Middle School Ed Tech Blog

This is a little test of how a Voicethread gets embedded into a blog post:

Voicethread Sample

I just finished viewing Scott Hossack’s presentation on sustainable blogging. It really was full of some excellent ideas on how to start and maintain student blogging in the classroom. He makes a very good point that adding blogging to what you already do in the classroom is not a recipe for success. We need to do something different in order to incorporate blogging with students, otherwise it will fall by the wayside. Scott mentioned that blogs should not be looked at as journals-they should be looked at as an opportunity for students to read, connect, communicate, reflect and comment on the blogs of others.

He had great practical ideas as well. Students should start out with blogging by simply reading the blogs of other students. A teacher can use netvibes or iGoogle to gather some blogs for students to start with and then share these blogs for them to access.

I think the realm of student blogging is an exciting one and hopefully we’ll be able to delve into this on a much broader and deeper level at University School.

It probably looks like many different things. Here is how it looks today with my 5th grade students as they collaborate on a podcast script that they are writing for their “USM Virtual Tour” projects.

I like having students work in teams on projects involving technology…here you will see them clustered around a mac, sharing and teaming up on their script in google docs. It gets pretty loud in the room, but that is what happens in an environment where all of the kids are teaming up in small little clusters.

Below is an audio clip of what collaborative learning sounded like with this class today…it is a pretty long clip, but I find it to be a great exchange of dialogue between the three girls who were working on a collaborative writing piece:
Click for the audio file

I was fortunate enough to attend the 2007 Solar Power Conference in Long Beach, CA on a Wisconsin Electric Teacher Grant. It was a great experience and I thank WE Energies for this opportunity!

I created a blog on my experience at:
http://solarpowerwegrant.blogspot.com/

Take a look at this awesome resource that is being created by a group of educators. This was started to serve as a place for people to connect and discuss issues centering around teaching and learning in the 21st Century. I participated in a virtual meeting last night and can say that there are some really sharp people involved in this project with some excellent ideas.

The website address is: http://eduwikius.wikispaces.com/

On Thursday, October 11th, 2007 we hosted the Fall meeting of the LMAIS Tech Coordinator group. We probably had close to 25 people from 20 different schools represented at the meeting.

A couple of things that I’m taking away from this:

1. Vinnie Vrotny’s demonstration of back channeling via twitter and google docs presentations really got me thinking about classroom instruction, the role of the teacher, the role of the student, physical room layout, etc. Since our meeting I’ve created a twitter account and a voicethread account. Both are really interesting applications. Vinnie’s use of back channeling via google docs powerpoint was neat as well-this is definitely something we can apply in future collaborative projects with our students.

2. Web 2.0 thoughts-we had a nice discussion on this…everything from barriers to implementation, how to promote the use of these tools with teachers/students, to success stories (Chris Butera’s success story with google docs at his school was a good one). I do think that web 2.0 lends itself quite well to learning environments that support constructivism, student inquiry, and student uncovering of knowledge. To me it works well in physical spaces that promote group work and good connectivity for students. The traditional schedule of several periods a day meeting for a short amount of time makes it difficult to use this stuff on a wider scale with students (IMHO)…

3. Classroom of the future-again, another good discussion on this point. I like the points brought up by Gary Stager in his blog that suggest schools learn a lesson about design from Starbucks and Borders, which are two places that young people like to hang out at! Classrooms should be warm, comfortable, promote interaction and collaboration, support easy connectivity; basically, they should be workspaces that support constructivist teaching and learning!

4. We went out to dinner with Curt Leinick from the Lab School on Wednesday night…this proved to be great dialogue and an experience we can hopefully have at future LMAIS meetings (Peter from Latin school mentioned they would be willing to host a dinner the night before the spring meeting).

All-in-all, it was another positive and beneficial meeting with a nice exchange of ideas and stories. I am already looking forward to our spring meeting down at Latin School in Chicago!

This voicethread thing could get addicting! I took the photos from my post from several days ago titled, “Technology use around school,” and created this short little voicethread.

This is so, so cool!!!

I just started experimenting with Voicethread…my early impressions are quite positive. This is so, so easy to use. I can imagine this really simplifying student created multi-media projects.

Below is a sample voice thread that I created:

A former co-worker of mine emailed the following youtube video along to me…I’ve seen this before-definitely an important message for everyone:

A participant in the ISED listserv posted a question about how to move her elementary school computer lab away from the “drag and drop” model that does little to encourage teacher involvement and ownership in lab instruction activities.

Below is a response to her inquiry that I posted:

“Karen-

One thing I would suggest right away is to dump the schedule you describe below and implement an “open” lab schedule. This open schedule will be uncomfortable for your teachers at first, but it is extremely important if you are to move your school in a direction that involves more project based activities in the lab. Encourage teachers to sign up for 4-5 days in a row for 60-90 minutes at a crack…then work with them to develop activities that are more project based and meet your organization’s goals of teaching information literacy skills within the context of the project. Because the teachers are so accustomed to the traditional schedule, some will most likely try to sign up on the open lab schedule so it reflects what their used to (for example, they might sign up every Tuesday from 1:30-2:00)…encourage them to sign up for consecutive days in a row as described above. This model might mean that they only come in the lab once a month for 4-6 consecutive days, but this scenario IMHO is much better for fostering integration and higher level computer lab projects.

Also, I would examine the type of software that the students have been using under the traditional model…if it is the type of software where students put headphones on and participate in skill/drill activities that isolate them from one another, I would suggest making a change and working more towards developmentally appropriate productivity software that encourages teamwork/collaboration and dialogue amongst students.

Good luck with whatever change you decide upon…it will definitely not be popular out of the gate and it will take a few years to implement and be accepted, but it will definitely be worth it in the end. I’ve been through this change two times…we changed the schedule and the lab’s software suite–it wasn’t a popular change, but it was definitely one that needed to happen if we were to move to a more effective paradigm where the classroom teachers took more ownership for computer lab activities.

Matt Montagne
Middle School Academic Technology Coordinator
University School of Milwaukee”