ConnectedTalk

The presentation to public and non public administrators yesterday went very well. Thank you to all who participated in the VoiceThread, it was one of the tools that provoked the most attention, especially after hearing what many of you had contributed to the conversation. The majority of people in both sessions were not aware of the ability for anyone to join online networks, (other than students) but then again many had not heard the term Web 2.0 or Read/Write web either, so we spent time talking about the evolution of the Internet over the past several years as well. From my experience I have found administrators are more comfortable talking about what they don’t know when in the company of their peers, more so than when in the company of their building faculty. Yesterday, there were many questions which were great.

I asked all who attended to be advocates for teachers in their buildings or districts, teachers who may come to them asking to use a tool an IT department may have blocked. I asked them all to believe in their staff, really to go to bat for them, because I know many classroom teachers do not feel as though they could ever “win” against IT. And rather than make the argument themselves, they give up at the first “access denied”. We need to have technology literate administrators, just as Karl Fisch and Terry Freedman blogged sometime last year about it is no longer ok to be a technologically illiterate teacher; I feel the same way about administrative staff as well. How are classroom teachers to move forward without support and understanding of what they are trying to accomplish from their building leaders? If the people in decision making positions are unaware of the tools and the possibilities those tools provide for students and learning then I’m afraid any significant change is light years away.

I hope to be able to have administrative staff development in my district this summer, and I hope as a result of yesterday’s sessions there may also be the possibility of offering something similar for all districts through the Intermediate Unit, as was done yesterday. I get impatient I know, thinking so many in people in leadership roles have no idea of the types of networks and collaborations we have at our fingertips. The resources we have available to one another and the sharing that takes place 24/6/365. I have to find a way to bring that awareness to my district.
Here is a link to a wiki I would like to use in the summer for any staff development I do on social networking, networked learning. Thanks to anyone who contributes.

Recently there has been a series of rapid fire introductions to new tools ustream.tv,
operator 11, google presentations all propelled to the forefront through the invisible connections of twitter and other social networking sites many are connected to as part of their learning communities. I have to say at times I feel overwhelmed with all of the discoveries passed on, trying to find the time to look, explore, evaluate, and understand the potential either for classroom use or as a suggestion for use in someone’s own professional development. I have to be cautious of what I pass along, classroom teachers may be likely to try one new thing in a year’s time so I can’t throw too many things at them and hope something sticks. I have to have a clear understanding of how the tools are being used by others in education, have examples to share and talk about. In all of the commotion of new tools I also have to deal with whether these new tools are accessible in my district. Not all are, filtering seems to work differently everywhere. I have to be mindful in this area as well, when something is blocked I have to try to figure out why, and before I ask to have anything unblocked I must try think through my reasons to ask for the filter to be lifted and the ramifications of having the status changed. At times I feel as though I am on a never ending road that twists and turns and sometimes I just wish for a flat stretch to get my own bearings before thinking about sharing one more new tool that has appeared and captured someone’s eye.

Update: How does anyone else do this, how do you decide what has merit to introduce as tools you feel has value, what process do you go through? I am looking for help, suggestions, models to follow, you see in my district I do not have anyone else to bounce these ideas off of and feel at times at a loss for what direction to take. Thanks for your help!

I have been looking  for Web 2.0 tools that may be useful for teachers when they return in August and I have found a couple I think may be helpful.
Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Here is an example, I think this will be beneficial for our high school for students to visualize issues in the world.

Another I have found is Gimp, it is a freely distributed program for photo retouching, and image authoring. It is available for Linuz, Windows and MacOSX. The site offers tutorials by level beginner, intermediate and expert which is nice, and they also have a wiki.
Also check out Gliffy a free concept mapping tool where you work offline and save your concept map as a JPG. You can also share you concept map online with others.
Cute PDF this download allows you to create .pdf files anyone can read with Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is great if your students/parents do not have the software you have at school installed on their home computer such as MS Word.
Visuwords is an online visual dictionary which is very cool.
Kartoo a metasearch engine with a visual display which has been around for a couple of years that I know of. I will be adding more interesting sites and tools as I find them.
Touchgraph, a tool to visualize and interact with information. Enables you to look at data see the big picture and how things are connected. Here is an example of web 2.0

Take a few minutes to look at these links, I think you will enjoy them

For the past several months I have spent time talking and introducing Web 2.0 applications to teachers and administrators in my district. I began with only a few Google docs, Pageflakes, Boxnet as a starting point and had the opportunity to find teachers willing to try using them in their classrooms. Students must have the opportunity to access the internet find, edit, and manage digital information. They must be given the tools they need to construct new knowledge from digital resources; still images, video, audio, text, learn to access and evaluate information, join online communities and engage in collaborative networks as part of their education. We all know this is how they interact outside of the school day. It is time to bring these valuable collaborative spaces into the classroom. This summer I will be working with teachers to expose them to the possibilities of collaborative classroom projects using wikis, blogs, podcasting.
Has anyone or is anyone using wikis and blogs in their classrooms? If so would you mind sharing the grade and send a link to your classroom site? I would love to have examples to show this summer during the staff development sessions.