Crossroads

This blog was written in participation with Web Tools for Science Teachers.

As I think about the task of reflecting on my experience with PLNs, I have this eerie sort of feeling. I am interacting with machines. I am interacting with programs. The words may have been written by sentient beings, but when, where, under what circumstances? Are you/we really out there?

The PLN that I have assembled will not be set aside at the end of this course, although it certainly will be modified. It includes iGoogle, Google Reader, del.icio.us, Classroom 2.0, twitter and of course a number of blogs. I’ll be manipulating these components very much like I move the magnets around on my fridge – depends on time of year, what is new and what has become ordinary, where there’s a need and where there’s not. I’m glad to have been exposed to PLNs, new tools are good.

And how have I gained or learned from PLNs? I became aware and in awe of the next level – the enormous amount, exponential amount – of thinking and discussion ‘out there’ on education. How could education not help but improve with all the exchange going on the web? Unless of course all that energy is going into the exchange itself, the interaction with machines, rather than with students. Will we all get caught up in the creation and delivery of the perfect ‘how-to’ manual, and forget to actually build the product?

My personal ‘big obstacle’ to using my PLN effectively is the potentially overwhelming amount of information. Overload. Will it be too taxing to even open up those pages for a glance? Or will opening up a new tab mean at least two hours servitude to the monitor? To avoid the overload, one must cull ruthlessly. Like any good breeding program, keep only a few per cent of what is created; keep a critical eye, sharp pencil, exacting records. Do not try to assimilate all, detritus is common in any web.

It has been a week since I’ve posted. Many things rumbling down the pike.

Thus begins the 4th week of Web Tools for Science Teachers. Three weeks complete. And what assessment can I make of my learning? What outcomes to date are practical and can be used ‘plug and play’ in my teaching? How can I improve the efficacy of my participation in the last three weeks? Hmmmm…

Let me start with what tools I’ve learned to use, albeit rudimentary use, that will have practical and applicable function within my sphere of teaching & learning. Google Reader – love it! Have already shared it. I feel so much more up-to-date with so much less bobbing and weaving between websites. I have been using Del.icio.us and appreciate the tagging option. I’m not quite sure how I will share bookmarks with students. I would like to tag bookmarks for different classes and then export all of those tagged to a class wiki, but not sure if that can be done. Any hints out there?

The blogging is OK: I’ve accepted that only a small group, very small indeed, is actually reading what I write; and that is liberating! I do not see myself continuing to blog after the class. Although it is a respectable form of journaling, and journaling has merit, it is one of those things that I can’t seem to put a high priority on. I will use a wiki this fall for general biology and case studies – the collaborative aspect of wikis seems to be custom made for that type of group activity. Simulations, real-world data, inquiry and problem based learning: all have had place in my teaching and with the resources presented here can only become more seasoned with use.

Which brings me to last, and not least, the social networking. (Golly, now there’s a term I dread.) Yes, I’ve been dragged along by the requirements of the course. I have read and commented on blogs. Not too distressing. Twitter, though, is that a big kid’s AIM or what? I keep expecting to hear a ding-dong, new message, a la Southwest Airlines. Social networks, like Teaching 2.0, I see the advantage. I also see lots of time in front of a machine.

Overall, I have a achieved a small competence in using the tools introduced and I find value in many of them. But, how do I improve my participation in this class? How do I increase the net take-home? Or do I have to slog through the whole learning process, the entire Bloom’s taxonomy, like everyone else? Yes, I do. My learning of web tools has been started with the knowledge introduced on these pages; I’ve practiced with the tools and comprehended them; but now comes the application, the analysis, the synthesis between. If I truly expect to be of the web, I need to learn to discriminate one strand from another.

Originally posted 8 July 2008  Web Tools for Science Teachers

I was thinking about freshness yesterday. It was a cooking day, a lovely summer day that made me think of ratatouille, or my version thereof anyway. It’s one of those dishes that uses up the excesses of the garden: ratatouille takes heaps of fresh tomatoes, and zucchini and garlic and onion and heady herbs. And as I am in Massachusetts and few of those elements are in harvest, I went shopping at the grocery store. Spent the day in the kitchen aromatic and had a nice supper on the deck with family & friends, but, it wasn’t as good as it should have been. Why? Freshness. I had chosen a vehicle, ratatouille, because it represented freshness even while I did not have the appropriate ingredients to make it work. Sure the tomatoes were fresh, after a fashion; they were greenhouse tomatoes from Canada, but they surely were not excesses from the garden.

And how does this story relate to Web Tools? Freshness. Learning to choose the tool (recipe) that is appropriate for the ingredients (curriculum) you have on hand. I just spent a very frustrating weekend with my pecha kucha. Hours and hours of polishing and trying to synchronize the twenty second thing with my narration. (And of course, then I find out after uploading to SlideShare, that the audio doesn’t go anyway, Arghh!) Knowing that all the time expended on this product was not efficacious – although I may use a product such as this in the future, for the courses I am teaching now, it is not functional. So, it all gets done, I have a fresh product, like ratatouille, that isn’t quite perfect. It’s been made in the name of freshness without the spirit. Pecha kucha is new and fresh, without purpose for me though. There are no extras in the garden; I can narrate my own slide shows in class. Lesson learned.

Originally written 13 July 2008

There is an easy characteristic to recognize in this group of teachers – the motivation to improve. It’s palpable in all of the posts: how to be more efficacious, more up-to-date, and most of all – more useful to our students. Using the web as resource for inquiry suits that motivation very well. After all, this is ‘web tools for science teachers’. Who in this group isn’t inquisitive? I would be willing to place a small wager that most of us have gotten lost, on the web, during the last week. Not truly lost in space, but truly lost in time. Simulating, inquiring, viewing posts and blogs and websites; and oh, the delicious websites – animations galore! And now on-line data.

One easy way I’ve used the census bureau website is to start in the first lecture of the semester, go to the website live, and have one of the students record the world & USA populations. Come back to it now and again during class (my class is 5 hrs long!). And then occasionally during the semester. It will be a great discussion point, without teacher prompting. If you take a few moments you can drive home exponential growth.

And a short note on PLNs. While researching websites, I cam across an invasive species blog. Who would have thought? And lo, that blogger has a twitter account. All tied in now; I am of the web.

I am being assimilated; resistance is futile. I am part of the larger being. I am of the web.

I made a wiki, posted blogs, read from a reader and aggregated bookmarks; I have even aggregated others’ aggregations. I have googled and have been googled. I am of the web.

My personal learning network is a new switchboard and I am a new operator. I can make the connection to anyone at any time. Again I am overwhelmed. I felt this way before, when I took another course “foundations of college teaching” – there were so many methods to try; how to fit it all in? These are wonderful tools and yet I feel hyperactive, running from one to the other, picking it up and playing for five minutes to run back to the first. It will certainly take some time to trim and shape these tools into a fitted network.

How might I use this tools within the venue of teaching & learning? Right off the bat, it will save me from some e-mailing. In past semesters, I would email myself links via the school system. I could open the email in class and use the links without having to type in website addresses. Now, I can just go to my link page at del.icio.us. Better yet, I can create tags per the class schedule (Week 3, lab 5, etc), or, just copy and paste the links to a class wiki and use the wiki in class. Hmmm. Trial and error.

My final concern is the speed with which change is yet to come. Will I need to take Web Tools 3.0 next summer? Does it matter? Resistance is futile; I am of the web.

I’ve been working on acclimating myself to the Web Tools for Science Teachers first week assignments. I’m motivated to become more adept in using technology, but, I have an innate resistance to blogs. They are so public and I am not a public person. But here I am blogging. Uncomfort zone.
Yes, I have seen a few that are most certainly learning centered – Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Extreme Biology to name a couple. But they are few. Most blogs (to me) are like this one – personal ramblings – something I feel is more appropriate to journaling. And I suppose that it what it is, journaling, in public. It is appropriate for these times – everything done as performance, for an audience. Yikes! Here I am on stage.

Well, to task. My Guiding Principles for Technology in Education. Draft. 1) Technology should be an assistant to learning. 2) Any technology used must be accessible to all the students. 3) Technology used to support a curriculum should be inviting, engaging and easy to use. 4) The time invested in maintaining the tool should have an equivalent or greater advantage in outcomes. 5) Any new technology used should offer a learning advantage over previous tools, or should offer a new perspective for the learner.

Questions to answer : 1. What am I learning? 2. How can it by applied? 3. What am I wondering?
I’m learning that people really like to communicate. (It’s something I’ve always known, of course, but it’s been driven home lately.) The obvious application is to use communication between students and students and instructor to increase conceptual understanding. Communication as active learning. I am wondering how I can use these types of communicative tools to benefit both the teaching and learning processes in the classes I teach.

Originally written 16 June 2008