Third Grade Internet Training

My third grade classes are in the midst of some serious Internet safety and usage training. Today we reviewed notes that the students took while touring Disney's Surf Swell Island Web site. First, we made a Kidspiration Web of all the kinds of information we should never share online. Next, we watched a short clip from How Stuff Works.com explaining how a computer gets a virus and then took a short online quiz from Brainpop and discussed places we've all been to that might host viruses. Finally, we watched a commercial they all have seen a hundred times: The Cingular commerical showing a little girl speaking in text-lingo to her mother who is upset about the cell phone bill. That tipped off a conversation about Instant Messenger speak and how words can be used to hurt or to help. So much to do and so little time. I wish I had more than 1/2 hr a week with them.
http://www.parents-choice.org/product_img/14673.jpg

Jottit

Thanks to Kathy Schrock, who recently posted on her blog about a new wiki site called Jottit. What makes it great is that it will allow you to create a wiki in about five seconds flat that does not require an email address. You can set it up so that anyone who knows the password (which you set) can edit the site. The home page is so simple that I almost didn't know what to do...there is only ONE button and ONE box. My brain almost could not process the simplicity.

Here's the catch--yes there is a catch. It's not easy to format the text, add hyperlinks, or add pictures. I had a tough time figuring it out myself. It's not HTML, but there is some kind of formatting coding that they use to get things like headers and bullets. Kids could learn it, but it's not as simple as the wikispaces wiki. If you want a class blog that is text only, this is YOUR TOOL!

New Wikis and Nings

Our social studies "Model United Nations" teacher in 8th grade, Kathy Laughlin, created her very first wiki this week. Instead of assigning print research projects, she has created a class wiki to which everyone will post. I'll admit, it hasn't been smooth as butter getting all the kids admitted as users for the wiki. Half of them claim they didn't get the invitation and other kid-related excuses. However, we're getting there. The kids love the idea, because of course they have been raised to believe their life exists on stage and they are all celebrities. We started down an interesting road with them: Why should the school dictate to them what they can create wikis about and what they can't. It led to a whole lesson on public spaces and private rights. Here's the start of their wiki:
Model United Nations Wiki

I will add that the table function in the wikis has been giving me a hard time, as well as the picture functions. It won't let me size images or tables. Anyone else have this issue with wikis?

The Danger of Preparation

Is it possible to overprepare? Frankly, I never really thought so until today. This summer, I worked with the teachers in our global partnership project to create interesting activity ideas, to introduce them to tools we might use. Never during this process did I stress the fact that there are always more ideas, different ways that might be just as good. I see that I did not emphasize the necessarily flexible, flowing nature of ANY collaboration. I prepared my Generals and I prepared them well! They are comfortable taking the lead but not necessarily following. This, too, is the nature of a new program...learning from your mistakes and fixing them.
Image Credit: http://fitnessfive.us/flexibility.gif

Social Networks Research

Marc Prensky posted on his Weblogg-ed Blog about the new National School Boards Association report "Creating and Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social--and Educational--Networking." This 10-page report outlines the positives and what they call the "gaps", as well as guidance and recommendations. It is targeted for School Board members, but the data and recommendations within are helpful for any parent or teacher.

A Ning Is Born

As of today, I am a member of a new social network created by the second grade teachers at my school. This private network, on the Ning network, is shared by these two classes and a class of students at an International school in Thailand. I feel like a proud mommy.

Bobos and Technology

This Fall, I am enrolled in two graduate courses. BOTH courses list the same book on required reading: Bobos in Paradise. I've already plowed through a hundred pages and I'm impressed. It examines how our cultural values were shaped by the WASP elite in the 1950s and how that shifted radically in the 1960s with the egalitarian, bohemian hippies. Today's generation is left trying to justify their own affluence in the context of "countercultural capitalism." Here's a blurb from Amazon's describing the book. Do you recognize yourself?

"You've seen them: They sip double-tall, nonfat lattes, chat on cell phones, and listen to NPR while driving their immaculate SUVs to Pottery Barn to shop for $48 titanium spatulas. They tread down specialty cheese aisles in top-of-the-line hiking boots and think nothing of laying down $5 for an olive-wheatgrass muffin. They're the bourgeois bohemians--"Bobos"--an unlikely blend of mainstream culture and 1960s-era counterculture that, according to David Brooks, represents both America's present and future: "These Bobos define our age. They are the new establishment. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we all breathe. Their status codes now govern social life." Amusing stereotypes aside, they're an "elite based on brainpower" and merit rather than pedigree or lineage: "Dumb good-looking people with great parents have been displaced by smart, ambitious, educated, and antiestablishment people with scuffed shoes." http://www.amazon.com/Bobos-Paradise-Upper-Class-There/dp/0684853787

I have to admit, I recognize myself in those $5 wheatgrass muffin-purchasers. I value the environment, yet I drive over 60 miles per day to work...even if it is a gas-sipping Honda. I feel like my educational credentials matter a whole lot more than my who my descendants are. However, that culture of consumption is one that I loathe, and when I recognize that impulse in myself I loathe that too. Technology falls into that category. When I was in Japan on the Fulbright Memorial Fund program (notice how I casually threw that in), I took note of how seamlessly technology was integrated into things like the subway systems and vending machines, but at the same time, things like stereo systems and automobile buttons were extraordinarily simple compared to the "gadgetry" we see here.

The message I have learned (remembered, actually) is that the technology software we use, hardware we hold and web 2.0 tools we use to connect ourselves to the world should be purpose driven...not consumption-driven. It's not the 1980s anymore, dude.

Image credit:www.stephan-selle.de

Over My Head

The truth shall set you free: I am in over my head. This week, I am challenged with navigating the configuration of an Exchange Server for calendaring functions at work. Don't let me mislead you--I'm not doing the configuring. But, our tech at work doesn't exactly know how to do it. So, here I am making phone calls to outside tech consultants asking them to configure something I barely even understand myself. And I'm supposed to be the "director" of technology. Hmph. I guess everyone learns sometime, but it's hard not to feel like a fraud on days like this. But then, there are other moments, like the one today when I lead a third grade class gently down the "internet safety" path for the first time, all while trying to suss out which kid was the dastardly cyberbully who sent hate-email to another third grader. It was plain to see who had a clue what I was talking about ("instant messenger?!?") and who was still excited about Webkins. I'm hoping that the Exchange Server configuration goes okay.

Technology's Power in Death

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because my father passed away unexpectedly last week. It's amazing that writing a sentence like that is so easy, yet the experience of it is so hard. What has made it easier is email. I was able to use email and Google search engine to find old friends of Dad's to whom he hadn't spoke in years, and decades even. Through email, Dad's seat partner in high school, with whom he used to trade notes and pose as her "date" for when she was dating boys her parents didn't like, showed up at our beachside memorial. I had never met almost half of the people at Dad's memorial, and they knew this part of him I never knew. That was wonderfully freeing. He had a life before me and I'll have a life after him. I am once again dazzled by what technology has done for me.

My mother, a technology whiz in her own right, has used Windows Movie Maker to create these tear-jerking videos composed of photos and mementos from his life. She even made a basic Web page for him. Can I add that they have been divorced for a hundred years? She's just that kind of Mom.