Connectivities Lab

Having rediscovered this old blog (a school assignment), I am wondering about the usefulness of semi-publicly posting about my teaching and experiences with my students. I liked my old 180 blog as it forced me to look ahead to predict where there might be good visuals of student learning. It served as an interesting meditation on the teaching and learning for the day to come. I might as well give it a go, especially as yesterday's field trip to Pilarcitos Cemetery yielded this nice panoramic of my APES students. Done with collecting death data... before cleaning the place and going out to experience their first low-tide investigations of the nearby rocky intertidal.

(1) I returned to the start of my PLN this week and had coffee with my first teaching mentor going back 20 years. I learned to be curious about this profession I fell into and just learned so much by observation. I started explaining my 2.0 adventures until her head hurt. She was excited, but all these web hours condensed into 3 hours at Peet's was a bit much. It was nice to try to give back full circle, and yet it made me a bit fearful for the school year to come...... (2) No one else speaks my language at my school. I have been given a crash course in a new language, and have spent this summer practicing verbs and learning new nouns and cuss words in this flat world. This summer I have been with a group who have adventured and empathised along the way, and now I am returning where no one speaks the lingo. It is a sad and scary place to be right now; I don't want to lose the vocab and the drive to learn, but it may be harder without the need to succeed the class has provide

Here is what I have in mind and on my mind.... (1) Science Bearings. This is a webpaint wiki to cover all the high school sciences that I teach. I teach all the high school sciences, the wiki currently shows the courses for the upcoming year. I don't know what I would do to a dormant class? Remove physics next year when I add APES? Well the wiki is an experiment in allowing students to do the legwork in finding resources for at topic as well as using all those hours on youtube for good (mine) versus .... It takes me too long to find perfect videos on topics --it is their turn! I have tied to the wiki to a google calendar so I can post test and project dates as well as add all those extracurricular events in that can conflict.I AM FRUSTRATED to the max as I have applied 4 times in 3 weeks to upgraded to an education site (removes adds, but more importantly gives me 250 documents I can attach which is a real value in providing access to handouts online). I've no real idea whe

Or better babysit it? The assignment this week plus life plus final project stress and frustration has left my PLN undernourished. I have learned to pop up a batch of twitter bites of interest and scan the screens quickly after I have done what I am intending to do. I am hanging in there with twitter. I am still a lurker for the most part, and I still don't believe that folks who post tons of sites are really reading them all and judging their quality. Can there be twitter education paparazzi who just grab and holler look what I found without even processing it? I am getting closer to figuring out who these folks are. I need to find those who are trustworthy and have read and used the sites they rave about. (I still adore Free Technology for Teachers for describing his findings!) My 2.0 frustrations this week involve obtaining educator access on sites (webpaint, animoto, glogster). I want a person to write to and ask questions as the 'response time' promised by these site

I am not sure where my titles come from at times. This post is to revisit my technology manifesto , but (1) it ain't gonna change much and (2) this video is refreshing. I like the power of slam poetry. Taylor Mali is a master at it and an ex-teacher and the poem is about teaching. It is one of those things that one would really hope the administration would play at the first of the back-from-summer meetings. So enjoy. å I have never been a technophobe; yet as a teacher with few resources and little tech support, it has never been worth it to invest myself in the web. This is something I have tried, but without a PLN it is time-foolish and time-frustrating. (okay it is still time-frustrating--imagine learning all of this during a full school year!) My manifesto about the use of technology stands. If anything I wonder more about the faddishness of things. Yes, glogster and animoto are fun, and I will likely use them, but will they last? Where do they fit in the future of creativity

Okay, I am really tired after doing this week's work. I will appreciate what it might mean for my classroom wiki and student involvement later. I will present things in the reverse order of creation, and oddly enough, time needed to create each (1) Voicethread Click the ok and then the play --or my tiny head This was cool and rather quick. I WANT to embed video, but no video format I tried would it accept. It is the least friendly site of all I have used as far a leading a novice through the needed steps. SO this might have been quicker to do for having gone through the other assignments. I love the interactivity and the chance for students to pick written or spoken comments. I also just found out I can zoom on the photo. I think this could be a fun wiki component, just to have something out there for kids to think about. Interesting photos and such...teasers for units to come. This is simple as it has just one image that I took this last week. It could be fun to use with the col