A Brave New Internet

Lately I been contemplating the use of the internet in the field of education. I have been wondering about the power of the internet: is it helpful or hurtful?

As I attempt to have my student collaborate with each other over the internet, I am finding more and more willingness to work with each other; however, not without a price. I notice that the students are more inclined to share their work with each other through the internet, but less likely to share their work in person. I am beginning to realize that the internet is comparable to a "protective shield" for my students. My students are not afraid to critique each other via the internet because they don't see it as real critiquing, and, the more and more I work with activities like this, the more and more I agree with them!

The students like using the internet because their is a invisible, wireless cape: the internet. The kids feel like they are invincible. They can say anything without consequence. Sometimes, I think everybody can be like this. As I surf my various websites, I notice that people can be mighty brave when typing on a computer. I can't help but think about all of the horrific cyber-bullying that has been going on, and see these things in each one of those cases.

Noticing all of this is one thing, changing it is what's truly important. As educators we need to be teaching the importance of the "reality" of the internet. It is easy to feel safe behind a computer screen, in the comfort of your own home; our students need to learn how powerful their words can be.

I NEED WEBSITE HELP!

Yes, this is one of the important moments in the early planning stages of someone or something's life. My classroom website for next year is nearing its completion and quite frankly, I'm not sure if it is good enough! Well, that was a lie. I am not concerned with whether it is "good" or not - I don't make website for a living, I don't expect myself to make an amazing website. I want to make sure that it is simple, educational, and resourceful for my students next year.

If you have not seen the website and would like to help me out, I would absolutely LOVE your feedback. Here is the link: Mr. Stag's English Class.

Now, like I said the main things that I would to provide for my students are simplicity, educational information, and educational resources. So, here is what I am asking you (who ever you happen to be - if you are even real!):

1. Is is simple enough? Does the layout of the NJ Standards, Classroom Info, and Web 2.0 tools lend itself to easy exploration? Or, are there too many link and too many places to get too?
2. Obviously, I plan to update the educational resources as the school year goes on, but as you may have noticed I have three main areas for the students to retrieve educational information: class announcements, popular news, and reading lists. Do you think this is enough? Or, should I add a section solely for the purpose of supplementary information for the various topics that we will study throughout the year?
3. My resources - I chose a few Web 2.0 tools that I thought would help the students in various situations. Sometimes the tools serve to educationally entertain the students if they get done an assignment early, other times they are used as a tool in the strictest sense of the word (Cramberry, Citation Machine), and sometimes they are used to enhance creativity in an innovative way (Wordle.) But, my question to you is this: are these tools too much or not enough? Or, is there any tools that you would add or take off my list?

If you do feel inclined to respond, please respond with specific feedback, so that I am able to take it into account and make some effective changes. Or, feel free to send an email or give me a call!

Snag-Ems!

"Snagit," for those of you that don't know, is an amazing tool by the ingenious people over at TechSmith (<-- NOTE: If you would like to download Snagit, click there!) The tool is similar to Jing - once again, if you don't know what Jing is or how to use, it is an amazing powerful tool that educators can use to manipulate images they find online - in that it allows users to take images from their computers and then edit the images, but it takes the functionalities of Jing MUCH farther.

Snagit is the tool that I used to create my entire American Pop Culture Project: Video Games. It allows you to an image, a portion of an image, or a series of images and add anything from various texts, arrows, shadows, shading effects, and more. As Educators we can use this to highlight important aspects of a picture or to point out to the students how they should view images.

Snagit also serves as a great way for students to CREATE images based on the work of others. I could not begin to count the times that I have trouble with encouraging student creativity. Often times, I hear responses like "I dont know how to draw," "I'm not creative," or "if I do that it will look stupid;" snagit has the potential to eliminate that feeling amongst students! Snagit allows the students to take work and then use a program to add their own, scaffolded artistic twists to the images. Assuming I have more computer access for my students next year, I am going to get them to use snagit. This gig is going to get great! (see what I did there? oh yea, thats the good stuff.)

Tweeting on Twitter???

I have been experimenting with twitter over the past couple of days and I must say that is has been pretty interesting so far. Its so interesting to me because I have almost NO idea what is going on when I am the website. There is a ton of symbols - have notices quite a few RT's and @'s and #'s - which are indecipherable to me. Many people that I have am close with (colleagues and friends alike) absolutely rave about twitter, and to be honest: I want to rave about it too! However, at this point I just do not get it.

Aside from the whole "language of twitter" I also remain confused on what is the purpose of twitter.

What does twitter want from me?!

For Chris-sake this question keeps me up at night! Am I supposed to be sharing my thoughts about random occurrences in my life like some people do? Does twitter want to know my thoughts on the rain, the sun, the sewage goes away on my street, my favorite cracker? Or is it more serious: I often feel like I am supposed to wait until I have some thing incredibly profound to say. Something that will shock the world! However, the problem with that is that these thoughts rarely occur for me. So, what is a boy who is trying to tweet do? Maybe I should tweet about it??????

(Warning: This next part has NOTHING to do with twitter.) Also, I have been impressed with the amount of emails I am receiving from AP students for their summer reading assignments. The large majority of the students seem to love the challenge of a summer reading assignment. So, my fellow teacher brethren, why are we not assigning more summer reading?! Next year??? Whose in?

The Trouble with Technology

The trouble with technology is that it is too new sometimes!

Summer Summer Sometime

So, this summer - the summer after my first year teaching - has been mighty interesting so far. Unfortunately, I feel like I have been slacking big time as far as my school work is concern. Maybe its because I do not have too much to do, or maybe its because I am enjoying the city too much.

This week my goal is to really start working on my plans for next year. As far as technology in the classroom is concern, I plan to make a serious effort to infuse technology in to the teaching of many traditional ELA concepts. I want my students to to be comfortable with all new technological advances, yet I cannot focus on teaching the technology. This could present a small challenge. However, if I stop being so lazy I know I can make it work!

This is my major dilemma: how do I fill all this time?? I want to do so many different things that I end up doing nothing! From here on out, I am going to focus on small tasks and get back into the swing of things. I will let you know how it goes.

The End? The Beginning?

Well, it is officially the end of our class, but I believe that it is also the beginning of a new chapter in my attempt to educate young minds. Many people know that we have been working with educators from across the world; I am extremely excited to get my students involved with this collaboration next year. I am thinking quite a bit about "where" we will be. I am curios where will be in our materials, but also where in the world we will be working with other students.

I have been seriously considering the possibility of creating an online learning community in the school. What I mean by this is creating a series of blog, websites, and online social networks that ALL junior teachers will manage. This will help to relate all the subjects that the students are being taught to each other. Its just a thought still; we shall see what happens.

Now what is really on my mind the most: where to go from here? It is important for ALL of us to remember that we can't simply forget everything we have learned during our first two class of Stockton's MAIT program. I can't help but think of Robert Frost's famous words, "Two roads diverged in a wood...And that has made all the difference." Hopefully, our roads will make a difference for our students....

The Importance of Connectivity

I'll start this week off by discussing the major change in my daily life: my move to Philadelphia. Despite the heat, the move went very well. Amy and I got everything in to the new place in just over two days - we felt like that was good time. However, it was not until after we were all moved in that I began to realize the importance of connectivity.

It is no secret that the internet has been an integral part of my life, especially my adult life. Sometimes, I realize now, that I take the ability to connect, create, and work with others through the touch of a button for granted, big time. That was never more apparent to me until this weekend, when Amy and I had NO INTERNET! I had forgotten what it was like to have to wait to talk to friends, get updates, and even get work done. It is amazing how important the role that the internet plays in my daily life, and, it got me thinking about the future. Scary thoughts!

Not only was the lack of the internet an interesting update this week, but I also have made major break throughs with our Siberian contact, Ekat. I heard from her on Monday morning; she is going to evaluate our Digital Stories AND possibly skype with our class on June 17th. This was a major breakthrough as far as I was concerned. It really is amazing how connected the world educators can be. This was an amazing break through for me. I hope am really hoping that we all get to experience working with and talking to educators from Siberia!! I will keep you posted on how it goes!!

One more note about connectivity: this whole idea of Video Conferencing is completely new to me and I could not be more interested in it. I have been researching different tools to maximize the overall outcome of a technologically induced video conference, and the three best tools that I have found so far are skype, tokbox, and oovoo. I suggest you check out all three, they all have different positives and negatives. Well, on second thought, isn't the point of technology to make things easier? Maybe I will post a video comparison of the three for next week.

Until then.... do svidaniya? Peace!

Things are looking bright

Well, this has been quite an interesting couple of days. I have been to a 2 college graduations, witnessed a school wide collaborationeffort, witnessed a perfect game by a Phillie, and have been communicating with people from other countries. Needless to say, it has been very exciting!

However, this blog will not focus on the many different events that I have witnessed this weekend, but rather it will be a reflection on what I believe was the most well planned and coordinated event by an elementary school that I have ever heard for. After what I saw, the future is looking bright.......

The "Eurasian Quest Arts Night" presented by Brigantine Elementary School was this past Thursday, and I was fortunate enough to attend. There each of the hallways in their school were set up as different "countries," and each country had elements of art, music, food, dance, costumes, and more. It was clear that the whole town was involved, and it really showed as you walked through the school. The kids were so excited about all of their hard work finally being displayed for everyone to see, and the parents looked on proudly as their students sung a song in Russian. If you did not get to go this year, I highly suggest you put it on your list for next year.

The one thing that stood out from the entire night was the "Wikipikis" portion of the night. In this portion the students (3rd GRADE STUDENTS) all created their own own "wikipikis" or, in our terms, their own wiki space. Each student was given a username and password, which enabled the teacher to monitor all information put onto the sites, and the kids were given criteria and they completed it. It was amazing! It really got me thinking about next year and the possibility of having my students create websites as an alternative to traditional MLA style writing. If third graders can create wikis with ease, shouldn't my high school students be able to do the same?

ONE LAST NOTE! I am babysitting this whole week for my brother. Check out me and my niece hanging:

Video Killed the Bloggero Star...

This is my update; it is a video blog. Or, as Josh calls it a "vidlog."All thoughts are appreciated!

I hope everyone enjoyed the video. I have to be honest, working with all these colors was cracking me up. This took me three tries to complete!

Go Phils!

Back to the Future

After last week's presentation on the History of Instructional Technology (I was super pumped at our performance; great work Judi, Josh, and Rita!), I have been unable to stop thinking about the future of education! Where is all of this new technology going to take us? Where will we be in 5 years? Where will be next year?

Perhaps the most amazing thing about all of this technology is how fast it has been moving over the past 10-15 years. After doing my research, I realized that the "explosion" of the internet has really been a major contributor to all of these recent developments. The internet, I now realize, is allowing people to get their ideas, theories, and tools out to the masses quicker than ever before. There has never been a time when ideas, good ideas could spread so quickly and I am excited to be apart of it!

One last parting note, recently become re-obsessed with TED Talks. The people who do these talks are the most inspiring and brilliant people from around the world, and if you have not heard any yet, I highly suggest checking out some talks. One small question I have for the people that run TED: why is the education section not a main section on the homepage!?! All of my favorite talks are the ones that have to do with education, and I always find it odd that they are not the most advertised talks of all! This is probably just my prejudice towards education, resulting from the fact that I am an educator. Either way, check it out!

Thatta bout does it. Over-and-Out.

Go Phils!

Blogging is the WHAT

Lately, I have been into having my students "blog" as much as possible. When the students are blogging in my class, they feel as though they are not even working, which is actually the complete opposite of what they are doing. I have learned that blogging is an incredible way to get students to practice their writing skills without it feeling like writing.

My class blog is located here on blogger, and it is set up in a way that each specific class has their own individual blogging page. I attempt to post a new blog entry once a week, and then the students respond to the blog over when I can get us time in the IMC. Here is a link to my English "Blogging" Homepage, once you are here you can view each individual classes' blogs by clicking on the various links.

One element of the blogging that I absolutely LOVE about blogging, is that it allows the classes to interact with each other's works. Many times while blogging, the students venture to different class periods pages, so that they can see the work their friends did or did not do. As the students become more and more familiar with the entire format of this blogging page, they begin to use their peers' work as examples and non-examples. They have discovered that they others will read their work, so they almost always attempt to post well thought out entries.

Although I am definitely in favor of using blogs in English Class, I have a few reservations about the process. One of my major reservations - at this point in time - is, in fact, time! In order for my students to affectively read and respond to a blog post they almost certainly need an entire period. This, to me, is a little bit too long. Especially when one day a week is already dedicated to PCR; another day of blogging leaves me to 3 days to teach! I am hoping that next year I will be able to get my students to blog on their time. My plan is to model blogging as much as possible in September and October, and, hopefully, by November the students will be willing and able to Blog on their time!!

Blog On! and Go Phils!

Let's BUILD Something!

So recently I have been working with my colleagues at school more and more frequently. The value in collaboration is becoming more and more clear to me; not only for the purposes of bouncing ideas off one another, but also because two people can work together to create one final, master project. This mindset, along with the advice of one of my fellow teachers, really got me thinking...

With the ideas/concepts of research, creation, and collaboration in mind, I would like my students to create a website that offers real, meaningful information to anyone with access to the world wide web! The idea is not originally mine, but I absolutely LOVE it. What better way to engage graduating seniors than creating a website that will be forever online?

So, after I got to seriously thinking about this project and possibly implementing it, I began to plan out how it would look from a teaching perspective. I figure that I will have to group the students into 4 - 5 person groups - thus, divvying up the work - in which each group will be responsible for a certain area of the topic. For instance, if we were going to create a website that will provide supplementary information for high school students reading Shakespeare's "Hamlet," one group may be assigned the history of Hamlet, another the plot and characters in Hamlet, another the Art and Literature influenced by Hamlet, and so on. This idea is obviously still in the early stages, but my goal - as a of right now - is to implement this project by the end of next year.

It is important for me to mention that the original creator of this idea had his students create a wiki-space. I am not too familiar with wiki-spaces and their functionality, but I plan to become acquainted with wiki-spaces and possibly choose to do that. We shall see!!

The big idea about this whole thing is that the students will be researching with a purpose and collaborating with their peers. In our district, I have noticed, many students tend to not care so much about the information as long as they pass. This may be an alternative to get around this attitude. And collaboration is always a great way to engage all students in the learning process.

I'll keep you posted. No, No... I will keep posting.

Go Phils!

I hear those sleigh bells JINGling.....

No! Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with the holiday season. But it does have to do with experiences with JING.

This week has been great for me because I have been using a new tool, Jing! Jing is a picture capturing tool that essentially allows you to take any image or part of an image from the internet and save it to your computer. Once you have the image saved, it then allows you to edit and modify the image with a variety of simple tools - all of which allow for more emphasis. The tool is absolutely amazing; it makes life SO much easier!

This is a picture that I took from a popular social networking site, facebook; have you heard of it?This is a picture that my sister-in-law took of my niece and posted on facebook. I went onto the site, saw the image, and only took about 3/4 of the total image. Once I had the image, it was easy to add text and arrows.

Here she is:

I have a sneaking suspicion that this tool will make life easier when designing visual presentations for my students. I can't think of how many times I have wanted an image, but have been unable to use it because my computer wouldn't allow me to save. Jing will make sure that does not happen again!

That is all.

No, I lied, one more thing. One more thing that makes Jing easy to use is its accessibility! When you download Jing it instantly puts a (movable) icon on your desktop that allows for instant, easy access to the tool. I recommend it!

Now, that is all. For realzzzzz.

INTC 5001 - Week 2

This is how I am feeling after our second class: CALM!

In the beginning of the course, I felt as though the course may be overwhelming for me. The contract confused me, the objective of blogging was confusing, and was simply overwhelmed. However, since the first night I feel much better, not only about the blogging, but about the overall course in general. I am ready to start working on adding some solid theory behind my integration of technology in the classroom.