Crazy Times

Well these past couple of weeks have been pretty crazy with days off and the end of the marking period. The above picture is a bit of unwinding at the Halloween dance last Friday night. The 3 sixth grade science teachers dressed up as entrants in the Ms. Science USA competition. It was great...the kids actually thought we were celebrities! Another crazy addition to these past weeks was Halloween itself. Then we had Wednesday off to do grades. We, the 6th grade science teachers, had planned to meet in the afternoon to get things ready and organized for the rest of the month...but instead we spent the whole afternoon getting sub plans ready for the next two days because we were going to the NSTA conference*. Next week we are looking at 2 real days of instruction with one day off and 2 half days with parent conferences in the afternoons! What craziness!
* The NSTA conference was great today. I am interested in going back tomorrow to find out what more there is to learn! I found some interesting stuff at the Discovery exhibit and learned some cool new strategies from my sessions. When you have a chance I would suggest check out this site...if you click on Virtual Labs you should get a pretty cool experience! Discovery
I'm not sure if the link will work because it is not on my laptop...

Individual Elluminate Reflections for Demetri

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Elluminate Session Reflections

I just tried out Odeo to record my blog for this week...it's pretty darn cool! I don't really sound like myself because it is 9 am on a Saturday morning, but here are some of my thoughts about our facilitation of our Elluminate session.
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JHU Online

Which JHU course could be offered as an online course?

We have taken many courses within the JHU Technology for educators program, but of all of them, I would have to say that the course we took with Ed Dieterle would probably be the best candidate for online instruction. In that class we participated in many asynchronous discussions based on our readings and related topics and held synchronous discussions in class as well. These topics could have just as easily been addressed synchronously on a program like skype or elluminate. In addition, our instruction in the classroom was often supplemented by guest speakers via videoconferencing, another activity that could also been conducted online with ease. Some of us may have felt more comfortable participating in this arena because I remember that class as being one of the few that our cohorts participation was a bit more reserved. Additionally, one of our major assignments was to create a capstone project and paper to accompany it. Ed was great in giving us feedback via the track change feature in Microsoft Word (I don't think I'll ever be able to use that feature without thinking of that class!). This facet of the class would also lend itself quite well to the design of online delivery. Though I think that the classroom setting and experiences that this course provided us were a valuable component to our JHU education, I think that it is a course that could have just as easily been conducted on line, a feature that would have prepared us earlier on in our JHU experience to use more of the available tools (such as skype, elluminate) that we are just now learning about as we finish up the program.

Educational Weblogs

I just thought this site had some useful resources and links addressing the use of weblogs in education. It addresses some of the topics we have been discussing in class. Educational Weblogs

"Belonging" to an online community

I have been asked to describe my best experiences as a member of an online "community." But I find this seemingly simple question to be a challenge. I guess this class that we are in now has probably been the most positive experience I have had and I would have to say that it is because of the variety of activities we have been exposed to. But that is an ironic thought due to the fact that that is also one of the most frustrating things about it too. Sometimes I feel like we are using so many different forms of online tools that I find it difficult to keep them all straight.
When you take the online connotation out of the question and ask what my best experiences as a member of a community were two specific examples come to mind. One is the neighborhood swim team, and I would say that what made that such a positive experience was a common sense of purpose, a common goal, and at least one common interest. There were people of all ages, backgrounds, and personality types, all coming together for the same purpose, and it was this coming together that really made the difference. Sure you could get a bunch of swimmers together in a chat room or on a discussion board and they could talk about their most recent meets, but I doubt that it could create quite the same spirit that the personal contact we experienced did. The other example that comes to mind would be my junior year of college, when I shared an apartment with 7 other girls. There was such a comradrie in that apartment, (true, true, we didn't ALL get along perfectly, but the marjority of us did), each of us supporting and encouraging each other in our various adventures in life. Those are two groups I think of belonging to when I think of myself as a member of a community.
To extend on these ideas, I connected with a quote referenced in the article we just read. It reads:
'"...just because you have a large audience doesn't necessarily mean that you have a community. Netscape, for instance, is one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet, because many people automatically go to Netscape's home page when they start their Netscape browser. But there is no community [because there is no connection]." Penelope Patsuris and Adam L. Penenberg. "Eyeballing community" Forbes. February 6, 1998.' I found this to be very true and easy to relate to. Just because all of us participate in an online discussion together does not make us an online community. Just because we all work on the same wiki to create a useful resource does not connect us as members of an online community. There are many other factors that enter into the building of community, human aspects, that can not always be attained simply through a common interest or a common purpose explored online.
After exploring some of the community building resources offered in the article, the one site mentioned, My Learning Place, seemed to offer individuals an interesting opportuinty to set up their own private communities based on interests. This one seemed the most applicable to my life as most of the other ones mentioned were business based online community resources.

Excited to Facilitate

I am very excited about my idea for our online facilitation because I think that it will not only open up good discussion, but also because after this week of school, I am really interested in figuring out what I can do with my life next year after I (hopefully) have my degree. The grading is getting to be too much, the parents are getting to be too much, and all of the extras that I am expected to do are definitely too much! So I am very curious to find out what options are open to me, where I can go from here. The only glitch is that the thing I like most about my job is the working with and interaction with the kids...and what other job will provide me that. Hopefully they'll be something!

I haven't felt this overwhelmed since my first year of teaching. There are so many disjointed inititiaves that they are pushing at us now, I haven't had much time to get to my content at all. First we had to have our students create a mission statement, because it's "Baldridge", so that = good. So we spent a whole day the first week of school making a 6th grade mission statement. Since then it has remained untouched, undiscussed on my board. That was the third day of school. I could have been spending some important time forming relationship with my students. The 5th day of school we had to do "Hoot Day". This is interdisciplinary so it = good too. By the end of the day, I think the students were ready to strangle the next owl they saw they were so Hooted out. I could have spent this 5th day of school celebrating with my students their survival of the first week of middle school, but instead I was rushing them through a computer activity and getting all stressed out myself. We weren't done yet though...then we had to do an IB Kickoff day to educate the students about the Areas of Interaction. Only glitch though was that not all of the teachers did it. So even though I spent my whole day working on this, I still have students who have no idea what the Areas of Interaction are. Right along with that we had Seedfolks day, where we read a book aloud with each of our classes. And these two activities were taking place while we were doing outdoor education for half of the week. Now, maybe I guess it is time for Science? It's just too much! When do we get to do the curriculum...when do I get to teach my kids science? Each of these ideas were great ideas, but it was too much, all at once, and in the most formative days of the school year. I feel much less connected with my students than usual, because I didn't get to do what I wanted/needed to do to form relationships with them. How many special initiatives are enough. Who decides what = good, and why don't I get a say in it? I'm sure they'll be more to report later...but hopefully not too soon!

Great idea?

So I was pretty upset that I had to miss last weeks session for two main reasons...One I would have much rather been spending the time talking with my classmates than presenting my dog and pony show to the parents at back to school night and Two because the topic sounded really relevant and interesting. It seems as if a good discussion was conducted though. This made me start thinking though...we could have such a discussion about what we are doing in the program, why not have a discussion about what we want to do when we get out of the program...why we are here. I'm excited about this idea because I think it has a lot of possiblities...many of these will be challenges for me to figure out...but I think it is a good idea. We'll have to see what dmo thinks...