Passionate about teaching

According to blog posts I've been reading lately, I as a teacher am supposed to be pursuing my passion through social networking. Fishing, or birdwatching, or basketball, or whatever. I know at least one teacher who does that.

But I'm already investing hours into reading tweets about ed tech, and chatting online about ed tech, and bookmarking, sometimes skimming, blog posts about ed tech, and planning lessons that integrate ed tech. Then there's my daily life, and once in a while I squeeze in some minutes to read a novel.

That's it, I think! Only so many hours in a day. I think we're going to have to call ed tech my passion for the moment.

Teaching tech?

Alison wandered into my office the other day to ask, "When you did that podcasting assignment with your classes, did you ever get to a point where you felt like you were banging your head against a wall?"

She has a way with words. And she spent more class time than I did explaining what to do. I just gave them videos and instructions on Moodle and sent them to the tech guys. But there were plenty of problems. The answer was yes.

At points I feel like I am a tech teacher and not a religion teacher. If the content is taking a backseat, something is wrong. The tech part should be seamless, some of my Twitter colleagues have said. I don't teach the tech, a colleague says. They teach each other.

It has also been said that the kids are all tech savvy, and that is just not true. Some are, to a point. Some of them don't know any more than I do, and some know less about certain things. So how much class time is it reasonable to give up?

I don't have to teach my students how to type, or how to construct a decent sentence in order to have them write a paper. Do I need to be the one to teach them how to download Audacity and LAME? (Assuming I have figured it out for myself?)

Just wondering.

Staff in-service

Thought my colleague Larry did a great job planning and presenting. He presents other places, too, and preps all that in addition to his classes. Amazing.

I'm sure some folks are overwhelmed by all the information. I am to a certain extent myself, even though I was familiar with much of what was shown. Being familiar is not the same as making use of the full potential of something. And some things Larry talked about I haven't touched yet. There is so much out there.

I hope that staff members don't feel they have to immediately do everything. Pick something that looks interesting or useful, and explore.

And, if we started to utilize just one of the tools presented today to communicate more within the building, that alone would make the day a success, I think.

Looking ahead

Next semester I want to focus on making some connections outside the classroom. I'm not sure yet how I will go about it! In Catholic Theology, the chapter on "church" seems ripe for that, and maybe for a project of some kind.

In Peace and Justice (new prep), I want to do that for sure. What better way to get up-to-date information on the issues we will cover than through the internet and through people to whom my students can connect through the internet? That's the class where I plan to launch into student blogging in some way, too, though my plans are modest.

Frustration

What's the deal with students who are "forbidden" to enter a Google site I specifically invited them to? There's a lot of that. Now I have had students e-mailing me things which I then upload to the site. But we have to fix the problem, or they won't get there to see what their classmates have done.

I have these sites closed right now because I'm worried about privacy concerns, and in some cases, copyright issues. But I want to do some of that differently in the future. I want the students to have a wider audience for their work.

What about these .aup files? what happened there?

Why is one freshman pair's photo story over the limit to upload when at least three others chose that format and had no difficulties? It doesn't seem so much longer -- maybe the effects they used?

I'm thinking of dumping the paper/presentation for Catholic Theology all together for next semester, and designing a project or two tied more directly to the material we cover. The topics are so... random, with some overlapping what we cover in class but others not. A lot of energy expended, and maybe better spent elsewhere.

But...
I'm happy with the results that I've seen and heard so far from these assignments. Just have to work out the technical issues, because they take away from attention to the actual product.

More on the podcasts

Just checked my school e-mail and answered about a half-dozen e-mails from Prayer students on the eve of an assignment due. They were supposed to listen to two other podcasts, and they can't find them all. Days after the things were due, we're still figuring out stuff, or students are absent...

I have to say that last year with Gabcast it was nothing like this. Very smooth. Hopefully I will learn enough to do it better this way in the future. Because Gabcast now = $.

Funny how I would never think of letting students disturb me at home after school hours on the phone. But e-mail is okay. I like that I can be accessible this way.

Uploading

Four Google sites. Open to the class, not the public. Prayer students uploaded mp3's. Got a .wav or two, and a couple of .aup's. We'll try to figure that out during an off day tomorrow.

Frosh: some difficulties getting into the site. Some already had Google accounts but with e-mails other than the school e-mail, so the website did not recognize and authorize them to enter. Maybe some other problems, too.

I am very, very much in favor of having frosh set up Google accounts with their Mercy e-mails at orientation. If we're going to use this technology and these laptops, let's just get one step out of the way. I'm not the only teacher using Google apps.

One student couldn't upload her photostory because the file was too big. "It's really long," she said. And truthfully, I don't even know how much my Google site will hold and whether the various projects will fit. A little bit of trial and error here.

So, not everything is uploaded yet. But what I've got so far, I like! I gave a choice of formats because I hoped the girls would pick something they are comfortable with, and could be creative with and have some fun. And in many cases, I think that has happened.