Redux | September 8, 2006: The first batch of soil arrived at the site yesterday afternoon—8 tonnes, courtesy of Parks and Trees, City of Fredericton—and David Smith (from Save A Plant, one of the project's sponsors) and I got to work.

We began with laying out a number of flattened cardboard boxes where we wanted the woodchipped path to be and marked it out with a piece of rope. We then spent the morning building up the berms on the outer edge of the site and managed to spread a little soil across the remainder of the site and in towards the path. Finally, thanks to our neighbours Devon Lumber, we mulched the pathway with cedar wood chips and placed two wooden posts to delineate the entranceway, with a third at the southern corner to discourage cyclists from cutting across the site at this shallow part of the berm.

 The photographs show the fruits of our labours for today. Later in the afternoon, the City generously donated a little more soil which we could use to further build up the berms. Time for a break, and fingers crossed that the site will survive any curious night-time visitors :)

 
 

Redux | September 1, 2006: A quick test of my new M-Audio FireWire 410 before I spend the long weekend in Prince Edward Island.

Enjoy!

September 1st [1:58]

 
Xenophobia 11/29/2007
 

Thanks to Sophia for first drawing my attention to le Guin's work.
 

How does one hate a country, or love one? [...] I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...

—Ursula K. le Guin

 
Gliffy 11/29/2007
 

Gliffy is a free diagramming tool along the lines of Microsoft's Visio that works entirely in your browser. Check it out here.
 

Gliffy has two ways to make document sharing simple. Collaboration enables others to see and edit your work by simply entering their email address. Publishing creates a read-only image of your diagram that you can easily embed in a wiki, blog, or other type of web software.

 
 

Continuing from yesterday's post, I thought I'd share a few reminders on how community members as educators (and everyone else) can best communicate to their audience. Many thanks to Merlin Mann and Dave Pollard for many of the links.

First, to get to know your audience and to make the storytelling approach work, you have to listen. From Becoming a Better Listener:
 

Genuinely interested: A successful listener is genuinely interested in what the other person has to say.

Listen nonjudgmentally: [...] achieving what Carl Rogers termed "unconditional positive regard." [...] Nothing nips trust like critical judgment and negative labeling. Beware of conveying disapproval through your intonation, leading questions, or nonverbal responses.

Use a variety of listening skills: Paraphrasing is restating another's comment in your own words. Good clarifying questions, used sparingly, can be most helpful in encouraging others to examine the causes and possible solutions to their problems.

Reflective listening: [...] You are not getting into the blame game. You are neither saying "You're wrong!" nor are you saying "I'm wrong." By listening to feelings [...] you are simply communicating that you are listening to them at the deepest level. It is like verbal judo. Instead of meeting force with force, you are letting their anger dissipate into the wind. Once the angry person has vented his or her feelings and you refuse to get caught up in a shouting match, he or she will begin to calm down.

From The Top 10 Tips for Becoming a Better Listener:
 

Be alert to your own prejudices: [...] you may want to think specifically about the impact of your prejudices on your ability to really hear what's being commmunicated. Often, we are unaware how strongly our prejudices influence our willingness and ability to hear. The fact is: any prejudice, valid of not, tends to obscure the message.

From How to Be a Better Listener:
 

Gentility: Be kind. People appear to be good listeners when they want to listen to others. If you look like you’re listening "just because," then your listening skills will appear less than perfect.

From How can you listen better?:
 

Do you listen to what other people say?: [...] the more you listen to what they say the easier it is to respond.

Do you listen for their intent?: [...] What is their emotional state as they're talking to you? Are they trusting and forthcoming—or guarded and defensive? Sure, the words that they use are important, but they're often only a small part of what is being communicated to you.

Do you listen to learn?: The best ideas have a funny way of coming from the most unlikely sources. That's why it's so important to be open to learning from anyone that you talk to. In fact, there is a new trend in organizations called Reverse Mentoring where executives are mentored by the younger staff at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. This helps to ground them in the reality of working on the front lines, and can be a great reminder of how things really work, or don't, far from a position of power and privilege.

Do you show them that you're listening?: Maintaining eye contact, nodding and restating key points are simple ways to show the other person that you're listening. And if you don't think this is important, think about the last time that you talked to someone who was looking around the room like they were scouting for someone better to talk to; did this make you energized to talk to them?

Next up is talking: how best to get your message across? For years, John Sawatsky was one of Canada's leading investigative reporters. He later became a journalism professor at Ottawa's Carleton University. From this All Things Considered article:
 

Sawatsky’s rules are simple, but he says they get broken all the time: Don’t ask yes-or-no questions, keep questions short and avoid charged words, which can distract people.

From the American Journalism Review—The Question Man:
 

The best questions, argues Sawatsky, are like clean windows. “A clean window gives a perfect view. When we ask a question, we want to get a window into the source. When you put values in your questions, it’s like putting dirt on the window. It obscures the view of the lake beyond. People shouldn’t notice the question in an interview, just like they shouldn’t notice the window. They should be looking at the lake.”

Via Dave Pollard:
 

Three Ways to Persuade: Jeremy Heigh describes three ways to persuade people to do something:

Pitching (carefully crafting the 'elevator pitch' that will, if they're ready, blow them away when they hear it);

Flipping (finding the 'tipping point' where the person who you are trying to persuade is most open and vulnerable to your argument, and focusing on that; and,

Pinging (bouncing ideas and information and opportunities for communication off the person you want to persuade, and then listening and paying close attention to the responses until you know so much about that person and their wants and needs that you don't need to persuade them, you just respond to what they've already told you they'll 'buy').

Finally, the process of reflection (or praxis) by both the educators and their audience. Anne Davis offers some suggestions:
 

• What did you learn [today]?

• How did you learn it?

• Did it mean anything to you? Why or why not?

• What would help you understand it better?

• How might you apply this learning?

• Can you make a connection to what you learned?

• Did it make something else you learned come into your mind?

• Did it clarify anything you had wondered about in the past?

• Is there anything else you might like to learn about this topic?

• Suppose you had to teach this to a younger student? Could you write a description of how you would do this?

On the process itself:
 

At first, they look at me like I have lost my mind. They have not been asked such [questions] before. However, I’ve found that it leads me down a road where I can really assist them in clarifying what is going on inside their heads. I need more questions that I can think about to help them reflect about their learning.

 
 

Recent discussions with our community watershed groups have highlighted the importance of outreach and education initiatives in reaching local residents and visitors and keeping the various social and ecological issues on the public (and provincial) radar. In the coming months, I will be engaged in developing educational materials and approaches that select community members may use to increase awareness of these issues and, ultimately, foster stewardship. In considering what approaches to include, it is vital that as many individuals as possible can identify with the issues of concern. This is where storytelling comes in.

What is a "story" and why can they be so powerful? In his CBC Massey Lecture in 1999, The Triumph of Narrative, Robert Fulford made the following observations:
 

A story is a linear account of real or fictitious events to explain, teach, or entertain. It usually has these attributes:

• meaning and value to the listener/reader;

• an organised explanation and resolution, often with a lesson, a reversal or turn of fortune, and suspense;

• evokes recognition in the listener/reader;

• its own voice, mood and point of view.

We have a basic human need to tell our story to negotiate our sense of self with others, and make enduring order, sense, and heightened value to our lives.Stories and narratives mimic reality, unlike analytical or critical prose.

This article on storytelling by Robert Dickman in Reflections, a journal of the Society for Organisational Learning, explores these ideas further. In it, Dickman outlines and explains his criteria for an entertaining and effective story, recognising four components: passion, hero, antagonist, and transformation. A favourite quote:
 

[...] a story is a fact wrapped in an emotion that can compel us to take action and so transform the world around us.

—just what any community group needs to bridge the gap between facts and action.

A useful precursor to the above is the storytelling approach to asset mapping developed by the Canadian Rural Partnership and which I employed during my time with The St. John River Society. Having identified what places, people, tangibles and intangibles a community identifies with as being of value, these elements can then inform and be incorporated into Dickman's approach to education on particular issues through stories.

Take the Canaan-Washademoak region as an example; communities on both the Canaan and the Washademoak may identify their waterways as valuable natural assets. However, Canaan communities may rate the river as valuable for salmon habitat (and are thus more likely to respond to stories where protection of the riparian zone is vital) whereas Washademoak communities may rate the lake as valuable aesthetically (and thus be less responsive to the same story, if clearing trees for a better view is their primary focus). This is a gross overgeneralization, of course, but I trust you get the idea.

Finally, a recent post by Will Richardson where he writes on Henry Jenkins from the point of view of connections to curricula, but with some interesting points that inform the storytelling approach, particularly in terms of community responsibility for learning:
 

In the classroom, scaffolding is provided by the teacher. in a participatory culture, the entire community takes on some responsibility for helping newbies find their way.

Agreed. Now let's see if we can make it work...

Incidentally, for more information on "scaffolding" (as quoted in Jenkins, above), search the web for references to Vygotsky's educational theories (in particular, Zone of Proximal Development).

 
 

Redux | August 28, 2006: Two years ago, the Fredericton Area Watersheds Association (FAWA) developed some materials and a go-forward strategy for a program called CityScapes, but did not launch it. The program was resurrected this summer, and one month ago a site was selected for the first demonstration plot.

The CityScapes program is aimed at promoting backyard stewardship on private land, in support of clean water, wildlife habitat, and biodiversity. Fredericton is a city that is 68% forested; however, much of that forest cover is at present slated for development and more will likely be developed in the future. Such development can result in a reduction in water quality and changes in hydrologic regimes in our watersheds. FAWA is currently developing the CityScapes program in partnership with the Parks and Trees Division of the City of Fredericton’s Community Services Department, the goals of which are to increase forest cover, riparian zone buffers, and biodiversity, and to protect or improve fish habitat in streams flowing through Fredericton.

A demonstration site has been chosen at the intersection of the Marysville/Nashwaak and Gibson Trails on the City's northside:
 


This intersection has suffered from subsidence in the past which the City has recently rectified by filling the depression with additional soil:
 


The purpose of the demonstration site is to highlight the importance of riparian buffers—the site is located adjacent to a natural wetland—while illustrating what property owners can do in their own backyards to help keep these areas well vegetated and healthy. By choosing to plant the site with native vegetation, the plot will also serve to raise awareness of our native plant species and to emphasize their ecological benefits.
 


The location of the site at the intersection of two popular walking and biking trails just off the City's pedestrian bridge means that the plot will be highly visible—ideal for our purposes. The soil fill has resulted in a potential planting area of about 8 x 12 metres. However, the steep slope into the wetland has resulted in severe erosion which we will need to address. Also, the City has already hydroseeded the soil, resulting in the growth of aggressive non-native species which will have to be suppressed before planting can begin. Finally, the site is already attracting the attention of cyclists who are choosing to cross the plot as a short-cut between the two trails—something which we will obviously wish to discourage once work begins on the plot.
 


Initial drafts of a site design featured a woodchipped path bisecting the site with raised wildflower plantings on either side, a 2-person bench, trashcan, and a boundary of either a fence or stones. The orange line points to north in the bottom-left corner:


Currently, the site plan is as represented below. The path (stippled) now enters from the intersection of the two trails, with the larger finger drawing the visitor deeper into the garden and with an unobstructed view of the wetland ahead. Gone are the bench and trashcan, as well as the fence. 2-3 foot berms now form the edges of the plot, with a gentler slope where it keys into the wetland. Dotted lines represent the contours and slopes of the berms, with the "V"s symbolizing the slope into the wetland. The four cross-hatched areas are boulders and the black "bar" between the two fingers of path represents an interpretative sign, either to denote the project partners or to display an illustrated planting map.
 


A key to the proposed native species included in the site plan is as follows:

G: Goldenrod
C: Carex sp.
WG: Wild Grape
FH: Fly Honeysuckle
BV: Blue Vervain
SB: Serviceberry
P: Potentilla sp.
YL: Yellow Loosestrife
T: Trillium sp.
SS: Solomon's Seal
BW: Bellwort
TH: Turtlehead
JiP: Jack-in-the-Pulpit

 
 

David Warlick presents his criteria for critical thinking and reflecting on blog entries:
 

• What did you read in order to write this blog entry?

• What do you think is important about your blog entry?

• What are both sides of your issue?

• What do you want your readers to know, believe, or do?

• What else do you need to say?

For an example of using the criteria for self-assessment, see this entry by Will Richardson. Julie Corio offers additional strategies for the evaluation of online content here.

 
 

Redux | July 11, 2006: NECC, the National Educational Computing Conference, the world's largest educational technology conference for teachers and technology coordinators, recently closed in San Diego. As a gift for those of us who weren't present (or who were, but just couldn't take it all in), Anne Davis has provided a generous selection of links to some of the resources produced at the conference.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Will Richardson offers his thoughts on the conference dynamic and
 

[...] about the conversations that have to come before pedagogy. Here’s what these tools are. Here’s what they can do. Here are the first practices that are sticking. It’s about building the vocabulary and the context, which, for some, takes time.

Will closes with a comment regarding the productive conversations that take place outside of formal meetings (echoing David Warlick's sentiments), a phenomenon that Dave Pollard discusses in his post on "unconferencing" (see here for additional resources and discussion). I'm particularly fond of this quote (the concept of which Henry Jenkins discusses in greater depth here, and Kathy Sierra here):
 

The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.

 
 

For those of you that have taken the plunge and are experimenting with podcasting in your classrooms, you may wish to check out a Podcasting Legal Guide produced jointly by Vogele & Associates, the Stanford Center for Internet And Society, The Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, and Creative Commons.

A useful companion reference, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced a guide exploring the legal issues that bloggers may encounter as a result of their activities.

Finally, as an inspiration to educators to try and integrate Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms, and practical advice on how to do so, Terry Freedman has complied essays, interviews, and narratives from educators from around the world to create a collection of contextual readings for free download. A valuable resource and an engaging read.

Update: This essay by danah boyd is a good introduction for those interested in jumping into the "public versus private" debate and how it relates to social networking technologies and education.