Conversations via comments

I have found lately that I have done a fair amount of reading and commenting but not much blog writing. I had big plans to review my blog and write an entry about some of the key ideas I have encountered in the last year (March 15 marked my first year of writing). Maybe I still will because I know there are some important concepts hidden back in earlier blogs that I need to revisit…but for now my point…..

and Clay have been discussing on their blogs the best pedagogy in approaching blogs with students and helping them become writers. It has been a great conversation moving back and forth between comments and the blogs themselves. However it has made me wonder about the intersection between writing and conversing.

Reading to write…becoming a writer…. Commenting to converse and to be stretched and to learn....How do these concepts fit together?

This is a personal question and it also has implication for student practice. I know it is not an “either or choice” it is a” both/ and” but it requires balance. In practice that balance may not be very neat or symmetrical because there are times when our engagement with ideas may not happen so much on our personal blog as they do in interacting with ongoing conversations on the blogs of others.

What does it mean for our students?

For me? Maybe it is a case of writers block or overload....being a conversationalist has been fun!

School wide blogging: What should it entail?

Recently I have been participating in a conversation on Clay Burell’s blog Beyond School about blogging in the classroom. It started as his think aloud and evolved through multiple post and comments to a good discussion about how to utilize blogs in a school wide setting. This issue is just coming into its own as more teachers are employing blogging in connection with their classes across a school community.

Some of the issues to consider include:

1. One blog per students or multiple blogs per student

In my opinion and experience one blog per students is the way to go. It allows for the students to experience cross curricular applications and synthesis of learning. It works to counter the departmentalization too prevalent in our current system of education. It also encourages teacher collaboration.

2. How are blogs used and who assesses the blogs/ for what purpose?

Clay has developed one option which you can read about on his blog. In essence it utilizes the blog as a journal of the students learning journey over 4 years. The blog will be a synthesis project culminating in their graduation year. One issue at the heart of his approach is a concern that using blogs in a more homework oriented fashion robs them of their power. (You need to read what he says to get a whole picture because this simplistic explanation does not do justice to his thought process) Clay, thanks for raising the question and helping me to think through my views. You are doing some great things and you always make your own learning curve transparent which gives me wings too.

I believe that writing across the curriculum is essential. It is the gateway to thinking like a scientist, a historian or a mathematician. It is the antidote to memorizing empty facts and leads to synthesis and higher level thinking. Therfore ideally it involves all teachers and all disciplines.

In addition, I think that engaging the students requires an authentic audience. Therefore my vision ( it s not a developed plan yet) is that blogs will be an integral part of all classes. I work at the K-8 level and the main focus of blogging is in grades 6 to 8. For now because the students still need to explore a variety of topics to expand their world some blogging will be prescribed. Teachers will need to help the students build an authentic audience and deliberately connect them with experts in the real world.

I also believe that blogs do not stand alone and therefore building Personal Learning Communities that reflect subject areas and course content are an important factor in creating reflective writing in content areas. I believe that a cross curricular team approach to mentoring (and assessing) the students is important so that they are encouraged to develop their voices and thinking in light of the unique voice and thinking characterized by different disciplines.

What do you think school wide blogging should take into consideration?

echnorati Tags: classrrom_blogs, Burell, school2.0, web2.0

BLC Conference Attendance

So are any of you planning to attend the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston this summer? I remember reading on someones blog that they had attended last year but I do not remember who. I will be attending and I hope I will get to meet some of you in person there. Let me know if any of you are thinking about going.
Technorati Tags: BLC, November_learning, technology_conference

Skrbl- a Cool tool/ 10 New majors-An article

Recent article that showed up on my MSN account 10 Majors that Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago. I just glanced at it but I think it maybe worth a look. It is certainly another piece of the ongoing story.

Great tool--- this one comes from Greg’s Weblog and it is called skrbl. It is still in beta but definitely worth exploring. With an LCD projector this is a great alternative for those of us who can’t afford “Smart boards” or tablets. Plus it is a good resource for distance collaboration.

Technorati Tags: skrbl, smartboards, tech-tools,school2.0,telling-the-story, web2.0

Back from CUE

CUE review....it really is about the conversations and the experiences!

The two things which made me think deeply were a conversation I had with Steve Hargadon and the workshop which the teachers and I presented on our journey which was about how to implement change and what can be done in six months.

The edubloggers meetup ended up just being Steve and myself but we had a great discussion about education. One thing that I have been pondering was our discussion about rigor. What is educational (or intellectual) rigor? As we design more open ended learning and move away from distinct chunks of knowledge it is sometimes harder for the constituency to quantify learning. Therefore, as we redesign courses we need to be transparent in describing the learning. By way of example we talked about the Japan unit I was working on in Moodle. Which is more rigorous? Following the text, learning about the early history of Japan and origins of its culture and passing the book test...OR Placing it in the context of a unit on Asia ( ie not studying in isolation from China and Korea), making connections with modern day Japan students/schools and considering how Japanese culture is carried over to the US by Japanese Americans? I know this seems obvious but my point is we need to be clear in our expression of what we are doing. We need to identify base knowledge the students need in order to explore deeper and we need to explain all of this to our community.

Our workshop was a great experiences on a number of levels. Our opportunity to present grew out of our participation in the ISTE Institute last July. So, Don Knezek, the CEO of ISTE attended our session and his affirmation and encouragement raised the bar, cemented the importance of continuing to move forward and provided the courage for me to continue to embrace change. Our experience at the ISTE Institute provided us with a foundation and a direction for change which will continue to anchor us and sustain our process of growth. The two concepts that we explored at the Institute were the NETS and the Essential Conditions for the integration of technology. As an important side note here-If you have not become involved in the refresh the NETS movement follow this link and give your input before the end of March.
It had been awhile since I had spoken at a conference and as always there were things I personally could have done better but there is something very powerful about the ownership that comes from explaining what you did as a means to provide inspiration and encouragement for others to move forward. The teachers did such a great job of speaking from their hearts and giving witness to the fact that the best way to integrate technology is not to have all the answers but is to get started and to be willing to learn collaboratively with your students! Publicly standing behind what you are doing is a powerful way to create ownership and promote continued change.

I did not attend any earth shattering presentations. Nothing that stretched the envelope on pedagogy or philosophy but I did attend a number of informative presentations. The list of talks were largely centered around issues of how to use tools and that was a good thing in many ways. I knew what tools I needed to understand better and I discovered a couple of new tools. I understand the "cast" in podcasting now, I think I get Google earth and how to use it in the classroom, I learned some tricks of the trade for RSS feeds and even for searching and I learned about some applications of video games in the classroom. Perhaps the best part was that the four teachers who also attended were getting excited about the tools and deepening their understanding too.
Technorati Tags: cue, cue07, ISTE, cue2007, NETS, lesson_design, 0to60

Moral Imperative? CUE takes on new meaning...

Typing on my lap and on the fly so this may not be the smoothest post but I hope to capture the highlights and maybe even some on the spot reflections. This morning I read an interesting post on Scott Mcleod's blog which raises a very important question about social justice. He suggests that we have a moral imperative to embrace what for lack of a better term we call School 2.0. (You really need to read the whole post)

"Many of us education bloggers write a lot about transforming classroom practice to reflect the needs of a new world: we often call it ‘School 2.0.’ Is School 2.0 the ultimate social justice issue for disadvantaged students? Is School 2.0 the most critical social justice issue of our time if disadvantaged students aren’t going to be left even further behind than they already are? If so, why aren’t we framing more of our technology initiatives and discussion in this way? Where’s our moral imperative?"

Scott's perspective raises the stakes on what is going on at CUE and across the educational blogosphere. I celebrate incremental change and understand that starting overcomes inertia but now I am wondering how much time we need and how to shorten the time until we embrace systemic change.

Keynote presentation: The Natives are Restless- Deneen Bowen

Digital natives or digital savages-- laugh a little at the things that are feared.. the students will take over, student wisdom an oxymoron, students to connected and distracted...
And then from the kids perspective... sorry but you had to be there ... The power of a two minute movie and …..

Great tool to hear the students voice- NetDay Speak Up – Survey of students: Tech use at school and in school, obstacles at school, what would you choose as important if you could design a new school,
Results gives you opportunity to compare to national responses

The talk was definitely experiential and hard to capture in words but one of the key components was to listen to the student’s voices.

Technorati Tags: cue, cue07, Mcleod, School2.0, cue2007

Moodleing in Palm Springs

I am posting from Cue 2007. I have spent the last two days in a Moodle training session and though the actual conference has not started my head is already spinning. For those of you who may not be familiar with Moodle check out their web site .In short it is an open source version of Blackboard.

Last night as I reflected on my experience there were a couple of things that are worthy of note. First is one feature that is part of Moodle which was news to me. Within each course you can add a RSS feeder to enhance course content. This is a great feature for those of us determined to give student access to Web 2.0 and up-to-date information for their course of study!

The other issue I have been reflecting on is course design. As I struggled through my learning curve in trying to construct a course I found that the traditional elementary and middle school model of lesson planning was not well suited to this new tool. Don’t get me wrong you could put up a very traditional class but in my opinion to utilize its full capability you need to think outside the box. I have not fully thought out what this means but I have a few ideas that I think need to be examined. At the K-8 level lesson planning has always focused on daily objectives and in recent years with project based learning and essential questions there has been some movement toward looking at the bigger picture but I still believe that for the most part K-8 balks at the idea of syllabus and long range planning. The argument so often is the” teachable moment”, I can’t plan very far out. Okay I get that but I do not fully buy it. If we want kids to take charge of their learning we have to stop dishing out discreet portions and become facilitators of a bigger picture. I was trying to plan a lesson for seventh grade on the early history of Japan but how can I teach that without putting it in the context of Asia in general and modern Japan. No wonder students are not engaged and see their learning at disconnected and learn for the test. How much of the text is truly essential base knowledge? What is important? I am now more convinced than ever that we need to define power standards and focus on bigger chunks. To facilitate learning in a digital world we need to know exactly what is important for everybody ( the base knowledge) and where the students can have the freedom to explore and we must teach in context of the world in which we live. To put it bluntly for most 7^th graders in our school the customs of early Japan are far removed from their lived experience and do not engage them. But they might be interested if Japan has a name and face … a connection with their world. They know about the Philippines so another connection could be ...how are the development of these to island cultures the same and different?

We can only find time for this kind of exploration and learning if we have a clear idea of what is essential in the big picture otherwise we are tied to our textbooks, our daily objectives. and discreet bundles of knowledge which are soon forgotten after the test.

Technorati Tags: moodle, lesson-design, cue, cue2007, cue07

Bloglines..Is it time to move on…

Today I read a post by Clay regarding the new image wall on Bloglines. I must admit even though I had seen it I had not looked at it very critically. Clay makes some very important points, especially in my case, since I work in a K-8 environment. I understand that we can not protect the kids from everything and I am not interested in censorship BUT I do believe we have to make responsible choices and model those for the students. ( It seems to me that the image wall just makes it too tempting and too easy for the students to do the wrong thing)We haven’t set up student Bloglines accounts but it was on the near horizon and all of the teachers are just getting started.

As my previous post indicates I have become a huge fan of Google productivity tools and so today I exported my Bloglines account to a Google reader! It was painless and now my notebook and my feeds all pop up on my homepage…How much easier can it be?

Technorati Tags: google, bloglines, imagewall, googlereader

Technorati Tags: boycottbloglines

Google notebbok a great productivity tool

Okay I am the first to admit this is probably very old news to most of you but I am hooked on Google notebook. As I am preparing for CUE I started to really put this tool to the test. If you have never used this handy little tool you need to check it out.

It is a fantastic intuitive application that has made my WEB 2.0 journey a lot easier. It sits quietly in my tool bar as I read the blogs from my aggregator, But then when I read something I think is a powerful concept or an important quote it jumps to life. I highlight the selection click add to notebook and there it is complete with references and always available on my Google homepage!

For a student doing research or anyone doing research or preparing a presentation it is an incredible way to keep all that great stuff together in a simple and concise way. There have been numerous posts about teaching students to deal with the large quantities of material available and this is one tool to make that job easier. Yes, you still have to be selective and you may still need to delete something when you gather too much but at least for me, it is simpler than a clip blog or del.icio.us and it lets me take snippets but keeps the link to whole!

Technorati Tags: CUE, Googlenotebook, web2.0tools

Learning from experience and thinking about the future

A week full of immersion excursions and also some thought provoking reading!

First for the immersion excursion….(Sorry, couldn’t resist) This week has been busy with the photo-a-day project! It is growing daily and currently has 13 school involved from across the globe. In my own community it has gendered quite a bit of interest at all grade levels and among the parents too. Because we are taking photos all around school I sent a letter to the parents with a permission form. The reaction was characterized by comments like “That sounds really neat. How can we see the pictures?” It is really exciting to see the parents wanting to be involved. All of the teachers also want their students to view the project too so this will be the first school wide Web 2.0 activity.

On a personal level it has been an opportunity for me to “practice what I preach”. That is to plan and carry out a project even though I was not well versed in using the particular tools we employed. To plan the project I built my first wiki and to do the project I built a Flickr group. Both of which were firsts for me. There were kinks and bumps but I feel good about how it is all coming together. And I can say with confidence it is okay for learning to be a little messy! Monday the student photographers and I will meet to talk about the project, what we have learned so far and what we can learn from the pictures posted by the other schools…. And then the next level of fun will begin with student interactions! Sooo much to learn…sooo much fun to learn!

While I was busy with all of this I have also been reading and thinking about the next level… the next Bhag…. How to have one foot in the here and now and one foot and an eye on the place we are headed. There are so many of you who are forward thinking and who keep stretching me…thank you! So these are the things that I have seen this week which have me thinking. Miguel at Around the Corner has taken up the BHAG challenge in his own way and has posted a wiki for us to answer the questions……
1. How are you building your network?
2. How are you modeling your learning?
(Source: Questions asked during Will Richardson's preso at the Connectivism Conference )
My own thoughts are centering around call for passion by Konrad at the blog of proximal development. (If you haven’t read this post you need to). Rekindling passion…. encouraging passion… about our subject matter is the life’s blood of education. If we are not passionate about what we are doing we are only half alive. So what works against passion? I see an intersection here with another topic that keeps coming up….moving away from dependence on textbooks and staying current through Rss feeds. Curriculum can not afford to be mind numbing…it must be dynamic and engaging ..it must be empowered….and my next Bhag will have something to do with kindling passion for course content through the dynamic interactions of web 2.0.
Tags: bhag, bhags, photo-a-day, flickr, photoaday, passion-based-learning

Articulating BHAGS –Big Hairy Audacious Goals

I recently began reading Scott Mcleod’s blog Dangerously Irrelevant and he addresses the components of initiating and sustaining change. This in connection with my own reflections as we are preparing to tell our story, “O to 60 in Six Months” at CUE in Palm Springs at the end of this month lead to this post.

Last summer at NECC and in many of the edublogs there was a lot of talk about telling the story. This, as Scott says, is a critical piece It builds vision, a common language and a sense of urgency. Telling the story by ripping, reflecting and remixing was the starting point for our school community and as the year has progressed we have continued to talk about the story because it takes time to plumb its depths. However the real change that occurred this year was driven by what Scott calls BHAGS- a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

As an instructional leader setting a BHAG drove systemic change forward. It was no longer just an important idea but an action. The BHAG for our community may not be as lofty or as big as Scott had in mind but it was nonetheless a BHAG in our context- a single K-8 school seeking to institute systemic change in our educational program. The BHAG- Connect teachers and students with Web 2.0 as an essential means of teaching and learning.

I believe that at all levels of school organization from the district to the classroom we need to identify our BHAG as the necessary compliment and call to action which should follow our story….interestingly once again, this is about education learning from business as Scott links us to the origin of the concept….

So do you have a BHAG? "A tangible, concrete target that lets us know when we’ve reached some crucial point." ( Scott Mcleod)

Just as the story has been shared, ripped and remixed I think we need to articulate our BHAGs so we can draw inspiration and ideas from each other as well as clarify our own thinking. So who is willing to take the challenge and articulate their BHAG?
Technorati Tags: Mcleod, BHAGS, new story, schoolgoals

Are you in? Part 2

Ready! Set!Go!

The student photographers will be armed with cameras and roaming the campus on Monday! Hope you are joining us!

The FLICKR Group has now been created- But you need to contact me so I can invite you to join because we have a public group that is set to "by invitation".

http://www.flickr.com/groups/photo-a-day4schools/

Steps to be included in the group:
1. Set up a Flickr account
2. Search for our group - Photo-a-Day for schools or me ( Babs2teach)
3. Add me to you contacts and send me a message
4. I will reply with an invitation to join the group

Technorati Tags: pads, photo-a-day$schools, photo-a-day, flickr

Planning for a photo a day

I am excited about the interest in the Flickr project. To move it from an idea to a reality I have just created a wiki so that all interested parties can collaborate in the planning.

So are you in? Visit the wiki and add your ideas and insights so that we are all on the same page and then let the fun begin!

A Flickr Activity/Challenge- Are you in?

I love early morning Blog reading...it always gets me excited about the day ahead! This morning in my reading I ran across a really neat idea.

David Muir Writes about a personal project on Flickr documenting the year in pictures and then ruminates on if or how we might use this in schools. This is a spin off of Project 365 which David talks about and in essence it includes posting a picture a day to capture life or in our cases the life of a school or class. David says that at Project 365 they have included some weekly challenges to make it more fun. So what can we do? It can include some weekly challenges to so that this week we might all capture the essence of __________ ( you fill in the blank- for example maybe recess/break time) As you can see in the comment below which I left on David's site...I think this has incredible possibilities especially if we connect and make a group of schools around the globe. Talk about learning to appreciate culture and visual literacy and connections....etc So is anybody interested in setting up a Flickr group and participating???

Comment I left at David's site...
Before I got to the end of the post I had already thought about how this could be used at school. I love the idea and we are just about to start our second semester...so why not start now. I do not know if we have the energy to do public and private postings as some suggested but I want to do this.. the public aspect appeals to me the most...especially if we can connect with schools around the world..We Pre-K (3 year olds) to 8the grade (aprox 13 year olds). I will post this to my blog so if you are interested come on over and leave me a note.
Thanks for this great idea.

Need your help to work smarter not harder

Leading others into WEB 2.0 always is an interesting journey and at least in my case I feel like I am only one page ahead of those who are looking to me for direction.
The staff has dabbled with Bloglines but are somewhat overwhelmed by searching for and adding feeds which leads to my question.

I work in a K-8 school and I would like to be able to point the teachers to some teachers blogs that mirror their grade levels. I have plenty for 6-8 but need some recommendations for teacher blogs for 3-5 and Pre-K to 2. Any ideas?
Maybe someone has their own blogroll sorted by grade levels?

Everybody will learn to search and add blogs but in the beginning sorting through lists like those at Support Blogging can be a daunting task.

Discovery: Two new Web tools from a great feed

In my morning sojourn with Bloglines I ran across two tools that I thought might be of interest. One of my feeds is from the site Solution Watch which is run by Brian Benzinger. The first article is about a site called Footnote that deals with original source documents and has partnered with the National Archive There is a free and a paid interface depending on your needs but the basic free level seems like a great portal to help older students utilize some original texts. It allows you to interact with the sources and like any good web 2.0 tool it calls for users to create content by adding other sources.

The second tool that caught my eye from brains reviews was one called Viddler. While we are not ready to use this yet I know many of you are busy with video creations and so I pass this one on for timed tagging of videos so you can show sections. I have bookmarked it for future use and hopefully some of you will put it through its paces and let me know how it works.

Even if these tools do not work for you check out Solution Watch. It is definitely worth and RSS feed.

web2.0 tools

Pedagogy and Practice

I am catching up now on my Bloglines reading and a couple of ideas are resonating with me. I have been thinking on and off about the issues of pedagogy and practice as we embrace Web 2.0. There have been various posts at various times that have opined for more development of pedagogy in the application of Web 2.0 for the classroom. In reflecting on this I found myself wondering about the old conundrum which came first the chicken or the egg. In this instance I think that two posts, one By Jeff Utecht and one by David Warlick have pointed me toward an understanding that works for my reality.
David writes about a recent workshop he gave and he quotes the reflections of Doug Hyde who writes....

"What particularly impressed me was his[David's] 3-E’s: Exposing the information, Employing the information, and Expressing ideas compellingly. These are supported by the invisible ‘E,’ Ethical use of information. In short we need to encourage ourselves and students to look for the truth, find relevance, and create value for information; all the while keeping the information honest, unbiased, and personal by citing sources."

For me this says it all. Dictionary.com offers the following definition for pedagogy "1.the function or work of a teacher; teaching." No matter what subject we teach our goal, our work, our function and our purpose is well defined by these four E's.

The practice, the practical dabbling, learning and changing that teachers embrace as they move into the 2.0 world will reflect the pedagogy only in the doing. Jeff states it so well...

"Not every teacher ‘gets’ the power of these tools, how they really can be used to change the way we teach and the way students learn. Right now, I’d say we are building School 1.5. Using the technology because it’s there, not really looking at how it impacts learning. But, for now, I’m OK with this.

Because …(this for me is one of the key things I need to remember)

We have to use the tool before we understand what it can do for us. When I started blogging I had no idea where it was going to lead, 16 months later I get it!

[Of course if Jeff thinks he is only at 1.5 then I have not even left the starting blocks- but that is another discussion]

So at least for me the practice and the pedagogy develop simultaneously….. as long as we dialogue about our practice and continue to stretch and try new things.

Blogmeister- The students are getting started!

We are getting started! The students have begun posting their first blogs. We are having some difficulty with the scribe posts but their individual posts are showing up so you are invited to encourage their efforts. Click on over to Blogmeister

New Year, New Perspective, Off and Running

First, I apologize for the long break in my writing. I had hope over the holidays to begin to post but I have been processing a lot of information and struggling with where we are and where we are going to the point of feeling overwhelmed. I did not even read any blogs because I did not want to get excited over another idea that I might not be able to implement.

Finally though I have regained a perspective and I am ready to look toward the future.

We have reviewed our growth over the last 4 months and there is much to celebrate. We have said that we are on a journey from 0 to 60 in 6 months. While my vision may have included “lassoing the moon” ( thus my frustration) the faculty and staff have accomplished truly great things . I invite those who might visit here to celebrate with us our journey. It is a long journey and every so often we need to look back to see how far we have come. Any comments or encouragement will be passed on to the teachers!

July of 2006

4 members of the staff attend NECC and the ISTE Institute

August 2006

Faculty in service-

What does it mean to teach and learn in the 21^st century- Is it fundamentally any different than in the 20^th century?

Watched Thomas Friedman’s MIT lecture on The World is Flat

Reorganized our K-8 school into learning academies

Primary Learning Academy

Intermediate Preparatory Academy

Junior High Information Technology Preparatory Academy

Sept. 2006 to present ( some of what we have done)

• Computer lab reconfigured to a classroom layout
• We disposed of our Pentium Computers with either 32 or 64 megs of ram and 3 gig hardrives were replaced with industry cast offs that are Pentium 3 800 meghertz with 10 gig hardrives and 256 ram—These at least are adequate for our needs----
• Went from computers gathering dust to a full utilization of the lab by classroom teachers (tech support but no lab teacher)
• Purchased to LCD projectors and two lap top computers which are in constant use by teachers and now students. Who are learning the ins and outs of good presentations.
• Introduced open source software- specifically Open office
• All teachers have read educational blogs and left some comments on student work from around the world
• All teachers have been introduced to RSS and have written at least one blog entry
• A classroom has signed up for e-pals
• Grades 5 to 8 have worked on internet literacy and talked about the validity of web sites
• 6 to 8 are beginning scribe activities
• Students in Grade 7 have tried their hand at creating a wiki
• Grades 6- 8 have been given online access to their grades and homework through personal passwords
• Grades 6- 8 each student has a blog and they are just beginning to see some action as of this writing
• Teachers in 6-8 have designed a cross curricular unit based on Romeo and Juliet which will encourage blog activity across the subjects
• We established a Moodle site and we are beginning to build content..
• 5 Teachers attending California CUE conference in March

Keeping up with the information flow

I only have about 15 blogs on my bloglines account and of those I probably only read 6 or seven almost every day. Today I was reading Remote Access, one of my regular reads and as always I found myself both encouraged and challenged. Clarence writes aMini-Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Classroom which I think I want to adopt as a kind of mission statement. In the manifesto one thing he says….

“The Gatekeepers are Gone
Giving kids textbooks that are ten years out of date is not only wrong, but it is bordering on negligent. Students can access information online that is racist, hurtful, or perfectly false. They also have the opportunity to post information online and gain an international audience. As one of the grade seven girls in my class told me last year, “you don’t have to be a rich old guy from New York anymore.”

I think he is right on the point but it also raises an issue that has been bothering me. Many people are writing in one form or another that we need to teach the kids to deal with large quantities of information. I agree that this is an essential literacy skill however I am at a loss as to how we do this. I am struggling myself and constantly feel that I am on information overload and that I will never keep up.

Any ideas about how we are going to master and teach this skill? If I am overloaded my teachers are feeling even more so because most are not naturally inclined to the technological world. This issue has been troubling me for a while because it is a skill I also need to teach my staff to help them manage the rapidly changing landscape of education.

Jeff’s recent article in the Techlearning Blog on the stages of the digital immigrant is another important reflection for on going professional development. It helps us identify where we are and where we need to be…. I have left both Clarence’s article and Jeff’s for the faculty meeting today. I will not be there so I will be very interested in hearing about the ensuing discussion.