A pipe is an inter-process communication mechanism originating in Unix which allows the output (standard out and, optionally, standard error) of one process to be used as input (standard in) to another. In this way, a series of commands can be "piped" together.

This presentation is a series of operators piped together. David Weinberger called this internet strategy "small pieces loosely joined". It is my strategy.

Educational philosopher Donald Schon once remarked that the telling characteristic of the modern school is
the “loss of the stable state”. In other words the only certainty in modern life is uncertainty. He considered
self-reflection to be at least one rock in this sea of seeming chaos.

This presentation will demonstrate how I have adopted modern, cloud-based technologies like You Tube, Vialogues, and Screencast-0-matic to create a
stable island of self-reflection.

I hope it is one that will help you act on improving your own teaching and learning as well as one that you can share with formal and informal mentors.

No simple, shareable way to reflect. I had just completed a Google Hangout with some friends about the nature of strategy and unstrategy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4BRrn75xIY) in our learning space/classroom. I realized that I needed to do some reflection about my own strategies in the classroom, so I thought about how I could do some "reflecting out loud". In other words I wanted a way to reflect on my own work processes and practices that I could return to personally and professionally as well as share with others for pedagogical purposes.

I already had a repertoire of tools and practices that I needed to bring together in ways that were as "frictionless" as possible. By frictionless I mean workflows that coincided as much as possible with I already do in the classroom.

In this case I already had class notes that I wrote down on a whiteboard before classes started. A previous iteration of these was on a 3X5 card. They represented a potential direction for class to take, but they also were loose enough to allow for improvisation.

I teach three face-to-face, junior-level compositions courses, Writing Across the Curriculum. I have 66 students in those classes.

I teach two online Intro to Lit courses. I have 64 students in those classes.

My wife and I are sheep farmers. She also works part-time for the National Park Service.

I am actively involved in several learning communities and am tech liaison for the WKU Writing Project. Next week my colleague Joe Dillon and I will be running a "PopUp" MOOC on the NWP Connected Learning G+ Community.

I do not consider 'busyness' to be a badge of honor. In fact I think it is in large part an indication that I failed to say "No" often enough. Any way you look at it, if I was going to have to, if I really wanted to do some reflecting, then it had to add little or no further burden (other than the reflecting itself which I knew would take some serious effort). In other words I didn't want to learn new tools or practices.

i inventoried the tools I would need to carry the reflection, Since I have been heavily invested in annotation tools over the past few years including a learning community that was using the Hypothes.is annotation framework, I decided that I needed a framework that would allow me to take my pre-class teaching notes and reflect upon them much as I would annotate a text. (Aside: If you would like to see an annotated text using Hypothes.is, try this one: https://via.hypothes.is/http://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/6/1/12/htm . Here is a screencast to help you use that link: http://somup.com/cDe32wutj)

I thought I might just take a picture of my notes, but sometimes they sprawled all over the board. I wanted a tool that would allow me zoom in, zoom out and move about documenting all of the notes. I realized that what I needed was a video.

And, yes, I had my phone for taking videos and YouTube for storing them. So far so good.

I also had a tool for annotating video that I have used for years: Vialogues (https://vialogues.com/), but I am getting ahead of myself.

I already had a YouTube account. Anybody with a gmail account has one. As an educator you really need one for professional and pedagogical purposes. There are too many intersecting tools that work with YouTube especially the mobile device in your pocket.

I use an Android device. It is a snap to take a video and share it to your YouTube account where you can do simple editing and playlist production. It is a one stop teaching and learning channel.

So I took a video of my class notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN3JqfM3ajA). I knew if I had it on YouTube, then I could annotate that video in my 'go-to' online tool, Vialogues.

Vialogues is not the only tool for annotating videos. You could use NowComment ( ) or Thinglink ( ), but for sheer ease of use, nothing works better than Vialogues. Recall that I want little or no friction between me and my reflection. Since I already do class notes on my whiteboard as part of that workflow, video of those notes and uploading to YouTube probably take less than five minutes.

Note, also, that you can use the video to send to students who missed class and want to get a sense of what happened. (You could also record the class assignment quite easily on the same video.) My point here is that so far there is less then five minutes between me and a useable YouTube video. That is acceptable added work.

Once you have a YouTube url, then you are ready to go with Vialogues.

Vialogues is the project of Columbia University's Teachers College EdLab. The program has been around for at least four years so they are committed to its long term success. Sign up for Vialogues is free and generous. I have 122 Vialogues in my account including a couple of my own personal videos that I have uploaded, one of which was almost 1 gig long. Very generous with excellent support and also with a super website, NewLearningTimes (https://newlearningtimes.com/)

After you sign up you just create a vialogue (video + dialogue) and start annotating. Here is the YouTube from the previous slide now uploaded on Vialogues: https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/28622/#external I have left it sparsely annotated so that you can use this as a 'take-away' (or in this case a 'do-away') for practicing using this tool to reflect on my practice. Praise, suggest polish or whatevs.

It occurred to me that there might be other objects that I might want to reflect or have others reflect upon. For example, what if I created a digital object like a Google Form that I wanted to think about out loud. How might I do that. Here is that digital object: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ex65iXM_YVmzgymJv15CYsTuqBg4JjjddKljMf3JDj...

How might I do the same kind of annotation? Easy. Use Screencast-o-matic to do a screencast, upload to your YouTube account and then transfer to Vialogues.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KLWKhMJFlE

I took the existing Google Form and used Screencast-o-matic (https://screencast-o-matic.com/home) to create an audio reflection on that page (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KLWKhMJFlE).

Screencast-o-matic is easy to use, free (with watermark and 15 minute video limit), and easy to upload directly to YouTube. The pro version allows for unlimited videos of any length without watermark.

Now I can reflect on any digital thing I make and I can show any colleague/student/parent my "out loud thinks" on that digital object. Here is the YouTube that I created and seamlessly uploaded. The reflection time is what 'costs' in this system. In this case I am just messing about on the page and making some observations.

But wait, there's more...on the next slide.

This may fall under the category of 'gilding the lily', but I took the screencast from the previous slide and created a Vialogue so that could put on another layer of reflection or allow others to do so (https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/28235/)

Probably the simplest way to reflect is with the TechSmith tool, Snag-It (https://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html).

Here are some sample reflections of my own work and others that I have created recently:

https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B_eRY5QJvXyqVUQ1dDJXTFluLU0

https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B_eRY5QJvXyqdS13MTNSaUVQWGM

https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B_eRY5QJvXyqMDVXalZIckdEME0

If this all seems like too much then here is the easiest path.

Path One

1. Find a friend to help you play with this stuff.
2. Get a YouTube account.
3. Get a Vialogues account.
4. Take any video on your smartphone and upload it to YouTube.
5. Create a Vialogue.
6. Start commenting in Vialogue with a friend.
7. Questions at any point? Reach me at terry.elliott@gmail.com or @telliowkuwp on Twitter

Path Two

1. Get a YouTube account.
2. Get a Screencast-O-Matic (SOM) account and desktop software.
3. Create a screencast with SOM.
4. Upload the screencast to YouTube.
5. Share with a friend
6. Optional: put the YouTube screencast on Vialogues.

Path Three

1. Get SnagIt.
2. Take a screenshot with SnagIt of a picture or some other digital object you have created.
3. Annotate with text boxes.
4. Upload to Google Drive (or some other cloud service).
5. Share with someone.

Path Four

Get in touch with me and we will do a Google Hangout and make some 'reflections'. Reach me at terry.elliott@gmail.com or @telliowkuwp on Twitter

1.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/

2.Vialogues: https://vialogues.com


3.Screencast-O-Matic: https://screencast-o-matic.com

4.SnagIt: https://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

5.Terry Elliott: @telliowkup, terry.elliott@gmail.com, http://impedagogy.com/wp/

Here is a blog post that puts it all in a row for you: http://impedagogy.com/wp/minimum-viable-product-for-reflection-4-me/