Thanks to the Behind-the-Scene Team

As a teacher geek of reading and writing, I spend time learning new tools that enhance the teaching and learning of reading and writing. I look for tools that capture the creativity and interest of my students so that they can apply their reading and writing skills in authentic ways. I look for applications that allow me to differentiate for the learning needs and styles of the students I teach.

Our 21st Century tools and applications engage our students:

A student who normally would grumble at any writing assignment, learns google search strategies to find information on his favorite boxers. He fills pages of sticky notes with his ideas, sticks them around the computer, and then reads from them to input his ideas on his wiki page.

Students who would normally balk at reading and taking notes, transfer their highlights and annotations of research with Diigo into their PBWorks to synthesize into their own ideas so that others can learn from them.

Students who hate writing essays, plan and create photo essays in Voice Thread on topics important to them.

Students who normally would not share in a class discussion will share their ideas on blog comments and Voice Threads.

And through all their work, they learn the etiquette of online participation while learning the online communication skills currently used in the work force.

But all of this would not happen if it were not for the thoughtful and supportive people behind the scenes.

Think of all the wires and cables and servers and code that coalesce into a sweet stream of bytes onto our computer screens.

Think of the tweaking by our technicians to allow our Google Apps, PBWorks wikis, Voice Threads, Animotos, Glogsters, blogs (Word Press, Blogger, Edublogs, Blogmeister, Nings), to pop up and animate, ready for input by teachers and students.

And, that these applications are available when needed at just the right moment for each student to transfer his/her thoughts and images into creative and accurate information for the analysis by others.

I’ve had several instances this year when a site wouldn’t work, or the system seemed slow, and a simple call or email to the technicians resulted in quick access to what the students and I needed for research, reading, writing, etc.

So, I’d like to thank all those amazing people behind the scenes who keep our cloud computing as clear as a bright sky. In my district, thanks to Pete, Adam, and Steve for their encouraging technical wizardry. The technicians at Edublogs along with Sue Waters were immensely helpful the one time I needed help there, and PBWorks support offered help when I had simple questions that needed a quick answer.

Thanks, hidden helpers, for supporting teaching and learning.

Sheri Edwards

How powerful is global collaboration?  Sue Waters asks this. Even small projects can prove beneficial in more than academic ways.
I’ve just blogged a reflection on an ongoing project between my fifth graders in Nespelem, Wa and Kim Trefz’s fifth grade in Memphis, Tennessee to share the goals and results of a serendipitous Web 2.0 meeting of minds.  I read an intro to a new edublog on twitter, which linked to her classroom blog, which included a voice thread. I commented and we emailed. Twenty hours later, Kim and I had Skyped and decided to collaborate. We’ve centered our work around a wiki idea: Living History.  To meet each of our schools’ requirements, we’ve adapted as the needs demanded. We skyped an exhibition of our Native American dancers (please read blog) and bookmarked historical text and videos about our bands.  They researched and wrote about Memphis in wiki and Mapskip entries.  We then highlighted main ideas and commented with Diigo, and revised the comment in Mapskip. Her students are commenting back. Her reflection is here.

We’ll be starting up wiki collaboration after our respective Spring Breaks. It’s been an opportunity for both our classes to build commonalities despite our differences, all through the power of writing and learning with Web 2.0.

My eighth grade students respond to a mentor, preservice teacher from the University of Regina in Regina, SK, Canada who is creating photography lessons for my students.  We annotating pictures to add to a project in Youth Voices, a youth blogging site.

My fifth grade students watched the inauguration of Barak Obama and heard his call for service.  Therefore, we started a VoiceThread for which two other schools have now added their voice for “Mr. Obama, we can serve by…”

The sixth graders just started a mentorship with another University of Regina preservice teacher on newsblogging.

I became involved because students love the computer, and writing class is a natural place for being IN web 2.0 responsibly with its fullest capacity: text, images, video, design.

My students are more engaged in learning through the empowerment of a digital footprint with others so far away who have similar goals (writing to publish, service) but come from different backgrounds and experiences.  Because we live in a very rural area, now my students begin to understand similarities in a world of multiple perspectives; they think, care, and produce as responsible, digital citizens. These projects help meet our school mission: “to enable a child to become a thinking, caring, productive person using high academic standards in a positive learning environment.”

Flexibility is key to such projects, especially in the beginning, so that participants can engage while learning the schools’ required objectives. Dive in is the next key. Kim had not skyped before, but signed up that night, emailed me her name, and I skyped her to test it out the next morning, not knowing it was her staff meeting time. She introduced the Mapskip aspect to us.  It was an exciting adventure that just blossomed for all of us. Focus on the global: our overarching goal became sharing living cultures even though our vehicle is writing.

I recently sent this tweet to Kim, which represents the heartfelt side of these projects:

“ktrefz picture this: two of my boys -arms around each others’ shoulders – reading your kids Mapskip comments [back to them]; smiles; joy in their lives; thank you”

This is the joy of leading the change we wish to see in the world.  Powerful, isn’t it?

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Gandhi

Notes:

Much bolder projects others in which others have succeeded can be found at the Flat Classroom Project: http://flatclassrooms.ning.com/

Find other projects at:

Teachers Connecting: http://teachersconnecting.com/

Online Projects 4 Teachers: http://onlineproj4tchrs.ning.com/

Check out the writing classroom at Nespelem School.

We’ve started a voicethread that other students across the country are joining. President Obama asked for a new spirit of service to our country. Our students heard that call in the Inaugural Address and responded in small ways to improve their community. In fact, we’ve started new goals after our first round of service.

Listen to what we started and other kids in Wisconsin who have joined us have to say. Another school in San Diego will also join us. Click here. Voicethread may be forwarding the final version to President Obama.

The fifth grade class is working with a class from Memphis, Tennessee; you’ll see comments from this school on student pages. We’ll be working on projects and skyping each other for video discussions. Our Dance Group under the direction of Terrie Sanger will share traditional dancing via video Skype. Students in both classrooms are thrilled to work together.

It’s a bold new world, and our kids expect to part of it in ways most of people don’t understand yet.

Our goal is to guide students to responsible and positive use of the power of these tools while learning. Our students expect, no; they are demanding this now.

Enjoy our voices, and thanks for supporting us.

Note: also blogged at: Nespelem Eagles and What Else 1DR

A friend said yesterday, “In 2009, things will be fine.” Hope seems to be springing up even in our snowy landscape. For myself and my class, things will be fine, too. I’m committed to creating online collaboration and student leadership.

I look to the experts and have listened to podcasts and read blogs:

GenYes

WebTools

EdTechTalk

Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Cool Cat Teacher

What do I need to do? Get started! So my eighth graders and I will dive in together, even more than we had before. They will be the editors – the criteria creators and encouragers for the projects to place on our Coyote Talks site.

Discovery Education will help us. To write, we need content.

How about Riding a Snowflake for writing content according to the criteria for science and creative writing that the eighth grade students determine.

After viewing Martin Luther King information and honoring considerations, the editors could choose several types of projects: service, poems, stories, etc..

What will the editors decide? How will they decide? I stumbled upon The World Cafe site which describes a grass-roots format for solving problems. I’m adapting parts of that to help my students become student leaders of writing.

Why? Remember the adage, “success breeds success”? I’m thinking “leadership breeds leadership.” We have some struggling students, and part of the reason they struggle is because they already take care of themselves, and schools generally control them (or try). Perhaps if allowed to be the leaders, they will lead and be successful. I know their families believe they can do it.

And because I want for them that “Things will be fine in 2009.” We’re going for it….

Book Blog Beginners

We’ve started the journey!  Two students have written the first book blogs, which you can see here:

Eagles Write

My Own Topic Time, Notedly Displayed, otherwise known as MOTT, ND, provides students the opportunity to read and respond on topics of their choice.  Students may read fiction or nonfiction; their assignment is to report on their reading every two weeks, on the 1st and 15th of each month.  The focus of the response is:

What did I learn? (words/graphics)

How does this relate to/ connect with me?

How does this help me understand the world?

What will I do with this information?

Wouldn’t you have embraced the opportunity in school to have the time to investigate your own interests? These students have learned about “jealousy” and “If you get it, will you still want it?”  Read the insights these students have gained and shared.  Please comment.

Look for more MOTT student writing in the future.

Note: More complete directions on the MOTT project are located at: MOTT Directions

So what does this “cloud” of social networking within which our students continuously engage demand for my lessons?

Lessons must Fire It Up!

Fun
Instant
Relevant
Engaging

Integrated
Tasks

Ubiquitous
Pathways

Students live in a world of instant gratification, engaged by peer to peer technology with phones, online games and chats. Their world fills with the fun this “instancy” and engagement provides; they are constantly stimulated in ways that create more neural pathways more quickly than ever did ours.

These are the children who come to us; we must accept that we must change. “It’s up to us to adjust to those patterns and pathways,” explains Brad Fountain in Understanding Your Students’ iBrains . We cannot even envision our students’ abilities, yet we must provide for them. And from Brad’s presentation I heard how students expect relevance, instant gratification, engagement, and fun. Because their social networking and multi-tasking allows them to participate in many activities at once, making frequent choices of interest to them, their patterns of learning expect the same from us. Therefore, I devised an acronym for my new curriculum planning: Fire It Up!

I must create a Fun and Instant lesson: frequent acknowledgment (gratification). It’s Relevance stems from student interest or interactive choices. The choices, discussion, and technological aspects Engage the students. Various Integrated Tasks with choices and interaction create Ubiquitous Pathways to learn curricular content.

The “ten minute” rule is crucial — but for some students it’s ten seconds! What question can I ask or video/image to display will capture the imagination and engagement of students so they focus and forge into the learning tasks? It reminds me of the years-past recommendation in science to create a disconnect with the expected outcome as a precursor to the lesson. The “novel” engagement that nabs the mind.

Students brains are different than ours. I relearned this today. How?

First, since I engage myself in some of the networks to which my students subscribe, including Twitter , I learned about today’s DEN (Discovery Education Network) Virtual Conference. I linked from Twitter to a signup page, signed up, checked email for registration info, clicked the link, and started the conference. Amazing.

I participated in:

Raise Your Hand if You’re a Rock Star (partial)
Steve Dembo

No Mind Left Behind: Using Media to Reach Your Students
Jannita Demian and Matt Monjan

Understanding Your Students’ iBrains
Brad Fountain

From Understanding Your Students’ iBrains with Brad Fountain, I learned again that student’s brains learn differently than ours; they demand fun, instant gratification, relevance, and engagement. Therefore, I must Fire It Up! Thanks, Brad.

And students, what should WE do to Fire It Up? Let’s power up the neurons!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Photo Credits:

Neurons in the brain
Credit: Dr Jonathan Clarke. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk

Creative Commons

Fifth grade and sixth grade still focus on elaboration in writing. However, we will dabble in applying our elaboration skills on election issues. I hope to introduce them to working together on wiki work to explain 1) How a person can become president and 2) Which candidate meets their solutions on the the student’s issues?

Seventh grade will finish their introductory research on Arctic global warming. We’ll break for a similar focus on elections as five/six since the topic is relevant and current.

Ditto for grade eight: they’ll complete their Who Are You art/media/text work in computers and the library study hall while our writing class begins the election focus.

All classes will vote: On September 23rd for Weekly Reader and on October 29th for the National Mock Election, which will include State elections also.

Students will have choices in daily and project work as they begin their role:

You are an informed citizen volunteer whom others will call upon for information. You volunteer at your candidate’s headquarters. As a volunter, you must thoroughly research the election process and the issues supported by your candidate and his opponent. You must create the information that voters need to make their choices.

Younger students will receive more support and guidance in writing project completion as they discuss the issues in class and with families to form and write their own opinions. Older students will make more design/product decisions on their own.

Will their products be accepted by the local headquarters? We’ll see.

http://whatelse.pbwiki.com/Election-Project

Congratulations Students!  You did it!

You worked well on your Letters to the President, researching issues important to you to find supporting evidence.  Not all of you researched in depth; some only summarized.  Even so, the work engaged you to draft, revise (several times), and edit well.  You met the deadline, and published.

The set up of our class wiki (http://whatelse.pbwiki.com) has begun and is ongoing. I created the project as part of PBWiki Summer Camp to promote the use of wikis in the classroom as a collaborative writing format. As a result, I am now a PB Wiki Educator so if teachers or principals have questions/concerns/suggestions, please contact me. I’d be glad to hear your ideas or offer suggestions about wiki implementation.

One project for eighth grade will be “Letters to the President” sponsored by Google Docs and the National Writing Project. The goal is for students to investigate and discuss issues and concerns they would like the future president to address. Students will collaborate in Google Docs and write letters in Google Docs to be transferred to a website of participant’s letters. It’s a fantastic opportunity for students to express themselves responsibly and sincerely to possibly effect change in the future.

As the year started and students filtered in, the eager faces mingled with those students who are less concerned with education and more concerned with being center stage with inappropriate language and actions. I thought about the implications the work of often contrary students could bring to the project; would they continue their negative, distorted views? In the next instant, though, I knew that it is precisely these students who need the opportunity to participate. Their immediate issues and concerns can be transcended as the the whole class deals with and discusses issues of the community. How else will all the students become engaged responsibly if we (I) don’t invite all students? Our purpose and my stated goal is to facilitate student civic responsibility; I believe the students, all of them, will want their voices heard, and they can only be heard if they learn the protocol for responsible sharing. I share these feelings and concerns I have so my students know how carefully and thoughtfully I plan for their successful education and hope for their future.

So, students, what do you think? Are you willing to join students across the nation in “writing the future” by learning how to address concerns to a public persona with thorough discussion, research, and writing?

The National Writing Project and Google have created a project for students to write to the future president about issues and concerns important to them. The project, Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future, provides a platform for teens to tackle the issues irritating them and present them to the future president via a website display from teens around the country.

Our students stepped right up to the problem, expressing concerns such as

• paying the high gas prices,
• depending on oil as fuel for cars
• wanting affordable hybrid cars: electrical, hydrogen, battery
• stopping global warming and the melting of the polar caps
• stopping the wars and having peace
• stopping pollution
• caring for our natural resources

Currently, each student is researching the issue of importance to him/her to find the origin of the problem, statistics, and solutions. That means checking the accuracy and validity of the websites — even those that “look” professional. A great example we are checking is the water-powered car. We are still checking out the facts. (Wikipedia: Check One Check Two).

Discussions we have begun: validity of information (how to check), citing sources (note-taking strategies), plagiarism (what and how to avoid).

Google Education includes lessons for teachers. We learned three google search tips:

• Use double quotes — “high gas prices”
• Include a minus sign — “high gas prices” -low
• Search site choices — site:gov site:edu site:org “high gas prices” -low site:org

The search term: <”high gas prices” -low site:org> found 123,000 searches instead of millions.

The journey has begun. Our computers are old, but working — slow, but steady snow iMacs.

What else?  What’s important! Students are engaged: reading, talking, googling, learning, sharing. They share sources, help each other search, and discuss facts. They are advancing their thinking: “If we didn’t even use gas in our cars, we wouldn’t need to use so much oil.” Tomorrow we continue and review persuasive writing strategies we learned last year.

Student pages: http://whatelse.pbwiki.com/TOC-W8-Members