Final Days: HTML and Presentations

As I mentioned much earlier, all the files designed for the DoE project had to be completed in Microsoft Word. Now that I had submitted all of the pages to the DoE in that format, it was time to "convert" it all to HTML so as to send them the direct files for posting. (The idea was that the MS Word files would be cleared for content and security, and that then the HTML files would be posted directly onto the Ed.gov site. I'm not sure why this could not be sent to the DoE in HTML to begin with but I suspect it is for security reasons.)

It was during this phase of the project that I discovered how much of a pain in the $#@!! it is to turn MS Word files into workable HTML. The main reason: MS Word inserts all kinds of nasty code of its own into any MS Word document. Why MS Word does this is completely unclear to me. What is clear to me is that nobody who works even the teensiest bit with HTML ever wants to take content from Word and make it HTML-friendly. Don't believe me? Go ahead. Do a Google search. It's a bit of a nightmare.

Now, before I go further: a brief history. I know basic HTML. I mentioned before that I used to be an early-adopter. Yeah, so in 1995, I was bored in the UBC computer lab (read: procrastinating) and decided to teach myself HTML so that I could create a Geocities site (in Netscape, no less). Oh, remember the days? That was around the same time that I was a CompuServe chat room hostess (little known fact) and I was determined that this Internet thing was going to be SO COOL.



Yeah, so anyway, I know basic HTML. I can create lists, headings, change fonts, and other basic stuff. I never moved my HTML skillz forward because I really didn't find coding nearly as exciting as English lit, music, and socializing, which took up the majority of my time at UBC (and not in that order). I was too interested in "the social web" before it was ever called that, and although I thought it was SO COOL to create my own website (which I did, and which no longer exists), I really only maintained the basic skillz so that I could tweak bits here and there when I needed to. And really, this was all I needed.

Until now.

Aside from the fact that I've been working on my own website, blog, and professional portfolio, I needed to up my HTML game for this DoE project. What to use, what to use? By this time, iEARN had been able to upgrade their version of Adobe CS, and so the new Dreamweaver was at my disposal. Yay! I thought it would be simply a matter of:

1. converting the Word docs to HTML in Word
2. opening in Dw
3. stripping the Word code
4. refining a bit

What it ended up being instead was

1. converting the Word docs to HTML in Word
2. opening in Dw
3. stripping the Word code
4. cursing
5. repeating all of the above
6. cursing some more
7. searching on Google for how to get rid of span this and /span that
8. repeating all of the above two or three times
9. perusing message boards and Yahoo answers
10. removing individual pieces of code from the main documents
11. crying as I realized I had 14 more documents to do this with before I could combine them all and add anchors
12. begging Diane and Jeff, iEARN's web developer, for help
13. experimenting with different ways to import HTML from Word into Dw (repeat, repeat, repeat -- ain't nothing like learning by trial and error)
14. finally realizing (THANK YOU, JEFF!!) that the best way to do it was to copy & paste from the Word document itself and then apply HTML formatting to the content in Dw
15. repeating that last step for every file
16. adding anchors throughout
17. adjusting image sizes, alignment, and adding "alt" tags
18. cursing again at the table alignment but resigning to their being "good enough"
19. offering prayers of hope to the tech gods that I never again have to move content between Word and HTML again

… and before I knew it … Oh who am I kidding… about 3 days later than I had anticipated, I had the necessary HTML files to send on their merry way to the DoE! :)

Now, my official internship and the project itself is COMPLETE -- HURRAH! We are still waiting for the official stamp of approval from Ed.gov for the site to go live, but in the meantime we are preparing a presentation for the Global Education Conference next week. I do hope you join us as we walk people through the new Teachers Guide to International Collaboration! Perhaps I'll write a separate post about that.

Top Image by itspaulkelly under this license.
Lower Image by webmove under this license. 

On blurry lines and shoes that fit...

Right.

So back to that ginormous DoE guide. A.K.A.: The Internship Continues!

Okay. How do I sum up 6 months' work in one blog post?

As I said, I began with the page of the DoE guide that got the most hits. And it did end up being the page that consumed the most of my time. But I worked my way through that page -- it turned into pageS -- and then moved from there to other pages, based on the analytics that the DoE staff were able to give me about number of page hits, referrals, etc.

There was a lot to be changed. Links didn't work. Sites -- or entire organizations -- had dissipated. For every existing resource, project, or contact person, I had to contact the person in charge and find out if it was still current, or if changes were to be made. This meant many hours of e-mailing and following bread-crumb trails through WHOIS searches, filling out forms on contact boxes, and tweets to the tune of, "Does anyone know anything about… ?" (SPECIAL SIDE NOTE: if you have a blog or a website, please consider putting your e-mail address on there somewhere! A contact form is not enough as it does not give the user an option of having "proof" of contact -- i.e., a copy of the communication -- which is often necessary for work, accountability, follow-up, etc.)

And so... we made changes!

We removed one entire section of the guide due to lack of relevant resources: Vocational and Life Training.

We combined the Languages section of the guide to streamline projects and to not make it seem like any languages were given preference or higher status. World languages are languages of the world, after all.

We added a page on Web 2.0 resources and tutorials -- and discovered a host of controversies surrounding how to classify tools in a digital age.

"Twitter is not a collaboration tool." "Yes, it is." "Well then what about Facebook?" "There are no document-sharing tools other than GoogleDocs. Why is that?" "They are too expensive." "How can teachers use Prezi for collaboration?" "Is Prezi a collaboration tool? Maybe we should call it a presentation tool." "But it does so much more than presentation tools like PowerPoint, and we're not even putting PowerPoint in here." "Is Skype really a Web 2.0 tool? It doesn't live on the Web -- it's downloadable software. And there are other web-based video tools." "I know everyone is using Skype but do we have a guide for newbies?" "What about wikis? Are they the same as CMS tools like Blackboard and Weebly?" "Wait, Weebly is for creating a website -- is that the same as CMS?" "Do we even have a CMS section?"

… and so on. So, please note that when you access the Tutorials and Guides section of the DoE guide, the categories are more like suggestions than they are labels. What I learned in working on that particular section is that most Web 2.0 tools (I hesitate to even use that nomenclature) are not easily classifiable -- they do many different things, and teachers use them in many different ways. There is no single way to use any tool, I guess. I mean, I knew this before, but trying to nail down what any tool does or does not do was tremendously difficult. My goal was to put it in the framework of "How will this help teachers and their students collaborate internationally on project-based learning?" Once I remembered that question (thanks to Diane for always reminding me of the purpose), then I found it much easier to write about how to use the tool and suggested implementation strategies.*

The tool should support the goals of the project.

We ended up discovering and therefore highlighting some VERY cool projects on various subject area pages -- many of which I had never heard of before but look so exciting. Global Dreamers, anyone? Rock Our World? Global Art? Those are just a few of the examples of projects that had a big "Wow!" factor for me -- and I've seen a lot of projects over my 12-year teaching career.

And then, with all the content more-or-less complete (and having made contact with some 100+ educators), it was time for the next phase: HTML.

*Note: I have to sheepishly admit here that I also discovered (and included) some tools that previously I had not considered as being instruments for student or teacher collaboration. Twitter, Glogster, and Prezi are all good examples of this. Twitter I saw primarily as a networking tool, not a collaborative one. Glogster I saw as a presentation tool, also not collaborative. In both instances, my quick tweets to my PLN definitively changed my mind, as colleagues directed me to resources, projects, and communities where these tools were being used collaboratively in ways that were A) not difficult, and B) truly transformative. I duly noted these and changed both my tune and the appropriate DoE documents. But perhaps the biggest turnaround for me was regarding Prezi. Having been introduced to Prezi back when it was still in private beta, I was not all that impressed with its clunkiness. (Such is one disadvantage of being an early adopter, and as a result I'm rarely an early adopter of anything these days; I've learned my lesson!) I saw Prezi as a "sparkle 'n' dazzle 'em" presentation tool that teachers just thought looked "cool." I did not see it as a collaborative tool whatsoever -- until Rob Newberry introduced me to Prezi meeting. I knew Rob was the go-to Prezi-for-edu evangelist in my PLN, and so sent a few tweets his way, much as I had when I was exploring Twitter and Glogster as collaborative tools. However, rather than point me in the direction of an example of how to use Prezi with students, Rob invited me right then and there to a Prezi meeting… and really, that's all it took: this skeptical mind was changed. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much Prezi had changed since 2008. Within less than 5 minutes I was suddenly saying, "Ohhhhhh-kay. Now I get it. Now I see how this could be collaborative." So, the lesson here, folks: don't knock it till you try it! There are some very creative things happening in technology for learning, and we shouldn't discount it just because it "looks" like the shoe won't fit. Even Cinderella knows to try it on first. ;)




Top Image by EvelynGiggles under this license.
Lower Image by Shopping Diva under this license. 

Building Blocks

Wow, so where to begin?

I haven't updated my blog since… well… since my internship period "officially" ended. Well… the time period ended but the internship did not!

Turns out that the DoE guide was going to be a lot of work. And iEARN wanted me to finish what I'd started… so my internship continued, so to speak. I'll divulge more on that in my next post.

But let me get back to what I was saying previously, just to give a brief update on Project #3: The Getting Started Guide for teachers new to iEARN projects. I'll start with the ending: It's done! You can view it here. (Yay!) In summary:

    •    I aggregated the data from the surveys. I also learned pretty quickly which parts of my survey sucked, and which parts were super-informative. (Note to self: the "Rate the following on a scale of 1-5" types of questions are most difficult to aggregate.)
    •    I created a killer report of all the survey findings, and presented it to Lisa, who was a bit surprised by some of the findings. In particular, that many teachers wanted video and lesson plans to help them as they were getting started in iEARN projects.
    •    After discussing the report with Lisa, I carefully chose content sources for devising a new guide. Basically, I ended up repurposing what iEARN already had, and adding several other sources here and there throughout the guide.
    •    I was disappointed to discover that it just was not going to be possible to create what teachers wanted / needed most: videos and lesson plans to aid them with their understanding of iEARN projects. The reasons we could not do this are wide and varied; suffice it to say it boiled down to time and resources -- isn't that always the case? Not to mention that many teachers in iEARN are accessing content from countries with slow (read: dialup) internet access, and so text always wins over audio or video. However, Lisa assured me that iEARN was aware of the need for more support to teachers in this manner and that the redesign of the Collaboration Center as well as some new resources in online and face-to-face workshop professional development would (hopefully) cover these needs. So, I feel like this is being addressed, despite my desire to have created some dynamic, media-rich resource for the iEARN global page! Ah well… the newcomer can't know or do everything, right?

So, the Getting Started Guide is done. It's not perfect (far from it) but it's a place where teachers who have never done an iEARN project can go to begin, and hopefully the iEARN staff can use this new guide as a building block for future developments.



Image by 10000spoons under this license.

If we knew what it was we were doing...

I've never really thought of myself as someone who's an extraordinary researcher. Really, I figured that what I can do is really what anyone could do with a bit o' smarts and an Internet connection. In my teaching career, I've worked with some crazy amazing librarians who have found answers to questions (mine and kids'!) before the question was even punctuated. I have marveled in their style and efficiency. I've never fancied myself as much of a librarian, or a researcher, for that matter, but several times in the last academic year, my peers have mentioned that my research skills are sharp. I  always thought (and still do) that they were just being polite.

Working on the DOE guide made me a better researcher.

That is the plain and simple truth. First of all, this project required me to not only check every link that was on each original page -- tedious! -- but it also required me to find new projects and make contact with all and any educators who were involved. Wow!

Considering how many pages the DOE guide was, (90+ when printed!), I decided I needed to prioritize. I emailed the DOE contacts again, via Ed. This time, I asked for some stats. I wanted to know which pages got the most hits. They responded shortly with not only the number of hits of each page but also the top referrals. This was very useful and allowed me to find a starting point.

I started with the page that by FAR got the most hits. And, unsurprisingly, it ended up being the page that consumed the most of my time by FAR on the DOE project overall. :)



Let the combing begin.

Image: 'What on earth!?!? (302/365)' by Tony₂
Edit: P.S. the title comes from this Einstein quote about research.

Survey says... Part 1

If you ever watched Family Feud growing up, you know that surveys can sometimes yield results that are accurate, while other times downright ridiculous or funny.



Asking the right question is super important to get the "right" response.

In my last post, I talked mostly about the main tech and logistical challenge of working -- or rather not working -- on the Project Book, and then went in-depth into the early stages of how the process went for the DOE guide.

I didn't say much about Project #3: The Getting Started Guide for teachers new to iEARN projects.

This task is quite different from the other two. Basically, it requires repurposing a lot of the media, documentation, and information that iEARN currently has in three main areas, and creating a succinct, "quick-and-dirty" guide to jumping into iEARN projects for teachers who've never done this kind of thing before. The iEARN teachers' community is, once you're in it, extremely welcoming, warm, helpful, open, generous, and supportive. However, getting started and finding your way into that community can seem intimidating to a teacher who has never done any kind of international collaboration, used web 2.0 technologies, or project-based learning. Those are three concepts that even on their own are sometimes tough for teachers to wrap their heads around; mesh them together and it can be enough to send a teacher away saying, "No thanks, I'll just keep doing what I've always been doing."

…. Which is exactly what we DON'T want!

Currently, iEARN's resources for getting started are in three main areas:

1. The aforementioned Project Book, on pages in the beginning of the book, before you get to the sections on all the various projects. This book is available in print and media formats.
2. A Multimedia Guide, available online and via CDROM (don't scoff -- many teachers in schools in developing countries don't yet have consistent and/or reliable internet access)
3. Notes and instructions about projects available online on the Building Connections section of the international iEARN website. 

Some countries have additional resources, but they're available only in that country's language, for the most part, and so would not be as accessible to me or the general audience of international iEARN teachers. There are also loads and loads of informal and anecdotal tips available for teachers on the internal message boards of the iEARN Collaboration Centre, but if you're totally new to iEARN, you might not even know where or how to access that.

My task: make all of this easier for teachers to understand.


Well, I never thought I'd say it, but I found myself digging out readings from my Ed Design course. Despite my having tossed the Smith & Ragan book on Instructional Design I bemoaned for so long (Word on the Street, are you listening?), I begrudgingly trawled through my annotations from that course and looked over all the stuff on Needs Assessment. Yep, that includes Tessmer and Rossett, too. If you were around when I was taking that course, you'll know that I grumbled about it more often than not. So, let this be testament that, like James Bond, I will never say never again. I once swore I'd never need Smith & Ragan, or any of that needs assessment stuff. Well, I was clearly wrong, as here I sat rifling through readings and annotations looking for where to begin.

You see, I thought I never needed that stuff because I am a teacher. Needs assessment? As my dear friend Sava says, "That's like, Learning 101." And as an "expert" teacher, I thought I knew all I needed to know about needs assessment. But what I didn't realize is that needs assessment in a classroom or formal learning situation is much different than in other situations, particularly those where the users are spread out geographically and by almost every other demographic possible -- language, age, ethnicity, experience, and so on. Not to mention that as a teacher, you spend time with your students; you KNOW them. When you're doing instructional design, you often don't know them at all. So you have to ask questions.

And so here was itty bitty insight #293487: I like teaching better than instructional design. In ID, the relationship with the learner is less important. You're one step removed from it because you're designing something to help someone learn, rather than being directly involved with the process of learning. This is an important bit of insight for me, although not surprising, as I had suspected as much when I was actually taking the aforementioned Ed Design course. But anyway, my point is that I realized that when doing any kind of ID, needs assessment takes a completely different approach than teaching because it's not as social and directly interactive as the relationship between teacher-student.

So, what did I do next?

• I talked to the tech people at iEARN and got analytics history for everything on the Multimedia Guide and the Building Connections section of the iEARN.org site in the previous month
• I put together a survey to send out to current iEARN teachers, asking them for feedback about all the different media available for getting started.

2 ways to do everything by D'Arcy Norman
Attribution License

… and that survey was way harder than I was expecting! "Oh, I'll do a survey!" I thought. Easy peasy. Yeah, notsomuch. After reading all those Ed Design papers again, I realized that creating the right kind of survey was going to be much more complicated than originally thought. The types of questions needed to be just right. There needed to be a balance between those types of questions. I needed to gauge feelings as well as competency. I needed ratings and open-ended suggestions. And, my users all spoke different languages as their mother tongue. Egads - if anyone took this survey it was going to be a miracle!

Eventually I got it done and Lisa agreed to send it out in the next iEARN newsletter, as well as posting it on the forums. I spent a good chunk of time monitoring the forums and piping in here and there to get a feel for how teachers used them as a resource for getting started. I made notes, lots of notes. I went through everything in the Project Book, the Multimedia Guide, and the Building Connections page and made more notes.

And then I waited.

It took 2 weeks, but we finally got enough responses for me to do something with! I was hoping for a minimum of 25 responses. We got 27. That was enough, as far as I was concerned. It was June -- the end of the school year for many teachers, and teachers are crazy BUSY at that time of year; I know this from experience. Luckily, the respondents were also a very good cross-section of the iEARN teacher population -- from 12 different countries and all with varying levels of experience in iEARN projects -- so this meant the sample would be at least semi-accurate. I mean, this isn't a scientific survey or anything! But we did need something that would at least give us enough data to get a pulse on what people thought of the current available resources for getting started in iEARN projects.

The next steps would be aggregating all this data and presenting it in some way that would inform me as to HOW to do this new getting started guide, and WHAT to put into it. Does that sound daunting to you? It didn't to me.

Not at first. But that's because I hadn't seen the responses yet.

by dno1967
Attribution License

Jumping In

simplicity is hard by Will Lion
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

One of my initial challenges when I began at iEARN was that I wasn't really sure who to go to for what. I mean, it's not that complicated: the iEARN office is quite small, with only about 12-14 full-time staff. But I was working on 3 different projects, with somewhat different goals, and in different "branches" of iEARN. It was clear that Lisa was my immediate supervisor, but when I asked her about things regarding the Dept of Ed guide (herein known as the DOE guide), she would politely listen and then suggest that I should ask Diane Midness, who is in charge of professional development. (I much later learned that this is Lisa's very polite style -- she would never tell me that I was way off base and asking the wrong person, and I appreciate this so much!) Eventually I figured out that for the Project Book, I should be talking to Lisa, for the DOE guide I should talk to Diane, and for the Teacher's Guide (for teachers new to iEARN), I should talk to both of them. Got it.

Lisa gave me the current year's Project Book both on CD and hard copy as well as a version of Adobe InDesign to take home and install on my computer (last year's MacBook Pro) so that I could familiarize myself with the program before it came time to use it to put together the Project Book.

The only problem was, the version of Adobe InDesign they had was version CS2. Yeah, from 2005. Eep. And while it was running fine on the Mac mini at my iEARN desk, it wouldn't even install on my MacBook Pro at home. After trying two different install copies and 3 times with each one, I finally gave up. I spent a bit of time trying to wrap my head around it at the office, but being so outdated, it was difficult to find online tutorials. It was going to be crazy difficult to learn this piece of software if I didn't have the opportunity to play with it at home. I explained this all to Lisa, who listened attentively and soon thereafter, contacted TechSoup to see if iEARN could get the new CS5 anytime soon. In the meantime, Lisa told me to focus on the other projects. Having plenty of other stuff to work on, I gladly changed gears.

I focused my attention on the DOE guide at first. Diane and I met briefly to talk about what its goals are (and were) and how it has changed so much since its initial inception. From what I understand, the DOE Teacher's Guide was originally conceived at some time during the Clinton Administration (I don't know the exact year), and then was updated one or two times during the Bush Administration, but then was shelved for some time. Now, under Secretary Duncan's Education leadership, the DOE was asking iEARN to dust it off and make it relevant, mostly because of Obama and Duncan's push for international engagement through education, and to make education more connected through technology. (Side note: Karen Cator used to be on iEARN's board, so iEARN was very happy when she was promoted to the government position she is in now, and the DOE is likewise very happy that iEARN is continuing their long relationship with the DOE. Some may feel this is a conflict of interest, but most would look at the long history of the relationship between the State Department and iEARN and conclude that they have always had, and will continue to have, a very strong relationship over the past 20+ years, despite who's sitting in the Oval Office.)

Anyway, Diane asked me to take a critical look at the DOE Guide as it currently was, and to come back to her and Ed Gragert, iEARN's director, with some ideas. I did. First I printed it out (54 pages!) and made some general highlights here and there, with some question marks in the margins, etc. Then I got online and looked at it in all its bare HTML glory. Hmmm. It wasn't so exciting. Over the course of the next few days, I annotated every page using Diigo (if you're a Diigo user and signed in, when you visit any of those pages, you will see my notes there). Surprisingly, I also made notes on the printed-out version. I say "surprisingly" because it even surprised myself how much I wanted to physically write on paper; I eventually needed a whole physical file folder to keep track of all my sticky notes on the hard copy printout. My process was very organic and very back-and-forth, and it took longer than I had expected. Of course, I was checking EVERY link to see if it still worked, and I'd estimate that about 75% of them did not. Of the ones that did work, half of them linked to pages that looked like they were no longer being used. It became apparent that most of the current guide was going to need to change, and that a significant amount of research was going to be needed. Additionally, I was going to need to contact people in charge of projects listed there, as well as people who were just starting projects of their own.

My head was swimming with all the avenues that were going to need exploring. I couldn't stop thinking about all the educators in my Twitter stream who would routinely tweet things like, "I'm starting a project with my 6th graders on the China - anyone from China out there who would like to Skype in?" and so forth. I started collecting lists of websites and networks where educators like these hung out (note: it feels very strange to talk about "educators like these" in the 3rd person, because I was one of those educators not so long ago!). More on these resources later.

Eventually I had an armoury of general sites and resources, but I knew I was going to need a methodical way of working through them all at some point. I was a bit overwhelmed thinking about just how much research there was to do, people to contact, ideas to organize, etc. I knew, however, that before I could start putting ideas "down" on paper, I needed to know some parameters.

• who was the audience? international or only American teachers?
• how would these pages be coded? regular HTML?
• were we allowed to insert video and images? (the current pages, as you probably noticed are mostly text, and VERY… vanilla, for lack of a better word)
• what was the deadline?

Before I could even ask Diane these questions, Ed informed me that there was going be a scheduled conference call about this very thing. I attended the conference call with Ed and several people from the DOE office. It was my first ever conference call of that kind, and it was very confusing. Not only could I not tell who was speaking at what time, it seemed that the people at the DOE were not really certain about what they wanted -- I got the sense that they were very busy --  and had really just hoped that we at iEARN would take care of everything. Which was fine -- this is, I think, what Ed and Diane wanted anyway, as autonomy is easier -- except that they (the DOE) had very strict requirements about how to go about the actual page construction.

Witness: The finished product would need to be sent as files in Microsoft Word. Yes, that's right, you read correctly. Microsoft Word.

I suddenly felt like I was creating a webpage back in 1998.

Here is a general overview of the steps I was asked to take: (edited for clarity and anonymity)

• Download HTML files from http://www2.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/index.html and put the content in Word.  
• Write and finish the new document (in Word).
• Send to R*** for clearance.
• Get and make edits (from clearance process) in Word file.
• Make sure Word file is final.
• Mark up final Word file in one big HTML file, keeping markup simple.  See our style guide pages at http://www2.ed.gov/internal/styleguide/markup.html and http://www2.ed.gov/internal/styleguide/css.html for general guidance on markup style.
• Send final HTML file to R***.  R*** will send to K**** and J**.  
• We (someone on our team) will break the big file into smaller files and post.  (A table of contents page will be generated here.)
• After it’s posted live, we will send the collection of individual files (page) to Ed.
• Whenever a file needs to be updated/edited, Ed’s team can make the edits in the relevant file (that we sent after posting) and send to us to replace that particular file on the web.

So, you can see that this process was going to be rather slow. Visits to those two style guide pages (above) made me blink twice and rub my eyes. Yowza. I met again with Diane and we discussed what the best way would be to go about creating these files so that multiple people had access and could contribute and comment. GoogleDocs was discussed as an option, but because it doesn't always play well with formatting when switching to Word, we opted not to use that. Instead, we created separate Word Documents for each section of the guide and put them on the internal iEARN server. This way we could all access them, but it did still mean that only one of us could edit at a time. I was going to be doing most of the editing anyway, with Ed, Diane, and Lisa providing feedback, so this wasn't a huge problem. I also introduced Diane and Ed to Diigo so they could see the comments I had already made on all the DOE pages. Within minutes, Ed and Diane had already gone into the Word documents and left notes and tips for me about things to explore, remove, or people to contact.

We were underway and I was ready to jump in.

Summer in Redgranite by Just Add Light
Attribution License

May I?

When I last left you, I was basically lamenting (okay, making excuses) about why I've been so delayed in creating this blog. I'm done with that now; I've settled into the fact that I'm behind and I just need to get a move on.

So, let's start with May.

I began my internship at iEARN on May 24 -- near the end of the month. Actually, my internship beginning was not so "simple" as this. I should give a bit of the backstory so you know where I'm coming from. First of all, I had been warned in advance that finding an internship in the summer could be painfully competitive. I'm generally not a competitive person at all, so I'll admit this made me wince. I mean, I'm not competitive, but while I bemoaned the possibility of it being competitive, there was another part of me -- that part of me that remembers that I'm 35 -- that said, "Wait a sec. Competition? You've got it nailed. You're a teacher. You can do anything." It's true, folks. If you are (or have been) a teacher, you know exactly what I'm talking about. After accompanying 70 sixth-graders on jungle hikes in the Vietnamese rain forest for a week, someone's gonna tell me I'll have a hard time getting an internship?! Eff that! (Apologies for the language -- but I'm trying to recreate the scene here, and that is exactly what went through my head.) So I didn't pay much heed to that warning, needless to say.

And it's a good thing I didn't.

Choices by garlandcannon
Attribution-ShareAlike License

Not only did I get an internship, I had plenty to choose from. I interviewed at some fantastic places and left all of them with the sense that there is really some amazing, inspirational, GOOD work happening in NYC with media and learning. GlobalKids, Urban Arts Partnership, Mouse, TaskStream, and Vision Education and Media all gave me interviews and plenty to think about. Really, there is truly some excellent stuff happening with these organizations; if you're in technology, media, and learning, I urge you to check them out. At one point I even considered merging internships with two different organizations just to get some exposure to different kinds of things. This still sounds like a great idea to me, but my reality is that life is too busy.

So, I interviewed with all of these organizations and met some fabulous people, and was offered something within each of them. I eventually settled on iEARN for several reasons:

1. I had known about the organization before, having seen them at conferences and/or heard about them through colleagues.
2. They are involved with international education, something near and dear to my heart.
3. One of the women to interview me, Tina Habib, knows and has worked with another friend of mine in Qatar -- we didn't discover this until the interview, and it was a lovely surprise, as the mutual friend is someone I love very much (kaif halak, habibi? if you're reading this, Anwar!)
4. I love that iEARN's backbone is built on project-based learning collaborations across continents. This is something that excites me very much and is something I know about, so the idea of working more within this context but not as a teacher was greatly exciting to me.

While the opportunities at other organizations were equally as exciting, a handful would have taken me a bit too far out of my comfort zone, and a couple involved doing things that, while fascinating, would have taken me down a career path I'm not sure I'd be interested in. They were definitely interesting, but not all were where my passions are.

iEARN graciously and excitedly made space for me, and starting on May 24th I began working each Monday and Wednesday.

A brief background on iEARN. iEARN is an acronym which stands for International Educator and Resource Network. It's been around since 1988, so it has an established history, community, and directive. There are actually many iEARNs. What I mean by that is that there is iEARN international -- an international network of teachers and students -- and then there is an iEARN-USA. And an iEARN Pakistan. And an iEARN Canada. You get the picture. In some countries there is lots of representation and some of those countries have iEARN coordinators and more. In other countries, there might just be one or two teachers in different schools who want to participate. And of course there is everything in between. iEARN international is not centralized; each country finds its own funding, and runs itself. Having said that, iEARN-USA is one of the best-funded of all the iEARNs, so things like the iEARN international website and their collaboration centre are run here in the USA offices. iEARN-USA is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization that runs many different projects and programs. As I mentioned earlier, the backbone of iEARN is their project-based learning collaborations. Basically, iEARN facilitates international collaboration through project-based learning, allowing teachers and their students in one country to connect and work with teachers and students in another country on a common project. All of this is done via different kinds of technology and media. It's really the "meat and potatoes" of what iEARN is all about, and why their current motto is "Learn WITH the world, not just about it." However, iEARN also facilitates and runs other programs such as international exchange programs, such as NSLI and YES. They even do teacher exchanges such as the Fulbright Teacher Exchange. An additional arm of iEARN is their involvement with other partners such as Adobe Youth Voices and PEARL World Youth News. Lastly, iEARN does tons of professional development for teachers interested in any aspect of international learning, collaborative project-based learning, cultural exchange, technology and digital media in learning, and more. Professional development is offered in face-to-face at workshops and conferences around the world, and in online virtual environments as well. As you can see, this small non-profit delivers on many different fronts!

From the beginning, Lisa Jobson, the Assistant Director of iEARN-USA, had arranged three projects that I would be working on for the duration of the summer. I'm copying and pasting their descriptions here:

1) Update the Teachers Guide to Global Collaboration on the Internet with current tools and resources. (The Teachers Guide was originally developed by iEARN for U.S. Department of Education)
Research tools and resources for integrating online international exchange into the classroom

2) Produce 2010-2011 iEARN Project Book
Outreach to iEARN educators worldwide to get new projects and project updates for the 2010-2011 iEARN Project Book, and edit book in Adobe InDesign. (See the 2009-10 Project Book.) 

3) Create an iEARN Starter Kit/Handbook as a companion to the iEARN Project Book.  Drawing from DOE Teacher’s Guide research, and earlier issues of the iEARN Project Book, develop a short online guide with tips, tools, resources, and case studies of successful classrooms internationally that help to answer the question often asked by teachers when they join iEARN – “How do I get started?”

And a general description of the mentoring I'd receive:

Adrienne will work closely with a number of staff, including Lisa Jobson, Diane Midness, and Ed Gragert.  All three projects that Adrienne will be involved in have built-in opportunities to exchange drafts and get peer feedback.  iEARN-USA is a small office (roughly 14 full time staff) that places a high emphasis on collaboration , so while Adrienne will be serving in a lead role in all 3 projects, we’ll meet regularly to exchange ideas and drafts, and distribute work.

wetfeet by intheozone
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

I remember being extremely excited when I was handed these projects -- all three involved areas I wanted to know more about or be more involved in. I was looking forward to getting my feet wet!

I didn't realize at the time just how ginormous these projects would become. Ah, the 20/20 vision of hindsight, huh? :)

At any rate, the end of May was a busy time for me because I was just beginning these new roles at iEARN and I was also finishing up a summer course back on campus (Leadership for School Improvement). I barely had time to figure out what I was doing next, but eventually I settled into the swing of things at iEARN, and figured out who to talk to about which project, and where to begin on each of them (spoiler alert: some didn't need beginning just yet).

The Middle

So, I'm an intern. At this organization called iEARN-USA. It's a really cool organization, and I'll tell you more about it in a little bit. First, I have to tell you the story of this blog in the first place, and why I'm starting in the middle.

You see, I'm an intern because I'm currently a grad student. At this very cool university called NYU. In an even cooler program called Educational Communication and Technology. And that in itself has been its own very cool journey (note to self: check Thesaurus for more words for "cool"). You can read about some of that journey here.

This blog is about that journey within the journey. More specifically, about my journey as an intern.

But you see, I'm already in the middle of that journey. In fact, I'm way in the middle. I'm hip-deep in my intern experience.

So yes, you guessed correctly: I am very, very behind in beginning this blog.

I never used to be this way. In fact, I used to be very disciplined, organized, and in control. There's evidence, even. Well, I still kind of am all those things. For the most part. But grad school has gotten the better of me, in many respects. So I've been slacking a bit. And, I am the kind of person who tends to take on lots of different things. My aunt once gave me a book titled, "Daily Devotionals for Women Who Do Too Much." Yeah, I'm that girl.

Add to this character trait the fact that while actually beginning the internship (in May -- MAY!!), I was taking a summer course on Leadership for School Improvement (intense and interesting), then had a mini-trip (Texas, to visit the parents) and back-to-back visitors (from home and from Bangkok) and you see how quickly the summer slipped out from under me like a silken bed-sheet and the next thing I knew it was July 24th. What the heck happened?

So these are the reasons I'm so behind in starting this blog. I am telling you all of this because I feel like it needs some explaining. I'm not really that irresponsible; just busy. I did consider lying. I even looked up how to back-date blog posts (it's true; I confess). But then I just felt so uncomfortable about it that I decided to lay it all out there.
I mean, I'm a teacher and I always think about what I'd tell my students to do. I mean, I know my intern advisor will be reading this (hi, Francine!) among other professors and colleagues, and so I always think: if I were them, and a student came to me and said, "Yeah, so, I'm really behind… I don't know what to do… " My response would be, "Just begin. Just start with something. It doesn't matter what. It's just a reflection. Just write." I mean, it's not a paper or a design document, right? I haven't even received a rubric or set of criteria about what this journal is supposed to contain. So it really just just be my thoughts about what I'm learning as I intern, right?

Right. So here we go. Starting in the Middle, take 1.

Image: Up and Down..., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 32920110@N07's photostream


Image: from Sign Generator Maker