Disrupting Class

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!

Making PD Sticky

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!

The Power of Observation

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 :-)

We've Got The Power

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!

Combatting Teacher Burnout

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

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

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.

I'm It

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

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


2. 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

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

When And Where Am I NOT A Teacher?

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)

Reflections on the Daniel Pink Live Video Conference at Arapahoe High

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

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.

Time to catch my breath.

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.

Blogging; In Their Own Words

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" /]