Online Scrapbooking...

Here's a nifty Web 2.0 tool I found online while googling 'Easy to Use Online Scrapbooks'...It's called SmileBox, it is a unique service that helps you connect to friends and family by using your photos and videos!Smilebox helps you make animated scrapbooks, photobooks, slideshows, postcards, and eCards for ANY occasion.

Below is the roadtrip I took with my sisters a few weeks back. I used SmileBox to recap our incredible vacation:

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

What Do You Mean?

My Gratitude List
1. GOD
2. My parents
3. My siblings
4. My niece
5. Church
6. Searingtown
7. Colleagues
8. Heat
9. Chocolate
10. Coke-Cola in a frosted glass
11. Pasta a la vodka
12. Sunday School
13. Nail extensions
14. Gift of Travel
15. My salary
16. My Tempur-Pedic mattress
17. Thursday nights
18. Summer days
19. Warm blankets
20. Worn out Bibles
21. Facials
22. Going out to dinner
23. Good literature
24. Driving
25. XM Radio
26. Baking
27. Avocadoes
28. GPS
29. Google

The above is an activity you should try (at least once a year). It is called a Gratitude List, an idea that I came across while reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. In short, the activity ‘forces’ us (in a good way!) to write down a list of things we are grateful for. I chose 29 random things, and tried not to put too much thought and list them ‘off the cuff’ (please do not judge me by only the few things that I thought of quickly---especially #13!). The number of things represent my age---typical of the birthday gratitude list, where you start a new list on your birthday according to the age you are turning.

What is the meaning of this?

Meaning. This is a term that pops up all too often into my brain and makes me feel every emotion out there! When I think about work and my ‘purpose’, I am at peace. When I think about church and my ‘purpose’, I am angry. When I think about my life and the ‘purpose’ behind it, I am confused!
Here’s what I see: we are ALL searching for meaning in our lives. Daniel Pink refers to ‘meaning’ as one of the six senses that ultimately guides our lives and shapes our world. We currently live in an environment of ‘…breathtaking material plenty…”. As I look at the above gratitude list, I realize that around 16 of the 29 on my list have to do with a material thing. Am I too materialistic? (I realize I might be going off on a tangent here, but it’s easier than having to think about the purpose of my existence!)

Ok…back to the meaning of my life. And yours. For those of you who are teachers (like myself), we are constantly struggling with this! We can’t just see our career as a job, it’s a vocation! We’re meant to do this. We have a purpose; one that must be revaluated twice a year; once in August as we get ready for a new school year and once again in June when we have to hand in our End-of-the-Year Evaluations.

“What’s the point of this?” I’m sure you’ve had a student in your career say this to you, usually during math instruction (probably during some crazy word problem that you can’t answer yourself!). Conveying meaning to our students should be our daily job. This will bring purpose to your own teaching. Students need to understand there is a purpose behind every math lesson, every war they learn about in SS, and every vocabulary word they have to define in Reading. This can only truly happen if you believe in the purpose in your teaching yourself. Of course, there will be those lessons in science or math that make you wonder why you are uttering nonsense to your students, but this is usually a rare occurrence. If children find meaning to what they are doing at an early age, they will continue to search for purpose as adults.

I enjoy knowing that I serve a purpose as a teacher. That my daily routine is going towards the greater good. But what about the rest of my life?

Daniel Pink has us realize that meaning is slowly creeping into every part of our being: from the rise of yoga classes to the selling of millions of copies of A Purpose Driven Life to the Amma who goes around sharing her famous hugs. Have people always been so reflective of themselves? How do we know when to stop searching? Or is it one that’s never supposed to stop?

I realize that unconsciously, I’ve been finding meaning all along! Meaning is what has kept me going, making sure that everything I put my hands on was for the good of the world. I still have a lot of work to do, and I for sure am still seeking for the purpose of my own life, but I am at peace knowing that essentially, there is meaning behind it all. Even this entry.

Are you a Lurker?

How do we design a Virtual Learning Community that is compelling enough that it will compete successfully for the attention of busy educators? ~ Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

I have never considered myself a lurker.

According to Dictionary.com, to lurk is to lie or wait in concealment, as a person in ambush; remain in or around a place secretly or furtively. It also means to exist unperceived or unsuspected.

Am I a lurker of the world wide web?

Reading Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s blog came me new insight to the word ‘lurk’. According to the blog, there is a model called the 4L Model which describes the roles and interactions of members of an online community: Linking, Lurking, Learning, Leading. As I read through the descriptions, I realized who I really was: a lurker. One who joins different online groups (nings, blogs, education communities…etc), occasionally participates in different discussions, webinars, and may even comment to some posts. However, that’s where I stop. I don’t involve myself deeper. I just lurk from one blog/website/wiki to another.

Reading on and having discussions with my colleagues on the possibility of seeing Virtual Learning Communities as professional development opportunities for teachers opened a whole new stream of thinking for me. Although the best PD days that I have the ones I have when given a chunk of time to sit and discuss curriculum with my own colleagues, I am absolutely in support of linking with other teachers in the ‘outside’ world. Time is ALWAYS an issue, but setting apart PD time to connect with other teachers online would open doors that we never knew existed.

Busy educators, in my opinion, still take time to continue to view or ‘lurk’ on different online platforms throughout the school day. The question then becomes: What makes these busy teachers go to some sites and not others? I’ve noticed where I work, many teachers go onto DiscoveryEducation and SmartBoard links. What they both have in common is the user-friendly feature of quickly finding information. Creating a VLC or a CoP should reflect the same type of user-friendliness. This can encouraged if given the chance to be done during the school day.


I am currently a lurker. I am hoping to get out of this phase and move on to being an online learner/leader. 

Interesting Comic by Craig Bellamy

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities_small.png

How to Create a Tag Cloud

Hi everyone, I posted an episode to my podcast, Amys podcast.

Click this link to check it out:
PSA

- Amy

Digital Technology and the End of Social Studies Education

"Our beliefs about learners and tools come via Dewey and Vygotsky, and have been informed by the 'cognitive revolution' that in the last thirty years has given these ideas scientific weight:
~ Technologies as tools that amplify and extend fundamental human capacities to observe, understand and communicate about the world- tools that give us rich data, help us manipulate and think about it, and connect us with others around it in new and powerful ways." ~ Bill Tally
This article was an interesting and raised up many questions many educators, specifically ones who have been on the technology bandwagon, have been asking: Why hasn't technology in education been the tipping point yet? Three possible explanations: The teachers are to blame, schools are to blame, testing/accountability regime are to blame. I think, as a tech 'tinkerer', that a combination of all three have led to the education 'scale' to not be tipped.

The article also spoke about the purpose behind WebQuests that caught my attention. WebQuests were the 'craze' back when I was first teaching in Manhattan (over 9 years ago). We were asked to volunteer our time to spend several lunches with a professor from Columbia University, where we learned all about Bernie Dodge. Since that time, WebQuests have become a natural part of my 'teacher-speak'. However, this article raises the question of the 'ubiquitous' WebQuests: Are they purposeful? Do they represent the triumph of process over substance? Is it relevant? All these questions made me reevaluate my position on such projects.

All this reading and discussing made me think: Did education get evaluated and reevaluated when the radio was invented? Did teachers have to rethink the way they teach when the television was invented? I know these tools are different from what we are being introduced to these days, but I'm wondering if this is just a phase....

The Judgement of Thamus

"What happens to us when we become infatuated with and then seduced by them [new technologies]? Do they free us or imprison us? Do they improve or degrade democracy? Do they make our leaders more accountable or less so? Our system more transparent or less so? Do they make us better citizens or better consumers? Are the trade-offs worth it? If they’re not worth it, yet we still can’t stop ourselves from embracing the next new thing because that’s just how we’re wired, then what strategies can we devise to maintain control? Dignity? Meaning?" ~ Andrew Postman , 2005 (son of Dr. Neil Postman)
Speaking to other members of TEAM and with Brenda Dyck on this particular quote from the article The Judgement of Thamus launched a 45-minute discussion on the topic of purpose. Purpose of new technologies- are they beneficial? Do they create a division among educators’ the ‘so called’ winners and losers? This idea of the ‘great divide’ among those who are tech-savvy and those who are ‘not’ made me immediately think about my mom. She has been working as an assistant head nurse at Queens Hospital Center for the last 20 years. However, it has only been in the last 2-3 years that she has come home night after night complaining about work. Complaining about the new technology trainings she has to attend instead of seeing her patients. Complaining about how hard it is to acquire all the new tech information in such a limited amount of time. Complaining about the fact that just when she has a new piece of tech equipment learned, a new one has come to replace it. Complaining about the feeling of inadequacy.
Does this ‘great divide’ happen in education? Absolutely! I’ve spoken to a plethora of teachers who feel that the available technology (ex: SmartBoards, scanners, digital flip cameras) and the Web 2.0 tools that some are using (ex: Animoto, PhotoStory, Skype…) is making them feel very inadequate! The question that then comes to my mind is: Will this gap widen as each school year goes by? How do we close the gap?
In terms of if new technologies alter our understanding of the purpose of education, I’ll have to say yes. This is my 8th year of teaching, and my level of instruction has been enhanced due to the mere placing of a SmartBoard in my classroom. New technologies have helped me focus my teaching, keep me on track, engage my students, and actually ‘slow’ down the learning a bit [that’s a good thing]. Am I always using new technologies to its potential? Probably not, but I’m not using my SmartBoard as only a glorified whiteboard, either.

I just came back from a full day of being intellectually stimulated at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference in NYC. What an awesome experience! It was amazing to be among thousands of educators and administrators who were clearly excited about learning how to be better at what they do. I spoke to many different people this weekend, from many walks of life, and I was inspired to realize that we were all the same: we just want to carry out our 'mission' the best way we can.
One of the highlights of today's experience was to hear the plenary speaker, Sir Kenneth Robinson. If you haven't heard of him, stop what you are doing (and put it down b/c you soon will be falling on the floor laughing) and listen to the following video from a TED conference:

I’m excited about the fact that I am finally going to learn how to use Flash---a term I never thought I would ever have to use as a teacher. Being that I use my SmartBoard in nearly every lesson of the day, I constantly come across Flash games created by other teachers. I frequently wish that I could manipulate these games or create them myself! It’s always the case that every game/activity that I use ends up either missing information or providing content that I haven't taught. So, being that it is my last full semester as a grad student in TEAM, I am finally getting the chance to open the doors to the great big world of Flash.
First of all, what would I do with my new found knowledge? Here are several ways I might use Flash in my classroom this year: Following the ideas from the George Washington site, I would also create a similar task in the subject of science, specifically for the unit on light. I would have kids look at several paintings that illustrated the concept of light (with shadows, reflections, color..etc). On the paintings itself, kids would be able to click on several parts of the artwork, which would lead to learning more about how light affected the area they pointed to.
Another example of how I can use flash in the classroom is by using the technique found in the Tangram site. As an extension activity of my Geometry unit, I would create an activity where kids could manipulate quadrilaterals that they learned about to construct an image/illustration (only using those quadrilaterals or by using a specific # of shapes- 2 trapezoids, 3 squares…etc).
A third idea of mine of how to use flash in the class (hey, that rhymes--sort of!) was triggered by the Titanic site. In that site, visitors can click on an image to learn more about a specific person/event. Using this idea, I can envision teaching my students basic flash so that they themselves can create a 1 minute movie about a member of the Corps of Discovery (group that led the expedition out west in the early 1800s). Once complete, visitors to the site could click on a member of the expedition to find out more about them.I realize the countless possibilities that can come about with the knowledge of flash. I’m hoping I find the actual task of learning the program painless!