Ruth’s Ruckus

http://students2oh.org/#what

http://beyond-school.org/2007/12/07/students-20-edublog-pre-launch-help-spread-the-splash/

Students talking about education..I know I want to hear what they have to say…

Yesterday at the VSRA governing council meeting, I introduced 50+ educators to bookmarking on http://del.icio.us !!  We will begin collecting and exchanging bookmarks as a professional organization.  I am excited!!  Many of them were not familiar with social bookmarking and so I was glad to introduce them.  Thanks to Steve Dembo  for the challenge to “build the choir”.

Vicki Davis has set out a challenge at http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2007/11/play-web-20-truth-and-dare.html Truth/Dare/Double Dare and I accept!

Do you spend any time talking about proper methods of e-mail? Not quite sure what she meant by this question, but I post about email use over at my work blog: http://ppsblogs.net/ruthokoye

Do you have a facebook or myspace profile? Yes I do.  It’s not really a great profile, so I’m hesitant to share it.  I’m just beginning to look into facebook as my goddaughter has joined and sent me an invitation…

If someone wrote about you, is your name hyperlinkable? (Do you have something they can link to?) Yes.  I have a two blogs. This one and the one from work mentioned above.

Do you know the names of all of your students? I’m really bad with names, and when I was teaching my students were quite aware of my diificulty.  I made up nicknames that I could remember for some and called most “sweetheart”

If your students have computers in the classroom, do your students make ongoing eye contact? When I taught and had computers in the room, my students were using them!  They weren’t looking at me…

Are you unafraid of what would happen if youtube, myspace, and facebook were allowed in your classroom? As a public educator, I do need to worry about student safety, however I would feel better about youtube and myspace being available if students were taught how to appropriately use these materials first.  Teachers at the elementary level (where I teach) should make used of free services to teach students how to use these types of materials before we let them.  www.imbee.com; tappedin.org; and the new ad-free Ning groups would be perfect to teach students how to use these.

Do your students collaboratively create documents? While I am familiar with wikis and googledocs, I’ve not used them with elementary kids at this point

Do you expect your students to complete their reading assignments? Kids never completed their reading assignments when I was teaching.  I never completed them while I was in school.  If we changed a few things like the publishing options, I think that might change.  If kids knew they would be blogging a response to a reading, they might know they can’t fake it.

Do you assign papers and grade them after reading EVERY WORD? I learned very quickly that I did not want to read a million papers, so I stopped giving boring assignments like write about…I used lots of options like create a brochure, do an oral report…that way I could really grade things fairly.

Have you ever given assignment and allowed students to create content on the public world wide web? I do now that I am in IT. 

Do you allow students to post content WITHOUT premoderation? I don’t think I could do that.  I teach elementary school.  They are still learning about what is appropriate.

If you allow students to post online, do you subscribe to 100% of their content in your RSS reader? No.  I post their stuff.  So I read it before it goes out there.

Do you comment on your student blogs? Yes, sometimes. 

Is more than 50% of your content relevant “to life?” (Ask your students) I think so.  I use lots of real life examples to get my point across.

Do all of your students open their textbook for your class on a weekly basis? When I taught they did in class.

Do you give reading assignments that include web content? Not usually

Have your students been taught methodologies for assessing the validity of web documents? I try to include that when I am teaching lessons that include research

Do you give students projects where they must manage themselves, multitask, and deliver a comprehensive output that is relevant to your topic? YES!!

Have you changed anything significant about ALL of the courses you are teaching THIS YEAR? Yes.  I’ve added blogging.

Do you care? Of course.

Here’s the video that started it all:

Neither of the administrators in the buildings that I am assigned to would caare about this, but I am showing this to my immediate supervisor.

I just read Steve Dembo’s post http://www.teach42.com/2007/10/18/building-out-the-choir/  and I realize he is right. So many of us here in the “Blogosphere” are connecting with each other over and over again; each time we hook up we reaffirm our need and dependence on Web 2.0 technologies. We need to move beyond that to an “each one, reach one” strategy in order to share the wealth. As a teacher trainer, I have opportunities to share, but so many of my teachers still need the basics. I have teachers who “don’t have time” to read email…what they fail to realize is that they truly don’t have time NOT to. All of these tools increase our productivity. They help us to get or find the resources that we need in shorter amounts of time.

Well Steve, thanks for the hint…I have the opportunity to reach 50+ reading educators at a meeting next month. I had planned to just give an overview of some websites, but I am determined to sneak a bit of Web 2.0 in…maybe I’ll mention http://del.icio.us  and explain how they can bookmark sites that are of interest. I’m not quite sure how, but I’ll come up with something.