Classroom Changes Afoot.

Holidays are when ideas begin to mull around in my head.  The summer holidays usually are the worst!  I make huge plans, and then I return to school, and reality hits!  It’s then I find the nitty gritty of implementing those plans takes a lot more than I anticipated in those lazy, hazy days of summer.

However, this isn’t the summer break, it’s the two week mid-winter break.  Ideas of how I want to make changes are entering my mind.  I am blaming it on the fact I sat in an office for last term instead of a classroom.  Normally my mind is mush at the end of a term and ideas have fled.  Oh, and the second culprit, Twitter.  It brims over with such great ideas.

Firstly I got drawn in by the idea of the Daily Five.  It’s a way to organize and structure the literacy programme, as shared by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser in their books, The Daily Five and The Café Book.  I see there is a possibility of structuring Maths in a similar way; however I will leave that for the time being. 

This structural idea appeals to me:

ü It encourages students to be responsible and independent. 

ü It allows me time to work with individuals and groups. 

ü There are also times when I can meet for whole class input. 

ü Once I get organized each student will have their own goals that they are working towards.

ü  The Daily Five ensures that students keep those goals before them daily.  We have often previously set goals and somehow during the term they have been lost, only to be remembered when we reflect towards the end of term.

So that leaves plenty to get organized.  And I also need to make a general large picture of the social studies unit to be entered into for the coming term.  There are plenty of other ideas also rolling around inside.  Not new ideas, others have all been there before me, but I am walking the path for the first time.  Fortunately great teachers have shared places on the internet to explore and obtain more information.

Subsequently I looked at the two sisters website and noticed the designs of some of the classrooms. I heard in my head, “What if…..?”  What if I made some changes in the layout of the classroom. (I am a structural control freak, you need to know that!) I decide where the students sit, I carefully craft a seating plan each term.

But what if…. Every student didn’t have a desk.  Computers are wonderful in the classroom, but they take up room and they have to be where they can be cabled into the internet ports, although a wireless upgrade is hopefully coming very soon. I use a rather large kidney shaped desk, that I like but has a dangerous wobbly bit on it.  So I am thinking:

ü Get a jelly bean shaped desk I can use.

ü Find a two seater couch

ü Rearrange the class library

ü Organise how to store student gear.

ü Remove some of my filing cabinets

ü Gather up some cushions

ü Make up some listening boxes

ü Put my dibs on a  low table or two

ü Wonder how many actual desks to leave

My classroom is generally the last thing I organize.  My walls are never anything to write home about.  There are other things that take my time and energy.  But this could make a difference to learning and I am rather energized by the thought. 

There is a thought going around in my head about how students will cope with this.  I am thinking that I will pre prepare but nothing too radical until the students return.  Then I will get them to think about the classroom and what if…?  I will ask them to come up with a design, and get their thoughts on how many desks we need, where we could place things.

I already have my jelly bean desk.  I spotted it on Trademe, now I just need to organize the transport.  I will be able to use it for working with groups of students and it can also double up as a working area for them when I am not using it.  I have my eye on a 2 seater couch that will be local and easily picked up, and very cheap.  Nice.

Creating the hub of my PLN

How do I organize the way I can tap into my PLN and other places that I use frequently ?  The hub of the network. That’s what PLN Challenge#6 is asking us to think about.  At first I was going to give it a miss, however I decided to do a little “spring” cleaning. 

I now have things slightly more accessible and I am happy with it.  I think that’s the essential part, it has to work for you.  That said if others post on this, I will be looking at what they have done, as something may stand out to me as a great idea.

This is how my homepage looked before the spring clean.  It worked, however there were a few double ups and it didn’t have that kerb side appeal!

Now I have changed the classic theme and put in Ninety mile beach. Far more relaxing and refreshing to view.

I like to work with tabs so across the top I have:

                                Diigo

                                Hootsuite

                                My class and teacher blog

                                Igoogle   (my homepage)

On the next line I have:

                                Evernote clipping tool

                                Bit.ly url shortner

On the next bar there is:

                                TKI  (Website for NZ teachers)

                                My SchoolTube account

                                Ilearn  (Collaborative website.)

                                NNWP writing lessons Ning

                                My You Tube site

                                My Glogster site.

I have now put two pages on my iGoogle site after reading the challenge post.  I have shifted my personal interest  links to this page.  On the homepage I have added in a feed from my Google Reader and Facebook.  I do have some educational links on Facebook, however family things also come in there and I like keeping an eye on it, so have given it prime real estate! I may add the Diigo bar as well later on, the problem when we have our laptops upgraded as teachers, is that it has to be set up again and some things get missed.

Now as I do this I acknowledge there are a few places in my links I haven't been to recently.  Like clothes we don't wear I guess they should be deleted. However I am going to hang on to them for awhile longer and try them on again!

Now when I turn on my computer at school in the morning, a good cup of coffee and I will be ready to go.

Evernote - Teacher Helper.

Evernote is a free web tool that I recently came across through reading Richard Lambert’s blog . Later I listened to a prerecorded webinar given on Wednesday eT@lking by Graham Clark. 

Evernote is for

            PC

            Ipad or Ipod Touch

            Iphone or Android.

If you have it on two or more such devices it will sync automatically and notes you put in using your PC will be found on for instance your Ipad when you next open it up.

Evernote allows you to keep notes that include text, photos, and audio. I cannot see any way of easily creating audio on your PC, however on the other devices it is in the toolbar and is very easy to add a voice to the note.

 If you pay $5 a month you can include all kinds of documents and video.  At present I am only using the free tool, however as I begin to collect information I may move to the paid version.  The free version allows you 60mb a month.

While I will use it to collect, sort and tag a variety of information I want to use it to collect data about students in one place so that it will help me to track what they are learning through the year.  For example the class has just finished a Science Fair project.  I have photographed these and put them in students’ notebooks.

Evernote can be downloaded from their website.  Apps are downloaded from the app stores.

There is a web clipping tool which should also be downloaded.  It sits on your tool bar and gives you the option of clipping the url, the whole article or the page.

If you set your preferences under Tools you will also be able to choose from a drop down list which notebook you want to put the note in.

A clipping tool is also added to your email and if you want to save a special email you can put it into you notebook.  For example I just did it to remind me of a password I want handy for a website.

If you are on your ipad you can also clip to your notebook using the email address assigned to you by Evernote when you join.  The following video shows you how to do this. I haven't yet mastered this aspect!  Clipping from your PC is far easier.

If you are starting a new notebook this can be done from the tool bar at the top. Once the new notebook is made you are ready to start adding notes to it.

The new note can then be clicked on, a title given to it and it can be tagged. Some teachers choose to tag by student name within a notebook.  I prefer to set up a notebook for each student.  I then tag as well, so that I could for example find all science information if I wanted.

If students had their own devices they could have Evernote on say their Ipod Touch and they could track their own work e-portfolio style. 

I like this free tool and I can see that it is going to be very useful.  I am looking forward to using it next term when I return to my classroom.

If you don't already use it I suggest you give it a go.  There are many uses for it outside of education.  Try it.

Making Time to build Your PLN.

When we are starting out to build a PLN the idea and task can be a little daunting.  It did to me at the beginning.  And really I still am at the beginning!  It does take time, but it doesn't need to be a lot of time.

In the most recent Edublogs PLN challenge Sarah Poling mentions the idea of spending 15 minutes a day, which will over a period of time make you very competent at what you are learning. For myself I then take this and say well I will spend some time most days.  Sometimes it will be more and sometimes less.

photo © 2010 Eric Lockheart | more info (via: Wylio)
I started out in a small way and joined the classroom Edublogs blogging challenges run by Sue Wyatt, for the last few years.  I didn't realise at the time that I was beginning to build a PLN.  I thought I was just getting into the world of classroom blogging and it was away to connect with other teachers and classes. My eyes were opened to the learning going on in other classrooms and I wanted that for my class too.  At this time I was introduced to the use of Google reader, firstly to follow blogs in the challenge, then my student blogs and finally I now use it to follow teachers who I want to learn along with.

Earlier this year I joined the Edublogs Teacher blogging challenge and through that I found more teachers, learned along with them, or was amazed at what some of them were doing far beyond where I was.  Through that I became aware of some of the webinars that were available from such sources as Techtalk Tuesdays and I have joined in occasionally with those.  Recently I could not be at the live webinar but I connected in later to listen to an Evernote webinar.  Afterwards I spent some time setting up Evernote to track my students, as I had seen suggested my Richard Lambert on his blog.  He had presented a webinar on Digital Storytelling, I attended that, have since bought his book and want to start out on that particular journey.

During the Teacher Blogging challenge I decided to join Twitter.  This came as a result of seeing how teachers in the blogging challenge were using it.  I have started very small.  I usually link into it quickly a couple of times per day.  I am still learning the conventions of Twitter.  I was working with a student recently, and was having to remind her about putting in full stops.  During our last session she said, "Right now I put in a full stop." Then  had to be reminded again later.  I thought to myself why can't she do this all the time.  However I was reminded of that little thought later in the evening when I sent off a tweet without the hash-tags it needed. I had used them properly in another tweet, but forgot again.  I then understood where we both were in our learning steps!  It helped me be far more compassionate towards both of us.  Today I have been learning about the Structured Overview of Learning Outcomes (SOLO) and the experience made even more sense to me.

As you may be able to see, I think I am building a PLN in a way that is particular to me.  I am finding that as I  participate in something I am meeting up with people I have met up before so I am deepening links with some people.  It is then leading to something new, joining up with something new.  And so the journey goes on.  One thing leads to another. I want quality rather than quantity. So my goals for building my PLN are:

1.   Spend some time on it each day.
2.   Comment on people's blogs that I follow.
3.   Spend a little time surfing through the latest updates on Twitter.
4.   Click on links that interest me in a tweet.
5.   Connect with others on Twitter as I see the opportunity.
6.   Each day spend time with one idea gleaned.  Explore it and decide it I am going to depth it.
7.   Recognise when I have a sense of fullness, small bites will be enough.
9.   Track how gradually my PLN and my own skills and knowledge is growing.
      (For example my New Zealand contacts have grown as I have consciously set about to develop this.)

photo © 2010 Hartwig HKD | more info (via: Wylio)

So what about actual time?  Sometimes in the morning I spend a little time glancing at my Google reader or Twitter. In the afternoon/evening  I might read on Twitter or engage in blogging. The weekend sometimes gives me some time as does school holidays as well. However I have less time for reading, watching TV, chores, and in person people time. It’s rather like budgeting with money, if you buy this then you can’t buy that..

To some extent what I choose is governed by what is going on around me or within me.  However I find that whatever I am passionate about time isn't a big factor.  I just need to remember I can't have it all.  We are time bound creatures!  However we have the gift of choice.   

Technology

Do you ever stop to reflect and be amazed at the ICT  that we have available to us today?  I do!  I was reminded of it again this weekend as I introduced my 86 year old Dad to the Ipod Nano, 6th generation.  I am not sure who was more stressed, him or me.  Dad because this was so new and amazing to him, me because I had bought it for him and I wasn't sure if he would love it as much as I do! Dad said his Grandmother would roll over in her grave at the thought of such a thing!

photo © 2011 Jason Bache | more info (via: Wylio)
It is so small, and there it was dangling at the end of his headphones.  No ear buds for him!  He was worried he was going to lose it, because of its size.  I thought, keep an eye on the headphones and there at the end will be the iPod.  He loves to listen to music and was amazed that we could put a whole lot of his CD's on it and still have huge space left.  I have put a few audio books on as well hoping he will get hooked into them.  We shall see.  He wakes in the night a lot and I am hoping that the iPod will be good company.  I think he is getting the hang of it, I will check in for the next few days.  I laugh at my own experience with this iPod, last year my 5th generation made awful noises and never went again.  I got the 6th generation.  For awhile I couldn't work out that I had to take the sticker of the front that showed the apps! And Dad is worried!!

I think back to the early and mid nineties when we had Apple Macs in my classroom and the one next door.  The teacher next door, Vanessa and I, attended a course in Multimedia in Education at Wellington College of Education.  Towards the end we had to present our own multimedia work.  The two of us were using Hyperstudio, I had spent hours putting my presentation together, with cords everywhere linking to the TV etc. I finally finished it.  But how were we to show it to the others?  We had no way of getting it there.  Think today of all the ways, there would be so  many easy ways.  We had to bundle up the monitor and hard drive and take the whole Mac Performa into Wellington.  Believe me it was heavy. I think too of our school intranet.  It rarely worked and I often ran down the corridor to jiggle a connection.  The internet?  Well that was very odd and I believed I'd need to be highly educated to understand how to log on to it!  How technology has moved on!

I enjoyed watching a recent TV series, Downton Abbey.  In the last episode the telephone had just arrived at the Abbey in England.  The butler was practising answering it, and he wasn't very sure of it. It was very humorous. A little like Dad and the iPod Nano.  I've told him about the iPad and I must show it to him some time.  In another twenty years I wonder what the world will be using for ICT.  Probably something not even imaged as yet.

What memories do you have of the early days?!

Twitter! Why Not?

photo © 2010 Steve Garfield | more info (via: Wylio)
When I mention to others around me that Twitter is great for teachers they say, "No way!" and to some extent I can understand that.  We already have very busy lives, get caught up in Twitter and there goes more time.  I held out against Twitter for quite awhile.  Turned a deaf ear.

However in January when I participated in the Edublogs Teacher Blogging Challenge I decided to dip my tootsies in.  It wasn't that bad!  Actually it was very good. A Twitter user only uses it as it suits them.  You might just follow others and pick up ideas.  That's one thing I do, I now have a number of people I follow who share great websites and ideas.  I test the ones I like the sound of.  Sometimes I click further onto the web site they are sharing.  Imagine my surprise today when I clicked on a website and found a face staring up at me that I knew. I couldn't believe my eyes.  I had taught with this Principal back in the days when he was a Deputy Principal at our school and I have a lot of respect for him.  So now I have the link to his blog on my blogroll.

One of the reasons I followed the link was because I follow mainly Australian and American educationalists.  They are great, yet I need a little more New Zealand in my diet, for the very reasons that TraintheTeacher shares.

Occasionally I share my own comments and thoughts on Twitter.  Not often, I am still getting used to it.  I occasionally retweet. Tweeting is like mini blogging.  Ideas are shared very succinctly.  You call in when you have time.  Learn a little more about it when you have time.  At present I am learning about #tags.  I haven't got into any of the'live' chats because the overseas ones are on at a time when I am working or asleep.  If you read this and have ideas on any good New Zealand Twitter people to follow let me know.  Maybe if I Twitter about it I may get a response as well.

If you are not a Twitter user I encourage you to try it.  Just small.  Don't even tell others you are trying it. Find a few people to follow.  See who they follow. Follow them. Start here and read Kathleen Morris' post about Twitter.

I Deleted my PLN!

photo © 2009 Sarah | more info (via: Wylio)
With one swipe of my finger (accidental you understand) I deleted a number of blogs that I follow.  These blogs I discovered while doing the Teacher Blogging Challenge earlier in the year.  All I intended to do was some tidying up, as I begin a new challenge about PLN's.  Memo to self, do not use my ipad2 to work on my blog. I can end up doing something I don't want!!

However it isn't as bad as it seems. You see I have other links to a number of these educators.  I have some of them in my Google Reader, where I quickly can see there latest posts.  On my iGoogle home page I have some more.  And my final port of call will be Twitter.  Well, actually there is one more.  I can go to the Edublogs Teacher Challenges and pick up some there.  So all is not lost.  I can probably restore the ones I want to keep over the weekend.  However one swipe of my finger on the ipad2 will take a little more time restoring on my laptop.

I want to continue developing my PLN.  I like the idea of small is good.  I find if I get too large I can't interact.  How does  a busy teacher get the time to follow what's happening on Twitter?  There is so much excellent material being shared.  I think this is a place I need to work on.  I still haven't got a handle on the hashtags so that needs to be mastered.  I don't use Tweetdeck and I am not sure that it would be of extra value to me.  However I am prepared to be open about that.  I don't use a mobile phone much. However soon I will need to upgrade because I have quite an old phone.  I am thinking maybe wait to the iphone5 comes out. That may keep me more connected.

I enjoy learning from teachers around the globe.  I can learn things that otherwise may never cross my path. I am a person who gets easily lulled to a state of boredom attending professional development that is not engaging for me.  Yes I do attend engaging PD as well, but not all the time.  What I like about a PLN is that I can engage with the ideas and learning that are relevant to me at the time. I may not know I want to learn about it until I see someone share about it.  I love that I don't have to 'leave home' to do it.  No travel!  Now that's a bonus.  I am presented with a lot of quality information, guidance, and good practice.  It makes me want to strive to lift my teaching practice, it opens up doors and possibilities.  Through the blogging challenge I began to keep an eye out for webinars that might give me new ways of seeing things.

So, blogging, Twitter, Google reader and iGoogle have been my main ways of developing my PLN.  I look forward to this challenge as a way of becoming more active within it.  I need to be realistic.  I only have a little time and so I want to build the most effective PLN for me.  I am also aware that I need to make time to contribute as well as learn.

Attribution:
Image from the Daring Librarian.
Image: 'PLN_DimSum' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43666171@N07/4806404770