Groundswell

The swell has not disappeared but has adapted to to its conditions.  The swell has moved to

iLearnInitiative.org

Thanks for reading.

I recently introduced some of my fifth grade teachers to blogging and got the and their classes set up with Wordpress blogs that are hosted here on our server. Welcome Steve Hanlin, Noreen Croyle, and Timber Monteith to the blogosphere. No biggie right? Right. But this one little statement by Noreen Croyle was enought to realize that I had done something. I had gotten through. Her comment,

“When you started talking about the conversations, the comments students could leave for one another and how they would probably, without much prompting for me, start dialogging about school got me. That is where you hooked me”

I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Jerry McGuire, you know where he is standing there at the end and Renee Zellweger says , “You had me at hello.” I have been really been trying to cover two main topics when I introduce kids to their blogs for the first time. First, the need to be safe online. We adhere here more or less to the COPPA standards for internet safety at SAS so that means using good common sense when posting. The usual rules apply here much they do for any of you out there reading who deal with students k-12-No full names, no home directions or anything close, pictures need to be checked first to see if parents have decided that their child’s image should no get posted online, etc. etc. Secondly, I stress the difference between quality and quantity. Hell, this is something I struggle with when it comes to blogging myself. What makes a good blog post? What makes a good comment? What types of comments are appropriate? The kids in 5th grade love to get comments and to leave them too but I have to warn them that it is not about competition. You might have 120 comments telling you “You Rock!” but is this the conversation we want to have? Is this the image of your intelligence you want to put forth? These questions usually get some good dialog going with the classes and I feel 5th grade is a great time to start these types of conversations if not sooner.

As always, I digress (quantity vs. quality). Back to the title of this post. So I have three classes in different stages of using their blogs, all three would love comments from you but moreover, your students if you are in the classroom. They don’t mind if your class wants to connect with them but are in a different grade level.

photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesmarchini/2938540659/

I will be taking my Groundswell blog from Blogger to Edublogs…I hope.  Please stand by, this may take a few moments.

This morning I came in to find that a fellow staff member at Carol Morgan had emailed me a survey asking to answer some questions. thinking nothing of it, I opened it up to find only three, very large, very daunting questions which i found myself struggling to answer. The questions were as follows

• In your opinion, what is the purpose of formal education (school)?
• In your opinion, what are some of the most important things we need to be teaching students?
• In your opinion, what are the most important challenges students will face when they finish school (including university)?

Certainly we have all discussed in one way, shape or form these questions and their implications for what we do in our classrooms and in our schools. However, never before have I had to try to form a nice, neat , concise, opinionated response to directly answer them. I decided to post these on my blog to see what kind of response I would get from others out there. Being that I think my regular readership is under 5 I don’t expect to get a lot back but anything would be interesting. So what is your opinion?

I am looking for a new spot to host a website, maybe my blog, wikis, podcasts…basically anything and everything I could need. Do you know of an all in one offering like this (that’s free or very cheap). If so drop me a line, i would like to hear what everyone out there is using.

Holy Hectic Batman! It must be the end of August because I am up to my ears in work right now. I just got a “new” lab this year which was desperately needed. By shuffling some computers around were able to put 4 computers in each of our 5th grade classes (a first here at CMS). We moved some of the old high school and middle school computers into my elementary school computer lab to update the computers that were moved out. Needless to say the lab looks great (better than the pictures show anyway) and my room that now connect to the elementary library is ready to go. Those of you who manage computers in your classroom and or a computer lab know how much work it is cleaning old programs off computers and loading new software onto them can be. Minus a few small issues that still need to be taken care of by our wonderful IT staff, we are pretty much off and running and the 07-08 school year looks very promising. Here are the things that I am really excited about exploring and doing this year

• Last year, the elementary school here led the way in switching to a standards based curriculum and school. This meant a complete overhaul in both the way teachers taught their classes and the way we reported student achievement. Last year we used the old Pearson Centerpoint which has now turned into Powerschool. We found that it was not set up to handle standards based reporting so the school has switched to using Webgrader. So far i am impressed with what it can do and its flexibility in handling the new demands of standards based reporting. In the future I think Powerschool with make the changes necessary to handle this but for now we are forced to use a third-party product. As is always the case when new programs are introduced here, I spend much of my time training staff and then afterwards answering their emails and questions when it comes to problems they might be having. I am always able to tell immediately know how well a program works and how user friendly it is by the amount of questions I have from the ES staff. This year after the Webgrader training I have not had a single question regarding any of the topics we covered. Although I would like to believe it is my superlative teaching, I know that it is the quality of the Webgrader program that is speaking for itself.

• I have already been in touch with Chris Craft and Kim Kofino about joining Chris’s project “Life ‘Round Here”. It is a digital storytelling contest that looks to dispel the prejudices we as global citizens have about different countries around the world using Microsoft’s Photostory to edit and create digital story books. The project looks to contrast perceptions vs. realities in our respective countries. The deadline is coming fast for my 5th graders who are interested on October 31st.

• Terry Smith a 4th grade teacher in Hannibal Mo. has graciously invited me to join his Monster Collaboration Project. I am rounding up teachers now who might want to participate in this one. Kids, from around the world (are you seeing a trend here?) will collaborate to build a monster for Halloween. Terry has been doing this for a while now and I think it will be a fun project for the kids and as always, will expose them to new kids and cultures around the globe that they will need to work with. Terry and I collaborated on the 1001 Flat World tales project started last year by Clay Burell in Korea.

• Speaking of Clay Burell, I am looking forward to again participating with the 100 Flat World Tales Project again this year. Last year, the three Schools that participated were able to post our stories with art work and make revisions to each other stories using our class wiki. View the 1001 wiki HERE. You can link to the two other schools wikis HERE and HERE.

• As I mentioned before we now have all of our 5th grade classes with 4 computers in each of them. Along with the Academic Tech. Director here at the CMS, we will begin working shortly with the teachers in these classes to incorporate these computers into their daily instruction and pedagogy. This should also aid the 5th grade classes in participating in collaborative projects with other schools since the students now have the opportunity to work both in their classrooms and in my lab.

• I have just started a Masters Certificate program through San Diego State University. The 15 credit, 5 class, Certificate in Distance Education is something that I have searched and looked for, for a while. I liked their course offerings the best and they seem well tailored to where I want to move next in my career-designing online ed. programs/courses for universities/business/or state or private online schools. I have two classes this fall, Intro. to Distance Education , and Project Management in Distance Education . I will be blogging about my experiences in these classes and the program in general in the future. It has been exciting all ready to be in touch with and work with leaders in Distance Ed. like Fred Saba and Donn Ritchie from SDSU

• Finally, I am working on an Elementary School Wiki for CMS so that teachers can go in and use it like their own personal webpage to alert parents and students to what is going on in class, assignments, etc.

Anyway, guess that’s it for now, lot’s going on but that’s how it is for us teacher types. I described it like going from 0 to 120mph after a long summer vacation. Funny, I get little sympathy from my non-teacher friends…

Fell free to send me what is new with you and the 07-08 school year when you get a chance, maybe we can get something going.

Images:

Batman:http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/Batman_In_Flight_statue.jpg

If you are among the 1 or 2 people who actually keep up with my blog I can be reached on this beach from now until April 9th. You will find me there with a small blond boy, covered in sand and a baby girl doubling as a sand monster. I will be the one with a cold drink, a big smile on my face, and sand between my toes anxiously awaiting the arrival of the daily breeze so I can join my friend Mark and we cruise the turquoise waters of Las Terrenas with kites fully powered.

If I don’t see you there, I guess I’ll meet you back in the blogosphere on the 9th.

Nos vemos y cuidate!

Please look over at my colleague, Mark Picketts‘ response to Warlick’s posting You just Got the Nod…

Some interesting changes that will take place here at Carol Morgan in the near future that should take us a step or two closer to having a school facility to handle the demands of the 21st century classroom.

This video about conducting literature circles is on Teacher Tube and was made by several of our elementary and middle school staff. Check it out and pass it on to your language arts teachers, reading/writing specialists, or anyone else who might find it helpful. It is a long video so it might take a while to fully load depending on your Internet connection.

I highly recommend listening to the newest interview on Alan November’s blog if you can find the time. Some very good forward thinking and analysis about what American schooling is missing in his interview with Dr. Yong Zhao, what we are up against in terms of competing with Chinese and Indian schools. Anyway, I especially found the portions about students as contributors to communities a refreshing idea and one that i have been tossing around for a while. What would a school that based itself on student centered community projects and businesses look like. The kids would come to “work” not “school”, they would contribute to a need of the community, they would learn while doing. Certainly this is not a radical thought, but getting there seems like a radical journey from the type of school that is the norm in the world today. My fourth graders for the last two weeks have been working on a business plan of their own that they will then have to execute. Most are selling baked goods but some are offering services. I really have gotten into this project with the kids and I think this is exactly the kind of project we need to see more of to make learning relevant to our students. My favorite student idea is offering the service of waiting in the lunch line for a small fee for students so they can go play . Who wouldn’t want to pay that so they could max their recess time instead of standing in the cafeteria waiting for food. And, as the student pointed out (a fourth grader mind you), “there is no overhead in offering a service Mr. D., so I think we can get the most profits that way.”

Perfect.