RCWP AI tech blogging community

Hi all,

A quick thought from Ottawa, Canada where I'm with family (coincidentally celebrating Canada Day; the streets are packed). These are the fireworks from on top our hotel parking lot.

Here's the thought I'm reiterating from our last day together: some of us talked about continuing our "tech team" through a blogging community, which for me is an exciting and potentially promising platform to share and dialogue about ideas that got started during the AI.

Consider this if I didn't successfully convert you during the week. :) Subscribe to each others blog (you can find them on our wiki http://rcwp08techai.wetpaint.com/ by clicking on the RSS icon (typically the little orange icon to the far right of the URL) and adding it to your new RSS reader (Bloglines or Google Reader). New posts will by like reading a local community digital newspaper. You can do the same with Flickr accounts, wikis and any other website you find valuable that has an RSS feed.

What a tremendous institute from my perspective. I'm wondering if in fact I gained more than the participants; I'm as enthused as I remember being leaving Chico last year after NWP's Tech Matters institute. Thank you all.

And you'll have one reader for sure. :)
John

Advanced Institute for Technology and Literacy

My first post to this blog in months. We've started our RCWP Advanced Institute for Technology and Literacy using a Wetpaint wiki as our primary tool of communication together. Check it out if you have time http://rcwp08techai.wetpaint.com

Tech Matters 07

Paige Cole with facilitator Peter Kittle and our friends Joe and Susan from Rutgers Writing Project

Howdy Red Clay,

Before too much time passes, I want to share a little about our experiences at NWPs Tech Matters institute. Paige Cole and I flew out to Chico, CA in mid-July for 4 days of mingling with other writing project folks interested in technology and writing. Heaven, right? I just wish more of you could have joined us. Imagine a summer institue about technology/writing crammed into 4 days (that's supposed to sound good, btw).

We had time to explore technologies (i.e., free online apps like Google Docs, Flickr, Wikispaces, VoiceThread) and talk about their relevance for our teaching and our lives. It's my hope that we can bring these conversations back to Red Clay and share with you some of the ideas and technologies we found exciting.


Paige and I are in the process of writing a minigrant proposal to help fund a tech learning community, and we'd like to invite you to join this tech team. If you're interested, contact me directly (johnny@uga.edu) or respond here on the blog. Enjoy the remaining days of summer!

Web 2.0

Like many, I’m thinking much about the Web 2.0 buzz and it’s relevance for education. I’ve been a little overwhelmed since my return from NWP’s Tech Matters institute in Chico, both by a desire to become proficient with some of these new tools (i.e., blogs, RSS feeds) and by some of the big ideas behind online “learning networks,” many that challenge the traditional academic hierarchies I'm navigating through. About the former, I’ve been almost paralyzed by the thought that our tech team is scheming a plan to introduce/explore Web2.0 with any interested teachers in our local writing project area. Right now I can hardly make it through a morning without getting lost in the Edublogosphere or trying to explore what some of these online apps can do. There’s just a tremendous amount of stuff going on out there, and I’m dogpaddling. Thankfully, my paralysis was loosened somewhat by a recent Dave Warlick blog about Web 2.0

My goal is not to assure that all of the teachers in my audiences know what a blog is, what RSS is, how to create a wiki, or even publish a podcast. Hell, that’s all going to change anyway. My goal is to convince educators and education stakeholders to understand that these incremental advances in technology have affected our information experience. It has become far more participatory, reader controlled, and it conducts human interactions in ways that were never possible before — and it is having profound affects on many aspects of our culture.

Funny, I sat down to write about D.U.S.T.Y. and Tech Matters and never made it there.