From the vantage point of an MLTI (1-1 laptop) middle school in Maine, it is hard for me to divorce technology from instruction & learning. The grade 8 team here, my team, is probably the most technology-skilled in the school. We use our daily team times, as well as other times, to share skills and student use ideas. One thing that I have learned since coming here 4 years ago is that "location" of technology plays a large role in its use. For example, we have a wall of unused digital equipment in the library, 2 unused DVD recorders in the computer lab, and room full of rarely used (and high end) digital production equipment in the HS. I have gotten three grants to purchase support technology for the Team: the scanners, cameras, probes, and G5 Mac are used all of the time. In fact, keeping track of them has become a problem. These are accessible, and they are used mainly by the kids - training is not an issue because they train each other. Designing performance tasks is not difficult because we talk with each other and build off of each other's successes.

Side note: the team as a whole has gotten a boost of energy from the enrollment of two teachers in the National Board Certification Program. Because it has a profound tech element, and because it stresses methology as much as content, the preparation for the Certification has led to numerous discussions and lots of exploration of new things. I recommend it as a spark to any public school or private school with certified teachers.

Another side note: We are now beginning to use Backward Design curriculum planning, and I find that the availability of technology use as a choice flows right along with BD - because the focus is on the learning objectives, not upon the methodology. Unless, of course, the method is the learning objective, which is not unusual in my class. That objective might, for example, be mastery of note taking on index cards, or it might be mastery of note taking in NoteShare. The skills are different, and in the middle school they need to be taught discretely. Choice comes in other ways: topic, demonstration of learning, writing voice, etc. The technology is just a piece of a much larger picture.

That said, I do believe that we are not doing our job if we ignore Web 2.0 as a tech phonom. I have had to fight for the release of my very protected wiki from our Bess (and a 2nd filter!). I have lost the battle for a social networking site and for teacher access to application installation, to the NoteShare network server, and to an "open pipe" for video conferencing. There are times, I think, that top-down control of technology can (for valid reasons at times and with good intentions) inhibit the best integration. My solution? Educate the Administrators and the parents.

I definitely agree that we need to educate the administrators and the parents. On the other hand we have an obligation to protect the children that we teach. How do we get our students actively using web2.0 tools and protect them at the same time?

Gary,
I recently joined this discussion group and have just visited the link that you posted concerning Computers as MindTools. Very nicely done...worthwhile. Thanks.

Karen,
One way I could see us using web 2.0 tools at teaching aids would be to create a classroom-only social networking site (www.ning.com is a free site). This has discussion boards, blogs, home pages, tools for sharing videos and pictures, and more. By making it a classroom-only site, you have an opportunity to teach safe online behavior in a real life context.

Two other thoughts - I use password-protected blogs as an alternative to written "Readers Response Journals," and also use blogs in running an annual Online Poetry Slam involving my school and up to 13 other schools worldwide.

Bill,
I would love to learn more. Is it possible to limit access to the ning.com site. What blog sites do you use for your password-protected blogs?

For ning.com, you can choose a "private" setting which allows only selected people to view and join your social network. The password-protected blogs I use are run by a friend of mine named Keith Mack, who lives in northern California. I buy access through the LiteracyWorkshop.org website (a listserve which I moderate and which Keith hosts). He offers a number of other services to interested teachers, largely to help offset a portion of the cost of hosting us. Our Poetry Slam project is also run off Keith's equipment: http://www.literacyworkshop.org/poetryslam/poetryslam.htm

If you haven't already, you should check out Gary Ackerman's excellent blog on NELMS. The most recent posting is on the NELMS Technology Committee's work:
http://www.nelms.org/blog/index.php?blog=2...ore=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Among other things, it invites people to add comments giving their "ideas and suggestions for how NELMS can support your work with technology." Please stop by and add your voice!

My district is in the process of writing ICT curriculum and we are curious what other districts are doing. Do you have technology teachers or integrators? What is the ratio of teacher/integrator to schools or number of students? Is your ICT (Technology) curriculum a separate curriculum or is it integrated into the core subject areas. Those of you in NH, have you modified your curriculum to include the ICT ePortfolio requirements?

Thanks in advance for your response to these questions.

We're a private school, about 120 students (22 in the middle school program) so it's a bit different, but...
We no longer have what we called a "Director of Academic Technology," who was a resource person to faculty for use of technology, and we haven't had a technology course per se since the '90s. We have tried to integrate our ICT curriculum into the core subject areas, with varying degrees of success. Our middle school program is in the process of examining whether there are holes in the technology area of our curricula, and how better to coordinate tech teaching across the different areas.

From Freeport, ME - The MLTI program has put an application on our laptops that can be used to introduce our students to Web 2.0 experiences: NoteShare. Also, they have given all middle schools accounts with StudyWiz, an online collaborative community that is "private." I am working with NoteShare notebooks, shared both through our network and over the net (using IP addressing), to show students how to make Comments and how to use threaded discussions in collaboration. With another teacher, Shawn Favreau, I will be also exploring the Chat and Discussion boards built into StudyWiz. Shawn and I are both finding that we can not assume that students really understand how to take advantage of either asynchronous or synchronous digital communication. I have had to set strict guidelines for contributions - "fluff" comments are an instant response from most of the students in any class group. Flushing out meaning or value in another's post is NEW and it is HARD. Shawn is finding that some topics, such as those that touch upon personal values and experiences, can be more easily explored through the StudyWiz chat - which is to say, students express their own feelings and thoughts more freely that they would in a classroom discussion or roundtable. However, they are NOT responding meaningfully to each other. This, we agree, has to be modeled and taught. The advantages of NoteShare as a teaching environment are that it is (1) instantly updated by each contributor [unlike StudyWiz, which takes too long to refresh screens] (2) editable - I actually highlight some responses, project them, and we edit them as a group - I also use the editing tools to comment directly to student authors, just as I do when I respond to their writing pieces. My hope is that the modeling will result in students who can use the editing tools to enhance collaboration and collaborative decision making. They are, by the way, planning group digital presentations in response to a novel we are reading. Each group is comprised of 3-5 students from other core classes. No f2f allowed (although, interestingly, 2 of the 16 groups are sneaking this...).

We tend to believe that because our students are active online, in real time, they will quickly transfer their skills to classroom uses. Nope - we can't take this for granted any more than we can assume they can make movies because they are handy with a camcorder.

I've been having some difficulties with videoconferencing with Skype and, while I have some ideas to test out, I'm also wondering what other videoconferencing tools people are using. In particular, is anyone out there using Wimba, and if so, what do you think?

Here's a link to an award-winning blog posting on technology in education:
http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/i...echnologically.html

Here's a sample quote:
"If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write. "

Your thoughts?!

Bill,
I'll be interested to hear what your middle school comes up with regarding tech integration. I think a lot of schools are struggling with the same issues.

Elizabeth,
I agree that we can't assume prior knowledge or the ability to transfer knowledge from one platform to another. What we need to do is to use the technology to get the students engaged and then follow-up with exercises that will help them to transfer the knowledge. Unfortunately, we still need to figure out what those exercises need to be. Please share whatever you come up with.

I have been playing around with the Senteo remotes from Smartboard and was wondering if anyone else has some unique ways of incorporating them into the classroom besides the typical review game type activity. Has anyone used them for assessment? How about as a questioning technique during a class mini lecture? The kids really like them but I do not want the novelty of them to be the only reason to use them. I would like them to become a valuable teaching tool.

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