Category Archives: Student Access

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The Gift That Keeps On Giving


Boxes!Originally uploaded by mooosh

We are at the end of our extended vacation on the East Coast – Fort McHenry and other Baltimore points of interest tomorrow and home on Friday.

We got into our room tonight and thanks to me bringing along my laptop, and free wifi in our hotel, an email came in from one of the childhood cancer support groups in Reno (The Keaton Raphael Memorial) that have helped Celest so much. Skype has donated 4 web cams and headsets to them so they might use our model to include other children with cancer to attend school using video-conferencing. Like Celest sometimes these children have to travel 250 miles to the San Francisco Bay Area to get special treatments at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital. Here’s a quote from the email:

“We have been thinking that the best way to utilize the equipment right now would be to initially set it up at Children’s Hospital in Oakland (where Celest and the majority of the Northern NV kiddos are treated) as a way for families to keep in touch while one is away at treatment and the other is at home with the other children (if applicable). There is a Reno mother currently in Oakland that is halfway through their 180 day stay. Her husband and three other children are in Reno. They are having a hard time keeping in touch and are perfect to try out the Skype set up.

I am heading down to Oakland Monday July 30 to help get them started. They already have internet accessible computers available for families to use, so I will just be bringing the web cam and headsets from Skype. Eventually we will have laptops available. I plan to head the family’s home in Reno on Friday to deliver the other webcam and help them get set up from home. That way we will be able to test it while I am in Oakland.”

She goes on to ask if I have any tips and could offer support if they run into any issues. I mean is this awesome or what!?

Yeah … this free Web 2.0 stuff … no impact on student learning.

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And They’re Still Blogging!

Several of my 4th graders have continued to blog even though school got out a month ago. This may not seem like anything new – we’ve heard teachers mention this before – however I think it is worth noting that most of the blogging that has happened has been from where ever they can get a connection since very few of my students have computers at home. One student blogged while visiting her Dad and then later when she was at her grandfather’s public library in Texas. Their posts have been mostly just keeping track of classmates stuff – but I’m thrilled because these students were not connected when we started and now they know some ways to communicate besides their home phone.

UPDATE 7/7/07: Per request I am adding links here to 2 of the recent posts and comments left by classmates – I think there have been about 10 total since school got out. One thing that is interesting is that in these examples the students involved either moved before the end of the year or are in a newly formed attendance area that is outside our school’s boundary and so the students won’t be coming back (probably). Links here and here.
Learning is messy!

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What If We Got What We Want?

I may not be the first to bring this up. But …

At the NECC EduBloggerCon one of the most lively discussions took place in a session where we discussed the “talking points” of Web 2.0. How do we advance our agenda about getting these tools and edtech and project based learning utilized to a much greater extent in education?

One of the points that came up was the lack of many working, successful examples of what we visualize as our model of what education and schools should or could look like. This made me wonder … I’m sure we don’t all agree on precisely what that model is, but what if you got it?

Tomorrow you get a call and your school district or whomever has decided to follow an educational plan that is basically your vision. 1:1 laptops, web 2.0 apps unblocked, time and $ for training, training, training, discussion, discussion, discussion, planning, planning, planning, whatever other hardware you feel is necessary, plenty of IT support, plenty of bandwidth, software – whether it is purchased or open-source, whatever else you envision as necessary. And this is going to cost a bundle AND everyone is watching. You have 5 to 10 years to show this makes a difference.

Now just having the tech is not all it would take obviously. How can or will students be evaluated would change the dynamic, connectivity at home (although that could be covered in the “whatever else you envision as necessary” point above – student connections at home – communitywide wireless?). What else needs to be considered?

How confident are you feeling now? You are one of the instigators here no matter what your role is (teacher, district/state edtech administrator, IT admin, ?). People are going to remember you (and others) pushed for this. They’re putting their money and resources behind you (and others). You have railed for these changes for a long time … and now you have them. Still confident this will lead to better student learning? Can you prove students are learning better or more? How? Test scores? Portfolios?

So if this really happened … are you freaking out about now … or thrilled to death?

Getting everything you want can be messy.

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Slow Average Internet Speeds Relative To Other Nations Could Threaten Innovation

I’m sitting in a session by Alan November called:

Expanding Boundaries of Learning: Designing Rigorous and Globally Connected Assignments

And I just pulled up this article:

Study: U.S. lags in ’net speed – Slow average internet speeds relative to other nations could threaten innovation
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

Here is the first paragraph from the article:

“A report from the Communications Workers of America says the United States has fallen to 16th place behind other industrialized nations in high-speed internet access. The union warns that slow internet speeds will dull America¹s edge in competition with other countries, and it recommends a national policy to address the problem.”

So I’m at the largest edtech conference in the US – and this is what I pull up … anyone else get the irony????

Learning is messy!!!!

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Cafe Envy

Jeff Utecht wonders why those of us populating the Blogger Cafe find it more engaging than many of the sessions. Well for one, you have a group of the most knowledgeable edtech people from all over the world in the same place, at the same time sharing and mashing all that knowledge and enthusiasm – “ and that’s powerful and addictive. You aren’t tied to “the topic” of a session – you can pick and choose and blend topics.

More intriguing to me is how do we replicate “Bloggers Cafe” on the web? Of course the answer is you can’t – Blogger’s Cafe has no time zone issues (if you’ve ever wanted to do a Skype session with other places in the world you know how difficult time zones are to deal with), it has no connectivity, platform or software issues. Sharing is immediate and not bound by what you can see or hear or feel on your computer.

This is the first “Cafe” and no one could anticipate its allure and how it has leveraged the entire conference. But it does then beg the question – how could we capture any of its power over the net? Skype or Elluminate are good tools for connecting – but the time zone issue clouds them. Wikis, blogs, feeds, and so forth all have their place – could they be mashed in some way to capture any of the magic of this place? It would be more than worth it to try – so you do it – you have the time, don’t you? Hmmm – yep that’s the rub. What new web 2.0 (3.0 actually) app could we come up with that would do this – you’d be a gazillionaire if you come up with it and develop it because this is way too powerful and meaningful.

Jeff Utecht, Chris Lehman, Darren Draper, John Pederson, Janice Stearns and I Skype-chatted a great session by Will Richardson just now –  Dean Shareski, Clarence Fisher, Bill Fitzgerald and others joined from as far away as Canada – here we were live Skype-Chatting Will’s preso and sharing it with people thousands of miles away.

Afterwards Chris Lehman may have captured the essence of “Blogger’s Cafe” when he said, “Blogger’s Cafe  is the reflection time not present in the sessions.” We all literally said, “AHHHH!”

Here’s to another example of “messy learning”

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Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming!

After finishing up our second and last day of ActivBoard training today I was talking with Mark Skoff, our school district’s Technology Program Coordinator (translation: He gets a teacher’s salary and puts out every edtech fire in a district of 65,000 students). He was explaining about what our plans are for next year. We are rolling out 200+ classrooms that will have ActivBoards, but he went on to mention that we have already purchased video iPods for podcasting and vidcasting classes for teachers next year – more digital photo classes – PDA classes – and the possibility of iPhone classes – they are serious! Realize that when you take any of these classes you get (for free to use with your students) the iPod or camera or PDA OR iPhone!!!

The reason this excites me as much as it does is that not even 2 years ago we blocked almost everything – Flickr, blogs, wikis, Skype are not blocked now and they are even talking about unblocking MySpace and other sites IF teachers take trainings in best practice use with students. Not even 2 years ago the classes offered beside one digital video class per year – a couple digital photo classes and some PDA classes were 3 classes on Word, 3 classes on Powerpoint and 2 classes on Excel … oh and classes on Groupwise (our e-mail client) and EasyGrade Pro, that was it. Attitude toward edtech was ..”just be happy doing Powerpoint presentations and Word docs with your students … and use the net, but not too much.” Those of us doing Marsopolis were hassled some about setting up yahoo email accounts in our classrooms so students could communicate with each other between schools – IT was really uncomfortable with that.

So what happened to change minds? (because pretty much the same people are in charge of Ed tech and IT now as were then). Some higher ups have been to some conferences, some of our edtech people finally “got it” how restrictive and narrow minded some of our policies are, and the few of us that were doing things anyhow raised awareness for how powerful web 2.0 is and could be. Like the title says: Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming! Oh, and so I guess this is more news that keeps me optimistic about finally making some progress towards trying some new ways and new tools. Yea!!!

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A Tale of a 4th Grade Wiki Project OR Kids and Animals … How Can You Lose!?

animalarkwiki.jpg

Nine years ago 2 of my sixth graders and I testified in front of the Nevada State Assembly Education Committee about how well using technology to enhance their learning had worked. At the time we had 7 Power Macs in our classroom running Netscape 3.0. We had made a web site for Animal Ark which is a local wildlife sanctuary. Per their web page:

ANIMAL ARK is a 38-acre wildlife sanctuary and nature center Northwest of Reno, Nevada. This facility’s rural setting provides an ideal place to house non-releasable wildlife and allows the public a unique opportunity to view these animals in natural habitat exhibits through glass viewing areas.

We had used Filamentality – “ a free web site even back then, to make “treasure hunt pages” about every animal at Animal Ark. We found web pages about every animal that users accessed to answer questions and do activities to learn about the animals. The state legislature did not have internet access at the time so I had captured pages that we projected on the lightest colored wall we could find in the chamber. The students blew the legislators away with what they had done and how well they explained it.

Since then Animal Ark has developed their own site and last year we took down our very well used, but worn out site. Well now thanks to web 2.0 and specifically wikis, we have made a new educational page for Animal Ark. Actually over 20 wiki pages. Each group of fourth graders in my class was responsible for making 3 wiki pages – one for each animal at the wildlife park. The pages can be used to do general research or as part of a “Design An Animal” project (see the wiki for directions and downloadable data gathering sheets). After researching info on animal adaptations students have to design a new animal that will survive in the area where the student lives – thus showing their understanding of animal adaptations and habitats through their design.

We did a trial run today and guess what!? We found out some (a few of over 80 total links) of the web sites students had selected as the best ones did not contain the information that was required to successfully design an animal. So, now that they could see that they went out with a clarified idea of what was needed and quickly found very suitable replacements. I know, I know, –  where in real life do we try things out and adjust what isn’t working right? (can you see my tongue in my cheek?). But this is the first time these students have done this kind of work and they didn’t get it right the first time on a small number of their pages.

FYI – students set up every wiki page except the main page which I set up to get us started. Students found the gold colored buttons with the paw print, made them, downloaded them, uploaded them to the wiki and put them on the home page and made them hot links to their pages. They also put the photos and links on their pages. Someone noted today that we didn’t have links back to the home page so we are doing that tomorrow ( I had missed that … duh). Students were responsible for finding web sites that were as age appropriate as possible that contained the necessary information. They answered questions as they searched to help them do that. My new student that only speaks Spanish has been finding links to pages in Spanish (Google lets you search that way … I didn’t know … way cool!), so our site will even be somewhat bilingual.

So now that they have replaced the links they found weak (weak links – get it? – sorry) we will gather the info they need and begin to design animals to survive in the Great Basin. We plan to make a video of the finished animals. More soon … I hope … last day is next Wednesday!!!!
Learning is messy!

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More Media Coverage And Some Really Cool News!

Last Tuesday a reporter from the local paper came to spend 45 minutes to do a story about how we Skyped Celest into class, but now-she-was-able-to-return-and-she-knew-how-things-worked-in-our classroom-because-she-had-been-here-via-Skype. Two hours and 45 minutes later he left. He stayed because he saw students blogging and using our class wiki page and working on more than 20 wiki pages we are making for a local animal park. Today 2 front page stories (Here and Here) came out about what we are doing with technology in our classroom (the reporter explained to me last week that they put the story off until now because it came after a three-day weekend and helped fill the pages on an “off-day”). Actually he did a pretty good job.

I tried to push the web 2.0 story, but that came out as “free software” and didn’t really capture the essence of web 2.0, … but he tried.

The other news story that happened today was that a producer from NBC Nightly News called me to do a story about Celest … but she decided that since our last day is next Wednesday, it was really too late to do a story this school year – she’ll keep us in mind for next fall – Celest has been granted a variance to be in my room next year so that if things don’t go well she can go online with us again.

The way cool news is that representatives from a local cancer support group talked with me last week. They told me that there are over 40 students like Celest in our area and that about 10 of them are at risk students that they would like to support by doing Skype set-ups like we did this year. A computer and web cam at home and one at school. We’ll see where this goes. Hmmm … using web 2.0 to connect students to learning, What a concept!

Learning is messy!

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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.

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Staying Connected

One of the tough things about teaching at an “At Risk” school is the turnover. In the last 4 weeks we gained a new non-English speaking student and lost 3  (almost 4) students. I’m rolling my current class to fifth grade next year and came to realize yesterday that out of my current 25 students only 14 will be with me next year. A few have already moved out of our attendance area and had to be issued a variance in order to finish out the year here, and 6 more students will be lost to the new boundaries they’ve drawn.

One of the students we lost 2 weeks ago has made a reconnection though. I woke up Saturday morning and checked my email and there was a new blog post waiting for approval and some comments. They were from Maija:

*I Miss You All!*
Hey you guys I’m here on my computer, and I had nothing to do, so I thought, hey I should go on our class blog!!!! So I did, and I started commenting people (if that’s okay Mr. Crosby?)!!! And I decided to write a blog saying I miss the good times we’ve had together!!!! And I really missed that!!! Like Mr.Crosby said “Has any of you gone to a new school?” I have and I know how it feels now!!! I was nervous, and scared! But once you get used to it you’ll be fine!!! Thanks Mr. Crosby!!!!
I’ll talk to you guys soon!!!

I guess it is about the connections.

Connections are messy?