new tricks for an old dog

You may notice that I haven’t posted for awhile. I think its becuase I can’t figure out what I want to do with this space. Everything that I want to do is already being done better by other people.

•  I don’t want to post a list of links, unless its ones I find helpful and useful (meaning that my classes have directly benefited)
• No one wants to read about my feelings and struggles as I teach.
• Dan Meyer already does the tech savvy but slightly sarcastic questioning of the sacred cows better than I could.
• I don’t find pictures of dogs and cats really interesting.

Well, give me a few weeks, school will end and I can try again.

I’ve run up against a serious problem in my attempts to implement technology and some o the web2.0 tools in my classroom. I have a few parents that wont’ let their children use the internet or download anything if they aren’t sitting right there next to their child. So..um…ok..

I’ve decided to offer use of my room and my computer to those kids that can and want to stay after school to work on the projects. What else can I do? I don’t want the rest of the students to be halted because a few families are that resistant. This isn’t a question of filtering, we have to have filters (I’m the IT person so my computers have a lower level of filter). What is it a question of and what is my obligation here?

School year started with more holes this year than I can ever remember. I’m only now getting out of the administration side of things, and back into my classes which I passed off to a visiting volunteer couple (both experienced high school teachers) for the first marking period.

I do have more time, so expect more posts soon.

For my master’s class, I’m working on a paper about the use of electronic portfolios. If anyone has any resources, please let me know.

This graph  shows why it will be vital for us as educators to implement the new web 2.0 platforms into our classrooms. The simple answer is that the kids use them, meaning that there is a naturally high rate of interest in these tools. High interest may lead to high motivation, and that may lead us to other techniques.

The relevant statistics are these:

If we look at the school age students (defined as 12-17) this is what we get:

34% Create web content

24% Contribute via comments, polls/rating and reviews.

11% Collect resources via RSS, tags, bookmarks

51% Use Social-networking sites

49% Read, watch, view, listen to content

34% are inactive on the web

link to original blog post.

I’ve been convinced over the past few years that while I am a good teacher, I’m not always technologically relevant. This blog will track my adventures in finding, creating and using web 2.0 technologies and content in my classroom.