May 30--More on Wikis

My, my, my. I just keep learning more. I had an idea tonight about a use for the Blog in the classroom. I wish I could get it up and running before school lets out. I would like the students to reflect on the year and pass on advice to the next ninth graders. What they learned, what they would do different, what they wished they could do more of. I had a student who remarked the other day "If I knew I would be using algebra again, I would have paid more attention last year" We all had a chuckle at this and then a serious discussion about how often we hear people say that. MY 30-ish cousin had the same sentiments. I shared with my student that he was ahead of the game and that I hoped they all would take that with them next year and wake up a little more. I think I will share with them a new blog I can create and invite them to join in for the summer...............hmmmm.....we will see where this goes.

I have been thinking since Wednesday evening of the implications of Wikis and Blogs and how they can affect our use of the Internet. I asked my friends who are immersed in technology for their jobs if they use Wikis and/or Blogs and they all responded with negatives. They did not use them in their professional or personal life. They had heard of Blogs but not Wikis. I was surprised at this. I question myself about the importance of these two pieces of technology and why we are spending time investigating them. For me, I see how easy it is to create this Blog. For the uninitiated techy it was very easy to learn how to maneuver through the steps and pages. I was awed Wednesday evening when we were looking at Google Reader and EduBlog. The use of Google Reader was fascinating. To be able to compile the blogs you are interested in onto one site was a very useful tool. This one tool makes blogging practical for me. I know I am a baby in all of this and I sit in class and try to wrap my head around all the implications of what we are learning and I know I will be sitting six months or a year from now and it will start to hit me. Looking at the Wiki that Bill created in class showed me that this tool can be used for my school website or my neighborhood school site. I don't know if this is incredible to anyone else but as I work on the site for my children's swim team and realize all the limitations that the host site (that we pay for) has built-in I am excited at the prospects of creating a Wiki with limited access. And it is free, and easy. What does this imply for Abundant Hosting (our domain name) or ETeams where our site is created?

refelctions on discussions about motivating

I was at school early last week and ran into a teacher that will be working on the ANGEL project with me this summer. I asked her what she thought of it and how she thought it would be useful in the classroom. She was excited at the prospect and her previous experience is going to be very useful. She was involved in the pilot program this year. She voiced some areas where ANGEL will be very useful and also voiced some concerns. The possibility of connections with parents and students is mindboggling. I was reminded of my groups advocacy idea--how to get students, parents and teachers motivated--and thought that ANGEL will be a great tool to help with this. One of the concerns was of the teacher that did not participate with ANGEL and how parents might react negatively to their non-participation. This in turn might cause disharmony within the teaching staff. We also discussed how the implementation is going to happen and how it could be done so that teachers would get on board. Her fear, and mine, is that it will be introduced at the beginning of the year--such an overwhelming time anyway--and through a quick inservice the teachers are supposed to incorporate it into their planning. We both know that the teachers that are techno savvy will be engaged, but the others will do their best to ignore it. She had some interesting ideas coming from the business sector to implement this new technology so that all teachers will be engaged but I'm afraid that the ones in charge will not heed her ideas. I am very excited at this opportunity to be involved in this PD. More to come I am sure.

Hi from me. It is now 10:40 pm and I just figured out how to post on this thing. I feel accomplished. I am nervous about Saturday. I don't like all the excitment, but wouldn't miss it. The last week in June is going to be a nightmare for me. A week that was planned a year ago for vacation with family is now all taken up with school. Nothing to do about it and I will get over it but I hope I don't miss the wedding..............off to do some more work. Later...