Blog Junkie

I’ve never heard of a meme before.  It’s some sort of cultural thing that, at times, goes around the blogsphere.  I am to write 7 things about me that you do not know. I was tagged by Jan Smith who wrote 7 things about herself on her blog.  She sailed a boat around the world! Check out her 7 things.  They are fascinating.

So here goes:

1.  I was born and lived for 6 years in Churchill, Manitoba.  Churchill is home to the polar bears as it is directly in their migration route.  Yes, I’ve seen polar bears.  We used to be driven from house to house for Halloween because it was really cold and snowing and it was bear season!  I have worn sealskin mukaluks that were traditionally made by an Inuit elder who chewed the skin used for the bottom of the boots!  I’ve worn a real arctic parka, complete with fox fur around the hood and listened to iceburgs “explode” on the Hudson’s Bay.  They didn’t really explode, they just cracked apart and it sounded like they exploded.  I missed the sound of the fog horn for years after we moved.

2.  I love fishing and grew up in the outdoors camping and fishing.  I do not hunt and cannot kill anything except for a bug or two.  Our family did this because my father was a trapper before he was married, complete with dog teams!  I plan on writing his stories this summer.

3.  I have been chased by a sow black bear with cubs.  I had an Irish Setter dog who treed the cubs and when a very, very vexed sow came after him, he decided that hiding behind me was a grand idea!  I hold the record for the fastest .5mile on record!  I was 15 and was….fishing!

4.  I am an insomniac.

5.  I’ve travelled to Poland (Warsaw) and the Ukraine.  My grandfather left behind a family in the Ukraine and in the late 90′s a man who grew up with my mom, a retired teacher, was teaching technology in a small village when a hunched over old lady with a cane asked him if he knew my grandfather.  It turns out that old lady was my mom’s half-sister. Can you believe this!  What are the odds!  It was like an Oprah moment.  So we had to go over and meet all the cousins etc… It was like going through a time-warp back to the 1930′s or 40′s.  In the city they shut the water off between 10am and 6pm.  People fill buckets and bathtubs with water.  You’re lucky to find a place with a flush toilet!  Like camping!   I laughed a lot while I was there.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

6.  I love to cook and am a Food TV junkie.  I own tons of cookbooks.  I have lemons preserving on the counter that will be ready next week.  Moroccan cuisine is coming up – tagine to be sure.

7. I never learned to crawl.  My mom wouldn’t put me on the floor in Churchill because she thought it was too cold. Result: I have very underdeveloped bi-lateral co-ordination.  Means:  I’m the clumsiest person you’ve ever met.  I am not allowed to play baseball as my husband says I’m a 911 call.  I tripped over the mutt, landed in the open dishwasher and had to have my face glued back together in the ER. Good news:  I do not scar. The dog died 4 months later.  Karma?!

I tag:  Betty Gilgoff, Chris Lehmann, Kim Cofino and Phil Macoun.

Please link back to me so I can read your 7 things!  Can’t wait….

What was the value of four weeks of Twitter?  Will I continue with the Twitter network?

So here it is.  The 4th week of the Twitter challenge.  (It is actually the 5th week, but I had to stop for a week to focus on the 5 Days of Google course!) To continue or cease is the question.  I have not been really sure about the value of a Twitter network.  As the weeks progressed its value began to appear.  The biggest being the PLN it created for me and the sharing of ideas by other teachers.  That culminated itself yesterday.

I had not been very active on Twitter last week.  Until last night.  There were tweets that attracted my attention on unintentional gender bias.  I followed the tweets to David Truss’s blog and continued to follow along to Betty Gilgoff’s blog.  I also took a side trip to Dan Meyer’s blog.  These posting had nothing in common, except to me.  The connection between them made plain the power of my Twitter PLN.

Now, to humbly attempt to write this as well as Dan. I am a linear, logical thinker and I find the web is not a place for linear thinking.  I lose focus and get lost in info overload. Dan’s blog is my anchor. His ability to get to the point, to be linear and logical helps refocus my own very linear thinking.  Dan is at a place in his career where I am.  His post really hit home.  He’s looking for a challenge to keep him “lean and hungry” for the next 30 years to provide his needed level of job satisfaction.  Our difference is I have challenges, more than I can manage, which is causing job satisfaction in my current position to fast lose its lustre.  Dan listed his former challenges and that list is what I needed to “see”.  It helped me clarify what was causing my own lack of job satisfaction and now I know how to fix it.  He, as usual, helped me refocus and clarify.  I wish I could offer the same level of help back.  What does David and Betty’s gender bias discussion have to do with any of this?

One of the most important missing pieces in my former teaching position – the one that caused most of my lack of job satisfaction and caused me to leave – was lack of professional development and dialogue.  On Twitter and in the blogs came a marvelous dialogue on gender bias started by a man (David Truss) regarding biases against women.  The topic is one we all think about but do not speak about.  It was brought up and discussed by men and women from all over the North American and Australian continents with grace, tact and professionalism.  That is what made the power of the Twitter PLN so very, very clear. It was everything I have been looking for for the past 9 years. I now have a way to provide professional development, dialogue and a place to refocus which in turn provides me with a way to create/maintain the job satisfaction I have lost in the past or currently been losing.  All from a set of apparently disconnected posts and tweets on my own PLN. That has immense value to me.

Will I continue with Twitter?  Definitely.

I really like Google. Except for the ads now appearing on my blog!  I know I am not using it to near its potential so I took a Knowschools course on it to increase my Google knowledge.  It was an amazing 5 days of  learning in a well presented on-line course.  Sharon Betts did an amazing job.  (As I visited her site I was sidetracked into her blog on her solar home. For those interested in solar energy see here.)  As usual in these courses I ended up with a degree of information overload, but managed to pull back and figure out what was important for me.

1.  Google calendar - I almost managed to miss my registration for the final semester of TLITE!  Far too close for comfort.  This little tool should be very helpful since my 2 luddite day planners and 1 desk calendar do not seem to be doing the trick!

2.  Google search and custom search - I did not know how to search efficiently at all and I am holding a postion of a Teacher-Librarian.  This was actually the top of my list of reasons to take the course.  Not being proficient at this is not acceptable to me considering my new teaching position.  I learned to use things from quotation marks, to site searches.  This was incredibly valuable and should make searching for educational research papers much more effective than in the past.  I also added a custom search into my Book Bin Blog.  Custom searches limit the search for more exact topics, in the case of The Book Bin, books reviews and soon other great library blog sites.  I thought this search would be very valuable to use with my research groups at school.

3.  Google Docs – I have used this myself only once this past summer as part of a co-operative mini research project on cyberbullying.  It was an interesting experience, and Sharon’s activity gave me an idea for my last action research project – using Google Docs with one of my research classes.  Listening to other course participants discuss their classes using this was exciting.  Co-operative learning is a big part of my classroom teaching and finding a way back to it for prep relief teaching with technology was great.  The students are able to work on a research paper collaboratively and simultaneously, email it to each other, share their ideas/knowledge and really own their own learning.  I thought this was an incredibly powerful learning tool for teaching.  Explore:  http://googledocs.blogspot.com

4.  Google Notebook – I really saw the power in this for myself as I work through another action research project and another research readings summary.  This Google tool allows you to collect notes, browse, clip and organize information online.  A great way to organize my reading notes.  Also a great way to keep track of blogging posts that push me to write a post on.  This tool allows you to create, manage, tag, export, share and bookmark the notebook.  If this appeals to you here are some helpful links:

http://googlenotebookblog.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=how+to+use+google+notebook&emb=0&aq=f#

http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog//2008/04/using-google-no.html

What did I learn this week?  Was the learning of any value?  Is it worth continuing with Twitter?

Three weeks ago when I began this challenge – Twitter for a month – I was not to sure that Twitter had any real value to be honest.  I have had my epiphany!

Twitter in Review:

I challenged myself to increase my tweets.  This was difficult, but I’m up to 48!  Still feels like butting into a conversation.  Stuck to safe topics: the weather, offered to send boxcars of snow to others.  Silly, safe.  No educational value at all. There are many technical tweets that I cannot follow as my technology skills are still at the “twit” level, but then …

Of value: Here’s what I learned on Twitter this week.

From mscofino I discovered TweetDeck.  I think I really like TweetDeck better than Whirl although I have not switched yet.

From bookminder a research paper on assessment for and as http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Publications/TeacherInquirer/archive/2008-09/2008-10/Moore-Maps%20for%20Improvement-edited.pdf as well as this great site from Africa which has live video stream 24 hours a day from the African bush http://www.wildearth.tv/home – hmm won’t link. Sorry about that.

I just happen to be taking a course from Knowschools called 5 Days of Google and from Bryan Hughes:http://mashable.com/2008/12/07/how-to-use-google-reader/

From Coolcatteacher a teacher group at twittgroup.  That was really great and I found a few more people to follow.

From Dean Shareski the video of your students was wonderful.  It made me wish that TLITE had been structured in a similar manner. Keeping the mustache growing suggestion on the back burner!  Glad you went to Twilight! Now you need to read the series! I have a Facebook account for that very reason!

There were various pictures posted that people shared of family and that was really nice as you begin to know these people and begin to feel connected to them.

Finally, datruss had a blog post on the eddie nominations and from that I discovered some amazing library blogs, teacher blogs, and voted for my favorites.  If I hadn’t found this I would not have known who was nominated or would have voted.  Congratulations to the people I have run into either in Twitter or blogging on their nominations:  datruss, michelle martin, sue waters, dan meyers,  and jan smith.  You can see all the nominees and vote here.  Good luck to you all!

The epiphany?  This PLN community I have been building has provided amazing and unexpected support.  I can post a tweet about a new blog post and some people on my Twitter PLN will actually read it.  But more importantly they will leave a comment.  Through those comments they share their ideas, opinions and thoughts.  It does not matter if they agree with my ideas, reflections, opinions or thoughts.  What matters is that they have taken the time to share.  I appreciate and value those comments immensely as I continue on my technology journey of discovery and learning.  Thank you.

Is it worth continuing on Twitter?  Definitely, YES.

The mind once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimension – Ralph Waldo Emmerson

I have been grinding the glacier over some issues around my instructional practices.  I left a private school system for the public system because I felt like I was teaching in a box.  A box that was becoming smaller and tighter each year. I was the outfielder standing alone in left field waiting for someone to throw a new ball my way:  differentiated lessons, co-operative learning, professional dialogue, anything.  I stood alone until I finally quit the game. Now I feel like I’m miles behind everyone.

I’ve discovered I can stop fighting with my big picture learning style, honour it and teach with it. I can provide my students with the “big picture” of the lesson, from objectives to work/project examples and return to it at the end of the lesson. Did you meet the objective? This was a very huge realization for me as I’ve fought against my own learning style since I started teaching.  It always seemed that I figured out how to do something right or better after I finished doing it.  How embarrassing to “get it” in June instead of September!

I have been working on solidifying some ideas around relinquishing control of the information and letting the students own it, of relinquishing my teacher power to control the discussions and/or avoid uneasy topics or questions and to replace this with language of least power.  It’s time to roll with the students.  But I still have to do this within a guided framework as I’m not in complete agreement with the constructivist theories of education.

My research groups do not need to work on a project.  They need to work on the skills needed to do a research project.  I do not need to feel pressured into producing some elaborate end result with them, we need to work on the process in a manner that allows them to own their own learning and for me to own my teaching.

I have not refined these new ideas yet, but that will come with the process.

What drives your instructional practice?