Reflection 3 - What Now?

The podcasts and information we have received during the second half of this course have been very global. There are so many implications about where technology could and should head in the future. I think as a district we don't have a "vision" of where we are heading and what we would like our schools to be technologically. I think it is time for a diverse stakeholder team to work on that.

As for me, I think I can start small. Certainly starting a wiki, a blog, and doing podcasts will be part of my year next year. But I think I have a responsibility to engage more of my colleagues in the possibilities. I will start with my grade level and see where I can go with them. I think that they are open minded but are not in general risk takers. I would also like to involve the special area teachers - Linda gave me some ideas on how the things I do could inform and benefit her teaching as well.

I would like to keep this blog going with reflections on my successes and trials as I go through this year. Is anyone else interested?

School 2.0

When I viewed the School 2.0 map, I was struck by how everyone is connected to technology in someway. This has it's plusses and minuses. I loved seeing people taking online courses (as I wrote in a previous post), I think this is something that will and needs to become more prevalent in our educational system. E-books? What are those? That definitly peeked my curiosity.

The stakeholder group was certainly inclusive but I keep coming back to the question of who are the leaders - who inspires the changes? Policy makers are often ignorant to the possibilities and technologists alone do not have the power(yet) to create the change. I think we need to create motivated teams to get the word out.

One drawback of the map for me was that everyone was connected. I do enjoy being disconnected at times. I think the more power we give technology the harder it will be for people to really let go of it sometimes. How do we find the balance?

Lesson 9 - School 2.0, Part 1 - 21st Century Students and Skills

Finally - a post for lesson 9! I struggled with this podcast as a means to get ideas for instruction. I won't mention his name since he is on Google alert! I like his little quips and I found his insights on internet safety to be very valuable. As I reflected on the podcast I kept coming back to collaboration - thinking of his Model T lesson. I have my students collaborate a lot at the K-1 level. I think a team writing experience between two classrooms would be very exciting for them. Many times in my classroom, we start a story and pass it to teams to write the next part. The kids get very excited about the possibilities. I think you could do the same on a Wiki... Start a story and pass it to a team of students in another classroom. They could illustrate and scan a picture on to match their text. then it would come back tot he first team to add the next part and so on. You could have multiple stories going. When they are complete, the teams could video themselves acting them out and put the videos on the Wiki. We could then compare the performances for the different ways the students interpreted the story. The more I write, the more this seems like a monumental task but maybe not...

Assignment 10 - New Perspectives on the Challenges We Face

Dr. Zhao had some amazing insights in the podcast with Alan November. A couple of points got me thinking...
** Increasing students ability to communicate globally with regard to language and culture. This would be a major jump up from traditional penpals to sharing our language in culture through websites, blogs, podcasts, and video. There is certainly the challenge of finding an international connection but increasing this kind of communication would be very possible at the elementary level.
**A requirement for students to particpate in online learning in order to graduate. Love this one!! Would this requirement have to be set at the state level or could we do it locally? And who takes on responsibility of educating and swaying the powers at be? We would open a lot of doors for students if we offered online classes that expand on the current subjects that we offer.
**I think there are implications for staff development as well. No longer do we need to pay thousands of dollars to bring in a single presenter when we may be able to participate in national presentations and conferences that are offered online.

Collaborative Bookmarking (Reflection 2)

Now that I have explored collaborative bookmarking, I can see many possibilities for my grade level. My grade level (K) frequently teaches around thematic units. We will often discuss or share ideas at meetings or on the fly! If we all set up a Del.icio.us accounts, we could set up two tags. One for sites used as teacher resources and one used for sites that can be used with kids. Since the themes change we could be adding to the tags monthly. Once you have a commitment from teachers to do this, there would be a whole new wealth of infomation being found and shared. One benefit of this would be an increase of new technology used with students in the classroom. I have been particularly worried to see so many classroom computers off recently. Maybe if more teachers are finding and bookmarking cool sites for kids to use, they will actually get used!! I am planning on using our summer curriculum day to help everyone set up an account - What do you think?

Wikis - A Valuable Tool

Wikis are a wonderful way to get kids writing on the computer. So often students complete assignments, they are graded, and handed back. A wiki allows their learning to be shared for all. I had the opportunity to use the Village Wiki with my first graders. They were so excited to go home and look up their work online. More than that, they were excited to tell other family and friends about it - even those that live far away.
I liked Mr. Lindsay's wiki. His newsletter was done as a podcast which saves a lot of time and trees. I also liked wikijunior. The concept of collaboratively creating primary level non-fiction books is awesome!!! I could actually use the pages that are under construction on that page as a resource for my class. The dinosaur pages are terrific. I have to be honset, with all that I have learned about blogs and wikis, I find them more vauable and stimualting than my my classroom website.

Video Resource Sites

I explored each of the recommended sites and found them to be very different. NextVista has an interesting concept. I liked the fact that the videos are all 5 minutes or less and that they can be submitted by adults or students. With only 70 videos, it's general use is minimal so far!!! But I have great hopes for this site. I think it could easily support class projects. It would be a great way for students to demonstrate new learning. when a group of students finishes studying any topic, they could create a teaching video and submit it to the site!


The commercial sites had a wide variety of material and topics. I noticed that people can comment on the videos and sometimes the comments can be inappropriate for students so teachers would have to monitor that. I loved Teacher Tube! I enjoyed the perimeter rap. If you haven't watched the "when I grow Up" video - definitely give it a look. It was creative and I think when shared with older students would lead to a neat discussion about the future.

You Tube and Clipblast were a little to commercial for me. The sites felt overwhelming and more for entertainment purposes than educational.

Teachers of older students might find these sites very helpful. I was thinking of how my older son could use the Next Vista site for help when he is stuck on a math problem.