An Historic Day Indeed

An African-American man is the presumed nominee for the United States Democratic Party. 

His running mate may very well be a woman.

My district is starting discussions about online collaboration tools.

Technically, the first two events will wind up in history books, but #3 is definitely up there in my book.  I never doubted that our IT team and administrators would open a discussion about Web2.0, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.  I am thrilled.

Topics in our discussion included:

• Possibly expediating the process of unblocking websites for teachers.  Our current process has recently left one of our administrators swamped with requests (Yea! Teachers “digging” for what they need).   I’ll be submitting a list of sites that I’ve used in my PLN that I believe would benefit staff members.
• Future use of blogs, wikis, discussion boards with staff and students.  We’ll need to review our AUP to make sure it’s flexible enough to cover the use of such tools.
• Obvious need of professional development for staff who want to use the tools with students, especially online safety and appropriate use.
• Including PLN’s, Web2.0 tools, and AUP’s as part of a November ‘08 professional development day.
• We created a private blog for our Technology department!  Usually we meet once a month, face-to-face, to discuss a laundry list of tech. issues.  Now, some of those issues can be resolved by discussions taking place online!  I’m very excited and hope that it is successful!

We’ve taken a step in the right direction. 

 

Hey…You…Guuuuys (and Gals)!!! Part 2

TGI-PLN (Thank Goodness It’s Personal Learning Network)

Thank you to everyone who commented on Part 1 of this post, especially MariaD for bringing to my attention (in very professional, non-D’oh! way) that I had left out possibly the most important part of social networking… sharing and collaborating!  Haven’t I learned that “Reading’ and “Watching” aren’t enough for the 21st Century?  Sheesh…where was my head?

Summer Homework for Teachers and Administrators?  Yippeee!

In Part 1, I posted links that explained RSS feeders and how to get one.  Reading blogs is not enough.  Take full advantage of them… comment.  Leave comments for the author, or for other readers.  Many bloggers will respond to comments so feel free to pose a question or expand the discussion.  When you’re ready, start your own blog!  There are plenty of platforms to choose from.  I use wordpress.com, but find the one that’s right for you.  Edublog is specifically for teachers and students and is free.  Did you say blogs for students?  Why yes, I did.  Check out Scott McLeod’s wiki on K-12 blogs.  Read, learn, create and share. (not necessarily in that order)

Continually Create Your Personal Learning Network

The biggest mystery I faced when I started this journey was “How do I find the good stuff?”.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Why not start by investigating the same “stuff” that other educators and administrators are following?  Easy:  set up a Twitter account.  The Twitter.com FAQ’s states that, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers…”  Basically you pick members that you want to follow, based on common interests such as technology and education.  Following someone on Twitter allows you to see what they post.  Then the magic happens.  Professionals from all over the world are telling youwhat they are doing!!  Workshop announcements, new blog posts, interesting articles, webcasts, IT advice…all dispensed in 140 characters or less.  Watch, learn, and interact. (not necessarily in that order)

I Learned Everything in Kindergarten:  SHARE!

Share everything**. (This is something I need to start doing more often.)   Create an online identity.  Be transparent:  the person you are online is like the person you are in real life.  (thank you, Kevin Jarrett) Post photos (professional, personal, your choice) on Flickr.com.  Create a wiki so you and colleagues (inside your building and from across the world) can collaborate on projects.  Stop sending documents as “flat” email attachments.  Give them some depth by creating files in iGoogle Docs, so you can share them with others in order to collaborate!  Share videos (again, professional or personal) on YouTube or TeacherTube.  Just get out there and experience this world.  Help create this world.

Our Students Need  Us To Learn, Share and Collaborate

We can’t teach our students about these tools unless we use them ourselves.  If we don’t share this knowledge with our students, they’ll use these tools without us.  Lack of guidance could lead to cyber-bullying or simply inappropriate online behavior.  So as you actively participate and collaborate online, think of ways your students can do the same to expand their learning and acquire 21st Century skills.

Lastly, thank you to Vicki Davis for a recent post that acknowledges and supports new bloggers like:
Kristi, Matthew Needleman, and Michelle Baldwin.

**Please remember to keep safety in mind.  It is never a good idea to share personal information such as address or phone number and students should never share any personal information!  For an opposing view on sharing, read this post on Connecting the Dots, by new blogger Mike Curtin.

Homer Simpson Clipart from:  Fabiosbest’s Public Gallery

Spreading the “Good News”

Maybe it’s because I’m sensitive to the issue, but this week, I’ve noticed a slight theme in the Twitters and blogs I’ve been following:  Most of the world doesn’t understand the power of social networking.  Specifically, folks don’t understand how Web 2.0 tools can help allof us learn and grow, especially if used correctly with school children.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve plugged myself in to this world and consider this past-time to be personal and professional research.  I know I have a long way to go, but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far.

That being said, I’m wondering why so many people, as Dean Shareski pointed out, think these tools are a fad.  Why isn’t the battle cry for the expansion of technology in our schools louder and therefore more difficult to ignore?   Why are so many districts writing policies which limit or ban social networking, rather than promote their use through safe guidelines and support systems?  One reason could be bad press.

Bad press is better than no press at all?  Maybe, maybe not.  Right now, the majority of key players (administrators, teachers and parents) are not active participants in a social networking system.  I’m guessing they hear about tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. via 1) their pre-teen, teenage or college age children or 2) TV or newspapers. 

Parents are led to believe that the sites are a sort of online scrapbook that kids can share with their friends.  Television leads them to believe the sites are dangerous.  (see “Beatrice, you’re way off“ ) Based on those influences why would parents, administrators,  or teachers support the use of social networking tools in school?   What the social networking world needs in good press.

Yes, many very intelligent and highly motivating people are dedicating their careers and lives to making real change in educational technology.  We should all be very thankful to their efforts.  A bit of mainstream positive press wouldn’t hurt the movement, would it?  The last I noticed was the coverage on the Congressional hearing on Second Life by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  It may not have been exactly positive, but at least it wasn’t negative.  (side-note:  Did Congress ever come to any conclusions about SL?  If they did, most of the mainstream news missed it.)

I’ll do my part to spread “good news” about social networking.  My next evil plan (muahahahaha…) is to post our school’s photos on Flickr.   Hopefully our teachers, administrators and parents will have a chance to use these tools themselves, and create a more informed opinion.

Teaching, Learning, Thinking and Growing with Technology

In my district, elementary students use technology, for the most part, only while they are in the technology lab.  For most students, that’s about 30-60 minutes a week.  I can only speak for my school when I say that technology is considered a “special” subject.  Although I am thankful the teachers recognize my classes as a valuable extension of the curriculum, technology is not generally considered the key to our students’ future.  In their defense, our administration uses much of our teacher’s time for professional development of core content areas.  How much can we expect teachers to learn independently,  when many consider themselves technology novices?  On the other hand, some teachers are lax in their efforts to learn even the basic technology their students are mastering!

Lisa Thumann’s post from yesterday really spurred this idea.  How do we rally our teachers behind the idea that in order to prepare our students for life in the 21st century:

• They need to teach with technology and their students need to learn with technology. 
• Technology is a thinking tool. 
• Technology ignites creativity and promotes intellectual, personal and social growth. 

If I stood up on the table and proudly stated those heartfelt words at the next faculty meeting, the staff might brand me the new village idiot.  Rather, I need the opportunity to show them that technology shouldn’t be “special” anymore. 

I’m dreaming up a list of resources I will use when our administration asks me to sell the expansion of the use of technology in our district.  Although I expect it to be a continuous work-in-progress, I’ll post it when it’s “finished”.

4/24/08  Thank you to Scott McLeod for posting research about educator perceptions.

Absolutely Necessary for Newbies

You’ve Got A Friend…

The great news is there’s another teacher in my district who is interested in breaking open the Pandora’s Box of collaborative technology for elementary students and teachers.  She’s completing a program for Media Specialists and hopes to switch from a classroom position to a Media Center position next year.  (I’ve noticed that media specialists and ed. tech. teachers can become the Wonder Twins for finding/organizing information if given the opportunity to work together.)  The wonderful news is that she’s also Here for the Revolution (check out the button contest for NECC) and is a newbie just like me!  I convinced her to join me at  the Students and Electronic Media:  Teaching in the Technological Age seminar at Princeton University on May 2nd.  She already follows Kathy Schrock, who is presenting at that the seminar, and we’ve promised to share the cool “stuff” we find along the way with each other. 

After I spoke with my new Media Specialist friend, I realized it was difficult to decide which tools are good, important or useful for my students (and me).  I’ve spent the last few weeks gathering information, but left myself little time to weed through it.  My del.icio.us is pretty unorganized…I don’t even know what I’ve saved so far!

You Can’t Live Without…

So I’m asking you to think back to when you started out in the social networking world…back when the possiblities practially caused an explosion in your mind…what tools did you need?  Where should we start?  Please suggest tools/sites/blogs you can’t live without.   Thanks!

My List (under construction):
Twitter
Del.icio.us
Google Reader
People who support this journey!

Parent Communication: “A” for Effort?

Last week, every student in our district received their report cards.  As for the teachers, depending on the grade/school in which they teach, the process in which they reported grades varied.

• Middle School teachers keep their gradebook online using PowerSchool.  Parents are able to keep track of their child’s progress in each class by logging on to the program online.  At the end of the marking period, the software allows the teachers to easily transfer the grades to a paper report card that is sent home with the student.
• In some of our elementary schools, grade 4 and5 teachers follow the same steps as the middle school teachers.  Our IT team worked with PowerSchool to adapt the software to meet the needs of an elementary report card (ex: The addition of check marks for effort/participation/behavior grades).
• K-2 students do not receive letter grades.  Their report card is comprised of approximately 80 check marks that cover practically every objective for each subject.  Some teachers print comments on the back of the report card using a pen.  Other teachers type a paragraph on full sheet labels, print them, cut them out, then stick the comments on the back of each child’s report card.

I help a NCU (non-computer using…yes, really) friend of mine with her comments by typing them for her at the end of each marking period.  (She insists on compensating me for my time.) Rather than printing them on labels, I formatted a Word document to fit the measurements of the report card, so we can run the original report card through the printer.  She likes the fact that her comments are very professional looking, and that by changing the size of the font, she can write much more than before.   My hope is, the more I engage her in computer use, the more likely she’ll be to try something on her own.  She’s retiring this year, and I truly hope she stays in touch…via email at least. 

I bring this up because I wonder how far digital report cards or Web 2.0 tools could take our district.  Or how far they should take our district.  I don’t have children of my own yet, but I know many parents keep report cards in scrapbooks and as keepsakes.  I assume eventually that the parents in our district will be accustomed to digital everything and therefore may not be upset by not holding a hard copy of their child’s report card.  But when will that change be appropriate?

I believe that the more parents know and understand about what goes on in a classroom, the more they are able to help their children, and understand why the children receive the grades that they do.  Web 2.0 tools can help us share more of the classroom experience with parents.  But how much sharing with parents is appropriate?   Assignments, homework, projects, grades, meetings, podcasts of lessons, webcams in the classroom?  Obviously parents are interested, but do they have the time to keep up with it all?

If you use Web 2.0 type tools to specifically communicate with parents about their child’s progress in school, please take a moment to leave a comment describing it.  How far can/should we go?  Will we one day see parent/teacher conferences conducted via webcams?

Hello World? No kidding…

I’m sure it’s not difficult to tell that this is my first blog post.  Call me wildly daring or dangerously stupid, I just learned about the depths of Web 2.0 about a week and a half ago.   Now, it’s not like I had been living under a rock.  Obviously, I had heard about blogs, wikis, Facebooks, YouTube…etc.  But honestly, the “world” had taught me two things about Web 2.0 tools:  1) they are “toys” that college kids played with and 2) they are the perfect unlocked door for predators to waltz right through and do who knows what to my innocent and Internet-naive elementary students.  As far as I was concerned, I needed no part of Web 2.0.

Then something almost magical happened.  I signed up for a workshop at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.  Lisa Thumann was offering ed. tech workshops and I signed up for one that sounded interesting… (wait for it) “Project-Based Learning”.   Sure, I saw the workshop, “Web 2.0″, but wikis and blogs were blocked in my district for students and teachers alike.  Why would I go to that workshop?  Well, the technology gods had something special in mind for me.  There was a scheduling conflict and I was “forced” to choose the Web 2.0 workshop…and guess what?  I loved it.  Thanks to Lisa, I’m on Twitter, have an active iGoogle Reader and was exposed to many tools that I can’t wait to use with my students.

But wait… wikis, blogs are blocked in my school!!  My IT team and administrators haven’t yet seen the light.  Can I do it?  Is it possible to show them that these tools can change the way our students and teachers learn/communicate/live?  After immersing myself in this “brand new world” I realized my elementary students were NOT Internet-naive.  Each year, we discuss Internet safety and the threat of predators.  Many of them have email/IM services that they use at home.  I’ve always been a supporter of supervised computer use with students… so what’s stopping my district?

Lack of knowlege:  it was stopping me too, a week and a half ago.   My plan for this blog is to share the steps I take with my students and our administrators.   First, my fifth grade students are learning about Web 2.0 by reading ed. tech blogs.  (If they are blocked, I print them out at home so the kids can read them.)  Then, they will use the Persuasive Writing Tools on readwritethink.com to map out a persuasive essay arguing for or against the use of Web 2.0 tools in school.  (I’ll send the final drafts to our administration…sneaky, I know)  Next, I’m working on a project with my GT students.  I’d like their final presentation to be a VoiceThread.  I’ll see how my principal feels about allowing comments!

Thanks for reading.  I hope that if you’re on the same journey as me (or have been through it already) that you’ll take a minute to respond to my posts. I’d appreciate any comments, suggestions or advice you might have!