Just Thinking........

 
Learning Spaces Wikis, and Moodles and More....

Podcast Number 2 at bottom of blog

My emails over the last few weeks have confirmed my feeling that shared workspaces are the new hot topic in educational technology. At Pottsville, we have seen this coming for the past two or three years and many of the “new ideas” I have seen being promoted are not new to us.

A shared workspace is a web-based location for assignments, documents, links, and even assessments for a class or subject. At the basic level it is a repository (toolbox) for all the technology resources needed for a class. At the more advanced level it provides a forum to meet and interact with students online and extends this forum to connections between students. Sound like their world? Exactly!

Our business teachers were among the pioneer Moodlers in Arkansas. (I guess everyone is aware that Mrs. Curry was State Business Teacher of the Year last year) Several other teachers in the district have also discovered how convenient and student-centered a shared workspace in Moodle can be. While Moodle is somewhat sophisticated, it could be the perfect fit for you.

Gaggle is our student email provider and they have emailed, called, and invited me to numerous webinars about their new applications. These applications are free, safe, filtered, and rich in applications. These workspaces provide for moderated social networking and other 21st Century tools to engage students in projects and discussions. Really cool stuff. Did is say filtered and safe!

Epals has similar new applications and they have a new partner in a little west coast company called Microsoft. Look for the free online “office” tools to be incorporated in ePals workspaces and combined with their original mission of connecting kids world-wide safely. Did I say safe and filtered? Also FREE!!!

Maybe the easiest and most basic online workspace is a wiki. We have introduced these to our elementary students and many teachers at all levels of our district have one. These shared workspaces have at their basic level a toolbox of resources, links, and assignments. As students progress more sophisticated interactions can be created and more tools can be added. Teachers can link their wiki to their web page and place assignments and resources on the wiki in a fraction of the time it takes to edit their webpage. This also enables teachers to leave a static webpage that needs less attention.

I look forward to the “year of shared workspaces” and I hope that many of you will find this method of creating your “technology toolbox,” to be a valuable part of your teaching resources.

Download | Duration: 00:06:01
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Posted by Jim Yeager at 8/8/2010 4:07 PM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
"Returning from the Future" or is it the present.?
What I did this summer!!!!!
Podcast Number 1. at end of Blog

I guess summer vacation is more than half over. I have had some down time and some energizing time. Along with some of you, I attended two excellent conferences in Hot Springs and in a more unusual way, I attended the International Society for Technology in Education Conference. The conference was in Denver and attracted 18,000 or so educators with one binding passion, the exploding possibilities of technology in education. I attended the same conference in 2008 in San Antonio Texas and it was a professional life changing experience. This year my attendance had one very significant difference. I attended the conference from my home office. The experience of connecting to the goings on at a gathering some 1,000 miles away made as much impression on me as the overwhelming amount of new and innovative ideas.
By the end of day one, Monday June 28, I had about figured out my procedures. While I thought I was tech savvy enough to get at least a little from attending online, I had no idea what was possible. I quickly mastered the Ning page that gave me the starting points I needed. I figured out how to join Eluminate's sessions, which were not regular conference programs, but rather volunteers who presented on their own in a special area set up at the conference. I had to pick and choose since some of the over 30 sessions offered were not pertinent to my world, but most I "attended" were great. Next I found a search for handouts for sessions that interested me and collected about 100 documents, links, and blogs that I will review in the next few days. An associate had mentioned Twitter to me a few weeks ago, but I had not thought much about it since. Basically Twitter offers the opportunity to post short blurbs about where you are and what you are doing or thinking. How can that help at my virtual conference? Twitter has a unique little buddy called Twitterfall. Twitterfall mashes all the posts about a subject into a collection of what is being posted about a certain subject. Imagine now that a large portion of 18,000 folks at a conference are posting "tweets" about what they are attending. They are evaluating, posting notes, and links to the presenters information. WOW.
Now imagine this. I am sitting at my desk with my coffee, listening to a session on a shared whiteboard program, looking for handouts in the downtime, while thousands of folks are my eyes and ears posting to Twitter.
I know I say this so often that I get tired of hearing it myself, but this is the world our current students will live in. They will have to be information gatherers, sorters, and publishers. The 3 R's will be more important than ever, but in an entirely different way. 21st Century literacy will be a collection of skills based on the content we already teach, but delivered with new systems.
Our job? Expose our students to these skills without sacrifice for the core subject skills that are so important. While this is a daunting task, it is also exciting. I hope you are on board.

Podcast Number 1. Below

Download | Duration: 00:06:33
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Posted by Jim Yeager at 7/18/2010 9:20 AM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Project Based Technology Integration
I have had the opportunity to work with primary grade students this year as we expanded our student access capability to include a technology lab for grades K- 3.  It has been enlightening for a career high school educator to see first hand the exciting possibilities and unique challenges for these children.  They love computers! They love to create and they love to present! Give us enough time and we will be able to dampen that enthusiasm, I am sure.  I have been amazed by their capabilities as we introduced the Office package as our base skills to solve some second and third grade real world problems. We made plans for a Dog Wash using Word, presented it to faculty and parents using PowerPoint and totaled our imaginary receipts with Excel. We planned parties, made presentations about bats, and designed a PE program.  Our Project Based lessons were simple using technology skills to solve real problems, will give these youngsters a head start when the activities become more complex. It has been great fun! I am taking my wife's class to the Arkansas TICAL Conference for Administrators and Technology leaders to demonstrate these lessons. 
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Posted by Jim Yeager at 2/17/2008 9:23 AM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
What will the new year bring?
As we enter 2008, I can't help but wonder what might be in store for Arkansas schools as far as technology integration is concerned. There are several encouraging initiatives on the horizon.  I have had the privilege to serve for the last four years with the TICAL committee at the Arkansas Department of Education. Among the goals of TICAL is the dissemination of technology information to educational leadership. With so many things cooking on educational reforms stove, it is very difficult to push change to an administrator who has no experience or knowledge base for a program.  A conference in late February will offer administrators the opportunity to get some of this information first hand. (Link: http://www.portical.org)
Another exciting initiative that I am excited about is the effort by Southwest Coop to formalize technology inservice programs offered by educational coops. This project will enable coops to select local trainers who will deliver consistent and similar content in each coop. This should eliminate the duplication and disjointed technology professional development programs we now have.
Both these initiatives show promise. In Arkansas we have in place some great and very inexpensive tools for making technology work for teachers and students. We have for too long reinvented the wheel and started over. It is my hope that in the new year that educational technology integration moves from pep rallies to practice.
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Posted by Jim Yeager at 12/27/2006 10:15 AM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
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