Wednesday, October 17, 2007

There is no shelf!


This is about how we find information vs. how we used to find it. We've had a hard time learning that we don't need to think of information as a thing located on a shelf or in a file. Tagging and RSS feeds changed all that. Video created by Prof. Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State Univ.

3 comments:

Martha said...

Hi Marian,

Recently, I attended some workshops and a conference on Professional Learning Communities with Rick and Becky DuFour. I was impressed by the PLC principles and inspired to put the principles into practice. But,…

Problem: How do we create a PLC for our moderately-sized NMUSD Adult Education Program w/17 sites, 40+ hourly teachers, morning, afternoon and evening classes, both weekdays and weekends?

Solution: We create an eLearning Community as a virtual PLC for adult educators.

Adult Education Matters

We share to impart, impact, improve and empower.

http://adultedmatters.wordpress.com/

My Request to you:
In the spirit of a vibrant and interdependent professional learning community, I ask that you look at our eLearning Community site and offer your feedback. Our NMUSD Adult Education team would be thrilled if you would provide your feedback as a posted comment on the site so that we could all read and learn from you.

With much appreciation,

Martha Rankin
Administrator
NMUSD Adult Education
2045 Meyer Place
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949.515.6747

Read on for further details on the Adult Education Matters weblog's inception and structure and issues of safety, privacy and cost.

Brief history of Adult Education Matters

October 2 - NMUSD PLC workshop

October 4-5 - PLC Conference in Anaheim

October 6 – Create Adult Education Matters eLearning Community for Adult Educators

October 8 – Share eLearning Community idea with NMUSD Adult School Site Council

October 9 – Share eLearning Community idea with NMUSD staff members and initiate open-dialogue process

October 9-19 - Test eLearning Community idea for relevancy, impact-potential, rate-of-use potential, ease-of-access and ease-of-use:
· Our region’s CALPRO director (CA Adult Literacy Professional Development Project)

· Our region’s adult education ACSA meeting - Huntington Beach Adult School has requested that we share it with its teaching faculty in the upcoming month.

· Blog stats to date: 1,562 total views, 12 posts and 50 comments from NMUSD Adult Education teachers.

Electronic PLC Site Structure - 3 pages:

1.Home page - an active page where the ever-expanding articles are located

2.About this Weblog page- a static page where the mission, vision and goals are located

3.The Matters of Adult Education page - an active page where the launching article "Adult Education Matters" is located. The intent of this page is to collaboratively build a list of essential matters in adult education (all with interactive links to research-based articles on these matters). This list acts as the content guide for my articles on the home page.

Safety and Privacy Issues:

I control all incoming comments with the "moderation" feature. All comments wait in queue for approval before being published. Worpress.com offers multiple privacy features and uses automatic spam protection.

To date, I have deleted 4 comments that came from outside viewers with no connection to adult education. Their comments were innocuous ("Yes! I've used Google Translation and it's great"); but, for traffic-control purposes, I deleted them. It is easy to spot and catch these outside comments and delete (or spam) them if necessary.

Fiscal Issues:

This is a zero-impact endeavor from a fiscal standpoint. Wordpress.com is a free provider. I created and continue to maintain the eLearning Community on my own time because it is a passion of mine to see that the PLC principles will impact, improve and empower our efforts in adult education.

Again, here is the link:


http://adultedmatters.wordpress.com/

Thank you, again, for your attention, interest and support.

Most sincerely,

Martha

Martha said...

One more comment on Adult Education Matters weblog:

We presented the Adult Education Matters weblog to our regional CALPRO director. He has asked for and received permission for us to share our weblog with State CALPRO folks in January. It is a thrill and an honor to share our ideas with others.

Marian Thacher said...

Martha, thanks for sharing your site here. I just checked it out, and I can see you are building something very strong and supportive with your colleagues. I will be delighted to support you however I can!