Reflections of a Techie

Where are the essential questions...the PBL experiences?

Even since I listened to Lynn Erickson talk about curriculum development and the reasons why you would want to teach from essential questions (the questions that are timeless and drive to the heart of the content AND that are transferrable), I've really questioned how we go about defining our curricular objectives.  They seem so straight jacket like to me.  They didn't stoke the imagination or intellectual fancy of my students.

I just finished readying Kevin Washburn's blog entry called, The Window: Making the Shift, Part 1: No More Objectives. and he raises many of the same points.  We have narrowed the curriculum down so much that, as he says, the window is limited to the on in the door to our room.  I hate that.  I want a window that goes well beyond the one to the outside of the building, beyond my community and country and one that knows few bounds.  Students and parents don't even know they're missing out....because they too have been deluded into thinking small.

But as my school pushes us to have pyramids of interventions and remediation, where is the energy, time or interest to think big????  Not sure.  maybe the few holdouts that still think school is more about being educated and less about GPA.

Emily's World: Tagging Bookmarks with del.icio.us for Educators

I want to come back to this and investigate it further.

Link: Emily's World: Tagging Bookmarks with del.icio.us for Educators.

My first audio file project of a teacher meeting--using Audacity and uploading audio to Typepad

Well, I've finished my first attempt at producing some kind of reflective audio file of teacher's deliberating about curriculum design.  I think I found myself too absorbed in the most interesting parts of the conversation and then worrying about how to operate my iPod.  But I did manage to gather a couple of audio voice notes into Audacity.

It wasn't as easy to edit the audio as I remember GarageBand being, though.  I couldn't figure out how to position the playheads at the just the right place.  So I'm not very happy with some of  it and I would have included more little bits and pieces of other people's voices had I known how to do this...

Download 08012005meeting.mp3

But it's a start and I felt like I needed to get going with my experiments.  People were very happy to accomodate my efforts for the most part.  I also think that some of what I recorded will be excellent to have when we must present this curriculum to the school board's review committees.  These are authentic teacher voices saying why their work is important, valid and useful.  Hopefully I will get better at editing and can provide a much better set of opinions.

Hopefully I will also gather steam for folks listening to this and leaving their ideas. The notion that these voices are here for people to react to and to stimulate thinking.  WOW.  If that would happen, I'd be thrilled.  We'll see.

Lastly I've never uploaded any content like this onto my blog.  So I'm wasn't sure how this would work...so far so good and it uploads like any other file.  That was probably the easiest part of this effort.

Using flickr to find math pictures--ratios

chalk,
originally uploaded by holysloot.

Using this photo for creating circle graphs could be great.  It's an easy picture, something familar for my students and interesting.

Math is Spoken as the Language of Science

About to embark on a new phase of my professional life, I am standing at a crossroads.  I'm to teach Math and Science...several hours of each.

I know my students' math foci for the year will be around number sense, more specifically percents, decimals and proportions.  The next biggest chunk is geometry.  Wishing there was more algebra, but alas that will be for future grades.

I know my science foci will be earth and space science...while my social studies parnters will be working on ancient civilizations.  With earth/space there are mountains(!!!) of connections back to the math content.  Even NASA has integrated lessons.  I plan on spending lots of time here.   Organizing ideas probably should look through the lens of motion and force.  How those happen in on our earth and then out in space.  Using the language of math, I can help students really see how it is essential to speaking precisely and unlocking mysteries for which words prove to be inadequate.

Access to the technology is always the hurdle and so we start there again. I will not be deterred.  My students' best interests nothing less than the best I can prepare for them.  I only have several weeks to create these experiences and I feel inspired by them.  It will be a great year and I thankful to have this opportunity.

A Whole Lot of Info Comes with the Feed...Golla Lee

Uncovering a bit more information about the way these aggregators work has led me to a Wired magazine article. Here I learned that

The feeds are written according to one of a few competing shared specifications, which are collectively referred to as RSS, which stands, depending on who you talk to, for really simple syndication or rich site summary.

At heart, RSS is simply a specification that a site uses to produce a page of XML code. The code breaks up each entry or story on a website by title, description and direct link. An aggregator then determines how to display that output in a reader.

So now I can clarify even more about what I know about RSS, aggregators, how they are checked (thanks to a comment posted by Tom Hoffman) and what information is carried along with each feed. It is beginning to look like information literacy is going to be valuable once again. So our library media specialists will find themselves at the center of this. I know that I shouldn't be surprised because they are the hub of almost everything we do. I wonder if they know it and by all the reading I do and certainly because I was first attracted to the whole notion through the work of the Shifted Librarian....well......

Duh Marsha. Are you dumb?

I do think the next thing I'm going to have to go learn about is this XML. I have heard of it but don't know anything about it. Not that I think I'm about to learn to program in such a language. That's not my mission. But I should know something...but I'm too tired to continue for right now. I have to return to my real world.

At the state conference and responsible for setting up chairs, getting networks to pull up IP addresses, finding enough projectors/screens so everyone can do their thing....I have to do a 3 hour workshop on Squeak (which I love) but no one will be interested on why it's an environment NOT a language and then suffer through another 3 hour workshop on using the Publisher Wizards. When I think of all the cool things to do and then all the mundane things to do. Well. Sigh. It's a living.

Thought I Knew Something But I Didn't...RSS are Pesky You Know

All this time I RSS was an aggregator...not true. So I'll have to find a new title for my posts....Oh well.

So now I know that RSS is what makes blogs different from the HTML stuff that I've authored my Dreamweavers. The initials seem to either stand for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndiacation. I can't get a clear read on it because one site says one thing and another site says another thing. So I guess it means both or neither or take your pick.

But what it does seem to be clear about is that RSS announces to the world.....via a feed is that your blog has changed. A "Ta Da" that spiders read from an aggregator on bl.og or Bloglines.

So the RSS is different from the aggregator. The aggregator keeps track of the links.

Now I get it!!!!!!

The RSS is like the big drum roll for the whole world to hear and the aggregator is the favorite bookmarks inside your browser except it keeps track of way more. This is a variation on a theme though. A real composer's dream because the agg alerts you to updates to the news feeds or blogs. When the news changes it waves a little flags (so to speak) and tells you about it. My old IE bookmarks never did that!!!!

Now add to this whole mess...................the spider. Well we've had spiders before. They've crawled the web forever. They've been in our search engines looking for those keywords we've typed in for a long, long time. Instead of looking for keywords, now the spider is out looking for RSS feeds and it's automated. Sort of sounds like it's on steriods.

People can read my blog...now that they know it's been updated....in a couple of ways. Through their agg because it brings little snippets to them. Or they can choose to follow the linke that the agg provides them. This is also where the new vocabulary word "ping" comes into play. And I don't mean the golf kind of ping. A blog uses this ping device to announce that's there new stuff to read and gets the word out before the spider discovers it. So if time is of the essence, then blog writers make sure their software includes pinging capabilities. In Typepad, I have the option at the end of every post to use a ping or not. Never had a clue before my research today what it meant. And I don't really know why I would need such a hurry up kind of feature, but maybe someday I will.

I'm glad I clarified what RSS means..........well I guess I don't know for sure. But at least I know now that it doesn't mean an aggregator. So that's progress. I am understanding more and more. I still need to know why you use HTML code inside a page instead of just using something like Bloglines.

I suspect it's because you want the feed delivered directly to a webpage so I'll research that tomorrow.

Classroom Best Practices:

Here's an example of a fantastic blog. This high school teacher has everything going....

good design
a great lesson
student work

I think all the elements are in place and I think the students are responding as evidenced by the work that is displayed. I really liked the work that is on display. This is what I would like to strive for. If you look at my classroom blog it isn't this seamless. The blogging aspect is still to evident and my kids' participation is too obvious and clumbsy.

Baby blogging startup Site

Blogs in Education

Baby blogging. Yes another helpful site to use in informing people what it is and how they can use it.

The Aggregator subsection is something that I think can be useful and I will come back to shortly. It has some good feed readers that I want to checkout..

Conceptual Lens and Taking it Extremes--The Zone of Teaching

Sometimes you wonder if you're at a crossroads. In a moment of clarity you totally get it. And you wonder why you have gotten it all along and you didn't have the words to express what you knew. It's so frustrating. I hate knowing something and not being able to have others understand what I just feel and what I can do when I'm with my students. It's sort of a zone.

Not zen but zone.

That doesn't play well to the conservative world of education. But then when did I ever fit into this world? Probably never. And never will I. That's the hardest part of it all. Just feeling like you are on a highway of people always going the other way. Once in a great while someone comes along and speaks your language and you feel so greatly relieved that you're not crazy.

You sigh a huge breath out because it's redemption. No one else knows because they didn't know the uncertainity you live with all the time. The ongoing tug-o-war that you have to keep your ideas inside because everytime you let them seep out with anyone but the trusted few friends you have, everyone thinks you're a nut case and cuts you off.

That's why I have to read the literature. That's why I have to live on the listserves. Without the connection to the outside world beyond my own backyard I would have no affirmation that I am anything. I would only think I am a crazy. But I am not. I loved what I heard when Lynn Erickson spoke about the Theory of Knowledge and how that translates into how students acquire knowledge and how we teach for deep understanding. I totally feel this when I look into my kids eyes everyday. It's what I have felt that they hunger for when I walk among them in my classroom and why I teach the way I do.

But it's also why everyone always says to me....oh, we can't do that. No one else can do that kind of curriculum. We can't write that. You're beating your head into the wall. Given the ranting quality of this I probably am a little nuts. But at least it's out of my heart and onto this page. My passion for my students to rise above their potential will not be quenched. I want more for them. I wish I was more articulate. I wish I was a better advocate. Sadly I am not. Fortunately there are others that are.

I am happy for a moment that I know that I am not crazy and that there are birds of a feather who are legitmized by the education world. I will hang on until my next encounter.