meL’s Word

I just read an article from Alan November’s November Learning site called Banning Student Containers.  The premise of the article is that students use “digital containers” – blogs, iPods, instant messanging, YouTube, video games, and of course, cell phones.  Students access these containers for information and to stay connected.  However, in school students doen’t have access to these containers – in fact, schools tell students these don’t have anything to do with learning.  At home the student picks up these tools or applications, moves from one to another – all self-directed, self-taught and highly motivating.  At school the student can’t access academic podcasts which would help him learn (such as Grammar Girl and numerous other podcasts geared towards learning).  The student can’t post class notes to his teacher’s blog so all RSS subscribers could know what went on in class.  The examples continue, but you get the drift.

November argues that students should be allowed to access and use their digital containers at school to make school both more motivating and more rigorous.  He makes the statement “what if paper had been banned because at one time a student wrote some inappropriate content without a teacher’s guidance?”  (”But what if a student writes something bad in a blog?  What will I do?”)

Oh how I wish I could convince more people to make the jump into the wired world.  The teachers that embrace the wired world are the movers and shakers.  The students that are allowed to connect and collaborate globally are the future leaders.  To all the teachers that complain that the students won’t learn – what are you doing to teach the way students will learn?  Recently I added a quote I read in ISTE’s Leading and Learning from Lisa Wilson of The Mentoring Center – “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.”  I’ll take it further – if we don’t use these tools we will no longer be teaching, we will simply sound more and more like every adult in a Charlie Brown video.

I recently read a post on Steve Dembo’s Teach 42 blog about whether or not joining Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) was bad for morale (Is joining a PLN bad for morale?).  Steve cited two examples of teachers leaving positions after learning what others are doing with technology in their classrooms and realizing those things won’t come to fruition in their current positions.  It made for many interesting comments from teachers all over.  Many teachers are in similar positions.  Many are in positions similar to mine – they fear budget cuts will eliminate their position. Some teachers in technology specialist positions were now wanting to go back to the classroom and use all these new technologies for themselves.  How about you?  Do you read about things other teachers in other schools/districts/states are doing and become disillusioned because you know whatever it is won’t happen here?  Or are you the one setting that example for others? Do you read about other teachers and simply think “no way”, or “how in the world?”

During my daily travels on the web and through edtech journals, I am always finding new tools (I especially like the free ones…).  Then I try to figure out which teacher can best use the new thing and come up with some ideas.  Recently I sent the link to GoAnimate to our middle school TAG teacher.  Her students loved it!  They have created historical and political animations.  One grade used it to create recycling commercials. 

Another tool I ran across and passed along to a lot of teachers was Pocketmod.  It calls itself the free, recylable personal organizer, but I saw it as a wonderul way to make pocket-sized study guides.  The TAG students used it to create storybooks for kindergarden and first grade students.  A sixth grade science class used it to create study sheets for their benchmark exams.

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?

Wii Whiteboard

Okay, folks.  You asked for it, here it is – the video.  The first teacher in the video went and got a Wii remote last week, my husband made her a pen and voila! She is in business.  There are so many things to show in the video, but I wanted to keep it short and sweet.   

Showed the board to a teacher today and now she wants one of her own.  I told her if she got the Wii remote, we’d do the rest.  If all goes as she says, I’ll be setting her up next week.   

I love teachers who want to try new things, and this is one of them.  It took no persuasion on my part to get her to use an RCA Small Wonder video camera to document assessments for her VGLAs (thanks to the kind folks in Loudon County for providing the PowerPoint templates for submissions).  Every time I show her something new I can see the wheels spinning.  Her officemate is the opposite and thinks technology it the spawn of the devil!

A few weeks ago I read a post on Why Technology Rocks in Virginia about using a Wii remote to make an interactive whiteboard.  Needless to say, I was intrigued.  I sent the links on to my cohorts thinking they would also be intrigued – but no one said anything.  Then I went searching and found videos on YouTube (go figure) and downloaded a few (using KeepVid).  Happened to play one or two for my husband to see.  Took them to work (since this is all blocked at our schools) and showed them.  Okay, seeing the thing in use hooked them.  Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, my husband headed to Wally World and bought a Wii remote on clearance.  Then he scavenged an LED from an old remote and built the required pen – looked much like a pipe bomb, complete with red button.  They were waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I got home.  Took the two to work the next day and the “guys” are amazed my husband has done all this.  Of course, we have to try it – so I download and install the calibration software.  The first laptop (my “office” laptop) doesn’t want to connect the Wii remote, so I try another one (my “school” laptop).  Voila! We get a connection.  But we don’t get good success with the pen.  I call home, murf (my husband) comes to work and we begin working on the pen.  He does some rewiring -still isn’t great.  Then we read that LEDs from remotes don’t always provide good results.  Off to Radio Shack, get a new IR LED, back home to resolder.  This one works, quite well, actually.  We are all wowed by the fact we just created something that works as an interactive whiteboard on any surface – we even got it to work with the laptop connected to a TV.  The next day Murf reworks the pen design – I mean, you can’t take something that looks like a small pipe bomb into a school and not have someone panic.  The new pen is in a Crayola marker shell (our daughter kindly donated one of her many markers to the cause).

It is really amazing to think we have a portable interactive whiteboard for less than $50 – add another $30 for a Bluetooth adapter to carry with it and we are there for less than $100.  The calibration software is free, and I have found two whiteboard software products, also free.  No, it isn’t a Smart Board, or a Promethean board, or any of the other store-bought boards – but for less than $100, it is quite do-able.  If your district budget is anything like ours next year, this is way cool.

It would seem we are a step or two closer to using blogs and wikis and podcasts (oh my!).  The main theme at ETLC in Roanoke, VA seemed to be these Web 2.0 tools.   I think our tech coordinator is receptive to the idea.  We have a few teachers using Wordpress in their classrooms, mainly for discussions.  However, it was blocked for awhile because it would seem folks like to run proxy anonymizers off their Wordpress accounts….

I want more teachers to give blogs a whirl – give students extra credit or something for participating in a discussion on the blog.  We are planning on putting our technology plan into a wiki for the admin and teachers to comment upon before we have to submit it to the state.  Another plan is to have middle school students begin creating book reviews in podcast form to place on their school webpage.

What are other ideas for blogs and wikis????