I am preparing for an administrator academy about blogs, podcasts ,and wikis here in Northern Illinois and I am wandering around the Internet, twittering (just started that last Friday morning), Skyping (started that a few months ago, but actually made my first independent call last night!),investigating uStreamed (Signed up last Friday, a participant uCasted me that afternoon) and my usual reading of my RSS feeds using Bloglines.
Many of you reading this blog post and wondering "YIKES, where has Meg been, under some virtual rock"? Actually, I have been busy teaching. Teaching all day and driving kids each evening. My teaching schedule was heavier this Fall than usual and in my mind I was keeping up with the great folks at classroom 2.0 over on Ning, researching using wikis, watching some great mashups on You Tube, investigating Teacher Tube, following my blogs using RSS feeds, and keeping up with my friends on Linkedin.
Just so you don't think I was standing still I also have been immersed in the virtual world of Second Life where I have been designing my dream home, serving on committees, and participating in amazing networking events. My avatar Meg Writer is getting more hits than my real name Meg Ormiston, based on the data from my Google Alerts. I have been using my shared Google Calendar to coordinate carpooling to and from school, and playing with Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
My current professional development is learning to master Google Sketchup, for this I am using videos found on You Tube. I LOVE this, and can see amazing applications for everyone! I particularly love to browse through the 3-D Warehouse and look at the things that others have built and shared. Still Google Earth is one of my favorite tools of all time, could rant and rave all day but not to be missed is the Street View in Google Maps.
With my teaching I also have learned how to use Garage Band to create Podcasts with students, Comic Life across the curriculum, and taught myself Adobe Fireworks. I have helped teachers create iMovies, Windows Movie Maker projects and made amazing websites using Google Page Creator. Exploring Flickr with various staff members they have created some great lessons, and others have learned advanced searching in Google to locate resources.
There is much more as I reflect over the last month working with k-12 teachers, but still look how much I missed in the short time. This world of Web 2.0 is absolutely amazing and it is changing every second.
As I reflect over what I have written here, I am wondering a few things:
- How many of the sites referenced in this post will the administrators I am working with know and have used?
- If I can't keep up with the explosion of possibilities how can our administrators add that to their over burdened plate?
- How do we extend the learning beyond a one day face to face session?
- How do we reach the teachers in the classroom with students and help them stay current?
Big questions, lot to think about!
1 comment:
The four questions at the end of your post were in my mind as I spent a year writing my dissertation, Naturalizing Digital Immigrants: How Are Educators Responding to Rapidly Changing Digital Literacies? I finally finished, and the link to my study website gives access to a pdf of the whole dissertation as well as to a summarizing page of findings and to a powerpoint I used to share the findings with a group of tech directors in the south suburbs. I am shocked that two people who weren't either on my committee or in my family have actually read the whole thing!!
It seems to me like a lot of schools are requiring administrator blogs, but it seems no one is commenting - hmmm.
I definitely don't have any answers about how any of us can keep up, but I do think that we need to follow the kids - see what captivates them and try to determine how can we use their fascination with podcasting, blogging, social networking, video games, etc. for learning purposes. One Aha! of the paper (and I think most of us know this intuitively but still don't know what to do about it) is that teachers want to do the best they can for their students but either:
a. genuinely aren't convinced that they can let go of legacy curriculum and skills without shortchanging their students
b. see so many flashy but very different tools and applications - nothing is standing out as a solid bet that will not be swept away in a blink of an eyelash
Accepting the fluidity of tools is difficult. I see a relaxed attitude characterized by NBD (no big deal) among some young, digital native teachers. They aren't thrown by difficulties with access or equipment, they work around it and don't even think about it. However, they reject poorly designed tools, websites or applications as flawed without blaming themselves for not being able to figure them out.
Enough from me. Good to see your post, Meg. Let's keep it going...
Post a Comment