Tools for communication

A last-minute idea over the weekend. (Well, an idea I had in June but decided now to act upon.) A question to pose to some of my students, one that I wanted them to think about rather than answer spontaneously in class. A deadline. So I put the question on Moodle as an assignment, and e-mailed the classes about it. By this morning (Monday) I had received significant feedback, before I even set foot in the classroom.

Quite a difference from when we first started to incorporate "tecnology," and students balked at the idea of e-mailing an assignment to me.

JP tech notes

The Justice and Peace course was new for me last year, and it's also very much about current topics; those are maybe the reasons why it's the course in which I most used "technology." But it was a little overwhelming for some at times. I think that will ease up in the future as students come having had practice with blogs and wikis in other courses. But I'm seeing if I can't somehow simplify things. Once complaint was that the students had so many places to go online that they didn't know what was what.

I'm moving away from Moodle a bit in that course. Maybe I can drop it for the most part. I had to move the wiki group assignments to Wikispaces because I have two sections glommed into one Moodle course, and it would be too time-consuming to form the groups manually. Auto-creating groups would mean students from different sections would be together.

Last semester I posted assignments on Moodle that were for the blog. Today, I thought, why not post the directions right on the blog? Duh. Maybe this will help with some of that feeling of confusion.

I'm lost without you

Dear  laptop,

I have been without you since fourth hour today. I had to wait to get home to check e-mails from the afternoon. When you are sick and in need of the TLC of the tech guys, it is then that I realize how much I depend on you. E-mails, grading, blogging, reading blogs, attendance, my department presentation, Moodle assignments, meeting notes...  At lunch I had to find a paper copy of the NCR to read, and later I scanned my "to-do" list, searching for things I could accomplish without you.Not too much, it turns out, and though I managed to get through my last classes, there were a couple of times when it would have been handy to have you there.

I'm glad you are all re-imaged and will be ready to go tomorrow.

The wiki

Just spent a couple of minutes catching up on some discussions on our staff wiki. We've had wiki's before, but now the time seems ripe; a few staff members have started to connect. It will be a place to see reports of conversations that have taken place in departments, especially about our CBL challenge, in lieu of e-mailed minutes. We are going to be a little less isolated this year, it seems to me. And our department is continuing a discussion that started at our meeting today, so hopefully we will make more progress than we could just waiting for our next face-to-face meeting.

Bringing the research to you

Yesterday I introduced our class blog, Google Reader and Google News to my Justice and Peace classes. We're just testing the blog right now, but I'll post links when we get going.

The other two are ways that the girls can start to get updates on what's going on regarding issues we will be studying, and maybe blog posts with some of the current thinking. Soon to come: I'll be showing them places to get encyclicals and Catholic perspectives, and through the course we'll try to do some reflecting and pulling things together.

For this class, though, I just had them find blogs and news about things that interest them. These are ways you can get current information about your own passions, without having to dig. The information is delivered to you, to your Reader or your News. 

The first PCG

Today was my first PCG (professional cluster group) meeting. It's a group of about 10-12 staff members from across departments. Larry gave more explanation about challenge based learning and about our own challenge, as well as an overview of some tools.

After the meeting was over a math teacher whom I have rarely spoken to asked me about Google Docs.

The challenge is on, but maybe more importantly, the conversations are beginning, beyond departments.

Back at it

Oh. My. We discussed our summer reading, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner during our staff days last week as the new school year was getting under way. Some of us remarked that we couldn't remember the last time we took staff meeting time to discuss education. It was refreshing indeed. In small groups I found out things that other teachers were doing that I had not known about, such as the cool projects in French IV. I have had a vague notion that there are pockets of innovation and experimentation going on around the school, but there has been no formal way to learn of it. Only Larry blogs, so I have known about him and my department and some other scattered stories.

That may change. Next week I will be meeting with my PCG, one of five "professional cluster groups" that will cross departments. So in time I will learn about what others are doing. Larry's taking on the groups to help us all move forward in implementing tools that will help us with our challenge: to design a challenged based project with our department to implement next year.

Exciting stuff happening at our school this year!