Wikipedia

It was last year in March that I had had my first discussion about wikipedia. It was in a circle of people that consisted of a media specialist from Illinois, a retired San Francisco College librarian a doctor, music teacher and little ole me. The SFC librarian had mentioned the questionable content of Wikipedia. The shame he felt for subjecting an unknowing public with any information that had not gone before a board of review to approve the content. Little did I know at nearly the same time a year later I would be recognizing the importance of reliable and valid information. John's article strikes me with a twinge of humor as I reflect on the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911. It puts my Goodwill purchase of 1957 World Book Encyclopedias to shame. I must say they were a steal at $15 for the whole set. The information that my own children take from these books must be scrutinized for its validity. I cannot imagine the time people have to check, edit, add and remove information from wikipedia. Clearly there is some one on some sort of "bored" of review.

Test Results

I was interested to see our results compared to the other schools and our own pretest. It was good to see some gain in what students had learned in regards to information literacy including reliable resources. It took me a little while to understand the results. I would like to see another updated version with all the results form the pre and post tests. Highland had a slight increase in correct answers and that could be for many different reasons. I would like to suggest that the Pretest and Post tests be rewritten to use the language that may be more user friendly. Perhaps I as a teacher need to stress those concepts in the vocabulary used in the tests.

Free Tutors Online

I am so excited about the Saint Paul Public Library Homework online. I will be telling my classes about it tomorrow. I can not believe that I missed that piece earlier in the year. What a powerful tool. Thank you SPPL.

Last Class

I know from the class that I am definitely more aware of the new technology and ways we can incorporate it into the classroom. I cannot fully express the benefits that I and my students will recieve. When Karen mentions that we will have to review the wiki information and its new enhancements, I find myself a little nervous. It is hard to relearn constantly. It is just like our email at school that says Campus will be updated in the next couple of weeks with the 2008 version. Scary. Will it work? Why do I have to start over at the end of the year? Will I be adjusting once again to a new look and new buttons to push? I guess the phrase is Open to change. As public school employees we are being asked over and over again to change. I hope that I can continue to be open to change. I will continue to work at imporving my computer and resource searching skills. My puzzle piece goals are good to set and put together. I am excited for summer, but realize that I must continue to blog and experiment with the technology to keep my know how fresh

Highland Community

Highland Park Senior High School is currently making attempts to redefine our mission, values and goals. Our administrator has worked diligently to get our staff to take ownership of our school with hopes to create a common focus. In her attempts to open a discussion she has planned 3 community meetings. Each meeting she has opened with the You tube video clip " Did you know...challenges for the future" which was an updated version of the piece we saw called "Shift Happens." This is a great way to start looking at what we do in our classrooms and to consider looking at what we do in a different way. It is hard to envision taking advantage of the technology and jumping into the information literacy when the money necessary to equip and train seems so sparce. It is a challenge to plan and incorparate the technology into our classrooms with so many demands.
One of the items our technology group agreed upon was creating a computer lab space closer to the library. This space would allow students research space close enough to the media specialist so that the students would utilize the most reliable resources with the assistance and support they need. We talked about more opportunities for the students to stay after school to complete papers and research. Students would have more fair and equal access to the technology.
Technology is only one piece. We need to be creating a culture of accountability for each student. We want a student body that values working together and sharing ideas. Study groups should be encouraged. Communication via the most up-to-date technology would enhance any of these efforts. Just getting the technology is not enough. We have to be ready to use it and Prepare for its use. So much for my ramblings...

Technology PDP

One of the Professional Development Plans this year was a Highland Park Information Literacy for the 21st Century a Technology initiative. We met for one of the last times to contemplate year one. We want to provide fair access to all students so that they can use the computers for research and documentation. (to be continued)

PostTest complete

I completed my post test with my student groups on May 1,2008. I was only able to schedule 13 Dell Lap Tops because all of our labs are reserved for MCA testing, Administrative events and IB testing. The challenges we encountered were when some of the computers were not working. Since my classes were about 25 to 35 students I thought that I would have half the class complete the test online. Later I would switch during the class period and allow the 2nd half of the class to test. As smooth as that might sound it is difficult to use the laptops when there are so many that do not work well. There were some students that got near to the end of the survey when the computer mysteriously died. Some students voiced disgust feeling they were being required to fill out one more online test. There was some absenteeism this time and with the altering of class schedules some students were tested that may have missed the initial pretest. Some of my students were taking the post test for the 2nd time since they had done it in Mr. LeCompte's Chemistry class on the same day. The students all completed it and we will move on to continue to incorporate Technology literacy in our classes.

A cool website

I found a cool website for the golden ratio. It is located at: http://goldennumber.net/ I was able to use this a couple of times with my class. I used it to open up a discussion of Phi. The site contained some very interesting facts and great pictures of art and architecture. I encouraged students to look at it. I came back to the site a few days after introducing and found that the students were more engaged to look at different information. It is so nice to look at a picture to gether and enlarge it to easily share the important features.

Projector

Just got a notice from Leslie to clean the filter in the projector. I think I will bring it home this week end and take care of that. It has been super to use it in my class. I was sort of wondering what would happen if I needed to replace the bulb. Where do those funds come from? That will be interesting when the time comes to replace it. One more thing about the projector. The feature that allows us to enlarge the slide or video by zooming is super. Sometimes I wish I could do that with my overhead projector.

SketchCast Completed

I finally got the sketchcast published on my blog. After attempting to Embed this Sketchcast address into my blog with several errors, I finally noticed the menu button on the right lower corner of the sketch. I pressed it and got two address options to copy. I could never get the full address of the sketch to copy. I then chose the URL address and finally it posted. Ta DA! My first Sketchcast posted.

sketchcast

http://sketchcast.com/view/ZKr9BqE

YouTube vs. TeacherTube

It was interesting to listen to Leslie's You Tube in the district update. I had received an email from the tech person in our building the week before apologizing to we teachers. There was a bit of frustration in that email because apparently the someone in the district that was in the position to make that decision, made it without any advance notice to the schools. I find it fascinating how we teachers are encouraged to utilize technology and You Tube. Almost as soon as we embrace the technology its ripped out of our hands. Preparing for classes is tough enough without dealing with time consuming relearning of Teacher Tube. I began a search online for a tutorial for the golden rectangle and ratio to use in my Math class. I went to the Teacher Tube as instructed only to experience the slow and ineffeceint design of this internet site. I could find no videos on this topic. My home computer in seconds could hook me up to a video via YouTube that was exactly what I wanted. On Wednesday at the 1930 Como building we could access You Tube. Why? Why were the "highways" of fiber optics open to these classrooms at a district office buildings and not the schools themselves where we should be enhancing our classes with reliable information? I don't care about bandwidth. Why are we learning this if we can't use it?

Who's in control?

I had an interesting response to the oncoming school break. I had this feeling that I needed a real break. Not just a time away from school. So I made a decision that I would not use the computer to blog or look up anything for 6 days. I just wanted to maintain the idea that I was in control. I have taken the time to reconnect with my family and communicate one-on-one and face-to-face. I spent some of those days at real peace. It is rejuvenating and healthy to take this type of break. The information age we live in can hook us up to ipods, computers and email 42 hours a day and ys a week. Instead of living patiently, we anticipate quick and accurate responses. When those responses go missing or late, we may begin to feel a type of road rage. This is the unhealthy dependence we feel for the information age. I think as teachers we need to be mindful of this and control our urges and dependency on this fast moving information.

Another Thing

So what is the scale of King Kong to the miniature used in the 1933 Movie starring Fay Wray? Well that would be one foot to every 3/4 inch. I started my class with a 3.5 minute YouTube video clip from the movie. The black and white version can now be seen in color. The students enjoyed the scene and we talked about the history of this movie. It was the one of the first movie makers to use miniature models to simulate a large monster. There was also a good FAQ site that addressed the movie. Tomorrow I will take a look at Crazy Horse Monument and continue our discussion of similarity in the Mathematical sense. Sort of neat... the students asked for the Rap version of PI that I had run out of time for about a week ago. It was pretty cool too.

Thing 15

I just wanted to say that our media specialist at Highland has been great at inviting our staff to join in in order to update our own learning and usage of information literacy. My attendance at the BER Workshop by Joanne Troutner can be credited to Janet's invitation. I was able to see the perspective that Joanne presented and I dare say her message is already being implemented. She made it clear how just a picture, video, audio or podcast can be a brief and meaningful class opener or segue during the class. No doubt there is an art to smoothly transitioning during a class to include these types of information sound bytes. I find that if I condition my self to put just a few little interesting tidbits each week I am more likely to make an attempt to enhance the class this way. Her message was that in her presentation she would present so much that you would feel overwhelmed. My head was spinning at the end of the day. But by making a decision to try one or to things can make things feel doable. She also encouraged us to simply spread the wealth by sharing one or two things you liked or found interesting with a friend or colleague.

Thing9

I know that I have talked about video use in my class in the past. This most recent use was due to a couple of things. First I wanted to get my students to engage in an experiment using bouncy "super" balls to generate a sequence of numbers. And I wanted to include something fun and different. I found a video on balls bouncing we believe the location was San Francisco. With the video was a little audio music to go along for the ride. What was funny is that I introduced so that the music would be background for the students to draw their sketch of their bouncy ball. The students were attentive to the 2.5 minute clip and they were asking if it was real or pretend. The music was soothing and the video was entertaining and educational for creating a visual of a ball bouncing... in fact several balls bouncing. We moved on to the experiment and data collection in a light-hearted manner.

Thing 9

I was at an information literacy workshop on Friday March 14. I missed PI Day with my students and decided to find out what NPR had to offer. At that npr website I found and used a YouTube video of a reporter going to Times Square in New York and asking people what the symbol Pi meant. It was a quick and easy video to include in my class. The reporter was not very impressed with the Times Square group and head to the Mathematics Department of NYU. One gal recites 52 digits of Pi. Students were impressed. I was also able to get a high school rapper doing Pi and some interesting limericks and songs and trivia. Did you know that March 14th is Einstein's Birthday? I didn't know that either.

Thing 5

I just attended a 2 hour workshop at 1930 Como on Urban Planet. I have begun updating my web access at Highland Park Senior High School. I was not able to update my student portal grades over the weekend and my students were looking for that update to see what they were missing. I hope to get better at maintaining this area for students to access information for my classes. I put the online textbook URL and some pictures of the students doing an activity. I think it would be cool to have students use a wiki or blog to submit their solutions to the challenge problem, but little steps are all I can take.

Thing 21

Today in class we actually had to go to YouTube for the tutorial for common craft social bookmarking. Easy viewing and only lasted about 4 minutes.

Thing 23

In class today we created our own delicious account for Social Bookmarking. It was one of the easiest things to do and one thing I believe I will find useful. The video was helpful. It was laid out quite simply in the tutorial. I registered my account and installed Buttons with Karen's help. I will be able to Tag more websites and share them with my students and colleagues. This networking should allow me to find other good resources in this shared space.