Getting excited and moving forward

A semester-long blogging experience with my undergraduate students had been quite an eye-opener of what this tool can do to support teaching and learning. Yes, I got to be honest that I tend to structure things so I can observe how the experience impacts student behaviors and dispositions -- but at the end, these student rose to the occassion and met my expectations. There were lots of writing and reflections -- lots of stepping outside of the box -- and taking some risks. Many students complained of the amount of work but also more stated that they have learned so much in comparison to other experiences they had at this university. For that, I can say that the blogging experience has been successful in effecting change at both the classroom and the individual level.

So I thank everyone who made this blogging experience possible -- students and mentors from the university, peers and supervisors as well as colleagues from the NWP Tech Liaison Network. I look forward to another blogging adventure next term with my students and the community at large where they will be working in the near future.

A Final Draft of a Classroom Activity

It's almost wrap up time for our blogging experience this semester. One of the outcomes that my students are generating from this experience are examples of classroom activities for K-12 students. One of them has been gracious enough to showcase her work to give others a better idea of the expectations for this task --

Objective
The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to develop skills in writing and reading as well as more information and respect for other cultures in the world. Studies have shown that students are likely to hone their reading and writing skills while corresponding with their peers. Students look forward to communicating with their diverse peers, being careful to check and edit their work. This activity will also develop proficiency with computer skills, particularly typing and e-mail.

Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills
Prior to conducting this activity, students should be able to express themselves in writing, be able to read for content, and have some knowledge of computers (particularly typing). Your students reading abilities will be tested with this project as their foreign peers may write with broken English and unique colloquialisms.

Materials and/or Tools
Students will need computers with Internet access, computer time in the classroom, and a folder to keep their letters.

Set Up/Context:This activity is designed for middle school students (grades 6 – 8), but it could certainly be revised to account for any grade level. Cultural awareness should be made apparent to any age group, but the process can be adapted so that it is more challenging for higher-level students and easier for younger children.

While this activity can span any length, I would encourage teachers to continue their pen pal interaction throughout the year. Once a week, teachers could devote time for Internet correspondence, having their students use the classroom computer to write their emails. This activity should only take place in the classroom, so that teachers can monitor their students.

Process/Instructions
1) Teachers need to create an account with ePALS (this was the server I used to experiment with this activity). Their website is http://www.epals.com. Click on the link “Become a Member.”

Following this, you have the option of signing up with “ePALS School Mail” or “ePALS Global Network.” The Global Network is free, and I found it to be suitable for this activity. From there, select the “Teacher Channel,” which will require you to fill out some personal information, but don’t worry, ePALS offers a safe, secure privacy policy. Be aware that it may take a day or two for your account to be activated.

2) Once your account has been activated (you will be notified by your ePALS e-mail account), you can then begin searching for other classrooms around the world. On the left hand bar of the welcoming page, there is a link to “Find Classrooms.” Once you begin your search, you can narrow your selection to classroom size, age, and country by clicking on “Refine your search.” A list of candidates will appear, allowing you to contact the teacher of each class through e-mail.

Be sure to pay attention to how long your prospective pen pals have been members of ePALS. If their profile has not been updated for quite sometime, I suggest you look for someone more recent.

3) Once you have an idea of which countries your students would like to converse with, contact your candidates one by one. I suggest you start this activity at the beginning of the year, so that you can give your candidates time to respond. If you do not receive a response within a few weeks, I would suggest you move on.

4) Once you have made contact with a teacher from another country, tell your students which country they will be conversing with. Have your students research the country they are studying on the Internet (if some of your students do not have Internet access at home, allow them to use the library or class computer sometime after school).

It will help if your students have some knowledge of the country they will be communicating with. Have them answer the following questions (or similar ones):

What is your impression of this country? What do you know or what have you heard about this country?
Where is this country located?
What is the geographical terrain and typical weather of this country?
What nationality are the people in this country, and what language(s) do they speak?
How many people live in this country?
Name something that has occurred in this country’s past.
Name something that is currently happening in this country.

5) Once your students have been introduced to their country, you may begin the pen pal process. You will need to contact your teacher to determine how you would like your students to correspond (chat, video, audio, postal), and you will also need to retain e-mail addresses. Make sure you inform your teacher what you will be doing with your class, and set up a schedule for correspondence – perhaps an e-mail exchange every week or so.

Also determine when the both of you would like to end the project. Allow your students to develop a natural friendship with their diverse peers, but try to incorporate topics your students could discuss with their peers. Have your students ask their peers questions, such as “What are you learning about in school,” or cultural questions, such as “What is your favorite food?” Since there are probably a limited number of computers in your class, have your students write their e-mails on paper before typing them in class. This way, you can read what they have written, checking for errors or inappropriate language, before they type their letter.

For every day of the week, have a handful of students type their e-mails in class. Be sure to check their messages before they submit them, and be with them when they send their e-mails. Your students should maintain correspondence with their peers, even if they have not received a response.

6) Print every e-mail your students receive from their peers and place them in a folder. This way, your students will have a record of every interaction, as well as the information they have gathered from this activity.

7) Finally, at the end of the pen pal interaction, put together a “culture package” filled with American souvenirs and pictures. If you can afford to do this, ship the “culture package” to your friends in the other country.

Outcome
After this activity, your students should have more information and knowledge about their country. This cultural interaction will allow your students to develop more respect for their diverse peers, and hopefully, this will be replicated in their behavior. At the end of this assignment, your students should have a keepsake folder depicting their pen pal interaction composed of their letters as well as those written by their peers.

Evaluation and Feedback
During correspondence, grade your students based on how involved they were in this assignment. Take a look at their letters. Do they seem interested in their peers? Are they trying to learn more about the culture?

At the end of this activity, after reading through the e-mails, try to uncover what your students have learned from this assignment. Using the responses of their peers and the information your students collected at the beginning of this activity, create a test to measure what your students have retained. How well your students perform on this test will indicate what they have gained from their interaction.

Follow Up
The most appropriate follow up for this assignment would be a student reflection. Ask your students what they have learned from their peer interaction. What did they enjoy most? What did they enjoy least? What could have been done to make their interaction more enjoyable? How has their interaction changed their first impression of this country? This will enable you to see how your students have grown in their acceptance of diversity.

On the road

I'm on the road this week in a place where winter is slowly making its presence known -- where? Pittsburgh. Home of the Steelers and the Pirates -- if you are a sports fan. It's the National Writing Project annual meeting and its good to be reconnected to colleagues from across the country that I've been communicating with online and to put real faces to peers in cyberspace. It's a good time to talk about blogs, digital storytelling, technology integration, read-write-technology issues and strategies among many of the topics that will be shared, tackled, deconstruct, or pondered upon in the next couple of days.

Hotel-wise I got lucky with my room -- it has a real view on the 11th floor with two windows -- and one of them overlooks the riverfront. That will be some sight to watch for especially with snow or snow flurries in the forecast.

More Class Presentations

Last Thursday we had our second set of presentations based on our WebQuest activity. As mentioned before, these projects have been welcomed by the students as a good change of pace of our technology-rich immersion this semester. One group showed us a newspaper layout they created while the other did a skit on "Who is the real Thomas Edison?" Also, the second group engaged the class with a light bulb activity which got everybody moving around into small groups.

A Week Full of Blogging

Our first week is almost over for our blogging adventure and everyone seems to be full of mixed emotions about the experience -- mostly positive I hope. But definitely I can see some progress being made in the blogs themselves including some positive skepticism from my students about the whole blogging project. Several students are making connections to what this tool can do for their future classrooms. Others are getting excited about "hooking up" with a practicing teacher as mentor/consultant.

I'm looking forward to where this experience will bring us in the next 4 weeks.

Wiki, Wiki -- the Hawaiian way?

My class did our first foray with Wikis last Thursday. I thought that connecting our Wiki experience with preparation for the final exam is a good demonstration of what this particular tool can do to support teaching and learning. It's a web-based collaborative writing tool, almost similar to a blog, that my students can use to build their notes of the articles and materials we used in our class this term -- so in a way we are making our Wiki notes.

As usual I learned to be flexible in working with technology. I did not realize that not everyone can edit the Wiki simultaneously. I got locked out big time with a 15-minute wait because one of my students beat me to the Wiki site. Son I went to plan B -- asking my students to outline the articles first that we will use for the final exam and then creating their own Wiki were they posted them.

Making headway with BP

How many times you heard someone say, "I can get this paper done once I've written the first line" -- but it is always the first line that is hard to get done. Isn't this so true?

Getting started is always a struggle especially when something looks formidable and overwhelming. I'm guessing that many of my undergraduate students are having these feelings this past week about our Blog Project. But the cat is out of the bag -- our class is moving on and making headway because there's no turning back. We are going to experiment, take risk, and try to get out of our boxes and make a difference to our target audience.

Some of my students are already making great posts -- check Meredith McCorvey's post (November 7, 2005) about her experience and reflection on our first assignment in this course, the Technology Autobiography (TA) in the Wacky Worker's Workplace Blog.

Also, Amanda Bosland's layout of her left side bar to showcase her selected course projects is a good example of how to do it (November 7, 2005) -- check it out in the Kiddy Corral Blog.

WebQuest Product Presentations

Thomas A. Edison must be proud with what my students have done with their WebQuest presentations. This week we started with three presentations that involved a brochure, an ABC book, and a bingo game. My students informed me that the projects were good breaks from our technology-intensive classroom experience. That's good to know and we have more next week!

Starting a Blog Project

Instructions to my students ...

We will be starting our blog project on November 7, Monday. Make sure that you have completed the blog membership requirements by Friday, November 4.

This blog project has a purpose of developing resources for elementary, middle or secondary school teachers and their students. First, you (each student) will identify web resources appropriate to their selected content area and target grade level.

Second, you (each student) need to develop a classroom activity using technology-based tools and materials. This classroom activity needs to be original (almost), creative, and appropriate to the target audience.

Finally, this blog site is also a place where you (each student) will showcase samples of your work from our class (as part of your e-portfolio) with commentaries on the challenges and lessons learned.

Please click here for more ...

Wilma Here and Gone

The past week had been incredible for those with a "wait and see" attitude. The churning of Hurricane Wilma around Yucatan peninsula for almost 3 days made everybody sweat around southwest Florida. Saturday landfall became Sunday and then finally, Monday around 6:30 in the morning. It was not really bad wind-wise until the back end of the storm came marching in all the way to the east coast -- Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. And there, they got the brunt of Wilma -- the wind, rain and stress made everyone realize that a simple life is not simple at all.

Hope everyone is okay including houses, condos and pets. The cold front definitely brought a breather of a weather for many of us to enjoy as we clean up the debris and wait for the lights to make us smile again for having Internet access!!!

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For a narrated aerial tour of damage, please click here.
The source for above image and link to the digital narrative is the PalmBeachPost.com

A Whirlwind of Activities

It's amazing to see my students jumping into this blogging experience. I know that for many of them -- it's their first time to try out this tool. Given this, I'm aware that they feel stress out or strange about the whole experience. However, they give it a twirl of experimentation and see what happens next. Truly a good characteristic of a teacher-to-be who wants the best for his or her students. So I look forward to the progress that my students will be making in the next couple of weeks.

Fall's here!

Fall just sneaked in as gulf coast communities wrestled with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for a record devastation and misery. On the academic front, both classes are on their way to creating e-materials that they can use to populate their group blog projects. As of last week, we started pairing students and some of them will end up working as triads. I'm still debating in my mind the rationale for how many should be in a group -- I guess I have to cross that bridge when I get there ~ which is today for one of my classes.

An interesting development on the grading scale front issue ~ which forced me to rethink what would be appropriate for this course. Given the conversation with both classes, I decided to adopt the division's grading scale without a benchmark assignment. With the bonus points issue I decided to continue awarding those but not across the board. I decided to award bonus points to those who submits exemplary work that can be used as examples. Then, those students who receive bonus points have to sign a waiver to allow me to use their projects as showcase artifacts. I think this is a win-win situation for everyone.

So, it's blog time for my students this week!

Welcome to My Blog

Congratulations! You found my blog!

This is an experimental blog that I'm using to demonstrate possibilities of what can be done with emerging technologies to support student learning. This year I'm working with a group of pre-service teachers who are learning about various applications of emerging technologies in the classroom and how they can be integrated in the teaching and learning process. During their time with me, they will be learning "new" tools (blogs, wikis) as well as "new" skills (podcasting, screencasting, Web quests, digital storytelling).

My students will be working in small groups as they build a blogspace on strategies for integrating technology-based tools to support reading and writing skills development. Though each student will be posting his/her work and providing commentaries on their experience, as a member of this small group they are assured to have a support system when things get "rough" or need for spontaneous celebrations on one's success.

So watch this space grow and enjoy!