Here's another good thought from this week's lesson plans ... from Mary:
"You learn better by doing and creating, or being interactive, than in any other way."

Remember the focus!

I'm grading your lesson plans, and have been pleased with some of the really creative ideas you've had! One thing I have noticed, however, is most of you are listing things like "make a powerpoint," or "make a website," etc. as your learning outcomes. Is that really what your purpose for the lesson is? I hope not! Your purpose should be to teach science, math, history, or something, and the technology should be a resource, not a learning outcome. I know that it's easy to lose that focus in our class because we talk about technology so much, but we should always keep it in context. Remember the "mindtools" article?

Anyway, I'm not really docking points for it, so don't worry - but I do hope that for the rest of the semester, you can always remember that technology is a possible means to a learning end ... not the end itself.

On another note, Erin had this interesting post about class management:
"One of the biggest challenges with using technology in the classroom is keeping the students on task and out of sites they shouldn’t be looking at. (I subbed in a high school technology class this spring and was shocked by the amount of time the students spent doing anything except their assigned work. The Instant Messaged each other, emailed their friends, checked out movie and song websites and played computer games. I am not entirely sure how to combat that however, I am sure that the teacher CANNOT sit behind his/her desk and trust the students to stay on task. The allure to get off task is far too high if they are left to themselves!) "

Weblog technology for kids

A new technology, Kidzblog, has an easy to use, and fun to watch interface to encourage elementary kids to blog. For parents and teachers, there are security features to protect the kids. How cool is all this? Can you imagine a class of fourth graders expressing opinions, analyzing stuff they've learned, and telling stories through blogs? What a great way to motivate kids to write! Check out the technology -- it looks fun!

Important announcement - put names on homework!

Hey class,
One thing that will help Alyssa and I immensly when we are grading your stuff is if you would PLEASE PUT YOUR NAMES ON YOUR HOMEWORK. This is especially important when you are posting your homework on your blog. Many of you do not have your names on your blog, so when we are grading, we know that "ILuvElmo.blogspot.com" did the homework, but who is "ILuvElmo" anyway? Same thing with emails, make sure you always put your name on the email if it's not in your email address. If you are worried about putting your first and last name on your blog for the whole world to see, then sign all your homework posts with your first name and last initial, or something like that.

A better idea is to probably just to put your name in the paragraph at the top of your blog that explains your blog. This paragraph shows up in our aggregators so we'll know who you are. You can rewrite this part of your blog by going to Blogger and going to your "settings".

Congrats! Our class is referenced by a major blogger

Congratulations class! Will Richardson pointed all of his readers towards our IPT 286 class wiki as a good example of using wikis in education. This is very exciting because Will's blog, weblogg-ed.com is one of THE most widely read education blogs out there. Great job!

I have a question for you: Does knowing you have the possibility of being seen and read by anybody out there influence how you write in your blogs or wikis? Does it matter? Does knowing this about your audience shape your ideas and what you write?

BTW-we're going back to the wiki in a week for the Ethics assignment, and who knows who will be reading!