Today and tomorrow I am participating in seminars for our Digital Internship Project. I think this is a great opportunity professional development opportunity for new interns. We are a group of 34 interns and a handful of faculty advisor’s collaborating to find and implement new strategies for learning. Please visit our network to follow along with hot topics through the forum, individual blog reflections and videos that we are watching.

The fact is that current teachers are generally not well versed with how to use technology in the classroom, but we will be. We will hit the ground running. Technology, specifically web 2.0 tools, are becoming an increasingly important component of education. Students are online, they are interested in learning through the screen. This engages them and promotes life long learning. I stand by this entire paragraph, I have spoken to my peers in education and other faculties and none feel as though they have enough preparation in regards to how they can use technology for their own development. In fact I find that most neglect their life long learning and only do whats needed to secure a % grade.

We all have issues… there is always hoops to jump through, have to find solutions if we really believe in it.

I am trying to move from the idea that we are “jumping hoops” toward the concept of “working through struggles.” Every situation has them, the difference is in how one works through them.

Alec Couros stated “It is like a life change in technology, it all seems very complicated until you get started and you slowly develop.”

Alec sums up my learning experience over the past 7 months. I am very comfortable now sharing the tools that I us. By taking risks I have found many rewards and continue to develop further.

Reminds me of Clarence Fisher’s advice that the secret to success is to “Let it be organic, don’t force it, let it grow. Pick one thing and become an expert. If it’s blogging then blog and blog well, then move on to new tools.”

I often bring this lesson up when I am speaking to people about bringing technology into their lives. I am guilty of spreading a net too large. I tend to start many projects without really finalizing as much as I would like. As a digital intern I tried to become an expert teacher of technology and facilitator of learning. With my classroom I developed a blogging style that opened learning up and directed students to explore and utilize the web. It was a good start.

For my professional development I have really focused on being a leech that feeds on information from my ever building my network. I have come to better understand my learning. Part of me wishes I blogged more frequently, but I get myself busy surfing & reading, twittering and del.icio.us’ing . My goals for the New Year are to become more active creating and commenting. To collaborate and to develop new material, to trial and to error.

Here are some sites he shared. I will add links and descriptions later.

9:00 – Alec shows us some tools from a brainstorm list

• Chacha - Live online Search
  
• Skreemer - Music Search
• Google Sketchup -
• Remember the Milk – Remember tasks through online tasks. Idea to share assignments and reminders with students.
• Gmail accounts for students and teachers – Couros Blog – Watch the Jing Cast

• Dandelife – Lifecast – Student Biography Projects – Personal Time Lines
• Slideshare – share powerpoints – Add audio with slidecast
• Gliffy – Online Drawing Tools
• QiZiQ – Online study help. Created by 15 year old
• Dynamic Images
• FD’s Flickr Page – Motivational posters
• Let them sing it for you
• Edutopia. Great source of ideas for teachers.

9:45 – A short explanation of Creative Commons. Re-useable content, crediting

10:00 - Dean Shareski is getting us Geocaching. I have looked forward to this presentation for some time.

geocaching.com

Dean is going to share how geocaching is applicable in a variety of ways. Technology doesn’t have to be sedentary. Anecdotes of GPS in dogs, senile grandparents, agriculture (GPS in tractors), prior to 2000 the satellites were only used for military use.

video from howstuffworks.com

video Simpsons on Google Earth

video – geocaching on UNC-TV

What is GeoCaching. Hidden Caches like a treasure hunt. Multi-cache sites, Dozens of forms of geocaching. Scratching the surface of how we can use it in the classroom.

People are starting to use GPS for all sorts of businesses and hobbies.

How to: look up on web, get coordinates, find location with a GPS

10:20 Getting Ready to go outside. Passing out devices to go over interface. Looking at geocaching.com
viewing the online map, clues and cordinates. Finding the location on Google Earth. Read the logs of other people that went looking for the cache to make sure of existence of the cache.

Fun way for students to learn coordinates, longitude, latitude. Need to learn more about mapping marked points. I will need to spend some time geocaching and thinking about classroom implementation before I get students going.

More to come.  This is something I want to learn more about

Here is a quick reflection of some of things that we have been doing:

Math PODS – We are supplementing 25 year old Houghton-Mifflin Texts with time where we break into groups and visit a variety of stations. These include computer activities, manipulative tasks and problem solving.

Social Studies – Canada: A World Player Task Card Unit – For this task card unit students are learning about Canada’s global role and our relationship with the world. Students complete tasks by conducting research of a variety of resources, but on paper and through cyber text.

Wakamow Valley Field Study – In order to enhance our study of eco-systems we visited to one in our own backyard. We focused the introduction of our classroom study on the importance of Water to the world. With a focus on how it sustains all life. While examining the eco-system we kept track of animal signs – manure, tracks, feathers, shells. We examined the lack of life in the Moose Jaw River. We returned to the classroom to learn about Food Webs and the interdependent balance of all things. It was a great learning experience for all of us.

Nothing to do with iPods. Dean suggests that maybe we shoud call it ‘netcasting’. Podcasts are another way of sharing information. It is important to spend some time and look at what other people are doing with podcasts in the classroom and what kind of content is out there. Find exemplary work.

We are talking about how we can subscribe and use podcasts successfully through iTunes.

What kind of content would be of interest to students and listeners?

How do we make and load podcasts? (simply & quickly)

Lots of related links to tools through Deans wiki. Podcast People is recommended as the easiest tool to use in creating podcasts. Dean is demoing how we create content direct to the web, similar to voicethread. Not as rich as using a tool like GarageBand but is a great online application.

Dean is showing the process of how he recorded his recent Skype conversation with Clarence Fisher, using audacity. He then uploaded the .mp3 of his Podcast 33, the third installment of his interviews for his K12 presention on classroom design. to archive.org.

Students can write scripts and practice talking. Try to make it sound like you are telling a story. That is the initial start, show examples of kids that don’t sound like they are reading directly from the script.

Dean showed the video of Bob Sprankle’s work.

Session 2: Alecs Digital Video Presentation 2:30-3:45

All you need a camera and a firewire cable.

Take video’s off youtube

iMovie trials

Alec has created this wiki on Media Literacy, unfortunately his slides are not posted. The wiki provides many great examples on the dark side of the web.

Looking at the dark side of the web. Alec touches on history and problems since 2000.

1. Scams, bullying (starwars kid)
2. racist sites, pro-suicide sites, anti-immigration

We touched on Prensky’s idea of Digital Natives vs. Immigrants.

Touched on how consumerism drives companies (iPhone).

Neil Postman 5 things we need to know about Tech Change. Missed the last two and am looking for a link.

• tech change requires tradeoff
• +/- are never distributed equitably
• not addictive, ecological

Parents have little idea of what’s happening. Alec shows metaspy.com what people are looking at.

Whats big with teens

- poker, rating sites (hot or not), alcohol sites, downloading/sharing,

- video assults, phone bans

Interns shaddy experiences on the net

- Axe deordant ad on website

Plagiarism is a major issue with internet. Sites that trade and sell papers. I did this, but would never now that I understand content. I had a lack of awareness and understanding of researching and consequences.

turnitin.com is a solution that cross checks references. Policing is the last thing we need, Alec says more groundwork needs to laid. I think being proactive should always be the first step. We need to teach what plagiarism is and why it is wrong. Need to teach importance of citations and reference.

Democratic creation of material is a foundational component of Media Literecy. We need to teach awareness so that our students can achieve the potential of the internet while avoiding dangers.

Safe Searching images, wikimedia commons