Tech Ed-dy

This year I decided my grade 9 class would join the Digi Teen project, an amazing global collaborative project dreamed up by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. As participants in this project my grade 9 technology class is engaged in researching different aspects of digital citizenship and collaborating with peers from other countries to edit Wiki pages. They are also participating in a Ning Educational Network within which they can get to know their teammates and other students from around the world. It is the experiences both I and my students are having on this Ning that I want to share.

Story 1 – “The teacher and the chat room”

I was the most nervous about involving my students in the Ning as I knew that it had potential to ring alarm bells with the parent community at my small private school on Vancouver Island, and I took pains to do my due diligence in informing parents and having conversations with my students around issues of personal and private information, digital etiquette stereotypes. I also made sure to check in on the Ning periodically to make sure everything was ok.

During one of these visits I stumbled upon the Ning chat room and realised that somewhere around the world there was a class of students on the Ning and in the chat room. Most of the chat seemed to be the students saying hello to each other in various ways, but a couple of the comments were quite inappropriate. So, being an administrator on the Ning I did what I thought was best and deleted the chat immediately.

But the comments kept coming and I was pretty sure that some of the were meant to be hurtful to others. So I decided to join the chat. Heart racing I entered a comment something like ‘Hey guys I’m a teacher over here in Canada and I’m concerned that some of what you are typing isn’t very appropriate”. I knew it sounded pretty stuffy but was at a loss to express myself properly in such a limited medium. As was expected l got some quick replies along the lines of ‘we are just having a bit of fun’. So I started typing away trying to express myself when I started getting replies of a much different nature. More apologetic and thoughtful.

What had happened was that their teacher in Australia had gotten wind of the chat and had taken the opportunity to talk to the class about it. What a learning opportunity! To follow up I started a discussion thread on the Ning asking ‘Where do you draw the line between having fun online and being innapropriate’. And I was really pleased to see some of the thoughtful replies posted by some of those Australian students.

So what is the take away lesson from this experience. I think it is that there is a lot of value in allowing students to make mistakes in an environment like the Ning where they can make mistakes and learn from them. I was nervous about the Ning component of this project because of the potential for my students to make mistakes on a public site, but if they are never given a chance to really fully participate in real world experiences then how are they ever going to learn how to navigate these experiences successfully.

Story 2 – “The war in Iraq”

This story is much shorter. One of my students started a discussion thread on the Iraq war. A tricky discussion to have when schools from both the USA and Middle East are involved in the project. The response she received from a girl in Quatar was incredibly mature and balanced. You can find it here if you are interested.

This short story has really reinforced for me the power of these global collaborative projects, and it’s not over yet. I wonder what other teachable moments and wonderful connections will happen next?

The post below is copied from the one I posted to our school intranet to try and give our teachers some ideas for their new blogs.

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I wanted my first post on this particular Blog to be as helpful as possible to all the teachers who have suddenly found themselves with an online workspace, but who don’t really know where to start.

There are a lot of really amazing teachers around the world using Blogs in really innovative ways in their classrooms and sharing their experiences. In a way this is a really neat virtual way to step into someone else’s classroom and see how they are managing all the different challenges that come with classroom teaching.

So, here they are, hopefully you will find one that makes you think ‘Hey that’s what I would like to do!’.

Teacher Teaching Blogs: For these blogs I have tried to find blogs where the teacher is either using the Blog as a communication tool, or as a platform for the students to write and express themselves.

Class Blogmeister – this is a blogging platform that allows teachers the same level of security we have with our Wordpress Intranet. Click on recent posts for links to different teacher blogs.

Room 208 – this is an older blog by a teacher called Bob Sprankle. He has his elementary age student post podcasts to the blog.

Smith’s Class Blog – this is a teacher using Blogmeister. You can see her student blogs in the right sidebar of her blog.

Extreme Biology – this is a teacher’s biology blog, but all the posts are by her students. If you read the comments you can see that students are commenting on each other’s posts.

ADV Biology – a more traditional teacher blog in which assignments are posted.

Math 247 – this is an amazing Math blog in which students use an application called Voicethread to make animated Math movies. We can do this!

Fun Math Blog – this teacher uses his Blog as a place to post the Math Problem of the Week.

Teacher Reflection Blogs: These teachers are using their blogs as a place to reflect on their daily practice. We often get our students to reflect, and we understand the importance for their learning, but we sometimes forget that we are also learners and reflection is an important part of that process.

dy/dan – this is the blog of a Math teacher who explores some really interesting questions in his blog.

Don’s Learning Log

Remote Access – this is written by a gr 7/8 (I think) teacher in Manitoba called Clarence Fisher.

View From Room 125

The Teacher’s View

Hopefully one of these blogs will strike a cord and resonate. Happy Blogging!