Thursday, October 16, 2003
I was pleased to see that almost all of the machines had survived the week with the scandisk and settings changes work that I did on them last week. As a result, the amount of time I had to spend on the technology itself was minimal. None-the-less, the machines are in need of serious work.
Marilyn indicated that they are all scheduled to be reburned. This will be a significant action that will allow us to move forward more quickly, because until they are burned we can use 3DWriter as a tool for creating and managing web pages.
Regardless, I decided to move forward with some basic training in this area, because I can put it on their laptops and they use it on their home computers. I prepped early in the morning by gathering some of the work they had created since last week's workshop and did a quick dry run on my laptop. Unfortunately, when we met during the 3rd grade prep period, we found that we could not ftp to the site, because the district firewall was blocking our efforts. It seem that my laptop was not logged into the network and as a result I was able to ftp while teachers could not.
After a quick call by Janine, I found that we can request that the teacher machines be opened for ftp. I'll compose a letter later and send it on to Marilyn.
Even though we couldn't ftp, I was able to demonstrate the process on my laptop and distribute handouts I had made to detail the process. I repeated the process with the 4th grate teachers.
During the remainder of the day I made the rounds of the classroom and worked individually with the teachers to clean up and post the web based activities they had created at the workshop and during the week.
They are all excited about getting the material online and beginning to use it with the students. We talked about what a significant difference the activities are making with the students as far as being motivational and engaging.
I should note that many of the kinds of activities that are going on at this point are not authentic projects, nor do they involve higher order skills. However, at this age many of the drill type activities are important to students who are struggling and are a necessary part of the curriculum. They also provide activities for the more gifted students to move beyond what is being offered in the class.
However, they are beginning to discover the difference between game type drill and more valuable online applications. For example, Debbie created an activity based on an NCMT java applet that allows student to input data and generated graphs. Students created surveys, distributed them to their classmates, tabulated the results, fed the data to the graph generator, and printed them out (after I got the printer up and running).
We also discussed the possibility of doing a Starw project that would involve a data collection study of an interesting human trait, not commonly known and to my knowledge, not previously studied as a data collecting project. The project could first be done and refined by students in the Starw classes and then expanded to the whole school, and eventually opened up to other schools in the district and around the world. It has the potential of being a significant online project. I'll be writing more about it in the weeks and months to come.
The fact that student and teacher work can not easily be moved from computer to computer is an obstacle that we have to overcome. I have some creative ideas about how that can be accomplished and will be testing them next week.
I asked the teachers to bring in their laptops next week so that I can load 3DWriter on them and they can begin more serious work in the creation of online activities.
All things considered, today was a good day.
Art
Marilyn indicated that they are all scheduled to be reburned. This will be a significant action that will allow us to move forward more quickly, because until they are burned we can use 3DWriter as a tool for creating and managing web pages.
Regardless, I decided to move forward with some basic training in this area, because I can put it on their laptops and they use it on their home computers. I prepped early in the morning by gathering some of the work they had created since last week's workshop and did a quick dry run on my laptop. Unfortunately, when we met during the 3rd grade prep period, we found that we could not ftp to the site, because the district firewall was blocking our efforts. It seem that my laptop was not logged into the network and as a result I was able to ftp while teachers could not.
After a quick call by Janine, I found that we can request that the teacher machines be opened for ftp. I'll compose a letter later and send it on to Marilyn.
Even though we couldn't ftp, I was able to demonstrate the process on my laptop and distribute handouts I had made to detail the process. I repeated the process with the 4th grate teachers.
During the remainder of the day I made the rounds of the classroom and worked individually with the teachers to clean up and post the web based activities they had created at the workshop and during the week.
They are all excited about getting the material online and beginning to use it with the students. We talked about what a significant difference the activities are making with the students as far as being motivational and engaging.
I should note that many of the kinds of activities that are going on at this point are not authentic projects, nor do they involve higher order skills. However, at this age many of the drill type activities are important to students who are struggling and are a necessary part of the curriculum. They also provide activities for the more gifted students to move beyond what is being offered in the class.
However, they are beginning to discover the difference between game type drill and more valuable online applications. For example, Debbie created an activity based on an NCMT java applet that allows student to input data and generated graphs. Students created surveys, distributed them to their classmates, tabulated the results, fed the data to the graph generator, and printed them out (after I got the printer up and running).
We also discussed the possibility of doing a Starw project that would involve a data collection study of an interesting human trait, not commonly known and to my knowledge, not previously studied as a data collecting project. The project could first be done and refined by students in the Starw classes and then expanded to the whole school, and eventually opened up to other schools in the district and around the world. It has the potential of being a significant online project. I'll be writing more about it in the weeks and months to come.
The fact that student and teacher work can not easily be moved from computer to computer is an obstacle that we have to overcome. I have some creative ideas about how that can be accomplished and will be testing them next week.
I asked the teachers to bring in their laptops next week so that I can load 3DWriter on them and they can begin more serious work in the creation of online activities.
All things considered, today was a good day.
Art
Monday, October 13, 2003
I haven't had a chance to make an entry for a while, because after last Thrusday's visit I had to drive to Deleware for a conference, then fly to California for a wedding, and then back to NJ for another conference today. All that is out of the way now and thank goodness I don't have any more road trips until February.
Last Thursday I had hoped to get the teachers working on the creation of web sites, however there were technical problems that prevented it. I wrote to Marilyn about it and we will be working through them and moving forward. In lieu of the planned work, I did some work with the teachers to set the systems up so that everyone's home page is the Starw.org web site.
Then we discussed some ideas of what they might be doing in the workshop on Friday. I had spoken with Jamie Saponaro who was going to conduct the workshop. I knew that she was going to work with them on the idea of creating short activities to be used in learning stations. I told them to send anything they came up with to me and I would get it on the web site.
When I returned from California, there were about a half dozen activities waiting for me in email. Thought a few didn't make it intact and others were lacking pictures. Some were complete and I posted as much as was possible, with the idea of pulling together the rest and attaching pictures when I visit this Thursday.
Last Thursday I had hoped to get the teachers working on the creation of web sites, however there were technical problems that prevented it. I wrote to Marilyn about it and we will be working through them and moving forward. In lieu of the planned work, I did some work with the teachers to set the systems up so that everyone's home page is the Starw.org web site.
Then we discussed some ideas of what they might be doing in the workshop on Friday. I had spoken with Jamie Saponaro who was going to conduct the workshop. I knew that she was going to work with them on the idea of creating short activities to be used in learning stations. I told them to send anything they came up with to me and I would get it on the web site.
When I returned from California, there were about a half dozen activities waiting for me in email. Thought a few didn't make it intact and others were lacking pictures. Some were complete and I posted as much as was possible, with the idea of pulling together the rest and attaching pictures when I visit this Thursday.
