Onionskin

I’m so excited! It’s official. Next month I am going back to working with kids and teachers, as an Engaged Learning Specialist at the middle school level!

I love the fact that my new job title places the focus on Engaged Learning, and that it is a multi-faceted position. I’ll be working with students in a computer lab part of the time, so I’m delving into the brand-new NETS publication eagerly, looking for the changes and seeing how they align with my current thinking about digital citizenship. I’ll be working with teachers to integrate technology part of the time, so I will get to apply some of that new knowledge shared by friends who attended NECC this summer and do what I love most – collaborate and facilitate. I will also be making some changes to the media center, so I am very grateful to have the insights of so many colleagues in my online PLN who have been investigating and blogging this past year about the changing role of the library.

Best of all, my new superintendent and new principal “get it”… They have used the phrases “breaking down walls” and “getting in the way of students’ learning”. Not surprisingly, my superintendent shared with me the highlights of various conversations he’s had recently with Will Richardson, David Jakes and Meg Ormiston. How refreshing to speak to an administrator who doesn’t give me a blank look when I talk about who’s on my aggregator!

This announcement is so new that I haven’t even seen the spaces I’ll be working in next year, so it’s a little hard to “envision” at this point. I’m looking forward to meeting new friends, getting oriented to a new culture, and beginning this wonderful adventure. I’m sure that it won’t be long before my To Do List grows to immense proportions, and surpasses the length of my current list of questions… so I’m getting organized now! I’m looking at Moodle and nings and wikis, and investigating student blogs and podcasting tools…

What tools have been most beneficial to you in your quest to integrate technology? What suggestions do you have for me — things you wish you’d known when you started your last new position? What would you do with a brand new opportunity like this one?

Photo Credit: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=109866&

Last fall, I attended an Administrators’ Academy by Meg Ormiston titled “Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts” and was introduced to the potential of VoiceThread. I watched a sample VoiceThread, and thought, “Hm. That’s not so difficult. My youngest son could do that.”

A few weeks ago, I attended a session by Will Richardson titled “Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts”. (The business manager almost didn’t let me go to this. Because it had the same title. Hmmm!) Anyway, Will brought this online tool to light once again, and I resolved to complete the project with my youngest son that I once envisioned in Meg’s session .

Background Info: In February, we had a rare set of circumstances come together that allowed us to travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands. We were packed (virtually, at least) and ready to go when the message came back from youngest son’s school, “Please have him read every day, and have him write a Travel Journal.”

This innocent request, made by hundreds of thousands of classroom teachers to those (awfully irresponsible) parents who have the NERVE to pull their children out of school for a family vacation, actually stopped me in my tracks.

I have an “outdoor child,” one that we have affectionately called “BBB,” as in our Barefoot Backyard Boy. He spends every moment of any free time he has — outside, digging and bug-searching and planting and eagerly scanning the fences for neighborhood buddies who might have escaped their houses to their own backyards.

This child, I was certain, would be “in his element” at the beach, digging and building and holding marine life in his hands. How — I repeat, HOW — was I going to get him to spend even one waking moment with a pencil and paper in his hand when there were so many undiscovered treasures out there at the water’s edge?

On a truly impulse buy (my husband says I know no other type), I stopped into the Apple Store and picked up a Belkin recorder that would attach to any one of our iPods. I envisioned my small son running up to me on the beach and excitedly relating his tales of discovery and kingdom conquest (LOL) as I demurely pushed the “Record” button on my Belkin.

Truth be told, we did SOME recording while there, but not of the level nor quality I’d expected. However, once home, I refused to delete these audio files from my iPod, thinking that they’d be useful eventually.

Last night, I pulled up the VoiceThread into which we had uploaded our photos, and recruited youngest son to do narrations. I even played the audio files for him from my iTunes, just to get him “in the mood.” In the end, I thought he did an amazing job of composing his thoughts for each image, and overall, of telling the “story” of our trip.

However, I didn’t expect some things…

• I had no idea that “free commentary” would be so daunting to him. My ever-verbose child INSISTED upon dictating his words to me. I keyed them into Word, and he read from there. Towards the end, improvisation and ad-libbing dominated, even with the script before him. Yet I was surprised at his “dependence” upon having it in front of him.
• While I worked very hard to not let the “teacher” in me come out, I found it amusing and somewhat disheartening when he would “self-correct” for what was seemingly my benefit alone. Twice he recorded the “spontaneous” voice saying, “We are busy-busy bees,” (which I know to be reflective of his experiences with his kindergarten and first grade teachers) and deleted it. I worked hard to convince him to keep it because HE liked it, no matter how “trite” it felt to me.
• I was surprised at how very aware he was of his audience. Originally, of course, the only intended audience was his teacher, and the purpose was for a grade. Once I resurrected the project from the “forgotten” pile, his audience became my Professional Learning Network (PLN). (Funny, he knows them from the Twitter screen. “Oh, she’s the one that sent you the “Bulgarian ‘Ken Lee’ YouTube link!” or “Oh, she’s the one that has the baby chicks, and she has a son my age,right?”)
• I was even more surprised at how the awareness of this audience affected his choice of words. He knew that he was speaking, for the most part, to educators, so he threw in his own editorial about the integrity of Christopher Columbus. Yet, he also knew that there would be students in his audience, so he captured the essence of “My parents made me do this…” every now and then. (Wouldn’t want to be TOO enthusiastic about something educational and reality-based, now, would we?)
• I was surprised at how this “child of nature” began several narrations at the end of the Voice Thread with, “This is a…” and seemed to stop there after identification purposes, despite volumes of knowledge contained in his head about that species. Oddly enough, he had more to say about the historical sites that we (evil parents) dragged him to see, unwillingly. (Justice. Grin.)
• Finally, I was surprised that he was adamant that his classmates should not see this. He didn’t mind “creating his digital presence,” as Steve Dembo promotes. However, he didn’t have any interest in having his current peers comment on the current product. He actually begged me to swear his teacher to secrecy and not share this with his classmates.

As always, I learn every time that I work with kids and technology. This time, the lessons were more esoteric. Now why wouldn’t I have expected that from this child?