The End…Reflections from a reluctant web 2.0 teacher

This has been a great experience for me!  Before this class I never considered a podcast, wiki, blog, Jing,  google docs, and now I can’t imagine live without those tools.   There is so much great material packed into this course, but if I had to pick one thing that my students love, it would be the wiki!  My wikis are very much under construction  gathering resources for 5 courses spanning 3 different content areas, will take time.  Oh yes, and all types of nasty things crawling around my laptop has forced me to make the change of a lifetime!  Working in an IBM "shop" since the age of 17 it was traumatic purchasing a Mac Book Pro this past Monday at age 52.  I love Disk Operating Systems (DOS)  and PC's but, having spent hundreds of hours cleaning equipment and bringing numerous viruses, worms, bots, and Trojans home, I had no choice.  I do feel that somethings were effected by the machine infections most obviously timeliness.  Productivity prevailed!

Wikis ensure student productivity with access available in class, resource, the library, or even at home.  Students can have greater control of their learning enabling more discrete repeated instruction from both school or home with the help of Jing.  The only negative is the district's policy to block all streaming video, meaning peers and students will not see the video clips inside the school unless they use my machine. Students seem to enjoy that I am teaching less and I believe even the lecture classes are  learning more utilizing the wikis.  Inspired "not to go quietly into the classroom" I emailed a request to remove the filters from my 3 wikis on February 11th, 2011.

There is still much that I can do while waiting for a response, including using the 2 flip video cameras I purchased for students to create their own "me" project.  Primary grades often complete an "all about me" project from which the flip project will spin. Students filling the camera's 2 hour video capacity, could be a source of improved understanding for families and staff.  Students will edit and burn a DVD of their work in class to share with family and friends, helping to foster the connections between home and school.  In August, freshmen orientation could continuing to capitalizing on students connections by incorporating pieces of all their videos to demonstrate the strength and diversity of our school. Could this impact student expectations and confidence?

Imagine a class focusing on second language learners creating flip projects in their own language to help and encourage younger students in acquiring english.  Students experienced in the transition to english could provide support and comfort to those beginning the process.  I am so impressed by the number of students that speak another language, since I have difficultly with my only language, english!  Having a non-english speaking mother-in-law created some interesting communications experiences for myself and children which technology eased.  

Memere (grandmother) as the kids called her was amazing in the kitchen, where cooking and baking dissolved the language barrier like sugar and water.  Memere would make their favorite dishes and though we tried to learn, we couldn't keep up and her fluent son didn't speak kitchen!  Attempting to create her signature dishes I got the idea to video record Memere and grandchildren making those "favorite recipes."   The recipe videos captured a woman who loved and cherished her grandchildren and truly enjoyed time spent cooking and baking with them. I have written many of the recipes down but, I like so many, prefer the visual. I believe that simple story explains the incredible power technology has to remove barriers and to connect people in many ways, even with Facebook. 

Living in a state that borders french speaking Quebec provides opportunities to visit relatives across the border on a regular basis.  Thanks to the many online translators (babel fish, and google translate),  Facebook has husband's french speaking family poking and sharing with me! Writing my thoughts in english then translating it to french.  When posting messages I use both the english and french text to ensure that anything lost in translation will not offend.  Could you envision foreign language classes using Facebook to communicate with native speakers, possibility from other countries. English speaking students using the target language and the non-english speaking students responding in english.  Think of the ability to speak the target language with a 21st century audio pen pal or rather audio pal. Technology is limitless to education.

 

There has been no class graduate or undergraduate that has influenced by teaching style and environment more than Plymouth State University's, Teaching and Learning In a Network Classroom.  Having coursework that can be used in the classroom immediately has lifted many frustrations and provided hope that tomorrow will be better.  Technology really lends itself well to project based learning which, I think we all appreciate for its deeper and enduring understanding.  I plan on taking a Windows operating system and Network Security classes at the technical college this summer hoping to stay ahead of classroom issues and updating the other aspect of my Personal Learning Network. However, saying the M word will take more time.