Blogging My Way Through a Construction Zone

The only time I have time for blogging any more is when I am driving on a highway, flying on a plane, or riding on a bus.  I just started a new teaching position as a gifted and talented specialist and I feel as if I haven’t got a clue what I am doing.  I think everyone should feel like that once in a while because I believe that is when real learning occurs.

My last post was about microblogging in the classroom and my students have been doing just that during this quarter of school.  We are using a tool called Shout.em which is very similar to Edmodo.  Some of the kids really “get” microblogging and are asking questions, sharing information, making connections, and getting to know one another in a new way.  Other students are not sure and some see it as a big waste of time.  There is an old saying that goes something like this:

“Contempt prior to investigation will lead a man to everlasting ignorance.”

This attitude seems pervasive with people who do not see the purpose behind the connected learning applications like shout em, moodlechat, Quest Atlantis, Second Life, Reaction Grid, etherpad, etc. can provide.  I am finding that the students who investigate with an open mind, in most cases, find the purpose behind connected, anywhere, anytime learning applications and begin utilizing them to enhance their own learning.  When email, fax machines, telephones, automobiles, nose hair trimmers, and toasters were first introduced many people didn’t see their purpose either…until they decided to investigate them with an open mind.

Twittering and Blogging from 31,000 feet…

It was only recently that I began using a cell phone…less than two years.  It is amazing to me the things that a cell phone can do.  As I was flying 31,000 feet over Montana, I wondered if I could send and receive twitter messages.  So, I sent a tweet out requesting that twitterfriends  send me a direct message and received several responses.  I am continually amazed at what is possible with new technologies.  On the second leg of our flight, I discovered In Flight Internet.  WoW did not work very well as I was continually disconnected…but gtalk and skype worked very well and I was able to talk to several members of my PLN about our trip to Australia.  I even was able to log in to Second Life and have a cool conversation with Louise Borgnine.

I usually spend time on a plane thinking about crashing into the ground in a huge ball of flame.  On these flights, however, I was thinking more about how awesome it is to have a PLN (Personal Learning Network) and how cool tools like Twitter, Skype, and GOGO InFlight Internet are.  Man…I love technology…I hope I can blog from Los Angeles to Auckland too…

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Twenty First Century Friendship

I have always been kind of a loner, preferring activities that isolated me from others.  Second Life, twitter, this blog, and other on-line social environments seem to have changed that for me over the past year in more ways than I would have ever imagined or dreamed.  I don’t know if it is the filter provided by my computer and my new found friends/teachers that makes it easier for me to share with others and really be myself or if it is something else about interacting on-line…but I truly believe that some of the friends/teachers I have made over the past year…on-line…are some of the best friends/teachers I have ever had.  I know as much or more about many of them than I do about people I have known face to face for years and I believe (might be foolin myself) some of them feel the same way about me.  This last statement may be more of a commentary on my lack of ability to communicate with people in “real life”…but my ability to communicate with others in “real life” has actually improved a tremendous amount as a result of my association with my new found non-f2f friends.  So if my “twenty-first century” friendships are not as mutual as I would like, it really doesn’t matter…I am a far better person as a result of each and everyone of those friendships…

On a personal note, my family and I are flying to Australia in a couple of days where I will get to meet some of my new friends face to face, even one from Tasmania.  I am going to record my trip on a new application I found called MapVivo.  If  you want to see my journey…click MY JOURNEY.  Adam made a slide show about part of our trip…see it below.  I am soooo excited to meet my new friends and go on a new adventure…I can barely contain myself:)  Oh yeah, big thanks to Dean and Jo for helping me with another grant…gonna get it this year…

more about “Adam S Project”, posted with vodpod

A Guy From India

A guy named Fred (not his real name) from India remotely helped me get my Hewlett-Packard computer fixed earlier this week.  I gave him the controls to my computer and we had quite an interesting conversation as he fiddled with my kitchen desktop from thousands of miles away.  I am a question-asker when something is intriguing to me as any Jokaydian will attest and so will Fred now.  I always wonder why jobs are getting shipped across seas and my conversation helped me understand why.  Fred is a 22-year old college graduate who lives in a town of 1400 thousand people (his number) called Hyderabad.   He has his degree in Mechanical Engineering and is planning on attending graduate school as soon as he can afford it.  I asked him several questions and as I recollect our conversation went something like the following:

Me:  So, what does a guy in India make for fixing my computer?

Fred:  I make about 10,000 rupees a month…

Me:  Wow…not bad…how much is that in US dollars…

Fred:  Right around $200…

Me:  Oh my God, Fred…If you had a job as a Mechanical Engineer in Montana…You would be making that much in a half a day…

Fred:  You are too kind…

Fred seemed like an extremely kind and responsible young man…the kind of guy you would want to hire.  He works 9 and a half hours a day, 5 days a week and must still live at home with his parents to afford graduate school.  If I could get him to work for me for $200 a month, I would not hesitate…Even if I knew that he would only stay on for a week.

I asked him what school was like for him when he was younger and he shared that there is a tremendous amount of respect for both education and teachers in his culture and also…an extremely low divorce rate.  I wonder if a stronger family structure and a deep cultural respect for education and teachers might have something to do with a student’s success in the classroom.

We were on the phone with each other for a little over two hours so I was able to ask a lot of questions.  I also had my son Edin…play his piano version of the Beatles song – Yellow submarine for Fred.  Although Fred knew who the Beatles were, He had never heard the song before.  He told me that he prefers Eminem.

On a personal note, my last blog post was my 50th and marked the one-year anniversary of my blog.  I know this because I wrote my first blog post on the way home from the 2008 Race for the Cure of Breast Cancer, and last weekend, family and I went to Helena for the 2009 Race for the Cure.  I like taking my family to this race…It is by far one of my favorites as it gives my children an opportunity to remember their Gramma…and me, an opportunity to remember my mother.  And this year, I was able to take my Father as well…the person who was probably impacted the most by my Mother’s battle with the disease…besides my Mother anyway…

Try not to smile

On Fridays in our first period class, students are supposed to engage in reading.  Many of my students left to go to a National Junior Honor Society meeting, so I was stuck in my room with several non-National Junior Honor Society types.  I shared with the students an article I read about how smiling is easier on your face muscles than frowning so when I want kids to smile, I tell them to relax their face.  If I want them to frown I tell them to exercise their face.  While explaining this to my students, the majority of them were very amused and smiling except for one.  He just sat there and refused to smile.  He was actually TRYING NOT TO SMILE.  He was doing a fine job until I posed the question…Why would someone TRY NOT TO SMILE?  One of my more digitally literate students responded, “I don’t know, why don’t you google it?” so I did…and the first link that popped up was the following video…

more about “funny storm trooper : try not to laugh“, posted with vodpod

Needless to say, Michael smiled…in fact, he laughed out loud…All middle school students love dancing Storm Troopers…even the ones who TRY NOT TO SMILE.

Learning at a Conference

Two of my new colleagues

Either I am an internet addict or everyone else at this conference in Missoula, MT is digitally illiterate. It is a Gifted and Talented Conference put on by our state gifted organization, AGATE. There are probably right around 1000 teachers here and only about five of us have been bringing our laptops to the sessions. I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that I am the only one at the conference utilizing Twitter to share what I am learning. I have been recording my experiences on a new tool Dean Groom showed me called etherpad. It is a live document that can be edited by all participants as they chat in a backchannel section of the page. I tried to share my etherpad with the other guy here who had a computer and he would have none of it. That guy now does everything he can to avoid bumping into me (thinks I’m a stalker). In fact, I tried sharing it with all my colleagues and not a one of them had any interest. However, at the end of the day in my hotel room while messing around in WoW with a colleague, I shared my etherpad. My colleague thought it was the coolest thing ever and even made her own that she plans to use at a conference where she will be presenting in a few weeks. Thank God, for my PLN. It always validates to me that even though there is evidence to the contrary, I may be on the right track. I am not sure, but I imagine at other conferences laptops are used by far more people to share ideas and discuss conference content. This is the first conference where I brought my laptop and used various web 2.0 tools to enhance my learning. Those tools [(twitter, skype, WoW (yes, for me, it is a learning tool)] have made this conference the most meaningful I have ever attended.

On a personal note, my avatar in Second Life, Henny Zimer, turned 1-year-old on April 24th. I bought him a new cyclocross bike to celebrate but I am fairly certain that I will be the one riding it. Also, unbelievable to me, someone in Montana actually started reading my blog and it was my brother, Tom. I am very happy that he has read the things I have been writing over the past year…Thank you, Tom.

Henny's Birthday Present

Diigo Social Bookmarking

I have been using Diigo for about a half a year. I am just learning to use some of the features presented in this video. Diigo is a very powerful bookmarking and sharing tool. I can’t wait to try some of the new things shown here…Webslides…Wow!!!

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Husband song

This video made me laugh…Jenny Luca thank God its Friday…

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Quest Atlantis begins at East Middle School

I began sending home permission slips for Quest Atlantis last week and I began enrolling students this week. I have QA downloaded on each of the ten Windows based computers in my classroom which run the program pretty well despite only 256 mb of ram and pretty slow processors but they were good enough. We also managed to get it working on twelve other computers in the Library. The library computers are much better than the ones in my classroom, so QA seems to run a bit better there. The computer tech said QA looked like a chat room and Susan told him that it was much more than that. Susan is my feisty Quest Atlantis partner and she has been instrumental in getting QA loaded on the twelve computers in our library. Many of the kids are so excited, they can barely contain themselves. I had to have a small conference with one student to get him to stop asking about when he would be enrolled along with the others. Angela shared with me that I would be very busy in the near future when kids began completing quests. She is a Tasmanian friend I met on Jokaydia and she has been extremely helpful in helping me learn how to begin implementing QA in my classroom. She is an expert in Quest Atlantis as she has been utilizing it for well over a year now I think, possibly even more.

I also made a wiki page that linked to the How to download QA at home and many students have taken advantage of it and began playing QA from their homes. Classroom walls are becoming wider all the time, in schools of the future, I believe that walls will be nonexistent.

KFBB Television came in and interviewed the first quester I enrolled early in September about different technologies we have begun using at East Middle School. I will blog a little more on that story as it develops. The chaoticness of this time of year is making me be far more precise with my words when I blog. Precision of thought, I have heard that phrase somewhere, is a skill that I need to work on if I am to continue blogging. I coach basketball for a couple of elementary school teams that my two sons play on and although it is a rewarding endeavor, it can be quite time-consuming. Basketball season has begun and so has the chaos.

On a personal note…Although I am connecting to some awesome teachers and having a very cool time I may have picked a poor time to join a the Cognitive Dissonance Guild in a new adventure I just began in WOW as a night elf hunter and a paladin dwarf…On-line educators are by far, the most helpful people I have ever had the pleasure of being connected to…like Maratink…my helper in WOW…

GoAnimate – Cool Web tool

Go animate is a pretty cool little tool. Thank you Kevin Jarrett for the twitter…I made this in about 30 minutes to introduce my new computer club to students…

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