Making the Rounds

Well, I made the rounds again today! No, I am not a doctor, a manager or a farmer. I am a teacher.

In the World of Matter, I live in Kansas, the first Land of Oz. At various times, I make a special effort to find teachers who also live in Kansas and use technology of all sorts.

This may just be me, but I find it is easier to find teachers on the other side of Earth, who have similar interests, than those living in my state. What has your experience been?

To find like-minded people, I look in the places where I live in the World of Electrons, for instance: Twitter, del.icio.us, Classroom2.0, TappedIn, and Diigo. Today, I found five people, living in Kansas, who teach and use technology. Some are not in the classroom each day, but they all have their roots in education. They also meet the use of technology criteria.

Why do I do this? I made this search part of my professional development plan. I want to help end teacher isolation in my state... in my lifetime. I hear about teachers in other states and countries meeting new area teachers and forming expansive collaborations in the World of Matter and Electrons. I think that is wonderful. What do you think?

To join with other Kansas teachers, to collaborate and share our past, present and future experiences would be a wonderful personal and professional goal to acheive. Kansas teachers have various opportunities to collaborate through area educational networks, yet they don't use them...even when they join.

How do you find like minded teachers in your state, region, or province in the World of Electrons?

New View

Teaching could be compared to sailing a dinghy across the ocean. When the weather is good, teaching is fairly straight forward, but any change in the weather brings a totally NEW VIEW.

It's often the context of learning that causes a change in the weather that trips up our students. Until we guide them through the transfer of learning required, rowing our dinghy will be treacherous. Teachers may think they are rowing by themselves at first.

As teachers guide students through new learning vistas, students will help us by rowing the dinghy of knowledge through the rough waters. Soon they will zoom through the new learning venue like a precision rowing team. Because we are so proud of their accomplishments, teachers may forget how difficult the weather was and how the students almost swamped the dinghy in the rough weather of learning transfer.

Often, as teachers, we need to remind ourselves to be patient with ourselves, as well as our students. When we experiment and take risks, we will need to constantly evaluate our process and product, until we are happy with the results of good teaching and learning.

A very gracious colleague of mine, Gabriela Sellart, teaches her students to write in her EFL class. She is using a wiki, so students can collaborate in editing each others' work. While the student stories are interesting, my colleague was not satisfied with their collaboration. I thought this was a great project, and I know she will guide them through this storm. I believe that the teacher and students will all be very happy with the results.

I have quoted my comments on her blogpost, More on Collaboration. If you are interested in trying this excellent teaching/learning technique in your classes, check out Gabriella's blog and read more about her project. You will learn more about uses for a wiki and how to implement an interactive application that will improve student's writing, as well as your teaching.

Using a wiki to write and edit is an excellent idea. From your posting, I noted that the students wrote and did some editing. IMHO;D You should be very proud of your first effort with your students. In the beginning, participation is a plus. Some teachers try such an activity, and not all the students even participate.

You have analyzed your project startup and the student's ability to edit each others language and discovered that they can make the language corrections as a group. Using the wiki to survey the mistakes from their writing is probably the most powerful use of the wiki itself. By using a wiki, you have a history of changes and you can get an idea of their level of competence and participation. That was a great idea;D

When starting new projects, it is not unusual for students to "appear" to have lost some of their skills. IMHO, the skills are not lost, but need to be "reorganized" within the new format, por ejemplo, the wiki. They will improve each time you do this project, and I think within a few practices, you will be very happy with your students' progress.

I am very impressed with Gabriella's project, and I want to share it with you,my colleagues;D

Lives of Teachers: Public or Private?

This is my response to an excellent discussion, by Andy Losik, a fellow educator/blogger, on his blog, HCS Geektopia. Below, I have quoted a portion of his posting that relates to problems some teachers have with online content that they have used, developed and placed in their profiles, websites, blogs and other online media.

If you don't think people are really looking at your Facebook pages or Googling you, think again. Here is a blog post from talk show radio host Kim Komando instructing parents how to find all kinds of information about YOU!

A tv station in Arizona ran a November sweeps piece on what they found on Arizona teachers' social network pages. "Teachers Expose Private Lives" dug up all kinds on new hires across the state, told where and what they teach, and tried to confront many on air.

Unfortunately for some teachers, the damage was done a long time ago. People post stuff or make crazy decisions and end up paying for them every time a perspective employer runs their name through a search engine. That stuff just doesn't go away.

You have expanded on a critically important topic that can affect the lives of many teachers.

Having a teen who interacts online, along with myself, I have had some strange experiences that lead me to believe that we may have more to worry about than monitoring our own behavior.

There is a dangerous trend among spammers and SEO's of ill repute to hijack websites, profile pages and public pages of social networking sites such as twitter, jaiku and others.

A few of my friends found our tweets online with different names, and these were part of a dating service. One of my friends was so aghast that she made her tweets private, shared the information with her colleagues and gave some suggestions to combat these thieves. I am of the opinion that might deter some, but not the hard core identity thieves.

My take home story is that we need to educate our leaders, including administrators and parents, not to jump to conclusions without verification and appropriate safeguards (including hearings) for teachers or we will end up with a witch hunt on our hands in a time when we need good teachers.

Through appropriate education on this topic, communities can aggree on standards and determine which teachers are trying their best to do right. We can learn to root out cases of identity theft, overcome a social faux pas and weed out the teachers with real social/emotional issues.

Thanks for carrying on this valuable conversation;D

What a Difference a Day Makes!

It seems that NASA and the European Space Administration did NOT say these new predictions by student are correct. It seems that NASA has already accounted for the orbits of the satellites in their collision calculations, so the 1:45,000 probability stands.

clipped from www.theregister.co.uk Schoolboy's asteroid-strike sums are wrong German kid saw 1 in 450 chance of Apophis apocalypse By Lewis Page → More by this author Published Wednesday 16th April 2008 11:06 GMT There's only one problem with the story: the kid's sums are in fact wrong, NASA's are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. An ESA spokesman in Germany told the Reg this morning: "A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake... NASA's figures are correct." It would appear that the intial article in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, which says that NASA and the ESA endorsed Nico Marquardt's calculations, was incorrect. The story was picked up by German tabloids and the AFP news wire, and is now all over the internet. because Apophis will pass interior to the positions of these satellites at closest approach, does not threaten the satellites in that heavily populated region. All in all, it seems there's no need to dust off the asteroid-busting space nukes just yet. ®

Always Check Your Variables.

Apophis is even more likely to hit Earth, according to a young student and verified by NASA. As part of his entry in a science competition, Nico Marquardt determined that one variable had not been considered in the probability of a Earth/Apophis collision...satellite collision reseting the asteroid's trajectory.

clipped from news.yahoo.com German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures: paper AFP/NASA-HO/File Photo: This artist's rendition released by NASA shows an asteroid belt. A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected... BERLIN (AFP) - A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported. NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right. The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

On a Trip To Peru

Pictures from one of my favorite fossil hunting spots with my best assistant and friends. This area is located in the layer referred to as the Pennsylvanian. Lots of invertebrate fossils, including a variety of clams, coral, and trilobites.

Tip My Hat to Twitter

I took advice from another teacher, @Helenotway, to check out Animoto You can use this website to make videos from pictures and images.

Then add music and Voila! you have a video that you can download, embed or put on YouTube. This is so cool.

This is my first trial, and it took about 30 minutes to complete, from start to finish. Oh, what I can do with this awesome web application. Thanks Helen.