Regarding Wikis, etc.

I wanted to follow up on Friday's session by pointing you towards a resource that I like a lot--Lee Lefevre's Common Craft site. Common Craft tutorial videos have a sense of humor and whimsy that I like, and he has a nice way of getting clearly and expeditiously to the basics. This link will take you to one about wikis, but he has others about RSS Feeds (a tool that will help you keep track of the activity on all of the blogs you'll want to read!) and social networking.
I also wanted to share something I just learned about. I know that you're using inspiration to do some concept mapping work, and I have the sense that some of you are seeing some neat possibilities for using the tool. You might want to check out visuwords, which is a dictionary using a graphical interface to connect words with other words and ideas. I know that it helps me to see ideas in context, even if those contexts are idiosyncratic, and this looks like the kind of tool that could inspire thinking, which I see as the ultimate criterion.

Media Specialists

Caroline blogged this week about a trip that she and a couple of others took to the school where they'll be teaching, and she wrote about meeting an inspiring media specialist. I was thinking about this as I listened to a presentation done by a woman named Joyce Valenza from the Philadelphia area (more details in a minute). Her presentation was about what she calls information fluency--helping kids to thoughtfully engage with and utilize information AND to be more sophisticated learners and creators of content. She touched on a couple of ideas that I thought might interest you. First, she speaks of a dimension that we'd not yet addressed...the idea of using blogs as sources. She presented with a teacher from her building who encouraged kids to do this, but who also wanted to scaffold their engagement with this task. They shared a template they had created for evaluating blogs, which can be found here. While you're there, I'd encourage you to have a look at what Joyce calls curricular pathfinders. These are sets of pointers to online resources organized thematically. They point to some databases that schools must subscribe to, so you'll be a bit constrained, but there's a lot that you *will* be able to see and the idea itself is a most interesting one. It also suggests a good question to add to your list of questions when you do the "tech at my school" assignment (or anytime!) Which research databases does my school subscribe to? There's lots of cool stuff being put out there, some of which costs a bit of $$, and if your library is subscribed to some of these databases you media specialist will likely only be too happy to see it being used.
Oh. The presentation that I spoke of took place at the NECC Conference in Atlanta earlier this month. I heard Joyce's presentation (and was turned on to a treasure trove of resources that she shared) here (via Apple Learning Exchange) or on itunes by subscribing to "conference Connections."

English Language and Music

Today I just want to share a couple of links that some of you might find interesting.

First off, in my recent travels I found this post that was made on a blog called "Teaching High School" that appears no longer to be active. Just a little gem you might want to use with students to remind them how challenging it is to learn English.

Secondly, Wesley Fryer is one of the more inspired educators to be blogging these days, and he's also an active podcaster. You can subscribe to his "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" podcasts on iTunes or at his blog site. He's a techie who is very conscious of the fact that we have to think of kids first, not tools, and he frequently makes reference to John Dewey, a great educational thinker who we'll be talking about at our next class (if you're curious about this man who died over 50 years ago, yet whose ideas feel amazingly "cutting edge," check out the brief, engaging essay, "My Pedagogic Creed," in the July 13th folder on CTools).
In any event, the chance to check out Wesley's own ideas is the best reason to go to his blog, but he linked to the most curious website a few days back, and I wanted to share this link as one of those "How in heck does this work..." kind of moments.
The site is called Midomi.com, and it's basically a song recognition site. You hum a tune, it tells you (with impressive accuracy) what song you're humming.
Here's Wesley's blog posting about the site. Have fun...

Bud the Teacher on Blogging

I want to steer you towards a post that you may find interesting. It starts with a post by Colorado HS teacher, Bud Hunt, who uses blogging with his English students. He himself blogs at a site called Bud the Teacher, and his work is well worth a look. The issue in this particular post seems to reside somewhere between supporting student writing as a tool for expression, and the notion of "teaching" blogging as a kind of act of connective communication and engagement with the world of ideas. The interwoven issues are nicely articulated and then, even better, several teachers respond to Bud's post (including Mr. I, whose classroom blog was one of those that we looked at) and complicate the issues still further, in lots of good ways.
This discussion fits very nicely with the conversations we started on Friday, in which some of potential benefits of blogging (being able to go deeper on a conversation, including the quieter students, slowing down the conversation) were mentioned along with concerns around privacy and that we not forget how to have good face-to-face discussions. Bud's experiences, even as a believer in the power of blogging as a tool, seem to indicate that "getting there" takes time and thought.
Here's the thread...your thoughts are welcome (whether here or on Bud's blog) Jeff

If I'm asking you...

..then I had better play, too.

I was really pleased with the discussion that grew out of your writing and drawing about technology in your classrooms. Lots of very creative ideas that, from reading some of the blog posts, set others among you to thinking. That's a great outcome, and is an auspcious beginning by my reckoning.
I also appreciated the fact that people gave expression to their skepticism, and their concerns about what might get supplanted in a rush to bring technology into our classrooms. These concerns and expressions of skepticism are vital, because (my interpretation) they help us to remember that we start with our students and our teaching/learning relationships, and we go from there. If instructional technologies can help us get there, then let's take a closer look. If not...on we go.
I'll probably mention this in class at some point, but some of you might be interested in a very creative use of blogging employed by a friend and colleague, Pete, and his student teacher from last year, Lauren. It was a kind of dialogue journal about their experiences together, and their takes on some of the issues that emerged. I found it interesting and thought-provoking to read about some of the teaching issues that emerged, particularly around gender. Maybe you'll want to try something of this kind. Check it out at:

http://ekotalearn07.blogspot.com/