Teach Paperless

Just a quick note to let you know that I will also be blogging at the  Teach Paperless blog. Formerly this was Shelly Blake-Price's blog, but now he has opened it up to a group of people posting. My first post You don't know me was posted this morning. As of right now I do not plan on cross-posting directly from this blog so you should expect at least slightly different content from there. I am excited to share with a larger audience and I hope you will join us in the conversations there.

"Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog"

"Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog" means "its worth keeping an eye on this blog." I was listed by whatedsaid as a blog to follow which I appreciate. Keeping the chain going (I hate e-mail chains and have never continued one, but this is promoting real blogs so...) I will give you ten blogs that I most look forward to reading on topics such as math, standard based grading, technology, and education policy. Common thread is honest writing and student-centered, project based learning.


Think, Thank, Thunk by Shawn Cornally. Read about math, physics, standard based grading, and student-centered learning instead of textbook centered. I would love to take his class.


Musings of a not so Master Teacher by John Spencer. An honest teacher who is continually evaluating everything in his life. John is not afraid to challenge popular ideas including technology use and immigration in his home state of Arizona.


The Tempered Radical by Bill Ferriter. Another honest writer who challenges education policy that he does not agree with.

Point of Inflection by Riley Lark. He uses computer programming to teach math.


Borderland by Doug Noon. He has really resonated with some of his evaluations of current ed. policy.


Sweeney Math by Matt Sweeney. I have learned some nice tips for teaching math such as the rainbow rule.


F(t) by Kate Nowak. A teacher who is really working hard to make math relevant and meaningful.


Questions? by David Cox. Really enjoy that this math blog is from a middle school math perspective.


Blogush by Paul Blogush. I like his views on how teaching and learning naturally occur.


The Fischbowl by Karl Fisch. This blog has focused on Karl's plans for teaching Algebra next year and he has been thinking out loud about his plans.


So check them out and give them some comment love. As a side I am interested in adding  more blogs that focus on problem-based ideas in middle school math such as David Cox's listed above to my Reader.  So if you have any excellent ones leave them in the comments.

What I'm Reading

Here are some blogs that have influenced me lately:

Ira Socol's SpeEdChange Ira writes about radical changes needed in education rooted in a historical perspective. He shows how many things we do are rooted in history to prepare students for industrial society instead of for today.


John Spencer get two nods Musings from a not so Master Teacher  A blog about all kinds of educational thoughts from his classroom to ed. policy and Pencil Integration an excellent satire of technology integration.


Shelly Blake-Plock TeachPaperless  Blogs about using technology seamlessly to go "paperless" and focus on student-centered learning.

Silvia Martinez Generation Yes Blog Her latest few posts about "tinkering" in the classroom really have me thinking.

Russ Goerend Learning is Life ELA teacher blogging about his classroom and education in general.


Matt McTownsley  MeTa Musings A high school math teacher blogging about standards based grading.

 Joe Power's For the Love of Learning Just discovered this blog about abolishing grades and focusing on student learning instead.

And I will add one "big name" to the list because of the creative and important crowdsourcing project he is organizing right now Will Richardson  Weblogg-ed

So check them out and add them to your RSS feed.

Parent Conferences Using a Computer

This week is parent teacher conferences. My new plan for this year is to use my laptop to show parents the student blogs and our class wiki. We have our conferences in the gym so I had our IT department get me a 25 foot cable to connect to the internet through the gym closet. I am excited to try this format for conferences.

My gut feeling is that many of the parents do not know or have not looked at their student's blogs. The other thing that all teachers are doing is passing out "business cards." The cards are color printouts of our names, e-mails, and class blogs or wikis. Again we are trying to get parents to visit the sites since this is the first year that we have all created them.

Has anyone else done this or something similar? How did it go for you?

Still Working on Teacher Websites

We are working as a school on setting up teacher sites. We ended up going with two platforms. Those that felt comfortable created blogger sites. Many had already made them. The teachers new having their own site are making wikispaces. The unifying feature is that each teacher is embedding Google Calendar on a separate page to share their lessons and homework.

It is exciting that many teachers are willing to take on this task by themselves. Also my principal and teachers who have 1st hour prep are subbing for teachers at the begining of the day when we show Channel 1 News to the students and have silent reading. I then can meet with five teachers for a half hour and help them get set up. Many of these teachers are anxious, but have left me set up and feeling confident and understanding the usefulness of the websites.

One of the most important concerns for me is that teachers see the websites as useful, productive, and not as a worthless adminstrative task that they are being forced to perform. So I am very excited by the great attitudes of the staff in my building (they are great to work with).

I hope to get some time to teach the staff how to use Google Docs to store their assignments and post them on their sites so that parents can see and/or print the work at home. Next year I would like to push everyone to have the same kind of blog.

Creating Teacher Websites

At a staff meeting this week we talked about our "Homework Hotline." This is a phone feature where teachers record their homework daily for parents to check on in the evening. Among its inconvenient features is that parents have to call back to access different teachers. We quickly agreed this technology was past its prime, and I volunteered to help set up teacher websites that could all be linked to the district site.

So...one week from tomorrow I have one half of an hour to train over 30 teachers to set up and use their own blog (Don't worry no one expects to complete this in that limited time. It will be an introduction). Maybe half of the teachers have been exposed to or set up some kind of on-line site before. The other half are likely to be a bit intimidated by this and are looking for simple and easy. I created a Google Doc survey to try to determine what the teachers want to do on their site. Most teachers do not check their e-mail on weekends, let alone a holiday so I hope to get most responses on Tuesday.

My thoughts are to show them my blog, class blog, and class wiki along with a few other teacher/school blogs so they can see some possibilities. In particular, I want to show them how I am using Google Calendar as my lesson plan book and embedding it in our class wiki to share with parents and students. I am leaning against a website because it might be too complex. I am also thinking against blogs because I feel like they are more difficult to customize. I think teachers do not really want posts as much as pages divided by their classes.

Therefore I am leaning toward teaching them to use a wiki, in particular Wikispaces. It is simple yet allows them to add almost anything. It is also easy to maintain different pages. The biggest disadvantage that I see is that "the look" of them is simple and not very attractive. But the biggest thing is that they are easy for teachers. Later I can introduce something more complex for those who are interested.

Teachers will be able to choose whatever platform or site that they want, but most will use whatever I show them. So readers what platform would you recommend? Blog, website, or wiki? What site would you use? Remember we are looking for simple use.

Paperless Class

I am in my 4th week of going "paperless" in my two 8th grade classes. You can see our class blog at woodtech.edublogs.org The students have created their own blogs, but most are not past the template stage yet. I have created a post where we will document in the comments how many pieces of paper we use and for what purpose.

We are taking a break from blogging and building balsa towers. We used a wiki valleywoodtech.wikispaces.com for our research. We will improve our blogs and post about the towers when we finish building them.

Greg from Middle School Tech Teacher and I are also giving an in-service training to teachers in our district on how to use Google Reader and Delicious. We are looking forward to spreading the news of Web 2.0!

Thing8-RSS links

RSS is nice for news and sports, but I am now seeing its true power as I explore education blogs. It allows me to see new content without having to visit all of them to see if they are updated. Favorites so far include:

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/

http://www.techsavvyed.net/

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/



My favorite source for finding these blogs are that the people in these blogs list their own favorite blogs. I find myself jumping from one to another. To me this is like getting a reccommendation for a contractor from a friend instead of the Yellow Pages. The best bloggers have already found each other and are linked. Inferior blogs are weeded out, something search engines don't do. So if many blogs have the same blogs on their subscription list then they are worth checking out. I think the list of Edublog winners is a great place to start.

From Blog Pulse I found a great blog for an elementary school where I live [unfortunately it is not the school my children attend :( ]. I plan to use it to show my principal the possibilities. What I did not like about this tool was that when I searched the district that I teach in, it came up with many links to sites that I think were just disguised links to porn.

I am now in control of my professional development. I feel so empowered. I will never again feel like there is a lot of cool stuff out there, but I don't know how to get started. These blogs are so much better than any college class I have ever taken. I will be recommending 23 things to everyone in my building!

Skype Connections

I am so excited! As mentioned in a previoius blog I want to use Skype to create WebPals with students from another classroom in another part of the world. I have had this idea for at least 5 years (I know it is not original, but it is not common place yet, either) and have been stuck on finding another classroom with the right technology. I even got my district to give me special access to Skype (of course the site is blocked to everyone else).

One of the first blogs I read was an article on Sue Waters' Edublog about tips for Skype users Quick start tips for new Skype users.
I asked about connecting with others and she created a part of her blog just for this: Skype other classrooms

She even tags me in this article! I can't believe how fast my question turned into a resource on one of the leading education blogs! I am also so excited to see the WebPals idea about to become a reality for my students!

Thing 2

I am out of order but after looking at other blogs, I realized I misses this part of the assignment. I think what makes a good blog is that it is about a topic that I am personally interested in. I am not going to waste my time reading about something that is irrelevant to me. For education blogs I enjoy ones that give practical advice and examples of things that they are using in the classroom.

I have already mentioned Skype in a previous blog, but I was very excited to find that others are using it. Two new sites that I found today that I could spend all day on are David Warlick's Landmark Project and Cool Cat Teacher. These are examples of great sites for collaboration with other excellent teachers and cutting edge applications of Web 2.0. My only problem right now is feeling overwhelmed with new thoughts and ideas!

I think that the two main ways that blogs enhance existing websites are by the links in them and by letting people share their personal ideas, experiences, and opinions. They are kind of like call-in talk radio. I think it is obvious that blogs are very simple for anyone to self-publish anything with incredible access for the world.