January 22?

I believe our last class is January 21st - a new concern for January 22 and beyond.

I finally checked in with my iGoogle page last night and saw that posts were made this weekend, the very first weekend of vacation. Egad, I thought. I'm slacking. I had planned to give myself a break, enjoy the holiday and start of vacation, and enjoy (in theory) the rounds of family that have been visiting or staying. I hadn't picked up my computer in days. The lasagnas (meat and meatless), chicken parmesans, roasted vegetables... consumed my life for a change. What surprised me, was how easy it was to put all that I have immersed myself in these past months aside, and not give it a thought (except - jeesh, my rss reader is probably packed). As a matter of fact, I think I could have left this well enough alone for the duration of vacation. Scary thought for as me as I thought I had crossed this great digital divide and arrived on the web2.0 side. Is it this easily that I can leave it all behind?

With a quiet house, I thought I'd watch another K12 Online Conference presentation. Diana, I watched the one you commented on because I wanted to see about this Screentoaster thing. I like how he kept his presentation simple, clear, and directed (thought I did lose audio at the end). It was reassuring to see him present two tools that we have been introduced to in class, Diigo and Prezi. With all that is out there, I find it really helpful to see tools used repeatedly to help me get a feel for them and to see that they may really fit into my post January 21st life. I think now I may even have an idea for my digital sharing project. Need I be worried that I am still waffling (oh, a breakfast idea for family that is somehow still around - homemade waffles, yum)? One comment that Drew makes at the beginning is that if we find ourselves watching this, we are probably going above and beyond. It's nice to have that sentiment acknowledged, but it makes me wonder, will this ever be the norm for me and not above and beyond? Or will I always be caught in the middle straddling the divide?

As a humorous aside, does this blog post ring true for anyone those last few days of school with all the treats available? Don't miss the label.

K12Online2009, part 3

Two additional K12 presentations I watched included: You Might be a 21st Century Leader if... and Little Kids, Big Possibilities.

Little Kids, Big Possibilities was pertinent, interesting, and applicable (and still somewhat overwhelming). One of my frustrations with all that we have been learning and exploring in the this class is the fact that I teach at the elementary level, am not a classroom teacher, and split my time between two schools. While much of this seems great, the practical applications can be elusive as students at this level can limited by their age. This presentation introduced five web2.0 applications that would be appropriate to use at the elementary level, along with examples of how she used them with her students. She also demonstrated the steps a teacher would follow to begin using each. Wordle was the only one with which I was already familiar. Others include Wallwisher, Comic Creators, Comics.com, and Edmodo. All are worthy of further investigation. But where to start? What continues to surprise me is that with all the new tools I've been learning about, there are still so many out there. What's the best way to sort through the options?

You Might be a 21st Century Leader if... was geared towards school leaders. It was helpful to watch to keep in mind the direction in which teaching and learning are traveling. Standards were shared and compared. The standards related to core values, the way students learn, and the way teachers teach. Inspire, sustain, promote, manage, collaborate, model. The ISTE standard shared, which I think is important in creating a successful 21st century environment - "... the success of technology integration initiatives relies on leaders who excel in supporting, implementing, and sustaining systemic reform for schools."

Dennis, I just noticed you have a presentation, too. I'll add it to the list.

K12Online 2009, part 2: Wizard of Apps

I mentioned this video in a previous post, and have now had the opportunity to watch the 51 minute keynote presentation in it's entirety (don't forget to check out the backstory). I don't know if I neglected to do something, however, it was often difficult to for me to see much of what was on the screen (not the Wizard of Apps/Oz scenes) and the audio was occasionally difficult to hear. I'm afraid I might of missed important pieces, or have understood things incorrectly. I've tried to do perform Google searches on various items that I'm unclear about, however, I am not able to connect to Google this morning! Can it be that Google is "down?!" With that said, here is what I took away from the presentation, knowing I have to explore further:

• General theme, being an ethical citizen, creating a positive digital footprint.
• People search tools: pipl.com, 123people. Didn't know they existed.
• That's not cool dot com - will have to investigate further.
• Flickr storm - creating an image tray could be a great tool to use at the elementary level as the use of images can be contained to one source and students could access at home as well as school (yes?).
• Not clear on triangulation - that will be a future Google search.
• Other search tools - dulcinea. Wiki search tool. Surchur will search across social networks.
  
• GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. If your research is lacking, so will your product.
• Evaluating information - does neutral text exist? Who's the source?
• Wikis and twitter as a resource - twitter as a primary source. Now that it has been brought to my attention, I can see the logic as tweets can be created at the site, though I'm not sure I would have come to that conclusion on my own. (Twasa)?
  
• It's important to think about the audience when creating a presentation (I again refer you to the backstory).
  
• Dig tales, voice threads, xtranormal. Cool ideas shared: poetry anthology as a voice thread, trailers for books through animoto, student book reviews in glogster.
  

K12Online 2009, part 1

I like the way Kim Cofino structured her address and shared ways in which her thinking was challenged, and how she challenges our ways of thinking. Organizing the presentation by incorporating very real aspects of her life abroad was a great analogy - very creative! She challenged one of my ways of thinking by saying culture shock is not always negative. Good point.

Her presentation made me think about the time I spent abroad as a junior in college. I attended an American international school in London for a semester. Looking back on it, I wish I had been more aware of, and receptive to, the cultural aspects of this experience, not simply pleased that we didn't have classes on Friday which allowed more time to travel. Yes, that was a significant and important part of the experience, however, I'm sure there was more to it than what my teenage mind was focused on. One recollection - and that's if I remember correctly... At the beginning of the semester there was more intermingling among cultures, meaning, students from various countries frequently socialized together. As time went on, however, my photos become less diverse, and only include the American students. As time went on, it seems we gravitated to what was familiar. I wonder if that would be the same today where people are much more connected. I do think we still find comfort in what is familiar, and that's okay. One student in Kim's address commented on this.

Seeking the familiar is not a negative thing, but an observation and an awareness which allows us to be adaptable and flexible, leaving us open to diverse experiences. I have a very clear recollection of being with friends and ordering my first pint of Guinness with Mafit (I wish he told me then that woman order half pints, not full), marveling at the fact that Rodrigo never took a photo because he knew it could never adequately represent his memories, and enjoying tasty Greek tidbits with Dimitri. I will also remember passing by the tv room and seeing the students from Beruit watching the news, hoping their families and friends had survived the bombings. Vast differences in background at the time. Is that true today?

Next on tap.... The Wizard of Apps.

A new tweet

Can't resist. A tweet from Laura Ingalls Wilder - HalfPintIngalls.

Why can't we have one of those SPECIAL blizzards with bits of candy & cookies in them? Ours just have dead cattle.

It's been a while

I've sat down numerous times since my last post, but have not yet made it back to my blog to add a new one. I'm busy working, but find all sorts of other neat things to wade into. One trouble spot is Google Reader. I find that by the time I've gone through the feeds, the time set aside to complete class work has evaporated. So today I'm working through this problem by limiting the number of links I follow within my Google Reader feeds. Another trouble spot (if you can call it that) is that I've discovered that I really enjoy the book related blogs I am following. Whether it's a discussion of the future/existence of ebooks, an unveiling of new titles, or commentary on the cover of a recent School Library Journal issue, I'm pulled in, unable to resist the lure of a link. They are informative, insightful, and humorous.

Blog tidbits:
Critique de Mr. Chompchomp blog. He comments about ebooks, especially those that have special interactive features, and states " Gizmo promoters talk about making books interactive, as if they weren't." Cool comment. He also talks about the fictive dream. I'll include it here - "But there is a type of reading, both a pleasure and a skill, that all the flashy images and intrusive puzzles inhibit. It's that fully absorbing type of reading, sometimes called entering into the 'fictive dream.' While for many avid readers, reading in this fashion is second nature and is the reason why we read, it is, nonetheless, a learned skill. A reader must learn to fully engage the text, to offer up his or her imagination to the writing, engage in the collaboration of creating the fictive dream." I'm not sure how much sense this makes standing alone in this post, so I'd encourage you to read his.

Through another blog, Neverendingsearch, I was introduced to another K12Online09 keynote, Wizard of App (think Oz). I haven't watched the entire video yet, but love the back story included in the post that also includes the video. It's worth a read. One new piece of knowledge for me (and only from the first few minutes of the address - just think how much more awaits) is the existence of such sites as Pipl. She has students check their digital footprint as they begin the college process. One more link for me to follow, but tomorrow is another day...

I've also watched Kim Cofino's address and hope to add a new post soon (I was thinking it would be tonight, but you know what happens to the best laid plans), before I have to watch it again. She speaks of culture shock - My husband is the one in culture shock as I've been exploring all the web has to offer. The lights are off, the house is quiet, and here I sit. An image from Chris Van Allsburg's book, The Wretched Stone, comes to mind...

Oh no, a twibe?

A confession... I forgot to read the article on Twitter before our last class. Not that it was intentional, it's just that when I get online, I still find myself squirreling (you know, darting here and there, under the car wheel, not under the car wheel, cross the street, don't cross the street). With the best of intentions, I sat down yesterday to read the article, but couldn't find it in the wiki, so squirreled my way through various "25 ways to teach with Twitter" google results. Found some pretty neat things, and think I overlooked the article we were actually suppose to read. All is not lost, however, as I found some pretty neat ideas, and today, have even found the correct article on the class wiki (bookmarked and highlighted in diigo).

From Google results: Who knew so many twitter options were available? A twibe, twitterfall, historicaltweets, twittermap, twiddeo, etc. Some great ideas are out there: produce a tweet dialogue between two opposing characters about an issue (colonists and British), tweet a story opener and have the students continue the story in tweets, engage in a scavenger hunt of finding online resources (website, pictures,...) for a project (no repeats allowed), post tweets as if a book character or a person from history would have tweeted, and the list continues.

From article: The ideas from the article that I particularly liked (and found to be the most pertinent to my position) include: tweeting about when a book review or blog post was added to the library website, giving a shout-out about an author's birthday, and sending a tweet about books being read (by me, others). I think back to my days as a classroom teacher producing our weekly newsletter home. There are such great options for communicating with parents now, it puts my old newsletter (objects and text in the same document!) to technological shame.

I also watched a video, Twitter Tuesday, on using twitter in the classroom (in this case, a college classroom). What I liked best was a comment made by the professor, stating that beginning to use twitter in the classroom was going to be messy, but that didn't mean it was going to be bad. I think that's important for all us to remember as we begin to use web2.0 technology. It probably will be messy, it might even be a flop, but we grow from our mistakes and learn by doing.

To conclude, a great tweet from Dr. Seuss's WhoPhone.

Bookmark Contest glog

Each year MSLA (Massachusetts School Library Association) hosts a bookmark contest. I thought that this might be a fun way to introduce it to students this year. The bookmarks on the glog are last year's winners.

As you can see, the embedding continues to challenge me. I am impressed, however, that I figured out how to adjust the size without having to look online for help. Does that mean I can finally swallow that piece of watermelon?

WatchKnow

I've spent some time this morning looking at WatchKnow, and am quite impressed. So far I've just looked at the videos relating to literature, specifically authors and picture books. There is a book that I haven't been able to locate for our library, but have found a video of it on WatchKnow - how cool is that? I know that some of our teachers study particular authors with their students and I think it be great if I could give them a quick shout out and twitter the links to them. I wonder how many would be up for something like that. Hmmmm, something to think about. Oh yes, I've also been exploring ways to use twitter in the classroom this morning. The historical tweets are my favorites. I'll have to speed up my reading of Abigail Adams, and hope some creative inspiration comes my way. My fingers are crossed.

How many?

How many gadgets are too many? Just tried adding another, Quote of the Day.

Remembering

My challenge is to remember what we shared in class tonight during the inner/outer circle activity. Unfortunately, I find remembering to be quite a challenge. How can it be the bottom, the base, of Bloom's digital taxonomy? I can pass judgment (evaluating) far better than I can remember!

What I really came away with was during the activity was the idea that we are continuing to bite out of the watermelon, not trying to eat the entire thing in one sitting. I know I've gone off track at times, however, I've ending up eating my own watermelon, I suppose, and that will be with me after the class ends. Which would the point, yes?

Pretty neat

Pretty neat video. Summary of personal learning, anyone? If only.

Find more videos like this on TeacherLibrarianNetwork

Recharged

Yesterday was a bad day on the 21st century ranch. So much time was spent online, yet it seemed that so little was accomplished. I know this (okay, hope this) is part of the process, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

Today, however, dawned brighter. I (library teacher) am working on a four way collaborative project with a fifth grade teacher, the technology specialist, and the art teacher. It's a lot of work (especially since I split my time between two buildings), but it's been exciting and just what I needed to recharge and tackle the 21st century once again. It also helps to have the guidance and support from our knowledgeable technology specialist to go with it. This whole learning thing is draining. The poor kids! I'm also using google docs again (this time an excel document). What a convenient tool that I've often forgotten about in the past.

Even tomorrow's looking bright as I have plans to work again with a classmate from our class. I'm on board with collaboration, it's a wonderful thing. It's the creativity that's got me stumped. Until I spiral the other way....

Shelfari?

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Voki

Dabbled at the Voki site tonight. Let's see if I can get it here...

Get a Voki now!

Attempting to embed a video: Freddy's Delivery

My son just sent a text message that directed me to this video. He explained that one of his teammates is taking a course called, something to the effect of, Digital Media Conversions (he wasn't exactly sure). The assignment was to pick a song and to make a video for it (and more I'm sure). My son is the first actor you meet in the video, not the creator. I thought the timing of this was pretty neat given the fact that I was just listening to Tony Wagner's keynote address. Let's see if I can get it into this post.

Laundry list

Here is what I am calling a laundry list of my thoughts, observations, and notes on some of the reading (and viewing) I did today.

1. ALA site.

RE: internet filtering - embracing values over filters and trusting children, parents play a big role.

2. Education at Bat: Seven principles for educators.
I really enjoyed this brief article. My son is a college baseball player, so the little league analogy resonated with me. He did learn the whole game first, and 19 years later continues to fine-tune his skills. And with a certain amount of enthusiasm no less. While endless drills might be considered drudgery to some extent, knowing the end goal makes the efforts worthwhile - in baseball and in learning.
RE: "learning the components of a subject without ever putting them together."
Perhaps my recollection is wrong, misguided, or even misinterpreted, however, it seems to me that at one point in time we wanted students to put the pieces together, without presenting the whole. As a learner, this never worked for me, and I suppose, still doesn't. I like to know what I'm aiming for, what direction I should be taking.
RE: "Learn from the team."
Refreshing thought. There is great comfort in being able to learn from others, and great fun in sharing what one has learned... most of the time. Just recently, however, I found myself being possessive of my new learning and I don't understand why. With a certain amount of shame I will admit to this - I initially found it a little difficult to share my new knowledge of "badges" with members of my study group. Is this because, that as a student of the past, the "keep our eyes on your own paper" attitude still run deep? I wanted to savor my new found knowledge, not share it. And the thing of it is, I really did enjoy showing off (er, I mean sharing) my new skill and certainly benefited from doing so. So why did I have that initial reaction?

3. Global Achievement Gap Keynote Video - list of my notes. (I know his list of competencies is online).
Employees that ask questions
Employees that engage others
Need core competencies to adapt, to be continuous learners (Abigail Adams?)
Problem solvers - Yes, ask good questions, but must have background, too
Collaborating to create new knowledge
Employees to come up with new ideas
Effective and oral communication - making a logical or persuasive argument. What to get out of meeting - give the whole first
Writing is thinking made public. Write with voice - need for persuasion
Competitive edge will be our nich
AYPs at expense of children's lives
Competencies not content, but content does matter. Yes know Civil War, but what do you think about the causes
Recovering high school English teacher (lol)
Knowing parts of speech not needed to write well
Finland - sample of student assessment, not all
Killing curiosity the longer in school. Test Prep?
Learn from peers far more than adults. Sharing constantly out of school. Digital divide
Young people with more and more responsibility in the workforce
Coaching rather than professional development for teachers. Video tape best practice and analyze it.
Some schools are doing this. Field trip?

Balance

This has been one of the most difficult aspects of the course for me. Balancing the time I spend completing #i3cs21 class work, and balancing how I spend that time (and, of course, keeping up with the day job). When I was a new teacher I had a principal who gave a great piece of advice about balancing work and life, and that was to quantify the time spent on work. My goal will be to try to listen to her advice once again and find a reasonable balance between my "real" life and my new found "online" life. I realize my "online" life will continue once this course is over and my hope is that I'll feel more comfortable when that time arrives.

When my son was born my mother also gave a great piece of advice, and that was to be sure to take a shower every day. Meaning don't let the simple things that are necessary and that make you feel better get away from you. This is something I wrestled with this weekend. On Saturday I worked for about 2-3 hours on what might become my Summary of Personal Learning, then closed the laptop to prepare for a friend that was visiting from out of town. Despite the fact that I was just beginning to make some headway (nothing tangible, I might add), I felt a certain amount of accomplishment in what I had achieved (again, lacking in quality evidence), and headed to the grocery store with a happy heart.

Sunday, however, was a different story. Our plan was to finish the Freedom Trail and to top that off with a climb up the Bunker Hill Monument (well, a partial climb), but it was very difficult to let go of the nagging feeling of the class work I was not getting done. I'm embarrassed to say that I was even soliciting advice from my friend about the Major Creative (digital) Sharing Project as we rounded the bend to the USS Constitution. It will probably be a while before she visits again.

Monday evening we went to the Massachusetts Historical Society to hear an author, Woody Holton, talk about his new book, Abigail Adams. Again the guilt. But I couldn't help to think what Abigail Adams would have done in the 21st century. It seems to me that she was a 21st century thinker in the 18th century. Or at least was the makings of one. She seems (I haven't read the book yet) to have learned so much with no formal education, no brick and mortar, imagine what she would have done with access to the information available to us today.

With my eye on the clock, shampoo at the ready, I'll dive back in...

Size adjustment

I knew the previous post had a rather large prezi embedded in it, however, I had reached my limits of exploration. Perhaps I was a little too impulsive to get something up last night. I've reduced it by half. Let's see what that looks like.

Testing Prezi

This is simply an early attempt at using Prezi and getting an idea of how it works and what it can do. I'm exhausted. Here goes nothing....

Badges

I've not only learned that badges exist, but I've also added one to my blog page. Let's see if I can also add it this blog post. This badge is from the Teacher Librarian Ning that I joined.

Visit TeacherLibrarianNetwork

Here's another one for Classroom 2.0

Visit Classroom 2.0

Prezi

I decided to take a closer look at Prezi. I created an account at the Prezi site and watched their tutorials. As I played with it, I still had some very basic questions about just getting started. I went to YouTube and found 2 helpful videos that gave a general overview. Again, very basic, but that's what I needed. They were simply Prezi Part One and Prezi Part Two. Now that I have the "bigger picture" in mind, it doesn't seem as daunting.

Bugscope

Cool project. For a short time on Friday I had the chance to observe a fourth grade class in the computer lab looking at a bee on a scanning electron microscope through Bugscope in their study of Plant Pollinators. What a great opportunity the students had to take an up close look at various insects. They were communicating with the experts at the University of Illinois, asking questions and getting answers on a variety of topics relating to the insect they were studying. What a great opportunity for the students to become scientists themselves, posing questions, exploring, gathering information, and learning from the experts. Wow.

Focus, focus...

I sat down about an hour ago to continue reading Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, but have gotten lost in Twitter. I checked to see if anything was going on, and it was down hill (so to speak) from there. For some reason I found it necessary to scan through the list of 444 possible groups to follow (excuse the lingo if it is incorrect. I'm not letting myself go back to check the terminology for fear that I won't get back here). Curious, I clicked on various choices, Ellen Degeneres, some Health Magazine type of thing, the Today Show, ... and found myself following one link, to another, to another. I'm in need of suggestions to help me focus better! For days, my intent of sitting down at the computer to complete class work has been to go through the two essay/reports listed in cluster 10, and for days I have been getting side tracked - at least going down class inspired roads, I suppose. If I were using a GPS to guide me toward my destination, I can hear it now, recalculating, recalculating...
Another C to add to the list, Choices. There are so many.

The three c's

Communicate, create, collaborate.

What else....We commiserate. We're challenged. We're curious. We curse. But above all, we continue.

A triumph

A few of us from class got together yesterday for about 2 hours. It was a fabulous success. We focused on twitter, added some tweets, found some tweets, found each other, and learned how to maneuver through the site. We also watched a video on wikis (wikis in plain English) that gave very basic information, but filled a void of understanding nonetheless. A document was created in google docs that the rest of us could then go in to edit. We could see first hand what was happening as changes were made and how that information was presented and conveyed. Being able to manipulate a document in this way helped to give me a clearer picture of how it all "worked." These were a few of highlights, I know I'm missing some things, but this is what comes to mind. I know I should have gotten on last night to complete this post, but plugging away for about two hours was my limit yesterday.

In this case working together, collaborating, along with some commiserating, really allowed each of us to come away with a better understanding of these tools and expand our knowledge base. Gaps were filled, misconceptions were cleared, and questions were answered. We might have struggled to answer them, but ultimately they were answered. Last week in class we had the opportunity to work this way to some extent, hopefully we'll be able to continue in the upcoming class (Dennis?).

A quote from the Minds on Fire article (bookmarked and highlighted in Diigo): "Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own." I can't speak to those who worked on their own, but overall, I couldn't agree more!

Just beginning

I've created this blog to track my learning in the course, Three Cs of 21st Century. I'll report back here on my triumphs, failures, and new understandings. Hopefully, progress will be made!