the media window

A reflection on Brian Crosby’s keynote presentation at the K12Online07 conference. Watching Brian Crosby’s presentation titled “Why’s and Wherefores was truly inspirational. I loved the creative projects that he devised for his class to overcome some of the common (and a few not so common obstacles) that teachers can encounter. A few of the web 2.0 tools that he uses in his own classroom and highlighted are blogs, wikis, Skype, and flickr. He also has his students do video and podcasting projects throughout the school year.
There were several ideas that I felt I could take back to my own classroom. One was using a wiki to have students contribute pieces of information on a subject that are part of a larger project. I immediately thought of our first graders who learn about biomes and create reports, posters, and games about their chosen biomes. It would be a great way for me to enrich their learning in the classroom by having them transfer the knowledge they gain to a wiki on biomes. The wiki could then be shared with their families at home or on portfolio night at school.
I also liked the idea of using Flickr to promote creative writing. This would also lend itself to the media classroom as it would be fun and useful to have the students write about a photo they select from Creative Commons. I would use this lesson to teach them how to download and save photos, import a photo to either a Word document or Powerpoint, and most importantly I would teach them to credit the source of the photo they have selected. Nice and tidy!
Brian also had a segment on students creating trading cards, which I found intriguing. I would like to explore that idea further. I wasn’t sure if he used a template to create them or how it was actually done, but I thought the idea was super.
This was a great keynote by Brian Crosby, as it inspired me with the interesting obstacles he helped  his students to overcome, such as the video that students created to help alleviate a bullying problem in their school and especially the use of Skype to allow a classmate attend school virtually while she was home battling leukemia. That was very touching to see.

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.