Drive by Rant

by Beth Knittle on August 27, 2010

I am such a door mat.

My daughter and I just had dinner in a restaurant where the tables are way too close together.  The women at the adjacent table was loudly berating teachers.  In her opinion it was a women’s job and really those women who become teachers do it because it is an easy job and they can still spend lots of time with their kids.  Teaching is a job for women who just can’t commit to being a stay at home mom.

I am shocked by these statements until her dinning companion mentions there are lots of male teachers.  She responds that these are just men with out any back bone who could not take it in the cooperate world so they teach this way they can feel like they are the head of something.

And I just sit there.  I could not even begin to come up with a comment or response.

What would you do?

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Thinking and Questioning

by Beth Knittle on August 14, 2010

Every July 4th I make my poor children sit through the musical 1776. I do live in Massachusetts after all.  There is a line in the movie that has always stayed with me.

“I’ve never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell yes, I’m for debating anything!”  (Spoken by Stephen Hopkins in the movie 1776)

As a tech integration specialist part of the support I provide is how to wade through all the information we now have access to.  The focus is on information & visual literacy which is really critical thinking & questioning.  When you show someone search strategies you begin with the series of questions you are looking to answer.  You develop your keyword search, focus your search on certain domains, and locate possible sites.  Next you look at those sites and go though basic web evaluation:  who publishes the site, is it commercial or personal, is it credible, what is the purpose of the site to inform, pursued etc.  But I find that people tend to throw out the sites that do not agree with what they expect to find. This has always puzzled me.

I was trained originally as a scientist and I guess I view things through those goggles. When you apply the scientific method in its purest sense: you pose a question, develop a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, gather results, and draw a conclusion.  Sometimes your conclusion supports the hypothesis, sometimes it does not, or it is inconclusive.  No matter what, you’ve learned something.  You can learn from ideas and information at conflict with what you know or expect. Isn’t that one of the cornerstones of constructivism.

One of my favorite topics to teach was the development of the theory of plate tectonics.  It started with Alfred Wegener and the theory of continual drift.  He used information from a variety of fields to develop his theory.  He was scoffed at because he was trained as an astronomer and used an interdisciplinary approach. Later with newer technologies we mapped the seafloor, this new information lead to a new theory, seafloor spreading. Seismic studies and other information then lead to the theory of plate tectonics. New technologies, new experiences, new perspectives lead to new ideas. Why then when we do research on the web we limit our information and experiences? Why do we limit our opportunity to think, to question, to challenge our understanding?  Why do we prefer to spend time only with information that supports our understanding and beliefs?

I want my children to think.  I want them to think deeply about everything.  I want them to question and challenge their understanding and beliefs. I want them to be critical thinkers and critical questioners this is how they will grow, and learn.  These are the skills I want them to acquire in their education. I do not want them to throw out information that does not fit their expectations or comfort zones.  I want them to read, think and question the conflicting information.  They just might learn something.

For more on Alfred Wegener,  Plate Tectonics , the movie 1776,   and the real Stephen Hopkins.

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BLC 2010 – Notes

by Beth Knittle on July 24, 2010

I attended BLC 2010 last week and am finally getting a chance to digest and process all the information I have gathered. The following are some notes I took on some of the sessions I attended. They are pretty raw and I only have added a few thoughts since the conference. I really need to explore some of these more fully. There is just so much to learn and think about I just want to do it all and it is pretty difficult for me to prioritize.

Darren Kuropatwa – Design Matters
http://dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/Design-Matters-at-BLC-2010
Slides and Audio are available on the wiki above

Darren’s session are always though proving and inspiring. The focus on this session is how design, instruction, and presentation are essential to learning and student engagement.

Darren recommend the following sites and books.
Colr website  to help with design of presentations
Brain Rules – Book
Made to Stick – Book
How People Learn – Book

My big take away was how to manage a back channel and how to get keynote and PowerPoint to tweet information. I found a nice overview of the process here.

Brad Ovenell-Carter – The Myth of the Digital Native
Brad’s Blog

People get overwhelmed! Focus on the process – not the tools
He suggests adding links to browser tool bar that list folders by process and then a FEW tools that do this.

This is a switch in thinking (marketing) that my district has been trying to make how to shift the focus form tools to process and to streamline and organize the tools we do have. There are only so many online word processors and presentation applications you can use.

Brad’s session helped to coleus our thoughts.

Here are a few suggestions of groupings from Brad.

Research
Yo-Link, Data Bases (those from the library) ,Google – Advanced Search, Alta Vista

Produce
Google apps

Publish
Blog, Wiki, you-tube, Google sites, flicker, glogster

Discuss
Edmodo, Moodle, Ning

Manage
calendar, todo list, rss reader

Angela Maiers – Fluency 3.0
Her blog
Presentation Notes

I did not take any notes here I was focused on what Angela was saying. Please look at her materials – they are well worth your time.

Dean’s session had a similar theme and since I had heard Angela I was able to get some notes down in his session.

Dean Shareski – Google or You? Who Would You Rather Control Your Digital Identity.
His blog
Slides from presentation

What is your identity?

You need to manage your profile and school
Who manages our school district’s rep?

Places to look up your profile
• Klout
• google profile – set that up
• spezify
• persona MIT
• rate my teacher

We do have a permanent record, after all.
When you are Googled do they find you and is it good stuff.

You can’t not play – once you are online you play

It used to be that life was “private by default public with effort”
but now we are “public by default and private with effort”

People who were raised in the first environment do not get the privacy standards of the new environment.

We need to become clickable, need to market and advocate for yourself

On Dean’s blog page what others say- “it always feel a bit weird posting good stuff about yourself, but to prove I have some credibility in what I say, read what other say about me.”

Purchase Domain name for yourself, and your children
One School gets domains as graduation present.

Bud the Teacher says if you are concerned about what people may find then maybe you should be a better person

Digital is different – easily copied easily shared – info shared quickly without thought – action is instant
Digital is easily edited and viewable by millions

In a newspaper we have pictures and names of students and it is considered okay BUT online it is not okay- “do only creepy people read the internet?”
newspapers are now online as well and searchable so it is still okay for students full names to be in newspapers.

Here are links to research about Internet safety – some thing to look out when considering district policy. When getting out of HS – kids want to be found – get blogs and info ready for college searching

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NASA where is it headed?

July 9, 2010

(Please excuse a little personal rant)
Science is big in my household – my husband and I are both scientists at heart.  He still teaches science and I used to before moving into Instructional Tech. We are fascinated by all science; Earth, Space, Bio, Chemistry, Physics it does not really matter.  My daughter’s dream since she [...]

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Transition

June 26, 2010

It is summer here in the USA and many of us in education are transitioning from our day to day experiences at school to summer, a time full of family and play.  For many of us that also includes a second job and an opportunity to attend conference such as ISTE, underway now.
In my household [...]

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iPads Mini Project

June 7, 2010

In March I wrote about looking at the soon to be released iPads. I thought it was time to give you an update. Our iPads arrived mid May and our mini research project has begun.  First the iPads were shared with the Tech Team for about a week.  If we were going to support them [...]

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Taking it With You

May 31, 2010

Many schools are now using google apps for education to provide a collaborative space for students and teachers to create and share content.  Some districts provide their students with blog and wiki space.  I myself have created over 2,000 student identities for our Google Apps domain.  Many grad students in education, as you can see [...]

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