Category Archives: Uncategorized

Words hurt more than you’ll ever know.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the topic of our loss of Amanda Todd. Mostly because things in the media are so polarized and everything about this story is complex, with interwoven issues that get lost in sensationalism.

But this is a beautiful song, inspired by a beautiful young spirit, whom we lost at too young of an age.

Words hurt more than you’ll ever know. Be kind, and when others are not kind, be brave and speak up.

 

Creative Programming!

I didn’t even know this happened until this student showed me today…

Photo

…And yes, I’ll need to talk to him about the appropriateness of this, but I just asked him to explain the technical pieces to me today… In my opinion it is more important to appreciate the cleverness & creative programming skills, than to jump into a conversation about misrepresentation. Besides, I want him on my tech support team! 🙂

Plagiarism 101

I don’t usually get mad about this stuff, but this is so blatant that it got me riled up enough to send this person an email. I’ll share the email below.

Plagiarism101

Also available here: http://imm.io/He8H As you can probabbly guess, I took some liberties with the green font text.

I’m not naming the person although technically I’m also sharing her work, but that’s out of respect for her since I really haven’t given her time to respond to my email. If she wants me to put her name on this post, I’m happy to do so. 

—

Greetings [InsertNameHere],

My name is David Truss and I recently came across your Educational Technology Philosophy via a Google Search.

https:// sites.google.com/site/[InsertNameHere]/welcome

It seems that you quoted me extensively from my statement, originally posted May 23rd, 2007 on my original blog, and now currently found here:

http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/statement-of-educational-philosophy/

I know that you understand quoting because you have Carl Rogers quoted on several of your pages.

I openly share my work with a Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_GB Which means you are welcome to share my work publicly, as long as I am attributed.

I’m requesting that you either quote me and give me credit, or that you remove the quotes from your page. It’s a small request considering that I chose not to copyright and actually choose to share, only asking that I get credit for my work.

Regards,

Dave

 

Suggestion for the Edublog Awards

I was cleaning up some things on my blog today after adding a “Podcast” tab, and I realized that I only share ‘badges’ from two different sources. One is to show that I’m a Connected Principal. And the other is my Edublog Awards nominations… (That’s right ‘nominations’ not actual award winner). The interesting thing is that I really enjoyed reading over all the award nominations in previous years, but really didn’t engage this year. Why? The lists were overwhelmingly large and I didn’t know where to start.

My suggestion:

a) Require that people be nominated at least twice for an award.

b) Require the nominators to actually explain their reasons, share links to posts etc… like I do here:

http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/2009-edublog-awards-nominations/

and here:

http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/my-2010-edublog-awards-nominations/

…rather than naming the award and offering up a nomination with no further details or explanation.

c) Link back to the nominations so people can learn why these people were nominated.

Note: Without going back and checking, I think these criteria would have eliminated 3 or 4 of my 6 nominations. But I’m ok with that. It would lead both to me being more appreciative of the ones I did get, and it would promote my desire to explore the blogs of others who have been nominated… And isn’t that what the awards are all about?

If the awards are just a mass list like this again: http://edublogawards.com/2011-3/best-individual-blog-2011/

…Then I think it’s time for me to retire the badges from my blog.

DigiFoot12, Twitter, lurking and drinking from a fire hose.

Drinking-from-a-fire-hose
This was Week 2 – “Tweet Me” in Digifoot12. It was all about Twitter and Kim Gill @Gill_Ville was a great host!

I created the image above for my blog post: “Drinking from a fire hose”. In this post, I shared my personal Twitter user-experience timeline:

Twitter
Why would I want to tell people that I’m brushing my teeth? This is like facebook updates without Facebook -> But Claudia seems to think there is something to this -> Wow, these teachers are sharing great links -> I can’t miss a tweet, need to read them all -> I’m drinking from a fire hose, this is too much -> hey, I can narrow this by following a list in Tweetdeck -> and hey, I can follow a hashtag to focus this even more -> I can go away and when I come back, my network will still be there -> This is better than my RSS feed -> If I miss something in my RSS feed, and it is good, it will probably get back to me via twitter.

Which brings me to another graphic by Alan Levine @cogdog, check out his wiki page on the Twitter Life Cycle.
Alan-levine-twitter-cycle
I went through the cycle, and now I’m here: ???

I still share and try to help people on Twitter, but now I’m also a lurker/spammer/moocher, and I mean that in the most positive way!?!

Lurker – I keep Twitter on in the background, and when I do look at it I tend to follow links and do some quiet reading, without Tweeting. I’m not ‘on’ twitter nearly as much as I have been in the past. But I love that my network shares great links and resources, and that this network reduces the fire-hose-like flow of information that I get from many different ‘streams’.

Spammer – When I do go on twitter I power-share. I throw out a bunch of the links I’ve read, I retweet, and I have conversations with people. I’ve been told by a couple people, new to twitter, that I ‘spam’ them: Since they only have about 20-30 followers they can end up getting about 25-40 messages from me in a row before getting something from one of their other followers. (If I do this to you, feel free to unfollow me, I won’t be offended… just remember to come back when your network has grown!) J

Moocher – Google isn’t the only place to find information on the web. Often, my social network, and Twitter users in general, do a much better job than search engines! Example: I have a question about Moodle so I ask it on Twitter with the hashtag #Moodle and I get an answer I couldn’t find on Google.

BUT… I do still share a lot, comment a lot on blogs and help others on Twitter. One way that I help people on Twitter, especially educators new to Twitter, is that I will often DM them this link after they have started following me: Twitter EDU – Follow these steps and you will grow your twitter network much faster.

I deliberately ‘flipped’ the negative connotation to the terms above, and chose ‘spammer’ and ‘moocher’ as terms to go with ‘lurker’ because I think for many, lurking is a big part of what they do on Twitter, and that word tends to have a creepy/negative emotional connection for people. However, it is important to know that in Twitter, lurking is a natural thing, (everybody does it! J)

And now, a great quote by Craig Nansen @cnansen, which came to me via Miguel Guhlin @MGuhlin‘s post Gongs and Cymbals – Twitter Tinnitus.

I use a different approach to get teachers and administrators using Twitter. I have them explore Twitter before they get an account, searching for hashtags that I provide them. More info here –http://tinyurl.com/7shqn6m

More evidence that lurking is good!

When joining a social network like Twitter, it is easy to either:
a) Get frustrated with it before you build a network that will help you more than you could ever reciprocate; or,
b) Get fully turned on to Twitter and have it become a fire hose of information coming at you too fast and too furious to feel that you can handle it.
Somewhere between these two points there is the balance that I’ve found which has placed Twitter as the second best Pro-D I’ve ever done! Twitter is second only to blogging… but that’s a whole other story!

 

 

___

ps. For those that are in the #Digifoot12 course, I’ve had a lot of feedback that suggests my Netvibes page helps to narrow the fire hose a little by putting all the links you’ll need in one spot. Hope it helps and let me know if you think of anything I should add to it.

DigiFoot12 – My Experience

Yes, I’m still at work. Yes, I’m probably too busy to add something new to my plate. But this is my work in a way… actually in two different ways!

1. I have been a MOOC dropout that did one assignment for the course, and I’ve never followed through with an online course… and yet, I work in an environment where I help students find success in online courses. I work in a learning centre for adults and most of them, like me, live very busy lives. I want to model the commitment I ask of our students.

2. Digifoot12 is an excellent launching ground for me as I start to build my course, Applications of Digital Literacy for our new Inquiry Hub, starting in September. I’m very excited about teaching this course and I think that almost everything I do in Digifoot12 will benefit the development of my own course. In fact, as we approached the start of this course, Verena Roberts and I had a conversation and we realized that we were taking similar approaches. She has students working as Digital Detectives, working on cases: Case 1 – Scavenger Hunt And I too had the idea of students being ‘digital detectives’ though not as an overriding theme. 

So, I have a lot to model and to learn from. I decided to use my Daily Ink blog because I’ll be posting much more frequently than I normally do on ‘Pair-a-Dimes‘, and that blog is really not for course material as that’s not the audience I’ve built there… Although reflections on this experience will creep over there as we move forward. 

What I’ve done so far:

* Joined the Student2.0 Digifoot12 Group and updated my profile. 

* Introduced myself

* Added my twitter and blog links. I’ve also posted about on Digifoot12 Twitter. 

* Added an artifact to mightybell – This one: The complete guide to building a digital footprint

* Watched the slideshow for week 1. (I had a work appointment that prevented me from being part of the live session.)

* Written this introductory post, And…

* Created this Netvibes page to help me, and hopefully others, follow along. 

Digital-footprint-me-dot-com-david-truss-cc-by-nc-sa