Week 6: Mid-term--How's it going?

Well, we're a little past the halfway point. How is it going?

For this week's assignment, I'm asking you to do three things:

1. Provide a little bit of information about your experience so far by answering these questions:
2. Revisit two of the previous blog posts (find access to the archived posts in the lower right corner hand of this page), and read through folks' comments. Find at least one thing to comment on and "reply" to that comment by clicking "reply" and leaving an insight, answer, or suggestion to that comment. One of the benefits of blogging is the conversation it allows for. Imagine if we had done this class via email. I could have sent you each week's post in an email and you could have responded to me with a reply to that email. However, notice how much richer it is to see and respond to each other's thinking using the blog instead.

3. Leave a comment to this post with your "mid-term" reflection. Anything you want to share is fine, but here a few questions you might want to consider: How is this set up working for you? How does learning this way stack up next to more traditional ways of learning? Have you learned anything about the way you learn that might impact how you teach? Any suggestions for the second half of the class? Remember--commenting on someone else's post counts. And, of course, thank you for your feedback!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bybri/2604493952/

Thanksgiving Week Optional Make-up Post

Well, we've had a couple snow days, then Thanksgiving was upon us, and, of course, what did I do? Totally spaced this week's optional blog post. Sorry about that. So here's what we're going to do--if you missed posting a comment so far, and were counting on this opportunity to make it up, I'd like you to think about how technology is making your life easier. What are one or two ways that you are thankful for technology? Think about it, then post your thoughts below. :) Happy Thanksgiving!

Week 5: What a View!

Have you checked out Google Street View yet? You should because Google Street View has probably already checked out you! You’d be surprised where you and your class can go. Reading a book set in Iowa? Might as well “drive” down Temple Ave. in Shell Rock so that students can get a glimpse of the vast terrain. Or maybe “drive” by the Guggenheim on 5th Ave. in New York City. It’s easy—just visit Google Maps, plug in an address or just zoom in on an area you wish to “visit.” Look for the little yellow guy and drag him over to one of the street views that are available in that area (available streets will be highlighted in blue).

This week, tell us how you might use Google Street View in your classroom. Be creative! It’s not just a mapping tool. When I looked at my house using Street View, I was able to use clues (evidence) in the view to determine the day and time (well, I narrowed it down to a 4-hour period) they must have driven down my street.

OR

If there isn't a way you could use Street View, visit the Google for Educators page or the Google blog (side note: it's really amazing what Google offers beyond search) to to learn about some of the other great resources Google offers that might be useful to you and your students. Let us know what you find and how you might use it.

Week 4: Seek and Ye Shall Find

This week's lesson isn't really about a tool, it's about how solutions to challenges and new possibilities are just a Google search away.

To begin, we'll start with some background on a challenge I faced last year with this very class.

Successful online learning and engagement depends on having a way for participants to exchange ideas with others and discuss the class topics. Many of our teachers are using the discussion feature of their SWIFT sites to host online discussions with students. Some teachers use it as homework prior to an in-class discussion and some as a way to extend lessons beyond the school day. If you want to learn more about using the discussion feature of SWIFT, see page nine of the SWIFT User Guide. One of the limitations of the SWIFT discussion feature, however, is that the discussions aren’t threaded. This means that as students post comments, the comments simply appear in chronological order, making it difficult for a student (or the teacher) to respond to a particular comment that may have appeared early on in the discussion. Threaded discussions allow people to respond to particular comments; they allow the conversation to branch off into different directions.

Unfortunately, Blogger (the tool we’re using for this class/blog) also doesn’t offer threaded discussions with its embedded commenting tool, making it difficult for me (or you) to reply directly to someone’s comment. However, we're not using Blogger's embedded commenting tool. Instead,  I uploaded a third party application that replaces the Blogger commenting tool with one that allows for threaded commenting. Yippee! 

This is how it happened: Last year when we started this class, I knew Blogger didn’t offer threaded discussions, but I figured that I’m not the only person who wished it did, so I Googled “adding threaded discussion to Blogger.” That led me to a blog post about third party applications I could add to the blog to increase interactivity. That’s where I learned about Intense Debate—the application I’m using to provide threaded discussion for our class on this blog. Within 15 minutes I had followed the step-by-step directions for editing the blog template, copied and inserted the HTML, and—voila!—we had threaded comments on the blog. Did I really know what I was doing? No. I don’t know HTML. I don’t know how to edit a blog’s internal template. But I do know how to search for an answer to a question/challenge I have AND I know how to follow directions. That’s all it took.

So, that's this week's theme: If you believe it should be possible, it probably is—all you have to do is look. I offer this anecdote as evidence that there is a solution out there for most of our challenges if we look and are willing to invest in a little risk taking. If I had seen this issue as a problem, I might have just begrudgingly accepted my plight (no threaded commenting) and would not have investigated further. However, I felt comfortable taking matters into my own hands and did some self-directed learning—something I think we (and our students) are going to be expected to do more and more of in this new digital world. In my role, I am confronted by this reality day after day, yet every time I am amazed and delighted. What about you?

a. Share a time you went online with a question/challenge and “taught” yourself how to do something new.

OR

b. Do it now . . . what’s a question/challenge you have in your class right now? Go online and look for your solution. How did it go?

Week 3: You're #1 with Teachers First

Great ideas and comments last week--check them out if you haven't already! I hope some of you may choose to create an assignment like this for your students. If you do, let me know--I'd love to help you do some of the pre-planning and thinking. Last year, someone in the class commented that now she needed to learn how to make the videos. I really believe students, when shown examples, can figure something like this out. We don't have to be the experts (thank goodness!). But we do have to help students learn how to learn and provide clear rubrics that spell out the expectations. That doesn't mean they won't need help, stumble as they go, etc. but I think we need to embrace that and make it part of the assignment. Okay, enough of that . . . on to this week's topic.

New Web 2.0 tools and digital resources come online every day. Many of these tools and resources offer intriguing possibilities for teachers in our district who want to leverage technology to meet one or more of the components of Classroom 10. Others are simply Classroom 1 and 5 content and activities dressed up in digital attire. In order to avoid the trap of using technology for technology’s sake, savvy teachers need to make thoughtful choices about which tools and resources they want to use with their students.

Some teachers read blogs like Free Technology for Teachers and Moving at the Speed of Creativity to find out about new tools. Another resource is the TeachersFirst website. This site “is a rich collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format. [They offer their] own professional and classroom-ready content along with thousands of reviewed web resources, including practical ideas for classroom use and safe classroom use of Web 2.0. Busy teachers, parents, and students can find resources using our subject/grade level search, keyword search, or extensive menus.”

One feature of TeachersFirst that I particularly like is their weekly email that contains a link to the featured sites of the week. When I click on this link each week I can quickly scan through the dozen or so sites, each listed with a brief description including grade-level appropriateness, and select which ones I want to investigate further.

This Week's Assignment
This week spend some time at TeachersFirst. Sign up for their weekly email or just search for tools/resources by grade-level and subject area. Get a taste of the featured sites for this week. Poke around and find one tool or resource that is intriguing to you. But don’t fall into the “technology for technology’s sake” trap. Find a tool or resource that could be used to meet a Classroom 10 learning goal in your classroom.

Have fun exploring, then come back here, and post your find (include the link to the site) explaining how it could be used to meet a Classroom 10 learning goal. (Don't worry--keep it simple, you're not writing a lesson plan here, you're just sharing an idea.)