Alan November - Banning Student Containers

Alan November
Banning Student Containers

Philosophical presentation, digital learning farm is a cool vision. Like the specificity of things to try in the classroom. Lacked factual justification, but good correlary to Warlick's presentation.

The US has become one of the most restrictive countries for using the tools they use at home at school.

We should study what kids do with technology when they are at home. If middle school girls had gotten hold of paper before teachers in the middle ages we would have banned pencil and paper.

Most school work is very self-centered compared to the work that they were doing prior to the industrial age when they were doing work on the farm that was vital to the family.

There are kids in China who are more desparate than our kids. They want the life that we have. We need to create a culture of learning where our student are demandng more work so they will be able to compete.

The digital learning farm where children are farmers. Give children jobs on the digital learning farm.

“The best school’s I have seen are where the learner owns the learning. Until we get to a culture where the learner owns the learning it doesn’t matter.”

Step 1 – Homework is going to contribute to the good of the whole instead of the individual. i.e. Create a tutorial design team

screencastomatic is a free tool for broadcasting

Step 2 – Curriculum review team – create a weekly podcast reviewing the previous week’s curriculum

Step 3 – Daily researcher sits at Internet connected computer to get answers to factual questions. Teach critical thinking on the Web. (research response to Pope’s speech in Turkey, don’t want to just see the US version, look at tr domain)

Step 4 – Global Conversation Team - Get primary resource materials across the world regarding all subject materials. Have an international discussion of topics.

Step 5 – Official Scribe – takes notes and embeds Web tools on a daily basis

Joselyn Todd had one of the participants do this during her session earlier this morning.

fear and imagination are the two barriers to innovation

What's New from Google - Patrick Crispen

Googlebots from Patrick Crispen

fun presentation - Google 411 tip and Creative Commons search are AWESOME

The Googlebots send Google a complete copy of the entire Web page.

http://netsquirrel.com/ - to see his old presentation on how Google works and gets a page rank

Patrick gives permission to use his presentations under Creative Commons

Google 411

Call 1-800-goog411 will text the directions or map to cell phone, doesn’t offer residential information . . . yet

Google Mobile Maps is a dowloadable cell phone application, see real time traffic information; google.gmm; more cell phone stuff mobile.google.com

in google maps set location and then type ribs in [location]

Google Research Tools

books.google.com

full text searching of thousands of books – adding ~ 3,000 books a day

Google has scanned and you can search the content of books to let you know where the word you are searching for occurs in the book, but won’t let you read the book online (with a few exceptions)

scholar.google.com

limits searches to peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles

news.google.com

news archive search – can find out where the article is and then you have to go to your library and get the real document. look on left hand side for the timeline

Google notebook www.google.com/notebook

browser add-in that lets you save information from the Internet onto a virtual 3x5 card, highlight information on web site, click on the star it adds what you wanted to your Google notebook page. on your notebook page it has all the information you nee to cite the resource

on advanced search there is a choice under usage writes to specifically look for Creative Commons materials

common facts can be searched using plain English

Google will make basic mathematical calculations

3*5

1 light year in miles

1 cup in teaspoons

1 dollar in euros

define smoots

weather: greensboro nc

movie [zipcode]

Google Productivity Tools

could create a classroom set of email addresses on gaggle.net

Google Docs has Powerpoint now too

Technorati Tags: GoogleEarth Crispen GoogleDocs NCETC NCETC07

Becoming a Teacher

Eight years ago, one of the teachers that I respected the most told me that I needed more experience with the demands of classroom teaching. I knew she was right. I earned my teacher's certificate in college, but decided to work in my major, engineering, after graduating.

My first job as a teacher was in an urban middle school six years later. I took over in March for a teacher who left. It was a tough position. I was trying to teach control adolescents that were emboldened by the fact that they had “run off the last teacher.” I survived the few months and had some moments when I felt that I was really reaching the kids.

The next fall teachers shuffled around and the principal decided to put Life Skills (the modern version of Home Ec.) back into the classroom where I had been teaching. I was moved to the Media Center where I became the computer resource teacher. I did teach one elective course each day, but I didn’t have a full teaching load. I loved that position and collaborated with many of the teachers in the school, but I didn’t have to track attendance, turn in grades, attend IEP meetings, hold parent conferences or prepare students for standardized tests. I wasn’t a real teacher.

That brings me to this fall when I got my own classroom again. I was fully four weeks into the school year when I panicked realizing that I had not started recording any grades. Our school district issues report cards every 9 weeks in elementary school. So I was nearly half way through the grading period and didn’t have anything to base grades on. Honestly, I was still struggling to recognize the students since I had only seen each of them four times.

I started making notes on my seating chart for each class about how the students were performing. In the ten minutes between classes I would try to get the lab ready for the next group of students and record my grading notes in a spreadsheet. My third graders wrote acrostic poems. So each night I carried a stack home to grade and record. And I poured through pacing guides and curriculum Web sites planning lessons.

I was starting to feel like I was keeping all the balls in the air in this juggling act, when the testing coordinator for our school came in two weeks ago. “Computer benchmark tests are going to be next week. We need you to help administer them to the fifth grade.” I wanted to scream, “Are you kidding me?! I don’t have time for that. Go talk to someone else.” I didn’t. I just tried to juggle a little faster.

I haven’t been to the K-12 Online conference. I am not presenting at NCETC this year. I have not conducted any workshops for other educators in months. I haven’t been keeping up with my favorite bloggers.

But I am learning what its like to be a teacher.

Technorati Tags: k-12 k12online k12online07 NCETC teacher