Finding my Voice in an Unsettling Week

Even in a "bad" week web 2.0 is wonderful! I guess I should explain what I mean especially if this blog is my "blog of choice" for this week. My youngest son served four years in the Marines, from age 18 to 23 with a deployment in Iraq. He was wounded several times and received The Purple Heart. He currently lives in the Washington DC area and has found employment very difficult. His current employer has taken advantage of his situation and he is underpaid and treated poorly. His debt continues to grow and he has been unable to find another job. Obviously, in this recession, there are many people out of work, but our young men returning from war are even less equipped to deal with such a market. Curtis went directly from high school into the marines leaving a huge gap in his education and his preparedness in this fast paced changing world of technology and knowledge. Our young men and women are well trained for the military but given little preparation to return to and survive the civilian world.

Needing help to write a resume that didn't shout military and transfer his skills to the civilian work, my son turned to the marines who then put him in contact with a company called Triple Canopy. A few faxes later, they offered him a job doing security detail in Iraq. I was horrified! Who is this company? What do they do? And why pressure for a commitment in just a few days?

I know I am rambling, but this had me raising alot of questions; turning to the web: I blogged, emailed (The White House and Iraq) and searched the web for any information possible. Consider:

"The Bush Administration is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into its own global private mercenary army tasked with protecting US officials and institutions overseas." The secretive program paid for by the little known Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) has paid Blackwater (a Republican-connected firm) more than $320 million between 2004 and 2006.

The WPPS contract awarded in 2004 was divided among a handful of companies, among them DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater was slated to be paid $229.5 million for five years but just two years later had been paid $321,715,794, according to the State Department. No one could explain the discrepancy.

The WPPS program escalated under the Bush administration with one report estimating some 48,000 private soldiers, working for 181 private military firms, were deployed to Iraq alone.

Blackwater has been at the center of strained relations between Washington and Baghdad following the shooting of 17 civilians which fueled the anti American insurgency in Iraq, where many Iraqis saw the blood shed as a demonstration of American brutality and arrogance.

While many private security firms are well respected, those that shoot first and don't care to ask questions later reflect on our military as all are Americans.

We have starved our military troops and sent them into war without adequate equipment while private security personnel receive upwards of $1000.00 a day, mostly tax free.

The Bush administration made sure there was no real accountability in the contracting arena. Who is overseeing these well paid cowboys?

There appears to be an increasing dependency on providing security from these firms and expending huge sums of money for them as we do not have enough military?

Why are we paying huge sums of money for hired gunmen to protect our diplomatic personnel and bases, keeping them in luxury and our military men and women in poverty and without the tools to succeed ounce they have served their country?

To be fair, Our current administration is putting in legislation to make these firms accountable under US law and provide our military with a substantial GI bill to return to school. But what about the gaps? I welcome your opinion.

Wikis in Education and Beyond

Wikis are exciting! A few months ago I had never heard of a wiki until I signed up for a class called Teaching and Learning in a Networked Classroom through PSU. Our teacher jutecht, explained that we would not be using blackboard but run through a wiki using wetpaint.com. He continued to explain what accounts to sign up for and we would be doing a lot of blogging, using a wiki, and creating a podcast. Oh yes, he then explained, we would be communicating with him in Bangkok, Thailand and please feel free to edit his text; unheard of! Had Scottie beamed me up to a new world




A Wiki is a combination between a Web site and a Word document. It can be read, has ease of editing, and groups can work collaboratively on the content. Each time a person makes changes to a wiki page, the revision becomes the current version and all older versions are stored.












Wikis are gaining headway in education as a tool for collaboration among students and educators in compiling data and working on group projects. The fabulous, The Flat Classroom Project and the Horizon Project, truly shows excellence in education! As I continue to search the web to learn more about Wikis in Education, there are many excellent sources to help educators get started. One such site Open content.org, is a rich source for resources on blogs and wikis in education, covering everything from district policies to how to use blogs and wikis to facilitate learning.





George Siemens in Knowing Knowledge, states "To know today means to be connected. Knowledge moves to fast for learning to be only a product. We used to acquire knowledge by bringing it close to ourselves. We were said to process it-to have it exist in our heads. We can no longer seek to possess all needed knowledge personally. We must store it in our friends or within technology."

My husband has a very demanding position where he is heavily involved in committee work, negotiating contracts, supervising staff and creating new projects. He complains that he does not have enough time in the day and gets up earlier and earlier to get his job accomplished; a day off may mean being behind in upwards of a hundred e-mails. He is a man of "tradition" in methods of education and doing business; new learning is "painful." While doing my research on wikis, I quietly suggested he might like to take a look at wikis....it just might help focus energy and resources. Even quieter, he replied, "I'll would have a look."

Regardless of whether a wiki is used in education, business,
or government, it is a great tool for collaborating and synthesizing information.

"The Time Has Come"

Approximately at noon on January 20, 2009, the United States swore in a new president, Barack Obama. In keeping with the theme of his campaign, almost at the instant Obama was sworn in, http://www.whitehouse.gov/launched a redesign of its web site signalling a new era in government; change has come. The new site is interactive and promotes communication between the new administration and the public. This follows the tech-savvy approach that President Obama used to communicate and get his message out during his campaign. The site demonstrates Obama's awareness of the importance of Web 2.0 which emphasises communication and connections. This site should not be confused with the site of President George W. Bush and his administration which conveyed a more transitional and quiet persona. During the inauguration, millions of people came together to acknowledge "the time has come for change", they stood shoulder to shoulder, people of all races and backgrounds, making connections.

Our country has embraced new leadership with the promise of change and while on President Obama's watch No Child Left Behind Act will come up for renewal. Educators will look for increased funding at federal level which will be difficult with our current financial crisis. Is it not surprising that the President proposes spending $500 million to upgrade school technology?

So what about school leadership? Our traditional views of school leadership have emphasized managerial or operational functions. Today, school administrators are still managing operations while focusing on student learning, standards, accountability tests and performance assessments. School leaders are extremely important in determining whether technology use will improve learning for all students. They need to collaborate with teachers, school personnel, school board members and community to create a vision for the future of our schools to adjust to our social and economic lives brought on by technology, thus School 2.0.

So the time has come...

..............School 2.0

Collaboration...connections..........

Media Sharing : The New Social Community

Media Sharing - it's everywhere. Just a few short years ago we communicated and shared using land line phones, wrote letters and showed our family photographs from our wallets. Now we have many interactive methods of communicating: via email, instant messaging, text message, postings and linking to web sites, PDA's. computers and many media sharing websites. Even my daughter's ultrasound is on CD's to share with friends and family members! This is a new era to be embraced.

As a teacher, we need to excite our students and use new innovative methods to teach. What better way to teach than to use the very skills our students use when they leave our classroom. I would like to think that I am becoming a connected teacher, exploring YouTube, TeacherTube, Flicker, RSS Reader and more.

Taking the class, Teaching and Learning in a Networked Classroom, is providing me with all kinds of information. I am really enjoying learning from other classmates' blogs. Their thought, ideas and sharing of useful sites is such a time saver and support. I look forward to reading many more!

Social Bookmarking - Why Tag?

So many web sites, so much to read, remember and save! Social bookmarking/tagging is a fabulous tool. Until now, I have been saving sites by bookmarking in my favorites. What a mess. I have now downloaded del.icio.us, and flickr and have started tagging. I can now take the chaos out of my life and organize my school work and all my other interests. I am amazed that I can now find my photographs with a click of a button.

The K12on-line conference with Chris Betcher was excellent; describing how social bookmarking can benefit your work and why tagging is so important. I had some problems with the video (hoping it was just my connection) stopping every few works or so; breaking the flow of information and a bit fustrating to listen to... His site also contains a world of information about using del.icio.us, flicker and edublog.

The social booking component - sharing with others has me intrigued. The idea of sharing web sites and information with other educators (of whom you may have never met before) allows for wonderful opportunities of collaboration and connections.

Oh, and to handle all of of my sites and readings, so my family might get dinner sometime, I have downloaded Google Gears!

A video you might like:

RSS - Right Back At You!

RSS... I am on overload! Now that I have discovered The Google Reader I have information coming back at me faster than I can read it. Before setting up my reader, I like so many others, had to search the web for sites and information. Now I am being bombarded without even looking for it. Using the RSS, I am gradually getting more comfortable with it and now I need to start to organize information into folders and what I feel is important and eliminate the rest.



The tutorial jutecht set up for our class was especially helpful. The example of receiving 29,069 feeds for global warming is mind boggling as is subscribing to just certain sections of a newspaper....incredible.



I will continue to experiment with the RSS feeder inorder to refine it

Blogging - What Is It?

Until recently, if asked, I would not have been able to explain what a blog is. If you are in your twenties, like my children or younger, like my students, you have been blogging for quite sometime. Until very recently, I communicated on line by either e-mail or bulletin boards. Following the 1990's the blog was born. But for many of us over 40 or 50; busy with work and family we just never heard of blogging. Sure, I have spend hundreds of hours researching information on line, reading other peoples posts and comments but never realizing those were blogs. Now, I am blogging!

So what is blogging? Blogging is the act of creating a blog. What's a blog? According to Wikipedia, a blog "is a web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order." The term blog is short for web log, a "log" of diary-like entries published on a web site.

The blog entry consists of a title, post date, comments, tags and other items, which I am still discovering. Registering with a blog site such as http://www.blog.com/ or http://www.blogspot.com/ are free and offer templates that you can customize. Now, if you love writing this can be a lot of fun writing about anything that interests you. Blogging is an easy and instant method of publishing to the web where content can appear in many forms including: videos, recipes, opinions, commentaries, advice and anything else someone wants to write about.

Recently, our school nurse asked for help in supporting a group of teachers who joined our "Biggest Losers'" club to get into shape. She asked for exercise and nutrition tips but also wanted to know how the teachers could support each other. Meetings generally fail due to busy schedules and meetings, so I suggested creating a blog. We have created a blog site using edublog and I am so pleased that it has been received with a great deal of excitement.

I still have a lot to learn about blogging, and the possibilities appear endless, but it also comes with a responsibility. The content is on the web for everyone to read and the author takes on that responsibility for personal opinions, beliefs and comments.

Connectivism - Teaching for the 21st Century

What is connectivism? According to George Siemens, connectivism is a "learning theory for the digital age." This is a learning theory designed for today's learner and helps to explain the limitations of the behaviourism, cognitivison and constructivism theory of previous years.



Bill Gates said:


"America's high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they're working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."


Why is that the case? What is going on? After reading George Siemens's Knowing Knowledge and Will Richardson's article World Without Walls, I realize teachers need to take on new roles in education. We need to prepare students for the 21st century in a way that is only just beginning to take shape. Students need to become life long learners, prepare for multiple careers by being able to learn and relearn as knowledge changes. They need to think global, learn decision- making skills to evaluate information and as Siemens states, 'know-where is more important then know-how."


The teacher becomes the facilitator, flexible, open, enthusiastic; shaping the learning process, modeling proper editing, locating valid websites and social collaboration. Social tools like blogs, skype, wikis, and social-bookmarking sites make the process easier. But there also lies some of our challenges. Teachers, administrators, parents and school board members still hold tight to our old methods of teaching therefore not preparing students properly for the future. Laws require filters to be used on computer networks usually blocking anothing that refers to "social."


There is good news. Universities, such as Plymouth State University offers a course called Teaching and Learning in a Networked Classroom. This course is helping teachers reshape their view of teaching to prepare our students of the 21st century. The instuctors model the role of facillitators allowing the students to learn by experimentation through social networks.



I recently viewed a posting from the blog site, Fischbowl, by Karl Fisch entitled A Whole new learning Experience: Take Two. The posting describes the learning experience of high school students in a language arts class reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, and discussing it in class using the live fischbowl method along with 30 other educators from around the world. The students complete their project with a Wikified Research paper. Included is a 38 minute video produced by Dana Levesque, a technology specialist, discussing preparation and reactions to this project as well as the technology used. This is a must see! I believe this is truly what connectivism is all about and would like to make that my personal and educational goal to promote this kind of learning with my students.

School 2.0, more thoughts

After writing my last post, I have continued to read and evaluate sites regarding School 2.0 and I feel as though I am caught between two worlds: can't go back but how do I go forward. I realize that school 2.0 is not about upgrading our educational system but a revision to how students learn in an increasing fast paced world where knowledge is continually changing.The new school vision includes the learning ecosystem; school, home and community to bring together a wide variety of educational experiences. I have had many conversations with educators that believe the changes we are experiencing have been brought about by increased use of technology. It really is about pedagogy with new theories and taxonomy. The direction of school 2.0 is driven by our advanced fast changing society.

As a mother of four children and a teacher I saw the changes happen but couldn't explain why they were happening; changes in how they learned, responded and socialized. I saw a generation pass in four years! Society has advanced and so has the speed we interpret new knowledge. We need to engage in conversations on how we will prepare our students to be literate in the 21st century. The YouTube PowerPoint presentation by Karl Fisch says it all; we have become a global world with new goals and responsibilities. for the future. How will we teach for the future? Will we empower instead of lead? Questions, questions questions.

School 2.0

We are embarking on a new frontier when it comes to education. I don't believe we are there yet but the days of traditional education of the industrial years will soon be part of the past. Within the educational system one has to be constantly re-evaluating what we want students to know and be able to do. Is it the same as when I grew up? I don't think so!

We have all had to learn and relearn over the past decades. We learned to use typewriters and then evolved into computers and world processors. I fell into the web and its links (or should I say jumped) when my youngest son, a marine, was sent to Iraq as infantry living "outside the wire." I quickly discovered the world was not the same as when as when the country experienced World War II or the wars that followed. Before one would have to wait weeks before information was learned. Now it is instantaneous. It is a double edged sword, so as to speak... constant bombardment of media information and images versus "ignorant bliss". The Marines under gun fire rigged up the Internet on the roof of their outpost so they could stay connected with home. My son stayed connected with home almost every day by either the Internet (web cam, e-mail, My Space) and by satellite phone. I lived on the Internet 24-7; my husband said I was obsessed, I said it was a Mom's "need to know." I felt like I was experiencing a train wreck, you don't want to look, but you have to. I discovered many new sites, read every new story, found countless sources that helped me trace where my son was and what missions he was engaged in. I discovered My Space where links told me when he was on line. One of my greatest joys was an opportunity to see him with web cam while using AIM. I connected with people all over the country sharing information and support. What an educational ride!

My school system has embraces school 2.0 and I want to be part of it. With new ways of learning comes change and for many change is difficult and and is met with resistance. Several years ago the school system started to use Edline, posting grades and information on line so parents and students could access grades, and assignments any time. Teachers were resistant fearing the worst from parent backlash. As we have gotten better at using the system it has been of great benefit and a time saver. We have a new middle school, and all the rooms are equipped with in-focus machines and telephones. We are learning to teach in new ways. Students are required to maintain electronic portfolios contributing artifacts yearly. Many of my student show what they have learned by producing power points and videos. (I would like to post some of them, but in this process I am not there yet)

Where are we in this process? How long will it take before we are there? Those and many other questions need still to be answered. There are many hurtles that still need to be faced. Among those, we need more computers for student use, professional development for teachers to learn the new technology and how do we implement it. Educators in a time of unlimited knowledge need to decide what we want students to learn and how we want them to learn it. Then how do we assess it, by standardized tests? Should we be teaching skills to learn and relearn, critical thinking skills, and research techniques or content?