A Christmas Miracle!

Thanks, Sean, Faye, Perri and the gods. It's finally here! Hardly worth waiting for but it's here.

CVS is My New BFF

Every once in a while it really hits home how powerful technology is. And how omnipresent. A few weeks ago I bought some hair color product or other at CVS (don't think I'm giving any secrets away here). Today in the mail I got a free sample of shampoo and conditioner from CVS. Not just any shampoo and conditioner though. That would be unremarkable and above suspicion. No, these samples were specifically for brunettes! Man, those little bar codes coupled with that little key chain frequent buyer card tell the world, or in this case CVS and anyone they care to share the information with, a lot about us. Not too sure how I feel about that. The cash register tells some computer, the computer stores a profile of your buying habits and voila! free sample tailored to my needs. It's amazing and a bit disconcerting. While I'm pretty sure no actual human was involved in this exchange of information other than some computer programmers, still, my hair coloring habits are on record somewhere. Hope the fact that I'm kind of fickle about my hair color doesn't blow a fuse somewhere.

Not sure how I feel about all this. Who doesn't love a free sample in the mail? But do I really want CVS keeping track of my personal needs? It's convenient of course but I think I prefer to be a little mysterious about the more intimate details of my life. Not that there are many. But they're mine. And anyway CVS is the least of it. Yikes! how much information do we give out over the internet and how secure is it, really? I'm not much of a privacy freak but do I want CVS and Land's End and Target and Amazon anticipating my needs before the actual humans in my life do? It's weird. 

Technology. It really is powerful. Maybe Waldbaum's will send me a steak!      

It Has A Name!

Picture this...a penny dropping, a light bulb going on, me smacking my forehead in the "I coulda had a V8" fashion. Now I get it! It's constructivist learning/teaching. That's what we've been up to all these weeks. It's the big picture. It's what we're doing in TEAM and what, ideally, we will bring to our classrooms. It's different.

I've been going bleary-eyed reading about constructivism this week but I can't stop. That's me being obsessive again. Constructivism is the new StumbleUpon. Just one more article and then I'll go to bed. The links that were in the weekly calendar, ironically (?) under the heading "guided instruction",  were a great place to start and I find myself returning to them for clear definitions and thumbnail descriptions. Skimmed through some things in Google Scholar and iTunes U. iTunes U has a pretty good podcast called Learning Theory which has one episode on constructivist theory. Quite honestly I've been avoiding the LIU library for the same reason that I'll never get a doctorate. I can't bear reading scholarly papers. Frankly, I'd rather have root canal than wade through all those abstracts searching for something that isn't a snoozefest.  My apologies to everyone who has labored for years over a dissertation. I'm sure there are some riveting ones out there. I promise to check into the library at some point.

But I digress. Back to constructivism. Isn't this why we became teachers in the first place? It's the "teach a man to fish" idea. I don't want to tell kids a bunch of stuff. I want to teach them how to learn. No, wait, I want to teach them to love learning. I want to honor their natural curiousity, to guide them in constructing their own learning. It's so much more fun. For me. And, I'm guessing, for them.

Well, I have tons I want to say about this constructivist model. Like a religious convert, I've seen the light! But it's at the end of a tunnel right now so I have some more thinking to do. Stay tuned.       

Election Night

Some old college friends from Chicago sent me these photos the day after the election. Talk about digital storytelling! Hope the link works. 

Shift Happens 2008

This is an update on the Shift Happens video that has been around for a while. It's well worth your four minutes if you haven't seen it yet. Gets you thinking about the future of those people who share our classrooms. They'll need their whole new minds for a whole new world!  

Has It Really Been a Whole Semester?!?!

Hard to believe the first semester of TEAM is winding down. What an incredible experience it has been so far. Until Bette mentioned that some people had asked about grades and evaluations I don't think I was actually conscious of the fact that we were in a class, a Masters program even. I guess on some level that reality was there but on a day to day basis it was something very different. 

One of the reasons (the main one, really) that I joined TEAM was because of the colleagues I knew who had participated in previous cohorts. It was not their amazing facility with things technological, though that was certainly impressive. It was their comfort level with the "new". I wanted that and I wanted to be able to share that with my students. I wanted to challenge myself with something that really made me uncomfortable. My own education was the very definition of "old school" and I think we tend to teach in the way we were taught. That's comfortable. Clearly, though that is unfair to the students of today, the 21st century learners with whom we share our classrooms.

Well, it worked! I'm uncomfortable every day and I love it. I stumble through Marratech, mini-p's, Garageband, Delicious, Jing, Animoto, blogs, googledocs and on and on. I'm learning to jump in with both feet and to borrow a phrase "just do it". I have AHA! moments and ARRRRGH! moments but I've enjoyed them all. I'm learning to reach out for help and that may be the best lesson of all. It's good for teachers to be reminded what it's like to be clueless sometimes. Can you say empathy?

Then there's time management...my downfall. I don't know how people who are in the process of raising families do it. My hat is REALLY off to you. My goal for next semester is to learn how to budget time for all the things in my life including TEAM. I have (and always have had) a tendency to procrastinate. While I do work on TEAM projects every day I have a penchant for wandering and not producing. I think I need a twelve step program for StumbleUpon, for instance. I enjoy writing but I do it in my head and leave the actual blogging undone for too long. Right now that mini-saga/recording/images project is hanging out there wagging its finger at me. One problem is that I feel like I have to finish things in one sitting. I'm going to try to learn to take baby steps. 

Goodness this started as a blog about what the TEAM experience has been like for me (not like your grandmother's class) and has turned into a ramble. Enough about me. What has TEAM been for you so far?        

21st Century Learners

This has been around for a while but I like to watch it now and again to remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing. Enjoy!

4th Period Experiment

Tony, Alejandro, Juan, Henry, Tyler and Jose get their feet wet. Their first try with some random shots from my iPhoto. 

Stumbling

So the good news is that StumbleUpon is the coolest site ever. The bad news is that it is really hard to get up at 6am when you've been stumbling 'til 12:30am. Oh, when will I learn moderation?!?! BTW Stumble is a great place to beef up your Delicious.

Been pretty tech busy this week. At home I've been stumbling as previously stated and trying to keep up with everyone's blogs and delicious and assorted quiktopics. There's so much I want to read and contribute to, so I'm trying to learn how to "dance" as Bette put it. So far...two left feet but I keep plugging. As I tell my students, practice makes almost perfect and that's plenty good enough. It's the process that counts. Right?

In school I have my kids doing things on Amimoto and they are amazing. We've had some great laughs and some great learning. I also have them reading into Garageband and listening to and gently critiquing each other. Since they are struggling readers I'm hoping this makes them more conscious of their fluency. They love doing it and always want to try again to make it sound better. It's also opened their eyes to the importance of punctuation in reading - something I have heretofore been unsuccessful in convincing them of. (Please pardon the dangling preposition. That sentence had me in knots.)

I also started a digital storytelling project with one group. May have bitten off a little too much here. They want to tell the history of the world in three minutes. Always a problem with young writers - choosing a small topic and writing in detail. They want to tell their whole life story rather than choose one small event, person, place, etc and really speak from the heart about their connection. Live and learn. I'll keep you posted. 

I stumble on. Literally and figuratively. It's fun!

I Had a Dream

Woke up in a cold sweat the other night after dreaming about doing my mini-presentation. It was the classic what-the-heck-am-I-doing-in-this-class scenario. Think this has been on my mind much? It made me really consider what the purpose and desired outcome of these mini-p's are. I think I was intimidated by some of the really great presentations we've had so far. People were presenting technologies with which they seemed so comfortable and familiar. While there are applications that I feel comfortable and familiar with I wanted to learn something new and present that. I've decided that my mini-p doesn't have to be fabulous but that something "quick and dirty" would be fine as long it was useful to my colleagues and students. I will go with my original choice - Animoto. I love it and my students have been playing with it this week.

One of the things that was causing me tsuris was the fact that I couldn't think how to apply it in a class. I did what I've been trying to do more of this year. That is - I asked the kids how they thought they might use it to support their reading. They came up with a great idea; story boarded it and are in the process of producing their 30 second "video". 

Something that was giving me nightmares (literally) became a real joy when I let my students lead the way. Lesson learned. Sleep tight.  

Tech Thoughts

Just came from a District Technology Committee meeting. We're discussing a district one-to-one laptop initiative. From all I hear at TEAM from the people whose districts or classrooms have implemented such a program I think they are definitely the way to go. I said at the meeting that I believed it was simply a matter of when. The idea of every student having some sort of electronic "notebook" strikes me as inevitable. Committee member's concerns are (understandably at this time) financial. We will study some existing models - Fort Collins, CO, Maine and we will visit Westhampton (can't wait). My concerns have mainly to do with professional development. I hope we do right by staff who are intimidated by introducing technology into their teaching repertoire. After all, we can't all be TEAM members ;-)  Lots to think about. Seems pretty far down the road at this point, though. everyone's waiting to hear what the state giveth and what the state taketh away.  

Audio and random pix, oh my!

 

After hours of frustration, Perri finally talked me down off the ledge and led me through down(up?)loading a video to a blog. I had to add some random unrelated pix (my grandson's obsession with Photobooth continues) in order to use iMovie. I think. Anyway, I'll keep experimenting. I have some videos that I've been shooting with my little Flip. Think I'll see what I can do with those. In the meanwhile I'm enjoying posting all these first attempts. Hope to document some progress.

Images

It's been a tech intensive weekend and, unplanned, my focus seems to have been on images. I've been practicing uploading, downloading and generally moving images around. I've also explored some image sites recommended on our class site. Joined Photoshop.com mainly, I think, because I was influenced by the intriguing use of images on their site. I want that. I want to be able to communicate my message using images. They are so powerful.

As an educator I think this idea of images as communication is particularly pertinent. We are all visual learners. I have always been envious of teachers who put up spectacular and information rich bulletin boards. I have no facility for this. To me my room and materials always look bare compared to some teachers who hit just the right note with visual displays and eye catching handouts. Maybe technology is just the thing that can turn this around for me.

I'm wondering how I can use images to be a better teacher and how can I guide my students to use them to better communicate what and if they are learning.   

The Gregmobile!

One of my students stopped by on a Saturday to show me the invention he had been talking about in class. WOW!  This is what comes from not having a TV. 

BTW I teach "remedial" reading. This was a great reminder that not all talents are nourished in school. Clearly this boy, while he may be a struggling reader, has strengths that far outweigh any deficits he may have. Wish his kind of mind was celebrated more in traditional schools.

Decisions

As in most things my inability to make a decision about what to write here prevented me from writing ANYTHING. Silly really. I write pages in my head when driving mindlessly down familiar roads. At home with the laptop on my laptop......not so much.



Here's a list of things I've been deciding about:

1. Should I just keep a log of tech things I'm doing for class?


2. Should I take this opportunity to become the world famous writer I was clearly meant to be?


3. Is it it just cranky to write about things that annoy you?


4. Are lists a good way of skirting brain-freeze?

Anywho..I've been doing tons of tech stuff. Not particularly well but I'm giving myself time. "Overwhelmed" and "frustrated" have been banned from my vocabulary.

Marratech and I have a guarded relationship. He (she?) can be cooperative or completely elusive. But I will be master. Now that I've bookmarked the proper page it's just a matter of time.

And Animoto, my new BFF, where have you been all my life. I have grandchildren I want you to meet. See you on Facebook with all my other friends. I think I love you.

Blogging's fun. Of course you actually have to transpose those vehicular thoughts onto the page and that's annoying but I'll learn to live with it. Delicious..ah, Delicious. Our relationship is on a trial basis. Sharing bookmarks, hmmmmm. Though there is a sort of voyeuristic side to it that I find........well, delicious.

Other things I've played around with (but nothing serious):

• GoogleDoc
• Flip Videos
• iPhoto
• Audacity
• Garageband
• iMovie
• iDVD

So that's my week. Lots of new acquaintances, a few new friends and one very special connection.

Bette, I'm learning to dance.

Animoto1

John's self-portraits composed on PhotoBooth and published using Animoto. Gosh, he's brilliant!

Me a blogger?!?!

Gotten this far and find myself at a loss for words. Not an auspicious beginning for a newbie blogger. Started this for a class that may or may not lead to a Masters degree in Educational Technology. Am I too old for this? Apparently not since I did set up this blog without any problems!