Technology Reflections

Yesterday I was stuck at home thanks to Ernesto – the Hurricane that wasn’t. He was a Tropical Storm, but in reality we’ve had stronger regular old summer storms recently. I took advantage of the day off to get my school technology in order – as I wrote about in previous posts.

To follow up on those posts I decided to use PBwiki for the classwiki. I have decided that I will give the students the password and set up strict guidelines for what they can and cannot edit. I don’t want to pay the premium price for advanced tools until I see how well it works for me and my classes. As with anything new, actual use will let me know what adjustments I need to make.

I’ve been playing around with a wiki to use with my classes. I really like wikispaces but each of my students would have to register with a password that I would have no control over. I looked at pbwiwki too and while students can just use a password that I supply, one one person can be editing at a time. That may also be the case with wikispaces, but I haven’t gotten far enough with it to test that out.

Another option is to use Writely. I need to see what the registration process is like there.

The school year began two weeks ago on August 14, 2006, but I am just now finding time to update the blog. There is no school today due to the impending Tropical Storm, Ernesto. This is the calm before the storm now – I’m as prepared as I can be and all I can do is wait and see what happens. After losing my roof last year in Hurricane Wilma, I’m a bit apprehensive, but I have a new roof now and this storm is not as strong.

So on to school issues. I am teaching a full six classes this year – 3 computer and 3 reading. I’m very happy with the schedule. I switch subjects every period which is good for me – I can get bored teaching the same thing over and over. I of course use technology in all my classes – or as David Warlick advocates, I teach technology literacy. I agree with his use of that term and I will try to use it more often, even if I have to explain what I mean : )

I intend to use blogs and wikis in all my reading classes and in my year-long 8th grade computer class. The only reason I’m not using them in my 6th and 7th grade computer classes is that those are 9-week classes and I have so many other things to incorporate. I will, however, if there is time at the end of the quarter, do an abbreviated lesson for the 6th and 7th graders.

While I’m home today (announcement just made while I was typing that school is closed for tomorrow too – but I may not have power then) I think I’ll set up the blogs for my students. I use learnerblogs.org for my students. I find it gives me the control I need to keep the kids safe, but it has enough flexibility, too. I set up blogs for each of my students, but I use my email address for each and I do not let them change the password. That way I can get into and edit any blog that I need to.

I use the blogs in different ways. I use them as online journals for the students and I have students read and comment on each others entries. I also like to have my students read other blogs to see what other Middle School students are doing. I have this lesson, but we have a new filtering process at school. Many sites are blocked, but teachers can continue on to most of those sites while students cannot. I can either choose to show those sites to my students on my LCD projector, or I can ask the IT dept to open those for students to access. They are not strict when teachers ask for sites to be open – they trust us to know which sites are appropriate for our teaching.

I want to start using a wiki – my original thought was to have my 8th graders take notes and add to it for certain lessons. I start the year with a History of Computers lesson and I was thinking about having students add their notes to the wiki so that everyone has complete notes. I think I will do that whenever we get back to school after the storm. It will be a good way for them all to review the notes in preparation for a test.

I also would love to do some podcasting with my 8th graders. That is a very new area for me, so I need to learn more about it before I can start teaching it. Also, my 8th graders are a bit more challenging this year than last year. This year’s class likes to talk a lot and I’m going to have to wait until they really understand that until they can follow classroom rules and procedures they won’t get to do extra stuff They are learning that very quicky, though…..