Colorado Conversation: Roundtable With Barbara and Clarence February 23, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions, Edubloggers.add a comment
This conversation is run through http://www.mebeam.com/alpharoom.php?room=colearning
Barbara Barreda – K-8 principal from Los Angeles, CA.
Clarence Fisher – 7th and 8th grade teacher from Snowlake, Manitoba
B- our students have a limited view of the world. Working with C’s students has expanded their horizons.
C- B and I met over the Internet, through blogs, through Skype
C- we wanted ‘Thin Walls’ to go beyond an online project. A lot of it was experimental. We started off with VoiceThreads. We went from there to blogs. We did a novel study together. We’re learning to be facilitators, to get out of the way, to develop the tools as they are needed.
B- my students live below the porverty level, but in a private school, our parents make a lot of sacrifices. We work to get computers donated, we use open source solutions.
C- we’ve found that the open source and web based solutions lend themselves to collaboration better than the commercial tools.
C- we’ve worked on common rubrics, some common grading standards. It is difficult to assess (through existing standards) manners and collaboration. We’ve had to develop many of the tools ourselves.
B- some of our teachers have shifted to assessing skills.
B- we’re going to be working on that global understanding through the rest of the year.
Are you seeing a change in the writing skills of students who are collaborating online? C- they become writers of their own account. They learn the authentic voices of that are their own. They learn about voice and audience. We live in a world where experts are going away and everyone has an equal voice. B- we have a better idea of students’ thinking than we would in regular classroom interactions because we have the whole conversation. C- the ability to access and review the transcript provides a window we don’t have otherwise.
C- students are IM-ing each other, but we haven’t see much social networking. B- I have a MySpace account and haven’t seen much interaction on the part of the students.
B- we’re trying to show that these are learning spaces, not just games. C- active mornitoring on the part of the teacher helps students learn to be good digital citizens.
C- the Asus eeepc’s we got were flying off the shelves for sustained silent reading. To me reading is reading.
B- give them (teachers) permission to make mistakes and time to try new things. (I think this applies to students too!)
http://colearning.wikispaces.com/Thin+Walls
Edubloggers Directory February 19, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers.add a comment
By way of Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog, I’m adding information to the Associations page of this blog to include the International Edubloggers Directory.
http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com/
Great Lists of Publishing Resources February 17, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Link Collections, Tools.1 comment so far
Langwitches has posted a great list of student resources for the classroom. Her list is inspired by the work of Larry Ferlazzo, who has his own collection of student resources for publishing. Both are linked below.
Langwitches classroom resources: http://www.langwitches.org/blog/2008/02/17/inspired-by-larry-ferlazzo-the-listmaster/
Larry Ferlazzo’s ‘best way to create online content’: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=best+ways+to+create+online+content+easily%2C+quickly
My own short list of publishing links on del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/publishing
2008 Education Blogosphere Survey January 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data, Edubloggers.add a comment
The title kind of says it all. If you are an edublogger, take a survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6StV_2bQlONrIuhBYx3O3cEA_3d_3d
Edublog Awards for 2007 December 12, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Link Collections.add a comment
The 2007 Edublogs Awards have been announced. Awards like this are a great way to find the best of the best if you are looking to jump in some place. From the looks of the list of award winners, I have a bit of jumping in to do too.
http://edublogawards.com/and-the-winners-are/
Students 2.0 December 11, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Edubloggers.3 comments
A new student-focused blog portal has arrived on the scene, called Students 2.0. In there own words:
This blog is an attempt to give students a voice in where the future of education is headed. But do not let the idea of listening to students turn you away: for everyone here is also a teacher. We are a team from across the globe: the cream of an immense crop of students, and this is our time.
There are several worth while posts to read and respond to. In particular, I was impressed with “Global Villages” that compared a virtual social network to a small town. The quote below gives you an idea of the tenor of article:
A critical step forward for schools would be to embrace the social villages of students and faculty alike. Schools should be developing portals and websites which take into account the social aspects of our lives. Even more importantly, once those networks are developed, the users should have the ability to welcome others into their village; too often we see systems which further isolate the school community from the larger social community.
http://students2oh.org/2007/12/11/global-village/
Edublog Award Finalists November 26, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Edubloggers, Edublogs, Link Collections, Tools.add a comment
Looking for great blogs? Try the 2007 Edublog Award finalists.
http://edublogawards.com/edublog-awards-2007-finalists-announced/
Annotation September 29, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Edubloggers, Tools.add a comment
Clarence Fisher, in his Remote Access blog posted an interesting activity about annotating text as an exploration of literacy. This seems like a terrific activity that brings those automatic skills good readers exhibit up to a more conscious level.
For a better description of the activity see his post here:
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/09/annotate-a-te-1.html
Just a few days later, Vicki Davis posted an interesting exploration of what I’ll call annotated text on her blog, Cool Cat Teacher Blog. I was struck by the similarities between Fisher’s example image and example number 6 from Davis.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-text-only-enough-for-todays-students.html
Another example of posted deconstructed or annotated text can be found on the Remote Access blog here:
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/09/blogs-complex-s.html
It looks like you could use JKN (http://info.jkn.com/) or Trailfire (http://www.trailfire.com/) do accomplish something similar with web pages, though I haven’t used either and suspect there may be even better tools available.
