First Week of Stats

I feel like my head is spinning just a little bit.  During inservices when statistics and data are introduced along with terms like standard deviation, and means, and modes, my brain has a tendency to just turn off for a little bit.  I know it is bad, but huge tables of data have that affect on me. 

I felt like I was in and inservice during this first week and as a result I ended up doing a lot of the work at the last minute, and I'm still not sure that I get it all. 

In the end, I'm hopeful that this will help me to use and understand the data I receive at work and I can take that and put it to use in the way I teach.  Today however, I still have that head spinning feeling.  I hope it will go away soon, but I have a feeling it won't.

Wiki vs. Ning

With the start of our next class we are leaving our experience with the Ning behind, temporarily, and moving into a course run on a wiki.  Just today I was signing into the wiki and setting up my page.  I also added my blog address to the sidebar, which got me thinking about which type of tool I like the best for these courses.  The strength in my mind with the Ning is the forums and the community building that can be done easily through the individual pages that all link together and connect in a really intuitive way.  You can share your work on the Ning, but I feel that you are somewhat limited in that they are shared through links to other sites or documents.  Some things can be embedded on the Ning's personal pages, but I feel like the individual page is not designed for content. 

The wiki on the other hand seems like it is built for content, and if ever you don't feel there is a space for your work, you just need to create that space.  The wiki also is highly customizable to whatever the needs of the group are.  Templates can be created, group pages, folders, new files that can be shared by all, images are easily accessed.  I think for our group the wiki is actually my preference.  It isn't as flashy as the Ning, but I feel that its functionality is greater. 

For my 7th graders I have put together a Ning for them to use in class.  I don't know that they are yet ready for the building process that goes into a wiki.  I want to get them used to the Ning and see how communities are built and how they operate before opening up the door a little with a wiki.  I will be doing that sometime towards the 3rd or 4th quarter where they will be discussing novels that are set around the Eastern Hemishpere.  In addition to their discussions I want them to post original content.  They will be researching topics of interest that are linked to the novels they have read.

If you have any experience with novels being used in geography or as inspiration for research work or know someone who does I would love to hear from you.

Ningtastic

This week was solely dedicated to the creation and manipulation of my ning. I create the Ning for a simulation that we do in our class, and I was looking for a way for groups to work together and present their product, but also a way for communication to take place between groups in different classes. I'm banking on the Ning to provide this service to my students, and my initial feelings are positive that this will happen.

I did run into some roadblocks working with the Ning, but they were mostly surrounding my not knowing some of the Ning lingo and where certain tools were and how to manipulate them. The only real issue with the Ning was the text boxes that seem to be a casual mix of WYSIWYG and HTML code. It took me a long time to do and I wish the interface was more like the Blogger interface that I'm using right now. I think the product would be better in the end.

Today is the first day my students have checked in on the Ning and signed up and the initial reaction seems to be positive, although we have a fair amount of work before us in getting them to understand appropriate ways to interact with one another.

The last positive is the character I've developed as the Symaster, he is a strikingly handsome man around 60 years old with a Sean Connery resemblance. I think I'll really enjoy playing this character on the Ning and will have to create a personality to match his appearance. Right now the only adjective I can think of to describe the Symaster is salty. I think the Symaster will bring out the best in some of my students as well as frustrate some who have it too easy normally.

Tweet, Tweet, Diigo, Diigo

I'm enjoying Twitter and am impressed by the amount of information the few people I follow have exposed me to. I feel like my eyes have really been opened up and I'm seeing that there is a much larger and powerful community that believes in many of the same things we do and have incorporated, successfully, much of our discussions into their teaching for the benefit of their students. I'm actually sorry that some of these tools and the discussions they reveal were not put into our program at an earlier time.

I feel the same way about social bookmarking. I would have liked and I think it would have been meaningful for at MEIT Cardinal Stritch Diigo group to have been created at the beginning of our cohort. I could only imagine the number of resources that could have been gathered and shared by this point in our journey. I will definitely be using Diigo with my students this year. First for individuals to be able to keep notes on the computer and have Diigo compile them all into one place organized by resource is a huge improvement over the pen and pencil model of the past. The second benefit I hope to gain is real collaboration in the research process and can take place inside and outside of the classroom.

How Can It Help?

I think the RSS item could help the most in the future. What I imagine in the future is my students are going to be producing a lot, and it is going to be found in a variety of different places. RSS should make it easier for me to follow and keep up with what my students are producing. The corollary to all this is that if I'm going to be a guide, I need a closer connection to each student to see where they are going. The RSS feed should help with this in that I could be so closely connected that I may be able to offer recommendations of where to go or who to see about further research before I even get a chance to see or sit down with one of my students.

I am already planning on using Flick'r in my teaching, but this is something that I'm interested in and I thought would be fun to do with my 7th graders. I'm not sure it helps my teaching, other than it helps all my students to connect and know each other better. The RSS feed on the other hand really seems like it could help me with keeping track of all the information that comes in.

Owen in the leaves

Owen in the leaves, originally uploaded by badgergobadger.

Today was a raking day. I had to rake the leaves at my parent's house, then come home and rake my own leaves. Thank goodness for daylight's savings time, I needed all the time I could get. I was at my parent's house at 8:15 and didn't leave until after 11:00. They are out of town, so I was doing the job myself, and with the amount of leaves they had it was like I was actually raking a forest clean of leaves.

Raking at my house was a lot more fun, and easier. My wife was there to help, and as you can see the boys make any job easier.

In a strange way, I enjoy seeing a yard right after raking, still green and entirely devoid of leaves, while all the surrounding yards are still under a blanket of dead foliage. After that it was back to work, school work that is.

Facilitating Web 2.0 Communication - Week 2

Week 2
This week I was able to really focus on trying to see how Twitter can be used as a tool for me as a teacher. What I like about Twitter is that I have a regular group of people whose opinions I have come to find interested and valuable to me as a teacher. I have really begun to enjoy checking in each evening to see if any of the people I follow have posted new material or resources for me to read or use.

I have not yet found the confidence or motivation to send out my own personal comments on Twitter. I have passed on material that I have read from others, but I have found myself unable to send out personal comments on things I have observed. Being new to this type of interaction I just feel like people couldn't possibly be interested in what I have to say. As I type this I know that isn't necessarily the case and that I'm missing the point of being involved in these new larger more inclusive social webs. I just haven't been able to adjust my mindset for interactions yet.

I also think my concern is that I want to keep my Twitter account primarily something that is related to my professional life and I'm uncomfortable sharing things that are personal for fear that it could transform into something like my wife's Facebook account. I'm not interested in whether or not someone is watching TV right then, or eating waffles, or putting their child to bed, so I have become hyper sensitive about posting anything too personal. I'm sure I'll be able to find a balance.

One person in particular that I have enjoyed following is a teacher who uses Twitter as part of a class and seems to have found a balance between offering them resources that he finds interesting, promoting their work, seeking out assistance for them, and at the same time commenting on football games or a TV show he is watching. I could see this being a great tool to help connect with students and at the same time push them to explore new material and engage really in their own learning. There is plenty to be skeptical of with Twitter and 7th graders, but I really liked using it myself and I can see the possibilities, perhaps more so than some of the other social networks that are out there.

Week #2 - Digital Storytelling

This week's assignments again have me cleaning up and simplifying. I have found that the process of simplification is not as easy as it may sound. I think one of the reasons for this is that in education we often think of the more you know the better, so we translate that to the more we teach the better our students will be.

I am still enjoying Zen because it is doing two things for me. The first is giving me some overarching ideas that I can try to always have in mind when creating presentations. The second is that it still has some solid concrete steps to follow. I really enjoyed the rules for going analog and concrete process steps at the end of chapter four. The balance between big picture and small directions is just right for keeping me interested and directed in my work.

I think Voicethread as a program is something that almost forces the author to follow the Zen model in that the pictures are the emphasis, text is off to the side, and you are limited, which forces a focus on a key concept or idea. I also really like how my planning went. I planned out my Civil Right presentation in a notebook, sketching out ideas and pictures that I wanted. I then went and found the exact pictures, rather than scanning the thousands of images for hours. The whole planning, researching, and creating process went much more smoothly and quickly then had I stayed on the computer the whole time. I was really happy with the process.

Final point, I think VoiceThread has great possibilities for my students this year as it is a very easy interface. I also like the idea of having other students see, and comment on each others work. I should be a fun option to give students this fall for possible presentations.

Digital Story Telling Week #1

I feel reinvigorated by the first week of this course. The posterous assignment has really been a lot of fun and has got me started thinking about ways to use pictures to tell the story of my class, of my students, of what I'm teaching. So many avenues seem to have appeared before me. I think the most realistic ones for this year are to have students use the posterous assignment for the SLC artifact. The student led conference is meant to have students reflect on their learning during the year and present it to their parents and home room teacher. I've been thinking posterous blogs would be a fun way for some kids to approach the presentation. The second potential plan is to create a picture gallery covering the class as a whole, it would be great to get every student during the year and document the work they have been doing. At the end of the year it would be a great document to show how far they have come in their understanding of the world around us.

The second item I'm excited about is the Presentation Zen book. According to the book, my presentations weren't killing anyone, but they did present a clear and present danger to the sanity of my students. I know I hate the presentations I see at my inservices, why would I put my kids through that like it is a rite of passage or something. Clean, concise and clear are my new objectives, and I love the idea of a handout for the students that they can use to reflect on the presentation afterwards. I think this manner of delivery will also lead to a productive discussion with questions on the handout and the presentation. Finally, I'm looking forward to using this new format to help my students better grasp the concept of taking notes after a presentation and prioritizing information.

Great start to a new class. I'm hopeful that it will continue.

Biggest Place for Improvement

Going through the nine strategies these last few weeks, has made me realize that I want to make a concerted effort this coming year to focus on two areas. They are providing feedback and recognizing effort. I think I have always known that it was important to give feedback on in class discussion, assignments, writings, and tests, but I think over the last couple of weeks I've discovered a new tool that I can use. I really want to have my students submitting their work online prior to final draft, so that they can get comments and feedback, make corrections, if necessary, then submit their final work. I think this can be huge for me and for them. I also want to create rubrics for all work, so that the objectives are clearly laid out and I can focus on them when I'm grading.

The second area is recognizing effort. I really feel like there is a problem at my school with students feeling that they can just go through the motions and do marginal work and feel like they deserve an A or a B. I think this year I'm going to try and incorporate some of the characteristics of effort into my calculations. I think that this will be a good way to encourage the top level students to push their capabilities and reward the average students who really do give their absolute best effort to succeed. I'm looking forward to the year and these changes.

Organizer Comparison

This weeks assignment was the great organizer comparison, specifically the functionality and ease of use of three web tools. The three tools that I chose to use and kick around for the last couple of days were Bubbl.us, Exploratree and the Education Oasis section on Graphic Organizers.

In terms of the three I choose Bubbl.us is slightly different because I viewed it as a place where students could go individually or as collaborative groups to help with organization of ideas. I think this tool would be great for students to work on a project together and divide up roles that could be color coded within Bubbl.us. Each could contribute the majority of their notes to their sections, but still help the others. They are then able to manipulate their concept map to make connections and bring all their information together. Bubble.us would be a great 1st step for a group that was wanting to create a project or write a paper together, making sure they were all on the same page and were writing with the same ideas and organizational structure.

The last two tools have the feel, to me, of teacher tools. The seem like a way to create and deliver a method for students to organize their knowledge. They would not be as adaptable for the students once they received them. I have already bookmarked these two sites for this year, because they had a lot of options and were well organized by goals. I liked how both sites offered suggestions on how each type of organizer might be used in the class. One of the sites, in my opinion, was significantly more valuable to me than the other. The key difference was adaptability. The Education Oasis organizers were given in PDF form and needed to be printed out. On the other hand Exploratree's organizers could be manipulated, shared, displayed and saved all online so that a teacher could create their own personal virtual binder of specific organizers that were geared towards their subjects and objectives. This overwhelmingly impressed me. The thought of being able to go back online and simply and easily edit my organizer making changes, even for a period later in the day is very impressive.

Overall, all three tools were easy to use from day one, but the best ones were those that allowed collaboration between students and teachers, as well as between students. Those were bubbl.us and Exploratree.

Electronic Student Response

A couple of items are available to me this coming year. The first is Moodle, which has been great. One of the features that I started with this past year is the journal feature. It is exactly what it sounds like a journal that the students will be keeping about my class. The really nice feature for me is that it is private, so the kids don't need to worry about what their peers will see or say about their posts, and it also allows me to post feedback to them and comment about what they write and to ask questions that work as great starters for the next post.

The second tool that I like is Google Docs. I started adding comments to their assignments before giving their grades, so they can make a round or more, if necessary, of improvements before final grading. They then send me an email when they have made their changes and they get their grade plus a second round of comments. I like this because it makes these assignments better in the end and helps the students to see what I'm looking for, where they are succeeding, and where they need to do a little more work. The only major change for me is that I really need to set two deadlines, and it is hard to track down my students who have trouble making one deadline.

The final tool, and also the newest is the Centio sp? system that my dept. is going to purchase this summer. We have them in the math dept for quizzes and such, but I envision using them as conversation starters and a way to check for understanding. I'm really interested by the option of polling my class and seeing where they stand on a certain issue initially, after discussion, after learning more on the topic.

I think all three of these tools will help me to do a better job of keeping my finger on the pulse of my class as a whole, and the pulse of individual students.

Feedback

I really liked this week's blog article and see it as a skill that I do need to work on. It is primarily to help with feedback that I am making an effort to create rubrics starting with all the major assignments during my year, and some generic rubrics that will work with some of my smaller daily type assignments.

My hope is that these rubrics will do exactly what the article suggests, which is to focus on the learning objectives. Having the rubric at the top of the assignment will allow me to have that reminder of what I asked of the students and where my primary focus should be when grading and giving comments.

The second benefit I'm hoping to receive from creating rubrics is to increase the speed with which grading and feedback is given. I know it probably isn't appropriate to do something simply to speed up the process, but I've found that the time commitment to grading is killing me. I'm sure many of you are in the same boat, but I have approximately 140 students on my team, and they all take Geography. That means whenever I give out a major assignment, I have a huge, imposing, heavy, cumbersome stack of big time assignments to grade. Sometimes I'm almost too embarrassed to hand them back because of how long it has taken. I need to find a way to pick up the pace, and I'm hoping that the rubrics will not only help my students focus on the objectives of the assignment, but also help me focus more on the specific stated objectives.

This article spoke to me much more clearly than last weeks and I also felt like it was offering me a way to make myself a better teacher not only for my students, but for myself, and I appreciate that.

Week 1 - Enhanced Learning Through Technology

I just finished reading the two online articles for the first week in class. I'm struggled with the Waxman meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning with Technology on Student Outcomes. I think there were a few reasons for why I did not connect with this article. The first is the statistical analysis. I took stats, once, in college and now it is gone. I was really bogged down and put off by the jargon of statistical analysis. What I did get out of all the statistical discussion is, despite the fact that we are supposed to be having this data driven system with NCLB, there are still very few studies done in the area of education and technology's impact upon it. Also the studies that are done are often not set up or operated with statistical integrity. This does not surprise me very much given my colleagues response whenever a piece of educational research may be put in front of us. Normally it is disdain and frustration that comes out of the fact that the place and conditions of the research projects so often don't look or feel anything like the place and conditions of where we work.

The second part of this article that I was frustrated by was the admission of the wild inconsistencies of the articles they included in their meta-analysis. I was shocked to see that studies that were conducted in the 90's were being included just because the findings had been published in the last five years. Given what the average person knows about the rate of change in the world of technology it seems criminal to include studies from approximately 15 years ago.

The main finding was pretty obvious, that integrating technology will result in a positive correlation with outcome results. I was not really surprised to see this. I was also not very surprised to see that by integrating technology the dynamic in the classroom changed from a teacher led to a teacher moderated classroom. I think this is the appropriate way to manage the class setting and allows students more freedom to follow their interests and to form more natural collaborative units. Of course this structure of student independence does lead to more abuse of privelege by students who aren't capable or comfortable with the freedom and you will see the increase in behavioral issues that were found in the study.

Overall, I wasn't that impressed by the study. I felt it was an overly technical reading for my tastes and it admitted to too many serious flaws. I also felt like the conclusions were pretty obvious from my experiences and I'm guessing most of us in this class would have ended in pretty much the same area based simply on our daily classes.

Week 4 - Online Children's safety

Internet Safety for Kids -
I know this is important, but sometimes I have real problems with parents in our district who get all bent out of shape about kids using their computers at home. In our school we have seen parents call in about students accessing De.lic.ious accounts at home, downloading GoogleEarth, using district served Moodle Forums. I understand that for some of these people they are nervous about the security of their computer and their response is to let their kids do absolutely nothing with them. Even when you try to explain your reasons for requests and comfort them with the knowledge that a Google Download is definitely coming from a trusted site, they still won't do it.

One of the big challenges we are going to be facing next year is to educate our parents and community about appropriate downloads and ways they can actually improve their computer and its capabilities. As ironic as this sounds I think we are planning on having a newsletter (on actual paper) go out about some of these technology issues.

The flip side of this of course is that some of these same parents let their students go on all sorts of sites without any sort of supervision at all hours of the night. They care so much about their computer, but not really what their students use it for. My last story of frustration was a student who came in and told me they couldn't do their homework, online, because they had been grounded. Thinking this was impossible, I emailed the parent. Sure enough they were not going to let their child use the computer at home because of some discipline issue. I'll never understand how someone would tell their middle schooler who was trying to do their homework that they couldn't do it because they were in trouble.

Sorry this post became so negative, but this is a frustrating issue when we do so much to try and protect and guide our students online and it often is lost on our parents, whether it be through lack of understanding or lack of concern.

Week 3 - Group Projects on tools

My general feeling from this weeks work, was that Google's goal is to create a tool for just about any need imagined while online. If they don't create one, then they buy another and rename it Google... This seems like a great idea because whenever I came across one of the non-Google tools, my first instinct was to see if there was a Google Tool providing the same service. The reason I think this is genius is because once you have become comfortable with the Google operating system and interfaces it just makes sense to keep using the suite. It is the same way with my students, my goal is to introduce a new tool to them. After that I want to build up their comfort level with it until they consider themselves masters of the tool. It would follow that the next tool I introduce should be similar in nature, so they can learn it faster, why start all over again? My only hesitation about going down this road is that Google used to be the little guy, and is maybe becoming 'the man'. I have always had this desire to turn away from 'the man' and embrace the 'little guy'. I just haven't decided who Google is yet.

Week 2 - Noodle Tools

I've used NoodleBib before, but I never realized that they had such an interesting rest to their web presence. I thought the tips that they gave for using particular searches or groups would be a great tool to use. I think that part of the reason all my students automatically turn to Google is that all their teachers automatically turn to Google. We really need to do a better job of finding resources that are more specifically fitted to the job we want to do.

The second part of Noodle Tools that impressed me was the 21st Century Literacies. I've always felt this title is a misnomer, but nonetheless it is something that we have been trying to implement, and standardize into all the curriculums in both grades at my school. I felt that this section offered a wide range of great ideas that could be used for that purpose. I actually recommended the site to a number of people within my committee and we have seen the section as a model for what we would like to create for our district. It will require a lot of altering and personalizing, but it should serve as a fair guide.

Week 1 -

Many of you will notice, but this is not week one, but I still wanted to get down my thoughts for the last 4 weeks of our last class. My first impression was that I didn't like having a personal page on the wiki. I really liked the NING pages from our first two classes and thought they did a much better job of allowing each of us to express more about who we were and what we were all about. I know that it is done this way out of consideration of having us only use one application, but I wouldn't have minded using more if one has such a clear advantage in a specific area of functionality.

My second comment on the first week was the web site critique assignment. This was something I was planning on working on during the summer anyway, so I was glad to get a first shot at it here. I've found in my class with 7th graders that they'll trust anything that is online without even a second thought. I'm hoping to find some ways next year to get them to be more self directed in their evaluation of their sources, especially online. I'm starting to think I have a good plan in my with the "fake" websites listed on one of the articles included with the assignment. I believe it was the Shrock Page.

How has this course helped me?

My initial feelings about this class were pretty negative before the class even started. I'm thinking about the inner workings (something I knew nothing about) and dreading a heavy load of tech speak and lessons that won't help me in the classroom. I know this is unfair to have such a bad attitude before starting, but it was human nature.

I'm happy to say that today my attitude is experiencing a 180 degree shift. I'm pretty excited about what we've done. I have made some plans for the future with the information we've learned. The first concerns my computer at home. I have taken some advice from my readings and have located new and improved security software. I have even managed to find free software online that is highly rated, more thorough than what I was previously paying for, and easier to use. The cost has just been the icing on the cake.

The second project will come this summer. I plan on buying two rotated out computers from my district and I want to use them as labs. I'm going to try to run them off exclusively open source material. Operating system, security, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc... I also want to use them to play around with the insides and see if I can update them on my own for a reasonable cost in parts. I actually have a former student who is a computer whiz that has indicated he may have some spare parts he could give me to get started.

As far as my class, I think the lessons from Triumph of the Nerds apply the best. You never know what direction we are headed in and it is important to take any idea you get and run with it, because the ideas aren't necessarily what is important, but rather what you can do with them.

So as you can see I'm pretty excited, and I think this class was just what I needed at this point of the year.

Personal Computer Failure

The question for the week is security and what would I lose if my personal computer failed. For me, the biggest issue would be the music. I have tons of music on my computer that I've acquired over the years. This would be a tremendous hassle and expense to try and recover that I'm not exactly sure what I would do. The positive to this loss is that while it would be stressful it could be done.

On the other hand my wife would lose all her pictures. These pictures, unlike my music, can't be replaced. Whenever I suggest we delete some pictures that I feel are subpar or portray me in a less than flattering light, my wife will claim that I'm destroying her "memories". I try to explain memories are in her mind, and that these are pictures. She never seems to come around to my point of view. If these pictures/memories were lost my wife may totally lose it. I can only pray that the computer problem wouldn't be my fault as to make me the subject of her violent rage. The only way I could see these being recovered right now would be to have my family and friends travel all over the world and time to recreate as many of the shots that we could remember. Talk about expensive.

The good news is that we have recently purchased an external hard drive. It is my understanding (my wife is the system manager), that by occasionally updating our hard drive we are insulating ourselves against the major loss that we were vulnerable to prior to our purchase. I really hope she is right.

P.S. I may have exaggerated my wife's emotional state after a hypothetical data loss to help get a point across, she is really a very understanding woman whom I love very much.

Computing in the Clouds

Truth be told this class is running pretty close with some issues that we are currently discussing within our school. The first is the linux issue. We purchased last year some mini-laptops that are minimal in power, but are able to meet the needs of a middle school student, which is mostly to research and word process. The downside of these computers is that they run on linux and don't connect to our school network. This means no printing and no saving to student numbers. This has been fine with flash drives to move files when necessary. The reason this has come up is that with our district moving to gmail email service we are now going to have all our students using GoogleDocs for word processing, presentation needs. The fact that these computers aren't hooked up to our school server won't be an issue at all, in fact it is a benefit because there aren't any long waits to log in. The cloud is great for an institution like a school because we can save time, energy, money, labor etc... One of the other issues that we have talked about at our school is allowing students to bring in their own technology into the building and to help them learn how to use their technology effeciently and for the powers of good (learning). This is going to be a big hurdle to clear amongst the people in the building and I'm sure we'll experience some setbacks, but it is exciting to see our school and district try to keep pace with all the developments that are coming our way.

Computer History

The year was 1994 and a young man was a senior at Middleton High School. Sitting at home was a brand new computer whose main thrill was able to navigate a solid yellow line around a square without running into a patterned yellow line that was trying to pin him in. The game was TRON and I loved it. The computer at home was also a huge asset in cranking out last minute papers for English Literature and Physics classes on the speedy dot matrix printer.

Upon leaving for college the computer stayed at home and I returned back to a life of computing at a lab or library station. During my freshman year at school there were three people who had computers in their room on my entire floor of approximately 50 people. By the end of my time at college 5 years later I lived in a house with 4 other people and 3 of us had computers. By this time it was already common to be hooked up to the Internet at home and use the computer as a resource tool for school.

The computer I had when I was finishing school drastically changed the way we operated. I was able to do so much more work because I was not restricted to the hours that a library was open, or I could take short breaks while I worked and not worry about not finding a spot when I returned. I was much more willing to do edits and change documents because it was so easy and the benefits were immediate in the quality of the work. Research was also much more available, we were no longer limited to was available in the libraries, or from the databases that were offered at campus workstations.

Beyond school work the computer and access to the Internet opened up so much content of the world. I still remember when people first began talking about Napster and being able to access so much music for free and to be able to hear artists and songs without having to purchase a CD.

We really just were amazed at how easy it was to find information on any subject you were interested in. It is hard to believe that we all take it for granted today, and it was not that long ago that I had a 15-20 minute walk to get computer access. It just makes me wonder where we'll be in another 10-15 years?

Course in Review

I have to admit, I enjoyed the beginning weeks of the class more than the last two. The first weeks were all filled with new toys to play with, Diigo, Empressr, Zoho, Nettrecker, Spreadsheets, etc.. This was great fun and I was entertaining myself, and even sometimes my students with new tools and ways we could use them in class.

The last two weeks were not nearly as fun, but now in writing this I'm kicking myself because without the last two weeks the first few are wasted. The technology implementation plan, the technology integration strategies, as well as the final chapters in the book on supporting students creativity and production were really the meat of the class.

I know I've mentioned this at other times in my blog, but I'm a little frustrated in starting this program in the Spring, when time is of the essence, patterns have already been established and kids start peeking at summer break. It is hard to get these new ideas into the fold. I too have begun to look to summer, not as a break, but as an opportunity to reshape the structure of my class and to find ways to blend in what we have learned so far in the program.

Next year to do list includes:
1. Get all the kids on Google Docs
2. Diigo groups to share notes/sites for class
3. Getting rid of paper assignments
4. Real/Regular collaboration on class assignments
5. Target student technological independence by year's end

Some of these will be easy, but others are going to require some long term strategies that I think our discussions, assignments, and readings have helped develop.

Just a quick observation, entirely unintentionally, my to do list has mirrored my impression of the class, toys at the front, meat at the end.

Week 5 Blog - How have I changed as a result of ....

There have been a few effects that have really made an impression on me and are starting to show an immediate impact on my class. The biggest impact on me has also had the biggest downside on my class. I'm sure we are all right up against it, in terms of the end of quarters and years and all the curriculum we want to cover. So of course what I have been really trying to stress is the process that is necessary to go through to set up my kids to have success in developing creative solutions and making sure that when technology is implemented with the curriculum it is done so with a clear and definite purpose, rather than just for the fun of it. I have been pretty good in making sure technology has a role in my past lessons, but now I'm just more mindful.

For the processes that is a big change for me. I'm a pretty free and easy teacher and try to give the students a lot of leeway in making their own decisions and choosing their consequences. As a result of this mindset in the past I have set the goal, identified potential tools, and sources and have let the kids go to work. I'm embarrassed to say it out loud, but then I was always surprised when the kids didn't live up to my expectations. I know part of this is that I teach 7th graders and some of them will always choose the path of least resistance and do the minimum, but I also know that I teach 7th graders who need the process laid out for them more than I was and require more guidance in some of these areas that are new for them.

Now for me is the balancing act, I will always believe that even 7th graders need to have some independence and experience making their own good and bad decisions when it comes to their learning. Since taking this class, though, I do realize my responsibility to put them in better positions and give them a perspective on their decisions. I know some of my kids are just intrinsically more creative than others, but by giving them a clearer look at where they are going and the road map I can get more kids to feel safe to take some of the risks that come with creativity.

The downside is, I was barely making it before these new revelations. Next year of course this can all be built in right from the beginning, but it is going to make the pace for the end of the year pick up even more than it normally would.

A Walk Through History - In Time Video

The lesson that I looked at for this week from the In Time website was a history lesson that was used as a year end review. What was created at the end of the year was a video that featured three segments, one that showed the time period using a film, a second that connected the time period to local history, and a third that showed what the students did across all areas of instruction to reflect what they as middle school students had learned about the time period. I was really excited to see the product that these students were able to create and I immediately began to think of ways that this could be connected to my geography course.

What came to mind was a world map, the students could use GoogleEarth as their organizer. As a person would move around the map at each location they would find a student resource that could serve as an example of what we did at the middle school and how we could connect ourselves with all the corners of the globe. I imagined students playing pieces from the orchestra classes that would be shown by geographical locations of the composer and allowing the visitor to compare regional styles of compositions. Literature would also be an excellent way for the English classes to get involved to do character studies on their books from around the globe. There are so many options, I only wish I had been given this spark at the beginning of the year so I could organize all my teamates and have the video collections grow up over the course of the year.

Finally at my school the students do a student led conference during the 3rd/4th quarter, I really think this would make a great piece for the students to demonstrate their knowledge as well as the collective knowledge of the group. That is exciting to me.

Spreadsheet Week

Well this is spreadsheet week in the Tech Int. program and I have mixed reviews. I personally really enjoy working with spreadsheets, in fact I developed a spreadsheet this summer that I use with some guys I golf with. It was a lot of fun to keep track of our summer long competition. We created a relatively simple game that we could play involving fairways, greens and putts, along with some penalties. We used the spreadsheet to then calculate a score based on possible points. The spreadsheet allowed us to have a season long competition and have fun with our competitiveness. I've used spreadsheets occasionally in the past, but only for personal reasons like this or a job I had growing up.

I have never found much success using them in class. My class this year used a spreadsheet to compare statistical data from the countries of Asia in the CIA World Factbook, and group countries by region and some of the kids really enjoyed seeing the differences between countries. They really enjoyed looking at countries that have 'amazing' statistics like Afghanistan's 44 life expectancy, Turkmenistan's 40% unemployment and Singapore's 2.3 Infant Mortality Rate! Students also used the spreadsheet to compare country data with U.S. The problem I ran into with my spreadsheet in class was that for every person who was really excited about the comparisons I had two or three who really struggled with finding meaning or dissecting the numbers.

What this spreadsheet didn't do was to have any formulas in it. I suppose it could have calculated regional averages, continent averages or identified highs and lows. This will maybe be something I'll do when we work with European countries next quarter. Any other ideas for the spreadsheet would be greatly appreciated.

Symsido

Week 2 Initial Thoughts - Online Storage

Week Two

The online storage sites are the items that I'm currently most intrigued by. I currently have this disastrous system not working for me right now where I try to remember at the end of the day which files to put on my flash drive, then forget the one file I truly needed at work. The next morning I then frantically work to finish/fix the file in question minutes before 30 kids come rushing into my room with a million conversations of their own. It is brilliant.

I really hope that setting up some storage online can remedy this situation for me. At the very least it will reduce some of the end of the day rush. In addition to reducing stress I'm hoping to introduce the other Geography teacher to the idea. If we both are there and sharing files we should be able to increase our efficiency and effectiveness by duplicating less work.

My students are always forgetting their work/flash drives at home and I want to try to encourage them to use this application to settle this issue.

Overall I really think this idea shows some real promise for me personally and professionally.

Final Point- In this weeks class someone mentioned the idea of collecting bookmarks as a class. I will definitely be trying to set up a situation like this for my students this semester. I've made it a goal for my class to create a one for all, all for one attitude in my room and I think this might just be the right tool for the job. Now all I need to do is figure out how to create a social bookmarking group that is accessible to all my students, but somewhat insulated from the greater online community. I'm also guessing that one of my challenges will be to set up a standard for use by the students so we can achieve some continuity in the way it is used.

First Week's End

I've learned quite a bit this first week. Some has to do with technology and the rest has to do with getting myself back into the habits of the student. The benefit that this program has over some of the other forays into education is that I am definitely enjoying the topics from the first week and I'm hopeful this will continue into future sessions. I'm excited to meet again tomorrow to see how everyone else is feeling and to hear their views on the first weeks assignments.

Google Docs Collaboration

This morning while I was working on our assignment comparing browsers, I chanced to find myself working at the exact same time as one of my collaborators. It was interesting to see the changes that he was making while I was doing my work. That was interesting and fun, but the best part was when I found that I could open a chat session and my partner and I could ask questions, share resources, and make a plan for our document, all while still in my pajamas on my in-laws couch. It almost made me forget I wasn't at home, then their puppy peed on the floor and I returned to reality in a hurry. Google Docs 1 - Microsoft Word 0

Testing out Email Blogging

I really like the idea of blogging from my email.  It allows a quicker message that could be sent from multiple devices.

First Week

It feels good to be getting to work, I've been thinking about this class for the last year. I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to find some tools that my kids will be able use effectively in and out of the classroom.

The assignment this week actually relates to something my team of teachers has been trying to work out recently. We are planning on creating and publishing a blog that would be used for our daily homework assignments as well as publish any announcements that we would need to get out to students or parents.

I haven't been able to come up with an excuse to make my students create and keep blogs yet, but I'm looking. If any of you have recommendations I am open to suggestions. The best I've been able to come up with is to create one that the kids could share and discuss current events topics that we aren't able to get to during our class sessions.