Hmmm….

Wow! I can’t believe I did the whole thing….lol.

Although it was touch and go for a few weeks there in December (drowning in pre-Break paperwork and slammed by various flus), this project has been really fun and enjoyable.  I see tons of applications to my classroom work, including…

• having a classroom wikispace next year
• rather than having children handwrite poems, songs, or create posters about something, encouraging them to create podcasts or vodcasts of poems or songs and to create wikis
• listening more regularly to educational podcasts and checking out educationally-minded blogs
• staying updated on the lastest classroom tech apps

Staying on track with the assignments during this project was definitely tough, but ultimately the flexibility of this course’s frame allowed me to succeed, as I would work in bursts every 2 weeks or so.  I really appreciated the fluidity of this arrangement during busy weeks.

Thanks, TechBabble, for creating such a practical and well organized course.  I don’t know where you find the time to get it all together, moderate everyone’s posts, and teach,  but it was really appreciated!

Possibly because I am under 30, what I lack in tech savvy-ness I make up for in tech enthusiasm.  And, while I certainly love a good NPR podcast to mull over while I drive, I definitely subscribe to the whole “picture is worth a thousand words” concept….and when we are talking about thousands of still images that appear to link fluidly, well then my heart just goes pitter pat.

So far this year, I’ve done some projects with videos that I post on unlisted websites (Picasa).  In a semimonthly project, small groups of my students write, direct, and act in a video newsletter that I share with their parents and my colleagues.  Because it is authentically run by 8 and nine year olds, things get a bit silly at times, but overall I think it has been an empowering way for the kids to learn about authentic apps for tech.

I also routinely show Youtube clips during Social Studies when words just wouldn’t do justice to certain concepts.  For example, we have been studying the Lenni Lenape tribe of Native Americans this year, but I wanted my students to also get a sense of the diversity amongst tribes, and of the vibrance of Native American communities today.  To do this, I found a hodge podge of Youtube videos, first ones that investigated specific aspects of Native American culture (e.g. “shelters”) within several different tribes, and then others that interviewed Native Americans today about the varied ways that people celebrate their ancestry.

On my studio page, I posted a link to a 1942 film that I discovered called The Courageous William Penn, because I am considering showing pieces to my class.  Throughout most of the year, we’ve studied the Lenape, using an exceptionally well-researched children’s book from 1932 as a mentor text.  For third graders,I have found that history that can be embedded in a narrative is so much more memorable and powerful to them.  We recently read an historical fiction text about Jamestown that helped them understand the perspective of some European settlers, but now I am hoping to examine specific moments in Pennsylvania history – specifically, the effect of William Penn’s involvement as well as the influence of Quaker settlers upon the history of the state.  I felt this film offered a chance for my students to find a personal link to this famous historical figure, gather some background about Quakers and their motivation for coming to PA, and also use their extensive background in Lenape studies to determine whether the film portrays Native Americans fairly and accurately.

I am assuming that after a certain amount of years, the rights to certain films can become public, because I’ve seen many old films posted on Youtube.  (I hope so, at least.)  Anyhow, asking children to critique films and ads is something I’ve been hoping to do more and more….

For my conference session, I decided to peruse “Using Google Sketchup,” mostly because I was looking for a very practically-minded tutorial-type session, rather than any sort of philosophical treatise.  My thoughts:

• I found it to be a very cool program…with the touch of an icon, you can paste 2-D shapes on a 3-D room, and then push or pull out their dimensions
• The person giving the lecture uses the program with high schoolers, and reported that even they find it frustrating at times, so it may not be appropriate for my third graders
• at the same time, while I will probably never use it with the whole group, I have a few students whom I think would need a bit of guidance and then be able to take off with the program and experiment with gusto
• It provided a nice addition to my repertoire of free apps that can work even on my classroom’s relatively slow computers

This is a really interesting topic for me, because it is one of those issues that is changing with incredible speed.  Initially, with the advent of Facebook, MySpace, and the like, the issue was, Are these harmful for children? Should they be allowed in the classroom?

I feel fairly clear about my answers to these questions: Yes, I do think that these sites can be extremely harmful for children, and I do not recommend that children get personal sites.  As to the latter question, I feel similarly that children should not be allowed to check or view personal sites in the classroom.  At the same time, as the feature about the To Kill a Mockingbird character project demonstrated, teacher-guided social networking pages offer great potential to embed complex material in a very concrete and familiar framework for youngsters.  In this sense, I think they offer a lot of potential.  I had been tossing around the idea of helping my students create Facebook-type (but now probably Ning) pages about European explorers, which they will be researching after Winter Break.

The funny thing for me is that the more muddied question in regards to social networking sites is whether one should be “friends” with parents, colleagues, and/or graduated students.  Initially, it was just younger (twenty-something and younger) people that were interested in these sites, but actually many parents, and even grandparents, with desk jobs and/or iphones, are Facebook fiends.  I continually debate questions of boundaries and professionalism within this issue.  Here are my conclusions:

current students’ parents facebook invites will not be accepted

former students’ parents, graduated students, and colleagues’ invites will be accepted, but with limited visibility – these individuals can only see my basic profile info and pictures only I post (in my case, only a couple).  They cannot see any pictures of my others post.  This keeps things, in my mind, friendly and “linked” but free of any possible embarrassment.  Still, some probably would say not to do it at all, and I can understand and respect that viewpoint also.

I enjoyed Kim Cofino’s keynote speech entitled “Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education.  At first, I was confused about why international educators seemed to be more featured than those of us teaching in the States.  I wondered, “Are they particularly tech-savvy? Are they particularly good teachers?”  After Kim provided her background, though, I can understand the metaphor – people who adapt (to some extent at least) due to circumstance, whether or not they agree with the ideals of the culture in which they are living.  It seems that Ms. Cofino is referring to a kind of “flexibility by fire” that expats may experience more than the rest of us.

I can certainly agree that the skills “of the future” she mentions will probably be important for students in the future, though I don’t know if I agree that TCKs are necessarily fundamentally more primed to have these traits.  I found the metaphor of TCKs interesting, but the elevation of TCKs to be a weak illustration of her argument as well as a distraction from the real message of her speech. (but that’s just me!)

Another interesting moment for me was when Kim mentioned that learning in the future will not “turn off” (in the sense that it will be happening at all hours, just as all of us are increasingly emailing and texting in the middle of the night) and will be “on demand.”  I can imagine that some of my colleagues would find these learning potentials unhelpful at best and dangerous to childhood at worst.  Now, Ms. Cofino might say that we all need to move with the changing tide of technology and culture, but as a young person who is extremely open to technology, I am not sure we should be so hasty.  I for one still rely on my older, wiser, (and in some cases, tech-phobic) colleagues to help me think about what we trade for technology.  If it is a worthy trade, then so be it, but if all we gain is moving faster and faster, then take away my Blackberry, by all means.  (Well, actually….maybe just my ipod…)

Other than my frequent use of Wikipedia for a variety of “educational” purposes (“What was Jimmy Stewart’s first movie again??”) I had never particularly mulled over the potential for wikis might have in a classroom, particularly a (hopefully) Progressive classroom for younger children.  I really enjoyed reading through the many types of classroom wikis out there – everything from using a wiki to chart a continuous story of Terry the Tennis Ball to a collaborative space that feels blog-like in nature.

I really enjoy the idea that the nature of wikis not only presupposes, but requires, collaborative editing, additions, and revisions.  At my school each year we have a particular social studies theme that we follow in different ways.  By this time in the year, my own students have learned quite a lot about the Lenni Lenape people of Pennsylvania.  I love the idea of setting up a wiki for them to collectively record what they have learned – a space to which the community and parents could then also respond.

It has been very interesting to explore the blogging world of elementary school classrooms, as I had always been a bit unclear as to how one might manage a classroom of young children blogging.  In perusing a few different models, I am beginning to understand that there are hundreds of permutations for this, each dependent on the needs and interests of the classroom teacher and his/her group.

I was especially impressed by the enthusiasm, trust, and frankly – bookkeeping ability, of one teacher named Mr. A in regards to his blog Mighty Writers 09-10.  He maintains a general blog for the classroom that pulls each (!) of his third graders’ individual posts into a centralized hub.  I especially enjoyed the medium’s ability to act as a virtual portfolio for his students, and as an easy way for parents to read their children’s writing, both blog posts but also longer, more in depth endeavors, such as their stories about how a turkey might escape from Thanksgiving.  After my initial pessimism regarding the feasibility of this in my own classroom (“They probably have a laptop for every child…I can’t be there every second…”)

I began to appreciate the potential of this genre for my own third grade students.  As I scrolled through a few of Mr. A’s students’ pages, laughing at posts titled “Unfun things” (homework, chores), I was struck by how eager most elementary-aged children are to share their opinions – about anything!  Blogs are perfect for my third graders’ transitional writing style, because it lends itself to a certain kind of earnest brevity.

I can see myself moving from our paper journals, in which once or twice a week I ask them to respond to a personal question, to blogs.  I would love to have a forum in which children respond to one another’s posts, rather than just my teaching partner and I, as well as parents.  I am always trying to think of (efficient) ways parents can see what we do in the classroom and more fully connect with their child’s life in the classroom.  I think a model like the one Mr. A has created would be a great way to do this.

A different, but also innovative, method of classroom blogging can be seen in an early elementary clasroom’s efforts, The Duck Diaries.  This blog was an endearing update on the reproduction habits of a nearby mallard.  At one point in the blog, the mother duck actually disappeared, and it was really neat to note how concerned everyone was.  Questions and comments poured forth.  In a blog such as this one, students don’t maintain separate pages, but could comment on the central blog (or compose posts). I think I may begin with this type of format, at least until I get my blogging feet more firmly planted in cyberspace.

I’m going to  admit something right off the bat – I have never been especially fond of reading blogs.  I think I felt them to be one-sided technological pulpits, similar in content to an editorial but generally less polished.  I tended to eschew them in favor of link compilation sites like reddit.com or the more traditional newsfeed sites, like CNN.com.

However, I must say, that upon investigating quite a few blogs recently, several of them written by educators, I have come to realize that, in fact, my assumptions about blogs and bloggers are not necessarily true (shocking!).  Some blogs are incredibly well-designed and eloquently written.  I have also encountered many blogs in which the blogger updates so frequently that s/he comments upon most (or all) of the comments made.  This provides a dynamic give-and-take that seems to often be far more balanced than I would have previously thought.

Of course, in order for any blog I create to ever come close to this model, I will need to be more willing to devote consistent (ahem) time the endeavor – definitely a challenge for me right now.  I think of Techbabble (Sarah B.)’s comment about framing this project in terms of play rather than work.  You are so right on, Sarah, about getting caught up in the seriousness of it all.  I am beginning to envision blogs as an opportunity for a different type of communication – collaborative, with a comfortable level of physical and temporal distance from my home life.  I am beginning to have visions of what a blog created for and by my classroom community could look and feel like.  Since I teach third graders, the specifics of how I might do this (its purpose and execution) are still pretty nebulous, but I am definitely opening up to the possibilities of blogging.

Here are my thoughts about the content presented in the Powerpoint  The 71/2 Habits of Highly Effective Lifelong Learners located at: http://www.slideshare.net/Techbabble/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-lifelong.

1. Which habit(s) are most challenging for you as you participate in this online course?

That is an easy one, albeit a slightly embarrassing one.  By far the most difficult for me thus far in regards to this course has been Habit #2, “Accept responsibility for your own learning.”  Since I am a teacher who often waxes lyrical about the benefits of my students taking ownership of their words and actions, admitting my own tendency to avoid responsibility (or justify it, displace it, and otherwise shirk it) is not easy.  My difficulty working through the class work within the time lines given, however, highlight that this is so.

I think that I sometimes get so bogged down in the daily, immediate responsibilities of the classroom (marking the piled papers, emailing parents about their questions), that I am not always able to or willing to engage in other projects that would ultimately provide far richer rewards.  In a sense, then, this issue is also related to habit  #1, the ability to begin with the end in mind.  I tend to be someone who can get distracted with what is going on in front of me, which sometimes prevents me from proper planning and execution.  Last year, my first at Miquon, I felt like the coyote from the Roadrunner cartoon, frantically trying to build a track one plank at a time while the train approaches.  The demands of creating a mult-disciplinary curriculum basically out of thin air, while also teaching and communicating effectively with parents, at times felt incredibly draining.  This year I do feel like I have more of a handle on things, which is why I am participating in this course, but I have still often been emotionally and physically exhausted.  Taking responsibility for my own learning is something that I’ll continue to work on.  I especially like the wording of this habit because it reminded me that the choice to participate in this course was mine – it was not assigned to me or thrust upon me, and yet I have continued to view it as yet another “task” of the classroom.  The reality of this experience, however, has been that I have really enjoyed all the new info and experiences.

2. Which habit(s) are most comfortable for you as you engage in this course as a lifelong learner?

I think habit #6, “Use Tech to your advantage, feels most comfortable to me.  It is always funny for me, though, that at school I am one of the “tech savy” people, since I live with a roommate who builds his own computers for fun and has to lead me step-by-step through the most simplistic (in his mind) of tasks.  Many of my friends from high school ended up in tech jobs, and so by the standards of today’s younger generation I think I am just average, but I do enjoy mucking about with new programs and gadgets, as long as they are relatively user friendly.  Also, Google usually ends up being my savior in these matters, since now with the advent of message boards you can type in any question, such as “How to make a document print horizontally on Word” and you get a readable answer.  Thank goodness there are now so many more efficient translators of manuals than I!

3. Which habit(s) will be most important to you as you work through the tasks in this course and begin to apply your learning to your professional life?

I think I have to go back to “accepting responsibility” for this one.  I think the combination of taking more responsibility for my decisions and what I choose to take on (whether in the classroom or in my own life), coupled with habit 3, “View problems as challenges,” will aid me in feeling less drained and more empowered.

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