Voki

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

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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.

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Here's another one for Classroom 2.0

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