Archive for May, 2003

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Technology Gets the Ax

Wednesday, May 14th, 2003

eSchol News Online paints a depressing picture of the state of funding for technology and education, in general. Corey Murray’s article Budget ax falls on school tech programs points out the following:

With state budget deficits soaring to near record levels, school technology programs from coast to coast are being slashed as policy makers and school leaders struggle to make do with sharply limited resources.

In Wisconsin, where budget shortfalls are expected to exceed $3.2 billion over the next two years, Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, has asked the state legislature to cut short the state¡Ás Technology for Educational Achievement (TEACH) program.

In West Virginia, Democratic Gov. Bob Wise has proposed cutting nearly $5 million for the purchase of computers and other technology equipment used to support the state¡Ás 281,000 students.

In Oregon, the fallout from a severe statewide budget crunch has all but booted technology from its place on the high-priority list. As many as half of the state¡Ás school districts are cutting days or even weeks of instruction off of the school year, and at least 1,100 teacher positions have been eliminated so far.

The poorer schools, he said, are at a distinct disadvantage because they lack the saving graces of charitable contributions from wealthy families and other alternative means of fund-raising. “The schools that have trouble raising money within the community really are going to get left behind”, he said. “Many districts ,not just Portland aren’t going to be able to perform the necessary upgrades.”

The list of desperate stories goes on and on¨and increases almost daily¨but no one is more intimate with the urgency of this problem than the educators whose task remains
unchanged, despite fewer resources.

And we hear first hand reports from Joe Luft in New York. “Obsolete equipment is a serious problem we’re facing at my school as we look to next year. Despite the best efforts of our tech squad, almost all of our classroom computers are no longer useful since they are now about 6-7 years old. Our labs are quickly aging and as a result our mobile iBook lab gets heavy daily use. No new equipment is on the horizon so access to reliable machines becomes increasingly problematic and further discourages teachers who are interested in integrating technology.”

Tim Lauer cuts to the chase with this comment: “ Like in many states we are mortgaging our future in the name of tax cuts and tightening our belts.”

Sigh……
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We Need More Pioneers!

Tuesday, May 13th, 2003

I have been following with interest the weblogs of aspiring presidential candidates. Howard Dean 2004 Call to Action Weblog is one I read. I had been reading Gary Hart’s but he has since withdrawn from the race. Does anybody know of any other weblogs by candidates? Does Bush have one? As I was checking for others today, I landed at Write the Web and followed a link to The Politician and his Weblog. by Giles Turnbull.

Politicians are not known for being very interesting. Nor are they renowned for their ability to keep up-to-date with modern technology.

My kids could have told him that after we spent an evening with legislators showing them weblogs - haven’t seen one from them yet… We’ll try to return next year and give it another try. Hey, we persevere!

Which makes Tom Watson somewhat unlike your typical Member of Parliament. The Labour member for West Bromwich East appears to be the only Honourable Gentleman with a weblog, and therefore is something of a pioneer.

We need more pioneers!

His site is quite unlike any Parliamentary site I’ve ever seen before. Updated every day with snippets of news, opinion and links to interesting things found on the web, it has the same appeal of many well-written weblogs with the added interest of its author’s occupation.

“I started with a ‘normal’ website when I was elected last year. It was rarely updated and frankly dull to read. Then I visited a school in my constituency and found seven-year-olds designing web pages and writing PowerPoint presentations. The lights came on and I realised that the political world was about to spin on its axis.

Hear! Hear! Just think what he could learn from some of our kids’ weblogs.

It is a huge political risk (Watson’s spoof page for teenagers caught the eyes of the national newspapers last week) but Watson is determined to stick with it.

Watson admits: “I’ll get some stick but I think eventually people will see that is fundamentally a more honest way of communicating with people who want to know what you think and do. Oh, and its also great fun and slightly addictive.”

A more honest way of communicating with people who want to know what candidates and politicians think and do - doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?

What’s more, Watson is convinced that weblogging will catch on among his fellow MPs.

“If the software makes publishing your thoughts and ideas easier, it will certainly catch on. For me, there is the advantage of getting ideas and opinions in the public domain quickly, without the reliance on your good profession (journalists) to interpret/edit what I’ve said.”

I’m hoping there will be a whole lot more risk takers who will communicate with us through weblogs. Just think of the teaching and learning possibilities…..


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ESL on my Mind

Monday, May 12th, 2003

This morning I was reading an article in Language Learning & Technology. This journal seeks to disseminate research to foreign and second language educators in the US and around the world on issues related to technology and language education.

The title of the article was Emerging Technologies - Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration by Bob Godwin-Jones.. He writes about collaborative opportunities.The article made reference to a blog for CALL created by Jim Duber and Aaron Campbell’s Web logs in ESL classes which I have made reference to in an earlier post) and Campbell’s own blog, the New Tanuki which contains resources for his EFL students and others. Bob Godwin-Jones provides a good overview of blogs, RSS feeds, and wikis plus the potentials these tools offer.

I found one initiative that he wrote about quite interesting. It is blam! and here is what he wrote:

An example of such an initiative is blam!, a template tool for writing and collecting reviews (of books, CDs, etc.). It uses Amazon’s Web services to gather the meta-data for an item, translates it into HTML, including any images and reference links. This is automatically placed into the editing environment, to be added to the writer’s review. The review is then posted to a blog. One could envision such a tool for language lessons posted on the Web. The FLEX (Foreign Language Lesson Exchange) lesson typography at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a step in that direction.

I still have not mastered RSS which I want to do and have many other things I need to learn first, but the possiblities scream out here! I’ll come back later and read up on this a little more thoroughly. Has anyone tried using this yet? Any thoughts on it?

I have a keen interest in ESL. The school where I used to teach had a high population of ESL students and we were always striving to meet their language needs. I’ve learned so much from these students. My sister also publishes Topics, an online magazine for learners of English. I love reading the students’ writings and have used their stories with ESL and other children to “broaden their horizons” and to give them ideas for writing. I’ve gotten my sister very interested in weblogs now and we are going to brainstorm a little later this summer on some ideas for collaborative projects.


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Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Friday, May 9th, 2003

I found this interesting link via Research Buzz.

New Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Available

Woohoo! The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is

up to version 48! The latest version of the bibliography

presents over 1,850 articles, books, and other sources

concerning scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the

Internet. You can get it in PDF and HTML flavors:

HTML: http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html

PDF: http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.pdf


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Engaging and Extending Writers

Friday, May 9th, 2003

The classroom teacher of the students I have been working with on NewsQuest greeted me with great excitement yesterday. She had a folder in her hands and could not wait to share the contents. She had just received the scores for her students on this year’s writing test. Each year fifth graders in Georgia take a writing test. Students are scored and rated as emerging, developing, focusing, experimenting, engaging, or extending writers. The link above explains those categories in more detail Mrs. Mateling said her children have never done better on the writing test than this year. She kindly told me that much of the credit needs to go to me. I told her no, I was sure the weblog writing helped but she was the classroom teacher and that’s where credit is due. However, I view this as somewhat of a validation of a real focus on writing on weblogs for students. Eight of her students are in my group of 11. Five were rated as extending writers and 3 as engaging writers!

Posted in Evaluation, Imported | 2 Comments »

Elementary Students Reflections on Weblogs

Thursday, May 8th, 2003

Today I worked for the last time with my fourth graders at J. H. House (sniff). The fifth graders were on a field trip so I will be getting their reflections next week. I always have a hard time when I lose a group of kids - I just can’t stand it and think I will never have as good a group again. My husband, however, says I say that every year.

We started the day off sharing the simulated teacher interviews that the students had done last week. Mrs. Barandiaran was quite impressed. I asked her to rate the students on a scale of 1-10 how well they knew her - Jennifer got a 9 and Emily and Derrick got a 7. They were elated and their teacher is going to provide them with the real answers! Perhaps we will get to post them later.

Now for the reflection and self-evaluation questions we worked on the past week or so. I had prepared the 20 questions and asked them to choose 10. These are worth reading. I am really looking forward to reading the fifth graders reflections next week!

Emily

  1. What have you learned?
    I have learned that you should always try to do your best and not to give up.
  2. How have you changed?
    My writing has definitely changed. I look at it differently now & I have less mistakes and more paragraphs.
  3. What has been the most challenging or frustrating thing for you and how have you met this challenge or overcome the frustration?
    Choosing the topic is one of the most frustrating. I usually turn on the TV to a news station and see what interests me.
  4. How have you integrated your learning of schoolblogs with any other area of your life?
    I try to use it in math and reading to write more descriptive answers to questions.
  5. What skills do you have that you didn’t have that are most valuble to you now?
    (see above)
  6. In what ways have you become a better writer?
    I learned how to write very good leads and ending paragraphs.
  7. How does having a weblog effect how you learn? How does it effect how you write?
    I start to look at all the things you are asked to do and I think about them more. For writing, I make the lead be extensive and for the story to be longer, but to the point.
  8. If you start a weblog of your own, what topic would it be on?
    I would have to say I would want to work on telling about the latest games. I would give hints, walkthroughs and everything in between.
  9. Do you have any words of wisdom for future webloggers?
    All I can say is for you to not do your work the night before you have to turn it in (trust me from experience) as it’s harder to do.
  10. Discuss your feeling on weblogs now.
    I used to think of it just to get out of class, but now I look forward to things like this…

    • to see what comments I have
    • to tell about a really neat news story
    • to learn
    • to share my thoughts and my ideas with my classmates and other people too
    • to read other peoples schoolblogs
    • to post my sotry and let my voice be heard
    • to keep discovering new ways to improve my writing

Derrick

  1. What is your favorite things about weblogs?
    What I like about weblogs is that you can choose your background and have comments.
  2. How have you changed?
    I have changed with my writing and punctuation errors and misprints. I have more confidence.
  3. Do you feel more confident abut any of your skills: computer? writing? reading? Explain.
    I feel more confident about my writing, reading, and how to use the weblogs because I have a good computer teacher. (Mrs. Davis)
  4. Do you ever find yourself helping others to learn something? How does that feel? Is this normal?
    Yes, I find myself helping others and it doesn’t feel bad at all unless you screw it up.
  5. If an outsider visited your site, what would you hope he or she would think about it?
    If someone did look at my site than I hope they say it is very good looking at the writings.
  6. What skills do you have that you didn’t have that are most valuble to you now?
    I think that I do have some skills that are now valuable to use because now I think I feel like a computer geek.
  7. In what ways have you become a better writer?
    The way that I became a better writer is that I can write a little faster than before. My ideas aren’t as scrambled as they used to be.
  8. If you start a weblog of your own, what would you write about?
    If I made my own weblog than I would write about the life that I live in.
  9. What did you think of the Georgia-NJ Connection?
    What I thought of the Georgia-NJ Connection was that it was awesome and I liked whom I worked with. As soon as I came int the lab the first thing I would do is to check if Dave and Vennesa B. had responded to me.
  10. Did you tell anyone about your weblog? Did others read your weblog? What feedback did you get from people outside the class, if any?
    I told a few people about the weblog and I got some great feedback on my weblog. One person said that I had no spelling errors and that I have been typing better.

Jennifer

  1. What is your favorite things about weblogs?
    My favorite thing about weblogs is that I can share my thoughts with others.
  2. What have you learned?
    I have learned new things in writing skills like a good lead and what a nutgraph is.
  3. How have you changed?
    I have changed into not being in my shy stage anymore.
  4. If an outsider visited your site, what would you hope he or she would think about it?
    I hope an outsider would like my weblog and might learn something new.
  5. In what ways have you become a better writer?
    I have become a better writer by using my new writing skills.
  6. If you start a weblog of your own, what would you write about?
    I would write my thoughts and feelings about what happened in the news.
  7. What did you think about the Georgia-NJ Connection?
    I thought that the Georgia-NJ Connection was very helpful and educational. Travis and Jeremy were my mentors. I would always be waiting to see what they would say about my weblog.
  8. Did you tell anyone about your weblog? Did others read your weblog? What feedback did you get from people outside the class, if any?
    Yes I told people about my weblog. Yes others read my page. Yes I got lots of feedback to give me some advice.
  9. Do you have any words of wisdom for future students?
    Yes I do and I want to tell them to have fun and work hard to achieve your goal!
  10. Discuss your feelings about weblogs now.
    Well I love my weblog so much. It is like I have an extra friend with me.

Posted in Evaluation, Imported | 3 Comments »

Students Learning about Possibilities

Wednesday, May 7th, 2003

Today I was looking back over some blogging links that I had put in my Favorites folder to save for a “less busy” day. That day is here as the students have finished finals. Do you hear that faint roar of joy coming from Atlanta? They are off and won’t be back until Monday! It’s nice to close the ITC for a few days for a little down time where you can think without the hustle and bustle of a normal day in our center. Bernie Dodge who is a professor at San Diego State University and is well-known for his Web Quest development had an interesting page on his web site about blogging entitled Cool Tools for Cool Teaching - Blogging. What caught my eye was his first subheading Writing with Passion. Bernie says, “Getting learners of any age to write is often a challenge”. He them talks about a new vehicle for self-expression - blogs! He created an assignment for his students to explore this new genre. He wanted them to think about how it might be useful to his students as educators. He used one of my other favorite tools, Inspiration, to create a diagram to illustrate blogging basics, personal blogs, and blogging in education.

On the education side he spotlighted these Blogs by Educators:

Mathemagenic
Educator Asylum (now EduBlog News)
Writing Across the Arts
Ms. Turnbull

and these class blogs:

Spanish American War
Joe Luft
GA-NJ Connection

In addition, Bernie provided these links for his students to explore:

Educational Bloggers Network
Weblogg-ed
Schoolblog News
Edublog Web Ring

For the final assignment for his students, he provided a link where his students were to go to post their reactions to blogging. He used Quick Topic which looks like a neat tool for educators.

Here are a few of the student responses:

Jeff sees it as a world-wide learning tool. “Blogging sounds like a great way to get students interested in the writing process. It also sounds like a good way for students to learn about the lives of others living around the world.”

Lily is inspired. “To get students to write with passion has always been the goal for many teachers. Blogging make this possible.”

Frances is a little confused. “I like all about it. Great way to get students to talk about an infinite numbet of topics. I just don’t see my self doing this yet. How? When? I still need to learn much more about it. I am very confused as what exactly is blogging? I guess I really don’t know much, but am willing to learn.”

Go read the student comments. Some you will agree with, some you will disagree with but I think this is a great way to get students actively involved in learning about possibilities. What a great start!

It definitely gives me some ideas for a class I will have in August. The professor will be attending a retreat, and I have a large block of time to introduce some education majors to weblogs. I can’t wait.


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Hey, Hey Stormy - You have one VERY proud aunt!

Monday, May 5th, 2003

3Allow me to diverge on a personal note. I am so proud of my niece, Stormy Peters. She is one of the keynote speakers at the Open Source Convention O’Reiley Network that will be held in Portland, Oregon in July this year. Nathan Torkington>

OSCON Keynotes highlights her keynote with the following comments:

Stormy Peters works for HP in my own town, Fort Collins. She’s talking directly to the theme of the conference, the way that open source and proprietary software often coexists rather than it being an all-or-nothing situation. Miguel’s an interesting aspect of this, come to think of it, with his work bringing the best of Microsoft to open source. She works for a company that’s making a big investment in Linux, and she’ll be presenting the financial story behind why adopting open source is a good idea. These arguments have actually been pretty hard to find.

Stormy is my niece and I am so proud of her! You go girl!!!!

Posted in Imported, Personal | 1 Comment »

Joe Points the Way to Electronic Journals

Saturday, May 3rd, 2003

Wow!  Joe posted this terrific link to an Index of Electronic Journals!  All in one place - what more could you want?

A directory of Electronic Journals that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost via open-education.org

Thanks, Joe for this great resource!


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Asking the Right Questions

Thursday, May 1st, 2003

The students did a great job on their simulated interviews with their teachers. Each brought a guest from their classroom and they really got a kick out of sharing their weblogs and working with their partners on the interviews. Gosh, what fun you can have with writing activities and weblogs! Our guests were amazed and everyone left smiling and talking. Next week we’ve invited their teachers to come in. We can’t wait to see their reactions. Of course, we included a disclaimer just in case it’s needed. :-) I chuckled at Joe’s comments today. I like his humor.

Anne Davis has moved and I look forward to reading more now that I don’t have to cross the Atlantic to see what she’s up to..

But let me tell you that it might be worth one more trip cross the Atlantic to go to NewsQuest and click on the student sites and enjoy their simulated interviews. However, a shorter trip can be taken via The Georgia-NJ Connections as the links are there, too.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on good questions. I wandered all over the web looking at reflection questions, self evaluation questions on writing sites, and all my links, of course, took me to other links and before you know it, you have no idea where you are and where you’ve been! Anyway, I took my list, chose various ones and adapted them to weblogs. I also “borrowed” a couple from Will - thanks, Will! And thanks to every other site I borrowed from! Here’s what I came up with:

  1. What’s your favorite thing about weblogs?
  2. What have you learned?
  3. How have you changed?
  4. What will you do with what you have learned?
  5. What has been most challenging or frustrating for you and how have you met the challenge or overcome the frustration?
  6. Can you see using weblogs in other classes? Explain. Be specific with a way you think they could be used.
  7. Do you feel more confident about any of your skills: Computer? Writing? Reading? Critical thinking? Explain.
  8. Do you ever find yourself helping others to learn something? How does that feel? Is this a normal role for you or new to you?
  9. If an outsider visited your site, what would you hope he or she would think about it?
  10. How have you integrated your learning of weblogs with any other area of your life?
  11. What skills that you have now that you didn’t have are most valuable to you and why?
  12. In what ways have you become a better writer?
  13. How does having a weblog affect how you learn? How does it affect how you write?
  14. Looking back, what do you wish you would have learned about that you didn’t? Or, what would you do differently if you could go back, knowing what you know now?
  15. If you could start a weblog of your own, what would you write about?
  16. What did you think of the Georgia-NJ Connection?
  17. Did you tell anyone about your weblog? Did others read your weblog? What feedback did you get from people outside the class, if any?
  18. Do you have any words of wisdom for future student webloggers?
  19. Discuss your feelings about weblogs now.
  20. Which response that you got from someone who made a comment about what you wrote did you like the best? Why?

I gave this list to the kids, told them to choose any 10, mull them over, and then bring them in as written answers next week. I love bumping up evaluation type questions for elementary students. They are not used to this type of evaluation questions and I am usually blown away by their perceptions. They just need to have some practice with reflecting on what they have learned. Don’t we all? Feedback welcomed ….


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