To print or not to print...

Will wrote about not owning a printer, and I had to think about my own printing habits. I still own a printer, but it hasn't really worked for several months. Well, it works, but the paper won't feed from the tray and it jams up a lot when it feeds from the manual tray. Oh, I forgot to say it is an old HP 4Plus. It is a wonderful printer that has served us well for years and years. And it still works -- sort of. I have a printer at work that I don't use much anymore, either. I just don't print much at all.

I post assignments to Moodle, and my students upload them there. I almost never print their assignments out. The only time I print them is when they are giving me a draft of a long research paper.

Even my assignments for the class I took this semester weren't printed out except for my 23-page final paper. I didn't print out the journal articles I used in the writing of the paper, either.

I hadn't really thought about how little I print until I read Will's post. I'm not really sure when this change in my printing habits took place, but it has been a while, I guess.

I wonder when I'll actually get rid of the printer and free up a lot of desk space?

Learning from Technology

Will makes the comment:

We have to stop focusing on what teachers are doing with technology and start focusing on how they are learning with it.

I had to think about it for awhile, but I think I understand what he is saying: Using technology isn't enough. It isn't.

I use technology a fair amount in my classes. We use Moodle; we access the internet and do different kinds of activities; we make presentations using PowerPoint or Movie Maker. We have blogged and will again. We listen to audio online. But all that begs the question, "So what?"

As a teacher, I know that I have learned a great deal from technology. My blog and the blogs of others, as I have said before, provide me with some of the best professional development I have ever had. In using Moodle, I have had to think a lot about teaching and learning. I have struggled with deciding what should be done online and what should be done face to face in the classroom. I have reflected on my own teaching and on teaching and learning in general.

But I must also ask the question with regard to my students. What have they learned? Have they captured the spirit of the technological endeavors? Sometimes I think they have, but other times I think it is just something they go through the motions on -- like an interactive worksheet of some kind.

I took an online course this past semester, my second. This one was great; there was lots of good discussion and lots of opportunities for us to learn from each other. Do I provide that those kinds of opportunities for my students? If I provide the opportunities, do my students recognize and take advantage of them?

I still have a lot to think about and a lot to learn.

Life begins at ...

I was reading over an old post at Creating Passionate Users and ran across this quote from Doc Searls:

"Nearly all of what I'm known for I've done since I was fifty."

Being past the 50 mark myself, I had to stop to think whether or not I could say the same. Not that I would even dream of putting myself in the same category as Doc, but I think that the same is pretty well true of me. In the last 6 years I have changed tremendously, grown tremendously. I have done things I would never have imagined I could / would do.

Another big milestone for me was 30. The change then was more personal and private but even more amazing. I literally became a different person. (I like to think a better one, too.)

Life is about change. It doesn't have to stop. It shouldn't stop. If we're lucky and work hard, the change can be positive growth rather than just getting older. It is exciting to think about what the future may hold. I wonder what I will learn once I am 60, 70 and beyond. Life doesn't begin at any particular age; it begins again each day. As Kathy said in her post,

It's never too late to be creative. It's never too late to make a difference. ... And remember the quote from the 90-something woman who, when asked about her regrets said, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken up the violin at 60. I'd have been playing for almost 40 years by now..."

My students and technology

My friend Angie commented on my last post, and I started to comment on her comment. Then I decided that I was writing enough to warrant a whole post.

My students usually have very limited understanding of technology. Part of what I do is teach them how to create PowerPoints, how to use library databases, etc. I take this part of my job very seriously. We are using Moodle this year to do hybrid or blended classes because it is important that they learn how to do more with computers than email and games. I feel good about the fact that my students leave me with the computer skills and experience they need to succeed in their other classes.

I try to give my students options; tomorrow one student will be showing us a movie he made. But another is creating his first PowerPoint. I encourage them to stretch themselves and their technological expertise. And they never cease to amaze me.

Angie talks about consulting the students about how to achieve the goals of the class . That is something I don't do enough of. I would like to try to change that this next semester. My students, even though they are adults, are not used to making any decisions or having any real input into their education. This sometimes makes it difficult for them to think about it deeply. And that is my biggest frustration. I have been doing a lot of "writing as thinking" with them this semester in an attempt to get them to go a little deeper, but it has not been tremendously successful. That does not mean, though, that I should give up on it.

I would like to get them excited about writing, and I think technology could help us do that. But not if the basic assignments are not exciting. I would like to experiment with having them produce alternatives to the research paper, for instance. Maybe a wiki. Maybe a blog. Maybe webtexts that are written for the Internet rather than print. The important thing is that the students learn how to do the research, how to think critically about the information they find, and how to write about it. The format doesn't matter. Could I offer a variety of options? Could each student do something different? Why not? I am the only thing keeping us from doing it that way. Am I up to it? Why not?

No, I guess we still don't get it.

Clarence has once again pointed out just how little we get it. He says, in part:

First of all, we still don't get it. We are still trying to appropriate the literacy practices of youth culture, and co-opt them for our own means. We use hip - hop to teach grammar. We use blogs to nitpick the ultra fine points of novels and to teach grammar. We don't honour the literacy practices of the people in our classrooms for what they are. To many teachers, they are not legitimate on their own. ...

Second, we still crave control. We are willing to give kids the experience of blogging, if they are responding to a list of prompts. We are willing to use video if the videos are a series of X number of shots, each lasting no longer then X number of seconds. ... Are we still doing old things in new ways? 5 paragraph essays in video form?

The more I think about my use of new technologies, the less sure I am of myself. I don't want to do the same old thing in new ways. We need to truly revolutionize education to meet the needs of our students today. But how? It is hard for me to think so far out of the box. But at the same time, as an older experienced teacher, I can be creative, take chances.

At any rate, I am thinking again about the next semester. What can I do differently? Not for entertainment value but for learning. Not old things in new guises.

If you haven't read his post, check it out.

Blogging next semester

I've been thinking about next semester and have decided to try blogging again with my writing students. I plan to have students write their early drafts of papers and post them to Moodle and then, when they are satisfied with them, they will post them to the blog.

When I do that, I know that I have to build an audience for them. Since I will probably only have two students in that class, we almost can't be our own audience! If there is no audience and there are no comments, there is no reason to blog. I guess I will make an appeal to anyone who happens by here to go there (wherever 'there" is) to read my students' blogs.

So be prepared to be invited and encouraged to comment on my students' posts next semester. Don't say you weren't warned!

Adult Literacy Education Wiki

For more than I year now I have known about the Adult Literacy Education Wiki, but it was only recently as I have gotten to be more comfortable with wikis that I have taken a real interest in it.

The wiki is a great resource for anyone in the US or probably Canada (and maybe other countries as well) who is interested in literacy at almost any level. The wiki is divided into a number of topic areas including Basic Literacy, Classroom Practices that Work, Professional Development, Technology and Young Adult Literacy.

I am currently the topic leader for the ESOL area. I am not sure yet exactly what that means, but I guess I will find out.

I would encourage any of you who are interested in literacy in any way to check this wiki out. It is filled with good information.

Another presentation fraught with problems

Yesterday I made a presentation at the LaTESOL conference in Baton Rouge, LA. I wanted to show the participants some of the cool tools that are available online. It started off well. I had set up a wiki with links to a lot of things and wanted us to look at the ones they were most interested in. I could access the wiki fine, but we were unable to access all the sites. It wasn't that they were blocked -- just a connection problem of some sort.

We talked about many of the tools and I was able to answer many of their questions even though I wasn't able to actually show them the tools. So on the whole, I was pretty content. I felt a little stupid every time a new site didn't open, but they seemed to take it in stride.

It is so much nicer to do an internet based presentation than a typical "slide show". But when they don't work, it is a problem. I had most of the presentation in an OpenOffice Presentation, but I didn't want to do it that way. I couldn't have individualized the program nearly as well. But I have to think about how I an do this in the future. I don't want another technology problem in a presentation on technology -- It's hard to win converts that way!

JotSpot

A year or so ago Bud got me interested in JotSpot, a wiki site. I started a wiki there but never really did much with it. Now I probably never will. Google has just acquired it to add to its "stable". As they did with Writely, you cannot get a new account there until the migration to Google's system is complete. You can, however, sign up to be put on the waiting list here. If you want to, that is.

Google Docs

Joanna asked what I thought of Google Docs. I have to admit that I really find it hard to make myself use it. I have always disliked the big Microsoft conglomeration of tools that can be accessed through one simple log-in. I feel the same way about Google. I am not convinced that I wan't them controlling my online life any more than I wanted Microsoft to do it.

I am planning to really look seriously at ZohoWriter and ThinkFree and any other smaller word processors I can find before I try to sue one with my students. It seems like there are new tools out there on an almost daily basis.

The only problem is that all these little companies are hoping to go the route of Writely and be gobbled up by some big company someday. I don't think you can pick one of these and expect to use them forever. I guess you might have to be happy if you can make it through to the end of the semester before you have to look for a replacement.

My presentation

Well, I went to the conference prepared for anything -- and it was a good idea. We couldn't find a computer lab that we could actually use, so I was either going to borrow a LCD projector or just going to have people gather around my laptop to see the presentation that is below. It ended up, though, that we found a lab we could use and we worked from this outline. We didn't get through all of it, of course, but I tried to address their main concerns, which seemed to center around publishing student work. All in all, it went well.

I can't keep up!

Things are changing so fast that I officially can't keep up! I was preparing a presentation for tomorrow on technology and writing for the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project. We weren't sure if I would be doing it in a computer lab where the participants would sit at their own computers and follow along as I did things or if I would need to do it as a PowerPoint presentation, so I prepared a PowerPoint to use in case I don't have Internet access.

I got it all done -- and then Writely officially became Google Docs. So I updated the URLs and made other little changes.

Then I heard that I will probably have Internet access, so I had to figure out the best way to cover all the same ground as I had in my PowerPoint (actually, OpenOffice Impress) presentation. I decided the easiest way would probably to put it all in a wiki. So I finally sat down and more or less figured out how to work with wikis. So now I have the links and everything there.

Then I read some posts to a literacy list I subscribe to, and I heard about Quick Topic, which allows you to add a discussion board to a website. So I set one up for the presentation to allow participants to introduce themselves and express their questions and interests. So if, as it now looks, each participant will have access to a computer, they will be able to post their introduction and tell what they hope to get from the presentation. After reading these, I will be able to shape the direction of the presentation. Of course, if no one expresses interest in or curiosity about anything, I can always go back to the prepared information.

I am almost afraid to check my Bloglines account again until after tomorrow morning because I don't want to get any more great ideas for my presentation! But I can't believe how much I have learned this week as I seriously began to put all this together!

A good question

Nathan posted a great comment on my previous post and asked a good question:

If we take away the "because it's convenient for the teacher" criterion, what else -- besides blog-or-not -- goes up for negotiation?

Any thoughts?

Rethinking blogging... again

Joanna posted a response to my reflection on the semester that got me thinking. She said that she had decided not to blog with her students now since there are so many other options out there, like Writely.

I wonder if there isn't some wisdom in that. Blogging is, at its best anyway, a personal endeavor as the result of a personal commitment. Who was is it a year or so ago who said that blogging shouldn't be something students had to do but rather something they did because they wanted to? Is that true?

I wonder what it would be like, if it would be possible to offer students a variety of outlets for their work and let them choose the one(s) they wanted to use. If a student wanted to blog, he could. If he only wanted to post inside Moodle, he could. If another wanted to use Writely, she could. Would there be any value in that? I know it would be a nightmare to try to evaluate student work if it were spread over too many different repositories - unless you have as few students as I do. But would there be value in allowing students that kind of freedom?

Write to My Blog

Joanna blogged about Write to My Blog and, being totally captivated by neat little applications and websites, I had to try it.

A while back I had written that I didn't think I would have a reason to type something up outside my blog and then post it to the blog, but I think it might have value.  Let's see how this works! 

Reflection on the semester so far

This semester has been the most interesting one I have had for awhile. The main reason for this, I think, is the fact that we decided to make the ESL courses "blended", with have the class hours done face to face and the other half done online using Moodle. I have been really fascinated by the use of technology in my classes for several years now, so this has been an exciting step.

So far it seems to be working quite well. My students seem to think they are being overworked, but they always had that opinion. What I see is that they are becoming more responsible for themselves and their learning. The transition hasn't always been easy, but for the most part it hasn't been bad.

Even before decided to put the classes online, I had decided not to use blogs with my students this semester. I wrote about that here. I am very glad that I made that decision. I have used Moodle's forum feature extensively with both my reading and my writing students. (That's like BlackBoard's Discussion Board, for those who don't know.) It has taken time, but they are learning to reply to each others' posts. They are having discussions that, increasingly, don't involve me. I am so excited by this fact that I am thinking about incorporating blogs again in the spring. Part of it, I know, is that my doing the work of putting the classes on Moodle, I have spent more time thinking on creating good assignments. That was part of the problem before; my assignments weren't quite right considering the responses I was hoping to get. Now my assignments lend themselves more to discussion. I have not made any definite decisions about this yet, of course, but I see it as a distinct possibility. I just need to think more about what I think they would gain by blogging rather than using a forum. I want to be clear about the reasons for switching before I do it.

So all in all, I am pretty happy with how things are going. The students also seem to be happy. We are off to a good start.

Work space

Kathy Sierra's post on the importance of the space in which we work got me thinking. I looked around my office and was appalled! But then I said, "Well, you don't spend that much time here, so maybe it's OK." And then I thought about where I usually work when I am at home. Not much better. Between the two places, I spend a considerable amount of time each day working in less than inspiring surroundings.

Then I thought back to where we lived before Katrina, a dilapidated old house with a great front porch overlooking the river. Now there was a place to work! It was so peaceful and inspiring and yet so full of life at the same time that I think I actually could get more done in less time.

The question, of course, is what am I going to do about this. Kathy went out and bought an old Airstream and converted it into her office. It looks beautiful. But that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. I think I really need to do something, though.

Did you read it? Where?

Within the last week or so, I am sure I read a post or an article somewhere that talked about academic writing (in English) being a foreign language. Did anyone else see it? It's one of those things I should have furled or something, but didn't. And now I need it for a paper I am writing! I would appreciate any help you might be able to give me.

Writing Project weekend

I have just returned from a 2-day retreat with our local Writing Project site, the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project. It was great to get away, spend time with my writing friends and make plans for the coming year.

I urge any US teacher who might read this post to check out their local Writing Project site. If you don't know where the nearest site is, check out the National Writing Project website for a list of sites by state. You don't have to be an English teacher, and it doesn't matter if you teach Kindergarten of graduate students; the Writing Project has something for you!

Beginners welcome

Vicky has an interesting post about the power of a newbie. She refers to a comment she had received from a beginner who had felt insecure about blogging her beginner experiences. Vicky quotes from one of her previous posts:

When you are a newbie, you have something that tech-experts do not have: the perspective of a new user.

Another important point in this discussion, I think, is that we are all beginners at something. So people who have been blogging for awhile may be scuffling to learn about wikis and people who have been podcasting "forever" are looking at some next thing. Once you get involved in this technology and what it can do for you and your classes, you have begun a never-ending process of exploration and learning.

So, like Vicky, I encourage anyone who is even remotely interested to join the discussion. We are all learning from each other, no matter how new or how experienced. That's the beauty of it: not that there are a large number of experts to lead us through the process but that we are all in it together, helping each other out when we can.