Tweeting

I plan to dive into the world of tweeting this week.  I have a twitter account that some of my students have noticed and are amazed.  They should be.  I've never used it.  But I'm going to this week...
#getready
#digitalinterloperondeck

Ha ha

De Laude Scriptorum

One of my favorite stories by Clay Shirky is about Johannes Trithemius, the Abbot of Sponhiem.  The Abbot wrote about the value of the scribal tradition in an effort to save the tradition from being lost in the advent of Gutenberg's moveable type. Unfortunately, in order to get the word out cheaply and quickly, he skipped the scribes and had the treatise set in moveable type.  In the words of Mr. Shirky, "...the Abbot's book praised the scribes, while its printed form damned them." 

I love irony.

The Value of Social Networking

On Wednesday, June 26th, I noticed a FB post from a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Chorus sadly announcing the death of Lindsey Keller on Tuesday afternoon.  I really didn't know Lindsey--she was a  soprano and I'm an alto--but there were a couple of announcements during the spring concert rehearsals about her ongoing battle with brain cancer.  After our May concerts, distracted by other things, I didn't read or hear anything else about Lindsey until Wednesday's announcement.  I thought it was sad that someone so young had succumbed to cancer--she was 32.  Mainly out of curiosity I linked over to comments about her and eventually came to her Caring Bridge site.  I read her "My Story" post and then the final post in the journal.  It was the one from her husband announcing her passing but titled "Glorious Freedom."  Knowing how the story would end, I traveled back to the first post from Lindsey that explained her diagnosis and what she hoped to gain from the treatment that had been prescribed from her team of medical specialists.  I read every post, a total of 104.  She talked about chemo, radiation, reactions to various treatments, and fertility.  She worried about her family finances because of mounting medical bills and perhaps the loss of her job.  She never complained or asked for help other than prayer.  She wrote about her loving and attentive husband, family and friends, and often posted photos of their escapades.  She offered up scripture and prayer at the end of most of her posts.  Each time I hit the "next" button I worried that the new post would be the one where she announces new tests showed bad results and there would be no hope.  I read her story for several hours on Wednesday experiencing her optimism, faith, joy, sense of humor, love, appreciation, and even fear.  Her Caring Bridge story began on April 16, 2012 and ended June 27th with the announcement of two memorial services in July.

So what does Lindsey have to do with my journey through Web 2.0? Beyond friends and family and her many chorus affiliations, Lindsey was an elementary and middle school chorus teacher and no doubt had many students worried and wondering about her.  I read a note by Lindsey's husband, Steve, shortly after she died that her doctors had told her after the initial diagnosis that this brain cancer would take her life. But not once in 104 posts did Lindsey ever let on that she knew that.  Her story is a sad but beautiful story brought to life for an infinite number of people because she chose to share it on Caring Bridge. 

Lindsey had a beautiful singing voice...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=787WnJ1JHLs

I'm sorry I never really knew Lindsey, but I'm so thankful she left behind such a beautiful story.

So much pressure for the 1st post...

I have a Facebook account that I read five or six times a week in the summer and rarely during the school year.  Sometimes I hit the "like" button, occasionally repost a photo of my sons, send or receive messages and pokes from my husband, and one time I accidentally traded some "instant" messages with a friend. Over the last few years I've created accounts for twitter, edmodo, tumbler, wordpress, youtube, linkedin, pd360 and various other accounts that I can't think of right now.  I don't remember posting in any of those accounts, but I sometimes get auto-generated messages from them saying, "where are you?" or" so and so wants to connect with you."  So I'm not a leader in Web 2.0 technologies. (I just googled "web 2.0 technologies" and read the wiki article so I wouldn't sound like a total idiot.)  But I do suspect I am a leader when compared to my peers at my high school or even in my county--which is kind of scary.

Which brings me to the question about what I hope to learn from this course...

Several points in the Shirky book really made sense to me.  I'm kind of like the scribes of the 15th century.  Over the years, I've performed an essential service to my students and their growth and journey to literacy, but with every passing year, I inch closer to obsolescence.  Instead of a riding the tsunami of technological changes over the years, I've allowed myself to wade in stagnant water.  I've started a class website each year for the  past four years but never made the website live.  I talk about the importance of 21st century skills to my seniors, but I haven't given them the opportunity to practice them in the classroom.  So I think like the scribes, I'm the tradition that's being ignored except by the faithful pleaser student.  I want to be a leader in Web 2.0 technologies.  Although at this moment I may be at what Mr. Shirky calls "the cognitive limit of Web interactivity," I expect this class is the beginning of real literacy for me.  I look forward to acquiring new tools and new confidence to use them and share them to my future students.