Another Year Over - One thing I learned..

As another year ends, I am happily looking into the next one. A couple of things I do every year on this first day of summer break is look back at what went well in my classroom and what didn't, and what am I going to add or do different next year. Looking back at what went well, I feel that I've learned more about my students this year. I really opened up my classroom to conversations about their activities outside the classroom. Sometimes this can be very eye opening, but other times it was very educational for me. When we discussed articles I'd read about myspace.com the conversation was truly a case of me learning from them. I knew nothing about the site until this year. I asked them about it, and I checked out some of their profiles. It was amazing the contrast between what I read in USA Today vs. what the students were telling me about the site. The end result was that I understood what the hype was all about from both sides. The site has its pitfalls, and in some cases my students knew them better than any of the articles I shared with them. they also gave me the impression that they knew exactly what they were doing. I tried hard to encourage them to use mySpace as a social outlet but not to expose themselves to predators. I also advised them that whatever is said on that site can be viewed by college recruiters or potential employers, even school administrators and police officers. We had one incident at our school this year where a student explained in detail the steps on how to get another student's classwork through the school's network. He was suspended and kicked out of his computer classes at our school which almost prevented him from graduating. These types of discussions were beneficial to me (I learned a lot), and I hope some of it sunk in with the students as well. From some of the immediate feedback I got in class I'm thinking it did. When I look forward to next year I have some ideas for more web2.0 based activities for my classes. In my AP Computer Science class this year we made our own vlog on current tech trends, (ok we imitated RocketBoom), but it was fun and the students enjoyed writing their news articles for our two chosen anchor people. Next year maybe we could put together a couple of episodes in my webpage design classes the possibilities are endless.

Two conferences I wanted to attend this summer are coming up soon, the Building Learning communities Conference in Boston, and the NECC in San Diego. I was going to try to get to one of them, but my schedule is full. I will just have to read about them both in blogs from all of you other lucky educators out there that are attending. I hope that the attendees of those two conferences and others as well will come back and share everything they've learned with their fellow teachers and administrators.

Have a great summer teachers and educators. Time for me to go add photos to my flickr.

Tags: myspace, myspace,education, teaching, blogging, edublog, teacher, blog, blogs, Thomas Fitzgerald, David Warlick

I need to start somewhere...

What an amazing two weeks. I am writing my first blog because events in the past two weeks that left lasting impressions.

First, I attended the Southeast Regional Technology and Teaching Conference (SRTTC). At this conference there were the usual tech vendors selling hardware for classrooms, and workshops promoting technology usage in the classroom. Nothing spectacular, and I didn’t expect much going in either. I am a computer science teacher and I am finishing my Master’s Degree in Instructional Technology, so going into this workshop I was a little over confident that I was on top of current trends in education and technology.

Then I met David Warlick, I sat in his presentations on blogging and podcasting and their applications in the classroom. David opened my eyes to web 2.0 and its many uses. I can not believe how much I have been missing. So I leave his workshop and I look at all of the new sites he told me about, and then set up my aggregator software and my netvibes.com, and my del.icio.us, and I feel empowered to bring this back to my classes and do great things.

As if that’s not enough, I sat with David at dinner that night and we chatted about what strangers at conferences usually chat about and the next day I sat through his program again. I actually learned about podcasting on the second day. Another important name is introduced on day two: Tim Tyson. After reading the linked interview, I will have to add his name to my hero list. His philosophy of instructional technology is the same as mine “Dr. Tyson believes that technology is neither "the answer nor the magic bullet" but a tool that, when appropriately leveraged, brings people together so that they can collaboratively create and share with unprecedented ease and facility.”

Before April 26th I thought I had a handle on technology and instruction. In just two days I was blown away at the possible applications of web 2.0. I really felt out of touch after that. So after returning home I have begun my own education blog, it will be my quest to use this new and effective medium as much as I can in my classes and my own learning. This is my entrance to the “global conversation” as David Warlick put it when we ate together in Greenville three weeks ago.