Back from a Dark Corner

Holy Cow Batman I had to search my memory long and hard to remember where this was. On the suggestion of a couple of our iSITS folks past and present here are my thoughts on three sessions that I looked as part of the K-12 Online Conference

K-12 Online Conference Session Reviews

Pre-Conference Keynote – Sharing: A Moral Imperative

It was an interesting start to this session for Dean to say that the ideas he blogs about are not his original ideas but a collection of ideas from a learning community that has embraced a culture of sharing. I agree with his sentiment that we invoke protectionism of our ideas we are the antithesis of educator’s; even though I must admit I am guilty at times of unleashing my inner two year old. When Dean introduces Dan Meyer into the presentation the concept of blogging as reflection of practice is a great idea however as with many things we need to find the time to do it on a regular basis and build it into our routines; something I have not done as can be demonstrated by the infrequency of my blog posts. It’s not that it is not something I value but it is not something I have taken the time to build into a regular routine. Perhaps this will change when I am no longer a dual identity teacher in a few years time. The idea of creating and then making available your resources and ideas is a great one. The idea of the “Identity Fair” is another great one to look at how we can engage our students in the learning and sharing process about a topic they are passionate about. The challenge is to work with our students to help them understand what being passionate about something means and to also work with them to develop that culture of acceptance that everyone’s passion is unique and worth learning about. The story of Jabiz and the blog he started for his daughter brought to mind for me two pictures; one, the dominoes that start to fall when you tip one over. The idea that one simple tweet would begin an entire learning journey for both the classroom and the blogger is quite amazing. The other image is the ripple in a pond when you drop in a stone. The blog being the stone and the far reaching ripples and relationships this idea has had. I do agree with the final message that Dean has and that is that sharing is an ethical responsibility and I guess taking that away will serve as the base for reflection in my teaching and changes that may result from that. In the broader sense how do we promote this culture of openness with all of our colleagues and not have them see it as a fad that will pass given enough time?

The Ben N Ben Show: Promoting Student Voice through a Student Hosted Webcast

I chose a session to listen to that might provide the basis for an idea I may want to try with my students. This might be an interesting project to try with my students to work on their oral language skills as they would have to form interview questions and then ask them to their guest. Another possible vein for this might be a way for our school or school division to highlight students working on interesting of unique projects or teachers engaged in new endeavors. Would this type of webcasting either through Youtube of UStream be a way to create virtual pen pals except instead of physical letters you would use video and perhaps culminate in a live Skype session? This might be something worth looking in to introducing into my ELA program but there are opportunities for many of our curriculum areas.

Digital Parent Engagement

This was a session that I chose to balance off the equation of educators, students and parents. It seems at times that parents are the missing variable in our equation to provide the best learning experience possible for our students. Do we have a standard information portal option that could be used with parents and students to communicate information at the school level? As I am listening to this presentation it is great to hear some of the tools that are mentioned here are being used by our teachers like Voice Thread for example. Would this Volunteer Spot software be a useful tool for primary classrooms or School Community Councils? To help promote parent engagement and create a new channel of information does the ISTS’s group need to work on a template for a school Facebook page that could then be shared throughout the division? Our division has a Facebook page and Twitter account but can we work to create school level information channels? I guess the message I took away from this session is the options for parent involvement and engagement which are two separate yet similar things are endless however as with any good relationship it will take time to build a good relationship through collaboration and sharing of tools and information.

I think if I reflect on the three that I chose I resonated best with Dean's pre-conference message as we struggle as educators to find resources to use but we also need to take the time to share what we do have for others. There are other sessions scheduled for later next week that have piqued my interest so perhaps this is a re-entry into the blogosphere; who knows.

The Ideas Continue

As always with our meetings there are great ideas and discussion that come but now I begin the process of boiling the ideas down into language that all my staff will understand and be willing to try to use. I think if I look there is one small piece of plate that has room for this.

Later Days

Meetings Give Ideas

With the start of our in-school tech meetings I hear about all the good things that people are doing in other schools and it amazes me that people are so multi-talented. I would love to have the time to experiment with the tools that people have found and as always the issue of time comes up. Perhaps there is a way to find that time balance. I find myself getting energized to find new tools to play with and then I will see how I can apply them to my classroom.

Later Days

A Great Find

Hi,

Here was something I came across as I was searching for something else.

Teacher Tube: You Tube with an educational focus.

http://www.teachertube.com/

Enjoy

- A

Alec C Visits BCS and Ustream gets a first time test,

I thought on this fine winters night (Hah, it's April and it's snowing out; I LOVE living here) I'd write about the excellent visit we had with Alec Couros at Central and my experiments with digital video.

Part One: The Visit

On Tuesday April 15 we had Dr. Alec Couros visit with the students and staff at Central. He put together presentations of varying detail level for our various student groups dealing with cyber-bullying and other pitfalls of the information age. With the older group that I was in with most of them they were engaged and interested in the information that was presented. I think a lot of them sat up and paid more close attention when Alec showed a commercial on once you post it you can't get it back. Here's a YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBz-hxjSLU. We also asked him to do a parent presentation that same night and we had a small group of parents come and listen to the same topic but the information was presented in a way that parents had the opportunity to see the wonders that are out there for their children but also some of the darker alleys that kids could go down. There were good questions and discussion had by this group. Thanks to Alec for spending the time with our staff students and parents. Hopefully we might find an opportunity to have him back again.

Part Two: Ustream Test Drive

I thought with Alec coming to the school I might have an opportunity to take advantage of some of the things that we shared at our last in-school tech inservice. I took some time to work out how to get a broadcast up on ustream and then worked with Donna and Owen to make sure we would have the ability to broadcast and chat. The only speed bump was the sound pickup that we had. The video worked really well but unfortunately the audio didn't work out too well. Oh well, live and learn for the next go around.

- A

Putting Together a Tech Plan

Hi all, (Who knows who reads this; it could be one person)

Here I am starting to think of what would be a good place to start with putting together a tech plan for our school and it's diverse staff. We have users that are technologically literate to ones that only check their e-mail once or twice a year. With the diverse resources that are now out there how do I provide the right target information to the people that need it without overwhelming them with information or making them feel like they learned something and not wasted their time.

Thanks,

- A

First Steps into a Larger World

Hi, Obi-Wan said it best there so here is the start of my personal blog where the random thoughts of someone who at one time considered themselves computer savvy is struggling to wrap their head around this next evolution of technology and what it means for me and my classroom may appear. These thoughts may appear at random times and places so don't set your watch by them.

- A