Thursday, February 17, 2011

Technology in the Classroom - Prezi

I was introduced to Prezi on Monday.  I met with other innovative teachers and we discussed using graphic organizers.  One of my colleagues (Hi Chris) introduced me to this.

I got to playing with it today and came up with this(Click here for link to Prezi).  I think it does a decent job of explaining some of my thoughts on the use of technology in my classes.

Enjoy.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The wiki wave

I find myself riding the wiki wave lately.  I've started using wikis a lot in my classes this semester.  I teach french as a second language and have very small classes, so small in fact that I have to combine three classes into one.  I have a grade 9 Extended French, grade 10 Extended French and grade 11 Core French combination.  The Extended french program starts in grade 5 and has students speaking french for half days until grade 8.  Once they get to high school they have to take 7 credits in French.  As you can guess it's not the largest program.  So I've been forced to combine classes in order to offer them.

That means that I am running two novel studies simultaneously.  The wiki is great, because I've set one up for each novel.  For each chapter the students have to read it and then write two comprehension questions.  Once all of the questions have been posted to the wiki they choose three to answer in the comments section.  This wiki is run through our board's server, which means the students have to logon to access it and this keeps track of who made what changes and comments.  In terms of assessment and evaluation this is very handy.  I can easily scan through, see who was contributed and assess their work accordingly.

In my grade 9 french geography class we are also using a wiki.  Except in this case the wiki is our textbook, and it's the students who are creating the content.  This is the project that is really exciting for me.  This is a different model for teaching.  Instead of the teacher being the sage on the stage, I am their guide.  So far we've talked about higher order thinking and different types of questions.  We've come up with different research strategies and way to get information for the textbook.  Our next step will be to evaluate that info and talk about what should make it into the textbook and what should be left out.  All of this would have been very difficult without the wiki and the iPads.  For this class I have 12 iPads dedicated every day.

The only unfortunate things is that the wiki can't be edited with the iPad.  You can submit comments, but not edit the page.  Luckily I have two desktop computers in my class, so the kids can do their research and prepare their info on the iPads, email it to themselves and then go on the class desktops to edit the wiki.  It's a pain in the butt, but it is what it is.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Mobile Technology: Altering Time and Space???

I know the title seems laden with metaphysical implications, but I think there might be some truth to it, in a manner of speaking.  Let me explain:

We are now in exam week.  Our first semester is coming to an end, students are panicking about exams, and finally handing in much needed assignments.  As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my grade 11 Ancient Civilizations class has been using our school's new iPads to research and prepare a board game and write a research essay.  The iPads are a class set, 24, that for the time being remains in my class.  For almost three weeks my students have used them every day.  It was a good exercise in classroom management for me and self-control for them.  Facebook is such a tantalizing distraction for so many of my students.

To get back to my point about time and space.  I've been thinking and reading a great deal about iPads or any mobile tablet computer and how to best use them.  I've come to a simple conclusion:  Every student should have one.  Fraser Speirs make an excellent case for this in his latest blog post (http://speirs.org/blog/2011/1/21/how-the-ipad-wants-to-be-used.html).  He is a teacher at a private school in Scotland, and has just instituted a 1:1 iPad to student program.  Granted he works at a private school and I work at a public one, but the argument for them is no different.   A mobile device, like the iPad allows students to complete their work on their own schedule.

An excellent example of this happened last weekend.  My history class had been working on their research essays.  They were due on Friday, but I extended the deadline to Monday.  I received an essay from a student on Monday morning at 1:35 am.  That's right I got it in the middle of the night.  The student wasn't coming in to school on Monday but was still able to send in his work.  This gets to the core of my post.  He could do it because he had access to a computer and the internet.  Many of us take this for granted, especially those of us who live in an urban area.  My school provides for students who live in a rural area.  High speed internet is not always an option, and some students can't even get dial-up!  One potential solution to this is to get those students a Wi-Fi+3G iPad, and come to some agreement on the data plan.  This would go a long way in eliminating the digital divide in our area.