Do Web 2.0 Right

This article defines three elements that shape how the teachers they interviewed use web 2.0 tools in their classrooms. The three elements are instituting daily practice, carefully considering the audience, and teaching and enforcing appropriate behavior. I will consider how these three elements affect my efforts to incorporate web 2.0 activities in my classroom.

First of all, daily practice is a struggle as we have just one classroom computer. Therefore, I usually schedule at LEAST one to two days a week for each class in the computer labs and create assignments for students to access on my eboard. I can't wait to try out the ipod touches Kimberly wrote a grant for and is currently using with her students. I am already compiling many applications for daily use with that tool.

The second element is consideration of the audience. I believe that with middle school students this is critical and will make or break an activity. I love the idea of using blogs as communication between myself and individual students. I think they will be much more open to sharing ideas of a personal nature if they know only I will be reading it. I wonder if there is a way to create a blog where others cannot access the content? I will look into it. However, I also think a spirited debate on a less personal topic would motivate all of my students. For example, in my Cowboy unit students write a persuasive essay on their view of the treatment of animals in rodeo, ranch work, or charreadas. I would like to first have a web 2.0 debate for students to argue their position before writing their essay. This way they will see other perspectives before settling on their own stance.

Finally, the article discusses appropriate online behavior. The main idea I took from this element is to limit access to a particular class. For example, I created my first class wiki to be used by all of my classes. Now, I can see the advantages and would prefer to have a separate wiki for each class. One, it will give the class ownership, and two, it offers more security to students as they know only their class will have access to it.

So, I have a few changes I want to make based on the information in this article. I think the first thing I will do is create the separate wikis since I already know how to do that and it won't take forever to figure it out. One thing at a time...

Be Flexible

If there's one thing I've learned from incorporating technology into the curriculum, it's that you'd better be flexible and ready for anything. Unfortunately, technology is not always reliable and you may have to shoot from the hip when it lets you down. For example, just this week I had two flops. First, I had my assignment all planned out to begin with a BrainPOP video and activity on Information Privacy. So, there they are all logging in and one by one I hear "Mrs. Blick!" and "It's not working!" Sure enough, for some reason that one video would not load on any of their computers. Second, I told my students that they would be creating a video presentation to go with a speech they'd already written on a theme to unite our school. I gave them examples from Youtube to look at of what I had in mind for them to create. Well...I hadn't researched quite enough to find the right application to create said videos, and now I'm not sure it's even possible without spending money to buy the tool. imovie won't work for our purpose because the flip cameras have disappeared from our school, and animoto takes "several weeks" to respond to my request for an educator's account. What's left for free is a measly 30 second picture show that doesn't allow for more than 20 characters of text! Still haven't figured out for sure what to do about that. Anyways, headaches aside, I'm still on board and will continue my endeavors to incorporate technology more and more. I'm just sayin'....it's good to be forewarned that you'll probably encounter an occasional glitch in the matrix!

I have so many ideas!

Seriously, I do. I just wish I had the time to pursue each one. There are so many exciting possibilities for lesson planning and 21st Century Learning. The applications tumble around in my head but the reality is that I have to pick just one to work on at a time. Even then, the hours I spend researching for one lesson quickly add up. It's Sunday, I've been at it for 3 1/2 hours, it's getting dark, and if my husband wasn't here to remind me of life's other occupations, I'd be here for a few more. But don't worry, I took Saturday off completely and enjoyed some rest and relaxation.

My current time-suck is a lesson I'm creating related to a speech my students began writing on a theme to unite our school. I perused YouTube for 45 minutes just looking for a few examples to inspire the kiddos. My goal is to have them create a video presentation to go with their theme. They will use text from their speech, inspirational quotes, music, and graphics that will inspire their viewers to embrace the message. The next step in the lesson planning is for Mrs. Blick to select the tool and figure out how to use it herself. Hmmm...I wonder how many hours will that take?

Testing

Agghh-Testing! It's not quite as exciting as 21st century learning, that's for sure. But, it is reality and I'm determined to help my students learn how to be successful testers. Now, I'm not sure how this ties in to my technology journey but it's what is on my mind this week so that's what I'm blogging about.

We just wrapped up CELA testing and CSAP will be here in no time. I don't know that my students, all ELA and a high percentage SPED, have often felt the satisfaction of a test well done. Therefore, this week we are beginning Larry Bell's UNRAAVEL, a method to tackle reading comprehension tests. I believe that just having a game plan to attack a reading passage will help my students immensely. It will give them a place to start and some feeling of control if they have concrete steps to follow. Afterward, we'll spend a while learning how to write "Better Answers" to standardized test prompts. This is based on a text by Ardith Davis Cole called Better Answers: Written Performance That Looks Good and Sounds Smart.

I plan to have my students write pre and post reflections on this process and hope to see a new confidence emerge towards test-taking. Stay tuned!

Jing

This week I finally made my own screen casts with Jing, something I'd been meaning to do for a while now. What a great tool! With an entire class in the computer lab, I'm able to show multiple students how to do something at the same time without saying a word! After three months of school, some of my students were still struggling to save documents to the server. Well, not any more. I keep the Jing video on the eboard for each assignment so they can re-watch as needed. I also used Jing to show students the first steps to setting up a Powerpoint for their book talk. It considerably lessened the number of repeat questions from students and they got a lot more accomplished in one period. Now that I know how easy it is to use it will become a regular part of the implementation of our computer lab activities.

Blogging!

I have spent a few hours setting up a class blog and researching how other teachers have used blogs for teaching and reflection. I'm always amazed by the amount of time it takes to learn a new technology and figure out how to best implement its use in the classroom! And I still have so many questions to answer as well as skills to acquire in order to become proficient at using just this one tool.

I am using Edublog. I am starting with one class blog and will eventually have students set up their own blogs to be linked within our class blog. Here's the URL if you'd like to check out the initial set-up: http://mrsblick.edublogs.org

I will begin the introduction to blogging by looking at examples of other classroom blogs and comment strings. As a class, we'll look at a few examples of blogging guidelines and then come up with our own to include on a page in our blog. I'd like to try and have the students be as involved as possible in the set-up of the initial blog. This way they'll have ownership and learn the skills needed to set up their individual blogs later. I envision these blogs to be used as portfolios for finished writing pieces as well as a reflection of the entire process.

It's a little scary jumping into something so new that none of us have done before. At the same time it is exciting. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck!

Project-Based Learning

As I took another look at the first three chapters of "Reinventing Project-Based Learning," I spent some time viewing blogs and websites the authors recommended. This takes considerable time as I always seem to find a link inside one site that leads me to another and then another, etc.... Then, I begin to feel overwhelmed again by the daunting task of creating a project for my own students. So, I was glad to find a list of some baby steps to get me started at Edutopia.org. I'll create a link here if I can figure out how to do it. It shouldn't be too hard, right? The article gives you things you can do if you have 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, or 5 years. I am going to start by planning mini-lessons for technology skills my students will need in order to participate in a project. First up- creating blogs to have a record the process and for reflection!