Finding My Way In The Web2.0 Universe

This year has been successful and inspiring. It was my dream last year to teach a class about web2.0 tools. I wanted to show off the abilities of the web and get students involved with tools that could help them with their classes. I was fairly successful with this endeavor. The students have created wikis in which they have embedded projects from 10 different web2.0 tools that we have sampled throughout this semester. We hit a few bumps in the road, but for the most part, the students and I learned a great deal and have enjoyed the process.

For 2010, I want to be more focused in my teaching approach. I want the students to utilize tools to help their teachers get more involved with web2.0 tools. The students and I are going to "googlize" and "web2.0" the curriculum of several teachers in our magnet program at Cleveland HS. My goal is to have the students create projects from the materials they have already covered during previous years as students in our magnet. I think the possibilities are literally endless, so staying focused and keeping the students and myself accountable to deadlines and teacher needs will be a must. To do this, I am developing a few ideas.

First, finding great ideas for using web2.0 tools is essential. However, I tend to get overwhelmed with all of the options available. This year, I tried to follow blogs, podcasts, and Twitter feeds about web2.0 tools. Needless to say, it was way too much. I became overwhelmed and I think my teaching and student experiences were less than optimal because I could not choose what tools to use and how to use them. My first step in focusing my curriculum and my own exploration of web2.0 is to look at fewer items. I have cut my blog feeds down to 3. I have cut my podcasts down to 1. I have utilized Twitter over holiday break and have found over 200 tweets that will keep me more than busy next semester. I will continue to look into other forums from time to time, but I am forcing myself to stay focused on these items for now.

Second, I found a great blog post at "Life Feast" - http://lifefeast.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-comes-first-methodology-or.html. This post blew me away with its simplicity and directness. It lists seven simple questions we should ask ourselves whenever we decide to use web2.0 in the classroom. By using these questions, we can keep the focus on educating the students and realizing the benefits of the new technology.

Third, Tami Brass offered some great ideas in this blog post (http://tech4teaching.org/wpblog/?p=721) about how web2.0 is typically used in the classroom. I am planning to uses these ideas as a springboard for getting other teachers excited about web2.0 projects for their classrooms. Here list offers six great ideas for utilizing Google Documents and wikis in the classroom. Google docs is such a great place to start because many teachers already have Google accounts, the tools are free, there are tons of great tutorials for them, and the Google engineers made them very intuitive.

With these ideas in mind, I am so excited about the Spring semester. My students and I will create fantastic lesson ideas for our teachers and build tutorials for them to study over summer break and be prepared to come to school implementing them in the Fall. I know these projects will inspire more teachers to get involved with web2.0 tools!!

Weird Al Yankovic - White & Nerdy

Weird Al Yankovic - White & Nerdy

Can We Become Masters Of New Things

Today, I was wondering if I could make screencasts of the information that I have shared in professional development sessions. I had always been afraid of trying to screencast. I thought it would be too difficult, but it simply is not. I used Jing to create it and it was incredibly easy.

This is a testiment to what I am reading about in "The Element". We are never too old to learn anything if we really have a passion for it.

This is the link for my first screencast Zamzar Demonstration

It shows someone how to upload and convert a video using Zamzar.com.

How Are You Intelligent?

I was listening to "The Element" again this morning while exercising (I works perfectly now, so I think fate was leading me back to listening to it again). Ken Robinson make an interesting distinction between asking, "How intelligent are you?" and "How are you intelligent?". The first question assumes that there are limits to intelligence and that they can and should be quantified. The second assumes that everyone has intelligence and does not make any assumptions about limits. I plan to ask the first question about intelligence on my first day of my web development class. I want the students to begin to question the assumption about how we discuss, measure and limit the intelligence of others. Then, I want to use the entire year, to help them find their own intelligence and express it in beautiful ways. Is that utopian? Maybe, nevertheless, it is a goal worth pursuing.

How This Blog Began

I am creating this blog because of an error I kept getting on my iPod. I had downloaded "The Element" by Sir Ken Robinson as an audiobook. Every time I tried to listen to it, the book would start over after about 20 minutes. This became increasingly frustrating, and I decided to stop listening to the book.

However, today I decided to start listening from the beginning of the book to see if there was "anything that I had missed". That is what is changing everything. The book begins with the story of three people who found their passion in life by finding "their element". All three stories showed how school was actually an impediment to people finding their element.

I am teaching a new class in the Fall 2009 called web development, but it should really be entitled, "Find Your Element Using Web2.0 Tools". I plan to make the entire class about helping students discover their passions and then using web2.0 tools to unleash the talents associated with those passions. Along the way, I hope to use their discoveries to help other teachers understand the value of web2.0 tools and their ability to transform education into a more dynamic and joyous adventure for their students and themselves.