Thursday morning, I woke up and headed to Erie High for a day full of teaching. I rode my bike through the early morning fog along the beautiful Erie River on the Edge to Edge (E2E) protected walker/biker trail and arrived to my classroom about 10 minutes before Mrs. Anonomateacher, though I'd already received a text from her that she'd be running late, so I didn't panic. A fellow teacher let me in and I rigged a doorstop with three bookends and a sponge to let early arrivals keep working on their disease essays before school started. 7:40 rolls around, and we begin.
Our daily schedule is projected from a computer to the screen. Students are to collect a green pen (for edits later) and start working on a journal prompt all about prokaryotes and eukaryotes. After a while, we raised the projector screen and took a moment to jot down everything they know about these groups of organisms. After a few minutes sharing out ideas, down comes the projector to introduce a web-based extra credit assignment, which involves uploading a video to our teacher's blog, followed by a video about bacteria. After a doc-camera note sharing session, students collect laptops to continue working on their Google doc essay assignment.
It has occurred to me that as much as I try to traipse around technology, it finds its way in. I have never considered myself much of a "tech" person, but there it is. Between 6:30 and 8:30am, I had cycled along a river, carried a bike up two flights of stairs, eaten basic cereal breakfast, had students write in paper journals and edit with pens and talked face-to-face with at least 30 people. On the other hand, in the same time-frame, I'd received and sent a text message, listened to 20 minutes of an audiobook on an iPod, checked my e-mail at least twice, connected two separate computers to a projector screen, manipulated a digital document camera and encouraged 30 students to write an essay not on paper, but electronically. Somehow this, is a normal way to start your day.
Throughout the remainder of the day, I subconsciously navigated endless levels of electronics, walking through countless wireless networks, checking student work online and discussing the relative merits of online integration in the classroom.
A common theme in our tech class has obviously been technology. Thursday night, at least half of our 40 person class met in the School of Education, only to subdivide into individual classrooms where groups of two-four presented 20-minute webinars. Webinars are fantastic tools allowing people to connect across continents. The first presentation was all about Shmoop, an online essay lab for students and teachers. Next up, we presented a geometry tech tool known as Geogebra. For any curious folks who missed out, check out our screencast tutorial and webinar. After our stunning presentation, we listened in on an online archiving/portfolio sight, Pathbright. Next up, Duolingo, a really nicely laid out language learning program. Finally, to take us home, a concept mapping software known simply as Cmap.
The webinars were surprisingly fun for occurring at the tail end of a really long day. I went home with a surreal feeling that most of the people I'd been talking to for the last two hours were less than a room away, but the potential uses of webinars as well as all of these tools remained.
In a sea of computers, internet, cell phones, cameras and iPods, I sometimes feel that we start to lose connections with our immediate surroundings. We're so obsessed with cataloging our days and not "missing" anything in the world, that we lose sight of what is right around us. The flip side of all of these tools is that we can immediately connect with the rest of the world and perhaps begin to see something new. The world gets smaller every day as data sharing and networks get strongly. I think my life and teaching will be an eternal battle between these two forces.
I can't wait!
David I really enjoyed your post! I also enjoyed the webinars much more than I thought after a long day at my placement. I think it might have had something to do with my great group members! I think that like many tech tools the are pluses and minuses to the webinars and I wonder how a teenage audience would do with them. After completing the webinar assignment and thinking back to Rory's question that he asked us in our last meeting as a class about not having classes one day a week and just having webinars for the students to attend, would this work? I am still unsure. I do think that the students may find it more engaging the first time or even the first few times but after that I fear that it would be too easy to do other things on their computers or on their phones. I did find that the polling tools and the hand raising tools were nice because you could draw your attendees back to the screen using these tools. But could teenagers handle this responsibility?
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