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Symbol of the Day:  Daughters of the American Revolution

Image by Leo Reynolds

I was intrigued by this symbol because of the role of girls in the American Revolution, and because the symbol is intricate and unique.  This symbol is most likely unknown to students, so it could warrant an interesting discussion about what it might represent, who were the “daughters” and why did they need a symbol?

 I LOVED Flickr and I wish I knew more about all its wonderful tools long ago!  I strongly believe that kids today are hugely visual consumers.  I use pictures to inspire writing in my classroom on a regular basis, and I try to tap into their visual tendencies and interests.  What a wonderful new tool to add to my arsenal.  National Poetry Month is during April, so I just may have to try out a poetic Flickr twist!  Stay tuned!

Creative Commons is a wonderful resource fore multimedia projects with students.  It is so disappointing to students when they are often “stuck” with the soundtracks packaged with video editing, sound editing, and other multimedia software programs.  As an instructor, being informed about creative commons and how to give students access to sound, images, and video that are protected in this way will open a whole new avenue of creative potential.

As for teaching materials, I find that teachers are generous to a fault in swapping materials and sharing units with one another.  The danger in this can be that materials posted online can be used by anyone, and the original author never receives credit for their original ideas and work.  Furthermore, what if someone takes your good ideas and then publishes a teacher guide based on your work?  If you want some credit and you still want to share, this is a great solution for any teacher posting their blood, sweat, and tears.

As for the downfall of creative commons, someone could potentially morph your original ideas in a way that you never envisioned.  You may disagree whole-heartedly with the quality or the form of the new work, but you will have little say about the end product.

Oveall, creative commons makes the possible use of your ideas much more clear, if you are willing to share.  What a wonderful “out of the box” solution for a long-existing problem.  I can’t wait to hook my students up with this new information!

 In my own search of creative commons items, I found myself overwhelmed by all the choices to explore.  Once again, I see the 2.0 things as a huge time devil, sucking me down the digital black hole.  I was pretty excited by MIT’s open courseware designed for high schools.  I found an online class on short stories, which would be a great tool for me the next time I teach that unit.  Why reinvent the wheel!  I also found an awesome pdf document on Web 2.0, defining basic information and how to access the different tools.  This is a wonderful reference tool for me as I venture further into the labyrinth of Web 2.0.  (Ps.  The OER Commons site is cool because it offers a little “bookmark” button to the right of each item, so that you can add it to your google bookmark toolbar.  Before this whole Web 2.0 class, I don’t think I would have even noticed the button!)

Some cool stuff I found on educational wikis:

• At the Wolves Den Wiki, I was delighted with all the wonderful resources posted for the English and History students.  What excited me more was the link to oodles of Web 2.0 tools.  I can’t wait to explore this site, Go To Web20.  I have to remember my first idea about life-long learning–play!
• At Kindergarten Counting Book I was pleasantly surprised with the creative use of digital photography and counting to post a class-created counting book for kindergarten students. I can totally see my own 5 year old being engrossed in this class creation.  What a wonderful way to use a meaningful project where all students can contribute, learn, and then later view their accomplishments from home with their families.
• Jennifer Dorman’s wiki, Grazing for Digital Natives, is a wonderful compilation of resources for all things digital.  I look forward to checking out her information on digital storytelling! I also wonder how she has time to post all that stuff!

What resonates with me after surfing a few educational wikis is that the more I know, the more I realize I don’t know.  It overwhelms me to see how much information is really out there, and it also energizes me.  The trick is to find the balance between burning time surfing and exploring and really creating something that will work for me professionally.

I already know that the next time I use a wiki with my students, which will be this spring, I plan on using RSS to track the student pages.  I’m also going to loosen the reigns a bit and let the kids really own it.  

What was missing in the wikis I browsed?  Well, each one has its own style.  I think a wiki is very similar to an essay.  If it addresses its purpose, uses appropriate and meaningful content, and appeals to the intended audience, then it is viable.  And like writing, a real-time audience that can collaborate, edit, post, and comment, is the most valuable piece of the whole environment. 

Personal Feeds:  I set up a feed on the subject of teens.  While I was not surprised, I was saddened to find that most stories in the current news about teens are not positive.  Topics like car crashes, shootings, knifings, violence, obesity, and depression clutter the news listing for teens this past week.  The article that caught my eye the most, however, is “Kids Dis E-mail, My-Space Dominates and Cyber-Attacks Grow More Dangerous” because my own experience with teens at school is they do not see the Internet as a potentially dangerous space.  They think nothing of sharing their most intimiate secrets with a few billion online users.  And according to this article, Korean teens see email as a formal communication tool, designed for business.  Instead, teens in Korea are using a social networking technology, similar to Face Book, to communicate .  In fact, Koreans are ahead of the Japanese in the uptake of this new technology.  So, my question is where are American teens?  I venture to guess we are not too far behind (knowing how popular My Space has become), but is our current educational practices, curriculum, and instruction preparing the teens for this?  Is it something to fear as a parent and educator, or is it an exciting new development on the technology frontier?

Gems of the Week:  I saw Cool Cat Teacher present at NECC last summer in Atlanta, and she inspired me to start a class wiki.  She made teaching sound so easy and fun.  She is sharp, dynamic, and fearless.  I find her blog no less than her real life persona.  She pointed out some new tools called “microblogging streams”, “backchannels“, and a twitter search engine called Terraminds for the microblogging streams .  I have no clue what she is talking about, but I know know enough about her cutting-edge style to know that these are things to spend some time exploring.  Does anyone out there know about these tools?  She also points out that PowerPoint is not the end-all in presentation tools, and if we really want to instill technology fluency in our students, we need to expose them to multiple tools that serve the same purpose.  Check out the 13 online alternatives to PowerPoint.  The days of PowerPoints being too large for email or bringing to a conference on a thumbdrive are long gone. Use an online presentation tool instead.  The last little jewel I found was another blog called First Day of Kindergarten, which was mentioned by another blogger.  (I so cannot tell you who, as everything gets so interconnected and you forget where you started in the first place!)  This blog was designed for a teacher’s online high school course.  Mr. Plough offers students a chance to approach assignments in multiple ways, utilizing web 2.0 tools they choose to explore.  He even gives tutorials and links to all the tools.  This is a great resource!  Check out the little slide show on how he defines Web 2.0 and take notice of all the wonderful links on this post for learning to use the tools.  I’ve added Mr. Plough’s blog to my reader–why reinvent the wheel?

 As I surfed through all the amazing pieces of information, including catching up on “All Things Considered” from NPR, I couldn’t help myself but to be drawn to all things Google.  Google docs, Google earth, Google gmail, Google, Google, Google.  Wow, what a giant! 

Google Docs can revolutionalize how students collaborate on the revisioning and editing of a piece of writing.  I checked out the professional development tips from Technology Learning, only to find easy tips on how to use the docs feature of Google, as well as some wonderful links to other resources, including a posting on “Why I Love Google Docs“.  Of course, I couldn’t really buy into what the previous blogger had to say, as she had numerous spelling and grammar errors throughout her blog. This is actually a good learning opportunity with students, showing them how bloggers gain your trust and respect when your words are crafted with care.

The blog Infinite Thinking Machine featured a blog post on “Google Apps for Your Domain in Education”.  This piece of information is especially interesting for schools who are trying to cut their tech budgets, but still offer some of the most cutting-edge communication tools out there, all the while using your school’s domain.  It is interesting how the school district rolled out the Google applications and helped the staff and students learn the ropes.

As if that isn’t cool enough, I had the opportunity to see a video of the Google Doodle Artist himself.  The blog Infinite Thinking Machine posted an announcement that students can enter a contest for their best Google doodle.  The video shows how Dennis Hwong draws all the doodles on a graphics tablet.  The video is edited in such as way that it speeds up the process visually, making the art look so simple and yet inspiring. I am going to keep my eye on the Google folks.  They really are leading us into the future with simple, efficient, and timely 2.0 tools.

I was inspired by the Students 2.0 blog, where a group of high school students sharply point out the inadequacies of the face of education today, in the posting “Amateur Education“.  It makes me sad to see that our current education system is failing in transforming students into the life-long learners we all value as educators.  The idea that we are selecting the content, deciding what kids should learn, and programming them to want to succeed based on grades and assessments we see as relevant. This posting is in concert with the blog post from Wandering Ink in “How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci“.  Here, blogger Kris Bradburn magnifies what schools are doing to squash the little creative da Vincis sitting in our classrooms.  The high school students in the Amateur Education posting would be refreshed to hear Bradburn’s approach.  Interestingly enough, commentors on this posting suggest that we turn to Web 2.0 tools to combat the dull traditional approach, allowing students to be more interactive and create content.  But, as many commentors pointed out, can Web 2.0 truly combat the politics of education?  The national and local testing, the agendas of policital parties, and more?  What will it take to truly reform education for the better, providing opportunities for students to truly be prepared for jobs that do not exist today and to offer creative thinking and constructive opportunities for all those little da Vincis?

Today’s students are the digital natives, and living in their world, I need to reach out to them through their way of learning.  As an educator, I feel it is my responsibility and calling to find interactive ways to create content and learning environments for student growth.  What blows my mind is that students we teach today will have jobs in the future that do not even exist yet.  How do we prepare a generation of learners for a world that values creative thinking, problem solving, and seemless use of new technology tools as they become available? 

As a learner and individual, I am already finding tools that serve my own needs.  I particpate in facebook to keep track of friends around the world.  I participate in nicenet with some writers, where we give feedback on writing pieces.  I see uses of wikis and blogs in my own school as well.  Instead of my principal sending out a weekly TGIF inspiring note about something she observed each week, she could post her ideas on a blog or wiki, where all the faculty members could also post their responses and inspiring experiences of the week.  Instead of waiting for students to return from being absent, we can share documents online and post work for easy access to all.  The possibilities are endless, which is why it can also be so very overwhelming.   

Easy…Resonates:  What resonates with me in thinking about the habits of life-long learners is the idea of creating your own learning toolbox.  I find that I enjoy collecting items that I need, and I enjoy the process of discovery.  I look forward to relying more on my colleagues and creating a network of educators who are in the trenches with me.  The idea of interacting on the web with colleagues and being part of an electronic community is a tool I really want to explore.

 Most Important:  What will be most important to me is to PLAY!  I am constantly reminded that time to explore and discover is almost more valuable than direct instruction and feedback.  I find ways to apply new tools and information when I allow myself the time to truly try things out, adapt them, and take risks.  I think in our busy lives, we forget the power of play.  Because I am the mom of a 5 and 6 year old, I think I am going to take a page from their book and really learn to PLAY!