meL’s Word

I just got finished viewing David Warlick’s Our Students – Our Worlds presentation on Slideshare.  I hadn’t seen it before, but it runs along the same vein as Did You Know? and other similar thought-provoking presentations and videos.  Then I got to wondering – what would happen if teachers actually viewed these?  I know there are always going to be the “non-believers” in our midst.  Would seeing any of these make a difference.  I watch them and think “preaching to the choir.”

I recently ran across a powerful quote (in T.H.E. Journal) – “If we don’t start teaching the way our kids think and play today, we will continue to keep the entire nation behind in developing the innovative, first-to-market, high-tech tools of tomorrow.” (Lisa Wilson, The Mentoring Center)  And yet there are still teachers who refuse to incorporate technology in their classes.  These teachers rarely check their email, they attend any required training with a bad attitude – you know, the one that says “I am only here because you made me” – the one that will block an open mind.

What can be done about it?  What do I do about it?

Okay, so the 30 Days to Better Blogging is over – and the last time I posted was day 16.  It is official, I am a slacker.  I can make excuses – “those last days weren’t meant for me,” or “the last challenges weren’t something I am prepared to do.”  But I won’t, you can read between the lines.  I did learn some things, and perhaps when this blog gets bigger and better I’ll employ some of those things. 

So, here we are on Day 16 and the last post was day 10.  I must confess, some of the challenges for days 11 to 16 were in areas I am not yet ready to delve into.  However, day 14 did suggest to make sure even an untrained monkey can get in touch with you.  So, I added an email link to my sidebar, just below my avatar and the link to my about page.

Day 15 was to find yourself.  I guess I should make more of an effort here.  I did a search and found a few of my posts.  No one links to me (duh!).  Day 16 is a challenge to create a “greatest hits” of sorts – a way for guests to find your best posts.  I think I should work on this one.

So, the challenge for day 10 was to look into how your blog looks in browsers other than the one you typically use, and also different screen resolutions.  I normally use IE 7 so I set out to check to see what meL’s Word looks like in FireFox (fine), Safari (fine – on a PC, haven’t checked on my Mac Book yet) and Chrome (fine).  I was disheartened to see the commercial “links” that appear in Chrome, a distinct turn off for me in using Chrome.  What do I mean?  An example – the word “blogs” appears with a double underline and when you mouse over the word, a little text window pops up advertising of all things, the TV show Married with Children.  There were other such links on random words.  I was NOT impressed.  I also looked at various screen resolutions – all are fine except 800X600 – you must scroll left/right to see the sidebars on the blog, but you can read the text of the blog itself.

Bottom line, I’m going to leave well enough alone on this one.  The Word seems okay in most browsers (I didn’t check Opera) and most resolutions – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Doesn’t seem too terribly broke to me….

So, the challenge for Day 8 is to leave comments for others on their blogs.  I sometimes comment, but more often I don’t, forgetting that comments (or the lack of) are one of the more frustrating things I find about blogging.  I post these random thoughts out there, but seldom does anyone comment, so I never know if anyone really reads this.  But yet, I do the same thing on the blogs I read – I read and don’t comment.

BTW – both Steve Dembo and Karl Fisch replied to the emails in which I thanked them for inspiring me to blog.  I did get a laugh, both replies were virtually identical – my thank you made their day.

I know, here it is day 5 of the challenge and this is my first post – “slacker”???

Not really.  Here are the challenges thus far:

1. What does your “About” page say about you?” – I added to mine, tried to make it a little more informative.  No, you won’t learn everything about me, but you should get some idea of what drives me.
2. Check into your site traffic – where does it come from, all that jazz.  I did add a Geotracker badge so I can at least see a map of where folks come from.  If it starts getting pins other than mine (grin) I’ll work more on site traffic info
3. Thank those that have inspired you.  I did that – sent an email to to Steve Dembo himself, and also to Karl Fisch (The Fischbowl).  These are the two blogs that I really follow and they are probably the main reasons I blog myself
4. Establish a Creative Commons license for your content- haven’t done this yet.
5. Globalize your blog – provide global visitors a means to translate your blog.  Maybe one day.  I’d be happy with a few local visits!

So, I have been following the challenge, just not all of it is visible to the public. 

Since I started this blog, first on WordPress and now on Edublogs, I have been only the occasional blogger – posting only when I thought about it and had something I thought might be worthwhile to write.  I added the blog to my email signature file.  But I never know if anyone reads this thing.  If they do, they never post comments.  Occasionally a teacher will email me about something on my blog, instead of comment.  Every once in a while someone says something related to a blog post of mine.  But most of the time, I wonder why I even bother. 

Then Steve Dembo who write the Teach42 blog wrote a post recently about being in a blog rut.  Beginning tomorrow and running the month of November, he is running a challenge – Be a Better Blogger in just 30 Days - 30 days of tips and ideas to becoming a better blogger.  I thought I would give it a try, see if maybe one of my fav bloggers can inspire me.  (Okay, knowing Steve gets into a blog rut, too,  does make me feel better…..)

So, here we are nearing the end of October.  I am teaching my second round of Web 2.0 Tools for the classroom.  This time I am just teaching middle school teachers – Larry is taking care of the high school teachers and Melodi has the elementary teachers.  Between the three of us, we have 40 teachers taking the course.  Combine those with the 14 who took it this summer (although not everyone finished it), we’ll have over 10% of ACPS teachers that know more about Web 2.0.

In reading the comments for the first assignment, simply about Web 2.0, I see teachers are realizing we need to change how we teach.  I honestly thing that students are wired differently than when I was their age (let’s just leave it that it was MANY years ago).  Today’s world is paced fast and furious.  If education is going to grab their attention, we have to work at it.  Think about it, what are the classes you remember most?  Mine are all teachers who found some way to make whatever subject interesting.  Face it, we all find some subject boring – which one depends on who we are.

Kids are more than comfortable with technology, and I think they expect it in school.  Look at any movie or TV show about school and you will see technology being used in the classroom.  Is it used in your classroom?

Last spring I created a social networking site for teachers.  I envisioned a place where teachers can share lessons and ideas, commiserate, get help, talk about successes and talk about failures (we all have them).  The problem is, I don’t really know how to promote it.  For it to work, I need educators to join and, most importantly, be active.  There are some members there, but how to keep them coming back? 

TheSpace4Teachers

Have a peek, join, post, be active…..please??

After I wrote my last post, I contacted the head of my daughter’s school.  I hated going to the top, but what is one to do?  He emailed me within a few hours apologizing, said he would speak with the lower school director.  She finally contacted me – both blamed their email system as not working properly.  Fine – but that is exactly why I left a voicemail.  Neither said anything about the voicemail – does that not work either?  I decided not to haggle that point since the main reason for contact (backpack weight issue) is being addressed. 

I think too often email problems are used as an excuse – but I find it hard to accept that as a valid excuse.  I have been using email since the late 80s when I began graduate school.  I have used a variety of ISPs for home use and I have had email accounts through several workplaces in that time.  In the early days I would occasionally have an email that ended up lost in cyberspace, but not in recent years.  Even the Bush administration hasn’t used that excuse (they simply don’t open emails they don’t want to acknowledge).