Networks Form in Real Time
(By Jeff Utecht)
I’m sitting here with some time to reflect on my own sessions (practice what you preach they say). After the keynote and two sessions this morning I’m enjoying some down time in a quiet corner of the school to just reflect on what others had to say and what were the take aways from the keynote this morning.
Via the Twitter Stream, I found Sarah’s blog where she decided to live blog the keynote. A great idea and a great way to take notes that include others. The system that she used also allowed here to add the Twitter stream from the conference…however she soon found out that it seems like to much information. She then called on one of her blog readers Bill Campbell to manage the Twitter stream and filter through it in real time and allow the good comments to come through.
Here’s the thing….Bill is not physically at the conference! Bill was following the Twitter tag for the conference saw Sarah Tweet about her live blogging, jumped there, and then saw a place where he could help make the content better for everyone.
The network between Sarah and Bill (I don’t even know if they know each other) was a just-in-time network that lasted for the duration of the keynote, created the content they wanted together and then left the archived copy there for everyone to read and learn from.
So if you missed something this morning most of the big ideas ended up here.
http://littechlearning.blogspot.com/2011/07/laptop-institute-2011.html
A powerful display of connections between people in real time.
Then there was the collaborative notes taken by Megan, Joan, and Susanne this morning in the Google Doc.
3 people taking notes for the world. 3 people in three different parts of the room together creating content in real time. Susanne who was in charge of links and resources lost connection and then the doc crashed on her. But what did we really loose? By splitting up the task we make sure that we still get the voice of others and from different perspectives and different parts of the room. The lost links can be found in the revision history and either I or probably someone else will go back and dig them out and add them to the finished document.
Both of these examples show the power of the connection, the power of real time networks. You don’t have to know someone for a long period of time to create content, you just need to have a common purpose or goal. There’s a lot of power here in creating content with and between students during class and after.
The power of human networks is the greatest power to leverage in the classroom. How are you going to leverage the human power in your own classroom?
Pictures: Some rights reserved by Darren Hester
