the WritingMatrix team's K12Online 2007 presentation

Elluminate session

Saša: Vance came up with the idea to have an Elluminate session so we can record it and edit it using the best parts of it for our 'official' K12 presentation which we are supposed to send by October 8th (see below). Another thing we have been asked to produce is a teaser (by the end of September) Vance suggested we try to come up with some powerful statements and use them to make kind of a trailer. The deadline is approaching and I will be away from September 21st to September 28th.
Can we have our writingmatrix reports ready to share and record in Elluminate on Monday, September 17 at 18.00 or 19.00 gmt? And also our sound bites for the brainteaser? Hope we can make it. Counting on having F.U.N. with you again :-)
Vance: can make it on Monday 17th at 16.30 gmt
Doris:
Rita: ok, Monday 17, 16.30 gmt, fine with me. Cannot make it on Tuesday, sorry.
Saša: I can make it an hour or two earlier - at 17 or 16 gmt - how about you, Doris?
Nelba: I can make it on Monday 17th at 16.30
Saša: We might as well set this time and date for the time being September 17th at 16.30 gmt. Still waiting for Doris.

About teaser

Saša: Something short which is supposed to make people curious – not necesarrily related to the project – when i attended the elluminate meeting they showed us an example of a short video with horses… not sure what the connection was but it was a refreshing sight. : - ) Perhaps Vance can tell us a bit more about how he imagined this: he suggested we come up with some powerful statements concerning the project ( I thought maybe student reflections, ours, see if there is something in our reports, I don't know) and then put this together so that it looks like a movie trailer. I think any ideas are welcome here at this point – I like Rita's seredipity project and her idea to promote it very much - think the whole writingmatrix experience was very serendipitous for us all : - ) – let's continue about this in the wiki as well.
Vance:
Rita: ok, guys, will work it out with my stds, I'll see if I can prepare some "teasers", and will study the software Vance suggested at http://www.instant-demo.com/download.htm .
Nelba:Well, I don´t know this soft, and I am afraid I will not be able to get familiar because of my work and besides I am going to Mardel Plata to Longman Congress for three or four days. I am planning to make a short video talking about the project with my participants and upload it to YOU to Be. Is it OK, Vance?
I sent a message to Doris telling her that we are leaving messages in the wiki.
Doris:
Saša: Fantastic, Rita! What I've managed to do so far is I updated my old wiaoc ppt and recorded my voice and webcam using camtasia - what i said is on this google doc http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgcggsvr_46tt243&invite=gntrpvf It is kind of rehearsal for our Monday meeting. If you have camtasia and want to see the recording let me know. My slides are screenshots of the things i talk about in the google doc...



We are on the conference program: http://k12onlineconference.org/

Thoughts on our presentation:

I (Vance) have been thinking about how we might do this presentation. I have Camtasia, which can make screencasts with sound and convert the result into various file formats. The screencasts and sound tracks are then editable. So we could go on something like Elluminate and interview one another talking about the project. While you are talking you could play a web cam and this could be included on the screencast. I could take the screencast and edit it into shorter segments.

You can also download freeware screencast software like CamStudio. You could open a browser with some tabs set to your students blogs and talk about them while scrolling and tabbing in the browser. The screencast would record your voice and the browser window and you would produce a video file with sound.

Again it would probably be good to work in short segments rather than go for one long piece. The files we each made and contributed could be mashed up later with Movie Maker (windows software that comes on PC's) into a single presentation.

What do you think?

Saša : maybe we could ask our students to give their impressions - find something there...
Vance: we should show their blogs, selections, with camtasia
a posting, a comment, response
we also have Windows Movie Maker (comes with Windows OS)

Saša : if we had one or two Elluminate sessions then this would be quite some material to choose from...
and it's much nicer to see the interaction
after all this is all about collaboration...
Vance: yes, but your idea to get stuff from the previous recording is good too
I'll think about that one
I'll work on that in fact
I'm on a roll with camtasia
the object of THIS one is to come up with a recording
like we could have some elluminate (the best of)
and maybe interject some slides and voice recording
views of students work
shots of each of us saying things facing a web cam perhaps

News for us presenters:

The conference presenter wiki is here: https://k12online07presenters .wikispaces.com/
1. Links to our presentation page here: https://k12online07presenters.wikispaces.com/writingmatrix
2. how to send the files: https://k12online07presenters.wikispaces.com/submission-procedures

The presentation should be convertable into audio only format (for podcasting).
There will be a helpdesk that will assist presenters with this, and a 'take my hand' initiative for forming mentor-mentee relationships.
The files will be moved to a common host and archived there; creative commons applies to all files
Here is the archive from 2006: http://k12onlineconference.org/?page_id=93

3. Instructions for adding neat tools to a del.icio.us account and a del.icio.us feedbox listing those tool resources on the presenter tools' page https://k12online07presenters .wikispaces.com/Presenter+Tools
4. Info on file formats and deadlines is here https://k12online07presenters.wikispaces.com/presentation-guidelines
5. Recordings from the two presenter roundtables meetings if you'd like to hear the proceedings https://k12online07presenters .wikispaces.com/roundtables If you only listen to one of them choose the 2nd one

Teasers will be posted on the conference blog as they are generated - information and ideas can be found on the wiki at https://k12online07presenters .wikispaces.com/teaser-ideas. If you chose to submit a teaser, please send the orginal file to Sheryl at snbeach@cox.net. The final deadline for submitting teasers is September 30.

Watch for an upcoming post on the conference blog requesting volunteers to man five conference committees. . The members of these committees will provide invaluable expertise and service to the conference. Perhaps you or someone you know would like to serve?

In late September, plan on joining us at "Before the Dawn" for a virtual social (in Elluminate) full of laughter and good cheer! At that time, we'll also address any questions and concerns you might have as the conference draws near.

Watch the Presenters page on the blog http://k12onlineconference.org /?page_id=88 for info on the five committees
Live Events, PR/Marketing, Tools/Tech Support, Accessibility Options and Professional Development/Graduate Credit

This is the orgininal Proposal which was accepted !!

http://www.k12onlineconference.org/
This call encourages all, experienced and novice, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this web form. Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in “playing with boundaries” in one of the four strands described. Deadline for proposal submissions is June 18, 2007. You will be contacted no later than June 30, 2007 regarding your status. Presentations may be delivered in any web-based medium that is downloadable (including but not limited to podcasts, screencasts, powerpoints) and is due one week prior to the date it is published. Please note all presentations will be licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Your submission of this proposal constitutes acknowledgment of these licensing terms for your presentation.

The following was submitted at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=398963885514

1. What is your first and last name?

Vance Stevens


2. What is your email address?

vancestev@gmail.com


3. What is your website or blog address, if you have one?

http://advanceducation.blogspot.com, http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com/ (ported to here July 31, 2018)


4. In what city, state, and country do you live?

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates


5. Please share a short bio about yourself and your role as it relates to your presentation topic.

I am a career teacher of ESL and computing and an educational technology specialist with long-time interest in blogging, communities of practice. and social networking, especially with regard to teaching writing and languages, multiliteracies, and teacher professional development. One of my recent interests regards how tagging and aggregation on the Internet works with tags and how this can be put to use by teachers and students, especially in the formation and maintenance of online communities and distributed knowledge networks.

My co-presenters are teachers in various countries who help me experiment with these concepts and make discoveries in ways that forward the learning goals of their students. Their names are: Nelba Quintana,Rita Zeinstejer,Doris Molero, and Saša Sirk. Will it be possible for us to do a joint presentation?


6. For which strand are you submitting this proposal?

Classroom 2.0


7. What is the title of your proposed session?

Motivating student writers by fostering collaboration through tagging and aggregation


8. Abstract: In less than 250 words, please describe what you plan to share and do in your presentation. Clarify how you plan to produce your presentation (podcast, screencast, video, PPT, blog etc.) Remember, your presentation must be viewable online once it is posted to our servers. Indicate if you be able to provide a downloadable version, suitable for "offline" viewing.

This presentation describes a worldwide collaboration project involving bloggers in two countries in South America and one in Balkan Europe, who utilized tagging and social networking tools to enable students to locate each other's blogs and then interact with selected individuals thus identified as being of similar age and interests. To achieve this, students are encouraged to blog their interests and concerns, then tag relevant posts with an identifier unique to the project. Technorati is then used to identify the posts of participants in other countries. RSS feeds are generated not only by blogging individuals but by Technorati searches, and any of these can be subscribed to in Bloglines. The intent is for students to be motivated to form writing partnerships spontaneously or in projects set by teachers collaborating in the project. A final aspect of the project is to have students explore areas of mutual interest through tagging some of their and each other's posts in Del.icio.us, then discern who else is reading and tagging their posts.

Five teachers, who have met only online but have already made two synchronous presentations on the project, will prepare a Camtasia screencast in which they update their results and experiences and those of their students as the project continues to attract participants. We will use Elluminate to record all of us together and enhance the result with other presentation materials spliced in with video editing tools. The result can be downloaded for viewing later offline, and its audio can be podcast.

249 words

9. Goals: State the purpose and intent of this session. Include presentation goals, objectives and anticipated outcomes for participants.

This session intends to introduce teachers to the concepts of tagging and aggregation in case they don’t know them already, and moreover explain how these concepts can be put to practical use in allowing students to connect online through inclusion of a tag that only project members would be likely to use. Participants will learn in our screencasts how to conduct Technorati searches on the unique project tag and then subscribe to the feed for this search in their Bloglines. We will show how this search can enable students to list then view the blogs of counterparts in other parts of the world, comment on postings of interest, and follow further postings of selected blogs in their Bloglines accounts. Participants will see how students can use Del.icio.us to tag their own postings, find postings on similar topics and tag them, and then see who else in the project has read their postings or tagged other postings in the same way. The presenters, as always, seek to further their knowledge on the topic in the best way possible, by refining their knowledge of the subject by continually teaching it to others. We also look forward to leaving a document on the Web that will serve as a reference to others wishing to use our technique, and finally to learn from others in the group how to improve it.


10. Justification: Why does your presentation fit in your selected strand?

In the classroom 2.0 strand - This presentation could almost be in the tools strand, in that it seeks to explain to teachers how to use the social networking tools Technorati and Del.icio.us in conjunction with Bloglines so that tagging and aggregation can be used to enhance collaboration among students blogging in different parts of the world, thereby increasing their chances of connecting with like-minded student individuals in different geographic locations and being motivated to communicate with these individuals and learn something of their diverse languages, perspectives, and cultures as well as what they all have in common. However, as the presenters are teachers, their focus is on pedagogy, and how the tools in question impact on students. Thus the presentation will focus on how the tools impinge on writing process, the importance of audience, and on encouraging students to write fluently and to ‘contribute to the growing global knowledge commons by publishing their work online’.



11. Theme: How does your presentation support this year's conference theme: "Playing with Boundaries?"

This presentation describes a project utilizing a technique whose purpose was to put students in different parts of the world in touch with one another through having them find one another safely on the Internet. In this sense the project transcended geopolitical boundaries, but it also stretched the boundaries of what is normally taught in online classes, even those whose students frequently blog. In requiring the use and exploitation of tags, the project created an opportunity for both teachers and students to learn more about the tools inherent in blogging and how to exploit them to pedagogical purpose.


12. Full Disclosure: Please note K-12 Online is NOT an appropriate venue for vendor-generated infomercials for commercial products. If you have any professional affiliation or commercial tie (vendor or are paid by any company or individual to use, promote, or support a website, project or service) to any of the websites, products or services you plan to discuss in your presentation, please disclose that here.

None whatsoever

Storyboarding as it occurs to Vance (feel free to comment)

1. Title slide, intro music, Introduction of the project, how it came about, what tagging is, how technorati works, show it on screen through a screencast with voice over, perhaps 5 minutes (I might use my WiAOC intro for part of this)
   I think I would mention Nelba and meeting her online students, esp Matias, over the summer, and the blog posts Matias made casting light on the subjects we were (still are) grappling with in figuring out how the project works
2. Maybe we'll then have Nelba introducing Matias, the complete video, about a minute
3. Doris at that point, parts of our interview with her about the project. I think I'll break these up. Where someone else mentions a certain topic, I might bring in another voice talking on that topic, try and vary the voices and backgrounds. For example, where I asked Saša and Rita questions in our Sept 17 interview, I might bring in segments for variety.
4. Next, Saša. Her presentation is about ten minutes. It's pretty cohesive. She says ...

I think the camtasia recording is a bit clearer and easier to edit than the Elluminate stuff, esp. since we also have the notes in google doc at http://docs.google.com/Doc ?docid=dgcggsvr_46tt243&hl=en . So I would suggest that:
· Instead of my long camtasia intro (the first 3 and a half mins) YOU introduce us (maybe showing my slide 1 or the bungee part from the teaser) and explain that we played with blogging at the end of our course and in the early stage of the WM project (end of April 2007)
· Then use my camtasia recording from slide 3 (begins at about 3 min 40 sec with 'Here are some glimpses from my student blogs…' ) to slide 8 (until 8 min 44 sec, ending with '…Because they want to, not because they would have to.'), about 5 min altogether. I think this is the part which includes my main points.

If not too much trouble, we could improve this by breaking a bit this 5 mins of audio and slides by playing the two videos while I talk about them on the recording, so if it's not too much trouble I would suggest:
· Using Suzana's YouTube fingertalkmessage video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v �3�UA85OgeFn0k&eurl�4�http%3A%2F %2Fsu4x%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F (only takes 12 secs) instead of the first 12 seconds of slide 5 video (slide 5 starts at 5.35 – 6.08) while leaving my camtasia audio narration uninterrupted)
· And using Matej's youtube bear video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v �5�of4-Cfhbcj4&eurl�6�http%3A%2F %2Frostilj%2Eblogspot%2Ecom %2F2007%5F04%5F01%5Farchive %2Ehtml (from 0.00 to 0.09 and from 3.55 to 4.30 or 5.00)) instead of camtasia slide 6 (starting at 6.08-6.53), again leaving my audio narration uninterrupted, like before)
But, as I said, do not worry about this if it takes a lot of time – I'm perfectly happy with the 5 min camtasia recording from slide 3 to slide 8.. The slides tell enough.

Hey Saša, if you want to DO what you suggest and send me the Camtasia version ... that would be sooo appreciated ^V^

>

1. Rita and her students. I can use parts from our shared presentations as well.
2. Some sort of outro by me. If there are any recent blog postings, please point me to them ^V^