Simpleology

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Sometimes you need to step back...

...and look at how it is going. I am too bust, I keep adding more to my plate. Maybe I should say balls in the air. As long as none of them drops, then I am doing well, right?

Well, now I am thinking. Hy husband has high cholesterol and now some serious side effects from the statins he is on. His chest pain makes me think of how stress can take its toll and sneak up on you pretty quick. My 43rd birthday is also Monday.

You must know that I enter the holiday season with a list. After all I can get a lot done during the break and I plan on this. This season is no exception, but I have had to rewrite my list. I suffered an accident on the 15th that dislocated the pinky of my right hand. The temporary splint gave me movement in 3 fingers (I am right-handed). Using it though was a problem. Turns out that I tore the ligaments in my hand and now have a cast that prevents movement of any finger in the right hand. That has changed my list completely.

So I will start out with a mission statement so to speak. After all I have been thinking of this but need to make it more formal and write it down. The fact that I now have more time to read blogs and peruse websites has me thinking more.

The touching and eloquent writing of Vicki Davis always leaves me thinking. In her last post Blogs are not the death of writing but the evolution, she says:

However, as we move forward to a society that can send and receive education any place any time from anyone, the best teachers will become SuperTeachers and the worst schools, districts, and teachers may find themselves completely without a job.

You know, I thought I was a great teacher. I am in the sense I use critical thinking and I motivate students. But anyone can walk into my room, take the activities I made, and teach them. Yes, some of them are original but anyone can do it.

That makes me replaceable. Doesn't it? We all think we are irreplaceable. But we aren't. If the activities are reproducible by anyone, then you are replaceable.

So, my point: I want to be irreplaceable. I want to use technology to its full ability and continue to change with it. I want to make connections with other teachers in order to collaborate. I want to be an example of what it should be.

Sure it would be easier to take a paper out of the file drawer and just do that activity. I think I can do better and will be using this time to craft some great lessons using technology, authentic activities, publishing, and collaboration. I want to show that this is more than just using word, creating powerpoints, and iMovies. One of my students posted a discussion thread on my wiki about tech use in the school:

Macbooks-- threshold to the future or finale of exploration?
I love the all of the new technology in our school, I just don't understand why Mrs. Maine is the only one who's challenging us to use anything other than Microsoft Word. I feel that half of the teachers who have laptops in their rooms don't even fully deserve them, only because I honestly don't think they even remember they are in their rooms. I don't understand why almost all of the teachers that have them give us work to do on them that could easily be done in the Mac Lab. Why is it that there are so many programs on the computer that I've never even heard of, none the less opened before? We have the opportunity to explore, but if someone were to see us we'd probably get our computer privileges taken away. I think that if we could just take one day, just like the C4F teachers do, and have some sort of 'training' just to let us grow a little in our Macbooks, all of us would be a little more satisfied. And don't get me wrong, I do fully understand that this is only the second year in this program and that it will be growing, but don't you think that using them in the first place is the only way we can activate? And the educational part of it? If all the teachers got ahold of some type of discussion board, like the ones on Tiged, we would maybe learn something other than the vocabulary words in our textbook. I think that the only way we can learn something is by interacting with others and communicating, without being restricted by our Proxy Server.

I replied that the learning curve may be steeper for others. That really is not the whole story.

Cool Cat Teacher also references a blog post from Jeremy Zawodny: The 10 habits of highly annoying bloggers. Funny, but I must be one of them. Which ones have I modeled? Not creating all my own content. After all, I am just learning and finding my voice. Some bloggers get me thinking.

I also did not have a blogroll for some time but had one up there before I read his post. The last is an rss feed. I had one with atom but wanted to update this. Remember the balls in the air? Not all of them were being juggled smoothly.

So, now what? Better planning and management to keep track of all the great things I have seen and want to do. And finish what I start. After all, I am a list maker!

Is this an example of poor citizenship?

It is not a bad example on you tube or a student posting personal info, but it is a poor example of how to converse on the web.

Students created information on environmental problems and posted the information on the class wiki. I showed the movie An Inconvenient Truth - which if you like or dislike Al Gore makes you have an immediate reaction to it. (There is another example of poor citizenship, don't you think?).

What surprises me is how they have not yet embraced the use of their voice. Let me backup: I first started with a world population activity where students analyzed an age structure diagram from a country and researched information to explain present and future populations. They also entered a silent online debate on TIGed over issues regarding world population problems. I thought all went well there and students enjoyed expressing their feelings.

Back to the movie: One student wrote in his my space about what he felt about the movie and global warming. Not kind, but his opinion. What bothers me is how he reacted when another student tried to clear up some of the miscnceptions he had and also asked for an explanation of a statement that he made. She had links, direct statistics from reputable sources, etc. I know it is off of school time, but he reacted by removing her as a friend and deleting her posts. I equate that to the same as saying: "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah - I can't hear you".

Maybe I am making too much of it but I am trying hard to get them to be critical of information, receptive of other viewpoints, and be respectful to another viewpoint. Both students are very intelligent, opinionated, but the responder works in class like a citizen.

So, now what? I didn't let it go. I decided to post a poll on the wiki as to their beliefs on global warming (the my space student knows what is up). Because the believers, and those that don't or need more information are close in numbers, I believe a debate is in order carried out in the space of their choice. Maybe instead of telling them the guidelines, the classes should decide what they are. Could be a good chance to discuss what being a citizen is and how necessary it is to be so in the digital world. I am still thinking all the specifics.

I am not sure what it is I think can be accomplished. Unfortunately, many adults can't act appropriately in or out of the web. But baby steps can still accomplish something.

I went back to read the post from Vicki Davis about Alec Couros' post on digital citizenship. She has a part that I really caught this time (another note to self: re-read the blogs more often to get what you missed the first time):

It is time to pull character education out of the shelf and inject it and ourselves into the world which we have become with our voices and all we have.

What am I saying if I don't make this a teachable moment? If I let it go? If I think it is not my responsibility, then I have lost more than just that moment.

Using asterpix

What fun!. I took a video on inflating deer lungs. Before you say yuck you need to understand that students love this stuff and every opportunity has a teachable moment.

So, I have a hunter bring in the intact heart and lung assembly of a deer. We discuss the parts and vessels of the heart, I show the differences between the left and right lungs and also discuss the anatomy of the trachea.

Then I take straws and show how the lungs inflate, discuss the parts of the lungs all the way down to the alveoli (air sacs), and most importantly, how smoking messes that all up! What makes all this better is that this year my students wanted to put it up on you tube. I also have it on my wiki. One of my students took over production duties.

Now I have found Asterpix. I signed up last week, had to get it unblocked (can you hear me groan!), and just now started to play. The video in the post below is my first attempt. How cool to be able to add notes and links to your video. Clicking on the little squares makes the clickable areas. Even though I talked about what smoking does to your lungs (and I personally have seen these in a pathology department internship of a big hospital) it is better for them to see it. I was able to find copyright free pictures on the Internet that I linked to that portion of the video. How cool is that! I need to redo one of my notes - it is too long as well as making the boxes smaller. My current problem - you tube is still blocked!

Now I have my students playing! Students are going to take video of pig dissection and use
Asterpix to make links for various systems that other students have trouble with. I will let you know what they think and how it goes!

Asterpix Interactive Video

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Citizenship - digital and otherwise

I just read Alec Corous' post on Understanding Digital Citizenship. I will write more about the contents of the article later as I really need to digest all that is mentioned. In addition, Vicki Davis has written an excellent response to this post as well. In his post, he quotes a definition. Excuse the repeat link of the definition, but it really struck a chord in me.

According to Wikipedia's definition of polis citizenship:

The first form of citizenship was based on the way people lived in the ancient Greek times, in small-scale organic communities of the polis. In those days citizenship was not seen as a public matter, separated from the private life of the individual person. The obligations of citizenship were deeply connected into one’s everyday life in the polis. To be truly human, one had to be an active citizen to the community, which Aristotle famously expressed: “To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!” This form of citizenship was based on obligations of citizens towards the community, rather than rights given to the citizens of the community. This was not a problem because they all had a strong affinity with the polis; their own destiny and the destiny of the community were strongly linked. Also, citizens of the polis saw obligations to the community as an opportunity to be virtuous, it was a source of honour and respect. In Athens, citizens were both ruler and ruled, important political and judicial offices were rotated and all citizens had the right to speak and vote in the political assembly.

Wow! Have we lost that sense of our obligation? Why are the rights to do _______ (insert whatever!) more important than the obligations? This is transferred easily into all the ills of today's world. The fact that technology is evolving so rapidly means that these ills are so easily seen, expanded, and seemingly out of control. I need to think more aboiut all of this but more importantly think about my actions. Have I been modeling this appropriately in my life?

Well, I started out gung ho at the beginning of the year with a blog – I think I made 3 entries the first day. What has happened since? Perhaps life and a little attitude has happened – it is the holiday season by the way. Let me explain. As I have been sitting and thinking about who cares if anyone reads what I have to say and who cares if I read what anyone has to say, my school email has filled up with edtech emails and blog entries I have subscribed to. Now that I am finally reading them it has occurred to me that I have not really faced my own attitudes about blogging.

Writing about what I am thinking is somewhat self-centered, don't you think? I am obviously the only one in my brain and if I write it all down, am I stuck on myself? Not really. That is just what I think others are thinking and I should not have that opinion toward anyone else either. If it is not meaningful to me, I don't need to read it. But someday it may be and the great thing about electronic communication is that it will be there for some time (another reason to be very careful).

Mostly I think that no one cares what I think (oops – there I go talking like one of the teenagers). Vicki Davis says it best in her blog:

It is about improving communication and facilitating effective, meaningful, educated, civilized conversation. And when it gets students excited about communicating and learning, then it just becomes a number one friend of a good teacher.

Even if your blogging is not tied to education, it is all about communication. The focus is not only on sharing but also connecting. I learn a lot by reading about the thoughts and experiences of others. It is important to make meaningful communication and use it constructively and just as thoughtfully. Even blogs or posts that polarize people are useful (this is a scrapbooking message board with passionate members): 2 peas

My hope is to use the blogs as a tool for not only my learning and communcation but also for that of my students. By thinking differently about blogs in general, I might just learn something after all.