Second Life

Hello from Second Life! Zoe and I spent some time today acclimating ourselves to the site. I actually got my account 2 years ago after attending one of many tech workshops, but after initially spending hours exploring the site and figuring a few things out, I lost interest.  I couldn't get the videos to play on some of the sites set up by various colleges and it was not much fun visiting medieval villages and gardens and such without a friend along to talk to. 

Zoe and I finally ended up at EdTech Island. This place is great, partly because it isn't crowded with new people. I can talk to Zoe there without strangers walking up and trying to start conversations. I am interested to see Dr. Wyly's house next week.

Earlier I had some ideas for using Second Life in my classroom, but one of the hindrances is the amount of time it takes to create things and the learning curve for figuring out how to create an environment. I wanted to make a place my history students could visit, but I can see it will take countless hours to learn how to create such a place.

Anyway, here is a picture of my Avatar in Second Life!  Maybe some of the others will know stuff and will be able to help me master some of the intricacies of this site.

Discovering new sources

The research I am doing for my Masters program at Full Sail is turning up some pretty good sites. I've used digital storytelling in my classes, so I chose to explore the digital storytelling resources for our current assignment. There were a lot of good links, but I especially liked http://electronicportfolios.org/digistory/index.html

This site has tons of examples of digital storytelling, including a lot created in an educational setting. I think it is well worth visiting.

Getting to know my Full Sail classmates

We've now had our third Wimba session and have been forming groups for our first class. The people in our class seem to be really nice. It's a diverse group, too. I am finding others with similar points-of-view and several with some really excellent experience that goes way beyond anything I've been able to do yet. I wish I could visit some of their schools and observe! I could just take a year off and immerse myself in all of this...but that wouldn't really be practical. Besides, I will want to apply some of the things I've been learning in my classroom this year and see how they work.

I'm really grateful there are such neat people in the class who are so friendly and willing to share their experience and knowledge. I am really isolated in my own school setting. Having this chance to network with my Full Sail classmates is really going to help me this year. I must confess, I've been getting a little burned out after 10 years in our Community Ed program.  I taught the Middle School Expulsion program for 3 semesters and have been doing Even Start/Alternative High School for 8 years. We are in a separate building and don't get a chance to collaborate with teachers at the high school. We hardly get a chance to talk among ourselves as staff. There is no common planning time, so we're lucky to have more than a few words together during any given day. Really, we have each been on our own. I think we could be really dynamic and effective if the program were structured to allow us to collaborate. As it is, we are each just doing the best that we can, isolated in our own classrooms, with a minimum of interaction.

I'm thinking the project I'm going to do for my masters might give me a chance to interact more with other teaching staff, including those at the high school.  We'll see! I certainly hope so. If not, I am encouraged by the friendliness of the people in my on-line class. I have really been needing a chance to network with others, especially those with an interest in integrating technology into the classroom.
 I'm looking forward to getting to know them better during the next year.

Online Learning...Ready, Set, Go!

Last night was our first webinar for the Masters in Educational Media and Technology program. Today I sent a few e-mails to fellow classmates. They are a fairly diverse group - not all educators. I am still waiting for some of the items (like a video camera) to arrive that were part of our tech package. I can't get my iChat to work. I may have to break down and call support tomorrow, but I was trying to solve the problem myself.

The masters program looks well-planned and very in-depth. I am wondering what I will be able to do with it when I'm done. This year I plan to try out things in my classroom. I think I will especially focus on returning to Moodle and using that as a tool. Our biggest problem with Moodle was getting everyone enrolled. No matter how much effort we put into it, we always have some students whose attempts to set up an account fail. They do things correctly, but the process breaks down. We've had some students create extra e-mail accounts to try to get their Moodle account set up, but even that doesn't always work. I think I will have to contact the ISD and prepare for possible problems ahead of time.

Also, this year we will be teaching classes as 6-week sections. I like that for several reasons, but it will require a complete restructuring of my classes, rethinking how to use projects and research with direct teach opportunities. And I have a few as-yet-to-be-named classes. I have no idea what they will be or what access I will have to computers for them. I probably won't find out until August, right before we go back to school.

Still, if I incorporate the things I learn through Full Sail University's program in even half of my classes, it will be a good thing.  It will be a great chance to try some things out and see what works best.

Social Media in the Classroom

I watched this really interesting video recently as part of a webinar I attended. I'd like to share it with you.



If you go to  http://socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-media-revolution-2-refresh/ you can watch the video and read a script, which I found useful since it contains all of the statistical information mentioned in the video.

Let me know what you think.

Michigan Adult Ed & Training Conference

Kalamazoo - I learned several good things today. The "Reading, Writing, Spelling and Math Solutions: Virtual Literacy for Adult Ed and Literacy Programs" part 2 left me with scads of computer-based resouces that could be useful, especially with next year's ABE students.
These sites looked intriguing: e-text reader at e-text reader, free text reader at free text reader, EZC Reader: Reading Strips at EZC Reader reading strips, Inspiration (which we should have at school already) Inspiration for a free tour or Inspiration home page, dictation software Dragon Naturally Speaking, TextHelp! at text Help, WordSmith - Literacy products at the same site as TextHelp!, and digital audio products at Digital Audio Products. I also found a possible site for grant funding to help our at-risk and economically disadvantaged students at the National Christina Foundation at National Cristina foundation.

I can see how some of these products could help our daytime students, the ABE students and our adult ESL students. I will have to investigate them more when I get back home. There is also a site listing audio recordings of books, including textbooks at audio books.

Reflection

This year I've been trying to use Web 2.0 skills in my classes. I'm really hungry to learn more about video recording and editing. I've been using some very round about, back-door methods to get things done because I lack the equipment and software to do them in a more professional way.  I've been watching the KVCC web site for their postings of summer classes!

What worked: The blogging we did in Computer Related Technology class was a good thing. I would improve it by being more on top of having students make weekly entries. I am going to use blogging in our Career Prep class last trimester. I intend to have them post their resumes and video to help them present themselves in a positive light to prospective employers.

Oh, and using Ning to create a private site where my students could post their work was great. This was the first time through, so I know I can improve on that, but it was really very useful and worked well. What I would improve: Forums.  I need to track these better and make a point of having students take time to respond.

The videos we made in Digital Storytelling were pretty good. I would spend more time on some lead-up exercises and on story boarding. I think we learned some ways to get better productions. On the other hand, I am happy with the hands-on experience students got in using Audacity to edit music and export it in MP3 format. I am also happy with the experience they had with Movie Maker, although I think that could be improved with a couple of short, individual projects. The group work had it's ups and downs. Individual work gives everyone a chance to go through the whole process. Otherwise, students tend to rely on the person in their group who "gets it" best. I want all of them leaving with the ability to do this on their own.

What didn't work so well: the wiki we tried to create in our history class. The big problem was the wiki site. People would type text and it wouldn't save. It was rather limited, too, in the ability to add pics or vids. I need to find other sites (free, of course) that would work better.

Last trimester I intend to follow through on more blogging. Also, I will use the WeSeed site to give my students a chance to try out investing pretend money, but with real results.  I also am going to video tape their job interviews again, but this time I think I'll be able to provide them with their own copies (something I wanted to do in the past, but never got quite done).

There is still a lot to learn. I hope I can get a loan to take more classes. Actually, it would be nice to still have a job, too. With Michigan's economy in the toilet money for programs like the one I teach in is scarce. Grant money isn't to plentiful, either.  We've all been walking around this year with the specter of unemployment looming over us. It does rather affect morale. This is the "take a deep breath" part, where you just have to keep moving forward with the presumption that we'll be here next year.