On the Right Path…

Yesterday our entire school went to a wonderful inservice that spoke words of validation to ideas I am just about to put in place. Our school district sponsored a great presentation on past, present and future technologies, of course highlighting work by Thomas Friedman and David Warrlick and others. It was just last spring that I approached my principal about changing how we teach our Computer Applications Class, knowing that the “times are a changin’”. After having my own ‘awakening’ regarding where technology, and especially where the web, is going, I really felt I needed to focus more in the direction of Web 2.0 technologies in this particular computer class — RSS, online collaboration tools, blogging, podcasting, and digital storytelling, for example. With my principal’s blessing I have revamped my class and its curriculum to promote the following goal - to get students to be contributors to the Web, not just merely consumers. I am so jazzed professionally, but, I have to tell you, I’m scared, too. Getting students to become a part of the Web 2.0 is exciting; contributing and having a voice on the Web is exhilarating and empowering, but knowing that our district’s clogged bandwidth is a real problem, scares me half silly. Add on top of this, a new Internet filter and a new district cache server that keeps blogs and websites from immediately updating, the problem is compounded even more.  So much of leading students into this new era involves the Internet and having adequate bandwidth. It was only last year that I realized how much my classes and curriculum are at the mercy of the district’s bandwidth. Our school piloted an important online assessment tool last year (Acutity testing); it quickly brought what I was doing to a screeching halt in my classroom, all because of bandwidth issues. So, I remain wary about my new  adventure, knowing that we all have needs and that bandwidth’s a shared commodity. Time shall tell. Over this next semesterI hope to encounter enough successes to keep the momentum forward moving. :)

Innovation!

Screen real estate is very precious to those of us developing web pages or working with a graphics editor such as Photoshop.  I’m sure the same is true for many other professions where large computer monitors are a must.  After checking de.li.cious this morning, came across this video demonstrating this new technology. The most amazing concept is shared near the end for the demo. This is the concept of “image hyperlinks” and how seemingly disjointed individual pictures from many people all over the world can be unified into a sum bigger than the parts. Amazing potential in terms of examining the concept of “perspective”. And I’m not just talking about geography or art or architecture.

Another first, for me at least…

Attended my first online educational conference this afternoon via Elluminate.  The conference was titled, “The Future of Education” and was partly sponsored by the University of Manitoba.  Everyone pretty much logged in about 20 to 10 minutes or so before the speaker was to start and there was some banter and chit chat before the speaker started.  Learned quickly through comments and questions that I added that not everyone likes the terms “digital native and immigrant”.  Too absolute, I guess, for these theorists.  Had no idea of such a strong objection to the terms, but thought it funny at how they would rather talk about acceptance of these terms rather than the real questions I put forth regarding technology and its acceptance into educational pedagogy.

 The session was okay, nothing really world rocking, but what really caught my attention was the discussion that appeared in the text box area as the speaker presented via audio and powerpoint slides.  Let’s just say that educators continue to be, in my opinion, one of the hardest audiences to present to.  There were so many side comments to what the presenter was talking about, some of it really not terribly relevant.  It was almost “rude” and at one point I could tell the presenter was slightly irritated.  It was as if the teachers were acting out like their students do when they present.  I wanted to ask if this was the norm, but didn’t dare.  Too many of the attenders were participating in such a manner.  Would like to have seen the chat/text area turned off until the speaker was done.  Found it distracting and a bit irreverant.  But, all in all, Ellumniate is a really cool tool and would love to explore it more to see what it can do.

Even more on the Surface Computer…

My students were really stoked by the video mentioned in yesterday’s blog, so much that one even came back today anxious to share with me another video he had found on the surface computer.  Again, we live in such remarkable times!  Would love to hear what you think of this revolutionary computing tool.  Do you envision this being as common as a coffee table in the years to come?? Will flat panel tvs become something we lower down off the wall to waist height, then flip more horizontally to use as a computer like this?  Wow…am very excited to see where this all goes.

We live in such an amazing time…

Love those RSS feeds.  I have stumbled upon such great finds these last few weeks and here are just a few.  First, found an article sharing that two  web 2.0 sites have recently been acquired by MySpace.  While most of us have heard about Photobucket, you may not have heard about Flektor.com.  I was very impressed by this site and its speed.  To its credit, it sports a very friendly user-interface that can be learned in minutes.  Flektor is much like Mixercast.com, but better - it touts more creative options.  What can you do there?  Make really awesome slideshows (with music) and even make/edit online movies.  These then can be shared via email, or you can paste generated code into your blog or website to view the slideshow there.  Liked this site a great deal.  I knew that if MySpace had gobbled it up, then it must, indeed be worth the $250 million acquistion they paid for it. :)

Ready for another great find?  This one is more futuristic (expect to see these in the next 3 to 5 years??), but when I shared it with my students they reacted with awe.  Check out what is called the “surface computer” or the Milan table top computer.  I want one!   By the way, the source RSS feed for both of these finds above is Webware.com.  A great site that I have greatly enjoyed.  Don’t have time to keep up?  Let Webware.com do it for you.

Have tried some blogging with my students these last few weeks.  Have learned lots, but the biggest lessson I am walking away with is to pick an online service that has reliability and speed.  My first attempt was to have them use this site, edublogs.org.  Found out the district was blocking it, and rarely could I get more than just a few kids on it at a time.  Also, discovered that the site itself was experiencing some nasty problems the week I needed to have my students use it.  Experienced a great deal of frustration.  A few days later, had my students create a Blogger account via Google, and it was smooth sailing, even when 20 kids were all logged in and creating away.  Was very impressed by how intuitive it is, and hope to use it more next semester.

Last, received a copy of a magazine the other day called i.e. (interactive educator), a publication of SMART Technologies.  In Cara Erenben’s  article titled, “Best Practices for Professional Development”, I was dismayed to  learn that research says “it takes teachers three to five years to move through the phase of acceptance” when it comes to actually incorporating technology into their pedagogy.  I’m hoping that this is research pertaining only to “digital immigrants” and perhaps we will see new teachers coming into the work force embrace educational uses of technology much quicker because they are “digital natives”.  Problem is three to five years in the digital world means that by the time you’ve learned to use the technology, it’s already archaic and past tense.  The pace of change right now is head-spinning — but exciting. :)

On a resonating note…

Really do enjoy going to David Warlick’s blog titled “2 Cents Worth“.   Because it is now that part of the academic year that makes even the most veteran of teachers gasp for air, I haven’t been able to check out his new postings lately, let alone get here to flesh out my own thinking on recent happenings.  But this evening I slipped away up to the computer to take some “me” time. I’ve been called away twice now by my youngest who insisted I come enjoy his freshly baked mud pie he just concocted outside. On the second visit out, I found him laying in the mud he had created, making what he considered an amazing mud print on the concrete with his body. So you see, I write this very moment at my own great peril. :)Okay, back to the purpose of sitting here.   In a recent post, Warlick shares a reaction to a comment posted on his blog …

“Last night, in his signature prickliness, Gary Stager (not his first comment on this blog post) lamented that we have had computers in classrooms for 25 years, and that some teachers still resist them indicates “…a conscious effort to be non-learners.”I’ve claimed my own frustration at teachers who ask, “But who’s going to teach me how to do that?”  Sadly, we are a generation who was taught how to be taught — not how to teach ourselves.  It’s one of the many reasons why the experiences that our children have in the classroom must become much more self-directed, relevant, and rich.  They/we need to learn to teach ourselves.  Teachers shouldn’t need professional development.  They should be saying, hey, I’m going to teach myself how to do that this weekend.  It’s about life long learning.  Not about a life of being taught.”

 Odd that this is just the thing I was thinking about driving home from work today. Once I shifted out of the language arts department and became a full-time computer science teacher twelve years ago, I knew that I could never stop learning - that my job would demand constant learning. Oh, how true it has been. Sure, I’d like to catch my breath now and then, but the really fun part is sharing something new with my students. Is there a thrill in being just a few steps ahead of them? Yes, I think so. I’ve come to know that this is the way it is if you’re going to teach in this area. But twelve years ago, I knew what I was getting myself into.  I saw it coming, expected it as natural, signed up for it, if you will.  Yet I can understand, to an extent, the resistant teacher who wants to be taught by someone, whose computer angst is enough to undo them.  I also understand that many of us thought we’d one day come to master the subject we chose to teach (except for computer science teachers, of course).  But what has impacted me so strongly this last two years is that no matter whether our respective subject matter changes very little or a lot each year, how we teach kids must change.  Technology is changing everything.  The term “digital native” is often used to describe younger people these days.  They are at ease, almost one, with anything digital, where as adults 30 and up tend to be “digital immigrants”. Some of us take the first ship available, others are more reticent to board.  But, if we’re waiting for someone to come alongside and professionally develop us in the latest and greatest technology, I think we’ve got a whole new thing to think about.  Those that professional develop teachers like us, are holding their breath, waiting for someone to develop them!  That’s how fast change is occurring now.  I truly believe if we hesitate to teach ourselves, we risk it all.  I think it’s our kids who really lose out, especially if they get a glimpse of us being non-learners, or perceive us to be saying “oh, I think I’ll wait for the next ship to come along”.  As many of our great grand parents knew, being an “immigrant” is hard — there’s the unfamiliar land, people, societal norms and language.  Who would have thought just a few generations later we’d have the same feelings thrust upon us by the digital world. 

Blogging To Help Increase Student Achievement

I get frustrated when students tell me they lost the assignment sheet or when a student doesn’t do an assignment because they say they didn’t know what they were supposed to do. I spend a fair amount of time trying to inform parents about units of study we are undertaking in class, not to mention the time it takes to send home or fax home additional copies of items we are using in class. I have this dream that I could reduce these problems by having a blog for the classes I teach. I imagine that each unit might be described and links would be provided where a student or teacher could download the information/assignment sheet. This would allow those students and parents to sort of be able to be self-serve in being able to get access to what they need. I was thrilled to see that Edublogs indicated that you can do this. I am swamped right now, but hope to set up sites for my fall classes. It is my hope that it will help students who lose their stuff be able to find it again and that parents can become more informed about what we are doing in my classroom.

What in the world is RSS????

RSS is actually very new to me — just started using it about one month ago, but I tell, you I love it.  Here’s what it stands for - “really simple syndication”.  Okay, that doesn’t tell you too much, so let me try this word picture.  Think of yourself in a really big room (symbolic of the Internet).  On the other side of this big room are several booths sets up — they are your favorite sites on the Internet.  To go get any new information just added to your favorite site, you’d have to “walk over” to the booth (think type in the site’s URL into your browser), then, once there, personally scour the table to see what’s new (look around the site to see if anything has been added).  Time consuming?  Yes, especially if you have several sites you want to keep up on.  Enter RSS.  Want the new stuff automatically delivered to you?  Yes you can — with RSS.  Okay, so now visualize an automated clothesline pulley that extends from your end of the room and connects to one of your booths (a fave site).  Every time the “booth” has new info, they take a copy of it, use a clothesline pin and attach it to your always moving, automated pulley line.  It, of course, travels back to you so you can read it at your leisure.   Can you have only one pulley?  No, you can have as many pulleys as you want, each hooked up to your favorite “booths”, aka your fave web sites. 

This is RSS — it is a technology that allows you to subscribe to new Internet material.  It comes to you, fast, reliably and free.  But you must be saying, how does that stuff come to me?  Email?  Well, it can, but I’d suggest you try out an “aggregator”, a piece of software, either desktop or web-based, that will gather all your news coming “off the pulley”.  This aggregator will allow you to login and see what’s new whenever you want.

While there are tons of aggregators out there, here is the one I really, really, really love.  It’s called Netvibes.  Simply put, it does so much more than just gather your RSS feeds — it is capable of becoming your homepage - a place that brings together, in one place, the things you use most during the day (email, to do lists, etc.).  I learned about Netvibes at the Awakened Voices Learning Center, a truly awesome site dedicated to creating free online tutorials to help others more effectively use the social web.  Their online video on how to set up a Netvibes account is great!  Highly recommend it!  I find that my Netvibes page has become my favorite web page; it acts as a aggregator for all my RSS feeds, but also my email, acts as my online calendar, displays the Denver weather, and much more!  With Netvibes, I’m able to keep abreast of professional issues, news, email correspondence and more.  Did I mention it is customizable (lots of drag and drop features)?  Now this is what a home page should be! Oh, and can you have the newest info from”That Which is Movado”  sent to you via RSS?  You bet!  Look on the lower right side and you’ll see just such a link for you to use. 

 (pulley picture from www.pennplastics.com)

Today’s reading time finds…

On Monday, Tuesday and Friday reading times (start of hour 2), if you peek into my lab, you’ll often find me intensely staring at my computer monitor.  I usually spend this time reading new RSS feeds on technology in education to try and keep up on all that is moving and shaking out there beyond the walls of AHS.  Today I spent some time reading all the new articles added to the techlearning.com site.  Four brief, yet excellent, articles bear mention particularly because they relate specifically to this blog and also because a few of them reference Will Richardson, someone I mentioned in yesterday’s post. 

 Web 2.0:  A Guide for Educators

Professional Development and Web 2.0

Web 2.0 and the New Visual Literacy

Web 2.0 Pocket Dictionary 

The potential of blogging inside and outside of the classroom…

Why Weblogs?, from Will Richardson’s blog  Weblogg-ed.com,   is really worth your time if this whole blogosphere thing is new to you.  It is actually a post and set of comments on why educators should embrace this learning tool in the classroom and in curriculums.  And it’s for all kinds of subject matters; only last week I was reading about a high school math teacher who was having her students blog about Calculus.   Will also has put out a book for educators called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  Have been wanting to get ahold of this book and see what great ideas can be gleaned from it.  I think it will make for some good summer reading. :) 

Also related to this idea of authentic student writing/learning, and recently talked about on his site,  is the potential for students to publish their writing via Lulu.com.  I had come across this back before Christmas and had mentioned it to my mom who is working on a book.  I think this site has much to offer our students, as well.