Returning from Break

Did you have a good summer?
Did you get away?
What did you do?

I had so many good intentions to accomplish so much.

Where did the summer go??

Posting to my blog was certainly near the top of the list.

But, that didn't exactly happen.

In fact, it has been quite some time since I last posted...May to be exact. Back in May, the demands of work, professional life, and family life exploded. Summer arrived with responsibilities for making presentations including my first stint at making a full-day presentation. More about that later. By the time life seemed to calm down, my head was so full new ideas and my RSS feeds were bursting at the seams. I made a commitment to myself to catch up on my feeds (over 1000) before I moved forward. Well, that commitment simply exacerbated my brain overload. I would read new feeds, discover new insights, draft new blog entries, and then move forward to the next feed. The cycle continued. At the same time I additionally discovered Twitter. The questions, postings, connections and network that make Twitter so powerful in the edublogger world had me hooked.
So, here I am on the first day of the new school year, just posting my first blog entry since May. While I have no blog posts to document my summer experiences, I did gain some interesting insights which should provide good fodder for additional posts.

More Virtual Me's

The continuing blossoming of virtual worlds and self created avatars begs my attention and exploration for educational experiences. It was just last Friday, when made my first foray into Second Life. I created my first avatar, Lucinda Nishi. I was easily drawn into the creative nuances of playing with the amazing range of possibilities from facial expressions to hair color to dress and to the new possibilities of new people and new worlds. Thanks to Seve Dembo's post on the DEN Digital Passports blog, I have also now discovered Voki. You create your own avatar and then record your message using a microphone, cell phone, using text to speech, or by uploading an audio file. Certainly, not comparable to the world of Second Life, but it looks like great fun! It also looks like a wonderfully fun way to had some variety and interest to a blog post and other web sites. The text to speech format allowed only a short post, but is worth a try. Wouldn't students find this a novel mehod for sharing what they learned in class? What about having students use i to post questions and respond to others for literature discussions? I think I'll have to have my students brainstorm a list of possible uses next week.


Get a Voki now!

Ripples and Hatching Salmon

In a recent post, Jen Wagner, wondered whether she was swimming in the right direction. She most definitely IS. There will always be days when we think our efforts are but a drop in the sea. But Jen's drop and the drops of others like her are inspiration for all of the other salmon (me included) who are trying to swim up stream and make a difference for our students. That's why we are a part of this incredibly supportive edublogger network. Forgive the analogy, but we are cheerleaders for each other. Progress can be hard to see and seem incredibly slow to blossom, but it does. Just this week a first grade teacher asked me how she might connect with her first grade penpal class in Texas. A great question, an opportune (and teachable) moment to get her class connected through videoconferencing. A small drop made a ripple that will continue to ripple beyond our wildest imaginations. Sometimes WE just aren't aware of all of the undulating ripples and hatching baby salmon.

Reforming Mathematics Instruction

Each night that I connect with the edublogger world, I am overwhelmed at the amazing things that are happening in classrooms around the world. Thanks to Steve Dembo at teach42, I read about Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher in Santa Cruz, who shared his unbelievable media rich introductory lesson on graphing for his high school students in a recent post. He says of the lesson, "The total effect only intensified and grew more exciting with each new event. With scaffolding that precise and a visual connection that strong, even my weakest students were drawing eerily accurate graphs."
Throughout this year and continuing into next year, my district is striving to reform our mathematics curriculum and instruction to help students build deeper conceptual understandings. It was just this morning at our faculty meeting, where we were working in small grops discussing critical ways in which our thinking and methods of mathematics instruction would change to better develop students' mathematical understandings. Dan's lesson is definitely an outstanding example to show how it can be done. You can be sure that I will be passing it onto our math teachers.

My Learning Community

I am currently listening to Women of Web 2.0 who are hosting Steve Dembo tonight. In a recent post on Digital Passports, Steve was asking for responses why teachers commit to an education community such as the Discovery Educator Network and what they gain from it? It is certainly NOT for the 'coupons and clothing'. There is amazing power in a community of passionate and dedicated educators collaborating and sharing their ideas as they strive to be the best educators they can be. I have made connections through the Keystones Integrator Program and the DEN that have opened new worlds and new possibilities for both myself and for my students. The connections I have made are invaluable. Belonging to these virtual and quite real communities means I have my own personal research team, my own learning team, my own class, my own mentors with whom I can learn asyncronously. I can turn to them any day, anytime to receive the latest recommendations and ideas for solving a problem or answers to my questions. They are my inspiration and my support. Together, they show the power of a networks of educators to not only touch the future, but to create the future today.

Thanks to Chris for this tip for another cartoon-creation site

MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! Online Educational Comic Generator for Kids of All Ages
I like this better than ToonDoo, no potentially offensive Google Ads as well as no cartoons my students should not see.

A Good Friday for Cyber-Compliments and Cartoons

My Cyber-Compliment for Cyber-Compliment Day goes to CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis, for the tip about toondoo.com. While I always read Vicki's blog and truly value her part in my edublogger community, this tip came at especialy the right time for my fourth graders. They have been using a great variety of technology tools to create their own synthesizing, curriculum-connected cartoons which they plan to post on their own "Kids Cartoons Wiki", Ning Network, and web site. They are going to love creating new cartoons using this new site. It truly is a Good Friday! Now, I can hardly wait for Tuesday!

Losing Connectivity

The immaginable happened. Driving home from visiting law schools with my daughter in Washington D.C. I pulled out my laptop to get a little work done. Clicking it on, I was faced with the unexpected - the hard drive breathing a message equivalent to the black screen of death. No config systems program working. I responded with a determined, yet calm sense of determination. Turn it off. Turn it on again. No luck. Calm determination prevailed. Perhaps it was a glitch in the daylight savings patch. Arriving at home, with electrical connectivity, brought no further light on my predicament. Help would have to wait until Monday when I could connect with the technology team and resolve the proble. The evening was earrily quiet, calm, yet lacking in a certain energy. Monday arrived. Logged into the network at school, which I had somehow inflated as a possible solution to the problem. No luck. The black screen of death lived on. The technology support request followed, by the email detailing my concens, by the phone call reaffirming my concerns, resulting in the relinquishing of th my laptop to the technology team for hopeful repair. Over thirty hours have passed. Loss of connection, withdraw, isolation. I am lost without acess to the resources I have gathered, tagged, and saved. I yearn for the connection I have with the community of educators who inspire and encourage me to look to each tomorrow with renewed vigor and hope. Their voices echo in my head. Determination, inspiration, insight, collaboration, shared vision...the power of a network of passionate educators...connected to one another, pushing each other's ideas to new heights and depths. The power of connection is a vital reality. How do we make the connection vital for our students?

Reaching Non-Tech Using Educators

As I was casually flipping through my recent copy of NEA Today, I happend upon a reference to a link about podcasting. I've really been thinking that in order to expand the use of technology in schools, we need to continually search for ways to connect with educators who have not fallen under the technology spell. We need to reach them through the venues they use most often. And here was a great example.Then, moments later, I turned to find an article titled Podcasting in the 1600's" There before my eyes was Camilla talking tabout her work with fourth graders and the "Jamestown 400th Anniversary Celebration" podcasts they have created. The kids podcasts are getting up to 400 hits a day! What an awesome project! Way to go Camilla!

Click here for the direct link to the article where you will find PODCASTING 101 – A Nuts & Bolts Guide to Podcasting

Enjoy and pass it on!

Use Blogs in School?

Do you think that blogs should be used as part of a classroom online learning environment? Some say that the use of blogs should not be used because the possible dangers of student misuse. Others say that blogs offer a natural way to engage technology-connected students with content and with other learners. What benefits or drawbacks do you see in using blogs? Would you consider using a blog as part of your classroom learning environment? How would you use it?