Four more peeps

Disclaimer: This is the fourth part of my five part series leading up to NECC about who I'm hoping to meet. I apologize for those I left out and for any mistakes I make (please leave a comment to correct me).

Thursday: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach & Will Richardson,
The Jon Becker and Bud the Teacher

Trying to fit in a few people here so I chose two people I’ve met and two I haven’t met yet.
The main people who have helped me in my job are my colleagues: Tim Clarke and Rick Weinberg, as well as my BOCES ISS team. However, the two people who helped jump start my learning into hyperdrive were: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson.

I’m sure everyone out there knows about both of these National presenters, so I’ll give a brief overview:
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach bio from here blog- Doctoral candidate, President of 21st Century Collaborative, LLC (21stcenturycollaborative.com) and Co-founder of Powerful Learning Practice, LLC (plpnetwork.com) with Will Richardson, and I'll throw in her incredible wiki full of resources in here as well: 21st Century Learning.

Will Richardson bio from his blog- “Learner in Chief” at Connective Learning and the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms now in its 2nd Edition. Will is also a national advisory board member for the George Lucas Education Foundation, he writes a quarterly column called “Web 2.0″ for District Administration magazine, and he's a regular contributor to journals such as Educational Leadership, Edutopia, English Journal and others.
Now, some of what they've done for me. My first month on my new job with CA BOCES I started the WNY-PLP group. This introduced me to powerful education leaders in our area, classroom uses for wikis, this Ning thing (I now belong to 33 groups) and also how to conduct live Elluminate sessions. This is the wiki that we worked in for the WNY-PLP group, the Ning group is private so I can’t share it. However, we had a great culminating event and my team put together a nice little Voicethread with what they did.

Where would I be without their initial push? Still moving forward, but they have both connected me to not only some great ideas, but also to great Educational leaders on Twitter, through Skype and Elluminate.

How about Jon Becker?

My main Duke Twitter fellow! Jon seems to always be on Twitter when I am. With him you also get a full range of tweets. From deep pedagogical advice and views, to well.... “@kellyhines Chapel Hill. Booooo!!!”

Gotta love it.

Another thing about Mr. Becker is that he replies to almost everyone, even me!
Not only has he helped remind me about upcoming Duke Basketball games, but also views from the college level and trust me, he’s not afraid to share his opinion. Here is his blog.
Almost forgot his bio from his blog- An assistant professor at the Educational Leadership Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, he teaches courses in school law and educational research methods.

I appreciate all Jon has done from sharing good Cars knowledge from his son to his college DimDim Educational meetings.
I just hope he's not that great of a golfer, not only will I meet him Face 2 Face at NECC, but it looks like he's in the group ahead of me.

And my main question for Dr. Becker at VCU and proud Duke graduate….what did you think about 2007?

Bud the Teacher

aka: Bud Hunt

Bio from Bud's blog- Bud is an instructional technologist for the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado. He is a teacher-consultant with the Colorado State University Writing Project. Bud is a co-founder of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation and has served as an Online Community Leader for the New Jersey Cohort of Powerful Learning Practice
Lately I’ve been watching for Promethean advice and tips on Twitter, however, I've always picked up great ideas from him. I know that he was always involved in K12 Online and NotK12 Online. I'm hoping after our trip to NECC I'll have even more to add here.

It's late and you know what, this blogging thing is kind of tough for me. But, I'm glad I'm doing this again. We'll see if I can keep it up.

For Friday? I'm going to try to hit a quick intro to a bunch of people in my Learning Network on Twitter.....good night.

After reading Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's tweet today and then Neil Rochelle's blog post I began thinking during this somewhat 'down time' for me with the holidays, about making sure I prioritize what's important: Family, Health, Succeeding at my job.....

I have spent way too much time on the computer I'm sure....if you don't think so, just ask the 'Wonderfully patient' Mrs. Carls!
I want to find the best way to help all the teachers in the school districts I work with and want those answers immediately! Is that wrong?
It is tough, though, to gauge how much to try to show people without going too far - plus, I don't always know exactly how some of these Web 2.0 tools work in a classroom setting. As we try things like Voicethread and even PhotoStory, I live and learn with the teacher & students.

I set some goals back in a previous post for December and didn't quite make it through them all.
Maybe I need to keep it simple again. Build with the teachers who have been willing to accept help. Continue with my social networks like Twitter, Plurk & Ning (especially the Voicethread Ning group) during the day. At home, leave the laptops off and focus more on Wii Bowling and the family. ** Sounds easy, but not always ** Leave work prepared for the rest of the week and enjoy my family.

I hope this works. Thanks all.

Voicethread Ning

Screen capture taken from http://voicethread.ning.com/ using Jing

Well, the one thing I've been most surprised about is how our Voicethread Ning group for educators has taken off lately. Mostly thanks to tweets and plurks this past weekend.

I remember being surprised months ago that Voicethread.com did not have a Wikipedia entry. I even e-mailed them about this and thought of starting one......but, I didn't.

{It still doesn't as of December 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 am}

At the same time I was also searching some Ning sites and began to think......

"Why isn't there a Voicethread Ning Group for Educators?".

The next thing I knew I was creating one at: http://voicethread.ning.com/

I left it open to the public and had a few people join, but didn't do much with it because of more pressing concerns with that little thing I like to call a job (I'm in there somewhere) and the teachers and districts I work with.

A short time later, more people started join the VT Ning group, and after some advice I added some basic groups. I've tried to check in on it from time to time (mostly when I get an e-mail message that someone has left me a comment).

However, I never truly decided what is the best way to organize and run this site,

it has just taken off on it's own, which is what I always wanted. I'm far from a

Voicethread expert, in fact, I'm still searching for something I'm OK at?!?!

Now, however, we are up to 224 members, and you can see some great things being shared, people making connections with others, and some good conversation lgoing on like last night. Wesley Fryer made a post about VT changing the settings for educators free accounts.

Then, before you know it Lee Kolbert leaves a comment and Miguel Guhlin is posting his thoughts as well as referencing his recent blog post about this.

Great insight and information on a topic I completely missed with from Voicethread, however, it is one that will affect the way my teachers use VT!

Here is the link to the Forum post.

Screen capture taken from http://voicethread.ning.com/ using Jing

Thanks to all that have helped with our VT Ning group. I hope it continues to grow. I'm always open to thoughts and ideas on how to make this group better, more interactive and easier for members to get information and/or help.

Thanks to everyone in my PLN that are helping me learn.