Tag Archives: “David Truss”

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

Cassie and Katie – Public Speaking 2011

Both of my girls did a great job with their speeches! 

Katie was a finalist in our non-judged Junior Public Speaking Celebration, on the morning of June 9th, 2011.
Cassie was 2nd in the Grade 5/6 category of the Senior Public Speaking Finals, later that afternoon.

‘My Day with Boon the Elephant’ by Katie Truss

‘Procrastination’ by Cassie Truss

Sarcasm, even spelt right too!

2011-06-20_07

I think Cassie was only 3 years old when she started asking me, “Dad, are you being tar-tas-tic again?”
This is from her Father’s Day card.
It’s interesting but I really don’t think that my sarcasm plays out online. I tend not to use it as it is too easily interpreted as rude or at times even scathing. So instead I barrage my kids with it. I’m sure as they get older their eyes will role-over as I embarrass them in front of their friends, (the eye-rolls have already started), but my editing filter shuts off at home. So, my girls will just have to put up with me… even with my sarcasm. 🙂

T.I.C. Chinese School PE Program Inspection

via qik.com

This routine is practiced almost daily for a few months before the inspection. At the start of the year it involved skipping ropes, but our school (neighbouring theirs) showed a lot of interest in basketball, so they incorporated basketballs into their spring routine.

Every student was asked to bring a basketball from home. The small items on the ground near them are cardboard rings that they made to keep their ball from rolling around at the back of their classrooms. Often during PE classes you’ll see the younger students wearing these like bandanas on their heads. Cute!

Watch to the end to see the speed at which they run to their line-ups to head back into the school. It’s that fast even when there isn’t an inspection happening.

A neat look into a very different school culture.

Looking into North Korea

1305897487945

We arrived in Dandong at about 9:15pm. This is the view of the Peace Bridge heading into North Korea. The lights on the bridge end at the border. Apparently a city of almost 2 million about 200,000 people sits in the darkness. Any hint of light is probably a military installation.

We’ll learn more in the morning, but this one image tells quite a story.

an original sin

I want to talk about something sinful. I say this in the hope that it promotes Good, not anger. Please keep that intent in mind as you read.

I’ve said this elsewhere before:

I think the two most noblest of traits are compassion and forgiveness.
Compassion because it links us to others in a way that we lose ourselves.
Forgiveness because more than any other trait, it can not be faked
and true forgiveness is to see love even in the faults of others.

This post is not directly about compassion and forgiveness but it is about being noble: having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals. It is about being responsive in a way the shows high moral principles in the most religious sense… where all great religions share common beliefs.

This post is about two things, Good and Evil. I believe there is capital ‘G’ Good in this world and also capital ‘E’ Evil in this world. I believe these forces are at battle globally, nationally, locally and personally. We have both good and evil wolves within us all and we chose which one we feed. I question which one is being fed in today?

Osama Bin Ladin is dead.

I do not question if he was Evil. Osama Bin Ladin is dead and the world has been rid of an Evil man.

What I fear now, what scares me, is the response I see to his death. It is vengeful, vindictive. It is spurred by hate. I see the only of the 7 deadly sins not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest: wrath.

I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it around the world. My earliest memory of it was when Ronald Reagan was shot. I sat, shocked, watching my friends television after school, one of the scenes shared, a celebration in the streets of an unremembered country, far from the US in distance, diplomacy and idealism. It felt wrong. I have the same feeling now.

And so I seek to see things from multiple perspectives and to understand things that we may miss because we take things for granted in our own culture and in our own fixed perspective.

President Obama said on the death of Osama Bin Ladin and in discussing the tragedy of 9/11, “… And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

I remember watching that on television too. Much of the world gasping for breath as towers crumbled. And once again, scenes shared of celebrations in the streets of other countries, far from the US in distance, diplomacy and idealism. This too felt wrong. I have the same feeling now.

How many have died since the towers fell? How many parent-less children are there? …the victims of a war on Hate. Victims: not gun-wielding Evil men and women… Just people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“… And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.”

Without doing research I would estimate the number of deaths from the war on Hate to be closer to 300,000 than 3,000. But the totals are not shared to be compared, they are both significant numbers that exceed zero, making them painful reminders of Evil. They leave gaping holes in many of our hearts.

It is hard for any of the surviving family members, victims in different countries but with common suffering, to see the Good in this world. But we do have Good in this world. And there is room for more of it. There is always room for compassion and forgiveness. There is always a possible response that is noble: having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.

An evil man is dead. I see celebrations around the world and this too feels wrong.

Will the killing stop? I read a book about ‘The Spider and the Starfish’. You sever a leg of a spider and it is crippled. You sever the leg of a starfish and it grows a new one. I fear that al Qaeda is more starfish than spider.

How do we let the Good in us reign? Where can we now seek love? Where can we show compassion? To whom can we show forgiveness? How can we bring peace to our world?

An evil man is dead. This is cause for relief, not rejoicing; reconciliation, not retribution; reflection, not wrath.