Copyrights and Wrongs

I never realized that copyright is part of the constitution (Fair Use) and actually agree that it now should be assumed. It is a lot to remember for an educator. Ideally our districts would provide necessary materials, have functioning copy centers that would obtain permission as needed, and tech people to maintain equipment and materials, and advise on use. But yes, teachers do have the "moral obligation to practice integrity and trustworthiness. My favorite site on this topic was Copyright Bay. As a pirate/Peter Pan fan I was motivated to sail through the site and enjoyed the clams reactions to my quiz responses. I still find myself thinking about the idea of "spur of the moment", "moment of inspiration", and "whim" instances that allow use once that doesn't follow the law. Keeping it legal was a duller way to read through much of the same, the big idea reinforced for me was, "ignorance of the law is no defense. I thought the Stanford Library "determinator" was cool. I can't imagine the copyright nightmare colleges and universities face and found their work on the subject interesting. The copyright FAQs is a very helpful and easy to deal with resource.

Podcasts I can count on one hand

Well that was fun! I started iprocrastinate because that's what I felt like doing. It had a mod, minimalist "plunking" intro that led into what sounded like an average Joe trying to wax philosphical about procrastination. Podcasting might be his way he procrastinates!?! I gave up on it when his theories got convoluted and he asked me to recall my college psych class and started trying to connect psych theory to his procrastication theory. A big thumbs down.

Discovery Channel stuff never disappoints and a podcast of the Cash Cab show was an entertaining way to try to continue procrastinating. If you haven't watched Cash Cab, it is a must! It is a trivia show in a NY cab. You earn prize money and a free ride to your destication if answer a series of questions correctly. The worst that happens is that you have to pay for your cab ride if you lose.

I checked out musician Jamiroquai's Greatest Hits body of work podcast. Cool if you are a fan of his music and video. He explains his choices, ideas, and the process. I also watched Kira Plastinina's Fashion Life: Fall Fashion Tips. It was a hoot...techno music beat the background and a 16 year old fashion designer's picks for what to wear this Fall: the "vampira" look is in, lots of black and pink. Highlights of her collection include oversized bags and converse with 2 color laces. I highly recommend these if you are my middle school students.

The one I like the best, and the one I got serious for was KQED's Quest: Chart the Ocean Floor. This is about a 6 minute video with great graphics and an interesting and understandable description and history of mapping land we don't see. Old school weighted line measurements have been replaced by multibeam sonar for detailed high resolution geographic maps of underwater areas. This type of podcast would be perfect for classroom use.

Podcasting in Education

Podcasting is a great educational tool. Any different way that information and education can be delivered to maximize the audience and its ability to access and comprehend new learning has to be a positive thing. If we are trying to educate more people and a more diverse set of learners, we must look for a variety of methods for teaching. We still seem to be stuck in the archaic teaching method of lecture to static sets of chairs in rows. I think our data on underperforming students speaks, in part, to the need for alternate ways to teach.

The FAQ lists cost, ease of creation, and RSS protocols as reasons that motivate podcast makers. Cost (free), number, and access are motivaters for users. I actually could follow Danny Sullivan's instructions on how to create an RSS item. If I can, everyone else can participate and facilitate the distribution, sharing, and integration of ideas and information. Integrating podcasting in educational settings would help the classroom look and feel more like the way students are communicating and connecting outside the classroom. Development and extension of ideas and learning could be expedited in a more flexible and interesting way for many students. For teachers, scaffolding, pacing, and differentiation is inherent in the format whether watching or creating.

My Essential Question

Which type of energy should we be using to support our lifestyle? Describe the different sources of energy and explain your choices.

Hotlist:

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listenergyli.html

E-learning

I have experienced a number of the student learning sites. I use them sparingly in my instruction. They usually end up as extension, intervention, and remediation resources. I like to have students have a specific purpose for computer use; we can set that purpose together at fist with them gradually taking on the responsibility. I want them to experience internet use as purposeful with a end point when objectives are met. Not undirected and unending. I liked the following game in gamequarium and gamequarium in general because of it's centered, clear list of suject and concept based activities: http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/fractionflags/ffthirds.html. Students can make specific choices easily without a lot of distracting text features. I also liked the Syllable Factory in BBC Skillwise. Simple, easy to use, and a great decoding and spelling tool for stuggling older readers. I hate Funbrain for the embedded site comics popup. Students are quickly encouraged to move out, get distracted from a useful game into a comic. Then at some point the product ads will pop in and be prominently and distractingly featured on the screen.

I think e-learning is a good accessory type of learning but should not replace classroom type instruction with human interaction...mostly for some of the same issues that come up with internet literacy:accountaility of authorship, understanding of context and tone, and a truer community connection. E-learning for adults is really the same in all respects as it is for children. It is great for choice, accessability, reaching a broad audience demographically and geographically, engagement, differentiation, equity, uniformity of delivery, and cost saving.

Web Safety

It is imperative that adults set limits, supervise, and instruct children in the safe use of the internet. Starting last year for my students and about four years ago for my own children, the web is used as much, if not more than the TV. When added to TV time, my students said they were at a screen (monitor of some sort, TV, computer, ipod, phone) for up to 6 hours a day and many times had 2 screens going at once. The 1996 National Center for exploited children article provides a great overview of basic guidelines. It continues to amaze me that so many of all types of parents allow internet access in kids bedrooms and have no idea what they are doing. I am constantly recommending that any type of screen come out of the child's bedroom even if is to simply discourage inappropriate use by being in a more "public" area of the house if the parent has difficulty being direct with their child about guidlines and rules. Unfortunately, many parents seem unable or unwilling to parent their children. They are worn down easily by the barrage of media fueled kid demands.

When I am working with students and the internet, they do not have access until they sign an agreement; I love the student written surftificates. Our district has blocks which I appreciate, the computer monitors face in a direction that I can see from most places in the room and I cruise in regularly when kids are working. I also tell them they ways I can see where they've been and most times limit them to bookmarked sites and subject area hotlists. Computers are for planned instruction or creating documents in a word program. My grade level standards are perfect for teaching web literacy and vice versa. At sixth grade they are learning to be critical readers and must know how to validate and evaluate what they read. It is easier to teach on the web because that is where they want to be. I really appreciate learning about how to teach finding link patterns. I wasn't doing this well; now I have tool ideas and a lesson plan. I think students will find this very engaging and empowering. It will also help me reiforce the crucial knowledge about the internet, that everything you see is not true. It is very hard for kids to understand that everything in print is not fact. With published hard copy text you need to be a critical reader, but you have to be even more so on the net. There are no censors, the context can be changed, text altered by others, and the authors masked. Butz's Holocaust revisionism is scary in it's apparent sense making of a horrific truth by a "professional".

NETS for Students

These standards are so important to teach because students are already out on the web (myspace, etc.) with little or no direction or real understanding of what they are doing. Standards 4 and 5, critical thinking and citizenship, are crucial and need explicit teaching and many opportunities to experience and practice. The experiences for grades 6-8 would be so engaging (again, If I had the resources). I recognize a few of our assignments in there. I was pleased to see that I actually provide my students with numbers 5 and 10. 5 aligns with a grade level ELA standard and is much more interesting on the web, and 10 is a necessity for all who work in a non title 1 school. I can spend an entire session in the computer lab with students just troubleshooting instead of core subject teaching. It is good to know that they needed to be taught those skills anyway.

NETS for Teachers

I would love to do all this. I am always appreciative, impressed, more engaged, and feel like a professional when colleagues and superiors "model and apply" tech standards when working with me.

Here it comes...I rarely have the equipment and resources to do any of this for myself or the students. When I have made an effort to get or maintain equipment it saps time and energy from other responsibilities (including self study to learn how to do most of what I'm doing) so that I randomly have these stand alone 21st century teaching and learning experiences for myself and/or the class.

This is another work area where I repeat my mantra, "I'm doing the best I can."

Thoughts on the McKinsey Report

Wow, I certainly don't have a solution to the problem in education. I became a teacher, 6 years ago at the age of 44, to figure that out. It seems obvious to everyone, except the economically, racially, and academically privileged, that there is a problem. If you are one of the folks that the system works for you and your child, you're happy getting yours and getting out.

So far it seems that our federal and state governments feel like the solution is to legislate education. I began teaching at the beginning of the mandates and knew what I was getting into. I also knew that legislators making educational decisions was wrong and that the only way to really understand the problem was to work in the system. It is complex, multi-layered, historically exclusive, outdated, and out of touch with today's student and family needs.

I agree that the quality of teaching is the single most effective way improve education. We do need to attract the best candidates, support them with resources, training, and mentoring, and place them with the neediest students. But with the current financial constraints, this isn't going to happen and if it were to happen, it would require up front funding to organize and support. There is currently so much distrust in the system, most people (tax payers and legislators) are unwilling to take what they see as a big risk.

I think we have to work with what we've got. There is some quality teaching going on in most schools. All schools need quality instructional leaders. Principals are every school's first instructional leader; they need to identify, motivate, and support the skilled teachers in their schools to not only be great in the classroom but become additional instructional leaders in the school through shared leadership, professional development provided to colleagues by these teachers, and shared school goals and collaboration. When we utilize and share the best in the building, the best candidates, and resources will come. We can talk all day about what is not working; we need to identify what is and systematically help that grow. We need bright and creative principals to make this happen.

The professional development that works best for me is when I can learn from colleagues in teacher learning communities. If the community identifies something we can't provide each other, we seek an outside source, attend together, and share experiences during implementation. I learn the most from other teachers through, discussion, shared planning, and classroom and other school observation of instruction.

If there were one resource I need to improve my teaching, it is TIME. I like that we have standards. It assures high expectations for all students. I don't think they are perfect and definitely feel there are too many, especially in math. But standards give teachers curriculum structure and students access to the same education. I think NCLB is self defeating but don't waste my time complaining about it. I have a feeling it is going to defeat itself. I think class size effects student success more than the success of the teacher...although I'm actually thinking now that they are intertwined. If a student isn't successful than neither is the teacher. I think the complexity of our society and modern lives necessitates smaller classes for success even it is just to find or have some place for a child to experience a more human scale with more direct human interaction.

I enjoyed the podcast learning experience, my first. Control of time and pace in my wacky life was nice. I guess I had a little too much human interaction today.

Primary Post

Teacher practices can be effective or destructive. Many teachers cannot recognize the effect of their practices and how they need to be adjusted to the students individually.