Computer Teacher, Teach Thy Self!

While perusing my feeds I came across a phrase by Lucy Gray from the Infinite Thinking Machine

It’s not about “competing in a global economy” for me…it’s about experiencing all that the world has to offer. I want kids and other adults to realize that there is so much out there to discover and explore.

Lucy was discussing the Global Education Ning network and a meeting that had taken place with other educators around the world. I would love for the blocks in my school to be removed and have my students have access to social networks being used in a constructive manner like Ning.  All students should be exposed to the wealth of information in the Web 2.0 world, especially the students who never travel out of their city/town, or think that worldly exposure only comes to those who are privileged.  I was one of those kids, I am grateful that I am more globally minded now, but I can’t help wondering how my educational experience would have been different if the Web 2.0 tools were available back when I was in school.  (We didn’t even have the Internet then!)When I think about how much my life has changed because of the global mind set of Web 2.0 it is staggering. Everything down to the way I think has changed! For example on the personal subject of vaccinating my son- before I would use google or maybe a meta search engine to find results on vaccine reactions. I would filter through resources and sometimes be satisfied with the results but often I would be left with even more questions than before. Questions I would like to ask a person who has the subjective experience or resources I can use.

Instead I use my Netvibes to keep me up on new search results, where it all neatly gets filed under my ‘Vaccine’ tab.  I use others’ bookmarks in Del.icio.us  and share mine.  Subscribing to blogs is just another way another way I start my research, but I also gain valuable subjective experience.  To round everything out I usually post any comments in my New Moms Yahoo group where all our topics are neatly searchable for future reference.  In many ways using Web 2.0  it is like having a ‘hive’ mind.  (I can’t help the Star Trek reference) I can consume, produce and deliver more information now than I ever could, and none of my information is static, it is ever changing. Having access to people and resources around the world has completely altered my paradigm.  I  find News about the U.S. through other countries to get a varied perspective on the current state of affairs.  Five years ago I doubt I would have even thought about the ‘lens’ that articles and News comes from, blogging has taught me to look deeper.

I will write a more formal post later…..

A while ago I began moving my blog from Typepad to here at Edublogs getting caught up in this process and the holidays I have not done any blogging of my own.  I have still been reading my favorite blogs, but not spending any time on my own thoughts. 

Getting to the point… When I started blogging and using delicious, flickr, furl, tabblo, etc… I became so excited I couldn’t wait to teach my colleagues. So I decided to offer a course through the local teacher center.  I actually designed two courses, the Web 2.0 Educator I and II. 

Today while trying to get in the door with all my groceries I picked up the Teacher center course offerings book and there I was..(in the book that is). So after picking the groceries up off the floor I ran to the computer to blog quickly. I am so very excited and I love all that I have been learning, so now have even more motivation to blog! (the fire under the _ _ _ so to speak)

I actually started to build a Del.icio.us account for my students! Right now this will just be an assignment on “Tagging“.  I may start with having the students access technorati first to see how certain blogs may contain Tags that they are interested in. Next, we will move on to del.icio.us where the kids will access the account I made for them “VHScompapps”. Once we go over “tagging” in general I am going to have the kids tag content by the following criteria:

1.  Actual subject tagging- for example: Internet, Student_blogs, Computer_history

2.  class period- P_C (for period C)

3.  Student Name- “Janie” So a tag entered by Janie in Period C will give credit to her, her class, and still have relevant tags like Computer_History.  The best way for students to get credit for their tagging would be to have them create del.icio.us accounts, and adding them to the “VMHScompapps network”

a.  Once a student is part of the VMHScomapps network they can alway tag their bookmarks with for:VMHScompapps/period_c this way the link is now saved for the student and for the class

This is totally in the idea process and I don’t even know if it will work, but I am hoping to have the principals and other teachers judge for the class that containes the best content, consistant tagging, and annotations. Please, any feedback or suggestions are welcome!

 One of my most recent assignments has to do with hyperlinking text in a document. I am doing this to build my students blogging skills before we actually start blogging. The assignement is to use wikipedia to answer some of the following questions and then to hyperlink a word back to the page the answer was found on.  Surprisingly, many of my High School kids have never hyperlinked at all.

The assignment starts with us finding the first answer together and a brief overview of wikipedia and hyperlinking back it . The overview is no where near doing justice to wikipedia, but it does motivate them to learn more. From this point the class continues to respond to the questions and provide a link per question.

To turn in the assignement I have created a thinkfree for the class with a common username.  The major problem with this is that the integrity of the assignment is questionable.  Any student can then download another’s assignment, change the name and the student name and upload it as theirs.  I would never us this for important projects that I would want secure.  I would love feedback on how to make this activity better!

thanks!

I have been reading many posts lately that express frustration about getting admin and teachers alike involved in utilizing Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. I have to admit that I go in and out of these phases of frustration but I don’t think that the battle is all up hill.

In one of his posts Will Richardson writes about the frustration he is experincing as a parent and an educator when he fails to see new pedagogies developed to aid our students in creating new learning networks.  One quote that I found poignant :

I know in many ways it stinks to have to be an educator at a moment in history when things are changing on a glacial scale. But what you signed up for is preparing kids for their futures. You have little choice but to deal.

Another Blogger I read quite a bit is Kim Confino, she is another realtively new blogger whose Web 2.0 curriculum is far more developed than mine. I like that while she expresses frustration she also keeps in mind that she is also learning and that teachers are just intimidated like all of us.  A line that stood out was that we are all learning, at break neck speed (as my old Prof would say)..

It’s a mind-set more than a skill-set. We just have to want to try and learn, to be open to new challenges, and open to the possibilities of both success and failure.

Blogging, RSS, Web 2.0 is all very daunting to learn, forget about employing in the class. I firmly believe though that it begins with us. It is because of people like Will, then David Warlick and now Jeff Utecht that I got started. It is other young bloggers like Kim Cofino that keep me going. I don’t post often and I hope to get better, I don’t really like the layout of my blog, I will change it. I am learning, and I do firmly believe that at some point we as educators will have no choice but to utilize Web 2.0 tools and have fully developed pedagogies. 

One way I am doing this is by offering web 2.0 inservice courses to my teachers. This is also forcing me to keep current and to take the risk of making mistakes. My next mistake may be that : I really have no concept of “trackbacks” and I am going to send a few out and hope for the best.

Two very cool things happened today:

1. I was interviewed by doctoral candidates about concerns I have for my school’s technology program.  I gave pretty lengthy answers on all the new things I wanted to do with my classes, so on of the candidates decided to use Garage Band to record my interview. After we were done he showed me how easy it was to select a drum track to accompany my voice, then bass, then a mandolin.  Before we realized it we had a semi-cool product.  In the span of 10 minutes a piece of work was created that I will later post on this blog.   We started talking about how “this” is some of the stuff that our students would love to learn. It would take their creative writing to a whole new level. 

2. I RSS Will Richardson’s Del.icio.us account so anything new that gets added I  receive.  The newest one was regarding Tabblo, a service that allows you to upload photos and arrange them into collages.  One very powerful Tabblo was created by Thomas Hawk. After looking at Thomas’s work especially in the “City that Care Forgot” I realized that here is yet another awesome opportunity for a lesson in my class.

Possible Activities:

1.   Have students select a piece of literature that speaks to them or create one expresses a certain mood or feeling. It could be as simple as having one of the kids colorfully narrate the findings on the lunch line! Later have students record this using Garage Band, and then add three elements to it such as drum, bass and guitar. Later the work can be published on their blog and recorded into a digital portfolio. A follow  up could be for the students to view video blogs such as lonelygirl15. Yes, a young 15 year old girl did not make these videos but film students did.  This is also a great opportunity for a poetry slam.

2.   Using Tabblo- have students collect pictures on a Flickr or upload their own pictures (great for yearbook, or journalism students) create a collage with available text space. Then have them write on the feelings that the collage invokes.

I have not posted in a few days; I thought I had a deep moment with the last post, but no comments so I became discouraged. Earlier today I was going through the chapter on RSS in my current bible Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts.  While playing around with folders and organizing my feeds I checked a new feed on Adventures in Educational Blogging. 

In her Blog Susan Sedro, offered great advice to another relatively new blogger who was feeling overwhelmed.  At first I read and re-read Susan’s post in Adventures in Educational Blogging. (She offers great advice on how to manage the implementation of blog curriculum)  Then, I decided to take a look at the novice blogger she was referencing. After all, I am only a few days into this and feeling very unsure of myself in the blogosphere, another newbie would be great to commune with. 

Kim Cofino’s   Always Learning blog is moving along nicely, and she had already started to implement great blogging lesson plans into her curriculum.  One line of her current post summarized how I was feeling:

For a while there I was feeling so far behind that I didn’t want to demonstrate my “late-adopter-ness” by posting things that everyone knows already.

Boy did I identify with that! Then she mentions how she found this post that made her realize that there were so many other teachers out there that felt the same way. When I followed the link …It was MY BLOG she was referencing! I got goose bumps, and then I think I “got” blogging