ConnectedTalk

Our OpenPD session this afternoon was designed to introduce blogging, my hope was the conversation would be beneficial for those in the class who are new to the concept and thinking about starting a blog of their own. Well once again my expectations were exceeded, and I am so grateful to all of those who participated today. Sue Waters was asked to join us and speak to those participating in class why she blogs, how she got started and if she would share any thoughts, and tip, for writing good posts. Well, Sue wrote a post about our OpenPD session, the topic for class, asking others contribute a comment on the impact their own blogging has had on them, their learning. It is full of interesting stories and suggestions, please take some time to read it. Sue also invited some other bloggers to join in the conversation as well; we were fortunate to have with us the following people:

• Jenny Luca recently wrote a post on PLN’s and balance great, worth reading
• Sue Wyatt as known as tasteach her blog on Smartboards and a classroom blog
• Joe Dale Integrating ICT into MFL classroom
• Kevin Honeycutt – Driving Questions as well as his blog The “Rest Area”
• Sarah Stewart Sarah’s Musings
• Mr. Plough The Next Step
• Carolynn Bruton Carbru’s
• Mrs.Durff Writing a Blog Post and Classroom blog
• Kimberly McClain Terrible Teacher

Thank you all for making another session of OpenPD so worthwhile, I learned a great deal once again. I am grateful for the true sense of collaboration, and sharing everyone brings with them to class, what we are able to learn from one another is phenomenal. This is a wonderful experience for me. Sue thank you for all of your wonderful contributions to this class as well as your work in the edublogger world. On the wiki we do have an assignment for this coming week, look at and respond to 4 other blogs we have some listed on the participants page as well. Also to set up a blog at Edublogs so you are ready to start. Hope to see you all again next week.

Tomorrow, Wednesday February 27, I will be presenting the Bucks County School Administrators Association meeting. This is the first time I will be presenting to a group of administrators outside of my own district so there is a level of anxiety on my part. The topic I am speaking on is Participating and Learning in Global Communities. I have spoken to several people about presentations to a group like this, and what everyone has said is, talk about your own connections, Open PD, the fact that you can tap into the experiences and expertise of a global, passion based classroom online. So I hope to be able to convey my thoughts and feelings of participating in this networked world wide learning community. The impact on my personal and professional learning has been exponential, I never imaged I would have other educators so willing to help and collaborate with. I have created and published a VoiceThread asking anyone interested to follow the link and leave their own thoughts on how participating in global communities has made an impact on their learning and also talk about how these connections may have influenced their classroom practices. There have been 10 people who have recorded their thoughts, please feel free to add your thoughts as well. I think I am ready and I also believe it won’t be so bad; I believe I have a better understanding of the topic than most of those who will be in attendance.

My head is still spinning from the weekend spent in Philadelphia at EduCon held in the Science Leadership Academy. So many have written such memorable accounts of the weekend I am not sure I can say anything that has not been said already many times over. For the entire three days I felt as though I was totally immersed in an educational community of caring. Caring for students, for each other, for our practices, for the future of education – both students and our own. The common thread, which brought us all there in my opinion, whether in person or virtually, was our commitment to expanding conversations centered on how to improve our classroom practices, our thoughts on professional development, building community with our colleagues, in our own district or around the world, as well as with our students. Throughout the weekend I kept thinking how wonderful it is to be part of such a supportive, passionate community of educators and students. I thank you all for stretching my thinking, for renewing my spirit to continue being an advocate for change, for pushing the envelope day in and day out because it is the right thing to do for students, and because I know I am one node in a network of dedicated learners and in our own ways we are all agents of change. I truly believe we can make a difference.

Darren Draper and I lead a session in the morning called OpenPD based on the online class we teach. The class is an introduction to using social software in the classroom and we use social software to teach it. We had a room full of people interested in professional development, interested in best practices involved in providing it, wonderful conversation flowed regarding successes and challenges we all face. If you are interested here is a link to the archived Ustream broadcast of our session. Be patient, it takes a bit to download and the audio doesn’t begin for the first 15 minutes. In talking about new tools for teachers and students, new levels of comfort, shifts in thinking, we model the use of the tools we talk about with those who attend. We believe we’re on to something here, and invite all of you to come and participate with us as we learn best practices in teaching how to use social software in the classroom.

Like many others I have spent the past few weeks thinking about all of the events of 2007. It has been an amazing year for me in the way I learn, those who now make up my professional learning network and my understanding of the ease of connecting with others through the use of web 2.0 tools and the sense of community which exists with so many who I have met through Twitter and my reader. I thank everyone for stretching my thinking and helping me in my goal of being a life long learner.

I read many great blogs written by educational leaders passionate about the education of the world’s youth. I continue to struggle with my own blog in light of those I read, wondering at times what I have to offer, and if this is really something I am cut out to do. I am going to persevere in 2008 to help clarify my thoughts as I begin a new year with an entirely new administration (5 top positions) in my district. I have felt stagnant since summer, but now the people are in place and my hopes are I will have the opportunity to share what I have learned in the past year from my network and we will truly begin to embed collaborative tools into classroom practices. This will be a challenge for me, the new administration believes in the use of technology for data collection, using the data to drive instruction, not necessarily using technology to make global connections or work in collaboration classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher.
I am looking at it as a new day, a new opportunity and hopefully along the way some of my reflections of what are taking place in my position will be helpful to someone else. I wish you all a healthy peaceful 2008!

Darren Draper’s blog post yesterday entitled Who’s Afraid of Digital Natives echoed some thoughts I have had myself about teaching, learning, education in general. I left a response over there, please go and take a look, here I have cross posted what I said there.
Darren, as we all know the future is now, the world has changed and it is not going back. We in education have to face the fact that it is not acceptable to teach the way we were taught. We are doing students a disservice in not using the tools they use in their daily lives, whether it is cell phone, iPod, MP3 player, digital camera, or online tools. We talk of modeling learning for students, the educational community needs to update their skills with the use of tools to engage students in their learning. I agree with you we do need to start thinking about what we do, and how we do it, and it will require time on everyone’s part. Yesterday Carolyn Foote was conducting a workshop and I had the pleasure of participating in a Skype call along with David Jakes, Patrick Higgins, and John Maklary. The conversation centered on connections, how we connect, the benefits of connecting with others outside of our own workplaces, and how the connections help us learn. The primary concern I hear most often from teachers, when introducing something new to use in instruction, is they have no time to learn about technology, it is still considered an add on by many, something else to teach.

David made a great point yesterday, he said we all have to make time to learn these new tools, take 15 minutes a day to focus on our own learning, over time it adds up. Those of us that understand the positive benefits of these educational technologies have taken the time to learn how to use them, taken time to understand their implication for use in teaching and learning. Yes, we are the ones who like technology, over the top to some, but we try, we make the effort, because we see the future, we know we have to do more to engage students. We are trying to make their learning relevant to their everyday lives, because the world has changed, and schools have to change as well.

Our students are connected all the time, I am sure they could explain the contributions they feel their connections bring to their lives and learning. So why not encourage their development, as you said, teach them responsible use, not ignore reality, its too easy to say no iPods or cell phones in school, students will use them to cheat. Instead when do we start to teach them to be good digital citizens, teach them ethical use of the tools? If we would only begin to imagine the possibilities.