Open House Week

This week saw a flurry of activity surrounding the use of technology in preparation for Open House. A few teachers stopped by the TLC wanting to learn how to use the Classroom Performance System. They had heard of other teachers using this as the sole means of presentation for the evening and wanted to join in on the fun. My hope is this will carry over into further use of CPS in classroom activities to enhance learning. I actually got busy and created a quick start guide for the new version of CPS software found on our computers. It is a bit different but easier to use, overall. The guide was prompted by Angie Gergen asking me to show her and her staff how to create a CPS database and enter questions into a basic multiple choice format. Angie and her staff are now able to take questions from teachers and create CPS presentations to help save teachers some time.

A few more teachers stopped by to learn or re-learn how to update their web pages as they knew their site was going to be presented to parents. Web sites are a good way to present one-way information to the world and teachers are aware of the importance of keeping these pages current although actually keeping them current is another matter!

Another teacher was motivated to create a blog after hearing how several teachers would be commenting on their blogs during their Open House presentation. A fruitful discussion resulted in him creating three new blogs for his classes that will be up and running soon. I believe a sense of community is established in a classroom when students comment to blog posts and thought a brief summary of blog use at Fremd, as I see it, would be appropriate, as well as little nudge into a new direction.

I see Fremd teacher blogs currently being used in three ways. First, teachers are using them to report on daily classroom summaries of lessons. Second, they are being used as interactive tools where students have to respond to comments to the teacher's post. Third, a combination of the first two exits. I am not aware of any Fremd teachers who are using students to make a post that summarizes the lesson of the day, however. The idea is to use students as daily scribes. This concept has actually been used by teachers for a few years. High School math teacher Darren Kuropatwa has been recognized by his peers as a pioneer in this area. The link above makes for good reading. I love his thoughts about the scribe posts actually becoming a 'text book' for the course as it evolves throughout the school year. Imagine being able to return to a certain point in the school year and re-read posts to review the area(s) where learning was especially difficult. It seems to me, without trying this myself, that scribes would automatically become more attentive in class especially if no one knows who the scribe will be for the day! (Yikes!) All students would know that their peers will by relying on them for an accurate summary of the lessons!

Teachers who have students respond to blog postings already know this aspect of blogging helps them see areas of weakness in their own teaching and student learning. The same type of teaching reflection could also take place with a scribe system in place. Teachers could also begin the next day with a class reflection on the scribes post the prior evening.

One way to jazz up a blog post is to add some photos or videos that might correlate to the days lesson summary or response type post. TeacherTube and YouTube provide a wealth of material. What about podcasts in a blog post? Can do! Technology even exists where you can phone in comments to your blog. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about adding these to your blogs.

Nicole LaBeau uses simple Smilies from SmileyCentral.com to add some eye-catching fun to her posts. I love them and have begun using them, too! Thanks, Nicole! Currently she can only add them from home as the SmileyCentral site is filtered at school; something I am working on to remedy! Smilies are cool!

Nicole LaBeau's post about the 'extras' echos what I believe to be the thoughts of many teachers who are feeling that while technology can help "enhance, improve and save time," it may actually cause you to have less time because of learning curves, or the additional work that gets added to your plate since you now have more time. Nicole is entirely correct when she states it all comes down to balance and priorities.

Remember, it's not the technology tools that will make a change in teaching and learning, it's how we use the tools with our students. So, while it is nice to use the new tech tools for the 'WOW' factor at Open House, it is important to remember that technology tools must be sustained by the teacher and their use continually evaluated as to whether or not they are impacting our student's education as they are currently being used.