Subject selection time

It has come to that time of year again when students are selecting their subjects. It is a time a love and dislike.

Sometimes I feel like we are in the business of selling a subject instead of supporting students through their learning and into guiding them into pathway that is for them.

As a teacher of Geography, I really have to fight to convince students and parents of the relevance of this subject. There are so many new subjects with popular names that conjure the image of glamour and money.... media....tourism.....business..... And yet today when we went on a university open day, the old academic subjects are still the subjects that the universities want to see the students succeeding in.

However, after the open day there were many students that finally believed me!!!! and they didn't just think I was being precious :)

I know I sound precious, and I probably am, but I am just passionate about Geography and its relevance to the sustainablity of our future.

Saving YouTube Videos

http://www.saveyoutube.com/ is a site that enables you to save youtube videos to your hard drive. It has a funny quirk though.

You first need a free download though: Riva flv Encoder

http://www.download.com/Riva-FLV-Encoder/3000-2140-10320097.html

I would tell you more accept I need my administrator to allow me to download this thing!!!!!!!!

Will let you know more in due time..........

The New BEBO

My year 10 students are using classblogmeister for classwork and anything they feel like reflecting on. Not all of them use as frequently as I would like - however here is an interesting comment from one of my students....

"classblogmeister is the new BEBO!"

She is not on BEBO for what ever reason - but really enjoys classblogmeister because people can not find her so easily.

This is a really interesting comment from a teenager of today - and just goes to show us that not everyone wants to share their life with the entire planet!

Leading a horse to water...

One of my frustrations at the moment, is actually getting ALL of my classes engaged using the web sites and tools I have set up for them!!!!

My Year 10s to be fair are coming along really well. Every couple of weeks I am raising my expectations of the tools that they should be using and how they should by using. I am fortunate that I am located next to a computer room and so we spend tutor time on the computers. Just having 15 mins for the kids to look up what we are doing, homework or do a quick blog has meant that they feel confident users at home. More and more of the students are blogging regularly and not just because it is homework.

However, my other classes have been very slow adopters. I know these things take time - but with all the time I put into it - I start to wonder if it is worth it!!!

While I know some would argue, not all our kids have internet access - I can say that that is now only true for some. Those that do not have access at school anyway!!

I think the issue lies in having that intial PLAY time on a site, getting them used to finding the website and blog. I have managed to allocate only a few lessons to do this last term - in the hope that it would take off. I do not have time to take out any more lessons - and yet I know that it would really help the students if I did!! Dilema.

At the end of the day, many of my senior students have admited that they are just lazy! so maybe it is simply a case of perservering and calling parents where apporpriate. I mean I know they are using BEBO etc regularly - there really is very little excuse!!!!

Anyway, enough gryping!! I just want things to happen over night - none of this taking time stuff!!!! I suppose the horse will drink eventually when it gets thirsty!! I guess the trick is making it thirsty?????????????

That's about it:)

Using wikis with the kids...

The kids have been getting excited about our new project. We are going to communicate what we learn about the Treaty or Waitangi on a wiki using Web 2.0 tools.

For me I am feeling a bit daunted - given that the computers go so slow at school and the tools are all new to the kids, including using a wiki.

However, we spent Friday getting used to using the wiki - just typing into it and adding a table of contents. I think the hardest part is going to be getting the kids used to the quirks of wikipsaces editing. However, if I get the students to work out the patterns in "text editor" which uses wiki text (code) I think they should be able to use it and problem solve when their edits did not quite come out the way they thought!!

All the students really enjoyed themselves, and you could feel a buzz as they knew they were really talking to the world about their learning.

Exams are next week - so it will be a while before we do too much more on this project.

Taking to it like ducks to water...

Having found the toondoo site over the last holidays and highlighting it on our school blog and wiki, I was surprised to see that none of the students really took that as a hint to have some fun and take up the challenge.

I suppose like most things, it is not until someone sits you down and shows you that you feel you can take the leap out of the comfort zone??? Or maybe they just didnt really think I made the cartoon on a free website... who knows...

Last week I gave my students two lessons to "take action" and bring attention to an abuse of Human Rights. So I let them decide which way they felt comfortable bringing attention and which Human Right abuse they would choose (old or present).

(Just as an aside - most choose to bring attention to the Holocaust - which goes to show that kids still feel like it is relevant to them in some way)

So groups decided on the following...
- Make a poster
- Blog
- Make a cartoon
- Make a powerpoint presentation
- Make a skit
- Make a song/rap/poem thingy!!!


At first the only ones that was online was the powerpoint and the blog - although the powerpoint people did not know that there powerpoint would end up in their blogs. I did not want to promise something I had not tried at school - despite being able to do it at home!

Yaaa I was so excited to see that slideshare was not blocked at school, and it took just minutes for the kids to email me their document and then upload it to slideshare, get the code and then embed into their blogs and then have me approve their blogs. I was jumping out of my chair with excitment as this just all fell into place!! Click here to see their first attempt.

So often the kids decide to make a powerpoint presentation to communicate their information, but at the end of the day - who are they communicating to? With this tool and the help of a blog, they now have another medium to communicate with inside their blog, which is to a worldwide audience.

The blog option was an obvious one and was short and sweet and made its point - no surprises there.

The other interesting group was the cartoon group. They were a bunch of quite impressive artists and so looked foward to showing off their skills, however I knew they did not have long to do this and suggested that they make the cartoon on the computer.........

I was given screwed up noses - which I was shocked at but then thought they were probably thinking I meant using word and clipart!!! BORING and hard to do.

Little did they know I meant Toondoo. Reluctantly they let me show them what I really meant and how simple it was to use (which I did for literally one minute). Within two minutes they were creating their impression of the Holocaust. Now I have a bunch of students who are creating cartoons online as if it were second nature to them. Click here to see the cartoon in a student blog. (the same cartoon is below)

I guess my point is that, all this kind of thing is second nature to our students - the problem is, is that it is not second nature to us teachers because we have not been brought up with it and we think that it is going to be hard to teach them how to use something.

The thing is, our students can actually problem solve and they are not afraid to play around until they get what they want out of something. It is rare for me these days to take my kids to the computer rooms and have a lesson teaching them "how to do..."

Now I teach two/three people and simply let the knowledge spread around those who have not already worked it out by playing with it. This spreads faster than an email around the world and much faster than I could have taught the whole class. What's more, students' communication skills and knowledge are being reinforced through this process.

My next project with my class is creating a collaborative wiki with what we are learning about the Treaty of Waitangi. We should have this finished by the end of term 2 - so keep an eye on this one :)
http://treatyortrick.wikispaces.com/

Student blogging in the classroom and as homework

The interesting thing for me, is the different way this has made me think about how I teach and also why I teach things.

Last year we concentrated on thinking skills and integrating them into our classes. This has been so much fun. Lessons are now really quite invigorating and I look foward to teaching them. The students get to have a voice in the class room as they are thinking about their learning and thinking creatively and laterally about the information. This has been so beneficial.

My Year 10s, who I also taught last year are really starting to show the benefit of these thinking skills. The level of thinking that they are putting into their work is really showing up. Recently (after a gruelling assignment task) I made their weekly homework to simply blog their essay that they had written before. Previously, while I know that the students were helping each other out with the essay, it was all very secretive....they didn't really want to share what they were doing with each other. However, since blogging their essays, they are now going in and reading each other's essays and commenting on each others work - albeit the "hey that was great" kind of comment.

This is so powerful. My kids have been lead into reading without even a hint of an argument. WOW!!!!!!!!! This in contrast to when they were told by their English teacher that they had 2 hours of reading to do over the weekend, and there was a big huge groan around the room. I commented to them, that if they counted up the time they spent reading each others blogs, they would have read for almost an hour!

It has taken longer than some to really get into the whole blogging thing.... and I think in some cases, it was a case of my expectations that a part of their homework would be on the computer each week. (I have to admit failure when it came to my year 9s with this, but I will perserveare; my seniors are very spasmodic also...but I have to remember... BABY STEPS!!)

For many of my students this was a completely new experience and completely out of their comfort zone, however as my expectations have increased, more students have come on board slowly but surely.

Pop over and read some of thir blogs - they would love some comments from people all over the world and NZ.

Google docs and spreadsheets

Well - yesterday at school I got a huge shock.


No longer will schools purchase Microsoft word, excel etc for their students to use because the students do not use these often enough to justify the expense. (To clarify, teachers would still have access, just not students)


Well at first I was mind boggled over what on earth we would use... however very quickly I was informed of these FREE online sites that provide you with similar attributes to Microsoft's software.


Google docs and spreadsheets - is the place to go. I have been playing around on it today and it is pretty good.


Good points:

• easy navigation
• works the same way just about as Microsoft Word - so I didn't have to learn anything new
• It is very simple - not too many gadgets to be confused with
• I can publish a document and make it available for anyone to see - and of course every time you edit it, you do not have to upload it again. It already makes the changes when you save. This is awesome for me as a teacher who uploads documents for students to access from our website, and then finds there is a mistake in the document. This time instead of opening, saving, and uploading again; I simply edited and saved. The document changes it self!! YAAAA (from a teacher who always grammar and spelling errors - despite the dictionary etc)
• You can access your documents from anywhere - and you do not have to worry about whether you are on a Mac of a Microsoft version of anything.
• You can save the documents as Microsoft word or Mac equivalent, and have them on your hard drive or email them etc
• Very easy spreadsheet navigation
• Good simple graph maker
• Can do formulas - not sure to what extent though - I haven't got too technical with it yet
• You can post your document to your blog (which I am hoping to achieve with this blog - yes successful after a few attempts)
• You can save your graph straight to your documents on you hard drive, which stops all the fluffing around with cutting and pasting into paint. Like this one...

• It has an autosave option
• Students can access school work from home without having to have a school intranet with passwords
• You can add collaborators so many people can work on a document.
• You can upload documents from your hard drive
  

Down sides

• Limited features (although, realistically for kids to use, I think it has most of what it needs)
• Limited amount of storage space (but it is free)
• not sure about exporting the document to an online storage facility - I have not looked into this yet. (this could overcome the storage space dilemma)
• Limited size restrictions to documents. Just make sure you limit the amount of pictures and what not (500K - with images counted as something else - sorry I am not technical enough yet to explain this, check out there FAQS, it is one of the top 5).
• Spreadsheet has limited graph functions - no lines of best fit, colour changes, changing the width of bars etc. As a Geographer, I would like my kids to be able to use these sorts of features
• Need to become a google member - this really is not a down side at all - they have got some awesome stuff now including Gmail and blogging, calendars.... gadgets for web pages etc

So postives outweigh the negatives I think.

I will still be using the software on my hard drive, unless I am wanting to put my word document on my website - then I will use google.

As for my students, I will get them to use this to do work on, I think I will do alot of it on this, especially when they are blogging - it might reduce the amount of errors????

See what you think! :)

I am ready, I am just waiting...

Now that I have learnt how to use this blog, it is appropriate that I should use it accordingly. I have just been reading a blog called "Moving at Speed" by Wesley Fryer. It is a great blog that has made me reflect once again, about engaging my students in this 21st century that we live in.

A recent post about "Don't hold your breath" really hit home. How many teachers are really embracing technology and what it can do for us and our students?

Now I would first like to take my hat off to primary school teachers – especially those who are the ones who have recently been teaching me how to improve my own teaching pedagogy. I am a secondary school teacher, and I think we have got a lot to learn. Too often, I think we hide behind the fact that we are bogged down with getting students ready for assessments and exams, we don’t have time to play around with “stuff.” I know I have done that's for sure.

Yes I agree, we shouldn’t just be playing around, but the future of our students is at stake here. They are the ones we are preparing for the future, and it is their future, not ours. (I am sure you have heard that before!!)

I have spent the holidays glued to my laptop, and enjoying every minute of it. Have I had a holiday – well if you could see the smile on my face as I rattle of the things I have been learning, then you would see that it has been a very fun, and exciting educational holiday sitting in the sunshine, kittens to my side, playing on the computer!!

I have been working on my wiki sites so that my students can use these in class and in their own time. I suppose it has been like creating a web quest or an intranet that is public?? But the thing for me, is that my own learning, knowledge, understanding etc etc has increased dramatically over the last two weeks.

We do not get the newspaper, or watch the news, or listen to the radio, so I would have to admit to being a teacher who (until this week) would have been completely oblivious to what was happening in the world and New Zealand. However, with the integration of RSS feeds throughout my wiki pages on relevant topics, I now know at least what the headlines are!!! And I even read the ones that interest me.

I suppose the greatest thing about these holidays has been the time to just sit back and surf what is around. I have been checking out other teachers and education sites to see what they are up to and see how they are overcoming the challenges that I know that I am going to face. My Geography knowledge has increased ten-fold as i have built a wiki based just on Geography, and this can surely only benefit the kids; as I find out more, and find the places that they can learn the best from, then they are going to get more out of it as well.

I now have wikis for my classes with links to the web, RSS feeds, podcasts from other teachers, relevant videos, self made cartoons. I have a blog for the kids to comment on things and publish their work, and I have blogs for their class notes, so what am I waiting for…?

Well I am stuck between the expectation of using what I have learnt to improve my teaching practice and the fact that the technology simply does not exist in my classroom or the school for that matter.

I have my laptop, two data projectors to be shared between 6 classrooms, and one computer room that is almost fully booked. But I have got to a point where I don’t want to take the kids to the computer room, I "just" need a computer for each group so that they can work through the work at their own speed, collaborating together as they go, arguing, reflecting, justifying, teaching each other things and then clarifying from me as they need to. I hear you asking - why not use text books - well yes, that would be okay if they were actaully up todate!! Books cost money and they are out of date even before they went to print. When the kids use the web, we need to teach them to verify information, and identify the bias that is presented. They have to remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and then create!! This is by far more powerful than a text book, which gets taken for truth, despite the fact that it may tell you that Pluto is a planet. (This of course is from a Geography and Social Studies perspective. English - YES I STILL THINK WE SHOULD READ NOVELS and so on!!)

So I am ready, I am just waiting!! I wonder how long I will have to wait? just to provide a platform that makes sense and is what is expected!!!!

What's the answer?

Are we scared or are we safe?

A teachertube video by Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis.



Well, last year I would have said that we were being safe when it came to blocking sites that kids could communicate on and share their thoughts. But now I am begining to wonder.
The ideal is awesome and so good for our kids and their learning. They love interacting in real time with people from all over the place, and constantly pushing the boundaries. I find the more "technology" (and I mean this in the broadest sense of the word) I give them, the more they begin to problem solve and completely change what I would have thought they would do!

Isn't this what we want? Kids who problem solve? Can trouble shoot and brainstorm and come up with completely new and creative ways of going something?

The down side of all this is the fact that so many kids are not being taught how to use blogging and various other tools in a respectable manner. Just as we teach kids table manners and how to respect each other, we need to teach them the manners and protcols of online interactions. We don't expect kids to simply know how to respect other people and their differences, we teach them, show them, model it to them. Well, why would it be any different for online interactions?

We need to teach our kids our to interact on the internet in a respectable fashion that they would be proud of in the future. When I introduced classblogmeister to my senior students, one student asked if this was like BEBO in very excited tones!!!! I responded with hesitation, knowing the bullying and gang recruiting that happens on Bebo.

The same student has now posted some great blogs about Yr 12 Geography. While she knows that I am watching what they say and will not post anything that I consider inappropriate, I hope that by having this kind of experience, she will learn that blogging is not simply about posting what your favourite colour is and what you did in the weekend. While these are not to be looked down upon, I want my students to realise that they have a real voice that people can and should listen to, so why not really say what you think in an appropriate, and respectable manner.

Thanks Vicki for your video post. It seems everytime I search I come up with something from you. That is a great thing.

Last thoughts, I think I am still safe, but I am learning not to be scared!

Converted blogger!

I never thought that bloggin would be useful in a classroom context, let alone an educational one, however, an open mind and my students' blogs is changing this. My students are blogging and doing it really well. We use classblogmeister as it is safe for everyone.