This week

Technology is not liking me this week. I upgraded my OS to the latest on my eMac and it is not allowing me to add to my blog or edit the wiki. So I have behind in getting to this blog. I did it already, but never checked to make sure it was in and it was not!

Last week's class was interesting. I have never heard of the Loti scale and I have been in technology for 10 years. I am happy to say that I have been striving and at time succeeding at hitting a 4 with a good portion of my lessons. I have aggressively trying to integrate the regular classroom curriculum into our tech program. I try to involve my students in the decision making process when it comes to our projects. Due to time constraints it is not always easy. I just did a budget project with the 8th graders where they had to research a career. They needed to know the amount of schooling required, the cost of that school, the average income for that career and the terms of the student loan. After all the calculations were completed in a spreadsheet they had to set up a household budget. Purchasing a home, car (if they could afford one), and all the expenses that the average American faces were put into the spreadsheet. Their eyes were opened to what good old mom and dad are experiencing.

I would like to introduce the Loti scale to my faculty and find out where they feel they are. Possibly that would put the spark into them to move themselves up to the next level. Think it will work?

Lots of Stuff!

There is so much on the web for teachers and education, it is amazing we still need to purchase books! If schools were truly one to one with computers and students our curriculum's could be packed full of interactive teaching sites. The resources on the eduwiki was quite interesting, I could spend a lot of time on that site. Wimbia, the virtual classroom tool looks interesting. I can see using the virtual book clubs, teacher blogs (good subjects, very relevant material) and teacher tips often. I will have to bookmark that one.


I could see using quizlab with my students, though I don't give that many quizzes. I will have to try it out next year when I give my key command quiz. I will be using the engrade site with my UWM students.

Seeing the way the other students did their website evaluations did give me alarm. Every one's looks so much better than mine, but I did put a lot of work into it. I did it brief as I had the evaluation forms filled out and thought we would somehow be using those. I did it like the wiki paragraph said . I guess we are relying more on what we posted on our wiki pages.

Google docs is not always working for me. Sometimes I am able to copy the published link and sometimes I am not, so I have to copy and paste the whole document. I don't understand why this keeps happening, but I am getting away from creating links. I am going to get good at this and make it work. I hope to be better organized next class as I felt very hodge podge this class. As though I was moving 100 miles an hour and unable to catch my breath. I don't think the pressures of the holidays helped. It was stressful. If the schedule could be redone and the class end before Christmas, that would be most helpful. Having homework over that break was painful. Until we meet again.........

My Rant-January 9

Tonight I felt stupid in class. I do not enjoy feeling stupid so it was not a pleasant evening for me. I have never "imed" before so it was a totally new experience. I did not understand what we were doing with Pam. Since I was unable to access any of the websites being discussed I did not feel I had anything to contribute. I think perhaps going over or demonstrating how to use the im would have been very beneficial to those of us who have never used it before. I think there were enough of us to warrant that.

Having more demonstration or examples on how an assignment is to be done would be extremely beneficial to this class. I am lost, and my frustration level is over the top at times. The website evaluations took many hours. I truly believe 10 websites was too many. To do a quality job the quantity should have been less. The first 2 websites I looked at took me about 2 hours each. I really wanted to find useful tools for my classroom. But at that rate, I just knew I could not complete the assignment and take care of all my other responsibilities. I must say, my family does suffer due to this masters program. I followed the guidelines in the individual assignment section of the wiki:

"Create an annotated list of the sites. Review the sites using the evaluation tool your study team decides on to guide you in describing the site. Include a brief description, including the kind of pre-prep that is needed to use the site, standards that are supported by the site and evaluation consistency and workings of the site. Is it complete? Working well? Etc."

It would be most beneficial if all rubrics were posted and gone over at the time of the assignment posting. This is at least the second time a rubric has been posted only days or hours before the class met.

It looks like each student did his/her own interpretation of how the assignment was to be done. I put a lot of time into this and now I have to fix it. I never understood that annotated meant the APA format. I even looked it up online to see what it meant. Like Louis said, it is all about learning, and that I am doing. But I really hate feeling stupid in the process. Sometimes I wonder if I can go on blindly like this for much longer. I like to know what exactly it is I am suppose to do and I too often feel as though I am in the dark.

I was looking forward to learning about the best sites in class tonight, but we never discussed them. All that work and now I guess I will have to go to each persons wiki to see what websites work best.

Because of the time crunch in this class I often feel I should keep my trap shut or else I will take up too much time. There are many times I feel the discussion should continue but we must move on so I let it die. And if have found that for me transitioning can be a difficult thing. I guess I am a slow learner and like to linger on things a bit longer until I feel I have grasped the concept. I realize there is not time for that, but it does cause me a lot of frustration.

The subject matter in tonight's class did scare me. I am going to be sharing this with my Jr. high students very soon. Lori and I were already planning on doing a unit in computers on bullying so this will work very nicely into that theme. I went over many of the sites listed on the meit wiki and some I found on my own and there is a ton of information on this subject. I will have a lot of share with my students and can't wait to start this lesson. WE have a serious issue with cyberbullying at our school and I hope this lesson will end it. Some of the videos are really eye openers and it is shocking to know that only 15% of parents realize this is happening. I will work on educating the parents. Getting a speaker in maybe at the next home and school meeting would get the word out.

December 20th

Sharing the scavenger hunts with the class was interesting. It is always fun to see how the students interpret the assignment or use the wiki page to post their work. I learned a few things tonight regarding the wiki page. I think from now I I will try to use the links and attachments more so the wiki page is not so long. But I do like not having to click and open more software in order to view a lesson. But the links and attachments make the page look cleaner.

The google docs presentations on search engines was interesting as well. It is good to learn more about other search engines, the good, the bad and the why is it there in the first place? Some of the research done was enlightening, like when Trinie searched for her husband's book and it was not found on the book search engine. Interesting!


At&T's Knowledge Network is a vast website of teacher resources, with website links one is able to search using a variety of criteria. The wide variety of search option makes finding quality material almost easy. But one must still shuffle though the mound of options. This site offers enough for an entire school year worth of teaching opportunities. This site also offers staff development, free training and workshops, discounts and funding, information on e-rate, grant opportunities, and videoconferencing.

Out of the list of online quizzes I think funbrain was my favorite. That one keeps coming up in my lesson searches as well. I will have to do more exploring with that one for my classes. I got so much out of this classes that I was once again over-whelmed and was trying to sift through it all the next day at school. I think the Thursday teachers are getting bombarded with my excited demonstrations of these websites each time we meet. But I am always so pumped after our Wednesday night class that I have to share with someone. I just hope they are using these sites back in their class rooms.

think-think-thinkfinity.com

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=world This is an excellent map and I will print this world map for the bulletin board and for the third graders. I will have all my students keep as favorites.
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2316/ Great lessons
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/01/gk2/friends.html
http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=11 fractions show this to daughter Aleah and students/teachers for math activities
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/timeline/index.html Really has a nice time line maker. I can think of a lot of ways to apply this. I must to share with the kids 3rd & 5th grade teachers.
http://www.bham.wednet.edu/bio/biomak2.htm-Would be wonderful to use with the kids at the beginning of the school year when I have them write their biographies. It is a biography maker.
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/wordfamily/- Use with the little guys, k-2nd.
http://www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/student_material.asp?id=65-print cd and book covers
http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/lessons.cfm?BenchmarkID=5&DocID=78-wolves lesson
http://www.powayschools.com/projects/mt&r/ConflictYellowstoneWolf.htm-controversy on wolves in yellowstone
http://snl.aaas.org/sci_update.cfm?DocID=338 gum
http://snl.aaas.org/matrix.cfm-way it is set up
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/landincrisis/drought.html-afgahistan maps
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foundation/grants_teacher.html-gramt information

The above sites were among some of the best that I found from this Wednesday's class. But I could easily add more. I just started to get overwhelmed again at the amount of information. On Thursday I sent a webnote to all teachers introducing them to thinkfinity and all that it has to offer. Those that I saw on Thursday I showed thinkfinity and related websites and they were all very impressed. I asked them to take a look and share with me lessons or sites they feel would work in the curriciulum.

Chapter 16 and Beyond!

The one to one initiative has always intrigued me. I dream of the day every child has a computer to use at all times. When all textbooks and “worksheets” are stored on a harddrive, in cyberspace or beyond. All parents would have access to the Internet with the ability to communicate on a daily basis with their child’s teachers. A time when teachers can spend more time teaching and less time doing mundane tasks. The correcting of papers is done automatically on the class website, or wiki page or google assignment blog chat space. I will only write of the pros here because we are aware of the many cons at this point in time. But in the future all things are possible and that is what chapter 16 focused on.

How wonderful it would be if all teachers used the infiinitely vast information on the Internet. If the mundane tasks of teaching, those tasks that take us away from focusing on our students, could be done for us and we received the outcome of the work done by our students in a concise rubric, evaluation, graph , chart, database, or spreadsheet. I haven’t figured out how all the correcting could be done mechanically, but I am hopeful it will be some day. Then the machine offers a host of resources that will enable that student to move ahead. The machine will define the student’s weaknesses and plan a course of action, which will thrust that child into a wonderful world of learning!

Problems with Technology and Schools

Teacher Competency and Comfort Level
If the directives from the administration were concise and provided a follow through method of implementation all teachers would understand where they should be with technology. Teacher evaluations, job descriptions, and requirements should clearly state and enforce these expectations. There needs to be a plan of execution so that teachers are given ample time and opportunity to meet these challenges. If the teacher chooses not to follow through then disciplinary action must be taken. These methods prove successful in the licensing of teachers and need to be implemented so that all schools can offer their students the best advantage to learning with technology.

What Training and Resources are available?
Having a technology coordinator either on the district level or individual school level would give access to the teachers a host of valuable resources available. CESA #1, here in the Milwaukee area, provides ongoing training and guidance to schools in the area of technology. If teachers were aware and offered these courses either onsite or at convenient locations they would be more likely to attend them. There needs to be incentives offered that make the extra work worth their investment. Paid training, pay raises, in-service days, continuing education credit are some ways to entice teachers to comply.


Administrative support - who has the final answer? District admin/principal/curric direct/school board
This area of responsibility needs to be address. On a state level an outline needs to be written of where the responsibility lies. Who is to make these decisions? How will the level of competency be addressed and evaluated? When technology first entered the education scene there were many directives handed down. But the follow through has been lacking. Technology plans are approved but then there are no checks and balances to prove its implementation. Unless the expectations come from the top, nothing will be done to improve technology in schools.



What are the expectations of the teachers and the technology coordinator?
After our school merged with 5 other schools I wrote up a list of responsibilities for the teachers and technology coordinator. Each building had been doing technology in vastly different ways. To say the least I was not and still am not a favorite among this staff. I expect the teachers to be involved in technology. I expect them to know the software, how to use the lab, how to use the computers in their classrooms and how to integrate technology into the curriculum. They have other ideas. It has been a struggle getting them into the lab and collaborating with me on lessons. Some teachers are great and love to work with me on lessons and it makes for a wonderful experience for all involved. It definitely makes a positive impact on the students’ abilities. I am still climbing that mountain to reach the goal of being completely technology integrated. Each baby step, each time a teacher collaborates with me, every time they are able to use the software themselves, we get closer to that goal.

Do we have the funds? Is it budgeted?
The technology plans states that we are to allot X amount of dollars for technology each year. The money is to come from home and school fundraising. Since the merger, I have yet to see that happen. I am not sure where that money is going, but prior to the merger I was careful with using the technology money. I left $8,000.00 in the account so I would have something to work with after the merger. I should have spent the money. The first time I asked to buy something, I was told I had no budget and no money. It has been challenging. This is our 4th year and I am now demanding things we can no longer do without. I am open to ideas and suggestions on how to keep our technology program going!