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Dave Truss

Digital Citizen - thinking about Facebook, Friends and Teachers | Educational Origami - 17 views

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    From my perspective, being friends with students in an informal social medium like face book is fraught with dangers? Its like attending student parties. What do you think? *Note my comment & Chris Kennedy's!
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    A cross post from the original blog: As an avid Facebook user I'd have to give a big thumbs up to the consensus of the group. I, too, accepted friend requests from students and have stopped the practice. Our district developed a policy that strongly discourages teachers "friending" students on social networking platforms. This has made my life easier. When I receive friends requests I can decline and give them school policy as my reason. Students understand and it is never a big deal. It isn't just Facebook as I receive more friend requests through GoodReads. In response I am unrolling school GoodReads account for our learning commons, as well as a Facebook Group. This was we can be there for them in their network without crossing personal lines. Great discussion thread!
Claudia Ceraso

ELT notes: Some things I am certain of (for now, this is beta, OK?) - 17 views

  • teaching is worth discussing. Anything else can be found for free on the Internet.
  • Good technology use in the classroom is transparent and intertwined.
  • Motivation is a drug. It is a short-term target.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Better make people "addicted" to learning, to the process, to the autonomy of it. There are intrinsic reasons why this is pleasurable, meaningful and long lasting per se.
  • 7) Mind the use of the word "enhance" when linked to learning. Mind the gap. Old things are just old things.
    • Dave Truss
       
      Note my comment: "This is such a good point! We do not advance from the early airplanes by sticking to using double winged biplanes or 'enhancing' the propeller engine. If a blog is used to 'enhance' the sharing of homework then the point of a blog is missed."
  • 9) Standards are for things that fit a pattern. When educators claim that creativity is a "21st century" essential skill, we need to accept the limitations of striving for standards. Assessment and standards are cousins.
  • Doubt, question and never, ever just assume.
    • Dave Truss
       
      This should be a poster to put in classrooms:-)
    • Gabriela Sellart
       
      Communicating results is becoming more and more frequent.(#4) Doubting out loud doesn't seem to grant you an "expert" degree, which I notice is the aim of many educators who are blogging. Particularly those who write in Spanish.
    • Claudia Ceraso
       
      The poster in the classroom... Interesting. I would change the phrase to "Remember your teacher also expects to learn lots from you". Few teachers are comfortable doubting in front of their students. Perhaps, with reason ;-)
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    So many quotable quotes in this post! Wonderful 'deep' thinking.
Dave Truss

The Digital Down Low: 1:1 Learning and the iPad...a few thoughts - 13 views

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    Even though most students who already own a laptop own a mac, we know that others are using a range of models running everything... Because our primaryacademic learning platforms (moodle and google apps education edition) run directly through the browser we're able to take a hardware and OS nuetral approach in our 1-1 learning model. @mjmontagne calls this "being device and OS agnostic"
Dave Truss

Needs and tools « Reveal Ties - 4 views

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    What I do want to say is, keep it simple. Digital tools should help you meet your class needs. Just as a piece of chalk does. Just as the tone of your voice does.
Dave Truss

ELT notes: IWBs and the Fallacy of Integration - 7 views

  • motivation and control. One seems to need the other, apparently. Keep the students motivated and you are a great teacher in control of the learning process. But we miss the point. Motivation has a short-term effect. New things will be old again. If we equal motivation with learning we will cling too much to it and direct our best efforts (and school budget) to gaining back control. A useless cycle that can lead us to consider extremely double-edged ideas like paying students to keep them learning.
  • We need autonomous, self-motivated students in love with the process of how humanity has learnt.
  • There is a underlying idea in the framing of our questions that needs unlearning. The belief that there are "levels", layers of complexity, hierarchies that we can detect and... well, control. But wait! Isn't that the very old way we want to truly change with new technologies?
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  • We already know it's about shifting power. Tight teacher control is a hindrance to foster empowered students who own their learning paths. We need to be aware of the old way finding its way to surface in what we question.
  • Tech is tech no matter what it does. It's innovative in its nature.
  • We can tell by the huge resistance to it. If there is no resistance in the process, we are probably facing improvements and weighing their gains in efficiency points. Good enough, only it is not an innovation. Innovation is not about "more or better", it's about "different".
  • What is the school picture today? What does my working context look like?I see an illusion that technology is to be bought, taught, used in class and then we can expect everyone to be happy. This false assumption seems to be guiding managerial decisions. This is the same old story behind the idea of technology "integration".
  • I doubt formal courses can make people adopt informal ways of learning. Courses could change teacher behaviour and leave their mindset untouched.
  • students are not digital natives. They know very little about educational uses of the technology they have been using for entertainment purposes only. They are quite ready to resist thoughtful, time consuming uses of the same technology. Particularly if they have had no part in choosing or deciding together with the teacher how we would use it.
  • First things first. Stay out of the tug-of-war. It is not a moment to think if the school is wrong in imposing it and teachers are right in resisting it. It's probably the moment to get together and go ahead purposefully. This is short-term thinking, though. Somehow teachers need to communicate to managers that the buy-don't-ask is an unhealthy approach from now on.
  • Ideally, we should envision a future where authorities engage teachers in conversations before buying.
  • Innovative teaching practices require innovative management practices. Let's think of adoption models that rely on having one-to-one conversations with teachers, experimenting together, asking them how far they feel they need mentoring, identifying what makes teachers happy at work.
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    We need autonomous, self-motivated students in love with the process of how humanity has learnt.
Dave Truss

Shift to the Future: Digital Tools and Social Responsibility - 12 views

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    bring together all our secondary school Principals to try to get to a shared understanding of the "digital" issues they face in their schools and how we might work together to address them. We met a few weeks ago and round-tabled to pull out the issues. I've included a subset below
Dave Truss

Where does school culture live? | Found In Translation - 7 views

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    I think the school culture is in how we treat each other. It is not something that sits…like a noun. School culture is a verb…that is a part of how we act, speak, share, collaborate, glance, and interact with each other.
Dave Truss

What's the purpose? « scmorgan - 8 views

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    "...My students were not able to "take" or "compile" much of their work. Yes, they created a list of what I asked. Yes, they created a cute "container" in which to hold their work. But I don't believe their portfolio truly represents their thinking, creating, and publishing this year. And that's too bad."
Dave Truss

My New Year Resolution: More Quality Comments « Sabrina's Weblog - 0 views

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    Apart from that, writing comments forces us to pay more attention to what we are reading and develop our own ideas further. Sometimes when  I decide to write a short  comment, I end up writing long and complex comments dealing with lots of issues, and I just don't know how I got there...To sum up, quality comments help us to become better bloggers and strengthen community links.
Dave Truss

It's not just a tool « Ideas and Thoughts - 13 views

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    "If we change the vocabulary and consider schools as learning environments, however, it makes no sense to talk about them being broken because environments don't break." Of course we currently aren't using technology to create learning environments at best we're embedding them into our current system.
Dave Truss

ELT notes: Some thoughts on identity -particularly mine - 6 views

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    Who are we when we are online? Maybe a better question could be, What is it about you that surfaces in an online environment and would not come up anywhere else?
Dave Truss

Home Reading Clips - iPads in 3C - 14 views

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    Tonight, and once a week until the end of the year, my students will record a clip of their home reading on their iPad, and email it to me. They can record the clip as many times as they want, and will choose from a selection of levelled books, books from home, and library books.
Dave Truss

The Connected Classroom: Supporting Reluctant Swimmers-or letting them drown? - 0 views

  • I have to wonder how many folks would jump in at all if they were afraid of the water. As David Truss points out, "too many people fear drowning and never get into the pool” and that in most Teacher Ed programs the amount of technology skill they leave the program with seems to be optional... to me that's like throwing a non-swimmer into the deep end.
  • I spend a day or two, sometimes a week “teaching folks to swim.” I give them the skills and we go SLOW.
  • There has been talk in the edtech community for a long time that we need to stop talking about the tools, but I disagree. You are always going to have those non-swimmers who finally find their way to the edge of the pool. Teach them what the water feels like and support them as they develop confidence in using the tool. When I share a tool like voicethread with a teacher, they can see so many ways it can be used in the classroom. They get excited about the potentials but they don’t understand the many concepts that go into it, embedding, and sharing, and privacy, and moderating comments, are so new to them…They are excited about being at the pool's edge, but it is like being thrown into that deep end for the first time.
    • Dave Truss
       
      So True! We do need to continue talking about the tools, but that can't be our focus, that is our line of support.
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  • There was also some talk in the comments on Durff’s post that administrators must make technology a priority if we are to get teachers to "take the time" to explore new things- it is one of the things that is driving me to complete my administrative certification. Provide opportunities for teachers to see what is possible (take them to the pool), Give them the skills they need (the swim lessons). Provide support for them and swim along side the teachers. Only then will you have competent swimmers.
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    There has been talk in the edtech community for a long time that we need to stop talking about the tools, but I disagree.
Dave Truss

Durff's Blog: Swim Instructors or Swimmers? - 0 views

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    My point is, how far are we to go with other educators? If we instruct on the technological skills, isn't our responsibility done? Isn't it the responsibility of individual educators to swim? It seems that too many, I have met them too, educators lack the drive to do things for themselves. We all went to college where we had to study on our own, write papers on our own, take tests on our own. I fail to understand the mindset.
Dave Truss

The Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 0 views

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    Larry does it again with an amazing Best Of post on the Holocaust!
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    You might also find The Best Web Resources On Darfur useful. Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust (and are accessible to English Language Learners): Here's a very accessible short history of the Holocaust.
Dave Truss

Google Docs, Wikis, and Tracked changes in Word: Looking at Collaborative Writing :: Ah... - 0 views

  • writing is moving into the public sphere. Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress. We post, we receive feedback (solicited or not) and we often rewrite or reconceptualize. In this way, teaching collaborative writing explicitely is crucial.
  • For me, the value of collaborative writing does not lie in the product but in the process; students are challenged to think critically, negotiate tactfully and engage meaningfully in a real life skill. The learning is layered and seamless.
  • when I first starting incorporating technology into my teaching repetoire, I must admit that it was the driving force of the lesson. In this way, I was trying to teach tech...which is not my area of expertise. However, when I finally figured out that I was not a tech teacher but rather someone who was using technology as a means to teach the skills and processes that have always been important to me...everything seemed so much more focussed and doable.
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    A new blogger doing great things... drop by and leave her a comment.
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    ...writing is moving into the public sphere. Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress. We post, we receive feedback (solicited or not) and we often rewrite or reconceptualize. In this way, teaching collaborative writing explicitely is crucial. For me, the value of collaborative writing does not lie in the product but in the process; students are challenged to think critically, negotiate tactfully and engage meaningfully in a real life skill. The learning is layered and seamless.
Dave Truss

The origins of BSOS - Bright Shiny Object Syndrome « Open Monologue - 0 views

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    It's about the learning not the tools, but how do we find the balance when helping teachers that are new to the tools?
Dave Truss

Personally Owned Devices or whether or not using them in the classroom. - alice's poste... - 1 views

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    as Steve Dembo mentions "here we are with millions of dollars in technology that's being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don't want to modify their own classroom management strategies."
Dave Truss

What can you do with a cell phone in the classroom? - Teach42 - 13 views

  • Fact is, they aren’t going away. If anything, they’re only becoming more and more prevalent. School budgets are tight, and here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies.
  • When I saw Jeremy Davis recently, he told me of an educator who uses cell phones in the classroom. In fact, this teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences.
  • Sure, we can keep fighting to keep cell phones hidden or banned in schools. But it’s a battle that schools can’t win. Life progresses, things change. Like it or not, these devices are here to stay, and adoption rates are racing towards 100+%. I suggest teachers be proactive. Because there’s a tidal wave coming and you can either ride with it, or have it crash into you.
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    When I saw Jeremy Davis recently, he told me of an educator who uses cell phones in the classroom. In fact, this teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn't… Well, that's when there are consequences.
Dave Truss

From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning: What is your classroom "rules" list for inte... - 21 views

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    . We could teach appropriate cell phone etiquette, while showing students how to use cell phones as learning tools. I would like to brainstorm some "rules" for including cell phones inside of the school classroom. Here are my top 5 (although I reserve the right to change them as I hear better ideas).
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