Technology in Education

Two of my favorite brilliant moments from TV you can find on youtube.  The fact that you can find almost anything ever recorded on youtube is amazing. 

But…when the cool wears off, will we be close to big brother?  Are we going to record everything, post everything, view everything?  and then KNOW everything about everyone?

Jesse Jackson reads Dr. Seuss.

Samuel Jackson is a hockey coach.

On another note, did anyone see Michael Jackson (my third Jackson tag of this post) at James Brown’s funeral?  I haven’t figured him out.  But there was definate love in the room for him.  And MC Hammer?  Good show.  With James Brown gone (who was fairly active) are there any true legends left? 

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I’ve been taking some time to read through a lot of the posts on the blogs and came across this Will Richardson entry about blocking software and how frustrated some of us can get.  I’ve been trying to start the discussion at my school and havent gotten that far.  SO much of what I find is blocked.  I agree that students can find “bad stuff” if they really want to, and that we should work to prevent it.

However, with the pace of change moving so fast it is hard for us to keep up.  Are there model programs out there that could post their strategies?

Google continues to come out with some cool tools.  Edugadget blog by Steve Brooks has this cool google label tool.  It sounds like a great way to teach tags, but would also be very useful in an elementary classroom.

 I’ve been spending some time reading through Will Richardsons bloglines.  I have a lot to catch up on.

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I am new to the web 2.0 blogsphere.  I have taken a break from the relentless world as a music director and I am teaching web design this year.  It has been an interesting year.  I finally have the time to really investigate my content area and the blogs have been a great resource.

 I started with David Warlick who I saw at the CECA conference in October.  That drew me to several other blogs, my favorite being Tim Lauer (check out Lewis Elementary). The last few months in class I have thrown a lot of new ideas at my students and they are starting to respond.  The blogs have been a great resource for that.  The kids are starting to do this investigation on their own, at least thats what I am trying to get them to do.   As a band director I would always say “I can’t practice for you..”.  As a track coach I would say “you need to run the miles….”.  I think “regular” teachers often spoonfeed their students too much and dont allow for students to develop self-reliance and self-direction.  I havent figured out why, there is certainly more pressure in a coaching environment or music director job. 

Happy Holidays everyone.  I am waiting for Claudia and Kasey to get up.  I find I can’t really sleep past 6:30am since I get up at 5:15am for school.  I can take a nap pretty soon, but I have to eat first and do some stuff.

This is Claudia’s first Christmas and it has been fun so far.  Uh oh, I hear movement!!!  Have fun today.

So I started this last night and already got a comment.  Thats a good sign.  I had a  radio gig when I was in college.  One semester I had the 6-8am slot on Sunday morning.  The only thing that saved me was that a friend said she got up and read while she listened to me.  Otherwise I thought I was talking to myself.

I’m going to try to set up the blog some today.  Not sure what cool tools from my class blog that I can bring over here.  I really enjoy the clustrmap, as do the kids.  And I haven’t quite figured out how the tags work over here.  I will find the FAQ files today, thats for sure.

If someone is looking for something to do they can look at my final project.  I’ve not taught this class before and I am trying to set-up a two week end of semester final thing for this introductory web design class.  I’m starting to get wikis, but the collaboration hasnt taken off yet.  If you want to see a cool wiki my kids did, visit this site or this one (in progress).

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We had a really great week of exploration in class.  We found a lot of great simulations (see list on blogspot) and the kids really got into them.  Some of the lightbulbs started to go off in class.  I think they are starting to understand what I have been doing.  Moving the class from 1.0 teaching to 2.0 has not been easy.

The Ayiti game from UNICEF was a great learning tool.  I think it really drove the final assignment we did.  I am searching out more of these simulations.  The kids loved playing it and learned so much more than if we had done a worksheet.

 The posts that they left on their blogmeisters are really pretty good.  Their writing continues to improve.  They are pushing the window on the free blogmeister (I think they are driving David Warlick crazy) as they keep adding code and shutting the system down.  But they are getting very personalized blogs.  More and more kids are writing, which is great.

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