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Bradford Saron

Online Community Manager: A New Position in Education - 1 views

  • 1) Protect their identity
  • 2) Engage their community
  • Community Advocate Brand Evangelist Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services
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  • 1) A Community Advocate
  • 2) School Evangelist
  • 3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editoria
  • 4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services
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    The four tenets of the community manager: Community AdvocateBrand EvangelistSavvy Communication Skills, Shapes EditorialGathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Very interesting article. 
Bradford Saron

Laundry List for Community Builders « 21st Century Collaborative - 1 views

  • The following is a “laundry list” of recommendations Community Developers should consider in the creation of their social community.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Sounds like the directions to set up a digital professional learning community with staff and faculty. 
  • Adopt a paradigm that views the community construction process as one of co-design that compliments and enhances your organization’s mission and values.
  • Create an emergent, evolving co-design with the collaboration of your intended members in developing a shared vision, community niche, and ongoing feedback loop on ways to improve design and usability.
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  • Utilization of a loose governance through light leadership roles in the initial launch, such as, community organizer, expert voice/subject matter expert, cognitive coaches, moderator/facilitator, help desk or support. Then build to an evolving leadership pattern that focuses on self-directed learning and self-governance.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Cognitive coaches and support. Then comes self-direction. 
  • Careful selection of a community organizer who should have passion, vision, enthusiasm, a clear understanding of professional practice, who is visionary and must not be afraid of innovation or changes
  • Creation of profile customization, identity tools, subgroup areas and activities to build trust and sense of community
  • Creation of a tool set that should enable like-minded individuals to form subgroups around shared goals and interests
  • Tools not rules – When possible use tools to help members self-govern
  • Inclusion of expert voices with name recognition that will bring newcomers and experienced community members together to share and learn from each other
  • Initiate regular content around relevant provocative issues and help members develop a sense of ownership
Bradford Saron

So Here's What I'd Do : 2¢ Worth - 0 views

  • But here are the solutions that this challenge brings to mind. Eliminate paper from the budget and remove all copiers and computer printers from schools and the central office (with exceptions of essential need). “On this date, everything goes digital.” Create a professional development plan where all faculty and staff learn to teach themselves within a networked, digital, and info-abundant environment — it’s about Learning-Literacy. Although workshops would not completely disappear, the goal would be a culture where casual, daily, and self-directed professional development is engaged, shared, and celebrated — everyday! Then extend the learning-literacy workshops to the greater adult community. Establish a group, representing teachers, staff, administration, students, and community. Invite a “guru” or two to speak to the group about the “Why” of transforming education.  Video or broadcast the speeches to the larger community via local access, etc. The group will then write a document that describes the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the person who graduates from their schools — a description of their goal graduate. The ongoing work of writing this document will be available to the larger community for comment and suggestion. The resulting piece will remain fluidly adaptable. Teachers, school administrators, and support staff will work in appropriately assembled into overlapping teams to retool their curricula toward assuring the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the district’s goal graduate. Classroom curricula will evolve based on changing conditions and resources. To help keep abreast of conditions, teachers and support staff will shadow someone in the community for one day at least once a year and debrief with their teams identifying the skills and knowledge they saw contributing to success, and adapt their curricula appropriately.
  • The district budget will be re-written to exclude all items that do not directly contribute to the goal graduate or to supporting the institution(s) that contribute to the goal graduate. Part of that budget will be the assurance that all faculty, staff, and students have convenient access to networked, digital, and abundant information and that access will be at least 1 to 1. A learning environment or platform will be selected such as Moodle, though I use that example only as a means of description. The platform will have elements of course management system, social network and distributive portfolio. The goal of the platform will be to empower learning, facilitate assessment, and exhibit earned knowledge and skills to the community via student (and teacher) published information products that are imaginative, participatory and reflect today’s prevailing information landscape. Expand the district’s and the community’s notions of assessment to include data mining, but also formal and informal teacher, peer, and community evaluation of student produced digital products. Encourage (or require) teachers to produce imaginative information products that share their learning either related or unrelated to what they teach.  Also establish learning events where teachers and staff perform TED, or TELL (Teachers Expressing Leadership in Learning) presentations about their passions in learning to community audiences. Recognize that change doesn’t end and facilitate continued adapting of all plans and documents. No more five-year plans. Everything is timelined to the goal graduate.
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    In response to the "bad" trend of tech gurus not offering any solutions. 
Bradford Saron

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: Introduction to Communications Technologies - 0 views

  • Henry Jenkins COMM 202 Introduction to Communications Technology This course is intended as an introduction to the ways new and emerging communications technologies impact our culture. While the primary focus will be on digital and mobile technologies and practices (contemporary new media), the course will also consider a range of older media when they were new - including print culture, cinema, television, recorded sound, photography, and the telephone. The course is divided into three broad units: Understanding Technological Change is intended to offer broad conceptual frameworks for thinking about the relations between technology and culture. Reinventing... takes as its starting point the ways that the emergence of digital, networked, and mobile communications technology has impacted pre-existing media forms. Rethinking... examines a range of institutions and practices as they are re-imagined in response to the introduction of new communications technologies. Taken as a whole, this class will introduce students to: Core issues concerning the study of communications technologies The process of media in transition The ways that new media impact existing media and institutions Core digital platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, eBay, Flickr, Second Life, etc.) and the ways they are reshaping our everyday lives.
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    Here is Henry Jenkins' (a leader in the edtech think-tank style publications) new class on technology.
Bradford Saron

The Hard Science of Teamwork - Alex "Sandy" Pentland - Harvard Business Review - 1 views

  • Our data show that great teams: Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don't do both. Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as "asides" during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance.Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team.
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    Great article on Teamwork, and the internal dynamics of human interaction (or lack there of). 
Bradford Saron

Co-designing communication solutions - 0 views

  • How about school-home texting? We’re asking parents if they’d want it. Could we video the next workshop and put it online? Or maybe literacy tips are best shared face-to-face: a teacher, another parent, and I brainstormed together about turning a typical parent breakfast into a Literacy Breakfast that would get the reading tips directly to parents who could ask immediate questions of teacher and literacy coach.
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    Really neat communication ideas for literacy!
Bradford Saron

Simple Communication Tools | November Learning - 2 views

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    Alan November's guest blogger overviews some simple tools that we--as administrators--can use to communicate. Check them out!
Bradford Saron

Four Hopeful Questions for the Future of Learning - 0 views

  • 1. What if… a community received quarterly dashboard updates correlating the number of community mentoring hours, internships or even online parental homework assistance with critical student success factors such as student attendance, school climate and academic performance?
  • 2. What if… doing something that is good for you, such as enrolling in a spinning class, could offset the electricity costs for schools?
  • 3. What if… we replaced conventional currencies with other value exchanges that made it possible for parents and community members to contribute subject matter expertise or other resources to schools in exchange for extended hour care for their children or use of school facilities?
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  • 4. What if …the more than 55 million K-12 students currently in the US were considered viable partners to crowdsource answers and opportunities to challenges we face?
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    Utilizing technology to communicate better, putting energy onto the grid, and crowdsourcing! 
Bradford Saron

Community Building- Powerful Learning Indeed « 21st Century Collaborative - 1 views

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    More on how Personal Learning Communities interface with personal learning networks and now powerful learning practice, all of which are interesting concepts. 
Bradford Saron

Community 101 Series: Purpose and Gathering Strategies | 21st Century Collaborative - 0 views

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    The most important element to a community is purpose. 
Bradford Saron

Digital Literacies for Writing in Social Media | DMLcentral - 1 views

  • The best way to understand the expectations of a particular medium is to participate in that medium and identify its genre expectations as they emerge.
  • Students need to think of their online data along the dimensions of: * accessibility* searchability* persistence
  • teaching our students about the kairos of digital media, its accessibility and persistence, and the extent to which it is public and private will prepare them not only for the writing situations that they find themselves in now, but also those they will face in the future.
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  •  Digital communication eliminates this physical incompatibility between media: when all media are digital, all media are subject to the affordances of digital communication, most notably effortless copying and sharing.
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    Deeper thinking about communication in a digital age. 
Bradford Saron

The Future of Community | Designed Learning Blog - 0 views

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    Mephisto (the devil, not the shoemaker) is still for hire.
Bradford Saron

iPhone and Education - Johnsen's Tech Exploration - 3 views

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    The cost of an Iphone now is very close to the cost of a net book or a solid state computer. I think we should also explore the option of investing in bandwidth and filtering so that students can bring their own computers to school. The cost is not that different from phones now, students can mass personalize their computer, and then there is no issue with personal overlap. It's their computer. With cloud computing, students just have access to their Google accounts through bandwidth, not the network. Food for thought. 
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    You and I see the value in this and many school board members do as well. We have to help our communities understand the value. I worked with a board the other night that totally gets the need for integrating technology into the curriculum. Their concern was the community: "They think paper and pencil is good enough." You cannot ignore this perspective, because if enough people in your community agree with that idea, you will lose the tech supporter board members at election time. This turnover in leadership does not lead to long-term systemic change (which needs to include the integration of technology).
Bradford Saron

Cognitive Interfund Transfer: Technology and a Community-Based School District Vision - 0 views

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    New blog post. 
anonymous

Defining College and Career Readiness: Take Action Now | ASCCC - 0 views

  • he Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) in Oregon, in a formal study asked higher education faculty what skills and knowledge they believe contribute to preparing students to succeed in college. Conley’s definition of college and career readiness is very basic: The level of preparation a student needs to succeed – without remediation – in credit-bearing general education courses or a two-year certificate program.1 The State of Colorado has also adopted this definition for college readiness.2 Such a definition might satisfy some community college and university faculty, but it is not comprehensive enough to really describe the preparation students need for the world of work or college level studies. There are productive behaviors that faculty expect in students and that employers expect in employees as well. EPIC went further to define college and career readiness by expanding the definition into one that is more comprehensive. The expansion includes more of the habits, skills, and attitudes that faculty and employers know are essential to success. It includes four areas:Key Content Knowledge (writing, simple research, core/GE subject area knowledge) Key Cognitive Strategies (inquisitiveness, reasoning, intellectual openness, precision and accuracy) Key Learning Skills and Techniques (self-control, note taking, time management) Key Transition Knowledge and Skills (understanding college or work as a system, interpersonal and social skills, culture of college)
  • nother resource for higher education faculty to consider is the work done by Arthur L. Costa regarding habits of mind for effective participation in the workplace and beyond. Costa’s recommended habits of mind are popular today and can be used for college students and employees alike. The 16 Habits of mind5 Persisting Communicating with clarity and precision Managing impulsivity Gathering data through all senses Listening with understanding and empathy Creating, imagining, innovating Thinking flexibly Responding with wonderment and awe Metacognition Taking responsible risks Striving for greater accuracy and precision Finding humor Questioning and problem posing Thinking interdependently Applying past knowledge to new situations Remaining open to continuous learning
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    leadership academy
Bradford Saron

Professional Learning Communities: A Popular Reform of Little Consequence? « ... - 0 views

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    You don't often see criticism of PLCs. Especially from such high profile bloggers. 
Bradford Saron

Executive Summary | U.S. Department of Education - 1 views

  • 1.1 States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning objectives using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Sounds like a Technology Plan, doesn't it. 
  • 3.2 Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional organizations.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      This is exactly what we are doing right now. 
  • 4.1 Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Both in school and at home. 
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  • 4.2 Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school
    • Bradford Saron
       
      1:1 just got national endorsement. 
  • 5.2 Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Leveraging technology to improve learning. 
  • Convening education stakeholders, in person and online, to share content, insights, and expertise and to collaborate on key elements of this plan. Ideas and best practices that emerge from these convenings will be shared throughout our education system
    • Bradford Saron
       
      My hand is digitally raised right now. 
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    iI found this interesting. Wisconsin could benefit from some of this thinking.
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    Great job, Miles!
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    As you know Brad, I am all over this. One thing I have been thinking about: in the past some reformers have tried to bring a more experiential feel to public education. I am thinking of John Dewey, progressive reformers in Waukegan, IL and Gary, IN in the 1930s, open classrooms in the 1960s and earl 1970s. Each time these reforms failed to take hold and scale up. I think it would be smart to look at these efforts and think about what's different today, what's the same, and how do we avoid the same fate.
Bradford Saron

BLC10 Keynote - Wesch on Vimeo - 1 views

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    The Building Learning Communities Conference (Alan November's Project) has a number of great videos. For you fans of the Kansas State University Professor Michael Wesch, here is one of his 2010 presentations. Wesch presented at the fall WASDA conference in 2009. It was awesome. 
Bradford Saron

How To Build an Online Community - Kristen Taylor - Technology - The Atlantic - 2 views

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    Ok, I admit I've not read this, but I'm going to because it looks awesome.
Bradford Saron

The Future of Education is Here » Blog Archive » Innovation? Yes, Please! - 1 views

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    I love the terms, community intelligence cartographers or education sousveyors. Read also about the Media Education Lab and about how twitter can make you smarter!
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