Thank You and I'm Sorry

Thank you. Thank you to the people who taught all of us. Thank you to my co-workers in the STF for all the extra work you do that nobody sees. Thank you to my co-workers outside the STF who work tirelessly for students everyday and never hear thank you enough.  Thank you to the central office staff for your support  even especially when I don't seem to appreciate it.  Thank you to the parents for ensuring that your child is ready to learn each day.  Thank you to the students for coming to school and working as hard as you do each day.


I'm sorry. I'm sorry my co-workers and central office staff are caught in the middle.  I'm sorry that today was very inconvenient for so many parents.   And to my students, I'm sorry I wasn't there today.

365:2011

I started my 365 photo challenge for the year. Wish me luck.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/markkowalski/sets/72157625723944088/

Haiku Picnik

We are going to take cameras and thesaurus outside tomorrow to write haikus.  When we get back to class we will use Picnik to put it all together on our blog.  I'll post tomorrow night with an update.  I'm pumped about this one.

Basho, I am not.

Edmodo and Current Events

I am teaching grade 8 current events this year and we started with a few discussions around edtech and items from the news.  We are also using monthly news booklets from Classroom Ready.  The bulk of our time was spent in discussions about current news stories.

We had two major problems:
1. The conversation was dominated by 5-6 students and myself.
2. I had no good way to give them a mark on their conversations.

Solution:
Edmodo.  Now, I can give them article, promote discussion and then make sure everyone has a chance to respond in a non threatening way.  Some of the students are even using it to post articles and questions after hours.  Cool.

KidBlog = Nice Compromise

I was trying to start a new blog for my class this year using Blogger.  I usually use this service but I came across KidBlog and decided to give it a try.  It is a real nice balance of easy and powerful.  It also provides a nice set of tools for balancing publicity/privacy.

We are starting with some posts about "Habitats and Communities" from the new grade 4 science curriculum.  They are creating a food web for randomly generated environment. So far so good.  Check it out.

Kids 'n Cameras

Xp10
Originally uploaded by markkow

My daughter in third grade saved up her money and bought a new camera today. We are heading to West Edmonton mall on Tuesday to combine some PD and a family get away so she decided to get a waterproof camera. I think it's time that she started a Flickr account.

IT Summit 2010

I forgot I have a blog.

IT Summit really pushed me to think about how to incorporate change. We have been floundering around trying to make different things happen at our school (Inquiry, UBD, PLC, Tech, Curr. renewal, Assessment For Learning). I think despite everyones best efforts we are not making a whole lot of forward motion.

During some downtime at the conference I slapped together a flow chart of how I think we can make these things happen. It's rough. Not all the dots are connected but I think from this we could design a planning document, a self assessment tool for the teachers, time for teachers to meet with local colleagues, and technology and PD to meet with colleagues further away.

Will Richardson really outlined the need for us to prepare students for collaborating with the world and Bernajean Porter provided the H.E.A.T. to make sure that we are directing our energy towards better outcomes for students.

Thank you again to the people who organized It Summit.

This Guy Gets It

"Poop Like An Elephant?"

Guy Kawasaki says to eat like a bird, poop like an elephant. How about poop like an Easter bunny?

Better By Design?

Dan Meyer "stirred up trouble" the other day by asking people to rethink their slide decks and ask for public critique. He asked us to move outside our comfort zone and Dean Shareski responded with a thoughtful self evaluation of one of his presentations.

One of the main issues Dan raised was the over use of stock photography. Personal tidbits

are always good but sometimes you just can't get the right picture yourself.

I made the same slide three times with clipart, a stock photo, and a more candid shot. Is one more effective than another? I don't know, you tell me.

iGoogle...and so do my students

My students are always frustrated by the lack of customization allowed by the computers at school.  Some of them even go so far as rearranging the icons and selecting a picture from their docs folder as their wallpaper (each and every time they log on).

Finally, I wised up and put them on iGoogle (we already had accounts) and let them have a tab that they are free to organize ALMOST any way they want.  At first most of them thought that meant that they needed 243 widgets.  We agreed that six was sufficient for now.

We also have a "School" tab that keeps their docs, cal, reader, and email.  I want to add delicious and flickr next week.

I also want to use what I learned from  David Warlick's IT Summit presentation on student use of RSS.  We are currently studying Shakespeare in ELA, and the RCMP in social studies.  Our next science unit is on predicting weather.  I hope to add tabs for these topics and then discard them when we are done.

(Not my first choice of theme, but it's not about me)

Classroom Design Matters

I had a lightbulb moment the other day.  My desk acted as a barrier to the IWB for my students.  I had staked out that part of the classroom as mine.  That was bad classroom design.

David Warlick Presenting: Cultivating Your PLN

Classroom PLN.

How is it I never thought of this?  David Warlick outlined some tools for us that use rss.  None of this was new for me but the "AH HA" moment was when you should how you could use this to build a topic specific feed for your class to use.  The class can assemble specific knowledge to one place that updates in real time.

Stunningly simple yet powerfully transformative.

Hmm?!

I think I heard about something like this once...

What Am I Doing Up Here?

We, like most leaders, lead from the front.  But are we facing the right direction?

If we are to properly mentor our students shouldn't we turn and face challenges with them.  How else can we model constructive responses to successes and challenges?  I think I need a new seating arrangement.

Festivus, The Holiday for the rest of us!

This is easily the best news story of the holiday!

And if you are unfamiliar with the this particular cultural events here is a quick primer.

Citizenship is not Digital

The tool you use to communicate does not affect the social norms of a society.  Start the flaming!  ;)

The Mystery Box

I just noticed that I have not posted to this blog since May. Opps!

Lately, I have taken to watching a lot of TED.com (best website ever for teachers, parents...people). I have been particularly inspired by J.J. Abram's talk. Mystery, participation, and creativity are the things that build school and community.

You should watch.

Or follow the link back to ted.com and watch a bunch more.

Wacky Web Tales

Kids today have it easy. Ohhh, when I was a wee lad we had to learn parts of speech with endless worksheets.

"Underline the noun with blue, circle the verb with red, draw a green box around the adjective...or was it the adverb?"

"Mrs. Cunningham, I can't find my yellow crayon!"

Well, I think I have found a more interesting way to practice this skill, more specifically, Education Place has found it (I just put a link to it on my website).  The students enter in singular nouns, verbs, present tense verbs, etc. into the fields to make a goofy story; copy it into a blog post; and use Tux Paint to make a picture to go with it.  Check out a sample here.

Bah! Maybe I'll give the little whipper snippers some worksheets on these skills next week!

Creating Graphs

My grade 3 students are using this tool to make great looking graphs. I love this tool and if you need a program to make graphs check it out.

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx

Check out our graphs here:

http://bready3.blogspot.com/search/label/Graphing