Another Book Recommendation

If you're team is having troubles, read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Great book and an easy read! I hope to use his ideas to improve our team at work this year so we can become more productive which will help our students succeed!

Uncle Steve's Medals

Uncle Steve, originally uploaded by acspohn.

This is a photo of my brother and my daughter after his retirement from the Army. He let her have these two medals and she was so proud.

23 Things: Thing 23

Take a few moments to reflect on your journey. You've covered a lot of material over the past ten weeks. What does it all mean? How has your thinking changed between Thing 1 and Thing 23?
I'm glad that I took this course even though I had used or heard of most of the "things" that we covered because I found, as I expected, that there was a lot more that I didn't know. I found that even the tools that I was using I wasn't using in the way that the Web 2.0 envisioned them to be used - in a truly collaborative sense. I also hadn't had time to really think through how some of these tools, like a wiki, could really get students to work together to create real, sustained knowledge in a content area. We also should remember that teamwork is still one of the crucial parts of every workplace and collaborative learning gets student ready for that type of work environment.


Has this program changed how you view the Internet or how view education in the digital world? What plans have you made for using these tools in and out of the classroom? How will you continue to learn about Web 2.0 tools? What are your big "take aways" from this experience?

One thing that's funny is that I was using many of the Web 2.0 tools for my personal use but hadn't extended them to my professional life. This program has helped me by giving me a wide variety of examples of how other educators and professionals are using Web 2.0 to enrichen their lives both personally and professionally. First and foremost, I hope this year I will bring to my classroom a collaborative mindset. I think that I have to start by creating a collaborative culture and then use the tools that this program has introduced to me to make the collaboration an integral part to our learning. I hope to especially develop and use my wiki and to make better use of blogging than I did last year. I think that, for some units, social bookmarking could prove useful as well. Right now I find sites and store them in Netrekker for my class to use but it usually becomes a tool for me to quickly retrieve a site to show something through the LCD projector. Kind of one sided. But with social bookmarking we could all help to find and store sites that would be useful not to mention we could have the help of our parents who are a great resource.

The biggest idea that I will take away from this class is that collaboration is where the world is headed. It used to be a nice thing to do and we all knew it worked well but not every workplace was a collaborative one. Now, it is becoming a requirement in almost all facets of our world. Teamwork is now even more crucial of a skill than ever before and, although people want to blame technology for destroying social etiquette and grammar, I think that soon our younger generation will begin to feel the pressure of the permanence of the web and the opposite effect will occur. We will begin to be even more careful than ever before about what we put out in the world.

Thank you for this learning opportunity and I hope it continues to be offered!

23 Things: Thing 22

In your blog post be sure to include the link to your wiki. Then discuss your feelings about using a wiki. How does a wiki differ from a blog? When is one more appropriate to use than the other?


My feelings about using a wiki are mixed. I spent a lot of time last year working on my school website and know that, to make it good, I invested tons of time. I just hope that managing a wiki doesn't become the same way. I imagine that, since a wiki is collaborative, that the workload should not be nearly the same as a web page. I can also see that my webpage is mainly informative in nature although there is a blog feature (issue? students have to remember a their student number to log in and some are long...very difficult for third graders!). We can also post pictures and comment on them in a discussion board. But, the website does not offer my students the flexibility and collaborative nature of a wiki. I don't see the wiki replacing the website at all but being another tool that we use to learn together. I just can't afford too much more time off my plate to manage another thing so it will have to have a very practical use.

http://spohngrade3.wikispaces.com/

A wiki is definitely different than a blog. A blog allows people to post and comment but not to create, edit, and revise content together. A blog is a collaborative way of working but not the same as a wiki. A wiki can allow a teachers, his/her students, and people outside of the classroom to collaborate on projects of all kinds and add content from their own areas of expertise. I think a blog is appropriate to use if you'd like to have a class discussion in which you want to see exactly what each person can and will contribute on their own. Blogs also give the "owner" much more control about what ends up being allowed to be posted. A wiki hands over much of the control to each of its members. While creating this wiki, I found that my own school site had added a wiki feature to each teacher. If it works where I can have other classes collaborate (and not just the students within my room), I may try to use that instead of the wikispace because it is linked directly from my site and is set up with my students as users already.

One question: Do students have to have email addresses in order to become members of a wiki on wikispaces? If so, that could be difficult for the younger ones as far as parent permission goes.

My Sister's Keeper

Has anyone else read this book? I loved it but was disappointed by the ending. I really wanted to see how the whole situation was going to play out in the direction it was heading. I don't think authors need to add a twist at the end for people to think their story is a good one. The realism had me hooked until then. Still a great book...quite a tear jerker!

23 Things: Thing 21

Describe a wiki you found that inspires you to create one of your own. What hurdles might stand in the way of your using a wiki? What would it take to remove the hurdles? Is it worth the fight?
I found a site by Vicki Davis and kept running into her blog and wiki as I looked around. I liked reading her blog about the ways in which wikis have helped her students re-energize about learning. http://westwood.wikispaces.com/ I think anything that engages students and gets them excited about learning, creating, and actually putting some knowledge into a more permanent part of their brain is right for me.

I envision two hurdles for me as I begin to think about a class wiki. I think the first is starting small with a very definable topic with very explicit objectives. I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with ideas and then feel committed to follow through partly because I have high expectations but also because when students have become head over heels involved there's no choice but to continue.

The second hurdle for me is an ongoing one. I am constantly thinking about assessment and how it is changing. We often question if assessments should be whatever the students can produce completely on their own on a given day without any tools and a blank piece of paper in front of them or is the collaborative nature of our world changing the entire ballgame? I am not at all about softening standards or expectations and it seems that many think of collaborative learning as a way to make things easier. However, I usually think to the contrary. I think that students feel a greater committment to learning and quality work when they know their content is public and their input is necessary for the good of the group. I also think that students learn way more from each other than from us. This year I spent hours helping a student with division. One day another student basically pulled him away from me, talked to him over some blocks, and suddenly division was easy. I asked them both why a student's less than standard explanation worked and the answer was that, "he talks like me." So, apparently I speak some form of alien language! I think ongoing collaboration allows all students access to information and knowledge especially when most students can't "get it" on the first presentation. As they add, edit, revise, or simply read what others have written, they will begin to understand the content. Time is the biggest gift for teachers, right? It's what we all beg for and demand. Why don't we think that our students feel the same way? Giving them a way to access content in our class anywhere, anytime is one way to do that. I don't think I have an answer about how wikis can fit into the assessment picture but that's why I have to remember to start small.

Wow, that was a lot of rambling but it's important for me to think through this even at the expense of the reader!

23 Things: Thing 20

Include in your post the name of at least one podcast to which you subscribed. Describe your experience using the various search tools. Which do you prefer and why?
I subscribed to the podcast "Radio WillowWeb" from the Education Podcast Network. It's the first in the list under "Elementary". I loved that this podcast used very young children especially since we are working so hard on writing and reading fluency. I'm assuming (hoping) that these students had to write and practice reading their scripts. In this way students are writing for a real audience and then working on reading fluency so that they can sound good when creating the podcast. I also liked Podcast Alley because there are podcasts that I could use both professionally and personally. This site has a more varied approach to searching than EPN which allows you to find podcasts more easily.

On iTunes I found that there are podcasts for learning second languages. What a great resource for teachers! Wouldn't students love it if for homework they got to listen to podcasts and complete an assignment rather than do another worksheet?! There are even free v-casts of some of my daugther's favorite shows like Super Why! Also, being able to watch news shows that I miss is great. I hate the idea of TiVo or DVR because I really don't watch enough TV to bother so this is a great alternative for me.