Balance is a Four Letter Word!
Ok, so now that I have my class blog up and running, my students are working together in Google docs, Gmail and groups, and they have all created meaningful Voki’s I seem to have neglected my professional blog. I am spending every moment working WITH my students to mold and shape our Power unit. During this collaborative time I have forgotten to sit back and think, “So, what does this all mean?” Read some of the comments that have been said in my classroom over the past two weeks:
“That makes so much more sense” – commenting on subscribing to RSS feeds
“What happens if we aren’t allowed to learn this way next year?”
“I need to do it this way because that is how I learn best.”
“”Finally!”
“I feel more comfortable speaking to the world through a blog than in front of the class. Is that ok?”
And finally, a parent comes to me at conferences and tells me how her 13 year old son and his friend were having a sleep over. It was 2 in the morning and she heard them on the computer. Expecting to find them on an inappropriate site, she was dumbfounded to find that they were blogging on our class blog!
I was speechless!
Parent Conferences
Tomorrow we are having Demonstration of Learning in my classroom and for one of the tasks I have asked students to post a comment on our class blog with their parents. I am really anxious to see how this will go over. I already have some parents who post on our blog. My hope is that this will encourage other parents to start as well. All the students have also created their own Voki which they are using to welcome their parents to our Demonstration of Learning – needless to say I didn’t have to ask twice for the students to complete this assignment!!
Students begun setting up their subscriptions this week. Most have subscribed to TSN and such. My goal is for them to start subscribing to sites that are relevant to the unit. This will be a natural movement for some, and not for others. We have been spending time on finding valuable internet sites that are reliable. However, I must admit that the students are much more aware than I was expecting. Their media intelligence is beyond my original assumptions. There are a handful of students wanting to start their own blogs after the break so that will be very exciting to watch and I will be sure to keep everyone aware of their progress.
On another note, some teachers in the school have begun blogging with the students and the students are over the top because of this. Today was a high because someone from South Africa was checking out our blog – the students were on a high!! (as was their teacher!)
Now This Is Engagement
Anyone who has been reading my latest blogs know that I am in the early stages of blogging with my students. I just have to share this with anyone who is skeptical about blogging in schools. I have two students that all year I have been on their case to pay attention, hand in work on time, participate in group discussions, etc. Since we have started blogging as a class these two students have gone above and beyond what I ever expected from any of my students. They are providing meaningful connections to the blog prompts, encouraging and challenging other posts and are so insanely engaged in learning that it takes my freakin’ breath away. I am not going to tell you who they are, but read our class blog and I have no doubt that you will find maturity and depth far beyond the average grade seven student. Trust me!
This is Sooooo Cool!
I think that I had goose bumps this whole week at school! We started our new social studies unit on “Power” and decided as a class that the Holocaust is a fabulous example of Power and how it can be used and abused in any situation. Our class unit blog is up and running and I have all my students with “academic only” gmail accounts. They love it because their parents can use the same email and it’s primary use is for school purposes. The kids have started blogging – some more naturally than others – but they are getting there. I even had a parent ask to post to the blog! I embedded a Voki on the sidebar and they love it – most have created their own Vokiand are constantly looking for more web 2.0 tools to play around with. I am having trouble embedding the Voki into my post though, so if anyone has some tips please pass my way. Now I have to run and get my Animotoholocaust vid ready for Monday’s class! I love school.
p.s. and my students do too!!
Digital Project
Well, I started my digital project with my students this week. I think at the beginning I was more excited than the kids. But, with most things in teaching, the kids are starting to feed off of my energy and get excited about their opportunities as well! I introduced the unit blog and had all students get parental consent and sign up (with their parents) for a gmail account. They were responsible for creating a username and password with their folks. The gmail account will be their “academic” email. Next year our school division is looking into getting educational gmail accounts for all of the kids. I sure hope this comes to fruition.
Today we discussed the intro of How To Blog. Students had to complete a draft of the blog that they post for their first post to the class blog. We also took a look at the class blog and they took a keen interest in the Voki that I had created. I think I already have a fair number who have created their own Voki’s (it takes them a fraction of the time to figure things out in comparison to their teacher). I can’t wait to continue our journey with Media Awareness and the impact of our digital footprints. I encourage you to check out our class blog as it starts to take form.
It’s Like Riding A Bike!
Well, tomorrow I am officially kicking off my class blog with my students. It will be similar to the -night- before -the-first -day -of- school -syndrome. I will be talking non-stop to my family members and they will nod and smile and act like they have the same passion as I. Then I will proceed to run through my “kick-off to the main event” followed by a night of tossing and turning. Thank goodness for Tim Horton’s!
Get the Picture?
Well, I have been absent from the world as we know it for several weeks now. I want to thank all of my well-wishers who recognize that I have a medically fragile (wow, is that a term of the times!) child and the roller coaster ride involved in such circumstances.
This absence is not to say that I have not been thinking about my final project. For some reason, I had this grand picture in my mind from the first day of my EC&I class what this project would look like. It has taken me two months to realize that creating this enormous monstrosity of a project goes against everything that I believe about technology and how it should be infused with education. To jam pack a bunch of stuff into a final project will not showcase my learning throughout the course. I will not benefit long term. It is like a crash diet, yes you will lose a lot of weight initially but in the end it will all come back and usually with a few more pounds. I need the smart, sensible lifestyle change that will benefit me for a lifetime. So, that puts me back to the very beginning. I am comfortable being where I am after reading and listening to what others in the class are doing as their final projects. I was even more convinced that I was on the right track after reading Weblogg-ed current blog which talks about Chris Jordan and the work titled, ” American Self-Portrait”. If you haven’t seen these photos, they are a must see. To me it captures how we tend to do so much without even thinking of the cause and effect of doing so. I brought this in to my own life and how I often see the big picture when I really should be focusing on the basics as well. It is so easy to get caught up in greatness of it all. The excitement sometimes gets the best of me!
