teachNbabble

Version four of my UBD map. I am getting closer to completion of the map. From our PD inservice and the assessment course I am taking I am making adjustments to the map then to my web/blog site. The latest have been to add targets to the map and blogsite.

It has been interesting having the targets become part of the page: they invite conversation. Discussion of what we are doing in a broader sense helps the students understand the bigger picture.

Update: Looks good on Pageflakes as well

This is kind of neat. I went to a number of blog sites from the assessment course. I subscribed to the sites and exported the information as an OPML file. I uploaded the OPML file to my web server. Using the Grazer create a widget page I added a link to the opml file and Grazr creates the code to embed the feed information on your blog page. What you will see are the RSS feeds from each mentioned blog. Selecting one of the blogs allows you to see the posts that have been added to the site. You have a number of different views and the plus sign allows you to add this information to other blogs.

This was an interesting week from both a course and work perspective. In the course we read an article by Curtis Bonk regarding future trends in technology. He listed thirty tools many of which, blogs, wikis, asynchronous and synchronous communication tools, LMS systems, I am currently using. The list also included other tools that I have been reading about such as games and Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG’s). Given the number of tools written about I was surprised that MMOG’s was one of the most discussed tool. In our discussion of the tools there were common threads:

• budget concerns
• implementation concerns
• instructional design

I am fortunate that we have the amount of technology that we have at our school. The number of parents/students who have the ability to access and use the technology is in the very high 90% range. However, I am also seeing a larger number of tools that can be used to ease budget concerns. I have been using NeoOffice for over a semester now. The cost of using this product is significantly cheaper than MS Office and there would be no significant difference between the skills students learn using this product as compared to using MS Office. We use, Joomla as a content management system and as a result we do not need the web creating software we used in the past to maintain a web presence. We are considering moving from FirstClass to Google Tools to handle our email, document sharing, file sharing capabilities. When you look at the Web 2.0 backpack or Open Source Mac it is evident that low cost quality replacements exist for a variety of more expensive products.

Another concern is how to get people to use these tools. I think it is a matter of small little steps. I also think that this has been going on for years and recall the same conversation twenty years ago. How can we get our teachers to teach writing using a wordprocessor? At school we have finally begun to use these tools in a collaborative manner with the World Languages department using a blog to conduct a curriculum review. The assessment team is using a wiki to explore the direction our school wide professional development in assessment might go. I have been talking and sending information to our curriculum coordinator about these tools for a number of years but there seemed to be a point this past week where he moved from just seeing the usefulness of the tools to a situation where he wanted to use the tools. As a result of using the blog he can involve all of the stakeholders in the process of collaboration on curriculum development as opposed to using a selected group of teachers from this department. To a large extent I think that persistently showing a person possible uses eventually causes that person to consider using the tool. Furthermore, by requiring teacher participation through these tools teachers will be more apt to consider using the tool within their class.

The sheer number of tools being developed make instructional design issues more interesting. Also our learners, content creators, (State of Media) have different types of learner expectations. Our course design needs to take this into consideration and create instructional content that addresses these differences.

We have been asked to post a concept map that we have created. I created my map to help me visualize my unit design for My Media awareness unit. I am modifying the map based on the inservice sessions we have had and then adding content to the class blog site.

Concept Map is at gbbert.com/Cmap/Module3.html

Blogging a Google Shared Doc

Can save documents in a variety of formats. Rubrics could be created online saved for individual student then tagged for the student. Rubric location could be linked to the assessment grade comment within powerschool? Makes for interesting capabilities within the writing/revision process. Perhaps an inservice nightmare though
Tried this out by uploading and publishing a graded rubric then attaching the link to the student comment and it seems to work you can also post docs to a blog. Which means you can collaborate on a portion of a document then submit this to a blog for people to comment on (the Blog we set up, for example, Fred)

Does republishing document republish to Blog as well? No. You have to republish to the Blog as well. Have not figure out a real title or how to post to a category.