Ed Tech at NTHS

Reson why I teach

2006-12-10T23:29:00.000-05:00

There is a reason I teach math. I thank Georgevaccaro for his wonder full post (See http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/) for giving my students a web project for the week.

Other than that I'm speechless as to the math error.

CECA Breakout

2006-10-29T22:21:00.000-05:00

I was a participant in Clint Kennedy’s last presentation at CECA and have finally found some time to blog my response. First, it was a wonderful session, very thought provoking and enlightening; I was also relieved to hear others with similar web 2.0 concerns.

I was disappointed that the CECA session ended so quickly as we were just beginning to enter some important topics, chief among them that I fear in my school is the impact of software patents, such as blackboards and now IBM’s (although I’m not completely clear if IBM’s will impact education). I currently have a Drupal site (www.mrseal.org), independent of my school, for my classes (a novelty for my students, and administrators). My fear is I’ll not be allowed to continue because of the threat of litigation regardless of how preposterous that threat may be.

And that’s just the beginning without even mentioning DOPA…..

Technorati Tags: ceca2006 ceca06

Textbooks in public ed?

2006-10-29T21:51:00.000-05:00

A month ago (giver or take) Clint Kennedy posted some interesting questions in his blog.

What if teachers and administrators used some/all of their PD days to prepare materials for students? They could use web resources, existing texts, each other, etc. They could publish this content online, as paper copies, via a blog or email or even a wiki. Students and teachers could then add/modify these resources over the course of the year/years.

In thinking about these an as I’m enrolled in classes at UCONN, I realized this is already happening with some higher education courses. Many teachers are finding articles and using them in classes, and the nice ones are giving full references for students to locate the digital copies themselves and save on buying the textbooks. I’m in my final year as a master’s candidate and have had to buy relatively few books, but have megabits of digital paper as references.

As will most technologies changes, most of the changes happen at the top, the real question is how do we help facilitate it downward?

K12online initial reflections

2006-10-18T23:58:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed the Keynote address by David Warlick and the examples. I'll be listening again on my commute and will continue to post reflections here. I also cannot wait for Monday's conference here in Connecticut.

First thoughts are the analogy to the rails was excellent, one I hope to use with administration (all levels) that have not caught the vision of these powerful tools.

Technorati Tags: k12online06 k12online

Citation Machine

2006-10-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

David Warlick in his 2 cents blog gave me more than 2 cents worth of help when his son needed help with citations for social studies and created Son of Citation Machine a simple tool to keep track of the mundane tasks of creating a citation page. He even created it for multiple formats (APA and CMS to name just two). Very nice. Thanks David.

School 2.0 Brainstorm - excellent start

2006-10-12T20:12:00.000-04:00

What a powerful concept, just looking at this and I want to move here, to teach, raise my family, and belong to this community.

School 2.0 - Join the Conversation States "School 2.0 is a brainstorming tool" well it got my brain storming.

How pervasive is the web?

2006-10-11T06:06:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about my research question and took a step back to realize, what if only a small portion of the working world actually needs the web to complete there work? Specifically what about the trade technologies, do they really need and use the web? Is it web 2.0 or 1.0 that they are using? Could a high school graduate of 2007 find a job that they would not need the computer and internet?

Just some thoughts to guide my research focus.

Possible Research Question

2006-10-07T22:33:00.000-04:00

After looking at Directory of open access journals I started thinking, do we really know How accepted are online open access journal's? Who really is using them, and how they relate to their print "accepted" counter parts?

Just thoughts to consider.

By the way, I really love the ease of bloging this new Diingo allows.

Diingo - WoW!

2006-10-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

Social Annotation: Seamless Integration of Social Bookmarking, Web Highlighter, Sticky-Note & Clipping

This is a powerful tool I just found thanks to a posting at edtechtalk . Can't wait to start using it!

DOPA reaches US News and World Report

2006-09-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

In a myspace article in US News and World Report, the "main-stream" media is finally seeing the impact of the DOPA legislation on education. I particularly like the articles experts talking about the positive nature of social networking and allowing students to interact.

"We want them to be able to make these judgments when they get outside,"says Gustavson. The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, which passed the House of Representatives in July, would make blocking of these sites at public schools and libraries mandatory. Although the law's intention is to protect minors from sexual solicitations or suggestive material, many experts believe it is written too broadly and will obstruct many useful sites. And they also argue that banning the sites from the very locations where there are adults present to monitor kids' online activities is a mistake. "If we lock these sites out of the schools, adults are turning their backs on kids and making them deal with these issues on their own," says Henry Jenkins, codirector of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I too have been wondering when as educator we will have our hands loosed and be allowed to teach students to use these tools safely, effectively to learn. After all, as it states in US New "kids" are using social networking sites. They will continue, despite all parental and governmental attempts to stop it.

Just the other day we had an incident at our school of inappropriate web use, and the feeling was if it was reported to the district one more potentially valuable website (it was a search engine) would be blocked (as so much of it is already).

Way to go US News and World Report!

Up and running

2006-09-06T21:01:00.000-04:00

School started and with it all the stresses of a new year and yet I seem to be adding more things to do to my plate. Yet I'm still working towards my masters and narrowing my research question down to a sizeable finshable amount. I'm taking a qualitative course from a wonderful professor who is challenging my quantitative training.

We read a provocative article by Tom Barone titled, "Making Educational History: Qualitative Inquiry, Artistry, and the Public Interest" found in and edited volume. In the article Barone discusses the need to move research audiance from talking to themselves and to talk to practictioners aka teachers. He states, "I am imagining research projects that reach out to an audience that trancends one consisting only of collegues and those alternative readers and viewers" (P. 219). Doesn't this sound like the web 2.0 world of publishing? This is the type of research I'm interested in and hope to conduct.

Found a ref list

2006-06-20T15:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a nice ref. list, haven't checked all the ref's yet, but hopefully I can use some

http://blogresearch.com/ref.htm

Blogs in research

2006-06-20T15:33:00.000-04:00

After an hour or so of searching e-journals (http://www.lib.uconn.edu/) it seems very little research has been published in journals regarding blog uses in the classroom. I’m interested if any researchers are publishing work on blogs or about blogs.

I’ll follow up after more searches and let you know.

My Ed Tech History

2006-06-16T23:58:00.000-04:00

I began teaching six years ago in a very different environment. As I've moved from school to school and state to state I have seen the impact different environments have upon students, especially with regards to technology.

My first teaching assignment was in Utah for where I got experience in classroom management and started my experimentation with technology. I vividly remember creating PowerPoint slides and connecting two and then three televisions together for maximum viewing by my junior high students. Additionally I remember the TI graphing calculators made available to evaluate for a month with students. I was new to teaching and very unsure of my abilities, my technological prowess, and myself as a teacher. I was fortunate to meet colleagues who guided me through the year and helped me begin to learn the profession of teaching. I remain in contact with my wonderful department head, who still teaches in the same district.

My next teaching assignment was in a rural high school in Hollister, California. I made the giant leap from a safe middle school environment to a “scary” high school of over 2500 students. It turned out to be another valuable lesson in educational technology. I began teaching with TI graphing calculators in Algebra and saw success when students began to understand difficult concepts because they had the tools of technology. I also published my grades and grade book online for students and parents to access. This provided a needed communication tool between my students, parents and me. The rural nature of the large high school and the digital divide of my students caused me to reflect on the importance of technology and the need for educators to teach students skills both in a disciple (like mathematics) and necessary to gain employment upon graduation.

While the weather was wonderful, and northern California is a beautiful place to live, I needed to achieve the American dream of home ownership not readily available to beginning public school teachers in California. I moved to Connecticut and began teaching at a very different rural high school on a university campus. While the digital economic divide so prevalent in California was smaller, I found many of the same technological difficulties. I needed to find my school as a teacher, one with an administration willing to take technological risks and allow me flexibility to experiment with new technologies. I learn much about the politics of high school and the value of small class sizes. I saw how technology coupled with small class sizes and appreciation from administration could really impact students. Yet I didn’t feel I belonged to the faculty; I again went searching for additional teaching positions this time within the same state, Connecticut.

My third teaching year was back at a middle school that truly believed in the middle school philosophy of teaming. I as a math teacher, together with two English teachers, a science teacher, a history teacher, and a French teacher, worked as a team with 100 or so students. We met as a team daily to discuss curriculum and student achievements, accomplishments and problems. It was here at the middle school I gained the understanding of how teaching doesn’t need to be in isolation. The teaming atmosphere showed me how one and one is more than two as the power of the team inspires greatness. I continued to try to understand how technology could enhance education, utilizing all available tools but felt frustrated and limited by the ever presence school budget with it’s strict limits on technology spending especially by new teachers.

Connecticut funds education mainly at the town level. This fact causes much stress to local administrators who must determine budgets based on voter approval. I was the newest math teacher and told in March the budget may need to be trimmed and my position could be eliminated. This instability frightened me as my dream of homeownership had just begun and I needed to keep making mortgage payments. Once again, I began the search for a school I could excel and help students yet would meet my financial needs. I found the Connecticut Technical High School System (CTHSS) and a position as a Math Lab instructor. The school climate including teachers and administrators seemed right, the resources were available, and I finally felt like I had a school where I could “begin” my career. The next two years I spend building my teaching skills utilizing technology. Again, I had availability to teach with PowerPoint slides, graphing calculators with overhead units were available and I succeeded in garnering donated computers to enhance my classroom (although these came at the end of the year and I have yet to teach with them).

Thus, I arrive at today. I have been appointed chairperson of the technology school improvement committee. This team works with the “big chairs” committee on a school improvement plan to help teachers in all areas of teaching from technology (my committee) to curriculum, to professional development and to school safety.

I also during the last two years have been working towards a master’s degree in learning technologies at the University of Connecticut (UCONN). I see the blogosphere, together with podcasting as a place destine to change education and the impact it is having in many classrooms, yet if these new technologies are used at my school I have not heard it.

Over this summer (2006) I will develop a plan of study for my masters thesis. As a classroom teacher and master’s candidate I want to know how new media can help teaching, specifically math teachers. I see very positive uses in History, English, and even science. It is difficult to find meaningful uses for podcasting and blogging for the math instructor that will truly enhance the students’ experiences. Therefore, I started this my blog. I hope to get feedback initially on what other math teachers are doing with blogs and/or podcasting. As technology committee chairperson, I also would like feedback on introducing these new media to the faculty and administration. I will be presenting my ideas and thoughts as I plan for next year.

At UCONN I’ve studied various models of learning. One that I think is of importance to the blogosphere is social cognitive theory. This theory (which I’ll attempt to explain later) states that knowledge is created in social networks. I believe the medium of blogging can create that network. I await comments.

Introduction

2006-06-16T22:14:00.000-04:00

As a public teacher at a technical high school and the technology chairperson next year, I thought I better start my own blog, and try and master this exciting media. Then I can hopefully bring it to my school.... more later.