The Secret Revolution

Anil points out its easy to bash things, which leads to a lack of understanding and empathy.

We have things we know are indefensibly wrong and our instinct is to try and fix them and correct them. There are things that we hate that we don’t necessarily have to hate, from Paris Hilton to Tea Partiers to Powerpoint. Anil teaches us some principles to put into play when we think someone is wrong and indefensible, so we can learn to have empathy for the people we think are indefensible.

heck, he even defends PowerPoint. Now that is revolutionary.

Today the revolution came into the spotlight with a keynote session for the 2010 Canadian eLearning Conference. The call has been made, and now it is all of your turn to join up!

Presentation slides have been uploaded to Slideshare (if you view there, you can see the slide notes). And the revolution is now recorded and is synced in the Slideshare below:

Well we hope so. Sometimes tagging can be a lonely game. It’s more fun when you play along.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Laurie | Liquid Paper

For tomorrow’s presentation at the CeLC conference, I;’ve been tagging all the web resources listed (and more) in delicious using the bluntly obvious tag of secretrevolution, with the most recent ones embedded via RSS on the sidebar of this site (hey, look right, there they are).

But play along. Tag anything you might think relevant, articles, blog posts, videos, flickr images, anything that gets to the heart of this not so secret revolution, all the ways we are finding to play the game differently, inside ort outside of the tools our institution provides.

Ahhh, but there is more.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by bookgrl

There is a SECRET tag. How can it be secret if I am putting it on this blog? Do you get the total irony of fake secrecy?)

Add an extra tag if what you are bookmarking is a bonafide education example of this in action- use the tag of s3cr3trev.

C’mon and play tag, its lonely doing this by myself!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Will Spaetzel

Our advance forces landed under the cover of darkness in Edmonton. Last spotted heading for a Tim Horton’s, the ground forces are prepared to launch the revolution Wednesday morning.

Canada is now on a level 9 alert.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by tashland

In terms of being a Secret Revolutionary, what are some of the instrumental tools that make the effort more effective? Let’s skip the obvious contenders, we know about Twitter and blogs and wikis, yadda yadda. What are the more odd specialized tools you use that others ought to put in their box?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by TOMTEC

Or for the well known tools, what add-ons make them even more powerful? For example, there are seemingly thousands of twitter apps (you could spend days combing through the Twitter Fan Wiki), but there are a few that really shine, like Twitter Times (http://twittertim.es/) which pulls resources and key stories out of the stream of people you follow on twitter.

You can add comments here and tag them in delicious (oh oh, thats a key tool) with secretrevolution

(originally barked at CogDogBlog…)

Let me try to explain it. There are some people hard at work out there aiming to “change education” “reform schools” etc- big huge monumental tasks. Kind of like “Let’s pick up the Himalayas and put them next to Florida”. Other radicals suggest we need a dramatic loud revolution, a burn down the house kind of approach.

Good luck with that.

I am a believer that we can generate a large amount of change through small localized actions. I am looking for–maybe “secret” was not the best word, maybe it is a “quiet” revolution in exploiting technology in education. And the irony is, it is not much a secret at all, that is a JOKE. Get it? I doubt it.

I’m looking for examples of two flavors.

One are the ways educators cleverly exploit technologies that are more or less “forced” on them, or the ones most encouraged/supported. Sure Blackboard may be a giant lead anvil, but I bet there are some really clever things people do in it, maybe things that were not even intended by its creators. Has anyone run some sort of gaming or simulation inside the Bb? Maybe an ARG? Or its always easy to take pot shots at PowerPoint, but I know people have done some things, like non-linear hypertext stories. Or heck, maybe even SharePoint. I dont even know what it is, but tell me of some novel way to use the tools people usually bash.

The second are the ways educators go to outside resources or personal networks, leverage free web tools, or open source to do things not even possible with what their school or organization provides. Not just “I created a blog for my class” or “we tweeted”- something larger, or more unusual. Something that makes you say, “Woah”
Now having what I am looking for as clear as lava, here’s where you can share any responses via a Google Form http://bit.ly/secretrevolution

The revolution is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. I’ll share it all, natch.

Failing to collect anything, I intent to show many photos of dogs being superior to cats.

If you cannot tell, the revolution is in progress of being set up. Stand back, and watch the paint peel.