Magic 8 ball

To me Twitter is a little like a Magic 8 ball….I watch what it advises and act on it! It can point me to useful personal connections, interesting and often cutting edge articles, and even what to watch on the TV! On Tuesday, it told me to check out Dave Cormier’s  Rhizomatic learning session so I obeyed.

I am in the wrong time zone so often miss the original Collaborate sessions but actually find it better to catch up in my own time. A question though to save my netbook being attached to my hip for an hour while I have earphones in and am chasing kids around the house…could the audio be saved out as a podcast? Could be a useful resource in itself… Organic learning, that’s what I got from the session and plenty more, but that one has resonated with me. Some of the ideals mentioned in allowing learning develop is often something I find difficult to recreate in my classroom where my students have learning outcomes to strive towards and I have exam boards to face.

But yesterday, I think I may just have seen the buds of those Rhizomes….I decided to bring my Magic 8 ball into the classroom and let the students embellish the core lecture with their experience, videos, and online articles all delivered via Twitter.  The quality of the lecture grew immeasurably as they tweeted additional resources and I displayed and discussed them on a Twitterwall. In fact I was still responding to their tweets at 10pm that night. A successful day in the classroom and beyond (I’ve storified some of it here). Hopefully these shoots will continue to grow 🙂

On an unrelated note…#ETMOOC has gone beyond inspiring the adults amongst us. My son was fascinated with GoAnimate as he watched me prepare my introduction video. For his school project, he decided that this was the medium he wanted to use. Now, he is not a child that is eager to do homework (!) but each night after I taught him the basics, he sat and worked on his project. So proud of him….here is one of the videos he produced. Thanks Alec et al. If he gets 100% will let you know but the important thing is the ownership and creativity he showed….learning can be catching!