Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

RSS Readers and the Search for Content

I attended the "Tag You Are It" session at NTC by Ami Dar and Katrin Verclas and was exposed to a lot of new technology tools.   So, I set up a little action learning project (cambodia4kids) to play with these tools to see how they might be useful for technology infused curriculum or nonprofit use.   

I love (and hate) how blogs, rss, tags, and these other tools are so right-brained and being able to indulge in some non-linear thinking ... on the downside, I feel so distracted and can spend lots of time in discovering these tools (and not doing other things.)    It reminds of how I used to feel exploring gophers and the early web in 1993.   I would follow links to links to links and discover, by serendipity, a fantastic resource.   At that point, I researching and organizing resources for artists on Arts Wire on how to use the web.   It was way back when you could click through the entire Yahoo directory and web sites had gray backgrounds.   Oh, and my  point was ...

So, there have been a few things on my action learning list (I'm going to create a 43 things list for this at some point).  Just when I was beginning to feel totally overwhelmed, I decided to dive and not worry about any logical or instructional order! 

One of the tools that was mentioned was RSS readers.  RSS stands for Really Stupid Syndication and since I'm really stupid I took a trip to Marnie Webb's article 10 Reasons Why Nonprofits Should Use RSS and Andy Carvin's What's RSS and Why Should I Care About It?.   Both of these articles are excellent primers on the topic.  More importantly, they gave me enough incentive to start reading blogs and also had some simple 1-2-3 advice for selecting a RSS reader.  With Bernie Dodge's glowing recommendation of Bloglines, I set up an account.

So I added the three blogs that I had been reading by clicking through them regularly from links I put on my own blog which I had thought was pretty cool. Now, with the RSS reader I can just click to one place and see if there are any updates.  Hey, this will definitely reduce my RSI injuries and save me some time!

Bernie was right, it makes it easy to read more blogs ... Oh, crap, I need some more blogs to read ... Where can I find them?  How many lousy or off-topic blogs do I need to slog through to find the really good stuff? Do I really have time for all this (with two kids under 6 whining at me as I yell - just another minute)

I started scrutinzing the links on the three or four blogs that I really liked and read .... and found links to the author's public bloglines feeds or references to feeds.  This is not unlike the early days of the web when people's personal web pages included a link list page and and all you had to do was follow the links to more links to find pages.  This was before google ...

Sonny Cloward:  Organized Into Folders By NPO Topics, including Technology
Marnie Webb:   Alphabetical listing by name of blog
Bernie Dodge:  The links on his blog labeled as "Feeds I Reads"

This is where I am starting.  As I find interesting blogs that I want to follow, I will add them to the bloglines account.   When I find a blog by serependity or if referred to in another blog I'm reading, I'm now asking myself:

Is the blog content of interest to me for my npo/ed tech work or Cambodia work or personal reasons?
Did reading this entry make me want to explore the entire blog to evaluate it further?Who is author?  What is their expertise/background?
What is the content of the blog?   Do they micro specialize or cover several topics?
Do they have good links and other resources included in their blog?
Are they a good writer?
Do they regularly post to their blog?

If this leads to me wanting to return to the blog on a regular basis, I add to my bloglines account.

I also have some questions about to best organize my collection, but I think this will come as I use it more.  I looking at it like my browser bookmark and I like to organize things into folders.  And, I'd like to make those folders consists with the link lists and categories on my blog.

Technorati Tag: nptech

Flickr Experimentation

Instructional Materials
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

I love how flickr enables conversation around your photos and connections to people with same intense interests ...

Cameras for Cambodia

Before I go on about this interesting artist/social activist project, I found it in the blogsphere ... I've been experimenting with cambodia4kids.org blog to test out the instructions/advice I'm reading on various npotech sites about blogs.  My own little action learning project.   

I started to find great expat blogs about Cambodia, particularly sweetcucumber  and started to follow the links of the comments and found another blog which referenced Elizabeth's project.  I emailed her.  She told me she had just listed the project in Craig's list in MN.  We had several wonderful exchanges back and forth.  I posted her notice on several other channels (adoptive parents of Cambodian kids, flickr Cambodian group, etc) and she is getting inquiries and offers of more cameras.   I am packing up my old Mavica to send her because it will be easier for her to report on the project via her blog from Cambodia without having to worry about finding a scanner in Siem Reap.  I am hoping that I can set up something with my son's class and the kids she is working in Cambodia over the next year ....   This reminds me of the early days of Internet back ten years ago ...

Cameras for Cambodia (C4C) is a grassroots project that will take place in the town of Siem Reap, Cambodia. The project was developed by Elizabeth Briel, an American artist and photographer, who will be based in Siem Reap as of June, 2005. C4C will put cameras in the hands of children aged 10-16. These are difficult ages in any society, but many of these kids will face pressure to quit school and work to support their families. Girls are particularly likely to leave school at a young age. C4C will teach them basic photo techniques, pay for developing and enlargements, and hold exhibitions in Cambodia, the US and Paris (summer/fall 2006), and beyond. Profits from sales of their work will go towards their education: even public schools in Cambodia charge desperately poor families fees to keep teachers on staff for an entire school day. If the family cannot afford the fee, the child goes home.

The project will begin with 5 students, and expand up to ten as the project grows. A university-aged Khmer assistant with an interest in photography will also be recruited.

Elizabeth is seeking donations of cameras and photo books before she departs for Cambodia in mid-June. She will take your old, your plastic, your unwanted, even your point-and-shoot 35mm cameras as long as they work! She is also seeking photo books.

The mail-to address is: Cameras for Cambodia c/o Wet Paint, Inc. 1684 Grand Avenue St. Paul, MN, 55105 You may contact her at elizabethbriel@gmail.com

The project is similar to one sponsored by Global-Children where they gave cameras to children in orphanages.   The organization also sponsors the dance and music program at Kampong Speu Orphanage where my daughter lived for 18 months.

Getting Started, Blogging Tools and What Makes A Successful Blogger?

Marnie Webb recently posted an excellent primer on selecting a blogging tool called "So you want get started blogging?"   I was in the process of pulling together this information for an afterschool program at ctc and a few others.  I was hoping there was something very straightforward and easy to understand about the tool selection and I stumbled upon it.  Talk about blogging as a source of discovery ... I was on the digital divide network trying to figure out how to make my RSS feed from here go to the DDN blog - and clicked on "read other blogs" and there it was!

I also needed to find some good reading on what makes a successful blog, particularly in an education setting. Anne Davis points a useful post on Elizabeth Fullerton's blog called "What makes a successful blogger?"   Anne Davis also has a great list of ways you can use a blog in the classroom or for professional development.  Now, just have to finish finding and synthesizing thinking on how blogging can improve student writing and some rubric examples ....

Gateway to Educational Materials

The Gateway to Educational Materials is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.  I used it while I was searching for lesson plans for the cluster workshop on Cambodian Culture I'm teaching for K-2 and it turned up resources that I hadn't seen before. 

The search engine uses a structured funnel approach.  You type in your key words, but on the side you see other ways you can drill down.

As an experiment and to prepare for some on-site work (technology infused curriculum for a community computer lab/after school program), I used to search for lessons to adapt that used poetry.  (I'm putting here because my laptop is broken ...)

Step 1:  Keyword search - poetry --over 500 results

Step 2:  Drilled down further by educational technology

Step 3:  Further narrowed by elementary school and lesson plans.

Now have 5 or so adaptable ideas.

What time is it in Cambodia?

ClockLink.com provides analog and digital clocks that you can easily embed in your web page with any time zone of the world.  I can answer the question "What time is it in Cambodia?" without missing a beat.

This could be an interesting resource for teaching time zones for social studies or math teachers ...  The world clock site made it easy to figure out what time zone Phnom Penh, Cambodia (GMT + 7:00).  Then all I had to do was edit the script and paste it in to my post. Now, I'm all set to let people who visit Cambodia4kids know what time it is in Cambodia!

Edupodder Home

Edupodder is a site dedicated to exploring how podcasting can be used in education.

Info overload functions as roadblock to better memory

An article entitled "Info overload functions as roadblock to better memory".  The article makes the point that the problem is a loss of focus. People aren’t paying attention, aren’t taking the time to do one thing at a time and make the whole experience a permanent memory.   Hmm ... I'm doing about five simultaneously posts right now ...

Why Computers Crash

Dr. Suess explains why  computers crash.

lotusmedia 2.0 ? Connect!

Ruby Senreich of Lotus Media just posted her excellent presentation "Network-Centric Advocacy" that she gave to participants in the Open Society Institute’s “Connect US” initiative.   It provides some theory and practice on social networks and technology tools used to implement an effective grassroots movement for change.   

Blogging for students and teachers K-12

Doing research right now to develop a simple blogging project as an afterschool project for grades 3-5.   There is an interesting conversation going on in the nonprofit technology community about the benefits and barriers to blogging in the nonprofit organization setting.   Here's a snippet of the parrall conversation in the educational tech world from Mark Wagner's "Educational Technology and Life" blog.  This particular post even includes a podcast! 

Blogging for Teachers - Part 1

Blogging for Teachers - Part 2

Digging deeper into links and material in this post, there is a link to a mattrix by Scott Leslie on blogs use in formal education. 

Cambodia Culture Quest

I will be leading several workshops called "Exploring Cambodian Culture" at the Sage School (preK-8 school for gifted students) during "Cluster Week."  Cluster Week concept is based on Joseph Renzulli’s Triad Model of learning for gifted students where students participate in a variety of workshops that emphasize higher-order thinking skills, providing opportunities for creative and productive applications of these skills to real-world situations. 

While doing research on the Web for the course content, I stumbled upon an article called "A Field Guide to Cross Cultural Projects" which lead me to an educational technology integration model called CultureQuest .   The site defines it as:

CultureQuests allow students to examine, understand, and appreciate diverse cultures, including the student's own culture. These inquiry-based projects are rooted in student questions and interests, and involve the focused, intensive study of one or more aspects of the literature, art, music, history, religion, language, daily life, customs, and traditions of other cultures. A CultureQuest is undertaken by an entire class working together, within which small groups of students focus on areas of the culture that are of particular interest to them.

A secondary goal of a CultureQuest is to provide students with the technology skills they will need for the 21st century.

I will be working with K-2 students and most likely be in a one-computer classroom that does not have an Internet connection.   So, for starters I'm focusing on the content, instruction, and learning tasks and have these available on my site, Cambodia4kids.  Once I've implemented the workshop in the classroom and revised it, I hope to explore how to better integrate the technology basics as part of the classroom activities such as: 

• Internet basics such as searching, evaluating, and citing Internet resources, and developing appropriate and ethical use policies
• Using the Internet for access to experts, other student helpers, and cultural ambassadors
• Creating and designing Web sites to publish student work
• Using desktop videoconferencing.

I have a lot more reading and digesting to do, but for starters I wonder what the difference is between a Culturequest and Webquest?

Technostress and Ergonomics

My colleague, Cheryl Hanback, is working on a project for her masters degree in instructional design.  She needs as many people as possible to fill out this 1-minute survey about pain incurred from sitting at a computer.   http://www.cherylh.com/survey.htm

About eight years ago, I had a RSI injury from spending way too many hours in front of the computer and not taking breaks or using proper posture.  When the doctor prescribed physical therapy and told me not use the computer so much, I initially resisted.  He asked me what's more important - loosing the use of your hands forever or learning how to avoid having your computer kill you?".   At that time, I was doing a lot of technology training in computer labs and felt a responsibility to teach people about ergonomics.  I made people stand and stretch in the computer lab - go through a series of exercises that my hand therapist taught me.  I introduced them to basic ergonomics and resources like: http://eeshop.unl.edu/rsi.html

Since at the time I was working with artists, would often start with having them draw a picture of what technostress looked like.   I had lots of wonderful drawings, but that site no longer exists.  I did save one I liked and used it to learn gif animation ...

Digital Video in the Classroom

I'm working with a newly established community technology center that is housed in an after-school program on an instructional technology plan for lab.   One area we're looking at is digital video, so have been madly reviewing educational resources and options.  I found a great resource, http://www.schoolhousevideo.org/ which had exactly what I was searching for - a piece on strategies for multi-level projects.   

Happy April Fool's Day!

My laptop died last week in Chicago at the NTC.  So, it was a bit difficult for me to find anything to laugh about.  I couldn't find anything amusing for my favorite holiday, April Fool's  Day and was just going to reference what I wrote on April 1, 2003.  Found some inspiration on my favorite blog at the Tombstone Generator.