Web 2.0 SRR

Podcasting is a term I’ve heard frequently, but I had little experience with actually selecting and listening to them. This exercise walked me through the process of sampling podcasts and then adding one to my Google Reader. As with the other Web 2.0 tools I’ve tried, the variety is endless, the convenience of listening to them at any time and in pj’s is a wonderful convenience, and the few I sampled provided food for thought. My first selection was an Education Podcast with John Merrow, called A Principal’s Perspective. Mr. Merrow interviewed the principal of a school in Washington DC, a school system infamous for its many failures. I found the interview candid; the principal said he would fire half his teachers if he could, for incompetence or lack of motivation in doing what needs to be done for students to succeed. It made me think about how our schools fail in general in accountability, and in the commitment of so many teachers to do what is best for the children. I felt there was an unspoken challenge to all educators that makes me want to improve my own practice.
after such a serious topic, I chose one for fun -if grammar can ever be considered a humorous subject. the Top 10 Grammar Myths , on Grammar Girls’ Quick Tips, taught me a thing or five about what is now considered correct grammar. That said, I could never add an ‘s’ after using an apostrophe in a word ending in ‘s’ to indicate the possessive – no Kansas’s for me. Still, in an age of declining standards of written and oral language, it was refreshing to know that some people do care!
I subscribed to podcasts by David Warlick, and listened to one about a Smart Table. I am in no way a techie, and thought it would be good for the soul to subscribe to something out of my comfort zone, and learn about emerging technology.
After this brief encounter with podcasts, I see an application in school for both learning about a topic, and using it to stimulate group discussion. In my experience in a preschool through grade eight school, students spend a great deal of time listening, writing, and transitioning. Podcasts might be one more efficient way of focusing everyone’s attention on a topic, and getting students to hold a higher level of discussion . The reality is that information seems more real and meaningful to them when it comes through a monitor or headset. So, let’s go with it, and make sure that what they are hearing is “good stuff” that we can use to build lessons, and help students communicate in full and intelligent sentences. That should be as much our goal as the content.

I have a confession to make. I am a British mystery junkie, always on the lookout for another author, the latest in a series, or even (sigh) a new series written by a favorite author. My method for finding authors and titles is hit and miss – and that is an understatement. I may get lucky by reading something in the Sunday newspaper book section. But the usual technique is to go up and down the aisles of the Fiction section in my local library either with my list of authors read (relaible if not limiting) or looking for British sounding names (no, I’m not kidding), or for titles that sound positively “murderous.” Since I am short and the shelves are very tall, I am scanning a fraction of the collection. Pathetic, I admit.
LibraryThing has freed me from that often frutiless trudge down the aisles. It is a fantastic tool for feeding my habit, height no obstacle. When I searched British Mystery, there appeared a treasure trove of titles, new authors, and lots of tags to expand my search. I found enough to be happily guessing who -done -it for months. Knowing that new books will be added to the site constantly will free me from shelf trolling, and ensure that I always come home with an armload of goodies.
One of my goals in my professional life as a librarian in a Jewish day school is to become familiar with the collection, and to become familiar with what else is out there in children’s literature. LibraryThing is a good resource for looking at a body of titles and authors. Definitely a find!

StrudelMonkeyhttp://flickr.com/photos/trentstrohm/72083021/

Since I’m always in travel mode, the photos I explored  on Flickr are for our next trip, to Ireland. I thought this was a lovely one, typifying the green land and the sea that frame the history and culture of this land. This was my first experience using the site, and it was a visual delight, if not a bit of an overload. With the enormous amount of images posted , one nevers knows what inspiration is just a click away. Concerning its use as a learning tool, it can be very valuable. Instead of using outdated or poor images from printed material, we can choose from this incredible range of recent and very specific images to suit the learning needs of the students.

Switching gears –  David Jake’s presentation on classroom uses of Flickr had some great suggestions. I especially liked several ideas: using photos as creative writing prompts ( one picture may be worth at least a hundred words!; creating a virtual field trip; illustrating student’s own stories. Another idea, to make comments on the works of other, is a a terrific way to stimulate questions and imagination. Any tool that helps students really look at creative work, including photgraphs, and look at them critcically, expands their world. Imagine the possibilities for discussion or essays: what did you like about the photo(s)? what message do you think the person whas trying to convey? what can you tell about her/him by these photographs? what words describe the image?, etc.

There is an expression, third time the charm. After trying two tools that didn’t grab my interest (Toondo and quizlet), I had fun with Wordle. It is easy to use and great for a novice. All you do is type or paste the words -quote – headline, etc, you want, and the tool creates a clever arrangement. Play around with font, layout, color, to your hearts content. Copy the design for posters, tee shirts, reports, or use as a PDF. The site is licensed under Creative Commons; all the developer asks is that people credit the site.

For a person lacking the art gene (that would be me), Wordle manipulates the graphic design in ways I never could. I believe students and teachers will like it, too for the infinite variety of eye-catching visuals it creates. I can imagine a wall full of these designs in an English  or History class. Because of the random – and/or alphabetical -arrangement of the words, different words or concepts will stand out and be reinforced.

Wordle is fun and clever and would be a great tool for students and educators to add some cool design to their work, classrooms – and who knows what else!

I just spent an engaging 50 minutes viewing one of the keynotes from the conference. “Time to Grow” was created by two educators, Vicki Davis in Georgia and Julie Lindsay in Qutar, near Saudi Arabia. While much of the session was an affirmation of topics I have been learning about during this course, Vicki’s enthusiasm (I dubbed her the techno cheerleader) combined with Julie’s matter of fact manner about the amazing collaborations she helped create with learners throughout the world (she is the flat classroom queen!)  made for great viewing and listening. I really wanted to meet these people.

There were a number of significant points in their presentation:

1. It is critical to embed professional development int our schedules to learn and explore. They call this intentional R&D. Just as we measure children’s growth, we need to measure our PD growth and do whatever we can to nurture this growth. Try for 15 minutes twice a week.

2. We must guide children to be good Digital Citizens. Equip them with norms of behavior that will enable them to communicate, connect and collaborate with people throughout the world, from very different cultures and world views.  In my own words, if the cannot be open, and act respectfully and responsibly with the technology, they might as well go back to the blackboard.

3. As a corollary to #2, don’t punish the tool, work on the behavior.  Just as people have always tried to ban books that did not conform to their morality or values, we may make the mistake of banning tools because they are not used in a safe way. Research the technology, monitor and be engaged, and avoid the fear factor. The benefit of what students can do far outweighs the risks of what they may do. I do not know enough about what our school does to foster Digital Citizenship to comment. But i do know that I don’t yet have the knowledge or comfort level to contribute much to the process. This presentation made me ralize that is something I need to address.

4. Aim for the flat classroom. Remove separations of space and time.  Eliminate the hierarchy of teacher/student. The teacher and student both become teachers and learners, to each other and to people and classrooms throughout the world.

5. If you’re really cool like Vicki and Julie, you may get to meet Thomas Friedman, the original “world is flat” guy, and one of my heros!

Is there value in this kind of anytime delivery system? Most definitely! To be able to see a presentation like this in the pj’s – or revisit it another day – embeds PD to fit with real life. There were many topics that sounded interesting, but the reality is I don’t have several days or hours at a time to do this.

Kudos to Julie and Vicki for giving me food for thought about my own PD growth, and the flat classroom imperative.

The subtitle for this post Creative Commons - is “How I learned to stop obsessing about copyright infringement and share/expand/modify the great stuff I found on the Internet!”.

First things first – I never noticed the CC logo at the bottom of the page. In truth I don’t usually scroll that far, unless i need to figure out how to return to Home; contact the organization/person; or choose to notice that the information I want to use for a lesson or project is copyrighted – and how guilty I want my conscience to be that day.

I looked at some sites I has used in the past, all Jewish educational resources, and saw that all had Copyright -all rights reserved at the bottom. Only when I revisited  Mr. Lindsay’s site did I notice the CC.

First impression -it is a long overdue and much needed strategy for making use of the explosion of great material that educators and students use more and more to spark their own creativity. I could not understand why a person/organization would go to the trouble of putting their ideas and work on the net -where the whole world could see it, learn from it, discuss it ad infinitum -then add , in effect, “don’t print, don’t use any of this in other work -not one word- unless you have permission. Right, like that was going to happen. In my previous job I created professional development courses for educators in Jewish schools in Atlanta. The Internet was a major resource for me, and I often used dozens of sites as part of my research. How practical would it have been to ask permission of each site, wait for the reply, when I often had only a few weeks to prepare lessons? AND, if permission had not been given, could I realistically be expected to forget what I had read?

CC is a brilliant compromise that makes sense. It will open up so many possibilities for students and teachers to be creative and collaborative, building on the creativity and inspiration of people and groups throughout the world. When I can be inspired by the ideas and experiences of others, not only to use their material but to use it as a jumping off point for my own projects – it was brilliant, and I silently thanked those who had the good sense to share their  work so generously.

CC ,it also seemed to me will not appeal to every creative soul. People may justifiably feel “I wrote -created -photographed – made – this, and “no, you can’t just take it and “make it better”

Negatives? does it blur the line between who the REAL creator of anything/everything  is?  Will the clever but lazy student look at CC as a license to take another’s work, change something minor, and claim it as his/her “original” project? Will it ultimately backfire? Clearly I’m being the devil’s advocate, but I do believe we as educators need to seriously address this new set of issues. Just as advances in medicine and science bring new sets of ethical issues, so do advances in technology and access, such as CC and creative authorship.

I almost wanted to be an elementary student again after reading the Room 15 Wiki! If Mr. Lindsay is even half as fun and creative as his wiki, life in room 15 would be a blast. This is the first of three wikis I will write about, and I felt it set a standard for excellence. It is attractive, with colorful graphics to accompany the text, and clearly organized. It had categories for classroom window; curriculum; and other stuff, including resources for educators. Mr. L. listed ways parents could be involved. He compared the 5th and 6th grade learning outcomes for Social Studies. He used tags and bookmarks as tools. AND he had lots of links to things he is interested in, which made for some intriguing reading.  I wouldn’t change a thing!

The second wiki Go West was also fun. It was a 3rd grade project on westward expansion. along the Oregon Trail.  There were over 20 topics to choose from the menu, such as clothing; hardships; timeline; daily chores; food; explorers. This project was very much owned by the students. They took digital photos, drew pictures, wrote narrative, and researched a variety of sources. This was noted by the teachers in an excellent reflective piece. I loved that the articles were written in the children’s own words. A note of caution –  don’t read the description of scurvy just after eating!

The teachers noted how excited the students were working on this project. They became familiar with so many technology tools, including digital cameras, scanners, Inspiration, Timeliner, Bubbleshare, information sites – as well as learning about acceptabvle use, citing sources, and URLs. Great wiki, great teaching, great empowerment of young minds. You go west!

The third wiki I looked at was Schools in the Past, a project of a 1st grade class. The students interviewed parents and grandparents to learn about how things were different in their time at school. The comments were dvided into Playground; Library; Number of Students in Class; and What was Studied.

It was simply a written list of the comments. There was one student drawing on the page, so very little visual appeal.

If I comapred this to the other two wikis I looked at, it would not fare well. There was no ownership here -no names of the children or who they interviewed; no mention of the ages of the interviewees or years they referred to, nor what part of the US – or foreign country -  their school was located. There was no attempt to relate this activity to learning outcomes. So it seemed to be floating in the universe as a random isolated piece. I would have included the information mentioned above, and definitely added drawings from the children and/or some photos of the interviewing pairs. also, follow up discussion with the students like, what do we learn from this? What would you have liked /not liked about going to school when your parents/grandparents went? I would have liked a reflective piece as in Go West, and recommended reading about schools of the past, whether 30, 50 or 100 years ago – or more.

OK, and now for my reflective piece. It’s not easy to get into another teacher’s head and always know what he/she should have done. But each of us, before we commit our students work and our effort to a wiki, should have some standard of what we should include. I don’t think the missing items would have required much additional work -but they would have made this a more interesting and meaningful project for the children and their families.

Is there a wiki in my future. I hope so. i am a Media Specialist, and I can see tremendous potential for book reviews, student writing projects, “you be the judge” scenarios from situations found in books and on web sites relating to their other curricular pieces. Take a deep breath, start small – and make sure you protect yourself against scurvy!!

Dear Diary -what a minute, no one uses that quaint method of expressing their thoughts, insights and dreams anymore -they blog!

Dear Blog, I have the power! I now can access the world, or parts of it, through my Google Reader account. I can express my opinions to colleagues I’ve never met, get the latest reviews of books for our Media Center, get tips on creating our own web site, etc., etc, etc. I even  know the reason I have trouble falling asleep at night, thanks to a little blurb in POPSCI.COM.

No more searching google and hoping to find articles of interest – only to click on a likely entry and find it was last updated in 2005! I love the ability to pick and choose blogs that interest me, changling and adding to them as my interests and needs change.

Sometimes i find the comments silly. How many people need to chome in, writing, I agree with so and so about such and such! On the other hand, I never know when I’m going to come upon a gem that will cause me to stop in my tracks and look at something in a whole new way. Taking a leap from the personal to the global, so many of the problems in the world are the result of people never having heard, or read, thoughts and ideas different from their own.

The experiences I’ve had in just the past week looking at a variety of blogs, reading the posts, and adding my own comments have been exciting, enlightening and empowering. Wow, that’s something i cannot imagine having written  a year ago.

Dear Dairy, I take it back; there is still a place for you. but it’s definitely a whole new BLOG-game!

This course is about the seemingly limitless ways we can communicate and connect with people. I was moved by the article that described an effective method of reaching out that included no spoken or written words, no graphics, no charts, or art or music. The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay -Straight Alliance, was a time for people to refrain from talking, to demonstrate the powerlessness that gay people often feel in the presence of hateful and demeaning speech.

The more I thought about this Day of Silence, the more I realized its power. We spend our days, and sometimes nights, thinking about communicating; Emails and text messages to send; telephone calls; blog posts, and the old-fashined but ever popular in person discussion. Imagine having this taken away. Imagine the thoughts, opinions, agreements, protests, suggestions, empathy, arrangements, advice, and love we cannot express when we are silent.

I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who is margainilzed due to sexual orientation – or disability,or being a minority, and unable to speak up. It is a frightening and demeaning place. If our success in the 21st century world depends so much on our ability to successfully communicate with the world wide web of people and ideas, then we had better work harder on erasing the prejudices and unthinking behavior that serves only to divide and silence us.