Morag's Musings

Hard Goals vs Smart Goals

2011-07-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm attending the Saskatchewan Principal's Short Course and yesterday our first keynote, Gwen Keith spoke on "The Multiple Roles of the Principalship." One item of interest was an introduction to HARD goals. SMART goals are the ones I'm familiar with where the goal is:
Specific
Measureable
Attainable
Relistic
Timely.

Gwen mentioned that SMART goals are for management and HARD goals are for leadership. A HARD goal is:
Heartfelt (something you are passionate about)
Animated (you can picture the end result)
Required (necessary for survival)
Difficult (require learning new skills)

I think that HARD goals are great for technology implementation because you always have to learn something new. I'm in the process of developing one for our One-to-One project this fall. To decide if a goal meets the criteria you can go to this site and take the supplied quiz.

I also found this Globe and Mail article on the topic interesting!

Sharing What I'm Doing

2010-10-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

Just watched Dean Shareski’s “Sharing: the Moral Imperative” talk and realized I have not blogged in a long time. So thought I should update you on what I’m currently doing in my school.

The grade 5 and 6 students just watched the opening two episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation that deal with the main character, Emma, meeting a “16 year old boy” Jordan on-line. She is 12 years old and thinks Jordan is cute and into many of the same things that she is. When he tells her he is coming to her city on a school trip, even though it is summer, she agrees to meet him. Her friends tell her it is a bad idea but she lies to them and sneaks away. At the hotel she meets Jordan’s “teacher” who lures her up to the room to join the boys for pizza. When she arrives at the room she realizes the teacher is actually Jordan. Luckily, her friends hack into her e-mail, showing how some passwords can be easily guessed. They discover that “Jordan” must have also figured out her password and has been reading Emma’s e-mails and then sending her messages that seem like he can “see into her soul.” They also discover the hotel where she agreed to meet Jordan and they let Emma’s mom know and in the nick of time Emma is rescued and “Jordan” arrested. As the police take away her computer, as evidence, the officer warns the mom to keep the computer downstairs so the cyber-stalkers can’t get into her daughter’s bedroom.

I’ve shown these two episodes annually for the past 5 or 6 years. I bought the DVDs for about $60.00 and it was one of the best investments I’ve made. The story is relevant, well acted, and quite riveting plus, it sparks great discussion among my students as to who they can trust on-line, the dangers of meeting someone they only know on-line, how a person can pretend to be someone else on line, where a computer should be kept at home, what you should tell your Mom and Dad, creating strong passwords and who should be allowed to know your passwords. In this day and age where most of the students in grades 5 and 6 have a Facebook account it also leads nicely into privacy settings and what it is safe to post on-line. We are following up this discussion with sessions on the “Passport to the Internet” site.

Glogster Fun

2009-11-04T19:16:00.000-08:00

I played with Glogster and created the following:

Moshi Monsters

2009-10-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

Moshi Monsters is a fun little site that my grade five students showed me. You can adopt a monster, out of six choices, give them a name, and customize their colours. Then you are given a house for your monster from which you can contact friends, play puzzles to earn Rox, and exit to go out into the town. To keep your monster happy you need to play with it, feed it, and decorate its house. You can also acquire moshlings who seem to be pets for your monster. To earn Rox for food and accessories you play puzzles. The puzzles are logical, Math, or word puzzles. To register you need an e-mail address and then you choose a user name, your age, your country, and a name for your monster. The site seems quite secure as you have to send a friend request to other monsters before they can chat with you. The chat of course needs to follow Internet Safety rules, and I'm not sure if it's monitored by the site but I think it probably is. My students are quite happy to do the puzzles to keep their monster happy. A good way to get them thinking.

Universal Design Learning - Carolyn Staudt at BLC09

2009-08-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

“The goal of this project is to use UDL principles to create practical science materials for students and teachers in inclusive classrooms. The project will create inquiry modules around the theme of energy.” It is free to sign up and I created a Living Sky School Division group so anyone else in the Division can add your own school as you register. It was developed with funding from the NSF and the data from all students who use the units is collected, collated, and studied. Classroom teachers are also able to see exactly how their students performed in different sections of the unit.

It has units set up for grades 3-6 on the topics of friction, electricity, plants, and clouds. Beginning units are labeled blue and are for grades 3-4 and intermediate units are labeled gold and are for grades 5-6. Each unit uses Inquiry based science experimentation. Lessons take (30-45 minutes each) and units include technology, science, a related math project, and a related reading project. You download the installer and the units. They are designed to work with very little bandwidth necessary, and graphics and so on load very quickly.

Each unit includes a lab notebook and students can pull the results from their experiments and put them in their notebook for their final presentations. During a lesson if a student clicks on a word they are asked to tell what they think it means and then they are given the correct definition. The words are then recorded in the student's personal glossary. Words can be clicked on and the computer will say them aloud. Interestingly, records showed that students don't use text-to-speech unless they are at the top of their group - over achievers.

The units also have a Smart Graph feature and when students use sensors which provide data it is then graphed. Questions about the graphs are given to students and the questions are accompanied by scaffolding to determine the answer, which includes a series 5 levels of clues. Teachers are able to adjust the scaffolding as they see fit.

Each unit starts with a pre-test and then follows through the ideas of:

engage
explore
explain
evaluate

Through modeling - students can create items such as an electric circuit, and do experiments such as determining which surfaces have more friction than others.

The students can login at home or school so parents can view what is occurring.
I'm hoping to try the electricity unit with my grade six class this fall.

BLC 25 Ed Tech Leaders

2009-08-05T18:42:00.001-07:00

Interestingly enough this is one session I didn't make it to but thought looked interesting. The slide show below gives you more ideas for people you may want to add to your PLN.

BLC 25 Ed Tech Leaders

View more presentations from Lisa Thumann.

SCRATCH SESSION at MIT

2009-07-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

I went to a great session at MIT on Scratch this morning, Monday, July 27th. It was run by several of the program developers, a graduate student, several programmers, a teacher who is currently using Scratch, and a professor Mitchel Resnick. The lab at MIT is really interesting with a large elephant balloon in one corner, a replica of the Millennium Falcon made out of gold Lego hanging from the ceiling, a massive mural, and stations with a variety of toys. The idea is that this lab is a Lifelong Kindergarten where the Kindergarten spirit to build, design, and create is kept alive. Scratch was developed with this principal in mind as it allows creation and sharing of interactive games, stories, and animations made by students.

Students need to think creatively, reason symmetrically, and work collaboratively. The students use a creative learning spiral which goes imagine, create, play (experiment), share (receive suggestions and critiques from other users), reflect (how could they change/improve their project), re-imagine, recreate, and so on. Students can download other student’s projects and remix and repost them or borrow parts for their own projects. We were shown some of one 13 year old girl’s (My Red Neptune) projects and she is very good at drawing and creating animations and other students have even requested that she create specific animations for their projects.

To create in Scratch is easy and difficult. They described it as like snapping Lego blocks together. There are different components like Moves, Sounds, and Controls. For example you pick a Sprite (character) from a gallery of pre-made ones, by drawing your own, or taking a picture from a camera or the Internet. Then you create a script for that Sprite. This can be simply asking it to move to music when clicked on or you can have the Sprite ask a question and then set up an IF – THEN - ELSE loop to tell if the correct answer was inputted. It is a good way to reinforce logical thinking as the Sprites do exactly what you tell them.

The Scratch website is 2 years old and nearly ½ million projects have been shared. One of the current focuses of the Scratch team is to help teachers use Scratch in classroom settings. As part of this project we were asked to develop a project to do with mapping. A book was shared to show that maps could be done in a variety of forms and ways such as mapping your heart, your family, your day, your vacation, and so on. I chose to do a map for Ma Famille, something I could have students do in grade three.

To begin I stole pictures off of Google, sorry Donna, and put them in a house. I’d have students scan pictures of their own family members or draw people, probably draw as it would be safer re-identity but more labor intensive. When you clicked on each picture a speech bubble appeared telling who they were in French, I think I would have the students record who each person was but I didn’t have a microphone. When I was done then I experimented by changing it into a game, Smart Board applications. I set it up so that when you clicked on a picture it asked who it was and the student would type in the name in French and the program would either say they got it correct and respond in a sentence or tell them to try again. You can see my efforts by clicking here.

If you are interested further you can check out more example created by grade five and six students at the Tech Examples Wiki. Their teacher said one neat tie in to Internet Safety occurred when the students took digital pictures and made a presentation on themselves and their likes and dislikes. She said it led to valuable discussions about what permissions you needed when putting up pictures of your friends, when you were giving out too much personal information, and so on. The presentation was awesome and I think I’ll have to get our techs busy downloading Scratch onto the machines at school.

Teachable Moments

2009-04-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

We had our School Community Council annual meeting the other evening. There were, I believe, equal numbers of staff members to council members and we actually had two new parents who were nominated. Yeah! We actually have a very active SCC and they have accomplished a lot since their creation two years ago. The meeting was the usual review of the year and elections with one twist. We have two Smart Boards installed at the moment and one, possibly two, to be installed in the near future. One SCC member asked if there was a way we could showcase these new tools so parents and grandparents could see exactly what they were and how they were useful. The discussion went on and it came to light that although the SCC has done fund raising for Smart Boards most of them had never touched one. So, I volunteered to get one up and running and let them see exactly what all the fuss was about.
As they finished their meeting I set-up my laptop and loaded up a few of my French lessons using Notebook10 and then I decided while I had a captive audience I'd show them the You Tube video on A Vision of K-12 Students. They watched the video and most of them tried the French games. I showed how them how they could write or type on the board, highlight things temporarily with the smart marker, draw shapes, and so on. The SCC members were really interested so then I kept going and showed them their son's and daughter's blogs, a power point the grade one class had done, and finished up with a quick intro to Quest Atlantis. It was so neat to see their excitement and to have them see the future possibilities for education. It was a teachable moment. Now we just have to plan the parent and grandparent open house we are putting on in May. ;)

PhotoStory

2009-04-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

I made a video to explain to my students how to create a PhotoStory. I thought I'd share it here:

What Makes a Good Blog Entry?

2009-03-09T20:23:00.001-07:00

Today I found a post on Remote Access that addressed what the author, Clarence Fisher, thought a good blog entry should contain. He included the following four points, which he had shared with his students to improve their blog entries:
"1.) A post needs all of the standard elements of writing.
2.) A quality blog post includes several good links to further sources of information that people can travel to.
3.) A quality post includes multimedia elements such as pictures, video or audio.
4.) Finally, a blog post needs to have an interesting title that will bring in readers."
I found this very interesting as I had never thought in these terms before. I've been working on the fact that a blog post simply shares an idea. I really like these four points. Will I include them in every blog post, probably not, but it is certainly something for which to strive. Has anyone else found a different criteria for what makes a good blog entry?

Picture from Flickr

Why Teachers Will Never Win Oscars

2009-02-25T19:17:00.000-08:00

I enjoy the Oscars. I like to see what everyone is wearing, who everyone brings with them, the opening monologue/song, the dance number, and of course who wins and what he/she then says in his/her speech. This year, as in many previous, I wondered what I would say if I won an Oscar. Except, I wouldn't win it for acting or directing I'd win it for Best Teacher or Best Lesson Plan or Best Use of Technology in the Classroom and it dawned on me I wouldn't win. It is not that I am not a good teacher or that I don't have good lessons but rather that other than my students no one witnesses me do it. Teaching for all the professional development and PLC's is done in isolation. My students may think I'm great, or not, but who can they compare me to in that particular year. I teach a single grade, or a single subject, and the students have no one to compare me to at that specific time. Even the supervisors who come into my classroom don't really see enough to judge me worthy or unworthy. Usually a teacher knows in advance when someone is coming to observe him/her and he/she plans more, warns/threatens his/her students, and picks a lesson to showcase his/her talent. If a supervisor arrives unannounced he/she may see a lesson but more than likely he/she will see students working on an assignment or project. Maybe with the advance of Web 2.0 tools and global collaboration an Educational Oscar could be possible. Teachers would need to create a video of their best lesson and post it on the World Wide Web. The best would be nominated. Then members of the Academy would vote. The possibilities and technology are there. I wonder if enough excitement could be generated to make this happen? How would our Education System have to change to make this a reality? Maybe I will have to start worrying about what I would say in my speech and oh, of course, what I would wear.

Photo from Flickr

Technology in the White House

2009-01-26T18:50:00.000-08:00

During all the pre-inauguration hoopla one thing, which caught my attention was that Barack Obama was going to have to give up his Blackberry. Apparently all presidential correspondence has to be archived for future generations. Also, there was apparently some worry over what might be intercepted by hackers. I liked the fact that Mr. Barack was unwilling to give up his e-mail opportunities to communicate with family and friends. When asked by CNN's John King whether he would have to give up his device

Obama responded. “….I think we're going to be able to hang onto one of these. Now, my working assumption, and this is not new, is that everything I write on e-mail could end up being on CNN. So I make sure that — I think before I press ‘send.’”

It makes me think this is the lesson we're trying to teach our students. Think before you post something on Facebook, think before you e-mail something, think before you publish something on the Internet. What a wonderful role model Mr. Obama will be for today's generation.

Web 2.0 technologies give us the chance to create, to share, and to connect around the world. According to Tina Brown, during the presidential campaign the web savvy Mr. Obama could:

deploy his web army to distribute his leaflets, raise his funds and sell his policies, he could speak directly to them whenever he hit a snag.

Here is a world leader who wants to be able to connect with friends and former co-workers who can give him immediate feedback on his decisions and new ideas. Isn't this what we're trying to teach our students?

Mr. Obama's whole election campaign was widely debated using blogs and other tools. My Dad had me take him on a tour of Mr. Obama's blog and explain why a tool like this was useful and powerful. It is a new way of thinking for older, and even not so old generations. Is it second nature to our students? I'm not sure it is yet, not for all of them, but the possibilities are there and they are endless.

My Mobster Nickname

2009-01-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

I found a fun blog The Generator Blog, which has tons of links to websites which generate fun things. Below is my Mob Nickname which was generated at Nicknamester.

Seven Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

2009-01-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

This post is in response to being tagged by Donna. Of course the title is dependent upon who is reading this but I’ll go with the idea that most of you are professional colleagues I’ve only known for a short time.

1. I used to buy a lot of books but now only buy a handful each year, teaching materials not included. I have not stopped reading but now prefer to patronize my local library. I request a lot of books and read most of them. The books I buy now are ones, which I’ll read over and over. Other than gifts the last major purchases were the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer and “Brisinger” by Christopher Paolini. Ironically, kids, my niece and a student, spurred both purchases.

2. While I buy fewer books my purchases of DVD’s is increasing. In a rough calculation I own about 300 books and 125 DVD’s, plus probably 125 VHS videos. Over the holidays I bought about seven DVD’s including Season 4 of “Lost” and “Mamma Mia”. The second one doesn’t really count as a purchase though as was a present from my Mum.

3. Yes, I did spell Mum with a “u”. I’ve always spelled it that way. I think it has to do with my Dad’s Scottish background. On that note I only met two of my parent’s parents. My Mum’s Mum and my Dad’s Dad both died before I was born.

4. I never considered not attending university and was part way through my first year before I realized that not everyone actually went to university. I’ve attended three universities so far. I spent my first year at the University of Georgia when we lived in Athens on a sabbatical year. I actually studied Business there but one accounting class convinced me to go into Education. I finished my BEd and my Masters at the University of Saskatchewan. While studying for my BEd I also spent one year at the Universite Canadienne en France in Villefrance-sur-mer, near Nice on the French Riviera. I lived with a French family for my second term and had a wonderful year.

5. I’ve taught in six different schools. I started teaching grades 7, 8 and 9 in Senlac, spent two years teaching English in 3 Junior High Schools in Japan, returned to Senlac, moved to teaching grades 1, 3, 4 and 5 at a Hutterite Colony for one year, and finally ended up teaching grade 3, Computers, and French at Unity Public School.

6. I’ve traveled a fair bit in Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and a little bit in Northern Africa. Some of my favourite trips were with my Mum. She brought a backpack and two Eurorail passes when she met me at the end of my year in France. We had an awesome trip around France, Italy, Greece, Turkey (by accident), Yugoslavia, and Germany. We also had a super tour around Hong Kong and China. We make each other laugh and that is a very good trait to have when traveling.

7. My most unusual Christmas was spent in the Okefenokee Swamp. On Christmas day we canoed by trees covered in that hanging Spanish moss and a variety of alligators. For Christmas dinner we had a meal cooked, by my Dad, on our Coleman stove and we spent the night in out tent trailer. It was fun and oh so us.

I think I'm supposed to tag some fellow bloggers so here goes:
Michael
Mavis
Alison
Priscilla
Byrna
Terrel
James
Mark

Everyone Knows Your Name

2008-12-28T10:14:00.001-08:00

I came across this excellent video on a blog called Langwitches - The Magic of Learning through Technology. They have some other good stuff on their blog too, so check it out.

A Doggy Christmas Surprise

2008-12-23T20:34:00.001-08:00

Wishing everyone a very happy, relaxing, and healthy Christmas and 2009!

Getting in the Holiday Spirit

2008-12-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

I found this cute and yes, useless, but amusing site called Elf Yourself. See the results below:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

With all the snow it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Coolest Thing Ever

2008-11-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

I'm a closet space-a-holic. I admit it. For those of you who don't know me well I do actually have every episode of Star Trek taped, with commercials edited out, on VHS tapes. My current can't miss show, when it returns this season, is Battlestar Galactica. How does this relate to my post you ask? A month ago Donna sent an e-mail about checking out Canadians in Space, a Yes I Can Science Project.

I went to the site and sent the link on to my science teacher colleagues but couldn't resist registering on the site, just to see if I could use it my Computer classes in some little way. Then I sort of forgot about it until I got an e-mail asking if my school was interested in being part of a web cast with a NASA Astronaut. "Don't wait," the e-mail said "space is limited" so I fired back a "Yes!" What followed was a frustrating, but ultimately delightful experience.

First, I had to set up my projector and do a little test for my web cam, microphone, and so on with Ontario. Due to all the web casts we've done in our iSITs group, "No problem," I thought. It turned out to be one problem after another. First the projector at school refused to work off my laptop. I even went as far as installing the security software. No luck so I FAMED a help request. I LOVE out tech guys. I learned you can use a projector with your laptop and the magic combination of the Fn button and the F5 button. I was ready to go.

I had planned to set up the projector, etc. in the Music Room as I was planning to have two classes participate and we don't have enough room in the Computer lab to accommodate everyone. I set up my laptop and did a run through and everything worked beautifully. I was ready for my little test with the Ontario people when I discovered the wireless, which had worked beautifully two hours earlier no longer worked. I FAMED again thinking it was a temporary shut down of service. "No, wireless is 24-7," they told me.

Okay, no problem I'd do my little test in the Computer lab and then worry about the wireless network later. I was set to go when I got a phone call from Ontario. I'd missed my test time. Embarrassing as it is to admit I messed up the time change and was thinking it was an hour later here rather than an hour earlier. No problem we could still do the test the next day and be ready for Monday.

Finally, I got set up and did the test, which actually only took 15 minutes. By this point I'd spent about 3 hours trying various configurations and different rooms in the school, but the test itself went smoothly. So I had a new brainwave, where else in the school could I hook everything up to the network and have two classes fit. The Student Success Room, no problem.

So I plugged in my laptop and tried to go on the Internet. The first plug in, which was marked as being turned on, did not give me Internet, neither did the second one, nor even the third one, which was not marked as turned on, but I had tried in desperation. I was really frustrated and starting to panic at this point. I'd sent notes home, I'd had the students all submit questions, two of which I'd picked and sent to the Yes I Can group. So I carefully tried the first marked plug in, one more time, and it worked. Yeah!!!!

On Monday I got ready before school started and made sure everything was working. The Internet took two tries but then it was connected and I was set to go. The students came in and for about an hour, from Houston, Texas; NASA Colonel Alvin Drew answered our questions "What do astronauts do when not on a mission?" and "What do astronauts eat in space?" and those posed by seven other schools in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
IT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVER!

I think back to when I was a kid and remember having to stay inside the gym, which had no windows, because there was an eclipse. It was so exciting. In my wildest dreams I don't think I ever thought I'd be sitting in a room with my grade three and six students talking to an honest to goodness astronaut, who's last mission was taking the space shuttle up to the Space Station. Life is good! If you are interested in the answers to the questions or the web cast set-up or wish to see the difficulties other people had with their technology during the presentation you can view a replay of the entire presentation by clicking here.

Digital Citizenship Starts When?

2008-11-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

Most of my blog posts these days seem to come from other blogs. There is a message in there I am sure. I was reading Will Richardson's blog and he referred to a study which stated the following:

"And please, send your administrators and IT folks this message in 42-point bold type:

Social and recreational new media use as a site of learning. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access “serious” online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions. (Emphasis mine.)

Finally, sit down, and mull this concept over:

Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads. Such learning differs fundamentally from traditional instruction and is often framed negatively by adults as a means of “peer pressure.” Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting “learning goals,” particularly on the interest-driven side, where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers."

It made me think that the blocking of YouTube, Facebook, and other sites is perhaps not the correct way to go. I know I may be preaching to the choir but I believe, without exposure to and education by educators, we're creating students who create their own digital citizenship rules and those may not be the ones we want to see in the future. I find in my own K-6 world that I often don't face the same challenges as my 7-12 colleagues but when should education on digital citizenship really start? Personally I feel high school is too late. Any other takes out there in the Blogosphere?

Food for Thought

2008-11-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

I was reading Brian Lamb's blog and found a link to a Ted Talks video by Dr. Sugata Mitra. Click here to see the video.

Dr. Mitra did experiments all over India involving a computer in a wall, which left in a variety of settings acted as a magnet to the local children. These children went on to discover how to browse the Internet, play games, use e-mail, and many other tasks by experimenting and then teaching each other. His talk gives a fascinating overview of his work and makes some very strong points about:
a) the need for teachers
b) the abilities of children to learn in groups
c) the future of Educational Technology
I highly recommend you spend the 20 minutes it takes to watch this talk and start to draw your own conclusions on where we as teachers should be going in the future.

GREAT BLOG VIDEO

2008-11-01T17:48:00.001-07:00

I found this great little video from Common Craft on what Blogs are and why we use them. Perfect for showing your students or parents. They also have videos on Wikis, RSS, and so on.

Cool Site

2008-10-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

I found this on Kathy Cassidy's blog. The site is Pictaps. It allows you to make a person using a paint type program and then it makes the person dance. You get to name your person and then you can post it to your blog. I can't wait to try this with my classes, especially grades one and two.

No One Cares How Long You Work

2008-10-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

I found this gem on the Leader Talk blog. I loved this quote:

My observation is that folks who ROUTINELY work more than a standard work week:

* Have poor time management skills; or
* They don't know how to delegate; or
* They cannot prioritize [HINT: Family comes first!]; or
* They are Wannabe Martyrs.

[OMG!, did he really just say that?]

Listen? I hear eggshells being stepped on.

Look, if you're a school administrator and you consider football games, plays, concerts, academic and athletic events to be WORK, you're in the wrong career.

I think it is so true and not just about administrators but teachers in general. On my staff we're always talking about time and the lack there of but may be we shouldn't be. Everyone needs to decide what is most important to them. Should teaching be a 24-7 job or is it possible to make it a 40 hours/week?

Great Slide Show

2008-10-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

I saw a great slide show of a presentation by Vicki Davis on her blog.

It has some wonderful points. I especially liked the idea that your students might be illiterate if they can't do a search, make a video, program a cellphone, and so on. Check it out. Lots of neat ideas!

Web 2 and Web 3d: To Literacy and Beyond

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: libraries learning)

iSITS First Meeting

2008-10-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Once again my brain is full of ideas and information. I love all the sharing that goes on during these days. My goals for this year are many. The top three are:

I plan to continue blogging with all my classes and try to have the other staff members use the blogs also.
I plan to create a school plan for digital citizenship.
I plan to continue expanding my own professional development by blogging and other methods.

So many challenges, so little time.

Donna's CD Meme

2008-04-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

The instructions are taken from Donna's blog.
You follow three simple rules and using your favourite image editing program create a CD cover.

The rules are:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Below is my cover. For the sake of information Durmanec is a county in Croatia and the quote is from Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy Earth Day!

2008-04-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

I used this with my grade three's today and they loved it. To read some of their thoughts on our Earth go to our blog. At the moment Riley's is the only post that appeared. We were having technical difficulties today. :)

Making Connections

2008-04-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

I've been reading all of Paul Parks's posts, in his blog The Sandbox, with great interest. His descriptions of life at the Kandahar Air Field are very compelling. I decided to share one with my Reading Comprehension group, which is made up of a dozen grade 3 and 4 students. I chose the post School Burning that describes the attack on the education system in Afghanistan and asks the reader to question how they would feel if someone burnt their school down or tried to prevent them from getting an education. It was a pretty serious topic for my students but we spent two lessons working through the article and discussing it.

We are currently reading to make connections to our world and so as a continuation I decided to tie in a real world site. On April 10th we went on a field trip to our local Memorial Park, which contains a monument to those soldiers who fell in the First and Second World Wars. It was a beautiful sunny day and the students enjoyed the walk over. Once at the park they listened as I read aloud the picture book The Wall by Eve Bunting. This book describes a father and son's trip to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. to find the grandfather's name on the Wall. When they find the name the grandson leaves a picture of himself, weighted down with stones, below the name. After we read the book the students and I made connections between our monument and the one in Washington. We also discussed the soldiers serving in Afghanistan who have died. Before we left the students all placed a picture of one of the Canadian soldiers who was killed recently and weighted them down with stones. I think it was a good lesson and hopefully the students made some important connections in both reading and life.

VoiceThread

2008-04-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've made my first VoiceThread.

I plan to have my grade 2 class finish their farm unit using this same idea.

Internet Safety/Common Sense?

2008-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

I recently listened to CBC radio report about a 16 year old tape which had surfaced as political parties switched offices. This tape was a video tape of several key people, including our now Premier, talking in front of a video camera. The remarks recorded included anti-gay, anti-labour, and rude comments about other politicians. Currently we are trying to explain to our students that when they put up pictures or video or a blog on the Internet that their views are there for all to see. We warn them about posting things which may reflect badly on them in the future and on those things which are simply inappropriate. In light of the comments recorded on this tape which is now posted on You Tube and CBC are we actually having any success? Does anyone use common sense anymore or did they ever?

Hockey Videos

2008-03-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not really a hockey fan but my grade sixes definitely are into the game. So it was exciting to find the following site and create my own Mash Up video. I can't wait to have them try it in class.

My Mash Up

The Mash Up Site

Blogging From Afar

2008-03-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm out in B.C. and it is so cool because I just approved several blog entries and comments which my students made back in Saskatchewan. The power of being connected even though I'm two provinces away. I have been mulling over one question though and that is how much should I edit my student's blogs. Should I be fixing every capitalization, punctuation, and spelling error? Anyone have any feedback?

Using Technology to Create New & Different Learning Experiences

2008-03-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

A post called Evaluating Technology Use in Classrooms got me thinking again about what I struggled with when I did my Masters. How do you use the Internet, and now Web 2.0 applications, to make student learning new and unique from traditional methods? The article was for administrators to think about how they evaluate teachers who use technology and the four following questions were given:

1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?

2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?

3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?

4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

I think that there is a natural progression through the first three steps above. I'm thinking of my own journey, which is ongoing, with student blogs. Initially I started them because they were there (step one). Then it became a way of publishing student work whereby instead of printing it out the students posted it to their blog (step two). I am currently working my way through step three whereby the students are publishing their work and having the students comment on each other's writing. They are now typing their comments rather than telling the person what they think, face to face. The fourth step is of course the biggest leap. I am working towards step four by publicizing the fact that my students are publishing their work on a blog. I have started by letting parents know and I have found another grade three class which blogs and I think it would be great to communicate with them and get their feedback on our stories. Inadvertently this has already happened to one of my students who received a comment on one of her stories from someone in France.

I am hoping that I will also be able to reach step four in some of my student's French projects. Sometimes the students' biggest complaint is that we always seem to do computer projects in French, which since I teach Computers and French, to every grade, is a natural fit. The students all learned numerous ways to use Word, Publisher, and PowerPoint by doing French projects. I'm excited about using many of the new applications I've learned about, such as Photo Story and Voice Thread, for upcoming projects, and I hope that my learning curve will allow my students and me to go beyond the first three steps.

Dr. Randy Pausch - from Oprah

2008-03-02T18:57:00.001-08:00

Using Google Image Search

2008-03-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

Another point which came up at one of my sessions was should we let our students use Google Images to search for pictures. The presenter's point of view was that as long as you had the student's record the url it was not a problem but one teacher was very worried about students coming across inappropriate images. The presenter said that most of what came up was no worse than what they may see on television.

I, of course, could not keep my big mouth shut and had to share that my students use Google Images all the time but that I have trained them to tell me if they accidentally come across something inappropriate be it a picture or a web site. I have them do this for two reasons. Firstly, if I do a history search and find an inappropriate site I should already know why it is there and secondly, they need to be aware that you do come across inappropriate items without trying and it is important to be responsible about it. I still believe this method works for myself and my students.

I, perhaps flippantly, also said to this woman that my elementary students were mostly hunting for kittens and puppies so it wasn't usually too much of a problem. When I thought about it later I realized my students actually do searching for much broader topics. I should have added that for grades one to three I often do the searching myself and put into a folder but this is more a time factor than my worry that they will come across something bad. I have also searched using the projector and have the younger students tell me which pictures I should save for a project.

I have only had one potentially disastrous situation in the last several years. I was searching, a few years ago, with my grade three's watching on the big screen for pictures of sea creatures. We were busy hunting for octopuses and I had the screen with all the little preview pictures up and I was enlarging ones which the students wanted a better look at. We had done several with no problem when I clicked on one which we couldn't really see in the small preview picture. When it came up on the big screen I realized it was an ice sculpture on the hood of car, the only problem was that it wasn't an octopus it was an ice sculpture of two people have sex, lots of legs. I quickly reduced the size and said it wasn't in the ocean so we couldn't use it. We moved on and I'm pretty sure none of my students were any the wiser.

It definitely made me aware of what was out there but it hasn't stopped me from using Google Images. I have tried some projects where the students have had to draw all their pictures and scan them in but it frustrates that students who can't draw and takes a lot of time both to complete and then to scan. I was wondering what other teachers do with their classes.

Blog Comments

2008-03-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

I discovered another neat Blog add-on at convention. It is called Clustr and allows you to put a small world map in your blog. Then when ever anyone comments on your blog it adds a read dot to your map. In this way you can see where the people who are commenting on your bog are located. I think it is pretty neat and was quite easy to set-up. So now I need some comments to see how well it works.

RRS Feeds

2008-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

I finally got my RRS reader up and running. It was easier than I thought but took awhile to get everyone's feeds entered. I can't get the Class Blogmeister feeds to register, not even my own. At first I thought that it was just that I hadn't enabled the RRS on my blog so I went in and did that but still no luck. Any suggestions? I also added my school blog to our Wiki and was impressed that I remembered how. If you would like to check it out even if you can't put it in your reader you can see it at
Blogging at Unity Public School
I sure hope it is RRS and not RSS. Since I don't know what it stands for exactly I'm guessing here! ;)

Showcase Reflections

2008-02-27T17:07:00.001-08:00

I went to two great sessions at our Showcase 2008. The first was Dean Shareski's session "Are You Published?" in which he gave us many great suggestions on sites to try and ways to publish your or your students' thoughts. His wiki has a lot of neat links.
Here is Dean presenting:

The second was Ev Sillers session "Integrating Technology with a Focus on Digital Story Telling and Blogging." This session, even though the presenter encountered 'technical difficulties';) was awesome. She went through how to use several sites, including Voice Thread, and focused on Photo Story 3. She gave us some examples of digital stories which can be viewed at DigiTales. I already have a few ideas on how to use this with several of my classes before the end of the year.

Something else which sprang from a discussion at my table after/during Dean's presentation was that it is sometimes frustrating not to have a curriculum or scope and sequence from which to work when teaching 'Computers.' We all felt it would be difficult to maintain a scope and sequence because things change so quickly in this field and then we said "We should have a Scope and Sequence Wiki to which we could all post what we are doing at different grade levels." Things to think about!

Internet Safety Powerpoint converted using Slide Share

2008-02-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

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Baby It's Cold Outside!

2008-02-09T22:25:00.001-08:00

Blogging at School

2008-02-02T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm trying to get more students blogging so the grade 2 teacher and I set up a site for her class at www.classblogmeister.com. At first it seemed to be going fine but then all of her students disappeared so I re-entered them. The students started to set up their pages and then I had extra students, as orphans, so I added them to the class. Then I had student's names come up twice. I also lost most of the student's info that they had inputted. So I then re-entered some info and deleted one of the two names. Now I have some students listed with everything working and I have some students who are just dots on the class list and your can't access anything. The "dot students" do come up on the class roster in the edit section. So I'm thinking of deleting the whole thing and starting from scratch but who maybe I'll have an inspiration on how to fix the whole thing. On the other hand my own class blog works fine, although I haven't touched it since before Christmas. I'm sort of worried to try now because they've added a new approval tool which I think may be part of the problem. Ah the learning curve of technology!

Straight No Chaser - 12 Days

2008-01-03T21:51:00.001-08:00

Thankful for Technology

2007-10-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

As I sit here on Thanksgiving Day I am overwhelmed by things for which to be thankful. Family, friends, and good health are of course top of the list but also near the top is technology. I'm lucky enough to live in a time and place where I can post my musings for the world to see. It's a little bit weird but also quite wonderful. On one hand there are people on our planet without enough food to eat and yet today I sent digital photos to be printed and in 2-3 days they'll be delivered to my post box. I'm not sure how this balances out in the real world. I hope that I can educate my students to use the advantages that they have and to make worthwhile contributions to our world at the same time. It is fun to try all these neat tech toys but hopefully I'll be able to come up with more meaningful applications when my students get to try them.