Sunday, March 30, 2008

Major Project Complete

Today I finished the final video for my major project. This really isn't a teaching video but it does contain my reflections of our class with about a week to go. If you wish to see the final video in the set, click here. I hope that you have enjoyed the videos. I know that I have learned a lot in making them. Feel free to use them in your school if any of your staff members are interested in learning how to use any of the featured programs.

Mathman33

Technology is great when it works ...

Technology is great when it works but it is sure frustrating when things don't go well. For the past couple of days I have been finishing up my latest video on networking (click here to see the video). Well, the video is only a portion of what I had intended. I had two other sections, one dealing with Moodle and one involving Second Life. For some reason the program that I am using to produce the video did not like those segments and I was losing the video during the rendering process. In addition to the rendering problem, Camtasia was only letting me record one voice take at a time so if I messed up the audio (which happened frequently) I had to exit the program and restart the program. I don't know if this is a conflict with Camtasia or my headset, or both. On the positive side it seems that short videos are viewed twice as often as long videos so hopefully that will mean that more people will watch this video and discover the power of networking. That's all for now. Have a good day.

Mathman33

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

After listening to last nights recording of class with Chris Lehman I found not only his discussion to be interesting but reading the back channel discussion was fascinating too. In particular, I was interested to hear and read the comments about standardized testing and how it relates to our provincial Assessment for Learning (AFL) program. I believe that the primary reason that our provincial system moved towards a standardized assessment practice is due to the public demand for an increase in accountability for our government structures due to the corporate practices of companies like Enron. There was a comment in the discussion panel that the STF initially had some reservation but then has done nothing about it since. I strongly disagree with this comment. If it was not for the efforts of our federation, the system that the government put in place would probably resemble the structures that exist in Ontario or British Columbia and it would have happened many years ago when a number of provinces were jumping on board with faulty U.S. data driven models. I am also thankful that I am a member of the federation that is diligent in ensuring that the current government stays true to its assessment FOR learning initiative instead of an assessment OF learning program. The one missing factor that people fail to recognize for the reason we are not like other provinces is because of the time and effort our federation spends on building relationships with our partner organizations. Because of our unique relationships and the trust (a very key concept) that exists between the partner organizations we are privileged to work in a system where the STF input is considered before decisions are made. The STF does not agree with all of the decisions made by government but at least we have a system that allows them to have a respectful conversation in the decision making process.

My final thoughts for this blog are more in terms of questions. The questions stem from Laurie's discussion about her sons. Laurie said something to the effect that she believes that her sons might have a lack of engagement due to a lack of vision and no sense of purpose. Chris showed us that their mission and values statements consist of three questions: How do we learn? What can we create? What does it mean to lead? Earlier in the class we heard that the majority of careers that our students will work at have not been created yet. Therefore, how do we create that vision or that sense of purpose to prepare them for something that most of us probably aren't prepared for either? Just curious to see what you think. I know what I believe but I will leave that for later.

Mathman33

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Making a Difference

In the last three months I have become addicted to Ted.com. The Ted website is full of videos that are sure to inspire and entertain almost anyone who visits the website for the first time. For all teachers that read this I would encourage you to check out the Dave Eggers presentation, Once Upon a School, or visit the website. It is a 25 minute video that will demonstrate how some people want to make a difference in the lives of the students that we teach. Inspiring!

Mathman33

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Power

It didn't take Stephen Downes long to say something that would inspire this writing. Early in his presentation to our class he questioned, "How do you teach if you no longer have power over students"? According to Rebore (2001), there are six types of power:

1. Inspirational – Influence of a person based on other people’s admiration and desire to model themselves after him or her.

2. Charismatic – Influence attributed to one’s personal characteristics.

3. Expert – Influence based on special skills or knowledge.

4. Persuasive – Power derived from a person’s ability to allocate and manipulate rewards.

5. Knowledge – Power derived from a person’s ability to control unique and valuable information.

6. Coercive – Power based on fear.

The first three types of power utilize influence rather than control while the last three utilize control rather than influence.

I would like to think that teachers that make a meaningful connection to students will always have power. The power to inspire and make a difference. Most of those teachers also accept that they have a shared expertise with their students. Even though the teacher may be the subject expert, they are still willing to learn from their students. I have never taught a class where I have not learned something from my students. These sentiments are echoed in Kelly C's last blog post (title Effective and Progressive) where he did some informal research with his students.

Unfortunately for education we still have teachers that do not want to put the time and effort into this great profession to build the necessary skills and relationships to become experts of their craft and inspirations to their students. They would rather use the controlling power that they have that comes with the job and pass on they problems that they create to their administrators to solve. This type of philosophical conflict is very challenging for administrators to resolve.

To borrow from Dennis Miller - That's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

Mathman33

Major Digital Project

Quick links to my major project videos

1. The one with Animoto
2. The one with VoiceThread
3. The one about Networking
4. The one about Reflections of the class

Yes, I know I am ripping off Friends with the title but I think it is appropriate in this case. As I create more videos for my project, I will continue to update this post. That's all for now.

Mathman33

Monday, March 10, 2008

Affluence

There have been a few ideas tossing around in the back of my brain for the last week as the material from both of my classes collides like the sea on rocks. The first concept that jumped out at me was that of social affluence. We really are privileged to be living in a society where the majority of people can retrieve whatever information they need in a matter of minutes. The more connected and knowledgeable people are, the quicker the information will arrive.

Clarence Fisher mentioned that teachers should be network administrators and be responsible for hooking kids up with information. I believe that most teachers think that that is what they are doing. However, as we all are becoming acutely aware, what we believed as a solid method of delivering knowledge and how we can deliver a truly authentic learning experience are quite different. I think back to how Clarence connected with the African community and his students truly learned about race, poverty, AIDS and a number of other social situations by walking a mile in the other person's shoes and not just reading about it in a book or listening to a lecture on the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

We are living in a country and province that has the ability to turn every classroom into a global communications center. The only questions are whether we, as teachers, will give up the notion that we have to be the experts instead of collaborators and can we convince the technology people at central offices to allow us to have full access to the internet so that we may hear the stories of other people and cultures?

Mathman33

Monday, March 3, 2008

Meme: Passion Quilt


I would like to thank kwhobbes for tagging me for the passion quilt. It has been many years since I actually have taken a photo so I had to resort to finding an image from the internet.

I believe that there are a number of factors that influence the success of any student. Similar to how there are a number of different factors that influence the success of any particular golf swing. When the pieces come together, it is a beautiful thing - whether it is the perfect shot in golf or that light bulb moment of learning when everything makes sense and you feel like you can conquer the world. However, we have all had our days when we feel that we will never understand what is happening. Regardless of whether we are talking about education or golf, there is only one thing that will make us better - PRACTICE!

So the next time your students are writing an exam or you have called upon a student to answer a question, ask yourself what thoughts and doubts are going through their mind as they try and put together the answer they perceive that you want.

Now I have to choose five people from my twitter/social network to continue on the quilt. I will apologize in advance but I will select Corey Terry, Dean Miezianko, Todd Volk, Tammy Sillers, and Luis. The rules are below.

The meme works as follows: The rules are simple.
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Mathman33

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Video is now working

Sorry to those who were really quick at checking my post. I had a couple of technical glitches with my video but it should be working now.

Mathman33

Major Project Started

Hello again,

Well I have started my major project. I am creating a series of videos that will educate teachers on how to use some of the programs that we are exploring in this class. My first video is on Animoto. If you would like to see the first episode please follow the link to my Animoto lesson. I created the video using Camtasia (the 30 day free trial version - not the $300 version). I would appreciate any feedback that you have, but please keep in mind that I am a rookie using the software (sorry for the breathing - you'll hear what I mean). Thanks.

Mathman33