Just when you thought you've heard it all...

In searching for an article to read for my class on laptops I stumbled across this article on teachers being trained as cops and carrying a gun in school. This is what Nevada is considering doing. OH MY! What are they thinking?? I love teaching but if they asked me to train as a cop and carry a gun to school I would be looking for a new job in a second. I am sitting here with my mouth hung open in awe of the thought of this. Are things that bad in Nevada? Is violence or intimidation the way to turn things around?
This is a must read article if you are in education at any level.
Teachers carrying guns!
I will be interested in reading your comments after you read this article.

PDA's

Let me start off by saying that I do not have a PDA. I can understand their uses and how some people need to stay connected all the time. I have a friend who has everything connected to her PDA so she never misses anything. I don't want to be that connected. I like coming home and finding a message on my answering machine. I like not being bothered if I am out shopping or in class. I like driving without the radio on sometimes just to enjoy the piece and quiet. I am not saying that if I was a Dr. or well, there is no or, I think Dr.s need to be connected all the time but right now I can't think of another profession that needs to be connected that long.
Let's take into consideration that I live in a very rural community and I am a teacher. The only thing I am connected to during the day are my students. I know we will be connecting during our class time but not through a PDA.
I enjoy getting on the internet and blogging but until just recently I didn't even do that on a daily basis. I must admit I am hooked on the internet but that is when I am home and not trying to do other things.
Because I am not from a big city nor have I ever lived in a big city my point of view is very skewed. I think if I lived in Boston or NYC and had more than an hour commute to get home I might find it necessary to use a PDA and my point of view might be very different. Our younger generations are growing up with this technology and find it a necessity. I must admit keeping everything organized and accessible in one location is an attractive feature. If you would like to learn more about PDA's I found this site to be very helpful.
PDA's

Topic of Choice-Creating a new mission statement

Next week we return to our classrooms. At Alton Central School we have a new principal who has assigned us all with the task of rewriting our Mission Statement. It is clear to me that the mission statement needs to reflect the changes in our world and what we teach, the importance of technology, and the importance of teaching our students to identify the sources of what they read on the internet and to be safe. I was reading a blog on my RSS Reader and came across this:
Dare to Dream
On her blog she says,
"If anything has and is changing radically in our world it is this sense of place and as we struggle with how it forms and informs our world I need to struggle with school as place and it begins with our goals. Schools must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate .... it should be a place of performance, invention resourcefulness, and networking . It should be a space that encourages us to negotiate and explore new places and that is what technology enables." This phrase just sums it up for me. I hope to be able to share this with our team of teachers as we struggle to rewrite our Mission Statement.

Assessment

Taking this class has helped me understand how to use the technology that is available in our school and how to create blogs and wiki's that I can use with the children as an alternate way of assessing to replace the boring paper and pencil days.
Currently we have a technology requirement that each grade level contributes to an individual portfolio. Second graders were required to have a minimum of two entries. They loved doing them! Since this was the first year it will be interesting to see how it evolves. I would love to look at how the students I had last year develop their portfolios.
We also use an online assessment called NWEA that allows children to take tests that have an enormous question base. If the student is answering the question correctly it jumps to a higher level question and the opposite also applies.
As a teacher the test scores are immediate and you can see where a child's strengths and weaknesses are. You can also see if all the children are weak in a certain area than you need to adjust your teaching.
I look forward to changing from traditional journaling in a book to creating blogs so the children can write their thoughts on their own blog page. I can already see how much better I am doing with connecting to different sites, it will be even more exciting to see the growth in the children.

Wiki Project

Below is a link to a collaborative wiki project that I have been working on with several other members of my class at PSU. I was probably the biggest skeptical when it comes to the usefulness and reliability of wiki's. That has changed! I just read through another wiki page that was created by another team in this class about how to use wiki's in the elementary grades. School starts next week and I now have a great reference page to start a blogging page in my classroom along with that I want to connect with another classroom to compare things like whether, culture, and schools.
Here is our wiki page on Touring Cities.
Here is the wiki page on using Wiki's in the classroom.
I can't wait to go back and read one of the other classmates wiki page on Web 2.0.

Science vs. artist Reading in Siemen's Knowing Knowledge

This is what Alan November was talking about in my earlier post. We can't discount or cut art out of schools. Taking this class and reading other blogs shows just how creative (or not) someone is. The blogs I like the best come from very creative people.

We need the voices of both the scientist and the artist. Neither one i s
necessarily better than the other. In some cases, a business may require
the metrics and method of a clearly-defined, scientific model. In other
cases (especially when pursuing innovation and creativity), they may
desire the beauty of learning created by the artist. Both, held i n balance
and for the appropriate task, are needed for learning and knowledge
sharing. (Siemen's Knowing Knowledge
This quote says it all about connectedness and networking!

We are all something, but none of us are everything.
Blaise Pascal109

Web 2.0

I really didn't understand exactly what the term meant so I went out and googled it. The link below might help you as it did me. It is everything we have been using, wiki's, bloggin, Flickr and tags. I still have some holes in my understanding of what some of the technolgy is and does. I find myself thinking about the internet and logging on and searching for information whenever I get a free minute. The time I am on the internet flies by.
Here is a link that might help you to understand web 2.0 better. It helped me!

O'Rielly Web 2.0