Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages Through Our Student’s Eyes

Cross posted on the Florida DEN Blog, as well as Danielle Abernethy’s tie4teachers blog.

Received word from Darlene Wolfe here in the Orange County, FL area of an event that might be beneficial to some of you. If you are interested please read further on below the images.

Educators, guidance counselors and administrators may register on line at http://www.fdmec.org/registration/event_012208.htm . More information for this free program is at the registration site ( http://www.fdmec.org and select register for January 22nd event). Since we do have a cut off point due to the size of the meeting area, participants will receive an email confirmation for them to print and show as both parking pass and free entrance to the Science Center.

The program begins with optional tours of Otronicon and the Orlando Science Center . Otronicon explores gaming, simulation and digital media in education and entertainment. A networking hour with snacks follows. Then, we have presentations from educators involved in the changes, industry professionals who will share what they look for in employees, and an update on the Digital Media Banner Center to be housed at Seminole Community College and on the coming programs, and changes in secondary and PSAV digital media curriculum.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: FETC edtech gaming education technology

This is it, my first post of the New Year, 2008. Looking back at the past year, I can say it’s been a WHIRLWIND of a year. I started 2007 as a classroom teacher. It was about this time last year that I interviewed for the Technology Specialist position that I’m currently holding down. It was also about this time that the Florida DEN Leadership Council was taking off, which brought responsibilities as a blogger for the DEN network of teachers for Florida.

I also saw myself going to FETC, NECC, Discovery’s Summer Leadership Seminar (on a cruise ship no less) and TechLearning Orlando (where I got to finally see David Jakes and David Warlick speak in person, and to see my good friend and colleague Kay Teehan present on digital storytelling, again!) Along the way I’ve made MANY new friends and contacts within the realm of educational technology. I can’t say one has been most helpful, or intriguing, or dynamic or special, because everyone I’ve come in contact with has been great.

Just before the new year rang on, I also saw myself begin to play World of Warcraft again. For all you WoW’ers out there, I’m Mithryss (Mithrass was already taken darnit!), a Blood Elf Priest, on the Zul’jinn Server. If you have never played WoW then you are probably not understanding any of the stuff I just mentioned, that’s okay! If you are a player, do let me know. I know that Evan Scherr is playing, as well as John Pederson.

The other big WOW is pretty humbling really. I don’t often get to listen to the show live, but it IS on my podcast feed and listen to it whilest I’m out walking, and I am speaking of the Women of Web 2.0 show. Back in late June, I ventured as I said to NECC 2007 in Atlanta, GA. I arrived a day early hoping to be able to go to edubloggercon, but that didn’t work out. Travel plans made that not happen. But ISTE decided to put up a little ole place called ‘The Blogger’s Cafe’. I figured, I’m a blogger, I can sit in there too. I can type up my session reflections for my blog, maybe talk to a person or two. I’d met Jen Wagner earlier that day at the DEN precon event held over at Stone Mountain. It was a case of mutual, “I’ve been wanting to meet up with yous” so that there was not a clear cut winner. Out of our conversations that day, and in the Blogger’s Cafe, she asks if I would be interested in coming onto the WOW 2.0 show. I said sure, not knowing what I’d be getting myself in for. Well, the date we talked about is closing in on us FAST. I will be their guest speaker this Tuesday. I’m very much looking forward to it.

And I’m going to close with this. I can finally say that my gaming life has met up with my professional life.Since 1999 when I joined “The Syndicate” (online gamings PREMIER GUILD), we’ve use IRC as our main communication tool. Tonight, the edublogosphere has finally hit the old school and continued some great conversations from Twitter, rolling right into IRC. Please email me @ thomas.turner@polk-fl.net if you wish a copy of it.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: WorldofWarcraft WOW2.0 WomenofWeb2.0 Twitter edublogosphere IRC

Last week I shared a Neverending Tale wiki project I’m working on with a fourth grade class (http://mrflynn.pbwiki.com). Tuesday when I introduced the wiki to the students, we advised the students that everything wouldn’t be ready for them to begin until they returned back from winter holidays.

So what do I find when I go to the wiki to start editing some new writing prompts for the students? Half of the class adding their portions to the story. These are students who every Thursday are being told they NEED to write a 5 paragraph essay as an FCAT practice. They do it begrudgingly, with from what I’m told, a heck of a lot of bellyaching. This resistance on their part justifies the premise that students who are given the task to ‘write for an audience’ will write, and write more often.

This being our first foray into this type of project the writing is raw. Heck, we’ve not even started the pre-writing learning centers and blogging. Time will tell how this turns out. Both the classroom teacher and myself have high hopes.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

A couple years ago, my media specialist shared with me a link to “The Neverending Tale“. At the time it was up and running, I’d have to say it was late 2004. At the time, I wasn’t ready to embrace its use. Having really just made the jump into educational technology.

Earlier this week I came across this article on TechCrunch. It really did pique my interest to the point of, how can I get something like this to be done on my campus. Here’s the basic concept. “Twittories” uses the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter to create a work of fiction. Much like “The Neverending Tale” from the late 90s - early 2000s did.

Here’s my problem: Twitter is blocked by my district. So that’s out. This is a shout out to all in my network of friends and colleagues. I’d like to start something like this, small of course, working with one of my 4th grade classrooms, as 4th Grade is the year that their writing is assessed by the state. At this time I do not have access to anything like Blackboard, nor know enough about Moodle to begin to fathom trying to create something. I’ve looked at the Moodle site, to me, very confusing. I am sure I can ask a friend of mine to host web space for me, is that what I’d need to use something like Moodle? (Here’s hoping there’s a session on Moodle @ FETC that I can sit in on) .

What are some other alternatives that I could use here. Again, this is a call for advice. Any and all would be greatly appreciated.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages.

Tom.

Technorati Tags: education technology edtech twitter twittories

First things first. A game. Who sings the song that I’ve entitled my blog post after today. Winner with the first reply gets a….my undying devotion?

My head’s been all over the place over the last week. I’ll honestly say that I refrained from even opening up my dashboard page for fear that I would type more negative material. Yes, my last post was negative. I’m trying, I really am. I’ve had some great conversations with great friends to help me keep my focus on the true prize.

We had a great photostory 3 workshop on my campus Monday evening. Many thanks to Karen Seddon who is coming out every month. (Last month was Audacity, this month was Photostory 3). The good news is that 5 of my teachers showed up. The bad news was the amount of complaining from teachers that the workshop was so late in the day. Yes, it was after school. All five of the attendees were newer adapters, even going so far as saying they are true, green newbies. That’s okay. Baby Steps. I’d forgotten the importance of that little mantra.

We have a 5th Grade teacher on campus that has been doing research projects, the old fashioned way. Let’s research, and oh yea, let’s write about 4 pages about what you’ve researched. Notice, not what they’ve learned. I tasked her with finding a way to spice up her project outcome. For the most part, she obliged. Instead of a paper, she offered her students a choice of a powerpoint or a display board. Progress. YES! That’s not the end. Begging would be an appropriate way to say what I did. I begged her to come to the PD on Monday night. Happy to report that her project outcome has changed again, with a due date pushed back to the end of January. We’ve discussed dates/times to come in and teach the students how to use Photostory 3 to create their own stories.

As described by me in previous postings, her reply to the school based mantra of “there’s no time for such projects like this” was this: “I don’t care, these students NEED to learn how to research and create something.” I should also note that this is an educator that has been teaching for almost 15 years. Baby Steps!

I have another post brewing in my head. More on that later, don’t want to get them confused.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages.

Tom.

Technorati Tags: PD education technology edtech photostory3

For those of you that follow my Twitter feed (Tom_Turner) you will have noticed some very disheartening comments being passed along. I understand that my current position is a combination technology integration specialist and network/hardware administrator. Unfortunately for me, more time is spent working on the hardware/network infrastructure of my job description. Is it a complaint? Not really in my estimation. Just trying to keep being a realist about things.

I wanted to share this last little bit of wisdom that was shared with me this week. I recently opened up a 3rd computer lab on my campus. Again, I’m very, I MEAN VERY, blessed to have a School Technology head who purchased 40 extra workstations to use on campus. This alone allowed me to open a second and a third computer lab on campus, which I think makes all the difference. The first 2 labs are being used as a skill n’ drill type lab, so my goal was to open this one up as a research and projects lab. Now for the nugget, “There is no time to use the computer lab for such trivial things as  research and to type projects.” So what is this teacher’s response to this? “Mr. T, go ahead and take me off of the lab time schedule, I’m just not going to go.”

This was just the latest one, there were more over the last few weeks. I won’t go into great detail into them, as I don’t want to harp on them. Frustrated? Yes, why yes I am. I’m sure it will pass. As with every time that I sense becoming highly frustrated, I tend to stay away from my office and work around the school. The last two days I’ve spent in the Media Center setting up (I will say FINALLY) the workstations for up there. It only took 5 months, but they are definitely done. In the end he has a pretty nice set up: 6 desktops and a movable 10 wireless laptop lab. Not even 10 minutes, while I was packing up my stuff to go down to my office, a class working on a project (this is where the hope comes in) on Lewis and Clark were having HUGE issues in finding books. Between the 2 of us, we worked with the class in using our online card catalog system to find the books they would need.  To put the icing on this story this particular teacher’s response to the decree on computer use/projects was a basic “I don’t care, they need to learn how to do it anyways, so why not now!” made me feel much better.

Sorry for the rant, so </rant>

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.