Nov 12 2009
David Kapuler spends a good deal of his time discovering folks on the Web who are talented and generous. One of the recent additions to his interviewees is Naomi Harm. This her list of tools. It is far-reaching, and easy to the eye. I would advise you to take a look:
Aug 12 2009
I have been preparing all Summer to go to work at Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield Massachusetts.
I cannot stop smiling.
I am going work with the seventh grade three days a week and the High School Keyboarding Class five days. The balance of the time I will the Technology Integrator for both the Middle School and the High School.
This is a brand new position, so the tablet is blank.
Mar 29 2009
Lee Kolbert published a timely blog post 3/29/09 entitled ‘Are you a Wimpy Whiner?’ Lee is from Florida and is the author of The Geeky Momma’s Blog. She is wonderfully intelligent, hardworking, articulate educator working in Instructional Technology.
Her district sponsored a conference with national prestige, but when people wanted to use Twitter to have a a backchannel discussion of the keynote address, they found it BLOCKED. It was confusing and dismaying, but a great deal of good has come from that event.
Writes Ms. Kolbert, “I’m particularly pleased to see the conversation take a turn to how teachers can begin to stop suffering in silence and seek a role in advocating for the very change they are seeking. It is always my contention that we should not “wimply whine.” We must take a part in finding a solution. If you are unhappy with the level of security placed on your desktops at your schools, what are YOU doing about it?”
I think this can be universalized for all the faculties and staffs in relation to a whole host of concerns. The issue of filtering is especially important, but issues like assessment, programmatic issues, even scheduling should not simply be whined about but should be researched and concerns presented to administrators in a cool and professional manner.
Dec 26 2008
I have been tagged by Richard Byrne - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2008/12/seven-things.html – for a meme that’s been going around. I am tasked with listing seven things about myself that people may not be likely to know that, at the same time, would help my PLN to know me better. Here you are:
1. I tried four times to write novels. I was able to get up to 173 pages of the first draft on one of them.
2. I started college as a biology major.
3. I was a widower when Jan and were married.
4. I am the oldest of nine children: six boys and three girls. I am 18 years older than my youngest sib and 17 years younger than my mom.
5. I have been in one labor union or another for thirty years.
6. My favorite color is green. (I am relieved not to start one of these with ‘I’.)
7. I was a semi-pro first baseman for a while.
I’m tagging:
@amycordova
@jjohnson
@kmulford
@kcaise
@kobus
@skytrystsjoy
@beil
Dec 21 2008
The winners of the 2008 Eddies are….
7. Best librarian / library blog
8. Best educational tech support blog
9. Best elearning / corporate education blog
10. Best educational use of audio
11. Best educational use of video / visual
13. Best educational use of a social networking service
14. Best educational use of a virtual world
Discovery Education Second Life
15. Best class blog
Nov 23 2008
On the face of it, there are two more issues that need to be set in place to complete the foundation of this discussion:
1. Online learning for professional development;
2. The applicablility of online learning for the community-at-large.
After these issues are reflected upon, we can begin to build our ’school for lifelong learners’.
Nov 16 2008
Should we enrol our students in schools like Virtual High School (VHS) – http://www.govhs.org ?
I have been both a teacher and student in online learning milieus. I have launched experiences, as teacher, individually online in Moodle (on a 3rd party site) and other ventures, as well. I am today going to focus on VHS.
Virtual High School is well into its second decade of existence. They offer well over 300 courses and have been exceeding over four thousand students per semester for the last two years. I think it is an ideal addition to almost any school, but especially for smaller schools. If you have fifty seats per year it is well within the realm of possibility that your student s will take fifty DIFFERENT courses in the course of a school year-Think of how that broadens horizons.
The school has four membership options, as copied from the VHS site as follows:
There are several considerations that should taken into account:
In the best of all possible circumstances, in my opinion, a school or district would have the same person be the Site Coordinator and teacher. VHS would be a regularly scheduled class, with independent study allowed on a case-by-case basis.
The teacher would develop an additional curriculum component or use the services of VHS to extend the class for the full school semester. VHS offers class fifteen consecutive weeks with NO BREAKS, so the students are at loose ends if nothing else follows the completion of that course.
This is the matrix for a small school in Washington state, except that the teacher teaches two online classes that provide the students with a hundred seats in VHS per year in any course in which they may enrol. This is a full-time position – two classes a day for the students in her school, two periods a day for her to teach her online students and one period for her coordinator and admin work.
On the other hand, if the Site Coordinator’s duties and teacher’s responsibility can be a part of the school day by reducing the face-to-face responsibilities, that ongoing cost would be negligible.
Nov 16 2008
Should successful completion of an online course be a graduation requirement?
This is a difficult call to make.
I feel it should be a requirement for a high school diploma and for an associate’s and bachelor’s degrees for students in our country. And, just as firmly, I believe that there should be suspensions or modifications allowed to the requirement, as well.
I have taught online for more than five years, completed a master’s online, and have continued to take courses on a pay-as-I-go basis ever since. I have explored adding moodle to my face-to-face courses. I have looked at several other options including commercial options (of which I have taken advantage).
Obviously, my skillset and learning styles make online learning something that is workable, desirable even, for me. We are really in the first few seconds, metaphorically speaking, of the Digital Age. If we can manage to survive the current economic and environmental crises intact, we will continue to rocket into this the Digital Age that has only two other events in history of comparable impact. If we are going to become a community of life-long learners; If we’re going to leave no child behind; We are going to do it by embracing the tools, and the lives we fashion with these tools.
Online learning is one of these tools.
Oct 26 2008
I do not believe that anyone is really, wholly a professional in what they do if he or she are not, too, an amateur.
An amateur is a person who does what they does what they do for the love of it. The word was coined toward the end of the 18th century in France.
Remember, as well, that a profession, in the sense commonly used in our culture is only the third or fourth definition, attributed to the word. The first have to do with making vows, keeping vows, and communities where such things are done.
If being an educator is a professional, no teacher is truly a professional unless they are an amateur, too.
I think of what brings true joy to me in my life as a teacher and it is all about being fulfilled, not paid. When there are dry times, a check does not bring rain. When there is a peak experience for my students and me, it is not because of what I earned or the scholarly article I’ll be able to write about it.
How about you?
Sep 28 2008
If, when, and how should a teacher express social and political opinions in his or her classroom?
Do you answer questions when students ask you directly?
Do you try to spur debate by telling students who your candidate is?
Do you try to spur higher level thinking in students’ minds by explaining your decision-making process in relation to a social and political issues?
