Technology Reflections

This year is not even over yet and I’m already thinking about next year. I’m thinking about new things I want to do and how I’ll do the old stuff better.

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 use blogs for my classes. I have a main page and then separate pages for each of my classes. It works well for posting assignments and links to webpages and sometimes documents that my students need to use, but I want something more like an online classroom.

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 : )

Reading though my Bloglines this morning I came across this post by Teacher Dude. This is something I have been thinking about for the computer classes that I teach. I teach three classes; 2 classes change each quarter (6th and 7th grade) and the 8th grade class I keep all year. I have been doing some cool Web 2.0 stuff with the 8th graders, but not as much as I’d like to, but the 6th and 7th grade classes have always been classes where I teach Word and Excel.

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.

Last week the 8th graders finished their Photoshop Project. The kids took all their creations and put them into a Windows Movie Maker movie. They were great!

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.