East Middle School Computer Club

I always get nervous on the first day back. I am sitting in my kitchen this morning reflecting about how much I have learned over the past six months with regards to new technologies and personal learning networks. Mostly Personal Learning Networks. For without my PLN, I would not have learned anything. I have always been a person who pretty much keeps to himself and I have never thought of myself as an interpersonal learner until recently. I read a blog post by Scott Merrick which led me to a blog post by Kevin Jarrett. Read Kevin’s blog post. He is one fired up teacher! He has passion that I sometimes lack. It is awesome that a teacher in NJ can write a blog post on Sunday, that I can read on Wednesday morning to help me get fired up to teach. I have become a connected teacher (Learner) because of things I have learned from teachers like Scott, Dean, Angela and Kevin (everytime I list PLN teachers, I want to list everyone). They, among many others, are examples of what twenty-first century educators need to be doing in their classrooms and in their own professional development to help students better prepare for an uncertain future.

Knowing I have a PLN (just beginning to understand this term) like I do…that I can change, edit, listen to or not listen to, as I see fit, is extremely empowering to me. It brings back my passion for learning (and teaching)…two terms that maybe are not as different from one another as I once thought…

Was I rambling or does any of this make sense…you two people who read my blog? On a personal note, I am about to go get on my bike for a little pre-first day back work-out…

I have a close friend who helped me build a fence. He has been teaching for the past 17 years at Highwood High School in Highwood, MT. The fact that my fence is so level is a testament to his ability to pay attention to detail. That ability is probably one reason that he has been such a successful coach for the Highwood Mountaineers. They play six-man football there and he has been their head football coach each of those 17

that is a level fence, dude...

years. He has done an amazing job, winning 10 state championships in his stint as their Head Coach, most recently in 2006. Earlier this month, he retired and is moving on to bigger and brighter things and a new profession. He will have more time now to spend with his own children, something I know is of highest priority for him. Highwood will have a hard time replacing this excellent coach and educator and I know he will be sorely missed by the entire community, especially the players he has coached. He will be working less time and not have to pay to drive 50 miles to and from work each day. And most importantly, I will never again have to be the offensive coordinator for little guy football.

Hey Dean, they need a football coach and a Math teacher in Highwood, Montana…hehe

Week 4 Discussion – Initial Post

During a spring Wikispace project my students worked on called the Far and Away Project I interviewed several students about their internet usage both at home and at school. There were ten students involved in the project, most were 7^th graders. One thing that was surprising to me at that time was the ease with which certain students could bypass our district’s proxy server. In fact, students were able to login to their web mail accounts and check their email whenever they wished. This was pretty amazing to me since all forms of web mail including msn, yahoo, and gmail are all blocked in our district. I had always heard they could get past the blocker if they wanted to, but had never seen it done until I worked with kids on the Wiki Project. This made me think that many students have more access at school than many of our teachers since most of our teachers simply give up when the big yellow screen with a stop sign in the middle pops up. Dr. Thornburg’s analogy of digital immigrants and digital natives is very appropriate in my school. If certain teachers at my school can’t figure something out, many, including me, will ask students how something works. I consider asking a student how to do something an effective method of losing my teacherly voice.

Another thing I learned through those informal interviews is the power that social networks possess for students. It still boggles my mind that some students who, to me, seemed to be the most scattered I had, could keep track of over four hundred global friends on their MySpace account. The most innovative teachers have already begun taking advantage of the power social learning has for students with wikis and educational blogs. I think something even more powerful that is currently developing in various educational arenas is the use of MUVE’s in education. Global Kids and Quest Atlantis are both excellent examples of programs that utilize Social Learning in a contextual framework.

In the coming school year, I will provide my students with more opportunities for group activities and projects. One way I will accomplish this goal is by having a classroom wiki. I also plan to begin utilizing Quest Atlantis in my practice. To be a more effective teacher, I need to begin taking advantage of middle school aged children’s natural social nature .

On a personal Note:

We said goodbye to our beloved Sloopy last weekend by taking her ashes on one final camp trip and could not resist taking a look at some other pups at the dog pound…Buster is our new dog’s name

Here are this weeks Diigo updates. BetchaBlog has an excellent intro to web2.0 page. Konrad Glogowski writes the Blog of Proximal Development and is currently having a South African adventure…Computer Clubhouse will help me with my computer club next year…and I met some new Australians…

Betchablog – powered by FeedBurner

blog of proximal development » Blog Archive » Working Towards Agency-Building Practice

Go to michalk.id.au

computerclubhouse

The Open Classroom

Logic Inc. – Norfar

I attended an excellent on-line workshop through a program called eluminate organized by The Australian Flexible Learning Network. I met several current twitter friends and also made some new ones.  In her presentation Joanna M. Kay presented several ways teachers can use a variety of media to improve their blog. She actually used my blog in her presentation. Click here if you would like to link to several of the tools and the slide presentation she gave. The slide presentation can also be seen below. It was collected and posted via Vodpod. It may seem strange to people that I have become so connected to teachers from so far away.  But to me, it is only a huge indication of how much our world is changing and how we, as teachers, need to begin changing with it.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.627330&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Just figured out how to make a blog post of what I have been reading…and learning about in my journey on the web…Bookmarking has taken me a while to figure out…but I believe I might be getting it now…Dean and/or Aussie friends…Am I getting it?

• eLearn: Research Papers
• Dean Groom
• MIT Media Lab
• SL5B Locations of Interest – Second Life Wiki
• eLearn: Feature Article – Roger Schank

This week’s topic is an interesting one for me. I have always struggled with tracking student’s work and progress. I am becoming far more organized with online things than I have been with hard copies in paper. For me it is easier and less messy to track things utilizing web resources. I will often joke with my students; my desk could be compared to a black hole. Don’t put anything close to it or it will be sucked in and taken to another dimension. Our goal for this week’s discussion is to identify and describe an idea to utilize new technology to break our paper-trained mindset.

My idea deals with both the storing of student information and records and the way in which students complete work. I teach a class called Math lab for students who struggle in Mathematics. Previously, students in my class utilized folders to track their work which were cumbersome and very often lost by the student. To replace those folders, I plan to keep a classroom wiki next year where each student I have will maintain their own page. You can create a free space at Wikispaces if you are a K-12 educator . They are trying to give away 100,000 free wikispaces to teachers. They are Plus Plan wikis so they are ad free. I plan to have students reflect upon their learning at least one time each week…If possible every day during the end of each class period. Each student’s wiki page will serve as a place where others can comment on their reflection and on any work they complete in it. Evaluation and commenting on the work of peers will be encouraged.I have recently been reading the work of Konrad Glogowski on the effectiveness of classroom blogging. My classroom wikis will be similar to the blogs he discusses in his work. In fact, I just finished attending a workshop led by Dr. Glogowski this morning on Ustream Television and in Second Life where he presented his ideas. The fact that I can watch a presentation in San Antonio, discuss it with educators in Australia, all from the comfort of my own kitchen is indicative of how much our world is changing…has changed.

I have just begun my final class towards gaining a master’s degree in integrating technology in the classroom. I believe educational blogs are a valuable tool that teachers can use to communicate their ideas to students, colleagues, and parents depending on the objectives you place on your blog. Therefore, for my final class, I plan to place each week’s discussion assignment in my blog, which will ensure that I begin blogging on a consistent basis. This weeks discussion concerns the importance of dealing with an ever-changing world, something we must teach our students to do.

One important change that has occurred for me in my practice recently involves my belief that educational blogs like the one I have started maintaining at http://teacherman79.wordpress.com/ and like the ones maintained by the teachers I have placed on a list in my blog provide an excellent forum for professional development. Through my journey to find Tek Zeno in our last class, I have met several cutting edge educators recently who have been maintaining educational blogs for a significant amount of time. Each of my new colleagues have told me of the value their blogs have in helping them develop as professional educators. I began reading their blogs on a consistent basis and realized what a valuable tool they can be. I decided that I should start a blog myself because of the value I saw in them, so I did. Blogs are very similar to the discussions we have each week in our classes at Walden university, and to me provide the same types of opportunities for learning, only they are free, just a little time-consuming at first.

Blogging has already made me a better teacher. I am more mindful of my beliefs with regards to technology in the classroom and also better equipped to defend my beliefs if the need arises. I believe there is a certain amount of resistance to the use of emerging technologies in the classroom. Maintaining a blog will better equip me to deal with that resistance if and when it occurs. And what is good for the teachers is good for the kids – see this link to find out about utilizing blogs in your classroom. Blogging encourages students to reflect about the work they are doing and also comment on the work that their peers are working on.  I plan to begin having my students begin a reflective process like this in the fall by having each class maintain a wiki in which they will periodically reflect upon classroom activity.  Any feedback you have for me would be greatly appreciated.

I have recently been working on writing a grant, something I have always wanted to do, but always had an excuse not to. I finished the grant yesterday and sent it in both electronically and physically. It may have been the finest thing I have ever written. However, in no way would I have been able to write such a fine document (MHO), were it not for the help of two new friends I have recently made: Joanna M. Kay, an educational consultant and Dean Groom, an educational technologist. I learned to use a Google service called Google Docs with their help. It is still a little surreal to me that I can be editing, discussing, tweeking, and pimping a document with professional educators thousands of miles away while I sit in my kitchen wearing Homer Simpson slippers. By the way, they are two of the finest educators I have ever met. Hopefully, I get this grant. It is for a computer lab that I plan to utilize to help both teachers and students develop digital literacy skills, something which I believe our schools are lacking in. The web is changing, has changed, and we need to train ourselves how to utilize some of the wonderful learning tools that it provides us with, not only for our own benefit, but for our children’s as well. Many children already possess some great digital skills, however, they are using them in an unsafe manner. In a project I worked on with Dean Groom, I discovered several students had secret email addresses and Myspace accounts that their parents had no idea about. We can try to block them from these things, but, believe me, they will find a way to use them, safely or unsafely. Perhaps a better approach to the new web (Web 2.0) would be to get parents and teachers to start learning about it so we can show our kids how to utilize these tools more effectively.

My sincere thanks go out to Joanna kay and Dean Groom, not only for all the help they have given me on the grant We wrote together, but all the help they have given me in many other areas of my life as well, just ask MissieZ, I am a changed man.

Digital literacy is something I am learning about.  In my previous post I linked to the page that defined what digital literacy is to me.  It is important because children who lack digital literacy skills are at a definite disadvantage to those who do not.  When I look at my own children, I want them to have every advantage in becoming successful, contributing, and happy members of society.  Recently, I have discovered so many things, and most of them revolve around the importance of the tool that I have sitting in front of me at this very moment.  As I have seen in the project I am collaborating in with Dean Groom of Australia, it is not only a connector of information, but one of people as well…