Learning, Teaching & Technology

These are the professional development courses and workshops I have participated in since 2005:

Professional Development Activity, Date, Credits/Hours, Documentation
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 06, 8 hours, Certificate
NECC Conference, Atlanta, June 2007, 36 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 07, 8 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference, October 08, 8 hours, Certificate
USM Course: The Read/Write Web, July 07, 3 graduate credits, Transcript
K-12 Online Conference07, 10/07-8/08, 3 graduate credits, Transcript
Yarmouth Writing Course, 07-08, 3 credits, Certificate
NH Tech. Education Conference, 12-08, 20 hours, Certificate

I plan to attend:

NECC Conference, Washington, D.C.,  June 2009, 36 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 09, 8 hours, Certificate

Also, courses I taught each summer at USM and in the Yarmouth School District.

Final Reflections:

I took this course because I knew I wanted to view many of the K12Online07 sessions and I had just been introduced to the many possibilities of web 2.0 tools at NECC07. I am completing this course late in the summer of 2008 as the K12Online08 sessions are looming on the horizon.

My responses to the sessions are reflections about how I might use the resources and ideas in my practice. An illness delayed my progress in the course, but now that I have been able to complete it I can say that I have found each session a rich source of new or consolidated learning and I look forward to using what I’ve learned in the upcoming 2008-09 school year.

Final Project

I have worked with learners in K-4 classrooms, computer labs and university courses for teachers for over two decades. My latest title is “Instructional Technology Integrator” in a school district of 1400 students in southern Maine. This year I continue to work with our elementary school students and teachers three days a week and those at the high school two days a week collaborating with Alice Barr.

The goal of the project that I will be taking on to utilize the learning from the K12 Online Conference is to increase the number and effectiveness of our classroom web pages that link to our Yarmouth Elementary School website. Specifically, I want all fifteen classrooms and the specialist teachers to have a web presence, ideally an interactive one. While some teachers have had static web pages for a few years I would like to explore the educational advantages of moving to blogs that are directed toward parents and encourage feedback to students. The focus of the blogs will be to showcase classroom learning and give students a way to share online with family members so they see that others can comment and leave responses to their learning

Teachers at the elementary level have long created weekly newsletters and other ways to send home a digest of learning activities, but there isn’t a connection to students and student work. A print newsletter is a one-way communication that may prompt more questions than it answers for a parent. Every teacher has had an iBook for five years now, it is beyond the time to move from limited email uses to tools that support online interaction.

I viewed several sessions by presenters that specifically addressed classroom blogs (John Pearce, Jeff Utecht, Anne Davis), while other sessions I attended gave tutorials and ideas for podcasts (Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle & Alice Barr) and other student-created media that can be posted to blogs (Clarence Fisher, Brian Crosby, Alan Levine et.al.). Many of the sessions remind us to plan for the pedagogy not just the technology (Sylvia Martinez & Sharon Peters) so that the focus is on increasing learning by changing our practices.

When I viewed Derek Wenmoth’s movie for his session one of the most memorable slides was the graphic included here:

If we are to keep moving along to the “Assimilation” stage of this graphic he has some very clear ideas and suggestions for what needs to change so we can continue on past the “Integration”stage. I see classroom blogs as important in moving in this direction.

I have already met with the elementary school principal about my action research for this year and we have agreed that this goal of teacher interactive web pages will be one that we will support with help sessions during faculty meetings and team meetings. Teachers who have experimented with blogs will be important instructors for those who are just starting. Indeed, just today I had a phone call from a teacher who was exultant in telling me that since I am not at school these days she taught a new teacher how to set up a classroom blog and was thrilled she knew enough to do that!

Teachers who have created classroom blogs (examples) have reported that they have many fewer questions and emails from parents as the blog posts allow them to view student work and access the whole class in a new way. Kathy Cassidy is one example of this at the close of her K12Online06 session. Is it scary and threatening for teachers to “go public” in this way? Indeed I can understand that it is, I felt the same way at one time. Change can be difficult, but given the right reasons for change teachers will move and learn.

Image attribution:

Image: ‘DWenmothK12online07′
http://k12online.wm.edu/K12_Keynote_3web.mov

The focus of this session is introducing possible participants to the purpose and possibilities of their Women of the Web 2.0 (WOW2.0) webcast on edtechtalk.com. Through Cheryl Oakes I had the opportunity to met Jen Wagner, Vicki Davis and Sharon Peters at NECC07. It was interesting to hear from the hosts how it all started and to view the making of a show at NECC07. They and their successors on the show have since become well known as innovators who host noted guests and topics of interest.

This session gave me a lot of information about how the hosts came up with the idea of webcasting and what they actually do during the production of the show. Although I have listened to the show some Tuesday nights I learned more from the presentation about the archives and delicious links available online.

I know that when Cheryl Oakes first participated in the Webcast Academy she found the access to international educators and the broadened conversations revolutionized her professional practices. Since then she has assisted many others who have been interns in the academy as well as supporting the development of new shows and encouraging listeners to shows. One of my goals is to find the time to enroll in a Webcast Academy which is usually offered in the summer and the winter of each year. I would like to become comfortable with webcasting so that I could assist students and teachers who want to collaborate with others across geographic distances in this format.

As I consider learning to webcast I am fortunate to have local access to my colleagues Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes and Bob Sprankle who have just begun sharing their “Seedlings Podcast at Bit by Bit” on EdTechtalk on a regular schedule. This has evolved from a regular podcast they have done for over a year. As the presenters say in their title, it’s about “expanding the conversation.”

This presentation offers a set of essential skills needed to build an online experience in teaching and a view into what will be in the future. Drew reports that he is getting positive feedback and finding it more enriching than other teaching experiences now that he is using interactive materials online in his classes. As we in Yarmouth try to move from static web pages of information about courses I am intrigued by the much richer site that Drew is able to develop and the interactions with students that are integral to the site. He views his course page as a community that invites opinions and debates, with an assumption that he will give feedback and students will give feedback to each other. Students learn to use the development tools and they contribute video tutorials, etc. As I have found at our high school, Drew mentions that there are big gaps between what some students know and can do and others.

The critical elements of web 2.0 that Drew thinks are reasons teachers should use web 2.0 include saving teachers time and the capacity to create relevant, effective lessons. Getting a critical mass of teachers to see these two in reality would help move more teachers toward using web 2.0.

Some of the 10 skills Drew suggests we need are organized around exploring & participating, deconstructing & reconstructing, and connecting and creating. Within these three overall areas he creates a progression that could be used to work with teachers and students. Using this progression would help those who have gaps or feel they are novices at the use of web 2.0.

I chose this session as I thought Liz might offer some resources to add to the discussion at our high school about whether cell phones can ever be useful in the classroom as opposed to a distraction that should be banned. First of all I commend Liz for a well-developed presentation (maybe too much text on some of the slides…) that has elements that I could use during a team discussion about this topic.

As part of my overall interest in having students see that the technology tools they use everyday (e.g. cell phones) can be learning tools I share Liz’s belief that we can offer that bridge to our students. What if we thought about cell phones as portable microphones attached to recording features that can access web2.0 sites? Even voicethread is now setup to take phone calls for audio content. I learned about evoca, and gabcast in addition to gcast (which I already use) as podcasting options using cell phones. I hadn’t thought about these sites saving directly to a blog, but I learned about many tools that can make the steps of podcasting to a blog much easier for students and teachers.

I wasn’t aware of the conference services like freeconferencepro and talkshoe. These conference calls are not unique to cell phones and they can be saved as mp3 files. I’ll have to explore what the differences are between using these sites and Skype. Teaching students to use jott or similar tools could help students with organization and planning.

One thing that I had heard about that I intend to try is to set my cell phone camera up to go directly to my flickr account. I have used resources like bubbleshare to create slideshows for our school web page and now I think I know how to send the pictures from my cell phone if I add email service to my cell phone account.

This is a very thorough presentation with many “how to” sections if I need help remembering the steps for accessing the resources.

I chose this session because I wanted to review current copyright and fair use guidelines and learn more about Common Commons so that I can offer that information to teachers and students. I had heard about Creative Commons and had seen the licensing they offer used by others, but the materials provided in Karen’s wiki filled in some gaps in my knowledge and added to the set of sites that I can use that encourage collaborative use of original materials that are in the public domain or available under various licensing structures.

As more of my elementary students want to add audio effects and photos to their research reports I will need to develop a web page for our student resources links that compiles these sites for them. When our younger students copy or insert a photograph from the Internet it seems that they are within the current Fair Use guideline: “Images may be downloaded for student projects and teacher lessons.”

By 4th grade I ask students to place the Internet address of the photo or sound clip they are using with the picture or in a Credits page at the end of a project. We talk about copyright and I think they would enjoy adding their original work to Creative Commons as Karen mentions. Some classes have setup flickr accounts and I have worked with some teachers to show them how to access the millions of photos that are shared under Creative Commons licensing on flickr.

This session is a great resource for questions about current copyright issues and site for open access or clearly licensed posted materials online.