It’s late, and I’m tired and hungry, but I just have to blog quickly about this before going to bed.

First, I’ve started learning about how literacy is changing and what it will mean to be a literate person in the 21st century. First I viewed an excellent video by Clarence Fisher as part of the K12 Online Conference. He described the history of literacy and then bridged into what qualities are needed to be literate now. I also have been paying attention to David Warlick and just yesterday received a copy of his book Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century. I’ve read only the first few pages, but it promises to be another excellent resource.

I am learning that we need to be able to communicate with the many mediums that are available to us now (text, graphics, video, audio, etc.)

Tonight I was grading PowerPoint presentations that my seniors created to support their research papers. The last one to grade for tonight ended up being the hidden gem. The student gave his oral presentation in class today, and he had a hyperlink on one slide, but since the Internet was down AGAIN at school (we won’t get into that nightmare here…) he was not able to show us what he linked to. At home tonight, I was able to check it out, and the most wonderful surprise was waiting for me at the other end of the click. He had embeded the link to a YouTube video. It was so cool. (Of course, it would be blocked at school unfortunately.) His report was on the literature of Greece, and he found a terrific 4-minute video about Greek heroes. It was the icing on the cake, the one little detail that really put his work over the top. Ahh, a literate 18 year old. I feel better about sending this one off into the world soon. He’s ready. He’s literate. He’ll be great out there.

Technorati Tags: 21st_Century_Literacy Literacy DavidWarlick ClarenceFisher K12online K12online06 YouTube

I got to attend my first “webinar” this afternoon. Way cool! David Warlick presented about Flat Classrooms. Here’s the link to the slides David showed. The webinar is supposed to be archived, but I haven’t found that link yet. I hope that it will include David’s talk, video of the slides, and the text of the chat that was going on concurrently.
The basis for much of the discussion comes from Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat.

One interesting idea was that we no longer need to teach kids facts. We need to teach them how to manage the facts. We need to teach them how to process and use information, not just memorize facts of information. I need to teach them to learn how to learn, how to teach themselves, how to be life-long learners. How else can they thrive in the 21st century? How could I possibly think of myself as a responsible educator if I fail to teach my students that?

Okay, well obviously I need to add more to this, but it will have to be a bit later.

Technorati Tags: flat classroom warlick webinar ThomasFriedman WorldisFlat

These links to some of the presentations from the K12 Online Conference will give you more information about all the cool things you can do with Flickr.

Check out this one from Alan Levine. Click on the various “hot spots” to learn more about the cool things you can do (very easily, btw) with Flickr. Really fun!

This video by Jeff Utecht will show you even more–enjoy! Can I embed this puppy? Okay, well, that worked, but I had no controls over the video. It started playing automatically, and I couldn’t stop, pause, etc. so I removed the link to the .swf video file.

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This PowerPoint is from notes I took while watching Clarence Fisher’s presentation, Global Literacy, at the K12 Online Conference.

global-literacy.ppt

This interesting post from CoolCatTeacher got me to thinking (as Vicki Davis so often does…)

What else can I compare blogging to? Since I was born without a sports gene, I’ll have to make my comparisons to something else. I think I’ll go with scrapbooking.

Blogging is like Scrapbooking

1. It’s a creative playground.

Although I’m fairly new at this, I’m finding that blogs are a good place to play and try things out, whether they be new tools or new ideas.

2. It’s a place to express myself.

If it’s on my mind, I can sit down and write a blog post about it. I can get my thoughts out, look at them, and maybe go back and make some adjustments. I don’t feel like I’m going to be judged here. It’s my blog, and I’ll do what I want to with it. If someone else likes it, cool. If not, oh well. I still like it.

3. It’s something to be shared.

Watching my 11th graders blog this year has taught me how much they like to share their ideas. I do too. It’s great to watch them interact with each other and respond, checking back several times throughout the week to see what’s new.

4. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

I see the awesome things other people are doing with their blogs, and I want to try to do that too. I may now know how, but I won’t figure it out if I don’t jump in and give it a try. Besides, I can always go back and change it later if it doesn’t work the way I want it to.

5. There’s only one way to do it wrong–not to do it.

Yeah–the only way to screw it up is just to leave the ideas in the box, just like the box(es) of pictures I know you have sitting in a drawer or a closet, unseen and forgotten. And don’t just “collect” supplies (or ideas)–USE THEM! They won’t do anybody any good if you leave them in the drawer!

6. The best way to learn is to see what others are doing.

See what’s out there. What do you like about what you see? Try it out. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? We like to call it “scrap-lifting” so I guess in this arena, it would be “blog-lifting”???

7. Make your mark–be unique.

Develop your own style. Let your personality shine through. Don’t be afraid to share yourself with others–believe it or not, some people actually want to get to know you. Open up and be yourself. Emulate the things you admire in others, but make it your own. Don’t just be a copycat.

8. I don’t have to be a “superstar”–Good is good enough.

As Ken Jennings once wrote in his blog, “Carpe Blog-em” Seize the blog. Grab the opportunity. I’ll never be a Will Richardson or a David Warlick or a Vicki Davis, but I can be a pretty good Nancy Scofield. Actually, I can be the best Nancy Scofield in the whole world. The more I practice at this, the better I get at it. Of course, I strive for excellence, but I can’t compare myself to others whom I respect so highly. I don’t think I’m in that league yet. But, if I keep working at, I could get there.

9. I can teach others what I’ve learned.

I can share what I’ve learned to do. I’m a pretty good teacher, and I can get people excited about (scrapbooking) when I teach a class. I can help them learn to find their own talents and explore their own creativity.

10. It feels pretty good when someone appreciates your work.

Gotta admit I was pretty cheesed the other day when Cheryl Oakes posted a comment on my blog about developing a technology class just for girls. It was my first unsolicited comment! The first comment that wasn’t an assignment! I was so excited I almost tinkled a little. (blush) Then it happened again–a math teacher from Littleton, Colorado named Barbara S. found my English 3 blog and posted a comment to the kids. WooHoo! Check out her very cool math idea here (it’s the entry titled A Math Teacher’s Experience dated 10/31/2006). Small, flat world we live in–I read the blog with her math idea the day after she posted to our class. Then on Saturday, I jumped onto the K12 Online Conference culminating Skypecast called When Night Falls… There I “met” several of my ed-tech heroes, including Vicki Davis. Long story short, she asked for my blog address, and when I posted it, she said that she had already read my blog! Oh my goodness! And then she said that she was impressed with my blog–I nearly died right there!

Okay, well, it’s not as insightful as Vicki’s original post about how blogging is like football, but it’s my bit for tonight.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Technorati Tags: blogging VickiDavis scrapbooking CherylOakes KenJennings WillRichardson DavidWarlick
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This is somewhat belated, but I’ll take a few minutes to write about the grant that I helped work on for our school last spring. I didn’t have a blog at the time we did the grant. Over the weekend, I participated in the When Night Falls… Skypecast as the culminating event for the K12 Online Conference (which was AWESOME, btw). This was brought up in the conversation, and Vicki Davis (Coolcatteacher) asked if I’d blogged about this grant. So here goes…

It all started last Valentine’s Day when my dear husband gave me a 60-gig video iPod.(Roses and chocolates last only so long, but an iPod is forever.) I started searching for educational podcasts in iTunes, and found several that I found interesting. Also, our principal had showed us a video in January that was of an Alan November presentation to the Colorado Association of School Boards. From Alan November’s site, I watched several videos and found Will Richardson, whom I started following. I ordered Will’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms,  when it became available, and my learning really picked up there!

It didn’t take long for me to see that HUGE impact these Web 2.0 techonlogies will have on education. I wanted to be part of this revolution, and I wanted to spread the word throughout our school. Our district Foundation offered a spring grant period, and two other teachers worked with me to write a grant to get an iPod and microphone for each teacher at our school.  Our grant focused on taking the technologies that students currently use for entertainment and exploiting those tools for educational purposes.

Our grant was chosen as the highest rated of the proposals, and we received half of our requested amount. Our principal matched another $1000, and our local Lion’s Club matched another $1000. We had enough to purchase 18 30-gig video iPods and 18 microphones.

I took an online class about Podcasting for Teaching and Learning from GlobalClassroom and continued studying Will’s book, as well as subscribing to several blogs and podcasts.  (See the BlogRoll on this page.) We scheduled a two-day training class in the summer for our staff, and we offered it to the rest of our district in the Summer Teacher Academy. I thought it would be a popular class, but sadly, only one person registered, so the Summer Academy classes were cancelled. I was disappointed in the lack of interest, but maybe we’ll try again next summer. The training for our own staff had to be postponed because some power-crazed person in our ad. building’s purchasing department wouldn’t allow the PO for the iPods to go through until August (we sent in the PO before school ended in May). It was an incredibily frustrating time. We still didn’t have the iPods when we had training in August, but they finally (!) arrived in mid-September.

I still feel like such a baby at all of this. I used Will’s book heavily as a resource for the summer training. Will sent us a couple of boxes of the book, and most everyone on the staff purchased a copy. We focused a lot of our time on blogs, recording mp3 files with Audacity, and taking a quick look at Flickr. I continue to try to work on staff development throughout the school year, but I feel so inadequate at times, like I’m barely a step ahead. Of course, the K12 Online Conference was a HUGE help in my personal learning, and I feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface with all the resources there. That will be an ongoing gold mine for me to continue to dig in.

At this point, I don’t see many of the teachers using the iPods for school-related stuff. A couple of them are using blogs, but many are not yet “on the bandwagon” it seems. I need to do a better job of showing them specifically how to use their iPods for classes. Maybe if anyone out there reads all this rambling, you could drop a comment and give us some suggestions.

Okay, this has gone on far too long….see you in the “blogosphere”