August, 2007

I share many sites with you, and I always say, "You need to check this out!" Well, Tom Daccord, history teacher at Noble and Greenough School  gets right to the point with help and specific ideas for integrating tech.
Start here

Once section on using chats in the classroom gives a transcript as an example. Really helpful!!

Using Chatting and Instant Messaging in the Classroom

• Why Chat?
• Sample Assignment for a First In-Class Chat
• Sample Chatting Exercise
• Basic Guidelines for chat groups
• Staring Chat Rooms with Chatzy

Maintaining balance. That’s an ongoing issue for us as we try to manage our one-to-one laptop program and determine what teaching in the 21st century means. I would love to see our students:

• publishing
• collaborating with schools across the country and abroad
• teaching each other
• producing audio and video segments

This article discusses what happens when people bring their laptops to meetings at Microsoft, and it all sounds SO familiar. Read more here.

I’ve been talking to some of my colleagues about the need to help students with organization and time management–or more specifically–management of information.
Yet, at 4:00 am, unable to sleep, I found myself browsing through Google Reader and adding yet one more blog!
Christian Long’s blog, think:lab, makes me almost regret my decision to give up teaching this year. Last year, my first year back in some time, was almost like a first year again, fraught with mistakes. I want a do-over! He is returning to the classroom and plans to do some reflective thinking about teaching on his blog. I skimmed the last few entries, and it’s definitely worth adding to your reader!

Tony Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership
Group at Harvard University’s graduate school of education, discussed 5 essential questions in a commentary on the EdWeek site. (You will need to register to read the entire article.)

He said,

So what are some questions change leaders might
learn to wrestle with? What might be the equivalent
“Five Habits of Mind for Change Leadership”
we could work on together?

In our work, my colleagues and I have identified a
sequence of questions that, if pursued rigorously, and
courageously, can lead to a deeper understanding of the challenges we face as well as
more effective strategies for dealing
with them:

• What is the problem we are
trying to solve, or the obstacle we
are trying to overcome, and what
does it have to do with improving
teaching and learning?

• What are our strategies for
solving this problem, and how
and why do we think implementation
of these strategies will
cause the change that’s needed—what’s our “theory of action”?

• Who (teachers, parents, students,
community) needs to understand
what, in order to “own
the problem” and support the
strategies we’re implementing?

• Who is accountable for what
for implementation of this strategy
to be successful, and what do
they need to be effective?

• What evidence (observable
changes in short-term outcomes
or behaviors) will we track that
will tell us whether our strategies
are working?

Certainly, as we think about how we use technology in the classroom, we should also consider these, especially the first: What does this have to do with teaching and learning? I hope we keep this in the forefront as we move through the year exploring new ways to help students learn.

A recent Newsweek article describes research by Danah Boyd of the Berkeley School of Information, and quotes her description of who goes where:

A few weeks ago, Boyd—who has done extensive ethnographic work on
online behavior, blog-posted an essay tentatively sharing her
(admittedly nonscientific) findings after months of interviews, field
observations and profile analysis. Generally, she contended, "The
goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids are now going
to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize
education and going to college." MySpace is still home for "kids whose
parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they
finish high school."

She writes later,  "The division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values."

Something to talk about this fall….