Apace of Change

by Damian Bariexca, Ed.D.

Archive for October, 2007

Social Action in So’ton – The Panini Project

I first learned about Sonia Nieto’s ideas on the importance of social action when I started teaching my Multicultural Studies course back in 2000. It’s a lesson I’ve taken to heart since then, and I try my best to volunteer time, money, or resources in the name of social action & social justice whenever I can.

Recently, Doug Belshaw linked to a fantastic social action project that manages to combine two of my personal passions: technology and football (is it putting on airs for an American to call association football by its proper name?). Kristian Still, a tutor at Taunton’s College in Southampton, England, started The Panini Project with his students.

The Panini Project takes its name from a company that produces, among other things, stickers based on professional football teams. Kristian’s project aims to collect a full team set of home jerseys for:

  1. Each of the 20 teams in the Premiership (top level of professional football in England)
  2. His local pro team, Southampton Football Club (for whom Kristian also works)
  3. The England national team

This amounts to 352 jerseys, each of which retail for around USD 80 (that’s over USD 28,000 worth of polyester, folks). Kristian and his students will then donate these jerseys to needy school and community football teams from Third World countries.

If anyone ever questions the value of utilizing read/write & telecommunication web technology, point them in the direction of The Panini Project. Kristian and his students are using the world’s most popular game (sorry, MLB, it’s not really a World Series, you know) as a basis for social action, and they’re using a wiki and email as a means of spreading the word as far and as wide as possible. Kristian was even good enough to spend a half hour or so Skypeing with me this morning to talk about the project.

Even if sports aren’t your thing, think about the ramifications this could have for similar social action projects, global or local.

I know we’re a minority here in the colonies, but if you’re a footy fan and have any old home tops stashed away, dig ’em out, give ’em a wash, and send them to:

PE & Sport
Tauntons College
Hill Lane
Southampton
SO15 5RL
United Kingdom

Hey, Taunton students. You guys are doing great things for people you’ll never meet, but who will appreciate it more than you’ll ever know. Keep up the good work.

Update: Per Kristian’s comment, I should have made clearer that his students are seeking old, unwanted jerseys for this project, not brand new ones.

TTP 3: Anti-Climax!

So I had it all planned out.

My school’s filtering scheme doesn’t block Twitter, and I’ve tried Tweeting from school via both Twitterfox and the website. Good to go.

Dramatis personae: Sophomores, 15 and 16 years old. Familiar with IM and chat rooms, intrigued, if slightly confused, by the screenshot of a Twitter timeline I broadcast from our LCD projector. I explain my rationale to them: Personal learning network (sorta, but close enough for their purposes). Community engagement. Learning beyond the classroom walls. Relevant links and possible extra credit opportunities. A permanent log of communication (so keep it professional & civil). The kids were interested, but still a little apprehensive as to what this funny-sounding website was all about. Then I dropped the hammer.

Behold Twittervision.

“Whoa!” “That’s awesome!” “Can we do that!” (Yes, yes, and no – I’m making them protect their updates)

We must have watched Twittervision for a good 5 minutes, commenting on the nature and purpose of various Tweets. We sent a class Tweet out from my personal account, and Konrad G was good enough to send back a shout-out all the way from Canadia. The kids were now ready to go. I gave them guidelines for creating their usernames, and they got started at Twitter.com. All was going well until I was asked, “Mr. B – it’s telling me to type in two words, but I don’t see the two words it’s talking about.”

Captcha.

The browser on the school laptops would not display the Captcha image on any of the 26 laptops the kids were using (and what kind of fanboy would I be if I didn’t mention I had no problem seeing it with Firefox on my tablet?).

And so the excitement that had built around using Twitter for educational purposes ground to an unceremonious halt with ten minutes left in the period. My solution? I’m going to create 26 student accounts on my home computer over the weekend and have them log in and start Tweeting on Monday.

Not what I had planned, but not an utter disaster, either. At least I’ve got them curious, and I got the impression that some kids were going to set up personal accounts over the weekend to play with. Maybe they’ll engage in their own self-directed learning and discovery this weekend.

Their homework over the weekend will include logging into our class wiki and developing some general guidelines for safe online practice.

O Conflict! O Strife!

The good news: My wife is due to give birth to a bouncing baby girl in Doylestown, PA between Feb. 16-19, 2008.

The other good news: I was one of three teachers at my school invited to present at the New Jersey Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. The four-hour (!) session will cover some basics on the teaching potentials in the Web 2.0 “standards”: wikis, blogs, Moodle, podcasts, etc., and will be part instruction, part hands-on workshop for attendees (mostly administrators, supervisors, and curriculum folks, but also some teachers). This conference will take place in Jamesburg, NJ on Feb. 12, 2008.

The conflict: Our first child came four weeks early, and my wife could really go at any time. I work about 45 minutes away from home; the conference takes place nearly an hour and a half from my house. If she hasn’t already delivered by the 12th, do I travel the extra distance so close to her due date? The return route to D-town requires traversing both the NJ and PA Turnpikes, for those of you who know the area.