On Line Calendar

Finally an online calendar for educators! Thank God and the people at Trumba!

Suprglu

I saw this the other day in an e-school newsletter. It's caled suprglu It pulls all your blogs together. I think it would be great when working our projects of students that you want to pull together into a finished project. Here's my suprglu.

So,What is the Answer?Questions

Here's an excellent article in Learning and Leading with Technology about some basics in developing a Technoogy plan. You need you ISTE id and password.

Alan November

Another podcast by Alan November!

What's next?

Here's what's on the horizon:

blogs
podcasts
screencasts

Listen to this podcast to see why!

Using Technology as a Thinking Tool

Rubric Maker
Graphic Organizer
Flash Card Maker
Spelling Wizard

Some interactive tools from Marco Polo.

Technology can be used in Science to illustrate difficult concepts. Here's an example of using a virtual lab to demonstrate motion, friction and forces.

Examples of Children Publishing on the Web

Some web sites created for Animals:

Anna's Dolphin Web Site

Ethan's Wetlands Web Site

Katie's Otters' Web Site

Packie's Lynx Web Site

Nick's King Cobra Web Site

Examples of Blogging for the Earth

ISTE - Hearing the Call of our Earth - Rationale

Earth Site

Earth Blogs:

Anna's Blog
Ethan's Blog
Katie's Blog
Packie's Blog

Marco Polo

This site is wonderful because it has online lesson plans developed by teachers in conjunction with Partners such as Read, Write and Think, National Geographic and EdSiteMent to name a few!

Marco Polo

School Web Page and Technology

Classroom Home Pages

Technology Home Page

Some other ideas

Preparing Teachers for the Digital Age
Technology In Educaton
Technology Glossary

Blogs and Technology

Here are some examples of blogs we have used are using are St. Mary's School:

Peace and Social Justice Blog


Peace and Social Justice Web Site - St. Mary's School

Our theme for this schol year concerns peace and justice. As little as two years ago, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany encouraged our schools to form"faithful citizens".

This year at St. Mary's School we will explore, develop and even blog what is meant by "faithful citizens." Some of our goals this year and some questions we will ask are:

* What is a "faithful citizen"? In other words, is it enough to be "people of faith" in terms of character formation or does or citizenship extend beyond a laudable personal morality?
* Might this be a year of learning about various issues, what causes these needs to come about and what changes may need to take place to change our world at a systemic level?

Using Webquests to Integrate Technology in the Classroom

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The model was developed in early 1995 at San Diego State University by Bernie Dodge with Tom March, and was outlined then in Some Thoughts About WebQuests.

Here's a webquest about webquests!

Soem webquests that teach to essential questions created by Sister Debbie for St. Mary's School:

• Human Body
• Virtual Scrapbook of the United States
• Wear Your Seat Belt On Line

Bookmarks

Bookmarks that are publically listed on the internet are valuable tools because:

• They help the teacher and learner organize their knowledge.
• Bookmarks are a good way to save links for future use.
• Links are able to be shared outside the immediate classroom situation.
• A great way to collect links while developing a project.

Bookmark sites:

I Keep Bookmarks

My Bookmarks

Some Examples of Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Using webquests to teach to essential questions:

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The model was developed in early 1995 at San Diego State University by Bernie Dodge with Tom March, and was outlined then in Some Thoughts About WebQuests.

• Bernie Dodge and the webquest garden.
• Here's a webquest about webquests by Bernie Dodge

Here are some examples of webquests created for St. Mary's School:

• Internet Safety - Wear Your Seat Belt On Line
• The Human Body
• Virtual Scrapbook of the United States

Limitations of Technology

Technology - Its Limitations

Technology needs to be integrated with good teaching skills - "The key point to understand about improving reading(education) is that good teaching combined with good technology can improve reading skills very quickly. Neither good teaching by itself nor good technology by itself can accomplish the task. This article describes how and why the combination of good teaching and good technology succeeds." (See Full Article)

The Digital Divide - "The lack of access to technology is a fundamental barrier to the widespread development of digital literacy. While simply being able to access a computer does not mean that a learner can confidently surf the Internet, it is still a good place to start.There are also less obvious issues of access. How can online culture be made more accessible to people not ordinarily accustomed to it? How can new media be inclusive of people with physical impairments or low literacy skills? "

• Access Divide
• Gender Divide
• Assistive Technologies
• Cultural Divide

Sometimes our poverty is due to our lack of use of the technology we have or not using the technology we have correctly.

Some examples that come to mind are:

• Having children write and then enter text on the computer. (Two steps)
• Using web pages only as we would a textbook, to fill in answers to questions. etc.
• To fill in time we don't have planned for anything else.
  
• Using websites without evaluating them first.

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

The children of St. Mary's School in grades four - six are active consumers and users of digital technology. Their interests range from internet sites that are entertaining to virtual communities( a special favorite of our sixth grade girls). They email and chat. They use cell phone and text messages. They (especially the boys from grades 2-6) love video games ranging from Pokemon to more complicated games, like Roller Coaster Tycoon. They are sophisicated and constant users of digital technology. As an educator, I beleive it is imperative that our children integrate these tools into their educational structures. Learning does require discipline and a certain amount of motivation but why not tap in to our children's natural curiosity and use it for the sake of learning.

I ask you, Are our kids thinking differently? If you are Marc Prensky you may believe they are. Marc states that, ""Children raised with the computer “think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.” This parallel world, children need parallel tools to support their thinking and mental models. Some tools I have found helpful are:

• Kidspiration - allowing a child to make mental models of ideas and to think in a parallel fashion.
• Golly Gee Blocks - a simulatoin program using 3d figures. A great tool for representing concept like:
  Perception
  Directionality
  Recognizing and drawing with shapes
  

Cognitive Flexibilty Theory and the Affordances of Technology

I find in my writing, I can be much more reflective and constructive of my own knowledge when I am able to hyperlink back and forth to other text and information. I think it is a way to let my reader see into my world and construct knowledge right along with me. It’s like sharing a good book and your ideas about it on steroids. After I read about the Cognitive Flexibility Theory,which states, "
"A critical goal of many education programs, especially in professional education, is to help the students transfer what they have learned to different, even unique, situations. This ability is often referred to as "cognitive flexibility." "[T]his includes the ability to represent knowledge from different conceptual and case perspectives and then, when the knowledge must later be used, the ability to construct from those different conceptual and case representations a knowledge ensemble tailored to the needs of the understanding or problem-solving situation at hand" (Spiro, et al., 1992, p. 58). According to cognitive flexibility theory, the way students are taught is a significant influence on the type of cognitive structures they create and the way they store and structure knowledge they acquire determines to a great extent how flexible they will be when they must use that knowledge. Encouraging cognitive flexibility requires a flexible teaching environment. Information must be presented in a variety of ways, as well as for a variety of different purposes. Flexible instructional methods help students learn the contours and complexity of the material they are studying, and it helps them work with that content from several different perspectives (Spiro, et al., 1992).The computer, with appropriate supporting material, is well-suited to flexible instruction. It can provide the variability needed to present ill-structured knowledge domains and to help students explore more than one perspective on a topic or issue. For example, hypertext systems provide a nonlinear, multi-dimensional medium in which to present complex subject matter that traditional systems (textbooks, lectures, etc.) lack. It is important, however, to keep in mind that traditional instruction may be very successful in teaching well-structured, simple subject matter. When the information is not simple and well structured, the power of the computer and the format of hypertext support a more flexible approach to instruction that some have called random access instruction (Spiro, et al., 1992). This allows the learner to access information as needed in any order pertinent to the his or her needs"
Now I was able to verbalize what I had been observing all along. As far as I know, no other tool has been able to do this with the relatively ease of use as the blog. If I were able to blog my rationale for the Social Justice web site or have the children and their parents blog about the "Food Pantry", then side by side with them, we could discover, reference, hyperlink and construct mental models in ways that were never possible before.
Some Further Information on the Cognitive Flexibilty Theory
Cognitive Flexibility Theory Implications for Teaching and Teacher Education http://www.kdassem.dk/didaktik/l4-16.htm
Cognitive Flexibility Theory (R. Spiro, P. Feltovitch & R. Coulson) Cognitive flexibility theory focuses on the nature of learning in complex and ill-structured domains. Spiro & Jehng (1990, p. 165) state: "By cognitive flexibility, we mean the ability to spontaneously restructure one's knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands...This is a function of both the way knowledge is represented (e.g., along multiple rather single conceptual dimensions) and the processes that operate on those mental representations (e.g., processes of schema assembly rather than intact schema retrieval)." http://tip.psychology.org/spiro.html
Constructivist literature The Constructions section provides an overview of constructivist literature Welcome to my pages on Designing a Constructivist Multimedia Curricula. and how such literature can be applied to a curricula design. http://www.edb.utexas.edu/mmresearch/Students97/Rutledge/home.html
Spiro's Cogntive Felxibility Theory A Graduate Presentation of the theory http://www.fhsu.edu/~ggiebler/WebProj/Cft-Modified/TitlePage.htm

Affordances of Technology

Some of the reasons to integrate Technology in our Classrooms

The ability to reach multiple intelligences - The more ways we can teach a lesson and reach our learners the better. Using Technology in our classrooms affords us with the ability to teach to our visual, kinesthetic and audio learners - the theory validates educators' everyday experience: students think and learn in many different ways. It also provides educators with a conceptual framework for organizing and reflecting on curriculum assessment and pedagogical practices. In turn, this reflection has led many educators to develop new approaches that might better meet the needs of the range of learners in their classrooms. (Howard Gardner)