iT Summit 2009

Man, did I have a hectic week last week. Two days of Summit, one day of teaching and madly trying to figure out where the students were at so I could prep for the next two days (plus throw interviews in that day as well) and then 3 days of drama festival. Coming back on Monday was another fun-filled day of playing catch up also.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I had posted. I knew it had been quite a while but wow. Summit was very enlightening. I think the most meaningful session was David Warlick's keynote session Tuesday morning. To have a speaker stand up at an iT conference and tell us to stop integrating technology was, to say the least, interesting. To look at technology as a way to continue to integrate literacy in our everyday teaching will, in the long run, be an easier way for me to "sell" the technology to some of my staff.

Another session that I enjoyed was Rob's Google Docs as I picked up a few tips which made me play with docs even more (I like that upload option - although it does lose some of the formatting). Even though I have been experiencing some frustration with Google Docs - trouble with kids not being able to log in and/or documents not being available, the research assignement I have been doing with a Google spreadsheet as the organizer for student info has been good. I just explained a little more about the rest of the docs to my 5/6 class today.

The Smartboard session had some technical difficulties but once all was working well, it was good. This was really my first chance to see a Smartboard in action as I am eagerly awaiting the installation of mine. I really liked the Senteo system - an interesting way to keep the kids more actively involved and a quick way to gauge understanding. I don't even want to know how much that would add to the bill. It was also nice to find out that I don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel and will be able to find lessons online.

I also checked out the ROVER session and it was great to see how in the next year or so we may have direct access to streaming video rather than having to order videos and hope they come in time and that they are actually what we need.

All in all a great first Summit.

Digital Citizenship

While I'm getting a clearer picture for myself what all is involved in being a digital (global) citizen and all the possibilities of tools available to use with my students to help them become digital citizens, I'm afraid most of my staff may be a different story. It's not that they aren't open to exploring new ideas and tools on the internet, in fact we just explored wordle and bubbl.us and played a little more with Discovery Streaming, but they are a little resistant. I think it comes from not seeing the relevance at the moment. Why would I spend all this time teaching my students how to blog when in the long run it will be less of a headache to have them write something on paper? (If truth be told, I wrestle with that idea at times, as well - my experience with blogs didn't go well.) Maybe if I can catch their attention with some of the more fun tools, I can haul them kicking and screaming down that road to digital citizenship, whether they like or not. Maybe if I can take them through some of the information out there about digital citizenship and what we're doing as a tech group, it will help to ease their fears and reluctance. I need to do some more searching, playing, trying things out and then see if I can convert the rest.

What's your personality?

So, I'm sitting having lunch at our Differentiation project meeting and we used the following link as a personality test: http://piratemonkeysinc.com/quiz.php. Its based on Harry Potter characters, so if you are doing anything with personality types, this is a fun way to introduce the Meyer's Briggs.

I'm

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

There's a light...

It's a faint light, but there's a light nonetheless. After a few of the short sessions this afternoon, I'm beginning to gain a clearer view of how to integrate more of these tools into my teaching. I know that its going to take time but I'm hopeful that by the end of this year I am using more web based tools to teach my students not only how to research but how to verify their research and maybe even have some fun doing it.

I'm a slow learner myself, so I know that when I go to my staff with some of these tools I'll need to be patient and stress that these are simply tools that will help their students to learn in a global setting and, in the process, make them global learners as well.

I'd like to try to resurrect the blogmeister that I set up last year with my 5/6 class and use it to explore more of the web-based tools. I'm hoping to not only show basics to my staff but introduce them to more tools that may be more useful to them on a regular basis, like using VoiceThread to change up how bookmaking or storytelling is accomplished. I'm hoping that in revamping our school website that my staff will try a little blogging of their own and brainstorm ways to use their pages differently. Stay tuned...

Finally...

I've been trying for a few days now to get Donna's CD cover challenge to work for me. I'm chalking it up to not knowing how to get a picture off Flickr with my Mac. As soon as I tried it with one of the computers at the school, it worked right away. It's a fun idea that I will try with my Grade 5/6 class, although I am somewhat concerned with what may show up for pictures on Flickr. Maybe I'll just use a school photo instead. Anyway, here's my attempt.

Overwhelming times

I have to admit that by the end of the day on Tuesday, I was more than just a little bit overwhelmed. For some reason I just couldn't seem to keep up with what was happening, being discussed and experimenting with RSS readers, del.icio.us, Twitter, etc.... Perhaps it had to do with the fact that my headspace was filled with report cards and there was no more room for anything else to fit in.

Now that I've had a day or so to sit back, ponder and do a little exploring, I'm finding things a little more interesting. I've started to set up a protopage and would like to do this with my Grade 5/6 class. I checked out my page at the school but something isn't quite right and I think it has to do with screen resolution. I'll have to ask Ryan or someone about it. I think this is something that would be very helpful when we start doing some more research, especially the bookmark widget. Plus, I think my students would find it fun as they could personalize it as their own "home" page. I also checked out Google Notebook with the hopes of using it in conjunction with their protopages when we start researching but had a lot of trouble with it. I couldn't add the little notebook tool to the links bar because a lack of admin privileges plus I couldn't figure out how to paste info I had copied from a website so that the citation showed as well which just frustrated me even more.

I started a del.icio.us list but did it later at night so Iwas getting a little confused as to what I was actually doing by the end of it. I need to go back again and try to figure it out a little bit more.

Tonight, after I finished putting my final marks in and had all the comments ready to go, I did a little work on a wiki page for my 5/6 Social class as we do some mini-research projects looking a little closer at some Canadian history. If you'd like to check it out, it's at http://canadianhistory5-6.wikispaces.com/.

My brain hurts. Its definitely time to log off.

Artists in the classroom

I know this doesn't really have a lot to do with our committee work but we have started our ArtsSmart project today. The Grade 5/6 students are once again working with Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot and Shane Bellegarde of Acimo Productions from Regina. Our goal is to produce 5 short films around the theme of acceptance by the end of the week. Shane and Gabriel are also working with a group of students at the high school who will also produce a number of films. On Friday we will have a mini film festival to showcase our students work. These films may also be posted to either teachertube or possibly youtube. One of my goals for this project is to become familiar with the editing process and the software that has been brought in.

Update: Well it took me a while to get back to this post but my students really had fun with the video project. It wasn't without its problems however. Software and hardware issues kept us from getting a completely finished set of films but those who came to our film festival were quite impressed with all the work both the elementary and high school students had accomplished. I can't say enough good things about Shane and Gabriel: how well they worked with my students, how enthusiastic they were about the project, and how dedicated they were to getting a finished product for our students. They literally spent hours trying to solve the problems, along with a few others - thanks Ryan, Ryan, Craig and Owen! Here are a few pictures of the week.