Meg Fitzpatrick, editor of of the UbD e-journal Big Ideas, invited me to contribute to both the e-journal and a new blog they are announcing today: The Faculty Room. Please come on over and join in our conversations (my first post on the blog should appear some time tomorrow). You will find other “familiar faces” over there. Also, now seems as good a time as any to remind you that the UbD Educators wiki is a good resource for you to post, share, “borrow,” and obtain or leave feedback on UbD lesson plans.
Category Archives: Blogging
What I’m Reading
If you haven’t happened upon Nick Senger’s blog Teen Literacy Tips, you need to check it out. Nick provides valuable content in every post. I am subscribed to his RSS feed through Bloglines, and I invariably bookmark his new posts so I can return to them when I have time (what’s that?).
I recently finished Making Classroom Assessment Work by Anne Davies (read the first edition rather than the updated second, which I linked). I read it as part of Blackboard Online class I took through a local public school system. Frankly, not much new here to anyone who has read Understanding by Design. If I can be allowed to vent for a minute, the reason I took the course in the first place is that I need six more SDU’s (PLU’s or whatever you call them where you live). I submitted my transcripts and all the necessary information to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, but they would not accept anything I had done since about 2004. I suppose I can understand why they might not want to accept professional learning I have participated in at my own school, even if I thought it was a valuable experience; however, I do not understand why they wouldn’t accept Mel Levine’s Schools Attuned. I worked extremely hard to earn the 4.5 PLU’s I earned for that course. I didn’t work a tenth as hard to earn the 2 PLU’s I just earned for reading Anne Davies’ book. If I had known Georgia was not going to accept the credits, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to finish the course online last year. Lesson learned. I will simply take a two-credit course online each year to meet my recertification requirements. At least I should then be assured that my courses will count for something. I have a non-renewable certificate that is good until the end of June, by which time I will have earned those six credits.
My husband sent me an article about a Wisconsin teacher arrested for praising the Columbine shooters on a blog. First of all, I’m not sure what the teacher said constitutes a threat, but to be fair, we’ve punished students for the same type of behavior. Second, once more we have a reminder that sarcasm does not travel well on the Internet, and it would probably be best to avoid it in any situation when it can be interpreted with any ambiguity. Third, and most important, teachers who post anonymously are not really anonymous; you can and might be found, and when that happens, you might be in trouble for what you say. In my opinion, the smarter and safer route seems to be to post openly and don’t say anything that you wouldn’t print on a billboard on the local interstate highway. Aren’t we also trying to teach our students that lesson? Finally, does this incident violate freedom of speech? I contend it does. If the remark was intended to be sarcastic, it missed the mark. If it wasn’t, it was incredibly ignorant, mean-spirited, and disrespectful. But I thought we had a right to be ignorant, mean-spirited, and disrespectful out loud in America. The teacher has learned a valuable lesson: Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui. He won’t be charged with a crime, but the district where he has taught since 1994 has not yet decided what to do about his job.
GISA Conference
I went to the annual Georgia Independent School Association (GISA) Annual Conference today. I ate lunch with Megan; it’s cool to see connections I made through this blog become “real-life” connections as well. Incidentally, Megan presented a session on using social bookmarking (such as del.icio.us). The two sessions I went to were very interesting (which hasn’t always been the case at GISA — the session I presented last year included): Fantasy Literature (teaching The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter along with Campbell’s ideas about the journey of the hero) and Blogs and Wikis in the Classroom. Frankly, I confess I went to the latter to see if a) it would be better than the session I presented last year (it was), b) what the presenters would say. I did not expect to learn about anything new. Of course, I did learn about some things that were new to me, at any rate.
One thing that interested me in particular about the Fantasy Literature session was that so many other schools already have this class as an elective. A teacher from Pace Academy shared his successes teaching the course to 8th graders, and a teacher from Griffin Christian High School shared that he teaches The Lord of the Rings for the first semester of 9th grade, teaching all the literary terms, etc., through the context of that work. I taught The Hobbit one year — when I was a student teacher, in fact — and I found that students in general didn’t like it much, but I think as part of an elective, it would be a different crowd. Frankly, I could see myself really enjoying such a class.
The blogs and wikis session introduced me to Voice Thread, which Megan mentioned also at lunch. I imagine if you hear about something twice in such a short span of time, someone’s trying to send a message. For the uninitiated, Voice Thread is online software that allows users to create documentaries using images and creating narration to accompany the images. Check out this sample of its use: Slavery in America (by Jeff Morrison’s middle school students at the Lovett School). Jeff (one of the presenters) also introduced us to TrackStar, which somehow went under my radar, even though I’ve used 4Teachers‘ other service RubiStar to create rubrics.
I am thinking about ways I might integrate some of these resources with my current projects — The Canterbury Tales and The Odyssey. You can view Jeff’s wiki, which has links to a bunch of sources he shared with us.
One of my favorite parts of Jeff’s presentation was a video he shared:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1SmgLtg1Izw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
As Jeff said, that is what it is like to teach. Especially middle school.
By the way, I am now receiving e-mails when comments are posted. I kept my eyes on the WordPress Support forums’ thread related to my problem, and eventually, someone posted a solution that worked for me. I uploaded a plugin created to work around the problem.
Summer Reading Update
I’ve been quiet in my post Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows daze. I promised myself I can re-read the entire series again once I finish my summer reading. I have three books to go: The Return of the Native, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’ve read most of the last two, so in a pinch, I can skip up to the part I’ve not read if I have to. I am working on the senior seminar class I’m teaching next week, and I am excited about the way it’s shaping up. I’m likely to be quiet next week as I will be working hard on this course. I don’t imagine I’ll be very active at the UbD wiki next week, either.
[tags]harry potter, summer reading[/tags]
Administrator 2.0
Scott McLeod challenged education bloggers to post today about effective school technology leadership.
In many schools in our nation, computers are not available for students. I have worked in four K-12 schools. The first had no computer lab and no access to computers even for faculty. Of course, that was 1997-1998, so I hope things have changed. The second and third had labs which were difficult to get into, often requiring sign-ups or a month or more in advance in order to secure time for my students to use the lab; therefore, I never took my own students because I couldn’t get in. My current school has an excellent computer lab which is staffed by two educational technologists. Space for two classes at a time generally exists, and the lab isn’t hard to get into. I can sign up the same day in some cases, and I have never had difficulty if I sign up a week in advance. Guess which environment has been most conducive to my students’ learning of technology as well as that of my own? The first thing administrators need to do at the school, district, and state level is to support initiatives to bring computers to the classroom. Ideally, I’d like to have a lab in my own classroom, but barring that, my current situation of an accessible lab is critical. One-to-one laptop initiatives are interesting, but bottom-line, it’s more important to me to have access to a lab when I need it. Administrators who do not do what they can to bring computers to school are basically saying that educating our children for the 21st century is not important.
A second thing teachers need from administrators is support for their efforts at technological education. I think one reason administrators sometimes do not support these efforts is fear and misunderstanding. It is imperative that administrators receive professional development in technology. As Scott McLeod noted,
Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Most of them didn’t grow up with these technologies. Many are not using digital tools on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.
My administration, and especially the Board of Trustees (specifically our board president) have been incredibly supportive of my efforts at using technology in my classroom. Without their support, I would not have been able to successfully use wikis or blogs in my classroom. Since I have plans to utilize Web 2.0 technology to an even greater extent next year, their continued support will be critical for enhancing the learning activities of our students. If I try to visualize doing some of the work I’ve done over the last two years in the setting of one of my former schools, I have to admit I don’t think I would have been able to even try using blogs or wikis.
As administrators begin to feel more comfortable with technology, I’d like to see more administrators blogging. I know this is fraught with problems as well, as this involves giving people more access to those administrators, which could result in blogging administrators becoming whipping boys for all the problems with education in their schools and districts. I think, however, there is more to be gained than lost by being more transparent in education. “The ‘net rewards the transparent,” and over time, as more blogs like this one pop up, it will punish those who do not reach out themselves.
I would also like to see efforts at creating Web 2.0 learning experiences made easier for teachers. Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay said at EduBloggerCon that in order to have their Flat Classroom Project approved by each of their schools, they had to use different rubrics. As their students were doing the same tasks, it would have been easier to evaluate their work using the same rubric.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that it is critical that administrators support best practices in using technology. I think many administrators don’t see the need for certain uses of technology not only because they haven’t used them and don’t use them now, but because they felt they got on all right, thank you very much, without them, so why should others need them? I’m sure the same has been said in the past of running water, electricity, a dependable mail service, automobiles, and any number of services and technologies we rely on today. I don’t know yet if we will necessarily rely on Web 2.0 technology, but the 21st century is already dependent on certain technologies, and not teaching our students how to use them is to cripple them as they move on to college and the work force.
[tags]administration, education, web 2.o, technology, schooltechleadership[/tags]
Happy Birthday, Blog!
My blog turned two years old today!
You can make your own Bayeux Tapestry art at Historic Tale Reconstruction Kit.
[tags]blogging[/tags]
British Educators: I Want You
If you teach literature and composition in the United Kingdom, I would like to work with you on a collaborative online project. I am teaching a semester of British Literature and Composition this fall. We will be reading selections from Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Arthurian legend, as well as the entirety of Macbeth.
I am not sure how to connect to UK teachers. If readers can help me out, I’d love to get your advice.
I am thinking of a blogging or wiki project.
[tags]United Kingdom, education, British literature, UK, wiki, English, blogging[/tags]
Tagging
After hearing Vicki’s sensible arguments for tagging today, I have been wondering about tagging on this blog. I use a very easy tagging plugin called SimpleTagsPlus. I can use it to create Technorati, Flickr, or del.icio.us tags based on keywords I enter using certain code before and after the tag(s).
I have only been tagging my posts with Technorati tags. Would it be useful to tag them using del.icio.us, also? I use del.icio.us to save bookmarks all the time, but I hadn’t thought of tagging my posts using del.icio.us.
Does anyone use Ultimate Tag Warrior to tag WordPress posts? What do you think of it?
I want to get serious about making it easy for people to find what they need at my blog. I think the search feature I have is pretty good — I’ve always been able to find what I need to find, anyway. Would a tag cloud be of help to anyone? Or is it one more busy gizmo in the sidebar?
[tags]del.icio.us, tagging, technorati, flickr, wordpress, plugin[/tags]
EduBloggerCon 2007
I have been home from EduBloggerCon 2007 for about a half hour. First of all, the most exciting aspect of the conference was the opportunity to be around so many educators who are interested in and actively using Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms. I am used to being very alone in this area, and I have to say that it was somewhat of a shock to my senses to hear so many educators talking about wikis, tagging, RSS, blogging, and myriad other applications. I think I realized for the first time that a great many educators actually are interested in Web 2.0. I have to admit I kept visualizing how energizing it would be to work in a school with these other educators.
The main feeling I was left with was just that — energy and excitement about the possibilities of bringing Web 2.0 into the classroom. I also met quite a few people I’ve only interacted with online, as well as some folks who are definitely going into my aggregator and blogroll.
I was fairly quiet at the conference today, and I hope no one interpreted that silence as disinterest. I was simply overwhelmed. In fact, I had never heard of ISTE before the conference today, and I had only heard of NECC a few days ago. I realize that if I am indeed serious about going into educational technology in the future, I probably need to check into joining ISTE and going to NECC when I have a chance in the future. I was sorry I couldn’t attend NECC, as it’s in Atlanta, but coming up with the registration fee on such short notice would have been too difficult.
Here’s the group picture (try right clicking the link, then opening it in a new window or tab so you can go back and forth) courtesy of Tim Stahmer. I am in the middle in the red (long gray hair!) standing to the right (as you see it) of Dave Warlick, whose face is more well-known than mine.
I want to especially acknowledge Steve Hargadon for organizing the whole thing (and for being so friendly when we were introduced), Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for sort of taking me under her wing and making sure I met people, and Megan, Vinnie, Elizabeth, and Kevin for the great conversations.
I’ve been blogging here for nearly two years (two years on Monday!), but I realized today that the real conversation has just begun. It was the first time I had the opportunity to be around so many like minds.
[tags]edubloggercon07, web 2.0, technology, education, necc, iste[/tags]
Classroom 2.0
Steve Hargadon, who led this session, mentioned that the wiki associated with Classroom 2.0 hasn’t taken off as he hoped and wanted to “create an action plan for developing good repositories of lesson plans and training for the use of technology and Web 2.0 applications in the classroom.” Vicki Davis took notes: Classroom 2.0.
What do you think would make it easier for teachers to find ways to use Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom?
[tags]edubloggercon07, ebc07cr20, classroom 2.0[/tags]