Transcript from Google+ Workshop Experiment

After posting about my conVerge11 workshop, I realized it might be good to capture the notes out of Google+. So here they are:

Nancy White  –  Nov 24, 2011  –  Public
About to start a small workshop on advanced online facilitation practices in elearning in Melbourne. Our agenda is a short intro activity (tags!), then looking at multiple perspectives through empathy mapping. I’m putting this on G+ in case any one else wants to chime in! Hashtag #conVerge11. If you are doing this at home, google +Dave Gray and “empathy mapping.”
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–  Tim Bonnemann, Luis Suarez, Hayley De Oliveira and 3 more

1 share  –  Gabrielle Harrison
55 comments

Greg Bird's profile photo

Greg Bird  –  Looking fwd to your prezo!
Nov 24, 2011

Gabrielle Harrison's profile photo

Gabrielle Harrison  –  This should be fun
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  I have just asked everyone to write one or two words on their badges that describe their strength as a teacher. Online folks, write yours here.
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  The room is full of talking. (And happy Thanksgiving to my American netfriends!)
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Gabrielle Harrison's profile photo

Gabrielle Harrison  –  I’m not a teacher in the true sense, but I guide and coach people
Nov 24, 2011

Mick Pope's profile photo

Mick Pope  –  enthusiastic
Nov 24, 2011

Jill Koppel's profile photo

Jill Koppel  –  At last! A technology I can engage with…

Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  We noted that none of the words would NOT apply online. Cool!
Hello, this is Evan and I’m scribing for Nancy White.
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Rob Cottingham's profile photo

Rob Cottingham  –  Wit. Doodling. Enthusiasm. Finding the funny. Weird but helpful metaphors.
Nov 24, 2011

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nicholas V  –  Respectful, Humorous, Responsive

Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Enthusiastic – online & offline. Make relevant (kick butt!). Understanding motivation.
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Lynne Gibb's profile photo

Lynne Gibb  –  Great so far Nancy! My two words were Patience and enthusiasm
Nov 24, 2011

michael chalk's profile photo

michael chalk  –  Empathy map created by Dave(?): think, see, say, feel, hear. Did anyone catch who created the map?
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Empathy map, (delegating!), engagement – generalised reciprocity, generosity
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nicholas V  –  Dave Gray and “empathy mapping.”
http://davegray.nextslide.com/empathy-map-exercise
Nov 24, 2011

Greg Bird's profile photo

Greg Bird  –  Michael – Dave Gray (I think)
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  What are you thinking/hearing/seeing/feeling/saying about your role as an online educator?
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Empathy Mapping – Dave Gray – www.davegrayinfo.com/

Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nicholas V  –  Receptive, facilitative, responsive, stimulating

Nov 24, 2011

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nov 24, 2011

Lynne Gibb's profile photo

Lynne Gibb  –  Thinking: Its actually quite hard work but its really exciting
Hearing: Student “I love learnng in my pyjamas at home!”
Sayng: ” I will lead you and then I will get out of the way and let you explore and discover on your own. But I will be beside you if you need me.”
Seeing: More and more teachers and students havng a go – yay!

Nov 24, 2011

Gabrielle Harrison's profile photo

Gabrielle Harrison  –  I am finding this very hard in this context. Nancy says this is not surprising. I like seeing the lights go on!
Nov 24, 2011

Michelle Hollister's profile photo

Michelle Hollister  –  Changing relationship – when you have a light-bulb moment with something finally becoming clear.
Nov 24, 2011

michael chalk's profile photo

michael chalk  –  Feeling: often i feel excited and engaged about meeting in a web conferencing space, especially when well-prepared. i try to feel the energy of the room, to add positive energy to the environment, even though it’s a virtual place.

Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  When relationships change online – conflict is a clever breakthrough technology! Creating the connection – mirroring, conflict, authentic storytelling – talking from experience.
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Mick Pope's profile photo

Mick Pope  –  dare to be loled at

Nov 24, 2011

ian knox's profile photo

ian knox  –  I love !!!! marks. You don’t always have to agree with students
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Are we perfect?! No! Allowing ourselves to learn from our mistakes (online leaves a trail!)… Use empathy map to learn where your strengths are and how you might shift your focus a bit.
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nicholas V  –  Are you an “invisible” facilitator online or an “in-your-face” one? Not wrong or right either way, but responding to your online class’ comments, reactions and being prepared to switch camps when you need to is important.
Nov 24, 2011

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nicholas V  –  I like… 😉
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Visual methods express things differently, can show the holes in what you’re trying to communicate.

Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Cat Manning's profile photo

Cat Manning  –  Idea/ using map online students

Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  What do we have in common? What are the “out-liers”?
What are THEY thinking/seeing/hearing/feeling/saying?
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  “Outliers” = something outside the norm/defined understanding
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Ask your students, “what are you thinking/feeling/hearing…?” – building more awareness of what’s going on with the learner and yourself
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  community of practice approach – who, what, how – build reflective practice in the learner
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  social artist – using visuals (not just about drawing)
sometimes it’s not best to use the “feeling” word, depending on the context
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

ian knox's profile photo

ian knox  –  network approach to reframing failure great concept
Nov 24, 2011

Nicholas V's profile photo

Nov 24, 2011

ian knox's profile photo

ian knox  –  Thanks I was just wondering how to spell it!
Nov 24, 2011

Gabrielle Harrison's profile photo

Gabrielle Harrison  –  excellent example of how to transform a face to face activity into an effective online tool. I want more chocolate though.
Nov 24, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  human spectogram
thanks, everyone
Nov 24, 2011  –  Edit

Jill Koppel's profile photo

Jill Koppel  –  Those choccies were good… thanks for all the ideas, Nancy.
Nov 24, 2011

michael chalk's profile photo

michael chalk  –  Applause Nancy, thanks! Will definitely use that spectrogram in a web conference.
Nov 24, 2011

Luis Suarez's profile photo

Luis Suarez  –  Whoaahhh! Fantastic exercise, +Nancy White ! Catching up with it after it’s all over now, for sure, but having a blast seeing the flow of how it went, even virtually! I have been wondering about this and how G+ provides perhaps a much better user experience w.r.t. engagement in this type of exercises where folks can convene in almost real-time virtually, just as if they were F2F. What was the experience like, Nancy, to conduct it? Can you share a line or two? Would love to know more… And thanks for starting the thread over here! 🙂
Nov 25, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  Luis, it figures you would notice this. I ran a 50 minute workshop yesterday at the ConVerge11 conf (#converge11 for interesting tweetflowage) and after probably leaving people dazed and confused with my keynote the day before, I knew I wanted to be both concrete, but to hold space for being, for being the change, for recognizing that our interactions via technology still hold their humanity. And to be USEFUL to the group.

I also knew I wanted to use visual methods, so I settled on the empathy map, picking up on comments on day one about how we talk about designing FOR students, but recognizing we need to design for ourselves, for other teachers, admin, etc. So I thought the mapping and comparing between maps might be interesting.

THEN when I rocked up to the room, I just had this idea to tap my network (even though the time zone was not hot for European frends and all US friends were offline with Thanksgiving. I was hoping some Canadian’s would find it and sure enough, +Rob Cottingham did.. THANKS Rob. I plugged your cartoons. Google+ seemed likely. I quickly could not facilitate and type, so Evan volunteered to scribe. Obviously we did not capture everything, but I could probably go back and create a narrative from the notes when I have a bit of time. But now it is day off in OZ and I am going to enjoy the beauty of Bells Beach and the pleasure of visiting with “imaginary” friends, now well met F2F.

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Nov 25, 2011  –  Edit

Luis Suarez's profile photo

Luis Suarez  –  +Nancy White WOW!! Absolutely fantastic, Nancy! Thanks much for taking the time to detail so nicely what the event was like and how folks were participating and what they got out of it. Fascinating to use the empathy map for such exercise to demonstrate how it is all about a dual lane highway, going both ways! Really sorry the timing was not right with me, I would have wanted to chime in as well. Sounded like lots of good fun! 🙂

Have a wonderful weekend and safe travels back home! Speak soon! 🙂

Nov 25, 2011

Pauline Wilson's profile photo

Pauline Wilson  –  Hi Nancy, I thoroughly enjoyed your presentations at ConVerge. Unfortunately my iPhone was playing up and I couldn’t contribute to this Google+ stream at the time. This was disappointing because I thought it was such a great idea to use this tool. I think Google+ has huge potential in education. Also really enjoyed Ian Knox’s presentation on using Google+ for communicating in a Social Media course. Thanks for “adding me back”! I look forward to following you on Google+
Nov 25, 2011

Junita Lyon's profile photo

Junita Lyon  –  Hi Nancy hope the weather picks up for your visit to prom, you will find Gippsland also beautiful in the rain..Thankyou for your pearls of wisdom.. Great to meet you..Cheers
Nov 25, 2011

Dave Gray's profile photo

Dave Gray  –  Hi Nancy, cool to see you doing innovative work with empathy mapping!

Nov 25, 2011

Manjit Bhamral's profile photo

Manjit Bhamral  –  Hi Nancy
All your presentations were great- ver inspiring! Thanks for adding me back on Google+

Nov 25, 2011

Jayne Cravens's profile photo

Jayne Cravens  –  I found audiences in Melbourne and all over Eastern Australia very receptive to using the Internet to engage & support volunteers – Western Australia, not so much (still a lot of apprehension). On another note – the Pho in Melbourne is to die for.

Nov 28, 2011

Nancy White's profile photo

Nancy White  –  I had Pho last night in Melbourne! Natch! And I have to say, the networks of change and interesting people in Melb are WONDERFUL. #KMLF #CalmintheCity#improv etc..

Nov 28, 2011  –  Edit

Alfred Penny's profile photo

Alfred Penny  –  Will be following closely. You have some very interesting things to say. Glad to see here on Google+ as we become new friends.
Dec 3, 2011
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Google Chrome – have to have a play

Google Chrome came out today in beta (of course) and instead of doing my to do list tasks, I had to download it and play with it. I had three motivations. From a selfish perspective, my main motivation is the crashing of firefox for the tab-addicted like me. I like to keep lots of tabs open and keep the browser open all the time. It seems like after about 18 hours, Firefox freezes up. My second motivation is I’m simply curious. But my more enduring motivation is that in my communities, people are always asking “should I download and use tool X?” Everyone isn’t technically curious, or has the time flexibility to try new tools and give some feedback. This is part of community technology stewardship. So I’m giving Chrome a spin today for me, for you, for anyone!

So far clean, if a bit ugly. So much blue! It feels speedier than FF. I like the tabs above the URL bar. I am able to blog easily from my WordPress “blog it” link as Chrome imported all my bookmarks and many settings. I am still playing around with the options.

So what would I advise my communities so far? Well, it doesn’t appear to be as buggy as some people said it might be. The download and install was painless. So for those seeking something new, go for it. For a transition for a community I still need to see if the web applications used in my communities function well in Chrome. That’s the acid test.

Here are a couple of screen shots. 

Google's Chrome Browser
Chrome Page with my Most Viewed

Edited later: Downsides

 

 

Using Google Translation Tool in Wikispaces

In a couple of weeks I’ll be facilitating a multilingual event. We are using DGroups (hopefully – they are moving servers and it just got delayed a week into our week long event and I need a plan B) paired with a wiki. We want to keep it simple, we want to try and include multilingual participation and we don’t have any dedicated translation resources. So we need a community based solution.

The plan is we all start together (English, Spanish, French) in one email discussion thread to introduce ourselves. We are asking people to post their introduction in their home language on wikispaces page and then, we thought we’d translate them all. But darn, that is a huge task. So I poked around Google’s Widgets and thought I’d try their translation widget in my Wikispaces onlinefacilitation wiki. Wow, it worked pretty darn well!

After the first day of introductions, we’ll split into English, Spanish and French language groups for our topical discussions on Days 2-4. We will have each group do a quick summary each day on the wiki, which again, we can start translating with the Google widget, then improve upon it. (Sometimes the machine translations are pretty funny.) On the last two days, we’ll again work across languages in one list to close out, make meaning (in EVERY sense of the word) and have that experience of togetherness, even with our language gaps.

It will be an interesting experiment. I’m very excited about it. I’ll make sure to return here and report what we learn, plus the wiki will be available for others to review after the event.