I discovered this morning during our keynote speaker that I can't just sit and listen to a speaker anymore I need to multitask. There was a backlog chat that was being projected on the walls in the auditorium where we sat. Unfortunately, I'd left my tablet in my classroom and couldn't participate. It was killing me!

So now I'm being a bad listener while in my small session... typing away, trying to catch up with my thoughts. Bad me.

My husband and I are going out of town for a few days - we're leaving Saturday morning. It'll be interesting to be away from e-mail, twitter, skype, facebook, and my rss feeder for that long! I can't remember the last day that I didn't at least check my e-mail! I'm cringing now just thinking about when I "plug back in"... how long is it going to take me to catch back up?! It's crazy just to think about. But, on the other hand, it'll be like going back to times of old (except we'll have a cell phone!). I don't even remember what it was like before e-mail... I seriously wrote my friends snail mail letters?!

I decided against assigning my Algebra 2 kids their wiki. That class is so divided ability-wise that is would have been an interesting result; I guess I just didn't want to deal with the whining that would have resulted from the assignment. Maybe I'll do it second semester. I think the learning of the tools is an important lesson, as is the actual review involved in getting their pages put together. Hmm.

The precalc kids' pages turned out pretty good. We had some issues with getting it all together, thanks mainly in part to some students (apparently in one of my other classes, not precalc) that decided to hijack it a couple of different times. They were somehow able to log in as kids in my precalc class and then editted their little hearts out. Thank goodness for the ability to revert to previous versions! Needless to say, my precalc kids were not happy about it (and neither was I!). From what I understand, one student was punished for it. It took place at his house, but he claims innocence. He was in alternative school (our version of in-school suspension) for the past 5 days and should be back in class on Tuesday. I'm interested to see if he says anything to me about it or not.

I gave the kids a follow-up to their wiki assignment where they had to go back to the wiki, look through 5 of their classmates' pages, and evaluate them. I wanted them to know what all was on it and what could have been done. Everyone seemed pretty pleased and it was funny to see how harsh they can be on grading. They also had to answer questions for me about what they learned and if they enjoyed the project and if I should assign it again. Aside from remarks about the hackers, most kids seemed pretty pleased with the project, learned some new uses of technology, and would like to do something like that again. Yay! Mission accompished.

fouss08.pbwiki.com

Check it out!

As part of the PLP process we're supposed to come up with a group project to present at our May f2f meeting. My team consists of 5 people - me (hs math), Tonya (hs computer science), Tricia (hs English), Sherry (hs Spanish), and Pat (jr high social studies). We have quite a variety of interests, so it's been interesting trying to pin down a topic.

Tonya just proposed an idea that I think is very interesting that involves screencasting lectures and podcasting lessons and posting them to our school website; I guess our principal is very interested in letting the parents know what all is going on in class. I think the idea is interesting (as long as I can get the kids to do the podcasting - I hate to hear my own voice!) and I hope everyone else agrees... this is an opportunity for me to learn about these new ways of communicating that I don't yet know about. I've done a couple of wikis (hmm... on last count, make that 4), I'm pretty active in the twitter community now (username Fouss), I have a few blogs, I use RSS feeds... but podcasting is something that I know nothing about. Could be neat.

My student teacher for this coming semester asked me to show him how to use Google Reader/RSS feeds. Thought that was neat.

I've added some new blogs to my Google Reader... here's what I found:

Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Integrating Technology in Education

Math Tales from the Spring

Mathematics Education Research Blog

Maths Class

Teaching and Learning Math

If there are any other good math ed blogs out there, I'd love to know about them!

We had an Elluminate session on Wednesday night for the PLP. I was able to do it from home, which was nice, but I was worried about how the kids (22 months and 4 1/2) would be while I needed them to be quiet and wasn't able to watch. They actually did pretty good noise-wise, but at one point I went into the kitchen and saw this:

She's a big cereal fan and I guess was getting hungry! My husband got home around 5:15 or so, which was good, but he went straight from vacuuming out the fireplace (noisy) to putting some shelves on the walls about 3 feet from where I was sitting (even noisier!).

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I'm still struggling trying to keep up with everything. I love Tweetdeck - it summarizes Twitter so nicely for me, but I find myself checking it too often. I think the PLP ning is being affected by that, and my personal/kids blog isn't being updated as often, either. I just need to find a good balance, I guess.

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I added a Twitscoop widget over on the side of this blog - thought that was pretty cool.

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My precalc classes have their wikis due on Wednesday and have time in class tomorrow to work on them. I haven't checked - hope they look ok!

This Week

I tried my best to follow my new Twitter followees this week. (I'm the follower, they're the followees, right?) Boy, does that thing move fast! Tweetdeck helped a lot - it was nice not having to sort through all of the tweets, and it picked out the ones directed just to me (which I was surprised to actually get some!). But the time I spent catching up on that took away the time that I usually spend catching up on the PLP ning. And then there's my google reader...

Ugh.

I keep adding new things to follow/read, and yet I'm not getting any extra hours in the day to actually do it! Doesn't seem like a fair trade.

I assigned my precalc kids the wiki this week. After collecting all of their e-mail addresses (and everyone had one except one kid... I wasn't expecting that!) I added them as writers and now it's their turn to work. Hopefully it will turn out well. I reserved a cart of tablets for the kids to use in class on Monday (they have an assignment to do, too) so hopefully they will get started on their pages. I was planning on assigning it to my Algebra 2 kids, too, but couldn't pull the trigger. I'm not sure why, and maybe I'll still do it, but for now my instructions and everything are just sitting on my desk. Maybe I'll wait until later in the week next week and not have it due until after Christmas break.

So far. . .

I had 4 of my classes collaborate on a wiki last year. Their guidelines were very few (because I was learning just like they were!). What I asked them to do was to summarize each section from our chapter on a wiki page that I had already set up. That's it. Afterwards, I had them evaluate 10 of their classmates' pages - what was good, needed improvement, and overall impressions.

I'm going to assign this year's wiki tomorrow... I think. It's all set up and ready to go, but for some reason I'm nervous about it. I don't know why - it can't be any worse than last year, and I was totally happy with that product! I think I just feel more pressure because I know so much more this year. I've set some guidelines for this one - they have to include color, links, images, correct mathematical notation, and some sort of "extra", which they can find on their own.

I've installed (and used a few times) Skype on my computer. It has been nice for quick questions at school when I don't want to try and track someone down. Other than that, though, I haven't used it. But, heck, if Oprah can use it, I sure can!

Last winter, at one of our tablet meetings, we were shown Twitter. Being enthusiastic about something that looked kinda neat, we all signed up. After that time, though, I didn't find much usefulness in it. Over this Thanksgiving break, Cary (our Tablet and PLP leader) posted a message on our ning with some educational uses for Twitter, so I decided to give it a second shot. I searched for new people to follow, made a few posts, and actually had some people respond back! I think now I'll give it an actual try... following the right people and getting some followers myself could really be helpful and give me some new ideas.

Over the summer I was sent a message from Cary, the leader of the T.A.B.L.E.T. project. It included a description of and an application for Powerful Learning Practices (PLP), a program led by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. The purpose is to help teachers redefine their teaching using available web 2.0 tools. We had a face-to-face meeting in October (in Chicago - what a drive!), a ning to communicate with our team and other teams from different schools, and now we're supposed to be working towards some sort of final project (of which we still don't know much about). This program will hopefully help me set up a network to give me new ideas and ways of teaching.

So I think that gets me to today. I was advised to use Tweetdeck to help organize my tweets (what a weird word!), installed it, and I agree that it is nice to see all of that information in three separate columns (instead of just one page!). We'll see where it goes from there!