The theme of balancing screen time is a reoccurring theme for me. Today is was mentioned in class. This is a very important issue. I feel that this conversation has to be had in every school because I have had relationships with teachers and parents who are worried about the child’s amount of screen time. I think they have to be reminded and reassured that first, computers are not replacing teachers, but enabling more learning to happen in a variety of different ways that can suit the unique needs of many children.  Using digital technologies allows for more relationships and communication to happen as long as the students know how to use it are given clear guidelines. Yes after school students should doing something physically active, but the reality is, this is not happening with out more support and guidance  from the parents. It is better for everyone if the child who goes home to an empty house with nothing to do, does something meaningful on the computer rather than sitting mindlessly at a game.

That leads me to my future vision project. The questions about my project  continue to burst out of my head! I have been looking at more ways to include a place for student made ebooks to be stored and viewed. I really want to draw students to the website. I have worked closely with students in grade two and three who don’t have access to any books in their home!!! Their family doesn’t go to the public library leaving them limited to the few books they take home from the library or a few books that I give them to take. From my research I have discovered there are not free ebooks available online which are low level and high interest for my struggling readers. I want ebooks to be available for these students when they are at home alone with nothing else to do but be at the computer. The students will be drawn to their books because the reading level will be at a lower level since the books are made by students in different grade levels.

The participants going to the website are  teachers and students. The learners are the teachers and learners. Kate has been working diligently at creating a useful website for teachers. I have been concentrating on ways to attract the student audience. The design has to be basic and very visual with only a few words leading students to the ebooks. These kids are not going to spend patience are desire to read the website. They have one reason to be there and that is to read a book that their friend made or a student they connected with from another school. This of course will lead them to opening up other books.

To create awareness for teachers I have to begin face to face.  I have to connect with the teachers I know. These are teachers I work with, or have a relationship with from other schools. I also need to use twitter to connect and spread the word. I guess I can’t put off using twitter any longer!!

Today was another informative session where we learned about more important words that can be used to describe the resistance to change, and how change can happen

Autopoesis- Self Creating.  As a living entity we are no different than any other living thing.We are ecological beings. We are connected as long as we are alive.We can’t live outside the environment.

Structural Coupling – The ways we connect to the environment.The ways we connect to the environment which go on continuously. Human existence depend on culture. We feel connected to each other through cultural expressions like dance or music.

Linguistic Cognitive Domain – How the connections happen. Bring those connections to life through language.

Linguistic cognitive domain goes beyond verbal language and also includes body language and tone of voice.

I think this is a very good point to discuss with teachers who we work with who are resistant to including technology into their class and fear that technology is going to take over real teachers, and learning in a social setting. I have had questions about this myself, even though I do support integrating useful technology into my teaching. We simply cannot remove teachers from the school. Humans need these personal, face to face interactions to connect to life. Schools are responsible for cultural exploration. If students are not connected to each other than their is no culture. Resistant teachers can rest assured that complete on-line learning, would be a disaster. There may be experimental situations where this is done but they will not be successful because of the nature of humans and the linguistic cognitive domain.

This was my third day working on my inquiry project. I am still loving the freedom! Each day I feel like I am narrowing my searches and finding extremely valuable information. I am being completely open to allowing the research take me in new directions. I have been reading more articles about community service learning projects. This has caused me to ask more questions about how to effectively use service learning in schools. I still would like to find some examples where they have used technology to deliver these projects. I am now wondering if maybe I shouldn’t just focus on environment service projects, but just service learning projects in general. I guess I will wait and see where my research takes me tomorrow!

NOTE: hAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. tHE BLOG WILL only type in capital letter!!

Jenny’s lecture about Conservative Dynamicism, iINSTITUTIONAL ISOMORPHISM and sociocultural homeostasis hit close to home for me today. Schools aren’t really set up for change. If teachers are happy teaching the way they taught 10 or even 5 years ago, then they aren’t going to be initializing or supporting change. It is a strange feeling when I walk into a school and can feel that they are really set in their ways.  In these particular schools that have a negative outlook on integrating technology, there are some teachers that I know of who would be completely onboard if they were given a chance to make changes in their classroom by using technology. It only needs to start slowly. I think if one teacher in the school was adamant to use whatever technology they had in the classroom than news would spread. With this being said, that particular teacher would have to talk about it a lot, and have constant dialogue with about the good experiences. If one teacher can break through the resistant barriers of the schools, and has enough ambition to barge ahead, I think their next step is get students parents to be ICT advocates. Parents will reflect the need for this kind of change back to the administration.

I good question to ask ourselves is “what are we doing in our classroom today that we didn’t do last year?”

“What are we doing in our classroom today that wasn’t possible three years ago?

Today’s class centered me a little bit more. My thoughts about ICT are not as scattered as they were on Thursday. It has been very difficult to pick one topic to focus and do an inquiry about for the next two weeks. I have been interested in finding online resources for struggling readers as well online communication techniques that can be used in the classroom. I rarely get to see the parents of the students that I work with. I am always sending notices home and inviting parents to come in or participate in our celebration of success events. I would love to set up a blog or a website directed at the parents. The other thing that has been bouncing around in my head is to inquire about how nature and technology can be balanced in the classroom. I have a a real connection with this topic and believe that nature and the environment is part of my teaching identity. I have always lived in the country, surrounded by animals, and beautiful natural settings. I strongly believe in endorsing nature in the classroom and sharing with students by going outside. Hmmm,..  there is an obvious problem between this and our future visions for using ICT in the classroom. Is it possible to effectively teach how to appreciate, respect and connect with the environment while at the same time forge ahead into the digital classroom? I want to know more about balancing screen time, social skills, going outside, and being active. Is that too much to ask?

I am well aware that children love being in front of the screen. After school I know that for many of my students that is all they do when they get home. If we bring more technology into the classroom will children ever get a break from the screen or have a reason to remove themselves from technology? Personally this last week has been a big adjustment for me. First I am living in the city right now, and I have never spent so much time on the computer!

So many things to find out about these pertinent questions.

On the other head, I had a great experience using mindmeister.

On a side note I am listening to my first webinar while writing this. It is about using technology to investigate the outdoors. At first I was surprised by the length. It is one hour long but fascinating!

I thought this was a very relevant video for today since I began the day learning about graphic novels!
I also learned how to embed a video

Create your own mind maps at MindMeister

My little world was shaken this week! Of course this is a wonderful thing. Not all teachers are fortunate to have an opportunity to be in a class for 3 weeks 2.5 hours a day with thirty other teacher brains going at full speed, trying to immerse themselves in the digital world

At many times I was feeling uncomfortable and rattled. I am feeling vulnerable because I don’t know a lot about ICT. I should …or should I? Then I always have to remind myself that   it is for my students and your students, our children.

The summative presentations done today were a wonderful way to end the week. We are altogether in this new way of learning. They highlighted the fact that many of the members of the class are going through the same thoughts and emotions. I am learning more and more about how teachers can share there thoughts and emotions through technologies like twitter or blogs, rather than just face to face.

I am a fairly new teacher. It was only about four years ago that I took a technology class as a required course in my elementary education program. We have come a long way from that. There is no comparison to what new teachers were being taught then and what educators are being taught now about technology, at the university level. I remember the assignments in that course consisted of making a webpage (with a difficult program that I would never use without tech support!) and creating a word document with hyperlinks to organize and list resources.

I am proud to stay that I haven’t printed anything yet for this course!!!  Maybe I can go paperless. I think I can go for three weeks without printing. I am one of those people who like the hard copies. I like having a little ringed binder and organizing paper into that. After the first day of this course I was going to print out the syllabus, assignment descriptions, and rubric. I am glad I didn’t because that would be a lot of paper! One of my classmates raised a good point in her blog, asking what happens when computers or the internet goes down. If improvements in ICT continue improving rapidly like they are, and schools have access to them, will teachers be able to have more trust that the ICT resources will work when we need them?