Obe Hostetter’s email to the VSTE ITRT Listserv got me to thinking (nice job Obe!). He shares some fantastic resources that all of us can use as we start this school year, that is for sure.

The question that I’ve been wondering about, after reading his email, is what do other ITRTs do in terms of getting ready for a new school year? Are you refreshed with some great ideas to try? Does your school division have a specific set of assignments for you to take on as the year starts?

In Floyd County we’re pretty busy making sure that all of the new teachers to our school division are set up and feel reasonably comfortable with the software and hardware that they’ll be using every day. Starting school, especially for a new teacher, is a huge undertaking. With this in mind, we try not to overwhelm them with too much to learn. In addition to this I sit down with our computer lab assistants and teachers and plan out the first few months of the year. This involves going over the SOLs that the teachers are covering and then brainstorming ideas that they’d like to try when their students come to the computer lab. Plus we consider any special technology projects that they are interested in working on, too.

This year we’re also really pushing the integrated Internet Safety that teachers must present to their classes on a daily basis. I imagine it will take some specific, concerted efforts on our part to help teachers provide those safety nuggets to their students. Does anyone else want to share what they do to help get their school year off to a good start?

Should teaching be any different? It takes a lot of work to live, care, and love; it is a lot of work to reflect, articulate, imagine, devise, activate; it is a lot of work to prepare, design, deliver, evaluate to what extent it worked or needs reworking; it is a lot of work to get to know each student, to be in their thoughts and emotions; and so, it is a lot of work to know of the currents students are swimming against in order to offer the support and encouragement for each of them to have a chance to make it.

Louis

I’ve always like Louis’s writing. I’ve always gotten something out of what he has to say about teaching. He’s a people guy and I like that. He reminds me on a regular basis, through stories and anecdotes, what teaching is all about at the center and core. Good stuff to ponder as we roll into a new school year.

This came via dana boyd’s blog and I’ve started reading the introduction. What I think about in terms of this book (which can be downloaded here as a pdf file) is that it is our students that will continue to have the chance to change the way our representative government works. Change is slow and churning at times I know, but it seems to me that the essays in this book address a wide range of issues that involve our connectedness in ways not too often expressed. It’s worth a look over, I think.

The image above is of a seismograph reading and today there was a magnitude 5.4 earthquake in the Southern California region. I was reading about it this evening online when I came across an article that talked about Twitter being a “news wire.” Hmmm . . .there are a couple of pretty interesting links that show how Twitter was used by people as the quake began, informing their followers about what was going on. Of course some of the language is NSFW, which is to be expected in an event like this, I would think. All in all though, it’s not a bad use of Twitter, in my opinion!

Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the larger community as we can corral all in one manageable place.

This article got me to thinking about my teaching experiences and where I’m at now. In particular it got me considering the small school at which I taught for eight years. The Little School is quite a different place and I think that this article speaks to many aspects that we were striving for and towards. Curriculum was “emergent,” based on student and teacher interests; classrooms were no more than sixteen students; desks were non-existent (we had tables and chairs); there was a lot of student choice throughout the day; academics were often taught through projects; assessments were narrative formats for each student; parents were invited to observe all morning before conferencing afterward; we took into account each individual student’s developmental timetable, aware that no two kids were developing at the same time, in the same rate in all areas. Assessments were also done based on work samples and observation. Kind of radical compared to standards, teachers being told what to teach, and helping students do well on standardized tests.

I’ve often believed that school is the one place in a childs life where they can come and be part of a community, learn to be part of a community that is not their family, with other humans that are in their same stage of life. My question after reading an article like the one linked above is how do we make our schools smaller learning communities, even within the confines of a large school? How do teachers create their community in their classroom while helping students to be part of their larger school community?

The above linked article is well worth the read. Will Richardson blogged about this article, which is how I found it. I found his blog post via Twitter, for those who are interested.

Some of my thoughts, briefly tonight, are that reading and literacy need to be taught to our students. By reading I mean all kinds of reading–both online and offline. There really needs to be an exposure to all kinds of text, including long novels, good non-fiction essays, and even short blog posts read through an rss feed aggregator. I agree with this quote on page four from the article:

Even those who are most concerned about the preservation of books acknowledge that children need a range of reading experiences. “Some of it is the informal reading they get in e-mails or on Web sites,” said Gay Ivey, a professor at James Madison University who focuses on adolescent literacy. “I think they need it all.”

This is a good article and a good topic to consider. As school begins in a little over two weeks for me, this article is one that I will ask teachers to read and discuss.

I would probably use these ahead of the Professional Development workshop to help see what it is that people want and need to learn. I really don’t like to waste people’s time or give them things that they’ve already had before. These tools can help to get around those two issues. Hopefully they’ll help you. As they say,

Share and Enjoy!

Share More! Wiki » Online Polling Tools?

How do collect data via a survey or poll?

Conducting surveys and polls is great. When I need to conduct a survey, I try to use tools that give me control of the survey data (e.g. UCCASS or Moodle’s built-in survey feature). However, sometimes that level of security just is not needed.

The hardest part about surveys is not collecting the data. Rather, it is designing the surveys and then analyzing the data. Although it would be too much to hope for to simplify both ends of the process—the design of the survey and data analysis—what if the latter could be made easier?

Here are 10 alternative online poll/survey sites you can take advantage of, all at no-cost:

* Poll Daddy - http://www.polldaddy.com/
* Cool Web Toys - http://www.coolwebtoys.com/
* Vizu.com - http://vizu.com/
* Blogflux - http://www.blogflux.com/
* Quimble - http://quimble.com/
* SurveyMonkey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/
* Zoomerang - http://info.zoomerang.com/
* Survey Gizmo - http://www.surveygizmo.com/
* Ballot-Box - http://www.ballot-box.net/
* Easy Poll - http://www.easy-poll.com/

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.

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~