So here it is my first movie. It was overall much easier to make than what I was expecting. The software was rather facile to use- I am not sure I ran into a single problem. The hardest part for me was organizing the photos and my thoughts- I should have gone with the storyboard first...listen to your teacher. These videos go over really well with parents and grandparents. I think they are my new cheap gift idea.

3-5-7 Thought and Reflections on Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts

Three, 3, Tres

Chapter three has several good points- if you aren’t blogging why should your kids be? I think that showing students example of good blogging at the peer level would be more effective than showing them my own. Right now for example my students are all excited about how “tough” people from NYC are. I think that showing them some blogs from students their age in NYC might be a motivational tool to get them reading, thinking, and writing.

I am left wondering if Jefferson County Public Schools have any groups of students that are currently blogging and if so, what site they are currently using. I know as a new teacher we have far more technology programs than I am aware of, thus I am wasting school funds. If anyone has any information on this let me know.

Finally, here is a link { http://questionsforschools.blogspot.com/} to a friend of mine (and Andrew D.) who has both a website and blog called “Questions for Schools.” He is a good example of a Kentucky educator that regularly blogs.

Five, 5, Cinco

I just read about setting up my own RSS and to be quite honest it sounded like a pain and something else to keep up with. It seems like one more thing to check while I am on the internet and get sucked into burning hours more of my life in front of a screen. However, I can see uses for it in my classroom. For example when we were studying our earth science unit in January and February I was constantly searching Google news to see if there was any updates on the volcanic activity of Mount Redoubt. It would have been nice to have had a constant stream of updates throughout the year, particularly as we moved into a new unit and I stopped being as faithful about getting the students updates.

Anyhow, I have decided to be a good sport and sign up for Bloglines. I will let everyone know how my adventure goes.

Seven, 7, Siete

Since we already played with Flicker in class this article was easy to approach, and I felt confident I could conquer this bit of technology. By the same merit since we had already played with it, I didn’t find anything in the article to be groundbreaking. However, when I saw the little girl’s project where she annotated all the different elements of Jane Goodall’s camp I thought of my own unique Flickr use. For labs with complicated set ups, I might be nice to have students who have done a good job take a picture of their set up, then annotate what was where (and perhaps why. It would be a good way for older student to capture the set up of their labs in order to better write a “procedures” section and have a way for people to reference their set up.

Thoughts on Wikis in the Classroom- Reflection for Chapter 4

I am the typical teacher that Richardson describes a little wary of the idea that anyone could post anything on a website linked with my classroom. My first of teaching has been all about learning to let go of things I can’t control so that I am not as uptight in the classroom. I for one couldn’t sleep at night knowing that anyone (particularly certain questionable characters in my own class) could put anything on the website- I would probably have to for my own sanity use a that is password protected particularly one like Jotspot where I could track which student posted what.
In my experience with middle schooler’s is that the statement “everyone together is smarter than anyone alone” (pg 61) goes against the hormones that create pack mentality…the more middle schoolers in one room the less intelligent they become.

As I do tend to worry and be a bit controlling, as I read this imagined someone wrecking or vandalizing a Wiki that a class had made. The author mention that wikis can teach students about “collaboration…publishing….and writing as well” (pg. 68) but I also realized despite the initial frustration that web vandalism would create it could be a great tool for teaching “web morals.” I think if student had to spend a lot of time reworking a site that had been destroyed it might prevent them from pulling this prank later on. So perhaps as he described, going with as few restrictions as possible might be an opportunity for students to learn by natural consequences.

Finally, I thought Richardson's section "Wiki Tools for Schools" was great in that it gave some examples of site on which could create your own wiki and direction. However, I thought the format of the directions was hard to follow...I like directions in numbered lists and bullets not paragraph form!

Reaction Chapter 2- Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts,......

Alas, I have my book thanks to a friends who is letting me borrow it. Unfortunately, by the time I got it last night I was too exhausted to read it. And, for those of you that read this before beginning your MovieMaker Project...follow her directions of making a script and organizing your pictures before trying to actually put a project together. It is not as difficult as I expected to use the software, but going in with a plan is helpful if you don't want to waste time. Speaking of waste, according to Chapter 2 I am wasting value reflective, educational space by just using my blog as a diary to record the days events. So here is the meat!

I thought Richardson did a great job of presenting Weblogs as an academic tool mainly because he gave so many real-life example. Many of the other classes I have taken at U of L have presented concepts and ideas (like differentiation techniques) but given no concrete way to execute them, thus this book is more helpful. I found it particularly useful that he provided examples of using blogs across the realm of education- one for a general school website, one for a Calculus class, one for an elementary class, blogs by teachers for teachers, and so on.

I also found his list of of what educational (or connective) blogging is and isn't very interesting on pg. 32. He says journaling or posting assignments are "not blogging" while "listing links with analysis" is "real blogging." I think having my literacy class participate in some blogging where the reflect on sites in the manner he suggests (and hopefully, with this teach them to be a hint of reflective). I tried it a little bit with journals and the stories/pictures from the New York Times Learning Network Site ( http://www.nytimes.com/learning/). However, my kids weren't very interesting in writing with pen and paper so perhaps having an audience would inspire them to improve their writing. I also think if I relayed to them the idea that writing for a blog is like a conversation (an idea that came from that fellow Kondrad Glogowski) and made it akin to texting back and forth some of my students might latch onto the idea. They certainly love to argue back and forth so perhaps I could tract it into a positive literary argument. Something to try anyway....

I just spoke of students as the audience of other students in my classroom and it made me think about the following my potential student bloggers would have. I don't feel like the author has taken into account (at least not at this point) that many students have very little support at home particularly in the realm of education. I feel it is highly unlikely that the students of parents that regularly let them skip school and fail classes would take interest in their blog or an email that generates updates about the classes latest assignments. I understand your blogs aren't supposed to be viewed only by parents but often, I would imagine this is the beginning of a following. Thoughts?

Reaction for Chapter 1- Wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc. (because it is all I have right now)...

The first concept the author explored that I identified with was the idea that because of the influence of technology so early in our lives (he quotes from Dr. Winn) “children think differently from us.” Because of this different manner of thinking students also learn differently- many of mine see answering questions in a webquest as fun while the same questions from a book are seen as painfully boring. I know from observing many students on my team get more quality learning time from spending time on computer based learning programs like “Study Island” or “SuccessMaker” than in a traditional classroom setting because they are less easily distracted when they are plugged in. Because I yet to have the full text (thanks google for getting me ahead)I am not sure if the author goes into more detail about the Rich Site Summaries, Aggregators, of Social bookmarking he mentions on pg. 8. However, I having never even heard of this am interested to know more about it. It seems very advantageous for a group of teachers-lets say all the JCPS teachers using the 8th grade module to be able to create a “social book mark” of all the sites relevant to our module on light. You could organize it per investigations and it would be a great timesaver as each teacher wouldn’t have to do as much searching. Finally, I could not agree more that students will, willingly or unwillingly come across inappropriate content anytime they use real resources. My funny teacher related to this is when my students looking through a stack of my grandmothers magazines found “porn” or at least a cartoon of how to do a breast examine… Anyhow, from this experience I realize that students will find inappropriate content on the internet. However, I am not sure that my students would be as easily trained to quickly turn away from this content as the author’s students. In fact, I think mine seek it out and I sometimes avoid letting them on the computer for that very reason.

Article Reaction- Student as Contributor-The Digital Learning Farm

Perhaps it is my overall interest in all things agrarian that contributed to my fascination with this article. I thought the author was heading in the right direction immediately when he spoke of how the “work of children had been replaced” as machines took the jobs of humans on farms. I feel that many students like the feeling of self-worth he describes because until they get their first job at 14 or 15 they make little meaningful contribution to society. Not only does this hinder their self worth but also the development of their social skills and responsibility level. Having student contribute in a “techie” manner is something I had not considered as a solution to the problem but his argument was convincing and I immediately found myself thinking of ways I could adapt his idea in my classroom.
By adapting some digital jobs into my classroom I would, as the old saying goes, kill two birds with one stone (not a very high-tech weapon-sorry). First of all, I would have students working on assignments for the “real” audience that you hear so much about in reference to best practice. Secondly, I would be solving problems that hinder progress in my classroom. For, example, if I combine his examples of filming tutorials and posting notes I have the perfect solution to the my ongoing problem of keeping prolific absences from thwarting progress on module investigations in my 8th grad classroom. Students could film (and maybe edit) key parts of investigations to show their absent classmates some of the main ideas from an investigation. Having students add notes or scan lab sheets might enhance the video. Perhaps learning to use Movie Maker could help me with this undertaking- I think it might be too much for Flickr?
I wholly agree with his idea that this provides a means by which students can make “important and rigorous contributions” however, I am not sure that it equates perfectly from the lessons learned from a day of back-breaking labor….. Students should see a share of both worlds, which might be where the Kiva.com plays into the picture.

Flickr

Below is the link to the flicker set “Waves” my group (Mark Smythe, Nancy Lawrey, Andrea Weaver, Joel Lommansson, and Andrew Digan) created this evening. The photo/video set demonstrates the following Kentucky Core Content Standards:
KY-4-1.SC-07-4.6.3 Students will understand that waves are one way that energy is transferred. Types of waves include sound, light, earthquake, ocean and electromagnetic.
KY-4-1.SC-08-4.6.4.2 > describe the transfer of energy via waves in real life phenomena.
Ideally this would be a review in which students would test their ability to look at a photo of a real life phenomena (flag waving in the breeze, a traditional ocean wave, the stadium wave,etc) and 1) identify it as a wave then, 2)describe the energy transfer taking place. We added a note the students could look at in the event that they were having difficulty so that they could “self-assess.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewpdigan/sets/72157618105550472/
I could see myself using a tool like this in the classroom for similar projects with my students- for projects that serve as assessments in particular. I personally struggled verbalizing the comments in the “notes” thus think for a student to make a project like this they would have to really have a good understanding of the content.
Finally, I was impressed with how quickly the group became adept at using flickr. None of us had previously used the site (I am a SnapFish girl) but within 7-8 minutes we were very comfortable and picking up real skills.