Friday, January 11, 2008

To Blog or Not to Blog

Now that I have overcome my personal insecurities about blogging, I have decide that it is time to introduce my students to blogging. I am also determined to make 2008 the year that I get some of my colleagues more interested in integrating technology in their lessons.

In the past, I have presented a wide variety of technology integration ideas through mandated professional development. My colleagues have always been polite in participating in my professional development and have utilized some of the tools that the administration requested of them. But for the most part, the general consensus regarding technology is that classroom teachers are too overwhelmed with the requirements of the core curriculum and data collection to learn new technology skills to incorporate into their lessons. As a technology teacher and leader, this attitude was very frustrating because I felt that the technology and tools that our students had access to were a waste. I also felt like a failure because I couldn't change their attitude and opinion towards the benefits of technology integration and for a while I stopped pushing myself to improve my teaching.

Then earlier in this school year one of my former students, who is now a high school junior came to visit me. He showed me a website that he helped to design for the Mummers' Museum and his personal blog. He made me realize that what and how I teach matters most not to the adults that I am surrounded by, but to my students. I was very pleased to know that I may have inspired him to do more with technology after he left Vare. I am also a very competitive person and decided that I could not have a student showing me up ;-). That's when I started my own blog.

So now that my blog has been established, I started a blog for our students on David Warlick's classblogmeister. Their first blog posting is a response to an essay assignment that they did with their classroom teacher. After I post all of their comments and I share the blog with the rest of our staff, I'm hoping that other teachers will want their students to participate as well. If you have any tips on inspiring and motivating your colleagues to use more technology please share your ideas.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Trying Animoto




I recently joined Linda Nitsche's Math in the Real World collaborative project called Math Connections. On her project resource page, she lists a variety of web applications which could be used to share our students' work. The first one I tried was Animoto. This is a website which when you upload your pictures, you can choose music for them and the application will create a video, syncing the music and the images. Some of my 8th grade students were with me when I created this video and decided that they would like to use this for part of there graduation presentation. This is definitely a fun application worth trying even if it is only for personal purposes.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The Power of Twitter

For the past few weeks, I have been exploring the web application Twitter. This is an amazing social networking application that gives people with common interests the opportunity to share and collaborate on new ideas. I started my exploration by finding and following some of my friends and fellow educators. I quickly discovered the power of social networking. Many of the tweets that I read, included links to web pages that advertised new gadgets or applications, blogs, wikispaces and Google Docs that contain notes that were from conferences or events that were relevant to educational technology. In most cases, the sites that I visited were new me.

I started to follow several people who obviously had a passion for using technology to motivate and engage their students in learning. One person that I began to follow is Lisa Parisi, she is a fellow DEN Star Educator and has been teaching for twenty years. In one of her tweets, she listed a wikispace that she and her students created with a classroom in New Zealand. The name of the project is Comparing Hemispheres. Not only is this a great example of global collaboration and getting children actively engaged in learning, but it also inspired me to think of a project that I could do with my kids using wikispaces. Stay tuned for further developments on that idea. Lisa also recommended a great website for book reviews which I shared with our staff called Booktagger. Thank you for sharing, Lisa.

Another person that I began following is a Principal at the Science and Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Chris Lehmann. It was through his tweets that I learned about Educon 2.0. Even though, I teach in Philadelphia and I try my best to seek and attend professional development opportunities that our district provides, discovering it on twitter is the first time I heard about this conference. Of course, a few days later an email was sent out from a district administrator advertising it as well :). But I do look forward to the agenda updates that Chris provides in his tweets.

Finally, I also want to thank and recognize Kristin Hokanson. Kristin is currently a CFF coach and takes pride in being on the cutting edge of educational technology. Kristin recently attend the Governor's Institute in Harrisburg. She had the opportunity to hear several Keynote speakers and shared her notes via twitter with those of us who could not attended using Google Docs. Not only did her notes contain a wealth of information, but I discovered a way to use Google Docs to collaborate and communicate with my yearbook committee. Thanks Kristin for keeping your twitter network informed.

I am really looking forward to building my twitter network and hope that I can contribute, share, and collaborate in order to help my students to use technology tools to become active learners throughout the 21st century. To follow me, search for tmcgrath or click the link in my side bar.

Friday, December 14, 2007

What is Web 2.0?

Intro to Web 2.0
I recently found this introduction to Web 2.0 video on Teacher Tube.


This was a video produced by Mike King. In it he simplifies the meaning and purpose of some Web 2.0 applications. In his blog post, Mike emphasized the need to build 21st century learning environments which integrate digital tools, encourage collaboration, motivate and engage students learning. As teachers in the 21st century and "digital immigrants", we need to take risks and step out of our box to continue to engage and inspire the students we teach-- the "digital natives." I hope some of you can join me in taking that risk.

As a Keystone teacher in PA, I have collaborated with an amazing group of educators. I have been inspired by what these educators have accomplished with their social networks, their blogs, their wikis, their global collaboration projects and much, much more. I hope that as I begin to develop my blog and create more lessons which utilize Web 2.0 applications, that you too will be inspired to step out of the box and begin to integrate digital tools in your lessons. Stay tuned....

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Welcome to My Cyber Cafe!

It is my intention that this blog becomes a place where educators and students can come together , share ideas and learn from one another. In my posts, I will be sharing ideas and tips for using and integrating technology tools in the classrooom. As I explore and learn more about the benefits of teaching with Read/ Write web and Web 2.0 tools in this ever changing society, I hope I can spark ideas in other educators and students.