Notes from the Ridge

Sweet Blessed Freedom: Web Proxy Bypass Rights Grant Access to Emancipated Education

It’s happened. I don’t know how, or why, but I’ve been granted the right to bypass fully my district’s internet proxy filter system so that Web 2.0 apps can be freely used in my classroom. Actually, I have to believe that a the recent success of a Skype Video Conference Chat between my Latino students and a group of year I and II Spanish class students in Maryland.

I’m fortunate. I know this. While educators worldwide battle web proxy filters that block access to Flickr, Picassa, Second Life, and various and sundry blog sites, I am able to purse freely the collaborative promise of these and many other web-based innovations.

I am filled with hope! Not just because of my newly granted access rights, but because my voice was heard by those in the upper rungs of my school district’s IT Management division. They saw what my kids were achieving via Skype and now trust me to use my professional judgment when using this and other web apps with my kids.

Hopefully, more districts will begin to take this approach with their professional educators.

Technorati Tags: content filters, proxy

Colleges See Web 2.0 as Lure for Students

A recent CnetNews.com article describes the different ways colleges and universities are using wikis in hopes that it will generate more excitement among the Millennials about their education. Highlighted users include Dartmouth film and medical school, and music students, iTunes U users at Texas A&M, and incoming Seton Hall freshman.

The move makes sense from a pedagogical standpoint. I see the push towards using this technology in the elementary schools here in Haines City, Florida. Surely students applying to some of the more well-known colleges will gravitate to wikis as part of their Web 2.0 college toolbox. I teach community college Humanities courses and have recently woven collaborative technology into my curriculum.

The best PR use of this technology can be seen at Texas A&M, where professors post three minute videos of themselves, highlighting their backgrounds, things that interest them, and the various courses they teach.  Social networking also provides a way for students to connect prior to coming on campus – finding roommates, figuring out where to hang out, eat, see concerts, etc.

Once students reach campus, they are being encouraged to continue the use of Web 2.0 tools  – using wikis, blogs, and other media to engage each other in intellectual conversations covering the course content their professors have posted to the web.  This frees up a great deal of time for in-class ‘workshop’ style discussions, because student have fleshed out the basics of each lecture ahead of time.  Besides, there’s the show off factor!

“A lot of students…like showing off their work. They like being published. They like being on display,” said Barbara Knauff, senior instructional technologist at Dartmouth College.

Temple University College of Medicine students are also using Web 2.0 to their advantage.  Their professor, Dr. Michael Barrett, put his heartbeat sound samples on the web in the form of iPod downloads.  As a result, student heartbeat recognition increased from 40 to 80 percent!  Ah, the power of the pod!

There are those who feel these innovations may one day lead to changes in the way college campuses are designed.  Claire Schooley, an analyst at Forrester Research states that:

 ”That interaction between student and professor is going to become more prominent where you have already read about or watched the lecture online. The days of the large university with a 300-person lecture hall are over,” said Schooley. “Universities will be built very differently, with the concentration on workshop life.”

Who knows, with the advent of 3D venues like Second Life, might the college campus may become a mere virtual shell of itself, with only a sports arena or football stadium to mark its physical presence? Most likely not.  But it does give us something to think about!

Technorati Tags: wikis, college

Tech Abuse: School Admins and Teachers Must Work Together to Curb it.

Medicine makes us well when we’re sick, but it can do great harm if used inappropriately. The same goes for technology. I updated my tweets today to see that John Pederson had posted a link to a Scholastic Administrators article highlighting the battle schools are waging with the way some students are using today’s technological goodies.

It’s a serious issue, and one that must be addressed via a combined effort between teachers who are clamoring to use collaborative technology in the classroom and administrators who face pressures from parents and school boards to implement policies to curb it.

In the article, author Pamela Wheaton states that:

“Schools across the country are waging a war against technology tools gone bad. Read how some districts defend their classrooms against the new school thuggery—from iPod cheats to cell phone punks and sneaky Web surfers.”

The accounts of technology abuse in several schools across the country absolutely point to a need for a collaborative effort between administrators, teachers, and parents to model appropriate use practices to students who, in the absence of such modeling, are running amok – a point supported by a Will Richardson statement relaying that “adults simply don’t know how to model appropriate digital behavior.” Obviously, this statement has to be tempered a little, as there are parents, teachers, and administrators who stay on top of technology and are “with it” enough to teach young learners how to use it properly. I witnessed the way my older brother and his wife introduced technology to their two daughters, and guidance was most definitely the order of the day.

Today marked the first day back for teachers in my school district. Most teachers at my middle school with whom I shared the idea of enhancing education through the use of collaborative web technology seemed relatively unaware of the tools we have come to rely upon. However, I did learn that a neighboring elementary school principal showed her staff the Did You Know 2.0 video developed by Mr. Karl Fisch, famed author of The Fischbowl staff development blog for Arapahoe High School. This tells me that change is on the horizon… and it’s happening at the K-6 level in this area first. Now is the time for Middle and High School teachers to work together with parents and administrators in an effort to develop some sort of game plan to follow as these young students leave 5th grade expecting to utilize the latest in web-based collaborative technology.

It has to be said that instances where students are misusing technology to the extent that we see in the above referenced article occur with minimal frequency, and there is no reason for teachers and administrators to close shop on Web 2.0 technology in a panic over what may happen.

Wheaton’s article has perhaps a bit too much of a Brave New World / Fahrenheit 451 bent to it. In one instance, she alludes to chaotic insanity breaking out in schools as students gain access to community based open Wi Fi signals and run rampant circumventing the prohibitive broadband access measures put in place to thwart them. Though, these are issues that warrant planning on our part so that we may do our jobs as educators.
Wheaton tones down the rhetoric and says as much, stating:

“The good news is that of all the people in the world, educators are best able to solve these problems. Technology is only the tool for bad behavior, and teachers have been teaching right from wrong since the days of Plato.”

Technorati Tags: technology, new media, abuse

EFL Connextions: Ongoing Explorations and Conversations on K-12 EFL

I have decided to start an ongoing post category on this blog called EFL Connections, which will be dedicated to collecting and sharing Web 2.0-enhanced EFL information and resources across the K-12 curriculum. I teach at a Central Florida middle school school that services a very large EFL/ESOL population, and I have to date felt that there was little I could do to help some of our mainstreamed EFL students succeed in my classes – save for pairing them with bilingual students, which is an option that is at times required, but one I hate – because it ends up providing both students with limited exposure to what’s going on in the class.

I believe the Web 2.0 collaborative learning philosophy can and should be applied in ways that are specifically designed to assist limited English speakers. It is my hope that by sharing our experiences with you here, and by relaying interactions we have with other EFL teachers and students across the nation and abroad, this ongoing post will serve as a point of information for those of you who want to do everything you can for your English language learners.

EFL Connections: 9-12-2007

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with José “The Coordinator” Rodriguez about how Web 2.0 technology can be used to better serve EFL students. We discussed the benefits of using blogs, podcasts, and presentation sharing software such as Bubbleshare. These tools encourage active engagement and interaction in English, and they provide creative outlets for students who may be shy about speaking in English as well as those who actively speak the language, but need to improve their grasp on its more Standardized characteristics. My mind is still buzzing with all the possibilities we discussed, and I’m still amazed at how open professionals like José are to helping those of us who are just now trying to learn more about the pedagogy behind Web 2.0. Thanks, José!

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I will most definitely be keeping up with José’s efforts on his main blog and through his regular EFL Best Practices webcast, which he co-hosts with Rafael Murillo. Tune in and listen to their pilot episode on the Webcast Academy website.I am not an EFL teacher, but I teach EFL students. Just as we are all reading and writing teachers, I believe the same mantra applies to using Web 2.0 with students who are still working to acquire mastery of the English language. I know – this seems a bit redundant in that I’ve already committed to using Web 2.0 with all my students. However, there is a need for special focus, within my TechEd curriculum, on serving limited English speakers. Ans, as I referenced earlier in this post, I don’t think the results will stop with my EFL kids. By encouraging us all to work as a collaborative group, I hope to cultivate more compassion, empathy, and cultural awareness among my native English speakers as well.Technorati Tags: ESL ESOL EFL collaborations web2.0 best practices