Although it means I'll have more time to cook dinner, I'm actually a little disappointed to be at Thing 23! I've really enjoyed learning about technology this way--the organization of the program made what seemed was initially overwhelming (the number of new things I had passively accepted ignorance about) simply fun. I won't attempt to answer the big question of what it all means definitively, but some "big ideas" I'll continue to think about are:
--how do we define community? how is it defined by our students?
--the speed of change: how do we keep up? how do our students keep up?
--equity & being left behind: if I get left behind, it's mainly my own fault. I have the resources. The stakes for not only being technologically-literate but also tech-efficient seem so high for our students, but I'm not sure that the urgency I often feel when I think about the flat world is widely shared.
--redefining "technology" from objects a teacher uses to enhance instruction to include intangible tools that facilitate student interaction and collaboration
Looking back at my initial post on Thing 1 & 2, I didn't have a radical shift in thought about the use of technology or the Internet in the classroom. I was open to it from the beginning on a personal level (I started using a computer when I was in preschool; some of my high school teachers were early adopters, so I've never questioned the place of the Internet in the classroom). I still have the same questions about how it might be applicable to my classroom given the subject I teach and the resources available, but I don't doubt for a minute that students' technological fluency is important. What has changed is my realization that many of things we explored have exciting possibilities for smoother collaboration and efficiency. I didn't think email attachments, for example, were particularly problematic, but actually using Google Docs (which I'd heard about and ignored), will change how I share information with my colleagues. I'm looking forward to having some additional time to spend on Flickr and plan to continue checking in with Bloglines.
As you might notice, these are all personal applications. Realistically, in the few weeks I have left before I go on maternity leave, I won't be incorporating anything new into my classroom. I'm more concerned that my sub will know where the mouthpiece puller is than with setting up a classroom blog. (Although it's not an entirely lost cause: I'm putting my files on Google Docs so that I can share them easier.) Completing the 23 Things project has given me some ideas about how I might incorporate more technology into some of the few non-musical projects we do as well as making me much more familiar with the world that students are growing up in, knowledge which has some value too.
I think that I'll make more of an effort to keep up. Some of the things I'd heard about but hadn't bothered to explore. It turned out that many of the new things were easy to do, and I think this experience will make me more likely to try them out and less likely to believe in the status quo. Of course, I'll want to know if RESA puts out a 23 Things version 2.0--this would be another great way to keep current!
Thanks to RESA and the facilitators for putting together such a great in-service opportunity. This has been tremendously interesting, much more so than many other professional development experiences I've attended. I'll definitely be recommending the next session to my colleagues!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Thing 22
My Wikispace is http://wagarmsbands.wikispaces.com/ but be forewarned: I don't like it. In fact, I wouldn't be making the site public unless requested to. Basically, it's the result of me playing around, learning the site, and it doesn't look like much compared to the websites I've created and maintained over the past five years. I found Wikispaces a little more difficult to use than I expected. The text formatting didn't turn out quite right and it seemed somewhat cumbersome to make changes. My district is currently using NexusBuilder for our teacher websites, which was easier for me to get a more professional-looking result upon first use. Prior to that, I used Publisher for my site, which was less flashy but again, seemingly easier to manage. More practice would likely make Wikispaces more intuitive; that, or a knowledge of html code, which might have helped me solve my design problems.
That said, I still struggle to find a purpose for a wiki space in my classroom. There just doesn't seem to be a pressing need for it. I can see it as a way to present info from our bio projects or comment on the process of preparing a piece for performance, but we're doing these things already in a lower-tech way and there doesn't seem to be a huge advantage to switch as of yet. Doing so would necessitate giving up a lot of rehearsal time since the only location everyone is guaranteed to have a computer is here at school.
In terms of how a wiki differs from a blog, it's more difficult for me to articulate how a wiki differs from a website except to say that there are multiple contributors. Blogs seem to usually (although not always) be the work of one person, as are traditional web pages. I think the choice of what to use depends on what the intended end result of the project is. A wiki seems like a great choice if it is a collaborative project, when many parts are added together to form a whole, and when contributors need a certain amount of independence to work on their parts from various places and at different times. A webpage would require the individuals to submit to a designated editor, who would then have the responsibility for publication. A blog seems more sequential; a wiki more flexible in terms of how to organize content. I'll be interested in what others say about this topic. Maybe that's it...with a wiki, we'd all be writing in the same spot!
That said, I still struggle to find a purpose for a wiki space in my classroom. There just doesn't seem to be a pressing need for it. I can see it as a way to present info from our bio projects or comment on the process of preparing a piece for performance, but we're doing these things already in a lower-tech way and there doesn't seem to be a huge advantage to switch as of yet. Doing so would necessitate giving up a lot of rehearsal time since the only location everyone is guaranteed to have a computer is here at school.
In terms of how a wiki differs from a blog, it's more difficult for me to articulate how a wiki differs from a website except to say that there are multiple contributors. Blogs seem to usually (although not always) be the work of one person, as are traditional web pages. I think the choice of what to use depends on what the intended end result of the project is. A wiki seems like a great choice if it is a collaborative project, when many parts are added together to form a whole, and when contributors need a certain amount of independence to work on their parts from various places and at different times. A webpage would require the individuals to submit to a designated editor, who would then have the responsibility for publication. A blog seems more sequential; a wiki more flexible in terms of how to organize content. I'll be interested in what others say about this topic. Maybe that's it...with a wiki, we'd all be writing in the same spot!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thing 20
I actually discovered Education Podcast Network while learning about Thing 19 since I was looking for ones related to music education. Searching it for such a broad subject was easy, although of course, the content it brought up was quite varied. Using Podcast Alley was a similar experience, although perhaps surprisingly, it was easier to find more specialized podcasts even though there were many more listed (and the podcasts were not necessarily education-related). I had no luck with Yahoo--I kept getting mp3 clips instead of podcasts. Perhaps if I spent more time with it I would have gotten it, but iTunes was so efficient it didn't seem worth it to work with Yahoo. It was interesting on iTunes to see what else people had subscribed to as well. Using iTunes, I subscribed to "This American Life" because I always enjoy it on the infrequent occasion that I catch it broadcast on the radio. I also found "Brass Band Podcast" through Podcast Alley, and subscribed to it through Bloglines. I like that Bloglines allows you to easily see updates but not necessarily download the program, thus taking up space on an iPod.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thing 21
Forgive the lapse in order... I didn't have iTunes at school yet had time to work on the 23 Things project, so out of order it is.
There wasn't a particular wiki that inspired me to go out and create my own, but browsing others' efforts expanded my understanding of what exactly a wiki is, and what it can potentially be. Prior to today, my definition of wiki was the prefix to wikipedia. I knew Wikipedia wasn't the only wiki out there, but hadn't seen many and thought of them as essentially a group-edited reference source (www.windrep.org is a particularly relevant example of this type). After visiting the suggested sites, I realized that online encyclopedia was too narrow a definition; they have a lot in common with traditional webpages too, with the advantage of multiple contributors (the Arbor Heights Elementary wiki seemed like a starting step to transform a webpage into a wiki). The sites done by students, and especially those that were collaborative projects between kids in different countries, were a cool way to demonstrate and share learning. The pen pal projects I remember from elementary school seem positively archaic in comparison.
I think it would be fairly simple to change my class website to a wiki, although I'm not sure the audience is really there to justify the effort. There are more significant challenges to creating a student-contributor/editor wiki. One is the familiar have/have not question: who has access to this technology? Confining the project to school hours only offers a solution, but the time involved would come at the expense of the main objective of my class--learning and experiencing music through playing an instrument. Copyright issues are also a consideration. Say we did do a wiki that was focused on analyzing and improving a set of repertoire for an upcoming performance: posting the audio file could potentially violate copyright. Lastly, it may be important to definine the scope of individual student responsibility. In the imaginary wiki above I can easily see certain students regularly contributing and others preferring not to...I can also see a discussion veering off into arguments about which sections messed up, a varient of the "too many cooks" problem. If everyone had their own specific task as well as guidelines for contributing and editing, I imagine this would be less of a problem.
At this point, I don't see a strong need or a simple way to authentically integrate a wiki into my classroom...but I see we'll be starting one for Thing 22, so I'll be giving it some additional thought!
There wasn't a particular wiki that inspired me to go out and create my own, but browsing others' efforts expanded my understanding of what exactly a wiki is, and what it can potentially be. Prior to today, my definition of wiki was the prefix to wikipedia. I knew Wikipedia wasn't the only wiki out there, but hadn't seen many and thought of them as essentially a group-edited reference source (www.windrep.org is a particularly relevant example of this type). After visiting the suggested sites, I realized that online encyclopedia was too narrow a definition; they have a lot in common with traditional webpages too, with the advantage of multiple contributors (the Arbor Heights Elementary wiki seemed like a starting step to transform a webpage into a wiki). The sites done by students, and especially those that were collaborative projects between kids in different countries, were a cool way to demonstrate and share learning. The pen pal projects I remember from elementary school seem positively archaic in comparison.
I think it would be fairly simple to change my class website to a wiki, although I'm not sure the audience is really there to justify the effort. There are more significant challenges to creating a student-contributor/editor wiki. One is the familiar have/have not question: who has access to this technology? Confining the project to school hours only offers a solution, but the time involved would come at the expense of the main objective of my class--learning and experiencing music through playing an instrument. Copyright issues are also a consideration. Say we did do a wiki that was focused on analyzing and improving a set of repertoire for an upcoming performance: posting the audio file could potentially violate copyright. Lastly, it may be important to definine the scope of individual student responsibility. In the imaginary wiki above I can easily see certain students regularly contributing and others preferring not to...I can also see a discussion veering off into arguments about which sections messed up, a varient of the "too many cooks" problem. If everyone had their own specific task as well as guidelines for contributing and editing, I imagine this would be less of a problem.
At this point, I don't see a strong need or a simple way to authentically integrate a wiki into my classroom...but I see we'll be starting one for Thing 22, so I'll be giving it some additional thought!
Thing 19
Compared to some of the programs and technologies we've been playing with, podcasting seems almost strangely normal. It's like the radio, on demand, except with a much wider variety of perspectives and producers. Never again will you have to hear the same Kid Rock song playing on three radio stations simultaneously.
Kids aren't supposed to have iPods or mp3-playing cell phones during the school day, and at present, we don't have the resources to produce our own podcasts (at least that I'm aware of). However, I found a couple of interesting programs and at the very least, can add them as links on my website. One is a series of podcasts that present middle school students' compositions. Created by Cranbrook students, the shows are posted at: http://www.cranbrookcomposers.com. We do listening and composition projects; I can easily see incorporating some of these students' podcasts as part of the lesson. I think it would be interesting for my students to hear what other kids their age have created.
Detroit JazzStage also has a series of podcasts featuring interviews and music highlighting the local jazz scene at http://www.jazzstageproductions.com. I'd have to surf more, but the existence of a podcast like this makes me wonder what other examples of professionally-played music might be out there for free listening besides radio streaming.
Lastly, I found a podcast called "Learn to Play the Digideroo" at http://echotree.tv. Without question, this is the most specialized podcast I discovered. The internet and the people who produce its content continue to amaze me...while it's not possible to have "seen it all;" the fat lady sung a long time ago (on YouTube, I'm sure...)!
Kids aren't supposed to have iPods or mp3-playing cell phones during the school day, and at present, we don't have the resources to produce our own podcasts (at least that I'm aware of). However, I found a couple of interesting programs and at the very least, can add them as links on my website. One is a series of podcasts that present middle school students' compositions. Created by Cranbrook students, the shows are posted at: http://www.cranbrookcomposers.com. We do listening and composition projects; I can easily see incorporating some of these students' podcasts as part of the lesson. I think it would be interesting for my students to hear what other kids their age have created.
Detroit JazzStage also has a series of podcasts featuring interviews and music highlighting the local jazz scene at http://www.jazzstageproductions.com. I'd have to surf more, but the existence of a podcast like this makes me wonder what other examples of professionally-played music might be out there for free listening besides radio streaming.
Lastly, I found a podcast called "Learn to Play the Digideroo" at http://echotree.tv. Without question, this is the most specialized podcast I discovered. The internet and the people who produce its content continue to amaze me...while it's not possible to have "seen it all;" the fat lady sung a long time ago (on YouTube, I'm sure...)!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Thing 18
Haven't we all sat through an interminable PowerPoint? One where you wonder what exactly the presenter was trying to communicate? Then in case you missed it, there's a handout with all the slides that weren't particularly informative duplicated in the unlikely event you might one day have a sudden need to refer to them. Trees in the forest hope for a better fate than to be used for slide show handouts. Besides the subject, I liked the sophisticated look of the presentation; mine look minor league in comparison!
I can see classroom uses in finding engaging presentations to use with students; I can also see using it as a way to share work, although since there isn't the collaborative editing capacity, it still seems that Google Docs or Zoho Show would be more beneficial for student-generated projects.
Thing 17
Truth be told, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of online communities there are. Why exactly is my calendar supposed to be a social network? (A PS after writing the entry: I can see using the calendar on my school website for upcoming band events.) Some of these tools, such as Remember the Milk and 30 Days, looked interesting yet more complicated than what I currently do. My husband's PDA syncs with our computer so we both have access to our calendar. If I need to remind myself to do something, I send myself an email. Of course, the time-honored post-it note method shouldn't be forgotten either! LibraryThing looked interesting, but not enough for me to invest time into using it instead of reading. Trailfire seemed a lot like Delicious; maybe I didn't fully understand it properly. Of the tools, Bubbl, Zoho and Knowtes seemed to have the most applications for the classroom, yet I kept wondering why I should have a Zoho account if Google Docs will do essentially the same thing? I was too young for the VHS/Betamax format war and didn't pay attention to the blue ray/whatever the other one was (!) high def DVD competition, but the sheer number of collaborative tools seem to have some similarities. I doubt that all of them will survive long-term; I'd expect one or two to become dominant. It also reminds me how important brand name and early brand loyalty is. I'd be less likely to switch from Google docs because I'm familiar with the Google name. Many people I know have Google accounts. Using the docs feature just seems like the next step, one that already has name-recongition and doesn't require yet another account to track.
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