog you are not required to sign up for every single one of these listed here, but you should have familiarity with the ‘experience’ of participating in ‘like’ sites. After all, your blogsite should be logging your thoughts about your daily use or ‘ingestion’ of these social media outlets to place yourselves in the experience. Be sure if you don’t decide to sign up for Twitter, to sign up for one of its ‘like’ counterparts (facebook does include one but the experience is very different, especially because Twitter uses simple SMS (text messaging) which connects you from your phone.
The object is to create an awareness of your own use; do you feel more connected or isolated by the experience? Use questions driven from your own thoughts and those from the class discussions.
Suggestions to sign up for: (For full descriptions and weblinks you can google them or see the class blackboard site for a word document labeled signups)
Lenovo Social
Twitter
Facebook
Ning
Flixwagon or QIK
Seesmic
Flick'r
Feedburner
Twhirl
TeacherTube
YouTube
Ushahidi
TC Digital Media Blog
A broadened spectrum of digital learning technologies brings along new possibilities for education across cultural boundaries.
If social networking spaces such as facebook, Second Life, G-Chat, IM, Twitter, and YouTube, alongside handheld devices, cell phones, text messaging, email and voice mail -- have become an integral part of the lives of young people looking for new ways to engage in online digital sociability, how can education tap into that collective? New studies on Internet and social media tools reveal their affinity for mobile, untethered and social opportunities for interaction and cite their current uses to communicate, gather and share information.
Our first week's questions to respond to, from your own experience and the readings provided:
Mark Prensky writing in Digital Natives, Digital Narratives articles comments on students as opposed to those teaching them:
"Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
— 1. How can we re-envision the educational potential which exists in the burgeoning number of social networks – the new media of interconnectedness? What role, if any do they play in education?
— 2. What has been the wider social, educational, cultural, and political impact of these new media for inter-connectedness?
We will experiment with social networking tools and learn to locate specific audiences in order to critically experience and discuss the possibilities and limitations for personal use and within an educational setting.
Short post on ‘Why Social Networks are good for the kids:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/24/why-social-networks-are-good-for-the-kids/
Final Assignment:
Students are being asked to
1. Join a blogging network such as blogger, set up a blogsite and post your thoughts and experiences there. Students are required to post a minimum of three posts per week on your personal/professional blog.
2. You will receive an invitation to join this blog. Discussions will be shared on this site and students are required to post responses to questions (provided by the instructors) here.
All one-credit students will complete a project or design a blogsite describing a plan for incorporating digital media and/or social media into school curriculum. The setting for the project might be the school the student actually teaches in, or a hypothetical school situation and you may use your blog site to create and promote this assignment. These descriptions should be informed by readings and class discussions, and should provide a rationale for using media in the classroom, a description of the media to be used, and a discussion of how these media would fit into a school setting. Projects will be due after the workshop date of April 25th, on Sunday May 3rd by midnight.