I stopped off at the Mountain View Public Library to talk to you before I head into the ozark woods to attend Leader U.
Cool Cat, Vicki Davis, suggested that bloggers blog their journey as they begin their blog. So, here goes.
It actually started long before this blog started last week. I have always been interested in technology (don’t they call them people GEEKS) . A little over a year ago I stumbled upon Wesley Fryer’s blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity and I was hooked. I bought an inexpensive mp3 player from Wal-Mart and listened to all of his podcasts back to the beginning. I then did the same for all of David Walick’s podcasts while I worked in the yard and garden. The message that jumped out at me from both of these that I need to be blogging my own personal learning journey. This viral thing must be contagious. I took the plunge.
I first set up a blog on Google’s Blogger.com. I had a blog in less than 5 minutes. However, David Warlick warned teachers in one of his workshops that Blooger has a “Next Blog >>” bar at the top of the page. This link takes the reader a random blog that could be anything.
I switched to edublogs.org. Here is where I hit my first hurdle: What do I name my blog? I thought about this question for two days. After all, after I picked it, I was stuck with it forever. I thought about even brainstorming a list of words or write them in a cluster map. I also had to decide on an address. You can see at the top of the screen what I ended up with, and my first and second blog post explains why.
I added most of the plug-ins available and choose a cool theme and I was up and running.
It has taken more time than I thought it would to write. Sometimes I get sidetracked looking for hyperlinks to include in my blog entries. Some writing advice I heard once was, “Stay off the internet! Stay of the internet! Stay off the internet!” I now understand distracting that can be.
I have also been working on developing a professional development blog for my school district. It has great potential, I hope it works out.
Time to get going. I’ll talk to you again later.
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I am headed to Mountain View, MO. I stopped off in Springfield at a McDonald’s with WiFi to grab a bite to eat and send of a quick blog entry. I wanted to try to write everyday of my first week of blogging, but I haven’t seemed to keep up. I hope I’ll be able to keep my blog going during the busy school year, but it will not be easy.
Anyway, I am headed to an annual leadership conference of the Missouri State Teachers Association. I am the president of the Carl Junction Teachers Association, our local chapter of MSTA. It’s a lot of fun, and I really enjoy visiting with the MSTA staff and other members. It’s held at Bunker Hill Resort on the banks of beautiful Jacks Fork River. I hope to interview for future podcasts: Kim, the official MSTA blogger; Todd and Gail, the official MSTA podcasters of The Pulse; and Kent King, MSTA Executive Director. Kent always gives an inspiring keynote, which The Pulse may podcast this year. I hope to blog some more about the conference, but you can’t even connect with a cell phone, let alone a computer. I’ll be unplugged for a while. hmm. . .Is that good or bad?
I also enjoy going to Mountain View because it is where I grew up, and I’ll be able to visit with my mom while I’m down there.
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I have to get going. Talk to you after we get reconnected. 
How does nature education fit into school 2.0? I just attended a 2-day workshop put on by our new Wildcat Glades Audobon and Conservation Center. The center won’t be done until next week, but I can already tell that it has great potential. I tried recording a couple of talks and interviewed the Education Director there. I will try to putting them up soon for my first podcast.
Now back to the question. The center does incorporate some green technology like a special materials on the roof so they can grow native plants there. It will also help moderate the building temperatures and control rain runoff. The will also include a rain garden and the runoff from the roof will collect in a cistern for watering. Chris, the education director, said that incorporating green technology was more expensive, but will result in 40% annual energy savings. If we apply Moore’s law to green technology, we can expect to reduce or eliminate the cost difference. He has also received special permission to make the center’s future web site to be interactive. Not only will it have activities, games, and lesson plans, but he wants schools to be able to enter data they gather from their trip to the center into a cumulative database. That Web 2.0 database is a good beginning.
However, School 2.0 is not just about the technology, it is about what the student do. During our workshop we used nets, observed plant and insects, and recorded them in our experience journals we made. We waded in the Shoal Creek and used nets to catch insects and animals. By observing carefully and identifying the life forms we found, we could get an idea about of the water quality of the stream. It was fun to wade in the water and walk the trail, but I was fascinated at the diversity of life that can we could discover just by poking and prodding into hiding places. My first thought when we found it was, what is it? Then I wondered what does its presence there mean? Is it good, or bad, or typical that it is there? Then I wondered why it was there? Those same questions kept popping into my mind every time we would discover something new. Kids would ask the same questions. Should I answer them, when they look at me, expecting the right answer? The answer is the difference between School 1.0 and School 2.0. School 2.0 is about investigation and connecting what they find with the student’s life. School 2.0 is not about the technology, its about the kind of learning that takes place.
I still had a great time learning with technology I took along with me. I had never been so engaged deciding when to take pictures and when not to. I decided that I would take picture for 3 purposes. I would use some in my classroom to teach about plants and animals. I would upload some to Flikr to share pictures of the new conservation center and the one of the few Chert Glades left in the world. I would try to include some in this blog entry and the future podcast entry (we’ll have to see whether that works). I was also very aware of the sounds around me, so I could decided whether or not to record the sound with my digital recorder. It wasn’t necessarily the technology that had me so aware and engaged in the activity, it was the potential pictures and sounds that I could record with it and later use.
At first glance, School 2.0 might seem to be the antithesis of nature education, but this ecology workshop spurred me to think on a deeper level about what schools in the 21st century should look like.
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School 2.0, which comes from th term-Web 2.0, are new buzzwords in tech ed. First, Let’s understand what web 1.0 before we talk about web 2.0. Web 1.0 is most of the web pages on the internet that you visit. It is read-only. You read it, look at the pictures, passively absorb the information, and gradually let it evaporate out of your memory. Most of the information is lost in the 7 +-2 seconds it is retained in short term memory.
School is often much this way. I have been guilty of this too, I would pour out my knowledge for my students to soak in. I would then question them, or even give them a test. Then we would move on to the next Grade Level Expectation. Unfortunately, the knowledge they soaked up evaporated after it was not longer needed (and sometimes before).
Web 2.0 is much different. It is also called the Read/Write Web. You can read it. You can WRITE it! It is a conversation between the student and his or her audience. Kind of like the conversation we’re having right now. What conversation you ask? How do you write the Web? We’ll get to that in a moment. Through blogs(like this one), through wikis, through social networking, through social bookmarking, through photo sharing sites like Flikr, we communicate with each other. We talk. We share stories. We make connections. We know the brain works by making connections between neurons. Our brains connect ideas to our current thoughts and connect to previous ideas in new ways. By communicating about our ideas with others we all connect new ideas and perspectives to previous ideas. We learn to talking to others and with others. The wonder of Read/Write web tools is that people we talk to don’t have to be in the same room or even in the same hemisphere. That could be anywhere on our flat earth.
Learning in school 2.0 should be 2-way also. The students shouldn’t just be consumers of knowledge. They need to create knowledge. When students actively engage the knowledge on their level, wrestle with it until it comes out in the shape they want it in, then it will stick with them for life. What do you remember from your school career? Is it all the textbooks you read and information you consumed, or is it the things you made with your own hands or with others? Students need to talk about what , write about, and make things about they’re learning. They need to connect with the knowledge, connect with others, and connect with themselves in order to make the information theirs.
You’ve read all this about communicating and connecting, but I still haven’t answered your question have I? How do we have a conversation if I’m doing all the talking? You haven’t had your turn to talk yet have you? Here’s how you do it: at the end of this post is the word “comments” in orange. Click the comment link to leave your comments. It doesn’t have to be on this post, it can be on any post. Tell me your thoughts about my thoughts and we’ll continue our conversation.
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