Helpful hints from Tweeter

MrMusselman

While expanding my Personal Learning Network (PLN) a fellow Tweeter contact shared this with me...wanted to share these twitter sites with all. There was probably a better way to do this, but this would reach all of us in the class. Mr. Musselman's suggestion is also to check out the lists of other Twitter members as a way to expand our own networks. And don't forget the Twitter 4 Teachers link.

@rjr52 "Big Three" (not Celtics) to follow for edu: @web20classroom @rmbyrne @tomwhitby - convos and blogs are fantastic #FF

Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom

Helpful Blog Introduction

As I wandered the seemingly infinite resources of the internet I happened across some information located at the McGraw-Hill website. The information about an introduction to blogs has helped clear up questions and concerns I had. It is an older site (2006) but the information stated about blogs and how they can be utilized to enhance student learning is straight forward and easily understandable. I especially like the suggestion of how blogs could be used to get older students to act as peer mentors/editors for younger students. Another nice point the page makes is that there are risks about blogging and that schools/teachers must prepare students before they allowed to blog.

A bad point about the site is that the links for additional information about blogs are “dead links”.

The site can be found here:
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47

The Horizon Project

A quote from The Horizon Report

"Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives."

Here is a link I found that talked about making mathematics come alive through the use of technology and how it empowers students and meets the current standards.

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/papers96/kimmins.html

"Specifically in the realm of mathematical concepts and skill development, technology(1) empowers students to deal with multiple representations, (2) enhances ability to visualize, (3) increases opportunity to construct mathematical knowledge, and (4) enhances opportunity for individualized and customized diagnosis, remediation and evaluation (kimmins,1995)."

With students becoming more technology capable we must meet their needs but if it is not pertinent to the class our hard work will be lost. Technology is not just an add on but needs to be an integral component of the class.

Tweeting?

What kind of message are you sending through your tweets? AnalyzeWords analyzes the emotional, social, and thinking styles of your words.

Click the title to read the article. A link to AnalyzeWords is found in the story.

Responding to Compteach

I just wanted to add this link in support of Compteach's comments. Pardon the cliche, but Big Brother has been watching us for a long time ... http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/koppel/interactive/interactive.html

Conversely, I recently read an article on the digital footprint and how employers are encouraged when they find the names of potential employees on the web. Many like to see that these candidates are tech savvy and using the computer as a tool.
The writer of the article suggested typing your name in its various forms to see what comes up in a search. Try it in Google. Google images, etc ... The writer then suggested taking certain measures to eliminate any negative "footprints."

I did the search and came across something I did not expect- My name on a site called ratemyteachers.com The site is used by students to evaluate their teachers. Not for the thin-skinned!

Digital Exposure

At the beginning of the course we signed up for a variety of online accounts. At the time many were nervous about revealing personal data and even struggled with choosing user-names etc. I read an interesting article in Discover Magazine (hard copy version) entitled Digital Exposure by Elizabeth Svoboda. The article discusses online data mining that gathers details about our personal lives and habits from our online activities. It then discusses negative ways that this information can be used. I was not able to find the actual article online but Shirley Frazier discusses the article in How to Protect Yourself Against Data Mining. Also, the article can be obtained as a podcast from AIRS-LA: Audio Internet Reading Service of Los Angeles. #i3cs21

11/12/09

The format of tonight's class proved informative. It was nice to put names to a few more faces. The inner/outer circle exercise helped me gain a better of understanding of where we stood on our learning paths.
One question that I wanted to ask, but didn't ... Was it my turn to bring the food???

Google-Proof Questioning

I found this blog site called The Electric Educator while exploring all the resources out there, and it caught me as pertinent, especially since we’ve been reading on the new Bloom’s Taxonomy for the 21st Century skills. As we have all been teaching ourselves these new skills and jargon for 21C, and probably just barely on the “knowledge” level of the hierarchy, I thought that this was interesting for our own thinking and approach in the classroom. I know I have been frustrated at times by the simple “cut and paste” of many student reports, and wished I could find a way to help wean them off that approach to web research. Actually designing your activity for the higher level thinking skills and actively encouraging the students to truly research, understand, analyze and then create (synthesize) their product just makes so much more sense. I have a major project coming up, and will take a closer look at the tasks and work I am asking students to create. It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds!

A Learning Update

While I have a few minutes here at school I thought I'd share an experience yesterday in my classroom. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned a web site called www.twitter4teachers.com. Dennis also has it in his list of sites to visit.

Through that I made contact with a fellow grade 8 science teacher at the Parker Middle School in Reading, MA. He is a very enthusiastic young teacher with an awesome command of technology in the classroom. Yesterday my classes watched a live-streaming video from his classroom where his kids were doing presentations on the Seasons and the Earth/Sun relationship – topics in the Earth Science curriculum we both follow. As we watched his students present their work via the video link (www.ustream.com ), we also had the chance to ask questions via text messages from 1-2 cell phones in my classroom. The messages were sent to another site (www.wiffiti.com) where my kids could see their questions appear on the screen, and then the Reading students would answer our questions real-time. It was quite the experience for both me and my kids as I began to see the possibilities of sharing educational experiences with others, anywhere, in the world!

I had also begun to develop a working blog and website for my own use in my classroom. I am using edublogs.org as the blog development tool as it is available in most schools and gets through the firewalls. Feel free to take a look at the link….and I welcome any and all suggestions! Mr. Ruggiero's Science 8-2

Students are coming back in…time to go!

Interesting Web 2.0 Videos

I found these videos at Discovery Education to be very interesting.

They highlight some very nice tools.

MPaul Learning Log

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The digitial footprint results of this course for me are two-fold. First, I know a little more about a lot of things (Prezi, Animoto, xtranormal,...). See my hotlist of saved sites with the many additions from this course which I would get to as time permits: http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listhighschmr.html

Second, I know a lot more about one thing (blogs with g-mail and you tube added). See the blog I created for my Transitional Algebra class: http://transalg.blogspot.com/ My student blog is, in effect a hotlist with graphics and video added since I disabled the comment feature (as I also did in the my parent blog, prefering they call me), preferring the students and I talk live and that they comment, if they like, on Facebook with the other Kahn Academy users.

Certified in instructional technology since the early 2000s, I have seen the technology itself go from electronic print and graphics to that plus audio and video with the purpose then and now to enhance learning, which is fine if the district permits the technology, the technology is fast, and constructivist theory is at play.

Even without tech glitches, the old "is it or isn't it a webquest" issue remains in that: Is the technology use advancing higher level thinking? For example, is getting blog comments from overseas in and of itself diversifying thinking, if, as in the flat classroom audio comments we heard the comments consist of only praise from both near and far. On the other hand, contact is a start that can lead to tolerance then empathy, as international school speakers in the Corvino conference video explain.

My reflections below continue to reveal my viewpoint about keeping technology in its place as a medium. Overall, I am glad this technology course maintained the traditional class meeting format. Electronic class meetings or comments only are not the same, even if they don't involve travel time or class time, as a co-worker of my husband observed. The other day the receptionist at the private bank where my husband works as the mail guy, whose four courses away from a Masters of Management at Cambridge College, where he is normally one of the two or three people in a class whose first language is English, was talking to him about the University of Phoenix finance class she is taking. Her comment on the over-emphasis on online learning was "There is something missing."

CLASS 1 10/15/09 Top 3 & Kiva Reflection

* Tech Skill: Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint

* Thinking: reinforcing emotional context for math (branching off Kiva blog)

* Math: Hooda dress-up addition webpage with worksheet

Math sinks in better when there is an emotional context.

* The emotional context canrange from off-topic small topic like Ramon noodles being a favoriate after school snack which leads to students elaborating on whether they pour the water off to have noodles only, add cheese, or like the crunch of eating them raw.

* Emotional context could also be goofy metaphors to make the math stick like comapring a multi-step problem to a cement barrier with an orange detour sign making you go around the block before continuing on your destination like haviing to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the missing side to use it as the height in the area of a triangle word problem you are doing.

* Emotional context could be simultaneously emphathizing as a global citizen and empowering yourself to act as a global citizen as in the Kiva project, all the while learning. With empathy itself being a worthwhile skill to develop such reeal-time math in the real-world develops amth and altruism.

However, as George Washington concluded when trying to motivate soldiers, interest outways altruism as a long-term motivator. Therefore, even if students were not particularly motivated by the social justice angle to Kiva math, as some of the post's comments indicated, the students' interest in getting a good math grade would motivate them to engage in the Kiva content, possibly deriving the humantarian added-benefit.

CLASS 2 10/20/09 Top 3 Preconceptions about Creativity and Innovation

* Learning: hybrid (online and in-person) learning enacts collaboration usefully, such as, watching blogging tutorials as a group with instructor

* Tech skill: signing up for g-mail e-mail for this tech exploration, first using it for You Tube sign up then for blogger signup

* Thinking: seeing "Engage Me" about UK students wanting to use their tech formats for schoolwork

CLASS 3 10/29/09 Top 3 How Communication/Critical Thinking/Problem-Solving Different from Past: Problem Solving and Critical Thinking

* Tech Skill: stuggles of copy-pasting Word to blog

* Tech Skill: Diigo as site to use tags to store sites and tags usefulness for group research

* Thinking: When taking an interest in student's day, ask "What did you do that was creative today?"

ESSAY: A $1 video from Redbox, "Adoration," turned out to be about technology on the knowledge and self-knowledge levels and about what happensa when a virtual extension in the classroom impacts a teacher's job evaluation.

Knowledge-wise, the movie showcases the main character's using a chatroom of nine on-screen faces. Similarly, an older generation of nine chat faces also advance the movie's plot.

Self-knowledge-wise, in the special features of the DVD the film director elaborates on his movie's main theme, which that is while technology, from recording video comments of a soon-to-be-deceased relative or listening to chat rooms of your peers or of your peers' parents, gives a person more perspectives to think about, as Mike Welsh also emphasizes in his display of Web 2.0 technology's changing how we think, ultimately, however, since the virtual world offers no follow-up caring, working through intra- and inter-personal conflicts continues to occur only in the real world.

The impact on teacher's job evaluation results from how the peer and parent chat rooms come about in response to a student's posting ideas that are an offshoot about a foreign language-poetry-drama class assignment. The teacher in the film was held to task for her high school student's extrapolating the assignment to the virtual world, where distortions occurred, though while not her intent, the distortions' impacting her job evaluation.

Therefore, while knowing how to use the latest technology for fun and for school is useful to gain perspective, ultimately all real growth continues to occur within one's self. Furthermore, others' commenting via technology can present a distorted view of a teacher's assignment, their generating virtual evidence that can effect a teacher's job evaluation.

CLASS 4: 11/12/09 Top 4 Preconceptions about Creativity and Innovation

* Tech Skill: MAP: 'pe-chak-cha' info--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha - 5-minute slide show format

* Tech Skill: MAP: Making Movies--http://www.xtranormal.com/ - Write summaries in cartoon format.

* Tech Skill: MAP: Photostory Tutorial--http://millie.furman.edu/mll/tutorials/photostory3/index.htm - MS SW to merge text and photos

* Tech Skill: MAP: Screened Sites--http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/ - Like Google custom for pre-screened student web searches

10. Cyberternity: Producer Emily Voigt tells a story about a guy named Wyatt, fixed in time. --http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/18

ESSAY: Creativity & Information Literacy

A NPR broadcast profiled views on how that when we die, those we have left behind may go through our hardcopy belongings and papers, but how will they get our passwords to take care of the electronic information we leave behind and in some cases, continue to appear to still generate once we are gone? Items to consider are how to put into persepctive out-of-synch messages from the dead, so to speak, as well as how to forward to your heirs your e-info.

Messages from the Dead: In her short story about people living in "cyberternity," the author explores the various reactions loved ones who receive e-messages from deceased loved ones who at an earlier age, at least earlier than the time of their deaths, wrote messages that they timed to be sent at a future date, years later, for example, when they, the senders, would be not only older but would presumably also have revised views since their younger days even as you, the recipient, conceptulize a deceased loved one as now being older, in synch with your won parallel growth, so that the message that pops up is disconcertedly from the younger them.

Is receiving such as electronic message comforting (receiving an additional thought from one you loved) or disturbing (getting a disorganized message whose content no longer reflects what the deceased person's real-time, so to speak, age and current thought would be)?

E-Access to Passwords for Deceased: Fee-based web companies exist that will store your electronic password information to forward it upon your death to those you had designated. Customers who have faked their death date test out the site to make sure it works as promised.

CLASS 5 11/24/09 Media Literacy

For people with access to and knowledge of the technology to engage with the current media literacy tools, of course, it's fun and fast; plus, it brings people together virtually, verbally, and pictorally. Issues would be 1) the have-nots feeling left out and 2) as with chat rooms, even with sincere comments, the conatct is just virtual, like on an acquaitance level, even with voice tone and non-verbal gestures transmitted electronically. As the director of the movie "Adoration" said in its special features, human issues still need to be worked out in real time within and between humans sans the technology of the era.

CLASS 7: 01/14/09 Top 4

* iTunes University warehouse of high-quality ed videos

* Slideshare to get embed code for PowerPoint presentations ao can upload them to blog

* Conceptual Age, Dan Pink's addressing right-brain six-senses emphasis (design not function, story not argument, symphony not focus, empathy not logic, play not seriousness, meaning not accumumlation) as abundance drives and for future jobs demand

* Social Networking sites for educational purposes: how Moodle changed font given teacher requests; also, need to consider district policy, teacher skill, student access, appeal to nonconformist students

K-12 ONLINE CONFERENCE OBSERVATIONS

1 & 2 of 4) TWO KIM CORVINO VIDEOS

Kim Corvino's 2008 "Connecting Across Continents" and 2009 "Going Global" presentations emphasize that teachers can use technology to engage students in online projects that are not just in the classroom but that are global. The purpose is a non-tech, age-old one: to build tolerance through exposure that can with maturity develop into empathy and appreciation through reflection.

While this noble goal makes learning the technology to implement it via online means a tempting carrot, some cautions exist regarding 1) the consequences to self-perception of too much global learning especially for those who do it physically ("third culture kids") and 2) an overemphasis on high-tech flashy and soundbite learning and an under-influence on what can be said for reading and reflection that requires a comfort-level with solitude.

Too much exposure to too many cultures, especially that when done from physically spending years in a variety of places, can leave people feeling "I didn't fit in with either culture," also stated as belonging to all and none, feeling connected but not belong.

To avoid the sense of alienation from multi-cultural overload, using global online projects offers a moderated alternative that is technology-dense, creating time demands, as in our 3Cs course, just to learn the technology in order to apply it. Future teaching will demand it; however, by then many teachers now will be retired and the new crop of teachers like Kim in her 30s and those even younger coming up will have grown up with the technology, so the tech-learning curve for them will be less of a time-eater, allowing them to give their students this safer-to-the-psyche-than-living-there exposure to other cultures. Even the presentation quality of Kim, whose a tech specialist, improve dramatically between the 2008 and 2009 conferences. Simultaneously, this new batch of teachers will be fluent not only in technology but also in another language or two, itself learned through effective technology venues.

Nonetheless, all is not lost for those teachers low on the technology learning curve since there remains something to be said for books and time to think, which both entail a comfort level with time alone, itself a skill worth developing and which needs to be done largely unplugged. Books, such as. "Eat, Pray, Love," a memoir of a budget-world traveler divorce, and ""First Came Love, than Came Malaria," a memoir of a Peace Corp volunteer's life with her husband, himself a Peace Corps and CARE employee, in South America, Africa, and the Middle East rivals for ex-pat life insights those from the international school experience, a "gated community" version of multi-cultural immersion as experienced by the student relocated from an American suburb to a Swiss one.

While using technology in the classroom requires learning time for this generation of teachers plus involves a host of district access problems, such global online projects are a safer-to-the-psyche way than physically living long-term in multiple cultures. Still derived from such projects, as also from books, is the tolerance building that leads to empathy and appreciation, arrived at through a comfort level with solitude, tolerating and appreciating time alone itself being a necessary skill set.

SOURCE: Kim Corvino Wiki Resources--http://going-global.wikispaces.com/Resources which includes Collaborative Projects Links--http://going-global.wikispaces.com/Resources#toc14 which itself includes 'Connecting Across Continents' Sample Collaborative Projects--http://globallyconnectedproj.wikispaces.com/ which eventually leads to an explanation of the collaborative project; 'Connecting Across Continents' Explanation Video--http://k12onlineconference.org/?p equals 335 but the actual project is , 'The Reading Connection' [K-6]--thereading connection.wikispaces.com

CLASS 8 01/28/09

STUDENT TECH PLAN INPUT

About students' having input into district tech plans since a discoonect exists bewteen how they use technology on their own versus in or for school ... as the new guard of teachers who use tech tools as comfortably as the alphabet or the times table become the teachers and administrators writing the district tech plans over the next decade, tech plans, still written by teachers and maybe still without student input, will, nonetheless, better match student use of technology in school with student use of technology out of school.

Furthermore, even if survey tools allow student input to district tech plan surveys, independent of technology, the issue of a child's view not being as comprehensive as that of a grown-up makes the child's view of lesser weight, allowing them to be kids without shouldering the adult burden of the import of decision-making about district tech plans. Just because technology might make all votes appear equal, they are not.

TWITTER'S USEFULNESS AND LONGEVITY

About the NY Times Twitter article, it seems it is a handy screening and linking tool to get current useful info. Plus, it does encourage being succinct. However, ironically, while hours can go by using it, it enourages lack of patience with listening to an individual develop an idea over pages and pages or minutes and minutes.

CONFERENCE VIDEO #3: BLOGS IN EFL CLASSROOM
Students, with varying degrees of participation and skill, as in any other assignment, used blogs both to learn how to use them and to better learn a foreign language, the blog's providing both forum for prolonged and varied discussion.

CONFERENCE VIDEO #4: PEEK INTO ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM HEAVILY USING ELECTRONICS--
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=553
With only three student computers, this creative, organized, and tech-savy teacher provides second graders with traditional and digital skills. Includes some helpful references for practicing math operations (the tutpup website), spelling (spelling city.com), or keyboarding (dancenet typing site). Shows not just what's out there but what is being done for enhancing learning by using tech (limited hardware but extensive web links) in classroom.

MISCELLANEOUS COMMENT: While listening to the BBC, my husband told me how a flood trapped thousands of tourists at a famous but remote Inca site in Peru. While some were able to be helicoptered out, the BBC asked the stranded tourists to e-mail them about being a tourist stranded by a flood at an ancient ruin with help eventually, weather-permitting, on the way. Therefore, as the "Adoration" director would say, technology made interesting insights available. However, the tourists themselves, who sent e-mail to the BBC or not, were still humans dealing with the intra- and inter-personal fears and discomforts of Nature's making them stranded in an uninhabited but historical jungle with mostly strangers.

My thoughts on Kim Cofin's quote

Issac Newton said: " If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." I believe collaboration is key to education and learning. I am lucky to work with highly qualified and creative people in the math department at Silver Lake. As a team we were able to bring our MCAS scores up 9.5 points from the previous year. This class is the perfect example of collaboration at work. Several of my building colleaques are in the class and we connect regularly, give support and encouragement when needed. I am privileged to be able to stand on the shoulders of many giants in my department. ~(thank you Joe, Pam, Steve and Laurie)

Comment on Ken Robinson's video clip

I just watched the Ken Robinson video clip. I enjoyed it but do not totally agree that schools are killing creativity. As an educator I feel my creative wings have been clipped. While at Silver Lake I have worked under four principals, each bringing their own flavor to the building. We have also suffered budget cuts. Luckily we have had our math and ELA coordinators reinstated and although one does not like the watchful eyes they have, it is comforting to know they are first in the line with the MCAS firing squad.
Perhaps I should address the elephant in the room now, I refer to MCAS. Let me just say I am not a fan of it. I think it stifles my teaching and the creativity of students. You are not suppose to teach to the test but I do, we all do. I believe it causes more stress for me than it does the student. I agree there needs to be some accountability but I find it ironic that we are taught to teach one way yet we test another way. Ken Robinson says that "creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value." Scott Adams says "creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes." MCAS testing seems to stifle creativity, not our schools and teachers.