High Tech in a Hurry

Kudos to our Dept. of Instructional Technology and Media and Maintenance
Departments for working together to install ACTIVBoards in what will be 6 21st century classrooms. Looking forward to all the great things that will result from this initiative. Hoping that we will be successful with grant cycle II--I think we have 18 teachers interested in writing a grant. If we continue at our current rate, we will hopefully be fully outfitted with 21st century classrooms by the end of 08-09.

Surprise--It's a snowday:)

Checking back through some of the projects that I have been slack with, and this is one of them. Going to begin sharing this blog with other elementary media coordinators in my district, because we never seem to have enough time--just to talk about all the directions we are moving in. Really great break out session yesterday seemed to help gear us up to try some new things, then wouldn't you know it---SNOWDAY--plan E--only 12 month employees are to report today:) Good day to catch up around the house and make a big pot of noodles. Going to Blue Man Group in Winston this p.m.

Is Anybody Out There???

Just spent a pretty good bit of time looking at the possibility of acquiring online pen pals, and I stumbled over E-Pals. Curious to see if the questions I left in my profile will generate desired results---responses to those questions from people all over the world. And in particular, answers from people who have first hand knowledge. If I am able to get students into E-Pals, I look forward to them being able to share their knowledge about the U.S. with sudents in other countries to hopefully get an understanding that everyone has information based on our day-to-day experiences that is needful to others. Now, the tricky part--waiting.....

Time Flies...

Beginning to realize that unless I share this blog and let others generate content, that it will become one ball that gets dropped when things get chaotic as they are right now. Thanksgiving was great and everything at school is pretty much business as usual.

Anyway....the faculty reception of the wiki for the book study was mixed, as I had expected that it would be. But for the most part, once everyone realized that the wiki behaves pretty much like a word processor, everyone was pretty cool with it. An added bonus, was that one of the team members that presented the first session this past Monday (11/26), absolutely loved the wiki. In just a few editing sessions, she uploaded all the files she used into the wiki, and delivered her group's presentation via the wiki. Later, I posted her group's "homework" onto the wiki, and during this past week, the faculty have posted their homework by editing that wiki page. Our principal was extremely pleased when I informed her on Thursday (11/29), that not only had everyone completed his or her homework, but that they had also completed it, digitally, either via wiki or via email that was then pasted into the wiki.

I am currently scouting faculty members who want to experiment with letting students build a wiki as a research product and in the meantime I am trying to think of other practical products that I could use wikis for.

Is It Really This Late???

10:30 p.m. here and I have been working to create wiki pages for an upcoming book study that our faculty is starting after Thanksgiving. I hope everyone will enjoy using the technology, or at least appreciate the fact that wiki pages can help us save paper and time. Still needing to explore Moodle, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Not a good idea to bake on 1/2 a night's sleep. Coca Cola cake here I come.

Funny Things Happen When You Sit Still

Holding down the lunch fort at circulation and taking time to read Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, et al. especially Chapter 3: Summarizing and Note Taking and trying to think of a way to help myself and fellow media colleagues more effectively use Marzano's research along with steps 3-5 of Eisenberg and Berkowitz's Big Six as we help students and our learning communities at large with their information needs.

I have been giving students pre-marked 5 x 7 note cards with the writing area divided into two sections--one area for notes and the rest for crediting the source. I ask them to assign a category to each note card on the unlined side, so that as they use resources they can organize the information according to where it will fit later when they are sharing what they have learned. The lack of space discourages the frenzy of copying that usually commences when I ask them to make notes.

For my older students, I am experimenting with using PowerPoint slides with a title bar for the category and two text boxes--one for the note(s) in 40 point font, one for crediting the source. When students finish their notes, they can pull up their slides, decide to paraphrase or quote, then insert the information into their learning products.

What I see over and over again with both of these approaches is the need to reinforce note taking by showing students how I would decide where in the source to look for information and how I determine which pieces of information to record. My targeted students are easy to locate--they are the ones who look rather like a duck that keeps diving after bread crumbs all the while looking to see if there are more bread crumbs in another part of the pond.

Second Life on Sunday

After getting home from church, I have spent the better part of the afternoon getting used to moving around in Second Life. Having a hard time training my eyes to see everything, and realized that I was receiving audio cues--I did not have my headphones on--duh. Plan to go back tomorrow to see how streaming video works and hopefully be able to see some classes in action. Looking forward to seeing some of the Edunation events.