Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Connecting

  • Calling for help in high school tech workshop development in English and en français

    I will be facilitating two workshops, essentially identical though different ;) , on integrating technology into secondary school classrooms. Specifically Language Arts, History, and Science.

    When it comes to workshops, teachers want practical ideas that they can use in their classrooms so I will be organizing the workshops by practice first and then filling the theory in as we go, as it is needed.

    Oh, they are identical but different because one is for English secondary teachers, one for French.

    Ideas I have so far:

    Digital Storytelling as the basis for integrating tech not only in the language classrooms but in the other classrooms as well

    Demonstrating examples using:

    • VoiceThread
    • Video
    • Blogging
    • Collaborative creation (using googledocs kind of things)

    Here are the workshop descriptions:

    Technology as part of the learning process: Specific activities that integrate technology in the Secondary classroom.

    In this workshop we will explore specific ways to integrate technology into Secondary Language Arts, History, and Science classrooms. It used to be that technology was an add on, something extra that many of us believed we did not have time for given the reality of rigorous curriculum and time constraints. Now, technology use is part of the curriculum, part of the learning process. We will look at specific ideas that can be used in the classroom – digital storytelling, blogging, voicethread, video, and other collaborative or individual activities – and how they are related to curricular competencies.

    The material we cover, as well as ideas for further exploration, will be added to the website Teaching is a Verb – Enseigner, C’est Agir. The website is set up as a blog and I welcome your comments and questions as they can help me to design a workshop that best addresses your needs.

    ———————-

    La technologie et le processus d’apprentissage: des activités spécifiques qui appuient l’intégration de technologie dans la salle de classe secondaire

    Il était une fois que la technologie en salle de classe était une activité supplémentaire, quelque chose qu’on faisait si on avait le temps après le ‘vrai travail’ du curriculum. Maintenant, la technologie fait partie du curriculum, du processus de l’apprentissage. Durant cet atelier je vais vous présenter des activités spécifiques que vous pouvez utiliser dans vos salles de classes – le récit numérique, des blogs, VoiceThread, vidéo, et d’autres activités de collaboration et non – et comment ces activités sont liées aux compétences du curriculum.

    Le contenu de l’atelier, en plus que des idées pour l’exploration supplémentaire, sera affiché au site web Enseigner, C’est Agir – Teaching is a Verb. En fait, ce site web est un blog alors je vous invite à me laisser vos commentaires ou vos questions, car ils pourraient m’aider à créer un atelier qui répondra plus précisément a vos besoins actuels.

    Any ideas for me? Things you think are must haves? Things I should avoid?

  • Google knows my friends and family, cool or creepy?

    In writing a comment for Mr Gonzalez’s post about his plans to use iPads in Science, I did a little google search on iPad’s wifi issues because, to be honest, I don’t trust iPad’s network connection enough yet to use it in a classroom.

    I was surprised to see, at the bottom of the first search page a link written by someone from my professional learning community – Chris Parsons.

    Google Social Circle and Chris

    At first I thought, Cool! Look, it’s Chris! Then I noticed the fine print by the article title:

    Beta – My Social Circle – My Social Content.
    connected via twitter.com

    Has anyone else noticed this in their google searches?

    I’m going back and forth from this is cool, to this is creepy.

    On the same note, Google street view has a view of the front of my parents’ house, with my mom in it. She’s standing in their garage. Again, cool? creepy?

  • Student Grades…Who’s Responsible?

    Image licensed from CagleCartoons.com copyright Daryl Cagle, All Rights Reserved.

    I’ve been seeing this image more and more lately, each time I smirk, shake my head. It provokes a number of thoughts:

    beginning with, defensively….

    • Why is it ok to yell at teachers?
    • Why blame the teacher for a student’s failure?
    • How/when did this accountability transition happen?

    but soon morphing into…

    • Are the parents/student upset because they were surprised?
    • If so, do you blame them?
    • I like that teachers are more approachable now, though I think the teacher has a responsibility to manage communication more effectively so that we don’t get a blast in the face from angry parents.

    What do you think?

  • farmers and teachers

    From Dea Conrad-Curry at Notions and Potions in Thinking deeply about the seeds we plant:

    …I was thinking of how farmers and teachers are alike. They both are responsible to nurture valuable commodities. Their work is both science and art. They both possess intrinsic passion, returning day in and day out to work over which they have limited control, facing the vicissitudes of nature: mother nature and human nature. And they are both being moved to change by the combined forces of technology and science.

    Planting corn along a river in northeastern Tennessee (LOC)

    Telramen op de bank in de klas / Counting-frames in classroom

    I quoted this yesterday in a short post about recent blog discoveries and I find myself going back to read that quote over and over again. There is definitely something about it that strikes a chord within me. There is a notion of stability, of consistency, of basic humanity in both farming and teaching. Yet, within these stable qualities, there is a necessity for change, for constant, continual change.

    I think it is the tension between those states – stability and change – that makes these passionate professions. You need passion to nurture and to live what Dea writes about.

    As I wrote in the comment box on Dea’s blog – she helped me to see why I feel so right living out here in farm country.

  • Some wonderfully new (to me) blogs

    As always happens just after the end of the school year, I am finding I have more time (and guilt-free time, at that!) to read what others are writing. Here are some of the blogs I have found over the last few days, written by people I am looking forward to reading again.

    L’espace à Zecool – Technopédagogue, par choix et par passion…
    (roughly translated to ‘Zecool’s space – tech educator, by choice and by passion)

    The author is Jacques Cool, an educator from New Brunswick, who works in the area of creating and delivering learning systems for students, mainly online. The blog’s attraction for me is in the area of French resources, which he finds and shares with his readers. It is written in French.

    Jim Burke: The English Teacher’s Companion – thoughts about teaching teens and English in the twenty-first century

    I found Jim’s blog in a roundabout way this morning. My stats page showed his feedburner link as an incoming link to my page, I clicked on it and found some wonderful writing. Anyone that uses gardening as a metaphor for self preservation and as a method for keeping sane at this insane time of year (or at least what was this insane time of year a mere few days/weeks ago) is someone I need to keep reading.

    Notions and Potions – Thoughts about teaching and learning

    I think I found this blog through the one above, sometimes the route to a site is quite circuitous! The author is Dea Conrad-Curry, an educational consultant who owns Partner in Education, a company that specializes in professional development opportunities for educators. Lucky for us she also blogs and this bit of writing I found today is what will bring me back to her blog tomorrow, living in farm country it resonates with me.

    …I was thinking of how farmers and teachers are alike. They both are responsible to nurture valuable commodities. Their work is both science and art. They both possess intrinsic passion, returning day in and day out to work over which they have limited control, facing the vicissitudes of nature: mother nature and human nature. And they are both being moved to change by the combined forces of technology and science.

    The French Corner – the blog that’s all French, all the time

    Well, it is written in English but Samantha’s posts are consistently about French, whether it be learning or teaching the language. Samantha is studying to be a high school French teacher and obviously loves the language. This blog is rich in resources and ideas. It is also beautifully presented and I think she designed it herself, which is always a bonus in my books. Samantha will make a great teacher. I’m looking forward to going back.

    FSL Mania!

    Yes, another fsl blog :) What got me with this one is that the author is sharing books she wrote for her Kindergarten classes, along with some accompanying workbooks. Sharing is good :) The blog is written in English, the materials en français.

    Autodizactic – I really like learning

    Zac Chase is currently sharing his experiences in Africa with us – his trip to the grocery store reminds me of my first trip to a grocery store in Beijing. I, too, had never seen ‘long life milk’ before then. Now I buy it at home, it’s great to keep in the cupboard for those mornings when I ran out of milk the day before and forgot to replenish with a fresh carton. It saves me and my coffee. When he isn’t in Africa he shares stories about teaching high school students, in particular about the projects they create and how he sets up the space in which to create them, in Philadelphia.

    Do you have any wonderful new blogs you are reading?

    ps – just found a new one, a few hours after I wrote this post but I have to add it in. It’s Classroom in the Cloud, written by John, a teacher who advocates for ubuntu in education. How could I not love him?