I received a tweet from Michael Kaechele, Technology Teacher at Valleywood Middle School.

What an opportunity!

Michael and I set the Skype calls up for the following week. I had a meeting with our Judaica teachers to get them involved and Brian, the Social Studies teacher from Michigan, shared a Google Doc with the questions his students were interested in asking.

Our students were very excited in being seen as “experts” and talked with their teachers about the questions and how to articulate their answers.

Since there were three sections of Social Studies classes from Michigan, we involved our 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes to take over one section each.

After our Skype calls, I received the following email from Michael:

Just wanted to say thanks for the calls yesterday. It was a great experience for our students to learn from yours. The social studies teacher liked it and wants to try again. Quote from student “They are just like us”

That says it all for me-breaking down walls of stereotypes that they might have just because we do not have a large Jewish community here.

I could not agree more with Michael. Opportunities like these, facilitated by technology tools (such as video conferencing) and Twitter (to make the initial connection), are taking learning off the pages of a book for our students (social studies book in this case). They give young people the opportunity to articulate what they have learned and share it. It brings in a kind of authentic learning that ordinarily the students in Michigan might not have had (meeting and talking to other Jewish kids their age).

Is that what “transforming” learning is about? Not doing the same assignments… the same content…simply with a different tool…?

Is it being able to do something that was simply not possible before…?

Tom Barrett on his blog EdTe.ch wrote:

transformative learning is what I am looking for, because replication offers no benefit to a teacher – all it produces is ostensibly a better presented piece of work and more of a headache to setup. The technology has to offer a whole new level of interaction [...] that cannot be gained from the traditional method explained above.

The learning activity has to be transformed into something that provides a greater depth of learning and interaction. There has to be a pedagogical shift.

I am thinking that the above mentioned learning example could not have been possible “before”.

• … before Twitter… most likely @concretekax and I would not have connected
  
• … before Skype … we would not have been able to bring our students together. Video conferencing is the closest we have to a face to face meeting. A phone call would not have produced the same results of the feeling to be in “one” classroom.
• … before…  our students would not have been called upon to be teachers to their peers across the country.
• … before… students from Michigan would have learned about Judaism from their teacher, from the pages of their social studies book and quite likely would not know or meet anyone Jewish in their community.

Cross posted on TechLearning Advisor Blog
I believe in sharing. Really I do… I would like to propose a Challenge to Share…for two reasons…

I believe in sharing...

Sharing is defined on Wikipedia as:

Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space.

Reason 1:

Many in the blogger- and Twittersphere are realizing and understanding that their PLN will give them back what they put into it. Sharing resources, ideas, and help is part of something bigger and only contributes to our own learning and growth as educators.

Back in November 2008, I wrote Sharing in Education. Is it changing?

There is no doubt, that we are in the process of changing the culture of sharing in education. The online version of sharing among educators seems to be at the fore front. We are learning about the power as more and more people are joining the network to take but also to give.

Great examples of sharing are Tom Barrett’s collaborative “Interesting Ways” slideshows on Google Docs. They exist because of educators who share their best practices for different types of tools in their classroom. Another example are blogs like Kim Cofino’s Always Learning, Brian Crosby’s Learning is Messy, and Chrissy Hellyer’s TeachingSaggitarian. They are teachers…in the classroom…in the trenches…daily…with students…choosing to share…

Reason 2:

We need to share what we do in the classroom, not only to give other educators fresh ideas and new ways to look at teaching and learning, but also to collectively show that schools and individual classrooms ARE changing and preparing students for a different future.

Just think, what if…  Chris Lehmann and his Science Leadership Academy would have taken the “quiet” approach and do what they are doing WITHOUT sharing their ideas, process and successes. We would not have someone to look up to, we would not have a leader as an example to point to and say: “If they are doing it… it is possible.”

We need to reach out and get “traditional” media involved like the local newspaper and television station to report what is going on in our classrooms. That might be the only way to reach “the rest of them” who are not reading blogs and who are not on twitter. We have to reach out and share examples of projects, learning examples and opportunities with other local schools to allow them to realize that teaching semester long keyboarding lessons to second graders might not be equivalent to bringing in 21st century skills. Sharing what we are doing in the classroom might wake up other schools and make them realize that they no longer can sit still and rest on their laurels of having students prepared the same way for the last 50+ years.

We need to support teachers who want to upgrade their curriculum content and assessments to include 21st Century skills and literacies but are facing reluctant or unsupportive administrators or districts that block tools and their efforts in moving ahead. We need to equip the willing with background data, research, examples, experiences and ammunition that “everyone else is doing this”.

It is a responsibility to share what we are doing in the classroom!

Maybe you have your own reasons for sharing ideas and best practices (feel free to add them by commenting below), but I do hope that you are willing to take my CHALLENGE to SHARE. Take the time to:

• describe a 21st Century learning project you have undertaken with your students
• share anecdotes from the classroom
• take images or video of students in action
• do action research in the classroom to collect data
• conduct a pre- and post assessment
• interview students and or other participants in the project
• share the final product or creation

Document your best practices in a public place (blog, wiki, ning, twitter, website, photo or video sharing sites, podcast etc.), share them at local, national and international conferences, work with your school’s marketing director or your district’s public relations and media coordinator. Do whatever it takes to get the word out that WE ARE PREPARING OUR STUDENTS for the 21st century!

Science and history fairs have been held across the United States (and maybe other countries?) for years. Having grown up in Germany and Argentina, the first time I encountered these events was with my oldest daughter at her elementary school in the 1990s.  According to Wikipedia, Science fairs have been held across the USA since the 1920s.

The school I work for alternates every year between a Science Fair and a Jewish History Fair exhibition. Students are to research and create a project for the respective subjects. This year the school prepared for the Jewish History Fair.

The sixth graders wanted to explore the theme “Jewish Communities Around the World. After watching Alan November’s video clip, I wrote about my idea of Information Literacy…Authentic Conversation..Globalize Curriculum…. The idea was born to allow students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Through personal real life connections, my PLN on Twitter and this blog, I was able to get in contact with volunteers representing every continent. They volunteered to be interviewed by our sixth graders about growing up or living in their country of residence as a Jew. Our students wanted to research similarities and differences of being Jewish around the World.

Coordinating Interviews and Media used

I would like to express a special Thank You to Daniel Needlestone (London, England), one of the first people to respond via Twitter and in return use his network to connect me with more volunteers!

Skyping with Daniel Needlestone from London, England

Daniel blogged about our interview from his perspective in this post: Mentoring, Online Lessons, Virutal Tours and Computing-All in a Days Work.

No sooner had the online lesson finished when I got a skype call from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano also known as @langwitches . Her 6th grade class interviewed me as part of their project on Jewish communities around the world. I’ve tried to help set them up with different friends of mine on different countries. Apparently Silvia has managed to cover every continent even Antartica! The girl who interviewed me asked great questions and I really enjoyed our 10 minute chat and meeting some of Silvia’s students. I’m very jealous of their project and look forward to seeing the results!

Although we intended to use as many different media as possible for the interviews, reality worked out a little different. Timing issues, as are very common in a tightly packed school day, played a major role. A face to face interview, as well as one of the Skype calls were turned into e-mail interviews in the end due to scheduling issues. Our texting with one of the contacts, who actually was stationed in the Antarctica at the time, had weather problems and no satellite connection available.

In the end we used the following media to conduct research and interviews:

We would like to express gratitude to all of our interviewees whether via e-mail, skype, telephone, face to face or Twitter. Your time and effort was very appreciated:

• Daniel Needlestone (England)
• David Truss (China)
• Mark Lazar (Israel)
• M. Finkel (Russia)
• Ariellah Rosenberg (South Africa)
• Kabren Levinson (USA)
• Ralph Glasgal (Previously stationed in the Antarctica)
• Andrea Uzan (Denmark)
• Gary Sakol (Scotland)
• David Cohen (Australia)
• Elizabeth Davis (USA)
• Noemi & Marvin Szoychen (Mexico & Venezuela)
• Steve Katz (Costa Rica)
• Elena Herz (Argentina)

Students were very excited for the planned interviews. First, we “distributed” the countries among the students. They each received a short bio from the participants and then gathered background research and to generate questions. I sent the questions off to the interviewees who were participating via e-mail and scheduled the skype & twitter conferences with the others. Once the time zone issues were resolved and the day and time was set, students who were not directly interviewing in front of the webcam were taking on the job of note taker or photographer of the sessions.

Taking Notes

Documenting

Costa Rica

USA

South Africa

Canada

Australia

Talking about being Jewish in the Antarctica

Although maybe a bit shy at first, students quickly became more relaxed at interviewing via Skype. All of the students had their questions typed up ahead of time. Their personalities started to shine through though as some added more in depth or follow up questions depending on what turn the conversation took.

David Truss from China

Ariellah Rosenberg from South Africa

One of our participants, Gary Sakol  (originally from Scotland), agreed to conduct the interview via Twitter. We agreed on a Hashtag (#JHFI) and on a day and time to meet on twitter. It was the first time for all the students to see twitter live in action.

Twitter Interview with David Sakol (Scotland)

Screenshot of DVD with Skype Interviews

When we were doing our research, we learned the following things that Jews have in common on every continent.

Jews seem to all celebrate Jewish Holidays similar

Most Jewish boys and girls celebrate Bar & Bat Mitzvah by leading services and having some kind of party

Many Jews attend services

There are different degrees of observance

They have rarely experienced direct anti-semitism

They all take pride in being Jewish

Many have gone to Israel or al least feel connected to it

Most don’t wear kipot in their daily lives

All eat some types of traditional food

They take part in the daily life traditions of their chosen country of residence and usually don’t feel like ‘outsiders”.

This type of learning required many more skills than just the use of technology…

we collaborated in our overall planning

created questions, took notes from oral interviews

asked in oral or written form

good initial and follow up questions, which required us to “think on our feet”

shared orally and in writing what we learned from each interview

synthesized, organized and compiled all our final impressions in writing

We also did some “book research” to locate data, flags, and histories for our countries

The final display of the collaborative 6th grade research project was a combination of a typed up country reports, a three dimensional map with flags of locations of interviewees, a DVD running on television of the recorded interviews on Skype and a display of photographs that students took during the the interviews.

Exhibition Display

Map Display

Flags displaying location and media used for connection

Interviewee locations

We heard rave reviews from parents and community about the project who visited the Jewish History Fair. The project is an example how to extend learning by using technology tools to reach further and dig deeper with resources. I believe we attained our goal to

allow our students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Not only did students write their traditional reports, but they practiced 21st century skills of:

• creating (a map)
• collaborating (with their peers to create a snapshot of Jewish communities around the world)
• connecting (with 15 Jews around the world)
• communicating (via different media)

In addition to basic literacy of reading and writing, students were exploring and exposed to

• information literacy
• media literacy
• global & intercultural literacy
• networking literacy

I created the following video clip, as a follow up to the Connected Learning Possibilities post from yesterday. It is to illustrate the ability we have (through technology) to extend learning, take learning further than and off the pages of a book for our students.

Extend Learning from langwitches on Vimeo.

No questions about it! Twitter has transformed my learning in the last few years. Having a constant stream of ideas, thoughts, resources and experts at my fingertips is invaluable for me these days. I continue to find new ways to make Twitter work for me, but also to contribute to the learning of others.

I want to share my experience of twittering from a conference (Curriculum Mapping), I attended last week. You might ask:

Why would you twitter at a conference?

Well… I am:

• picking out the main idea the presenter is trying to make
• summarizing and condensing what I am hearing
• trying to write concise
• by documenting the important points for me
• documenting in chronological order what is happening
• sharing with my Twitter followers the information that I am receiving
• disseminating ideas, thoughts, resources, discussions, questions, answers…
• allowing others, who are not physically present, to participate to a certain degree

Take a look at the following screenshots of my tweets from January 12-14 during the conference. Scroll down to the end to begin, since they are in reverse chronological order.

What is your impression? Are these kinds of tweets from a conference helpful? Do they give you an idea of the conference? Are they confusing/useful/useless? Do you tweet at conferences? What are some of the advantages you see/have experienced?

On a chilly Florida night, Andrea Hernandez. and I hosted the 2nd Annual Jacksonville K12online Conference LAN Party. About 20 educators from 4 schools gathered in the computer lab of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School to learn about the K12Online Conference, watch a few presentations and talk about the changing landscape of teaching and learning.

Skyping with K12Online Presenters

I am amazed at and grateful for the willingness of colleagues around the world to share their practices, experiences and thoughts by creating presentations to share freely with anyone.

We met at 7 pm and after a brief introduction of K12Online Conference, which only a handful of the teachers present had heard of, we watched Kelly Hines’ presentation Little Kids, Big Possibilities together as a group.

I am even more convinced of the power of having a learning network, when one can ask the presenters of the K12Online Conference to stay up late or wake up early in order to continue contributing to our learning by skyping into our face to face meeting.

Although Kelly’s presentation was about tools, such as Wallwisher, Wordle, Comiqs and Edmodo, her skyping in with us, talking to us from her home in North Carolina, having her two sons pop in and out of view, was what illustrated the true value of the learning for the evening (in my opinion). Kelly Hines is a fourth grade classroom teacher, as real and as busy as all of us. She finds the time to learn, collaborate and share her teaching journey with the world. She connects and exposes her students to tools, that allow them to be problem solvers, creators, thinkers and participants in a global community.

Kelly Hines from North Carolina talked about her presentation "Little Kids, Big Possibilities"

After our call with Kelly was over, everyone picked another presentation to watch and/or simply talk with each other. At 8:30 pm we were ready to skype in K12Online Keynote presenter, Kim Cofino, from Thailand. Kim’s presentation, Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education, was simply brilliant.

Kim Cofino from Bangkok, Thailand opened our awarness to a global, interconnected world with her presentation "Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education"

She summarized it well for our group when she said:

Until you experience [the collaboration, the global connections]for yourself it does not really click in your mind, you really won’t understand why all these tools that we are talking about are so important and so powerful for learning.

This evening was about being able to show our local teachers, the ease and the accessibility of inviting other voices from across the world to exchange thoughts, ideas and grow as educators together.

It was not about technology, it was about learning with and from each other regardless of location in time and space. It was about bringing awareness to:

• “real” teachers are doing “it”. They are moving towards embedding technology to facilitate learning.
• teaching and learning has to change in our schools, adjust, be flexible and adapt to accommodate a new kind of learner and a new kind of “reality” that exists outside of school.
• the reasons why there is a need embrace change.

Kim so eloquently says:

We are at a shift in society, where the ways we use technology has changed so drastically and so rapidly that it is difficult for education to keep up. My fear is that if we don’t keep up and embrace the new ways of communicating and collaborating, schools as we know them will be eclipsed by something else.

Links to all K12Online 2009 presentations.

Suggested presentations:

• Keeping the Literacy in 21st Century Literacies by Drew Schrader
• Using Web 2.0 tools to teach ‘The Outsiders’ by Drew Buddie
• A Peek for a Week – Inside a Kiwi Junior Classroom by Rachel Boyd
• Show & Tell: Exhibit, Reflect & Critique with Blogs by Sarah Sutter
• The Digital Writer’s Workshop by Jackie Gerstein
• Engaging Our Youngest Minds by Angela Maiers
• Parallel Play or Collaboration–Leveraging the Wiki Platform for High Quality Work by Paula White
• Around the World with Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Middle School students are working hard on their Math Wiki. They are using a variety of tools to create tutorials (Garageband, SmartBoard Notebook, PowerPoint, Animoto).

Their latest creation to be embedded into the Wiki were Animoto Music Videos.

They created PowerPoint slides, then exported them as jpg files to be imported into Wiki were Animoto
Students are learning presentation skills and tools as they are designing the slides to create specific tutorials for math definitions and concepts they are learning in class.

“By learning you will teach;by teaching you will understand.”
~ Latin Proverb

To teach is to learn twice.
~Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842

Not only are students organizing their own thoughts and teaching each other, but they are also becoming web publishers who are inspiring and teaching math students around the world.

As they were working on the slides, we learned many things about presentation design:

• don’t use too much text on one slide. If you must have more text, duplicate the slide once or twice to be able to give the reader more time.
• use as many relevant visuals as you can.
• use arrows to point to explanations and help the viewer focus in on what you are trying to explain
• make sure you don’t place text/titles too close to the edges of the slides, as they tend to be out of the frame, when Animoto pans across the slide.
• use contrasting colors
• use bigger font sizes
• less on a slide is better

Here are some of their Animoto examples:

Just a few days ago, Andrea Hernandez (edtechworkshop) and I had a  conversation about our Personal Learning Network.

A “working definition” by David Warlick says that a Personal or Professional Learning Network:

involves an individual’s topic oriented goal, a set of practices or techniques aimed at attracting or organizing a variety of relevant content sources, selected for their value, to help the owner accomplish a professional goal or personal interest.

As I am working on various projects at school (A Worldwide Audience for Six Year Olds? and Jewish History Fair), where the presence of my PLN played a mayor role, I can’t help but wonder, if using and “showing off” these connections to students and other teachers, does not shed a “false” light on “reality”.

In order to disseminate student work, like

• the 1st grade podcast or
• the 8th grade Current Events Google Map

and get them an audience for

• global awareness
• increased motivation
• and the value a network can have as a source of information & resources

you have to have an active PLN to work for and with you.

As Steve Dembo (Teach42) points out in one of his recent posts If you tweet, will anybody hear?

In the effort of attempting to demonstrate how wonderful, simple, powerful and dynamic it is, we make it seem much more effortless than it really is.
[...]
the fact that it takes TIME and EFFORT to gain a few hundred followers. And without having a critical mass of people to message out to, your odds of getting a response from a general tweet are VERY small.

Steve is absolutely right. It takes time and effort to blog, tweet, share and disseminate. Are we making newbies or others who we want to introduce to the value of a PLN look through rose colored glasses?

Seeing the World through Rose Colored Glasses

Some of us are expanding and growing our PLN through blogging, twittering, skyping and speaking at local, state, national and international conferences. In consequence, we are able to create projects, collaborate with global participants solicited through PLN contacts and disseminate results to get feedback through our globally read blogs. I would not be able to do a lot of these above mentioned projects, at least not to the same extend nor with such a far reaching response/audience), without the always willing participant of my PLN.

Will Richardson even compares creating, maintaining, growing and working with and through Personal Learning Networks to a literacy.

… the literacy becomes how do you build these [Personal Learning] Networks?  How do you flourish within these networks? How do you find trusted sources within that context?

[...]

You have to be able to engage in those conversations. You have to be able to find those other people who are producing content or who are engaging in their own kind of conversations that you are interested in.

It takes time… it takes dedication to build a network… it takes perseverance to not give up when no one responds to your  first (second or third) shoutout.

Building and Maintaining a Personal Learning Network

The conversation, Andrea and I had started, about PLNs took a turn by asking, if we could expect every educator to dedicate that time and effort into building  AND maintaining such a PLN?

Is it realistic to expect every teacher to create, be part of AND nourish a PLN? A network that consists of contacts that would allow them to expose their students and their work to a global audience, experts and collaborators? A network that models for students the possibilities of connected and collaborative learning?

I wonder if every school should have a a position that is dedicated to search for, find, grow, nurture and provide a far reaching network of contacts to bridge that gap? The person in that position would be connecting teachers,   scout curriculum related projects from around the world to get involved in, find communication and collaboration partners  and put them in contact with their colleagues and students.

A Learning Network- A Give and Take

That person would be responsible for creating a SLN (School Learning Network). I don’t mean a Learning Network among people who work at the same school. I am thinking of someone in charge of nourishing a Learning Network  for all classes, teachers and students at a school, with their interests in mind.

Such a person could be in charge of sharing resources, growing potential collaboration partners, being available to help others via video conferencing, survey participation or collaborative assessment and in return be able to solicit expert advice, receive authentic feedback and harvest resources to distribute among colleagues and students.

A Learning Network is built on a give and take. You get out of it what you put in. What if that becomes the responsibility of one person or a small group of people at one school in order to benefit the learning experience of everyone?

If you have not thought of podcasting with your younger elementary school students, I encourage you to think again.

The first graders at my school had listened to the second grade podcast about animals, and had really enjoyed their story.They were especially thrilled that the second graders had received so many comments from teachers around the world. Believe it or not, but having an audience matters… even to 6 year olds.

They were enthusiastic and eager to record their own voices to get them “into other people’s computers and iPods” too.

I had started reading a chapter book called Vacation under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne from the Magic Tree House series with them.

The idea was to pretend that we were interviewing Jack and Annie, the two main characters, about their latest adventure that had taken them to Pompeii.

We read one chapter at a time and discussed as a class,  what happened as we were reading. After each   reading, I typed up all the questions and answers that students had came up with. The following time I went to their classroom, we recorded these questions and answers from the “script”.

I rotated all students to be either the interviewer, Jack (boys) and Annie (girls). I also had them record several segments as a class chant together (ex. gasping, “no children allowed”), which they seemed to enjoy very much.

Recording with Garageband

I had several students at a time come to the back of the class and record directly into Garageband, while the other students were silently working on classroom work or reading a book. A few times, I also took them out into the hallway, if the teacher had another activity planned in the classroom.

• I was amazed how cooperative and attentive to what was going on with the recording in the back of the room while it was not their turn.
• Several students started to take a real interest in the editing part of the podcast too. They were verifying that I was editing out any clicking noises that were included when I stopped the recording segment, or if a word was repeated twice.
• If they were not happy with their recording, they asked to record over it for a second, third or fourth time.
• Shy and quiet students were coming out of their shell. Their classmates were surprised and impressed of these new “podcast” voices they were hearing from them.

Recording in the Hallway

Recording:

• After demonstrating the difference in the sound of their voices and fluency, students agreed to NOT read off the script.
• I read one sentence at a time to the student who was to record. I let them practice saying the sentence out loud and coached them with their volume, melody and to use different acting voices.
• Some students needed to have sentences split into parts. Putting each sentence back together made it sound seamless in the recording.
• I could tell a drastic improvement among students in their confidence level and voice expression as we progressed in the book.

After class,

• I “cleaned” the recording tracks
• added music and  sound effects

The class couldn’t wait to hear the entire recording the next day. They wanted to hear the audio from start to finish, including the newest chapter clips. They begged to hear it again and again from the beginning and not only the added part. By the time we reached the end of the book they had heard the podcast over 20 times.

Skills addressed:

• listening
• speaking
• presenting
• comprehension
• storytelling
• performance
• voice acting
• oral fluency
• media
• technology

Take a “listen” and leave a comment to these first graders who worked very hard and enthusiastically on their recording. Let them know where you are from too. We will create a google map with placemarks to show how far their voices reached.

Thank you for leaving our first graders comments. You are making a worldwide audience real for them and are keeping them motivated. We are tracking them on our Google Map. Once you leave a comment with your location, we will add you to our Google Map.

View MJGDS- 1st Grade Podcast: Magic Tree House in a larger map

CSI- Crime Scene Investigation at school!

Third graders find unidentified skeleton on school campus.

Unidentified skeleton found on school campus

What is one to do, when you find such a specimen on school grounds? Students across grade levels took a mini fieldtrip to the pond on campus to examine the skeleton. The BIG question for everyone, including teachers was: WHAT kind of animal was it? What an opportunity and teachable moment for students and teachers to collaborate in the investigation process and find out.

We had different approaches to the investigation:

Approach A:

• took photos of skeleton and xeroxed copies for students to take home and do research involving parents
• researched online for different images from animal skeletons to compare
• using parent veterinarian as resource
• got in touch with school librarian

Approach B:

• took photos of skeleton and e-mailed them to local Museum of Science and History, local zoo and Florida Fish & Wildlife Service
• e-mailed photos to local veterinarian.
• posted request for identification and research help on School Librarians listserve
• blogged about it on The Barefoot Librarian – Can you identify this Aninmal Skeleton?
• took the opportunity for lesson with 2nd & 3rd graders to talk about and demonstrate inquiry and research process
  • first stop library for reference interview
  • use books and online resources to narrow search
  • contact local experts
  • evaluate your sources. What makes an expert? (Animal lover versus Florida Fish & Wildlife Service Employee)

Approach C:

• took images of skeleton with iPhone
• uploaded to Twitpic, which sent  automatic tweet to  Twitter network

First set of images sent to Twitpic

Second set of images sent to Twitpic

Over the next three hours the “shout out” for help in identifying the skeleton received over 50 Twitter responses with

• links to resources to further investigate
• guesses on what it could be
• help to get experts involved
• questions to help further narrow the answers down
• advice where else to publish questions and take advantage of the power of social networking

Following the tweet

I uploaded the image to the ID-Please group on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/idplease/

After a few hours, comments were left by other Flickr users

Note being left directly on image, identifying the three teeth being typical of a raccoon.

Another tip came and suggested to upload the image to a site called “idthis.org”

http://idthis.org/

The Twitter network also jumped in and retweeted (RT) the request for help onward to their network

Guesses and further questions what animal it could be flooded in

Suggestion of getting in touch with experts who could help our investigation along or expert’s guesses:

Links to more Resources:

I am amazed, again, at the power of the network. As the investigation spread across our school campus, so it did across the network. Having a support team, a flood of resources and experts at your fingertips (literally), it is truly an example how learning, research, has changed through the collaboration, connecting and communication tools of the social network era.

I am happy to report, that all three approaches of research came to the same conclusion.

Our skeleton seems to be a raccoon skeleton.

Our librarian has collected the specimen and is shipping it, as we speak, to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Services, who have offered to clean it up, give us a positive identification and ship it back to us.