The Dichotomous Teacher

Students explore the Web 2.0

I am caught between two worlds. I have a functioning traditional classroom with most of the things you would expect in a progressive learning environment. But I step next door into the connected classroom and I am met with a shadowy vision of what the future will look like, only it isn’t the future. It is where I teach half the time. It is like half my brain is analog and half is digital. I feel disconnected.

I don’t know how to teach in this web 2.0 world. It is cold comfort to realize that nobody does! There are pioneers out there doing amazing things, but no consensus exists about which is the right way to go about this digital adventure. The technology, medium, and philosophy are new and evolving. The netbooks we use are more powerful than the laptops of 4 years ago. The flow of information through email, Elluminate, Bridgit, and video conferencing is different to traditional classroom interaction. With internet search engines, such as Google, students have instant access to a vast knowledge base. We don’t need to teach knowledge; we need to teach process. But what does that mean?

And so everyday I take those two steps to the connected classroom and leave the familiarity of a 150 year old traditional classroom and move into the future. A future where I struggle to create a scope and sequence of skills and experiences to shepherd the students. I flounder setting multimedia assignments for them to create. And I am perplexed as to the best way of collecting and grading those assignments.

But I do wake up in the morning excited about the day’s challenges and opportunities. The kids are enthusiastic, parents are supportive and administration is confident about the program. A measure of academic success is discipline issues requiring attention. There has been no discipline issues in the connected classroom. Even when dealing with 75 students in a virtual conference the kids are engaged. Parents have had nothing but positive things to say about the program. They openly express their gratitude for the opportunities that the students are receiving.  Administration has bent over backwards to make this program a success. There has been no pressure, only encouragement and support. So why do I feel like my right and left brain are heading off in different directions?

Connected classrooms places the connected team somewhere that we haven’t been before. It forces us far beyond our comfort zones and asks us to learn new skills and invent others. It makes us reflect and question everything we do in the traditional classroom. We ask ourselves constantly, does this need to be done and if so, could it be done better in a digital format? We see the future and it challenges our assumptions of who we are as teachers and what we do. It is both uncomfortable and exhilarating. And some days it makes me feel a little crazy.

Technology Fail

 

We have all had one of those days – arrive at work early with a to-do list optimistic beyond reason only to find that you were greeted by a technological failure.

 

Perhaps if I was more attuned I might have seen a premonition in my porridge (It’s been a long time since I looked into the entrails of a goat). But I didn’t, so the collapse of my attendance program took me by complete surprise. Let me state up front that there is no love lost between me and that program. Who tests these things before they are shipped? I have visions of Bill Gates clones fresh from programming in some geeky computer language, glancing at this the attendance site and giving it the OK, before moving on to playing some esoteric online game. What happened to teacher evaluation!

 

It takes 35 minutes to get the program set up to do attendance. I am in a foul mood, have zero prep done for the morning, and lost several holy stars. Apart from being ambushed at recess by other frustrated attendance takers wanting help, the day goes well, until the evening.

 

I look at successful bloggers and I look at my blog. They have widgets, applications, badges and readers; I don’t. I devote myself to remedying the situation. In the end nothing works out, or I chicken out of downloading a third party application guaranteed  to be a killer app because I fear that it might harbor malicious viruses that would cause naked men to dance across my computer or something.

 

Never mind it is only 8:03 pm and I have a video to edit – Killer Spiders of the Equipment Room. Editing is a meditation and a creative release; time passes unnoticed. But at 9:34 pm and with the 30 odd clips edited together I go to save and the system crashes. Bill Gates comes to mind again. I stop working on the computer, thinking it’s possibly forever.

 

What have I learned from the day?

 

1. Technology comes with unexpected surprises, some good and some bad.
2. I need to learn more HTML – you need to keep learning to be successful.
3. I can’t blame software or hardware for failing when it wasn’t designed to handle the computing load put on it; therefore I need to buy new software and hardware.

 

Now the only question is: Mac or PC?

Getting Student Writing On The Web – Media Type 1

 

Getting student work on the web doesn’t need to be difficult. Using a blog gives you complete control over student content, costs nothing and can be expanded to become a media rich environment.

 

The Written Word

 

The Cayoosh Kidz website www.cayooshkidz.net uses new media as its vehicle, but its core is the written word. Students constantly write scripts, news reports, emails, radio plays, blogs, etc. The awareness of a real audience to share their stories with can unlock the creative process, especially when the audience will be in the hundreds, if not thousands.

 

Blogging

 

Blogging is easy and you have creative control over the site. Set up an account with Blogger, WordPress, or Flickr (depending on what combination of content you want) and you can share student work in minutes. The process is no more challenging than setting up an email account.

 

Blogging, Vlogging and Glogging (not flu symptoms)

 

What is the difference between Vlogging, Blogging and Glogging? Well increasingly very little as the four different media forms (text, image, audio, and video) are merged together on the internet. With a blog host such as Blogger  https://www.blogger.com you can write a story, record sound, attach a video, and link  images from your Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/grade5/ account. Conversely you can accomplish much the same result by starting with Flickr and linking out from it.

 

My best advice about blogging is to try it. And if your first blog doesn’t work out your second one will be better. Our class blog http://pikanews-5.blogspot.com/ may give you some ideas about what you might like to do.

 

Ken