My Great Idea

One of the ways that I share my excitement for educational technology is through graduate online course development. I write ed tech courses for Pearson Higher Ed. This spring and summer I have been busy with a course featuring Web 2.0 technology. I wrote the course and then talked with Pearson's video guru, Vikki Myers, about video content. During our conversation I listed my Who's Who of ed tech Web 2.0 - Wes Fryer; Women of Web 2.0 (Jennifer Wagner, Vicki Davis, Cheryl Oakes, Sharon Peters); Will Richardson; Dave Warlick; Joselyn Todd; and Bill Ferriter. "By the way," I mentioned casually, "most of these people are sure to be at NECC. And they will probably be present for the edu blogger con."

My project manager and her supervisor loved the idea of talking to all these people at one time. So they started making calls and got permission to attend the blogger con and film it. I was so thrilled to be part of the project I could hardly contain myself. My husband listened to my delight bubbling over and even encouraged me to fly out to be there. Unfortunately it was the same day as my daughter's birthday party and I missed her birthday for NECC last year. So I didn't pursue it, but I could hardly wait for the blogger con to arrive and see if there was any buzz on the Web about it. Little did I know the buzz would be about my "great idea" and whether it was great or the ruin of the blogger con.

Some bloggers were mad that Pearson showed up, accusing them(us) of stealing ideas and changing the climate at the blogger con. I was crushed. I only wanted more teachers to be inspired by the great ideas of my favorite ed techies and now it seemed like it had all gone wrong.

I talked to Elaine Roberts the next day and she assured me that blogger con and the conversations there were awesome! Later that day her comments on Wes Fryer's podcast seemed to quiet the storm. I hope in the end this will continue debate about intellectual property, learning communities and commercial enterprises and maybe it will be a great idea after all.

Technorati Tags: necc blog Pearson

Image by Wes Fryer(http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/649225040/)

Swimming with the Pods

It's summer, but I can't get away from school or technology. My school district is hosting staff development sessions this summer. We don't have to pay anything to attend, but after arranging for a neighbor to walk the dog, paying for camp for two kids and asking a friend to drive the kids to camp it's not exactly free either.

But after all that, I am here with iPod, laptop and flash drive in hand. I have attended short sessions on podcasting before, but I was always dipping my toes in the podcasting water. Today I dove in head first.

I recorded a podcast, added it to a web page with a podcasting plug-in (podpress), set my iTunes settings and Voila'!

I am a podcaster!

Technorati Tags: podcast elementary media

A Measure of Success

It's the first day of summer vacation! Ahhh! It feels good to have a bit more time on my hands. I still have work on my online courses, but no big deadlines around the corner and no 1st graders to meet at 10:45 each day.

With a great deal of cooperation from my fellow teachers I was able to complete a small piece of both my 1st grade and 3rd grade projects.

3rd Grade Wiki
Ms. W's class, the chatty bunch struck silent by the introduction of the Wiki, were the farthest ahead and were able to publish some answers to their key questions in the Wiki. Next time I will have them compose in Word and then copy and paste into the Wiki. We lost a lot of time waiting for the Wiki to be available to edit. There was one student who was so excited about the Wiki that she came to talk to me outside class about how I set it up. Made my day!

1st Grade Publishing
Ms. J is a very tech savvy teacher and very accommodating. So I asked her if I could work with her students outside of their regular computer time. I learned from a second grader how to make recordings directly in KidPix. So we made a KidPix slideshow out of it. It didn't turn out as polished as I would have liked, but the kids were thrilled to see their work! Ms. J brought them to the lab to see it on the last day of school and she is planning to create a slideshow next year.

Technorati Tags: elementary wiki kidpix

Bad Report Card

My euphoria from last week has worn off. Remember back in elementary school when all you got was S (satisfactory) or NS (not satisfactory)? Today I felt like a kid who got her report card back covered with NS.

I didn't realize how much I wanted closure on my projects. How important it was for me to have a concrete finished product. And I am not going to get it.

My colleagues decided that we won't have our regular classes all next week. We have field day Monday and Tuesday, so those days are lost. Wednesday and Thursday we will have our end of year celebration. It all makes sense of course, but I was hoping to have just a few more days to teach.

This week is it. I get to see each class one more time.

The wiki isn't done. The 1st grade PowerPoint project isn't done. One of the second grade teachers, who isn't particularly techie finished a better KidPix project with her class than I was able to manage.

The donated computers we got last month are still sitting in the corner of the lab. I forgot to write an agenda for the Media & Technology meeting tomorrow morning. I couldn't remember kids' names today.

Sigh! The price you pay for biting off more than you can chew in the last 10 days of school!

. . . but I'd do it again, and probably will.

Crazy Pays Off

Third graders. The biggest class that I teach. A chatty bunch. I picked the most disruptive student to show the Wiki first. She loved it.

With less than 10 minutes of class left, I showed it to the whole class. They fell silent. SILENT! This is a great group of kids, but they talk constantly. And this little Wiki struck them silent. I know the magic won't last but, it was Cool!

Slightly Crazy

I must have a case of Spring Fever because I am doing crazy things. The first week of the last nine weeks I decided to start using a Wiki, http://littlebeavertech.pbwiki.com. My friend, Joselyn Todd, taught me so much about them (here and here), but I have been reticent to try them in the classroom. For all my experimenting with new technology, I am not much of a risk-taker when I am in front of kids. I want to be confident about what is going to happen. And Wikis seemed a little risky.

They REALLY are easy and pretty safe. I set up one page in under 30 minutes and it was a great help with my classes. So far they have just been using it like a home page to access Web sites I have chosen for them.

Now I am going to try letting students edit the Wiki. My third grade classes have been studying Internet research techniques. I talked to them at length about Wikipedia and how you can edit it. I even got myself banned from making Wikipedia changes for demonstrating one too many times how easy it is to change things on a Wikipedia page! (I didn't know that could happen, but it was a great teachable moment.) However, I decided that to really understand Wikipedia and Wikis, my students needed to get their feet wet editing.

So stay tuned! If I actually pull this off in the last four weeks of school (really I think I'm nuts!) I will share their Wiki page.

Summer on the Horizon

I was working through my lesson plans today when I turned the page in my planning calendar and there was June! Suddenly it seems that the year is about to end. (June 9th is our last day with students.) We are all talking about next year and what we are going to work on over the summer.

I am excited about next year and also a little disappointed. My Assistant Principal came to talk with me several weeks ago. She said that next year I won't be teaching Encore'. Encore' is what we call the classes the students attend while their classroom teachers have planning - art, PE, music, library and computer. This year I was part of the rotation for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. You probably remember me complaining about 2nd grade being added during the first 9 weeks of school. It made it difficult for me to collaborate with teachers and keep up with the things that needed to be fixed.

But I was able to teach. For 40 or 45 minutes each day, the kids were mine. We went on Internet adventures, wrote stories and played games. I love the kids and the challenge to engage and stretch them. So when the AP came to me and told me that I wouldn't have a fixed schedule of classes next year, my first thought was "Darn!" I'll never be able to tell Kelsi from Jennifer. I won't get a hug from Nancy once a week. I won't be a real part of the Encore team of teachers.

I stewed about it and then I began to see the possibilities for next year- podcast book reviews, create a wiki for 5th grade, apply for grants, create digital photography projects, team teach with the librarian, . . .

In reality there is a lot still to do this year - inventory, computers to fix, decorate my classroom, finish a writing project with 1st grade and a unit on research with 3rd grade - but I am excited about the possibilities that next year holds.