Podcasting for Remembrance Day: A Joyful Learning

This week spent learning about podcasting was a challenging, stimulating, and joyful week for me. Joyful, you ask? Absolutely. I read Stephen Wolk’s article The Positive Classroom: Joy in School from the September 2008 issue of Educational Leadership. Wolk is talking about the dictionary definition of joy: ‘According to my Random House dictionary, joy means, “The emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something good or satisfying.”‘

Wolk discusses 11 kinds of joy; I’m borrowing some of them to share with you what I learned about the power of podcasting.

JOY 1: Find the Pleasure in Learning

Wolk talks about teaching as nurturing; we must help our students find their reasons to learn. I started out already knowing my reason to learn. I knew when I started to work on this topic that I wanted to create a podcast of Mona Gould`s poem, “This Was My Brother.”

Why this poem? It is one I always shared with my students when we worked on our Remembrance Day programs. It is Canadian, written by a Saskatchewan-born poet and broadcaster after she lost her brother in World War II. And finally, a more personal reason: I lost my brother last year and this poem reminds me of him; he was very proud of the time as a young person that he spent in the army reserves. This kept me motivated all week, even through the many challenges.

The creation of Remembrance Day programs motivated many of my students to learn. The most successful program we did was the year I had grade nine language arts students interview a relative about the personal cost to the family of war. Students recorded the interviews and we based the program around this content.

We created tableaux of actors in costume portraying one scene from the reminiscence as the appropriate audio played in the background. We also used some of the audio as soundtrack for the slide presentation we created from family photographs students brought to share. Every student in the class was involved either onstage or backstage as we honoured these memories. While the joy was sombre in nature, it was definitely there.

JOY 2: Give Students Choice

This project was joyful for me because I was able to choose what was meaningful. I was able to choose music as well as the poetry; I have always loved Ravel’s evocative “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” I was also able to choose a project that I was capable of doing. At one point I thought of reading a longer piece, but I decided once I started recording that I didn’t know enough about recording, editing, adding music, creating effects, and exporting to deal with a long reading and the resulting large file.

When working with my students I always gave them choices too. Those who were uncomfortable performing in front of an audience were able to choose other tasks. We had students editing tapes, organizing slides, running lights or sound, writing scripts, creating costumes, and more.

JOY 3: Let Students Create Things

In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson talks about the importance of audience for students. He says, “Podcasting is yet another way for them to be creating and contributing ideas for a larger conversation, and it’s a way of archiving that contribution for future audiences to use” (p. 113).

I did some searching on the web for schools that have used podcasting as a way of honouring Remembrance Day in Canada, and found only a couple of examples. Eel Ground School in Eel Ground, New Brunswick, a school with lots of interest in new media, has a podcasting club. Here is their podcast of a special ceremony on November 8, 2006, where the school honoured not only Canadian veterans but also soldiers visiting from Maine.

Vincent Massey Collegiate, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, also active in podcasting, has podcasts of their guest speakers for Remembrance Day (scroll down to find presentations by Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Bastable).

How I wish that I had had these tools to use earlier in my career. How wonderful it would be to have an archive of the incredible creativity, expertise, and sensitivity that my students showed in their contribution to the observance of Remembrance Day in our school.

JOY 4: Show Off Student Work

We invited family members to attend our Remembrance Day presentation, and of course they were always suitably impressed. How sad that we were unable to create a more lasting version of our work. If only we had had the resources we have now, this would have been a natural to videotape and then broadcast. The students could create individual podcasts of the interviews, web slide shows, and more.

I’m happy to show off my presentation. While technically imperfect, it captures for me the essence of where I am right now with this new skill. More importantly for me, it gave me something positive to do with the feeling of loss that I am still trying to integrate into my life.

This Was My Brother by Mona Gould

JOY 5: Take Time to Tinker

Ah, yes – the joy of tinkering! Thank goodness for the booklet Learning in Hand – Podcasting for Teachers & Students Booklet that classmate Christine Robinson shared with us. The step-by-step directions walked me through the technical niceties of downloading and using Audacity, import music, and do some basic editing, as well as how to save and export the file. I still really haven’t mastered trimming down a long piece of music to the right length, and properly fading out music, and I certainly need to find some more detailed instructions.

Of course I referred to all of these directions AFTER using Windows Sound Recorder, and spending a l-o-n-g time recording my poem only to discover the format isn’t supported by Audacity! I had to record it yet again. And again. And another five or six times.

At this point Irealized that the inexpensive microphone I bought really isn’t good enough for the job, so I’ll have to buy something better when I have had a chance to research them.

More tinkering was need when I went to put the podcast on my blog. I realized again why I am using Edublogs to host my blog, as it was so easy to upload the file there. Due to the problems I’ve had with Edublogs being down, I am backing up my blog on Blogspot, and adding a podcast there was not easy at all. The hosting sites suggested in the booklet didn’t work for me but I finally found Podbean, an audioblogging site, and was able to upload my podcast, create a post, find the embedded player, and copy the HTML to my Blogger site. I’m sure there is an easier way, but at least that roundabout method worked!

This is a reminder that using technology with students will require much tinkering time. I think perhaps there should be another type of joy listed here:

The Joy of Structure and Scaffolding

In her PowerPoint presentation, Podcasting in School Libraries, Kristin Fontichiaro, author of Podcasting at School and Active Learning Through Drama, Podcasting, and Puppetry, not only gives a superb list of reasons for using podcasting (learning styles, curricular fit, needs of 21st century students, sharing learning with the outside world), she also provides a number of ideas for providing students with the support they need to create successful podcasts, as well as the safety tips they need to keep them safe.

As with all project-based learning, students need to start with manageable podcasting projects that are supported with just-in-time instruction from the teacher.

Joy in school?

It’s up to the teacher to help the students – and herself – experience this. I agree with Wolk. He says, “So teachers must strive in whatever ways they can to own their teaching so that each morning they can enter their classrooms knowing there will be golden opportunities for them-as well as for their students-to experience the joy in school.”

And Joy for Me

This week I challenged myself. I learned, I created, I podcasted.  What’s next? I’m looking forward to volunteering to read for my very favourite web site, Librivox, which provides free audio recordings of books in the public domain. And I’m going to take great joy in buying a really good microphone!

RSS Feeds: Organizing Work and Life

Which Web 2.0 tool could I learn use that would help organize more effectively my work and my life?

When I considered this week’s topic, getting (and staying) organized in an electronic, Web 2.0 environment, I thought about how much I like to be well organized.

I love organizational tools. I love coloured file folders, customizable dividers, and stacking clear plastic boxes.  I love Microsoft Outlook because the calendar reminders function keeps me on time for all my meetings and the rules and folders for mail keep my correspondence arranged by topic and the colour coding for incoming mail meant the fuchsia messages from my principal got instant attention. I loved using Backflip, because I could access my bookmarks from any computer (now I’ve switched to del.icio.us). I love my MSN homepage because on one page I’ve got email, important links, daily weather, news headlines, the comic strip For Better or Worse, and more.

But I know I can be much better organized using some of the Web 2.0 tools out there. My inquiry question for this week is this. Which Web 2.0 tool could I learn use that would help organize more effectively my work and my life?

As I began to research this, I knew that it would be tough to pick just one tool. I needed something with applications in several areas, and that would be useful not just as a teacher’s tool but as a personal tool. I thought about the amount of time I spend searching the Internet, and thought that perhaps I could find something that would make this more efficient and less time consuming. That would impact my personal AND professional life.

I skimmed through our text book again looking for ideas and was struck by the title of Chapter 5: “RSS: The New Killer Apps for Educators.” I had looked at this earlier, while setting up my Bloglines account at the beginning of the course. But now I saw all the different ways you can use RSS to get all kinds of content organized and brought to you. Richardson says, “RSS is a technology that will change your life if you let it” (p. 72). The most useful application for me personally that he suggested was the RSS feed for website searches using Googlealerts.com (p.80).

I decided to investigate using RSS applications as my Web 2.0 tool of choice.

Joanne’s Trailfire on RSS and Blog Aggregates provided some more excellent examples of the effective use of RSS applications. In the article NCTE Inbox Blog: RSS: Bringing What’s New to You I was struck by this succinct explanation.  “But what exactly does RSS do? In the simplest possible explanation, RSS gathers the new information from specific sites that interest you and brings this new information directly to you.” Then the author, Traci Gardner, provides some suggestions as to what RSS can do for you in addition to just keeping up with new blog postings.

Here are a couple of Gardner’s ideas:

1. Want to keep up with new results for a Google News search? Perform the search, then click on the RSS link (lower left of the page) to subscribe. When new results appear, you’ll see them in your aggregator.

2. At Amazon.com you can subscribe to RSS Feeds for Bestsellers, Hot New Releases, and Movers & Shakers.

In Terry Freedman’s book, Coming Of Age: An Introduction To The New World Wide Web, I found more good ideas about RSS in John Evans’ chapter “What Are RSS Feeds and Why Haven’t I Heard About It?(RSS Feeds from an Educator’s Perspective).”  Evans mentions the time-saving aspect of having selected content come to you, and he gives some educational applications too. For example, in social studies teachers and students can subscribe to feeds from around the world on a specific topic or event to compare content, bias, coverage, etc.  He suggests using RSS Compendium – RSS Feeds, which sorts feeds into categories such as Education, Film/Video, Government, etc.

I also read Quentin D’Souza’s Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators A Guide to RSS and More Version 2.0. He gives dozens of ideas for integrating RSS feeds into all kinds of projects and applications, including email, blogging, photo sharing, and video sharing. Need to be reminded about something? Go to ReminderFeed – Your RSS Reminder Service. Want to search while you are off line? Set up a search on MSN, and then subscribe to the RSS feed for it. Want to share a calendar with your family? Go to RSS Calendar, and you’ll get updates automatically in your aggregator! I have set up a calendar to share with my family to help us in planning our family reunion for next year.

It is clear to me that using RSS feeds more extensively will simplify my time online considerably. I’ve already seen how easy it is to keep up with new blog postings on Bloglines. I plan to set aside some time each day to learn how to use RSS more effectively, especially in doing Internet searches.

As a teacher librarian, how would I go about sharing this with my high school teachers? I would select a social studies topic dealing with a current issue, such as global warming, set up some feeds from around the world, and meet with one social studies teacher to share what I’ve collected. I would teach her how to set up a Bloglines account and appropriate feeds. Together we would plan a project where students would look at and use content from around the world using RSS aggregators. One we’ve done this with one class, we would collect feedback from the students, and modify the project.

I’m looking forward to my new learning curve.

Stumbling Through Video Sharing, or The Week I Almost Lost My Mind

From Digital Ethnography » Blog Archive » YouTube Statistics

This has been the toughest week of the course so far for me. I have spent way too many hours reading books and blogs and exploring video-sharing sites. In fact I’ve worked so many hours that today my husband said to me, “Sweetheart, how would you have time to do this course if you were still teaching?”

I felt so overwhelmed that I dug out my copy of Focus on Inquiry and looked at the description of the Processing phase of the inquiry process:

“Inquirers usually experience a sense of relief and elation when they have established a focus for their inquiry. Even so, choosing pertinent information from resources is often a difficult task; there may be too little information or too much information, or the information may be too superficial or too in-depth for the inquirers. Often the information that is found is confusing and contradictory, so students may feel overwhelmed” (Alberta Learning, 2004, p. 12).

Yes, that was me. Overwhelmed. While I understood from my reading that video sharing sites work for many teachers, my initial exploration of YouTube did not excite me. According to the YouTube statistics from Michael Wesch’s blog, Digital Ethnography, as of March 17th 2008, there were 78.3 Million videos on YouTube, and 150,000 videos are uploaded each day (Wesch, 2008b).

When I searched for videos that could be used to support curricula I found the site confusing, the search inefficient, and the videos generally of poor quality. In addition several searches yielded results with tags that were to say the least, inappropriate for a school context – even high school. There was also blatant and rampant copyright infringement.

 I looked for videos dealing with John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, as that is a project that I am presently reworking for an English teacher friend. What I found were many clips from commercial movies, and a variety of poorly done student re-creations of various parts of the story. Then I expanded my search to John Steinbeck and found The Dustbowl and the Great Depression.

This is the kind of project that I can see my students doing as they explore the life of migrant workers. It does likely infringe on copyrights, but we could avoid that by obtaining appropriate permissions and/or using non-copyrighted material.

In her blog posting, Have You Tried YouTube? Brenda Dyck talks about these constant trade-offs. She says, “Much to our chagrin, the very Web sites and online tools that provide incredible learning opportunities also provide the ever-present possibility for students to access and misuse inappropriate information and images. The enduring challenge for educators is how to access one without the other” (2007a).

Dyck goes on to discuss the fact that YouTube is blocked – and for many good reasons – in many schools. I know it is in mine, due not only to the inappropriate content, but also because of the fact that downloading video is a bandwidth issue. Dyck argues, ‘What better place than school to teach about and practice evaluating the value and ethical use of sites like YouTube? But just talking about it isn’t sufficient; students need the chance to develop their ability to evaluate Web content to determine “what is and isn’t appropriate, what is and isn’t academic, what is and isn’t true.” Anything less would lack authenticity'(2007a).

I agree with Dyck, but this has huge ramifications in terms of education not only of students but also of teachers and parents. In her follow-up article, she suggests using TeacherTube (2007b). I of course looked at TeacherTube and was relieved to find the educational quality and attention to privacy concerns and content lacking in YouTube, although my search on Steinbeck found only two videos. This site, as with other educational video-sharing sites I investigated, including SchoolTube, Studi 4 Networks, SchoolWax tv, and JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments – Biological Experiments And Protocols, and Edublogs.tv 3 steps for 21st century learning had far more material for math and science teachers than for literature or the arts.

But of course it’s not just about the resources students can use, which is the part I have been struggling with.

So I know I am slow, and what I am saying is painfully obvious to all of you, my young colleagues, but I finally get it – it’s the Read/WRITE Web. Maybe it should be the Read/Write/Converse Web. Michael Wesch’s presentation “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” made this so clear to me: video sharing is just as much about the sharing – and the conversation it creates — as it is the video. Think of the Numa Numa song, moving from person to person around the world (Wesch, 2008a).

In their report titled Pew Internet: Teens and social media, “The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004″ [underlining is mine] (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill,, & Smith, 2007, p.2).

Of course we want our students to have access to quality curriculum-related videos as part of their instruction, but we also need to facilitate our students’ creation of video. Students need to be involved with the process of creating product, as well as simply viewing it. And that finally helps me to see more clearly just how YouTube might fit, at least in my high school. Our Communication Technology students create a variety of products, ranging from portfolios of their photographs to computer animation projects to short music videos to a full television news broadcast (we have a professional quality TV studio) complete with news, sports, weather, and commercials.  

These products were shared only with teachers and classmates, and at Open House. Last year I suggested to the teacher that she have a noon hour showing of the best of the work. We booked our large central atrium and had a week of sharing that included displays of photographs and portfolios in the library as well as video showings for ever-increasing audiences of fascinated students, some of whom didn’t even know of the Comm Tech program’s existence.

If those students had their work shared on TeacherTube, what a resource that could grow to be. They can compare their work with that from thousands of other students around the world, and can learn from successes and the mistakes of their peers. Their teacher can hone her instructional techniques with dozens of exemplars, both from her own and from other teachers’ students. And as Will Richardson says, these videos can be aimed at “real people outside the classroom” (2008, p.121).

In Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0, Susan Ariew gives a great example of this. She discusses how her library used a student volunteer who was an avid YouTube user/creator to help library staff create videos for library instruction. The first video, Databases, was posted only on YouTube as it infringed on copyright and was not technically perfect. But the staff was hooked. They invested time and planning and money on higher-quality equipment, and their second video, “The Chronicles of Libraria,” was posted by the library and received national attention. The student volunteer spoke at a library conference, showing his presentation Youtube, Librarians, and Me. Now planning for further videos is an important aspect of library programming, so much so that the library sponsors a video contest to solicit more instructional videos created by students (2008, pp. 125-132).

I’ve been asked to do a presentation on Web 2.0 at my previous school, fortunately not until this course is over! I’m already planning the video-sharing section. I’m looking forward to reading your blogs to help me stumble a little less on my way.

References

Alberta Learning. (2004). Focus on inquiry: A teacher’s guide to implementing inquiry-based learning. Edmonton AB: Alberta Learning. Retrieved September 24, 2008, from Alberta Education Web site: http://www.education.gov.ab.ca/‌k_12/‌curriculum/‌bysubject/‌focusoninquiry.pdf

Ariew, S. (2008). Joining the YouTube conversation to teach information literacy. In P. Godwin & J. Parker, Information literacy meets Library 2.0 (pp. 125-132). London: Facet.

Accompanied by a bog at http://infolitlib20.blogspot.com/

Clark, J. A. (2007). YouTube university: Using XML, web services, and online video services to serve university and library video content. In L. B. Cohen (Ed.), Library 2.0 initiatives in academic libraries (pp. 156-167). Chicago: Association for College & Research Libraries.

The book is accompanied by a wiki found at http://www.acrl.ala.org/‌L2Initiatives/‌index.php?title=Main_Page

Dyck, B. (2007, May 1). Education World ® Technology Center: Brenda’s blog: Have you tried YouTube? (Part 1). Message posted to http://www.educationworld.com/‌a_tech/‌columnists/‌dyck/‌dyck015.shtml

Dyck, B. (2007, May 15). Education World ® Technology Center: Brenda’s blog: Using YouTube in the classroom. Message posted to http://www.education-world.com/‌a_tech/‌columnists/‌dyck/‌dyck016.shtml

Edublogs. (2008). Edublogs.tv 3 steps for 21st century learning. Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://edublogs.tv/

Etraffic Press. (n.d.). SchoolWAX TV [Educational video sharing]. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://schoolwaxtv.com/

Godwin, P., & Parker, J. (Eds.). (n.d.). Information literacy meets library 2.0.

Accompanied by a blog at http://infolitlib20.blogspot.com/

JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments – biological experiments and protocols on video. (2008). Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://www.jove.com/

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill,, A. R., & Smith, A. (2007, December 19). Pew Internet: Teens and social media. Retrieved September 25, 2008, from Pew Internet & American Life Project Web site: http://www.pewinternet.org/‌pdfs/‌PIP_Teens_Social_Media_Final.pdf

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

RuneHQVideos (Director). (2007). The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression [Motion picture]. YouTube. Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://www.youtube.com/‌watch?v=gplaqa2yRgg

SchoolTube. (2008). Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://www.schooltube.com/  

Contains approximately 6200 videos

Science videos search engine [Indexes videos from other sites]. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://sciencehack.com/

Studio 4 Networks, Inc. (2008). Studio 4 Learning. Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://studio4learning.tv/

TeacherTube – Teach the world: Teacher videos, lesson plan videos, student video lessons online. (2008). Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://www.teachertube.com/

Wesch, M. (Writer/‌Director). (2008). YouTube – An anthropological introduction to YouTube [Motion picture]. United States: YouTube. Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://www.youtube.com/‌watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU&feature=user

Wesch, M. (2008, March 18). Digital Ethnography blog archive: YouTube statistics. Message posted to http://mediatedcultures.net/‌ksudigg/‌?p=163

Online Identity: Putting Yourself “Out There”

When thinking about the topic “Creating a visual presence in your own ‘little’ places on the web,” one area of concern I thought about was creating an online identity. The question I want to consider is this: How much of myself do I want to put ‘out there’ on the web? As a way of limiting the topic, I’m restricting my response to blogging.

When I began building the blog for this course, I started out thinking that I should strictly limit any personal information or even personality in my blog. I built a Voki avatar to use instead of using a photo of myself. I avoided using my name in the URL. My original posts were short and, I thought, to the point; in other words, really boring. Then I began to read blogs, and about blogs.

First I read Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom Use. Richardson suggests that teachers create their own blogs and make them public.

Be a public blogger. Put your name on your work, but make sure you understand the ramifications of doing so. . . . Public writing demands discretion, especially in an educational setting. And remember too that what you write stays with you. Each post contributes to your online portfolio that may turn up in future Google searches (p. 45).

Hmm, yes – discretion. This reinforces that I should be careful what I put out there. The comment about “public writing” stayed with me. I came across that idea again in a blog entry by Doug Johnson titled How – the importance of conduct. Johnson blogs about Thomas Friedman’s review of Dov Seidman`s book How.

And Seidman’s book, Friedman writes, is about how one’s reputation in life is going “to get set in stone so much earlier.” It’s “a digital fingerprint that never gets erased” and that second chances will be harder to come by when your resume may play second fiddle to a Google search about you. That the only way to succeed is to get your how‘s right –  how you live your life and how you conduct your business. And do it early in life.

Obviously I know that I have to be discreet about what I write in each page and post, but this article made me look carefully at what else I had put on my blog.

I love quotes, and was excited when I discovered that I could add a quote widget. However, I got rid of the first one I used, a widget called Quotes4All because a couple of the quotes were a little more suggestive than I was comfortable with. While I found them funny, I wouldn`t have shared them in a professional context at school, so I decided not to share them on my blog.

Laurel Papworth, an Australian consultant and lecturer about the social web, talks about how one`s reputation influences trust. While the post Laurel Papworth -Social Networks: Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks discusses Twitter, I think her model applies to blogs too.

The quick and dirty version:
We create a Profile (My Account) on a site, we make friends and add applications and groups and events to define Identity. We interact over time, offering content and comments and ratings which gains us a Reputation. That Reputation is then turned into a Trust factor – we decide how trustworthy a social network member is by the way they fill out their profile, by the connections they make, and by the content they submit, all of which is over time, which is why Social Media is a long term engagement.

She has posted this diagram on Flickr. Note she mentions choice of widgets under Identity!

Laurel Papworth - Social Web Reputation Management Cycles
 
As I continued my exploration for information about to identify myself in the blogosphere, I searched for blogs to add to my Bloglines account. I saw not only how the “experts” were crafting their entries, but how their personalities and some personal information were revealed. Will Richardson mentions his son, Tucker. Joyce Valenza`s very funny post My condo for a paper clip: or the effect of Kindle freeze on one particular vacationer shares some insights about her family and her foibles. Doug Johnson`s Blue Skunk Blog is frequently funny and personally revealing, as when he describes his ill-fated Alaska adventure.

I also found two excellent postings by Stephen Downes about how to create effective blogs. Both discuss the importance of establishing a clear identity. In Seven Habits of Highly Connected People, the seventh habit is Be Yourself.

The idea behind “being yourself” is not that you have some sort of offline life (though you may). Rather, it’s a recognition that your online life encompasses the many different facets of your life, and that it is important that these facets are all represented and work together.

In another post, How To Be Heard, Downes discusses many strategies for getting your blog read and taken seriously. In the section, Your Blog Is Your Identity, he suggests several ideas, including using your name in your URL, adding your blog address wherever you put your name, putting your blog address on your business cards and as part of your email signature, and makes this final point:

And don’t forget: put your name on your blog. Blog posts that cannot be attributed are much less likely to be cited by anyone (and if they’re not cited, they’re not read).

I`m not ashamed to admit that I really knew nothing about establishing online identity in my blog. How have I changed it as a result of my reading and reflection?

  • I`ve used my name in the URL.
  • I`ve added some humour (hopefully).
  • I used my own photo instead of an avatar.
  • I added personal information (my love for Scotland), and used some photos I took there.
  • I`ve worked on developing a distinct and personal voice in my blog entries.

I know I have a lot to learn about personal online identity on the web, but at least now I know that I didn`t know!

School-wide Web 2.0?

Want to feel intimidated about Web 2.0? Be sure to read David Warlick’s article “A Day in the Life of Web 2.0.” Although it was written almost two years ago, it certainly presents a vision of a school-wide (and indeed system-wide) philosophy and effective use of technology that is light years away from my high school.

In the last chapter of his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson illustrates one teacher using all of the tools discussed in the previous chapters. “Epilogue: The Classroom of the Read/Write Web” shows an English teacher’s use of Web 2.0 tools to enhance teaching and learning. 

Warlick’s article goes further. In this vision every teacher in the school uses various 2.0 tools to facilitate teaching and learning, including blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking, and more. This technology helps infuse the school and the school system with a culture of sharing and collaboration that includes teachers, students, administrators, and parents. Even the superintendent of schools is in constant touch with what’s happening in his schools as a result of effective use of 2.0 technology.

While I do find Warlick’s vision intimidating, I am also inspired. My favorite part of the article is the description of the role of the teacher librarian, who, along with the school tech facilitator, subscribes to all the teachers’ weekly blog reports that summarize all that will be taught. The t-l and tech facilitator map all the curricula that are being taught in the school each week. They then research various resources and strategies to share with teachers and students.

I wonder if there is a school district where this vision has become a reality. I love the possibilities this vision suggests to me.
 

Blogging on Web 2.0 for schools . . .

My name is Cynthia Peterson. After 38 years of teaching (23 as a teacher librarian in junior high and high school), I’ve retired — sort of. Through the University of Alberta’s Teacher-Librarianship by Distance Learning program, I am presently working on a M. Ed. in School Librarianship, something I’ve long wanted to do, but with home and work responsibilities, never had time for.

This blog is part of my classwork for EDES 501, Exploration of Web 2.0 for Teaching and Learning, taught by Joanne de Groot. Although I’ve created very simple blogs and wikis before, I am definitely lacking expertise with Web 2.0.

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson zeroes in on what I’m lacking. He describes teachers who “have taken the work they had students do in the paper, analog world and simply digitized it” (p. 8). That probably describes about 75% of the work I’ve been collaborating on with my colleagues. Now I have the opportunity to use this blog as my tool to construct my own learning.  

I decided to use Edublogs for this blog, as it comes highly recommended by colleagues, and it is ad-free. As I hope to be using this with teachers and students, I want to be sure I am really familiar with it. I have already discovered that the instructions leave something to be desired! 

I felt quite sheepish when it took me four hours to figure out how to upload a Word document! I would have expected to be easy, given that this is designed for teachers to use with their students. I plan to create some Edublog tutorials of my own later.

I am also hoping that it will not generate the spam email I got when I used other programs.  I have found it rather “glitchy” but perhaps that is is my lack of expertise.

Here’s to new challenges!