Thing 7

     For thing 7, I took a look at several class wikis.  My favorites were the Monster Project, Schools in the Past, and the Thousands Project.  I also enjoyed looking at the Study Hall wiki created by CoolCat Teacher's Classes.
     My favorite was the Monster Project.  This wiki pairs students in one class with students in another class of the same grade level but possibly in another school even across the country.  The purpose of this wiki is to develop reading and writing skills while using technology. According to the wiki developers,  Ann Oro, Cranford, NJ and  Anna Baralt, St. Petersburg, FL, "During the project, students create, discuss, describe, interpret, analyze, organize and assess their monsters as well as the monsters of their peers."  The Monster Project is particularly well-organized.  It includes very clear instructions on the welcome and getting started pages.  The project is in its third year.  Each year of the project has its own page with a table listing participating classes with links to the resulting original monsters, descriptions and reproduced drawings.  There are seperate pages by year that provide the students with an opportuinity to reflect on the project and how they may have written their descriptions differently.  Not only is this site well organized it includes additional pages for helpful hints, tips and lesson plans.  I can't thnk of anything that is missing from the Monster Project it is a wonderful example.
    Schools in the Past and  the Thousands Project are similar wikis.  They are each class projects that invite participation from guests around the world.  Schools in the Past started by having students interview their parents and grandparents about their school experiences so that they could compare and contrast schools in the past with those in the present.  The results of these interviews were compiled on a wiki and then guests were invited to add to the lists.  With the Thousands Project, Mr. Monson's Grade 5 Classroom poses a question for a world audience to answer. The goal "is to reach at least one thousand answers for each month of the school year... to share our thoughts, get ideas for writing, learn geography from around the world, collaborate with others and read the thoughts of others."  Both of these sites are less detailed with their instructions inviting participation than the Monster Project but well-done nonetheless.
     The Study Hall is a project of high school students who use the wiki to develop study guides for various courses. It appears from the description of this project that it generated a good bit of enthusiasm when it was started.  However, the project looks to have had no activity since 2006. 
     From my early experience with Wikis, it seems that there are two primary benefits.  The first is as a respository of information that can be accessed from multiple computers by many users.  The second and most beneficial use of Wikis is as a tool for collaboration.  I currently manage one wiki and participate in several others.  The wiki that I manage is a respository for information about the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth act.  I created this wiki as a source of primary information for all school-based McKinney-Vento program liaisons.  It serves its purpose well.  I am also a participating member on several other school ystem wikis that serve much the same purpose as the McKinney-Vento Wiki.  In my opinion, the best use of a wiki is for collaboration between multiple partners on a common project.  While I can see many additional uses for wikis as respositories of information in my professional role I am still searching for a good use as a collabortive tool.  I believe my next wiki will be a training site for school system personnel responsible for data collections. 

Thing 6

I have been using Diigo for a little while now.  Before this class I had about 9 friends.  I look forward to adding more friends through this class and as I become more comfortable with the social networking aspects of Diigo.  To date, I have really only used Diigo to save, tag and make lists from my bookmarks.  I like how easy it is to keep my bookmarks organized across computers. 

I like the idea of being able to use Diigo to enhance my professional learning ntework.  Although I have not yet had much opportunity to become proficient in searching others bookmarks I like the concept in theory.  I still have much to learn about using all of the social networking features in Diigo.

Thing 5a

After several days of searching for  and reading blogs, I am becoming more enthusiastic about the usefulness of blogs to my professional development.  Locating beneficial blogs is getting a little easier the more practiced I become.  I have found several interesting blog posts on the Blogboard feed.  Blogboard is a compilation of educator blogs from Teacher Magazine.  The blogs and the comments are generally thoughtful and, in my opinion, worthy of discussion.  In fact, I attempted to post my first comment to a blog not created by a classmate in response to a Blogboard blog but was unsuccessful.  I am still disappointed that my comment wasn’t successful because I did not save it and probably can’t generate such a persuasive commentary again.  I would like to two share two nuggets that I found in Blogboad posts.

The first nugget was found in a comment made by Nancy Flanagan to the blog Teacher Assignments? Call Scooby Do!  The blog itself addressed the idea of notifying parents about their child’s teacher assignment prior to the beginning of the school year and posed the question “Can anyone explain why systems don’t seem to have this down to a science? Are there implications in this issue that I am not seeing?”

Lively debate ensued on the pros and cons of sending letters to parents introducing teachers.  Nancy Flanagan shifted the conversation to the “highly qualified” language in NCLB:

Even staunch early proponents of NCLB have lately been admitting that the "highly qualified teacher" language therein was an elevation of credentialing over the substance of excellent teaching. We all want content experts in front of our classrooms, but many teachers who were highly qualified on paper were no such thing in front of children. A school leader who was "serious about building relationships with parents" would trust their own judgment about a teacher's competence, rather than paperwork hoops. It is for that reason that schools--knowing more about teacher's actual abilities and success-- wanted to be very cautious about labeling good teachers "unqualified." And--ironically--vice versa. A law that did nothing to clarify what effective teaching actually is...

It seems to me that far too often we measure what is easy to measure instead of what is important.

The second nugget that I found was also on Blogboard in a post entitled You Lie! In this post Anthony Rebora speaks to the idea of  “confidence-boosting lies” told by teachers to students in order to build the student’s confidence.  The implied question in the blog “is it okay for teachers to tell confidence-boosting lies to students?  I think this is an interesting question deserving dialogue.  I tried to comment on the post myself but so far my comments have not appeared on the blog.  In a nutshell, I posed the question why tell a confidence-boosting lie when a confidence-boosting truth works just as well. 

Thing 3

Education blogs: Are they useful or just more information overload? That is the real question for me. In my limited experience in reading blogs, I have mixed reactions. While it is true that I have found some thought provoking nuggets in my early reading, I have also glanced at many other blogs which may be very good for specific purposes and audiences but did not resonate as very useful to me at the moment.
I do see the benefit of blogs and I think over time I will discover which blogs are most relevant to the work that I do. However, I have much more to learn about searching for appropriate blogs and organizing these blogs for maximum benefit. My journey is this regard is only beginning.
As a result of the assignment for Thing 3, I did discover a blog posting that is most relevant to an area of my work that is getting a lot of attention at the current time. Jeff Utrecht, in his blog Preparing for the Worst = Opportunity, describes three circumstances in his career in which making preparation for continuing education in the face of possible school closures forced schools to move to an education delivery model that utilizes technology to a greater extent than they previously thought they would be able to do. The worst case scenario planning created an opportunity that accelerated the integration of technology in learning. I think this is a good thing. Crises do create opportunities.
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a table top exercise to test H1N1 plans. During this exercise participants discussed whether or not we would be able to continue providing education in the event of long-term school closures. The honest answer from most of us was that we are not prepared to continue delivering high quality education if students are unable to come to school. This got my attention. Mr. Utecht’s solution, as stated in his blog, would be to implement online learning full-time in instances where schools were closed because of some natural event. I agree this would seem to be a natural response to write in a plan. However, under current circumstances there would be several barriers to overcome.
First of all, in my county there is a significant percentage of the population that does not have access to the web and in some cases these students do not have access to computers outside the school. Computers are available in public libraries and youth serving agencies such as the Boys and Girls Club but if schools close due to H1N1 so will other programs in which people gather in groups. Second, the current state of the economy has caused many families who may have otherwise had access to the Internet to discontinue their service. Online learning is simply not an option, or at least not one that will meet all needs, when access to technology is not available. Finally, we are simply not yet prepared with the resources or experience to deliver online learning as a primary means of instruction.
These are barriers that we must overcome not only to be prepared for a worst case scenario but because this is the future. While we may not have direct control over students’ access to technology in their homes, we do have control over our own ability to deliver online instruction. I agree with Mr. Utecht’s assertion that online learning is not simply a solution that can be switched on when it is needed in a crisis. To be effective it needs to be practiced. Now is the time to practice before a crisis forces our hand.

Thing 2

Until very recently I have been mostly ignorant about blogging. I had heard of blogging but without any personal experience with blogs I discounted them as playgrounds for the narcissistic. After starting a blog myself and reading some of the required blogs for this assignment my mind is changing. I am beginning to appreciate blogging as a useful way to share ideas and engage in productive conversations.
Since I am not an experienced reader of blogs I cannot comment on the world of blogging in general. However, I can comment on my initial impressions of the good things that can come out of blogging based on the few required blogs that I have read.
In Anne Davis’ blog A Rational for Educational Blogging She writes

Blogging affords us the opportunity to teach responsible public writing. Students can learn about the power of the published word and the responsibilities involved with public writing.

Blogging may be the easiest way to get writing in front of a public audience. Blogging, if comments are made, can become a conversation of sorts. It allows a free exchange of ideas and joint problem solving. So far the few blogs that I have read have been thoughtfully written and thought provoking.
Another example of a thought provoking blog that I read as a required reading for this course was Karl Fisch’s Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? he states about the new technology tools,

In order to teach it, we have to do it. How can we teach this to kids, how can we model it, if we aren’t literate ourselves? You need to experience this, you need to explore right along with your students. You need to experience the tools they’ll be using in the 21st century, developing your own networks in parallel with your students. You need to demonstrate continual learning, lifelong learning – for your students, or you will continue to teach your students how to be successful in an age that no longer exists.

Teachers who are truly preparing students to be successful in the 21st Century will have to have a level of comfortable with technology that allows them to use it, teach it and model its use for students. These tools must become as second nature as blackboards and overheads when I went to school.
As I stated above prior to reading the required blogs for this assignment my misinformed view of blogging was not very positive. I still think that blogging can be used in some very negative ways and students should be taught how to use blogging appropriately. Information in blogs that are the opinions of the author should be presented as such as factual information or references to other sources should be cited responsibly. This does not come naturally because I think that blogging is more closely associated with conversations among friends or diary writing than writing for publication. Students will need to be taught how to think about and filter blogs critically. Another concern that I have about blogs form a personal point of view is finding time to read or even peruse blogs of interest to me on a regular basis. I will need to learn how to organize my blog reading in a way that is efficient or I could spend all day reading and reflecting on blogs if they are all of the quality that I read today.

Thing 1-B

Web 2.0 both excites and frustrates me. First of all, regardless of how I feel about it, I am certain that it is the present reality for most people my age or younger and that it will continue to evolve more rapidly than I can learn to use it. I strongly believe in the power of collaboration and I can readily see how Web 2.0 supports and promotes collaboration. I agree with my colleague, Matt Thompson, who writes in his Moonlight through the Pines blog that Web 2.0 can serve as “a kind of proxy community that has been lost.” Web 2.0 is engaging, stimulating and appealing on many levels. However, I wonder about privacy and anonymity.

I have begun to use Web 2.0 tools in my professional practice. Within the past few years I stuck my toes in the water of social bookmarking, social calendaring, document sharing and most recently blogging. These tools and my limited and sometimes floundering use of them have already helped me better organize my work and better communicate with others. It does become frustrating to try to use Web 2.0 tools when all users are not at the same level of familiarity with the tool. This creates dual work for me as I try to move into the 21st Century with some of my colleague using Web 2.0 tools while are the same time not leaving other colleagues who are less technologically savvy behind. However, I have begun to see a glimmer of hope in the future. If my mother-in-law can learn to use Facebook all will be well for those unsure about technology. Another frustration that I have is the learning curve that I have in learning to use Web 2.0 tools. The ones that I can see an immediate use for in my professional practice are the ones that I can learn to use fastest. I am still struggling to learn those for which I still have no clear idea how to use in my present circumstances. Finally, some of the Web 2.0 tools that I would like to use require hand held internet devices which cost money. Money is something that is not readily available at the present time.

I can see a variety of ways that I can use Web 2.0 tools to engage the stakeholders with whom I work. One of the reasons that I wanted to start the H1N1 Update blog was to be able to reach as large an audience as possible without having to personally manage a list of email addresses. I also wanted to be able to keep those stakeholders who were most curious about the current situation engaged with information and links to reliable sources without causing others to ignore the information that they needed to know about due to information overload. In the future I can see the benefit of using wikis and perhaps other collaboration tools in place of some committee meetings. I am also hopeful to use Web 2.0 tools such as podcasts to provide training that stakeholders can refer back to as needed.
I want to learn more about and use Web 2.0 tools because in my position I must work smarter. I am already working as hard and as long as I can possibly work. Moving forward I need to be able to work more efficiently, and even more collaboratively than ever before in order to simply keep up. I feel very much like a novice with Web 2.0. There are some many things that I do not know but one thing that I know for sure I need to get on board with Web 2.0 before it passes me by.

I am trying out a new Web 2.0 tool in this blog. It is Writeboard and my post is linked below:
Thing 1 - B
Earlier in my blog I expressed concern over privacy and anonymity. I will explain some of my concerns with these issues as I practice Writeboarding.
Privacy
In my limited use of social sites such as Facebook I have encountered situations that make me nervous about privacy. By nature I am a private person and like keeping my life and consequently information about me highly segregated. My family gets the most personal view of my life. Close friends next access to information about my thoughts and fears, dreams and aspirations that I don’t share with other people. One of my first profile pictures on Facebook was a picture of me slouching on the couch in shorts and a t-shirt with a bird on my head and one of our other pets in my lap. It was a playful picture that I wouldn’t mind my family or close friends seeing but not really something that I would want an employer looking viewing. I am nervous that I cannot control my privacy as much as I would like when I use many of the Web 2.0 social sites.
Anonymity
In terms of anonymity, I have found that people will say and do things under cover of anonymity that they would not do otherwise. For example, we have one parent in particular that makes all sorts of false accusations against the school system on the sound off sections of local newspapers using very threatening language that I do not believe this person would use except for the anonymity of that is provided. In some cases such as the one stated above the world seems to have become less civil because of it.

http://123.writeboard.com/1ebd6a9560463c931

Thing 1-A

The adventure begins.

I work as Director of Student Services for the Barrow County School system. In this capacity I perform a multitude of very varied roles. I supervise school social workers, school nurses, the regular education hospital home bound teacher and student records clerk. Yes, we all do have a permanent file that tells all about our experiences and accomplishments in grade school. I am also the Homeless Liaison and Title IV (Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities) coordinator for the school system. Data collections, the reporting of student data to the Georgia Department of Education and US Department of Education as required by law, is another responsibility of mine. These are my primary roles but there are many others too numerous to list here.

I am a social worker by training who came to public education in mid career. This is my 14th year in education all of which have been served with Barrow County Schools. Although I have the same title, my job is much different this year than it was when I started.

This is actually my second blog this school year. The first was begun out of necessity. I was looking for a way to keep people informed about current information related to H1N1 as it relates to the Barrow County School system without flooding their email boxes with detailed information to sift through. The blog provides a tool that allows people to get as much or as little information as they want on the subject. Thus my blogging adventure began. I hope to learn more about this and other Web 2.0 tools that I can use to do my job more effectively and more efficiently.