Technology Reflections

I’m sitting here on Sunday morning with my cup of coffee bemoaning the fact that my winter vacation is almost over. I really have nothing to complain about – I’ve had 2 ½ weeks of time off and I don’t even have to go back until Tuesday!

I had a strange dream last night about school. I dreamt that I was walking down the hallway and a student asked if she could use a computer in my room to do an assignment – it wasn’t clear if it was before school or during a planning a planning period (which I do not have this year), but we walked into my classroom and there was someone else teaching in there! The tables were all messed up too – I have four rows of tables (along both side walls and a double row going down the center of my room) in my classroom, but in my dream only the center rows were there and they were way up close to the white board at the front of the room. The kids were all over the place – which is something I don’t usually allow, but in the dream the kids did all seem to be working on assignments from the mystery teacher. The mystery teacher welcomed me into my room and it was apparent that he was not there to take my place, but was an additional teacher. Since I DO teach all six periods in my room this year, it was a bit unsettling. I woke up with the dream still in my brain and it was one of those WOW moments. I guess I’m thinking about going back to work, and that I’m not ready.

I love my job – I really do! I have the best schedule this year for my pseudo-ADD brain (I get bored easily doing the same thing). This year my schedule is Reading, Computers, Reading, Computers, Reading, Computers. All the Reading classes are the same – 7th grade average readers, but each Computer class is different – 7th grade wheel, 8th grade all year and 6th grade wheel. The 6th and 7th grade classes do basically the same things, I just go a little slower with the 6th graders. Since I get bored seeing the same assignments over and over again (I do each 6th and 7th grade class four times each year!) I mix up the assignments while still teaching the same skills.

This post was intended to get me motivated to write actual lesson plans, rather than all the planning I’ve been doing in my head lately. I write my plans on a wiki, but I don’t use it in a collaborative way – though that would be a cool thing for teachers who do plan together! Also – I hate writing plans and I’ll admit the plans on the wiki are a bit sketchy – especially the computer ones. Our plans are not checked every week – we do hand them in at the end of the school year, but that’s just for accountability in case a student comes back and says they never learned something

It’s a beautiful day here in South Florida – 78 degrees and sunny at 10:00am – so I’m not sure when I’ll actually get to my planning – and I do still have tomorrow too, but I know in my heart that I need to plan in order to teach well on Tuesday. I’m actually going to try to plan for the next three weeks. I have two 4-day weeks then a 2 ½ day week because I’m leaving to go the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) halfway through the day on Wednesday January 24th. I will need to write sub plans for Thursday and Friday, too.

I have been using Bloglines to read my blogs, but every now and then I notice weird things with Bloglines. Since I’ve been posting more, I’ve been noticing that my new posts aren’t showing up as quickly as I’d expect in Bloglines. A few months ago I started getting repeat posts in Bloglines, sometimes a few months worth! At that time I set up a Google Reader account, but then Bloglines got better and since I was used to that format I went back to them.

A friend of mine uses Google Reader and he likes it better than Bloglines – he agreed that he likes Google Reader better because that was the one he used first (the same reason I gave for liking Bloglines better). But – I have decided to give Google Reader another shot. Bloglines is still slow in updating and I do still get lots of repeat posts.

I imported my feeds from Bloglines into Google Reader and I have been navigating the new reader and I have decided I like it. There was one thing that I think needs updating (I need to send feedback to Google on this) – since I originally set up the Google Reader last month or so, I had tons of unread posts, but I had actually read them all through Bloglines. In order to mark them all read, I had to click on each feed and then click a Mark All Read link. With over 100 feeds, that was more time consuming than it had to be. It would have been nice to have a global Mark All Read option.

If that’s my only complaint – I think I’m going to be fine with Google Reader…..

With 5 days still to go in my vacation, I’ve really started to think about plans for after vacation. Yesterday I was in computer class mode and today I’m in Reading class mode.

I was looking at some wikis that I had created, but never actually used with my classes and I decided to resurrect them. When we were reading our first novel, Tangerine by Edward Bloor, I set up a wiki for the kids to write a summary and discuss characters, plot development, themes and symbols. I never got around to doing it with them, though. We have one more week of reading Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech so I set up a wiki for them to discuss this book. I need the kids to complete everything by the end of next week, though – only 4 days of classes. I’ll have to assign some for homework, but I’ll give them class time to complete the work too. Here’s the assignment as the kids will see it – Room 140 – Reading.

The kids read this book in Literature Groups. I assigned the groups and each member rotated through each role weekly. They posted their assignments on their own blogs, for the most part. There were some technical issues – both from the school’s end and from learnerblogs, but overall it went well. There are things I feel *I* didn’t do well, though. I didn’t get to the groups the way I had planned to, but I did listen in and the discussions I heard were pretty darn good . I also wish that I had had more class discussions, but again, from what I heard in groups and read on the blogs and role sheets that were handed in, the kids read and understood the book pretty well. It’s an easy book so I could do it this way. Also, we read it in the weeks before Winter Vacation when everyone was tired and it was an easy way to get through a book while still gaining knowledge. The next book we read, Walk Two Moons also by Sharon Creech, has a lot more stuff going on and needs to be read in class with good discussions. We’ll be starting that book right after state tests at the beginning of March.

After we finish Absolutely Normal Chaos, we will be doing test prep – hard core work on the standards the test tests – things like Main Idea, Author’s Purpose, Compare/Contrast, etc. These are things we have been working on all year and are basic skills for a Middle School Reading Class, but time to make sure the kids know them cold

OK I’ve got ideas for my wheel classes (the 6th and 7th grade computer classes that change each quarter). The new quarter starts next Tuesday when we go back so it’s a perfect time for a new plan.

I start each quarter with Online Safety lesson from Netmartz. They have characters called The Wizzywigs who represent online dangers. I usually have the kids kids make posters about the Wizzywigs, but this quarter I’m going to have them make movies using Windows Movie Maker about online safety rules and the Wizzywigs. I’m toying with the idea of making a wiki with the rules and safety tips. If I do that, I will probably start it and the kids edit and add to my work, but then maybe after that I can have them create one from scratch about using Word and Excel. I really do still have to teach the kids how to use those products – I’m just looking for a more interesting way to do it.

We are in the final push for our state tests, so I will incorporate a lot of those skills into using the Office products. I think I’ll have the kids create booklets with definitions and examples of the areas we study for the state tests (Main Idea, Author’s Purpose, Compare/Contrast, Fact & Opinion, etc). The 8th grade Computer class is making a booklet exemplifying how the Parts of the Computer relate to those areas.

Another idea I had was for the 8th Graders to use Gliffy to draw the parts of the computer, but I think I’ve drawn out that unit enough, especially since we started it before vacation. I usually do a unit on Effective Searching and Evaluating Websites with the 8th graders, but I need new ideas.