Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/28/2008
Installation/LowMemorySystems - Community Ubuntu Documentation
Geek to Live: How to access a home server behind a router/firewall
Geek to Live: How to assign a domain name to your home web server
Trouble with phpmyadmin - Ubuntu Forums
sudo aptitude update
WordPress Installation on Ubuntu with LAMP · supriyadisw dot net
Monday, May 26, 2008
Jumping into FOSS
Saturday afternoon I got the wild notion that learning how to set up my own web server would be fun. There are quite a few flavors of Linux out there; I had no idea. I decided to go with Ubuntu server 6.06.2 with Xubuntu as the GUI.
Then, with the help of a variety of tutorials and forums, I was able to get Apache2, MySQL, and PHP all playing nicely. Throw WordPress into the mix and tada: kismet.homelinux.com is born. There isn't much there to speak of; right now it's just a sandbox for learning how to make all of this work. But who knows, if I get comfortable with all of this and can keep the installation stable, I just may work on migrating everything over.
Around 10am today I hit a wall and decided it was time for a book. I love the computer section of book stores and am a frequent browser, but this was the first time I trying to deal with something so technical. Lots of options out there, including a Dummies book for just about anything you would want to do with a computer, but overall the books fell into two categories: 1) so ungodly technical as to be nearly unreadable for someone without a CS degree or 2) a $40 restating of what I had already read online. I picked up the WordPress for Dummies book anyway--sometimes its nice to have a good overview in one place--but lots of thanks to the incredible community that has put together all the information for learning how to do something like this.
The hardest technical part was getting the IP information straight between my server, router, and DynDNS. DynDNS is pretty neat--with a free account, they provide a domain name and keep the URL pointing in the right direction if you have a dynamic IP. If I decide to stick with this, I will need to just register my own domain, but what a great way to play around and learn the ropes.
The other hard part was just keeping things straight in the server terminal. I'm so used to GUIs that adjusting my mind map of the system took some time. Fortunately, I could also surf the file structure in Xubuntu; otherwise just finding some of the files I needed would have added hours to the process.
All told, from wild, incomplete understanding of what I was tackling to a working web presence took just over 20 hours. Certainly time well spent.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/25/2008
jooce.com - power to the people
virtual desktop
From The Library of Congress
"Discover the stories of America's past..."
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/22/2008
Competency Model Clearinghouse - Hospitality/Hotel and Lodging Industry Competency Model
Staples Foundation for Learning
The mission of Staples Foundation for Learning is to provide funding to programs that support or provide job skills and/or education for all people, with a special emphasis on disadvantaged youth.
Weebly - Create a free website and a free blog
Create your website. Fast. Free. Easy. Now.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/21/2008
Today's Middle Level Educator - NMSA Podcast - National Middle School Association
Today's Middle Level Educator, a podcast produced byNational Middle School Association, is the place to hear conversations,interviews, and commentaries from middle level practitioners, leaders,and experts. Listen online or subscribe to the podcast and listen onyour computer or MP3 player. Available on iTunes.
Employer of the Year: Top 50 marketing employers 2005 - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic
EA: Employer of the Year Award Winners
“We felt it was time to establish an awards program honoring great employers in Illinois that recognize employees as their greatest asset. There are many employers that work with imagination and conviction to create organizational value and business results through their policies and best practices in human resources management, ” said, Mary Pille, CAE, SPHR, EA’s President and CEO.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/15/2008
Have you ever thought, ”Gosh, I wish I had time to learn more about Flickr, wikis, or (enter your Web 2.0 tool here)?” Well, this is your chance to take the time to focus on your personal and professional development around Web 2.0 tools. It’s fun to explore these tools and figure out ways to use them in the library, with your personal Web sites, or in other ways.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/14/2008
ccMixter - Welcome to ccMixter
ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
Friday, May 09, 2008
diigo bookmarks 05/10/2008
The Thinking Stick | Where are the comments?
Some great guidelines for blogging
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/30/2008
Jason Ohler : Education and Technology : @ Work with Teachers
Mahara is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/22/2008
KeepVid: Download videos from Google, Youtube, iFilm, Putfile, Metacafe, DailyMotion!
The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It
The Future of the Internet explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.
ESEA Title II, Part D - Enhancing Education through Technology - Title II Part D
MT OPI page for TitleIID
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/19/2008
Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies - Annotated
Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy.
- Twenty-first century readers and writers need to
The purpose of this little script is to allow a Twitter user to "follow" a bunch of other Twitter users in one fell swoop—a Twitter friend list generator if you will. Dembo made me do it.
VUVOX - slideshows, photo, video and music sharing, Myspace codes
digital collage
Thursday, April 17, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/18/2008
This tutorial is brought to you by the California School Library Association (CSLA) 2.0 Team as a professional development program.
Information and Community for Teachers in Multi-User Virtual Environments
SimTeach is a place for university instructional designers, faculty and administrators to find information and to share their own experiences designing, teaching and administering classes in immersive environments.Arp Home Page K-12 Education Staff Development Education Content
Missoulian: Taking a stab: Inland Empire Divisional Qualifiers fencing tourney coming to Missoula
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/17/2008
Company that provides video streaming services to cities/counties/schools
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/16/2008
Community Technology Centers' Network
The Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) is a national membership network of community technology centers (CTCs) and other non-profits, united in their commitment to provide technology access and education to underserved communities. CTCNet works through the CTC Network to provide resources and advocacy to improve the quality and sustainability of CTCs.
Dangerously Irrelevant: Dear Jon letter (a.k.a. The world doesn't care about you)
Educational Origami is a blog, and a wiki, about the integration of ICT into the classroom, this is one of the largest challenges that I feel we as teachers face. Marc Prensky coined the now popular and famous phrase "Digital natives and digital immigrants" in his two papers on digital Children. We the teachers are the immigrants and our students are the natives, brought up in a world where there has always been computers and the internet, where information is always instant and varied.
Monday, April 14, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/15/2008
Eight Teenagers Charged in Internet Beating Have Their Day on the Web - New York Times - Annotated
- he hoped that the attention the case had drawn would raise awareness about the Internet’s power to desensitize young people to violence.
- And the 1,800-plus comments generally followed a similar line: “its not about youtube and myspace!! its about those 8 freakin’ teenagers!!”
- authorities say the attackers intended to use the attack to become Internet celebrities.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/13/2008
Assessing Technological Literacy « Educational Insanity - Annotated
- I also wonder, will “technological literacy” mean something different in 2012 than it does today? If so, how do we develop measures of something unknown?
Friday, April 11, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/12/2008
Models for Change | Center for Digital Democracy - Annotated
The creation of a more robust electronic environment that is economically sustainable and contains independent sources for civic, cultural and socially conscious content will pave the way for a more democratic society both on and offline. Organizations and models that are making it a priority to shape our digital future are already emerging.
- Freecycle is an amazing community. My wife uses this frequently. - post by mjclausen
- A web service for sharing and exploring information about neighborhoods, serves 63 cities, and 3217 neighborhoods in the U.S.
- Could be a neat project for schools/classes to develop their own community info. - post by mjclausen
- Using the latest technology, Avaaz.org empowers ordinary people from every corner of the globe to directly contact key global decision-makers, corporations and the media.
- Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.
- The new free wiki encyclopedia of arguments and debates. As a "wiki", it enables anyone (you included) to easily present and organize the unique arguments made by third-party sources (ie. by scholars, experts, leaders,...) on both sides of a debate.
- The "citizen's encyclopedia on Congress" that anyone— including you—can edit.
- Gaming
- Find out about the pollution problems in your community and learn who is responsible.
- ibiblio.org is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies.
- An international organization - led by youth and empowered by technology. TakingITGlobal connects youth around the world to find inspiration, information and get involved in improving their local and global communities.
- Digital Youth, UC Berkeley
This project works to address this gap with a targeted set of ethnographic investigations into three emergent modes of informal learning that young people are practicing using new media technologies: communication, learning, and play. - Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet, George Washington University
Its mission is to promote the use of the Internet and new communication technologies in politics to enhance democratic values, encourage citizen participation and improve governance, at home and abroad; in short, to “democratize democracy.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Friday, April 04, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/05/2008
Department for Children, Schools and Families : Byron Review
tags: internet safety, professional development, onlinesafety
Learning.now Strengthening Student Resilience to Online Risks
tags: internet safety, learning.now, onlinesafety
CIPA: Key Issues for Decision Makers
tags: internet safety, cipa, filtering, censoring
Thursday, April 03, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/04/2008
Colorado Filtering Clearinghouse - CIPA Compliance Guide
tags: cipa, internet safety, internet_filter, onlinesafety
Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune - Teacher e-mails made public
tags: email, privacy, professional development, tech_and_society
Almost a year after asking for the documents, a Vesper man's request will be honored for e-mail messages from the workstations of five Wisconsin Rapids School District teachers.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/03/2008
tags: American history, curriculum, history, loc, social studies
American Memory project from the Library of Congress
tags: art, asia, culture, curriculum, social studies
Asian Odyssey is a three-year project (June 2002 - June 2005) to advance the study of Asian Art and culture in K-12 curriculum by creating a model curriculum and program that is accessible to a national and international audiences via distance learning and the museum's web site.
tags: English, curriculum, language arts, strategies, teaching
English Teacher Resources: Lesson Plans and Teaching Strategies
ESR - Educators for Social Responsibility
tags: curriculum, social studies
As a leading national center for teaching about conflict and social responsibility, ESR has been providing effective and credible resources for teaching important current issues for over 20 years. Our Online Teacher Center provides teaching resources on a range of issues related to international security, conflict resolution, peacemaking, violence prevention, and social responsibility.
tags: curriculum, foreign language, world language
scroll down for language links
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/02/2008
turns text upside down and backwards
tags: curriculum, foreign language, language acquisition, world language
KnowledgeWorks - Map of Future Forces Affecting Education - Home
tags: education, future, learning, politics, tech_and_society, technology, transforming_teaching, web2.0
Cable in the Classroom - Threshold Magazine - Spring 2008
tags: 2008, tech_and_society, threshold, transforming_teaching
Global Warming Skeptic Organizations
tags: climate change, skeptic, special interest groups
List of prominent groups organized to refute the science of global warming
World Language Learning Materials
tags: curriculum, foreign language, materials, world language
Today's spies find secrets in plain sight - USATODAY.com Annotated
tags: information, internet safety, onlinesafety, privacy
Agencies dedicated to covert information are increasinly turning to open networks.
ed4wb » Education for Well-being
tags: ed4wb, education, transforming_teaching, video
Education as if people and the planet mattered
Monday, March 31, 2008
diigo bookmarks 04/01/2008
tags: SMARTboard, professional development, smartboards
blog that highlights resources, tips, and tricks for using smartboards.
Open Thread: Your Favorite Teacher Blogs, by Subject Matter? | Beyond School
tags: education, teacher blogs
Comments filled with great edublogger links.
TubeSock - Save YouTube videos
tags: digitalstorytelling, ipod, tubesock, youtube
TubeSock 2.0 downloads YouTube or DailyMotion videos from the web and saves them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable. TubeSock knows how to convert the video using the codecs and bitrates best for each device. It can even add the video to iTunes for you.
kwout | A brilliant way to quote
tags: blogging, quote, screenshot, web2.0
"kwout" is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map.
Educator Technology Literacy Rubrics - Shifted Learning
tags: rubrics, standards, technology
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
NCCE Reflections | Day One: Admin/IT Leadership Summit
Communication: both groups (admin and IT) expressed a desire for greater communication; there is a real need for each to know what the other is thinking, feeling, planning, so efforts can be fully developed and coordinated.
There was also some discussion about being included in the upper administration thinking process. Some districts have IT and instructional tech leaders at the cabinet level--at least in the room if not in a voting capacity--and more of this would be beneficial in my district. We have started having these perspectives attend the principals' meeting to good effect, and I think having instructional technology represented at the highest levels of decision making would also be an important move.
Vision: Something new for me was learning about ISTE's Essential Conditions; these are a crucial take away for me because they feel like a structure for discussing change within the district. The top condition is shared vision, which happens to be my #1 tech integration priority. The work of the district instructional technology committee will be critical here for crafting and articulating this vision in a manner that can then be used to inform district-level decision making regarding the allocation of various resources (time, money, people). Working this shared vision into the larger district plan will also be very important.
Leadership: Because so many of the decisions that need making are ultimately resource allocation issues, having strong leaders who share the vision and are willing to work toward it are vital. School boards and superintendents need to value the importance of moving the district forward on issues of tech integration and student-centered learning.
And while district-level leadership is important, real change all comes down to building principals who ultimately have the on-the-ground influence and responsibility to make things happen. If principals don't buy in to the district vision, making it part of the the ongoing, day-to-day expectations in the building, what is expected by the district and what happens in the building won't be in alignment. Our building leaders are critical for keeping the priorities in focus so they don't get lost in the daily hustle of teaching.
Something that didn't come up during the workshop but I feel is invaluable is the role of teacher leaders. Integrating technology and making student-centered learning a priority is risky business for the teacher who is used to the tried and true, traditional modes. How do we, as administrative and IT types, support those who are willing to take some professional risks and move outside their comfort zones? How do we work with these teachers to develop them as building and district leaders willing to pave the way for their more reluctant peers?
NCCE08
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Planning the School of Today (and Tomorrow)
Along the way, we will also need to discuss professional development, and I would like to see a mix of formal and informal opportunities. Since so much of web 2.0 is about literacy and learning, shouldn't teachers be allowed to get professional development credit for creating and engaging in their own personal learning environments?
What is your district doing? Is there a plan, a systematic approach, to developing the integration of technology into all classrooms across the district? How is PD handled? Are teachers provided a way of getting credit for their own, informal, explorations of technology?
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Sitting at the Big Kids' Table, Part Two
My plan had been to spend the year working with her, learning the job, and then step out of the classroom and into full time curriculum work next fall. Life, as Lennon put it, is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Yesterday, I was hired to be the full time teacher on special assignment starting Monday. My head is still spinning. This morning I was up at 4am because the thoughts just kept intruding. My students took the news pretty well, and it was hardest telling the ones I've worked with for two or more years. I teach (er, taught) in a small school, so I've worked with many of them. But they also understood. While the timing isn't exactly what I had planned, the end result is something I've been working toward for the past three years, and my students have seen some of those efforts, especially the ones who were in one of my classes while I was working on my Master's Degree.
What hit me last night, though, as I sent my parents (both educators themselves) an email letting them know the good news, is that while I am leaving my classroom for the rest of the year, I may very well be leaving my classroom for the rest of my career.
Part of finally getting back to writing a blog entry is because this thought keeps popping up.
But I am excited about the change. My new role extends my voice at the table, including helping to shape the district vision for integrating/embedding/verb-of-the-moment-ing technology into the curriculum. I will also be working with folks from across the district on academic recovery, an issue near and dear to this alternative teacher's heart.
Monday morning is going to be difficult. The first of many days that doesn't involving working directly with students.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Umm...are you sure?
Monday, November 05, 2007
Marketing keeps teaching me about teaching
In a post today, "Social gestures beget social objects", MacLeod ends with
So all you corporate MBAs out there, here's a little tip. When you planning on how to embrace the brave new world of Web 2.0, the first question you ask yourself should not be "What tools do I use?"As we educators continue to wade deeper into the 2.0 waters, pedagogy has become the critical topic. So, "How do I want to change the way I teach my students?"Blogs, RSS, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook- it doesn't matter.
The first question you should REALLY ask yourself is:
"How do I want to change the way I talk to people?"
And hopefully the rest should follow.
Think about it.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Legal Implications of the Backchannel
The main thrust of the article is whether or not council persons' use of email during city council meetings is a violation of open meeting law. Is the public's right to the full and open discussion of a topic being infringed?
[Council president] Childers said the communications were appropriate because they dealt with a topic on the table. He also said he does not see a meaningful distinction between an e-mail during a meeting and a council person leaning over and whispering in another's ear, a frequent occurrence.I suppose the comparison is a fair one, but the use of email (chat, twitter, txt, etc) does seem to violate the open intent of transparent, democratic discussion.
Perhaps the council needs to start using Twittercamp ;)
Monday, September 17, 2007
Phases of Online Development
In my own experience, the phases are fluid. I will get comfortable publishing on a specific topic, or with a specific technology, but find myself returning to anxiety when I step outside the usual fair (there's a reason I've done exactly one podcast
Now that I am doing more to promote using online tools, I've certainly seen the anxiety and uncertainty in others, too, as they consider the implications of publishing online. Part of providing support and encouragement to my colleagues and students is remembering this anxiety as I work to encourage engaging in online publishing.
--
Table from Developing Digital Portfolios for Childhood Education by Marja Kankaanranta. 2002.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Demo Classroom Update
This week was also about hardware, peripherals mostly. All of the "stuff" comes with software, and software means getting time with the tech. Our building tech is great, but like so many techs in our district and across the country, he is split between multiple schools and seriously overworked. So, its not all up and running yet, that may take another week or two, but we are getting closer.
One of the hidden costs of integrating technology into a curriculum is patience. Absolutely nothing, from installation of hard/software to planning how to use it all, goes as quickly as I would like. Remembering that we are in the early stages is important, and while I worry that we are not making progress quickly enough, as a district and as a nation, we are moving forward and seem to be accelerating.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
First week thoughts
Returning students are refreshed and happy to be back, a few even told me they were ready for school to start. I work in an alternative school with students at risk of dropping out but here they are smiling and upbeat about another year at Willard.
The new students, who account for roughly half our population this fall, were understandably more cautious as they learn the routine and settle into how things are handled here. In a few more weeks they will be fine.
The hardest part of this week has been leaving school each day just as afternoon classes are beginning. As I walk out the door I have this nagging feeling that I'm not done yet, that I'm abandoning my students halfway through the day. During the five minute drive down to the administration building I am learning to let that feeling go and put on my ToSA (Teacher on Special Assignment) hat.
Of all the differences between being in a classroom and in an office, the nature of time has been the hardest to get used to. The classroom is ruled by the clock; there are only so many minutes in a period and, whether you have finished or not, when those minutes are used up the period is over. Current students file out, new ones file in, reset the clock and go.
Not so in administration.
The first meeting I attended was scheduled for an hour and a half, but when time was up we weren't done. We worked for another hour, completing our planning. Being able to do so was a completely foreign experience but also a real delight. No half finished discussions, no scribbled notes to pick up the thread the next day; instead, a task completed by giving it the necessary time. I can get used to this.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Demonstration classroom: getting started
The next piece of the puzzle will be developing the classroom portal, which will serve as a front door to the various web-based tools. My district is using dotnukenet, and so far I've found it fairly straightforward and easy to use. I'm looking forward to having a single URL that will connect students, parents, and fellow educators to all the pieces.
I still need to see if there is a way to provide an RSS feed for the portal. Anyone using RSS with dotnukenet for their classroom / school web portal?
Monday, August 13, 2007
What to tell the principals?
Now the plan lacks the hands on nature, so I want to show how these tools are being used by students. That is where you come in. I will be doing the presentation twice, once for high school principals and once for the K-8 crowd. I have some high school level projects in mind (NPR's YouthCast, Vickie Davis & Julie Lindsay's Flat Classroom, and Clay Burell et al's 1001 Flat World Tales) but know little about what has been going on in the younger grades. So, those who know of good examples of younger students (or even a great high school example) using the read/write web please leave a comment sharing the resource.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Transform
So, when I finally started reading The World is Flat this summer, I grabbed the first handy scrap on my nightstand, a ticket stub from one of this summer's blockbusters. Today, I happened to notice which ticket stub I had grabbed.
Thanks to Ewan MacIntosh for the invite to Skitch. What a fun program/web service.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Student safety, or can we ever publish anything about students ever again?
However, she also advocates for what seems to be the complete removal of any and all reference to students from the public spaces of school websites. Names, pictures, examples of work, practice schedules, all verboten for fear that someone will misuse the information--identity theft, predation, etc. The bottom line: we are afraid.
The truth is we have been publishing student information in public forums for as long as it has been possible to publish. But wait, internet safety advocates will say, now the internet lets anyone with access know about and prey upon our children. And I suppose it is easier for the bad people these days. But taking information about the start of football season off the school website only to have it published in the local paper, which has an online presence, doesn't change anything. Except maybe liability.
How sad to think that what we truly fear is not something happening to our children but instead that we will get sued.
Last night I was listening to NPR and happened to catch From the Top, a showcase of rather gifted young musicians. During the course of the one hour program, the listeners learned about these students, including full name (one name was even spelled on air as part of a joke), state, high school, musical instrument, and a quaint biographical story. Basically, enough information for someone with malicious intent to begin grooming that child was provided on air during a national broadcast of a weekly show. And to make matters worse, on the web page for last night's show visitors can also find pictures of the students, again complete with full names.
I had never listened to From the Top in this way before. Prior to the WoW show, I had always seen the broadcast as a celebration of student achievement. Now I see it for what it really is, a buffet of vulnerable youth just waiting to be exploited.
My point in all this hyperbole? That From the Top is a celebration; that schools want to showcase their students' achievements; that while we do indeed need to teach about privacy in this new, transparent landscape, we still need to live our lives; and that while we live in a world with some bad people, our students are doing really neat things and they deserve the recognition and rewards that come with the risks inherent in learning new things.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
A Blog for Each Hat?
My career is all mixed together right now; wearing multiple hats will do that. I suppose some of the future posts will be about balancing these two half-time-on-paper-but-we-all-know-better roles, in which case it makes sense to have both roles reflected throughout the blog.
I think I've talked myself into sticking with one space; thanks for being the sounding board. Those who blog and wear multiple hats, how do you handle blogging (and everything else :) )?
Working outside my comfort zone
The demonstration classroom pushes me to the edges of my teaching, my personal/professional space, my comfort with being observed, of dealing with people, of being judged -- my entire professional sense of self worth as an educator. yikes. The demonstration classroom is an incredibly transparent way to teach and part of me is scared to death of the level of exposure I am about to engage in. I am going to make mistakes. In front of my peers. In front of principals. In front of upper administrators. What are going to be the consequences of those mistakes?
The Teacher on Special Assignment position is much the same. I will be in new territory--budgets, grants, planning meetings, coordinating efforts (often with peers who teach in areas I know little about). The organizational aspects, keeping it all straight, are daunting. I am a well organzied person, but this living in two worlds is really going to demand a new level of awareness and coordination.
Even with all this, though, I am really looking forward to the change. As a teacher, I get to do even more of what I've been trying to accomplish regarding tech integration. With the ToSA position, I get to expand this to district level conversations about the changing nature of trying to teach in a world where the notions of what it means to be literate are changing.
As one of my fellow alternative teachers reminded me on the last day of school, growth occurs at the edges, at the borders of our comfort zones and the new things we experience. I need to remember that this is an opportunity. The transparency of the demonstration classroom, of having colleagues come in and observe, is a chance to invite expert teachers into my space to see what I do and get their feedback. Part of the process, of visiting my classroom, will need to include time to sit and visit with me afterward. Face to face commenting, as it were.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Writing, Comfort, and the Mistakes that Happen
One of the fundamental questions when writing becomes "how do I plan to use this?" The answer to which drives media selection decisions; I recently jotted down a list of things to do that should have been done, at a minimum, in a spreadsheet and perhaps more ideally in some form of concept map; something that can be pushed and pulled, revised, posted for comment, tagged, shared... Perhaps accomplishing my list should be done through a wiki, an ongoing, online repository of my own and others thinking about how to accomplish the goals before me.
With so many choices, I pick up my notebook out of habit, out of comfort, out of a need to tap out imperfect thoughts. This reminds me of Miguel's post about sharing and making mistakes in a transparent environment. I'm a bit of a perfectionist; I will probably reread this post three or four times before publishing just to make sure everything is exact.
But how honest is this?
We all know learning is a process and, therefore, messy. This is one of the fundamental lesssons I try to teach my students. I encourage them to engage in the process of writing openly, showing their drafts to classmates, accepting and rejecting feedback, explaining the choices they make between drafts.
One of my challenges for myself is to be more willing to do what I ask my students to do, engage in the messiness of the process. Once I clear out a few thoughts from the notebook (this post started two weeks ago), I will endevor to put my thoughts directly into this space in a more timely fasion.
Of course, that comes with problems. As I reread this (only the second time, I promise), I realize the second half, which was composed on the spot, is only loosely connected with the first. I'm trying to learn to live with that.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
For Twits Sake
But I'm not sure I get some of the newer things. Second Life, which I have played around in off and on for over a year, just doesn't seem to click for me. The massive nature is interesting, but I'm still not convinced of its educational value except in cases where face to face is difficult, and then video chat seems more appropriate.
Now Twitter is becoming a bit of a thing. I tried it and honestly don't get it. At all. Who cares that I am eating popcorn right now? Perhaps Twitter is still largely in the shiny new toy stage and more engaging uses are still down the road. Maybe the Will Richardson of Twitter will reframe the twit as Will did the blog(v.).
But what got me going tonight was Jeff Utecht's post about Twitter in the classroom. He discusses the ability to use Twitter with cell phones and how this might help his IT department better communicate.
We are 8 people across 6 schools on two campuses 2 hours apart. It might be interesting to see if something like Twitter would allow us to stay in contact, help each other out, and improve our communication.
I can see this; this is a practical application that improves upon text messaging because a single twit can go to the entire group.
But then he extended the thought to the classroom.
With being able to use it on your cell phone I can picture some uses for it in the classroom as well. With kids able to answer questions via a text that appears on a teachers twitter account. You would have the name of the student, their answer and be able to give them personal feedback with a direct twit.I felt that cold chill, that tightening in my gut usually reserved for extreme heights and spiders. A classroom awash in the glow of cell phones as teacher and students twit away, narry a word spoken. Is this the cold dread other educators feel when I talk about blogs?
But the image resonated on another level too. We are already doing this, aren't we. One of the hot topics of tech integration is response systems. What if Twitter is the response system all our students already own? What if, instead of spending thousands of dollars on these systems, we capitalize on the technology our students already bring to school every day.And now I need to know more. So I've added the Twitter box to the blog, for now at least, and I've downloaded Twitterific from Iconfactory (apparently just for Macs). So, if you are a fellow Twitterer(?, gotta work on the lingo), twit me.
Here is my Twitter profile.
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photo credit: Ohio University Center for Academic Technology
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Close the Book
This year went by incredibly fast. I was joking with some of my students about how September to April went by in a blur and May took three months.
69 students graduated this year, students that largely would have dropped out if not for the alternative school. I am proud of everyone at Willard for being part of that success, and I am especially proud of the students choosing to be successful even when many people in their lives, including other educators, told them they would never graduate.
Now, getting ready for next year.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Sitting at the Big Kids' Table
That changed this morning.
Starting next fall, I move into a half-time position as teacher on special assignment as the current teacher steps back to part time. Much of this position will be coordinating career and tech ed programs, overseeing the Perkins grant, and facilitating connections between school and the business community. The remainder of my time will be spent promoting and developing the integration of technology into the core curricular areas across the district. The new role is very exciting, but what I am most looking forward to is being part of the district-wide conversations about 21st century learning.
A significant piece of this second part is also connected to the other 0.5 of my full time day. I have been asked to be the teacher for a demonstration classroom, modeling how a wide variety of technologies--hardware, software, and web-based--can be embedded into an English classroom.
I get to both talk the talk and walk the walk. I can't wait.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Blogs as Just Another Assignment
Part of the disconnect, I feel, is the tool I am using. I love classblogmeister for its ease of use and security settings. The teacher has control over what goes live, leaving plenty of opportunity for catching student mistakes or inappropriate comments before they cause problems. But how is my role as moderator of student blogs any different from my role as moderator of the hallway bulletin board? If everything a student writes needs to go through me, isn't the student reduced to writing for me?
This has become part of the larger discussion in my district regarding the use of blogs in the classroom. Do we, as teachers, need to moderate all posts and comments? At what point--grade level, age, experience blogging--might teachers move to monitoring instead? Is monitoring ever "enough", or is our professional obligation to student safety so great that moderating is the only option?
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Nuns Get It!
A convent in Michigan is going high tech, using a website to help with recruiting. The nun in charge of recruiting, Sister Joseph Andrew, was interviewed , and I just happened to be walking past the t.v. when she said, "When I travel, I take my Blackberry with me because young women want a response quickly." (no direct link: see "More U.S. Women Joining the Convent" at MSNBC)
Nuns get it! What is taking education so long?
As an aside, I do find it interesting that the ad on MSNBC leading into the piece is for Blackberry devices.