Category Archives: Brian Crosby

Posted on

It’s Just One Of Those Busy Times

This is one of those … “I know I haven’t been blogging much…” posts. Well I haven’t,  but you may have picked up here and there that I have been unusually busy. If you’re a classroom teacher you know how it can be.

Today a number of my students were informed they would no longer be in my classroom … it was tough … tomorrow may be tougher. I thought about keeping everyone (not that it is really my choice), but I had 7 more students than I was supposed to, and it showed. Our classroom is just full of bodies. On the one hand because my students this year are a great group (14 from last years class) you feel like what the heck I’ll just keep them. But, is that really what is best for all involved? When 2 or 3 or 4 or more students show up later … all of a sudden it’s not such a great idea. The other upshot was it gave me more students than I have laptops for 1:1,  so it was agreed it was a good thing. Tomorrow is our last day with everyone there, and we just so happen to be doing a video-Skype session with Lee Baber’s kids out in Virginia. We will both record, so it should be available as a podcast and maybe a vidcast later.

Next week I’m off to a conference about kids in poverty and how to understand their situation and help them, then I am back and having a film crew from New York come in to archive some of the things we are doing – I’ll fill you in later. In the meantime I’m getting ready for a sub and trying to make a video “Keynote” for the K12 Online Conference that at least won’t be embarrassing, and maybe will be helpful to some … we’ll see. I also have a 1 unit tech class for teachers coming up that always keeps me busy … oh and then there’s my family … : ). Once I have the keynote done that will take a lot off my plate and my mind (I love doing it, but I have to work at not letting it take over), so then I should be back to posting more often here and hopefully over at In Practice which all involved agree was tough to start up at the start of the school year, but we did it!

Learning Is Messy!

Blogged with Flock

Posted on

The Bear, The Broom and The Brave

silverlake.jpg

I’ve been off the grid this Labor Day Weekend camping 2 hours south of Reno in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains near Silver Lake. Friday night I got up about 1am to walk our fidgety, demanding Australian Shepherd. No big deal, found a good spot for a dog to do their thing, but apparently there was no thing that needed to happen, so we headed back to camp.

Now you have to understand this was at the end of an especially busy first week of school. I was exhausted. I plunked back down in bed and was out. At 3:00am I was awakened abruptly by my alarmed wife and kids telling me that there was a noise outside. “Something’s outside! – it might be a bear!   go outside and check it out!” In my early morning fog, as I opened the door of the in-laws RV, that is exactly what I heard them say.

Of course what they actually said was, “Check it out, but don’t go outside – it might be a bear!” This registered in my brain about the time the opening door struck the bear in the side of the head while simultaneously causing the broom leaning against the RV to slide into the opening doorway making it impossible to close the door. The bear’s head turned toward me and made kind of a gurgling sound just as I managed to flick the metal broom handle the other way which made a clanging noise against the side of the RV and then the ground scaring the bejeebers out of the bear which flinched and then began to run away just as the door clicked shut.

Of course I turned to my family with that confident, “You can applaud now, I have everything under control, I scared the bear away,” look on my face. I was met with opened mouth stares, and then, – WHAT WERE YOU DOING? WE TOLD YOU NOT TO OPEN THE DOOR THAT THERE WAS A BEAR OUTSIDE!

Awhile later the bear returned briefly to get a drink from our dog’s water dish and eat the melons we had on ice in a cooler outside the door just for him (not really!).

Mission accomplished – it was exciting, no one was hurt, and again I’ve given my family a great story to tell at my expense.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with Flock

Posted on

‘Nuf Said

We saw many of the “Memorials” around Washington DC today – VietNam, WWII, Korean War, Lincoln, Jefferson, The Holocaust Museum – all striking and thought provoking. But one surprised me in that I wasn’t really aware of it, and that was the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial. Very well done. I put two photos of quotes of his below – they say it all (I guess its that 1,000 word thing with pictures).
fdr1.jpg

It says, “THE TEST OF OUR PROGRESS IS NOT WHETHER WE ADD MORE TO THE ABUNDANCE OF THOSE WHO HAVE MUCH IT IS WHETHER WE PROVIDE ENOUGH FOR THOSE WHO HAVE TOO LITTLE.”

fdr2.jpg

Posted on

Test From Flock – Or I Better Not Get Caught Using Word to Write My Blog Again!!!

OK – I was made fun of (just a little) by several inhabitants of the Bloggers Cafe right after David Warlick sat next to me, saw that I was authoring a blog post, noticed I was using Word and said, “You use Word to write your blog!???” which brought much jovial kidding (I think it was jovial). Jeff Utecht and Mark Wagner showed me a few options (the whole time chuckling). So, here I am trying this new version of Flock even though I’ve heard both good and bad about it.

By the way not long after it was noticed that I use Word, someone saw that I wasn’t using RSS (I am now) – I must say that I did my part providing comic relief (even though none was needed) to my fellow bloggers. OK, time to see how this works. Did I mention I heard about this through my Twitter feed?

Learning is messy and sometimes embarrassing.

Blogged with Flock

Posted on

I’m Here! NECC 2007

viewfromritz.jpg

Well my plane (jet) left an hour earlier than it said it would on my itinerary, but that worked out OK. I just read Dave’s Tips about how to behave while here – I hope I remember everything.

I learned during my visit to Houston in January that you do need to be aware of your surroundings. A presenter made a somewhat disparaging comment about our President, and the Texans in the crowd moaned and were not pleased. The woman sitting next to me explained that she did not support President Bush in many of his policies, but you do not say anything negative about him in Texas – or if you do it is at your own peril – good to know.

The photo is the view out of my 18th floor room. Does the Coca Cola sign in the distance have something to do with Dave’s comment about Pepsi? Oh well, I’m sure he was just kidding.

OK now I have to find something to do until EduBloggerCon tomorrow morning. Where’s my white hankerchief!?

Technorati Tags:
Posted on

No Rest For The Weary!

You’ve probably noted I haven’t posted much lately … I’ve been sick … it’s end of school year syndrome … just too busy. Our last day was Wednesday, but I had to completely box up my room, even though I’m not moving classrooms because the entire school is having asbestos abatement done. All the carpet and floor tile is coming up. The floor tile is the culprit – contains asbestos circa the early 1960’s. We’ve been told for years that as long as the tiles are in one piece we needn’t worry because the asbestos is held in the tile unless the tile starts to flake (We’re all very reassured by this … cough, cough).

We had planned to do one last blog post on the last day, but the gods weren’t with us – cooler than usual weather messed us up because it changed the day’s schedule and just didn’t give us time. We did shoot a little video of our finished animal designs – we had planned to do some interviews about them on tape but that didn’t happen either … best laid plans and all.

I have about 50 projects around the house waiting for me (got most of the vegetable garden in today …  finally) – but I get to go to NECC this year so now I hope to have some time to prep for that … I have to figure out what sessions to go to.

My big news of late is that I got a new MacBook – an administrator in my school district got it for me even though only HP’s are allowed in my district!!! “……because you’ll use it well….” and since it is a district owned computer I can get it tagged and put on the network (shhhh! I just won’t mention what brand it is when I send IT the MAC number). It has an 80 gig hard drive and I really want at least 120 gig – would love 200 gig – but the guy at the Apple Store told me I have to leave it as is or I void the warranty – and since it came with 3 years of AppleCare I don’t want to do that. However, I perused the web some and found several references to others’ having the same thing happen and some say that they have gotten Apple on the phone and were told as long as an Apple certified repair place does it you are OK (the Apple Store guy told me no way you can do it under any circumstances). ANYONE OUT THERE HAVE ACTUAL EXPERIENCE WITH THIS!?

OK, where’s that list of things to do? I’d better get started.

Learning is messy!

Posted on

Come Join Me On WOW2 Tonight!

Women of Web 2.0, Cheryl Oakes, Jennifer Wagner, Sharon Peters, & Vicki Davis have asked me to be a guest tonight on their live webcast. On their web site they describe themselves as:

“…four women who not only love using the tools of the Internet but also love sharing the tools with others.”

I’ll share what my class has done and is doing right now using Web 2.0 tools and more. That’s tonight (Tuesday) 6:00pm Pacific Daylight Time – 9:00pm Eastern.

Posted on

A Hit and a Miss

I finished the last of four  4 hour classes I taught on Flickr, blogs, wikis, writingfix.com, digital video, TeacherTube and Skype (and a few other things) last night. To demo Skype I made a connection with Chrissy in New Zealand. I had never met Chrissy or been to her blog, but she was the first to answer my request. What a way to make my point of how easy using Skype is. I typed in her Skype name, clicked on it and 10 seconds later there she was along with her class. She announce that she was from our future since it was 11:30 Wednesday for her and 4:30 Tuesday for us. She shared how she uses Skype with her students – making connections with other classes in other places and that was it. Just simply cool. I sent her a thank you email and expressed the hope that we could possibly have our students work on something together, especially since the time zones make that possible.

On the other hand, I was supposed to join the WOW2 usual Tuesday night chat to demo how that works by having Cheryl Oakes, Jennifer Wagner, Sharon Peters, & Vicki Davis respond to a question or two. I entered the chat just fine but every time I tried to listen in I was knocked off their site … I’ve been on before … from home, no problem. I was running late and didn’t have time to problem solve for long – so I apologize if I disrupted things there : ( – Dang and my track record was doing so well too.

Posted on

My First Blog Post

Well I missed my blogs birthday a few weeks ago – So belated Happy Birthday blog! Here is my first post:

Why Field Trips, Technology and Project Based Learning?
Sunday, March 5th, 2006

Why Field Trips and technology and project based learning? They build schema and experience many of our students don’t have.

School mission statements have revolved around developing students that know how to learn or teach themselves for many years.

“Students will develop the skills required to become lifelong learners,” has become almost a mantra in education. Then we go about this by doing what we have been doing forever – just more focused, organized and, “research based.” NCLB added “the stick” because obviously what was missing was strict accountability.

Language and math “literacy” have become the focus because the thinking is that underachieving students will never make it without the “3R’s.” OK, fair enough – and some of those programs have made a difference – especially in primary grade reading and math test scores. However, as soon as students get to 3rd or 4th grade those scores drop and continue to drop more each grade level thereafter.

Why? Partly because the programs being mandated are so time consuming that there is no time for anything else (field trips, real science, real social studies, art, technology, PE, etc.) where students might experience at least some of the vocabulary and background knowledge required to make sense of what they read – and make it interesting. When students hit upper elementary, reading and math questions stress more and more analytical skills and vocabulary and students often just don’t have the schema in those areas to be successful. Reading then is too often meaningless and boring.
Technology has become a new tool of literacy – like it or not. Just like long ago:

At a teacher’s conference in 1703, it was reported that
students could no longer prepare bark to calculate problems. They depended instead on expensive slates. What would students do when the slate was dropped and broken?

According to the Rural American Teacher in 1928,
students depended too much on store bought ink. They did not
know how to make their own. What would happen when they
ran out? They wouldn’t be able to write until their next trip to
the settlement.

We are not doing our students justice by not giving them experience with the new tools of literacy because we don’t feel they know the old ones well enough. Technology is a gateway to learning that without the knowledge of its use students will be at a disadvantage compared to those that do.
Don’t believe that yet? We will continue to convince you.

Posted on

Ah The Troubles I’ve Seen

Saturday I was scheduled to do a 1 hour presentation “Tales From A Model Technology Classroom” at the Nevada Technology Leadership Conference. That was great because Ian Jukes was doing several presentations after his keynote and I would have a chance to sit in on at least one and then spend the afternoon seeing several other sessions. When I arrived however, I was informed that I had one of the very few presentations on blogging and Web 2.0 apps and could I do that 2 hour presentation (scheduled for Sunday) this afternoon too. I was 90% ready to do that, but had no handout – the wiki I was making for it was not finished – because I was planning to finish that that night after I had a “feel” for the conference – but I relented and said I would do it.

Here’s the irony – the room I presented in had desktops for 35 and seating for probably 15 more people – but I only had seven participants. I had 10 minutes to set-up for the presentation, there was no way to attach my laptop to the projector or sound system – so I had to run the presentation (starting 10 minutes or so late) from the wiki links on the desktop in the room – which was not logged into the network because the last presenter in the room had shut it off (I figured that out – the log-in was posted on a poster on the back wall) – it went OK, but with such a small group in such a large room there wasn’t a lot of “chemistry” or feedback from the attendees. I did hear from one today though that they had already set up their own wiki and were amazed how easy it was.

Contrast that with today – I did the same (but tweaked) presentation with a finished wiki in a room with computers for 12 – I had people sitting on the floor – standing in the back and probably 10 or more people came late, saw the crowd and left – all my equipment hooked up just fine – the presentation went off without a hitch and was very well received by those in attendance.

Presenting is messy!