I struggled with the technology assignment in the Digital Tools course I took last semester. I am a preschool teacher and have mainly pre-literate children in my class. I really wanted to create something interesting and dynamic for my students but wikis and blogs are just no good for this group.
I think I will refocus my attention on creating better staff (through professional development) as well as creating a positive home-school connection in order to foster learning. Parents could also use some professional development (teachers need certifications to teach but parents are not required to learn anything to raise a child.) I would like to create a dynamic interactive experience for parents and staff to use in order to better their skills as well as foster communication. Many times both parents and staff allow situations to arise and bubble over before opening a line of communication. This causes frustration for all parties, mistrust of staff by parents, and resentment of parents by staff for not doing what they feel should be done. An interative experience can be engaging to all while allowing a seamless method foe enhancing skills and communications.
Teach With Me is a group dedicated to providing PD on developmentally appropriate practices. This resources can help teachers design their lessons and can help parents better understand the level their child is at, and how to prorperly challenge them to create an optimal learning environment.
The group Priceless has a great description: "K-1 teachers who are interested in
collaborating to create a monthly News letter to publish resources and
interactive games for parents to practice with their children at home." This group, however, does not seem to have any participation. I think that I will post some things and try to watch to see if this can become something productive.
Using Multimedia
for Communication & Education is a group that opens itself to all people interested in digital communication and the use of multimedia. A diverse group like this (bringing people from in & outside of the realm of education) may provide unique solutions to educational problems that teachers (in their teacher mindset) would be hard pressed to arrive at.
In addition to providing professional development, I would like to create a place for teachers to share information, stories, resources and resumes and create a community concerned with the improvment of education.
Walker, Jameson, and Ryan discuss participatory culture. Teachers have been preaching that students must learn by doing, yet have not created opportunities to learn that way themselves. Educators must move past the acceptance of technology but learn to harness the force that it has become.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
E-Portfolios
I am very interested in the idea of creating E-portfolios. I am interested in using them to better capture the learning and development of my preschool students. I have a few checklist type assessments that I use throughout the year to assess their developments. These lists cover a variety of categories of learning like physical and social emotional development as well as cognitive aspects. I also take pictures and videos throughout the year. An e-portfolio would be a great way to bring all of these pieces together to give parents a complete view of their child's "puzzle" instead of handing parents a pile of pieces.
I am also interested in it for enhancing my own résumé. The one page résumé is something that has been ingrained in my head. I recognize that schools and employers want to give quick looks over applicants and need one page of well-presented information to quickly sort. However, I feel that as a teacher, my job description and a photo or two of me teaching cannot come close to capturing my experience and skills. Despite e-everything being the direction of the world, I feel that if I walk into a job interview tomorrow (for a preschool teaching job or directorship) with an interactive, multimedia portfolio presentation, my application may not be taken seriously. I am pretty sure that that this will quickly change to be the norm and very soon, anyone walking in with a résumé on paper will be the one who is not taken seriously.
In my browsings, here are a few links to articles and information about e-portfolios. I hope you find some of the information useful. The links are from a variety of sources from K-12 and college but the base of information seems to be good. The information gathered can be developed into a proposal for your school to implement.
If YOU have any links to share please do! Thanks in advance!
REAL* ePortfolio Academy for K-12 teachers to be facilitated by Dr. Helen Barrett
http://electronicportfolios.org/academy/
Use ePortfolio to achieve your goals
http://www.eportfolio.org/
WELCOME to the MCC ePortfolio Project
http://eportfolio.middlesexcc.edu/control.cfm
I am also interested in it for enhancing my own résumé. The one page résumé is something that has been ingrained in my head. I recognize that schools and employers want to give quick looks over applicants and need one page of well-presented information to quickly sort. However, I feel that as a teacher, my job description and a photo or two of me teaching cannot come close to capturing my experience and skills. Despite e-everything being the direction of the world, I feel that if I walk into a job interview tomorrow (for a preschool teaching job or directorship) with an interactive, multimedia portfolio presentation, my application may not be taken seriously. I am pretty sure that that this will quickly change to be the norm and very soon, anyone walking in with a résumé on paper will be the one who is not taken seriously.
In my browsings, here are a few links to articles and information about e-portfolios. I hope you find some of the information useful. The links are from a variety of sources from K-12 and college but the base of information seems to be good. The information gathered can be developed into a proposal for your school to implement.
If YOU have any links to share please do! Thanks in advance!
REAL* ePortfolio Academy for K-12 teachers to be facilitated by Dr. Helen Barrett
http://electronicportfolios.org/academy/
The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning
http://aaeebl.org/
Use ePortfolio to achieve your goals
http://www.eportfolio.org/
WELCOME to the MCC ePortfolio Project
http://eportfolio.middlesexcc.edu/control.cfm
ePortfolios in K-12 and in Teacher Education
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Tech makes communication easier, not better
Technology has made the act of communication amazingly easy. A landline telephone was all I had as a child to communicate with someone when they were not present and it worked just fine. 3-way calling was about all I could handle as a pre-teen, what an amazing advance! Email made letter writing quicker and easier and cell phones can connect me to someone no matter where either one of us are. Skype is the equivalent of the big screen I used to see George Jetson talk to Mr. Spacely on! All of these tools have made communication easier and until recently, I didn't think it helped or harmed the quality. Further developments in digital and online communication (Text Messages, Facebook, Twitter, etc) have continued to make the passing of information easier, however, I feel not necessarily better.
I am finding that people are no longer able to have lengthy conversations or even short, yet important ones, in a face to face manner. Nearly every person I pass while walking or driving is hunched over, staring at some device, locked away in a personal bubble with speakers in their ears - I thought Bluetooth was bad, but iPhones come with two earbuds. The use of twitter and text messages has limited the amount we can say, forcing us to boil down our thoughts to fit - not a word limit - but a character limit.
I experience, on a daily basis, adults who will send out an easily (and most likely) ignored email or text in order to find someone to substitute for them at work, rather than make a phone call and talk to a person. I did a favor for a friend and I received a text message with a heartfelt Thank You later that evening. That is a nice gesture however I was with the person that very day! Why were they unable to simply look at me and say those words?
The 2009 movie Surrogates shows an extreme case of the type of isolation that I see developing in some of our digital youth. SPOILER ALERT: The clip I am showing, in essense, gives away the end of the movie so if you have not seen it you may wish to stop reading now. Surrogates is a movie set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots. As part of the plot, a virus is being sent out to disable all of the surrogate robots.
I am attaching a clip to the end of the movie. I apologize for the quality of the video. I am using what I assume is an illegal copy of the movie on You Tube (most of which have been taken down), however for some reason the copy that is dubbed in Hindi is still available. There is really no dialogue during the clip I wish you to view. Forward to the 7:28 mark and watch until 9:40.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=migR8oHSnZk
All of the surrogate robots were beautiful, ageless, and provided the ability for people to hide from the real world. Notice all of the pale, unkempt, robe-wrapped people stumbling out of their homes, unsure of when the last time they saw daylight was.
While this may be an extreme situation, I feel that more and more people are isolating themselves from others, communicating in little snippets of language, losing the ability to have a benign discussion (let alone an emotional one) while looking another person in the eye. Our many tech tools may make our ability to communicate easier, however, to preserve the ART of communication, they should not be used to replace real interactions.
I do not mean to be high up on my soap box here because I am often guilty of climbing into my own little bubble and hiding away. This is simply a rant on my recent observations.
I am finding that people are no longer able to have lengthy conversations or even short, yet important ones, in a face to face manner. Nearly every person I pass while walking or driving is hunched over, staring at some device, locked away in a personal bubble with speakers in their ears - I thought Bluetooth was bad, but iPhones come with two earbuds. The use of twitter and text messages has limited the amount we can say, forcing us to boil down our thoughts to fit - not a word limit - but a character limit.
I experience, on a daily basis, adults who will send out an easily (and most likely) ignored email or text in order to find someone to substitute for them at work, rather than make a phone call and talk to a person. I did a favor for a friend and I received a text message with a heartfelt Thank You later that evening. That is a nice gesture however I was with the person that very day! Why were they unable to simply look at me and say those words?
The 2009 movie Surrogates shows an extreme case of the type of isolation that I see developing in some of our digital youth. SPOILER ALERT: The clip I am showing, in essense, gives away the end of the movie so if you have not seen it you may wish to stop reading now. Surrogates is a movie set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots. As part of the plot, a virus is being sent out to disable all of the surrogate robots.
I am attaching a clip to the end of the movie. I apologize for the quality of the video. I am using what I assume is an illegal copy of the movie on You Tube (most of which have been taken down), however for some reason the copy that is dubbed in Hindi is still available. There is really no dialogue during the clip I wish you to view. Forward to the 7:28 mark and watch until 9:40.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=migR8oHSnZk
All of the surrogate robots were beautiful, ageless, and provided the ability for people to hide from the real world. Notice all of the pale, unkempt, robe-wrapped people stumbling out of their homes, unsure of when the last time they saw daylight was.
While this may be an extreme situation, I feel that more and more people are isolating themselves from others, communicating in little snippets of language, losing the ability to have a benign discussion (let alone an emotional one) while looking another person in the eye. Our many tech tools may make our ability to communicate easier, however, to preserve the ART of communication, they should not be used to replace real interactions.
I do not mean to be high up on my soap box here because I am often guilty of climbing into my own little bubble and hiding away. This is simply a rant on my recent observations.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Classroom Web 2.0 Tools
It is very difficult to choose just ONE Web 2.0 tool that would be most beneficial to teachers. I will list a few tools that I find are most useful, by category.
In my practice as a preschool teacher, web tools that I use are to enhance education by keeping my teaching resources in order to quickly and consistently retrieve them. They are also used to share information among fellow teachers and staff and to keep parents up to date about their children's education. While I use some computer and internet based resources directly with the children, the most important tools for me are the ones that make my job better, more interesting and more organized.
I am definately a fan of technology however I also want to say that all the tools in the world cannot make up for face time (I mean real face time, not the app). While sharing information via web tools is a convenient solution to a world that is constantly running up against a deadline, a concerted effort should be made to maintain the types of relationships that only in-person contact can really foster.
In my practice as a preschool teacher, web tools that I use are to enhance education by keeping my teaching resources in order to quickly and consistently retrieve them. They are also used to share information among fellow teachers and staff and to keep parents up to date about their children's education. While I use some computer and internet based resources directly with the children, the most important tools for me are the ones that make my job better, more interesting and more organized.
Bookmarks
Diigo is a new bookmarking site that features the ability to have online access to your cataloged favorites anywhere you go. It offers multicolored highlighting to help you remember exactly what you saved the page for in the first place. It also offers sticky notes (a teacher's best friend!) to allow personal notes to be placed right on the page. This is a great tool to keep the many other internet resources that a teacher may use organized. It could also be used as a class or parent site, allowing pages of interest to be stored and vital information to be hightlighted for attention. Students or parents could pop sticky notes on the page with their own thoughts to promote communication or spark further discussion.
Photos
I am not sure what site is "BEST" but password protected photo sharing sites are an amazing tool. While permission still needs to be obtained from parents to post student pictures, many of these sites - such as photobucket - offer an administrative login and password and a guest password for viewing only. This allows only the teacher or administrator full access to the site but allows parents or other chosen users to log on using a secure password in order to view photos. Preschool parents would love to see every minute of their child's day but that is not possible for most. As a teacher I email individual parents photos of their child occasionally but a secure site for the entire class to use is a great way to keep parents and kids connected during the day.
Document Sharing
Emailing documents is a great way to get information from here to there quickly, cheaply, and paperless-ly. However sites like Google Docs allows multiple people the ability to work on projects when they are able or even simultaneously. It is not always practical for groups of people (especially teachers or parents) to get together physically to collaborate on a project nor is it effective if everyone sits around a table with note paper and one person tries to input all sorts of info onto one computer. Document sharing sites provide everyone in a group an equal chance to input their thoughts and information. A combination of Skype and GoogleDocs can take the place of many face-to-face meetings and allow for broader participation.I am definately a fan of technology however I also want to say that all the tools in the world cannot make up for face time (I mean real face time, not the app). While sharing information via web tools is a convenient solution to a world that is constantly running up against a deadline, a concerted effort should be made to maintain the types of relationships that only in-person contact can really foster.
Please share with me YOUR favorite tools!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Would you, could you, with a frog? Would you, could you, with a blog?
I am not so sure about the whole blog thing. I read the Richardson chapters. I read the example blogs. I GET it. However, I do not think I am INTO it.
I can imagine maintaining a website with links, resources, maybe even videos or games. This seems like a format that is multi-use, could have a blog on it, and would appeal to my viewers (students, parents, fellow staff) for a variety of reasons. So, if I were to maintain a blog, it would be in that venue. However, a site dedicated to blogging seems superfluous. I feel, for the many examples given for what a blog could be used for, that there are better ways to do almost all of those things. I understand that the sample provided in this course is not the BE ALL and END ALL of blogs, I am simply using the examples given as a discussion topic.
Sharing lesson plans is a good use of technology (email, webpage, etc). This would be a great asset to a website where files could be stored or linked to for all to view and perhaps comment on to add insights and extras. I have gathered many internet resources that assist me in planning my lessons and I email my weekly plans to my director, fellow teachers, and the parents of my students. However, I am not convinced that a blog is the best way to do this. I have viewed a few blogs that discuss lesson plans and I find them, overall, to be difficult to follow when they receive all sorts of comments and not typically organized very well.
I can see (perhaps) using a blog for idea sharing, discussion of teaching techniques and the like. However, I feel that it may turn into a big, long list and not be well organized. I like discovering new websites and resources but I have little patience for sites that I find are disorganized or have too much outside content like comments. People like to share and I can see that a blog could be a very attractive device for low pressure sharing, especially for people who may be shy or uncomfortable sharing in a face-to-face format.
OVERSHARE is a word or phrase that has come about due to the very nature of web 2.0 and the social aspect of the net. I am guilty of it myself, sharing details that are not really worth sharing or that no one really cares about. I once shared a picture on facebook of my breakfast. I had cereal and fruit and it looked so good (like an advertisement for a well-balanced breakfast) that I took a picture of it and posted it. Why? Because I can! I have also posted my share of complaints about work, school, friends, spouse, and the very site on which I was posting the complaint! A blog could very easily turn into the digital equivalent of (what was described to me by a professor I had and was warned never to go) the evil lair that is…THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE. I was told that no good could come of spending time there. An innocent, newbie teacher could get sucked right in to the kvetch-fest that goes on there. And what is a person to do? Someone is complaining about (circle all that apply: administration, budget, kids, curriculum, parents, support, personal issues, staff, etc).
I can imagine maintaining a website with links, resources, maybe even videos or games. This seems like a format that is multi-use, could have a blog on it, and would appeal to my viewers (students, parents, fellow staff) for a variety of reasons. So, if I were to maintain a blog, it would be in that venue. However, a site dedicated to blogging seems superfluous. I feel, for the many examples given for what a blog could be used for, that there are better ways to do almost all of those things. I understand that the sample provided in this course is not the BE ALL and END ALL of blogs, I am simply using the examples given as a discussion topic.
Sharing lesson plans is a good use of technology (email, webpage, etc). This would be a great asset to a website where files could be stored or linked to for all to view and perhaps comment on to add insights and extras. I have gathered many internet resources that assist me in planning my lessons and I email my weekly plans to my director, fellow teachers, and the parents of my students. However, I am not convinced that a blog is the best way to do this. I have viewed a few blogs that discuss lesson plans and I find them, overall, to be difficult to follow when they receive all sorts of comments and not typically organized very well.
Privacy and confidentiality are big topics in my school and I am sure plenty others. Discussing students is frowned upon unless in a formal setting, whether the stories are positive or not. I feel that a blog is not the place to share such information. Stories-of-old that cannot be tied to any current students may be acceptable however any story that could be viewed as less than positive should not be shared in such a public format. And, personally, I would not be interested in reading a collection of sticky-sweet stories that most parents would consent to having posted about their child(ren).
I can see (perhaps) using a blog for idea sharing, discussion of teaching techniques and the like. However, I feel that it may turn into a big, long list and not be well organized. I like discovering new websites and resources but I have little patience for sites that I find are disorganized or have too much outside content like comments. People like to share and I can see that a blog could be a very attractive device for low pressure sharing, especially for people who may be shy or uncomfortable sharing in a face-to-face format.
OVERSHARE is a word or phrase that has come about due to the very nature of web 2.0 and the social aspect of the net. I am guilty of it myself, sharing details that are not really worth sharing or that no one really cares about. I once shared a picture on facebook of my breakfast. I had cereal and fruit and it looked so good (like an advertisement for a well-balanced breakfast) that I took a picture of it and posted it. Why? Because I can! I have also posted my share of complaints about work, school, friends, spouse, and the very site on which I was posting the complaint! A blog could very easily turn into the digital equivalent of (what was described to me by a professor I had and was warned never to go) the evil lair that is…THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE. I was told that no good could come of spending time there. An innocent, newbie teacher could get sucked right in to the kvetch-fest that goes on there. And what is a person to do? Someone is complaining about (circle all that apply: administration, budget, kids, curriculum, parents, support, personal issues, staff, etc).
Few options are to be had:
- Leave saying nothing and go back to your desk to eat your lunch.
- Nod (without comment) which may seem innocent but is seen as total agreement with the dialogue.
- Disagree *GASP* and potentially have some positive influence on the conversation but chances are, once you leave the room, *tsk* will be heard from the mouths of the klatch and the topic of discussion will turn to YOU.
That said (and I know it was plenty), perhaps it is my newness to the idea of blogging that is causing my negative view. It seems that much of web 2.0 is addicting, what with all the sharing and photos and videos and constant streaming media straight to my senses. The instant gratification of it all can sometimes be quite pleasing. Through this course I will be writing a few blogs and perhaps it will be enough for me to get hooked, or at the very least have a more positive view of the idea. Stranger things have happened!
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