2011 Teacher Technology Program is Under Way

Image via CrunchBaseWe have, I think, 27 teachers taking part in this year's program. Devon and Melissa are our remote participants - welcome to ISB and thanks for getting in on the course.  Module 1 is complete and everyone has a Gmail address.  If you're new to Gmail, I know there's a lot to take in - think of this course also as a reference that you can visit and revisit as your confidence grows.  For those of you who are not new to Gmail, try out the Gmail Ninja Tricks in the extension section at the end of Module 1. Week 2... Blogging.

Module 9 Reflections

Here is Milena's reflection for this week. This is a use for Bubblus I've never seen before. It just goes to show that the uses for these web tools are only limited by the imagination of teachers and students. 

Online Organization

The minute I saw the mind maps that bubbl.us offers it's visual appearance immediately reminded me of something I use to explore at the university. It is called Transformational Grammar and it deals with the rules our brains apply when processing language. One of the focuses of TG is a tree-like representation of sentence's structure just like the one I posted here. Now maybe this is not a mind map in the same sense we discussed in this module but then again maybe it is even more of a mind map then that:)

Mind maps could be used to help students enhance their organizational skills but I feel that with Lower School students this can only be done with a lot of help from the teacher. For example when we are having group discussions about various topics students can at the same time use mind maps to graphically represent our train of thoughts. This will help them get a more clear picture of the beauty of brainstorming and help them start to use this sort of tools in their future learning. However, I think that at young age this maybe a bit too advance for them and that's why at this period we should (as with bunch of other things) model this approach for them. One great way bubbl.us can be used however is story maps. Each time I want to use story maps in class I end up googeling through millions of versions until I find the one that most suite the story in question. With this web site in mind students can now make their own story maps adding the branches as they see fit. This will definitely make them more engaged in the activity then when they are simply presented with a printed copy of a map.

Why Do I Blog? - Patricia Andjelkovic

We are very fortunate at ISB to have a colleague that has scaled the blogging world to heights many of us cannot imagine.  Many have stumbled across Pat's Yankee in Belgrade blog and benefited from the useful insights and superb photography of this city we call home.  I know that some of her followers are curious friends and family of international staff at ISB.  For them and many more, A Yankee in Belgrade wonderfully reveals this city and country's vibrancy, beauty, nuances, and flavors in ways we cannot.  Pat's blog was in fact a thrilling introduction to life in Belgrade when we discovered it over two years ago after signing on to join this great team. Thanks, Pat.

Jennie and I asked Pat to be a guest contributor on our blogs and answer the following question: Why do I blog? Her response serves to underscore the vast possibilities blogging brings to student and teacher learning. If you have discovered the advantages blogging brings to your life - personally or professionally - please let us know and consider contributing a feature post too.

WHY DO I BLOG?  LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

I’ve been doing my photoblog, Yankee-in-Belgrade (http://yankee-in-belgrade.blogspot.com) for over two years now.  I’ve been into photography since the mid-seventies, but up until I reluctantly (but now happily) went digital in 2005, I hadn’t been able to share my photos with the big, wide world, other than the occasional exhibit here and there.  While doing an online search of sites with some non-standard photos of Paris for a friend who was traveling there, I came across Paris Daily Photo, the blog that became a website that spawned other City Daily Photo blogs (www.citydailyphoto.com).  “Why not join?” said I to my dog, Bibi, who became my ‘nom de plume’ and avatar (I didn’t know what the latter was either back then….).  Using Bibi’s photo assured me some degree of anonymity, but would you believe that I have had people (2!) recognize her when I’m out walking?!  I made the decision to create a blog and did so in less than 10 minutes….knowing absolutely nothing.  ‘It’s free and easy,’ claims Blogspot.com and it is.  I set up a template, added a header photo, uploaded my first photo with a short comment, and voilà,I was a photoblogger.  Comments came slowly, but gradually increased as I visited others’ blogs.

Some of us blog to stay connected with family and friends, but I created my blog for several reasons, which are, in no particular order:

--to break stereotypes about Serbia/Serbs; to show a side of Belgrade and Serbia you don’t necessarily find on the Internet and from my long-term expat point of view,  to learn about other photobloggers’ cities; and to improve my photography skills by taking more photos and sharing photo tips with others.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t learn something through my blog, either from someone’s comment about my post or by visiting their posts.  I’ve met blogger buddies in person in New York City, Seattle, Warsaw, and Belgrade, and look forward to meeting others on subsequent trips. I’ve written to photobloggers from other cities for info about their cities and have always gotten an answer.  What I enjoy most is when I receive an email from someone, usually a Serb in the diaspora, who requests a photo of some place or something dear to them.  Insofar as possible, I always fulfill their wish.  By the time you read this, I’ll have met a blogger fan from Romania who will be visiting Belgrade, and soon another who wanted info on how to import her dog to Serbia!  Somehow I even got a comment from the author of Walk Two Moons (and other books), Sharon Creech, who stumbled somehow upon my blog.  My son even told me that a colleague from the US wrote to him about ‘this great blog on Serbia’….ha.  From comments and visiting, I confirmed my belief that people are indeed all more alike than different. 

The fun side of blogging, in my case, photoblogging, is that Yankee-in-Belgrade has opened up new doors for me.  Over a year ago I was contacted by a publisher who had seen my photos and wanted me to do a two-page quarterly layout for Inspire, the Hyatt Regency magazine.  I still do this, and it’s also is also good for the occasional cocktail party….  Ditto for a local newspaper, from time to time. Sometimes other bloggers ask permission to use my photos either on their blog, and that’s fine with me, as long as they link back.

More than anything, though, I have found photoblogging to be just plain fun. Now even more than before I carry my camera all the time, lest I miss something, like the proverbial fisherman’s ‘one that got away.’ 

Week 7 Reflections

This is a busy time of the year and I suspected Online Presentation Tools might take a bit of a hit in this course. Please consider trying the presented tools out when you get more time.

Here is Anne's blog entry for week 7.

tech 1:1 week 7

Letter to the Editor
Students mass sharing? They are doing that already. ISB's role? At this moment ISB is doing the most important of preparatory steps -- it is training its staff to be proficient with MANY aspects of computer use in education. To put a teacher, headful of knowledge and methodology full of experience, before a class of laptops would be a recipe for failure unless the teacher is experienced enough with computer possibilities.

Another important step in preparing students is to refine their research skills in:
~evaluating the reliability of sources
~evaluating the validity of sources
~evaluating the completeness of sources
~citing sources when quoting material
~researching multiple sources
~proofreading source material since the level of language usage varies greatly
in accuracy
~eliminating plagiarism
~reading large amounts of background material so that this onslaught of mass knowledge can be put in perspective

These skills may have been presented in high schools in the past; they now need to be started in lower schools ... a formidable task is before us!

P.S. Mr Editor: I love this YouTube video. Please help Mr. Leadbeater with his grammar:
birds nest is possessive
everyone is a singular indefinite pronoun taking a singular antecedent.

And here is Draginja's...

Module 7: Blog Reflection – Online mass-sharing (being immersed in the public domain)

As new and more advanced technologies are appearing in the classroom, more and more the students are becoming part of a global, self-educating, online community where they are involved in learning programs that encourage them to gain knowledge and master skills through mass-sharing.
 

Mass-sharing of information and skills through the Web is changing the very meaning of teaching, learning, and even schooling, itself; the roles of the learner and the teacher are changing, teaching and learning can occur outside the four walls of the classroom and beyond the time limitations of traditional class schedules, and, the focus is fast changing from teachers teaching to students learning.

By making education more achievable by more students, mass-sharing of information online will give access to improved, meaningful learning to students all around the world. Students need to be taught how to make the most effective use of the online tools available to them; web-based multimedia learning experiences for student learning communities, such as videoconferencing to learn and teach, on-line discussions with other students and course consultants/experts, sharing learning through online publishing tools, using a wiki as a collaborative tool to share class notes, web activities complete with images, sound, and video to present information, test knowledge and skills, submit assignments and communicate with students and faculty on a global level, all create a high quality learning experiences.

Computer hardware malfunction, inappropriate use of the computer, difficulty in accessing an Internet service provider, on-line traffic overload leading to low or no internet response, and security problems are obstacles that students need to learn to deal with in twenty-first century education.

Mass-sharing makes learning more dynamic, interactive and authentic, focuses on the social learning process, enables members of the learning community to access and share information resources speedily and easily, and motivates and empowers students. Students need to be encouraged to develop an interest for connecting with a global community and sharing with others as a means of learning and expanding their knowledge.

The power of mass-sharing cannot be under-estimated; collaborative, online learning community experiences more effectively augment acquisition of knowledge and skills than traditional or individual studies. In that light, it can be concluded that students need to be prepared/trained for a life of mass-sharing; they need to be aware of the implications of being immersed in the public domain. 

(See my Blog Reflection: Module 4)

Our MS 1:1 Organization Mind Map

In an upcoming module you'll learn how to use online mind mapping tools for enhancing student learning. To put my money where my mouth is, here is a look at how we are using it to make sense of the MS 1:1 initiative. This one is far too big for a blog entry, but you can see the possibilities.

Week 6 Reflections

Image via Wikipedia

I think it's fair to say many of the teachers in this course are finding Delicious a very useful partner for resource building.  The term partner in this case has a lot more depth too as it really does enable you to partner up with your global peers - even though they may never know it.  It's all about creating value - when you tag a site as being useful to your needs you are in effect voting and others will benefit.  And vice versa - when thousands of professionals in your field do the same thing, the resources are in effect being selected and vetted for your consideration and benefit.  This really is a profound and meaningful display of the power of what is coming to be called crowd-sourcing.

This post from Amy sums up the immediate benefits of Delicious succinctly.  To comment on her post, please visit her blog, White Site.

"After stumbling through the website, I finally got my Delicious account set up! I typed in several topics we have been studying in class and was shocked by the amount of information that was quickly returned! Some were things that I am already using in class but took quite some time to collect. This is definitely a new skill that I will be putting to good use.

I am currently spending heaps of time searching the internet for everything I use in class. I then save the websites to me favorites list. I understand that this is clunky and not the best way of going about things.

I look forward to searching around on Delicious more to see what all it has to offer."

And here's one from Russ's Blog

Finding and Using Online Resources

I usually use online resources which facilitates online collaboration and information-gathering. Most of the resources I use come from the ISB Library Resources page, and after personally testing those resources, I adapt the most useful ones to my lesson plans.

I taught one unit wherein I constrained teams of students to finding information around a subject using nothing more than their Del.icio.us accounts. They were able to find resources and tag them as their own. Other students were able to see their peers using resources and commenting on the usefulness of them. This saved time in doing research, and students had fun commenting on the validity of each website or database found through Del.icio.us.

I also use National Science Foundation and National Science Teachers Association websites for finding Science-based resources. The resources advertised are suggestions made by other educators and professionals.

Week 5 Reflections

Again Anne has given us a lot to think about, so I've embedded her post below. If you would like to leave a comment on her post, click here.

My Computer as a Communicator in the Past

Our kids played PacMan on my Apple IIC as teenagers and typed their high school senior theses. The first year our son was in the university in the US, I had no email. Communication was by letter and phone calls every two weeks. Email took over then and has carried our family, friends, and legal business ever since. Last summer digital photography was added to my repertoire. My desktops have been my tools of professional communication through such courses as Advanced English Grammar with the University of Tennessee, Expository Writing with the University of Washington, and Writing Children's Literature with the Institute in Connecticut.

Up until now my computer has been my telephone, my mail service and my typewriter.

My Computer as a Tool for the Future

Ahhh, now..... Now, in 1:1 I am learning all its other capabilities. In 2010-2011 I will have a "teaching assistant" in my classroom. For me in art classes, the computer's ability to bring examples of artists' lives and their work and students' work on screen for the whole class to discuss or write commentaries will be wonderful . A blog seems at this point the most user- friendly means to accomplish this.
By 2013 I see hard copies of books becoming obsolete. I see the necessity of courses on internet research techniques taught vertically throughout schools. However, in art I hope that I don't see a lessening of hands-on activities. In fact, hands-on will become even more important since the fine motor skills of writing will be taken over by keyboarding and page layout will become automatic.
I know that access to information will be multiplied again and again. I fear the students' ability to synthesize and evaluate this flood of information. Their backgrounds of reading and life experiences will be narrowing in many ways as the virtual supplants the real in their lives. Let us remember to teach respect for what has gone before us, being cautious about hurriedly pushing away the past 555 years since Gutenberg's moveable type, in our attempts to grasp at the future.

1 comment

 

Paul McKenzie said...

A computer as a "teaching assistant" - so for the students could they become learning assistants? Paints, brushes, and palette knives will never be replaced - if anything, the ability to show life-size images of the works of the masters in your classroom will inspire more creativity. And don't worry about computers atrophying the fine motor skills of our youth - you should see what some kids are able to design in Google Sketchup and online applications like Sumopaint!!! We'll cover these later in the course. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts :)  

Here are Janice's thoughts. You can reply to her post by visiting her blog here.  

Computer Use Now and in the Future

When I think back when I was teaching fourth grade, 2 years ago, the extent of my computer skills was excel spreadsheets, word documents, and sending/receiving emails. I began to use the projector to show short films on my laptop, but with help from my teaching partner. The technology facilitator would help me on PowerPoint projects, Hyperstudio projects, Windows Movie Maker, and using ikeepbookmarks.com for keeping a collection of bookmarks for the units I was teaching at the time. Now, just two years of working at the Middle School and in the science classroom, I can't believe how visually literate I have become. Thanks to the push and guidance from Jennie and Paul. Through the course of 23 things, the virtual environment opened up to me as a whole new world. I became confident in tinkering with things on the computer, as our 21st century learners do. I am amazed at the amount of tools that are out there and the support available for teachers and people in general. The social networking tools that allow for collaboration are amazing.