In the profession of education, collaboration and sharing is essential for growth and a sense of community. Before reading this article, I was well aware of Flickr, blogs, and wikis for educational purposes, sufficient knowledge of their levels of control, collaborative and sharing. One I never thought about was Instant Messaging. I used it in college, actually, I couldn't live without it in college, but somehow, I never thought it could be transferred to my professional life. I like how the author refers to the FUD with introducing new technology...it is so true!
This article has a lot of great ideas to incorporate technology into our profession. The author spoke of how to share information from the library with the patrons, but the same tools could be used to help teachers communicate with each other. Teachers work really hard to come up with innovative ideas to engage students. As teacher we could make our lives so much easier if we collaborated more. Tools such as IM, Flickr, and Wikis could make this sharing much easier!
Lack of time is probably one of the most, if not THE most common problem for teachers. Collaborating and SHARING (I love how she uses this word in the article), can save us tons of time. IM is even better than a phone. If the person you need to contact isn't at their desk, the pop-up lets them know immediately that someone tried to contact them. As I mentioned in my response to the Blog article, it gets easier when one doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Once we create a space, or a blog site, or a podcast, we have it forever. Now, imagine all your fellow teachers posting the one or two podcasts, videos, PPT's they made on a WIKI that you all have access to.
I have been aware of and used all of these tools on the web, but I love how she puts them together to make a dynamic library. All of a sudden I have an urge to become a librarian : )
I am honestly trying to think of a use for IM in the classroom. Besides, the obvious use for real-time sharing with teachers, can you think of how IM can be used in a class effectively??
I went to a session at a conference on tablet PC's. We used the IM feature on the software to collaborate with a partner. For this particular lesson (it was a foreign language lesson) we had to communicate (greet one another and ask/answer a few basic questions) with each other in the foreign language. It added a written component to the lesson and worked really well. Using the tablet PC software the teacher was able to restrict the IM to people in the group. If students had the ability to talk to anyone on their "buddy list" it would probably be problematic.
After reading this article you are very impressed with this librarian/media specialist who is so into new web tools. It seems to work out so nicely for the library/ media center but I wonder what they do if they get someone who is not so nice online? I agree with this author that so much is now online and that you can share, interact, and collaborate with so many people and learn from them and teach others what you know, but with students there is so much more to worry about like their safety and finding time to fit interactive social environments into your curriculum. I can only see these tools working for homework maybe during the summer or the weekend.
When using IM you would have to constantly be online to see if anyone is trying to contact you. For math, you could fix a time every night and be online and have it as a time to ask Mrs. McDowell questions or concerns about homework or math problems. It is hard to just sit in front of a computer unless you have a set or fixed time for your students to meet online with you. You could have one evening on a weekend too. I think the kids and parents would love it.
I also liked the idea of sharing information with other teachers. When I was in college I used to use IM all the time to communicate with students in other rooms, or floors on assignments, etc. I don't know if the logistics will work out with the students, however. You could restrict who they can talk to, but can you record and look back at their conversations? Would you want to? We let our students work in groups in "real" life without recording their conversations. Can we trust them to IM each other on task? I think we could. Most of the students, at least in my grade and district would, I think anyway.
Great info from this article. In the art department at LFHS, we are all over the building and often see eachother only at scheduled meetings. We have many events throughout the year that need updating, etc. The use of a Wiki would give us the flexibility of an editable calendar, discussion, and useful links. However, who has the time to put it together???
I don't know about IM with my students. I think that this could get a bit dicey without supervision. Also, do we really want to dedicate our evenings to this?
First, I must say that I LOVED that this article centered around the fact that the "transformative sharing" is taking place in a library. :) I think the author did a great job of giving clear and concise examples of how they implemented and used these tools within their library. I thought the wiki example illustrated a great point - meaningful training and staff buy in are critical when trying something new.
Chris - I love the idea of using a wiki to facilitate communication with your art department colleagues. A wiki is very easy to put together - the hardest part (at least in my experience) and deciding how you want to organize it.
I loved the way he broke down the steps that were taken to choose each tool that would be used to make this library have more functions accessible online. Now the challenge is to see which of these tools would work for my small K-4 library. I am also interested in learning more about Trillian.
What I found most interesting in this article was the process they went through to choose these technologies. She started by having the staff look carefully at their goals and requirements for the library. Next, the author contacted other librarians and asked about other virtual references options they had considered. She asked about how the services were working for them, how difficult they were to learn, other staff issues and the cost of the service. The author then selected services taking into consideration the comments from the other librarians and the requirements her staff had developed. They chose IM as a collaborative communication tool because it was free and supports voice and video. They chose a Wiki because it gave them the ability to collaborate, was easy to control, wasn’t too labor intensive to set up and has the ability to index changes. Google Maps was chosen because it was easy to use and could give directions from anywhere to get to the library. Flickr, a web-based photo sharing community was chosen because of ease of use, its ability to provide a Web-based image bank for the clients of the library and allows the librarians to share with one another. Before implementation of the services staff members went through training. I thought it was very interesting how the author paid particular attention to the potential for FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of her staff and her clients and helped defray this be making connections between these new technologies and the traditional library services and tools.
My favorite part of the article was having someone create a term for how so many of us feel about technology--FUD. I know that if I spend the time to set up a well-planned system using a blog and a wiki (I'm not sure about the IM feature) my students would find it highly engaging. It would be an interesting way to monitor understanding and share ideas.
I am really excited about the author's idea of a wiki page to share ideas in the department! I did not realize about how I could post a form on it. I am seeing this as a great parent page--one parent's question is usually at least five others. I is sort of like an easier website for information on upcoming events.... I always thought of IM as quicker emailing. It accomplishes the same thing unless you are having a real time conversation. Keeping it open at night for homework questions is a good idea. It works really well if you are at your computer anyway on a regular basis. You can work on other things and when the IM pops up, you can attend to it.
I don't think I would want to be responsible for a homework hotline at night. Our grade books are already in real time eliciting e-mails galore from parents. I can't imagine the time it would take to manage instant messaging with students and parents.
I like the idea of collaborating this way. It seems quicker and easier than finding a common time to meet. This year our school has meetings practically every couple of days. Sometimes even twice a day. I think most of what we need to say or share can be done in a format like this.
Like a lot of people in this program I am impressed when I look at these technologies, but I start to lose heart when I try to actually implement them in my classes. My classes run very efficiently now, so I am hesitant to try too many new things at once. I think I am going to try IM this year, I am the sponsor for the Model United Nations Club at school, so I going to try to do all my communications with club officers using IM. With that forcing me to be more "plugged in" I think that I am going to try to encourage students in my academic classes to use IM as a communication tool to reach me for help during certain times... We will see how it goes.
Shift happens...All of this new technology is overwhelming at the very least. I like to think I am on the cutting edge of all of this, but trying to implement one of these really does require a ton of work. If I am going to implement this, I will have to work on it over the summer. There is no time during the school year.
I am honestly trying to think of a use for IM in the classroom. Besides, the obvious use for real-time sharing with teachers, can you think of how IM can be used in a class effectively??
How about a review of materials before a test? Or a pop quiz? Good way to see how everyone is thinking.
You could also use this as a way for a class to leave a short reflection of an idea.
One last thing...It is very easy to transfer large documents back and forth.
"I always thought of IM as quicker emailing. It accomplishes the same thing unless you are having a real time conversation. Keeping it open at night for homework questions is a good idea. It works really well if you are at your computer anyway on a regular basis. You can work on other things and when the IM pops up, you can attend to it."
Just make sure you have a school IM name and print out the log. You must protect yourself.
24 comments:
In the profession of education, collaboration and sharing is essential for growth and a sense of community. Before reading this article, I was well aware of Flickr, blogs, and wikis for educational purposes, sufficient knowledge of their levels of control, collaborative and sharing. One I never thought about was Instant Messaging. I used it in college, actually, I couldn't live without it in college, but somehow, I never thought it could be transferred to my professional life. I like how the author refers to the FUD with introducing new technology...it is so true!
This article has a lot of great ideas to incorporate technology into our profession. The author spoke of how to share information from the library with the patrons, but the same tools could be used to help teachers communicate with each other. Teachers work really hard to come up with innovative ideas to engage students. As teacher we could make our lives so much easier if we collaborated more. Tools such as IM, Flickr, and Wikis could make this sharing much easier!
Lack of time is probably one of the most, if not THE most common problem for teachers. Collaborating and SHARING (I love how she uses this word in the article), can save us tons of time. IM is even better than a phone. If the person you need to contact isn't at their desk, the pop-up lets them know immediately that someone tried to contact them. As I mentioned in my response to the Blog article, it gets easier when one doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Once we create a space, or a blog site, or a podcast, we have it forever. Now, imagine all your fellow teachers posting the one or two podcasts, videos, PPT's they made on a WIKI that you all have access to.
I have been aware of and used all of these tools on the web, but I love how she puts them together to make a dynamic library. All of a sudden I have an urge to become a librarian : )
I am honestly trying to think of a use for IM in the classroom. Besides, the obvious use for real-time sharing with teachers, can you think of how IM can be used in a class effectively??
I went to a session at a conference on tablet PC's. We used the IM feature on the software to collaborate with a partner. For this particular lesson (it was a foreign language lesson) we had to communicate (greet one another and ask/answer a few basic questions) with each other in the foreign language. It added a written component to the lesson and worked really well. Using the tablet PC software the teacher was able to restrict the IM to people in the group. If students had the ability to talk to anyone on their "buddy list" it would probably be problematic.
After reading this article you are very impressed with this librarian/media specialist who is so into new web tools. It seems to work out so nicely for the library/ media center but I wonder what they do if they get someone who is not so nice online? I agree with this author that so much is now online and that you can share, interact, and collaborate with so many people and learn from them and teach others what you know, but with students there is so much more to worry about like their safety and finding time to fit interactive social environments into your curriculum. I can only see these tools working for homework maybe during the summer or the weekend.
When using IM you would have to constantly be online to see if anyone is trying to contact you. For math, you could fix a time every night and be online and have it as a time to ask Mrs. McDowell questions or concerns about homework or math problems. It is hard to just sit in front of a computer unless you have a set or fixed time for your students to meet online with you. You could have one evening on a weekend too. I think the kids and parents would love it.
I also liked the idea of sharing information with other teachers. When I was in college I used to use IM all the time to communicate with students in other rooms, or floors on assignments, etc. I don't know if the logistics will work out with the students, however. You could restrict who they can talk to, but can you record and look back at their conversations? Would you want to? We let our students work in groups in "real" life without recording their conversations. Can we trust them to IM each other on task? I think we could. Most of the students, at least in my grade and district would, I think anyway.
Great info from this article. In the art department at LFHS, we are all over the building and often see eachother only at scheduled meetings. We have many events throughout the year that need updating, etc. The use of a Wiki would give us the flexibility of an editable calendar, discussion, and useful links. However, who has the time to put it together???
I don't know about IM with my students. I think that this could get a bit dicey without supervision. Also, do we really want to dedicate our evenings to this?
First, I must say that I LOVED that this article centered around the fact that the "transformative sharing" is taking place in a library. :) I think the author did a great job of giving clear and concise examples of how they implemented and used these tools within their library. I thought the wiki example illustrated a great point - meaningful training and staff buy in are critical when trying something new.
Chris - I love the idea of using a wiki to facilitate communication with your art department colleagues. A wiki is very easy to put together - the hardest part (at least in my experience) and deciding how you want to organize it.
I use IM professionally to collaborate/communicate with other librarians.
At the public library that I work at in the summer, we do reference IM (like the article mentioned).
I can see the points being made about IMing with students - I can see both the pros and the cons.
I loved the way he broke down the steps that were taken to choose each tool that would be used to make this library have more functions accessible online. Now the challenge is to see which of these tools would work for my small K-4 library. I am also interested in learning more about Trillian.
What I found most interesting in this article was the process they went through to choose these technologies. She started by having the staff look carefully at their goals and requirements for the library. Next, the author contacted other librarians and asked about other virtual references options they had considered. She asked about how the services were working for them, how difficult they were to learn, other staff issues and the cost of the service. The author then selected services taking into consideration the comments from the other librarians and the requirements her staff had developed. They chose IM as a collaborative communication tool because it was free and supports voice and video. They chose a Wiki because it gave them the ability to collaborate, was easy to control, wasn’t too labor intensive to set up and has the ability to index changes. Google Maps was chosen because it was easy to use and could give directions from anywhere to get to the library. Flickr, a web-based photo sharing community was chosen because of ease of use, its ability to provide a Web-based image bank for the clients of the library and allows the librarians to share with one another. Before implementation of the services staff members went through training. I thought it was very interesting how the author paid particular attention to the potential for FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of her staff and her clients and helped defray this be making connections between these new technologies and the traditional library services and tools.
MomLady is Leanna who is having lots of trouble with her Google account!
My favorite part of the article was having someone create a term for how so many of us feel about technology--FUD. I know that if I spend the time to set up a well-planned system using a blog and a wiki (I'm not sure about the IM feature) my students would find it highly engaging. It would be an interesting way to monitor understanding and share ideas.
I am really excited about the author's idea of a wiki page to share ideas in the department! I did not realize about how I could post a form on it. I am seeing this as a great parent page--one parent's question is usually at least five others. I is sort of like an easier website for information on upcoming events.... I always thought of IM as quicker emailing. It accomplishes the same thing unless you are having a real time conversation. Keeping it open at night for homework questions is a good idea. It works really well if you are at your computer anyway on a regular basis. You can work on other things and when the IM pops up, you can attend to it.
I don't think I would want to be responsible for a homework hotline at night. Our grade books are already in real time eliciting e-mails galore from parents. I can't imagine the time it would take to manage instant messaging with students and parents.
I like the idea of collaborating this way. It seems quicker and easier than finding a common time to meet. This year our school has meetings practically every couple of days. Sometimes even twice a day. I think most of what we need to say or share can be done in a format like this.
Like a lot of people in this program I am impressed when I look at these technologies, but I start to lose heart when I try to actually implement them in my classes. My classes run very efficiently now, so I am hesitant to try too many new things at once. I think I am going to try IM this year, I am the sponsor for the Model United Nations Club at school, so I going to try to do all my communications with club officers using IM. With that forcing me to be more "plugged in" I think that I am going to try to encourage students in my academic classes to use IM as a communication tool to reach me for help during certain times... We will see how it goes.
-Greg Simmons
Shift happens...All of this new technology is overwhelming at the very least. I like to think I am on the cutting edge of all of this, but trying to implement one of these really does require a ton of work. If I am going to implement this, I will have to work on it over the summer. There is no time during the school year.
L. McDowell said...
I am honestly trying to think of a use for IM in the classroom. Besides, the obvious use for real-time sharing with teachers, can you think of how IM can be used in a class effectively??
How about a review of materials before a test? Or a pop quiz? Good way to see how everyone is thinking.
You could also use this as a way for a class to leave a short reflection of an idea.
One last thing...It is very easy to transfer large documents back and forth.
Diane said...
"I always thought of IM as quicker emailing. It accomplishes the same thing unless you are having a real time conversation. Keeping it open at night for homework questions is a good idea. It works really well if you are at your computer anyway on a regular basis. You can work on other things and when the IM pops up, you can attend to it."
Just make sure you have a school IM name and print out the log. You must protect yourself.
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