Professional Development

     When I first started teaching in Hartford 8 years ago, all of the Professional Development (PD) planned for teachers was either district-based or school-based. The problem with both of those were that the focus was always about what everyone should be doing in the classroom and never individually tailored to the specific needs of the teacher. Then about 5 years into my tenure with the Hartford Public Schools, those PD's switched to being only school-based and not district based. I saw this as a step in the right direction, hoping that we'd be able to focus on issues that may be individual to each school or cluster/grouping of kids. But what I saw as a step in the right direction turned out more to be a shuffle-step to the side because all we ended up doing was having the same kind of subject-based PD but just as a school, in a smaller setting, still being force-fed information and curriculum that (because of time restraints) never had much of an impact on the teachers who were dealing with all their other variables in the classroom that weren't being addressed.

     What I've learned along the way, from teaching for years in the same school system, as well as from my EDT classes throughout the years, is that PD is only helpful and successful when it is planned to target a specific need. Like good instruction in the classroom, PD has to be planned out thoughtfully in order to address the needs of both the students and the teacher. I say the needs of both students and teachers because it seems that all of the PD teachers are required to attend is directly related to student progress concerning with the curriculum in place for each grade level, but the PD sessions never address the numerous 'what if' scenarios that arise in many of the classrooms, most of the time being unique to that particular classroom environment. 

     If PD is ever going to be a successful tool in Hartford then I believe the focus needs to be on what each school and group of grade-level teachers at that school need the most help with. Many of the programs and strategies introduced at PD could just as easily be delivered at school meetings or in the weekly email bulletin that is already sent out. Teachers might also take the PD days more seriously if they knew ahead of time that what was being covered would directly be helping them in the classroom and offering solutions to problems they may have encountered with the curriculum. Technology PD is something that teachers need to sign up for ahead of time, and are given CEUs for attending. I also think that mindset needs to change in Hartford, because if you only have technology PD being offered on a sign-up basis, that's either telling the teachers "it's okay if you don't use the technology we've provided you with" or "Have fun learning how to use the technology available to you if your schedule doesn't allow you to attend any of these sessions."

Online Safety: AUP...huh?

When I moved from a middle school in Hartford that was being phased-out and closed-down to a successful K-8 magnet school in Hartford I knew that I would have much more technology to use with my students, both in the classroom and school computer labs. So, you'd think that there would be a more strict AUP document in place in the building. Think again. Just like the first school that I taught my first 7 years at in Hartford, my new school has no AUP for the students in the building. The people I spoke with downtown at the Board of Education said that there used to be a district-wide policy but hadn't updated it in years and was now a school responsibility to come up with their own. If I had to guess, I'd say that most schools in Hartford don't have their own AUP in place and that it is why we have to monitor the kids so closely when we bring them to a computer lab. I think that not having an AUP for students, that they sign at the beginning of each school year and are held responsible for gives them the wrong message about how important online safety is.
At my old school, there were 3 main rules displayed over any computer or computer lab in the building. Along with these rules were the consequences that students would suffer if they broke any of the overarching rules. It was basically a three strikes and you're out system, but my new building doesn't even have that. Administration in charge of the computer labs say that it is up to us as teachers to explain the rules of the lab every time it's used and to always be walking around to monitor student progress, also making sure that they don't stray onto any sites that they shouldn't be surfing on. The main problem with that is teachers will come up with their own rules to give students and if something goes wrong on the internet while you're the teacher in the room...well that could cause a huge problem. Since there were brand new computers placed in the school's 3 labs, I asked my principal why there wasn't any AUP document for students to sign like the uniform and school rules contract they get at the start of every year, and she said, "It's being created this summer."

I'm not going to hold my breath.

Digital Storytelling

My Digital Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG62Mka_OmE


Producing a digital story of my life was pretty challenging. That was one of the reasons I chose myself as the subject of my first attempt at a digital story. I also saw that some of the most amusing pictures that I had were ones from the past proving what a dork I was growing up. I found that I ended up focusing on the part of my life I remember most fondly and they seemed to work well with explaining who I am. What I found most challenging about this was locating all of the pictures that I wanted to use and then figuring out how much time I needed the photo displayed while I was narrating, but being able to record my narration while I was watching the clips allowed me to see how much time the photo had left on the screen made the narration easy on the iMac I Have at home with the built in microphone. Never any 'connection' problems with audio because when there's no line out detected, the iMovie program automatically uses the internal microphone.

I also made a digital story about me because I wanted to give it is an option to my students at the beginning of next year. I always have them write an essay about who they are and what they're interested in, sometimes students would even make collages and picture books, but this would be a perfect way for them to both work with new and emerging technology, but also have to constantly be writing and rewriting text is an excellent way to tie in an original class-created document into their everyday classwork. Most of my students may need help in learning how to use the tools to create a digital story, but between me and my students who would outdo me x10 (the geek I hug every week) the students who really wanted to learn how to do this would find a way to learn from me or a peer.  

I taught a recent lesson on mood and tone in photography to my students, and studying about digital storytelling made me want to watch all the Ken Burns PBS documentaries that I could find, and ending up showing each class a great 24 minute clip about his Nation Parks series (http://video.pbs.org/video/1132712651/) to find all the students amazed at what a photograph can convey. I think that digital storytelling would be a great way for students to express who they are to me as well as their classmates at the start of next school year. The most important part of this learning experience for me was in seeing the amount of time that it took some of the programs to 'upload' images and video especially. It took hours for youtube to import my file but I wanted to use you tube to host the video because it's now attached to my google account. 

Google Docs & Open Office

Google Docs Vs. Open Office...
Having used both platforms for a few months now, I think that both suites of productivity tools are excellent FREE resources. I think that the two work best together because of the one reason that sets them apart. Google Docs are saved to your google account (gmail, iGoogle) online in one of the many clouds whereas Open Office stays put on your desktop, where it (and the documents that you create and save from Open Office) will always be so even when you can't access the internet, you can still work on your Open Office docs. Since I have internet access at home, work and even grad school (all wireless as well) it makes sense for me to keep most of my active documents in Google Docs because I am able to get to them no matter where I was or what computer I was on. But lets just say that I took my laptop with me golfing at Tower Ridge, where I don't have a wireless signal, I would have to create a document in Open Office and just save the work while my dad was hitting out of the sand trap, and then if I wanted to later could easily upload it to my Google Docs when online. Easy enough for my students to remember as well: Open Office = work offline, Google Docs = work online. For students of mine that already have multiple documents on different computers at school and home have started uploaded them all to one place on Google Docs for better organization, and some 8th graders that I try help mentor about high school choices have uploaded essays and application questions to their Google Docs for future editing, use and reference.

Other than being free, the fact that both programs can easily read most files from new and older software makes platform compatibility a thing of the past. Even the oldest Microsoft Word docs that I have from 10 years ago uploaded fine to both. And since many of those big-name fancy software companies don't allow you to save as an older version or even sometimes open older versions of documents, think of all the headaches and hassles this would solve in schools where many of the computer equipment is outdated or just mismatched labs set up where the school could find enough space. Just by using Open Office and Google Docs, both students and staff could have the ability to share and save work that was accessible to them anywhere at anytime as long as they could get online and had what they needed uploaded or saved in their Google Docs. I also like how you can select more that one file at a time to upload to each program, making it easier for users to make a fresh start with programs that won't empty your wallet and create endless possibilities for collaboration in and out of the classroom. Open Office looks like it has a ton of templates and add-ons available, so that may take some time to see what other uses it could have in the classroom, or it may be worth having students start using both platforms and have them come up with some ideas to use the various programs in their courses. 

On a more personal note, Goggle Docs has been a huge help to me in organizing all my course work from the Ed Tech program after my laptop went down and I needed a place to quickly upload all of the documents that I needed to save that were created along the vast journey these past seven or so years. Here's to you! Google Docs!!!

WebQuests

When I first started teaching 7th & 8th grade Language Arts at Quirk Middle in Hartford, It was 2002 and there was little to no technology available for teachers to integrate into their curriculum. The three computer labs in the building was all we really had to work with. I was teaching a poetry unit at the time that also included lyrics to popular Motown songs and designed an on-line scavenger hunt for the students that only included 2 different websites that they'd need to browse through in order to find the facts that would answer their questions. In 2002 I had never heard of a WebQuest before and was just trying to get through my first year of teaching while still keeping my 118 bouncy-ball students engaged and learning. Even without knowing much about the educational design and what specific standards I was hitting, I think I did a pretty good job back then considering the lack of tools I had at my disposal. Even setting up the lab back in '02 meant coming in an hour early just to make sure that all the computers were working, and had the 2 websites I needed bookmarked on each computer.....(I could go on and on)

Now that I've built a few WebQuests and studied up more on their power and uses, I can see how developments and improvements over the past decade on the web and with the new Web 2.0 tools, how WebQuests can incorporate more research and relevant information in a more streamlined manner. If Custom Search Engines were around when I built my website scavenger hunt assignment back in the day, I would have had a much easier time providing a path for the students to follow as they worked through their questions. CSEs are the perfect fit for webquests because of the control you have when building the CSE and what its capabilities will be for the student. While reading So Far From the Bamboo Grove (a novel about a Japanese family stuck in North Korea after WWII & their journey to make it back to Japan safely) I was using Google Earth quite frequently to zoom in from space to the North Korea, South Korea, Japan area to show them what the landscapes looked like in Nannam compared to Seoul and Pusan. I didn't see many actual photos thumb-tacked down on the maps to look at, but just being able to zoom down and in on the Imjon river and where it crosses the 38th parallel gives the kids that visual some of them so baldy crave now, so with those types of pictures, photos and sometimes even video available, WebQuests don't have to be just a simple journey down a pre-blazed digital trail. 

My students have already completed on a map/timeline of the family's journey back to Japan that has a 'travel line' with numbers along the line that explain important events that happened along the way. By using Google Earth with them now, they can go back to those actual places in North Korea, South Korea, Japan on Google Earth and create their own travel logs online with coordinates of where they think the certain events happen based on information they get from the book. They could even go out looking for pictures of certain cities, landmarks and important locations in North Korea, South Korea, Japan to help make the journey more real to them. If this assignment was done in a step by step process as the reading groups progressed through the book, I think it would have more of an impact as well as rope in some of the more reluctant readers right from the start.

CSEs (better late than never)

Now that I've stopped construction on the Ark, prevented my basement from flooding AND had COX Communications finally restore our cable/internet/phone to working order, I can finally jot down some thoughts and revelations about Google's Custom Search Engines and what a great tool they have already been to both myself and my colleagues. All of the 7th and 8th grade teachers at my school now have gmail account sand have a least been using google docs for a few weeks now, so I decided to give them a brief rundown about Google's CSE's at our team meeting on tuesday of last week. They were all so excited that all but the math teacher decided to use a CSE engine with the 7th and 8th graders as a whole class the next time they went to the computer lab. I asked both the science and social studies teacher why they were so excited about building CSEs, and both responses had to do with having "control of the content that students will be directed to on the web."

I also believe that the "control" aspect of CSEs is what makes them such a great educational tool. Not just for the teacher, but for the student as well. Using a CSE for the webquest that we're building is going to streamline the project for the student by directing them to the most appropriate information that will help them complete the tasks involved. The same could be said for the science teacher at my school that designed  CSE loaded with all the best middle school-based science fair projects: ideas, suggestions, science curriculum tie-ins and standards. He was able to keep the students from clicking off on tangents and staying in the "realm" that he wanted them in. I liked the way he used the word 'realm' and so did the social studies teacher, so much that he also built a CSE for students to use when they went to choose countries from Latin America that they would research. 

CSEs would also be great for students to use in making up their own webquests for classmates. Once they've been taught how to properly evaluate websites for educational purposes, having the students build their own CSE could be a powerful tool in helping them construct their own realms of knowledge based on what they found most interesting in social studies, science, or language arts class. 

Flick & Digital Photography

If anything, my new flickr.com account will give me a place to keep all of the photos I use in my class, and plan to use with my class in the future. I have a ton of photos on my iMac and a ton as well on my laptop. After my wedding a couple years ago I took a month of that summer archiving all of my photos and videos collected throughout the years, and backing up all that info was very time consuming. But it also gave me a chance to reconnect with many images I hadn't seen in years, and now that I can easily locate all of my old photos and video clips, I have a place to upload the ones that I'd like to share.
I've also recommended flickr.com to the 8th graders at my school working on a yearbook. They had been taking photos on their digital cameras and emailing their shots back and forth to each other. But as you could imagine, with 8 or 9 people taking pictures, that was alot of emails, alot of images on already slow-running computers. Making sure that the site wasn't blocked on the school computers, I told them if they each got an account at flickr.com they'd be able to share their photos with each other the instant they're uploaded to the site. I also explained that if they were nerdy like me and labeled the photos well when they saved the file that would be uploaded to flickr it would make the pics much easier to label once they were done being uploaded.
I was pleasantly surprised when I uploaded my first photos how the file name I saved them as was automatically in the description box for that photo. I also liked the ease of flickr to organize and label all of the photos individually and in sets as well. There are so many possibilities for the use of the Creative Commons photos in the classroom, and the countless ways students can tag and label their own photos, or find photos that are interesting to them as well from all over the world is pretty powerful. My students would have a great time taking the information they collect in science or social studies class to annotate a picture for other classmates to learn from.
I've only had time to upload some photos from my home computer of my family to give the students and example of my home life and what's important to me. I will be asking them to do the same with pictures they really love of their family. The kodak photo program I used exported the pictures in a form the program called, "best for the web." I think they look a bit dull, and blurry even, so I'd have to say the next batch I upload will be saved at a higher resolution. Check out my first album at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/herman75/sets/72157623638963422/