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This issue is so prevalent that some experts recommend we teach students “academic language.”

This additional distance between the writer and reader decreases the likelihood that the journals will actually be read. And if the journals are not read by teachers, the research will be slow to influence educational practice, if it does at all.

We are spending time, effort, and sometimes money on research doomed to remain idle because it’s not communicated well. The poor writing prevents worthwhile application.

If understanding depends on translating the language, students who struggle with this prerequisite may lack the motivation or inertia to think beyond, or even through, the interpretation. We’re making understanding more difficult—a seeming antithesis to our role as educators.

Why can’t “academic” journals and textbooks utilize common principles of good writing. Why do we insist on communication complexity when our goals would be better served by simple clarity?

Status? Are we insisting on “academic writing” because it separates journals from the “rags” intended for the masses or textbooks from the unlearned? If so, our goal must be to maintain some perceived elite readership—a readership probably not teaching or sitting in our classrooms.

Do we think that our research and subject matter is complicated, therefore our communicating should also be complex? This is so contrary to logic and sound teaching that it’s an oxymoron.

A complex topic requires simple writing, especially when the reader likely lacks the author’s background knowledge and experience. This is almost always the case when a researcher seeks to address individuals who were not part of the research team or involved in similar research themselves, or when experts in a field seek to articulate concepts for students.

Medina presents ideas simply and in ways known to foster learning. As the brain engages in elaboration, it overlays new data with known experiences, making connections that help construct understanding. Medina relates a new, complex topic to a familiar childhood activity—origami (even though he is not writing for children). By giving us a reference point for understanding DNA, he equips us with the tools needed to construct understanding. Isn’t this what we should be striving for, both in our textbooks and our journals?

In my senior level strategic management seminar I asked people to break up into groups of three and then distributed a Fortune article about a local firm so that we would all be working with the same course-related content.  I gave them class time to read the article and also provided an organizing framework to help them focus on the main themes regarding the company's business strategy.  I also printed out a blank storyboard using the 3-slide handout feature in MSPowerPoint and distributed a few copies to each group.  Their task was to come to some consensus about the most interesting aspect of the company's strategy and identify the one central point that they wanted to get across in their 2-3 minute presentation.  The only other constraints were that they had to include one slide that highlighted some data that supported their central point and they had to create their storyboard and script in analog form before they opened their laptops. 

I asked each group to create a narrated presentation using either Keynote or PowerPoint, which they then uploaded to a discussion forum in our web-based course management system.  Each student also reviewed at least one other group's presentation, providing feedback on content, as well as the application of the Presentation Zen approach.  I provided feedback in the forum as well, commenting on the presentations themselves and the peer reviews.  Everyone who participated got full credit, which is why I referred to the practice presentation and peer review as a risk-free or low stakes activity.

Provide an example of a presentation that used the Presentation Zen approach, along with the storyboard and script

It also opens the door for viewers to give me feedback on the effectiveness of the design decisions I made and offer suggestions on how to improve my presentation.  I have found that opening up the conversation and giving students permission to review my work helps to strengthen our connection and improves my practice at the same time.  It also helps me demonstrate that it takes time and practice to implement the PZ approach - we are all a work in progress!

My final tip, at least for now, is to give people plenty of opportunities to practice using the Presentation Zen approach and give and receive feedback.  My students decided they wanted to create at least four presentations throughout the course to demonstrate their understanding of course concepts and their ability to apply those concepts to real world examples. 

This year, I’ve taken pictures in class and then uploaded the pictures to VoiceThread. I record their words for each letter sound using Audacity (another free tool that allows you to record and edit audio on your computer) and a microphone attached to my laptop. At home, I add their recorded voices to the alphabet book.

students’ book. I can export a video of our book, with comments, to bring back into class so we can listen to the additions and see how the book has grown. When we reach the letter Z, I’ll burn the book onto CDs for each of my students, so they’ll have a personal copy of their project.

anyone can add words or comments to my

Because VoiceThread is collaborative,

1-Because of a generous network of teachers on Twitter, my students have a chance to hear English spoken in a lot of different accents, by people who speak English as a first language and by people for whom English is an additional language.

2-They’re learning about countries as we see where our comments come from. 3-They have an invaluable connection with a group of students in New Jersey, who are also learning their letters and sounds, thanks to the efforts of Kim George. My students are mighty impressed with how many words Kim’s students know for each letter! (In fact, you may want to fast forward through a few of the alphabet letters when you check out the project–it has really grown since our first letters!)

4-Since the book is web-based, other classes around the world can “read” our book and it can continue to grow.

1-It gave my students a clear, real reason to use English. It also gave them a real audience to write for. They had something to show for their hard work, something they could share with their friends and grandchildren. 2-My students have a chance to interact with other students through comments. I embedded their project on My Corner of the World (my student blog). While they haven’t yet mastered the art of responding to comments (a few are still figuring out where they might find their email addresses ), they do enjoy reading comments from others. 3-Since it’s web-based, I can share a link with the parents of my young learners class, and they can read the book at home. In fact, anyone around the world can read the book.

Networks are ideal as enhancements for all four of these essential activities of lifelong learners, and they enable us to model, demonstrate, practice, and reflect constantly and effectively.

“teachers who practice autonomy in their own professional development formulate heuristics for harvesting knowledge within their personal learning spaces, and thus stand a better chance of inculcating the desired behaviors in their students, thus increasing the likelihood of producing potentially autonomous and lifelong learners. But it is a percolative process.

The wiki allowed anyone (anyone could write on it, not just Webheads) to leave an email address if they needed an invitation, and those who had spare invitations would give one to someone in need. The system worked to organize a quick and robust Webheads Wave, a sandbox for teachers to try out the tool and to model and demonstrate and practice with one another.

Networks provide the framework for this to happen.

Pedagogy

Networking

Literacy

Paradigm shift results when many people in a community or network follow the same process of seeing things modeled and demonstrated for one another in such a way that after considered reflection and weighing of the old and new ways of addressing a problem, they gradually alter their practice.

Heuristics

hose with knowledge and those seeking it treat each other equally, often reversing roles frequently as seekers and providers of knowledge and content.

multiliteracies approaches

When the Writing for Webheads group of students and teachers formed in 1998, participants were distrustful of sending their pictures to strangers on the Internet, and even to reveal their real names.

Photographs and voice/webcam communications enable group members to see the human behind the text message and enhance bonds leading to a sense of community

Scaffolding one another’s practice by modeling to one another and answering each other’s questions

the evolution of social media has enabled the Webheads CoP to interact with others to become part of a much wider distributed learning network.

Siemens has long espoused the notion of connectivism, famously summarized as “The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe.” (Siemens, 2004, n.p.). Here, Siemens means that it is more important to nurture a system of connections between knowledgeable people (the pipe) than to be concerned with what these knowledgeable people know (the content within the pipe) since this content can be directed as needed to anyone with appropriate connections within the pipe.

Communities and networks help us to aggregate, filter, and assimilate this information into some kind of knowledge structure and then disseminate it throughout the community or network.

distributed learning networks (DLN’s), or personal or professional learning networks (PLNs), or personal learning environments (PLE’s)–all provide direct (and indirect) contact with many people in one’s network, each possessing a reservoir of knowledge which contributes to the entire pool of knowledge residing in the network. This can be accessed through listservs or sometimes almost instantaneously through Twitter or RSS feeds, or Skype, or instant messaging. Therefore the knowledge possessed by any individual, or node in the network, is the sum total of all aggregated knowledge within that network. It is to this that we ascribe the incredible power inherent in distributed learning networks which often comprise to some extent communities of practice.

Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002, p. 6) promote the CoP model as an anecdote to the fact, as he puts it, that “increasing complexity of knowledge requires greater … collaboration; whereas … the half life of knowledge is getting shorter.”

the skill of leveraging networks is increasingly important in the 21st century in plumbing and aggregating knowledge when that knowledge base is forever changing at an increasingly accelerated pace.

or appropriate use of online social networks to be taught in schools, teachers themselves must be familiar with their impact on learning. One problem is that teacher-trainers without sufficient experience with technology and who are rooted in old-school methodologies are simply not modeling new age learning behaviors for their trainees by showing them how to reach out to networks.

research indicates that teachers don’t necessarily activate the knowledge they are exposed to in training curricula. The example he gave was on reverting to traditional methods rather than utilizing knowledge about communicative language teaching (Richards, 2009: 4), but the same applies to knowledge of technology.

In order for training in pedagogical affordances of networking to take hold it is crucial that teachers be trained not only in social media, but through its use. Those who use social media in their professional networking find this self-evident, but there is at least annecdotal evidence for the need for modeling by mentors.

teachers need to be shown the connections between their use of social media in their personal and professional lives. Glogowski and Sessums pointed out in their presentation at the WiAOC 2007 conference their surprise that student teachers who were already using technology with online acquaintances in their after-hours social networking were not carrying this over into their professional teaching practices.