I begin training this fall as a school library media specialist. Before my formal education begins I would like to be informed on the current changes regarding information media and educational media in the K-12 setting.
So what readings would you recommend to an eager student hoping to become the best educator he can be. Any responses are greatly appreciated. (Am I starting a meme here, thanks to Alec Courous)
The world before technology: an insane vision
Taking a summer school course and reading Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by Jason Ohler. It is a beautifully written book. Jason is an excellent storyteller and I look forward to the rest of the book.
In his first paragraph, Ohler describes how ridiculous our modern technologies would sound to people a mere 25 years ago. Here is a link to a different version of that same story from the perspective of a grade school girl 60 years ago (found here):
Being that I am planning an extensive travel vacation, I have spent some time thinking about what the planning process might have been like 25 years ago. I try to imagine what the world was like before we had cell phones, or turn by turn direction at the click of the button, or turn by turn directions sitting on our dashboard. I actually don't even want to think about all the extra hoops people had to jump through just to plan a trip to meet a friend in a different city. A few hours of planning has turned into a few keystrokes, a click of the mouse and an emergency phone call for a detour.
With respect to my experiences in education new media technologies have been a great experience for me. Since completing my student teaching I have spent a good chunk of time reflecting on my experiences online on my blog. I have also began building a personal learning network of educators on twitter. I have seen my reflections start a wave of interest from people all over the world. This kind of connectivity has the potential to drag teachers out of the water cooler and connect them with the ideas and potential to expand our social networks to places we never would have imagined.
I think students are hungry to tell their stories and they are primed for sharing them in the digital world
In his first paragraph, Ohler describes how ridiculous our modern technologies would sound to people a mere 25 years ago. Here is a link to a different version of that same story from the perspective of a grade school girl 60 years ago (found here):
Being that I am planning an extensive travel vacation, I have spent some time thinking about what the planning process might have been like 25 years ago. I try to imagine what the world was like before we had cell phones, or turn by turn direction at the click of the button, or turn by turn directions sitting on our dashboard. I actually don't even want to think about all the extra hoops people had to jump through just to plan a trip to meet a friend in a different city. A few hours of planning has turned into a few keystrokes, a click of the mouse and an emergency phone call for a detour.
With respect to my experiences in education new media technologies have been a great experience for me. Since completing my student teaching I have spent a good chunk of time reflecting on my experiences online on my blog. I have also began building a personal learning network of educators on twitter. I have seen my reflections start a wave of interest from people all over the world. This kind of connectivity has the potential to drag teachers out of the water cooler and connect them with the ideas and potential to expand our social networks to places we never would have imagined.
I think students are hungry to tell their stories and they are primed for sharing them in the digital world
Know the Code?
I am helping a friend get his first webpage/blog online using a wordpress.org self hosting management system.
The link is here: http://www.drewdonnay.com
It has been an excellent learning/collaborative experience. It started when Drew asked me in a facebook chat if I could help him code a webpage, it moved to a few sit-down sessions and hopefully will continue online via something like tinychat where we can take advantage of remote access.
After watching Chris Lott's presentation on uStream live last night, thanks to a tweet from David Truss, I can't help but imagine that I am working on the design of this page like the tailor who tells his customers to arrange their body in strange positions to fit an oddly designed suit. That is, we have a vision for what the webpage should look like, but don't have the design skills to accomplish them...so we arranged the content to fit the design of the theme.
It makes me wonder what it is that I am truly learning. Can I say that I have experience with CSS, PHP and mySQL now because I have tweaked a couple of attributes in a stylesheet or a page template? Am I learning something by just being exposed to the code? Will I ever even need to know the code anyway?
I imagine that someday it is possible that I teach a web development class. Translate this as you may... Will I need to know the code, or will my students be satisfied adjusting their content to fit the form?
The link is here: http://www.drewdonnay.com
It has been an excellent learning/collaborative experience. It started when Drew asked me in a facebook chat if I could help him code a webpage, it moved to a few sit-down sessions and hopefully will continue online via something like tinychat where we can take advantage of remote access.
After watching Chris Lott's presentation on uStream live last night, thanks to a tweet from David Truss, I can't help but imagine that I am working on the design of this page like the tailor who tells his customers to arrange their body in strange positions to fit an oddly designed suit. That is, we have a vision for what the webpage should look like, but don't have the design skills to accomplish them...so we arranged the content to fit the design of the theme.
It makes me wonder what it is that I am truly learning. Can I say that I have experience with CSS, PHP and mySQL now because I have tweaked a couple of attributes in a stylesheet or a page template? Am I learning something by just being exposed to the code? Will I ever even need to know the code anyway?
I imagine that someday it is possible that I teach a web development class. Translate this as you may... Will I need to know the code, or will my students be satisfied adjusting their content to fit the form?
Growing new curriculum: a sustainable agriculture project
I am currently reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. A thought occurred to me for a very interesting lesson/curriculum for our schools. K-12 school-wide project that examines the biology, chemistry, economics, politics and art of agriculture from an experiential perspective. After sending out a tweet with no response (I need to grow my network), I ran into an old friend on facebook who is working on a farm in WI. He pointed me in the direction of Growing Power Farm in Milwaukee, WI.
Growing Power's mission is to transform communities by supporting people from diverse backgrounds and the environments in which they live through the development of Community Food Systems.
One of their outreach projects is to do essentially what my idea suggests. Growing Power has developed school garden projects with two Milwaukee schools. One of these schools keeps track of their progress on this wiki, Karens garden (named after the school's former food services director that spearheaded the project). The products of the garden are eventually used in the school cafeteria and the experience gained by the students working on the garden is an important scaffold for curriculum goals throughout the school.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
What books, websites, and technology tools would a school need to make this a transformative experience? Have you heard of any other schools that are doing this? How have they got started? Are there any political implications of such a program?
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