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Barbara Lindsey

Educational Leadership:How Teachers Learn:Learning with Blogs and Wikis - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...ning_with_Blogs_and_Wikis.aspx

professionaldevelopment leadership education Ferriter

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Teachers rarely get to self-select learning opportunities, pursue professional passions, or engage in meaningful, ongoing conversations about instruction.
  • Although most of my colleagues recognize that business-driven reform efforts are likely to have little effect on student learning, they are largely unwilling to challenge the status quo. "Nothing's going to change," they insist. "This is how professional development has always been done.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 17 Mar 09
       
      Do you agree with this statement?
  • First, there's a new emphasis on the importance of collaborative learning among members of close-knit teams in schools. School leaders are beginning to believe in the human capacity of their faculties and are structuring opportunities for teachers to reflect on instruction together. These joint efforts are targeted and specific, increasing educators' motivation and engagement.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Second, digital tools now help fulfill Elmore's desire for fresh "portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools." Specifically, thousands of accomplished educators are now writing blogs about teaching and learning, bringing transparency to both the art and the science of their practice. In every content area and grade level and in schools of varying sizes and from different geographic locations, educators are actively reflecting on instruction, challenging assumptions, questioning policies, offering advice, designing solutions, and learning together. And all this collective knowledge is readily available for free.
  • Blogs have introduced a measure of differentiation and challenge to my professional learning plan that had long been missing. I wrestle over the characteristics of effective professional development with Patrick Higgins (http://chalkdust101.wordpress.com) and the elements of high-quality instruction for middle grades students with Dina Strasser (http://theline.edublogs.org). Scott McLeod (www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org) forces me to think about driving school change from the system level; and Nancy Flanagan (http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land) helps me understand the connections between education policy and classroom practice. John Holland (http://circle-time.blogspot.com) and Larry Ferlazzo, Brian Crosby, and Alice Mercer (http://inpractice.edublogs.org) open my eyes to the challenges of working in high-needs communities.
  • What's more, the readers of my own blog challenge my thinking in provocative comments day after day.
  • Start by using a feed reader as a learning tool for a few weeks. Find several blogs that target educators in your grade level or content area and organize them with an aggregator of your choice. The search for blogs probably best begins at the SupportBlogging wiki (http://supportblogging.com), which includes a list of hundreds of blogs broken down into specific categories, such as education blogs, principal blogs, teacher blogs, classroom blogs, and librarian blogs.
  • Tell others how much you enjoy having your thinking stretched by the blogs you read.
  • Share your feed reader with your learning team and begin to explore together. Ask peers about the most interesting articles they're reading. Make it a point to talk with a colleague about a shared blog post at least twice each week.
  • Although reading blogs is the best way to start incorporating 21st-century tools into your plan for professional learning, writing your own blog about instruction can be equally powerful.
  • The difference between a wiki and a blog is that wikis are designed for collaboration among groups of users. Anyone with the shared wiki password can edit the content on a wiki at any time. Wikis also provide discussion boards for every page, enabling users to engage in ongoing conversations about their developing project. Some teams of teachers—such as the teachers creating Digitally Speaking (http://digitallyspeaking.pbwiki.com)—use wikis to reflect on the characteristics of effective instruction. Others use them to create warehouses of materials among teachers working in the same content area (http://cesa5mathscience.wikispaces.com) or as a source for teachers and teams creating entire classroom textbooks (http://anatowiki.wetpaint.com/?t=anon).
  • Consider finding a few peers to write about teaching and learning together. Divide your topic of interest into subtitles or sections. Teachers could be responsible for creating content for their area of expertise; they could generate key ideas, add links to external resources, upload appropriate documents, or embed interesting videos. Then allow users who are fluent with language to polish your final text. Find members who are sticklers for spelling and grammar and turn them loose. On a wiki, the writing process is far less intimidating than on a blog because you're not responsible for an entire selection all by yourself. Instead, you'll reflect with colleagues—which in and of itself is a powerful form of professional growth.
  • Digital tools have also changed who I am as an instructor because I've introduced these tools to my students. Together, we use feed readers to explore collections of student blogs (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/20982438) and organize resources on topics connected to our curriculum, such as biofuels and global warming (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/22534539). We write a classroom blog reflecting on current events (http://guysread.typepad.com/theblurb) and use wikis to collaborate around content (http://carbonfighters.pbwiki.com). I teach my students to challenge the thinking of digital peers with their comments—and to enjoy the challenges that others make to their own electronic thinking. At the same time, my students are learning to create, communicate, and collaborate—and to manage and evaluate information found online.
  • Blogs and wikis are changing who we are as learners, preparing us for a future driven by peer production and networked learning.
Barbara Lindsey

A Colorado Conversation » Administrators - 0 views

colearning.wikispaces.com/Administrators

richardson Fisch fischbowl networking pln Glastonbury wiki

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 04 Feb 09 - No Cached
  • Essential Questions Capture Everything: What's worth capturing in my classrooms? My building? My district? Audio? Video? Text-based assignments? Student work? Writing? Share Everything: Where can I share it? With whom? What audiences is our organization working to serve? How will they benefit from these shared items? Who needs to see what’s going on? Open Everything: What are the closed silos of information in our schools that shouldn't be? What things outside of our schools have we closed (blocked)? What can we do to open both of those up? Only Connect: How can I help my students and teachers connect with content, with each other, and with others outside the classroom (students, teachers, experts, mentors, the community, etc.) in a meaningful way? What questions do I have for my administrators/curriculum staff? Teaching Staff? IT Staff? Students?
  • Essential Questions What literacies must educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? What’s one thing you are going to do in the next six weeks to help you begin to master these literacies? How does "authentic" assessment change when the student's audience is the world?
  • Barbara Lindsey on 04 Feb 09
     
    Networking: The New Literacy by Karl Fisch and Will Richardson
Barbara Lindsey

The Tempered Radical: New Opportunities to Connect and Create. . . - 0 views

teacherleaders.typepad.com/...new-opportuniti.html

technology teachers

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 31 Jan 10 - Cached
  • I've truly embraced digital dialogue because it provides me with the opportunity to be challenged and to grow all at once---and on my own time. The traditional barriers of time and space that prevent teachers from learning from one another are eliminated by technology---and the terms "relationships" and "professional development" are being redefined by new opportunities to connect and create together.
  • Last year, I tried to pass that digital enthusiasm on to the sixth graders of my classroom. Together with peers, my students collaborated on a wiki, recording nearly everything that we learned in my science and social studies class. The collective efforts of 90 motivated kids resulted in nearly 80 pages of content that had been revised and refined almost 400 times.  They also joined an effort to create a classroom podcast program that earned over 20,000 page views from visitors in 125 countries ranging from Bolivia to Burkina Faso. With over 110 posts, our "little adventure" drew recognition from technology experts like Will Richardson and was spotlighted on national resource websites like MiddleWeb. 
  • The children of my classroom grew as digital citizens throughout the year. They learned to see the Internet as a tool for collaboration and communication---rather than simply as a vast online research encyclopedia. They practiced posting on our own digital discussion board, polishing the unique skills that it takes to engage others electronically. They judged the reliability of online resources together, became experts at questioning, grew willing to open their work to review and revision, learned Internet safety practices important for protecting themselves and saw the potential of becoming citizens of an electronic world where content is being created at a blinding pace.
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  • What are we going to do with our wiki and blog at the end of the year?" they asked often. "Can we take it with us to seventh grade and keep recording what we're learning? It would be neat to see what we had at the end of middle school!"
  • Our students will buy and sell from countries across the world and work for international companies. They will manage employees from other cultures, work with people from different continents in joint ventures and solve global problems such as AIDS and avian flu together.
  • But what I've grown to realize is that very few people have really embraced the changing nature of a tomorrow that remains poorly defined. We know that the Internet today is far more powerful than ever before---and have heard about companies that are capitalizing on these changes---but we haven't figured out what that means for us. We're jazzed to have access to information and geeked by interactive content providers, but our digital experiences remain somewhat self-centered.
  • the new National Educational Technology Standards for Students being developed by the International Society for Technology in Education. These standards reflect an increased need to teach children how to use the Internet in new and different ways. Perhaps the most challenging---and important standard---for educators to embrace will this one:Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: A. Interact, collaborate and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. B. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. C. Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. D. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.Does that sound like the digital work being done in your classroom, school, district or state?!
  • Together with the Center for International Understanding, North Carolina in the World is developing partnerships based on digital collaboration between schools in North Carolina and nations ranging from China to Mexico. Teachers and students in partnering schools are learning to use Web 2.0 tools like web-conferencing and wikis to connect kids across continents. Not only do these efforts help to build a general knowledge of other countries in our children, they are providing concrete opportunities to use technology in new ways.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 31 Jan 10
       
      Share with Glastonbury!
Sonja Marhefka

Quia - 0 views

www.quia.com

spanish french russian latin greek games vocabulary flashcards word search matching concentration

shared by Sonja Marhefka on 24 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Sonja Marhefka on 24 Jun 10
     
    Online games, quizzes etc. It is a subscription based site BUT, there are a ton of items posted that are FREE to use!
  • Patty Silvey on 24 Jun 10
     
    I "love" Quia and so do my kiddos! I have a paid subscription and have kept it for a number of years. If you see something on my site, either grab it from my site or link to my site for your students.
Barbara Lindsey

Technology in the Middle » Blog Archive » In the Classroom: Global Collaboration - 0 views

pwoessner.com/...classroom-global-collaboration

globallyconnectedproj global collaboration students education2.0

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 07 May 09 - Cached
  • Technology also determined how the project would end. Considering I was using the internet for overseas contact, I decided to look domestically for the conclusion. As a result of just a few minutes effort using emails I found three US museums (see below) who agreed to take our class interview projects for safe keeping in their archives. I was overwhelmed by the interest in our work and was amazed when the US National WWII Museum in New Orleans asked to have us provide links and information for their website. In conclusion, some simple email and wiki-site contact with a handful of schools brought the WWII period to life for Midwestern students in the US like nothing else could have.
  • Poland offered vivid stories and images of invasion, concentration camps, and families torn apart, and my students were able examine perspectives that were not to be found in our text book.
  • After blanketing the world with polite requests for collaboration things began shaping up. My 6th graders were set to work with schools in Turkey, Lebanon, and Morocco. My 7th graders were set to work with schools in Germany, Denmark, Japan, the Philippines, and most importantly Junior High #4 in Poland.
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  • My students were involved in two projects. One was collecting and discussing input from around the world on WWII, and the other was interviewing someone in their own life who had a connection to the war. The combination of the two projects proved powerful. The process connected them with friends and family who told amazing stories of their youth, they were able to social network with other students on the other side of the world, and we managed to slip in a good deal of history when they were not looking.
Irene Gifford

LanguageGuide: Foreign Language Vocabulary, Grammar, and Readings - 6 views

www.languageguide.org/

learning language languages english education

shared by Irene Gifford on 08 Dec 11 - Cached
  • Irene Gifford on 08 Dec 11
     
    This is a great vocabulary builder in French, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, etc. I introduced it in the lab and my students loved it. There are many topics and when you put the cursor on the picture it tells you by words and pronunciation what it is in the target language.
  • Irene Gifford on 08 Dec 11
     
    This is such a great website for my students! I was really excited to find this resource. I took my beginning French students to the lab today and they loved it. I will also share it with the Spanish teachers. Merci!
Barbara Lindsey

The Fischbowl: My Personal Learning Network in Action - 0 views

thefischbowl.blogspot.com/...earning-network-in-action.html

fischbowl socialnetworking actfl09 ctcolt09 mafla09 pln

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Sep 09 - Cached
  • It’s also critical to include varied viewpoints in our PLNs, to make sure we don’t continually reinforce our already held beliefs.
  • We live in an age of information abundance. Our students need to learn how to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize, remix and re-purpose information in order to understand and solve complex problems.
  • books are still part of my PLN
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  • Loss of certainty about authority and credibility is one of the prices we pay for the freedom of democratized publishing. We can no longer trust the author to guarantee the veracity of work; today’s media navigators must develop critical skills in order to find their way through the oceans of information, misinformation, and disinformation now available. The ability to analyze, investigate, and argue about what we read, see, and hear is an essential survival skill. Some bloggers can and do spread the most outrageously inaccurate and fallaciously argued information; it is up to the readers and, most significantly, other bloggers to actively question the questionable. Democratizing publishing creates a quality problem, the answer to which is—democratizing criticism. Critical thinking is not something that philosophers do, but a necessary skill in a mediasphere where anybody can publish and the veracity of what you read can never be assumed.
Barbara Lindsey

One Laptop One Child | Scholastic.com - 0 views

www2.scholastic.com/...article.jsp

1:1 equity students laptops

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08 - Cached
  • quietly tell select students about the policy
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08
       
      and which students then get to use this resource? What of issues of equity?
  • “We’re going to invite 20 seniors [this school year] selected by teachers,” he says. We don’t want the computers to be a distraction.”
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08
       
      So is this the AP version of digital access?
  • In Forsyth, the district uses radius servers for centralized network management. This device identifies the districts’ computers, allowing them access to the network according to their status. Laptops that don’t pass this test are put on the district’s virtual lan. This gives them online access while keeping the user behind the district’s firewall and within its Internet filters. It keeps these computers—and their users—away from the district’s network.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08
       
      Sounds like a resonable solution
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  • The Consolidated High School District 230 in Orland Park, Illinois, has taken a step in this direction by allowing students to bring their computers to school and connect to the Internet, but not log on to the district’s network, says Darrell Walery, director of technology.Stay Away from My Networkwalery sums up the struggle in this issue succinctly. He says tech directors who have been teachers favor the experiment, while those who have business backgrounds blanche at the thought. “My role as technology director is to mediate this exact issue,” he adds.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08
       
      Why we need more IT who have been teachers or really understand the difference between a business and educational environment.
  • Murray’s Pennsylvania district scans each notebook before it can connect to the school server. Clean Server antivirus software is one of the tools it uses to avoid “malware” and worms. Also, the district’s scans point users to free patches and service packs that are needed to keep security up to date.
  • Compatibility seems to be less of an issue each day as more online applications become available.
  • schools can turn to the growing number of free online tools available to all.
  • Classroom management is another potential worry. If college professors feel like students sometime use their lectures as a quiet place to fool around or get other work done (see sidebar), then what chance do K–12 teachers have of getting—and keeping—25 students on task?Teachers in Pennsylvania use classroom management software (a small software download) to keep control. Murray says this program allows teachers to take complete control of each laptop if they want, pushing out their lesson to each screen, blocking all work with a single button, and even using the pcs as glorified personal response devices.
  • The last big hurdle to make this policy a reality in more districts is one that can’t be cleared with a simple software program. It is instilling the idea that teachers will no longer be the dominant information delivery for each class.
  • “How do you get teachers prepared to teach in a classroom where everyone is a teacher?
  • “Professional development is key. We have instructional technology specialists at every school. These folks are not the fix-it people but certified teachers [usually from that same building]. It’s a peer.”
  • “There’s an explosion of social activities” that computers enable, Murray says,  from talking with people worldwide to keeping in touch with like-minded groups through Twitter to having students take virtual field trips halfway around the world, or just down the street. Science students can do an online dissection with step-by-step analysis, or math problems where a simulation can help illustrate a difficult-to-grasp concept, he adds.
  • Teachers need to think about teaching in a different way,” he says. “If you’re doing that, a lot of these [problems] go away.”
  • Having kids bring in their own computers can help bring 1:1 a lot closer to reality, especially in poorer districts. Klingler says Forsyth can channel its existing computer stock to students without personal computers and help reduce tech disparity.
  • While his state’s Classrooms for the Future program brought 550 pcs into the district, the technology coordinator realizes he won’t have the funding needed to replace these machines in three or four years.
  • “The cell phone is their thing,” Walery says. “Communication is the main [goal]. They constantly text back and forth.”
  • Forsyth has even looked into using Sony Playstation handhelds in class, noting that they have a “decent Web browser.”“We want to support whatever kids bring in,” he adds.
  • “It’s much more likely in a few years all students will have their own smartphones,” he says.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 19 Dec 08
     
    How 1-1 is changing as students ask to bring in their own laptops
Barbara Lindsey

2¢ Worth » Predictions Questions about the Next Decade - 0 views

davidwarlick.com/2cents

teachers technology lesson planning publications blog

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Are we (teachers) going to become digital users or subscribers?  For decades we have been comfortable using packaged instructional content (textbooks, etc.) to help students learn, and this was probably necessary in closed learning environments.
  • What’s to come of social networking? Will we, as a larger defining education community, come to accept social learning techniques and integrate them, or will we continue to fear and block these opportunities?
  • Just how much influence might I have, as a teacher, on the learning that my students are engaged in outside of my classroom and outside of the school’s bell schedule? How might emerging ICTs enable more interesting and potent learning experiences beyond the confines of traditional schooling? How responsible am I to pursue these opportunities or do I continue to follow the traditional role of teacher and leave tech and the networks to the “natives?”
  • Barbara Lindsey on 30 Dec 09
     
    Are we (teachers) going to become digital users or subscribers?  For decades we have been comfortable using packaged instructional content (textbooks, etc.) to help students learn, and this was probably necessary in closed learning environments.  
Barbara Lindsey

Nicolas' Cool Wiki - My Blog - 0 views

nicolascres.wikispaces.com/My+Blog

students teachers technology blog elementary wiki

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 23 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 23 Jan 10
     
    student (looks like elementary) with blog and wiki. Crowdsourcing for ideas for name of blog. Thx to@tonnet for link
Barbara Lindsey

Google Earth Lessons: My perfect tour of Spain - 2 views

www.gelessons.com/...mytourofspain.html

teachers google technology spain virtual tour high school

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 25 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 25 Oct 09
     
    Written for grades 9-12
Barbara Lindsey

The Tempered Radical: Compulsive Sharing and the Public School Teacher - 0 views

teacherleaders.typepad.com/...the-public-school-teacher.html

Ferriter pln professionaldevelopment teachers opensource OpenPD

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 22 Mar 09 - Cached
  • To put it simply, the kinds of compulsive sharing that Fisch, Johnson and Priestley argue is essential for powerful learning only develops in conditions where sharing is efficient. 
  • In my experience, digital tools are the key to making sharing---whether it's between colleagues in the same building or on different sides of the world----efficient, yet schools have been slow to embrace their potential.  
Barbara Lindsey

Can you see the difference? | bee's buzz - 0 views

bshallowes.edublogs.org/...can-you-see-the-difference

teachers blog technology tools twitter skype

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 06 Dec 09 - Cached
  • We had another great experience this week. A few of the children who stay at school  for After Care joined me at 4:00pm to Skype a class in Jacksonville USA. The Jacksonville kids are doing a tour Around the World with 80 Schools. It was a real WOW experience for the boys as they saw and spoke to children so far away in real time. They caught a glimpse of life beyond our school or city. Most of our learners have not travelled outside of Port Elizabeth and few have access to computers or the Internet outside of school, so their general knowledge is a bit lacking. This morning when I checked my Twitter account there was a link to a video clip that Silvia had edited and uploaded for us which means the rest of the grade 3’s can view it next week. So thank you to innovative and creative teacher, Silvia Tolisano for the experience. Which brings me to another difference technology makes in education. Twitter. I would never have met Silvia without Twitter. Three little boys’ lives have been enriched by a 15 minute Skype call and hopefully it will ignite a desire to learn more. Technology in education is dynamic!
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