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Sunday

14Mar2010

Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 7:28PM

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Improving my Blogging Experience

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Educational Bloggers ... How often do you revisit your blogging tool, layout, and features? How often do you get asked about what you are using for your website? Recently, I have been asked a few times ... so hear I go ...

While I like to pay attention to other blogs and how they are doing things, I find that keeping up with the blog tool itself is difficult at best. Since my blog is devoted to my personal education and not making money, I just don't stay on top of keeping the site layout fresh. Adding 'tools' can be testy at best when you have a limited amount of time to take care of your blogging environment. My solution ...

1. I like Squarespaces a lot even though it costs a fair amount of money because I don't need to keep up with the coding side.
2. Updating the backend is non-existent and that is exactly what I want!
3. Squarespaces is very user-friendly!
4. The CrankyGeek had me at a hello ... followers of their show should get that ...

The next step that has improved my use of Squarespaces Scribefire and Zemanta. I was thinking about switching back to WordPress because of the inability to use Zemanta but thankfully ... Scribefire has come through!

While this post isn't very useful for many ... I just wanted to think out loud about keeping on top of my blogging host / tool of choice.

The Screencast revisited?

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I think it is time to come back to some other "learning to learn" approaches with technology beyond the model of the Lifelong Learning Approach. Recently. several of our math teachers have been giving me a lot of nice feedback as I have helped them challenge their teaching methods and classroom approach because of the introduction of a Smartboard into their classroom. We were able to revive a board last year that sat unused for quite some time ... cough ... cough ... After letting the great feedback marinate for a while, I recently emailed them to see if I could prod their thinking some more ...

Thank you so much for the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback" title="Positive feedback" rel="wikipedia">positive feedback</a> on how things are going for you with the Smartboard. I continue to be energized by your thoughts as you experiment with alternative teaching strategies and methods because of the introduction of the Smartboard into your classroom. I was hoping to get you to think about the next step in the math problem so to speak. Mathcasts. My understanding is that if you can teach someone else a math concept, than you have mastered the content. Is that true?

Examples to explore:

   1. @mjmontagne 's student work ... California School: http://middleschoolblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-first-student-mathcast.html
   2. http://mathtrain.tv/index.php
   3. Check out: http://mjgds-math.wikispaces.com/ ... This is just the beginning of their school’s systemic approach to Mathcasts.
   4. @drezac and Mathcasts: http://www.drezac.com/search/label/mathcasting
   5. Further thoughts on how to use a screencast in education: http://screencastacademy.wikispaces.com/Applications+with+Students

The key to this approach in my opinion is storyboarding (debatable), an authentic audience, high expectations for student behavior, and a demand for high quality work. If you don’t take that approach, than we might be setting our students up for failure. They won’t take it serious ...

Resource for screencasting that I created with 2 colleagues (@bengrey and @apkohl) for a workshop that we did 2 years ago: http://screencastacademy.wikispaces.com/

List of Tools: http://screencastacademy.wikispaces.com/Tools

What are your thoughts on Screencasting? Do you have any more ideas for utilizing this strategy in the classroom?

Don't get caught up in the "master process" ... Let students create!

Scott Meech | in

Curricular Ideas,

Educational Thoughts | tagged

Constructivism,

mathcast,

tutorial

Wednesday

10Mar2010

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:40AM

Is this a Vision, Reality, or Pipe Dream?

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A Vision of 21st Century Teachers is worth the few minutes of your time. I do think the video is a little cliche and over the top but anything that gets you to think about what it means to be a student or teacher now is a good thing. Questions arise after the video which extend your thoughts.

My initial questions:

1. Is this a vision or a reality for you?

2. Is this really a move in a positive direction?

3. Is this a pipe dream?

Teachers are constantly talking to me about being overwhelmed. They ask questions like:

* Where do I begin?

* When would I have the time?

* Who is going to teach me?

These are tough questions sometimes as I don't think enough of us are answering them. These are the essential questions for change! For me, the best part of the video is:

Screenshot from within the Video The key to helping teachers improve their use of technology is their appreciation for learning themselves. Focus on learning! Change the vocabulary from technology into learning vocabulary. Basically, the question still remains every time I see these kinds of inspirational videos, how do you get there?

Screenshot #2

The answer for me is to focus on learning to learn and how to do that best! Can drive by workshops on creative tools get teachers to this point in the video? Do you have a comprehensive plan in place to get teachers to this point? Please let me know ... I want to share it with my district if you have something better than the Lifelong Learning Approach.