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Thursday, July 17, 2008
K12 Online Conference Final Reflections and Project
K12 Online Conference Final Reflections
I took the K12 Online Conference as an online course for graduate credit for several reasons. First of all I wanted to ensure that I would make the time to check out a majority of the sessions that were offered. I also wanted to use the course as a way to increase the size of my personal learning network. Lastly, I wanted to start blogging on a more frequent basis. I’ve made progress on all three personal goals through taking this course.
I now have completed all 5 keynote presentations and 16 of the various other sessions that were offered. I found all of the presentations to be tremendously valuable. I have pointed co-workers and students to some of the materials in the conference as well as have used some of the presentations in courses that I teach at Saint Joseph’s College and the University of Southern Maine. This conference is creating a tremendous online vault of great ideas and thoughts about teaching and learning using technology. Unlike a traditional vault these presentations are openly available to anyone who wishes to view them.
As I have taken this course I have continually added to my network. I have subscribed to many of the presenter’s blogs and Twitter accounts. This has helped me get further connected and help keep me as current as possible. My use of Twitter has really skyrocketed through taking this course. I started using it heavily after NECC 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia. I now follow 275 people (and growing). I’m not sure how many more people I can add and still be able to follow what is going on. I find that the flow of information that comes from Twitter with my current network to be manageable. I’m trying not to let it get out of control.
Taking this course got me to blog much more than I have in the past. To accomplish this I set up a Google Apps account with a custom domain that I purchased ($10/year for mikearsenault.net). I’m surprised that more educators are not taking advantage of this incredible deal – especially bloggers who are already using Blogger for their blogging engine. While I have written more this year in my blog through taking this course and other writings, this is the area I want to continue to work on most. I need to use my blog as a place to post my thoughts, ideas, and reflections. This will turn out to help my own professional development and get me involved in the conversations. I have been a lurker of the conversations for many years now. I want to become more than that. Taking this course has put me in the right direction for this to take place.
Final Project
I teach in a middle school that serves students in fifth through eighth grades. My seventh and eighth grade students work in a one-to-one environment with Apple iBooks provided by the State of Maine. Our district purchases laptops for all students as they enter high school. These laptops are used for each student’s four years of high school. My middle school and the elementary schools are now benefiting from these laptops trickling down to us. This influx of laptops is getting me closer to having my students in fifth and sixth grades working in a one-to-one environment as well.
My school had two labs filled with 25 eight year old iMacs. Due to space issues I needed to give up one of the labs for classroom space. I saw this loss as an opportunity to do something new in my building. I wrote a proposal to empty the second lab as well and replace the old iMac computers with 10 new iMacs that could be used as a multimedia lab set up in more of a studio style (inspired by Clarence Fischer) than a traditional desktop computer lab. I want to see more work done in my school with digital video (inspired by Brian Crosby’s keynote and Dr. Tim Tyson) and podcasting (inspired by Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr, and Jen Wagner).
As a result of taking this course I have decided that I would like to delve into the world of podcasting as my project. I am going to assemble a group of students that will create a news-style podcast of happenings in our school. I want to learn more about this with my students. I plan to start out simple and just do an audio podcast show. As our skills improve, I wish to move into video. I’ll use the knowledge I’ve gained from using Blogger as my blog engine for this course to set up a blog that will be the home of this new podcast. We will house our episodes on servers located within our district.
The idea I have for the implementation of this project is to take advantage of a last period study hall that all seventh and eighth grade students have that do not take band/chorus. I’ll recruit students who are interested in being part of this group. We will develop our own professional learning community to learn the skills we’ll need to make a quality podcast. I’m sure our episodes will improve dramatically as the year progresses. It is my hope that the inclusion of seventh and eighth grade students will create a training cycle after this first year. I would like the eighth grade students to help get the new seventh grade students trained in upcoming years.
It is my hope that this becomes a student-driven production. I want to see the students take ownership of this project. I truly feel that it will only be sustainable and successful if the students take pride in their production of this show. I hope to slowly back off and be seen as merely an advisor as opposed to the focal point of the production. I feel that I’ll know this project was a success when this happens. So keep your eyes (and ears) open in the fall for the Frank Harrison Middle School Podcast. I want the students to come up with the name of the show and domain so I’m not sure where it will be located, but a link will be provided from our school web page.
tag: k12online07, briancrosby, timtyson, cheryloakes, alicebarr, bobsprankle, jenwagner
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Reflection on Jeff Utecht's Presentation: Online Professional Development
As I watched Jeff Utecht's K12 Online Conference presentation I had to laugh. It's the middle of July, I'm working on a K12 Online Conference session created last October, my Twitter is flowing with information coming out of Ewan McIntosh's live keynote at the BLC Conference (I actually paused the presentation for a while to drop in on the Ustream of the keynote) and I'm interacting with others through email as this all occurs. My own interactions sort of mimicked the interactions Jeff had in his presentation. I love how he just sat and demonstrated how he connects with his network through these tools and more. Through my work on this course I have grown to see the power of the network and there's no looking back now.
I used to use my RSS aggregator as my main way of connecting with my network. I started small by subscribing to David Warlick's and Will Richardson's blogs. As I read their thoughts on their blogs they connected me to more and more bloggers that I found interesting to read. Since last summer and my experience at NECC07 I have been using Twitter much more as my way of connecting to my network. I had found the graph on the presentation's wiki really interesting because it absolutely nailed me as a Twitter user. When I first signed up for my account I found it foolish to see what others were doing. I really didn't care that someone was having a BLT sandwich for lunch. However, as I got to use it more and more I found that there was a ton of value within that network. The key is getting through the start of it and building a significant list of people to follow. Just as I have to skim my feeds in my RSS aggregator I have to do the same with Twitter. I now find Twitter to be an indispensable tool.
As I think about this it makes me ponder the new skills required to learn in this sort of environment. More importantly, are kids learning how to do this? Kids are known as multi-taskers. Do they know how to simultaneously follow a Twitter stream, RSS feeds, Instant Messenger, and a steady flow of email without losing their focus? Is it a big deal if they lose their focus from time to time? I often lose my focus and end up in all kinds of different directions. As I mentioned earlier in this post I set out this morning with the goal of watching this presentation. About half-way through the presentation I stopped it and started watching the BLC keynote address. As I watched the keynote address I was interacting with others in the Ustream chat room and Twitter (I actually got the link to the Ustream through Twitter).
If anyone out there is interested in following me I can be found:
My blog: http://blog.mikearsenault.net
My Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marsenault
My Skype: michael_d_arsenault
tag: k12online07pn09, k12online07, jeffutecht
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Reflection on John Pearce's Presentation: Me Blog? No Way!!!
Blogging is often an idea teachers think will be a good addition to their classroom. John Pearce described many reasons why teachers would want to use blogs as well as topics of concern in his K12 Online Conference session, "Me Blog? No Way!!!". For blogging to be successful in the classroom teachers must think about the pedagogical reasons for why they want to use this tool. Hopefully, the pedagogical reasons brought the teacher to the idea of using blogging in his/her classroom in the first place. I have found that when we just decide to use a tool for the sake of the tool itself, it is not sustainable. When we focus the use of a tool to learning objectives and essential learnings and see success in that connection sustainability will ensue.
The idea of a teacher using a blog to learn was particularly interesting to me as well. I have been reading blogs for a number of years at this point. I have learned a lot from my virtual professional learning network. The people in my RSS reader have proven to continually keep me up to date and stretch my thinking on many topics. The battle I find myself in is continually trying to make time to write and be more reflective in my work. Being part of the network should include adding to the conversation. I have posted comments on many posts that I have read over the years, but I want to be seen as someone with his own ideas and thoughts.
I have used blogging in my college courses for three years at this point. All my students write their thoughts and reflections in blogs. Edublogs is a great tool for this purpose. The magic of RSS then brings the conversations to life. Each semester that I teach at least one person gets a comment from someone that they wrote about. David Warlick has been a great commenter for my pre-service teachers over the years (we read Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century as our course text). Just last week, Vicki Davis and Jeff Utecht commented/linked to a student in my graduate course on technology integration. These connections create "teachable moments" that cannot take place without blogs. How many students get the opportunity to have a conversation with the people they are reading or reading about in a class? Why isn't this more common in education today?
tag: k12online07oo06, k12online07, johnpearce
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Reflection on Sylvia Martinez's Presentation: Web 2.0 Share The Adventure
As I watched Sylvia Martinez's K12 Online presentation, "Web 2.0 Share The Adventure" it brought me back to yesterday. Yesterday I was fortunate to take part in Edubloggercon East 08 in Newton, MA. Early in the day I had the chance to discuss whether teachers should know about all the tools they use in their classrooms with the attendees of this "unconference" and particularly Ewan McIntosh. It was a great discussion. I found myself disagreeing with Ewan on this topic.
I feel that teachers do not need to know how to use each of the tools their students use to demonstrate their learning. The classroom teacher should be an active participant in observing their student's work throughout the process and ensure that their students are achieving the learning goals of the activity. Ewan feels (please correct me in the comment section if I'm not articulating this well) that a teacher should know how to use the tools that their students use. I'm curious how Sylvia Martinez would respond to this discussion. After viewing her presentation, I would guess she would be in agreement with me.
There are so many web-based tools available to students and teachers to demonstrate learning I do not see how a teacher can know them all (or should). Should students be limited to the handful of tools a teacher may be aware of and know how to use? Should all students demonstrate their learning using the same tool? I believe this can provide great opportunities for students to help teachers learn about more and more Web 2.0 tools - let their students teach them how to use them.
The key here for me is that the teacher can not leave the student to his/her own accord to just complete the project. The classroom teacher should be continually assessing how his/her students are progressing towards the completion of their project and how well they are reaching the learning goals of the project. Students are willing to learn new tools on their time. I have found in the past 6 years of working in one-to-one environments that students really enjoy teaching their teachers about new ways to use technology in the classroom. Why hold them back?
On a separate note...
I am looking forward to the creation of a student podcasting team at my school in the fall. I have a new lab set up for multimedia work and I'm tremendously excited to learn with my students as we create podcasts for our school community and the world. I'll use many of the ideas that Sylvia mentioned in this outstanding presentation to move us forward.
tag: k12online07oo07, k12online07, ebce08, sylviamartinez, ewanmcintosh
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