Someone recently described me by saying, “If you want to learn from Dean, don’t follow him on twitter but read his blog instead” I thought that was a fair statement. This is the place where I’m pretty serious, or at least focused on my passion of learning and how to make better schools for our kids. Twitter? That’s a different story.
I’m the Community Manager for Discovery Education Canada since 2012. From 2002-2012, I worked as a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. Previous to that I taught grades K-8 for 14 years. I specialize in the use of technology in the classroom. I hold a Masters of Education in Communications and Technology through the University of Saskatchewan. I also am a sessional lecturer for the University of Regina. Since late 2004 I’ve been immersed in understanding what the Read/Write Web is all about and how the new shape of knowledge changes how we all learn. I believe teachers and students ought to use technology to connect ideas and learners in safe, relevant, authentic ways to answer questions, share ideas and develop community. Learning can be, and should be, fun and personal. I was fortunate to be awarded the 2010 ISTE Award for Outstanding Leadership in Technology and Education. This honor is mostly a reflection of the great people I work with both within my school division and beyond. My greatest asset is that I know smart people and how to find them.
I’ve been fortunate to work with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson in varying roles for the Powerful Learning Practice. This company offers a unique professional learning experience for educators around the world. It has been a great learning experience for me as I help create community and learning in virtual spaces and help teachers change practice to improve learning for students.
I mostly blog here but occasionally for Tech and Learning Magazine and the Huffington Post as well as on the DEN blogs.
In 2016, I published a book called “Embracing Cultures of Joy” which details and summarizes my work and belief around a topic that best describes my beliefs around learning and community.
Following Dean Shareski
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Replied to Flogging the Dead Horse of RSS by Dean Shareski (Ideas and Thoughts)
Dean, I can completely appreciate where you’re coming from. I too am still addicted to RSS (as well as a plethora of other feed types including Atom, JSON, and h-feeds). I didn’t come across your article by feed however, but instead by Aaron Davis’ response to your post which he posted on his own website and then pinged my site with his repsonse using a web specification called Webmention. We’re both members of a growing group of researchers, educators, and others who are using our own websites to act as our social media presences and using new technologies like Webmention to send notifications from website to website to carry on conversations.
While many of us are also relying on RSS, there are a variety of new emerging technologies that are making consuming and replying to content online easier while also allowing people to own all of their associated data. In addition to my article about The Feed Reader Revolution which Aaron mentioned in his reply, Aaron Pareck has recently written about Building an IndieWeb Reader. I suspect that some of these ideas encapsulate a lot of what you’d like to see on the web.
Most of us are doing this work and experimentation under the banner known as the IndieWeb. Since you know some of the web’s prior history, you might appreciate this table that will give you some idea of what the group has been working on. In particular I suspect you may appreciate some of the resources we’re compiling for IndieWeb for Education. If it’s something you find interest in, I hope you might join in our experimentations. You can find many of us in the group’s online chat.
I would have replied in your comments section, but unfortunately through a variety of quirks Disqus marks everything I publish to it immediately as spam. Thus my commentary is invariably lost. Instead, I’m posting it to a location I do have stricter control over–my own website. I’ll send you a tweet to provide you the notification of the post. I will cross-post my reply to Disqus if you want to dig into your spam folder to unspam it for display. In the meanwhile, I’m following you and subscribing to your RSS feed.
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