Category: Social Web

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PressED: A Global WordPress Conference on Twitter

PressED header

I’m excited to be selected as presenter at “PressED: A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter.” PressED is a global Twitter conference (#pressedconf18) looking into how WordPress is used in teaching, pedagogy and research. The focus will be on how university-based educators and their students are innovating with WordPress. See PressEdConference18: Presenters Twitter List

Even if you’re not interested in that specific topic – you should check out this cool way to organize a conference on Twitter. It will take place on March 29th from 10am (BST / GMT+1) to 10pm (BST / GMT+1) onwards. My session PBL with Digital Storytelling Tools will start at 12:20PM (Pacific Time).

The conference is made up of sessions. Each session at the conference is based on 10-15 tweets in a fifteen minute period. Presenters can add videos, gifs, slides, links or whatever they like to their tweets.

Submissions for sessions are closed, but you can also take part by following the hashtag (#pressedconf18) for the day – or at any time after the conference has happened. When a session finishes, there’ll be a chance to ask questions.

 

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Social Media Promised a Voice For All, Instead We Got Troll Farms

This is a remix of UP Tech Talk S06E02: Trolls, Tales, Twitter, and Thoughts – my conversation with cohosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb of UP’s Academic Technology Services

My preface: I grew up in a different media environment in the fifties and sixties. My information flow was controlled by big corporate media gatekeepers – network TV, record industry, newspapers, magazines, Hollywood.  I taught a media studies class in the seventies and eighties. It was all very McLuhan – how TV was shaping our thought.

When the digital revolution (and later social media) came along, my first reaction: “This is great. The barriers to entry are down and the media gatekeepers are dying off.” I was publishing print on demand paperbacks and later multi-touch eBooks with my students. I was blogging, posting “how-to” videos on my own YouTube playlists and excited to network on Twitter chats with colleagues. I was advocating for my students to do the same – be content creators, not just consumers. 

I thought that social media would emerge as a low-barrier way for people to share information and that the “best content” would rise in a “marketplace of ideas.” But now I realize that because of the algorithms, we’re not in a common media space. We say we’re on Facebook, but the Facebook that I see is different than the Facebook that somebody else sees. The social media business models hype “engagement” and the most outrageous content rises to the top. Trolls and bots further game the algorithms and we end up awash in “junk” news.

Maria, Ben and I discussed the current state of social media, where we’ve been and where we’re heading.

Peter, Maria and Ben

“WW III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” ~ Marshall McLuhan, “Culture Is Our Business”, 1970, p. 66

Here’s a collection of essential reading on the subject

Made with Padlet

Image credit:  Adobe Spark  – UnSplash / ian dooley @nativemello

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Classroom Tech: When Less is More

I recently was a guest on the UP Tech Talk Podcast produced by University of Portland’s Academic Technology Services and hosted by Maria Erb (Instructional Designer) and Sam Williams (Dir of Academic Tech Services). Kudos for the great ATS podcast studio!

We had a lively 18 minute discussion about my UP social studies methods class and technology’s role in instructional design – it opened like this …

What’s the least amount of technology you could use to get the job done?

Maria: Peter, so glad to have you on the podcast. We just had a great conversation … you managed to rattle off probably half a dozen Web 2.0 tools that you’re using just like you were a fish swimming in water; it just seems so easy and natural for you. I’m just wondering, how do you go about choosing which tools you’re going to use for these great projects that you’re working on? What piques your interest?

Peter: I think it really begins with seeing yourself as a designer of a learning experience. You work with the tools you have and with the setting you have. You’ve got X number of students; you’re meeting once a week; you’ve got three hours with them. You think about the instructional goals that you want to achieve, and then from there, you say, okay, so what kind of tools are out there. For example, there was a situation where I wanted them to collaborate and design some lessons. I wanted them to be able to share their work with one another and be able to comment on it. I also think it’s important that there always be a public product, because I think we find our students producing content for their instructor as opposed to … which is kind of a ritualized thing as opposed to real-world content.

And ended with this exchange …

Sam: Are there any words of wisdom around it’s not about the technology that you could leave us at the end of this podcast?

Peter: I would say the big question is what’s the least amount of technology you could use to get the job done. Taking something and making it prettier by putting it on a white board when you could have written it up on the chalk board really doesn’t get you anywhere. I think that the transformative part of technology is getting it in the hands of the students so that they can research and create and produce in ways you couldn’t do without it. For me, those are the essential elements that I’m looking at, not simply just something that’s a bright shiny object.

Text transcript (word file) | Show notes and links | Podcast at iTunes: #12

The University of Portland uses the SmartEval system to gather student feedback on courses and faculty. Here’s a few comments from my UP students that are relevant to this podcast:

  • Peter challenged us to think and be designers of curriculum, instead of just lecturers. We learned how to get students working and thinking critically in the classroom.
  • I liked that the focus of the class was on making a product.
  • He also showed us how to move from the lecture mode to engaging students as architects in their own learning process.
  • Very well connected with other educators on Twitter. He has promoted every student in the class using his connections to help us build professional connections and build a professional online presence.
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Teaching Politics, Controversy, Engagement – #sschat 11/3/14

sschat-promoMy @EdMethods students and I [@edteck] are proud to be guest hosts for Twitter #sschat on Monday November 3, 2014 from 7-8 PM (eastern). That night is election eve ’14 and our topic will be very timely –  “Teaching Politics, Controversy and Civic Engagement.” Here’s our questions:

Q1: What are student attitudes about politics and government – engagement, distain or indifference?
Q2: How do you create a safe classroom climate to address hot-button political and social issues?
Q3: How should teachers deal with their personal opinions when teaching politics and controversial issues – teach, preach, abstain?
Q4: How can we help students be critical consumers of political news and opinion?
Q5: What resources / ideas can you recommend for teaching politics and fostering civic engagement?
Q6: (Channel your inner Nate Silver) Do you have a prediction to make about a hot 2014 election or ballot initiative?

My co-hosts are pre-service social studies teachers in the School of Education, University of Portland (Ore). We take social media seriously in EdMethods. It’s an essential element of the course. Our students include: 

Kari Vankommer  @MissKVK
Christy Thomas  @crthomas478
Emily Strocher  @emilystrocher
Andy Saxton  @MrAndySaxton
Erik Nelson @ENelsonEdu
Michelle Murphy  @michelleqmurphy
Kristi McKenzi  @tiannemckenzie
Sam Kimerling  @kimerlin171
Scott Deal  @SLDeal15
Jenna Bunnell  @jennamarie0927
Ceci Brunning  @csquared93

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Get the Word Out: A Social Media Case Study

Police Dog Tess I teach future teachers – secondary social studies teachers. The course has three goals:

  1. Learn to think like a historian. 
  2. Become a skillful instructional designer.
  3. Develop skills for reflection, growth and professional networking.

They begin the course by doing self-audits of their social media use for professional networking – a good starting point to reflect on their expanding professional learning networks. Along the way we use load of tech tools to achieve our course goals. Every activity results in a public product for their growing professional portfolio.

Rather than tell them what to do, I prefer to model it. Here’s a brief Storify that illustrates how to fuse our three course goals and produce content to share with the world. Here’s our first set of student posts. Take a look and leave a comment.

Image credit: Police Dog Tess, 29/1/35 by Sam Hood
State Library of New South Wales