Like a Fish Out Of Water

Posted on November 25, 2008 by berretta

Last week I attended an Apple Road Show and looked over some of their stuff. I have to admit, I am a bit partial toward PC but I don’t discredit the Macs and Apple for the great products they make. I have to say, though, Mac Fanatics really annoy me. I guess they annoy me the same way that health food fanatics and the guy standing on the corner holding the 15 foot cross telling all the women they are going to Hell because they are wearing pants all get on my nerves. Fanatics just annoy me. Maybe it’s because I’m a fanatic for so few things that I really don’t see the point in being fervent unless it is actually important. Maybe I just see things differently and don’t see why a piece of machinery should be important enough for me to become a fanatic about. Granted, I like my Google, but I also enjoy Office, Zoho, and Adobe, so by no means would I be considered a fanatic.

My philosophy is simple- use what works best for you and your environment. In our laptop program there are a number of kids who have brought Macs even though we support one specific PC model. They have to support their own machines and are on their own if something does happen. For this reason, a kid new to the program would be better suited to going with a machine we support if they can’t support his or her own machine. If they can’t support their own machines, then it becomes a distraction and a hindrance in the classroom for both the student and the teacher.

Overall, I could care less what a kid brings as long as they could support it and it is beneficial to them. However, in a single model environment I think the tech department can offer better overall support and the teachers may feel more confident about the program, but that just isn’t an option in this environment. All machines have the same problem- they break. Some break in different ways than others, some are built better than others, and some are more user-friendly. But they are all just machines- tools to help us do our jobs to the best we can- after all, isn’t that what technology is?

Picture from Telegraph Media Group’s photostream

Using GoogleEarth in the Classroom

Posted on November 20, 2008 by berretta

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been quite open regarding my love for Google, so this edtech tip should not surprise anyone.

GoogleEarth is a great tool for education (more than just hunting for your house and seeing if you can count the missing shingles from your roof). One great idea that I’ve passed on to a few of our teachers is using GoogleEarth as the starting point for creating Scavenger Hunts and WebQuests. Depending on grade level, student ability, and comfort level of the teacher these can be as simple or as complex as you want.

The Scavenger Hunt

Most of us have done scavenger hunts before. You’re given a series of items to find and the first to find all of them wins. Usually the items are goofy: pictures of you next to someone wearing a striped pink sweater, a ceramic platypus, or a bass fishing trophy. With a younger audience you could use the scavenger hunt to look for 3-D buildings, important sites, constellations (don’t forget the sky function!) and more. For example, giving the kids a list of places to find will help them build an understanding of geography, land mass, location, mapping skills, and more.

The WebQuest

A WebQuest “uses the power of the Internet and a scaffolded learning process to turn research-based theories into dependable learning-centered practices.” Basically there are four steps:

Guidance- The teacher provides guidance by supplying questions, resources,and research options that will lead to a differentiated method of authentic assessment.
Exploration and Discovery- Using various technological resources, students are guided through the discovery process by using the questions and resources provided in the assignment.
Transformation and Application- Once the student has completed the questions and research, they can then apply their newly discovered information and grow as students.
Presentation and Assessment- using a well defined rubric, the teacher needs to be able to assess if the students were successful in gaining the desired knowledge and whether or not the assignment was sufficiently successful.

Creating a WebQuest in GoogleEarth is done by creating a collection of placemarks, providing sufficient questions and resources (the older the audience, the more freedom can be given), and setting expectations and authentic assesment methods that will demonstrate the success of the assignment. Creating the placemarks is simple, entering the data requires a rudimentary understanding of a couple HTML commands, and then you save the collection as a KMZ file that can be sent to users. (For an excellent handout on creating placemarks, click here.)

For example, I created a small KMZ file for a WebQuest on the National Mall in Washington DC (click to download KMZ file). By launching the file it will add the placemarks and information that I have put together to guide a student through some basics over the National Mall. The final assessment of the assignment would be to take the information gleaned from the assignment and use it to reach an educated conclusion (such as focusing on the importance of the three monuments and the numerous speaches and protests which have taken place in the National Mall.)

Resources

There are a number of great sites for creatin webquests and using GoogleEarth. Also look for sites where teachers share their KMZ files for you to use but don’t forget to contribute back to the community!

Geo Education Home – Find helpful information on using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom.

Google Earth Blog

Google Earth Hacks – Google Earth Hacks provides links to interesting content found or created by users like you and gives you quick access to check things out in Google Earth.

Google Earth Lessons – GELessons.com – A Free Public Resource – Providing Teachers with the tools needed to enhance their instruction using Google Earth®, the free program that brings the world to the classroom! A Website By and For Teachers.

Google Lat Long Blog – News and notes by the GoogleEarth and Maps team.

Google Lit Trips – KMZ files for literature tours in Google Earth. Map important locations in the Aeneid, The Grapes of Wrath, MacBeth and more.

Making Movies with Google Earth

Ogle Earth blog

Real World Math – Using GoogleEarth to teach math lessons.

Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0

Using Google Earth – Learn tricks and tips to explore your world more effectively in Google Earth.

Ancient Rome Seen on Google Earth

Information Fluency Part I: Redefining Technology

Posted on November 18, 2008 by berretta

Image via Wikipedia

This past Monday I had to give a presentation on Information Literacy in the classroom and decided to take a different route. It seems as this has become a dominant theme this year for our school, but I have to wonder if we’ve taken the right approach. With this in mind I set out to redefine Information Literacy. My first task was one I strongly feel must be done. In our school, it is an unfortunate fact that even the technology has become a part of the “Us and Them” structure that causes tension between the faculty and the administration. Part of this I believe is due to the fact that teachers look at the tech department as forcing technology on them as well (as a number of other factors). In order to somewhat alleviate the tension and separation between the two groups, it would be best if we can come together with one common understanding of technology.

The word “technology” has its roots in two Greek words: teche, meaning “craft, skill, art,” and logia, meaning “word, speech, wisdom.” Logia is an interesting word. When we look back into Greek philosophy (I’ll try to keep this brief, so please forgive the oversimplification!) we find that philosophers argued over the nature of the Logos (translated simply as “word” or “thought” but it’s implications are quite profound). Plato argued what really mattered was the true nature of something. For example, a chair is a chair not because it has a physical existence (which can change), but rather because the word chair evokes an image of the absolute essence of what a chair is (which is absolute and unchanging). Aristotle argued just the opposite- that what really mattered was what we could sense with our physical senses. Either way the word logia does not simply mean “word” but rather it is the absolute nature of something- it is what really matters.

When we combine these two Greek words, teche and logia, we are now left with a better definition: Technology is the tools that allow you to do your art, craft, or skill to be its absolute best. Technology is the tools that allow you to give your job meaning. We often associate technology with machines and computers but by this definition, technology can be a pen or a piece of paper. For a carpenter, technology can be a hammer (after all, isn’t a hammer just a technological advancement over the rock?) or a fancy compound miter saw. A whiteboard/chalkboard are great pieces of technology and are excellent tools for teachers just as a tablet pc with the right software is as well. In the end, the tools needed to do a job effectively are the pieces of technology that allow a teacher to do their job to their best ability.

Now that we’ve defined technology, we need to next consider the implications of that terminology. Using a bit of reason: if technology is the tools that we need to do our jobs to their absolute best, and our job as teachers is to prepare our students by helping them to develop the proper skills necessary for functioning in a 21st century world, then what tools do I need to accomplish this task?

Other Posts of Interest:

T+L to Educators: Embrace Change

Giving Twitter Another Try

Posted on November 18, 2008 by berretta

Image via CrunchBase

It’s been quite a while since I actually looked at my Twitter account, much less sent a single Tweet from it. So, I’ve decided to give it another try. So I found a bunch of people I knew, started a bunch more people who had titles that interested me and had tweeted interesting tweets and then my addiction began to rise. I keep my TweetDeck open full time on an extended desktop where I also keep my work email open, I installed a couple of apps on my Palm, and voila- fully connected.

With GTA going on today I am very interested in hearing about how some of my colleagues are doing and the excitement they are having. I am curious to hear other people’s opinions on the software we chose to go with for our School Management System. I am also interested in hearing about how many of my cohorts rocked out to some Guitar Hero World Tour last night- bragging and talking trash over who rocks harder. All of these great things and I come back from getting my mid morning coffee and what do I see: the same thing that drove me crazy about Twitter three months ago- down for data base issues. Oh well, I guess I’ll keep chugging along and wait to hear GTA is going and to hear the latest smackdown on who does a better Bon Jovi impersonation.

Resources:

Try Twitter in Plain English!

How to build your Twitter Community

How NOT to build your Twitter Community

Twitter Lingo

Twitter Apps for your computer, mobile device, etc.

What say you, Magic 8-Ball?

Posted on November 5, 2008 by berretta

With all the talk about “cloud computing” and companies like Amazon, Google, Adobe and even Microsoft offering web-based software, there is a huge movement that I’d like to throw my 2 cents in on. Let’s look at it this way, currently if I want a decent laptop that will do everything I want it to do, I need a computer with a strong processor, lots of memory, and enough hard drive space to hold all my pictures, software, music and more. But let us consider another option. What if all you needed was internet access and an affordable laptop with a decent amount of memory and decent processing speed. Hard drive technology has dramatically improved from the old record-player type disk and head mechanical drive to a solid state drive that is significantly faster at transferring data and since the drive lacks mechanical, moving parts, it is significantly more reliable.

So here’s where I’m going with this= less expensive laptops that are less dependent upon extremely robust hardware to keep up with the software demands. How’s this supposed to happen- that’s where “cloud computing” comes in. Microsoft is working on Azure while Google is working on its own operating system. Microsoft is working on Office Web Applications while Google has GoogleDocs and Adobe has Acrobat.com not to mention Zoho, EverNote, and others (Office Live Workspace vs. Google Docs comparison). With the operating system and the applications all moving to the web, what’s left? You can store pictures online using Flickr, videos online use YouTube, and your documents online using Microsoft’s SkyDrive or the new Live Mesh or any of the other online storage options. You can edit pictures online using pickfix.com, picnik.com, or rsizr.com. Even when you don’t have internet access, you still have small applications like Google’s Gears and Adobe Air that run web-based programs offline.

So now the question is- what’s next? If I break out my Magic 8-Ball and shake it profusely, maybe it will give me a clear sign of things to come. Maybe it will direct me to where my investments should go and maybe how long I should wait before I buy a new machine so that it is not quite as obsolete as most other machines when I take it out of the box. Something tells me when I turn the ball over it’s mystical wisdom will tell me exactly what I thought it would say- “Better not tell you.”

Resouces

ComputerWorld

Picture from Anyhoo’s photostream and Nallalux’s photostream.

Taking Care of Business

Posted on November 3, 2008 by berretta

John Lennon said it best: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Sometimes this little fact is something we need to be reminded of while we’re stressing to get all our lessons ready or worried about whether or not our classes are prepared for whatever standardized testing their going to face to determine the fate of their future. These kids have a tremendous amount going on that we may never really be aware of that is taking (gasp!) precedence over our classes.

I look at my own life for example: Not too long ago my parents went through a divorce that radically influenced the way I look at my students. My first child had just been born, I was working full time, going to grad school at night, staying up late with a screaming child, and then dealing with the stresses of my parents’ separation. By the time the actual divorce was going through (two years later) I was taking a full course load at night to finish Seminary, my second daughter had been born, I was working two jobs, and still trying to cope with the fact that my parents’ 30-year marriage had fallen apart. It really does not matter your age, divorce is just not something any child is really “ready” to deal with.

My second year teaching I had a student whose father died early in the year from a brain tumor. In the same class I had a student who was diagnosed with diabetes, another whose sister was pregnant and had to come back from college, two whose parents were going through divorces, and one who had to be taken out of school and put in rehab. All of this and it wasn’t even the end of the first marking period! For me to tell these students that their classwork was more important than dealing with the issues facing their lives would be heartless. At the same time, we also have to help them understand that they can’t just let their work go to the wayside while they are coping. Part of our job as educators is not just to feed content into these empty vessels. We have to be mindful of while making our plans for the days to come that the lives we influence also have lives they are living outside the safety of the school walls. Our main job is to help our students to understand how to seek knowledge for themselves while also taking care of business at home.

Sources:

G. J. Charlet III’s photostream

(for those who don’t get the TCB reference)

Collateral Learning

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Monthly Archives: November 2008