Tip for the day

I just read my tip for the day which is a great idea for using the count words feature in Word to improve student writing. Here is the link.

http://ewarkentin.edublogs.org/

Janice

A new job

I am starting a new job this fall. It will take a while to settle into things and learn, so I may not be writing much... then again, I may be writing more.

I have moved from the district I was subbing in which is a huge inner city district to an elite district on the west side of town. People move to this area just for the schools. I will be an interesting chance to see things from a different point of view. This is just SO different than anything I have experienced so far. There is huge support for technology and for professional teaching. I am full time at an elementary school (K-5) and they want me to be working with classroom teachers more than fixing machines!

My goals for this year:
1. Spend more time in classrooms supporting effective use of technology in classrooms than I spend alone with equipment (or running around the halls with cables, etc...)

2. Figure out how to keep up with reading and writing blogs when working like this! How does anyone do it!!

The balance has been a bit off this first week as things start, but I am going to do my best to be in classrooms as much as I am in the lab.

I just thought I would write a short note for the two of you who read this and wonder what happened to me.

Starting the School Year

I have been spending some time the last week getting ready for the coming school year. I am starting a new job and I have very little real idea of what it will be like, so it is hard to prepare. I have focused instead, for right now, on being present and available and learning people's names. I also decorated bulletin boards and did some exploring to see what is in the lab (I am the Computer Technology Coordinator). I know that it is very different than it will be next year when I KNOW everyone and there are expectations for me and I am doing beginning of the year training and all of the things that I will look back and say "I wish I had done that at the beginning of last year".

However, I was just reading blogs and feeling a little guilty about not doing more specific preparation. Other people are writing about the training they are doing and the class plans that they are making.

Instead right now I am reading blogs. In Doug Johnson's most recent blog he talked a bit about Covey's Time Management Matrix. He said that blog reading and writing falls in Quadrant III Urgent and Not Important or maybe Quadrant IV Not Urgent and Not Important. I am thinking that I have learned so much in the last year by reading blogs that it is possible that they should be in Quadrant II for me. Not Urgent and Important. I am tempted to put it in Quadrant III or IV, but I think it might be too important and I would lose something by cutting it out.... What do you think?

Beginning School

I wanted to point out the blog called The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmear. It is a collection of some really inspiring thoughts for teachers that my friend Mark Ahlness has pointed out. I think that reading them is a great way to start the school year.

Thoughts on Organic Change

I have this thought banging around quietly in the back of my head and it poked its head out again a tiny bit this week and so I am going to try to express it. I am doing this without reading what I wrote before first, but I think I did write about it.

Last school year I was substitute teaching and I was trying to observe (as much as you can) from a substitute's vantage point what was happening in general with technology in schools. I was dismayed that even though there were usually 4-5 pretty new, Internet connected computers in each classroom most of them were not being used at all. I probably saw a handful of classrooms where it looked like the technology might be being used in interesting ways.

That disturbs me. I add to that comments from friends who are big technology users saying that they are seen as odd. They are identified as the techie teacher. I add to that 6 years of working with the eMINTS program where teachers were given a room full of equipment and two years of intensive support and training on using technology in the classroom. After those two years the percentage of teachers doing interesting and worth while things with technology was much larger, but it seemed to me that more than half slipped back into their old comfortable ways of teaching and I would guess that there are schools that divided up that equipment between all of the rooms, or made the room a lab, or waited until the equipment was obsolete and then decided it didn't really work.

I know that in the last few (can it really be 7?) years teachers have been dealing with NCLB and testing pressures and that has taken a huge toll on project based learning which is really what technology is good at supporting. But, my thought bumping around in my head is that there is more to it than that.

What I am thinking is that change happens in organic ways and that schools change in their own (very slow) organic pace, but they ARE changing. I am wondering if we (supporters of technology in schools) have been working against this organic type of change first by thinking of teachers as technology users (good) vs. non technology users (poor). Then by putting lots of equipment in each classroom whether it is used or not and blaming those who do not use it for not using it. But what can you do differently? How can you work with organic change to make it happen better? Is that a helpful metaphor?

Photos From:
Bonguri, Flickr Photo, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonguri/128765190/ August, 2007

Bonguri Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonguri/128765116/in/photostream/ August 2007

Reflections on Blogging Online Projects

I tried to write this on Sunday, but my brain was struggling with jet lag. Now, Wednesday, I feel ready to try to express myself. I am really hoping for some feedback and suggestions from this posting because I am feeling too close to the blogs to see the whole picture. This third time of blogging in Greece seemed the least meaningful and successful to me. Here are some things I observed:

• Fewer comments and questions - It seemed like many of the comments were "It sounds like you are having a good time". I have learned from this experience the value of a travel blog as a way to communicate to a wider group of friends and family more pictures and stories about your trip. I am always amazed after returning at the people who say, "I read your blog and really enjoyed it." But that is not the purpose that I was hoping for this blog and that is why I stopped blogging when I got to Vienna, Austria. I was hoping that this would be an opportunity for some students (I had summer school classes and some home schoolers who wrote that they were interested) to participate in my trip.
  
• Lack of comments from students-In all three Greece trips I have hoped to engage students to ask questions and to give them opportunities to learn from experts on site about things like archaeology and Greek culture. When I am there that is what has motivated me to ask question and learn myself about various things. Somehow the questions of others get my curiosity and energy moving. It feels like a communication rather than posting pictures and information for a vague audience.
• Less Interest on my part-Maybe because of the lack of response from others and maybe because it was my third time in Corinth I did not have the same sense of curiosity and amazement that I had other times. I have already written about the Corinth canal and about the museum and many other things.
  

It is strange because in some ways it was the easiest trip in terms of being connected to the Internet. The excavation house where I stayed had wireless that worked really well and was free, most of the time. There were a few days when it was down and then it was not too hard to get to an Internet Cafe because we had a rental car. The Internet cafe only charged 2 euro an hour (about $2.60) rather than three euro.

One good thing is that the blogs that I wrote are still there and will be available for anyone looking for information or pictures even in the future. On the first trip I had hoped to connect some American students with friends in a school in Greece. I learned that it took weeks to make the contacts in the village and visit the school there. That was not easy. And then the teachers at the school, although they were very friendly with me were not really interested in American schools or students and so it was clear that I would be an intermediary rather than helping them make a direct connection. Also, the students seemed less curious about Americans. Maybe they think they already know everything from movies and television shows. I am not sure. There was good participation from my American student friends.

On the second trip I had given up that hope, but I found a very interested group of students at John Muir Elementary school among others, who did participate. They asked some good questions and did participate, so that was fun. My husband was actually digging on a dig in Corinth, so I had first hand information on some really interesting stuff-like what it is like to find a coin. I also went to Turkey so there was a bunch of new stuff to talk about in the last week of the trip.

This time it was really hot and we traveled with others and so there were distractions. It seemed like there wasn't much new and I didn't think many people were reading.

The blogs are at:
http://malahinitx.blogspot.com
http://jfriesen.edublogs.org
http://jfriesen.my-ecoach.com

One thing that this experience has done is it has given me the chance to try different blogging tools.

I decided that Blogger.com, although smooth and easy to use, was not the best choice for schools to use. One of the schools that wanted to participate the first time spent two weeks getting it unblocked and by then it was too late.

I liked edublogs, but had to post all of my pictures on my own webspace somewhere and link to them.

I also liked my-ecoach. It was by far the easiest for my pictures. I could upload them right to the page and they were automatically resized. At this point it does not have the ability to use tags, so I think that matters, but I haven't been very good at tagging everything yet.

I also use Classblogmeister and hoped to put my blog in two places since that is what my ESL students read and write to, but I was not up to the task of keeping up two blogs, especially because with Classblogmeister it is not just copying and pasting, but adding a little code. I do like Classblogmeister for the ability to receive and help students edit their work and comments before they are posted.

I don't know if I will travel like that soon again, but I am thinking that I have to do something different in order to motivate more participation next time. Are there any ideas floating out there? If you read the blog did it just seem like a travel log and like I "had a good time"? Maybe I wrote it differently and so there wasn't much to question or comment on.... I hope to hear from you.