“Twitter saved my life!”
That’s what Rafranz Davis
told me at ISTE 2013. She
credited the social media
tool, despite its 140-char-
acter limit, with providing
opportuntities for communicating and collaborating
that have exponentially increased her productivity
and creativity.
Today we are seeing a
remarkable explosion of
massive-scale online collaboration tools, such as
Wikipedia, Ushahidi, and
Duolingo, which have the
potential to help not just
students and educators,
but Joe Citizen as well.
In his TED Talk ( goo.gl/
TtFx Yu), computer science
professor Luis von Ahn
describes the impressive
impact such tools can have.
Von Ahn has made some
amazing contributions in
this area, including—believe
it or not—his invention of
CAPTCHA (an acronym
for Completely Automated
Public Turing test to tell
Computers and Humans
Apart), that little box where
you have to type the letters
you see before you can final-
ize an online transaction.
Though most of us Joes find
that step annoying, von Ahn
used it as inspiration to create another tool, Duolingo
( duolingo.com). It helps
millions of people learn a
new language while translating the web quickly, all for
free, by capitalizing on the
time people spend typing in
those dang CAPTCHAS.
Clay Shirky has also made
some interesting contribu-
tions to the discussion of
massive-scale online col-
laboration tools. Shirky’s
“cognitive surplus” idea
combines technology and
human generosity to create
civic value globally (goo.
gl/DVbi YL). Shirky argues
that we have about 35 hours
per week to spend on extra-
curricular activities such as
volunteer work. You get to
choose whether you spend
that time viewing LOL
Cats or participating in a
massive collaboration like
Duolingo.
Luckily for us, L&L
authors are tapping their
cognitive surplus to contribute stories all readers can
benefit from. For example,
co-authors Jeffrey Carpenter
and Daniel Krutka have had
very positive experiences
using Twitter to collaborate
from 1,000 miles apart to
create projects for their
teacher candidates. Turn
to page 10 to learn how
they use organized chats
to deliver teacher PD.
Happy surplussing!
—Kate Conley is ISTE’s periodicals
director and the editor of L&L. She
has a master’s in journalism and
was a high school English teacher.
Collaborate for Humanity
❝
❞
Inspiring iterative thinking and decreasing the costs of failure
are key to forming the habits of mind we hope to
cultivate in our students.
See page 36
connect
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Look for links to L&L articles
and the latest Point/Counterpoint
questions.
iste.org/counterpoint
Join ISTE’s LinkedIn group to
participate in Point/Counterpoint
debates.
Follow L&L’s editors
Senior Editor
Diana Fingal @dianafingal
Managing Editor
Paul Wurster @Paul_Wurster
Associate Editor
Andra Brichacek @andramere
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Send letters to the editor,
and we may publish them.
iste.org/LL
Find L&L and other great
ISTE resources online.
tech we like
Check out the useful resources the L&L team
discovered while producing this issue.
Unofficial Index to Educational Hashtags:
goo.gl/4CVDW
Andra Brichacek plans to use this list of
popular education hashtags when
tweeting resources (page 11).
ISTE’s Coaching White Paper:
iste.org/learn/coaching-white-paper
Kate Conley enjoyed reading this coaching
white paper (page 25).
Happy Snail Time: goo.gl/RlDFd5
Diana Fingal likes this game app developed by
middle school students in Colorado (page 27).
Automata Toy Construction Project:
www.clohe-movingtoys.eu
Tamara Kidd got a kick out of the CLOHE
moving toys project described in the
Connected Classroom column (page 35).
