Reflections - The Road Traveled

What did I know, what do I know and what will I do? Until December, my professional development consisted of taking classes in education and in my content area, for the purpose of making me a "better teacher." While scanning the course schedule for PSU, I happened to notice a course entitled, Teaching and Learning in a Networked Classroom, which sparked my interest as my classroom had been fitted with an infocus and we were encouraged to change our teaching style. I had never taken a technology class before but the thought of blogs and podcasts intrigued me. I had heard of them but really hadn't a clue what they were; still very much a Web 1.0 mentality, I decided to jump in and what a road it has been!

The first week I was in such a panic, downloading, audacity, skype, creating a blog, signing up for google e-mail and setting up an rss reader! Then the ice storm hit, no power, skype phone call with Kim, while sick with bronchitis; I thought I must have been out of my mind to sign up for this class. But, just as Jeff said, by week three, we would be on a roll, and on a roll I was!

The readings were informative, the process challenging and exciting. Blogging was becoming easier and I had learned how to import videos from Teacher Tube, You Tube, images from Flicker and Google, create hyperlinks and my information was flowing to me in my google reader. I had so much information flowing to me and so many new web sites, I was beginning to become over whelmed, but enter my new address book - delicious; perfect.

I became so excited with all that I was learning, I found myself engaging others in conversation about technology and Web 2.0 and where we needed to look toward in educating our students. My students were producing projects that including technology and I created a blog using Edublog to communicate with my students parents. I had a lot of fun creating valentines for my husband and children with Animoto.

My greatest learning curve came when I had to create a podcast. I searched for every tutorial I could find, held my breathe and jumped in. It took a couple of trials to record using Audacity and many to upload to Podomatic correctly. It was so easy to miss out a step between Audacity to my blog, but podcast I did! My son discovered my blog on line and was so impressed.


Where am I going? I have a blog for communication with my parents and plan to produce a weekly podcast by my students. I plan to create a wiki for collaborative projects and become more of a facilitator than a director. Oh, and by the way, I am signing up for another technology class! I'm not sure where this road is taking me, but I'm on my way....learning and relearning.

Thank you.

title="Wordle: web 2.0 in education"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/1008848/web_2.0_in_education"
alt="Wordle: web 2.0 in education"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

Bill Strickland: "Water is Life"

Bill Stickland is truly an inspiration! After watching the 35 minute video, I sat and reflected on his profound wisdom. This man could have fallen through the cracks as a high school student, but didn't, perhaps because of one ceramic teacher who showed him the light. He has been giving back that "light" ever since. He has certainly renewed my motivation and energy to try and impact as many students as I am able. Wanting to know more about Bill Stickland I discovered another powerful video, Make the Impossible Possible, and have posted the link here.

http://www.impossiblemovie.com/


How true when a person is consumed in gloom and feel they are sentenced to a life of misery, how bleak life can be. He demonstrated that by giving a person "affection, sunshine, flowers, food and good music", they can grow, become creative and value themselves and thus a change in behavior. We all need to remember:

"Water is Life

Sun and flowers equal hope




Children being celebrated






Being able to see themselves causes change in behavior







Make a friend in every town and you will never be lonely." (Connections)







It would be wonderful if the Bidwell Training Center could be the model for all schools.

Why Do Project-Based Learning?

There is nothing new about project based learning. Teachers have always used projects as a supplement to their regular course of instruction. It shifts away from the teacher-centered lessons and instead emphasizes learning activities that are long-term, student-centered, interdisciplinary and integrates real world issues and practices.

PBL helps make learning relevant and useful to students by establishing connections to life outside the classroom, developing real world skills, including the ability to work well with others, make thoughtful decisions, take initiative, and solve complex problems.

It has not been uncommon to hear students say "what do I need to know that for?!" and "I'll never use that." For years students taught by the practices of short, isolated, teacher-centered lessons had a hard time finding relevance to their education and thus rarely motivated to learn. Many students who enrolled in vocational or technological studies learned by relevance; applying math or science skills in real life situations. Many of these students, as a result, continued on into higher education.

PBL allows teachers to build relationships with their students as they become coaches or facilitators discussing what learning is taking place. Projects also allow opportunity to make connections with the community; by sharing the finished project and the business community who have a stake in the students' education.

"Project-based learning is intended to bring about deep learning, where students use technology and inquiry to engage with issues and questions that are relevant to their lives. These classroom projects are used to assess student's subject matter competence compared to traditional testing."

As a middle school exploratory teacher, I have the wonderful opportunity to work with students in integrated projects, including an International Festival, International Gardens Project and a Rainforest's Project. When working on these projects, the approach has been less structured than a traditional classroom and students must collaborate and produce their own artifact to represent what is being learned.

An outstanding project is the FIRST Robotics program where students partner with adult mentors from the fields of math, science and engineering to build a robot from scratch and program the robot using technologies as professionals. Students have six weeks to design, build and program a robot to do a specific task. There is a lot of both school and community support. The year my son participate, they had to build robots that could pick up and transport large balls and deposit them into a large container. Competition is stiff with regional and national competitions.

When used with 21st century tools/skills, project based learning provides a meaningful way to investigate, collaborate, analyze, synthesize and present their learning.

Recording a Podcast - Update

Recording and posting my first podcast was a huge learning curve for me, that spanned over a couple of weeks while I was trying to keep up with other assignments and work. As I stumbled through the process, I asked a number of staff members at my school if they had ever make a podcast, and not a single one had; including our youth! Although it was challenge for me, it was also a great learning experience. As I went through the process, making mistakes, missing out steps, I finally got it and I will never forget the process. For the feeble minded, like myself, I found a couple of sources that was helpful to me. They are:

http://http//radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm

http://http//www.guidesandtutorials.com/podcasting-tutorial.html





Although these were really helpful and made to look easy, it wasn't so much. ( it's obviously because they've done it a lot). This process reminded me of a program on the PBS television series Cooking at the Academy. Bo Friberg, pastry chef and author of The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef, demonstrated how to create a puzzle cake. It was a challenging cake that he made look too easy. He should have posted a warning: "For professionals only. Do not try this at home." It just takes practice!

One of my students came into class the other day excited and couldn't wait to tell me she had just made her first movie, using movie maker, and had uploaded it to You Tube; she dedicated it to her friend who taught her . The thrill of learning!

Thank you, Laura, for your wonderful comment on my podcast that I woke up to this morning! The thrill of learning! Laura, if you use podomatic to upload your audio, after you upload your media, then fill in the description, another screen pops up that gives you the option of adding a picture. Just save your picture or image in your computer first, then browse and upload.

My Podcast - Finally!!

Teaching in a New Networked Classroom - Yes We Can!

The Internet has become a new platform for users because of its two-way communication abilities and therefore has become increasingly popular to integrate technology into the classroom. And as a teacher, I believe we are about to have the biggest discussion on education. We need to ask, how do we learn? Jeff raised the following questions about our students:

"What should they know?

What do we think they know

"What do they need to know?"

Where will this discussion take us? Already in this class, we have explored the potential of social networking, media sharing and other web 2.0 tools These are popular tools, not just for education, but popular among our students. Our students have been using web 2.o tools for a long time; writing blogs, uploading photos and videos, building personal portfolios and interacting with each other every day. They have Myspace and Facebook accounts and explore popular sites such as Wikipedia and Flickr; therefore students are already motivated to use technology. The new requirements of 21 century learning is forcing us to focus on education differently. It is forcing us to help our students learn in new ways and to show them there is a whole world to connect with.

Obama said: 'we can stop talking about how great teachers are, and start rewarding them for their greatness!


Why should we use technology in our classrooms? Best practices would embrace education that includes:
*creativity
*collaboration
*promotes student centered learning
*engages students
*learning not limited to school boundaries
*writing not limited to one-on-one communication
*helps students become familiar with technology.

I'm following a lot of discussion about how to use Web 2.0 technology to help students learn and it usually comes back to co-operative learning. It is important to engage students in activities, to collect material, analyse information and process it with others, work on documents and wiki's, post comments and editing information with the help of the teacher. Students should not be left on their own but should be guided by the teacher to evaluate information and to ask the right questions. As teachers we need to find ways to use technology in our classrooms and consider the security issues and the copyright. Technology will not take away the need for teachers, instead we will need to be the center of education because our students will need our guidance more than ever and to encourage and motivate them to become better learners

The following is a link to PBS a Frontline report on "Growing Up Online."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

So what should teachers be looking for? What are the answers to those thought provoking questions? The more I read about this, the more I feel that I need to keep looking further. And for now, while evaluating what works in my class, I am modeling the use of using Web 2.0 tools. I have linked a my blog from Edublog to our school's web page to start that conversation with my students' parents.

A Wonderful Thing Happened.....

Teaching in the public education system has its trials and tribulations; days where you wonder if anything is working and why am I doing this? Today was a day of total exhilaration, a day that makes all others worthwhile. In a previous posting, I wrote about teaching the endocrine system to my eight grade students and their project, a presentation to the class must include a technology component. I was not prepared for the lack of technology skills among some students in an age that I thought they knew more than I. Some of my students are still using two fingers to "peck" and a number had never made a web page, PowerPoint or video before; others, however, were very savvy. The division was very notable; probably due to socioeconomic backgrounds and ability levels.

Rather than telling my students how to learn, I encouraged them to work together and experiment with different tools. To my surprise and astonishment, an autistic young man pulled up his chair to a young lady that had no idea how to begin in developing a PowerPoint. In a very positive and supportive way, he helped her get started while working on his project. The smiles on their faces, the delight of success in her voice, was more than money could buy!