LightintheWoods

Today, I met with the Centre for Academic Technologies at the University of Regina. The topic of discussion was possibilities for, and the potential of, mobile tools and learning. In preparation for this discussion I prepared this wiki on Mobile Tools. You will find links to stories, possible tools, ideas around teaching & learning, strengths/opportunities & weaknesses/barriers to consider and a selection of related links. In the end we agreed on the importance of remaining current on these technologies and attempting to ensure that courses are designed with possibilities for mobile tools in mind.

Hopefully in the near the future we will see these tools integrated into courses as they are needed and not because mobile seems to be the latest & greatest trend or flashy gizmo. My feeling is that some students are already self equipped with devices that have the potential to expand upon their access to content and overall learning experience. It was evident that his area is ripe for experimentation and innovation, as we generated far more questions than answers. We are continually looking for models of success and ideas of sound pedagogical application, please share if you have any stories of mobile technologies and learning.

There is much more on this topic that I want to unpack and think about. As tools advance, barriers to efficient use of the tools will decrease and learners will continue to find ways to utilize the mini computers that we carry.

I have a related post on MP3 players from January that has more thoughts on possibilities for tools.

Some twitter folks may of followed bits of this scenario if they had been on twitter at all yesterday. If not, try to follow along. Here is how it started…

In that third tweet, I shouldn’t have used the typical teacher talk to refer to the classroom conversation as a ‘lesson’. For this post I will save you the details about the ‘conversation’/'learning experience’/'time together’, but I suspect bits and pieces will come out as I share my perspective.

Anyway, this tweet triggered a few replies. Through the early evening, we threw a few tweets back and forth. Eventually, I picked up a short conversation with @mindelei (that is the only name I know know her by.) As a brand new teacher, I like following and tweeting with Mindelei, because she is a pre-service teacher and writes well. We shared meaningful discussion and questioning on teaching about the ‘idea of cool’.

I claimed that it is important to discuss ‘cool’ with students. That everyone has their own unique sense of ‘cool’. Referring to the students, I tweeted about coolness as part of one’s ’self’. Everyone is cool in some way. I tweeted about modeling ‘cool’ and that students are shown many examples when we teach about hero’s, share best practices and point out ‘cool’ acts.

I wrote that, too often ‘cool’ equates with ‘popular’ and that is false. Coolness is not about social hierarchy at all. It is about strong values/morals/ethics, neat interests, talents, being real. To me it is about being calm, collected and with ‘it’. Again, this is my perception of the concept, if you don’t agree please share. I know this is not the general perception of cool.

Mindelei and I ended up seeing eye-to-eye, I think, and we concluded that the debate we were having was moot as it was hinging on semantics. I have invited her to follow this blog post to discuss further, if she wants.

Whoohoo, success. Learning is awesome! Thanks for making the connection between us Twitter! That is what these social tools are about.

But wait… it is not over.

I came across another recent follower that had a perspective to share. Unfortunately, he was critical of our discussion and tweeted without the @thekyleguy pre-fix to notify me of his issue with the discussion. I was taken back by these public tweets as they insulted my character and incited some further reflection. After a hike to clear my mind, I decided that blogging this to wider forum would create a learning experience. Bringing this issue to light here, ignites the topic of practicing digital citizenship and courtesy. I will share this followers’ perspective and subsequent questions that I am left with.

(Update: Chad admitted he may of mis-understood the discussion tweets and apologized through direct message this morning. I have accepted his apology but feel as though this scenario raises too many valuable topics that do not get discussed enough.)

I have copied & pasted a screenshot of Chad’s tweets from last night. Start with the tweet at the bottom.

Please, keep in mind these tweets on their own are out of context. We don’t know which which part of the discussion @cbrannon started reading my tweets. I want to learn more from this. We need to discuss further. As a sub, I want to learn about being a ‘real’ teacher. Assist me with these issues so I can carry myself better when I enter the classroom and the staffroom.

Often twitter is described as a large virtual staffroom where teachers from all over the world gather to share resources and talk. The problem here is that these patronizing tweets were shouted without direction to the whole staffroom, rather than being whispered about privately as they would likely be in a real staffroom. I come to the virtual staffroom to reflect upon and to question teaching practice and pedagogy, both my own and that of others whom I learn from.

I welcome criticism and questioning of my idea’s and thoughts, in fact I am always calling for honesty and feedback. Usually, I defend my stance or learn from the questioning perspective. In this instance, I don’t feel as though I need to defend myself against Chad’s tweets because we have determined that he mis-understood the discussion. I am, however, interested in the definition of ‘real’ teacher, the manner with which this issue has been raised, and thoughts on discussing the idea of ‘cool’ with students.

<INSERT THEME MUSIC>

Readers, I now pose the hard questions to you.

Is being ‘cool’ important to students?

Should ‘real’ teachers and students talk about the ‘idea of cool’?

Why hasn’t @cbrannon heard ‘real’ teachers talking about it?

Do you talk to kids about being cool, about bringing out their passions?

Isn’t this opportunity for authentic learning experiences?

Are substitutes, ‘real teachers’?

What is your idea of ‘cool’?

and on a personal note, do I come off as an “expert without experience”?

*You can follow all of my twitter conversations in my archive.

With any writing, the writer needs a purpose. One could write to persuade, to entertain or to inform. I find that each of these are the purposes that drive my writing. I use this blog as a space to reflect on own practice, to share tools/resources, and connect ideas that I read. I consider my audience, which I assume is mostly other connected teachers. What will they want to read about? I select tidbits of information or teaching resources to write about that interest me. Sometimes, I blog about something that I feel needs more coverage, more publicity, and other times I focus on a certain tool and how it can be used to shift classroom learning.

Personal blogging is only one part of my online activity. I am more active micro-blogging and conversing via Twitter. As I participate in/with online communities of teachers I am led to find the best models of current practices. A week doesn’t pass that I am not sitting in on a live seminar with other like minded individuals. Through other blogs, I am connected to new ideas, new teachers, new philosophy, new issues. Twitter and RSS pull my community together. I build online relationships, and discover folks with common interests. As in real life, one can not be buds with everyone, and although I follow many, my circle of major influences tightens. It is through twitter & RSS, that I strike up or follow many rich discussions that drive my philosophy and thinking about teaching and learning.

Tonight I sat down with my friend and colleague, Paul Bazin. Recently I have been pushing Paul to embrace the web 2.0 world and since September he has taken some great strides. Already he manages a blog, We have set sail to learn, within his classroom. We have chatted about bringing our classes together through blogging and perhaps online blog mentorship in some capacity.

As Paul helped me learn how to use my MacBook more efficiently, I helped him become more familiar with his blog, introduced him to twitter, del.icio.us, a variety of links and Google Reader. It was such a good learning experience for me to take some time to walk a colleague through these tools. It helped that Paul was keen to learn and had started his own web 2.0 exploration prior to our visit. This is how change happens, impact one teacher at a time if you have to. Slowly more will come to see the benefits that result from technology implementation.

On a side note: I have only ever tackled photo editing once before. Today our discussion at the Digital Internship Seminar pushed me to try out picnik and phixr. My verdict, they do the same thing but picnik seems more friendly.

I posted this in the discussion forum of the Digital Internship Project

I was naive in thinking that all Grade 6’s would have email. Turns out only about 60% do. The division I am in has it in their policy that students in grade 4 and over should have email addresses but this is slow in it’s implementation. As a result, I have been contemplating how to get them all addresses and decided to send them all home with the assignment of emailing me if they could. Perhaps I should of created them all gmail accounts? I think that I will create accounts for different applications in the future.

(One mistake in the situation above is that I gave them my teacher gmail account rather than my division email. I am going to ensure that all further correspondence takes place through my school account.)

But I digress, a couple days later a mother has written a note in an agenda stating that “her daughter is too young to have email.” uhoh, road bump. I have this floating in my head all day trying to think about solutions, when another student asks if it’s ok to use his Dad’s email account. a-ha solution.

This is just a minor situation and I have only had brief contact with a couple parents. But tonight I am going to compose a note to go home introducing the blog. And hopefully once my students start blogging we’ll have the parents in for a show and tell. I will talk briefly about blogging and rationale, but I also want to ensure parents of their child’s safety.

I am looking for suggestions and stories of experience from each of you reading this. What would put in a letter to go home? What would show or say to parents? Of course everyone’s situation is a bit different, but this is a major issue to be addressed.

School started on August 30th. First couple days were very introductory with my Gr. 5/6 split, we got to know each other and the procedures of the class. Then by Monday, our class had been switched to a straight Grade 6 and our class population only decreased by one. Now there are only 18 little darlings under my guidance. I am excited because I don’t have any experience with the grade 6 curriculum so this gives me a chance to expand upon my K-5 elementary University program. If anybody has any tips on middle years activities or resources lead me to them please.

I have been a little nervous about where and how I was going to implement tech tools. But slowly it is happening. I set up the class blog and have used it to link the students to math games and endangered species information throughout the week but hadn’t really explained what it was or how we are going to use it. On Friday, I finally got our schools sole projector set up in the computer lab and introduced the class to Thinking Exploring Learning. They were the best behaved they had been all week, they ate it up. They, not I, can wait to get started. It was my intent to familiarize them with the blog through commenting and eventually take some time for them to create their own blog. This is all fine and dandy, until I realized that half of them don’t have email addresses yet and they are required for commenting on this blog. Little bump in the road. Their homework for the weekend was to try to set up an account, so far only two students have emailed me their address.  I think we will have to take some time to do set up email this week.

On the positive, my co-operating teacher really thinks that this blogging idea is great. This is a relief for me because it would be difficult for me to implement this tool if I didn’t have her in my corner. We both saw a difference with the class in the computer lab, they were so into it.  I am convinced that the use of this tool will reinforce the key learnings that we have over the semester.  They want to be on the computers, they recognize the computer as a valuable tool.

Three weeks left then internship, grade 5/6. I am pumped. But also a tad nervous… So many questions. I am starting out with Phys ed and hopefully by the end of the first week I will be using lab times to get started on student blogging and introducing various tools. But I don’t really know how I am going to begin and I am looking for advice. I know that my implementation of technology will snowball and develop over time but I want to be prepared so I can guide successful usage.

This idea came to me from David Jakes via twitter, he asked the question of which video to show on the first days of school - the answers came in as Did you know? Pay Attention and Sir Ken Robinson. or maybe The machine is us/ing us But what else do we need to do to start.

I believe I need to begin with a strong focus on digital citizenship. So I will probably also show Think BeforeYou Post and introduce why how real life and digital life is one in the same.

But how else can we prepare our students over the first couple weeks. What are the best choices for setting up student blogs? Do I get them google accounts right off the bat? That way we can use google docs, blogger, reader. How about use RSS? What particular routines or rules will be useful for class management?

I am looking for answers from all you teachers out there. Please help.