Drawing Trees with Young Artists

Final Reflections

So, Where Do I Go From Here?

Wow!  It’s been an adventure the past 8 weeks.  I’ve learned more than I ever thought I could about how computers can be used in education and now I realize how much I still have to learn.  Thank you one and all for your support and comments.

I now can use the Read /Write web to put my photos on Picasa so that I can narrate them with Jing and put them in my wiki or share them through my social network blog. If that doesn’t get my point across I can always make a Youtube video to embed in my Ning or an Audioboo podcast.  If navigating my weblog is difficult I can make a screencast using Jing to show you how to find your way around Web 2.0.  To keep up on all of my postings you can link them all with an RSS feed aggregator so that they will all come to you in one place and you won’t have to keep logging in to all of the different sites.  Allow me to suggest a url to get you started.

I never could have done that before this class and now I can even though I still need a little practice and sometimes I use the help screens and search for a Youtube how to on the web.

From here I plan to use as much of this as I can in the second half of the school year.  I have already made a second wiki to use for a committee at school and did a presentation with it at a faculty inservice.  Everyone now has access to it and will use the information placed on it to help improve our student AIMS writing scores.  I also grabbed my laptop at school and captures photos of the firemen during their presentation to my class last week and then had students in my class recorded the event using Jing a few days later.  I’m on a roll now.  The more I use these programs the more natural they become and the more ideas I have for using them.

And the adventure continues.  I love to create and this is one more outlet for me to do so with and for my students.  The skills and knowledge I have learned in this class have been more relevant than most of the classes I have taken in the last 15 years.  It certainly will have an impact on my future teaching.  I also have been encouraging others to take the plunge and learn more about how to incorporate technology into education. I know I will.  

A Visit from the Firefighters

Signs of  fall can be seen in many places in the Verde Valley.

Philosophy of Education Revised

A Dance Between  Learners and Facilitators

My philosophy of education still revolves around the interaction of the learner and an experience that result in a change of knowledge, skills, and or character of the learner.  However, the methods or vehicles that are used to make that interaction happen has  certainly  changed.  The change has happened because, I now have a different set of skills and knowledge to draw from when I am designing and guiding the experiences. 

When Arthur Ashe said “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” I now have a different starting point.  Now I know about Picasa, Flickr, Jing, Ning, Wikis, podcasting, Youtube video production and posting, blogging.  And I have found a ton of fantastic websites in a variety of forms that show how these applications are being used with real kids in real classrooms.  I can do more things with technology. I  know how to use these applications and I certainly can do more with those skills than I ever thought was possible.

When I combine this with the general knowledge and experience I have about how children learn I am now better equipped to meet their needs in a more contemporary way.  The learner will still need to show up mentally and physically but the way a student in my class will be able to interact with information will change.  Their cycle of experience, reflect, publish, generalize and apply will remain the same.  After experiencing the frustrations of a steep personal learning curve, I can see the value of giving learners time to experiment and to experience the lessons of do and repeat as often as necessary to grasp a new concept.  So my interaction with the learner will change more than my core belief about education and personal growth.

I also understand more about the concept of empowering learners to work in isolation as well as cooperative learning, the sharing of information, and asking for and accepting assistance or feedback  from others.  This feeds back into the idea that the learner needs to “show up” for the experience and become the engaged director of his/her personal learning outcomes.  This is accomplished by being a risk taker.  By stepping out of one’s comfort zone and into new territory the learner is able to discover, explore, and gather new information and experiences that will cause change in attitudes, skills and knowledge and thus facilitate individual growth.  The result in essence is to become more educated.

Technology Terms

Web 2.0  The second generation of using the web, everyone is a reader, creator, publisher

Read/Write Web - using the web to read, write and share information
Blog – web log, journal where other people can post a comment on your blog post
Wiki – information on a topic, supplied by many people, anyone can add or delete information with permission, collaborative learning
Ning, Wikispaces– free websites where people can create social networks
Youtube – make and store audio-videos
Teachertube – make and store audio/video recordings
Audacity – used to make audio recordings
Podcast – audio only recordings sent to ipod, blog, wiki, 1-40 minutes long
Jing – record audio capture images and send from your screen to other sites (sun)
Flickr – download your photos, make sets and share
Social networking – myspace, twitter, facebook, blogs, wikis
Picasa- online photo gallery of personal photos
http – link code
url – web address

Embed – to include a video, audio, or photos right onto a site

Audioboo- used to make audio podcast recordings

RSS – Really Simple Syndication, a way of linking information systems, information comes to the reader

Links to Great Wikis and Blogs

          
Photo credit: pschubert from morguefile.com

My Favorite Wikis

http://mrsmiller.pbworks.com/w/page/FrontPage  This site is created through PBworks which is another  place to create a wiki.  The teacher has links as well as daily class information and  photos of class activities.  Good example of formatting differently.
http://kindergartencce.wikispaces.com/ This wiki is for the kindergarten teachers in an entire school district. It has a very extensive list of resources.  This is a good example of what can happen with group collaboration.
http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+educational+wikis This is an unbelievable directory of  educational Wikis.  It includes the country the wiki is created in, a description of the content and sometimes links to other sites.
http://linktolearning.wikispaces.com/Search+Engines This site is good for teaching technology skills in the classroom or in the computer lab.  It starts with staying safe on the web and mouse skills. This one shows how to do social bookmarking with del.icio.us
http://www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters/index.htm  This wiki has been an ongoing collaborative project with young children for 8 years.  It has a collection of stories from those years.  I t is a good example of using wikis to collaborated with students in other locations.
                       Blogs or Weblogs
http://www.edutopia.org/grade-level-k-2 This is a site that has a collection of links to blogs and weblogs.  You can search by topic, grade level, schools that work and videos.  This would be a good place to start when looking for blogs on specific topics.
http://www.thisweekineducation.com/  Here’s where I can keep up on what the current topics and issues in education.
 http://itsnotallflowersandsausages.blogspot.com/ It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages.  Just the name of this blog sounds like fun.   This one is written by a 2^nd grade teacher who tells it like it is, including the funny daily happenings in a typical classroom.  She says, “Sometimes a girl’s gotta vent.”  I could get into this one at the end of the day.
http://earlystories.org/ Early Stories is a blog that focuses on  issues relevant to early childhood learning.  I would go here if I wanted theory or to see what the current trends and buzz words are in the field.
http://michellesmelser.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html  This blog of a first grade classroom could be just the ticket for seeing what is possible for first graders to do.  It  is current as of November 2010 and it has links to many other blogs that the author recommends.

Podcast, Tree in the Wood

Photo credit: kakisky from morguefile.com

One of the units of study that we do in my class at this time of year is autumn and the change of seasons.  I found this book of an old nursery rhyme that I remember from long ago and thought that the my students would enjoy it also.  It's called The Tree in the Wood An Old Nursery Song adapted and illustrated by Christopher Manson. I sang the rhyme while I drew the illustrations on the white board.  Then I had them draw it with me when I sang it the second time.
http://audioboo.fm/boos/211225-the-tree-in-the-wood