New Year, New Schools

As a reading and teaching consultant, I have the opportunity to begin each year with a new set of colleagues and students alike. Of course, I still have my work with schools of previous years, but just as our goal as educators is to graduate students from our schools, my goal as a consultant is to help teachers and schools become independent of my services.

But the point of this entry is to describe the feelings of my first days in an entirely new building with a group of new teachers and their equally unfamiliar students. I am working in the St. Louis area and the middle school teachers I met yesterday are the most enthusiastic teachers I have ever met. As a consultant, to step into a new culture can be intimidating. I wonder if they will like me– I wonder if what I bring to them will be useful and new– I wonder how our time together will be spent–will they listen attentively or will they interact engagedly. Pleasantly for me, they dove into the work and really almost literally dove.

My high school teachers, who can sometimes bereserved, are meaningfully involved in our work, which for this month is focused on vocabulary skills, in teaching and in learning. My week has been one of the best in my career…the week began with a sense of uncertainty in the newness of the challenge, yet the week ended in the assurance that we will make a measurable difference in the achievement and persistence of our students! Bravo teachers!!

Hello World

I must sound like a broken record, if anyone remembers what a broken record was……but I keep saying the same thing…over and over…I am swamped. I remember taking a grad class during my educational administstrative days that explored the time technology added to our day and really that is where I am. I love technology and because of my passion, I am immersed in finding ways to introduce newcomers to the benefits and ease of using technologies in the classroom. But, that takes time!!

Later this week, I am presenting at the Illinois Education and Technology Conference in Springfield. Cheri Toldeo and I are teaming up to share what we can about wikis in two hours. The workshop is “make and take.” We have two hours and twenty computers,  so I’m pretty psyched about finding some really engaging “stuff” (one of my favorite words) to give and share with teachers that will really add up to time well spent. Something that they take away and return to rather than just leave behind.

In my search, I am looking for current SlideShare, YouTubes, etc.  I just watched a really cool SlideShare show–. I don’t speak Portuguese, so I’m not sure what the words are saying. I did try to translate…and from the inferences I was able to draw, I still think the show is pretty cool. If someonw could translate for me, I’d be more than appreciative.

Wiki Woman

I have felt so guilty. My last post was a declaration of love for blogging and then I turned my back on this friend and took up with a wiki!! Can one have two passions and be fair to both…torn between two lovers! Okay, I’m going a bit overboard here, but I’m having some fun. I’ve had a great week. I am an educational consultant and that, as you can imagine, is an up and down world…well at least for me. Well, everything for me is up and down. I get  joy out of the simplest of “things” but the tinest of hurts can cause me pain, too. Back to the point….I have developed a “wiki workshop” and I gave it for the first time this week…and it was great! I really got a group of English teachers sold on the wiki and more than that, gave them some “food for thought” about how to use that wickedpedia for educational purposes. I’m speaking tongue in cheek; I hope you can see the smile in my words.

 I am also sympathizing with students right now…I have a pretend assignment from a professor in doctoral program…I am writing a “pretend” grant proposal…only about 40 pages!! Why or who has anyone do anything anymore that they don’t have any use for? Sometimes the process is enjoyable, but I should have written the “some” part of the word in subscript…if you get what I mean. No exaggeration, yesterday I worked on that paper at the computer for sixteen hours and I’m still not done. Today I took a bike ride, and then I took a drive, and then I bought groceries…are you catching the theme–avoidance. But here I am tonight, back at it.  Well, only for a couple of hours. If I am going to pretend, I should be doing that in Second Life, which is a place I have never been, well, not on the computer!!!

I’m getting silly now, so I better go. No words of wisdom; no educational sites to visit; no accolades to other bloggers or techies–just blathering about what makes life pleasureable…just letting my words spill out because they can’t stay locked up anymore.

Listening to a recent Stephen Downes videocast, I liked what I heard. I am so connected to information and communication available through the internet. He says, and I’m paraphrasing, “take a break! Live your life.” That addresses some of the concerns that were expressesd on this site two or three blogs ago. The responsibility to shape our world is our responsibility alone. Stephen Downes says, “You are at the center of your own personal learning network” and I say, for that we must take our own responsibility. Well, I have always felt I took responsiblity for myself, but in letting the 24 x 7 nature of the internet consume my attention, I no longer felt that taking time to experience the pleasures of life was a responsiblity centered in my own core. I allowed the immediacy of communication to change the quality of my own reality.

Pretty deep, huh?! He also suggested responding with immediacy to what we hear and see and so I am. I heard his message and I am responding both through my blog and my action. I am back on track, following Aristotle’s “Golden Mean” searching for moderation between technology and human self. I say that now, but we’ll see. Something else he spoke of that struck a chord with me was the nature of blogging….not publishing, but blogging. Listen to what he said and see what side of the fence you come down on….publisher or blogger.

I am committed to the educational power of Web 2.0 and I demonstrate that commitment through my blogging and my ongoing efforts at developing a quality wiki for collaborative learning. But I am also committed to regaining the autonomy of thought that allows me to consider the wonderous nature of life and its ambiguitites within my own constructs as well as considering theories framed in and by others.

The Future of Education. 438 Post #3

I have been spending time in the virtual world of The Future of Education Conference–last night listening to Dr. Cheri Toledo’s discussion of The Future of Teacher Education: Herding Cats and Chasing Targets.  She shared some views with her listeners regarding changes that need to be made among preservice teachers and also among their professors. One suggestion that seems imperative is to get professors and other PS instructors into a real classrooms…by real, I mean those that are representative of the course content. Too many academics are too far removed from the world of elementary, middle and high school to resonate with either their own students or the coordinating teachers nurturing and mentoring PS teachers. By the way, if you go to the link to hear Dr. Toledo’s talk, be patient for Elluminate to download…I hadn’t used this conferencing technology–had only heard about it…pretty cool. Listeners can particpate by using icons that vote, ask questions, show emotions!

This morning, I listend to the Derrick de Kerkhove on The City as Classroom. Wow!! I have read the work of Marshall McLuhan when a college communications major in 19…a few years ago.  I was anxious to hear what de Kerkhove had to say.

Theoretical, but totally engaging…be ready to listen close.  He spoke about the many generations that have brought us to this moment in our technologic journey, and introduced a cool word: “wreading.” That is what the NetGen reader does “outside the head on a screen what we were taught to do in our head” and isn’t that right…calculators are a simple example that comes to my mind. Kids make make meaning by moving a mouse to gather information or seek corrections for their spelling.

And he talked about the evolution of the medium from simple (my word) internet Web 1.0 to the current constructivist organization of knowledge through tagging. What he was getting at (I think) referenced the way we (the generation of kids that have never been without 24/7 social communication) think and how the visual nature of the Web 2.0 both in graphic images and the symbolic images of text are affecting information processing and the way, essentially we see ourselves as both individuals and a society. Well, that’s what I thought…but I gotta tell you, this was a talk that could use a rewind…if you know what I mean…lots of information and as I said–theoretical notions of how the brain and text come together to make meaning…which brings me to his last word: hypertext…which he defined (and now I’m loosely quoting…) as “associations received on line ‘just in time’ to get meaning” the bringing of content and context together. Yeah…you know…we do it all the time–individual perceptions of reality attempted to be aligned by the producer through a series of agreed upon visual conventions–letters as symobols, graphics as symbols, pictures of a shared culture. That kind of thing…I think.

Technology Immortalizes

I’ve always loved to write and so the act of blogging is one that comes quite naturally to me. As a matter-of-fact, I have a well-document life’s record, words posted on a hidden pages in the depths of drawers forever lost to time. Once I got a computer, my thoughts raced across the screen to be saved in the box until one machine was replaced by another and /or the battery died. The opportunity today’s technology offers is so valuable for the safe-keeping and the sharing of ideas. How many good thoughts and well-turned phrases have been lost because they were given life before the support of blogging could offer them immortality?!