For the past few years, I have drifted away from teaching my students the fine details of using Word and Excel to doing more projects that integrate those programs and doing more ‘fun’ stuff, like digital stories with PhotoStory and Movie Maker. I don’t want to abandon the ‘fun’ stuff, but as I was working with my Reading kids on typing and printing a book report, I realized that they do not know the basics of setting up a document. I told them what margins and line spacing they needed to have and most of them had no idea how to change those settings. I think that next year I’m going to have to go back to teaching the basics and maybe even testing those skills. I do only see about half of the 6th and 7th graders each year (one class of 20 – 25 students in each grade four times a year – and probably 50% – 75% of the 7th graders had my class in 6th grade) and then I only have one class each year of 8th graders (about 25 kids). It is entirely possible that I could have kids in my reading class that have never had one of my computer classes. But it still made me think about what I was teaching in my computer classes. I have to admit, too, that I have become lazy in those classes; pretty much everyone gets an A. But that makes me think that I’m not challenging the kids enough. I AM exposing them to new technologies, which I intend to keep doing, but somehow I need to work the basics back in. In a 9-week class thats tough, though. I added an Online Safety component a few years ago too and that takes a couple of weeks. I usually end that unit with a digital story of some sort. After we’ve done all that ‘fun’ stuff, the kids don’t want to sit still for boring Microsoft Word parts of the screen and how to set margins and line spacing. If anyone has any ‘fun’ ways to teach that, I’d love to hear ideas!

On Wednesday, I’m heading to FETC. I have been to FETC 4 of 5 times in the past 7 or 8 years. I love this conference; every year I find something new to use in my classroom. Sometimes it’s just a great idea and sometimes it’s something that costs money. I’m lucky that I have an administration who believes in technology and usually these things I find are purchased for me. In the past few years I have received a Mimio for my whiteboard and software to monitor all the computers in my classroom.

For the past few years I have toyed with the idea of being a presenter at FETC, but I never know what to present. It seems that the things that I know how to do are ‘old news’ by the next year. However, looking at this year’s offerings, maybe not. They may be old news to me, but there are so many teachers out there who are just learning about some of things that I have been doing in my classroom for years. One of the things that I like best about FETC is hearing how other teachers use technology, and one of the things that I like about teaching is hearing how other teachers teach the same skills and concepts that I teach. Hearing a new perspective is refreshing and makes my job more interesting.

While in the shower (don’t all great ideas come to us in the shower? ) I thought of a way to combine both of those collaborative ideas. At my school we have bi-weekly in house training sessions with the curriculum specialist. We have tried to make these trainings into a best practices sharing activity, with the principal’s blessing, but they are still more teaching than sharing. What I would like to do is to set up a wiki or blog page for teachers to share best practices and possibly infuse some training into the process.

If it was a blog, teachers could post what they did, or are planning to do, in their classroom, and other teachers could post comments on ways they have done that same thing, or give advice on how to improve on the lesson. If someone did a lesson that went really well, they could post that so that other teachers could try it too. I’d also love to see teachers giving advice on how to adapt lessons for other subject areas. Just this weekend I was talking to a math teacher who was saying that the short, full staff training we had last week that used a reading passage wasn’t helpful to her. I pointed out that the training wasn’t about the reading passage, but about the process and then proceeded to tell her that it was a process she used when teaching math (Modeled instruction, guided instruction and independent practice). She totally did not see that until I pointed it out!

If it was a wiki, then teachers could add to the posted lessons, but I’m almost afraid they would change someone’s lesson too much, and we’d lose the process of helping someone, or sharing best practices. If one person liked the original lesson, but then someone else changed it, the original lesson would not be there any more.

I would then like to present the process and outcomes at FETC 2009. I would get teacher responses to the process, either on video, in the form of quotes or even as a panel to present with me.

This is obviously in the very early stages of planning and I have a lot of thinking to do, but I’m kind of excited about it already. I need to think it out more (though posting here helps me do that – and already has [blog vs. wiki]) and present it to my principal. I could pilot it at the end of this year (after state testing) and then continue it at the beginning of next year. Piloting it this year would let me know if it would work and give me data and samples for the FETC proposal which is usually due sometime in July.

If there is anyone out there still reading this blog, I would LOVE to hear ideas and input.

I would like to teach my students how to use Diigo (I need to see if it’s blocked or not, but the IT guys know that I will make sure that it is used properly and they will usually unblock things for me). I think that Diigo will be a great tool for my kids to do some group research on our next unit (The History of Computers). I’m thinking about splitting up the class into generations of computer development and having them do a presentation. I’m even considering Voice Thread for the presentation – again I have to see if I can access it at school.

What I need are tips/tricks to teach my students how to use Diigo. I understand how it works and I can use it, but these are 8th graders and I need to present it well for them. Since I have just started using Diigo today, I was hoping some more seasoned people would reply with their experiences about using the tool.

Thanks!

Google would be another good alternative – Google Docs and Spreadsheets are great, and they can be shared and collaboratively edited. After reading Clarence Fisher’s post today, I started thinking about teaching RSS to the 8th graders next year. Since I use Google Reader, it would be easy for me to teach the kids how to use it. Keeping everything in Google makes sense.

For the past two years I’ve used blogs with the kids as a means for them to respond to writing prompts. I want more of a true blog next year, with student reflections. I’m thinking about having the kids write something reflective twice a week. Their reflections could be about anything school related; a book they are reading, how hard the science test was, how much they hate math , etc. Just to get the kids writing. I will grade it only on completion, I will not judge their writing or their spelling or their grammar. I will comment when I can and I will encourage them to read their classmate’s blog and make appropriate comments. I think this will help their writing overall. For blogs I use wordpress.

I’ve also been thinking about the email accounts that I mentioned in my previous post. The kids need email accounts to register for all the wonderful online stuff. Pros: I have control of each and every email account, I have the passwords if someone should forget theirs (I don’t let the kids change their password from the default one) Cons: It takes a long time to set up each account, I will have to monitor all the mail when they start sharing documents Alternatives: Have each student set up their own gmail account. They would have to give me their password so that I can monitor them (but in reality, I probably wouldn’t log onto what could be 100 accounts to monitor them). Am I being too over protective? – these are for 7th and 8th graders. I would love to hear thoughts on this – help me decide how to handle the email issue.

One thing I want to do better next year is having my kids take notes – Reading classes and the 8th grade Computer class. Reading classes need to take notes on literary terms and things specific to each story or novel that we read. I would LOVE to have them take notes online and be able to collaborate on those notes. I could use a wiki – we used wikis this year and it worked pretty well, but the kids are still very focused on changing fonts and colors and stuff. That would be a problem anywhere, anyway.

Then I thought about using an online note taking tool. I read about a few and NoteMesh looked interesting, but it’s really more for college students and I’m just not sure it’s right for Middle Schoolers. Then I read an article about the new Zoho Notebook (beta). It looks really cool and I played around with it a bit tonite. I could set up books and share them with my students. I can set some books or pages to be read only if I want them to see info, but not be able to edit it. In order to have control and for safety issues, I will make each of my students a gmail address using the +name feature

(add another name to your gmail email and it acts like a separate name, but all mail comes to the main email ex: you have a gmail account for username@gmail.com. For my student emails I use username+studentname@gmail.com. All the email for the students comes to my gmail account)

Zoho has some other really cool tools that I’d like my students to use next year too; Writer, Show, Planner and a few others. I wish Zoho Challenge (Test creator) was free – I’d love to do online testing too. I’m sure that I can find somewhere to do that

I’d love to hear thoughts and ideas about my idea of online collaborative notetaking. Maybe I could even find another class that is reading, or would be willing to read, the same novel with me next next year.

I’ve sent info about Moodle to my IT director to see if that is something we could host, but I’m looking for other ideas. My requirements are (in order of importance):

• Free
• I’d love something just online that doesn’t need to be hosted (in case I hear back from Mr. IT Guy that we can’t host anything)
• Something that would allow lessons to be posted with links to all sorts of things – webpages, documents, even document downloads
• Online quiz capability
• chat room – it would be cool to have a quiet day where the kids would have to contribute to a discussion by typing only
• monitored message board (this might not be a good idea – middle school kids think message boards are for writing silly things )

OK – thats all I can think of right now…feel free to add to your thoughts on what else I should have as well as any suggestions for how to accomplish this without creating my own web pages : )

I start each quarter of new students for the 6th and 7th grade classes with a lesson on Online Safety. I use the materials from Netmartz.org. It’s good stuff and really gets the kids thinking. I also use an online program called Edclass which has standards-based content area lessons which use technology (mostly Office-type technology, some HTML and Internet). I adapt these lessons as well; some assume more knowledge of the products than my students have, some supply the template for the project when I’d like to have the kids learn to create the template themselves). I like these products, but I want to add to them. One of my limitations is that other teachers in the school rely on me to teach certain basic skills – the research teacher wants the kids to know how to set margins and line spacing, for instance, and the science teachers want the kids to be able to do basic calculations and create charts and graphs in Excel.

Since I only have these kids for 9 weeks, I do not want to set up blogs for them – it would take up too much of my time to teach them how to use the blogs effectively. I do have a bunch of wikis that I could use – maybe to have the kids collaboratively create a How-to for the things I listed above. One of the things I would like to do is use more Open Source online products. I have access to Inspiration, but I haven’t even used it this year. Maybe something like Inspiration but something online that the kids could use collaboratively.

I have another week before I go back to work and I need to do some planning this week. I’d love to hear ideas from you all on ways that I can revamp all my computer classes to use more Web 2.0 products.

This week I decided to start a podcasting project. I’m a total newbie with podcasts but I decided to give it a shot anyway. I decided to use gcast and have the kids record their podcasts by phone. We listened to some other Middle School podcasts – good ones and not so good ones. I wanted the kids to hear the difference and want to make theirs a good one. My plan was to have the kids get into groups of their choosing and then record their podcasts at home.

The problems started from the very beginning. During the Photoshop unit they had been given a lot of freedom to walk around and talk. Now that we were starting a new unit, I needed to teach and they needed to listen. They seem to have forgotten how to do that. On Monday I threatened that if they couldn’t behave and listen then I wasn’t even going to do the podcasting. On Tuesday and Wednesday they were better. They even got into groups and started planning their podcasts. Today I wanted to show them talkr and how you can turn blog posts into podcasts automatically. I had some issues with the technology (I was blocked from hearing the podcast on one computer, but could access it on another and had to move the speakers over) I repeatedly reminded the kids to stop talking, even after I finally got the podcast to work and I was moving onto another topic. I reached my frustration level and said they weren’t working on podcasts today. Trying to think fast, I came up with nothing for them to do except to read. When I announced that, they all cheered! As a reading teacher I loved that, but I was looking for punishment So I changed my mind had them all write my standby essay about why it’s important to follow directions and respect your teachers. That way the kids who were being quiet write about something they already know about (My old essay was to write about what you did wrong, but not everyone did something wrong) [note: I'm writing this in class and I just had to stop and talk to some girl who were 'communicating' to each other] They need to take their essays home and have their parents sign it and bring it back to me tomorrow. I don’t usually do this, but if they don’t bring it back I just might assign detentions.

I think I will follow through on my threat to not do podcasts. I will assume part of the responsibility and that is that I need to learn more about podcasts and podcasting, but I also need to follow through on my threats.

I’m also feeling a bit nostalgic. Last year’s computer class would have LOVED this project. I was spoiled last year with the best computer class ever since working at this school. This year’s class is not last years, and I have to adjust my projects, and my attitude, accordingly.

Many colleges offer degrees in Distance Teaching, but I really don’t feel like spending thousands of dollars – not to mention that I don’t HAVE thousands of dollars. Global Classroom USA, has a variety of courses that are delivered though Moodle. Their classes range from about $250 to $900, depending on the length and complexity. The time frame ranges from 4 – 8 weeks.

The program for Distance Teaching involves three classes: Teaching and Learning Online, Developing Online Content and Integrating Content Into a Web-based Classroom. They also have an Integrating Content Into a Moodle-Based Classroom in the works. Another course they offer that I am very interested in is Podcasting for Education. I really want to take all four classes, but I just can’t get myself to commit to spending the money. It’s really not all that much – just over $1000. I spent 3 times that when I went back to school a few years ago to get my Reading Endorsement. I need the motivation to commit to it – I really enjoy learning more. I like to say that after time I use the knowledge that I already have in my head and every now and then I need to fill my brain back up again with new knowledge.

First, it was taking 10 mins for the kids to log onto the computers this morning. I get in touch with the IT guys and by 2nd period that was fixed, but 1st period didn’t get to blog today.

My 4th period class is using Writely.com so that they can share documents with me for grading and checking for plagiarism (I’m using a little program called EVE2 for that). I had to have the kids set up their own using accounts using their own email addresses because I couldn’t have it all on my email for sharing purposes. They needed to get a confirmation code from their own email to use the program, but a bunch of them said they never got the code. We can’t check email from school, but I had them do the ’send me the code again’ option anyway. I told them to check their spam folders and hopefully they will be able to access it this weekend. In the meantime, I had them type their essays in word and they either saved it to a flash drive or I emailed it home to their personal emails.

I did have four essays that were completed and shared with me, so I checked them for plagiarism. One had 5%, but that was mostly the questions that I had ’selectively appropriated’ from a website on the same topic as the test – History of Computers. The other one, however had 55% plagiarism. The program is very cool; it highlights the plagiarized parts and saves it as a new document. It also lists the websites that have similar phrasing so that you can go look and check it. The other two that I have had no plagiarism! Now I need to get the remaining 18 and read and grade them all! Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend