Digital Stories: Intriguing Personal Connections

Once again, the digital stories created by 505 students were fabulous. Each story told a personal story and illustrated the power of digital story telling in connecting personal life to school life. Winners in our light-hearted digital story competition were Sally, Todd and Haley. Most important, the sharing of digital stories contributed to the growth of our community of technology using educators as we each got to know each other a little better.

Our resource reviews covered GeoGebra and Wall Wisher. It is interesting to note that we used to call these reviews “Software Reviews”, but as Evrim pointed out in class, the word software is almost history now. Almost all our resource reviews now use free, web-based applications. This is definitely good news for schools.

We began our journey into using wikis in classrooms and groups were formed to begin work on the collaborative assignment. Each group met briefly and agreed upon a topic and grade level for their project. Lindsay’s group will be creating an activity for Lindsay’s 4^th graders.

We will go online next week (Feb. 28) as we read about TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and describe how some skilled teachers are demonstrating their TPACK.

We look forward to your feedback and suggestions for our blended format, You may include suggestions in blog comments and in our midterm evaluation next week.

Going Online: Digital Stores, Hot Potatoes, and Bransford vs. Papert!

We are now almost 2 days into our Feb. 14 online week and things are off to a good start. Students chimed into the Similarities Between Bransford and Papert discussion and have illustrated their points with effective specifics from each author. So far, emphasis on the importance of metacognition and prior knowledge have been the most common areas of agreement on similarities. Later in the week, I plan to move the discussion toward differences.

Elisa chose Hot Potatoes for her resource review and her topic is generating discussion and interest among our group.

And our main activity for the week is the completion of digital stories. We will share these stories in class on Feb. 21. Sharing the stories provides great examples of high quality digital stories and also helps us connect with each other on a little deeper level. I look forward to seeing all the creations.

As Evrim pointed out, most of the students in 505 have already created an online presence. I look forward to lively, grounded discussions this week.

High Speed Evening: Online presence, Transfer of Learning, Mathophobia and Digital Story Telling

In a blended class, it seems especially important to make maximum use of face to face class time. If this is done correctly, students also have the opportunity to make maximum use of online time. As we planned last night’s class, it was clear that we had a very full agenda and Evrim suggested that we agree on time allocations for each piece of the agenda. This approach seemed to work well for us as we addressed all our agenda items and finished right on time. We should now be in good shape for an online class the week of Feb. 14, giving students time to concentrate on their digital story creations.

One of the highlights of the evening was Lindsay’s resource review on Brain Pop. Her review was clear, well organized and very effectively communicated. I look forward to the follow-up discussion this week.

The Imovie teams produced pretty impressive one-minute videos on “What is Learning” and made good use of many of the Imovie features. I feel confidant that this 505 group will produce some amazing digital stories and that we will all enjoy viewing these on Feb. 21.

I can feel our community of learners developing, both face to face and online. We had a successful online presence during our first online class last week and I look forward to that same presence the week of Feb. 14. I am interested to know student reactions to our blended format and your suggestions for how many face to face and how many online classes we should plan. Chime in!

Technology and the Teaching of Writing + Going Online!

We are experiencing our first online class this week. I am hoping that students will experience our online work from a metacognitive point of view----thinking about our interactions and the learning going on as we go.

The week started with a brief (15 minute) video summarizing our topic for the week as well as assignments for the week. As of Thursday, our discussions are beginning to take shape. I am hopeful that the delicious pieces of the reading discussion will help students connect with specifics from the reading, through their own posts and those of others.

We have two resource discussions this week, so students will have several interaction opportunities. I was pleased with the discussion around Amanda's Zapitalism resource last week and I hope the momentum continues.

I always worry a bit with online classes wondering, "is anybody there?". I look forward to finding a positive answer to that worry!

I will update the blog as the week progresses and I look forward to your comments.

New Media Literacies and Cognitive Science Meet Blogging!

Our second class meeting focused upon new knowledge about human learning and how technology applications can help us take advantage of this new knowledge to create new experiences and learning for students. Evrim began the evening with an interesting, resource filled talk on New Literacies and then moved to an introduction to blogging as one example of a platform where new literacies can be developed. Students then examined a few educational blogs looking for examples of new literacies. I then chimed in with a discussion of our reading in Bransford and Papert and we worked to connect the approaches of the two authors to each other and to our explorations with technology.

I was pleased with our first attempts at discussion and student sharing. In most classes, it takes awhile for students to feel comfortable discussing and sharing insights and I felt we made good progress in this area. I am hoping that a few more students will share gears of their childhood in our Facebook environment.

Evrim and I did a little more talking than we usually will in our learner-centered environment, but I think this is a necessary part of getting things going. We look forward to active, student centered evenings together and online!

Amanda chose an appropriate resource for our evening when she shared Zapitalism, an online learning environment focused on issues of supply and demand. Her experiences using the resource in her classes were especially interesting. Amanda will lead a discussion of her resource in our Moodle site this week.

I am excited and a little apprehensive about our first online class experience the week of January 31-----our community is beginning to grow face to face and I want our online experience to continue to nurture our connections. We will call this an experience in adventurous teaching and we will approach our online experience metacognitively as we evaluate the ups and downs of the experience together.

Getting Started!

After a little confusion about class meeting times, we got off to a good start on Monday, January 10. We have a large (19) group of students with diverse backgrounds, which will make for interesting and useful interactions as we explore technology applications for classrooms. We began with course and people introductions and then moved into a brief introduction to Logo. Logo provides a backdrop to our course since it was the first educational computer application that focused upon creating an active learning environment for students. 505 students quickly embraced the Logo experiences and worked through primitives, procedures and simple programming. I look forward to seeing the resulting Logo assignments.

I was pleased with our first night together. We have an active, well informed and talkative group, and I anticipate a dynamic learning experience together.

I am a little concerned about the Martin Luther King holiday taking some of our initial momentum, but I think we will all be ready to go with issues like cognitive science, school transformation and blogging!