When I look back at some of my original blog posts and recall my doubts and frustrations at the beginning of course, I realize that my negativity stemmed from my ignorance, plain and simple.  First of all, I didn’t know anything about the tools of the 2.0. No, that’s not true–I had heard the word “wiki” and had read the personal blog of a friend, which is basically a quarterly updated journal of what their family has been up to. But that’s it.

Probably the part of the course that I found to be the easiest was the Pecha Kucha. That would be because I was already familiar with Powerpoint.  I had fun putting together the presentation because my creative soul was allowed to make it look pretty.

Podcasting was the next easiest.  I guess that’s because I have that sometimes detrimental “gift of the gab”. We chose a topic that was easy to discuss, so it was a very natural dialogue. The editing of our sound track  was time consuming, but fun, once we got the hang of it.

The CamStudio video tutorial was a new experience for me.  I think it is a great tool that I would like to use in the future.  The one negative has to do with the age level of my students.  The topic of my video was Photostory, a program that I was going to use for the first time with my third graders. Because of audio difficulties, I was never able to actually show the tutorial to my students.  Instead, I walked them through the process with my computer image cast on the pull-down screen with my overhead projector.  To tell you the truth, I really think that the pace of the tutorial and the amount of information shared in it would have been much too overwhelming for my third-graders. They needed a lot more time and step-by-step hand-holding in order to learn the program. Maybe I need to re-record the tutorial and give it a try, rather than assume it would be more or less a waste of time to share it with them. 

Since the beginning of this course, in preparing for a lesson on a certain type of poetry writing, I put together a Powerpoint with a few examples of persona poetry and then a very brief 5-step guide on how to write one.  The kids were extremely engaged when I showed it in class, resulting in a high level of motivation.  I then emailed the PPT to the parents so they would know exactly what was expected of their kids when they took their poetry writing assignment home to complete. The parents truly appreciated the resource.  Now that I have it tucked away in my Literacy folder, it will be easy to pull out in the years to come.  I think that the real killer is the time that it takes to put together some of these resources, but once the job is done, it’s there for you to tweak, use and share for a long, long time.  It is definitely something that could easily be posted in a class wiki or blog for easy student or parent access at school and at home.

And isn’t that a perfect segue into the most challenging part of the course–blogs and wikis!  As I said in one of my first posts, it really is like learning a new language. And by no means have I become fluent at it. Just like any good language program, though, you need that whole  immersion experience in order to gain the level of comfort and competence required for one to make the new language truly a functional part of their life.  In spite of how confusing I first found it, I do realize that our students will probably pick it up much more quickly than we do.  They don’t have any preconceived notions or mental barriers like we old dogs do. 

With the final assignment that we are working hard to finish, it has really made me feel hopeful that students will be able to share their learning in a wiki format–that means both telling/showing their understanding to others, as well as learning from others’ posts. 

So, will these good things come to an end? They better not. But in order to ensure that we teachers don’t “forget” what we have learned and resort to our traditional teaching strategies, I think we should make sure that we have continued pro-d, or maybe even start an ISM faculty 2.0 wiki to inform and inspire others with what creative and useful ways we are implementing 2.0 in our classroom.

As well, if I was anticipating an absence and was hesitant to have a substitute teacher tackle a particular skill, program or topic with them. I could fire up the computer ahead of time and explain it on film, whether guiding them through a particular program or simply doing a written, narrated demonstration on something like a Microsoft Word document

I guess the trick is to get using it so it becomes second nature rather than grounds for a migraine headache! One way to avoid the latter would be to not agonize over scripting. I realize “they” say that a scripted video tutorial will result in a concise, efficient presentation. But we, as teachers, are not used to writing and following a script. We are the queens of dramatic elaboration, the kings of “winging it” (based, of course, on fully detailed, carefully laid out lesson plans for every minute of the day!) In fact, isn’t the ability to speak upon the prompting of a few key words the sign of a good public speaker. And with a little work, we can learn to speak like a typical radio show host, and elongate those words, rather than trip over the “ums” and “ers”.

Truthfully, I was hardly a quarter of the way through the article and was definitely starting to feel my blood pressure rise as he described a good portion of today’s youths as “The students who ‘tune us out.’ These students are convinced that school is totally devoid of interest and totally irrelevant to their life. In fact, they find school much less interesting than the myriad devices they carry in their pockets and backpacks.”  I was milliseconds away from leaning over to my two colleagues to complain about these “tune-outers”, but caught myself in the nick of time, reminding myself that my ramblings were better saved for my beloved blog.

I couldn’t help but flash back to my less than satisfying and shortlived year (last year, in fact) when I entered the sphere of high school, thinking only about how I would embrace the courses and students I was assigned to teach (French, Tourism and Home Ec), enjoy the elevated level of maturity in these kids (at least in comparison to my multitude of years as a lower elementary school teacher)and help them to learn more than they ever thought they could on the subject.  After all, I had taught French immersion for many years, I had traveled the world and I had been cooking and sewing since I came out of the womb. But what disappointed me was the high percentage of these”tune-outers”.  Oh ya, there were certain ones that I was able to get through to as they sensed my passion for the subject and realized that Tourism 11 or French 9 weren’t, in fact, the biggest waste of time in the world. As long as I was able to exert a little crowd control in Sewing and Cooking, it was pretty easy to get my darling little adolescent urchins on my side, as I was able to lure them with such entertaining delights such as sewing machines and electric cake mixers, both of which have buttons, make noises and could cause a certain amount of damaged if in the wrong hands–the element of danger is always enticing to a hormonal 13 year-old!  The promise of a hefty portion of chocolate chip cookies or gooey cheese scones at the end of a cooking class was also a pretty good lure for my little 8th grade fishies.  But French 8 was another story. I taught half of these same kids in my Home Ec classes and they just couldn’t figure out why I was such a fun teacher in Home Ec, but not in French. But, telling them that I was teaching them a language and not how to roll out dough and use cookie cutters didn’t seem to make too much sense to them.

So, the lack of bells and whistles definitely made my job an ongoing uphill battle and all the while I was thinking,  kids couldn’t have been this bad when I was a teenager, could they! That thought rapidly re-entered my head as I continued to make my way through Prensky’s step-into-the-new-millenium sermon. But as he says, when we were kids, our “…lives were a lot less rich—and not just in money: less rich in media, less rich in communication, much less rich in creative opportunities for students outside of school. Many if not most …[of us] never even knew what real engagement …[felt] like.”

As much as I have fought this notion, it really is true, isn’t it?  For so long, I’ve been thinking that some of these kids are just so darn disrespectful, complaining, not paying attention…what kind of manners have their parents been teaching them?!  But now I’m realizing that their parents (myself included, since I am the mother of two teenage girls) have provided them with a life full of talking gadgets with bells, buttons and whistles.  Long gone are the days of wooden train sets and doctor kits with candy pills. Our kids don’t really even know what those little trinkets are. Even when my girls were toddlers, fifteen some-odd years ago, their version of a doctor’s kit was a panel with red crosses and shapes that lit up and  yelled in  a relatively unemotional “Emergency! Emergency!  Call the doctor!” Now, kids have three-d computer/video games such as Wii and Nintendo DS (and let it be known that my husband and I have not succumbed to the Wii, and daughter number two was only allowed to purchase a DS after saving up all her hard-earned babysitting money!–at least some traditional non-instant-gratification standards do still exist in our household). Just as we aren’t quite the same parents as ours were, our children aren’t the same relatively innocent, easily amused kids that we were.  And sadly…or not…there’s not a lot we can change, is there?  I sit here at my 6 year-old relic of a Mac desktop, with one daughter 20 feet away on the almost as archaic 4 year-old lap-top, as my eldest sits beside me on the family’s newest piece of technology, 20-inch flat screen and built-in camera and all,  to enter the house just less than a year ago. My poor husband has been relegated to his pencil and paper since we haven’t yet forked over the money for a 4th major piece of computer technology (although his 42″ hi-def t.v. keeps him pretty happy!) Except for the fellow who drew the short straw, we are all checking our emails or Facebook far too often, in between researching info on the world wide web, importing photos here and there, consulting Youtube for the occasional relevant or simply entertaining video clip.  Yes, our daily existence has changed and so, I admit,  must our teaching. Next question: “Can this computer fabricate a few extra hours in the day for us to do it?!”

http://www.garageband.com/mp3/Boomerang_Expats.mp3?|pe1|WdjZPXLrvP2rYVK-ZmtmDw

So, the question of the day is “How can I effectively use blogging or wikis with my 3rd grade students?” Given that blogs are more personal in nature and provide a space where you can write down your thoughts, wonders, investigations and observations, and receive feedback from those who just happen to accidentally or, perhaps more likely, purposely find your post in cyberspace (especially when it comes to wee ones who send their link to Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa and any other friend or relative who might be interested in supporting the little tyke in his cute little venture), I personally figure blogs might be most beneficial at this age.

I didn’t think I could really intelligently answer this question without doing a little research. Most of what I found really focussed on the benefits of having kids writing on blogs. Sharon Housley talks about what one would expect–commitment, improved writing/spelling/editing skills and, of course, improved keyboarding skills. Donna Boucher provides some interesting writing ideas and a good list of Do’s and Don’ts to consider when having your kids embark on blogging…although adults would probably be wise to adhere to the same rules! But it was six year-old Aidan‘s blog that really spoke to me. He’s a full 2 years younger than my own students and has clearly gotten hooked on blogging. An adult friend of the family provides a rather short but entertaining commentary on the little gaffer’s excitement. Basically, he writes about topics that interest him, with research backing it up and all. Aidan really got me to thinking about what I could start with my students and, once I nurture them for a bit then push them out of the nest, they could continue with as a home based activity.

I so loathe passing out traditional Spelling homework each week…put your words in alphabetical order on Monday, write sentences on Tuesday, blah, blah, blah…. I know the kids go home and, for the most part, likely loathe it just as much as I do! What if I was to give them a list of writing topics? They could alternate between my list and a topic of their own choice. Wouldn’t 30 minutes of focussed, motivated writing be worth more than glowing 20/20 on your weekly spelling test? Since we don’t condone voluminous amounts of homework at this tender, young age, this could be their regular, weekly homework. In one week, they would have to write one post of their own and respond to that of another student in the class. I would encourage parents to help them with editing (why not encourage some positive and meaningful parent/child interaction whenever the opportunity presents itself?). At the moment, I already have my kids write a weekly letter home to their parents to share what they have been learning. It is just as much of a “let’s learn how to write a proper paragraph” tool as it is a communication one, although my little angels don’t necessarily realize it. As much as I love to see their little handwritten letters and their parents’ loving handwritten reply, maybe I should give up my traditional, sentimental tendancies, step into the 21st century and have them do a little communicating 2.0 style! Ideally, they would continue with the blog for years to come and it would become the memory album of their thoughts. With peer comments, can you imagine the hilarious discussion is would prompt at their 10 year highschool reunion!?

So when I say “homework”, I don’t say they are going to be awarded with an A, B, C or otherwise on their efforts. If I give them enough choice of topics, it might not really feel like homework. As long as it gets them reading and writing, submitting a commentary on their favourite Play Station game would be totally acceptable! I would just have to make sure their blog entries didn’t purely consist of a “Weekly Play Station Update”!

Our school is quite committed to the idea of E-portfolios. Perhaps this blog would be a comparable alternative to the portfolios and, because they can personalize their blog that much more, their motivation to add their own work samples might be greater…or is this getting away from the intended nature of a blog?

Well, I am now just over the 700 word mark and rapidly heading towards 800…not bad for a Friday night after an always tiring week at work. So, wikis will have to wait until next time!

I also like the Think Abouter’s creativity and willingness to let his blogsite and his thoughts evolve and really take on a life of their own. As we say in curriculum planning circles, it should be a living, breathing document. And I guess by nature of it’s interactive qualities, it really is. I can see a blog becoming a haven for philosophizing (sp?) about life, its bizarre intricacies, its natural wonders and its ultimate potential.

So it’s time for me to stop complaining that “I’m just too busy” and embrace the opportunity to self-discover, to grow professionally, to ponder about life in general and, basically, to get with the 2.0 program!

If you haven’t figured out what I am referring to, it has to do with kids being able to follow their passion and write critically about it, then get credit in more than one subject area (i.e. writing thoughtfully about Math or Social Studies, and being given credit by your English or psychology teacher). My own daughter was fortunate enough to be in a school whose practice was just that. For her, it involved a project that she had spent endless hours working on. Because it was a Social Studies project that involved a genre of writing in which they were expected to show their ability for English class, she got credit for both. Why not show your understanding of a science concept by writing a factually based piece of fiction, and receive credit in both English and Science class? We all know how much time such an assignment would take to thoughfully design and efficiently complete. For that matter, why not get credit for art class by illustrating it? Although this idea and my daughter’s experience involve a fairly large project, I think it could be highly reasonable for such overlap to occur in lesser assignments, such as journal writing. Two or more teachers could easily have access to the student’s blog.

On the other hand, do all students have the desire to think as passionately as Clay Burrell sees his wonderful students doing? Will they come up with an idea and revisit it regularly, dissect it, look at it from different perspectives and allow it to perpetuate further questions and wonders that are so strong that they are motivated to read up on the topic and respond to their learning? I think these kinds of students are few and far between. In a perfect world, we would all be like this…but our world is far from perfect. On the other hand, if I was allowed to research about sewing techiques (I know–major yawn, right?), challenge the “right” way to do them with shortcuts that I have created, maybe even start writing about some of my sewing challenges, all because I knew I could get credit for it in a class, I might just be motivated enough to do so. A soccer player might be interested in doing so, too…as well as a dancer, a mathematician, a biologist, a reader…a computer geek! Even if it wasn’t interdisciplinary, would it make sense to incorporate this notion into a portion of a students mark for each class in middle school or highschool, or upper elementary? Why not let the students choose a topic that is related to a given subject area, write freely about it, wonder, read up and share with others? If the topic isn’t already a passion, it might just become one.

Where I could see a difference in teaching with 2.0 is the out-of-class hours communication between teacher and students and/or parents. It can easily be a daily communication device and place for increasing access to assignments, worksheets and other resources. Of course, with this comes teacher accountability or perhaps, moreso, teacher commitment. It must truly become a way of life because if people come to expect something, they will not be impressed if it is not maintained to a consistent standard. I see Stale’s little “how to” video clips that are extremely helpful. I can see this being very useful so explanations can be made available to anyone anywhere. Although the video clips are not terribly long in their completed format, how much time goes into making them? I guess a perfectionist would be highly stressed with this aspect of teaching, wouldn’t he?

As for learning, I can see that, given the input of the teacher in the previous two paragraphs, a student’s learning could be enhanced because of increased accessibility to information on blogs, wikis, etc for reinforcement of their learning. A very keen student would benefit more, especially one who loves to read and write. If the teacher were to write messages to students, they could read and respond to the text. More beneficial would be visuals by way of podcasts and such (and I say this not really knowing much about podcasts at this point in time). Perhaps the teaching that is offered through 2.0 tools would be directed just as much towards parents as students. If a child is confused about a new concept, the parents could consult the blog or wiki and learn, themselves, so they could be a greater support and liaison for their child at home. What would student collaboration at the middle elementary level look like? Much of such work really has to occur within the classroom so the teacher can facilitate productive collaboration through encouragement and additional explanation and gestures.

Now, I want to forget that I ever mentioned any doubts about the usefulness and effectiveness of web 2.0 when it comes to teaching and learning. Although there are probably way more advantages than I can even fathom, here is a brainstorm of all the positives that I can see from my very novice perspective:

resource for school readings and worksheets/assignments

resource for filmed explanations

resource for useful websites

communication tool between parents and teacher (class calendar of events/assignments, Q & A and updates)

place for students and teachers to pose questions

place to plan/work on certain projects

I’ll leave it at that and try to remain more optimistic and open about the possibilities of technology in the classroom!

When I read a blog post on someone else’s site, I realized that, in terms of how I can see this being used in the classroom, I have to be thinking so ahead of myself and assuming that within the relative near future, all the kids will have a laptop on their desk and we will be accessing all kinds of sites, resources and programs on a regular basis throughout the day. Having been a teacher since the late 80′s, when we were just learning how to do word processing and hadn’t even been exposed to things like email and Google, and when 99% of the learning took place in a fairly traditional classroom, part of me questions how much we can allow computer technology to take over in the early elementary classroom (I am teaching grade 3 at the moment). Will it speed up learning or slow it down because of the time that it takes to learn the programs? Are the brain and fingers of a third-grader capable of applying the use of blogs and wikis in an efficient, productive way?…maybe it just takes longer for adults! Will we start teaching keyboarding in PreK or ECLC so they are experts by grade 2 or 3 and will be able to complete what we need them to complete in a given day? At the moment, I have my students write a letter to their parents every Friday. They are able to get twice as much written when they do it by hand than when I have them type it and email to their parents.

From what I can see, much of the sharing of ideas and questions on blogs is done from the privacy of one’s own home or at least away from the teacher/classroom. Do kids in grade 3 have the wisdom and maturity that might be necessary to think deeply enough and effectively communicate with each other on blogs, without having someone’s face and gestures in front of them to help them further elaborate on something that is confusing…or will we be doing that with webcams? Even if that something is not particularly confusing, I question whether a third-grader would think and write deeply enough. For the most part, they are the wizards of one-word answers.

As teachers, will school become a 24 hour-a-day occupation; will we find ourselves having to respond to students via our blog or wiki well into the evening? Will we want to or will we start to resent it and feel that we have been surgically attached to the computer? Will the world of Web 2.0 be an incredible motivator for my students or will it be a heap of incredible frustration for them? I do sound like I’m playing the devil’s advocate. Maybe I’m just trying to avoid falling into the trap that appears before us when we don’t think thoroughly enough through the pros and cons.

Perhaps some of the discussion and teaching in this course will enlighten me with regards to the realistic greater application of our modern technology in a classroom of 8 year-olds. Or, at least, it will make me become more efficient with it, which will enable me to convey an understanding to my students in a confident manner. Will I have the opportunity to significantly explore the use of computers in third grade classrooms in other parts of the world? Surely some educators must have blogs about just that subject.
So, I suppose what I want professionally from this course is to learn practical, realistic applications of Web 2.0 in the middle elementary classroom.

Being an expat, we use the computer as a means of connecting ourselves with our former life–our family and friends abroad. At this point in time, I am so impressed with the simplicity and usefulness of email and Skype. Can this course enhance my ability to stay better connected on a personal, social level ? I guess the next 2 months hold the answer.

WIKI – home for the course (control centre)

           – to collaborate, see posted info and type in notes

           – space for everyone to consult

NETUBES – subscribe to fees for course

                    – some overlap with wiki

                   – something that I need to configure

BLOG (wordpress) – I post writing, assignments and notes

                                     – this is my space

And now I realize that maybe I need to be keeping all these notes in the WIKI, right?