Jul 21 2008
Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » Student and Teacher Blogging that Succeeds
Blogging is way more about reading than it is writing.
Dean hits the nail on the head with this one. Great post on what makes blogging succeed with students and teachers. Read it. 
Plus check out some excellent student blogs from Room Twelve, and Tina Coffey from Salem has some great 2nd grade blogs going on this summer.
Jul 18 2008
Man, my head is going to explode I think. This summer has been full of ___________ . I’ve had some fantastic discussion on my PBS Teacherline training discussion board and am enjoying some great emails with John Hendron about this whole thing called educational technology, standards, and professional development. Perhaps for the first time I am really beginning to organize my thoughts in a way in which I can articulate them clearly, with passion and openness. It’s a little hard to explain, to be honest.
In addition to this I’ve read some compelling posts by edu-bloggers as well. Specifically this post from Will Richardson titled, “What I Hate about Twitter.” The comments here are excellent in terms of what this whole thing means to others. At the same time I’ve been aware, more or less, of what I call the ‘house of mirrors’ or ‘the echo chamber,’ that we edu-blogger techie folks tend to live in. As I’ve become more aware of this, I now want to work this next year to expand these ideas and these practices throughout my ‘overly small’ school division in southwest virginia. i’m compiling some simple goals to work towards next year that i think will help.
The area that I’ve been chewing hard on is that area that has to do with the whole emphasis on standardized testing. It seems often that the focus of using educational techology is on how we improve test scores. Not that this is a horrible thing, but it seems to me that it is perhaps a little misguided. At the same time, the internal dialogue pushes back when I remind myself that the teachers with whom I work are judged based on how their particular group of students score on the test at the end of the year. Keep those test scores up and you’re good. If they’re low then things can get dicey.
My focus is less on the test score but more on the fact that we want teachers to use technology in appropriate ways in their classrooms because this is the world in which their students live. Or will live, if they don’t already. Even in my overly small school division.
Finally, my blogroll over to the right there has some good stuff to check out. Feel free and enjoy.
~ until next time~
Mar 07 2008
I’ve recently begun listening to some educational video posts on a site called, Ustream.tv
Today while working on a website for one of our art teachers, I listened to Will Richardson give a presentation on using Web 2.0 tools in education. He talked about what it means to teach our students for what lies ahead in their lives, rather than what is happening today. He also spoke about the realities of teaching now–assessments, time constraints, blocking sites, etc. etc. It was quite informative. You can check out this show and others that he has done at his Ustream website.
Mar 03 2008
Technology Times Blog – Voice Threads
This is a great podcast from John Hendron, over at Goochland County Public Schools. There’s a lot of potential in this tool and John does a great job of explaining it. I can’t wait to introduce this to a few teachers that I know will enjoy working with their students on this.
Dec 08 2007
Field Report #11: Voice Thread (with Meg Swecker)
This is a nice GenTech ‘field report’ done by Tina, interviewing Meg. The project is such a good description of getting students involved with something that allows Meg to share her passion for diving. Enjoy this one–’tis good!
Nov 02 2007
Do you twitter? I’ve been trying this out for a bit, feeling both excited about it and also a ‘what’s the point?’ type of thing. I think that as I follow more education folks though, it starts to make sense . . . .check it out if you haven’t!
Oct 30 2007
I found this site today. It’s run on the social networking aggregation of sites known as ‘ning.’ One of the issues that I find to be true is that there are simply so many blogs out there to read and choose from. Even using RSS, one only has so much time to read. So, it can be a trick to find the ones that are relevant to you and your needs. I find that over time my reading changes as well–blogs come and go–which is fine. I’ll be adding more to my blog roll on the sidebar in time, as I find blogs that are currently worthwhile.
More soon~
