the media window

A reflection on Clarence Fisher’s keynote presentation at the K12Online07 conference.

After watching Clarence Fisher’s keynote presentation for K12Online07 a few times, then understanding what he has managed to achieve in a fairly remote part of the world I realize that it’s up to me to stop finding the reasons that I CAN’t accomplish the tech integration in the classroom and start finding ways to make them happen. I live in a metropolitan area! I’ve been talking about starting a blogging project with students, but have yet to accomplish it. So, with the good advice from other educational bloggers who have gone before me I will finally delve into student blogging this coming school year.
The part of Mr. Fisher’s presentation that I keep coming back to in my mind is the final part where he speaks of “changing ourselves”. The idea of a classroom as a studio is intriguing to me. I feel as if I am on the brink of making fundamental shifts in the media center that I teach in, my “classroom”. I teach literature appreciation, research skills, technology skills, and media skills in a variety of ways. As I watch Fisher’s presentation though, my methods seem archaic to me. I would like to present some options for students that better prepare them for their future in meaningful ways.
Here are some of the key points I heard in this presentation:

• Geography is irrelevant, knowledge is not.
• We need to prepare students for their future.
• Teachers need to change the way they teach.
• Use tools that allow collaboration, promote ideas, exchange of viewpoints, and make connections.
• Relationship is important.
• Information is vital.
• Curriculum needs to be constantly evaluated.
• Use a variety of tech tools that allow this collaboration.

Challenges for me:
The large number of students I see each day and the range of grade levels (K-5).
Limited access to computer lab especially during standardized testing times (9 weeks of the school year now)
Firewalls that block certain websites, such as Skype, Yackpack and more.

Accommodations that I can make:
Make use of computers in the media center, ibook laptops.
Have computers as stations in the media center during lessons.

Just like this emerging hepatica in my backyard, on a chilly day in May, I am pushing my own comfort level by joining the Comment Challenge that was the brainstorm of Sue Waters, Kim Cofino and others last week. In my mind, the idea is to increase the level and quality of comments I make on blogs that I read. Another happy effect appears to be finding new and interesting blogs to read and the chance to make contact with others doing the same!
Day 1 Activity
My “self-audit”.

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
  This is easily answered–almost never! This is why I felt that joining in on a challenge that encourages me to start commenting is essential if I hope to develop my own ability to reflect on education and the ever-fascinating, ever-changing world of technology. I really believe that we will all benefit from this endeavor.

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
  Since I rarely commented, I had no reason to track anything, although I am notified by email of new comments at The Media Window. I am now subscribed to co.mment and am using co.comment for the Challenge. I am still learning how co.comment tracks things, and I must say I have been led to some interesting blogs and conversation only because of using it. Makes it easy to get lost in my wanderings! Must maintain personal discipline!

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
  At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t tend to comment at all, so here is where I will write my intention to increase my level of commenting in general and my commitment to leaving comments at a variety of blogs, hopefully with some level of reason and intelligence!

I read Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments and found it useful information for those of us who have not commented extensively. Excellent advice to follow in general about the niceties of commenting on blogs.
So, join me and many others, if you too would like to expand your blogging world, and if you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to tag your posts “comment08″

The week off for spring break has allowed me to explore all manner of things web2.0 and one cool site I discovered today is LibraryThing which allows you to catalog your personal library of books, write reviews on what you have read, rate books, or join a group that shares your book interests. The founder, Tim Spalding was just named one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers for March 2008. It was super easy to sign up, add books and then add a widget to my blog showing off the most current books I’ve been reading! Next I’m going to experiment with the reviews capability. I am intrigued to think that I can add this to my media center website and have “featured” books with reviews for parents and students to read and use.

I am now signed up to earn graduate credits for through the K12 Online Conference. The credits are from Plymouth University and the learning is self-directed, but overseen by Jeff Utecht, who is a K12 Technology coordinator at an international school in Shanghai and whose blog is The Thinking Stick. My first assignment will be to watch and reflect on the pre-conference keynote speech presented by David Warlick titled “Inventing the Boundaries”.
Not too long ago I was knocking down and cutting up cardboard for recycling. It had built up in my garage over the summer. I picked up a small yellow stub of paper that drifted out of one of the cardboard boxes that had held some of the paper stuff of my father’s life.
It read:
Dahl Bros. Painting and Decorating
For the pay period ending: January 4, 1951
Employee name: Stanley Dahl
Regular hours: 41
$2.02/hour
Total deductions: $4.64
Net pay: $78.18
In January 1951, I wouldn’t exist for another year and 2 months, but at that time my father had a wife and three children to take care of. He worked as a painter for his brother, Wally. How did they manage on a salary like that? We were always struggling and now I know more clearly, from a little scrap of paper, why. He worked at that same job for more than thirty years.
His choices for a career were more limited than mine, and also, his life shaped mine in ways that I haven’t always considered.
As I listened to David Warlick’s keynote speech and heard him speak of watching his own father put on his tie while dressing each morning it reminded me of that paycheck stub. Neither one of us knew as children how vastly different our lives COULD be from our fathers’ lives. There was a static sense to my world at home and school that led me to adulthood. I received a solid public education that helped me to go on to college and eventually into teaching. At some point, however, I was introduced to an Apple IIe, and from there my fascination with technology began. The boundaries opened up for me and my own children during the time they were in elementary school and the hook was technology.
Now we are in a new era of students and technology, and it was interesting to be presented with David Warlick’s idea that there are three “brand new conditions that are converging on our classrooms”. We as educators need to pay heed to these concepts.

• The first condition he mentioned was info-savvy students. While there are many students today who fit that title, I would argue that students are not all info-savvy. I especially see this in my school where there is quite a range of poor to affluent students. I agree with David when he said that they still need us to help them “work” the information. We also need to make sure that those who have less receive these benefits at school, especially if they cannot get them at home. I also feel that school can help put the vast array of technology choices our students are presented with into meaningful context.
• The second condition to consider is a “New Informational Landscape” in which we provide students with “responsive information environments” that allow them to “communicate and share personal experiences”. We need to allow students to ask questions and to “safely make mistakes”. Just how to do that in relation to emerging web based technologies is the key. It makes me look forward to watching the rest of the presentations in the K12 Online conference.
• The final condition Warlick mentions is the “Unpredictable Future”, which for me brings it back full circle. I do believe that our world is changing much faster than that of my own childhood and I see that in the lives of my children. I’d venture to say that it’s our job to educate ourselves as best we can and be open to the change that continues to occur to better prepare the youngest students for their unpredictable and hopefully positive future.

I had a chance to go to the Yahoo website to create an avatar there. Since I already had an account, it was relatively easy to do. It would be a good activity for my after school computer club to try, but since they may not have Yahoo accounts, I was interested in exploring the Voki website as well. I still need to test this, but I believe you can create an avatar and “grab” the code to embed it without having an account. I did set a Voki account, so my avatar is available to me whenever I want to use it. My Voki avatar is the larger image above. She/me is pretty cool, because of the voice and animation. They are both a much younger version of me, but I sure didn’t want to be a cat or an old grandma which were some of the many other choices available!
I couldn’t put the Voki in as a sidebar widget, but I read that Sue Waters from Edubloggers is working on the fix for that.

A few weeks ago I made ms dahl’s media blog independent of my school webpage. The main reason was that I am helping teachers in my building to create their own school websites using weebly.com. Since I was using edublogs.org I wasn’t totally in sync with their needs. Now I have a weebly website for my school media center and I plan to continue this one as an avenue for my own professional learning.
This is day one of my winter break, and in between cleaning stints, I have been listening to several of the K12 online presentations. So, I am now a new member of the Seedlings ning. Through them I learned about Podcastpeople, signed up for that and also created my first podcast.
I’ve also been catching up on reading my favorite education/web2.0 blogs and have even found MORE that I would love to follow as well! One that I appreciate is Kim Cofino’s Always Learning. I was interested to read about the 1001 Flat World Tales project that is starting up in February. I keep looking for the perfect project to do or join in terms of web2.0, but am starting to realize that I may need to quit dipping my toes and just jump in and do something- anything!

Students have used a variety of reference materials in the media center already this year, including World Book ONLINE. If you have internet access, your child may use WorldBook ONLINE to do homework and research. It has all of the same wonderful print articles that their regular encyclopedia has and in addition there are sounds and videos for many of the articles. There are also recommended websites that will enrich their research even further.  Tons of cool, educational fun! Ask your media specialist how to access it from home, he or she can provide you with the login id and the password.

Go to www.worldbookonline.com

Try it out!

Here’s a chance to learn more about web2.0 and develop your technology expertise in a variety of areas. It’s all free!

I went to the MEMO conference this weekend. Not only was it in the lovely Brainerd area with beautiful fall color, it was a very worthwhile conference for me, and I hope to be able to share many of the valuable insights I gained there. The following are just the technology related sessions I learned from.

• In the first session I attended I learned more about podcasting. This is a growing area of technology, and while I am interested in it, I have not ventured into the realm of using it in the classroom. I did get information on free audio editing software that is available called Audacity.
• I attended a few sessions on SmartBoard technology. The information in these sessions was good because I learned that as long as there is one SmartBoard in your district, you can download and use SMART Notebook software. I am excited about that, because once it’s downloaded to your computer, you can use it with projector and an Airliner tablet and do many of the tasks of a SmartBoard without actually having one! This will undoubtedly be more advantageous to those schools with a number of projectors already in hand, but I am looking forward to seeing what we can do at my building.
• Another session I attended helped me to learn more about using Google. I was already familiar with and had used GoogleDocs which is a great tool that allows a group of people to edit a document online in real time. The beauty of it is you don’t have to be together to do the editing. This summer I took an online course and used GoogleDocs to collaborate with another media specialist who was taking the course with me. We were able to develop our lesson plan assignments together, add our instructor as a contributor and have him view our work! Very slick. What was new to me was Google’s custom search engines. This is a way to limit the websites that Google will search, which could be useful for teachers and students. If you limit the websites, you eliminate the potentially confusing array that a student encounters while researching a particular subject. You should create a separate Google account for your school and not use your own Google account if you plan to use it with your students. I may use this in the future and have classified the knowledge in the “good to know” category.
• The fourth session I attended was facilitated by Doug Johnson, a nationally recognized leader in media and technology from our state of Minnesota. He currently maintains a blog that is always interesting and informative called “Blue Skunk Blog“. His talk on “Policies 2.0: Rules of the Social Web” was informative and thought-provoking. The questions that arose for me had most to do with the concept of intellectual freedom. In a nutshell, I believe that intellectual freedom is essential, but as a teacher of young students I feel there is a responsibility on my part to provide an environment of safe learning for those in my charge. I always feel more comfortable checking out websites or downloading the pictures I may need from Google images myself ahead of time and linking to them for the students to access and learn from the lesson I want to teach. It saves time and potential back-tracking from objectionable or useless material. I feel that the challenge now is to locate Web 2.0 platforms that are “education friendly” and relevant to the classroom. One website I became interested in is Teachertube. As the months go by, there is more and more education relevant content added to this site. Check it out if you haven’t done so yet!
• The last session I attended was a Web 2.0 session. I learned some important bits of information , but I must admit that I felt the facilitator was holding back somehow. The first 10 to 15 minutes of the presentation was pretty much preaching to the choir on the necessity of integrating technology into the curriculum. I was ready for more sooner. The best websites that were shared in that session were the following: zamzar.com which allows you to convert all sorts of files into another format, gcast.com which is a place to use your telephone to create free podcasts, and gliffy.com which is a place to draw and share diagrams on the web.

The blogs were a mixed success. We are now looking at having the teachers create web pages at weebly.com. It’s easy to navigate and create a nice looking web page here. Uploading clip art and pictures are a bit more tricky, but not too bad! I made a pretend classroom webpage here if you would like to check it out:

ms dahl’s classroom