Audio post

- posted by mrdaly @ 10:33 AM 0 comments

 
MS Student 2006
Microsoft is releasing "MS Student 2006" which will combine web browsing/searching with their Encarta encyclopedia and an Office-like suite of word processing and database products. It includes a graphing calculator for math and science homework as well. I think the best part is that web-searches also bring up related articles from the Encarta encyclopedia so students can verify information they find on the internet.

It definitely seems useful as a whole. I wonder if it will be more appropriate for middle-school rather than high school students. I feel that at the high school level students should be preparing for the same products and software they will encounter in college/work. Also, by the high school level most students have developed their more of a web-sense and can find appropriate material on their own. Although I have been surprised by the number of students who do not consider the URL when "googling."


eSchool News online
- posted by mrdaly @ 1:47 PM 0 comments

 
Intel's Education Visionary Conference
eSchool News online

Intel Corp.'s fourth annual Education Visionary Conference. Looks like an interesting conference with some significant presenters from schools and major tech companies.

A principal from Texas, Tracey Freeley, talks about how technology intergration has changed her school. Besides changing her personal focus from "graduating kids" to "preparing them for life" she points out that the overall atmosphere of the school has changed.

"We have changed what we teach, and how we teach, in the classroom," she said.
"Teachers are facilitators of learning--that's a huge role reversal. You walk
into the classrooms, and you find students teaching. When kids take ownership of
learning, that's when learning happens. That's engagement."

- posted by mrdaly @ 1:19 PM 0 comments

 
blogs in the building
CHS English 10 Honors

Great to see Mr. Irani's class blogging away. I love the idea that using blogs for peer revision and writing workshops has clear benefits compared to traditional revisions and discussion groups. As Mr. Irani points out:

"I hope one of the gains of doing writing workshop assignments on-line is that
we will start reading each other's work with a blank slate. In other words, the
way a writer reads a piece, comments by the writer, and various other factors
will not interfere with your interpretation as much."

One of the keys of integrating technology into the classroom is intergation with a purpose. Sure, exposing students to new internet technologies and blogs in particular has some inherent value, but by using it selectively and letting the students know the purpose of this technology it will lead to more focused and effective instruction and learning.
- posted by mrdaly @ 3:44 PM 0 comments

 
getting things together
Today's goal is to get this page in a little better order. I've imported my links from my bloglines account as that was a fast and easy way to post most of the education sites that I regularly visit. The ease and convenience of RSS is what I really feel will allow student blogging and webpages to actually cut down on my daily work for class and not double it. By using RSS all of the updates to student pages (blog posts, responses, and comments) can all be delivered to my computer through Bloglines (or another RSS aggregator) instead of me having to check 90+ websites each night.

I'm sure I'll add additional links as I get things going, and I'm not sure how best to format the links to organize them as well as the bloglines links. I think the first step is to further categorize my bloglines links and see where the non-RSS links can fit. I think I'll also be removing the Blogger toolbar from the top of the page. Yes, it does allow you to google-search your own page, but it might be a problem with students ending up on inappropriate blogs. I'm sure that will happen anyway, but perhaps removing it could cut down on the # of incidents.
- posted by mrdaly @ 7:03 PM 0 comments

 
off we go...
As I take on the challenge of creating a "paperless" classroom throughout this school year and into 05-06, I thought I would try and create a blog that explains my thoughts and processes of getting a class online and interactive. Expect none of this to be mind-blowing, but if you're curious to see how a mildly-computer/web literate teacher takes on this task than feel free to read along, and please offer me any advice throughout the process.

Currently I'm teaching Technology classes (think a cross between shop class and a computer lab) at Charlottesville High School, but in all likelihood I will be returning to the Social Science department next year. I've spent the last few months fiddling with blogs. I've created one to use with our Technology classes this year, but it isn't a true "blog" but really just a simple webpage as a place for links, assignments, and course information. It has served it's purpose, but I want to do more next year, both in and out of the classroom.

I've been turned on to Bloglines by Will Richardson (go check out his excellent site: www.weblogg-ed.com, right now) and his post today about the amount of student work that is basically wasted in a school year sparked me to go create this right away:

At my school, our quarter ends this week, and I know what that means. New
classes, new books, new content for teachers to disseminate, old content for
students to throw away. I'm going to make some assumptions, but if our 3,000
or so students each create just 2 pieces of content each day, that's
1,080,000 pieces over the course of the year. I'm going to be generous and
say that via the hallways, the Website, and various other outlets, a typical
student or teacher at my school may run across 250 of those artifacts in a
year in any "published" form. That's somewhere around .0002 of what our
students produced. (If that's wrong, remember, I'm an English teacher by
trade...you get my point.) Even if we assume only five percent of the total
content our students produce is really quality stuff, worthy of being added
to the knowledge base, that's 54,000 nuggets of information, 53,750 of which
I'll never have the chance of seeing.

And these numbers are only dealing with the number of "publishable content" for each student ---which he estimated as one per every two weeks. This doesn't take even begin to consider the countless smaller assignments which become fodder for bottom of the locker. What if not just the "publishable content", but the smaller steps that lead up to it could also be stored online and be accessable to all. I'm not saying that every worksheet should be online (god, how I hate worksheets and the fact that students are so conditioned to fill out packets by the time they reach high school.....but, I digress), but wouldn't it be interesting and relevant for students to post their reflections, thoughts, and ideas along the way as the encounter new material.

Thinking about how many millions of pages of notes, worksheets, and papers that I've encountered in my life as a student and as a teacher is a bit dizzying. Hopefully the end result of this next year will be a greater emphasis on creating knowledge, interacting with the content, interacting with each other, and in the end less paper. We'll see.

- posted by mrdaly @ 3:35 PM 0 comments