Clarify Me

Itchy Feet and Another New Home

2010-08-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

Feet + Surf by mattsabo17, cc license

Well, I've decided to move again. I know I've only been at Blogger for a month, but this is really the move I should have made in the first place.

Why Move Again?

In this post I explained why I made my original move from Edublogs. There I mentioned that I had considered hosting my own blog. My husband has a bunch of web space where he has his website kiwibytes.com. I looked into putting WordPress (open source blogging platform) onto your own web host, but it looked a little too techie for me. Luckily, about a week ago my husband decided that he wanted to set up a blog and at my suggestion he checked out WordPress. Within a few hours he had it up and running. He offered to set up WordPress for me too. Excellent!

What's In A Name?

I decided to purchase my own domain so that if I get flighty again and move, at least my web address will stay the same. So I went to GoDaddy and tried a bunch of names. Most of the dot com names I tried were taken. Claire.com, Clairethompson.com, ClarifyMe.com... I wasn't sure if the domain suffix was terribly important, but just to be certain I posed the question on Twitter (with some other good advice from @OakesMedia). In the end I decided that I would go with a .ca domain. I want this domain to be where I present my professional side. Initially it will house my blog but more may be added in time (CV, other websites...)

And The Winner Is...

So I decided to go with claireonline.ca. My blog name is still Clarify Me. If you're so inclined to add me to your RSS feed reader I promise I won't move again :-)

Thinking of Moving?

If you are thinking of moving your blog, do take the time to look into all the ins and outs. You don't want to be like me and have 3 blog homes in one month! I found that there is a lot of good information on how to import your blogger blog to wordpress and vice versa. Do be ready to clean up loose ends though, like broken internal links and dealing with the fact that blogger tags can get converted to categories in Wordpress. If you've moved before and have some good advice, please share it in the comments. Thinking of moving and have some questions--I'd be glad to answer any that I can.

As always, thanks for reading!

FO2010 Case Study: Virtual International Day of the Midwife

2010-08-19T14:05:00.001-07:00

One of the case studies that we were asked to study this week in Facilitating Online 2010 was the Virtual International Day of the Midwife conference that Sarah Stewart and Deborah Davis organized in 2009 and 2010. What I thought was really interesting was that initially after the inaugural 2009 conference Sarah felt that it was a failure. The live attendance was very low--averaging 6 people per Elluminate session (including speaker and facilitator). Clearly all of the hard work that went into preparing the 2009 event paid off as the 2010 event exceeded Sarah and Deborah's expectations with respect to attendance.

Some lessons from this case study.

The first time you run an online event, attendance may be low
If you keep at it, attendance will improve as the word spreads
People need time to get used to the technical aspects of an online conference
An organized social media campaign can help to disseminate information and create interest in your event
When using social media to promote your event remember the social part! You can't just use social media to advertise
Ensure that you respond to people who leave comments or questions about your event
Have a plan B--speakers may not show up; what will you do?
Ensure you have a support person (or people)
Try to use as many venues as possible to share information (YouTube, blipTV, Facebook, wiki, blog etc)
Make access easy (Sarah mentioned setting up a Facebook Fanpage as opposed to a Facebook group--this way people who do not have Facebook accounts can still access your Facebook content related to the event)
Consider mobile access to bring in more people, especially those in places where the infrastructure may not support this kind of event
Always provide links to World Clock or some similar tool so that it is easy for people in different time zones find out when your session is
Encourage participants to give you feedback; for example, in the form of an online survey like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms

I could write more, but I'll stop here. If you are planning on doing an online event, I strongly recommend reading the resources I've linked to above. Sarah has provided great info and reflections on running an online conference.

Week 4 in FO2010

2010-08-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

5 Stages of Moderation

This past week in the open Facilitating Online 2010 (FO2010) course our topic was What is Online Facilitation. One of the readings that really stood out for me this week was Gilly Salmon's 5 stages of moderation model. Gilly used a variety of ways to convey the role of facilitator and how it changes at the various stages that participants go through when learning on-line. Her use of a variety of visuals really helped to bring home her message. I plan to go back to this article again when I start facilitating a new group. I definitely recommend reading the article if you are planning to facilitate online.

Nancy White's Elluminate Session

Another standout from this week was the Elluminate session with Nancy White. I was not able to attend the session live, but really enjoyed the recording. One problem was that I kept wishing I could chime into the discussion! I have attended one of Nancy's sessions before and she does a wonderful job. Here are my notes from the session:

Volunteer Facilitators

Our volunteer facilitators, Carole and Sharon did a wonderful job. They started off by describing their prep for the session (they Skyped prior to discuss how they wished to do things, they entered the room early, they liaised with Nancy to see how she wanted the session to look), and they introduced themselves and Nancy. As the session progressed they did a good job of ensuring that those that wanted to speak got their opportunity, they welcomed latecomers, and they made sure that the session kept to the prearranged time (often a difficult thing to do!)

Diving In

Nancy started off by getting people to use the whiteboard to write down what they were most interested in learning in the session. Before doing this she polled the room to see who knew how to use the whiteboard and who didn't. There were a number who did not know how to use it, but instead of Nancy explaining how, she asked one of the group who said they did know how to explain to the group. She did this again later with regards to adding a new page to the whiteboard. I though this was a good way to do things--it allows the group members to share their knowledge. Spreading facilitation about the group!

Once everyone had written on the whiteboard she showed them how to move items around on the whiteboard to clarify things. One strategy is to allow different participants the opportunity to sort items on the whiteboard. She mentioned that sorting is an important facilitation tool. The use of colours and boxes (around similar ideas) can help too. She asked them to think about how the space feels for participants--was it chaotic, how did it feel if someone wrote in your text box or over your text? Then as an experiment she made everyone facilitators/moderators. From the feedback many people found this a great experience. Elluminate does look a little different when you have moderator privileges and of course you have control over many more things.

On the Importance of a Wingman

Nancy mentioned, and that has become clearer to me as I've attended more of the FO2010 sessions, that it can be crazy to try and facilitate a group by yourself (unless it is a group that has met many times and where many people in the group are de facto facilitators), you really need a wingman (wingperson?) The co-facilitator or helper is in a good position to see where there might be problems and step in to help them.

Chaos and Contraints

One of the themes that Nancy touched on was the tension between chaos and constraint. She had everyone draw on the whiteboard at the same time and for some it felt very chaotic, for some it was frustrating because their space was being invaded. She then set up constraints by way of putting a grid on the whiteboard and asking everyone to pick a square and draw inside the square. This was more organized, however for some participants this might feel too controlled. Part of the challenge of facilitating is striking the right balance between creative chaos and constraint. Context plays a big part in helping you to decide on this balance. A group that has met many times might be better able to handle the more chaotic approach, while with a one time meeting of a large group you may need to err more on the side of constraint.

Providing Summaries

When someone arrived late to the session Nancy welcomed them and asked someone to give a good 4 sentence summary of where the session was at. It was a good way to get the new person up to speed and a way for the group as a whole to think about what had been experienced so far. She also mentioned that recapping is an art and that if we wanted to see an example of an amazing recapper, to check out Jerry Michalski who hosts a YiTan call, which lasts approx 35min which he then recaps at the end. Nancy said that she tries not to do too much synthesizing for the group. The group then discussed the benefits of summarizing and one of the key things that came out of that discussion for me was that the summary should be brief and about the content, and we should not do the 'meaning making' for the participants. Also, when we give over to a participant the responsibility of summarizing it shows the other participants the importance of summarizing. This brought up the interesting question of 'What layers are we facilitating?' At the end of the session Nancy went back to the whiteboards and summarized the discussions the group had had and in particular she went back to an earlier screen where participants had written down what they were most interested in discussing and she asked them to put an x or a check next to each one to indicate whether they felt those items were discussed. This was a good way to review the objectives of the session.

Communities, Networks and Loose Connections

Another topic that came up was the distinction between Communities and Networks. Nancy talked about the fact that communities are bounded groups where we give up part of our 'me' identity to take on a 'we' identity. Communities often have a shared purpose or goal. Networks on the other hand have fuzzier boundaries or intersecting boundaries.

ニコニコ動画 2007年12月07日総合ランキング(本日) 再生タグ共起ネットワーク by kynbit with a creative commons attribution license.

If you are facilitating a community you are going to have to do it differently than when you are facilitating a network. In networks there is often lots of choice and more diversity than in a community. In a network if there is a road bump or a problem you can avoid it or go around it. Communities don't scale--they can become too big to be effective. A problem of too much or too little control can kill a community. Communities, however, can be great at getting things accomplished. Nancy used the imagery of facilitation as network weaving. The area in between networks and communities are where you have looser connections. But these looser connections are often where interesting things occur. I wonder if this is the same as the idea of the strength of weak ties as per Mark Granovetter?

A Question

One thing I wondered about the Elluminate session was that some people had (profile) after their names and if you hovered your mouse over them a little box came up with their photo and bit of information about them. I thought this was a really neat tool--the rest of the people in the group become more real when you have a better sense of who they are. For example, I'm terrible with names, but if there is a photo of the person I am better able to remember who they are and to connect with them.

The Wrap Up

It was a good week. I'm learning a lot and connecting with more people in the FO2010 class. I look forward to what we'll learn this coming week. If you have any thoughts on what I've written I'd love to hear from you! As always, thanks for reading what I write.

Reflecting on the 'Who', 'What' and 'Why' of Online Facilitation

2010-08-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

My blog title was the focus of this past week in the Facilitating Online course (FO2010). For a look at the resources we were asked to read/view this week check out this post on the class blog.

Community, networks, and what sits in between

I found the Nancy White video on Community, networks, and what sits in between very interesting. She distinguished between communities, which take time to build and nurture, where people (hopefully) make strong ties to each other to networks which tend to involve looser ties, people drop in and out, and they overlap with other networks. She maintains that the area in between the two is an area of real interest. I hope to learn more about this when she presents in the class Elluminate session next week (open to non-class participants too!) After watching Nancy's video I realized that I have created an online learning network for myself, but many of the online communities I have joined have fizzled or I have dropped out of them. I think it is definitely more work to create, maintain, and participate in an online community.

Working effectively in a virtual team

This past week's Elluminate session featured Terry Neal who spoke on Facilitating virtual teams. Before the session we were asked to read the paper she co-authored with Dr. Clare Atkins, Working effectively in a virtual team. Both the paper and the presentation highlighted a few key things for me:

to be effective, roles and responsibilities need to be clearly laid out
it helped to start off the team work with some face-to-face meetings
ensure that you use a variety of means to communicate; text (e-mail, Google groups or other discussion fora, blogs), audio (telephone, Skype) and visual (Skype, Elluminate).

This past year I have had experience with the difficulties when point number 1 is overlooked. It can be frustrating working in a virtual team when the roles and responsibilities are not clear. Work can be duplicated, feelings can be hurt. It only makes sense to spell things out. It doesn't mean that there can't be any flexibility, but it at least gives everyone a starting point.

Point number two just makes sense. It is so much easier to make a connection with someone if you've been able to meet them face-to-face. Then when you are communicating with them in the more limited (fewer dimensions) on-line environment you can relate them back to the real person.

Terry's presentation was the first one that involved volunteer facilitators from the class. Chris and Jillian stepped up to the plate and did a great job. They had spent some time before in Elluminate working with the moderator tools. They had clearly discussed with each other what their roles were going to be and they did a good job of dealing with issues and keeping the session moving along.

Synthesis

This week I've realized that I would like to make a number of changes to what I do. When I connect with my high school distributed learning students, most of whom learn asynchronously, I need to provide multiple ways to interact meaningfully. I current use e-mail, text messaging in Moodle (our Learning Management System) phone conversations, Elluminate, and face-to-face but I really need to step things up a notch with Elluminate and my face-to-face interactions.

Elluminate has been a struggle--with a small number of asynchronous students in the 13 plus courses that I am responsible for it has been challenging to come up with meaningful meetings. Every student is in a different place so offering lessons is difficult; who do you target? I have tried tutorials too, but because my students aren't part of a strong community it is a big risk to go online and say "I don't get this, please explain it to me." (The community aspect is a whole other post--so I'll leave that for now.)

"hang the blessed DJ..." (again) by streetpreacher83 (Photo License)

Math DJ

So this is my recent brainstorm. My Elluminate sessions are going to allow me to be a math DJ . I will ask students to send me the questions they would like me to explain at least one hour prior to the session. When the session starts I will record it, but also see if I can stream it to UStream or a similar service so that students can observe without having to log in to Elluminate (they choose their level of interaction.) If students log into Elluminate, I will play their requests first (thus the DJ part of Math DJ), with the requests from students who aren't logged on going to the end of the queue. My hope is that students will get the math help they need, they will get it conveniently online, but there is a way to reduce the risk of putting yourself out there. Hopefully many students will become more comfortable with the technology and up their participation. Now I just need to find some good intro and outro music...

F2F

Face-to-face (F2F) group meetings have been difficult for many of the reasons I cited with Elluminate. In the past my colleague and I have offered a drop in tutorial session where we occasionally have small group lessons on core course ideas (eg grammar for Language Arts students, writing up and carrying out labs for Science students). It has not been particularly effective for a number of reasons; one of which is that it is optional for some students and mandatory for many students who are behind and/or have behavioural issues. This is not a good mix. This year I would like to separate the groups. The students who have an agreement that they must work x amount of hours in our building will be there at a different time from the drop in tutorial session (unless it is their choice to attend the tutorial). Hopefully students who attend the drop in tutorial are they because they (or their parent!) want to be there and they know that they will get help (and not have to wait for the teachers to deal with those students who do not want to be there).

Gym by I like. (Photo License)

Math Gym

In addition I would like to offer some stand alone face-to-face sessions called Math Gyms to engage students in basic problem solving in Math. I'd like to draw on some of the activities that Dan Meyer writes about in his What Can You Do With This? blog posts. The Math Gym would be multi-age and it would not cover specific aspects of the different Math curricula--but it would be an opportunity for students to work together on problem solving. Work on their Math muscles as it were.

The Wrap Up

Last week was a good week in FO2010 land. I've absorbed a lot and I think I can start to integrate this learning into my practice. If you have any suggestions on how to improve Elluminate and/or F2F sessions with asynchronous learners please let me know. My school year starts at the beginning of September so now is my time to plan so that I can hit the ground/internet running :-)

How I Use iGoogle

2010-07-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week in the Facilitating Online 2010 course Sarah Stewart talked about how she uses her iGoogle page to stay organized and up to date on new posts from the FO2010 crew. She also asked if any of the participants used iGoogle and if we could share how we use it.

I created the following video on how I use iGoogle using Screenr and then published it to my YouTube channel. Here's the link to the video in case it is not showing up for you. I use iGoogle a lot. It is my own personal dashboard. I hope you get a sense of how useful I find it from my short (2:16) video.

This is my first time using Screenr. So far I have been pleased with it. It was easy to set up and easy to use. I haven't done a lot of screencasts before, but I liked using Screenr better than Jing (though Jing allows for screenshots, while Screenr does not). That's one thing I enjoy about taking a course like this; it encourages me to stretch my thinking and to try out new tools.

The Wrap Up

Do you use iGoogle? What are some of the differences in the way you use it? If you don't use iGoogle (or a similar tool) please feel free to ask questions about it in the comments.

Cheers!

Plan for FO2010

2010-07-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

Brainstorming

To help me think about what I want to get out of Facilitating Online 2010 (FO2010), I created the following mind map in bubbl.us The map is quite large so you will have to drag with your mouse to see all of the map. Here's the link to the map if it is not showing up below.

This is the first time that I have used an online mind mapping tool. I was inspired by the mindmeister mindmap on Online Communities that Sarah Stewart tweeted about last week. I decided to try bubbl.us after polling my twitter network (thanks network!)

The Task This Week in FO2010

For this week Sarah has asked us to make a plan for what we want to learn and explore. Here are the four questions that we've been asked to answer:

What do you want to learn to facilitate? Online professional development for teachers. I'd like to work on a model for professional development in my school district that fosters ongoing professional development. I see this as involving a face-to-face component as well as synchronous online meetings using Elluminate and possibly Moodle as a place to archive and collaborate on learning. (Thinking Moodle because would like to see more teachers in my district using it, but am also aware that a more open environment can result in even more amazing connections and learning.) One possible format would be 'Tech Tuesdays' style 20-30 minute weekly Elluminate Live meetings on a specific topic. Another possible format is LAN parties as outlined by North Vancouver's Bryan Hughes.
What are you doing now in terms of online facilitation? I'm a distributed learning teacher with the majority of my courses being online in Moodle. I offer my students weekly Elluminate tutorials (these are poorly attended and an area in which I am trying to improve.) I have volunteered as an assistant facilitator with Know Weeks and CEET. Both organizations offer(ed) week long online courses geared towards K-12 educators in British Columbia, Canada. Both Know Weeks and CEET used Moodle.
What would you like to achieve, change, or do more of? I would like to improve student participation and engagement in my Elluminate tutorials. I would like to initiate online professional development in my school district.
What do you need to do or make happen to acheive your goal? I need to practice facilitating in a safe environment before attempting to promote and facilitate an online professional development session on my own.

Feedback

Have you facilitated your own online events before? What advice would you offer to someone who is planning to offer their first online event? Are there some definite dos and don'ts?

As always, thanks for taking the time to read what I've written :-)

Google Map Mashup for FO2010

2010-07-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

For those in the Facilitating Online 2010 course, Chris Woodhouse tweeted

shed53: #FO2010 Never done any mashups but wonder if anyone fancies a map with all the students' locations pinned. Course poster?

So...

Here's the link to a map where we can add markers indicating our locations. Check out the video near the end of this post to see how to do this.

View FO2010 in a larger map

I'd recommend placing your marker in a general spot, like 'Vancouver' as opposed to a specific address like '3614 West 16th Ave, Vancouver'. I had seen this done before when I (briefly) participated in CCK08. Rod Lucier created a similar map and posted on how to add your marker to the map. I've included his video here. If you follow his instructions it will work on our FO2010 map.

Cheers!

Welcome To My New Digs!

2010-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Hemel by Mr Ush. Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works License

Thanks for stopping by! I've recently moved my blog from Edublogs to here. You can see this post for the reasons for my move. Moving all of my posts and their related comments was relatively easy. The Wordpress2Blogger site has instructions and a converter. It talks about WXR files, but I found that it was able to deal with the Wordpress XML file that I exported from Edublogs. However, any links I had to my own posts appear to be a little messed up. I'm also getting some weird text showing up with many of my images. So it is a slow process right now as I go through all my posts and fix these issues.

If you've moved your blog before, why did you do it and how did the process go? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current blogging platform?

Moving Day?

2010-07-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

On Cleaning House and Blog Sabbaticals

: Moving Day by Joe_Andrews. Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works Licence

Well, I've been thinking about it for awhile. I'm going on a bit of a blog sabbatical. I know, I know, it's alright if you thought I was already on a blog sabbatical. After all, it is not like I've been posting up a storm. So let me clarify. I'm not ceasing to blog. I'm just going somewhere else to do it. For awhile at least.

Some Background

When I started blogging back in November of 2007, I started out at Blogspot. Two months later I made the switch to Edublogs. It seemed like that was where all the cool kids were ;-) The blogs were more customizable (you could have pages and tabs at the top of your blogs!) There was a big community. And lots and lots of other good reasons. (Unfortunately when I made the switch I deleted my original blog and didn't save all of the posts. So my very first 'Hello World!' post is gone.)

Why Go Back?

The Ads: When Edublogs started embedding ads in the free blogs I was ok with it--after all I had won Edublogs credits in the 31 Day Comment Challenge and used them to upgrade to a supporter blog, so no ads for me! When my year ran out and I was too cheap to renew I got to experience the joys of ads ads everywhere. First is was links in posts, then banner ads at the top of posts. Particulary irksome is the ad linked to my blog's byline. As I do not administer student blogs, just this little ole blog, it didn't make sense to me to shell out for a premium blog. I tolerated the ads, but kept wondering if I should move to a new home? Perhaps even host my own blog?

Google Goodness: A lot of the blogs that I have been reading recently are Blogspot blogs. I also have a couple of Blogspot blogs that I use for other reasons, and Blogspot has steadily improved over the years. In addition, when I looked into hosting my own blog I got a little overwhelmed (yes, I know that it costs $$ to host your own, but my husband has webspace where I would have hosted it.)

Is It For Good?

I don't really know. I just know that I need to make a change. Starting the Facilitating Online 2010 course has also provided some impetus to clean house. I'll go on this little sabbatical, and perhaps come back with a renewed enthusiasm for all that Edublogs has to offer.

The Wrap Up

Have you made a blog move (or thought about one)? How did it go or what is holding you back?

And finally... please check me out in my sabbatical home!

E-mail is so Old School

2010-04-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

And Landlines Too

A common theme in this blog is communication. It is key to so many elements of my job as a DL (distributed learning) teacher.

E-mail

Lately I'm finding it is harder to get in touch with my students. E-mail is so oldschool for them. Students may have their own e-mail address, but often only check it once a week. I wonder if most high schoolers rely on messaging in Facebook as opposed to e-mail? That seems to be the way many of my friends 'e-mail' these days.

Landline

Phoning isn't the old standby it used to be either. It seems that for a lot of families the landline is the number they give the school, but in reality they don't use it much as each member of the family has their own cell. Once you track down the right person's cell number you might be ok. The students, though, they aren't so keen on voice calls. Instead they're all about texting.

These changes have really only come about in a big way in the past year.

Texting

So when my colleague suggested that we needed district issued cell phones for texting our students, I laughed at first and then realized that she was probably onto something! I don't use my person cell that much (and only learned how to text a few months ago--yes I'm a cell phone ludite) so I have a very limited plan. And I'm not keen on giving out my personal number to my students. Come to think of it, they're probably not that keen on giving out their cell number to their teacher!

Question Time

Do you text your students? If so, how have you set this up so that proper boundaries are set, both for them and for you? If you have students at a distance, how else do you keep in contact?

As always, thanks for reading what I write.

Photo Credits
All images in this post are have Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Licenses.

e-mail screenshot by mwoodard
Tyneham - old telephone by Whipper snapper
Stop texting & watch the game by Lorainne DeSabato

Homework

2010-02-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Ah, homework! To give it or not to give it? If you give it then how much? And once you've given it, then what?!

Now, because I work at a distributed learning school (online school or distance learning) really there is no homework. Or maybe everything the students do could be considered homework?! Anyways, a recent post by Kate Nowak started me thinking about homework again. If you haven't read Kate's blog and you teach math, you should definitely give it a read. In her post she describes a new system for dealing with; assigning homework, getting rid of homework checks, and doing homework quizzes. In her post she referred to this post by Sameer Shah on his binder system. Sameer describes a system designed to keep his students organized and motivated to do and correct their homework. His system is also a more efficient use of his time. Anyway, both posts got me thinking about the system that I used in my Biology 11 classes back when I was in a bricks-and-mortar school.

First off, I did not plan homework for any of the science classes I taught (gr 8 - 10 Science, and Biology 11 and 12). I tried to give enough time in class to complete assignments. If students didn't complete the assignments in class, well then they had to finish them for homework. They did, of course, have to use time at home to study for quizzes and tests also.

Before implementing my system (which I'll describe soon) I was frustrated with the following scenario; students do an assignment, hand it in, there is a delay for me to mark it and get it back, they get it back (by which time they can't even remember doing the work), they look at the grade but they do not read all the wonderful feedback I've given them and life moves on. I found this particularly frustrating when it involved lab reports; so often students have difficultyunderstanding why it was they did the lab and interpreting their data.

My system:

Students are given time to complete an assignment. If not completed in class then it is for homework.

Next day--students take out their completed assignments and start working on the 'opener' questions that have been posted on the screen or if it is a simple assignment--not a lab--the answer key is posted and they are to start their corrections.

I walk around and check the assignment briefly--making suggestions to students as necessary (full sentence answers please, remember to do your drawings in pencil, oops--forgot the conclusion to your lab, that sort of thing.)

Each student gets a happy face stamp on their work; right side up if the assignment is complete, upside down if it is only half done etc. This way I don't have to keep a record--you'll see how the stamps help in a bit.

We go over the assignment. We do this briskly. Students are expected to mark their own work and make corrections in a different coloured pen. Theoretically all of the students should have a completely corrected assignment.

At the halfway and end points in the course (I taught semestered courses) the students were required to hand in a portfolio of their work.

The day before the portfolio was due they would get the list of assignments required for the portfolio. There were usually 10 items. For some of the items the students had a choice (eg hand in lab 2a or lab 3b, choose your best opener questions etc) and for others they did not. The list would include the date that the assignment was assigned, the full name of the assignment, and if the assignment was a series of questions from the textbook I'd include the page numbers. I encouraged students throughout the course to properly date and label their assignments as this would make organizing their portfolios easier. They were expected to write out a table of contents and to number the pages of the items in their portfolios. One of the items was to write a page long reflection of their learning (most interesting thing they learned, what they thought was the best example of their work and why, their strengths and/or where they need to improve.

The only thing the students could prepare ahead of time was the title page and their reflection paper (I offered to comment on their draft versions).

They were given time in class to assemble their portfolios.

They had to include the original work -- not write out good copies.

When they handed in their work I would mark it according to a rubric that the students were given ahead of time.

My stamp system (see above) allowed me to tell how complete the original assignment was.

Corrections needed to be evident. If a student made a good first attempt, but got a number of parts wrong, that was ok if they did good corrections.

With the first couple of assignments, the students did hand them in so that I could get a good look at their work and provide a lot of written feedback. I wouldn't necessarily grade their work--just provide a lot of suggestions and get an idea on what I needed to clarify with the class.

The benefits of this system were:

I got to go over the work with the students right away.

if students were away the day that we went over the assignment, they were motivated to find out from their peers what their corrections should be.

my informal homework checks allowed me to talk to students and make suggestions on how to improve their work so that they were handing in their best in their portfolios.

students were motivated to keep their work organized.

students had to reflect on what represented their best work.

students were more likely to pay attention to the feedback they'd been given.

less grading and more on-going feedback.

The drawbacks of this system:

once the portfolios were handed in, it took a fair amount of time to mark them all . On the up side though, the students didn't need them back right away as we had already gone over the individual assignments.

I had to constantly remind students that they needed to keep all of their work as it may be needed in their portfolios. For some kids it is just force of habit to throw out an assignment once they think the teacher is done with it.

Now I need to ask myself what's stopping me from using a system like this for my distributed learning students?

What is your system for making assessment authentic? What would you change about my system? As always, I welcome your feedback.

Annual Tools and Sites I Use List

2010-01-04T03:04:00.000-08:00

It's time for my annual "Tools and Sites I Use List'! Here's my first list from January 2008 and my second one from January 2009. I was originally inspired by a Will Richardson post, and Will was in turn inspired by Tech Crunch's Annual List. You can see this year's Tech Crunch list here.

tools mosaic by m kasahara licensed CC attribution, non-commercial, no derivs

My List

So, in no particular order, these are the tools and sites I use. I use all of them on a weekly basis and I use the starred ones pretty much daily:

Twitter*

Seesmic Desktop*--a twitter client that allows you to organize the folks you follow, keeps track of your searches, and also keeps you up to date with your Facebook friend updates. It doesn't have quite the same strong following as Tweet Deck, but I really like it.

Google Chrome*--I really like this browser; it has a clean appearance with very few buttons and menus, it feels speedier than other browsers, and I love that there is just one box that allows you to both search and put in URLs. Chrome is not perfect though. Ironically it seems to have problems doing certain things in Google Docs. Chrome doesn't have quite the wonderful array of plugins/extensions that FireFox has, but I'm hoping that will change (I used to be a big FireFox user, but it was just getting too buggy.) The biggest thing I miss from FireFox is the CoComment extension. I'm finding it difficult to keep track of comments on the various blogs I visit. It's a pain, but not a big enough one to get me to switch to using FireFox again. By the way, if you have a good way to keep track of comments if you're using Chrome, please let me know. If a blog has the option of 'e-mail follow up comments' I select it, and I will subscribe to comment feeds, but often you have to subscribe to all comments from a particular blog as opposed to just the post I'm interested in.

GMail*--Love the way you can tag messages, the interface is great, and I can have my e-mail my way on any connected computer

Google Calendar* -- Keeps my personal and work life organized. My colleague and I use Google calendars for our students to help them plan their timelines. You can see an example embedded on my school website here.

iGoogle*--it's my home page, where all the things I need at a glance are there for me; Gmail, Google Calender, Weather Widget, Google Reader, Tasks, Top Stories...

CEET -- A social networking site for BC educators called Community for Expertise in Educational Technology. It was created back in the spring, but really seemed to take off this fall. There are some wonderful people facilitating and participating in the community. I've posted a number of questions and gotten fabulous feedback.

Moodle* -- My school district moved to Moodle this fall and I've written here about one of the features of Moodle that I really enjoy. I have a lot to learn about Moodle, and I am looking forward to further customizing my online courses to suit the needs of my students.

Microsoft Outlook* -- only because I have to :-p (my work e-mail all has to go through Microsoft Outlook.) Using it though makes me appreciate GMail even more ;-) I do like the calendar in Outlook and use it for all of my work related appointments. The alerts are very handy and it is easy to notify others in the organization of meetings.

Google Search* -- I can't imagine being on a computer and not using Google search. Every year I find out more cool things that Search can do.

Wikipedia

Delicious* -- I still haven't spent the time to figure out the social part of delicious, but I love having one place for all my bookmarks.

Edublogs -- my blog host

Skype

YouTube

Elluminate Live! -- to offer tutoring to my students and to attend meetings with colleagues

The Analysis

This year my list has shrunk from 29 to 16. Perhaps I'm being more selective? Or could it just be that I have a bad memory ;-). New this year are Google Chrome, Seesmic Desktop, and CEET. Moodle is back on my list after a one year hiatus. No wikis on here aside from Wikipedia. Last year I spent a good deal of time checking out Wikispaces, PBWiki, WetPaint, but the whole wiki thing just didn't take.

Sadly missing from my list is KnowWeeks. KnowWeeks were a series of week long Professional development sessions that were offered in the Moodle environment. They were free for BC educators and they were wonderful! Sessions on using wikis, photo editing in Gimp, Browserless blogging and on and on. The facilitators included folks like Kathy Cassidy, Grant Potter, Sharon Betts, Bernadette Rego to name but a few. Last year I got the wonderful opportunity to train to be an assistant facilitator in KnowWeeks and it was awesome PD. They didn't get funding this year and I think that CEET is meant to fill the void left by KnowWeeks.

On The Horizon

I *think* I've decided to do the 2010/365 project where you take a photo a day for a year and post them online. I tried last year but fizzled out before January was over. I hope that things will work out better this time around. If it does, I'll be using Picasa 3 to organize photos on my PC, or iPhoto if I get a chance to use our Mac ;-). Both of these programs help you to organize your photos, do simple editing, create slideshows/screensavers/wallpaper/etc, and they both have facial recognition. I'll be posting my photos to Flickr and you can check out my photos so far here).

Wrap Up

Of course it is not about the tools, it's about what you do with them. The tools on my list help me to communicate, collaborate, create, investigate and learn. If you're inspired to write your own post on the tools and sites you use, please leave a comment below so I can check it out. Are you surprised by some of the items on my list, or some that aren't? Do you have questions about any tool I've mentioned? Then leave a comment below!

Workflow

2009-12-31T08:02:00.000-08:00

A few years ago when I discovered Google Calendar, Docs, iGoogle, Reader and on and on and on I was really thrilled that I could have all my 'stuff' online and accessible from any internet ready device. I'm not sure that all of those apps have increased my workflow though. Ease of collaboration, yes! Ease of sharing, yes! Ease of access, yes! More work done in less time--well, not really.

Background

I teach at a distributed learning school. I am responsible for Science 8 - 12 courses as well as Math 8 - 11. The math courses are all paper based and the science courses are all online. My students work from home, but they have access to face-to-face tutorials, online tutorials via Elluminate, as well as help as needed via phone, e-mail and face-to-face. The students work asynchronously at their own pace. This means that it is rare that I mark two of the same assignments in a row.

When Technology Makes Life Decidedly Better

Part 1: Moodle

This fall my district undertook to host Moodle on its own server. Prior to this our online course offerings were through WebCT (an oldish version). In our Moodle courses assignments can be submitted electronically within the course, with alerts being sent to the teacher to let them know when new material is ready to be marked.

Part 2: HP Tablet Laptop

Our school has had 2 HP Tablet laptops for the past couple of years. If you haven't seen or used one of these, you have the ability to draw directly on the screen using a special pen. There is handwriting recognition software which can convert handwriting into typed text. Prior to this year I have used the tablets with a projector when teaching to write notes and instructions, just as you might use a felt pen and transparencies on an overhead projector.

Marking with the HP Tablet

Part 3: Putting It All Together

Here's what happens when you combine Moodle with the HP tablet.

I receive an e-mail alert that a student has submitted an assignment. I click on the link and am taken to the assignment in Moodle. I select the student's file which is downloaded on my computer and opened in word. Using the pen on the tablet I can easily mark and add comments to the assignment (marking with the pen tool is far easier than adding comment boxes). I then save the file with a new name. I go back to Moodle, input the grade, and upload the marked file. The student will now receive an e-mail alert to tell them that their work has been marked. Easy peasy!

Prior to using Moodle, when students e-mailed in their work I had to save it to a specific folder, mark it, go to my marks program to record the mark, save the marked file, attach it to an e-mail and send it to the student. Lots of clicks, lots of little pieces to remember to do.

Prior to using Moodle, most students did their work on paper and dropped it off at the school. There was a delay between the student finishing the work and me receiving it and then a delay between me marking the work and them picking it up. And then there are the (infrequent) times I'd forget to record the mark and the times that students claimed that they handed in their work but it disappeared or they claimed that the marked work never reached them. This doesn't happen with the new system! In addition, it is far more convenient to carry home just a laptop as opposed to envelopes of student work. Students also tended to hand in a whole whack of work all at once, preventing timely feedback. In Moodle students are less likely to do this.

I'm finding it difficult to convey how smooth and seamless the Moodle/tablet combination is! Let me just say that I actually look forward to marking now (sick, I know).

How 'Bout You?

Is there some system or technology that you use that actually helps your workflow to a significant degree? I'd love to hear about it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see about getting all of those math courses I teach into Moodle ;-)

Most Influential Post of 2009

2009-12-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

Requisite--So I Haven't Blogged For A While...

Lately my on-line participation has shifted more towards Twitter and the relatively new social networking site for BC educators, CEET (Community of Expertise in Educational Technology). Coupled with starting to using Moodle for course delivery and learning more about online course design, I've been less active with my blog.

Edublog Awards

Though I haven't been blogging much, I have watched with interest the Edublog Awards. I never got off my butt to make any nominations--so thank you to all those folks who did. The nomination list is always a good place to find interesting voices that are new to me.

Better Late Than Never... My Nomination

Though I didn't nominate anyone, I would like to highlight this post by Stephen Downes as the post that I found most influential in 2009. The post, titled The Monkeysphere Ideology, refers to a Cracked article from 2007 (yes, that Cracked.) From Downes:

Now let's look at the Cracked article, which suggests that each of us has a limit of about 150 people we can know and understand and relate to. The theory is based on Dunbar's number, and Cracked calls it - with more than a little alacrity - the 'monkeysphere'. The article, which was written in 2005, is making the rounds again.

Sock Monkey Group by sunsetgirl creations

One of the key points that Downes makes is:

Our failure lies not in the fact that we cannot know and understand more than 150 people. That's just a fact of physiology. Rather, our failure lies in how we characterize the remaining 99.99 percent of humanity: as though they were automatons.

I see this 'us and them' mentality pervading so much of life. Now whenever I do I think of the monkeysphere. For example; there has been so much in the news lately to do with global warming, and CBC ran this piece last week on the disputed island of Miningo. Because of global warming the water temperature in Lake Victoria is rising and water levels are dropping. This, along with overfishing, is resulting in increased pressure on the Nile perch stocks in the lake. Miningo island has become the flash point for Ugandan and Kenyan fishers who are finding it increasingly difficult to catch enough fish. From the CBC story:

The change in Lake Victoria is important because some 30 million people rely on it for their livelihood.

It is in situations like this that the monkeysphere ideology comes into play in a powerful way. Take this quote from the CBC story:

Kenyan fisherman Paul Odhiambo sorts through his catch of Nile perch in the bottom of his boat moored along Migingo's rocky shore. His anger rises quickly when thinking of Uganda.

"They just come with tear gas. And spraying us with the tear gas," he says. "So these people are not human. Just look at them. They are carrying guns. Why? Why carrying guns at this small place."

"So these people are not human." Where have you heard this before? Where else has this been justification for treating other human beings like garbage? But this is not a Uganda/Kenya problem. It is a human problem.

Since I read Downes' post, I've been thinking about the monkeysphere quite a bit. I am more aware when those around me and those I hear and read about "characterize the remaining 99.99 percent of humanity: as though they were automatons." or worse...

What About You?

What do you think about the monkeysphere? And what blog post, book , article, etc has influenced you in a big way this year? Thanks as always for reading, and I welcome comments. Cheers!

Re-visiting the PD 2009 Meme

2009-10-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Early in the summer I was tagged for the Professional Development Meme 2009. This meme was started by Clif Mims. Normally I'm not crazy about memes--they remind me too much of chain letters--but I felt that this one was worth my time :-) For the meme I wrote a post about three goals I would like to accomplish over the summer. Below I'll list the goals and how I did.

Read 'Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns'. Not only did I read the book, I blogged my reflections on it here.

Learn more about teaching using Moodle. I chose this as a goal because my district was moving over to using Moodle as our learning management system (LMS). Prior to that we offered on-line courses through Open School BC and their WebCT system. Regrettably, I did not spend much time on this particular goal. I was very familiar with Moodle from the perspective of a student and as a facilitator (thank you KnowSchools!) and I had taken an introductory course on Moodle in June. I guess I'm just saying that it's not like I was totally unprepared for the change over to Moodle. I hope to write more on the change over to Moodle in a little while.

Prepare for the two professional development sessions I will be facilitating at the end of the summer. I spent A LOT of time on this one. In fact I probably spent too much time on it. I'm guessing I put at least 10 hours of preparation for each session; the sessions were around 3.5 hours each. In the end I enjoyed doing the sessions, but found that it is really difficult to design a session for all levels of technical ability. I plan on writing more about these sessions, but at this point I'll just leave you with the link to the website I created to support the course. My goal was to provide participants with the information so that they could progress through the different topics at their own pace.

So, I feel good about how I did on two of the three goals and overall I'm pretty pleased with the PD part of my summer. Now excuse me while I go and spend a bit more time learning to Moodle...

Disrupting Class

2009-08-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the summer I read Disrupting Class, one of my summer PD goals. The following are my scattered reflections on the book.

*Note: the book focuses mainly on high school--I would be interested to
see what teachers in the elementary grades have to think about the
book.

Themes

Most schools approach teaching using the factory model; 30 kids in a class, assigned by age. It is difficult for teachers to address their students' individual learning styles. Some students get left behind and some get bored because everyone has to move along at the same pace. They mentioned that much of teacher training focuses on classroom management: an essential element in the factory model.
Technology can help; programs that teach kids according to their learning styles and only allow the student to move on when the student has mastered the content. We aren't there yet, but the authors are optimistic that collaborative on-line tools will be built that will allow teachers, students and others to create tutorials, lessons and so on that will help others to learn.
Cater to non-consumption. The authors point out that disruptive innovations usually target non-consumption. They give the example of the early SONY transistor radios; they were cheap and the sound wasn't great, but they were popular with teenagers who could not afford the only other option--big, expensive table top or floor model radios. Teenagers, previously non-consumers of radios, became the new consumers of the disruptive technology. In education the areas where we will see change is with courses that schools cannot offer due to student numbers and other factors. Distributed learning schools are not going to be successful if they are focusing on courses that regular bricks and mortars school already offer.
The disruptive innovations will not be successful under the current structures. He gave the example of Toyota's experience with hybrid cars. Toyota put together a team to build a hybrid from the ground up. They didn't have to use existing components and make do. They could re-engineer all of the systems so that the final product was efficient and worked well. Other car manufacturers did not take this approach, and their hybrid cars are inferior.

The Journey from Here to There

In my position as a teacher in a distributed learning (DL) high school I can see the growth in demand for a different model of schooling. In my district budgets are getting tighter and enrollment is dropping so creative solutions are being looked at. This fall all of our grade 10 students will be enrolled in Planning 10 (a core course) delivered in an on-line format. Doing Planning 10 on-line, outside of the time-table, will allow the students more choice; there won't be timetable clashes between planning 10 and other courses. It will also be possible for students to take more than a full load of courses. One can't help but wonder if being exposed to planning 10 on-line will encourage students to take other courses on-line, that currently are not offered at their school.

Right now, many of the on-line courses I have seen are not geared towards a range of learners. Typically, the kids who deal well with text, and are self disciplined enough to stick to a time line do well. There is not a lot of differentiation... yet. A lot of the talk at the distributed learning conference I attended in the spring (Virtual School Society Annual Spring Conference) was about how to cater to the big range of students who are now exploring distributed/on-line learning. People on the front lines want modular courses, where you can put together a course that is designed to meet the needs of the learner. I think we'll start to see these. Currently though, the cost to put together a complete on-line course can be quite high. I've heard estimates of $40,000 to produce one on-line course. On the one hand I am doubtful that we will see the modularity and differentiation that is written about in Disrupting Class, but on the other hand I am constantly amazed at the incredible applications that are available on the web, so who knows?

I'd like to know a bit more about the authors' visions of the role of the teacher in this new model. Right now as a DL teacher I can tell you that one of my biggest challenges is getting good lines of communication flowing between myself and my students. I've written about communication with my students here and here. Currently I rely on e-mail and phone to communicate with students, but recently it occurred to me that e-mail is very old school--I've got to explore the ways that my students are most comfortable communicating. For example, many students don't use e-mail, but are constantly texting; would they text me with their questions if that was an option?

Canadian Perspective

It definitely seems like it is a much more tumultuous time in education in the USA than in Canada. Frequently in Disrupting Class the authors referred to the negative impact of teacher unions and the tension between public schools and charter schools. That is not to say that those tensions do not exist in Canada; just that the magnitude is much much lower.

The Wrap Up

Where do you see the future of on-line learning? If you read the book, what did you think of it? As always, thanks for reading my post!

Reflecting on 08/09

2009-07-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

Before I really get into my plans/goals for the 09/10 school year, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on the past year.

Goals and Results
Prior to the school year starting, and as it went along I had a number of goals. I'll discuss them below with a review of how they worked out.

'Malinconia. L'ultima partitella (the last match of+the+summer)'

Get more face-to-face time with my students (I work at a distributed learning school--students work at home on the curriculum that we provide): In the 07/08 school year my colleague, Jodie, ran a humanities class for her grade 8-10 students and I could see the benefits of this weekly face-to-face time; it allowed for discussions, one-on-one tutoring, and an opportunity to speak to students about their progress. So for this past school year Jodie and I offered a general high school class for 2 hours on Thursday mornings. Students were encouraged to attend, but for many students it was optional. For other students at risk for failure the class was mandatory. The benefit to this structure was that we had weekly face-to-face time with the students who needed it most. The drawback was that with the large number of students present, all at different levels and at different points in their programs, it became difficult to conduct effective lessons. I think that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks though. In my experience one of the key factors for a student to succeed in a distributed learning program at the high school level is good communication with the teacher. These face-to-face classes facilitated this.
Improve communication with students: I've written about the communication aspect before in this post. This year many of the courses I was responsible for were paper based which meant that my kids were not in a Learning Management System (LMS) with built in e-mail. I wouldn't have thought this would be a problem, but a surprising number of students do not have their own e-mail accounts that they use regularly--I guess they rely more on IM and sites like Facebook to communicate. Partly to address this, Jodie and I (ok, it was mostly Jodie) set up a 'Student Lounge' in WebCT. Most of our students take at least one course in the WebCT LMS; enrolling all of them in the 'Student Lounge' meant that it was easy to send out batch e-mails and it was easy for them to e-mail us. We had other plans to showcase student work along with some general discussions. Those didn't materialize, but I definitely had more students contacting me with questions than prior to the 'Lounge', so I'm pretty happy with the results.
Provide opportunities for students to conduct labs at our school with support: There are some virtual labs that my students do, but there are also a good number of traditional labs the students are expected to do. To do a lab at home on your own can be frustrating. Let's face it, even in a typical classroom kids get frustrated because they don't get the 'right' results, or they are unsure what to do. This year my goal was to have time during some of the weekly high school class (see #1 above) to help students with labs. This was not a big success. I was able to do a couple of labs with the kids, but because the students start at different times and end up in different places in the course, it was difficult to choose a lab that all students were ready for.
Improve my weekly Elluminate sessions: In the 07/08 school year I started doing weekly Elluminate sessions. One week was for science and the next was for math. We met for 30 minutes for each grade. I gave a mini-lesson reviewing old concepts and introducing new ones. Then there was time for questions from the students. I started out this way again in 08/09. As usual the problem is that very quickly the students get spread out in their courses, so preparing a mini-lesson becomes difficult. Over the course of the year the sessions shifted more to being a straight tutorial. I find Elluminate to be very useful to help students with their math. It is difficult to answer math questions over the phone or via e-mail, but using the whiteboard feature in Elluminate allows you to write out the math symbols easily and have the student help to answer the question. For next year I think I will spend more time recording mini-lessons so that I can build up an archive that students can access as needed and use the Elluminate times as straight tutorials. I have to work on attendance too. The sessions are not mandatory and attendance is not always great. I'll have to look at ways to improve this.

Future Plans
Those are the main goals I pursued this year. If you have any thoughts on how I can improve on these areas, I would love to hear it. I plan on posting again soon with my goals for next year. I hope to make this an annual event: posting goals prior to the new school year and reviewing them once the year is over. If you already do this, do you find it useful? If you don't, would you consider it to be helpful. As always, thanks for reading this!

Making PD Sticky

2009-07-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about professional development (PD) and technology integration the last little while.

Questions by Oberazzi

My Questions:

How do you make PD sticky? We've all gone to a conference or PD day, learned some wonderful (or not) things, then gone back to our classrooms never to revisit those ideas again. How to make them sticky?
How do you encourage teachers to start their own Professional Learning Networks (PLN) and provide them with the skills to be successful?
How do you support the sharing of ideas and resources within your local area? I've been very lucky to connect with wonderful educators from around the English speaking world, but know very little about the teachers in my own small school district.
How do you truly integrate technology and support your teachers while doing so?

Over at Charlie Roy's blog I left this comment on technology integration:

The training element of introducing new technology is always a challenge. The approach that you took this year sounds like a good start. You definitely have to meet people where they are at. In my dream school the director of technology would be a consultant. S/he would meet with teachers one on one; the individual teachers would outline what their objectives with a particular unit or project are and the director of tech would come up with a variety of ways to integrate technology. Doing a poetry unit? Let me suggest using Wordles, or Voice Threads, or... and here's how to proceed.

I think that you also have to find the people in your school or district who are really into integrating technology into their teaching and/or professional learning and support them like crazy. You're going to see great things from them and the goal is that they will inspire others. I'm not sure that converting people overtly is going to work, but diffusion just might do it.

What do you think? Do you have answers to my questions above? I'm happy for some push back and sharing of ideas. Cheers!

Professional Development Meme 2009

2009-06-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the meme on Louise Maine's blog and thought it sounded like a good one, and low and behold she had tagged me. Well here goes!

Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules

Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.

For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/07/09).

Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.

Title your post Professional Development Meme 2009 and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.

Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme09.

Tag 5-8 others to participate in the meme.

Achieve your goals and "develop professionally."

Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Professional Development Goals

Read 'Disrupting Class; How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns'

Learn more about teaching using Moodle (my district is switching to Moodle in the fall and I will be responsible for teaching at least 4 courses using this Learning Management System)

Prepare for the two professional development sessions I will be facilitating at the end of the summer

I'm really looking forward to summer break not only to accomplish the goals above, but more importantly to decompress and enjoy time with friends and family.

Now, I'm going to break rule #6 and not explicitly tag anyone. If you are reading this, first off thanks! Secondly, if you haven't been tagged already and think you'd like to participate, then consider yourself tagged ;-)

Quick Reflections on VSS 2009

2009-04-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

Though the title says quick reflections, I've been reflecting on the Virtual School Society Annual Spring Conference since the first round of sessions kicked off. The VSS and the pre-conference are an opportunity for people involved in distributed learning (DL) and educators who use digital technology in education to get together and share what they've been up to. Briefly, here are some of my take aways:

Mast reflections by DonGato CC Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative works.

Tying in with Michael Horn's keynote, DisruptingClass: How Disruptive Innovation is Changing the Way the World Learns, web 2.0 tools and the young field of DL are part of the current disruptive innovation. Horn says that to be successful, disruptive innovations must be allowed to be separate from the status quo and not judged by the current/old norms. My take--Don't force your DL program to be like the regular school program; let your DL teachers and admin experiment and innovate--they have the potential to help many of those kids whose needs are not currently being met in schools.

DL schools don't necessarily fit with the rest of the school system

there is as shift to teaching mastery: a DL environment is the perfect place for this

More educators are finding that tools like Elluminate Live! can be very powerful, especially with math instruction and tutoring. (**A Province-wide license means that Elluminate Live! is free to use for all BC educators--go here to find out more)

A surprising small number of DL educators are on Twitter, but perhaps more will be after Ellen Wagner's keynote :-)

A surprising number of delegates have not yet dipped their toes in the web 2.0 waters

There is a shift away from the tools to the pedagogy of teaching and learning in a DL environment

No two DL schools are alike--some offer only synchronous programs, some offer asynchronous and continuous enrollment, some are 12 month operations, some are big, some are small, some offer special ed, some don't...

More people are willing to share their stuff; not just their ideas, but the things they have created.

My last point is BIG. Two years ago when I went to the predecessor of the VSS conference, the BC Ed Online, the mood was one of competition. We were all competing for the same pool of DL students. Talk was of how to protect what we've created, not how to share. I'm glad for the change in perspective.

My brain will be mulling over the VSS sessions and discussions for quite a while to come and this post was a chance for me to finally put down my thoughts. The conference will inform the direction my school takes over the next little while, and that is pretty exciting.

The Last Words
My questions for you are, (1) have you noticed a shift towards sharing? I mean, it's so gosh darned easy now to share what you have created in the digital world, shouldn't we all be sharing? Doesn't that give more value to what you've spent time creating? (2) Are you starting to notice a shift away from the tools and towards best practices in this increasingly digital world?

As always, thanks for reading!

The Power of Observation

2009-04-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about my teaching practicum, oh those many years ago, was the chance to sit in and observe other teachers in their classrooms. Everyone has a different teaching style and there is always something to take away and make your own. Since my practicum days I have taken the opportunity a few times to sit in on colleagues' classes, but never as often as I would have liked.

student teacher by peiqianlong
Attribution License

Blogs, Twitter, and social networks are making it easier to network with and learn from other educators, but for the most part they don't allow for actual observation. Lately, however, I've been able to get in some virtual classroom observations and it's been great! This past year I've taken a number of week long on-line professional development classes through KnowSchools. In addition, I've been training to be an assistant facilitator for KnowSchools which has allowed me an inside peek as to how the different facilitators organize and run their week long classes. The classes are done using Moodle and it has been fascinating to see how the different facilitators make use of the different features in Moodle. So I'm learning about some great ways to improve my teaching practice and I'm getting to observe talented educators and how they teach.

I've also participated in some virtual PD offered in Elluminate Live from a variety of sources; today I popped in (briefly) to Classroom 2.0's weekly show. I use Elluminate Live with my distributed learning students so whenever I'm in a session that someone else is moderating I'm looking for good ideas that I can steal! It's also good to experience an Elluminate Live session as a participant. It reminds me that it is boring just to sit and listen to the moderator; I need to give my students an active way to participate and discuss ideas and I need to engage them with good visuals.

Do you take the opportunity to observe your colleagues as they teach? If so, how do you make time to do this? Do you prefer live and in person, or virtual observations? I'd love to hear from you :-)

The DL DeLemma

2009-03-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

In February Ken Allen wrote a great post, Champion Elearning Myths, that's been rattling around in my brain for the past month. He raised a number of points that are relevant to me as I teach at a distributed learning (DL) school in British Columbia (in other jurisdictions it is often referred to as distance learning).

Student - Studying by m00by CC attribution, no derivative works.

There have been a lot of changes to distributed learning in the past 5 years which have resulted in more students, especially in grades 10 and up, enrolling in DL schools. There are a myriad of reasons that students have for choosing a DL school. Lately at my school we are seeing more and more students enrolling who have learning challenges and/or do not have the organizational skills to successfully work through the courses we offer. With many of these students they have agreed to come in and work at the school for 2 or more days of the week to receive support from their teachers and certified educational assistant (teachers assistant). This is helping the students to be more successful, but I don't think it is enough; they still need more support.

This leads me to wonder, when does a DL school stop being a DL school? I mean, if we really want these kids to be successful, maybe we should say that they need to come into the school 4 days a week? It seems that the system needs another option. The students that I am concerned about are not being successful at the regular schools, but they also don't 'fit' at the alternative programs. They are in between and so are choosing the DL option. The problem is that most successful DL students need to be organized, motivated, and have strong support at home. That is not the case for most of these kids. Heck, a DL program is challenging for the 'ideal' student.

I guess I need to step back and ask, are these kids being more successful with us than they were in their regular school? If so, is that enough? I don't know; I still think they deserve more.

What do you think? How can we help these kids who fall through the cracks?
Technorati Tags: distributed learning, DL

Attack of the Body Snatchers

2009-03-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

This week at my friend's school: a girl Googles her friend's name and finds a blog, apparently written by the friend, which discusses all sorts of personal issues that really ought not to be on-line for all to read. When the friend is shown the site by the principal she claims that she is not the author; that someone created the blog and is impersonating her. After a request from the school the site content is quickly removed by the blog host.

I see two scenarios here, both disturbing.

A) Someone is impersonating the girl. This would be very easy to do, though a bit time consuming. What if someone was impersonating you by creating 'your' blog? What damaging content could they post? How could you prove that you were not the author of the blog? Would it even be possible to determine who was the real author? All I can say is I'm going to keep that Google Alert for my name; though I should figure out how to filter it so that I don't keep getting hits for Claire Thompson the S and M novelist.

B) No one is impersonating the girl. She just showed a real lack of knowledge thinking that she could treat her blog, with her name on it, like a personal diary; full of intimate details that only she could read. This is a dangerous lack of knowledge. We have to do a better job of educating our kids about the internet. In my day teens could make mistakes, sometimes pretty big ones, but they didn't do it on-line, for the whole world to see, forever...

Each day more and more kids have easy unfettered access to the internet via cell phones, the iPod touch, and whatever those new gameboy thingy's are called. No longer can we rely on just keeping the family computer in the kitchen (though that's still a good idea) or on having programs like Net Nanny or Agent Bob (a program my husband developed) on the aforementioned family computer. We've got to give the kids the skills to make good decisions on-line.

Vendo iPod touch 16 GB by juanpol

Are you aware of these sorts of issues occuring with your students? Does your school address digital citizenship/literacy in an adequate way or is it just a piecemeal process?
Technorati Tags: digital literacy

Using A Blog Editor

2009-02-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

Using a Blog Editor

This week I've been participating in a KnowWeeks course called 'Browserless Blogging ' with Grant Potter. One of our tasks has been to try out a desk top blog editor. I think that this just means using something other than your blog's own editor that can post directly to your blog. So writing your post in Word and cutting and pasting it to your blog's editor doesn't count. And if you've read Sue Waters' post on this you'll know that that is a bad idea anyway.

As I was going through the list of options there was one that I had tried; Flock's blog editor. I wasn't crazy about it as it lost all of the formatting when it uploaded to edublogs; though maybe I needed to tweek some settings.

Anyway, as I was going through the list and trying to decide which other blog editor I'd like to try, it occured to me that Google Docs has a 'post to blog' feature. I like writing my posts in Google Docs, because that it where I do most of my writing. When I went to check out the 'post to blog' feature today I realized that when I tried in the past, I hadn't been able to get the setting right. When I looked at it today I realized that the blog URL I had put in was in the wrong format. Another post by Sue Waters helped me to figure it out. To post from Google Docs to Edublogs you use the following URL: http://YOURBLOGUSERNAME.edublogs.org/path/to/xmlrpc.php

So this is my test of posting from Google Docs. I know it won't add tags or categories, but I'm gonna give it a whirl. Where do you post your blogs from?

Blog (detall) [sic] by Lady Madonna Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Sharing a Little Cheer

2009-02-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Right now I have over 200 unread posts in my blog reader; I definitely have to do some pruning. There are some writers who's posts I read as soon as I can; I've blogged about them here. Lately there are two other bloggers who have percolated to the top of my faves list. They often bring a smile to my face, which is a nice relief in February (*note: February is probably a Northern Hemisphere affliction).

The Principal's Page.com Blog

This blogger cracks me up. As the cop on the Simpson's says, what he writes "is funny, because it's true". His posts can also be poignant (see this post for example: read to the end where the Principal's Page's wife leaves a note). Up until recently all of The Principal's Page post titles were in caps. Many of his paragraphs are one sentence long. He refers to his posts as blogs, which I find endearing. I don't know who he is, but his "blogs" have cheered up some bleak days.

Not Too Late To Change The Name

This is the other 'must read' blog in my reader right now and is by Jen. Jen teaches at a ghetto middle school (her words, not mine) in LA. This is her second year of teaching, but I think this is her second career. Her job sounds really challenging and I frankly don't know how she does it. Her language is colourful at times, but she writes with humour and compassion. She sometimes writes short bittersweet posts like this one, and then ones like this one that make me realize that my troubles are pretty small in the big scheme of things. She also writes hopeful posts like this one. One quirk about Jen's posts are that they never have titles.

Freedom in Anonymity?

Both Principal's Page and Jen write anonomously, which may be why their posts are so enjoyable; they can say what they want to without professional repercussions. That is not to say that they slag people, because they don't. They can just be a little more candid than some of us are willing to be when our names are attached to our blogs.

Who Makes You Smile?

I've shared a couple of my favourite, put a smile on your face, bloggers. Do you have a few gems to share? What do you think about blogs published anonymously; are you pro, con, "it depends", or other? I'd love to hear what you think :-)

Just Some Hoops to Jump Through

2009-01-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

It was Thursday and some of the high school students were at the school to do some work (I work at a Distributed Learning / Distance Learning school, so usually the kids are at home). One of the grade 10s was working on a course she was just starting; 'Family Studies 11'. This kid is pretty bright and does well in our program.

Me: "So does Family Studies look interesting?"
Her: "Yes. Mr. X said it was easy so that's why I took it."

Superdog by skycaptaintwo
Attribution License

Yup. Just another hoop. Made me think of the 'Guitar Hero' part of this post by Dan Myers. It also made me think of the really bright, top of the district, student I taught a few years ago who switched from Chemistry 12 to Geography 12 a third of the way through because she knew she could get through Geography more easily. Not because she liked Geography better. I know this because she told me as much.

I don't get it. When I was in high school I probably could have taken a study block, but that never occurred to me; I was having a hard time trying to narrow down the classes that I wanted to take. I took Drawing and Painting 12 because I liked, well, drawing and painting. Not because I thought it might be easy. In fact I had very little artistic talent and taking the course probably put me in danger of lowering my GPA. I took Drafting 11 and 12, again, not because I thought they might be easy courses, but because I was interested in them. Same with Choir, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics.

So when I see kids taking "easy credits", or study blocks, or gunning through their academic courses so they can graduate 6 months or a year early; I. Just. Don't. Get. It.

I don't want to lay all the blame on these kids, though. It's human nature to do the easy thing, to keep doing those things that make you feel successful. Have you seen how most people use flashcards to study--they spend most of their time on the cards that they already understand, and not the cards they need to understand. Failure feels uncomfortable, so we often stick with what we already know.

The system is also to blame. We often focus on "these are the courses you need to graduate", "this is the minimum number of credits you need", instead of "we have some wonderful courses that you're really going to enjoy, learn a lot from, and serve you well in the future". Maybe we need more inspiring courses.

I don't know. What do you think?

Re-discovering Books

2009-01-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

Or the Silver Lining of Being Sick

So far 2009 has been a bit of a bust for me as I have been sick for the entire time with a variety of non-life-threatening ailments. The plus side is that I have been able to read some books! Back in the spring I bought Daniel Pink's 'A Whole New Mind' and only made it about 40 pages in. Well I got a chance to read it and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Then, on one of my forays out of the house to procure tinctures etc, I picked up Malcom Gladwell's 'Outliers' and devoured it quickly. Another great read that has me analyzing my own personal success and wondering what factors will impact the success my children will experience as they grow up. Both Pink and Gladwell do a wonderful job of weaving stories of individuals to make their respective points.

Different Types of Reading

Now I find myself wishing I had some more unread books on hand to read. There is something really satisfying about books that I'm not getting from reading blog posts. I enjoy reading posts and engaging in conversations in the comments, but books really feed my soul. I guess I need to have a balanced diet when it comes to reading. I've also got to make sure that I'm not so busy that I don't have time for books. A problem that I have with books is that I feel compelled to finish them; I have difficulty just reading a chapter and putting the book down for a day or two. Reading a book in just a few sittings is not a good strategy if you have a job and a husband and two little kids to look after ;-)

Now on My List

Since tweeting about reading these two books it's been recommended that I read 'The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives' by Leonard Mlodinow and 'The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything' by Ken Robinson. So I'm on a quest to get these books; so far my local book sellers and library are not helping me out.

Any Recommendations? What's on Your List of Books to Read?

What books have you enjoyed lately? What book(s) are you pining to read?

Tools and Sites I Use--One Year Later

2009-01-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

tools by tashland

Last January I decided to write a post on the tools and sites that I was using on a regular basis. I thought it would be interesting to do another list this year and see what changes, if any, there are. The tools that I use daily have a star next to them, all the other tools I use at least on a weekly basis. In no particular order they are:

Twitter* (microblogging tool)

TwitterFox* (Twitter client)

iGoogle* (customizable homepage with different feeds--I have Google Reader, calendar, Gmail, news, weather etc)

Google Docs*

Google Reader*

Google Calendar*

Edublogs

GMail*

Firefox* (web browser)

Flock (Firefox based web browser)

Delicious* (social bookmarking site)

Google Chat

Skype

MS Outlook (only because it is the mail program at work)

MS Word (for work documents)

iPhoto

Flickr

coComment*

co.mments

Blogger

Facebook (once I started using Flock I found I used Facebook more because of its built in Facebook client)

WetPaint

Wikispaces

YouTube

Google Search*

Elluminate Live

Wikipedia

WebCT/Blackboard

MS FrontPage (for work)

No doubt I've missed a few tools. Compared to last year's list I've noticed the following:

Twitter is now on my list.

This year's list is way longer; 29 entries as opposed to 13, with 19 brand new entries.

3 entries from last year didn't make this year's list: Google Notebook, Moodle, and Google Video. Since I started using Delicious I found that I dropped Google Notebook. I still use Notebook occasionally, but definitely not on a weekly basis. Moodle was on my list last year because I was part of a pilot project with Open School BC using Moodle for some of our courses. The pilot project ended in June '08 and so too my moodling. My colleague and I are going to lobby the powers that be to allow us to use the Moodle server that they already have up and running, but just for in house use (ie not for students to access via the web). Google Video, just kinda faded out for me. Not sure why.

Wikipedia was the only wiki on my list last year.

So, I've done a lot more exploring and added a bunch more tools and sites to my toolbelt. But hey, they're still just tools. I could have five great hammers, but if I never used them, or had no skill with them, then so what. It's not the tools per say, it's what you do with them.

Are you gobsmacked that one of your fave tools is not on my list? Curious about a tool that I've mentioned? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!

7 Things You Don't Know About Me

2009-01-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

I was tagged by Jan Smith for the meme "7 Things You Don't Know About Me", so here goes!

I watched every game of the Canucks' '94 run for the Stanley Cup, either in person or on TV. My friends had season's tickets and so I got to attend some of the games. A bunch of us would get together to watch the games on TV. I seem to recall that the friends sold the 3rd and 4th round tickets, but I tell you even those 1st and 2nd round games were great! The loudest place I have ever been was at the Pacific Coliseum for round 2 against the Dallas Stars. After the Canucks won game 6 of the finals we went down to Robson Street in Vancouver and participated in the celebration; everyone was so happy it was great. I didn't go down to Robson when things turned nasty after the Canucks lost game 7. I haven't been such an avid hockey fan these days, thought the Canada / Russia World Junior game the other night was a real nail biter!

I have a class 4 driver's license. In BC that means that I can drive a mini-bus (approx 19 passengers). When I was assistant coach for the high school golf team the coach asked me to get one so that I could drive the team on occasion. I haven't used it much; the responsibility of driving 19 young lives around wears me out.

All through my high school years I was absolutely certain that I would become an architect. Then I got to university ;-)

I am very afraid of heights, though I have found that after giving birth to two sons many of my fears have weakened a bit. Perhaps it's time to head over to the bluffs...

Skaha Bluffs by outdoorsgirl

My oldest son has Asperger Syndrome. Going through the process of getting a diagnosis and then advocating to get appropriate support for him in the schools has really changed my outlook as a teacher. I have a lot more compassion for the 'difficult' students, and the students who struggle with anxiety. I also have a greater appreciation of what the parents go through.

I get excited when I can add another phylum to the 'Foods I Have Eaten' list. I'm a biologist; this is ok in biology circles;-) My husband and I were at a big Chinese banquet a number of years ago and I was very happy because I got to add Phylum Cnidaria (jellyfish) to my list. For a moment I thought I'd get to add Phylum Porifera too (sponges), but it turned out to be bamboo (who knew?) I don't go out of my way to eat weird things, but if they are part of the conventional cuisine of a culture--I'll try 'em!

I have worked on the DNA of Sticklebacks (fish), Cutthroat trout, Rainbow Trout, Dolly Varden (fish), Kokanee (fish), killer whales and humans. Sticklebacks , the other fish and killer whales to learn more about their evolution. On humans I worked in a lab where we studied Fragile X syndrome and were looking for genes associated with autism.

Doing the '7 Things' has been fun, and I've definitely enjoyed learning more about the folks whose blogs I read. I'm supposed to tag people for this one, but I think I'll leave it up to you--if you would like to do the '7 Things' meme, consider yourself tagged...

Pop-Tastic Award

2009-01-05T11:55:00.000-08:00

I was recently nominated by Charlie Roy for a Pop-Tastic Award. I like the idea of the Pop-Tastic Awards; highlighting wonderful bloggers who may not necessarily have wide audience. I'm honoured to be nominated by Charlie, whose blog I've been enjoying for about a year now. My 6 nominations for the Pop-Tastic Award are...

Jan Smith (Re-siever)

Louise Maine (Hurricane Maine)

Betty Gilgoff (Betty On-line)

Cindy Martin (Blog Junkie)

Phil Macoun (Tech-Edy)

Ted Munat (Still Life With Shark)

The first 5 folks are educators that I've met in the past five months and they are doing great stuff on their blogs (and in their schools!) My last pick, Ted Munat, is a bit of a departure. Ted is the father of Sharky, who has Asperger's. Ted's blog is where he writes about the joys and challenges of parenting Sharky. I think Ted's blog will be of interest to educators; most educators will come into contact with children on the autism spectrum and it is important that we understand the challenges these kids and their parents face. I hope you check out all of these blogs.

Here are the Rules & Regs for the bling:

When you receive The Award, please post it on your blog, linking back to the person who gave it to you.

Please visit Veggie Mom’s Post , which explains the origins of The Award, and Sign Mr. Linky, so she’ll be able to keep a record of all whose Blogs are Pop-tastic! Feel free to leave a comment, too!!

Pass The Award along to SIX Bloggy Friends, whose creativity merits inclusion in this circle. Link to their blogs in your Awards Post, and notify them that they’ve received The Award.

I strongly suggest looking at the other blogs that Charlie nominated.

We've Got The Power

2008-12-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think we forget that for many of our students we are a significant adult in their life. For some students we are one of the very few significant adults in their lives. As such, how we respond to our students can have a very big impact on them and their perception of themselves.

For Example:

A number of years ago I had the following experience which really brought this idea home to me. I was teaching Biology 11 and there was a girl in the class that I had known for a few years. She was a sweet girl, but very unsure of herself. I had noticed that she had seemed down for awhile and after class one day I asked her if everything was ok. She smiled and said that things were fine. The next day I got a call from her mom; her daughter had told her about the brief conversation we had. The daughter felt that none of her other teachers even noticed her, and so when I noticed and was concerned about her it really affected her in a positive way. Her mom shared some of the troubles her daughter was having and thanked me again for taking an interest. She said it meant a lot to them both. All this from a brief conversation; just letting another human being know that they matter.

Recently there was a situation with a high school student at my school which also illustrates my point. As a staff we had noticed that this student had changed quite a bit since September; in both his appearance and behaviour. He was also making some poor choices which were affecting more than just his schooling. Then a situation arose that was clearly a cry for help. My principal met with the mother and then with the boy. He did a great job of letting the boy know that: 1) the staff and students had noticed the changes in him; 2) we were all concerned about him; and 3) we all really liked the "old him" better than this new persona. There was more to it than that of course, this is just the Coles notes version. A week after that meeting, the student was back in class and he was so positive. He was working well and interacting with the other students, not shutting them out like before. He was back to his old self and more. His positive energy was contagious and the other students were feeding off it; very cool. I'm just guessing, but I think it probably felt pretty good to know that the staff and students at the school cared about him and liked him. He mattered.

The Take Home Message

Now I'm not saying that we need to go around acting as counselors for all of our students; in fact when students come to me with personal troubles I let them know that I will offer them support, and part of that support is finding a person with the right skills to help them (I'm not trained in that kind of stuff and I definitely do not want to botch things up.) And I know for a good percentage of our students they are doing just fine, thank you very much. But we do need to be aware that for some of our students, just the fact that we notice them and are concerned about them really is a big deal.

What About You?

How do you try to connect with your students? Do you think I'm overplaying this role of teachers as significant adults? I'd love to hear from you!

Are You A Control Freak Too? Or Why It Can Be Hard Shifting To Being The Guide On The Side

2008-11-24T17:22:00.000-08:00

Today I learned a few new things, some interesting, and one disturbing.

New Thing Number One

Mosses reproduce by fragmentation (I know, some of you are gasping "you must be joking" and others are saying "well, duh!", while still others are saying "that's interesting... why?")

New Thing Number Two

Some mosses have found ways to survive in the desert. (Ditto parentheses above).

Photo by ecstaticist Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

So What?

I have been teaching grade 11 students about mosses for about 10 years now and I didn't know about this fragmentation stuff. I mean I knew about fragmentation, but not that mosses did it. I found out today because one of my students highlighted fragmentation as a key way that mosses reproduce. He was also the one who mentioned that mosses can live in the desert.

So here's the disturbing thing: these revelations about mosses lead me to realize that for too many years I have mercilessly controlled the information that my students receive. My students would only learn about a narrowly defined (by me) version of mosses, or arthropods, or the excretory system etc. The official curriculum document says the students have to learn X,Y, and Z so I made sure I served X, Y, and Z up in easy to digest morsels. I injected humour and stories, I used a variety of instructional strategies and provided activities that uncovered prior knowledge, but for the most part I controlled the information.

Despite my strangle hold on the information, the assignments that I've always enjoyed assessing the most are the ones where students have to research a topic. That's where I get to be the learner and they get to truly explore. (One very useful piece of information that I learned from a student research project is that we get the urge to urinate when our bladder is only a third full. I find that comforting when I am on a long car trip or hiking in the woods--it's only a third full, it's only a third full...)

For the past few years though, I have been teaching at a distributed learning school where, so far, I don't own the courses. By that I mean that the courses students take are not designed by me. I am their guide, tutor, cheerleader, and assessor, but I am not their course designer (not yet anyway). Often times there is a poor fit with the text and the course a student is taking, so the student has to look to other sources to answer their questions. That's how my student found out about fragmentation and about desert mosses. It was not from his textbook, it did not come from me. He found it 'out there'. And I'm so glad he did. It reminded me that it was never my job to own the information. And now, more than ever before, it is not necessary for me to own the information.

I know, bit of a slow learner ;-)

Some Questions

Do you ever feel that you have to own the information? For me I think this came about because I needed to be sure that they learned what they were supposed to. And, how else would we make it through the curriculum? If you have relinquished control over the information, or perhaps never felt like you needed to have control in the first place, how would you counter these concerns?

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this!

On Teaching Science At A DL School

2008-11-21T00:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a good day.

I teach at a distributed learning (DL) school and though this is home learning, we do encourage most of our high school students to show up for a face-to-face class for 2 hours on Thursday mornings. It can be challenging wrangling 20 plus kids from grades 8 - 11 who are all at different places in their (different) courses. My colleague and I have used the time to check up on where kids are at, prod them to get work done, provide tutoring and do mini-lessons to the whole group (on studying for example). My colleague has also pulled out grade groups to go over grammar and to discuss their reading journals. We've found that our students are far more successful when we have this regular face to face contact with them.

How Can You Do Science Without Labs?

Today was the first time I was able to pull out a group to work on a science lab. In a DL program labs often get short shrift. It can be time consuming for the student to complete the labs, they often feel at sea--not sure if they are getting the expected results, or unsure of what they should be observing. While this also happens in a traditional classroom, at least the teacher and peers can support the student.

Seeing the Lightbulbs Go On

Photo by Cayusa Attribution-NonCommercial License

I had 4 grade nines work on an electricity lab; comparing series and parallel circuits. I really baby stepped them through the lab. We went over the proper lab format and I dictated or wrote what they needed to include at each step. I guided them through setting up the circuits and drawing the schematics. One of the students was really adept at setting up the combined series / parallel circuit and he explained to the others how to do it. He used what he had learned earlier in the lab to confirm that he had it set up correctly. We discussed their observations and what they meant. When we got to the final section of the lab write-up, the conclusion, I explained how it should be set up and said "Here's where you explain what you learned from the lab, so what have you learned?" The response was great; "A lot!" And then they went on to tell me the things they learned in a very animated way. I just don't think that these kids would have gotten a lot out of this lab had they been doing it by themselves at home.

"What did you learn"--"a lot!" I'm still smiling :-)

Living Life On-line

2008-11-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking to a colleague who was bemoaning the fact that her computer crashed on her. It was report card time and she couldn't access her marks program, lost all her bookmarks, and needed to get/find the disks for her software. It made me think about how much of what I do is stored on-line. Bookmarks, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, e-mail; all on-line. Marks are on the district server (which I can access via the 'net.) For me that leaves my photos, videos and music which are not on-line.

How much of your computing is on-line? Are you up in the clouds, on terra firma, or somewhere in between?

Photo by puja Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

You Say It's Your Blog Birthday...

2008-11-15T01:41:00.000-08:00

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, NAH. It's my blog birthday too, yah!

OK, the original lyrics are definitely better ;-)

birthday cake by photolate CC License

Clarify Me Turns One

Yup, it was a year ago in November that I took the plunge and dove into the blogosphere. The milestones weren't as dramatic as those for a human in their first year of life, but significant none-the-less.

The Early Days

The first blog I started was on Blogger, and I didn't really know what my focus was going to be. At the end of December I switched over to Edublogs. I regret not keeping the original Blogger blog as a time capsule--I transfered my posts over to Edublogger, but I didn't keep the those very first tentative posts. I posted photos about the big November windstorm that hit my neighbourhood, and I pondered what I would write about at Claire's World.

I was inspired to blog by my younger sister; she'd been blogging for about a year by then, and yes it was sibling rivalry ;-) What helped me find a direction for my blog was taking a KnowWeeks course called 'Using Blogs in Education'. Cristina Costa and Ramona Dietrich were the facilitators and they did a wonderful job helping us (mostly) newbies find our way. It was there that North Van educator David Brear directed me to Sue Waters' blog. Wow, did I feel like I hit pay dirt!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

When I started this blog, my focus was on how to get my students blogging. As I blogged more and read more I began to realize that blogs and blogging weren't necessarily the key; it was using technology, and web 2.0 in particular, to help students learn. Heck, before I started blogging I had no idea what web 2.0 even meant. My focus for blogging became not so much about finding out how to get students doing it and more about my own professional development. I was building my Personal Learning Network (only I didn't know it at the time.) By the spring I volunteered to do a professional development session on blogging for teachers.

The aim of the session is to introduce participants to blogs and illustrate how blogging can enhance on-going teacher professional development by facilitating communication and collaboration with teachers from around the world.

Over the summer I prepared my session by posting all of the tasks and information on a blog I set up for PD activities.

Full Circle

So, earlier this week I noticed that KnowWeeks was offering 'Using Blogs In Education' again with Cristina and Ramona. I thought I'd sign up for old time's sake ;-) The interesting thing is that I tweeted about it and as a result two of my BC Twitter friends signed up. My colleague at work too. Cool. This time around there are fewer newbies, and the focus is less on setting up a blog as it is about sharing resources.

Spiral Staircase by Martin Haesemeyer CC license

Thanks

The most amazing thing about this past year has been getting to meet so many wonderful, and inspiring educators. I won't start listing them all; you can check out my blogroll to find most of them. There are some folks who I converse with on a regular basis, others who graciously respond to my comments or questions, and still others whom I admire from afar :-) You've all influenced me in countless ways. Thank you.

May I Have A Word?

2008-11-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

This past little while I've been exploring ways to improve communication with my students. I teach at

Photo by ohhector
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

a distributed learning school (DL) and have limited face-to-face contact with my students. My students are in grades 8 to 11 and I am responsible for math and science. At this point, these courses are paper based. Their other core courses, English and Social Studies, are delivered in WebCT.

A challenge has been setting up an effective way to communicate directly with all of the students. Many of the 8s and 9s do not have an e-mail that they use, so e-mail communication is mainly through a family or parent account. We do have a school website where Google Calendars for each of the grades are posted. This has worked well in terms of posting time-lines and important dates, but not much else. Add to the mix the fact that I have very few so called digital natives in the group, and perhaps you can understand my difficulties. (Teaching 21st century literacy skills to this group will be a whole other post...)

Wikis?

I have only dabbled in using wikis, so this past Professional Development (PD) day I set up test wikis in Wetpaint and Wikispaces. After tinkering around for a bit, I felt that I was just duplicating what I already have on the school website, so I don't think that the wiki is necessarily the way to go to improve communication with my students.

Moodle?

I've used Moodle a little bit; as a participant in a few KnowWeeks courses, and I was part of an Open School BC pilot project delivering Science 10 through Moodle. My district is hosting Moodle in house (as part of the one to one tablet laptop program, I believe), but to access Moodle students have to get onto the district server using Citrix and then log onto Moodle. Citrix can be a little slow and has a nasty habit of kicking you off. I looked into a Moodle hosting service and they seem to fall into two groups--the "it's too good to be true" $5 per month options and the "wow, that's a lot of clams for a small school" $5000+ per year options.

WebCT Students' Lounge

Photo by imedagoze
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

An idea that my colleague suggested is setting up a "Students' Lounge" in WebCT, in which all students would be registered. Announcements and batch e-mails could be easily handled here. In addition, almost all students should already be signing into WebCT every day. I have to find out if there would be any costs to setting up this 'course' and enrolling all our students.

Where It's At

Right now, barring cost, the best option would appear to be setting up a Students' Lounge in WebCT. I'll also investigate to see if the district could be convinced to make Moodle available out of house (is that the opposite of in house?)

How Do You Do It?

If you don't see your students face to face on a regular basis, how do you ensure that communication is effective and efficient? Are there other tools out there that I should be investigating? As always, thanks for taking the time to read this!

Intro to Hibernation

2008-10-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

After my little hiatus from blogging, it seems apt that I have a post on hibernation ;-)

hibernation by Life As Art

The Lesson

I was starting a small unit on hibernation for my mixed grade (4 - 7) science class and came up with a modified 'concept attainment' lesson to introduce the topic. Here's how it worked.

I gave students a list of animals in alphabetical order. I then told them I was going to be placing them in 3 groups labeled A, B and C. Their job (with a partner) was to figure out why I grouped them the way I did. I told them that it might be difficult because they may not know very much about some of the animals that I listed, but that was ok.

I started introducing each of the animals, in alphabetical order, by showing them a photo of the animal and then showing them which group I placed it in. After each of the groups had one or two animals in them I asked the students to discuss with their partner why I was grouping them the way I did. I did not get them to share their ideas with the entire group at this point (even though some of them really wanted to!) I showed them a few more animals and where I grouped them. Again they were asked to share their ideas with their partner. They were also asked to share their ideas with the group next to them. I continued showing them animals, but I would ask them to predict which group I was going to put it in. As the group got a clearer and clearer idea of how the animals were grouped their predictions improved and loud cheers would go up when their predictions were proved correct. Once we made it through all of the animals I asked different students to explain why the group A animals were together, then why the group B etc. By the mid-point of this activity all of the students were completely engaged, and by the end I felt that the class as a whole had a basic understanding of 3 of the main ways that animals cope with winter (hibernation, migration, and adaptations such as thicker white coats of fur, broad feet to move through snow etc.)

The Slide Show

The slide show I used for this activity is embedded below. Please note that I included bears with the hibernator group, but many people do not consider them to be true hibernators. All of the photos I used were under Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives licenses. Group A are the animals that do not hibernate or migrate, but adapt to the cold weather. Group B animals migrate to warmer climates during the winter. Group C animals hibernate.

Reflection

I have done concept attainment lessons before, especially as an introduction to a new concept. I've found it particularly effective in Biology 12 when introducing biomolecules; one group would have molecular structures of amino acids/polypeptides and the other group would have molecular structures of the other biomolecules we would eventually learn about; carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and lipids. It focussed the students on the key structural characteristics of amino acids. I have also used it in Biology 11 when introducing gymnosperms.

This particular lesson on hibernation was for a mixed grade (4 - 7) science class. In all cases, most of the students enjoyed figuring out the puzzle and the focus was on sharing their thinking/hypotheses with a partner and constantly reassessing. It can sometimes be challenging to structure the activity in such a way that students don't come up with the answer right off the bat. With this hibernation lesson, I suspected that many students would know that we would be working on hibernation, so that is why I used 3 groups instead of just hibernators and non-hibernators. I am happy that I did because it got the students looking, at least in a basic level, at the different ways that animals cope with winter.

Take It Please!

Please feel free to use this lesson (or pass it along to a colleague), and modify as needed. If you would like me to send you the original Google Doc file or a Power Point version, just let me know in the comments. Better yet, if you know how I can post the file here for you to download I'd really like to find out. Please keep in mind that the photos are all CC attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives. Any feedback you have about the lesson is also appreciated. If you use it would be neat to hear how it worked out for you.

Hiatus Over...

2008-10-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

Yikes! I haven't blogged for over a month. Time to get back into the groove. Though I haven't been posting, I have been doing a lot of reading and commenting.

Favourite Blogs

All of the blogs in my reader are great, but with over 200 unread posts, there are a few that I ALWAYS stay up to date on. In alphabetical order they are Drape's Takes, dy/dan, Hurrican Maine, and Practical Theory. Combined, these people are challenging me to reconsider how I teach and how I use technology.

Lately Louise Maine (Hurricane Maine) and Dan Myer (dy/dan) have been really influential. Louise posts great stuff about what she is doing with her biology students. She is a queen of the wiki and does engaging project based learning with her students. This post of Louise's is a particular favourite of mine. Louise inspires me to share what I do and make the learning meaningful for my students. Dan Myer writes great posts and asks the questions that need asking. His dy/av video series this summer was amazing. At the beginning of September he posted his entire Geometry curriculum on-line, complete with his slides in PPT and other formats. Add to that he's a fan of The Wire and The Office--what more could you want?! A recent post of his that has caused me to get it into gear was this one where he lamented the lack of Web 2.0 technology that is transforming math instruction. It made me realize how few blogs in my feed reader are by subject specialists sharing what has worked for them in their practice.

Time To Kick It Up A Notch

The influence of the four bloggers that I mentioned above has caused me to re-evaluate what I've been posting here. A lot of what I post is about my experience with blogging and with the technology. I think this is to be expected from a new blogger. This is a way to reflect on what I've been learning. As I near my one year blog anniversary though, it is time to kick it up a notch. This weekend I probably put in 3 hours preparing a resource for a 45 minute class!?!! Add to that it was for a mixed grade class (gr 4 - 7), where I will see the grade 4s for 2 more years, which means I can't use it again for 3 years. This is not being efficient!!! However... if I share what I did so that others can use it, well, then the time investment was worth it. I will post on this lesson soon.

How 'Bout You?

If you blog, are you content with the focus of your blog? Or are you like me, re-assessing what you do. Love to hear from you!

CCK08 Dropout

2008-09-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's official. I am a CCK08 drop-out.

Say What?

CCK08 is the Massively Open Online Course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge being taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. When the course was announced in the spring I eagerly signed up. However, as the start date for the course approached my doubts about being able to keep up with the course (plus everything else in my life) intensified. Can doubts intensify? If they can mine did. The first week I dipped my toes in the CCK08 waters; I signed up for the RSS feed, I set up my profile on Moodle, I introduced myself, I read the assigned readings. I told myself I would get more involved in week 2, when I had more time...

The Thing About September

As a teacher and parent of one school aged child and one preschooler living in the Northern Hemisphere I have to say that September is a crazy month! As a parent I'm trying to get the kids into their new routines and make sure that I register in time for all of the activities that they would like to participate in. As a teacher in a distributed learning school this is a very busy month; our enrollment pretty much doubles as we go from September 1st to September 30th. That means lots of meetings with families, helping to order and distribute resources etc. along with teaching classes and marking, ahem assessing. My husband is a teacher too, so needless to say things are a little crazy here in September. Something had to give so we dropped Beavers (the 1st step in Boy Scouts in Canada). Great, now I'll really get into the course...

I'm Fine With It, Really

Photo by A Boy And His Bike
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

I've just not been able to keep up even my week 1 level of participation. I think I have to face facts; I'm a CCK08 drop-out. But I'm ok with being a drop-out. I don't feel stressed. I didn't feel like I had to read every single blog posting or Moodle forum. I was not flustered that I couldn't participate in the Elluminate sessions or watch the UStream broadcast live. I guess that as I approach my one year anniversary of building my on-line personal learning network I've gotten used to the fact that you can't read everything. You can't watch everything. I feel like I'm standing at the river's edge; there is a constant flow of interesting information (with the occasional bits of flotsam) and if you try to catch everything you'll drown.

What's Your Story?

Did you sign up for CCK08? If so, what has been your experience?

New Image

2008-09-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking for awhile that my blog has been looking a little busy. I had left and right sidebars with a lot of widgets. What finally pushed me into action was visiting Jan Smith's blog Re-Siever. It looked so clean and sophisticated, and the content is great too!

Choosing a Theme

It can be daunting choosing a theme, but luckily Sue Waters at The Edublogger wrote two posts back in July which were really helpful; What To Consider When Choosing Your Blog Theme and The 100 Edublog Themes Separated Into Categories To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier. Using Sue's posts I decided what I wanted in a blog theme and started checking out the ones that seemed to fit. Well, after lots of thought and consideration I went with the theme that I really liked... the same one that Jan Smith is using (Ocean Mist by Ed Merritt). They say that imitation is a form of flattery, and Jan's most recent post is titled Steal This, Please. I have personalized the theme though--right now that's a photo of my youngest running through the spray at a water park.

Some Bumps Along The Way

I'm finding that a few things got lost in the transfer (like Clustr Maps) and I've been trying to re-jig things. I took my blogroll out of my sidebar and given it a separate page to try and reduce clutter. I'm still playing with the layout so that it works for me.

Your Thoughts?

What do you look for in a blog theme? Are you a 1, 2, or 3 column type of person, or does it depend on the blog content? Have you considered changing up the look of your blog? Do you have any suggestions to make my blog layout/set-up more reader friendly? As always, I'd love to hear from you!

Image: Bump, bump, bump by gwen

Getting My Head Around Mobile Learning

2008-09-12T03:37:00.000-07:00

I like using technology, but when it comes to mobile learning I feel like a luddite.

Mobile Learning the Future?

Photo by AdamLogan
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

This morning I read a post by David Truss where he talks about the future of technology in education:

I predict that in about 5 short years almost every Middle School student will own an iPhone or its’ equivalent, and they will be connecting to our wireless network via bluetooth for absolutely free. Students will be ready, willing and able to use these tools in our classroom… will teachers be ready enough to maximize the opportunities and learning experiences these tools (coming to our classrooms for free) will provide?

Really?! I feel that I am terribly out of touch with what mobile technology middle and high school students use today. I have a cell phone, but it is basic. I have a pay-as-you-go plan which runs me about $11 a month. I don't text. I don't have a data plan. For a period of time when I was homeless this summer I looked in to getting a beefed up plan, maybe even upgrading my phone (I do covet an iPhone). Basic iPhone rate here in Canada is $60 a month.

Surely the majority of middle and high school students don't have a $60 a month plan?! I know I'm missing something though, because David is talking about students connecting to the school wireless internet for free.

I would love a hand-held "internet machine" (who coined that term? I know I just read it a few days ago...) that could pick up free wireless. Where I live there are a reasonable number of places that have free wifi (Starbucks, Safeway, schools).

What Do You Think/Set Me Straight

Do you agree with David Truss' prediction? I like the vision that he paints. Do you have the piece of the puzzle that I'm missing?

Reflections on Blogging 101

2008-09-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is cross-posted at Tech Pro-D Tools.

A week ago I facilitated a session called 'Blogging 101' for teachers in my school district. The session was aimed at teachers new to blogging. By the end of the session I wanted participants to be able to:

search for blogs of interest

subscribe to blogs in a feed reader

submit comments to a blog

set up their own blog

write their first blog post

be able to add media to their posts (images, videos, etc)

The session was all built around a series of blog posts on my other blog, Tech Pro-D Tools. The posts are all tagged/labeled 'blogging 101'. The focus on the posts was mainly 'how-to', with lots of screen shots and step-by-step instructions. The session ran from 8:30 to 1:30 with two 20 minute breaks.

Reflections

Resources
My goodness it took a long time to put together the 11 posts which make up the bulk of the

Photo by Cesar R.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Blogging 101 series! My hope is that it will be useful to anyone who is interested in getting into blogging, especially if they are planning to use Google Reader and Blogger. In addition, if I do another intro to blogging workshop, I've got the bulk of my resources ready. For the record, I do not receive kickbacks from Google; I chose these two tools because I am familiar with them, Blogger is easy to set up, and it requires only signing up for services with one company.

I did not provide resources other than what was in my blog posts. I didn't prepare any handouts. In future I think I would prepare a one page handout with key information on it such as the blog address, how to contact me, and how to get into the Google account once it has been set up.

Time

Photo by F3R/n@nd0 (FJTU)
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

I tried to break up the session so that participants were interacting with each other and getting out of their seats. Having said that, I think I needed to have more of this. The participants all seemed very into what we were doing, but 5 hours is a long time to be sitting at the computer. A couple of the participants suggested a two day session would be a good format, then they could go home and try out some of the things we talked about and come back the next day with questions. I suspect two 3 hour sessions might be a good way to do this.

Group Size
Seventeen people were signed up for the session, but only eight actually showed up. I think that 17 would have been way too much for one person (me) to handle effectively. As it was, 8 was perfect. I felt that I was able to move around the room and help people when they needed it.

Knowing Your Audience
I did create a pre-session survey and 7 of the 8 participants completed it. Their experience with web 2.0 tools was all over the map and it was helpful knowing where everyone was at. I erred on the side of making my instructions in the 'Blogging 101' posts geared toward the technologically inexperienced and I think this worked well. If you are more experienced you can ignore the step-by-step screen shots and just go with the flow. But if you are uncertain, the step-by-step is there for you. I would have liked to have an exit survey, but I just ran out of time.

Random Thoughts
I was a little surprised at how many participants wanted to keep their blogs private. I had forgotten how apprehensive I was about privacy and security when I started blogging--so this was a good reminder. The session focussed mainly on the mechanics of blogging. Given more time it would be great to discuss how to write good posts, be a good commenter, track blog stats etc.

The Wrap Up and Heartfelt Thanks

I was happy with how the workshop went, and as I've mentioned above there are some things that I

Photo by psd
Attribution License

would change. It took me a tremendous amount of time to write all the posts, so that's another reason I hope to do another workshop on this again to get more mileage out of all the work! Lastly, I would to thank Sarah Stewart and Sue Waters for their comments on a post I did soliciting ideas for this workshop. Sue has been a fantastic blogging mentor for hundreds (thousands?!) of new edubloggers and I am so grateful for all the support she has given me this year. Sarah Stewart was generous enough to share the outline and resources she used for her recent blogging workshop. We also had some good discussions via Twitter on how to run a successful workshop on blogging. You can read Sarah's reflections on the three sessions she and her colleague ran here.

If you have any suggestions on how to run a successful blogging workshop, please let me know. Any comments on the Blogging 101 series I ran would also be welcome!

Combatting Teacher Burnout

2008-08-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Chris Lehmann wrote an interesting piece last week where asked, amongst other things;

How can we change the system so that more teachers are rewarded for not taking the short cuts?

Chris' post was inspired by video number 8 in Dan Meyer's summer video posts--which have been excellent.

How To Keep The Ones We Love?

In response to one of the comments, Chris outlined what he does in his role as principal to improve the sustainability of the profession. You should really check out Chris' comment in its entirety*, but basically he says that he;

- buys extra teaching positions to reduce the student to teacher ratio

- treats his teachers with an ethic of care

- fosters collegiality and collaboration amongst his teachers

These things come at a cost--for example; reductions in non-teaching positions--so the choices are still difficult ones to make. My favourite quote from Chris' comment is this;

In the end, I believe that high school teachers shouldn't have more than 80 kids on their academic roster. Teachers should not teach 70% of their working day, because that guarantees that the diligent teacher is consigning themselves to 60 hour work weeks -- minimum. Both those solutions mean spending a lot more money, but I think that's what it takes.

30% Preparation Time--Where Do I Sign Up?

I can tell you that I would have loved to have 30% of every teaching day as prep

Photo by estherase
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

time. In my last school, a grade 8 - 12 school, we ran a semester system. It meant that for one semester (half the year) you taught 4 out of 4 classes. For the other semester you taught 3 out of 4 classes and one block was for prep. A week into the new semester you could walk into the staffroom and tell right away who had prep and who didn't. Those without prep, if they were even in the staffroom at all, had that tense wide eyed look you see on horses when they're spooked. Those with prep had a whole different body language--sitting relaxed on the couches, joking with their colleagues.

When I had prep in a semester, life was pretty good. I would only have about 75 students to keep track of, and I would have the chance to overhaul some units and do some fresh stuff. I could collaborate with other teachers who had prep at the same time, or I could come in and watch another teacher's lesson during my prep and learn from them. And when I got home, I could actually spend quality time with my own children. The end result was that my students had a teacher who was more relaxed, able to roll with it, better able accommodate their needs, and able to provide more challenging and engaging activities. Conversely, when I had no prep I was responsible for around 100 students and always seemed to be running fast just to stay in one place. I'd often scarf down lunch in my room while I prepared for the afternoon lessons--missing out on valuable time to connect with my colleagues.

Now maybe for Chris that 30% wouldn't be all prep time, but I'm sure that it would be time that would allow teachers to do a better job and provide a better learning environment for their students.

Weighing In

If you teach in K-12 how much prep time in the teaching day do you get? What do you think would be the ideal? How else could we make the profession sustainable?

*I haven't figured out yet how to make a link to a specific part of a webpage yet, so you'll have to go to the post and browse the comments.

Periodic Table of Videos

2008-08-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

I just found out about this resource via Alec Couros' blog Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy. The University of Nottingham has put together a series of YouTube videos, apparently one for each element on the periodic table, called The Periodic Table of Videos. I just checked out a few (Zinc, Potassium, & Uranium) and they're pretty engaging. I've embedded the trailer for this video series below.

Definitely worth a look if you teach any chemistry, otherwise forward it on to a colleague who does!

On Changing Paradigms

2008-07-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching Sir Ken Robinson's talk Changing Paradigms at the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts (via Will Richardson). Robinson is an engaging speaker and I highly recommend viewing his talk (it runs 55 mins). If you're more pressed for time, he did a TED talk 2 years ago which covers some of the same ground (and comes in at around 20 minutes).

Divergent Thinking

Robinson discusses divergent thinking, which he feels is a prerequisite for creative thinking. He refers to a longitudinal study where children were given a test on divergent thinking at ages 3 - 5 and then every 5 years for a number of years. Using the predetermined benchmark for "genius" in terms of divergent thinking, the results are startling, perhaps not in their trend, but in their magnitude. At ages 3 - 5 years 98% of the children scored at a genius level (I believe the sample size was 1500). It then rapidly dropped off (I can't locate the exact figures) until at adulthood those scoring at the genius level represent only 3% of the population.

Schools Kill the Creativity in Children

Robinson argues that schools kill the creativity in children, not on purpose, but they do it none-the-less and they do it systematically. He argues that our current school system, based on the industrial revolution no longer works. The industrial revolution needed a large number of workers with basic literacy and numeracy to work in the factories, a smaller number of more literate and numerate people were needed to manage the workers, and the top level of the hierarchy were those who would attend universities and become the doctors, lawyers, and leaders of industry. Today's societies and economies have different needs. We need creative thinkers to tackle the issues of increased urbanization, global warming, the incredible growth of the Earth's human population...

We should be encouraging creative thinking, we should be nurturing the talents that children have, we should not be aiming for conformity.

So How Do We Do That?

I think that Robinson makes some very compelling points, but I'm struggling with the practical aspects. I would love to see a school where they are free to abandon standardized testing, teach to the talents of the students, and group students based upon pedagogically sound reasons (not merely based upon birth dates). Then there is the on-going debate of what information is necessary for all our citizens to learn. If a student's talent is in visual arts, is there anything from the other subject areas that can be omitted so that they can fully pursue their talent? I do not want to come off as a naysayer--I really like Sir Robinson's ideas, I'm just having difficulty visualizing the system he proposes. Does project based learning address some of the issues he discusses? Perhaps I'll just have to read his books to get a better idea.

What Do You Think?

Do schools systematically kill creativity? Is there a way to revolutionize schools and education to promote creative thinking? How do you work toward it in your own sphere of influence?

As always, thanks for reading!

Image: Which one... ? by carf. Licensed under a Creative Commons, attribution non-commercial no derivatives license.

In The Words Of Elvis...

2008-06-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

"Thank you, thank you very much."

31 Day Comment Challenge Awards

On Monday, Michele Martin over at The Bamboo Project Blog announced the winners of the 31 Day Comment Challenge and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was a co-winner for the most comments on a wide range of blogs category. I tied with Bonnie Kaplan. Other winners were Carla Arena for the most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic, Kevin of Dogtrax for the comments that provoke and promote the most learning, and Taylor for the student award.

Not In It For The Fame

I enthusiastically joined in the Comment Challenge back in April and was raring to go with the first task on May 1st. I knew there were prizes, but that's not what motivated me. I just wanted to become a better blogger. Well, what a month May was! About part way through I knew that I was not going to be able to keep up, and that was OK. Part of the reason that I wasn't able to keep up was the usual life things (kids, work, school...) but a big part of it was that I was finding all sort of new blogs and commenting like crazy. Through the challenge I got to meet a lot of great new people; heck I didn't know any of the other Challenge winners prior to May, but through the challenge I've 'met' and conversed with all but one of them. I also enjoyed reading posts and comments from Kate Foy, Christine Martell, Ines Pinto, and Ken Allen who were some of the others nominated for Challenge awards.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Comment Challenge has really helped me to grow as a blogger and I want to thank the fantastic four who organised it; Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and Kim Cofino. I know that I felt pretty busy during the challenge, but these wonderful women must have been going crazy, because they were everywhere--commenting, posting, and generally supporting participants. Thank you all so much! I also would like to thank Diane Hammond for nominating me for the award and all those who voted for me, read my posts, and especially those who took the time to comment on something I wrote.

Give It A Try!

If you didn't participate in the 31 Day Comment Challenge, you can still access the tasks and the links to participants posts at the Comment Challenge wiki. If you can get a large group of people to do it at the same time, even better. Or you might be interested in Web 2.0 Wednesdays; an idea that sprouted from the Comment Challenge, and is organised by Michele Martin.

Images: Elvis Statue in Hawaii, by Hawaii. Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives license. Not sure how to credit the Comment Challenge Logo, but here goes; the logo was created by Christine Martell of VisualsSpeak for the use of Comment Challenge participants.

I'm It

2008-06-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Way back in May I was tagged by Louise Maine for the "I believe..." meme started by Barry Bachenheimer. I've been putting off writing this for quite a while. It's not that I didn't want to write it, it's just that I have a hard time articulating the points that I feel are important in education. So, as I procrastinate writing up those final report cards, here goes.

I Believe...

- every child deserves respect

- every child should be valued

- every child has strengths that need to be recognized

- no one deserves to be told that they can't do something or that they'll never amount to anything

- education must be relevant to the learner

- assessment needs to be meaningful

- students must be given the opportunity to discuss and reflect upon what they are learning

- grades should not be used. as a motivator. as an end in themselves.

- the focus should be on the process, not just the product

- learning builds on prior knowledge; it is a teacher's role to uncover that knowledge

- our students are diverse so our teaching methods should be too

- there is more than one way to demonstrate knowledge

- the best education encourages wonder

- a good education should empower students with the skills to be able to continue learning about the things that are important to them.

These are just a few of the things that I believe with respect to education.

The Thing About Blog Memes

I'm not a memeticist, but I'm not sure that this is really what Dawkins would call a meme. I can't help but feel that they are pretty similar to chain letters with the exceptions that

they rarely demand that you tag a required amount of people in a limited amount of time or else... and

men are just as likely to participate in memes as women--unlike chain letters which seem to be the domain of women and girls

Tag--You're It!

So it is with great trepidation that I tag the following people:
Kevin /dogtrax (Kevin's Meandering Mind)

Sarah Stewart (Sarah's Musings)

My trepidation is they will see this tag as an onerous task to add to their to-do lists. If it catches your fancy--great, do it (I'm keen to find out what you believe!) If not, that is ok too.

The Final Word

What do you believe is truly important with respect to education? Write a post or leave a comment below. It is an interesting exercise, to be sure!

Image: 'Tag! You're It!' by Lance and Erin licensed under creative commons attribution, non-comercial, no derivitives works 2.0 generic.

Blogging 101

2008-06-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

Some Background
I started blogging in November of 2007 and I am amazed at how much I've learned and grown as a result of blogging. My network is expanding all the time; now it's time for me to work on local connections, with the folks in my district. In August I am doing a professional development session in my district on blogging. I've billed it as 'Blogging 101; Blogs as Professional Development Tools'. If the session fills up I'll have 20 people in a computer lab for the day (5 hours). Ideally I'd like to have the participants sign up for Google Reader, read and start commenting on blogs, and finally set up their own blogs in Blogger (for ease of use). If I can I'd like to have some folks Skype in on the session to help illustrate the power of the network. My goal is to introduce teachers to blogging as a way to enhance their professional practice. This is not a session on how to get students blogging.

I'd Like To Pick Your Brain
If this was your session how would you run with it? Do you have an "aha!" moment to share or a golden resource? What is the most valuable thing you've learned in your blogging journey? My plan is to do a follow up post with everyone's suggestions (she says optimistically :) ), hopefully to act as a resource for others who might be considering running a similar session.

Share and Share Alike
Tech Pro-D Tools is a blog I set up to support professional development sessions that I am involved in. I'll be running the 'Blogging 101' session from that blog--posting links, resources, how-tos, and tasks there. I hope that it will be helpful not just to the session participants, but to others too.

Closer
Again, if you have any suggestions, ideas, links etc, I'd love to hear from you, no matter if you've been blogging since before it was called that, or if you just started yesterday :-)

Image: Cyan Brain by bebop717

My Quest to Kill Fewer People at My Presentations.

2008-06-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week my colleague, Jodie Reeder, and I held a transition meeting for the students who will be entering grade 8 at our school next year. Our school is a little different as it is a distributed learning school--think correspondence/home schooling but within the public school system. We offer K-12 with an elementary (K-7) section and a high school (8-12) section. We've found that our students often have difficulty with the jump from grade 7 to grade 8, thus the transition meeting. This post isn't so much about the meeting, as the process of putting together the presentation--without any needless PowerPoint deaths...

My Well of Inspiration

Jodie and I spent a lot of time considering what we wanted to convey at the meeting; then it was my job to put together the presentation. Well, lately I've been trying to learn how to put together a really good presentation, or at the very least one that doesn't end up with me had up on charges of 'Death by PowerPoint'.

I've watched the very helpful and humorous video by Alvin Trusty How to Create a Great PowerPoint Without Breaking the Law. I've been to a number of presentations on the brain and learning where the key ideas were that images and (limited) text produce the most learning. I've also been influenced by Dean Shareski and his quest to help people improve their PowerPoint presentations and to make them bullet free :-) (just type in PowerPoint in the search box on Dean's blog and you'll find a wealth of resources on putting together a better presentation). Some other places of inspiration have been ZaidLearn's Is PowerPoint Evil? and Presentation Zen's Brain Rules for PowerPoint and Keynote Presenters.

Armed with the brilliant insights from these sources I set to work. And a lot of work it was! How to say what I wanted to with limited text?! How to find the images I needed (without breaking the law)?

Thank You Flickr and FireFox/Flock!

I've been using Flickr more and more lately for images for my blog and for presentations. I do creative commons searches with keywords for the types of images I'm looking for. It can be time consuming, but also very interesting. Not everyone tags their photos the same way that I would!

Helping in my Flickr search was a Firefox short cut that I'd read about. I forgot to bookmark the original post where I learned about this shortcut (dumb, dumb, dumb!) This blog post by Ted Carnahan, though, explains how you can use an interesting feature of Firefox bookmarks to help simplify searches you regularly perform on sites like Flickr, YouTube and a host of others. The long and the short of it is that now if I want to search Flickr using Firefox (or Flock) I can just type fcc and a space and then the term I want to search in the address window of my browser and bingo! I have my personalized search of Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licensed photos. Yippee! Want a photo of an apple--I'll just type "fcc apple" and viola--lots of photos that have been tagged with apple. I didn't have to be in Flickr already, pretty neat.

So You Couldn't Make it to the Presentation--No Problemo!

It took me a lot of time to build the presentation, but I knew that if I did a good enough job I could use it again next year and I could post it on the school website for those folks that missed out. (One student missed it because she wasn't told--apparently me speaking to her personally by phone and confirming her e-mail address and then sending the info didn't count...) The problem is that if you follow one of the great pieces of advice on doing really good presentations--limit your text--it doesn't come across very well on the web. Out of context, the wonderfully apt images may not make sense and your meaning is lost.

Slidecasting to the Rescue!

There is a way to produce a presentation that works live and on the web. It does take a little more work, but so would producing two entirely different presentations, no? SlideShare allows you to synch audio with your slide presentation to produce a slidecast. I've posted on how to do this here. Basically, I narrated the slides using Audacity (a free cross platform sound editor), uploaded my presentation to SlideShare, uploaded my audio (mp3) to a podcast site (in my case Internet Archive), then on SlideShare I linked the project to the URL for my audio, and then used SlideShare's slidecast editor to synch the audio with the slides. OK, so that's a lot of steps, but it sounds more onerous that it was, really.

Without Further Ado...

So, after all that build up I don't really want to post the presentation. I can promise you that it will not go viral. But it is what it is and if you're interested in seeing a slidecast, why not this one? If you are interested in how to prepare high schoolers and their parents for the world of distributed learning, check it out. If you'd just like to answer the question "why does she have a photo of bran muffins in a transition presentation?" then this is the slidecast for you! If you can't view the embedded slidecast in your reader, then here's the link. You can make the slide cast full screen and you can press the arrows to jump ahead in the show, if for example you are only watching to answer the burning muffin question ;-)

| View | Upload your own

Your Turn

I've never podcasted before, so yes, I need to get a better mike. If you podcast, perhaps you could let me know what some good (and free) sites are for hosting podcasts/mp3s. I have used Internet Archive a few times, but I'm willing to try others.

What are your favourite presentation tools and/or resources? Do you find slidecasts a useful way to get information? Do you or would you consider slidecasting?

Suggestions on how to improve my presentation skills are also welcomed.

Thanks for reading, and if you watched my slidecast, double thanks!

Post Script

As far as I know, no one has died as a result of watching the above presentation. I will keep you updated if this information changes.

Enough Text Already!

2008-05-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

Give me pictures! Give me audio! Video would be great too!

Day 26

The task for Day 26 of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to investigate using multimedia for a richer commenting experience. I decided to follow Kevin's lead and try out Sketchcast. I had bookmarked Sketchcast a few months ago and this seemed like a good time to try it. Here are my reflections on how the 31 Day Challenge has impacted my blogging world (here's the link if your reader doesn't show the embedded Sketchcast below).

I have seen the use of multimedia in the comment section of blogs before. Some will allow video, like this example from Dean Shareski on using Riffly. Other folks, like Jeff Utecht, provide for webcam or audio commenting. I've posted before on video use in blog posts and comments here; basically I find that I enjoy short, get to know the blogger videos. Otherwise I generally prefer text as I can scan, re-read, and focus in depth on the parts of the message that interest me. I think that talking head videos do not add a lot to the message; although you do get a better sense of what the blogger is like, which can strengthen your sense of connection with that person.

Why Sketchcast?

I haven't explored Sketchcast that much, but one of its strengths is that it allows you to illustrate your points, not just explain them verbally.

You Have The Final Word...

What do you think about using other media for comments? Perhaps you'd like to leave your comment as a Sketchcast, or a VoiceThread, or a podcast... I don't have any fancy media plugins for my comments, but you could do what I did on Kevin's post; I made my Sketchcast, then left a link to it in the comment section of Kevin's post. I look forward to hearing from you in whatever you see fit! You could cheat, like I did, and use your comment for the basis of your post for Day 26...

Is There A Late Policy? Getting Caught Up On the 31 Day Comment Challenge.

2008-05-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm a little behind in the 31 Day Comment Challenge. This post should really be for the Day 7 Task; Reflect On What You've Learned So Far, but I'll see if I can cover all the tasks I've completed to date.

Ahead Even Though I'm Behind

So far I would say that the Comment Challenge has been a huge success for me. For the Day 1 task, I said that I probably commented on blogs about five times a week. Flash forward to today and my coComment account tells me that over the last 17 days I've tracked 23 conversations--on some of these I've left multiple comments. In addition, for the first 10 days I didn't realize I had to click 'Track' each time I left a comment (I thought it would automatically track when I commented--oops). I wish I had a better idea of how much I'm commenting, but I would estimate that I now make at least 3 comments a day, which is a big improvement for me, though I know it pales in comparison to the commenting heavyweights.

Not only am I commenting more, but I am trying to connect with the people who comment on my blog, or leave trackbacks. As a result I'm being exposed to a lot of new people and ideas.

Is It Cheating If I Peak At What They Wrote?!

I've been learning a lot by reading other 'challengers' posts on the different daily tasks. It is interesting to see how others are dealing with the Day 11 task, Write a Comment Policy. Some folks, like Kevin, didn't have a policy before this task and now do. Others, like Sarah, had a policy and have decided to change it a bit. Still others, like Sue, are wondering if they really even need a policy. I haven't written a policy yet, but I think I'll take more of a 'how to' approach, rather than a detailed policy on what I'll allow and not allow on my blog. Something to the effect of "play nice" and "spam will be deleted" may suffice for the policy part.

Homework Check Time

Days 1 - 3: done and posted here.

Day 4: Ask A Question In A Blog Comment--I've been doing more of this lately. My questions haven't been very deep, more along the lines of "how do you _____?" It has helped me to engage more with bloggers and commenters and hopefully some deep questions will start to spill forth...

Day 5: Comment On A Post You Don't Agree With--I found a post by Clay Burell; I didn't disagree with his post, but I did disagree with what some commenters to that post had to say. I really was torn as to whether I should comment or not. The post and comments were discussing science, in particular Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, and religion. I hemmed and I hawed, but I eventually decided to stay out of that particular quagmire; in a debate like this I just didn't feel that I was going to change any minds. There are some issues that people don't just don't flip flop on.

Day 6: Engage Another Commenter in Discussion--I've sort of melded this task with Day 4's and have basically asked other commenters questions relating to their comments. Again, this has helped me to connect with and learn from others.

Day 7: Reflect On What You've Learned So Far--this task asks for three lessons learned. Lesson #1, check out the blogs of the people who take the time to comment on or trackback to your blog. Lesson #2, try to engage the blogger and other commenters by asking questions. Lesson #3, remember to click 'Track' when leaving a comment :-)

Day 8: Comment On A Blog Outside Of Your Niche--ok, so here's where the wheels start to fall off the bus. The thing is I like my niche (and I don't even mind if you say it neesh or nitch). Having said this, I have written about stretching my world view. However, it has been much easier to add a range of news outlets to my iGoogle page than it has been to find a blog outside of my niche and comment on it. I do comment on a triathlon blog, and I am not involved in the sport. Is it cheating if the blog is my sister's? Ok, must work harder on this task.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting On Blogs?--done and posted here.

Report Card

Claire needs to learn to apply herself. She tends to focus on those tasks which appeal to her, and minimize the importance of the tasks which put her outside of her comfort zone. Yes, she is commenting more, but at this rate it will be July before she is done.

The Wrap Up

For most of this post I've focussed on the commenting aspect of this challenge, however, I'm finding that my posting is improving as well.

Prior to the challenge my post mode was 3 posts a month; this will be my fourth post this month and it is only just half over. My writing is also improving. I'm trying to convey information in an organized, thoughtful and sometimes humorous way. Knowing that there are 126 other people doing this challenge, I've tried to make my post titles enticing. No straightforward 'Day 7: Reflect on What You've Learned So Far' titles for me--I need a title that draws you in. But beware! My first post It's Day 1 Baby! got me my second only spam trackback and it was to Pregnant Celebrities (or some such thing). The celebrities part must have been all the fabulous bloggers I linked to in the post ;-) The pregnant part must have come from my title. Lesson learned--no babies in titles.

So yes I'm behind, no I'm not stressing, and yes I am learning.

Final Question

If you are doing the challenge too, which task have you found the most difficult, or the one you've dreaded the most? Thanks for reading!

Images: Crossing the finish line with my sister, Homework by Gollygeedamn, Albert Bowles report card E. St. Louis Juniour High by Liz Castro

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: comment08, blogs, comment

Comments On? Comments Off?

2008-05-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

Have you ever gone to a new blog, read a really interesting post, and wanted to comment only to find that comments were not allowed? Well the task for Day 9 in the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to consider whether we should be commenting on blogs.

The Argument Against Comments

The first time I came across a blog that did not allow comments I was aghast! On my blog comments were my riason d'etre. What was wrong with this guy? If only I could give him a piece of my mind...

After cooling off a bit I noticed that the owner of this blog (Charles Nelson) had clearly articulated why he does not allow comments. The gist of his message, which you can read here, was that he, like most people, likes comments. The problem is when they simply agree with him he feels he is not really learning. And when people disagree, "they are likely to dash off their disagreement without chewing on it and thinking it through. So, I might learn a little, but not as much as I would from a thoughtful and measured response." So Mr. Nelson prefers to use trackbacks.

I've just given a brief summary of Mr. Nelson's reasons, and I really suggest you read the whole thing. He also has a whole series of posts on this topic.

The Argument For Comments

For me, the comment section of a blog is a place to meet people. It is like the staffroom of a collegial school where you can hammer out ideas, enjoy some laughs, and occasionally (depending on the blog and on the staffroom ;)) agree to disagree. Sometimes commenters head off in a different direction, and that's interesting too.

It is interesting how some posts really touch a nerve and generate a huge number of responses. This one by Will Richardson has garnered 68 blog reactions and 166 comments to date. What could someone possibly add to the conversation at comment 166? I don't know, but they must feel pretty stongly to add their 2 cents worth.

Where Do I Stand?

I understand Charles Nelson's points about not wanting to just have people agreeing with what you write and about wanting thoughtful responses. Even if a person were to take the time to write a thoughtful blog post, in lieu of a comment, how often do you check out the trackbacks? If the trackback is on one of my blog posts-of course I check it out. If I go to the comment section of someone else's blog it is rare that I click on the trackbacks. Now maybe that's just me and maybe I need to change this behaviour, I don't know. I also find that though a lot of times commenters agree with a post, they often bring a new perspective or can offer some information so that I am still learning from what they have to say.

Sameer Vasta, in pondering whether to enable comments on his blog writes, "So I think this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to enable comments on posts where I feel there can be some good discussion. On posts where I just want to have a bit of a personal soapbox, I’ll shut them down. That way, I get the best of both worlds." I'm not so sure that the 'personal soapbox' posts would benefit from a lack of comments. I'm sure there are certain times when disabling comments might come in handy.

To wrap up, I like commenting, I like reading comments. For me, comments are an integral part of a blog. They help me connect to others, and to learn from them.

Final Questions

When would you see the need to disable comments? Do you check out trackbacks on other people's posts? Why or why not?

Images: 31 Day Comment Challenge Logo, Relaxing in the Staffroom.

Comment Pet Peeve

2008-05-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

So, you have a blog with Blogger/Blogspot/Google and you're looking forward to lots of great conversations on your blog. Here's one thing that many people overlook that could be hampering their ability to get the conversations going.

Default Comment Permissions

When you first set up your Blog on the Blogger platform the default setting is to only allow people with Blogger or Google accounts to comment. So when a person clicks on the comment link, this is what they'll see:

A lot of people are not going to be that interested in commenting if they have to sign up for an account. Or, if you're like me and have a Blogger account, but wish to link to your blog on another platform, it is just annoying. By having your blog comments set like this you are making it harder for some people to comment and join in the conversation.

How to Change Your Settings

To change your settings first you need to go to your Dashboard and click on 'Settings'.

Here's what you'll need to do next:

1. Select the 'Settings' tab.

2. Select 'Comments' from the menu.

3. Under 'Who Can Comment?', select 'anyone'

After making these changes, here's what your readers will see when they decide to comment.

If you are concerned about anonymous comments you could enable comment moderation and put a disclaimer on your blog that anonymous comments will not be posted :-) Easy!

Another Plug for the Comment Challenge

Part of what prompted me to post this was that I've been participating in the 31 Day Comment Challenge and so have been visiting a lot of blogs that are new to me. Amongst these blogs I've encountered some with the 'Google only' commenting.

Final Thoughts

If you come across a blog with 'Google only' commenting, maybe you can link them to this post. If you think there are some very good reasons for sticking with 'Google only' commenting I'd like to hear them. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Addendum #1: and if anyone can tell me how to insert images so that the text doesn't get all garbled up--I'd love to hear from you too!

Addendum #2: Thanks to the great comments by Sue Waters and Rick Biche, I've been able to fix most of my image and text wrapping problems. Thanks you two! Sue has since posted Are Your Comment Settings Making it Harder for Readers to Comment? where she has some more great suggestions, especially for WordPress/Edublogs bloggers.

This is cross-posted on my other blog, Tech Pro-D Tools.

It's Day 1 Baby!

2008-05-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

So here we are with Day 1 of the 31 Day Comment Challenge and today's task is to do a commenting self-audit. We've been asked to answer the following questions:

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

My Typical Week
I probably leave about 5 comments per week on average. I have about 38 blogs in my feed reader (see the blogs I read in the left sidebar), plus I subscribe to Stephen Downes' OLDaily where he gives brief summaries and commentary on blog posts that have caught his eye in the field of educational technology. Then, of course, there are all the posts I find out about from my Twitter network :-). I think the reason that I don't leave more comments in a week is three-fold:

I often just don't have the time. Writing does not come easily to me, so even a four or five sentence comment is pretty time consuming. Hopefully as I blog and comment more, the writing will start to flow a little easier.

Many of the blogs I subscribe to are pretty popular and by the time I read the post there are already 20 plus comments--by then I either don't have time to read all the comments (and as Gina Trapani says in her guide to blog comments, if you can't read the whole thread, then don't comment!) or I have nothing new to add.

Some of the blogs I subscribe to don't necessarily invite comments. By that I mean that they are primarily a place to disseminate information. An example would be David Warlick's 2¢ Worth. He does a lot of conferences and live blogs many of the keynotes that he attends. I love reading his stuff, but he generally does not write posts that provoke comments.

Tracking My Comments
About a month or so ago I signed up with co.mments after reading a post about it by Sue Waters. It is easy to use, I just click on my 'Track co.mments' bookmark when I want to follow a comment thread. New comments are automatically sent to my Google Reader account via RSS. I use co.mments when I comment on a post and want to hear new comments. I also find it useful if I get to a post when it is brand spanking new and has not comments yet. I may not have anything to say yet, but I want to find out what others think about the post.

To participate in this challenge, I signed up for coComment. Today is my first day using it and I'm intrigued by the groups feature. I'm interested to see what else coComment has in store for me.

What do I do with my tracking? Not much. I mean I read the new comments, but that's about it. I'm curious as to what others do with their tracking. With coComment you can post your most recent comments on your blog. For the purposes of this challenge I think I'll try adding that feature. Hopefully it will help draw other people into conversations they might not have otherwise found.

Do I Get Around?!
I definitely do not comment on a new blog every week. This is not out of any sort of exclusiveness; I just am not a prolific commenter to begin with. There are a few blogs that I comment on regularly; here they are and the reasons I have for commenting on them.

- Sue Waters (Mobile Technology in TAFE and The Edublogger ): Sue's TAFE blog was one of the first blogs that I came across that I found to be really useful as I was starting out in blogging. Sue writes a lot of 'how to' kind of posts and the way she writes invites comments. She is also so generous in responding to comments and to questions. She subscribes to my blog and I know that there's a 50/50 chance that she will comment on each of my new posts. She is a wonderful mentor and is always encouraging other edubloggers to welcome new bloggers on the scene. It is not surprising that she is one of the co-conspirators in the 31 Day Comment Challenge!

- Michele Martin (The Bamboo Project Blog): I think the first post I read of Michele's was Six Reasons People Aren't Commenting On Your Blog. This was early in my blogging career (4.5 months ago, ha!) and I was worried about the lack of comments on my blog. Michele hands out great advice and poses thought provoking questions. She is also extremely generous in responding to comments, both in the comment section of her blog and in e-mails. Again, it is not surprising that she is another of the co-conspirators in the 31 Day Comment Challenge!

- Sarah Stewart (Sarah's Musings ): I don't know how I found Sarah's blog--I suspect that I read a comment of hers on Sue Waters' blog and decided to check her out. Sarah is a mid-wife doing her PhD in New Zealand. Her PhD involves researching the use of e-mentoring (mentoring provided by email) as experienced by aged care nurses and allied health professionals. Though I am not a mid-wife, I am an avid reader of Sarah's blog. She is constantly trying out and reporting on her experiences with web 2.0 tools. I'll often read one of her posts and decide that it's high time that I tried out tool X, Y, or Z too. It was after I wrote this post that Sarah and I both took the Twitter plunge (after being kindly mocked by Sue Waters).

- Clay Burell (Beyond School): Clay is an eloquent writer, he writes a lot of posts, he's passionate about what he writes, and his posts can be very provocative. He writes about what matters in education and sometimes I read and I am just compelled to comment. Clay is also is very active in the comment section; replying and adding to others' comments.

Because I know what a rush it is to get comments on my blog, I always check out brand new blogs that I hear about and leave a comment. Unfortunately a lot of folks who start up a blog get discouraged and the first post I comment on ends up being the only post (gosh I hope I'm not cursed ;-) )

So, if I look my commenting behaviour I think the following things become evident:

- I comment when I am thankful for a great tip.

- I comment when I know that I have something new to offer to the conversation.

- I comment when I know that my comment will be responded to--that I will be part of a conversation.

- I comment when my thinking is challenged.

- I comment when I want to encourage new bloggers.

If you are new to blogging, get out there--read some blogs and start commenting. You do have something to add to the conversation. If people are intrigued by your comments they'll check out your blog, and maybe leave a comment of their own :)

Am I Crazy to Start Another Blog?!

2008-04-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here for awhile and aside from the usual excuses about life being too busy, it's also because I've started a new blog.

Background

As I mentioned in my last post, I was preparing for a talk that my colleague, Jodie, and I were going to do at the Virtual School Society conference in Vancouver entitled Get Your Google Glow On. We were focusing on how free on-line tools like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Notebook can foster collaboration and enhance communication with colleagues and students. (And no, Jodie and I are not employed or affiliated in any way with Google--we just love their stuff!) Well the conference was last week and Jodie and I felt really good about how our presentation went. It was a small room, but it was packed and the talk seemed to be sparking some good dialogue.

The New Blog

To help support our conference talk and hopefully continue the discussion, I created a new blog on Blogger called Tech Pro-D Tools. (Clearly I need to work on having a catchier title!) I debated using this blog, Clarify Me, to support our talk; it was appealing to think of drawing new people into my blog. However, I am doing a summer pro-d session, Blogging 101, where I'll be getting participants to set up a blog using Google's Blogger. Blogger is such an easy interface to use when you are starting to blog (though it does not have the functionality of Edublogs / WordPress). It just seemed to make sense to set up a separate blog for the conference talk and to support my summer pro-d session.

Blog Warming Party?

So here's your invitation to check out the new blog. If you already use Google Docs, Calendar, and/or Notebook you'll hopefully find some useful tips and links. If you don't but are curious, there's something there for you too! Oh, and if you're wondering about the best blog warming gift--it's leaving a comment :-)

How Do You Get Your Google Glow On?

2008-04-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

My colleague, Jodie, and I got an e-mail the other day from the organizers of the Virtual School Society's Annual Spring Conference saying that they did have room for us after all to give our presentation Get Your Google Glow On and could we still do it? Even though the conference is next week (not a lot of prep time), Jodie and I are good sports and said yes.

Image: google_logo by keso

Nervous About the Presentation
Yes, I've been teaching for awhile now, but for some reason I'm more comfortable talking to an auditorium of high school kids than I am speaking to a group of my peers. Added to that, the last time I did a presentation at a conference was when I was wrapping up my MSc in Biology about 13 years ago; hopefully distance learning educators are less ruthless than grad students and post-docs who are trying to make a name for themselves!

Collaboration & Communication
Jodie and I are presenting on some of the many on-line tools that Google offers. We're highlighting Google Notebook, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. The presentation is aimed at beginners who have not used these tools before. We're planning on focusing on how these tools can allow for increased collaboration and better communication.

How We Use The Tools
Since September we've been using Google Calendar to post relevant due dates, exam dates etc. We created a separate calendar for each grade and students can subscribe to their calendar or just view them on our website (see the grade 9 calendar here). I teach at a distributed learning school where many of our students are working asynchronously. The calendar 'deadlines' have been very helpful to let students know if they are on track to finishing their courses on time.

Jodie and I use Notebook to book mark sites we want to show the students in a particular unit. We've just been working on a series of lessons on hatching duck eggs; Jodie set up a notebook and shared it with me so that I could add links as well. I also use Notebook to organize the links for my Elluminate Live! sessions.

As for Google Docs, I've been preparing my Elluminate Live! lesson presentations using the Presentation tool. To demonstrate how to solve Applications of Math 10 questions I set up a spreadsheet in Google Docs and walked a student through the process on-line. We're also starting to get students to collaborate with each other using the Documents software.

How Do You Use These Google Tools?
Do you use any of these three Google tools with students or colleagues? If so, would you be willing to share how they have been effective for you? If so I'd love to hear from you!

Post Script
I'm posting this using the Blog Posting option in Flock. I'm curious as to how this will work out as I'm new to using Flock.

Added after posting--The Flock upload worked fairly well, except that none of my font formats were uploaded (italics and bold).

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Google, Google Docs, Google Notebook, Google Calendar, VSS conference, collaboration, communication, tools

Look Ma, I'm on TV!

2008-04-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about the following question; if I'm a visual learner, why do I have trouble with video? In the past month or so I've run into a lot more video on blogs. I'm not referring to people embedding YouTube videos or TED Talks. More and more people are including video entries and comments. Though I'm a visual learner, I'm finding that for a lot of content I'd rather text over video.

Here are some of the different uses of video I've seen on blogs (sans TED Talks and other formal presentations).

1. Video Comments: Not so long ago, Dean Shareski posted on Riffly, which allows people to leave video comments on your blog. It was neat to see and hear the people commenting, especially when they were people I've been reading on a regular basis. However, a number of commenters noted the downsides of video comments. In reply to Dean's post Sue Waters said, "it takes longer for you to take in the information from the spoken text because you can scan read with text" and Clay Burrel offered, "I’d rather have auto-transcription of voice-recognized audio. Who wants to have to watch a whole video comment to discover it wasn’t worth seeing? Or at least give us the fast-forward option."

Dean Shareski replied with, "I wonder if people had difficulty with the telephone when it was first introduced? Along with the cost, were there similar issues we now face with talking heads?" and later, "I wonder if many miscommunications I’ve seen on blog posts could have been cleared up had they used video." Dean's last point really resonates with me. I'm often putting in smiley faces to temper what I've written so that it doesn't come across as being too harsh. Others have 'LOL'-itis, presumabley for the same reason.

2. Video Posts: In March Stephen Downes did a follow-up post in video format (approx 16 minutes long) on his views on homeschooling. Some of Downes' views on homeschooling are seen as quite controversial. However, a number of the comments on this post mentioned the difficulties with the video format. For example, part of Jeremy Hiebert's response to the video was, "A spirited, reasoned response. I'll have to stew on it for a while, and maybe watch again before going too deep on a response. If you have your notes in digital form, would you mind posting them here as well? I think it's harder for me to follow and process the sequential nature of video." And from Dana Hanley, "Anyway, I'll respond in more depth tonight. Responding to video is a little more difficult.."

Charles Nelson posted a reply to Downes, and over half of what he wrote was about Downes' use of video: "his [Stephen Downes'] video made it clear to me that when using tools, we need to consider what they have to offer, how they can add to our message, and what we lose when using them." Nelson goes on to provide a good analysis of why he thought Downes' post failed and ends with, "This time requirement of viewing and understanding videos means that if they are to be used, they need to offer something that cannot be obtained in print only...". I highly recommend that if you are interested in the use and mis-use of video that you check out Nelson's full post here.

Of course there are others, like Gary Vaynerchuk who do video posts like this and this. I think that Vaynerchuk's video posts are successful in part because they are usually fairly brief (under 2 minutes) and have a single focus. Plus, he is so wired that it makes his message that much more intense.

3. Meet the Blogger: These are short video clips that bloggers post to build a rapport with their readers. An example of this is in Sarah Stewart's blog. She recently experimented with video and I felt like I got to know her a bit better seeing and hearing her. The key here is to keep the clip short. Which brings up another point; I'm a big fan of video skins (if that is the right term), that let you know how long a video is. Sometimes I don't have the time to watch a 15 minute video clip, so it is nice to know before I press play.

Perhaps in the future there will be ways of viewing videos that will allow us to easily scan and move backward and forward through the information. Or video coupled with text transcripts allowing you to scan the text and select the video when you find the part in which you are interested. Until that time, I'm going to have to really assess how I use video and how I ask my students to use video.

Having said all this, below is a brief (12 second) video hello from me. My goal; to create rapport with my readers and further establish my on-line identity. And no, my son never sits still ;-) A big thanks to Sue Waters and The Edublogger on info regarding embedding video on your blog! As a result I was able to modify the YouTube embed so that it did not include related videos, some of which were inappropriate.

What do you think about the use of video in blogs? Do you have some examples of successful video posts or comments? Or video formats that allow you scan, easily move back and forth, and/or bookmark video segments?Image: Fatty Watching Himself on TV by cloudzilla on Flickr. Creative Commons by attribution.

When And Where Am I NOT A Teacher?

2008-03-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Recent events have me wondering about the line between my public life and private life, my personal life and my professional life. They also have me thinking about a post over at Students 2.o by Sean the Bass Player back in February. Sean's post, Where Do We Draw The Line?, discusses whether teachers would want to have students joining their on-line networks. It's a good post with lots of interesting comments. When I first read it I thought about commenting, but I just couldn't articulate how I felt about the issue. Here are some of the events that made me look back at Sean's post.

Event #1: earlier in the month Al Upton closed his Al Upton and the miniLegends blog, as requested by the South Australia Department of Education and Children’s Services, due to concerns over his student blogging project.

Event #2: around the same time, but for very different reasons, Jabiz Raisdana agreed to resign from his school in Quatar due to objections raised over an art project he posted on his personal blog.

Lots to think about in those two situations, and many people have been blogging about them (see these posts at Remote Access and Cool Cat Teacher for a start as well as the above links to Al Upton and Jabiz Raisdana).

Event #3: then yesterday, in a totally different situation, Dean Shareski posted about a disagreement that he had with blogger Matthew Tabor. I had heard Dean tweet about the argument on Twitter and I had read the comments on Matthew's blog. In Dean's post he says "It’s not that I regret posting the item to twitter it’s calling him obnoxious that was wrong." He goes on to say "I’ve gotten so comfortable using Twitter that I’ve forgotten, it’s not private."

These events are mixing in my head; I'm thinking about:

- how to teach my students to interact with 21st century tools while keeping them safe

- how to let the students' parents and community see that they are safe

- how to maintain a personal blog that is public and still maintain my professionalism

- how it is possible, as Dean says, to become so comfortable with web 2.0 tools, such as Twitter that we forget that it is not private.

And lastly, I am wondering, is a teacher a teacher 24 hours a day?

Anyhow, back to Sean's post, Where Do We Draw The Line?, regarding whether teachers would want to have students joining their on-line networks. After what I've written about above, I guess it comes down to this; there is no hard and fast line.

It can be very rewarding interacting and corresponding with creative and thoughtful students, but for a teacher there is also an inherent risk. As a teacher I have to be concerned about my perceived conduct, especially when young people are involved. Am I a teacher 24 hours a day? No, but it is certainly not just during the hours when I'm at school or prepping. The line is blurry, it wiggles a bit, it is not hard and fast. We don't draw the line, others later retrace our steps and sketch in the line where they think it should be.

Images: Lines and Ceiling Light 1 by tanakawho (creative commons attribution licence)

Making Twitter Work For Me

2008-03-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

Back in January I wrote about Tools and Sites I Use, and I mentioned that I would like to try Twitter, but I had my concerns (intimidated, worried I'd get sucked into the abyss, etc) After that post Sarah Stewart and I decided to take the plunge. It took me awhile to feel confident enough to tweet, but I did start to get into the groove. Then I just stopped. The problem was I was using Twitter by logging on to the Twitter site. This was cumbersome so I just stopped.

After reading various posts on Twitter (eg here) I realized that I needed a browser extension for Twitter. I knew that Sue Waters uses Snitter, and Clay Burell was a TwitBin guy. I checked both extensions out and decided to go with Twitbin.

I'm now back in my Twitter groove! Twitbin is great! I downloaded the Twitbin extension for Firefox and I now have a cute little Twitbin bookmarklet and it is so easy to get my "live" Twitter window up (see image below). Now I just need to work on building up my network. If your interested in following me on Twitter I'm clthompson; I'd be happy to reciprocate :-)

Experimenting with Lab Reports and VoiceThread

2008-03-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I wrote about how I like to try a new tool every week (give or take). After reading a post by Jeff Utecht earlier in the week, VoiceThread rose to the top of my 'Tools To Try' list.

Jeff wrote about how a science teacher at his school, Carol Jordan, had her grade 9 students report the results of their science experiments. Instead of the usual formal lab report document, the students either created a YouTube video or a VoiceThread. I have been thinking about having students do lab reports in a different format so it was a very timely post for me! In his post, Jeff has lots of examples of both types of lab 'reports' which was incredibly useful to see what the students produced.

Last night I had insomnia, which was the perfect opportunity for me to try out VoiceThread! (With a 4 and a 6 year old where else do you find the time?!) I signed up for an account and created the following VoiceThread which provides information on how to navigate my blog. Lately I've had trouble embedding items in this blog, so first here's the link and now the embedded file: [kml_flashembed movie="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=76592 " width="480" height="360" wmode="transparent" /]

VoiceThread allows you to upload a variety of files; video, photos, documents etc. You can then comment using audio or video. In true web 2.0 fashion it also allows others to comment on your work, so feel free to comment away on my VoiceThread.

I did have a few technical difficulties with VoiceThread--the program wouldn't let me edit at times and I somehow ended up with a lot of scribbles on one of my slides--but all in all it was very straight forward. I could see students being able to figure it out and being able to start creating pretty quickly. Unlike SlideShare's slidecasting, which I posted on here, you record the audio directly on the VoiceThread site. With SlideShare you must produce your audio on your computer, host it on a podcast host, then link your slide show to the podcast host. So a bit more set-up is definitely required with SlideShare. SlideShare slidecasts do have a more professional feel to them, but VoiceThread allows for more interactivity.

VoiceThread also offers EdVoiceThread.com, with is designed for use by teachers and students. It is designed as a safe environment for students to create and comment on each other's work. They are obviously trying to address the security concerns that some schools and districts have with social networking type sites.

In summary, I think that VoiceThread is a pretty user friendly tool, and I don't think it would take much to get the students used to it and using it.

Image: Funky Light by Gaetan Lee

Reflections on the Daniel Pink Live Video Conference at Arapahoe High

2008-02-28T05:43:00.000-08:00

I was a bit behind on my Google Reader feeds, but was happy to find Karl Fisch's post from Tuesday just in time! The grade 9 students from Karl's school have been reading Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind, for the past month or so. Over the course of their reading they have invited other educators and guests to join in their live blogging discussions of the book. Today they upped the ante! Karl writes:

This Thursday is our students’ live video conference with Daniel Pink. They’ve finished A Whole New Mind and this is their chance to ask Mr. Pink some questions directly, as well as further discuss the book with their classmates. We’ll have all four classes of students (about 110 or so) in our Forum and will conduct a video Skype call with Mr. Pink.

They also decided to Ustream the discussion and have the live blog discussion hosted on CoverItLive. I caught the post just in time this morning to log onto Ustream. Along with about 80 other viewers I was able to watch (and I could have participated in side discussions) part of the amazing discussion. Some live Ustream talks I have watched were not of very good quality, technically speaking; this was not the case today! It was amazing to hear the mature discussion between the students and Daniel Pink. It was difficult to follow the conversations on CoverItLive as the comments were coming so fast and furious!

Today's experience really highlights how powerful web 2.0 tools can be in education. The students were totally engaged and clearly understood the key points of Daniel Pink's book, judging from their questions to the author and the way they were rippin' it up on CoverItLive. Imagine trying to offer the students (and interested educators) this sort of opportunity without web 2.0 tools.

Thank you Karl Fisch for sharing this experience with other educators; it is really something to aspire to!

Addendum: February 29th--A big thank you to Anne Smith and Maura Moritz, who Karl Fisch pointed out in the comments, are the English 9 teachers who organized the whole learning experience. And the grade 9 students at Arapahoe High; you really showed people how thoughtful and involved with your learning you are, well done!

Adventures in Slidecasting

2008-02-23T02:19:00.000-08:00

There are so many web 2.0 tools, that it really is hard to keep up. In an effort to expand my web 2.0 horizons, I've attempted to try at least one new tool per week. I note which tools are receiving a lot of buzz or look really powerful and they end up on my informal list.

The latest tool that I've tried is SlideShare's slidecasting. I've seen quite a number of straight slide shows on SlideShare, but it was only recently that I played a slidecast. What is a slidecast? A slidecast is when your slides are synched to audio. It has the power of video, but is much simpler to make and the visual quality is excellent! In addition when you are watching the slidecast you can skip ahead to the slide you're interested in and the audio is still synched. At the bottom of the slidecast you can see how much audio goes with each slide.

To learn how to make your own slidecast, check out Jonathan Boutelle's slidecast. In addition to Jonathan's info, the following might help. To make your slidecast, you upload your slides to SlideShare and your audio to a podcasting host. In Slideshare you provide the url for your audio. One of the things that I found difficult was locating the url for my mp3 file. I still don't know how to find the url for the audio I uploaded to Gcast. I eventually loaded my mp3 file to Internet Archive. When you click on your audio file in Internet Archive you get a screen that looks like the image below. I've indicated in the image where you find out the url for your mp3 file.

I decided to make my first slidecast using a Google Docs presentation I did for my Science 9 on-line class. It is on cell division. The slides were not geared to slidecasting, and have far more text than is necessary. I've never podcasted before, so there are definite problems with the audio--it is very quiet and there are no intros, outros or music of any kind. In the spirit of sharing though (see Shareski--Lesson #1 Share), here's my slidecast, warts and all.

[slideshare id=276642&doc=copy-of-sci-feb-20-1203656309380038-3&w=425]

| View | Upload your own

In case the embedded slidecast doesn't work, here's the link.

One way to use slidecasting would be to prepare mini-lessons that can be posted on-line for students to access on an as needed basis. They could also come in handy on those days you require a substitute teacher :-) People can comment on slidecasts that you post to SlideShare. If students did projects involving slidecasting, their peers could view and leave comments. I could see using this to get students to make their own slidecasts to explain concepts.

I'm excited about slidecasting because it is relatively straightforward to produce, it has the power of video, the image quality is great, and all the tools are free! If you haven't tried it before, give it a look-see and maybe you'll add it to your list of tools to try.

Stop The Insanity!

2008-02-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a number of posts recently that have highlighted, either directly or indirectly, how incredibly busy many teachers are. This, of course, is not a surprise to teachers, nor is it an affliction limited just to teachers.

On Saturday Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach of 21st Century Collaborative posted You Might Be Too Busy If... where people from her Twitter network finished off the statement. Their responses are funny, but also attest to how very busy some of us are!

Then on Sunday, Chris Lehmann's post included a poem by one of the teachers on his staff, Matthew Kay. The poem is a great tribute to the amazing community that they have built at the Science Learning Academy where Chris is principal. It also emphasizes the amount of dedication and time the teachers, students and support staff put in to maintain that community. Here is a small sample from the poem, (I encourage you to go and read the whole thing here):

We’re 6:30 AM Practices. We’re 6:30 PM tutoring.

We’re prep periods lost observing

We’re lunches skipped counseling

We’re late night planning

We’re doling out hugs

We’re doing whatever we can to make sure

That the kids leave our classes inspired.

Both of these posts have me wondering how we can balance our dedication and passion for teaching while still nurturing our relationships with family, friends and ourselves. Are we looking after our own health and well being?

Michele Martin wrote Making Your Work Life More Manageable at the end of January and she has a number of really good suggestions. I was inspired enough by it to overhaul how I deal with my e-mails, although I still find it hard to only check my e-mail two times a day. How can I not check it when my iGoogle page is always up on my monitor??!!

Michele also wrote about including relaxing/non-work activities in your daily schedule; we've got to plan to do these things, or else they may not get done. For me it has meant dedicating 60 minutes every other night to exercising; this includes the stretching afterwards.

Michele's post didn't discuss something that may be a very teachery trait--putting too much time into planning. Let's face it, that new unit you're working on could suck up all of your 'free' time--if you let it. To provide balance in their lives, I know some teachers who choose a specific time to wrap things up every day--they may 'do' school from 7:30am to 5pm, but once they leave the school, schoolwork is over. With a young family, I find this a hard one to do. My kids are in bed by 7:30pm so I elect to go home earlier and do more prep, marking, etc once the kids are in bed.

I wonder too about a culture in some schools and districts where there is an expectation that the teachers and/or the admin do not have a life outside of school. C'mon--we should have outgrown that idea once we were out of the primary grades (remember being surprised seeing your grade 1 teacher out and about?!)

"No." This is a word that is so simple--just one syllable, only two letters, but it appears to be absent from the vocabularies of many stressed out teachers. Every school has one or two teachers who have never even heard of this word. You know, the ones that are soooo good at organizing assemblies, or sports tournaments, or school dances, or or or... and so they always get asked to do them. If you know one of these teachers, please help them to get acquainted with this word! And let's not always go to that same go-to guy or gal--spread the love around and give them a break occasionally.

Is the only time you pause to take a breath when you catch that cold at the beginning of winter/spring/summer break. You know, the cold you couldn't afford to have while you were busy preparing for the winter concert/class trip/basketball tournament/end of course exams... Maybe it is time to stop the insanity?

I know that what I have written about does not pertain just to teachers. I'm also not advocating that people start slacking off. It just seems like sometimes it is worthwhile taking a step back to look at the big picture.

What tips do you have for living a balanced life? I'd love to hear from you!

Image: The Trick is To Keep Breathing

How to turn 'Me Vision' into 'We Vision'

2008-02-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've read a couple of posts lately about how easy it is to use web 2.0 to inadvertently narrow our thinking; to just be getting information that we agree with. David Warlick live-blogged a talk by Ethan Zukerman where he quoted:

In the Internet age, we end up with the Internet Me, a personal news source where we only hear people who think the same way that we do.

It has gotten me thinking about my own situation. Let's look at the news sources I consume. I use iGoogle where I have 4 news feed widgets, but 3 of them are from the same news source, the CBC. I also listen to CBC radio and watch the CBC national news. Not a lot of diverse view points there. Living in a smaller town (Penticton, population approx. 20,000) I have limited choices when it comes to radio; it's CBC, a few cheesy local stations and sometimes I can get NPR. My choices with television news are equally limited since we went cable/satelight free 3 years ago (that's another post in itself). It becomes clear to me that I need to diversify with my internet news feeds, because that is where I really have choice. I may not agree with the view point of certain media outlets, but they offer an insight into what other folks are thinking about current events.

In Michele Martin's recent post Living in a Blogging Box and How to Get Out of It she talks about how easy it is to end up with limited viewpoints:

The problem with blogging in our comfort zones, though, is that we narrow the possibilities for learning and creativity that come from exposing ourselves to new and different perspectives. If I stay in the edu-blogger community or the technology community of bloggers, with little contact with anyone else, it's easy to get sucked into the sort of group-think that naturally evolves when any community of people comes together.

As a newbie blogger, I built up my blog subscriptions as one might expect. I'd find some influencial blogs, in my case Clay Burell's Beyond School and Sue Waters' Mobile Technology in TAFE. If their posts linked to other blogs I would check them out, and if I liked them, I would subscribe. I'd also read the comments after their posts and if I liked what someone wrote, I'd check them out and maybe start subscribing to them. What I'm finding now is that I'm often reading the same people. I might be reading Dean Shareski's blog, but many of the people commenting are already in my feed reader, which isn't surprising considering how I got my subscriptions.

I've also noticed that with most of the blogs I read that there are very few dissenting opinions in the comments. Notice I didn't say no dissenting views. So my strategy on subscribing to blogs is letting me down in that I'm not being exposed to alternate views. This is not to say that I'm not learning a lot--I am!

My goal for the next few weeks is move from my 'Me Vision' to 'We Vision'. I'm going to add some different media outlets to my news reader. I'm also going to follow some of Michele Martin's suggestions and try to diversify my blog subscriptions with the help of Google Alerts and StumbleUpon. Hopefully I'll avoid group think and possibly get more exposure for my blog :-)

Are you concerned that your 'world view' is too narrow? Are you seeing the downsides of 'Internet Me'? What are you doing to expand your vision? I'd love to hear your strategies.

Image: Day 296: Boxed In by Mrs. Maze

Finding my voice on Twitter

2008-01-26T14:13:00.000-08:00

I've been on Twitter for a couple of weeks now, and I am pleased to see that my network is growing--a big thank you to Sue Waters for asking the folks in her network to follow me! I've been enjoying reading the tweets and finding out quickly what people are up to and following the links they provide. My challenge right now is finding my voice. So far I feel like I've been lurking. I feel like I need to have something really important say, which is silly since there's some pretty everyday things that people comment on. Perhaps it is just that I don't know the people in my network very well yet, but I know that will change :-)

Image: gag by G. Rohs

I'm on Twitter

2008-01-18T11:50:00.000-08:00

After my last post I got a bit of ribbing from Sue Waters, and encouragement from Sarah Stewart re: Twitter. Sue, a confessed Twitter addict, thought it was funny that Sarah and I were scared of Twitter. Not ones to be laughed at, Sarah and I decided to take the plunge together. Feel free to check out Sarah and my Twitter profiles.

So, after a few days of Twittering, I have to say I can really see the power of the site. Post a question, and within a very short time someone's gotten back to you with some good information. You read a great new blog post, Twitter it, and now your 'followers' are onto it too. Cool! It is not as intensive as I thought it would be, mind you I have a teensy network. You really can just be a fly on the wall and participate when and if you fell like it.

My challenge right now is to build up my network. If you (or someone you know) are new to Twitter and trying to build up a network, let's reciprocate--you follow me and I'll follow you ;-)

Image: Free Bird by Southern Pixel

Tools and Sites I Use List

2008-01-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

Following Will Richardson's lead (and therefore TechCrunch's) I thought I would make a list of the Tools and Sites I currently use on a regular basis. Like Will, I'm just going to include those I use at least once a week, and I'll star the ones I use on a daily basis.

Google Search* (just discovered the 'define' feature--it's wonderful. In your search type "define:"and then a word and you'll get definitions from multiple websites)

Google Video* (less porn/questionable material than YouTube)

Google Notebook*

Google Calendar*

Edublogs*

Moodle*

Firefox* (I just love the tabs and that it is open source and not a Microsoft product :-p It blows Safari out of the water too.)

YouTube*

Google Reader*

Elluminate Live! (I teach in a DL program, so I end up tutoring over the phone quite a bit. Now, if a student has a math problem we usually just go into Elluminate and use the whiteboard--it's great. Better yet, it is available to all public school teachers in BC through a provincial license.)

Wikipedia

iGoogle* (I have Gsearch, Gmail, Gcalender, Greader, plus news and weather all in one handy place)

WebCT/Blackboard

It will be interesting to see how much this list changes in a year from now. Nine of the items on my list I was not using at all as of five months ago. Five of the items are from Google. Forgot YouTube, that's six. I sure hope that Google uses its awesome power for good and not evil, as they sure must know a lot about me!

Now here's my list of tools/sites that I would either like to start using or use more frequently. The ones I haven't tried sound really good, but I just haven't found the time to check them out. OK, I'll admit it; I'm actually scared of trying Twitter.

Twitter (not sure I get it, worried that it will suck me into the abyss)

Ustream (all this time I thought folks were talking about 'United Streaming' which I have found to be pretty ho-hum. Ustream--whole different thing.)

Del.icio.us

Flickr (I have an account, just haven't put the time into seeing how to make optimal use of it.)

Site that went from 'Cool' to 'Ho-Hum'; Facebook. When I first signed up it lived up to its 'Crackbook' nick name. But now I hardly ever check it out. Maybe I'm too old for Facebook?

Any tools/site you couldn't live without? I'd love to hear about them!

*List photo by nocos

Tools Are Important (but they're still just tools)

2007-12-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

In April the VSS 2008 Annual Spring Conference - Learning: Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere is happening in Vancouver and I was pumped about a session that I wanted to do with my colleague, Jodie. I went to the conference last year for the first time and I found it to be wonderful Pro-D and a great networking opportunity.

What Jodie and I wanted to present on were a bunch of cool Google applications that we stumbled upon this summer during our self-directed Pro-D. One of them, Google Docs, is a great little fairly basic on-line word processing tool. What makes it impressive is that multiple users can work on the same document at the same time and go back and view edits that have been made. It could be a very useful tool if you have students collaborating together on a project, or if you are collaborating with a peer (as Jodie and I have done).

We also discovered Google Calendar, which we have used with great success. You can do a whole lot of cool things with Google Calendar such as allowing others to subscribe to your calendar or you can post your calendar(s) to web pages. For example, check out the calendar on our grade 10 web page. We have been using the calendars to post deadlines and other important dates. Students and their parents have been finding the calendars quite useful. After these two great finds, I decided to check out More Google Products. From here I discovered Google Notebook, Blogger, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Reader, and much more.

So, basking in our Google Glow, Jodie and I thought we should definitely present on this at the VSS conference. But now I'm having second thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I love these Google apps. I use Notebook everyday, I have almost committed to switching all of my personal e-mail over to Gmail, I rely on Google Calendar (for school and home), the first thing I look at when I log onto iGoogle is Google Reader, and I entered the blogosphere using Blogger. (Wow, I hadn't realized how thoroughly entrenched I have become in using all things Google until just now!) So here's the thing; they're just tools. And there are other tools out there that do similar things. I don't know if I should be giving a presentation on tools. Especially since that's what it will be, a presentation. Not a hands on workshop. Just me and Jodie telling and showing. I have no doubt that people would come to a presentation on these particular tools, but how much of an impact will we make?

I'd still like to present at the VSS conference. And it is a Google tool that will be the inspiration (not quite the right term) for my presentation. What I'd like to present on is blogging. Not on how to get your students to blog--I haven't done that yet. No, on blogging as being central to an educator's professional development. I only really started blogging at the end of November, 2007. In the period of just over one month I've been exposed to so many fabulous ideas that have really impacted me as an educator. I'd like to expose the blogless to the thrills of conversing in the blogosphere.

What do you think; Blogging as a key part of an educator's pro-d, or should I just stick with the tool talk?

The Switch to Edublogs

2007-12-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

After joining the blogosphere in November '07 on Blogger, I've decided to make the switch to edublogs. My previous blog, Claire's World, was started when I decided I wanted to see what blogging was all about. Now I feel that I know what the focus for my blog is, I thought I'd try edublog. Blogger was a good place to start, but I feel that a WordPress powered blog might offer me more flexibility in the design of my blog. We'll see how it goes. My new blog name, Clarify Me, reflects my focus on clarifying my thinking on using technology to make education more relevant to my students, and to help foster communication and collaboration.

A Technology Plan For My School

2007-12-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to improve student learning at the Distributed Learning (DL) school where I teach. Jeff Utecht's series of posts on developing a tech plan have really clarified my thinking on this. This is my current 'wish list' for my school:

provide all 8 - 10 students with lap tops (currently we provide computers for most 8 - 10s, but laptops only to those students who will be traveling.)
offer more 'mini courses' to 8 - 10s on specific web 2.0 topics--eg a mini-course on blogging where the students come to our school with their laptops to learn with each other how to set up and effectively use a blog.
Improve our school website so that it becomes the effective portal that Jeff Utech discusses in his tech plan series.
Move to a single Learning Management System (LMS)--currently we use Moodle, Web CT and we have paper based courses. I would like to see us move to something like Moodle (though I need to learn much more about it to fully understand all that it can offer). I'm leaning toward Moodle because it is free open source software and from what I've seen so far it does a pretty good job.
Educate our students' parents about the web 2.0 tools that we are using with their kids so that have less fear about their kids being on-line. Perhaps a series of workshops, or invitations to parents to attend and participate in the 'mini courses' that I mentioned earlier.
Student Information System? Is ours working? Can it work better (I think so)?

I'm sure I'll add more to my list in the coming weeks, but this is a start at least.

Time to catch my breath.

2007-12-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been almost 2 months since I joined the blogosphere, and what a ride! The past month I have been exploring blogs (see my rapidly expanding 'Blogs I read' list) and joining in on some pretty interesting conversations in relation to education and web 2.0. It's been keeping me so busy that I haven't had much time to post to my own blog! My goals are
- to find a way to make learning more relevant to my distributed learning students
- to explore how to help students become technologically literate so that they can operate successfully in the 21st century.

With respect to my first goal, one of the difficulties I am having is that I do not have a very large group of students in any one grade. I have 3 to 6 students who are active in any one class so coming up with a project specific to a class may not be very fruitful unless I can link up with more students.

With respect to my second goal, I'm thinking more and more that I would like to start doing some mini-units for students (and interested parents) on using blogs, wikis, etc in education to get them interested in using some of these applications in their learning.

As always, I am interested in suggestions or comments that you might have.

edublog Awards

2007-12-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

Voting for the edublog awards is on right now. I know I'll be checking out the nominees to see what's worth reading out there. One blog I found there sent me to a way cool site with lots of free science video clips. I found out that apparently rats like to be tickled--who knew? If you check out the nominated blogs and find something that catches your fancy, please write me a quick comment to share the news.

Blogging; In Their Own Words

2007-12-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

This is a great little video for educators. Teachers and students describe how blogging can enhance learning. Some interesting strategies for using blogs are described (I like the class scribes) and there are some wonderful discussions from the students on the benefits of blogging. I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear your comments on the video.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=472240602788150711" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]

Google Analytics

2007-11-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

After reading DSWaters' Blog 'Advice On Being A More Effective Blogger' I decided to install Google analytics. For a more detailed description of what it is and does, check out her blog. But basically it gives you stats on how many people are visiting your blog, how they found you and how far they went into your blog. Cool stuff. I'm just hoping that I'm not the only one who's checking out my blog!

Boosting Collaboration

2007-11-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

I have been participating in the knowWeeks course for 4 days now, and I cannot believe the amount of collaboration that's going on--all through blogs! My big task now, is to come up with a way of using blogging with my students.

Using Blogs in Education

2007-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get a better handle on blogging and how I might use blogs as a teacher, I'm taking a knowWeeks course called 'Using Blogs in Education'. My goal is to see how I could use blogs in a distributed learning (DL) environment for high school science and math courses. I could see blogs helping my students in many ways:
1. By replying to each other's posts they would be getting the peer to peer interaction that can be difficult to achieve in a DL environment.
2. It would give them a place to work on a deeper understanding of the topics they are learning about by giving them a forum to work out their ideas.
3. It would help them to work on their metacognition (is that the right term?) -- thinking about how they think.

I'll be interested to see the blogs of the other participants in this course to see what their ideas are.