Lee Ann Spillane's Posts - Classroom 2.0

Feeds

2008-11-03T11:42:22.000Z

My friend Ryan once told me, "it's all about feeds." This was probably 2 years ago and we were talking about Web 2.0 things and the semantic web--ideas which like cloud computing are a stretch for my imagination, even now. I understand more about feeds, but I'm no expert. When I subscribe to a feed, content is delivered to me or more specifically to my reader. My reader, in my case, Google Reader, brings all of my feeds together in one spot: customizable content, automatically updated.
This morning I made my first blogroll using my feeds. A blogroll is posted to a website or blog and it shows readers the blogs to which you subscribe and read. I have been listing blogs by hand in a link widget from Blogger--definitely old school. I just didn't understand the power of the feed. I have many a blog socked away into my Google Reader: edublogs, mommy blogs, artist blogs and the like. Today I learned how to use tags/folders to get them a bit more organized. It was a simple step to go from organizing to sharing. You know my fondness for "omatic" web tools, screencast-o-matic being the first among them. Well, Google might not have the o-matic moniker, but it sure made creating a blog roll easy, once I read a quick how to.

So now, the Portable Teacher teaching blog that I started this fall with a few friends, has an automatically updating blogroll. How cool is that?

Listening In

2008-07-01T20:00:00.000Z

I'm working on a curriculum project, Plugged-In to Nonfiction with my literacy mentor, Janet Allen, this week, so I was not able to go to San Antonio for NECC. However, I have been dipping in as often as possible and I was thrilled to listen in to Chris Lehmann's session this afternoon.

School is real life. Sometimes, if we're really being honest, it doesn't seem like it. When my first grader brings home worksheet after worksheet of math facts I wonder. Surfing new blogs recently I cam across this by Christopher Johnson. What do we want? What do students need to know and be able to do? Once we begin to talk honestly and to define that, how do we make it happen? And not just happen for one classroom or one teacher or one department or a few schools, but happen everywhere so that when my son gets to high school I know he will be changing himself and the world in which we live. That kind of shift, monumental as it is, is what I want.

Tag Galaxy

2008-06-27T11:21:35.000Z

cross posted on my personal blog Pink Stone Days

Alan Levine posted a Tag Galaxy picture collage about China on his blog which motivated me to check out the new-to-me web 2.0 app. You type in a tag and Tag Galaxy creates a visual, moving, 3-D galaxy of options for you to browse. Click on a planet in the galaxy (labeled with a category) to view that group of images. I almost didn't get to the pictures because I had so much fun playing around with the moving Galaxy. Once you click the planet 'o pictures, you can click each picture to see it full screen. It reminded me of Jeff Han's TED demonstration:

"Jeff Han shows off a cheap, scalable multi-touch and pressure-sensitive computer screen interface that may spell the end of point-and-click."

I created a Tag Galaxy image of Sanibel where I'll be heading on Saturday to work on the next level of Janet Allen's Plugged-In to Reading. Of course, the work doesn't look like my Galaxy images, it looks more like the picture below, but still... the island is an amazing place to be

Wordle Cloud

2008-06-27T11:00:00.000Z

cross posted on my personal blog Pink Stone Days

Wordle is a online application that makes word clouds. You know me and my word art, so this is just so cool. You can type in your own words and it will arrange them or if you use delicious , you can allow wordle to make a tag cloud out of your bookmarks. For those who've never heard of delicious, it's a social bookmarking tool. You post your "favorites" or bookmarks to your delicious page. Why? Because then they are not computer dependent; you can access them from any computer in the world that has an internet connection. Plus you can network in delicious. Once you add folks to your network, you have access to the bookmarks they are posting too! And they are are searchable, organizable, etc. Delicious, like so many Web 2.0 tools, comes with its own vocabulary. When you post a site (bookmark) to your Delicious page, you add tags to the bookmark.

Tags tell a reader/user what category or categories the bookmark falls into; for instance, if I were to bookmark my own blog, I might tag it personal-blogs or family-blogs or just blogs. You create your tag thus creating your own organizationl system for your bookmarks. Tags that have a lot of bookmarked entries are bigger and darker in color that tags containing fewer bookmarks, so you can see when you look at a tag cloud, bookmarking and interesting trends. Here's my Delicious tag cloud that I created in Wordle. Click it to see the large version at Wordle. Can you tell what my interests are lately?

Learning Live Online

2008-05-28T18:30:00.000Z

I'm still chuckling about last night's Second Life session. Jane Krauss asks audience members to raise their hands and what do I do? Jump up and down. Ah well, I'm new, a newbie as they say and I have a lot to learn in Second Life and in the Web 2.0 world. Everyone begins somewhere, right? I'm glad that I can laugh about it--and share the funny stories with the teacher next door to me at school, Tim.

Today I participated in a Classroom 2.0 LIVE conversation with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay who spoke about their Flat Classroom Project as well as other keys to digital collaboration. Just before the program began, the moderator, Steve Hargadon acknowledged the waiting participants and announced the start time, "we'll begin in four minutes", "we'll start in 2 minutes." It was a count down, remniscent of a launch to me. The analogy got me thinking about how learning in a Web 2.0 environment is similar to a rocket launch; I've certainly launched myself into learning with them.

Today's session was quite different from last night's session primarily because of the platform. Elluminate was easy to use with less physical interaction than SL. There are no avatars or moving parts in Elluminate just slide sharing, chat and voice. Still, that's plenty. The multi-tasking still amazes me: listening, chatting, responding, visiting web links and viewing.

I'm starting to get a sense of Personal Learning Networks and how to build one. In terms of my PLN, I am starting to recognize names across social networks and lists. When online I'll find myself thinking, oh that's so and so from my Classroom 2.0 network, or that's such and such from Twitter or the Blogosphere. It's coming together, but I need to do more reading.

After the Elluminate session today I heard from Ruthi, also a participant in the session. In the chat she mentioned connecting with a classroom and I sent my email to her. I imagine that's how you begin, right? Jump in with someone who is willing to talk and plan a project with you. Ruthi teaches English as a foreign language at a school in Jerusalem. We emailed after the session and then skyped together. We had a nice conversation. I just can hardly believe I was speaking a teacher in Israel about possibly collaborating. As Vicki Davis said "this flat world still amazes me."

First Foray into Second Life

2008-05-28T01:04:55.000Z

I now have a Second Life. In SL I'm Ernestine Snoodle. Tonight I went to a presentation on Project Based Learning given by Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss. I enjoyed it and it was quite interesting, but I'm somewhat overwhelmed by what I need know how to do in SL. It took me quite a while to figure out just how to sit down at the amphitheater and forget learning how to raise my hand during the presentation, instead I accidentally jumped up in the air when I tried to follow the commands people were sharing in the chat. Opps. I have a lot of questions about how to move around in SL. After the presentation I wandered into the ISTE headquarters building and started hearing voices of people talking around me, but I couldn't really see them. Hmm... I don't want to be a lurker, but I'm not sure where your SL person goes when you quit or log off. Do you store your person somewhere? I've definitely got some reading and figuring out to do.

New Literacies?

2008-05-27T12:30:00.000Z

I'm not an educational technologist, not by training, but I do love to share what I learn with other teachers and show them how they can use digital tools in their classroom to build literacy. This year in the Reading Writing Center I did a lot of that. If the RWC is truly a literacy-rich place where I demonstrate best practice literacy instruction then it makes sense to incorporate the "new literacies." Ewan McIntosh twitted a question about new literacies this morning asking if Twitter would be considered a new literacy. First I found myself thinking about what mcIntosh and others mean by "new literacies."

I favor Elliott Eisner's definition of literacy as the ability to encode and decode symbolic forms used in a culture. Encode means to produce, like producing content for a traditional school assignment or for the web. We can encode an algebraic expression, sales tax percentages, persuasive speeches, letters, essays and more. We can also encode web content. Blogging and twittering are just two examples of this process. Decode means to make sense of to understand and mine meaning from. We decode language both spoken and written as well as tactile, visual and audio information. Aren't decoding and encoding the essence of Web 2.0, the read/write web?

If I'm using Eisner's definition of literacy then I'm standing under a fairly large umbrella. One that sees literacy as a thinking process one applies to an infinite number of texts. In my mind then, Twitter isn't a "new literacy." It is a symbolic form of Web 2.0 culture. It's a product or a Web 2.0 text type. If it's a text type then I need to teach students how to read it just as I'd teach students how to read the dictionary using guide words or how to make sense of a map. The other half of that lesson is teaching students how to apply what they learned by teaching them how to create their own text, a map, dictionary, delicious page or twitter spot. Decoding and encoding. Does that make sense?

It's Not About the Tool

2008-03-13T23:42:56.000Z

I'm listening to and watching a presentation Will Richardson gave at Manhattan High School yesterday I wish I could tag the video and write notes (tag) in places as I watch it like you can on Viddler which Ryan showed me the other day.

[Twitter Moment: I couldn't remember the name of the taggable, shareable video site and unfortunately I didn't post it to my delicious, so I just sent Ryan a message via my new Twitter network. He replied within minutes. Incredible.]

Richardson says we should start with what teachers love to teach and then find what tool fits it. He goes on with words that really stopped me in my tracks:

We've been doing this the wrong way for about 30 years. Come and learn wikis. Come and learn blogging. Come and learn podcasting. We should have said, 'what do you love to teach?' The next question I would ask and see if we got any traction is 'where do your kids struggle the most in the
curriculum'? . . . We can't have technology lead staff development.

That's a lot to think about especially after the series of Tech Thursdays I've just finished. Hmmm... When you're a beginner, what do you begin with? For those newly invited to the techno-party, where do they start?

What happens after HE helps the teacher select the tool after the teachers divulge what they love to teach. What happened to teaching a man to fish? What happens when you let the kids dive in to the tools themselves? Is this empowering or disempowering teachers? I have to listen more and read more before I speak out of turn, but I do know that as a learner and a teacher, I have to be doing it-. Like walking the talk or showing students by example that I value something (reading, assignment, tool, whichever) . I have to know how to post to a blog, or comment on a wiki or record using Audacity in order to help my students when they don't know what to do. I just have to--that's the reality of my classroom where only 1 out of more than 400 students had ever used Audacity before this year and that is me as a learner.

Blogs, Phones

2008-03-13T10:00:00.000Z

I noticed something the other day. Try not to laugh, but I think the light went on in terms of tags. I use tags, though I think mine are a bit random, but as I was reading Will Richardson's blog the other day I started to see how many people's tags fit together. Just a small ah-ha I suppose. How much time does it take folks to cull through tags. I'm thinking of David Warlick's August presentation here in Orange County . He asked the audience to tag any blog entries we wrote about his presentation with David Warlick, literacy and something I've now forgotten. I had just started my Classroom 2.0 tech-thinking blog at that time. Who invited me here?

On another note, I've been blog surfing. Skimming and reading what interests me. I want to make a chart to sum up what I've learned about blogs and bloggers-- I acknowledge the nerdiness LOL, but I'm thinking it might be useful to use w/ teachers at school and my own teacher friends (the geese).

I finished Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools. It's a good starting place for teachers I think. I wish I had read it a year ago, simply because much of the step-by-step instruction (for Audacity for instance) is something I already know. The classroom examples, especially the blog that Sue Monk Kidd participated on (in?) with students fascinates me. I am still having problems with my students and blogging.

The service learning blog that I set up is really just me delivering the same-old-same-old via a blog and reading it online instead of on paper. Perhaps that 's just one step on the teaching continuum or teaching with technology continuum (because surely now, that one will parallel the other)? There are a few differences though: students can comment, students can link to new content, etc. They just aren't doing it... yet.

I started this posting thinking about two things:
1. edublogs I've been reading
2. links to postings that illustrate instructional cell phone usage Alice Bedard-Voorhees

Letting Them Show What They Know

I want to go back to that later. Bedard-Voorhees also sent a link to her Rocky Mountain Ride blog postings which she said shows pictures sent from phone to blog. I need to try to do that. Hmm... how? I imagine it's about finding the right code to text the pictures to, right?

Creating a Class Blog

2008-02-25T19:16:01.000Z

Using a blog with my service learning students has been a challenge. I want to say failure, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Besides, failure is something to celebrate (like in Meet the Robinsons)--failure means there are lessons to be learned!

What's gone wrong? Here's the short list (warning to fellow English teachers, these will not be parallel or grammatically correct):

Students don't understand the difference between a blog post and a comment.
Students can not figure out how to log in.
Blogger.com is accessible from school, but not Gmail which students must have in order to have a blogger.com authorship account.
Names are not on posts
All150 students were posting comments to the same blog in random order
Students are posting but not talking to each other.
Students know how to log in but don't remember their password.
Students don't read what is on the screen in front of them.

What's working?
Many students are posting.
I can post content for students to view/read and then have them respond to it.
With students listed as authors on class period blogs we can now dialog or post comments to each others' writings.
Entries or posts are time and date stamped.
Assignments are available 24/7 .

I know what I want out of class blog: discussion, dialogue, resources and links we can visit and discuss. I want a class blog to live as an online version of our classroom--filled with a variety of resources and reflecting rich student work. The trick is teaching students how to do it or how to develop problem solving attitudes so that they are not flummoxed and shut down by log-in or other issues.

Our class blog is titled, At Your Service . Eventually, I would like to restructure how my service learning classes are run, so that we really are studying issues and creating projects to address them-- the class blog would become the space where we could trace, keep and reflect on our work.

I reviewed blog posting again today. We'll see what happens.

What happened to January?

2008-02-08T11:47:56.000Z

It's February and I missed posting here in January. I've lived the busy teacher's life since returning from winter break. It's been a whirlwind.

I can't access this blog from school and perhaps that's why I'm writing less, but I do want to continue to note and journal about the technologies I'm trying and how they are affecting student engagement and my own practice. So, what's changed? What's new this month? In terms of my practice, I started a blog and a wiki for my service learning classes. So far so good. Our blog, At Your Service, is going well. I was quite excited the first day to see the postings/comments climb as students accessed the site and posted entries from home. I introduced my second semester students to the blog the first day of the semester. We did an ice breaker writing in class based on American Express print adds. Here is one student's entry:

Denise S. 5th

Childhood Ambition:Lawyer
Fondest Memory:Going to Disney for the 1st time
Soundtrack:Chris Brown
Retreat:Bahamas
Wildest dream:Wanting to fly
Proudest Moment:Passing the FCAT after 3 times
Biggest Challenge:life
Alarm Clock:Mom
Perfect Day:Hanging out with people i love
First Job:Pizza Hut
Indulgence: Chocolate
Last purchase:Jeans$32.50
Favorite movie:The Notebook
Inspiration:Cousin
My life is amazingly crazy
My calling card is weightlifting

January 22, 2008 12:20 PM

Students will be posting weekly journal entries to the blog instead of keeping a written journal. Am I merely making the blog a pencil/paper tool? I hope not. I want students to comment on each other's writing on the blog, but I haven't figured out how to alter the blog template so that comments have comments. Does that make sense? Right now, I post a writing invitation with my example. I do it during class and students draft on paper and talk about their pieces. Then outside of class they log onto the blog and post a comment in reply to my invitation. Right now there is not another level of commenting, so we're aren't having the dialog I want to see. Hmmm...

Another issue is timeliness. I've posted 3 writing invitations so far--so that's 3 weeks with one entry a week for my service students. I give students a week to post their comment. At last count I had about 145 students. Here are how many I've had post so far.

My Life entry: 105 posts
How were your first few days? 48 posts
Prayer for the 21st Century: 34 posts

There are significantly fewer posts this week than the first week. Hmmm... One cause? Teacher absence. I was absent the second week, but I put the invitation online and thought I'd just see how many students happened upon in the course of checking the blog. My students meet with me on Mondays and then serve as student assistants in classrooms and offices across campus the rest of the week, so 48 of 145 students were checking in on the blog and posting. Of course 20 or so of those students work for me in the Reading Writing Center, so they knew I had posted an invitation because I had the opportunity to tell them on Tuesday (or throughout that week). Fuzzy math or insignificant statistical analysis leaves me thinking that at least 20 students are logging into the blog regularly. The site's statistics say it's been visited 900 some odd times-- many more times that we've met in class certainly. But how can I up the number of students writing there?

I think I get students more engaged by having them engage with each other and not me-- which perhaps can happen on the wiki in the comment section. I'm going to think about that and think about when/how I can move them there. Hmmm...

Can We Spark Innovation?

2007-12-06T00:45:59.000Z

Today I'm thinking about the digital tools I've been using lately with varying success. I'm also thinking about David Warlick's recent apology to teachers. He apologizes to teachers for talking about them to administrators and others invested in improving schools/education. Does he really apologize? His apology is for talking about teachers and "getting them to teach differently" with administrators and others-- or for reporting out conversations he's had. I think that's how he words it. I can't help but wonder about those conversations. What does he see? What do teachers and others tell him? Why does he feel guilty about telling?

What's the subtext here? One subtext is that teachers are not performing up to snuff (again). Teachers are not learning or making use of instructional technologies consistently in their classrooms. Another subtext is that teachers are unwilling to change how they teach. Are we? I'm not, but don't we have an entire segment of the profession that is or that is resistant to change?

In his post, Warlick says that we need (at least) these three things in order to teach differently:

Time to plan, collaborate, research, assess and adapt, build, and innovate (I tell them 3 to 4 hours a day — everyday).
Classrooms that are equipped for learning in an abundant information environment, rather than an information-scarce environment (This means wifi, a laptop in every teacher and learner’s hand, one or more projectors in each classroom, and access to the emerging technologies
that channel contemporary literacy).
Permission to safely innovate and facility to engage in professional conversations about the changes needed for relevant education.

One comment to his blog read joked about the plan time; no kidding , we need it. Will teachers take it? Will they be paid for it? I wonder. Without a major overhaul of the schedule, is it even feasible or is Warlick evangelizing from the ivory tower? A working high school teacher in my district starts school at 7:10 a.m. and finishes the contracted day 2:40. The half an hour after school is designated as "common plan time." How often is that used in that way? Not often enough. On that point I agree. Teachers need common planning time. They also need structure, support and supervision in order to insure such time is used wisely.
Outside of our contracted day teachers work many hours assessing students, grading papers, communicating with parents, planning lessons and the like. My school parking lot is still 1/2 full at 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon. Can you add 4 hours of common planning time to that schedule? What about family commitments? Three or four hours of common plan time everyday brings to mind utopian thinking to me. What is realistic? What can teachers take responsibility for?

In terms of equipment, I heartily agree with Warlick's recommendations. He is a visionary. If I were teaching in heaven I would live his vision. All of my students would have laptops, digital cameras or other multi-media devices with fire wires at the ready to download, upload, share and present. The reality is that my school was just rewired or retrofitted. We now are wireless school wide. We don't have enough working laptops to go around; I bring my own and share with students. We still have teachers on campus who don't have speakers or sound cards in their computers. We have teachers who don't even have working computers. With a faculty of over 200 teachers we have less than 50 LCD projectors. Equipment realities are hard to overcome in tight budget times and in large, urban school districts.

Lastly, in terms of permission to innovate. We need it. Most teachers have it though I think teachers are so used to being mandated and accounted that even when they have "permission" to innovate they fear they will be reprimanded for not following a prescribed curriculum. Part of having the permission to innovate, I think, is taking the responsibility to learn--to learn best practices that make use of new literacies to engage students in meaningful learning. Rare are the teachers who read professionally, construct instructional rationales, or feel comfortable defending their practice. When I say rare, I mean that at my school I can count on one hand the teachers that talk to me about the professional books or articles they have read within the last year. I have however met many teachers at conferences or meetings who regularly engage in this type of study and dialog--they simply don't exist in my current reality. In talking with instructional support personnel recently I was dismayed to hear that one support person felt that the magic of teaching has been lost. He related that teachers now seem unwilling to craft or design instruction, unwilling to do it for themselves or to research/read how to do it for themselves--they've lost their spark in this person's words. Innovation takes spark. Perhaps Warlick's conversations are just the spark some of us need to move us beyond rhetoric and into action.

Warlick, David. "My Apologies" 2¢ Worth. 4 December 2007. 6 December 2007. <http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/12/04/my-apologies/>.

NCTE New York & Podcasting Woes

2007-11-30T10:43:04.000Z

It's been two weeks since NCTE (National Council of Teacher's of English). Reading David Warlick's blog post this morning puts in mind of teachers using technology. Teachers who do and teachers who don't. Interesting post. Ultimately it comes down to doing your job as a teacher for Warlick. He says, " Teachers who aren’t using computers and the Internet in their classrooms with their students every day are depriving their children of the opportunity and the right to use basic literacies as working skills. You can be a good teacher an not use technology. But you’re not doing your job." How far removed from the reality of the classroom is this? How many teachers could actually use technology every day? At my school, a school with over 200 teachers and close to 4,000 students, I think we only have 45 LCD projectors installed in classrooms. We have two computer labs that are booked solid for students in reading remediation classes. Fortunately our media center has probably 50 computers available to for class use. Am I making excuses?

I don't mean to and certainly I agree with Warlick (for the most part anyway). Teachers need to use technology fluidly, seamlessly and almost unconsciously, but to do that they need to develop automaticity. I think that is part of the picture. I also think that teachers need to choose the tools that authentic instructional moments need. Technology and its use should be purposeful like reading is purposeful.

I use technology almost everyday with classes in the Reading Writing Center. The students who work in the Center are always on the computers when they do not have clients to help/coach, but the whole class demonstrations I do, do not always have a tech-piece, and at my school I'm a high end user. I am no where near Sara Kajden fluid use of Web 2.0 tools, but I aspire to be. So what's really happenening out there? How can teachers incorporate, use, model, demonstrate or make technology a daily workable skill for students if they lack equipment? or if school electronics policies exclude us from using available technologies the students have in their pockets or backpacks? Hmm.... just thinking.

On a different note, I just learned how to Skype! Skype is a free computer to computer calling program/platform. Once you sign up and download Skype you can contact other Skype members for free. If you have a webcam you can video conference. How cool is that? Kylene Beers and Bob Probst added Sara Kajden to their struggling readers session at NCTE and Kajder talked about the most amazing classrooms. Can you imagine using Skype to call authors and other experts to participate in literature circle discussions? Kajden works with a class in Virginia that does just that. It sounds incredible. I can't wait to become one of the million plus subscribers to their literature circle podcasts in iTunes!

Errrgggg... Techno-Frustration

2007-10-19T10:57:26.000Z

Well, last month's attempt to embed video into my blog post obviously did not work. I thought about editing the entry today. Cleaning it up. Sweeping away all the code. I stopped myself as I deleted paragraphs, changed words and erased the codes. Why not leave it? Leave it so that I can learn from it. Obviously I didn't embed the code correctly. So, I went searching for solutions and posts with answers. I've found a few but am still reading.

And reading, and reading... that is one thing about web 2.0 tools. As you're learning you read a lot. What are the implications for students? There are tremendous implications for students that are struggling readers--the practice, actual reading time and practice, with authentic text(s) of interest and practical use to students. I read to search and seek solutions to tech problems I have or to tech topics I want to learn.

That frame of mind--that constant reading, seeking, writing/processing, and searching is what I want to teach students. I want to teach students (and teachers) to set their tech-frustrations and fears aside and simply go exploring. It is by play that I've learned on the computer--through exploration, trial and error.

How do I teach that to students? Many of the students that work in the Reading Writing Center have that habit of mind; many are problem solvers or problem seekers (my thinking for the curious that create tech-challenges for themselves so that they can learn to conquer them). I'm a seeker. And right now I should get back to it--figure out how to get the video to embed correctly and appear as a play screen in my post. Errggg.

Video, Instruction and Problem-Solving

2007-09-07T01:27:55.000Z

What are your three words? That's a question I want to ask my students. I can't wait to show them this video--when I first saw it, I immediately thought of my service learning students. How could three words change your world? or someone else's? What three words would share? I'd use the video clip as a hook, then we would write. Then I would show them how I might create my own "y3w" piece. Then I would invite them to create their own. Then I would teach them or show them the tools they could use to create their pieces: iMovie, Movie Maker, iPhoto, or PhotoStory. Oh the possibilities!

IWho knew there were so many instructional possibilities lurking out there on the web? recently graduated to DSL from dial up. I admit it. I was late zoomer. Not by choice, but by location. We live in the country. We lack infrastructure. We don't even get cable TV out where I live (and it's a good thing I think). DSL became available last spring and we signed up with BellSouth.

Now, my son and I get lost in the wonderland of YouTube regularly. "Funny Cats" is one of his favorites (he's six). I'm recently taken with "Your 3 Words" (above), and "I CAN from Team Hoyt." There are so many instructional possibilities, learning opportunites. I can only imagine.

I'm amazed at all we were missing simply because of the speed of our connection. I find myself trolling for good videos to use in my classroom quite often. Recently I searched for files about being an American. I want to use in with a unit called Get Over It! Character, Conflict, Cause & Effect! The core text is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and I've collected a variety of other texts to use. This will be the first unit where I actually the capability in my classroom to include multi-media. Needless to say, I found several moving "Proud to Be An American" type videos I could use. I can't help but think about Marzano talking about how we need to make an emotional connection to content in order to aid memory. Janet Allen always says make it "meaningful and memorable"-- I can get a lot of M&M by pulling video clips into my curriculum.

I love that I can search google for video files (topic + video extension). I can't access YouTube at school, but I've learned how to use ZillaTube to download YouTube files and then convert them to a format that will play on my iPod or in Windows Media Player.

I've learned to download to my Mac too. Things are different on a Mac. Think different. Quite a marketing coupe; trite as it may be, I'm thinking differently. When I think about my process, I'm really beginning to notice that my problem-solving processes are the same whether I work on my Mac or PC. I search. I read. I wonder. I ask Google. the more specific I get my search strings, the better the returned results. I've noticed that I don't let the tech-problems or snafus bog me down so much anymore. We can find the answer to almost anything on Google... I'm discovering answers for myself. Talk about liberating.

For instance, after I downloaded the video downloader plug-in for Firefox and began to caputre videos using the Mac laptop, I was dismayed to discover (during a presentation no less), that Quicktime could not or would not play YouTube's "flv" videos. I had no idea. I had not paid heed to the file extensions. That afternoon I Googled: quicktime + "play flv" discovering Perian and a solution to my problem.

I learned that I could download a plug-in for Quicktime that would play YouTube "flv" files in quicktime (A future blog post will surely have to revel in the vocabulary I've aquired: plug-in, file extension, caputre, etc.). After reading about Perian, I downloaded it, installed it and was able to play the files I'd captured using the Firefox Video Downloader plug-in on my Mac.

This is the first time I've tried to embed a video into a blog post. We'll see if it works. If not, it will be one more problem for me to solve--one more failure to celebrate.

Hmmm... the embedded videos did not work, but I can see the links there! Hmm... I wonder what I need to do in order to get them to just appear and play?

David Warlick Rocks, Second Life and the Changing Face of Literacy

2007-08-16T03:30:00.000Z

So, today I attended Orange County's inservice conference at the convention center. I must say that David Warlick's presentation, inspired awe. Redefine literacy. Literally. We have to. As Warlick says, it's not about integrating more technology, the pencil & paper of our time--it's about integrating literacy. I would add, "critical" as a descriptor there. Digital dectives are critically literate. Digital detectives who can, as a matter of course, or with some level of automaticity "track back a URL" to dig deeper as they read, operate at Bloom's highest levels. I used to do this with students using a five-finger rule--actually it grew to seven fingers, (ie: 7 Questions for Highly Effective Web Surfers). It's an activity that I adapted I think from Kathy Shrock's web evaluation materials. I realized as Warlick was talking about digital detectives today, that I need to revist that lesson and revise it. Model simple strategies such as "URL track back" that students can practice immediately on classroom computers. Then, I need to figure out a way to build in enough practice, enough varied and engaging activities that this kind of critical thinking/critical reading becomes spontaneous for students. Because I can tell you, it's not spontaneous for most of the seniors I teach. How spontaneous is it even for most adults? most teachers? There is no question in my mind, nor has there ever been that we need to teach students (and remind ourselves) to thinking independently and critically. I need to do a better of job of it.

So, I've been exploring and thinking and researching topics Warlick brought to my mind today. One of them is Second Life. My mother, a retired dental hygienist, of all people introduced me to Second Life (SL) about six months ago by telling me a salacious story about a mutual friend (also retired) and her SL Avatar. Apparently, "Suzy" met someone and in-World experienced a little paradise by the dashboard lights if you know what I'm saying. Hmm... I wondered what else people did in Second Life, so I went online.

I found all kinds of information about Second Life in postings here, from news articles, to conferences about SL to this great parody page, but I've yet to really wrap my mind around it. I mean how would I ever create an Avatar? What would she look like? How would she move? I enjoyed Warlick's comments about his older-than-himself Avatar-- I wonder what kind of Avatar I could/would create. Could I be part animal? Could I have wings? What kinds of Avatars would my students create? What kinds do they already have? Hmm... surely I can learn something here. There's a community building activity in here somewhere--I just need to tease it out.

Reconnecting to literacy, I was browsing around the Global Kids Media Initiative when I stumbled upon an anticipation guide... well, an anticipation guide reincarnated, I suppose. Anticipation guides (Readance, Bean & Baldwin) anticipate reading or content. They help us form opinions and change those opinions as we learn more information. Done before reading (or learning), anticipation guides activate students' background knowledge about a topic. Such tools help teachers connect the new to the known by connecting the material students currently know or have opinions about to material they will learn. Anticipation guides build bridges between information. In this SL version, called the Human Barometer, students actually move their avatars to express their opinions.

This is when the Campers played human barometer in Teen Second Life! They seemed to be very split when they were asked if they agreed, disagreed, or were unsure about the statement, "Online relationships are not as important as real life ones".

How cool is that? So, do you agree or disagree: "Second life educational applications are just as engaging as real life ones." Seeing as I've just spent an entire evening engaged in Second Life exploration, I know which I'd choose.

Readence, J. E., Bean, T. W., & Baldwin, R. S. (1995). Content area reading: An integrated approach (5th ed). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/ Hunt.

Viruses, Adware & Spyware

2007-07-21T13:44:05.000Z

So, I've learned a lot about viruses this past week. Who knew that viruses, adware and spyware were mutually exclusive but similarly symptomatic? My laptop picked up something at camp--and no not band camp. Though that whole idea and a recent comment from a pastor at church got me thinking about people that use computers for porn (if you're not following my tangents the American Pie movie is running through my mind while I contemplate a unit I taught to a health class in the Reading Writing Center on STDs ). I bet a lot people that use the web inappropriately pick up a STCD (sexually transmitted computer disease or STCV sexually transmitted computer virus). This was not what my computer had, but it sure had something.

I upgraded my Norton but that did not do the trick. Lucky for me I have a fantastic tech-team at my school, so I asked one of them, Curtis, who explained this kind of rambo-marketing many people, who actually understand this techno-world, would call Ad-ware. Then a friend told me to download two freebies: Ad-aware and Spybot (or something with Search & Destroy in its name). It worked, or the combination of Norton, Spybot and Ad-aware worked. My laptop, while still sluggish, is at least not assaulting me with urgent messages about Trojans which send me to commercial sites selling virus protection. My laptop, having deleted over 200 infected files is relatively clean. That's a good thing.

Avatars ... Oh My

2007-06-23T01:23:11.000Z

Ever feel like someone is trying to tell you something? I recently learned about avatars. I don't even know enough about them as virtual personalities to write much of them, but I'm hearing avatar everywhere... even my mother, a retired dental hygeniest brought it up in conversation this week. She actually told me a rather amusing (if scandolous) story about a friend and her avatar. So... I'm thinking, how could I use avatars and Second Life in a high school? Safely and cleanly of course--surely those are issues ed-techies are talking about. How could I connect it to my service learning classes? or use it with an English class duirng a thematic unit? Hmmm... certainly it would be fun to set up a novel's virtual world. A kind of Atwellian, who would you invite to dinner (virutally) from some of your favorite books or content areas. How cool would that be? Hmm... I'll have to explore and learn more.

Entry #1: Tech Thinking

2007-06-14T23:42:34.000Z

I've decided to use this blog to journal about technology and Web 2.0 tools in my classroom. As a mentor for the Florida Digital Educators grant program I am expected to conduct action research in my classroom. I plan to use these musing and posts to gather my thoughts and process my experiences toward that end. My apologies to any readers who wander by... this is truly going to be a working place for me... a work in progress that I can later shape.

What is technology integration? This is a question I've been carrying around in my mind lately. I mean, I know what it means to integrate technology into my classroom. I've used a smart board. I currently have an LCD projector which I use almost everyday to engage students with live multimedia content that's relative to our daily lessons. I've used my iPod, my teacher computer, laptops, microphones, digital cameras and yes, even overheads (as antiquated as that technology is). The key here is "me" and "I". Nancy Atwell once wrote about teachers as "creationists." We love to create things for students to do. We love to create units of instruction, questions to answer, projects to complete and more. The problem with creationists in the classroom is that the teacher (creator) is the one doing all of the work. The teacher is doing all of the thinking, the problem solving, the analyzing and the synthesizing. More often than not, the students are merely filling in blanks, jumping through hoops, or more recently using the copy/paste commands on their keyboards.

So, what does technology integration really mean now? I think it means to shift the creative power from teachers to students. To truly integrate technology we need to teach students how to use it. How to use it effectively and with purpose for a given task. I've done that a bit, but I'd like to make technology and the tools we use our anchor---our tool for constructing new knowledge.

I teach students how to create podcasts (audio only so far) and I've supported students as they've participated in the International Science and Technology Fair. Still, I wonder. What is technolgogy integration? Surely it is not just "me" using all of these tools to wow kids. No, the real meat of integration is teaching students how to use digital tools to locate, analyze, process and synthesize content. Perhaps my question then becomes what would it take to create a fluid, technologically rich classroom in which students had the creative power?

I think it starts with projects. Finding or leading students to create digital or multimedia projects that build community and build shared content knowledge. That's where I think I'm heading.