A lesson from Jack about motivation

The new dog is helping the old girl learn new tricks about motivation and its connection to learning. (The new dog is Jack who is growing by leaps and bounds; the old girl is yours truly.)

In case you hadn't noticed, it's hot outside. We have now learned that Jack doesn't much like the heat (smart dog, that Jack!) I'm juggling, trying to keep the air conditioning bill under control and the number of "accidents" on the carpets to a minimum. We have a dog door, but the old dog hasn't been doing a very good job mentoring, and Jack has been reluctant to try it on his own. But he really gets very (ah) jacked out of shape (tee hee) when he can't find Roxy in all the usual places.

This morning, I really couldn't bear leaving the sliding door open so Jack could head out to the yard on his own, so I let him out and then closed the door. Lo and behold! Jack finished his toilette and then dashed back into the cool clime of the bedroom -- whoosh, right through the dog door without a pause. Good dog, Jack!

Somewhat later, he saw Roxy out in the grass, and the next thing I know, he's streaking out through the dog door to join her. Wow! That's a new one! The dog door swings both ways. Good dog, Jack! He seems just so damned pleased with himself, now that he's figured this out. Not as much as we are, you can be sure.

While we've been talking up play, we've also noticed that participation in 23 Things has waned a bit this week. Maybe it's because of the heat, or maybe everyone's hitting the road on vacation, or hauling out the flags and the bunting for next week's celebrations, but it may be also that we need a little jolt, a kick of motivation that doesn't depend just on play.

So Jack's learned a new skill that gives him greater independence, and he's really pleased with himself. (Of course, I've been effusive in my praise too, but I don't think he's going in and out of the dog door for me.) I just hope other 23-Things players are learning too, and getting personal satisfaction out of it, but it would be nice to be able to add some yummy cookies to those wagons! Share!

Why use pictures?

jelly camera
Originally uploaded by youngdoo

Not a huge number of blog posts using photos this week, and I'm not quite sure why. Is it because the huge number of photos in Flickr is overwhelming? Or because it's difficult to find a specific picture? Or because the technique (uploading, adding to posts) is too confusing? Take this opportunity to share a comment. (Or have you all been as busy as Sue Oliver, the Rat-Lady who's been very busy midwifing.) We're interested.

Training Bras 2.0

I read several blogs about education, and one of the best is Webblogg-ed by Will Richardson. This morning he commented about an article I read in today's NY Times about doll sites or "virtual playgrounds" for kids. I was stunned by the original article, and I bet there will be a lot of comments about it in the blogosphere today.

This past spring, in my English 102 class (where the research topic was electronic surveillance), I learned about cell phones for kids. They are brightly colored with only a couple of buttons (Mom, Dad, 911) designed for the very young set but marketed as safety devices to parents. Who wouldn't want her first-grader to be able to contact Mom as she walks home from school? Cynical old me -- I look at these as training cell phones, so that as kids get older, parents can just upgrade the devices and services, adding IM between specified buddies in a couple of years, and easing off restrictions at age-appropriate levels. Catch 'em while they're young. It irritates me that these companies use fear to market them to parents.

So these doll sites caught my eye -- virtual playgrounds for children -- that introduce them to social networking and web 2.0 tools in a "safe" environment. Well, maybe. Sometimes these sites are tied into purchases (Webkinz that allow kids to access a web site for the plush toy they have already purchased -- does anyone have one of these?), and sometimes they are ostensibly free, containing no advertising and requiring no subscriptions. What a long-range investment these companies are making!

These sites may be safe from sexual predators (fear as a marketing strategy again), but I see them as consumer training sites, teaching very young children to want branded items, to expect read/write web capabilities, and to be comfortable customizing their online experiences. Imagine what they'll expect from technology in elementary and secondary schools, not to mention college. Look at all the learning 2.0 skills they are picking up along the way. In just a decade, these folks will be in our classrooms. Will we be ready for them?

The tangled web

I'm sorry, that circuit is busy ...
Originally uploaded by </paul>

Is this how you feel right now? Confused and overwhelmed? Tangled up in Web 2.0? Take a deep breath and relax!

One of the biggest challenges I face as a learner and a teacher is handling the pace of information. It's what Christine and I are referring to as the "Goldilocks dilemma." We're struggling with that right now. What is too much information? What is too little? What's too fast or too slow?

Some of us are chomping-at-the-bit learners. We find some new capability or concept or tool and we want more, more, more. Others need the info fed out a bite at a time; if we get too much at once, we choke, get confused, and drift away.

I felt a little overwhelmed by the potential of Flickr. Not only is there Flickr itself, but there's all this stuff I don't know about gadgets (my cell phone, my MotoQ, etc.) and a whole slew of stuff I don't know about digital photos (cropping, colors, size, etc.) It's pretty overwhelming, especially because I really am a print person. So I'm going to take it a step at a time. I'll probably write quite a few posts this week, playing around with pictures and the mash ups Christine introduced. I have some interesting ideas I want to explore, but I think I'm going to have to take this in pieces.

Similarly, I have this same quandary as a teacher. How much information is too much? How much is not enough? Should I present all the information at once, or dribble it out as I think students need it? Some students are really irritated if they learn something at the end of an assignment that would have solved a problem they identified early on. 'Tis a puzzlement. If I present the information all at once, some students race through it to "finish it up" without thinking as they go. Some students don't undertake a project until the last minute, so while all the information presented at once might serve their needs, it also overwhelms other students who want things a piece at a time. It reminds me a bit of the hot-dog eating contest this weekend; the winner ate 59 hot-dogs in 12 minutes. That's one every 12 seconds. They don't actually eat them; competitive eaters have learned to stuff the hot-dogs down their throats by controlling their natural gag reflex. Boy, is that a scary metaphor for learning!

Many of us now recognize that we're going to have to figure out how to keep up with all these blog posts. We'll introduce some strategies for doing that next week. However, the folks who are frustrated by the leisurely pace of 23 Things should read Alisa's blog I'll dub her Queen of the fast pack. You can peek ahead to her mash up that she told me about in her comment to my post about "Do you go to the store with a list?" Then you can read co-Queen Marla's experience forging ahead.

The point is that we have to find our own pace, and that our pace might differ depending upon what we're learning. I'm a lot faster learner when I'm dealing with text than I am with photos or audio or video. I think teachers need to find a way to accommodate both the turtles and the hares.

The power of play

We are learning about the power of play to build friendships. Well, we aren't learning that. Jack and Browser are. I don't have any pictures yet of them cavorting in the yard together, but we had a big breakthrough this evening, actual play (rather than just tolerance) with tails wagging and some silly toy-swiping. (Don't you admire our restraint in not calling this puppy Spot?)

So we know that play is a great way of learning, but I think we're also learning that playing together is a great way of forming those supportive friendships that allow us to make mistakes -- which is one of the things that happens when we really learn. I think it is sad that playfulness, a key part of experimentation, is missing from a lot of learning, and I've been thinking about how I can get some of it back into my writing classes. What I really want is for students to have fun, play around, and then ZAPPO . . . suddenly realize that they've learned something useful and important. Something more for me to chew on . . .

By the way, I have three or four other ideas cooking based on other posts I have read. I'm going to start them and save them without posting so I can go back and work on them over the next few days. It took me a while to understand the difference between those two buttons below the compose window. I have to remember to read the screen :-)

Do you go to the store with a list?

I've been reading through the 7 1/2 habits entries that have been posted so far, and I started taking some notes. They really are fascinating because everyone's approaching an analysis of the habits in different ways.

So far, we're sort of split down the middle (with Pam staking out that mid way point). On the one hand are the folks who need that goal in order to learn, as Jim says, "No goal = Nothing to seek." Marla thinks she's more productive when she has a goal, and Mary Jane (not surprisingly, because she's teaching this session) thinks it's critical to know where we want to end up when we set out. I wonder if these are the folks who make a list when they head out to the store. When we go to Costco, we have a list and a path, but strange things appear in our cart by the time we're done.

On the other hand, there's another group that likes to explore (who knows what we'll uncover?) Karen (in Cybersynapse, a great blog name!) says that she likes "seizing opportunities as they present themselves rather than looking for them" which I think is a wonderful way of describing life-long learning. Denise talks about plodding through (she'll be comfy here in the big muddy), and Alisa says, "I don't really care where it's going to take me. . . . If something is fun, then I try to think of ways I could actually use it for some goal. The goal comes at the end."

I think I'm most often in this last group. I like the serendipitous nature of not knowing what might happen when I put my particular spin on the tools I learn, and I'm willing to put in the time to learn without knowing whether it will lead anywhere at all.

Not surprisingly, we're also split on how comfortable we are with "play" as a kind of learning. When I think of play, I hear "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again." I wish I had a dime for every time I've had to do that -- I'd have a big jar of coins for sure. This summer, I find myself exploring more before reading the FAQ or the docs (if there are any). I'm trying to click on all the links to see what they do, and if I get confused, I just take a break and then approach it from a different direction. I'm trying really, really hard not to approach every "thing" with the question of how I could use it in my classes.

But then, I wonder how our students would react to the 7 1/2 habits.

You don't know Jack

I'm learning a lot these days about learning. Yesterday we added Jack to our household. He's a 9-week-old mix of yellow Labrador and Australian Shepherd (so they say). He's very cute, but I think this is really Learning-point-five, and it's unclear who's the learner and who's the teacher.

So some of this is kill-and-drill (pee in the yard, not in the house); some of it is curiosity (he sniffs everything and takes an exploratory chew of most, including lamp cords and shoes). There's a lot of trial-and-error learning here too; he's learning the difference between the part of the sliding door that is glass and the part that is open, and yesterday afternoon he tumbled into the pool, just not looking where he was going. Last night, he was (not very successfully) learning to go to sleep.

Jack is the back-up dog; the main dog, Browser, moved to her exalted status last year when the former main dog died. She's learning too, mainly that this small piece of energy is just a pain, and she heads off in the other direction whenever she can. If anything, she looks at this novice with annoyance, making her comfortable life much less secure and predictable. Where's the mentoring, I wonder? The big dog teaching the small dog the way through the dog door, the best places in the yard, which sounds mean fun and which mean food? Browser isn't being a responsible mentor. Maybe eventually she'll grow into it and become the big sister Jack needs in order to learn to be a member of this family.

Granted, Jack's a dog, and a very young one at that, but I can't help think that I learn through drill, curiosity, exploration, play, trial-and-error, observation and habit. All of those are effective learning strategies, and I know how wonderful it is to have mentors.

I'll just have to chew on these ideas a bit. That's allowed, isn't it?

Learning the lingo

I was reading a blog (on evolution) the other day, and I realized what it feels like to come across brand new words. I have a pretty large active vocabulary, so in my usual day-to-day reading, I generally don't have to haul out the dictionary very often, but in the space of two or three paragraphs, I tripped up on six words . . . not only didn't I know what they meant, I couldn't even hazard a guess. Talk about being out of your element!

So I have some real anxiety about how to introduce new words as we explore 2.0. Of course, some of them are "names" like Flickr, Twitter, Rollyo, Technorati, etc., and I can tell from their use (and thankfully, that they're capitalized) that they are companies or services. A quick google will find them (see, even though they're usually capitalized, they sometimes become verbs). But blog, wiki and mashup are generic (like kleenex has become), and I know I have trouble figuring out what they mean.

So in the Web 2.0 world, I wonder how to get my head around the new lingo. I went searching a bit to see if there were any web 2.0 tools, but I haven't found anything yet. I'll keep exploring, but it's probably too "old-world" to see this as a problem. Does it really matter if I don't [yet] understand what a mashup is?

More fun

I realized that we really ought to have something off-the-wall and fun to do this week, so if you stumble over here, why not modify your picture a bit? Here's a face transformer. My picture is in the mode of Modigliani, but I really like the Boticelli version and the Mucha one too. Or you can make yourself a baby or a teenager. This stuff is so much fun!

Playing around = learning 2.0

It struck me, as I was watching the "7 1/2 Habits" tutorial, how wonderfully Lori Reed had captured the fun of learning in her photos. I think I forget sometimes that "playing around" is a powerful way to learn because it [again] puts purpose way far away and makes the outcome or "product" a bit shadowy and indistinct. As I play around, I expect to find new ways of doing something, or snazzier ways of doing something I was doing in a clunky fashion before. When I set out to play around, I tell myself that whatever happens may not be perfect the first time (or may never be perfect ever), and that's okay. If I care about becoming better at a particular skill, I just have to play around some more or practice a little more often.

I had to laugh at the list of names, phone numbers and email addresses in the online contract pages. I spent two hours with a friend yesterday -- on the telephone and online -- trying to learn something new. I know more than I did yesterday morning, but I still have to play around a bit more. He and I agreed that being on the telephone at the same time we were both online was a great way to learn, much more efficient than having him write instructions and then having me follow them. And you're hearing this from a print person! If you do this telephone thingy often, buy yourself a headset so you can talk hands-free.

Much to my dismay, a lot of Web 2.0 tools don't have heavy print documentation, but I'm learning (dang, there it is again) to broaden my repertoire of learning strategies. There's a lot of audio or audio/video combos, so I'm making an effort to try those out before I go hunting for the docs. Having said that, I still feel wonderfully reassured when I can find a book. It's almost like a security blanket, even if they are a bit out of date. So if you'd like a great Web 2.0 security blanket, I recommend you toddle off to Amazon.com and buy Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. Don't be put off by the secondary school emphasis; I learned a lot from his stories and examples. Richardson has an education blog too called Weblogg-ed that I follow.