Tag: #28daysofwriting

Replying to Comments for Day 17

28 Days of Writing, BloggingPublished onLeave a Comment on Replying to Comments for Day 17

convo

The more I think about what is next for #28daysofwriting the more I think it will be about commenting on blogs. Tonight I enjoyed the rare pleasure of replying to some on my own blog post from yesterday, “Micro Engagement is Killing our Edublogging Community“. Here are the few I managed in my 28 minutes tonight, take a look at the comment thread on the post for the full discussion:

In reply to johnjohnston

I would take 20 comments instead of 100 RTs anyday. I know which one I gain most value from in terms of adding to the conversation and building on ideas.

I do hope we see the return of the long form – we need to invest in it and tend to it, we need this part of our edu culture to grow back. Whether commenting will do the same, who knows. The more I think about it the more I want to run a 28 days of writing alongside one supporting commenting. I want to see people doing that old thing of “I just commented on…” type social share.

John you pinged me on Twitter with that tool – Known http://known.johnj.info/2015/t…

Looks really interesting and I hope I can discover better ways to draw the conversations together from across the web. Any other ideas would be welcomed.

In reply to Phillip Cowell

I have similar posts @disqus_2IzmJDVjOB around this blog over the years. The content is just consumed. I suppose for me I am not surprised when it is posts that are not needing discussion – when you genuinely invite ideas and see nothing you realise it is fading from our digital space.

In reply to Stephanie

I hope we can do that Stephanie, I think it would be a good follow up too – commenting for a month. Whilst a new bunch go through the writing month too – what do you think of that? So you have a crew doing the March writing days and a crew signed up to a month of commenting everyday.

In reply to Monika

Thanks Monika I think a focus on discussion and commenting is a good next step – in many ways it is much harder than just writing your own content. Engaging in meaningful ways though comments takes a different skill, we have to assimilate the original content and share our challenges and questions.

In reply to Christine McIntosh

I think there is lots of room for better commenting tools to be developed. Just had a search through some blog plugins for WordPress and there is not that much. Disqus is in fact a pretty solid tool compared to what else is there. Sorry you lost a comment, always painful, I have made it a habit now whenever I am commenting to copy anything I have written before hitting submit. Saved me many times.

In reply to Andrew Giddings

Thanks Andrew – yeah that thing about RSS readers has been something I have long been dissatisfied about. The experience of reading is nice, say in Feedly, but having to move out of that to comment always feels clunky. I would love to see that solved in some way.

I appreciate that conversations about the things we publish may occur elsewhere, but unless that dialogue or the ideas developed is fed back to the blog author in some way it goes unnoticed. For example if a long discussion occurs on Twitter or in a Fb group without the author they cannot learn as well. Always good to loop people back into discussion so that they can continue to learn too.

(Thanks to Dave for commenting just as I was posting – I will get to your comment too!)

Thinking about writing about Thinking

28 Days of Writing, Blogging, ThinkingPublished onUpdated on2 Comments on Thinking about writing about Thinking

Time

As we hit the midway point of this journey of a full month of blogging everyday, (#28daysofwriting) I am just looking back on where I started and some of the challenges that I faced establishing a steady habit and what I have learned.

So the 28 minute time constraint seems to have been pretty handy in setting a limit that still allows ideas to flow and some time to think whilst writing. I have had a few days in the last 2 weeks when I have wanted a little longer, but I am happy with how I have been able to carve out the half an hour or so everyday to sit and write. So I have learned I can find the time when I need to – even just half an hour. Time was cited as the biggest challenge by those involved. I am hopeful that for everyone taking part they will form a better understanding of how we create and protect this precious time – or simply why it is still such a challenge.

The image above is a word cloud of the biggest challenges to getting into a regular blogging habit shared by the 100+ people who are involved this month.

I have learned that writing in the evening has been my go-to time for the activity. I might switch over and do some morning writing and see how that goes for me during the remainder of the month. Learning when we write best or when we have a preference to do so is hopefully a better understanding those involved in #28daysofwriting will have.

One of the most important positive outcomes for me was a shift in the way I have been reflecting and thinking during the day. I actually felt this very early on and it has been something that has continued. I am thinking about my writing more and identifying aspects of my work, or concepts I want to explore in more detail. Previously this was something I felt only when I was sat staring at the blinking cursor, ready to go. I have learned that thinking about writing more regularly throughout the day has helped clarify my thinking. I have opened up the positive aspects of the thinking process that goes on with writing to be woven into the fabric of my day.

Hold Your Ideas Lightly

28 Days of Writing, Creativity, Design ThinkingPublished onUpdated on6 Comments on Hold Your Ideas Lightly

This is a simple metaphor to understand. When you are exploring the validity of an idea, hold your idea lightly – do not clutch it tightly to your chest. We often explore if an idea is valid in the company of others and so we need to present our thinking with this mindset as lots of good things flow from it. It is an important mindset we adjust to in our design thinking workshops we run with teachers.

Instead of having to pry open our fingers to get to the idea to offer advice, when it is held lightly and openly in our open hands others can access it.

Offer an invitation to your ideas not a barrier to hurdle.

When we hold on to our ideas lightly we are being more careful in terms of what we have committed to that idea. There is no tension in our grasp of the idea because we have invested lots of time and energy into developing it. It is probably early on in terms of our thinking and we are open to what others say.

If our grasp is light it might be swept along by a strong breeze from others. Who knows if we are open to other people contributing and building on our idea it might be taken in a direction that we might not have seen.

It is all about communicating your idea as early as you can, but matching that action with a relatively low commitment in energy, time and resources.

In the workshops I have led over the last four years I have asked hundreds of people to communicate an idea they have only just created to someone else. The constraint comes from the time they have to communicate the idea or concept and the resource they have to do it with. A single Post it note. What else!

They are thrust into a situation where they are already non-committal about an idea and are encouraged to “Hold their ideas lightly”, pitching the idea to someone else quickly. All of these things create a scenario that is often alien within education – sharing something so early. I always like to follow this sort of task up by asking “What does it feel like to have to share an idea so early on in the process?”

Invariably there is a mixed reaction. From the “nerve wracking” and “scary”, to “liberating” and “exciting”. The anxious responses normally speak of a habitual culture of getting it “just so”, or working on something heavily before sharing widely. The more positive responses, which is the majority, recognise how this mindset, named up front, and the process that activates it, creates a refreshing sense of openness about our creative work.

Hold your ideas lightly – don’t clutch them tightly to your chest.

Teacher Education Should Not Be Compromised

28 Days of Writing, LearningPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on Teacher Education Should Not Be Compromised

Western Decay

I can’t help but feel worried about teacher education. You know, university courses for learning our craft. Today I ran into some unfortunate stories of the experiences our aspiring teachers might come across. Who knows whether this is a universal, worldwide issue but I have long held concerns. They have niggled away in the back of my mind. After all this is such an important formative experience for people entering our profession.

  • How can you not have lesson intentions or success criteria for sessions about how we teach?
  • How can you not have technology rich experiences for our aspiring teachers?
  • How is “technology and me don’t mix” still a sentence people say?
  • How can you be so muddled about the student course and curriculum, you have no time to talk about learning?
  • How is a young teacher meant to learn when nothing of the contemporary classroom is modelled?
  • How come we are not thinking deeply about the student teacher experience?

So many questions and so much that needs to change. I know this may be in the minority here in Australia. Well I hope it is.

We are on the cusp of a project with an education team from a university here in Melbourne. I am excited about what we might create together in re-designing teacher education. It is one of a few pieces of our eco-system that is, well, broken. If over the next 5-10 years we can raise the quality of the aspiring teacher experience, it figures that everything might flow in a positive direction from there.

Pic Western Decay by sleepinyourhat

Keeping the main thing, the main thing – Posts about Feedback from #28daysofwriting

28 Days of Writing, FeedbackPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Keeping the main thing, the main thing – Posts about Feedback from #28daysofwriting
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loopz by Rosa Menkman

I started 2015 in Perth. Well in actual fact I had trips to Brisbane and Sydney as aperitifs and then headed to Western Australia. I was helping with some professional learning days at a large independent girls school we have been working with since the beginning of 2014. Our mantra for the sessions was:

Keep the main thing, the main thing

And feedback with its long lost twin, feedforward, is pretty close to being one of the most important elements of learning and curriculum design. I will spend some time in future posts sharing how I see it all and how it aligns with a prototyping disposition. For now, here are some great blog highlights from educators sharing their thinking on feedback as part of #28daysofwriting.

 

Alex Gingell shares how he used an Experience Tour to help with the professional learning discussions on feedback in his school.

I wanted staff to ‘immerse’ themselves in feedback. To gain an understanding of how feedback works across the school and to give them a tool that would enable them to develop their own perspective of feedback in their practice. This tool is designed to be used over a slightly longer period of time and having started, I would now like to provide the opportunity for staff to continue their ‘tours’, moving from reflecting on feedback in books, to experiencing feedback in each other’s classrooms.

Experience Tour: Feedback by Alex Gingell

Great to see the DIY Toolkit being hacked to suit the needs of our school developments. An interesting post well worth a look.

 

 

In this post from the Four Seasons in One Kiwi blog, @StephT shares some of the discussion about feedback in terms of leading a school.

a good leader shows they are human, takes on board feedback, uses it to improve the way things are done but does not allow themselves to sink under the weight of it.  We did not think that the leader that journeys up the Nile in a heavy armour plated frigate was that of a good modern leader.  That, we felt, was a leader that ignores feedback and has armoured ears, which could, consequently turn into a disaster zone.

Day 7: Educational Piranhas #28daysofwriting by @StephT

Great to get some on the ground, fresh insight into the principal role within a school – read the rest of the post above.

 

 

This post from Dave Stacey outlined an interesting concept to explore when structuring the timing of feedback. Something I will be returning to in a future post of my own.

We need to get much better about the point at which we give our feedback and make sure students can act on it (DIRT time is an idea that’s been kicking around for a couple of years, and if you’re a teacher if you’re marking without it, you’re probably wasting a chunk of your time – try here and here to start, but there are loads of great blogs on it). We can restructure our assessments, we can make better use of cloud technology to provide feedback BEFORE the final deadline, or ensure that students get a second go at delivering that presentation.

I shouldn’t feel bad for saying ‘well done’ – #28daysofwriting day 5 by Dave Stacey

 

 

Nicola Richards shares her first steps into using the SOLO Taxonomy in helping students understand the specific parts of their journey. By the sounds of it the taxonomy helped the class also provide effective feedback to peers, which is often tricky if we don’t have a notion of what specifically to say.

So my first real “work” for my class this year was to write a paragraph with a video as a stimulus. Once they were finished we discussed the key concepts and then I asked them to peer assess the paragraphs using a simple SOLO rubric. Most found it easy to identify where their partners work was at and could also identify next steps. I can see me using this regularly for peer, self and teacher feedback. I am passionate about the use of SOLO taxonomy (thanks @arti_choke) and keep finding ways to incorporate it in my teaching and learning. This was a great example as it fulfills many of the key requirements of effective feedback too.

28 days of writing – day 5 by Nicola Roberts

Explore more of Nicola’s post on her blog nixpixmyideasonstuffeducational

 

 

I look forward to writing and learning more from the reflections of others about feedback and do my bit to keep the main thing the main thing.

Image loopz by Rosa Menkman