I realize many of you do not want to think about next year at this very moment. I also realize that many of you can’t help but to think about next year. So, with these things in-mind, I thought I’d share some things that have crossed my Google Reader and Twitter feed.

David Warlick asked his readers, “When you return to your classroom (or other edu-workplace), what do you wish will be there that wasn’t there this school year?” Folks then posted their wishes on Twitter with the hashtag #classwish. I wished for online presentation software could be collaborative and had non-linear possibilities. Today, Warlick compiled his results.

How would you answer David Warlick’s question? What do you wish for next year that wasn’t there this year? Really think outside the school box on this one. Who knows, we might be able to make it happen. I found the presentation software I was looking for in Zoho.

Over at Weblogg-ed, Will Richardson writes about a Time article in which the future of work is pondered. The article states, among other things, “We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values–and women will increasingly be at the controls.” Richardson then wonders…

Which would seem to me to suggest that we need to create a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative learning experience for my kids, right? If as the article states fully 40% of the US workforce is predicted to be independent contractors by 2019, shouldn’t we be rethinking what it means to prepare them for that?

How do these ideas change what you do in your classroom? My hope is that what we do in eMINTS supports this shift in education and the workplace. What do you think?

In conjuntion with the news that California (read “Cal-ee-fornia”) is dumping the textbook in favor of internet sources, I stumbled upon the blog TeachPaperless. While it claims to mainly provide educators with ideas for going paperless, the blog also gives its readers president for going tree-friendly in their classrooms. Even if you don’t care for the political slant, it’s an interesting read.

In my personal network, a friend who teaches high school English in Lincoln, NE mentions on his blog that his team of teachers is meeting to deal with plagiarism. It seems that several students have figured out how to copy and paste content from online sources onto their own papers, trying to pass the work off as their own. Have you considered this possibility in your own class? Do you have a plagiarism policy? Are you aware of ways to teach about and discover plagiarized work?

My partner sees this a lot as an English professor at the university. It’s easiest to deal with plagiarism when papers are turned in electronically. She copies the suspect content, pastes it into a Google search box, and up pops the original work. Sometimes it’s that easy; sometimes she has to search for a while.

As far as teaching about plagiarism, I have a few resources that may help:

• For you Wikipedia fans out there, there is a page with specific directions for citing the online encyclopedia of the people. Besides citation instructions, the page also offers advice such as “As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible.”
• Plagiarism.com does the Google searching for you. Just enter the offending text in the box and hit “search”. You can even set up a Google alert as soon as the same text pops up anywhere on the Internet.
• The Citation Machine takes the guessing out as it will help your students generate citations for the work they ethically use within their writing.
• Excellent guides for teaching plagiarism can be found from Colorado State University, Web English Teacher, and Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Look for me to continue updating this blog about once a week this summer with more ideas to get your next year with eMINTS off to a great start!

Picture Source

Warlick contends (or the guy he cites, Garr Reynolds) that by teaching systematic processes to our students, we limit their creativity and motivation for using technology. I couldn’t agree more. This is why I often avoid step-by-step instructions when introducing new software. I have found that most of the teachers I work with learn the software better when they work through it. If I can facilitate that learning through experience, then my teachers are more likely to make their own connections with the software.

This all goes along with eMINTS’ promotion of inquiry-based teaching methods. Your students are naturally inquisitive enough to figure out their own ways to make the technology work for them. We just have to facilitate that learning by providing experiences that encourage exploration.

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Since I’m into citing other people’s work today, another daily read for me is Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed. Richardson ,like many in the ed-tech world, loves the work of Clay Shirky, an expert in the networks of Web 2.0. Anyway, Richardson quoted Shirky for his “quote of the day”…

I’m just so impatient with the argument that the world should be slowed down to help people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on. It’s in part because I grew up in a generation that benefited enormously from not doing that. Right? The baby boomers, when we were young, we had zero, zero patience for the idea that people who are in their fifties in the ’70s and ’80s should somehow be shielded from cultural changes because somehow the stuff that we were doing was upsetting them. So, now it’s our turn and we ought to just suck it up.

Teachers who have signed on for eMINTS training are not sitting back while the rest of the world moves ahead. You have chosen to update your skill set and to prepare students with 21st century skills. Good for you for making such a commitment to your students.

The best way to learn to use difficult software is to spend time playing with it.  Of course, I’m not talking about only using the software at our training sessions.  You have to open up that software on a regular basis to really know how to run it.

I thought about my own knowledge of software.  Most of what I know was from “messing around” with the software.  Take my ability to use Publisher as an example.  I used to make mix tapes all the time in college and in the years following.  I went so far as to design special cassette packaging using the program.  This allowed me to figure out how to use templates, play around with text styles, take images from the Internet, etc.  This doesn’t mention how I’ve learned most of the software I now train you all to use.  I have mostly been self-taught, and that may be the best way to learn.

So, this summer, while you sit on your porch enjoying a cool glass of iced tea, open up that laptop and play around a little.  I know that Dreamweaver and Fireworks have caused a lot of headaches for many of you.  These would be great programs with which to play.  You could design a website for your family or design a logo for your church choir on Fireworks.  Have a little fun with it and in the meantime, you might learn to use this software more effectively.

**As a side-note…In order to keep your lap cool while using your computer, try filling a hot water bottle with cold water.  It gives an adjustable pad on which your laptop to rest and keeps your legs from heating up.  (courtesy of Life Hacker)

10. Be creative. We really have to think outside of the box when writing WebQuests. David Warlick recently posted on his blog, 2¢ Worth, that the creativity we need to encourage in our students “will not come from lessons about creativity, but from a different kind of lesson that makes room for, invites, and values creativity.” Think outside the box and find ways to help your students do the same.

9. Think: What do adults do with this information? Think of your WebQuest as an opportunity for the students to practice applying what they learn in school to the real world. Thinking this way can also help you understand why the topics you teach are so important for preparing students for their adult lives.

8. Web 2.0 is your WebQuest’s friend. Not only can you provide resources from which your students can gather information, but you can also utilize all the great tools online for their WebQuest work. Wikis, like those at Edublogs or PBWiki, can be useful for group plans, note-taking, and even final products. Additionally, there are always things like blogs (Edublogs, Blogger, etc.), Moodle, various media hosting sites (TeacherTube, Switchpod), online productivity tools (Google Docs), and even social networks ( Youth Twitter, Edmodo).

7. WebQuests are best accomplished in groups. Here is your chance to put together a cooperative learning activity that is positively interdependent, able to hold each individual accountable, provides equal participation, and gets all the group members simultaneously active. However, WebQuests could also be valuable as tools for distance learning or independent studies.

6. Hook your students’ interest with great role-play. This doesn’t only mean you have to come up with great scenarios and characters for the students to carry out. You can also incorporate some “fake” email addresses for the students to contact clients, mysterious informants, or any character needed to make the project feel real.

5. Provide scaffolding for the learning whenever you see fit. It’s OK to link graphic organizers to the WebQuest that help students organize their learning. This could be a good opportunity to use software like SMART Ides or Inspiration. Just remember that this sort of work is to help the process, not to give you something to grade. You could also add a section for “learning advice” that could suggest techniques for organizing or how to aggregate the information.

4. Include brief descriptions of each of your resources with the links. This will allow students to know exactly what sites they should be researching. It’s sort of a preview of the site that prepares them for the other side of the hyperlink.

3. Be clear. Whether it’s the task, process, or expectations, you will want to be crystal clear for your students to be as successful as possible.

2. Consider including a teacher page in your WebQuest. A teacher page can provide others who want to use your WebQuest with contact information or tips for implementation. It may also be a good place for you to keep notes for the next time you use the WebQuest.

1. A WebQuest is a work-in-progress. Just because you assign a WebQuest to your class and they complete the task doesn’t mean that you are done with it. A WebQuest can be revised over and over in order to keep the links updated, the task fresh, and the strategies effective. If something doesn’t go smoothly, change it before you use it again. If you see a way that it could be altered to give students different perspectives, make the revisions. It’s your creation for you to mold into the perfect learning experience.

A WebQuest is a great way to provide real, student-led inquiry in your classroom. The best part is that it is also something that you can create to fit your students’ unique needs and gifts.

While I have been checking my Google Reader today, I have noticed that the blog Techlearning has been very busy lately.  They have provided several articles with helpful hints and resources.  One article provides a video tutorial for inserting pictures into shapes on PowerPoint.  Another lists resources created by the federal government intended for free use by educators.  There are also articles (like this one) that help make the connection between using technology and the web in constructivist classrooms.  Techlearning is a site with which every eMINTS teacher should become familiar.

Another blog to keep an eye on is edtech guru David Warlick’s 2 ¢ Worth.  A recent post by Warlick describes statistics he discovered on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  The NCES has a “Kids Zone” that…

…provides information to help you learn about schools; decide on a college; find a public library; engage in several games, quizzes and skill building about math, probability, graphing, and mathematicians; and to learn many interesting facts about education.

Apparently the graphing tool is pretty cool.

The third resource blog I pay regular attention to is PDtoGo’s SMART Board podcasts.  Ben Hazzard and Joan Badger provide an entertaining  yet informational program on constructivist-based applications for the SMART Board.  There are often free SMART Notebook files to download at the blog.  I often listen to the podcasts on my way to Wellsville as a way to productively use that time.