LightintheWoods

I am blessed to be participatory in a diverse network of thinkers and learners whom mentor me on a daily basis. I am beginning a series Mentorship Recognition Pieces. I think mentorship needs to be celebrated and appreciated more and I hope to do that with through these brief Biographies.

This is a shout out for Kelly Christopherson. Kelly works tirelessly connecting online and ensuring he runs the best school possible. In his writing, Kelly devours the idea of online learning networks in real ways. The perspectives he shares at Educational Discourse are rich with reflection and advice for balancing an online learning community with the daily demands that teachers face. When he is not drafting a new post, @kwhobbes shares insight with his twitter colleagues, builds Ning communities for fellow Administrators to connect and attends a wide array of online professional development opportunities. I share Kelly’s blog because he is representative of an administrator that has shifted his thinking about learning.

Photo Credit @kwhobbes Twitter Profile

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.

Do they know how marketers watch?

In an effort to make website privacy policies kid friendly, The Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada Blog shared this neat story out of Ontario. Val Steeves (University of Ottawa) and Jacquelyn Burkell and Anca Micheti (University of Western Ontario) researched students abilities/willingness to read & comprehend online text. Now the they have come together to draft child friendly privacy policy consents for websites.

Their guidelines provide advice on word choice and phrasing (avoid double negatives; keep sentences simple and paragraphs short); information structure (arrange information in a logical order; start paragraphs with topic sentences); and design consideration (use 12-14 font size and typefaces designed for the web or preferred by kids; leave enough white space).

Turns out that a simpler version of privacy policy is coming to websites near you. I hope they continue collaborating with students and youth nation wide on this issue. I wonder how Canadian classrooms could get together to create this policy together? It will be interesting to see what comes of this initiative. I think this is another movement for the childs voice. Might make it easier for adults too
More from Val Steeves

How children’s sites see your kids as marketing goldmines

My apologies to Lee Lefever and CommonCraft for the play on words.

My friend Lowell posted this Video. 3 guys get together to create hollywood style filming. Very cool use of green screen.

This post explores some ideas of how we can leverage mp3 players to enhance learning of the langauge. Schools try to prohibit students use of these devices, but that is the wrong approach. Innovative educators find ways to use these tools to expand their lessons. I have started to compile ideas and models of classroom use. You can be the judge as to how it will work for you. Projects involving MP3 players can be used to achieve objectoves from each of Saskatchewan’s 6 language arts strands; Speaking, Listening,Viewing, Reading, Respresenting, writing.

“12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time.” Pew Internet, 11/22/2

I have had this blog post on the back burner for little while. As a Digital Intern, I received funding from a Microsoft Partners in Learning (MPIL) Grant to purchase tools for my school. I chose MP3 Players to be part of the package. Today, I sat in on a meeting about potential classroom use of the tools. These two factors inspired this post.

Teacher’s automatically are intrigued by the idea of digitized assessment, voice recorders capture the blurbs of learning that students express in conversation. I used the recorder to record conversation during group work, reading, presenting & debating. As I walked the room I recorded student conversations, captured their responses to questions and made additional anecdotal comments. I briefly reviewed the material recorded and realized it would take a lot of time to listen to every minute again. The neat thing is that the recordings are digitized and stored as part of the students portfolio. The teachers at the school are excited about the potential of recording reading benchmarks for comparative data.

Rationale for using these tools; because our students do.

Ideas and models of classroom use of the Tool:

1. Listening to eBooks/podcasts

I have been in two conversations in the past two days in which someone has referred to a book they listened to. You need to search for free ebooks, but they are out there.

There are podcasts on many, many topics and new content added every second. Search iTunes or Juice to find podcasts that relate to the subject matter you are studying. iTunes U has a huge library of College podcasts. Educators may want to visit the Education Podcast Network to find podcasts from other educators and examples of podcasts organized by grade or subject. CBC is another favorite source for radio podcasts.

2. Take recording on the road, record learning and observations from fieldtrips. My good friend Paul had students interview one another while visiting the McKenzie Art Gallery. Listen to the podcasts at his classes blog. Again capturing the thoughts and ideas as they are expressed.

3. Create Radio Shows on a variety of topics

This could range from a strong 15 sec advertisement to a full out Sprankle Style Production. My fellow intern Joy, had her Gr 7 students create podcasts on music from different era’s. She called it “Music Through Time”. I worked with a group that studied music from the 70’s and created their version of what a radio show sounded like at that time. It should be noted that teachers need to allow time to work out the intangibles of larger projects.

4. Record the project instructions once in a while. Change up your presentation method. Record the instructions for your next assignment.

Possibilities are endless. Have students verbally record the process of a science experiment. Upload a daily language lesson. Drum with a professional. The teacher no longer has to be the only professional in the classroom.

Sharon Peters‘ grade 9 class completed a neat interview project (covering all levels of blooms taxonomy) as part of their response to a novel study on The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Once scripted the students record their podcast and post to their class wiki. Sharon also pointed me pointed me to LEARN Quebec as a source for classroom ideas.

Damien Baxerica has had his high school students record dramatic readings of The Crucible. Students also learn from teaching peers with their Slidecast Presentations.

You will also find Brian Grenier’s Classroom Tech Podcasting Wiki to be a good resource for the podcasting teacher.

I can’t afford books. I live the life of a student. I read what is published online but often like to sit in a comfy chair to read from paper. So I visited the library. Now I am reading two insightful, opininated books Wikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams and The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. Wikinomics takes the leftist view, Cult of the Amateur the right. I can relate to very well to the arguments of both books and look forward to reading them this afternoon.

I wanted others opinions on these books, so I sent a shout out via Twitter.

Here was some of the feedback from two edubloggers that I follow and who’s opinions I definitely respect.

That is not where this sharing ended. While searching for more info on both books I came across Lawerence Lessig’s critique of Andrew Keen’s, Cult of the Amateur. I knew this would be of interest to Darren, so I tweeted the link to him.

I don’t know about any of you, but this type of collaborative interaction definitely builds my background and demonstrates the power of the online network. This book talk has taught me much more than any of the Oprah Book Clubs I have participated in and this all happened within the last two hours.

Today was a big day.

Alec Couros has invited me to participate as an assistant with his EC&I 831 Course. Tonight was the first class via Adobe Connect. I am very excited about this opportunity. Not many folks are teaching assistants without first taking the course, nevermind a graduate level course.

Dean Shareski made my day brighter by inviting me to join him on Friday to shoot video and later accompanying him to work with classrooms within Prairie South School Division.

Having these mentors is quite a honor and definitely a testimony to my learning of educational technology over the last while. These two individuals are instrumental to my personal/professional development and I am honored to work this closely with them so early in my career.

Later in the day, I returned to the University of Regina to complete the final course of my Education Degree. The course is on the the teaching of writing, so I have no doubt this blog will see improvements in my writing. Returning to class feels odd. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a second year course and I am ready to graduate with my second degree. It may be that I feel ready for the classroom, I feel ready to teach. Perhaps, it is because I have taken control of my own learning process and the class is disconnected from the network (so far). I had some ideas for bringing web 2.0 to my peers. I am going to speak to my prof about creating a common tag for internet resources. Hopefully I will coerce somebody to join me on del.icio.us. I already have plans to create a wiki for my major project, and hopefully I will be able to push the idea on my group members.

I continue to explore, learn and develop professionally. Thanks be to the network.

Note: I found this archived post from Sept 20/07. Reading over it again tweaks my brain. I still agree with what I wrote. I get a sense of my own growth and learning over the past couple months by looking back at posts like these. My current notes are in green.

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.

An interesting thing happened tonight. Steve Dembo hosted Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. Daniel spoke live at this Webinar through WebEx. Upwards of 190 people listened, some of whom participated in live chat. Great Learning happened. It became interesting when CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis created a google Doc for Show Notes. 29 people participated collaborating to create the document.

As I contemplate how learning happens, I see possibilities for Google Docs in the classroom and auditorium. In January, I begin a position with the Center for Acedemic Technology and The Center for Teaching and Learning. One of my tasks will be to present to faculty from around the University of Regina on relevant ways to adopt web 2.0 tools into their teaching practice. I think Google Docs is a good place to start. Whether it is compiling notes or participating in a larger scale project. A good example of this comes from Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University and Professor Wecsh’s Video A Vision of Students Today. Students used Google Docs to compile stats and info.

Live blogging from our Digital Internship Project

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