Learning Labyrinth

Powerful food for thought…

The Lost Generation

Thing 23 – Add your reflections to the K12 Learning 2.0 Voicethread; Blog about your experiences and next steps

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The world is rapidly changing and advancing all around us. I can envision a time when we will no longer be able to determine a clear divide between the ‘world of education’ and the ‘world of technology’. We are living in an era where new technologies are emerging, and old technologies are improving, on a minute by minute basis. Today’s children and students have never known a time when they were without technology in their daily lives. Therefore, I feel it is our duty as educators to teach these digital natives, our students of today, and our leaders of tomorrow, in the modality of learning that is most conducive to their technology-enriched learning styles.

As an educator, I want to empower students to learn through the use of technology. I want them to view school as a place where they can explore their curiosities and expand their knowledge, not only through books, but through the use of technology tools that enable them to grow, share and learn with the global classroom, the global community. I strive to instill in my students a life-time love of learning. I believe the only way to accomplish this goal is to show them that education and technology are intertwined; they are not separate entities and to do that we must learn, use and model the appropriate and beneficial uses of technology tools for our students. My goal as an Instructional Technology Specialist is to empower educators to do just that, to implement and integrate the use of emerging technology and web 2.0 tools in their classrooms and with their students.

dk’s Evoca Podcast

Podcasting truly is easy, engaging and fun once you have experimented with it a few times. My former students engaged in multimedia recording activities throughout the school year and they loved the experiences. Seeing the pride in their eyes and the happiness through their smile assured me that it truly was a valuable learning experience for them…which only encouraged me to create more podcasting and vodcasting activities aligned with our curriculum goals.

My Ideas for Podcasting in the Elementary Classroom:

• Creative Story-telling – record student narrating an original story; great for very young students who have not yet developed reading and writing skills
• Build Reading Fluency – record student reading a story passage and then allow the student to listen and critique their recording
• Foreign Language Lab – students listen to a prompt recorded in a foreign language and then respond to that prompt in the same language of study
• Author Studies
• Reporter for a Day
• Fieldtrip Reflections
• Historic Radio Shows
• Book Talks
• Poetry Readings
• Short Story audio recordings
• Reader’s Theatre – a great way to incorporate video as well, thus creating a Vodcast
• Research/Book Reports
• Oral Reports/Presentations – great for students who have a hard time speaking in front of an audience (like I did in school)
• How-to Videos/Tutorials
• Vocabulary Development
• Expert Interviews
• Class Discussions
• Debate
• Test Study Guides

Thing 17 – Intro to Podcasting; Explore some educational podcasts

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I have been a podcatcher and a podcaster for over three years now. I subscribe to over fifteen different podcast series using iTunes and often listen to them during my daily commute between school and home. The podcasts I find the most interesting and useful are those that help me to stay in touch with emerging trends and technologies.

Conference Connections, produced by Apple Distinguished Educators, delivers some of the most innovative content from the most exciting workshops, forums and discussions at leading technology conferences across the USA and around the world.

David Pogue, The New York Times personal-technology columnist, reports weekly on new technology in the video series Video: Technology | David Pogue. David Pogue Presents a fun, unbiased look at new technology. His reviews openly point out the things that we have all longed for the world to catch on to in a very humorous and clever way. He has a way of transforming a less than exciting topic like streaming or routers into something hilarious and understandable. Many technology reviews that I have come across have placed me into a sleep induced state of activity, it’s great to finally find one that is unique, interesting and humorous.

While I was teaching in the classroom, before coming to Trinity School to assume my role as an Instructional Technology Specialist, I produced a series of podcasts, entitled HighTech2, with my second grade students. I say that I am a “classroom podcaster” as I always produced episodes that involved and focused on the students in my class. Each and every time it was a very rewarding experience not only for myself, but also for my students and their families. My only regret is not having created them more often with my students.

Over the past few weeks, Mrs. Stafford and I have co-produced a series of student created podcasts entitled TrinityMD. The TrinityMD project was originally developed by Mrs. Stafford as part of a technology infused unit in correlation with the sixth grade TabletPC Program. The focus of this year’s project-based learning unit targeted diseases and disorders that affect the human body. We worked together to publish the series of podcast episodes on our school’s Project Source wikispace. I encourage you to visit the TrinityMD wiki and listen to the student’s final projects. You can view the TrinityMD podcast feed and subscribe to the series here.

Thing 11 – Create an online Slideshow using your own or Creative Commons photos.

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I created a slideshow on Animoto.com. I had difficulty finding the embed code and the site was not posting it for me to copy. However, I resorted to uploading it to YouTube and embedding the video on my wiki page via YouTube’s embed code. Yeessshhh….

Anyway, my slideshow contains photos of Australian Rainforests. Our Pre-K classes will be investigating these rainforests in the coming weeks and I wanted to have some pictures for them to see. )

Here is a direct link to my wiki sandbox page: http://k12l20sandbox.wikispaces.com/daniklaus

Thing 4 – Task:

Read at least five of the suggested blog posts.

As you read, consider the following questions (feel free to adapt and expand on any of these or add your own):

• What do you notice about the genre of blog writing in general?
  
• (How) is blog reading different from other types of reading? How is it similar?
  
• (How) is blog writing different from other types of writing? How is it similar?
  
• How does commenting contribute to the writing and meaning-making?
  
• Is there a “blogging literacy?” How does blogging affect the way we read and write?
  
• (How) can blogging facilitate learning?
  

Create a blog post in response to the exploratory reading and questions listed above. Feel free to reflect on anything that struck you about the posts themselves itself or the genre of blogging in general. Be sure to include a link to any post(s) you refer to and include “Thing 4″ in your post title.

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To me, what makes blogging unique from other types of reading and writing is its informality. It’s reading or writing the way we speak in conversation. I love that! I am someone who requires complete silence and the ability to reread countless times in order to comprehend and make sense of what I read. I am also someone who struggles to write anything of sustenance as formulating clear ideas that can be translated to paper or complete thoughts that are coherent to the audience of my words is a difficult task for me to accomplish. I have always struggled to express myself clearly without the intended audience getting the wrong idea or taking my words the wrong way. This has been a challenge for me my entire life…it’s very frustrating. Therefore, the informality of blogs…with the incomplete sentences (written more as a string of thoughts much like our minds work in daily conversation versus measured and carefully formulated statements that appear in more formal writing), misspellings, and the ability to immediately send your message out to a massive audience of potential readers for their response or input…is an ideal writing and reading platform for me. The ability to comment allows deep (and sometimes “shallow”) conversations to develop and grow. It allows for individuals and groups to share and collaborate on a variety of topics, ideas and discussions. We can now include people from all over the world in a conversation we would normally have just within a small group of colleagues at the school. How perfect is that?

In terms of teaching and technology, many of the greatest thoughts, ideas and discussions have originated in blogs. Blogs allow ideas and thoughts to be formulated now…today…in present and real time. They promote conversation and the ability to collaborate amongst our peers. Whereas, we have to wait for weeks or months to read the next magazine article or book on the same topic. Both of which are very one-sided conversations or points of views. Yes, we could send a letter to the editor or author…but who else would see that beyond you (the writer) and the editor (the reader). Even if you are one of the “lucky ones” whose “letter to the editor” becomes published, it is already a month later and the context of the discussion (the original article or book that sparked the desire to respond) is missed by a large percentage of that month’s audience.

I enjoy reading many types of blogs, but mostly those relating to technology and how it is altering the face and heart of education – teaching and learning. Vicki A. Davis’ post,
Spies Like Us, on the Cool Cat Teacher blog, reminded me of an incident that occurred very recently in our Tablet program where two students were recording a teacher’s lesson without her knowledge or consent. When the teacher became aware of the activity, and uncomfortable with the situation, she asked the group of teachers involved with the program (Tableteers) if this type of activity was addressed in the AUP. We have yet to discuss this in detail during our next meeting. Although, ultimately, I feel that while currently it is not addressed in the AUP, we will be looking at the possibility of altering our AUP to include this type of activity. Additionally, while we cannot always control access to these activities and capabilities, we can teach students ethical use and behavior. That is where our focus needs to be turned, I feel.

I did read most of the other blogs presented and enjoyed many of them. Some in particular that I feel have immediate application to an elementary classroom (promoting student involvement) include:

• Duck with a Blog: Where second graders blog about the whereabouts of a missing duck. How adorable is that!
• A Final Good-Bye: Where third graders post their thoughts about a funeral for overused words. What elementary school teacher has never had the desire to “trash” certain words from our students writings? What a great way for students to become involved in the writing process!
• Imagine Turning On the Faucet and Nothing Coming Out: From
  Extreme Biology where students are encouraged to blog about topics relating to the study of biology and then participate in the discussion. This particular discussion on the situation of Georgia’s water crisis is compelling enough to spark a teacher’s interest in replicating the model within their own classroom.