Delicious is gone!

Well now that I finally learned how to use delicious I found out today that Yahoo! is going to get rid of it. The date has not been set, but evidently delicious will soon be a thing of the past. Here is the link to the story. If you look at the commnets there are people explaining how you can save all of your bookmarks to other places on the Internet.

Click HERE for the story

Wiki vs Google Docs

Does anyone have experience using both of these? I use wikis a lot in my classroom and was wondering if google docs would be a better choice. Wikis are safe, pretty secure and I have ultimate control, which I like. I also like that there is a history so I can always see who did what on the wiki and when. The biggest problem with wikis is that students can NOT edit at the same time. Information is easily overwritten and many times is lost if students are editing the same page at the same time. The article we read this week said that this was uncommon with wikis, but I can assure you it is more common than they think in a classroom setting.

I think the biggest strength of google docs would be that students can edit at the same time. The scariest part for me as an elementary teacher of google docs is that I will lose a lot of control and I am not sure if parents would be OK with all of their students having a google account with their own email etc.

For now it seems wikis are good for elementary and google docs may be better for secondary and higher education.

"Should Laptops Replace Textbooks"

This is a survey being taken on Edutopia right now. Right now laptops are winning by a pretty large margin. I am on the side of laptops replacing textbooks. To be honest in my elementary school, we only use textbooks for Social Studies and a little bit of reading. I think laptops have more up to date information, they allow students to access way more information than any textbook ever could and it will teach them and prepare them to use the tool they will be using once they are out of school and in the real world. What are your thoughts?

My dream is to have a one to one laptop ratio before I retire. There are so many things students could accomplish if they had their own laptops... not to mention the amount of paper it would save!

Project-based Learning

I am sure most of us in the program do at least a good amount of project based learning. I am also sure some of them have not gone as well as hoped. I do still know teachers out there that do not see the value so this is a great article for them to read.

I have a co-teacher who wanted to be a principal a few years ago. The other day he said to me " Once we get back to basics I will be a principal" I didn't say anything, but in my mind I was thinking...he just does not get it! We will never be going back to kids sitting in rows and listening to teachers lecture all day. We will always have technology and group work in classrooms. He like many teachers think project based learning is a passing phase and maybe they are secretly hoping that it is, because let's face it. It is harder to be a teacher these days than it was even ten years ago.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/project-based-learning-not-giving-up-suzie-boss?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

When is there too much of a good thing?

So I am doing my homework this morning and I am realizing that I have 10 different windows open. I am searching articles, posting blogs, updating my wiki, checking my social bookmarks and yes even reading facebook every now and then for fun! This week we are learning about Ning, facebook and social bookmarks, and as a teacher I have to say it is both amazingly helpful and amazingly stressful to find the time to keep up with all of these sites! I do love technology and I am all in when it comes to technology in education. I also believe that it is amazing how much information can be shared between educators. I am just wondering at what point it will become so much that it will take away from my teaching??

Ning in the Classroom

On the site "The Professional Learner" I found an article or a blog (It is getting kind of hard to tell the differnce anymore!) about his experience using Ning with his students. I have no experience with Ning yet, but I like the idea of giving students a space to create groups and collaborate! I am not sure facebook is the best place to send my students for school work, so I like that the teacher described ning as a "closed" environment that is like facebook.

http://profespringer.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/using-ning-in-the-classroom-to-create-a-learning-community/

Just a Thought on Conferences

This is mostly for elementary educators, but could apply to all. I just finished up my conferences this past week and in the middle of them I once again started wondering why we do them the way we do. Why do we have this two day marathon of conferences when teachers are tired and the conferences are back to back so we can barely catch a breath before the next one starts. I only have 23 students in my room. If I could start meeting with parents one on one sometime in November and have them wrapped up by December I think I would be much "fresher" for each conference. I would feel more prepared and I would feel like I can give the parents the time and attention they deserve. I could have one or two a day before or after school. I would be able to block off more time if I felt it was needed for a specific conference or less time if I felt it was needed. I would not be rushed or exhausted. The fact is that there are some parents I do not need to meet with because I had already met with them a few days earlier at an IEP and they still feel obligated to sign up for conferences so they don't look like a bad parent. I also have those kids that are just awesome and all we do at the conference is sit there and chat about other things. It is nice to catch up with and meet parents and I believe conferences are an important part of what we do. I just think the structure is not the best it could be.

Outsourcing Education!?

http://www.edutopia.org/node/35235?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Online Learning: The Next Great Debate is an article written by Dr. Katie Klinger on edutopia.com. I thought this was very interesting for two reasons. First of all I thought it was so cool that there actually is something called Open University (OU), which is an online school for students all over the world. Secondly I thought is was very interesting, because evidently the teachers are being "outsourced" from India. The tutors from India are willing to do the work for half the cost of the UK teachers so they are getting the jobs.

I guess with the excitement of the possibilities of online learning, I never considered that fact that it will create more competition for jobs and the lowest bidder will get the work! Kind of scary when we are talking about education.

Are teacher Salaries "Too High?"

http://detnews.com/article/20101118/METRO/11180420/High-teacher-salaries-under-scrutiny-in-Michigan

Once again there is an article in the newspaper, the Detroit News this time, about how it is our turn as teachers to take the big cuts. Honestly I understand that we are state employees and if we have to make some concessions, that is fine. I get upset when there are people quoted in articles like this saying that what we make is "Way over the top" as one Troy resident put it. There was also state senator Mike Bishop who thinks we should take huge cuts as teachers because as he puts it "Teaching is an awfully nice job for that kind of pay".

I am tired of feeling disrespected by the general public because form their perspective our jobs are fun and easy and we get three months off and all of these vacations. Very few of them have any idea about the pressures we face everyday and the fact that many of us spend our vacations working in one way or another. Little do they know that after my retirement, union dues, TSA, etc etc, I get about half of what I make every two weeks in my paycheck. If I have to take a 10 -20 percent paycut, the job just wouldn't be worth it to me anymore. I would miss teaching, but the pressure would not be worth the salary I am making as a person holding a masters degree.

What are your thoughts?

Real Education Reform

We all believe that there are some things that need to be done to improve our schools. I believe that many of our schools are great, but a lot of them are in trouble and there are also a lot of them that need to join the 21st century. With all the talk of charter schools and merit pay and putting parents in jail if they don't come to conferences I think it is time to take a look at schools that are being innovative and successful. In an article written by Kathy Baron titled "Academies: School Within a School"she introduces us to a school that is trying some real reform. They have created high school classes that actually go into DEPTH into a subject. Students sign up for a class that lasts three to four years and they work as a cohort collaboratively to create, communicate, learn and succeed together. Some examples are a green (environmental) class and a physics class. What I like about it is that students are engaged and they are learning and they are using all of the skills that we coin as 21st century learning. This is the direction that I believe we should all be heading in for school reform. Not longer days....just better ones! Please check out this article because it was hard for me to do it justice in a short blog.

"How to Stay Caught Up With the Curriculum"

An article on Edutopia is a great look into the one thing that stresses most of us teachers out! The battle between keeping up with the curriculum and actually teaching our kids and making sure they are learning. The fact is that most kids don't learn according to a pacing guide. Some learn faster and some learn slower. One of the biggest problems I have is that we have way too much bredth and no depth to curriculum anymore and this article gives some good advice on how to handle this pressure. It also does a good job of warning against believing you are a good teacher just because you are farther ahead in the curriculum. The real question should not be how far are you? It should be how much have your students learned?

Teachers and Students friends on Facebook?

This is not based on any reading, but rather on stories I hear on TV and the radio. It seems to be a growing trend that teachers are becoming friends with their students on facebook. I am just wondering what other people think about this. I believe that it is giving the students too much of a look inside my personal life. I am able to control what I post, but not what my friends post and I don't think it is my place to expose my students to whatever someone else feels is appropriate. I also believe you are setting yourself up for possible trouble down the road if a student wants to accuse you of saying or doing something that you didn't do or say! What do you think?

Using Facebook in the Classroom?

Has anyone tried this yet? I teach 5th grade so I probably will never attempt it and I never thought it was a good idea until I read an article on the website emergingedtech.com. This article is told from a high schooler's perspective. The student was reflecting on how he liked that his teacher used facebook as a reader's response log. The students would join the group and then post their responses to the reading on facebook. My first thought was that the teacher could use blackboard or moodle in the same way so why use facebook. This was also brought up in the article and the student felt that students were more engaged because they love being on facebook anyway and they already know how to use it so well! Since it was a group created for the class there was a "wall" between this class and the social aspect of facebook. I liked this article last night, because I was just thinking that someone should create a facebook for schools so teachers can use it in their classrooms. I think that kids would love it.

New Educational Website

I found a new educational website that I find really interesting and helpful. It is called Emerging ed tech. It can be found at emergingedtech.com. the reason I really like it is because it is a combination of articles and blogs written be people from the educational field. There are also a lot of links within articles. For example if you are reading an article about twitter, within the article there are links that lead you to "how to" videos on using twitter.

Writers Workshop

How many out there use writers workshop? I started using it last year in my 5th grade classroom and I love it. I am also using readers workshop in my classroom now and the two are an amazing compliment to each other! I finally feel like I am teaching writing and not just assigning things for my students to write! It has been a tough transition and there are still many management things that I am working through like conferencing, but I think it is well worth it.

Another Edutopia Article

I really like the site Edutopia. It has very interesting ideas and thoughts from people all over the education field.
The article I just read was by Dr. Katie Klinger. The Article is called "An Effective Diagnostic Tool, Does AYP Measure Up?" She brings up the topic of AYP and whether or not it is working the way it should to reach all students. The part of the article that I was interested in was near the end when she proposed that teachers be certified more specifically for grade levels. Like K-3, 4-8 and so on. She believes that each level has specific needs, whether it is more literacy based in lower grades or socially and transitionally based in middle school because of the changes from Elementary to Middle school.
I thought this was an interesting idea and one that sound logical to me. I have long believed that schools themselves should be split up K-2 and 3-5 in different buildings or at least following a different schedule. I sat on our district's scheduling committee a few years ago and we learned that there was no good way to make a schedule that is good for all students, K-5. If we could have split them up into lower and upper schools then we could have done some amazing things with the schedules that would have met the needs of the students much better.

National "core standards"

At a meeting the other day at my school we were given the new core standards. These will now replace our GLCEs. Has anyone else received theirs yet? I have not looked at them very closely, but they seem to be easier to follow and more streamlined. I am not sure how I feel about national standards yet. I remember this was a topic in our last class and we discussed it. I guess that I did not realize it was a done deal at the time! Just wondering if anyone else has seen them yet and what your thoughts are.

Week 1 Blog - Helping Students Use Social Networks Appropriately

I read a very interesting and timely article today on edutopia. It is called " How to Help Students Use Social Media Effectively". It was written by Andrew Marcinek. You can find the article on my RSS feed. The article discusses the fact that there are so many ways for students to share their thoughts and ideas that we as teachers need to use this opportunity to teach them to communicate effectively. The article says that eventhough we are using technology we should still pay attention to spelling and grammar. I agree and think this is very true. If this is modern day writing we still want to teach it correctly and not accept spelling errors and grammar mistakes all over the place! We all come across many little mistakes in blogs, tweets, etc. that we are letting them slip by and they are becoming more and more common and accepted. As Marcinek says, " If we want to maintain the sanctity of the English language" we need to hold students and professionals accountable for the way they convey their messages.