BLogarithm

Update: 8/27/08 8:24am

I had the pleasure of participating in the writing of a technology grant for my school last year.

We were awarded $98,000 which we promptly spent on Promothean boards, laptops, and all sorts of lovely tech goodies for the classroom/school. There is still plenty of money left over though…which I’m sure will be spent on PD.

This morning we are attending a conference that is supposed to show the non-tech friendly educators among us how to use web 2.0 technologies in the classroom ( blogging, twitter, podcasting, etc)

As always, I am cautiously optimistic.

I’m cautious because many educators are notoriously wary of technology.

I’m optimistic because if we can get our collective stuff together we can really do some amazing things in the classroom.

I’ll post updates with time and date stamps throughout the day.

9:04am

We watched an interesting film that somewhat summarizes my future post The 21st Century Learner. Essentially, old school teaching is dead. Technology, used properly, can engage and promote higher levels of student learning and achievement.

Robbie Reisner is here from the GADOE. She is the program manager for the grant. Jane Henson, an ed-tech specialist with the GADOE, is here as well.

Since the feds have given us the money we are subject to state monitoring, surveys, and drop ins from state big wigs to ensure that we’re using the money effectively.

I can’t help but notice the lack of young people in leadership positions within the ed-tech sphere as well as here at the training.

11:18am

We’ve finally gotten to the overview of the web 2.0 section. It’s more of a cursory overview of ways to use wikis, podcasts, blogs, rss readers, etc.

Personally, I would like it if there were live examples of these tools in use for the teachers in the group who don’t know what these things are or have any idea how to use them, let alone create content.

Again, I can’t help but notice the absence of youthful representation in this session. It would be nice to have someone who uses this technology daily to present its application to us. Oh well.

Oh yeah, we’re going to be using moodle as an online course management system for the teachers in the grant. I’ve personally messed around with moodle as a content delivery system for my own classroom as opposed to other CMSs such as wordpress or postnuke.

I do think that after seeing how powerful moodle is I’ll try to incorporate it into my own class.

11:24am

http://voicethread.com/ is the subject of the conversation right now. Again, just a cursory overview of the website and possible classroom applications. This time they did provide a live example of how this is used in a lesson. 

It does seem to serve as an interesting way for students to collaborate with one another. It also allows students to subject themselves to the same sort of public critique of their work that blogging does of one’s writing.

11:27am 

Lunch!!!

12:42pm

Cracker Barrel is always awesome. I’ve never had a bad meal there.

The facilitator is giving the group an overview of RSS right now. It’s a shame but up until a few minutes ago I had no idea what the letters in RSS represented. I finally learned something new.

The gentleman is explaining the benefits and uses of aggregators….and is now showing a youtube video that gives a synopsis of RSS and aggregators.

Here it is:

1:10pm

Now we’re learning how to search for content on the Thinkfinity website. Again, I have to remember that not everyone is technologically literate. I’m starting to get bored.

1:17pm

Now we’re discussing the use of digital media ( video, still pictures, etc ) and how to incorporate that into the instructional environment.

Photo story 3 has been profiled.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the focus is on student created content…but the content is relatively low level. We shouldn’t sacrifice substance for flash just to engage students. Low level is low level no matter what skills tools are involved.

1:49pm

I have officially been disengaged from the lessons for about 30 minutes.

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