Is it possible that the blur of school is on us already?  I don’t mean school itself, I mean the endless cycle of Monday, garbage day, Friday, NFL game, Monday…I am guilty.  I have a fascination with crossing off dates.  But sometimes that’s not good enough.  I cross off months, weeks, days, and I even find myself crossing off class periods.  You can become so consumed with time that time dictates your teaching. 

How will I fill this time?  Where will I find the time?  Let’s not do that because there is not enough time.  You and your students could be missing out on great experiences when teaching becomes consumed with time.  My unqualified advice, let go.  It will get done or it won’t.   The odds of deep understanding are actually better if you fully explore an idea than if you scratch the surface of 100.  If you model the thinking and learning process well, then you can put ownership of the rest of the content into their hands.        

That said, I want to be better this year.  I myself want to let go of education being a function of time.  I want to be a more thoughtful, more reflective learner and I hope by being conscious of that, I will help others around me do the same. 

Have a great year,

I’ll tell you the Russian story next time I get a moment to type.  It has to do with 21st century tech and one student placed here in good ol’ DuBois PA, that only speaks Russian.  Let the wackiness ensue.

I would love to hear any thoughts and feelings you all have reguarding professional development and they way it is provided in your district.

Please provide me with name, experience (yrs), and location. 

Here is my problem statement:

Educators in the DuBois area school district need to provide a relevant education to their students.  Currently, few teachers are demonstrating 21^st century applications or skills in their classroom.  We believe that this is a result of inconsistent professional development and a lack of technical support.

Therefore, we will make a concerted effort to provide quality in-service training that is relevant to the educator’s aptitude and follow up with consistent skill reinforcement.  Furthermore we will make a concerted effort to provide adequate resources to educators whenever and where ever they choose to use the new knowledge or skill they have acquired.  

Research Questions:

1.  What are the 21^st century skills we want our teachers to model?

2.  How can we provide consistent and relevant training to 200 teachers?

3.  Will adequate resources encourage teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum?

I believe that feelings are relevant to atmosphere or environment so I encourage you to let it out.  If you would like to keep anything private, please note it so that I do not publish the comment or include you name on the paper. 

Thank you network.

Take Care.

Yeah! It’s finally here and I can open my mouth.  Pageflakes, the RSS aggregator and now so much more, has released it’s new edition.  I had the distinct honor, and advantage to be among the first group to demo the Blizzard Edition.  I gotta tell you it was a blast.  Dan and the pageflakes team were absolutely dedicated to getting it right.  So much so, they delayed the release by close to a month.  Was it because they were slow and unprepared?  No, it was because they took every piece of feedback we gave them and addressed it. 

Enough smoke, check out my pagecasts and play with it yourself.  I think you will find a huge amount of personalization that is only limited by your imagination.  Be sure to use the anything flake and the web page flake.  It may become your one stop on the web.

Be Good

Using information from folks like Ian Jukes, George Siemens, Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, I pieced together a presentation that I hope will get the point across.  My point, the kids are alright, we are the ones that need change.  It is my goal to introduce 20 teachers to professional networking and begin the process of changing educational practices here in DuBois, PA.

This was done with the web application Spresent and it seems to work best in full screen mode (lower right).

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.ode>

With the wide spread use of collaborative web application the question should be why isn’t everyone involved in school curriculum?  Using a wiki or Google Document a district has the power to offer business, industry, universities, and the community at large a chance to make their voice heard.  The real selling point, all of these groups can participate at their leisure. 

I am in the initial stages of trying to use this technology to accomplish similar tasks.  I have authored several Google Documents inviting the key players to collaborate.  Currently I am only dealing with administration and educators with a stake in this particular project, but I am excited about the possibilities.  Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have a virtual mentor that is an expert in the field you are writing for?  How about a representitive from the state agency to explore grant possibilities while making sure that you have the updated standards?  

Will education ever open up enough to let this happen or is this just another idea that would take too much effort?      

You can PM me at kpruitt@dasd.k12.pa.us.

If you are creating your own, please forward your public “pagecast.”  It would be great to see this come together.  

Check out the page:  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Read what was behind the idea:  http://kpruitt.edublogs.org/2007/06/07/aggregators-as-communities/

First, I can’t say that I am a big fan of the online conference.  It’s the blur of a chat room, the bad audio, and sometimes disasterous presentors that keep me watching re-runs rather than participating in real time.  (By the way, thank you to the person that thought of recording and posting presentations.  It’s like TiVo’d education ) However, Dave did it right.  He demonstarted a tool within the context of potential use.

Dave used the aggregator, PageFlakes, as a web portal.  (see it here) He set up each of his ”flakes” to aggregate certain tags (in this case foe2007scm.)  He then encouraged the students to create a blog post or tag a flickr pic.  After a few minutes and a quick page refresh, links started to pour in from the attendees.  I literally sat slack-jawed in my clunky K-Mart recliner.  It was so simple, yet so cool.  

Sure wikis and even expensive web-portals can do similar things but here, right in front of our eyes was a FREE 10 minute answer to keeping everything…and I mean EVERYTHING, in one place.  Just off the top of my head.  This is reseach, assessment, collaboration, community, and even entertainment placed into a nice neat package.

Here are two communities I am working on.  I cannot stress how ease this was.  I hope that I can energize others the way Dave unknowingly energized me.

For teachers at DuBois  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11176389   

For PA tech Teachers   http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Obviously, I am only working on local items.  I have no idea where this is going nor am I sure what the impact will be.  I can tell you one thing, the success or failure will be clear.  In fact, it will be availble for millions to see. 

I am not going to get into particulars, but during a nice conversation about using web tools in the classroom an interesting comment was posted.  The source, who ironically declines to post a picture,  questioned if using web tools is a step toward killing FTF communication and if we advocate them are we teaching our children that it is okay to ignore the human element?  Hmmm. 

Short answer, no.  I don’t think anyone who cares enough to be a teacher is advocating dropping out of society.

Long answer, this question always seems to be posed when education is involved.  Be it secondary or university is e-learning as good as FTF learning?  Personally, and I may step in it here, I feel that the e-learning I have experienced is and has been more substantial than the 4 years  I spent at a small university in PA.    How can I rationalize such a statement?  Thought you would never ask.

I agree the e-learning is not for everyone.  I am a self-motivated individual that will dive head on into just about anything that catches my interest (keyword).  I like reading, I love learning, and yes, I like that the majority of the time the outcome depends on me.  In my mind, there is no comparison between 8 weeks of on-line grad work and the first 2 years of on-campus undergrad.  During the “gen ed” years of college I was stuck paying 10,000 a year for part-time faculty that wanted to be there less than I did.  I was automatically enrolled in classes to make sure I was ”well-rounded” and was only able to sniff my interests once a semester.  I went from jazzed about running a real TV studio to a careless frat boy 2.0 seconds.  (oh yeah, and back in my day, we had to live in those 8×8 concrete cells, not these 5 room condos they get today) 

Before I go too far, I think what I am trying to say is that there is room for everything, like I said before, balance.  Technology is not going to replace FTF communication.  As human beings we long for connections.  As soon as electronic communications turns personal you know that someday you will meet that person face to face.  With the web we get to seek out exactly what we are interested in.  When I looked into grad programs it was between a $40,000 PSU diploma in curriculum and a $20,000 diploma in technology integration from Walden.  A PSU branch is within walking distance, but they did not have the program for me.   In the past I would have been stuck, but e-learning provides the platform for experts and interested students to connect and focus like never before.  There is no way a rational, educated human being can say that the 2 credit Health course with 800 people is better than an email conversation with an industry leader.   

Heck, we are all going to meet in ATL in just a few weeks and I am excited for that opportunity.  I have ”met” several people that I consider true friends and even though it may take us a few minutes to recognize each other, I guarantee we’ll be laughing and sharing stories in no time. 

Take Care and hug a friend, or as our European pals say, 

Cheers!

Ken  (flickr photo by Bonedad)         

Professionally, my wish has come true and I accepted a new position.  It will be my job to help our teachers prepare our students for the future.  That’s right, little ole’ me attempting the most dangerous job in all of teaching, teaching the teachers.  Of course I am extremely pleased with my new position, but I also realize the choas I just called for in my professional life.  No class schedule, no regular students, NO SUMMER OFF.  What have I done???  

As I sat back and enjoyed the holiday weekend, I was mindful of the battles abroad (My sister leaves in a week, stay safe Traci) and of our battles right here at home.  I am proud of the men and women of military and wish them all God’s speed.  I am also proud of the work we are doing for the education of our children.  As a parent and as a peer, I know that the future of education is in good hands with you folks around.  With your tireless efforts to improve education, you will help provide our students with balance.  I know that some day, God willing, those students will provide our world with it to. 

Hopefully this blog will soon start to take on it’s original intent, to share the journey of technology integration and professional development.  So if you are growing tired of my scatter brained reflection, fret not, soon you will also experience the wonderful world of my scatter brained ideas for technology integration.  I start writing new NETS curriculum June 11th.  Wish me luck.

Since Jeff added smiley faces I will link to his post.  http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=504.  There you can get all the information you need on October’s K12 Online Conference.