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.