The acronym Diigo stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” No matter what the letters stand for, Diigo is a popular and powerful social bookmarking site that gives you access to websites you save from any browser and any computer. After registering for an account you can save and tag websites as well as add a description. You can organize your bookmarks even further with the lists feature and share them with your students or workshop participants via a slideshow. Additionally, Diigo allows you to highlight any part of a webpage as well as attach sticky notes with comments to your highlights or to a whole web page. You can keep your comments private or share them with your Diigo groups.
Diigo now has educator accounts with some very nice features for teachers and their students. Teachers can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation). Students in the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and comments. Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
You can get started with Diigo here: http://www.diigo.com/index
You can view video tutorials about Diigo’s features here: http://help.diigo.com/Getting_Started/Videos_Tutorials
If you sign up for an account and you’d like to collaborate with me, please let me know. I have lots of websites bookmarked and ready to share! I’m “cummingsl” on Diigo.
Laura Cummings
Tagged: collaboration, social bookmarking, Web 2.0 May 13, 2009
The MACUL conference is coming! You should have received your registration booklet by now, (if you haven’t see link below) SIG-Telelearning is sponsoring three preconference workshops this year.
Our featured presenter is Miriam Taylor of T3 Consulting who will be presenting two half-day hands-on workshops that are applicable to all learning management systems and/or teacher websites. Her sessions, “Blending Learning and Authentic Online Activities” and afternoon “Using Technology to Create Authentic Online Activities” promise to recharge, enrich, and energize your current classroom site.
A third afternoon session will be provided MDE. The title is “60,000 Free Resources Aligned to the MI Grade Level Content Expectations. Learn to find them and use them effectively!” All three will be held in computer labs at Macomb ISD.
See page 8 of the Conference Registration book for detailed descriptions of the three sessions, feel free to share it with colleagues and anyone going to the conference or involved in online learning!
Remember that everyone who attends any one of our preconferences becomes a member of SIG-Telearning and may attend and vote at our annual meeting on Thursday, March 19 (lunch included!)
Hope to see you at the conference!
Registration page for the 2009 MACUL Conference contains a link to the Registration booklet and Conference Schedule
http://www.macul.org/page.php?pid=228
Directions to Macomb ISD
http://www.misd.net/maps/ESCBldgLocationParkng.pdf
park in the south parking lot
Carol Isakson, Assistant Director, SIGTELE
Tagged: elearning, online learning January 20, 2009
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of amateurish ways to create a web site. My first experience was with Netscape Composer. From there I moved to saving MS Word files as web pages and then on to using the MS Publisher webpage creation tools. All of these options also required a host server and a rudimentary knowledge of ftp. When I tried to teach other educators how to make web sites with these tools I met with limited success. All of the participants created sites, 90% of them actually got them uploaded to a server and available online, but only a very small percentage ever followed through with regular updates. It was just too complicated…
Now, with the advent of Web 2.0 and the proliferation of freely available tools on the Internet there are many options that make creating a web site fast and easy. The creator of the site simply logs in and, using tools much like those found in word processing software, creates the site and posts it to the Internet by clicking “Publish.” The three online tools for web site creation that I want to highlight here are Protopage, Pageflakes and Weebly.
Protopage
I was first exposed to Protopage at a “Let’s Talk Technology” meeting. Jim Wenzloff was our presenter and as a sidebar showed us his Protopage site. We all immediately wanted to know how the site was created and Jim was gracious enough to stray from his original topic and show us how to get started. Basically, you get a page before you even register. You add and manipulate a variety of widgets and tabs to personalize your site. If you like what you create, you can then register and you’ll be able to save and share your site. Several of the “Let’s Talk” members have gone on to use Protopage as the means to share resources with other educators. (Be sure to use the tabs near the top of the page when you are exploring these sites.) Jane Perzyk created this Protopage site for a presentation at the 2008 Educational Technology Coordinators Conference (ETCC) on “Juicing up the Online Learning Experience with Twitter, Protopage and other Web 2.O Tools.” Carol Isakson uses this Protopage site to hold the resources from a variety of workshops she has facilitated for Wayne RESA and the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL.) Chris Skoglund and Rose McKenzie use this Protopage site to support the work of the MACUL special interest group for Special Education. Their site links to even more examples of Protopage sites created by educators.
Pageflakes
I don’t recall how I first learned about Pageflakes, but it is another web site creation tool that is worth exploring. Pageflakes and Protopage are very similar, but on Pageflakes the “widgets” stay in nice orderly rows. Pageflakes has the same “tab format” for accessing other pages within a site. In Pageflakes, your site and pages are private to you until you create a “Pagecast” which then gives the public access to your work. I created a Pageflakes site to collect and share resources with classroom teachers. You can check out my site here. Frank Miracola made this Pageflakes site to share resources from workshops he facilitates.
Weebly
The last site I’m going to talk about is Weebly. I learned about this one from the aforementioned Frank Miracola. At a meeting for the REMC Instructional Technology Specialists group, Frank showed us the website “Begin With Me,” which was created with Weebly. We were all very impressed with the look and feel of the site! Frank gave us a quick overview of how Weebly works and we were even more impressed. With Weebly you create a more traditional looking website. The tools are set up in a tabbed format and many of them are drag & drop or one click away from becoming a part of your site. Your site remains private until you choose to publish it. A nice feature of Weebly is that you can download the site to keep a backup copy and/or host it on your own server. Frank shared with us how quickly and easily he has been able to get other educators and even students up and running with their websites. Teaching with Technology and Curriculum and Instructional Technology are two more examples of sites created with Weebly:
With these tools and the many others that are out there, it’s now convenient, fun and easy to create and update your own web site. Let us know which tool you are using for your site and why you like it. Please share a link to your site too!
Posted by: Laura Cummings, SIGTELE Director
Tagged: Frank Miracola, jim wenzloff, pageflakes, protopage, web authoring tools, weebly September 19, 2008
I’m not a programmer, but I’ve always been interested in trying to make a computer do something I told it to do. From the early text-based adventure games where my “yes or no” selection could cause unique things to happen I was hooked! One of my graduate courses introduced me to BASIC programming. I was very proud of the Math program I wrote but even prouder of the wonderful things my 8th grade students created! The students used logical thinking, mathematical reasoning and developed lots of patience and teamwork skills through the process of getting their programs to do what they wanted them to do. It was very clear that the students enjoyed making computers do things even more than they enjoyed reacting to a program someone else had written.
Over the years I’ve explored Logo, Stagecast Creator and Microworlds. These are all wonderful programs that allow the user to be creative and in control of the computer but I had very limited opportunities to use them with students. They weren’t part of the programs on the computers where I was teaching and there was no funding to add them.
Now there is Scratch to add to the mix. Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Their purpose was to help young students (ages 8 and up) learn 21st Century skills. To quote from their website, “As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.” Best of all, Scratch is available as a FREE download for both Mac and Windows platforms!
James Daly has posted a very nice write up about Scratch at the Edutopia website. You can learn a lot more about what has been happening with the tool in its first year by reading his article. One of the key things which intrigues me is that, via the Scratch website, Scratch users can upload their creations for feedback and collaboration. More than 175,000 projects have been placed on the site in the first year! Many of the projects have been created by students outside of the school day. How cool is that?
From the time I first heard about Scratch I had the best of intentions to explore it and begin to think about how it could be used to enhance learning, but I never found the time until I was at NECC 2008. One of the “Bring Your Own Laptop” sessions was “Using Scratch to Teach Programming at the Elementary Level” and the description stated, “Participants will acquire the skills needed to use Scratch and teach programming.” That was enough to hook me. I went to the session and the facilitator, Christopher Michaud from Georgia, did not disappoint. 120 “students” in the room did not daunt him. He even provided differentiated instruction by letting independent learners use the tutorials on his website while he gave direct, step-by-step instructions to those of us who wanted to learn that way. By the end of the hour I had created a “Pac-Man style” game where my dog would move around the maze eating food for points that showed up on my scoreboard! I was impressed, not only with my project, but with the potential Scratch has to engage learners in higher-level thinking, mathematical reasoning, collaboration, design and story writing.
If you’d like to learn how to use Scratch too, download it from the Scratch website and take advantage of Christopher Michaud’s wonderful project tutorials via this link. If you decide Scratch has educational value for the students you work with and you move forward to ask to have it on the computers at your school, please let us know! We’d love to follow you on this adventure and learn from your experiences.
Laura Cummings, MACUL SIGTELE Director
Tagged: logo, microworlds, NECC 2008, necc08, programming, scratch August 1, 2008
It is hard to believe that a week has passed since the opening keynote for NECC 2008. My best intentions to blog each night were quickly set aside as the new experience of a national conference and resulting information overload were taken to an entirely new level. NECC is not a conference for the week of heart; with 12,000+ in attendance, the crowds alone can be overwhelming at times. Add in the many, many excellent sessions and the ability to attend only one at a time…well, the entire experience was really something! My hope is to summarize each day in separate posts on this blog, sharing my experiences and a long list of links to additional information you might find interesting. Hope you find something of use in all of this. NECC 2009 will be held in Washington DC. You might want to think about attending.
Sunday, June 29, 2008.
The Second Annual Constructivist Celebration, a pre-conference workshop with Gary Stager
Held in the historic Casa Rio Restaurant in San Antonio, I was among those fortunate to have registered for this workshop. Using a very constructivist approach, we were presented with a large amount of software (included as part of our workshop fee) and given time to work with the program of our choice to learn and build new skills and knowledge that we can take back to our classrooms. The list of software each attendee received was impressive: Inspiration (Kidspiration 3 and InspireData), Tech4Learning, (Frames, Pixie, ImageBlender, WebBlender, Twist), LCSI (MicroWorlds EX), SchoolKitT (edClass), FableVision, and Stationery Studio. I spent my time playing with MicroWorlds, InspireData, and Stationery Studio. Following a show and tell time during which workshop attendees shared what they had learned and created, representatives of each software group (including Peter Reynolds) assembled for a panel discussion to debrief the entire day. The workshop ran from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm, with a break for lunch (Mexican, of course) in the middle of the day. While the software received was exciting enough, the conversations held and the skills acquired were memorable.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
James Surowiecki, opening keynote speaker, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, spoke to a crowded room of cowboy hat clad attendees (thanks to Smart Technologies). Emphasizing the importance of collaboration, Surowiecki proposes that a group of diverse individuals will nearly always make better types of decisions or predictions better than individuals and even experts. Citing several examples from history all detailed in his book, Surowiecki connected his perspective quite neatly to the importance and potential of leveraging this sort of collaborative power in education. The 2008 conference theme of convene, connect, transform, was well delivered and equally well received. Opening receptions followed in the conference center, including live music, food and drink. Large screens behind the entertainment featured NECC 2008 in Second Life, with live video of the crowd in the background. I am still a novice in Second Life, having visited only twice. Blurring the line between real life and Second Life is still somewhat confusing for me. Oh well, it was all very exciting and quite impressive.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Open Minds, Open Education, and a View of Open Culture
David Thornburg
Stating that technology is changing faster than pedagogy, Thornburg challenged his session to consider how teaching should change. Focusing on the state of the world in which our children are growing up one solution discussed was accessibility for all learners in the world using computers and software that runs on everything – students should be able to access at home the same tools used at school. The session then focused on a variety of available resources and the falling prices on many of these: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), The Intel Classmate, One2OneMate: a Linux computer, and koolu, a company whose focus is to provide computer appliances run of free and open-source software. There is a completely open source phone: NEO1973, and flash drives have dropped dramatically in price. After talking at some length about these low cost and free alternatives, Thornburg suggested that some people in our country are viewing children as wallets, not as human beings. Hmmmmm. Perhaps the most lasting point offered by Thornburg was the importance of cultural mixing. Borrowing a quote from his presentation, “xenophilic not xenophobic”, embracing those from different cultures rather than fearing, will result in a richer “salad” of results. Thornburg urged his session to think globally, to recognize and celebrate different cultures, and strive to bring equal learning and technology to students throughout the world.
Sarasota’s Next Generation Learning Plan With Promethean ActivBoards
Pat Henry, Promethean Inc.
Because my building is installing a Promethean board in every high school teacher’s classroom this summer, I felt I should attend a session to learn how other schools have incorporated these interactive boards in their classrooms. Mike Horan, Supervisor of Instructional Technology for Sarasota, Florida schools spoke passionately about the implementation of 3500 Promethean boards staggered over one year in his district (43,000 students). Beginning with a pilot group of just ten classrooms, the project grew quickly throughout the district. Sarasota was able to offer its teachers 2 ½ days of training, which had to occur within one week of receiving their board. The groups were limited to ten or less and were tied to their curriculum. Teachers also were provided with ½-day subs to attend the training, and were brought back together again three to four weeks later for another ½ day of training. Using AngelWeb as a course management tool (similar to BlackBoard), the district designed and provided eight modules of on-line learning for their teachers. When asked what he would change in this plan, Horan quickly added that the administrators need more training. Promethean was a tier one sponsor at NECC 2008, and their presence was everywhere, literally, as their sales representatives distributed bright orange t-shirts to many willing recipients (I have one). To make these gifts more interesting, if you were spotted wearing your shirt by a Promethean rep, you could win fabulous prizes. Very exciting! Promethean was not the only inter-active whiteboard making its presence known: Smart Technologies provided cowboy hats to all in attendance at the opening keynote, as well as the free t-shirt offer (I have one of these, too). If these boards truly deliver all the sales reps promise and Sarasota schools have achieved, it will be an eventful year at FHS.
Truly Technologically Integrated Planning for Teaching and Learning
Judi Harris, College of William & Mary with Mark Hofer
This was the most interesting and worthwhile session I attended at NECC. My dissertation focuses on the processes used by teachers when designing technology-integrated lessons. How exciting to attend a session speaking on this very same topic, and equally exciting to learn that these researchers had reached the same conclusions that I had reached. Briefly, Harris and Hofer address the issue of teachers planning instruction according to technologies. Although this is not bad when first integrating technology, they caution that eventually this approach will limit the depth and breadth of student knowledge and result in a “technocentric planning” approach. Harris and Hofer propose a learner-center, curriculum based planning that is situated, contextual, activity-based, and routinized. Their procedural design model includes the following steps: 1. Learning goals; 2. Pedagogical decisions; 3. Activity types; 4. Assessments; 5. Tools and resources. Placing the selection of tools and resources last on the list emphasizes the importance of selecting the most appropriate tool for the learning, and not the other way around (which many of us do). Their closing comments were summarized in three points: Planning, professional development, prerogative. 1. Planning should not revolve around a particular tool, but should be done holistically and based upon curriculum, content and needs. 2. Professional development should focus more on learning activities and matching these to learners, and 3. Prerogative, referring to teacher agency, the right to create the best and most appropriate learning materials for our students, which they suggest has been taken from teachers. Harris and Hofer have been developing content-based activity type taxonomies and distributed a social studies sample to the group. It was their belief that different concentrations used different kinds of thinking when planning activity types. They continue to develop this tool for other academic (and, I hope elective) areas. A reference tool like this would greatly assist teachers when planning technology-integrated lessons. I could go on and on, but I won’t. Follow this link to the session handouts if you are as interested in this as I am. Enjoy!
Digital Storytelling With Minimal Clicks: Improving Reading and Writing Skills
Wesley Fryer, AT&T with Vicki Allen and Karen Montgomery
I have followed Wesley Fryer’s blog for about two years now and was thrilled to attend one of his sessions. Digital Storytelling is something I am not very familiar with, as it seems to be a tool used mostly with elementary age students. Wes’ session guided us through the process of telling a story with just five pictures using voicethread, a web 2.0 resource. Vicki Allen and Karen Montgomery shared their experiences and knowledge on this topic, treating us all to some very cute and inspiring samples of digital stories. I found that Wesley has published a Google document with links to those mentioned during his session. You will also find additional resources at this link. I will be teaching one section of English 10 this upcoming school year and am planning to use this tool to help my students’ better express and understand some of the themes and concepts we will be covering in our literature. It should be fun.
Creating Live Web TV for the Classroom for Global Audiences
Will Richardson, Connective Learning Group
I have been a Will Richardson fan for about three years now. It was at one of his sessions that I learned how to set up my RSS feeds and about the use of blogs in the classroom. If Will is presenting, I have a hard time not attending. I was not disappointed. I have “borrowed” the NECC description to explain Will’s session:
In the last few years, streaming pre-produced video content to the classroom has become easier and easier. But now, the next big step is on the horizon: the creation of live streamed Web television from your classroom, from your home, or even on location. New Web tools like those at UStream.tv and Mogulus.com put the power of live streaming in your hands with very little need for equipment or extra computer knowledge. In this session, participants will get a look at the latest in live streaming technologies, will learn about the technical requirements and pedagogical considerations of using it in the classroom, and discuss strategies for involving global audiences in the process. We’ll also look at some best practice examples to get our thinking started.
The technology demonstrated during this session was, well, wow! Cutting edge was used by Will himself to describe how new these tools are. Helping Will onstage were several of his tech buddies: David Jakes, Ewan McIntosh and Steve Dembo. What a treat to hear from each of these skilled practitioners, and what fun! Using UStream, Will streamed the session live while amazing and amusing his audience. These sites are fairly easy to create and offer a lot of possibilities for educators. Here is a link to Will’s site so you can see what UStream in action looks like: Weblogg-ed TV In fact, you can take a look at Will’s presentation from that session (at least it is still available today). I’m still thinking about this technology, but it sure was a fun session.
Free, Open Source, and Web 2.0 Software for the Classroom.
Steve Hargadon
This was the last session I attended on Monday. Falling under the heading of “Birds of a Feather,” this was a session in which all in attendance participated by sharing their favorite web 2.0 or open source websites. I think I managed to write down all of them. Here they are:
Alice Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web.
Animoto (contact site as an educator – will remove ads)
Audacity = podcasting software
Chacha Ask any question, anywhere, anytime on your mobile phone.
Creativecommons Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”
Del-icio-us = social bookmarking
Diggo.com = social bookmarking
Dipity (on-line timeline)
Eduforge Eduforge is an open access environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open content and open source software for education. You are welcome to use our community resources or start your own project space.
epals
Freemind
Freeplaymusic
Freesound
Gaggle = safe e-mail for students
Gamemaker
Gcast
Gimpshop GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.
Gliffy.com Create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online.
Go2web20 A comprehensive index of logos of the latest web 2.0 sites, applications and services.
Google notebook
Jing The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.
Mixwit
Moodle
OpenEducationDisc
Openoffice
Phpmotion HP motion is a free to download and free to use video sharing software.
Podomatic
Praat doing phonetics by computer
Scratch Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
Scribus Scribus is powerful software that helps you create great looking documents of all kinds.
Slideshare
Sounddogs
Splashcast (video streaming)
Standardstoolbox Free Lesson Plans, State Standards, and Teacher Tools online lesson planning, test prep, and standards accountability
Texasgames (tutorial)
Think Think.com connects schools, teachers, and students from around the world to collaborate on projects, share experiences, and build knowledge together.
Vimeo = video sharing
Voicethread
Weebly (websites)
Wetpaint (wiki)
Enough for today…I’ll share more of my experience tomorrow.
Mary Saffron, MACUL SIGTELE Communications Officer
Tagged: necc08 July 6, 2008
Hello Everyone,
Laura and I are off to sunny and warm San Antonio tomorrow to experience our first NECC conference. We will be blogging away, sharing our fun and learning with all of you. I hope my 5120 students will check in as well as all the SIGTele members. Please share your comments and questions during these next few days. We’ll be working hard (really!) to bring you the best of NECC 2008.
Tagged: necc08 June 27, 2008
At the recent Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) Conference, I was fortunate to be able to attend the SIGTELE Pre-Conference Workshop, “Content, Creativity & Collaboration: Web 2.0 in the Classroom,” facilitated by Jim Wenzloff. Jim worked in a variety of educational capacities in Macomb County for over 40 years but recently switched careers and is now working as a consultant at November Learning (http://novemberlearning.com/).
Jim started the session with a brief presentation about some of his beliefs for teaching and learning. These include:
* Knowledge is more important than facts.
* Engaged/motivated students learn more.
* How to learn is more important that what you learn each day.
* Test Scores will improve if students are actively involved in learning.
* Students will do better work for an authentic audience.
Jim’s presentation made an excellent lead-in to the hands-on portion of the workshop! Below are highlights of what we learned.
Official Scribe for Class
To engage and motivate us while providing us with an authentic audience, Jim had the participants take turns being the scribe for the session in a shared Google document. He suggested that having students take turns creating the notes that will be posted to the class website is a powerful motivator. Click on the link to check out what students in an AP Calculus class are posting when they have their turn to be class scribe. A text document is not the only way to share important learnings. Jim also pointed us to Slideshare, blogs and wikis as places to post shared notes.
Design Team for Creating Online Tutorials
To help students deepen their knowledge of the concepts and skills they are learning in class, Jim suggested having the students make tutorials about the concepts. He shared several examples with us. One example was made by two elementary students using screencasting where they explained how to round decimal numbers. Another example was a video of two students explaining the Partial Products method of multiplication from Everyday Math.
There are a variety of free tools that can help make this happen. Screen-O-Matic is a website that allows you to create a video recording of your screen and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install. The Jing Project is a free download that lets you capture screenshots as well as make videos of what is happening on your screen.
Curriculum Review Team
Jim suggested that students take turns making podcasts that summarize events and lessons taking place in their classrooms. Click on this link to hear this type of podcast as made by students from “Room 208.”
If you are working in a Mac environment, your students can create podcasts with Garage Band. If you are working in a Windows environment, Audacity is a free download that will provide the tools you need to record and save files as mp3s. Gcast is a website that lets you record your podcast via a toll-free call from any phone and then hosts the podcast on their site.
Daily Researchers
Students work to find the answers for each other. The teacher isn’t the provider of all knowledge. Someone can be appointed the “Search Expert” for the day. Depending on the tools available in your classroom(s), the expert could search on the Internet, contact an outside expert via Skype or email, or look at the resources available from the iTunes store. Students could collaborate and share the information via Google Docs or Google Notebook, a Moodle course, blog or a wiki.
To see and learn about even more of Jim’s suggestion for using technology to leverage instruction and learning, visit his wiki, A New Adventure. All of the participants in his workshop are already taking steps into that “new adventure.” We will be looking for you to join us on the journey!
Laura Cummings, MACUL SIGTELE Director
Tagged: jim wenzloff, macul08, macul_08, november learning, Web 2.0 April 2, 2008
The 2008 MACUL Conference Blog is up and running. Ben Rimes, MACUL Board member and administrator of the blog, sent out an invitation for all of us to stop by now to read previews of sessions and other interesting posts. After the conference the blog will remain available so we can listen to keynote interviews, catch up on sessions that we missed during the conference, or extend the conference experience beyond our March face-to-face adventure. We will keep a link to the 2008 MACUL Conference Blog in our “Blogroll” as long as the blog remains active.
Tagged: macul_08 January 14, 2008
Class ended today. In just two short hours all the projects were presented and final thoughts shared. Nearly every student commented on how overwhelmed they had felt at the beginning of the course, how pleased they were with their final project, how much they had enjoyed learning Dreamweaver, and how excited they were to continue developing these sorts of web-based tools. It was a very satisfying closing for not only the students but also for me. I now have the pleasure of reviewing and grading the projects. I think they all have A’s:) You take a look and let me know what you think.
Despite a couple of late or missing posts, I have enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. It has provided me with a place to reflect and share and I hope it has been been interesting and beneficial to those who might have been following along.
This is my final post on this topic, IT 6140, but I’ll certainly be back. Thanks for reading!
Mary
July 18, 2007
As a novice blogger it has become apparent that taking more than one or two days away from the blog will likely result in no writing at all. Yesterday was one of those marathon days that resulted in me completely forgetting about this blog. Detroit Public Schools have teamed with the Instructional Technology department at WSU this summer in a program that any teacher will surely envy. A small group of DPS teachers (approx. 100) have been able to take one or two of the IT classes that are designed specifically for teachers. Each of these classes will (or has) been taught using the three-week schedule that my current class is following, including one on-line course. Tuition and books are provided for the teachers while earning graduate credit hours and receiving what I consider to be top notch instruction and training in technology integration. I began teaching another section of this class (6140) with a DPS group yesterday that will run from 7/16 through 8/2. This class meets in the afternoon from 1:30 – 5:30, so the first three days of this week require full days on campus for me. This is a larger group than my current class with a much wider ranger of technology skills. I’ll be busy guiding this group through the course, but again, it is only three weeks.
My morning class has been doing extraordinary work. We spent just a little time in class yesterday talking about using these curriculum webs in mostly hardware terms. By this I mean how teachers can access this learning tool in their buildings. Even though it is currently on the IT server, this is not a permanent arrangement. One option is for teachers to put a copy of their website onto the share server in a computer lab (if available) so their students can use it without having to upload it somewhere. Once students have opened the web folder and clicked on index, the site will open in the browser and work just like a “live” website. If your district is willing, curriculum webs could be uploaded to a district server. I have also uploaded a website to class Blackboard sites and this works very well, too.
Today is our last day in the lab and the discussion centered around teachers teaching with curriculum webs and just plain teaching in general. Peg Ertmer at Purdue has written several articles on the topic of teachers using technology and the barriers that they face, identifying first-order (external, like equipment and training) and second-order (internal, such as changing the way you think and go about the process of teaching). First-order barriers are relatively simple to fix. Those second-order barriers, however, require that teachers really think about how they teach and why they teach that way and challenge themselves to consider new classroom strategies and instructional approaches. I know that many teachers are still battling the first-order barriers to some degree, but I believe we are all standing in the doorway of second-order barriers. MACUL is a good example of an organization working to help teachers through this door of change. Through the annual conference and on-going workshops and events, MACUL provides support and learning opportunities for its members. Will Richardson, through his blog and workshops, addresses these barriers and offers suggestions for those ready to take that step. Finally, FutureMinds: Transforming American School Systems is a new initiative sponsored through AECT (Association for Educational Communications and Technology). Seeking a systemic transformational change to education in this country, this committe outlines the need for sweeping reform and changes at the district level. There are no simple solutions to these challenges facing education and educators, but I think these questions of change, within ourselves and our educational system, are ones that we all should be asking.
And so, on those thoughts, I passed out the course evaluation and left the lab while the class completed this university requirement. Once the evaluations were completed and submitted I was permitted to re-enter the lab. Everyone is furiously working to complete their project before they leave today. I have received permission from the class to post their final projects on this blog tomorrow. I have seen these projects in progress – you will be really impressed!
Mary
July 17, 2007
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