Learning, Teaching & Technology

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.

This session is just what I needed as I take on the adventure of working two days a week as an Instructional Technology Integrator at our high school for the first time. Our 7-12 students all have 1-1 laptops and there is a need and interest in more support for learning with technology at grades 9-12. I am concerned about one of the initial points that Sylvia makes that students want the “socially connected experiences” that they engage in outside of school; teachers need to learn how to incorporate that into classroom learning. Alice Barr and I will be working together on ways to have students as our “allies” as we help teachers to face the obstacles and opportunities of adding web 2.0 tools.

Working at the elementary school level I have asked students to take responsibility for oversight of laptop carts (somehow classes never put them away the right way or make sure they are charging) in classroom wings and more and more I ask them to share learning and teach each other at the projector during classes in the lab. Some of the students who were innovators when I had them in 3rd or 4th grades are now the high school students who help us teach courses to faculty (imagine our surprise when students did all the reading assigned to the teachers!) and who are in the process of forming a student tech team. They are asking the right questions about what student tech team should have as it’s mission. Lately they have wondered if they should be offering a web 2.0 class for their peers as they find that many students don’t seem to be exploring the way they are. These seem to be along the lines of what Sylvia talks about as authentic learning and real life problems.

I chose this session because I am still early in the process of engaging teachers in blogging, for themselves or with their classes and I need more rationales and reasons to support my efforts. The safety issues movie presents some of what I know teachers feel about avoiding the responsibility of providing students with blogs. John’s point of view about our role in guiding young students to safe practices with supervised experiences in the early grades is similar to mine. The presentation does a good job of bringing to the surface the reluctant stances that teachers may not be willing to articulate, but I know are there. Having each movie address a separate topic makes them short bits that could be used at a faculty meeting or team meeting for discussion as a few pioneers help others move to adding classroom blogs to their writing activities.

The interactive aspect of a blog is the powerful motivator for students, but it seems to be the thing that teachers fear the most. As new teachers have joined our faculty they tend to be younger and more used to technology. I have encouraged them to start a blog as a way to create a classroom web presence and move away from our practice of creating web pages that have content describing the classroom. Although teachers regularly receive email from parents there is an adjustment for them to open up a blog to public comments. For now, some teachers have started blogs, but have not opened them up to comments. Hopefully we can move to opening up that conversation.

In addition to blogs, John also mentions wikis and one of the ideas I hope to pursue this year is for teaches to participate in developing wikis for shared team materials. and resources.

In my response to this session I am going to tackle the question that Brian asks at the end: “What obstacles could you and your students overcome with these new tools (to help us transform schools)?” Since I am the Technology Lead Teacher in my role in the elementary school I can add, “What obstacles can I, the teachers and students overcome with these new tools to help transform teaching and learning?”

There are never enough resources… I work in a community that has underwritten technology as heavily as any school setting I know, emphasizing professional development and support as well as necessary hardware and software. Some obstacles we might overcome:
1. Obstacle: Lack of electronic white boards or “SMART Boards”. While we are not eligible for grants for these white boards (and we can’t fund them out of our decreasing annual budgets)
Opportunity: We have moved from one LCD projector in our grades 2-4 school that was secured in the lab to an additional 8 projectors on carts or secured in ceilings by using grants from National Semiconductor and decreasing our printing expenses and we hope to increase by 3 more this year. Why projectors? Our teachers have had iBooks for 4 years and are very comfortable sharing resources with students and having students present using the projector. If we can get to one projector in every one of our 15 classrooms then teachers truly will have the anytime option to assimilate technology into the classroom as described by Derek Wenmoth. We have found that the projectors have increased student engagement in curricula which is one of our district goals.
2. Obstacle: Lack of teachers taking advantage of professional learning courses and opportunities to learn web 2.0 tools.
Opportunity: Teachers are working in collegial teams to support each other in new learning and expand their skills so that all students have the chance to participate in digital formats of communicating and displaying learning.
3. Obstacle: Lack of laptops for students in grades 2-4. Classes use a computer lab once a week with the classroom teacher and myself planning a lesson that integrates with the curriculum.
Opportunity: The high school purchases laptops for 9th graders who use them through the 12th grade. At the end of those 4 years enough of the laptops are still useable that they are sent to the middle and elementary schools. Last year we had 2 carts of 24 iBooks for use by the ten 3rd and 4th grade classes. This year we will have 48 more iBooks and teachers are participating in the decision to leave whole class sets on carts or split one cart into a couple in every classroom for anytime use. The combination of a projector and a small set of laptops has been very powerful in a few pilot classrooms.

I look forward to finding other “obstacles” that I can try to turn into “opportunities” for our students.