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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Dad, I really want this dog!
Would you be able to say no? I used my new iFlip video to shoot this short clip. I'm thinking that an iFlip could really help a busy classroom teacher who wants to have students record significant learnings to post to the classroom blog.
The Great Firewall of China
I was listening to NPR this morning and caught an interesting segment. China is attempting to limit on-line gaming to those under 18 by requiring software developers to install "anti-addiction" software to their programs.
According to an article in the BBC News,
Gamers playing for more than five hours will get no points. A teenager was interviewed for the NPR segment, and said that they have already figured out how to get around the software - they register with someone else's name who is over 18.
All of this makes me think of the discussion about filtering in schools here in the states. I read Steve Dembo's TechLearning blog post last night, since it relates to the message he delivered to our Walled Laked teachers during his keynote address at our Spice it Up Technology Conference. One of his main points that I heard is that we cannot block all the social networking sites to protect our children.... they know how to get around the filters and restrictions that we set. They use on-line social networking sites at school and at home. The key is EDUCATION. Since Steve's keynote, I have been thinking about strategies to employ to make on-line safety education a part of what ALL teachers do in Walled Lake, K-12. The students who spoke at the Spice it Up Student Panel agreed that on-line safety has not been addressed much by their teachers. Awareness is the first step, so I suppose broadcasting Steve's message (that we taped) so that all the folks who did not hear it should be a priority. Then what? How do we ensure that the education is not done in a "hit and miss" fashion? Yes, all 8th graders have on-line safety instruction as a part of the NCLB 8th grade tech literacy requirement. This is obviously not enough! Please add your ideas as a comment to this post. Thanks!
According to an article in the BBC News,
The Chinese government has clamped down on the amount of time youngsters can spend playing online games, according to the official news agency Xinhua. Under-18s who play for more than three consecutive hours a day will have limits imposed on the amount of points they can score, the agency reported.
Gamers playing for more than five hours will get no points. A teenager was interviewed for the NPR segment, and said that they have already figured out how to get around the software - they register with someone else's name who is over 18.
All of this makes me think of the discussion about filtering in schools here in the states. I read Steve Dembo's TechLearning blog post last night, since it relates to the message he delivered to our Walled Laked teachers during his keynote address at our Spice it Up Technology Conference. One of his main points that I heard is that we cannot block all the social networking sites to protect our children.... they know how to get around the filters and restrictions that we set. They use on-line social networking sites at school and at home. The key is EDUCATION. Since Steve's keynote, I have been thinking about strategies to employ to make on-line safety education a part of what ALL teachers do in Walled Lake, K-12. The students who spoke at the Spice it Up Student Panel agreed that on-line safety has not been addressed much by their teachers. Awareness is the first step, so I suppose broadcasting Steve's message (that we taped) so that all the folks who did not hear it should be a priority. Then what? How do we ensure that the education is not done in a "hit and miss" fashion? Yes, all 8th graders have on-line safety instruction as a part of the NCLB 8th grade tech literacy requirement. This is obviously not enough! Please add your ideas as a comment to this post. Thanks!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Distance Collaboration
I have had the pleasure of working with several people from across the state of Michigan on a professional development project for the 1:1 Institute. We have used Moodle (for file upload, wiki, and chat), Ning, Skype, and email to collaborate over the past several weeks. I found that I was able to closely connect with these folks using these on-line tools, something that I didn't think would be easy to do. Now I feel even more strongly about the need to give our students more opportunities to use on-line communiation tools for educational purposes.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Spice it Up!
The school district where I work in Michigan held our 3rd annual "Spice it Up" Technology Conference. It is conference for teachers, put on by our own TALENTED teachers. We had a great start to the day with a virtual presentation by Discovery Education's Steve Dembo. Can't get much better than that. Some of the teachers really missed being able to see Steve's face (although they did get to see a photo of him in a Star Trek outfit), but they listened intently and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We also had a student panel; a mix of high school, middle school, and elementary students. The students were candid about their experiences growing up in the digital age. One high school student said "Technology is here to stay. We really need you teachers to jump on board and use technology with your students." Another student wanted us to know that teenagers really can read email and study at the same time.
I facilitated workshops the entire day. The teachers in my MovieMaker video created a "I am a Teacher" video, following the same format as the "When I Become a Teacher" video that is posted on YouTube. That was a lot of fun! I'll load it on TeacherTube and link it up here sometime in the near future.
The day was exhausing and invigorating at the same time. The turnout was good and the teachers who attended were appreciative and are anxious about putting into practice some of what they learned today.
I facilitated workshops the entire day. The teachers in my MovieMaker video created a "I am a Teacher" video, following the same format as the "When I Become a Teacher" video that is posted on YouTube. That was a lot of fun! I'll load it on TeacherTube and link it up here sometime in the near future.
The day was exhausing and invigorating at the same time. The turnout was good and the teachers who attended were appreciative and are anxious about putting into practice some of what they learned today.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Great News: NSBA Report on Social Networking
The National School Boards Association published a report in July, 2007, to communicate their stance on social networking for education. The report, called "Creating and Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational -Networking," is posted on their website, http://files.nsba.org/creatingandconnecting.pdf. All educators need to read this report.
The stance of NSBA is "Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression....but students may learn these lessons better while they are actually using social networking tools." NSBA is seeking a balance between protecting students and providing a 21st century education.
From my experiences working with teachers, I find that the general perception of online social networking is that it is bad, scary, and has nothing to do with education. However, I find that this thinking is due to having had no experiences with social networking. The 60 teachers who joined me in a Web 2.0 usergroup have now had positive experiences with social networking for their own professional development and learning. Once teachers discover the fun, exciting, motivating, and powerful learning that can result as a result of online social networking, they hopefully will take the risk to allow their students to learn using social networking tools. There are safe tools to use.... Moodle comes to mind.
Does anyone have other ideas about how we can keep our students safe while allowing them to use the social networking tools that are such a huge part of their lives? How else can we help teachers and administrators overcome their fears about social networking?
81% of the students surveyed (1,277 students ages 9-17) have used a social networking website sometime over the past three months, and almost 60% report discussing educational topics on social networking sites. Yet the vast majority of school districts ban social networking during the school day, even though students and parents report few problem behaviors on-line.
The stance of NSBA is "Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression....but students may learn these lessons better while they are actually using social networking tools." NSBA is seeking a balance between protecting students and providing a 21st century education.
From my experiences working with teachers, I find that the general perception of online social networking is that it is bad, scary, and has nothing to do with education. However, I find that this thinking is due to having had no experiences with social networking. The 60 teachers who joined me in a Web 2.0 usergroup have now had positive experiences with social networking for their own professional development and learning. Once teachers discover the fun, exciting, motivating, and powerful learning that can result as a result of online social networking, they hopefully will take the risk to allow their students to learn using social networking tools. There are safe tools to use.... Moodle comes to mind.
Does anyone have other ideas about how we can keep our students safe while allowing them to use the social networking tools that are such a huge part of their lives? How else can we help teachers and administrators overcome their fears about social networking?
Friday, August 3, 2007
Gmail Collaborative Video
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/VfDW7qAdFGk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]I learned about this collaborative video from Langwitches, who learned about it from A Teacher's Life. http://mail.google.com/mvideo
Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. Post your clip as a response to this one. We'll edit a selection of submissions together to make a final video, which will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.
Respond to this video with your own clip by August 13, 2007 to be considered to the final collaborative video. Learn more about the project at http://mail.google.com/mvideoThis looks like fun to me!
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Visit to NYC
I've never been to New York City before. It is a hustling, bustling place! I enjoyed a week without cars. I took this photo of the harbor at dusk. We visited the World Trade Center site, walked through Central park, and walked through Times Square. It was a great week, but I'm happy to be back to Michigan, with all the green grass and trees. Vacation is over. It's time to prepare for the start of the schoolyear! I need to finish up my preparations for workshops I'll be facilitating on grant writing, MovieMaker, and Moodle for Walled Lake's "Spice it Up" Tech Conference on Aug 21.
Vista & Office 2007 Tutorials
The how-to videos for using Vista and Office 2007 are now available from Walled Lake's Tech PD webpage. Hopefully they will be helpful to teachers and students (and anyone else) as they learn to use the new software.
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