New Endeavors

Starting tomorrow I will be blogging with my students! This is a big step with the Space Science Honors class because no one in the school is doing this. I am pretty excited to do this with them! So far we have done a little bit of VoiceThread and we will soon be Tweeting!

I have had some nice feedback from the parents so far too. They are impressed and glad that their kids are doing this because they will soon be faced with these programs in college. I have been journaling about how things are going and I hope to be able to use it as I go along!

How far I've come!

When I first signed up for the Learning through Technology class I was very apprehensive about it. The main reason was that I thought it was going to be another one of those here is a computer and all of its parts and here are word, powerpoint, and excel. Boy, was I TOTALLY wrong! This class was amazing and I am so excited to be able to actually use things that I have learned in one of my grad classes in my own classroom. Often times we sit in our classes and listen to all of these great theories and then when we try to implement them we realize that there is no way to actually use it. But I feel that I will be able to use tons of the things that I learned in this tech class. I feel like I learned at least one new thing every week. I actually found myself going home and fiddling with the applications we had learned about that night.

So as some of you know I am going to be teaching a new class this year...Space Science Honors level! I am really excited to start this because teaching this class is really enjoyable. The kids love this class because they have not been exposed to it very much and they love learning about space. But this time around I get to kick it up a notch! I was recently approved to make the class tech rich. I will have a mobile cart in my classroom with 25 MacBooks, full wireless internet and a printer. Throughout the term the students will be doing many of the things that I had to do this summer in my Tech class. This will include making their own websites with Google sites, sharing documents electronically, creating a blog site of their own to reflect on the things we will do in class, Twitter, Voice Thread, interactive whiteboards (hopefully if I can get it to work tonight!), WebQuests, Wordle, website evaluation, podcasts (listening to and perhaps making them), and Wikis. My hope is to be able to integrate technology into the content without taking away from the meat of the class. I want them to be able to use these programs/applications and learn space science at the same time. Ideally, this will be successful but as most teachers know things don't always work out the way we want them to. But I figured I would give it a try!

To Dave and the Ladies of EDU 533 thank you for making this such a great class! I hope to keep in touch with you all as you delve into the world of education! Best of luck on your future endeavors and remember...if we based teaching on the first year we would only have first year teachers! It does get easier...I promise!

Why PLN?

Why have I decided to delve into the world of PLN's? At first I had my doubts about this...but after using the many applications I have found that I am pretty interested in it. It is addicting actually! I have joined a few of the Ning sites such as Classroom 2.0. There are always lots of great links to websites, or discussion boards or one on one conversations with others that are linked in to the site. I use Facebook, but strictly as a personal PLN. I also use Twitter and this is mostly for professional purposes. I have taken part in a few webinars to better my knowledge of various uses of technology integration for the classroom.

PLN's can be quite helpful in the professional world! I am still very new to this world, but I have found so many useful things! I enjoy skype-ing with friends and with professionals. I have found lots of different teacher's websites through TeacherWeb on Twitter. It picks a website that belongs to a teacher a day that they feel are good models. This has been really nice to help me try to improve my site.

I can see how this would be a difficult thing for people just starting out as teachers. If you don't know what to look for it would be hard to know where to begin. After having taught for 7 years I know what I am looking for in my content area but I am still, at times, unsure what to look in the technology front.

I have had the luxury of being able to take the summer off and have really enjoyed looking into the various technologies that we have learned about in class. I wonder how much time I will be able to devote to it during the hustle and bustle of the school year.

Man on the What??

I am an astronomy teacher at a H.S. in New Hampshire and this is one of my favorite subjects to teach.  Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon.  Those men are in their 70's now but made such a huge impact on where we are today in our space exploration and where we are headed in the future.  

I had dinner with my parents the other night and we were discussing the fact that we are going back to the moon.  My dad wasn't quite sure why we would go back there if we have already been.  But after talking with him and explaining the innovations that have happened in technology in the last 40 years he was a little bit more receptive to the idea of going back.

Do you remember this night?  I was not born yet but I bet it was amazing!  I have seen the news clips and the recaps but please feel free to comment and tell me what you remember.  It is always nice to have first hand accounts to relay back to my students when we discuss the moon.

Equal Access...Is it really equal?

After doing a bit of research about equal access when it comes to technology in the classroom I found that it really comes down to two things: funding and professional development.  In order for teachers to provide an equal experience to all students in their classroom they need to know how to do that first.  Many times you hear teachers (who are less experienced in the technology world) say that they used technology by having their students word process the reports they have been working on in class.  Why don't you just drag out the typewriters and have the students use those because that's the extent of technology you incorporated into the classroom!  Don't get me wrong, students need the experience word processing documents, but using a class period or more to do this isn't really applicable any more.  

So how do we get teachers out of this mind frame and have them use technology more effectively?  We teach them!  What a novel idea!!  If we want our students to use technology appropriately we teach them how to use it (hopefully) but if we want our teachers to use technology what do we do?  We plop a computer in their classroom and say "here you go...use this!"  But there rarely is instruction on how to use the computers effectively and equally in the classroom.  The school districts need to hire people who know how to use the computers in the classroom effectively and they need to be able to convey this to teachers. This should not be the "tech guy" in the building, they have enough problems to worry about!  This should be someone who is paid to help teacher integrate technologies into the classroom that all students will have access to and an equal experience.  This should be part of every teacher's professional development, they should have to learn how to use the resources that are available to them.  If there is video conferencing materials at the school, utilize them!  If there are mobile carts with a class set of computers on it, use them not only for word processing, but for other things too... web quests, research methods,  digital storytelling, blogging, and voice threads.  These are resources that are very user friendly, are free and may not require the students to have internet access (if their parents will not allow them internet access).

The second problem with trying to give all students equal access is money.  Many districts can not afford to have computers in all classrooms and ones available to all students.   In order for all students to have equal access to technology a district needs to be able to provide that opportunity to the students, through funding, classes, and seat time.  If the students do not practice using the computers they will not be as skilled as using the computers as other students would be.

I look at an article called "Ensuring that Students Have Equal Access to Technology".  Check it out at this link:

http://tie.smartlibrary.org/newinterface/segment.cfm?segment=2349&question_id=26910&from_segment=2244

To evaluate or not to evaluate?

Why should a teacher evaluate a website they are going to use in the classroom?  This is an interesting question.  There is nothing like showing a website to a class full of students to find that it wasn't exactly what you thought it was.  Teachers should always research what they are using to prevent an embarrassing mishap!  

It happens often times that you discover a website that looks amazing, full of great information, and detailed pictures.  But after doing a little bit of uncovering you find that the sight is run by a biased party.  Then you have to think:  Is this information factual?  How skewed is the opinion being expressed? Or is this an open source, where any one can post any information, factual or not?

Moral of the story...do your homework and check your sources!  Make sure that what you are showing the students is accurate, factual and unbiased.  It is not worth finding out too late that the site you have chosen is not as great as you initially thought it was!

What is Technology Integration?

What is technology integration?  I think it all depends on who you are talking to.  Some of the "oldies" may say that allowing the students to use a calculator or a computer to type an essay is integrating technology.  But I think it is so much more!  The amount of things that are out there for today's students is amazing!  

Last year, our school purchased two classroom sets of graphing calculators with these pod type things.  The students are in groups of 4 and hook up to the pod which in turn hooks up to the teacher's computer.  The teacher can have the students create a certain type of graph, have it go to the teachers computer when they are ready and the teacher can display the graph using a projector to the entire class.  The class can then analyze the graph displayed and see if their results match!  Amazing...and instant gratification (which we all know is exactly what kids are looking for).

Another piece of technology that I have come in contact with is video conferencing.  We have a room in our school that is fully equipped with video conferencing materials all purchased through grants.  In the past two years I have video conferenced with NASA scientists (for FREE..check it out at http://dln.nasa.gov/dln/) on four occasions!  The kids were amazed that they could actually talk to a real NASA scientist.  This not only got the kids involved but it showed the district how easy it was for us to do this.  

I feel that as teachers it is important to expose the students to as many technology resources that we can get a hold of.  If we don't do this then who will show them that their computer is more than AIM, Internet and E-mail?  It is our professional responsibility to show them how much is out there and how to properly use it!  So the next time you want them to do a project, don't have them make a poster, have them make a website or a blog about their topic.  It gets the student's involved and it is a lot easier carrying around your laptop rather than a huge stack of posters!