Computer Teacher, Teach Thy Self!

Yeah! Okay I know I am next in line to a speck of dust on the blogosphere but I was tagged!! So 5 things some of my readers (ha!) do not know about me…

1. I am an amazing Sci Fi and comic geek. People often do not believe just how “bad” I am. I was in the single digits when “Stars Wars a New Hope” was released and my mother and I saw it 3 times in the theatre. I was one of those crazy people who went to the first (12:00 AM) showing of all Star Wars prequels, and Matrix episodes. Some of my “older” favorite Sci Fi Writers include Heinlen, and Herbert.

2. I study Chinese martial arts. On the whole I have or currently study -Shao lin Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Bagua (my fav), Xingyi, and Chinese Kempo. I was very fortunate to find an amazing teacher who is very traditional and runs a non-profit school. The American Center for Chinese Studies now has several branches run by my older brothers (My teacher’s senior students) I have been studying for 5 years now and blogging and practice often conflict with in my time available. So now I try to blog while at work during my preps, lunch, or late at night when I should be sleeping. Oh, along with Sci Fi movies I am a total Saturday morning Kung Fu Theatre buff too.

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3. People say I look like Uma Thurman…. I don’t know about that but I’ll take it. (I would love her height!) Actually the fabulous ladies in our cafeteria here call me Uma. I think because I wanted to be the “Bride” for Halloween. I love the Kill Bill series and the amazing Kirosawa moments that Q.T. referenced flipped me out in the movies! Akira Kirosawa is amazing, two of my favorite movies are Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai.

4. I speak Mandarin Chinese, the dialect I understand the best is Beijing. I started almost 5 years ago, my instructor Frank DeMaria is also my Kung Fu teacher, he began the class because he spoke to us often in Chinese and wanted to offer it to those of us who were interested in learning more. Now I have become very interested in Chinese culture and try my best speaking to native speakers when I get the chance. They are very kind not to laugh at me.

5. I owned and rode a Harley Sportster.

yojimbo, originally uploaded by thecreatrus.

One of the movies I mentioned in my 5 things. I thought Toshiro Mifune was amazing.

okladki-divx.neostrada.pl/covers/y/yojimbo.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecreatrus/399084/

Teachers need to become facilitators.- Okay I have 4 more saturdays of this.  The class is through the College of Saint Rose and it’s C.I.T.E. program.  I have already obtained my SBL (school building leader) certification a year ago through this program. Now I am going for 2 more classes to complete the requirements for the SDL (school district leader).

The class was primarily debate today. The instructor brought up what he felt were the largest mistakes of the American Educational System. I created a Keynote presentation of the subjects discussed and will post it for any that are interested.

The coolest part of the whole day was the very brief mention from the instructor about constructivism and  how technology is changing the face of learning.  My instructor is a Superintentdent who is a techno-phobe but is wise enough to know that students are learning on their own. So then the real issue is how do we keep them safe?  Then I checked my Netvibes and saw that Will Richardson put in this post about how another school is no longer going to filter out content.  Ironic, the first time I heard about teachers as facilitators was on his blog
Well in a remote hope I also forwarded the link to my administrators.  Personally I think that filters allows us to become lazy with our students.  With filters on, teachers do not have to always circulate around the lab and make sure students are not accessing innapropriate material.  Of course some of the students still are but then the buck can be passed onto the overwhelmed and far over-worked tech support people. Of course the teachers should still circulate, but we all know that does not always happen. This is all my opinion after workeing in 5 different schools in various capacities.

Let’s blame the bandaid, but not cure the problem.

Anyway the suggested reading for the course is:

The 8th Habit- From Effectiveness to greatness

Practicing the Art of leadership

Schools for the 21st Century 

And of course during the course of having the class debate various issues the notorius The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman was brought up.  I admit I had a smug grin because of all the bloggers that I read I am aware of the impact this book is having.  Now I just have to read it.

 You ever have one of those nights where you stay up late to discuss some great blogs? I was all over Jeff Utecht’s and David Warlick’s tonight really getting back in the blogging groove, then it happened. After about an hour of reading/blogging I lost it all!

Any suggestions on how to prevent this? Anyone? Bueller?

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.

The very begining to blogging is to start reading blogs. One of my favorite bloggers once said ( I am paraphrasing) “when I don’t blog it doesn’t mean I don’t have enough time to write, I don’t have enough time to read”. Blogging takes on many different steps. The first of which is reading, being aware of how others blog.  I have about 30 “feeds” that I try to read on a daily basis. ( Some of the bloggers I look up to read 200+ feeds a day!) From these blogs I find out about new technology, D.O.P.A reform, and online resources that I currently use to learn about Web 2.0.

 In the book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts Will Richardson suggests that using an aggregator to find and continue reading blogs you find relevant is and important first step. We will eventually explore bloth Bloglines and Netvibes as a resource to keep your feeds organized. 

Your assignment:

Look at Will Richardson’s blog post on what is happening in a Middle School class using the book Guerrilla Season. Will Richardson who did something similar in his journalism class writes:

Just a quick link to another example of how teachers can use blogs to enhance the reading of a book in class by extending conversations past the school day, linking to resources and relevant materials, inviting parents to read and study with their children, inviting students from other parts of the country to collaborate and have students learn directly from interacting with the author of the book. What a concept!

1. Explain how your perception of education would change if all your teachers were using Web 2.0 technology as a part of regular instruction. 

2. Why do you think this type of education is also called learner centered?

3. In a mature fashion, please describe how you feel teachers could change to motivate you to study and participate in class more?

Please write your full name and class period to recieve credit.