Albany

I am leaving shortly for Albany to attend an SED training and meetings. Returning by mid-week.

Teen Identification on the Web!

It is surprising how many teens provide personal information that helps to identify who they really are on personal blogs as shown in the study "Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs" by David Huffaker and Sandra Calvert . I have had previous discussions with UBTigger about our fears that our kids offer too much information about their true selves, thus making them possible easy targets for the unscrupulous people in cyberspace. This particular study seems to substantiate our worries.

After reading the study, I relooked at the information offered in my blog, personal website, and home email accoutn. There are obvious personal identificaiton facts that I gave out that could be used to get a true identification of who I am or where to find me. Which of course will bring me to make changes.

I was not surprised, however, to see that one of diaghrams idicates that boys tend to "embellish" more within their blogs, and that girls tend to use communication and emoticons more often than boys. Aren't these typical characteristics of teens anyways?

Champions!

What an exciting weekend this has turned out to be. My daughter's varsity basketball team, from Elba Central, won their Class DD sectionals game in Letchworth Friday night. After all the celebration, their bus was greeted at the school by a flare lined driveway, the town firetrucks and many of the towns residents. From there they were escorted along the streets shouting from the bus windows, sirens running, horns blowing all for the support of the Champion team. Today, was a replay with the varsity boys team winning their championship, then greeted with the same type of celebration upon their return.

This comes after three months of grieving for the members of both teams, all Elba students, and community. We lost two of our teens within three weeks of one another. Tim McKenrick, a junior in my daughter's grade, and Will Stempin, a senior. Both boys were extremely good natured and well liked by all. Will was the best friend of Elba boys captain and friend to all the members of both teams. And Tim grew up with all these kids, making it his responsiblity to remove the sadness from anyone's face; he was the happiest kid bringing a smile to everyone.

After a long winter of hurt, sadness, and grief, the success of these two teams seems remarkable. And extremely rewarding, as every member wore the boys initials on their jerseys for each and every game, remembering and honoring their memories and friendship. They went out for each game with the goal of playing hard and winning to honor their friends.

My home has kept an open door to these kids, as a safe and supervised home where they could be together. I am not the only one who offered their homes for the kids to gather. It has given them the opportunity to be close, talk, remember, and share laughs about their memories. I still shed tears to watch these kids play and cheer for one another, and knowing that Tim and Will are not there among them, to share in the satisfaction of winning two school sectionals championships in less than 24 hours.

And I grieve for their parents and siblings who came to many of the games to show their support. And more importantly, to ensure the kids never forget their sons. I don't know how they could. Will and Tim were two fine, young men who lost their lives from accidental deaths. I will never go a day without telling my children I love them, and feeling thankful I do not have to suffer the lose of a child.

Podcasting

One of the latest online techonology communication tools is podcasting. Apparently, it has been around for the past year, yet until I read about in the January 2005 edition of eSchool News, I had never heard of it (you can register to have online access to past articles). Designed by a 13 year old boy who excells at computers, podcasting takes pre-recorded RSS files and provides a way of making these files accessible on the internet for uploading to ipods, mp3 players, cell phones, blogs, etc. Here's a short description about podcasting from the article.

"A descendant of web logs, or blogs, podcasts are pre-recorded audio files that can be posted to text-based blogs in the form of MP3 music files. (For more on blogs, see the new eSN Ed-Tech Insider) The recordings, similar to amateur radio broadcasts--except not live--can be accessed from a traditional desktop or laptop computer or downloaded to a handheld device, such as Apple's popular iPod, for busy users who prefer to listen on the go."

I am just amazed at how quickly things advance, change, fade away, etc, in the technology field/business. As I read further, it describes the ability of teachers to record their class lectures and download for students to access at a later time. Imagine students having the capability to access a site and upload their teacher speaking the assignments or class lectures while riding the bus. Thus expanding the phrase "filling your minutes". The instruction of foreign language is a good example of providing students with audio to practice with. Texts and articles that are read and uploaded to listen to rather than reading. Radio broadcasts saved for anytime listening, not just the moment it is broadcast on radiowaves.

Curious, I did a google search for "podcasting" and found multiple entries and found a number on how to set up podcasts. I found a podcasting tutorial page at FeedForAll, a feed creation tool site. Looking these over, it seems fairly simplistic to do. Even our blogger site offers audio recording from your cell phone to your blog site, using audioblogger. So I wonder if this is next venue for advertisers and spam? Why not, they access everything else. G-Metrics.com present a recent look a the numbers of podcasting events from the google site, which shows a steady increase of activity.

I mentioned it to my junior in high school and she gave me the "you are so out of it look" and said, "I already knew about that." this is so new, yet it makes me feel so out of the loop in regards to new technology. How will educators be able to keep up with the changes and possiblities, when everything new seems old for the students? It tires me out thinking about it.

Current status!

"What have you discovered so far, as you interact with others online, about conventions of online communication (you'll need to be specific about context). How does it differ from face-to-face communication? How do contextual factors shape it? How does it differ (or does it?) in different communities? And how do communication conventions seem to develop and be taught to new members?"

Up to now, I have tried to focus blog posts around the DMS assignments, with a few personal thoughts thrown in. Knowing that other class members may be reading, keeps me a bit more guarded in what I offer. This might possibly be from knowing folks personally and possibly being judged too strongly about my opinions. At times I just do not have a clue what to write about.

The online communities I belong to have been going very strong with daily communications with the SED assessment project. We will be traveling to Albany again next week for open discussions, training, and decision-making. This always brings about alot of discussion, which seems to be a positive aspect of the face-to-face meetings. Everyone offers questions and concerns ahead of time. There is a time element that allows us to get our thoughts together bringing more focus while together. Everything seems to get laid out on the table up front so that the work goes more quickly. I would have to say this is a very positive aspect of maintaining the online community aspect for this group.


My other two communities have been busy with posts, but all very tedious, or specific to technology questions or upcoming national workshops. Since I am not able to attend the workshops in Florida or colorado, I seem to have little interest in all the plans and excitement. There is a definite difference and this changes with each community based on my personal interests or benefits I might gain from the discussions. Is this normal to think about it this way? I can't say for others, though it seems to be the way I have interacted within these groups over the past few years.

Community … Real vs. Online Community: How do we interpret?

Community … Real vs. Online Community: How do we interpret?

In my naivety, I had viewed an online community as being chat room or instant messaging style formats, where participants were communicating in real time, creating and responding, as each participant posted messages to one another. As in the real person format, participants listen and respond, communicating their points of view, gaining instant clarification from how the other(s) responded.

The aspect of delayed communication formats did not occur to me as constituting a community. Letter writing and memos create a community among its members within a work setting and among families, without the use of electronic technology. Long before computers individuals communicated through hand written processes, phone calls, and even the telegraph.

So what constitutes a community? The Miriam-Webster online Dictionary defines community as “ a unified body of individuals”, “ …people with common interests”, “ interacting population of various kinds of individuals”, “a group linked by a common policy … “, “ joint ownership or participation” , and “ a group of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society”. The words used most often are “people”, “common, and “group”. Therefore, we can presume that a community is a group of people with something in common.

Let’s expand this to the electronic communications field, and surmise that a group of people using similar electronic communications who respond to one another would constitute a community. Therefore, any group of people who communicate through phone systems, in pairs or conference calls, would be a community of people discussing a common interest. It would make sense to consider any aspect of communications where the individuals communicate about common interests and topics would represent a community. This sounds so simple when put into this framework or thought process.

Defining online communities would involve all forms of computer-focused communications. Kimball and Rheingold (2000) describes “online social networks [as] webs of relationships that grow from computer mediated discussion … distributed across time and space …” resulting in the need for conversations “to take place online, over an intranet or private internet forum”.

Chat rooms and Instant messaging communications would be a very limited perspective or examples of online communities, when one considers all of the possible ways individuals communicate through network processes. Yet, people use these avenues to have instant communications with one another. Some of the online communities that I have had experience with include email, listserves, and web based messaging, etc.

Many people use email to communicate with others, with recipients of our emails receiving what we communicate to them. This does not necessarily mean that they all know each other, but have the option of responding to all attached to the original email. However, they can react or respond the others easily.

Many computer users tend to have more than one email address for personal email, university email, club/organizations, and a work email. It can become a busy and time-consuming process to check each one daily and attempt to keep up with each. Personal emails are more private, in that they are not part of an address system that is readily accessible to others.

Emails that are part of an organizations email system generally are listed for other system members to access in an address book. Email addresses are configured to be identical with the addition of individual names, whole or abbreviated in a similar fashion, and added to the system address book listing individual names and contact information. This provides the members ease in contacting one another to collaborate on topics of interest or work tasks.

As part of the Virtual Communities class, we have explored other aspects of online communities. It has been surprising to come to the realization that I have belonged to multiple online communities, some for a very long time, and not have realized the extent of my reliance on these communities. Listservs seem to include the bulk of my interactions for work topics. Involvement in numerous programs within the school environment has encouraged me to look outside of the school walls to others involved in similar activities. Enrolling into several Listservs has offered a vast amount of information of shared ideas, new research, training conferences, and so on that I would not have had readily available.

Members of one in particular tend to be from all parts of the United States, and internationally, addressing issues related to my job. It includes other teachers, teachers in training, professors, researchers, and other professionals dealing with the Blind and Visually Impaired. It offers such a wealth of information and suggestions that comes to me easily through a work email system. An important feature is the controls established by a listserve administrator, who manages the members, limiting it to those associated to organizations dealing with the Blind and Visually Impaired, and denying open access by anyone, including spammers.

As a member of a training and task force member for the NYS Education Department, I travel to Albany five to six times per year for larger group meetings. Yet, continual discussions and clarifications of information need to go on regularly. Frequent travel to meet in one location is costly and takes a great deal of time away from family and work responsibilities. Therefore, we use an email listserve that allows the members to post questions, ideas, or help one another on specific aspects of the project. Yet, all members have access to the conversations and are free to respond as they wish. It has proved to be extremely helpful during the past five years that I have belonged to this training group. This type of communication tool has also allowed sharing of documents, PowerPoint training tools, travel forms, etc. quickly and easily.

Weblogs are not new to the internet, yet are only recently growing in popularity with individuals and groups. Weblogs or “blogs” are pages with information entered by the owner(s) and listed in dated sequence. They can be accessed and altered by its owner(s) to post their personal communications, with the ability to comment on previous entries. It has become increasingly popular with individuals who travel or live away from their homes for any length of time, as a means of sharing their experiences with friends and family.

I have “played” with several blogs over the years as part of a personal journal, another for a class project, and a third one with another friend who lives afar. Each blog is limited in what the focus was to be. Yet, it could have been expansive to include multiple avenues of interest.

Take a journey through a blog world as I did recently. I spent an hour exploring others blogs. The journey took me to a woman’s journal of her pregnancy, including pictures of the nursery and the sonogram. In others, I experienced poetry, photographs of someone’s travels, another’s art, political and religious views, a history teacher’s interactive blog with her class, pics of newborn puppies, entries in other languages, journal entries discussing life, the struggle to quit smoking, and so on. To say the least, it was enlightening and entertaining.

Most web pages are designed with a contact option, as with most product-based or organizational web sites. They offer the possibility to contact the administrator or support group to pose questions or comments. Even our blogs offer the option to allow other to contact us through email.

Information expands our ability to look at a topic and see it in a new light, in various views. Network communications offer a more viable means for larger groups of people to converse with one another about any given topic, particularly if the location of the group members creates difficulty with meeting regularly to work out details. Online communities can be personal in nature, focused on interests, hobbies, views, and as a way to communicate with others long distance. Accessibility to an online computer opens up the network to a vast expanse of opportunities to talk to anyone around the world in a variety of internet web pages, email systems, and so on. It is amazing to comprehend that the internet is still young and growing and yet, so vast and full of possibilities.

Kimball, Lisa, and Rheingold, Howard (2000). How Online Social Networks Benefit Organizations. Retrieved on February 6, 2005 from http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/onlinenetworks.html.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2005). Located at http://www.merriam-webster.com/.

Spring or Fall?

Ok, who stole Spring?

I was getting so into having sun and warm weather, even after a few days. On Sat. I went to the car wash and despite the long line and 40 minute wait, I rolled down the windows, turned on my radio, phoned a friend, and let the sun shine in. The best part was that everyone in the lines in front of me, behind me and either side of me were doing the same thing and smiling. Today, with the ground covered in snow, cars were honking if someone was driving a few MPH under the speed limit to avoid slushed caused slidding. Geez! There is no patience out there when the weather turns bad.

I miss Spring! Damn that Groundhog anyways.

Online Communities

For some reason, my previous entry on this topic never appeared. Obviously, I did somthing wrong when I attempted to publish. Anyways, I have been a part of several communities. As a teacher of the Visually Impaired working on aspeical assignment, I had joined communities that dealt with projects/trainings that I am involved in. Two come tome through email, though I have the option of having access only through login onto the server website. One is an "Outreach" community of other professionals in the field of Blind and Visually Impaired from all over the U.S. Most participants work in the various state schools for the blind, some grad. programs, research, and organizations within this field. It has been both a sharing of information community, but also one in which pariticpants get to know each other online and through different conferences and programs across the country. I have had the pleasure of keeping in touch with several who were in my VI program in the late 1970's. The focus of this group is specifically designed for Outreach services in all 50 states who offer programs to Blind and VI students in regular ed programs. We share program ideas, but postings can be related to specific teaching techniques, speicalized materials, curriculums, and assessments. There are times that the postings become more personal, sharing information about a colleagues joys and sorrows, change of jobs, promotions, and retirements. Because there are both online and personal contacts it does feel like a community with social ties.

Most recently I joined a group dealing with a specific Assistive Technology software, Duxbury, that allows the user to input, scan, or copy text and translate into Braille code, then send to an embosser. This truely is limited to questions/answers, sharing of shortcuts, suggestions, upgrades, uses, etc. regarding this Braille embossing software. It is operated by the "offical" software tech. support. I found out about it after a phone call to the company to get help with an upgrade installation. The tech. guy was from Florida, and so helpful and engaging, that we ended up talking for 2 hours. He is himself blind from birth, and has been involved with different companies dealing with technology for the Blind and visually impaired. What a riot he was. After about an hour, we realized that we had friends in common who are also in the this field. Anyways, he asked me to join, which I did. I will say that the advantage has been that I get alot of information and help. The downside is that I get alot of email.

The third community that I belong to is more or less part of a listserve system set up by folks from the NYS Ed. Department dealing the NYS Alternate Assessment for students with Severe and Profound Disabilities. This assessment is the counterpart of the Regents for regular ed. students. I have been a state trainer since the Alt. Assessment's inception more than 4 years ago. This community is directly through email with no other options for communicating. The members are each part of the trainer system across the state. Approximately 4 times a year we come together in Albany to get the latest information for the different aspects of the annual process. So most of the approximately 100 members I am able to put a face to. Unlike the other two communities this one is designated as a working community only. We can post questions, suggestions or problems to the members or State Ed. staff who run the Assessment process. We are reminded not to post personal information. Some of the members, like myself, are also part of the Task Force and/or Scoring Site Coordinator community. I have been on all three listserves for most of this time.

In the past I also have been part of a kayakers online community whereby we posted comments to a weblink community. It was interesting, and I occasionaly go back to learn a few new things or places to travel to with my kayak and small army of friends. Another was a recommendation by a friend who had heard about it. I was going facing surgery, and she had heard about this group who offered support and information about what to face, dealing with our fears, recovery, etc. It has been several years since I had communicated with this group. But I found it to be emotionally supportive, encouraging, and informational.

Defining Blogs!

While searching through various community/groups dealing with technology and education, I came across the following short article:

"The Blogging Phenomenon: Who? How? Why?"
http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=86

A simple explanation of what blogs are and the general purpose for them. It offers a numerical view of how many are out there using blogs to post their interests, opinions, and so on. It also indicates that many people spend their days perusing blogs and posting their own comments. I had no idea this was spreading into such a phenomenon.

February already!

It has been a week since I created a post here and thought it about time I added to my own page. So where to begin. Our school renovations have been completed. For the past two weeks I have worked long days packing and moving from cramped quarters in the schools residential areas where dorms, every corner, closet, and so on were shared with dormitories, classrooms, therapists, and offices. It has been on long year and a half. But now the end is near! I can say in all honestly we were getting very sick of being under one another nose.

Most everyone is moved and settled with their offices and classrooms, except for myself and two others. Let's see we have had to pack, move, unpack and set up the Tech. lab, the Media room, teacher workroom, our individual offices, the professional library, as well as having to move and set up two student computers in every classroom and most of the staff online computers. And then there is the library, which we have not yet touched. Needless to say, I am worn right down. The dust is enough to make a person sick .... and it did for all of those two weeks. I often came home and went to bed shortly after. But the end is within sight ... I hope. Despite all the negative talk here, the rooms look beautiful, clean and new. I think I will be happy in my new surroundings. And my plants are loving the bright windows they fill.

Yesterday was groundhogs day and nicely stuck us with 6 more weeks of winter. It also would have been my mothers birthday. Although she passed away in 1982, I still wish she were here. I think of her nearly everyday wishing I could call and ask advice on raising my daughters, or better yet, take them for a few days. :{} It's not that I dislike them, but who cares who borrowed what? At least they have clothes to worry about, and food to eat. So annoying, but I love them just the same. I can't tell you how often I have spoken outloud to my parents apologizing for creating anxiety and hurt from similar words or actions that I see my own two doing. Guess experiencing the emotions that we put our parents through is how we become wiser. I will say it has not been easy raising them alone without having my own parents alive to talk to or help out. But I wouldn't have missed the trip for anything.

Time to head out again for my daughter's basketball game. Looks to be another late night drive to Rochester. One of these days I will figure out how to post pics in this site. Might be nice to have a few visuals added in. Signing off .....