is tech helping or hurting us?

One of the topics on my mind of late is: Is all this technology in education ultimately helping or hurting us? While I am aware of its benefits, what are the things we as educator are no longer doing for the benefit of children in order to make way for technological inclusion?

What to do...

The work goes slowly as far as the discussion boards are concerned. Even the voice threading is going slowly but that may be a reflection of the cirucumstances of my schedule. I have too much to do and apparently not enough time right now to dedicate to being in my room so kids and work, but then when I am available they are in a core subject and I feel that taking them out of core subjects is not in keeping with good education...any suggestions for solutions?

feedback

Feedback is a powerful tool. It needs to specific and meaningful. Just writing good job on a students’ paper is meaningless. Letting them know that using descriptive words in their writing lets gives the reader a change to really understand the meaning.

MSA Madness and Book Review Blues…3-27-09

With all the madness of MSA, it seems like everything in both school and home life has been put on hold. How is it that these assessments manage to take over and control so much? The power they have is truly amazing no matter how much we try to avoid it. This week, our first official book reviews were due for our class wiki. The quality of what I received varied from stellar to stinky with a little of everything else in between. Even after modeling how to write one several times and viewing a number of examples online, there appear to be some major areas of need. The biggest gap is evident in the amount of content given in the story elements section. Students are either giving away the ending or not writing enough to hook the interest of their readers. We’ve decided to pair up students who wrote engaging and thorough reviews with those who need some extra assistance. These students will share their reviews aloud with one another and hold peer review discussions. We are hoping that the students will realize on their own that their reviews are missing some critical elements in order to be effective. I am considering doing my own voice thread on how to do a book review step-by-step. I think I may be a bit confused on exactly what we have to do. I’ll have to go back and revisit our list of requirements to be sure I am on the right track!

Frustration

After 20 minutes of sitting here being ready to blog...I am finally online. I could not figure out my sign-in to save my life!!! But...now, I am thoroughly confused as to what I will be doing from here on out.

We have finally finished the pictures. Now we have started putting our PowerPoint together for the students to use as their book. We are going to thread this into the podcasting somehow...although I am just not there yet. We don't have the equipment we need. I am finding that completing the wiki portion of this project is difficult with kindergarten. Is it meaningful for them? Really, I am doing most of the work of putting it together...while they give me the ideas and I input the information. The PowerPoint is off to a nice start. I look forward to having that done, and posting their work to the wiki for all to see.

The podcasting will be next. Hopefully we will be able to do that before spring break.

Time

I'm finding it a little difficult fitting in our STEP projects with the rest of what needs to get done here at school (forget about home!). I'm really enjoying it and learning a lot. but time is hard commodity to come by. I want to be sure that I meet all of the requirements, but more importantly, put some of this new knowledge to authentic use. I know that it will happen, but I'm feeling a little bit stressed about it all right now. Anyone have any suggestions?

Blogging

I am finding it difficult to blog. It took a while to find the new post for the blog site. I noticed that I am missing dates on some of my posts and can not figure out how to edit the post. I met with my peers about how to edit. They are having trouble getting in the blog space and even posting. I am sure it will get easier the more we blog.
I am excited about the podcasting. We are going to have so much fun with the podacasting. I am so excited that someone is going to show me how to edit my blogging!!!

Kidspiration

I enjoy using kidspiration...and the kids do too! They have been using it to write what they like about each other. It has been a great tool to increase writing.

Voice Threading...

Voice Threading…what an interesting concept. Though this opens great many things for all of us again I am troubled with authentic application. Is all this technology really helping us instruct better, or is it hurting us?

Blogging Blues

Are these blogs really necessary. I am not a blogger. The last few weeks has shown this to be true.

Choices

I had a very interesting conversation with our tech support person this week about choices. She has a speech that she's going to email me about this and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Apparently it's all about how the more choices we are given, the more difficult it is for us to make choices. We are paralyzed by the fear that we might make the wrong choice or that a better choice is out there, just waiting for us to find it (often using technology). I can see lots of connections to this idea, both in my personal and professional life.

I also made a connection between this and a conversation I had this week with one of our regular substitutes. She is a retired teacher. She commented on how it seems that with all of the new technology applications that are being thrust upon us as educators to make our life easier, nothing is being taken away. She says that she thinks our job is harder now than it ever has been. This is a sentiment that I have heard from other retired teachers as well. I definitely agree that if we are going to have all of these programs etc. put in place to make our lives "easier," then we need to find ways to eliminate or integrate some of the other tasks that we are holding onto. Otherwise, this profession will be impossible to manage very soon. I don't think that we are given/have the time to deeply consider how to determine which of the multitude of CHOICES that we have to use with students and for management are the best suited to our line of work. I also don't think (sorry) that this kind of thinking is necessarily being done the way it needs to higher up on the food chain where these decisions are mostly being made. What results for many teachers is a frustration at trying to find ways to manage the CHOICES that are made for us regarding technology. This frustration and a lack of time results in too many teachers not being able to really consider (or find) which tools (like podcasting, wikis etc.) might be the right CHOICE for our students. When I saw all the cool things that could be done on voicethread (which I had never even heard of) this situation was only highlighted for me.

I guess this post also reflects my feeling lately that I've been on a treadmill that I can't turn off! With all of the requirements placed on us (God bless you guys who have MSA too), I feel like I'm missing out on golden opportunities for my students because I don't have the chance to consider the CHOICES that are out there.

Speaking of Technology…3-20-09

This past week, I went out and purchased a headset with microphone to begin podcasting with the kids. Haven’t tried it out yet, but am planning on playing around with it over the next couple of days. The kids are really excited to start posting some of their book reviews to our wiki; I’ve got quite a few to edit this weekend. So far, they are looking really good. One student is just dying to get on and be videotaped. Her name is Autumn. She joined our class in January and has been quite a lively addition. This girl is going to go places – no doubt. She has a personality that is contagious and is brimming with self-confidence. I am looking forward to our first filming next week. Can’t wait to share!
Recently, I had to write a speech on why full funding of education is critical to academic success. I decided that my take on the issue would be to explain how full funding could impact academic achievement in how it is spent. One of the three ways I chose to elaborate on was technology integration. I thought I’d share this portion of my speech on our blog to see if anyone had any thoughts on the issue:
Another way to motivate children to achieve academic success is through technology integration.
Technology holds the potential to transform learning environments from teacher-centered auditoriums to highly interactive, student-centered powerhouses of knowledge. As we move into the 21st Century, it is crucial that teachers become aware of just how technology-savvy their students are. Students hunger with curiosity about our sophisticated and technologically based world. The one computer classroom doesn’t cut it in comparison to a classroom an ocean away where students are working with personal laptops. Can a chalkboard really get the same message across as an electronic whiteboard? What can a student produce when you place a stylus in his hand instead of a pencil? How does one teach reading comprehension and hold student attention when the click of a mouse overshadows the turning of a page?

In a technology-rich classroom, instruction is often complemented by project-based learning. Through the Internet, multi-media tools, and an extensive and ever-expanding variety of software, students can research, interact, dialogue, create, and demonstrate mastery of content and skill in a variety of disciplines like never before.

Let’s not forget the power that advancements in technology have given educators. With the touch of a button, educators today can access valuable data and information about individual students in order to design personalized action plans for increasing their level of academic success. In addition, technology use and integration impacts student achievement by allowing us to reach the special needs of students in new, dynamic ways. Hearing and vision impaired children can interact and compete on the same level in the same classroom with the general education population.

Former Director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, Linda Roberts, dispelled the notion that there is a delusion about technology's capacity to improve K-12 education, and spoke of a realistic vision of how the use of technology can enhance teaching and learning to improve student achievement as well as provide access to valuable, educational resources. In this era of increasing accountability, it is important to be able to demonstrate that student achievement is being impacted. Technology can provide us the ways and means to do just that. The time technology saves an educator is immeasurable. And time is money, so they say.

Let’s face facts. Children today are mesmerized by the wonders of technology. With the flick of a switch, I can capture the attention of an entire class, find the answer to a burning question in science, or virtually transport students from Colonial Williamsburg to the Great Wall of China and back again. There is no question that technology motivates students to achieve, so is there really a reason to question the full funding of education to support its use in doing this?

Kidspiration inspiration? 20 March 2009

Kidspiration inspiration? 20 March 2009

There was not a lot of time this week to be playing with technology, email, or anything due to MSA testing and my decision to have all classes. I rearranged my schedule to accommodate those classes I missed. One thing I did notice on an email newletter was something that very much looked like Kidspiration, but for older students. It was an organizational tool that one could make webs and mini-folders of ideas. One was to use it to help with writing. This was a big feature in this newsletter. When I went to check it out, there was a notice that stated that at this time, we can not accept new members. It reminds me of a new European web site, devoted to the arts. It was highly advertized in the US, and when launch day came, it crashed because too many people wanted to join it.

On a wiki note, I am able to add the student names to the wiki. The wiki is education. I have had them sign in going in two different ways. They are still not getting the sign in for their names to be posted. I am glad I have them sign at the end of the post. What am I doing wrong?

Technology problems

It seems as though my computer won't turn on at all. One of the cords was yanked out and damaged last night and it appears to have been dropped. The computer specialist is coming to look at it and will hopefully fix it.

Other than that, I have really enjoyed using the camera with the kids. They love taking pictures and they love seeing the ones that they have taken. I plan on using more of that in the future. It is so nice to be able to start really incorporating the technology from last year's STEP program into use this year.

Self-evaluation

Self evaluation is an important process to teach children. They are so scheduled around events and other peoples’ schedules that they don’t seem to think about their actions and reactions. They don’t seem to hold themselves responsible for their performance. This really limits their potential. Electronic portfolios have been used in self evaluation in the past.

community of caring

Our Community of Caring initiative is off to a good start. I can hear students referring to the tenets of caring, respect, responsibility, trust and family. Now we just need to teach them what all that means on a daily basis.

Alphabet Picture Taking

Today we sent students around the building to take pictures. They were finding pictures for the different letters of the alphabet. The children will make a list of the pictures they want to take and the pictures they have taken.

When computers work..LIFE is ordinary...

YEAH the older computers in my room now work…kinda!?! They work enough for me to start having kids visit during lunch and recess or go back during class to create their post, not that many are willing to do so at those times but I can try. I honestly haven’t really thought about it much lately. I have so many irons in the fire right now I’m barely keeping my head above the flood for work that has magically appeared on my desk. But it is what it is..

13 Mar 09 SAVE ME!

13 March 09
SAVE ME!

It is Friday the 13th and so far today, I have proven to be technologically incompetent. I was nominated for Teacher of the Year and found out Wednesday that all information was due by today. I took my school laptop home and worked on my educational stuff at home on Wednesday evening. I saved the file on the laptop.

Yesturday, the education stuff didn't print to the printer in the library even though the printer is the default printer listed. I put the file on a thumbdrive, took it to another computer, and printed it out. I wrote a speech here at school and then took the laptop with me to complete work at home. I ended up writing a completely different speech and edited the first one as well. I saved everything on the laptop.

I got to school this morning. I could NOT access either speech. I saved them in My Documents and not on Mary Beth's Documents on the desktop. They are GONE!!!

I spent my morning rewriting just one speech. I thought I saved it on the desktop I was writing on. When I went back to add a title to the top, IT WAS GONE!!! I apparently didn't save it at all!
SAVE ME!!!!

19 Feb 09 Not a technical week

Blog 19 February 2009

Not a technical week.

This week, I barely used or shared technology. I did a lot of research the old fashioned way, using books. I am writing a quilt unit to go with a presentation Regina and I are doing on Saturday. Instead of searching for even more resources on the Internet to support the lesson, I went to some old reliable stuff that I already knew.

I did check my records for a lesson I wrote for ArtsEdge using FOLLOW THE DRINKING GOURD. I found my drafts and knew that if was on the site…at one time. It was gone! Yes, they have begun getting rid of some of the lessons and that lesson (which was really good and had quilt patterns with it) was something I wanted to see as to what they did with the patterns. So I ended up drawing out new patterns. No technology, just me, a pencil, and grid paper.

Rubrics

It is great to see rubrics as part of the bulletin board displays of student work. When you really study them one can see that students had to put effort and rigor into their work. I love seeing all of the technology used in generating these displays!!

Podcasting Rocks

Today's session was really cool. I am very excited to start working on Voicethread with my kids. The samples that we saw were very, very exciting. I really loved the way that you can have kids publish shared writing using Voicethread. It would be cool for them to be able to access it from home and share with their parents. I also think that it will be very cool to try to use this to have kids share research and other classroom projects.

Today's blog!!-podcasting

Today's session was very informative. I enjoyed looking at specific kindergarten examples of podcasting. Coming into this being completely unfamiliar with podcasting, I was pleasantly surprised that it seems so user-friendly. I am currently brainstorming ideas of how to use it instructionally (maybe like a book read-aloud for children) or how I will have the students using it (again with the alphabet thing...or narrating pictures from our field trip!)

Just some thoughts!

Podcasting and Beating the Blogging Blues! 3-13-09

Today, we had our monthly meeting for our STEP II Team. It was centered on Podcasting. I'm excited to begin using this new technology tool. This weekend, I will probably go out and purchase a simple headset with attached microphone. I'll begin by having the students record the text for their personal page in our class Write-A-Book, Our Alliterative Animal Alphabet. This will give every child a chance to record one sentence of text as an introduction to podcasting. Our next step will be to record descriptions of our Landform Pictionary books and Landform model project. We will be working our way up to using this multimedia tool/option for presenting our Biweekly Book Reviews on our class Wikipage.
As you can see, we have also been able to begin blogging online again. It should be a much more user-friendly format to share a blog page on this site within our school.

Authentic Integration

My biggest concern as we learn about wiki spaces, podcasting etc...is the authentic integration of these technologies into the planning, teaching, learning paradigm. It is possibly just a personal concern however I worry frequently about such things. I am just now getting to the point where the technologies presented last year are becoming comfortable in their integration into the classroom in a manner that is authentic to both myself as the instructor and the children as the receivers of instruction. While I understand that as we introduce these new ideas into the classroom there will be that inital excitement about something new, however the projects that introduce the children to the new presentation format are and should be based on solid instruction and thoughtful naturalistic integration of the new tools as opposed to doing the project for the sake of the new technology.

Podcasting

Today we used the vociethreading website for podcasting. I thought this was fun and the children will love doing activities. I loved watching the other podcast for ideas!!

Welcome To Rockledge's STEP Team Blog

Hey Rockledge Roadrunners!

This is our STEP team blog. We are going to use this one blog to jointly communicate our experiences from this year's program. This is also where you can add/repost your previously written blogs (remember to put labels on them so they can be sorted). I look forward to communicating with you. Go Roadrunners!

TIME TIME TIME...part 3 of a thousand part rant...

TIME…where is the TIME TO WORK!!! I am getting behind on this stuff. That may be an overabundance of ideas and not enough time with kids to get it done. I can see how if I were in a classroom and could devote a small amount of time to this daily with select students tell all were done this would be a great benefit. But as a specialist with different kids every 30 min…this is hard.

Grateful for Technology 3-6-09

This week, we have been consumed by continued MSA preparations. I cannot begin to share how wonderful it has been to have our personal laptops and LCD projectors. Not only can we easily type modeled BCR responses and student responses on the laptop to project clearly and modify easily for the class, but we can print out these samples in a snap for students to take home for parents and students to use to assist them in answering BCRs at home. Parents and students have been grateful to have these as a resource. I have been grateful for happy parents as a result!

rubrics

I was thinking how rubrics for work can really make a difference in how children approach a piece of work. If the items reflect literal ideas and concepts that have been presented it is like a recall or review. If the rubric calls for a student to analyze or draw a conclusion it includes more rigor. The higher grades may be able to use "Inspiration" as a tool to expand on their writing.

Equal Parts

03/20/09

I just did a great lesson using united streaming about equal parts. We watched the Number Crew on Fractions, and then we did an activity using Skittles. We used the Elmo and sorted out the Skittles and put them in pairs to share with each other. The class discussed equal numbers of Skittles and uneven numbers of Skittles. They enjoyed the lesson very much. It was simple and delightful to teach!!

5 Mar 09 Wiki? What's a Wiki?

Blog 5 March 2009

Wiki? What’s a Wiki?

This was a refrain I heard from students and staff as I tried to explain what I wanted them to do with my new classroom wiki. Some folks had heard of Wikopedia, but most were confused. I tried to explain it.

I uses the wiki-ness of my wiki to edit each one, yet again. I decided to add annotations to each. Over the weekend, I read all of the Black Eyed Susan picture books and created a plan for reading them to the school. I know only a few lucky classes will get to hear them all because of the snow day and because of MSA schedule. Anyway, the annotations were easy because I had a CD of the books and there were some annotations there. I just copied and pasted. The few picture books with none, I wrote quickly myself. The picture book ones are about a sentence or two long. The novels are quite a bit longer. Not every font was the same when I did the copy and paste thing or wrote my own annotations. I do not know how to fix that. I hope the reviewers don’t mind.

I found a student who had read three of the novels and I wanted her to be my wiki guinea pig. I invited her in on Tuesday, sat her down at the computer, and went right to the wiki. I explained what I wanted her to do. She selected the book she wanted to comment on. We clicked on the discussion part. She could not discuss. I did not know how to add her> I must have been on bus duty when that was gone over. I went to Susan and Wendy for help. Wendy set me straight.

I took the girl into Wendy’s room after school and Wendy showed me how to manage the wiki to add the names. Now this is going to be time consuming, since there are 510 students who go to this school. I decided to see who else had read three novels. I did a copy history on each book and printed out a list. I found only one other student who matched my first as in the number of books read. I added her as well. Both girls came into the media center yesterday, and I explained what I wanted them to do and how to do it. One girl wrote a lot. The other girl wrote a little. They took about 10 minutes to do their work. They were excited to post and want to come again today to write about another book.

Meanwhile, one third grade class has decided that they want to check out Black Eyed Susan novels because they too want to post. I checked out five books over the past two days for them. I asked them to read it quickly, so that other student could also read the books. A student from yesterday already returned the book. She wants to post too. I learned when I added her four-letter name to the list of guests, I needed to have six or more letters for her. I added her short last name and that fixed it.

I think to manage how students are doing their commenting, I will open it up for before school, at recess, and after school. I hope I get more than three commenters.

Flat Stanley Wiki

One of the ideas I had for my wiki was having kids add pictures to embedded maps of where their Flat Stanleys had traveled. Tia was nice enough to ask the “Google Guru” how to do that. I’m in the process of experimenting with that now. It’s so exciting to learn how to do things that I’ve run across on the web. My kids are very excited to have yet another way to share their Stanleys’ travels.

Kidspiration

I used kidspiration today when counting money. It was so helpful to be able to manipulate the features around the screen and use it with the students. I saw the whiteboard in another class, and I really want to use it. It looks like it is an incredible resource. I would love for all teachers to have one! I am looking forward to getting a "turn" with this one...maybe next year.

Piano Keyboarding skills and STEP an unlikely paring

It is interesting that as I work with the MIDI boards I am discovering some children seem to have a natural affinity for the piano. With little coaching they are able to strike the keys quite pianisically while others are tentative to the point of not getting them to register. Which leads to the need to teach how to interface with the interface…huh…whom knew?