Summer's Over

Since we last posted, several exciting things have happened. Shawn has moved to a new high school, based within a community college setting. Hopefully, he will have an easier time in his new environment using the tools he wants to incorporate into his classroom.

I have spent two weeks at Duke University learning a new curriculum which is part of Project Lead the Way called Gateway to Technology. It is to encourage middle school students to explore pre-engineering, science and technology careers, and is heavily based on science and math curriculum. It was loads of fun to learn, and made me realize that I can take my current curriculum and tweak it to include hands on high interest projects that actually use science and math data to engage my students. I had a great time playing with automation and robotics, electricity, and of course, it was amazing to spend two weeks in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke seeing all the ways they are using technology to solve problems and engage students in the learning process.

Speaking of which, Shawn's already started back, and I am due to begin school tomorrow. I hope my middle school kids will be as happy as I am to be back at school.

More Excitement: We (Shawn and I) have been invited to teach a workshop in our county about web 2.0 tools for teachers. Yes, this is exciting and very big deal. Wow! a chance to show that this is for real, and not just a flight of fancy. Where to begin?

Happy end of summer. I've got lots of new kids to enroll in Gaggle e-mail, so I'm off.

The bit...

I am beginning to feel like I'm champing at the bit. The lack of ability to add opensource/freeware to our school computers is really starting to grate on my nerves. Everyday, I am finding a plethora of web 2.0 tools that I could implement in the classroom, but I can't. I would like to publicly plead for teachers to be treated like the well-trained professionals that we are. Web 2.0 promises to revolutionize how we teach, what we teach and what we define as "learning", and yet we have a huge wall blocking us from it. We can see glimpses through the chinks in the mortar and like any good prisoner, we have figured out some weaknesses in our enclosure, but why should we not be given the freedom to move our teaching into the 21st century?

My students are really taking off with their class wiki and I am eagerly anticipating the work that they will produce in the coming stages of their project!

I have gotten a hold of a few computers that were destined for the trash. I'm loading the Ubuntu opensource operating system on them, to try it out. I have also been using a variant of the OpenOffice opensource productivity suite. I'm already impressed with how well it works.

Lastly, I came across this very cool way to put all of your student's iPods to work in your classroom. With a 99 cent program (available from iTunes) called iQuiz, you can create custom quiz sets that students download to their iPod. Imagine, iPods for studying! Read more about it here.

Check this out

You've got to see this:

Keeping up with it all

As I have gone deeper and deeper into the read/write web (web 2.0), I keep getting confronted by the fact that I have just barely scratched the surface. Today, I came across zoho.com, a free, internet-based, fully functional office suite. This allows you to write and store your work completely on the web. It functions similarly to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, but seems a bit more robust and also has a powerpoint style presentation tool, too.

Now for keeping track of everything, I have been using Google Reader, an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed Aggregator that allows me to scan multiple 'blogs, news sites, and anything else that offers an RSS feed. This saves a lot of time by checking for new updates automatically. I don't have to make the rounds of multiple sites to check for the latest posting, Google Reader does it for me. That way, I can try to keep one nostril above water in the rising tide of web 2.0 apps!

I'm on board too....

Like Shawn, I've introduced my students to Gaggle.net and the idea of using Wikispaces.com for classroom collaboration. My students took home a Wiki Warranty, and I've invited parents to join us in our project. I've issued many invitations today to join the Wiki and a lot of them were for parents! I'm excited about where my students will go with this project, and like Shawn, I've seen already how focused my kids are on their assignments coming through e-mail.

I've hosted Shawn's classes in my computer lab to work on their Wiki project. It is fascinating to watch them explore and learn with this new technology. The level of concentration and focus is really amazing. They relate to this technology, and it gives them the opportunity to do what middle school students love, socialize with one another through any means possible.

I've also set up a teacher account on imbee to give my sixth graders a chance to explore social networking in a controlled environment. Since there is so much negative buzz about Myspace, introducing and modeling correct behaviors in this environment can't be a bad thing. I'm holding back on this for a while, there are quite a few e-mails backed up in my teacher account from my kids, and I can't imagine what imbee approvals will do for my workload!

and away we go...

I introduced my students to their last class project, yesterday. They seemed genuinely enthusiastic. They were especially happy with their new email accounts that I got for them at Gaggle.net and I was up last night reading their emails until about 9:30! The next big hurdle is getting them to create and utilize the class wiki properly. I am trying to approach it by setting it up as a place for them to post "proof of learning" about things we discuss in class. I also want it to be a springboard to their own exploratory tangents on the topics we are discussing. It is also allowing me to discuss the concepts of copyright, fair use and the Creative Commons license agreement. Hopefully, it will instill in them the importance of protecting and sharing intellectual property.

Batman vs. Borg Mentality

I'm teacher of the year for my school. I had an observation today, my sixth graders were learning about netiquette and unfortunately, the observation team left before they got to see my kids use their e-mail accounts to retrieve a study guide I had sent them. That was too bad, because they missed the best part of class, watching my digital natives download an e-mail attachment for the first time. So, I got to thinking, then I got to looking around for inspiration, and ultimately, I came across this great quote, which sums up how I am feeling right now about my middle school kids.

"I come from the Batman era, adding items to my utility belt while students today are the Borg from Star Trek, assimilating technology into their lives.
Secondly, I don’t have to keep up, just keep open. I can’t remember if it was on a podcast or at a presentation I went to, but the speaker said, “I can handle ignorance, but I can’t handle fear.”
If a teacher is forward thinking and aware of what students will need in the future, they will use technology to get students where they need to go."
David Truss

I know that when Shawn sees this, he'll have plenty to add!