Drawing to a close...

Our class is coming to an end, but my techno journey has just begun.  I am off to a great start, thanks to you, Marialice. (Shout out!) You allowed us to play as we learned. It is a powerful approach, and one that also taught me how best to teach Netgeners. ( In fact, my biology students spent Friday's class playing and learning how to make their own student glogs on my edu.glogster.com site so that they can gain the skills needed to create one addressing a critical thinking question at the end of our unit on cell structure.  And they are loving it!) If you had not been so flexible and open-minded none of us would ever have had the time or energy to come this far on our techno journeys. Kudos to you!
 
As you know, I have been using this blog to document my adventures in cyberspace, and also in real life as I have tried to close the technological gap in my school.  I am happy to report that the time I spent first hounding and then collaborating with our IT guy has been time very well spent.  He and I are now getting along great, and we are currently working together every Wednesday morning to accomplish a variety of goals, including getting Schoology up and running for my school.  Here is an excerpt from an e-mail he sent to me two days ago:

...However, it is you who deserves the credit...your desire to push the boundaries and try new things makes my job (typically one filled with forgotten passwords and broken printers), much more interesting and rewarding.  See you Wednesday.

Cool, huh?  Who'd have thunk?  I am a boundary breaker! :-)


And that brings me to my final assignment, answering the question "Who are 21st century learners and teachers?" 
Well, I would say it is just that, to be boundary breakers.  It is to bridge gaps between people, between schools of thought, between various groups, organizations, countries and cultures, between IT guys and teachers, and most importantly, between students and their potential.  It is putting to work as many of the Web 2.0 tools as we can to help empower our students to become critical, collaborative, creative and innovative thinkers so they can build a better tomorrow for themselves and the world.  There are unlimited frontiers out there which our students may never see if we do not let them "out of the box."  As their teachers, we must overcome our own fears and venture out to learn the new territory ourselves.  Only then can we effectively guide our students to acquire the skills they need to learn and to express their thoughts and ideas safely and responsibly with the rest of the world.  
We also need to know when to sit back and let them teach us.  Teaching and learning are interactive processes. We are all on this great adventure together.  The world will never be the same as it was.  Nor should it be.  Change is good.  New frontiers are great if you are truly prepared for the journey that is to come.  It is our job as educators in the 21st century to embrace change.  We need to keep working, playing and exploring. We need to keep implementing and modifying what we find  to suit and enhance the abilities and interests of our students. 
We are the boundary breakers.  Here we come!!!

My Cheat sheet

Just a few of my accomplishments since beginning this awesome course:

1.      I figured out how to use Google docs and shared it with the class.

2.      I learned how to post comments and successfully copy and paste links to a variety of apps, including wetpaint and nings.

3.      I created a powerpoint for my unit on cell structure.

4.      I became an “expert” on Voicethread and figured out how to upload the powerpoint to it before sharing my expertise with the class.

5.      I created this blog to document my trials and tribulations as well as my successes at learning to use Web 2.0 tools. 

6.      I created three smartboard activities for my General Science students and five for my biology students to help aid their learning of key definitions and concepts. (I plan on creating a smartboard Jeopardy game for my Biology students over the weekend).

7.       I created a Glogster for my classroom’s homepage, and my principal is considering subscribing to edu.glogster.com as a school.

8.      At work, I got our IT guy to work all week long on addressing our many technological issues and he is working on setting up Schoology for us.  Most incredibly, he just contracted with me this afternoon to collaborate every Wednesday morning with me to help bring our school into the 21^st century.  Hooray!!!

9.  There’s more but I just wanted to start this list while I was thinking of it…

Got to get to class!!!!

Preparing to launch....

So I am pretty much all set to begin a new unit on cell structure with my Life Science/Biology students. I just finished creating an interactive poster for them and all of my students to explore.  My students come to school towing heavy emotional and academic histories behind them, (even more than your average teenage girls).  Most have come to my school due to truancy and other behavioral issues.  Most have difficulty relating appropriately to each other, let alone to any one in authority.  I run a tight but friendly classroom.  When students cross a line, I stand firm.  They soon learn to respect my authority and to trust that I have only their best interests in mind.  I am always looking to lift their spirits, self-esteem and motivational levels as soon as they enter my classroom.  Hence,my poster includes a link to a motivational video I found aimed at teenage girls.  I will try to change it once a month or so.  There is also a link to a video that briefly covers a lot of information about our home planet, Earth, and they can click on that to learn more.  I hope it can get them thinking about how amazing our planet really is.  Further down the poster are their class assignments.  I have one student, Tiffany, who is learning Environmental Science independently so she needs to click on the paperclip at the bottom for an attached document to get her assignment.  There are also two documents listing websites I have listed for all students to use for any research purposes, which can be accessed by clicking on the same paperclip. I included a video of my dogs playing in the poster as the girls love to see them.  I bring one of them in for the day every few weeks.  In fact, my students from last year helped me train Lucy as a puppy to sit and to fetch!  My classroom is known as a "No Drama Zone"  which is why that is written in the bottom left hand corner.  There is a seasonal scientific link on the puzzle piece, and a powerpoint introduction to cells that I attached to my biology class assignment.  I will actually be doing the powerpoint in class, but any one who is absent, or wants to view it again will be able to access it with my voice and comments included. I did this by uploading my powerpoint to edu.voicethread.
Oh, so here is the link to my glog., aka. interactive poster):
http://sheblindedme.edu.glogster.com/mrs-halls-science-class/

I also designed smartboard activities for them to use during the course of the unit and I would also like the girls to collaborate with one another to make their own wordles and interactive posters about cell structure.
I made this wordle this morning: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2515581/eukaryotic_cells
Now it is time to take my dogs for a walk.  Later, after I complete one million errands, I am going to finish setting up my online gradebook through engrade.com.  One of my teacher friends showed me how to get started yesterday.  He said it takes awhile but is well worth the effort.
Enjoy this lovely day.  Until we meet again in cyberspace, (or real life)!
Kristin

At last!

Hooray!  I spent three hours, off and on today creating smartboard activities for my students to help them learn the roles of the various organelles in eukaryotic cells, and the difference between plant and animal cells.  The word match activities are great, and those anagrams are a blast!  I had several teachers come in to my room after school to play with my newly created lesson activities.  I felt so totally cool, Man!
During the creative process I had to abandon the instruction booklet that my principal had printed out for me.  It was too laborious to read.  Playing with the gallery bar to figure out how to work it was far more satisfying. Does this mean I am going native? ( Digital native, that is..?)  Of course, I was never very big on reading instructions, with the exception of recipes.  Which reminds me...time to take the kids out to dinner tonight.  No cooking for me!  It's time to celebrate my techno victories!  Talk to you later!  Have a good one!

The IT guy strikes back!

  So, the "intentionally terrible" guy was at my school this morning, and not happy about it.  When I asked him a question, he condescendingly reproached me.  "Can't you tell I am busy?," he snarled.  I retreated, hoping that he finally was.
  The good news is that he loaded the necessary software into our notebooks today. This also means I was not being stupid last week when I couldn't get to the gallery toolbar that was being mockingly shown to me in every smartboard tutorial I saw. Wish I'd realized it was missing BEFORE I spent 45 minutes getting worked up about it! Then again, perhaps that's why my principal demanded he be there today.  No one likes to see an angry granny in action! Not more than once anyway...
  What is sad is that we have had two smartboards in our school for over two years and none of used them as more than nifty hi-tech projectors.  We didn't even realize they were missing this vital software, until now!  What were we waiting for?  These things are going to be obsolete in a few years, at the rate technology is advancing.  We absolutely have to work harder to keep up with what is out there to help us educate these digital natives before they become even more restless. (Pun intended).  At the same time, our education leaders/principals must recognize the need for their teachers to have more time at work to learn how to use them and to incorporate these tools effectively into their instructional units.
   Speaking of which,  I have to attend a meeting during my planning periods tomorrow, and then go to my class after school.  That means I have to wait until Wednesday afternoon to start working the elusive gallery toolbar.  Can't wait, though!  Wish me luck! Peace out!         

A new day!

Well, playing tennis last night was a lot of fun, and it really helped clear my head.  The frustrations of yesterday are gone, and my resolve is back!  This morning I went on Ed.VoiceThread to check on my threads and realized they were closed until I paid a $60 subscription fee.  Ah, well...no free ride lasts forever!  So I paid.  Maybe my school will reimburse me.  Otherwise it's tax deductible...no worries.  Next, I uploaded my aforementioned, shiny new powerpoint on cells, and recorded my voice narrating the slides.  Now my presentation is ready to be viewed by students who are absent from school. It's a pretty rudimentary show but a good lead into further student exploration. Pretty cool!   You can check it out at:
http://ed.voicethread.com/?#u1169178.b1344362.i7152378

Also feel free to join the commentary on my  first voicethread by clicking on this:

 http://ed.voicethread.com/?#u1169178.b1306959.i6987836

I am presenting them both at my technology education class this Tuesday.  Wish me luck!  :-)
Now, I am going to shut down my computer for the rest of today, so I can do everything around the house that desperately needs doing.  While techno granny is moving up, regular old me has been  falling behind.
Enjoy your day! Peace out!

I thought so...

So, I was hoping I would have the chance to play with the smartboard this afternoon.  As usual, however, my principal had other plans for how I would be spending my time.  She held a meeting, from which I asked to be excused as it did not pertain to me, but she insisted that I stay anyway.  By the time the meeting ended, I was thoroughly frazzled.  How can I become a 21st century educator when my own principal is denying me the time and support I need to acquire the necessary skills?  The good news is I had set up all the equipment yesterday so I was able to play the powerpoint I made on the smartboard and draw circles and such on the screen.  That was cool.   Unfortunately, the next 45 minutes of my long. long day was spent fiddling, cursing,  and looking for something to kick, because I couldn't get the gallery toolbar to come up. I finally realized that the necessary software had never been loaded onto the net book by our IT guy.  Does IT stand for "intentionally terrible," because sometimes I really do think it does.  But that's a whole 'nother story.
I am going to go play tennis now and blow off some steam.  See you all tomorrow!