05
12
2007
Evaluating One at a Time
Posted by: Toby Fischer in WIKI, blog, education, future, issues, technologyNine months ago, I wrote One at a time. After reading David Warlik’s post, My Apologies, I revisited my post to evaluate how successful have I been at my “One at a Time” theory? The reusults:
- Three teachers, who I never thought would get on the blogging bandwagon without a fight, came to me and got the ball rolling.
- Four others, who I expected to hop on board, are blogging.
- I have another teacher ready to use a wiki to post a summary of his class each day. He isn’t going to post the summary, the students are. The students will also have access to the unit assessment on a wiki. They will be allowd to make changes to the assessment to make the questions better fit what they have been taught. We are just developing this, I will write more about this in the next month. Thank you to Steve Dembo for this great idea.
- We wrote group research papers using wiki’s in a language arts class. (Each kid wrote a section and the group worked together on the into and conclusion.)
- Outside of web2.0 tools, all 400 of our 8th graders used Photostory 3 to create a video on the life-cycle of a star. I love digital story telling and if you haven’t seen it, Photostory is one of the best tools to date for simple videos. (side note…i didn’t work with a single 8th grade science student last year)
I’m not a patient person, but when I think about it, this isn’t bad. My next step is to get a pilot 1to1 team going. Anybody have some money they want to donate to a good cause?
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December 5th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Toby, how long have you been in your position? You are really moving and shaking and must have some great people moving along with you. Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr and I had a great workshop at the k12online conference. We have had 64 people join our ning, come on over, watch the video’s to get started. Love to see you and your staff with us.
Cheryl
Keep blogging!!
December 6th, 2007 at 10:02 am
This is my 6th year working as a technology integrator, 2nd year in this building. I work with a great group of teachers. It is amazing how good they are with kids. Unfortunately, like most teachers, professional development is done on their own time. Our district level administration has minimalized their free time. Hopefully that will change over the next few years.
The other problem our teachers are up against is the pressure put on them related to testing. In our district test scores are more important the top priority. I could go on for a long time on this subject but wont, at least not right now.
Cheryl, I will check out the ning group at home in the next few nights. Like twitter, it is blocked at school.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Toby- Congrats on your successes towards change. Rhetorical Question: Why do you want teachers to use blogs and how are they using them? Why are you having them use wiki’s, photostory, etc. Do they know?
I know why I have encouraged my staff to use these tools, but I ask the question only because I think teachers need to see the technologies are more useful, more engaging, and more of a tool for student learning than what they currently use or else there is no incentive for them to move to Web 2.0 or other technology tools. A compelling reason to help kids I have found to be the biggest motivator for teacher willingness to adapt and imbed technology.
Barry