Wordle in 6th Grade Humanitites

In our middle school we have a Humanities class (SS and LA combined) at each grade. These teachers are doing some really fabulous projects. One of the ones is the use of Wordle to help students explain the 6 Big Ideas of History - Science and Technology, Government, Culture, Geography, Belief Systems, and Economics. The products completed by the students were printed and put on a bulletin board and will be used throughout the year for them to reference as they study any event in history.

The Process:

Students had to brainstorm 20 different terms/keywords that were associated with their Idea. They then prioritized those ideas by which were the most important in describing their Idea. Next, the students typed their keywords into Word (spellchecking was needed) - they would type the most important terms multiple times (Wordle uses the frequency of a word to determine it's size in the final presentation), so "ScienceandTechnology" (all one word) was typed 5 times while a lesser term to describe it say "computers" was only typed 3 times. Each word needed to be separated with a space. The students then copied and pasted their text into Wordle and adjusted the design/colors to suit their tastes and then published their work! We were able to print them off and the students also pasted the url of their published work into their class forum so that everyone could see and comment on them.

Great Blog Post with Free Resources for Regular and Special Education

Many of these are resources I use regularily. Some of them I've never heard of. This is truly an amazing list and much thanks to Paul Hamilton for posting it!
http://paulhami.edublogs.org/productivity/

Moodle and Battle of the Books Team

We have Moodle now in our district and it was amazing to see the student response to it yesterday. Moodle is essentially an online site that allows students and teachers to collaborate and communicate in a protected environment. Yesterday, students in the Battle of the Books Team at one of our Middle Schools were the first students to use Moodle in our county! They logged in to Moodle, navigated to their teacher's site, and clicked on Knights of the Round Table Forum. Students were then presented with a forum topic of "Introduce Yourselves". After reading a blurb written by their teacher about herself - students were asked to answer 4 questions to introduce themselves:

What is your family like?
What are some of your hobbies?
What is your favorite book?
What are your future goals?

Students were immediately engaged. They were in their environment. They communicate this way naturally. They had answered the introduction question quickly and were teaching themselves Moodle and how it worked. They were helping each other. It was amazing.

Students than began to write their own questions for their peers to answer. Students could see next to their question how many other students had answered, they then clicked and saw what the responses were from their online learning community.

This was a wonderful experience for me - Web 2.0 in action! Engaged students. Collaboration in action. Seamlessly integrated technology. Meaningful. Real-world.

I have one word - WOW!

The way they grieve

The horrific events at Virginia Tech last week have stunned the world. Senseless. Unimaginable. Inconcievable loss. But I keep finding myself in a different plane of thoughts, separate from my personal feelings of grief for the families, students, and friends who are trying to survive this tragedy. Maybe it is because I've been trying so much lately to investigate the possible uses of web 2.0 tools and other technologies in the classroom.

I am truly amazed at the way this college generation is dealing with their emotions. In a CNN article from the 18th:

There are now more than 200 groups related to the tragedy on Facebook.com alone. Some have only a handful of members; others have thousands. One group, "April 16, 2007," had more than 28,000 members as of Tuesday afternoon.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/18/vatech.online/index.html

These students, and others around the world, learned of the massacre, got in touch with family and friends to let them know they were safe, shared their grief, and have begun the healing process all with the use of technology.

Pictures, videos, instant messaging, facebook, myspace, message boards, digg, maps, online news portals, websites. Ways to communicate, to network, to mourn.

And while I am continually amazed, I am certain that for these students it was natural.

I've noticed too that they seem to also value the human touch and face-to-face interactions. They don't exist completely online. But, they each find the balance.

So, as I search the internet for some of these pictures, memorial groups, and news articles, I'm reminded that our younger generation is moving on, taking the technology tools and using them the way that fits their lives and their needs, with or without us. It's time for those of us in education to pay attention and listen to them.

United Streaming Webinars

April is full of United Streaming Webinars

April 4th
EdTechConnect with Hall Davidson - Staggeringly Great Things Mixing Media and Google Earth

April 11th
EdTechConnect with Lance Rougeux - unitedstreaming 24/7

April 18th
EdTechConnect with Steve Dembo - Widgetizing the Builders

April 25th
EdTechConnect with Jannita Demain - Do You Have the Audacity to Podcast

All webinars are at 5-6 PM EDT

You can enroll here...
https://discoveryed.webex.com

Classroom 2.0 Social Networking Site

Classroom 2.0 is just getting going - please join and add to the discussion!

Classroom 2.0 " Welcome to the CLASSROOM 2.0 social networking site! This network is devoted to those interested in the practical application of Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in the classroom and in their own professional development. Especially we hope that those who feel they are "beginners" will find this a comfortable place to start being a part of the community dialog and to learn more."

Free Stuff from PBwiki

I got an email from PBwiki and figured this would be a good place to share. If you don't know, PBwiki offers ad-free wiki hosting for educators.

More information can be found here...
http://pbwiki.com/edu.html
http://educators.pbwiki.com/

They are offering PBwiki Presenter Packs. So, if you're giving a presentation about wikis, they will ship you a free PBwiki t-shirt, an easy-to-read PDF about wikis, a Powerpoint with pictures of real PBwiki users, and 3 FREE Gold Premium wikis to give out to your audience.

They have also posted, self proclaimed, the coolest videos in the world. They filmed real educators using PBwiki and asked the questions: what they like, what they can improve, and common concerns. They have posted 7 videos, including:

How do you use PBwiki?
Is PBwiki safe?
How does collaboration work?

Infinite Thinking Machine

Here is a very cool site/show. Google has made this to help teachers and students thrive in the 21st century. So far, they have about 5 show with some extras. I first watch (and found the site) after watching ITM 5, Calculate This. The show format is pretty basis. It starts by giving some tips, tricks, and questions. It then went to an interview segment showcasing a teacher using Google's spreadsheets.

This is something I really want to do in my district, just need to find some recruits to help me.

Engaging Digital Natives Diigo Site

This is an educator's diigo site with links to Web 2.0 applications. It is wonderful!! http://groups.diigo.com/groups/edn

To host or be hosted???

I was just over at HitchHikr reading some of the recent blog posts about the NCAECT conference. It really was a treat to see David Warlick and Will Richardson in the same room talking about where we need to go with technology and education. I learned a lot about podcasting and I loved the fact there were a lot more collaborative sessions. I love hearing the conversations around what is working and what isn't working in different districts. It is amazing to me how far some districts are along this path. We are getting there. I feel the biggest struggle we face is figuring out how to deal with the protection issues of hosting vs. not hosting the web 2.0 content. It seems from the conversations I heard that this was true elsewhere also.

I am a proponent of opening it up - letting teachers use any and all tools that will help them teach students better. No matter how great your engineers are (and ours are wonderful) you are never going to be able to produce easy to use tools as quickly as companies like Google can, it just isn't possible.


Some would argue that you just can't allow that because we can't control the content that gets put out there. That is true. We won't be able to control it. But we CAN provide teachers with the training they need to use wikis, blogs, and other web 2.0 tools effectively. I believe teachers are professionals. Capable of using these tools - we just need to allow access and provide the training.

Technorati Tags: ncaect2007 ncaect ncaect07

Teacher Recruitment

I have always said that I could solve the teacher shortage. It is simple, start by doubling the salary. Then you will start to get some people interested. But, we all know the likely hood of that happening.

I was just at the NCAECT conference, which focuses on technology in education. While a collegue and I were discussing a session, she said "That's why you left education. You weren't having fun." I don't remember the reason or even what we were talking about, but it was at that moment I realized that was reason I left. It took me three years to figure that out.

Now, I really didn't leave education. I just left the classroom for the Technology Department. One of the first things I saw in my new job was a Smart Board or Activboard. I was impressed. In fact, I said "I would have taught another year if I had one of these in my classrooms." Since I am in the under 30 crowd we pretty much grew up with technology. This is even more true with the younger generations. Plus, in case you didn't get the memo, computers are cool now. So all this got me thinking...

If I am fresh from college...
fresh from facebook...
fresh from im converstaions...
fresh from skype calls
fresh from video chats
fresh from campus emerged with technology...
fresh from carrying a laptop...

Why in the hell would I want to step back in time into a classroom...
with no wifi
with no lcd projector, just a marker and an overhead projector
with no laptop, just a desktop with Windows 98. No you can't use yours.
with no IM
with people who refuse to or can't use email
with a strictly filtered internet.
with a campus whose big technology push was going from chalk to dry erase markers

Maybe younger generaations aren't going in to education and are leaving education because they are digital natives trying to teach other digital natives with analog tools. Doesn't sound like to much fun to me.

education, technology, instructional k12

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0

While I was doing some reading over the weekend I ran into this blog. This is the most comprehensive list of web 2.0 tools for education I have seen. It is actually a three part series. Part one focuses on organizing, grade books, resume building, and research. The focus is not just teachers, student web 2.0 strategies are also mentioned.

Part two looks at online office applications including word processing, presentations, diagrams, spreadsheets, and calendars.

The third and final part focuses on "real world" educational scenarios in blogging, photo/video sharing, podcasting, and wiki's.

Be sure to check out the comments too; lots of good links in there.

Image from http://www.francispisani.net/

web2.0 education k12

Google Donates Sketch-Up Pro and Google Earth to Maine 1:1 Program

This is way cool - imagine the uses...

Combination of Google Earth and the new Sketch-up Pro to redesign communities and placement of new buildings.

From Tim Lauer's Educational Technology blog.

Why Kid's Blog - from 2 Cents Worth Blog

Why Kid's Blog

Take a student to workshop post

Read the post here: http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/take-a-student-to-workshop-day/
Great idea for terrified-of-technology teachers and administrators!

New Free Book on Web 2.0

Called Coming of Age "The book provides a set of stories, describing the ways in which Web 2.0 technology can be used in schools, particularly as a way of supporting social, collaborative learning, and a more individualised curriculum." from http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

You can Download the book here

Publish Your Own Book!

Great article in the latest issue of Technology & Learning about online sites that allow you to publish your own book.

I especially found interesting:

...possible applications for education: student portfolios, teacher-made lesson books, family history projects, PTA recipe books, class photo albums, and literary journals, to name a few.

see article here

Some of the sites listed in this article are:
Kodak
Apple iPhoto
Xlibris
Blurb
Lulu

Flat Classrooms

David Warlick has started a new series of posts and a wiki on Flat Classroom Learning Engines. It is incredibly interesting stuff and a way to address some of the ideas and issues brought up in Flat World. I am intrigued by his ideas but always come back to how do we make this change? How do we take our classrooms from the traditional methods and move them towards the future. I believe that we need to setup a trial site of some kind to do this - a classroom or an entire school (yes I KNOW I'm dreaming here). If we don't show that this method can improve performance on high stake testing I do not think it will gain a following until it is too late!

Some of the interesting quotes from these posts:

"It's more important how we learn than what we learn."

"The teacher could rely on gravity to support the flow of curriculum down to the learners. But as much as we might like to pretend, we (teachers) are no longer on top of the hill. The hill is practically gone."

Not School!

I just read and heard this discussion about "Not School" from connect.educause.edu - see article here.

This is amazing

What struck me:

-It is not school it is LEARNING
this is so important - and makes you think about what School is and what LEARNING is - how are they different? We want learning - where are schools failing - are they purely socializing structures?

-they have "changed the semantics" by calling students "researchers"
what would this do if we changed the way we look at students - if we saw them as researchers - part of the quest for knowledge - determining what they want to research

-because the learning is personalized every child is a success story
the more we allow kids to personalize their own learning the more we are going to engage them.

-kids are "hungry to learn"
excellent point - kids may not be excited about going to school but every child wants to learn - the question is what do they want to learn we need to allow them the opportunity to choose!

-we do what is convenient for us in schools today
I have seen this so often and been a part of it - it is so much easier to do what is convenient - we need to be pushing the envelope and doing what is hard

-20th century ideas on how schools should operate will not make sense going forward
I'll begin to sound like a broken record on this I'm sure - but it is so true and so important. Schools must change - not just how we teach but the learning environment also. We need to make radical reforms.

Telling the New Story

I recently attended the NCETC conference. I came out of the conference energized and excited over what we can/must do for America to keep pace with the rest of the world. I had already read The World Is Flat and was intrigued at all the things that were going on that I had no idea about. However, I was not surprised that education is not taking the role it needs to. I have been struggling with what we can do to make changes in education to prepare our students for a globalized society.

At the conference I attended David Warlick's session Telling the New Story. It was an excellent presentation that pulled together the challenges we are facing and some possible directions for us to head in (Find more about his presentation here).

Particularly of interest to me was his discussion of how we cut students off the minute they enter school from all of the technologies they use and learn from. I have to admit to being one of those "anti-game" people (although I'm changing I swear!). I play computer games and I have grown up with them. However, I have always believed that kids today are playing them too much. "Get outside and explore - don't sit in front of a computer screen!" is/was my motto.

I still feel that this is important. But I realize now that I've not been seeing the whole picture. Perhaps more importantly does it matter what I think? We can't go backwards. Games are not going to disappear. Kids are not going to stop playing them. We MUST use games and their ability to engage our students.

Another thought provoking idea that came out of this session for me was how out of touch I really was with the ways the internet is being used now. I have been going along thinking I'm at least partly up on what is the newest, coolest stuff. I was WRONG. It is incredible how differently our kids use the internet than how we use it. I go along happily and do my Google searches and check my email and play with Google Earth - but I do it in a vacuum. I collaborate with no one.

To illustrate this - I was at my in-laws for Thanksgiving. My 17 year-old brother-in-law is showing me his site on http://www.myspaces.com/ - I'm thinking well isn't that nice - it is cool that he has something like this - and look at how he is using it. I don't think the full implication of what he was showing me hit me until I was driving back from the conference last week. He is collaborating with other children across the country/world - he gets it - I don't.

I am determined to continue questioning myself and others about what is really going on (or not going on as the case may be) in education today. We are falling behind - quickly and yes quietly. We are not reaching out to our students. We must collaborate with others and find solutions. We must give games their place in education. We must change the way we teach students. We need to tell a new story - the old one is dead.