I have been looking at some of the Khan Academy videos, following Jason's introduction to them. It is inspiring, and I started to think to myself, "I wonder if I could make those kinds of videos?" I like the idea that it feels very much like a one-on-one tutor situation. So I began to download some apps on my iPad. I have Educreations, ShowMe, and Skitch on my iPad. I have begun to play around with them. It looks like Skitch is more of a support app, that would allow me to add visuals to the lessons fairly quickly. Of the other two, ShowMe seems to have a few more tools and is a little more user-friendly. It also looks like it would be fairly easy to upload the lesson to the Internet. I am planning my first one now, and hope to try it with students in the next week or two.

If you have any experience with other lesson video creation apps, I'd love to hear how they worked! Part of the draw of this for me is that it has really generated some personal enthusiasm to be trying something new and somewhat proven through another source. I hope that the students have the same enthusiasm!

As I finish the teacher leadership course, I am struck by my position. By that I mean that I am always one of the people in my building who speaks out about change, new initiatives, good learning, new ideas. I have participated on the textbook adoption committee and on the curriculum committees. Yet, I don't feel like I've really spoken out about the changes that I feel are most important for students in the new era. Maybe it's because I didn't feel like I knew much about these coming changes before this program, but I feel like I have been treading water. For example, I know that I am a believer in curriculum reform. We teach essentially the same English curriculum every year, and in the style of the Sabertooth Curriculum, we add layers of complexity to the same ideas. This doesn't serve the students of tomorrow very well. Nor does our current AP initiative, which pushes students to take highly advanced curriculum work in unrelated areas to their fields of interest, with the hope of getting into elusive "dream schools."

If this change starts somewhere, I am working to make it start with me. I am going to develop a new kind of instructional delivery for my course this summer and show that it can be done; that students can learn in an online or blended format, that they can use analytical writing in courses other than English, that the curriculum for yearbook requires as much intensity in thinking skills and software skills as the curriculum for their fourth year of high school English.

The Ultimate Offload

Jason got me turned on to the Khan Academy idea. While I haven't tried it out yet, as he has, I was impressed with Sal Khan in the 60 minute piece for a few reasons. First, the guy has no background in education, yet he seemed to understand a lot about effective teaching: scaffolding, prioritizing, self-paced instruction, a guide on the side.

Second, the idea that some pilot programs have students learning the concept from the Academy at home and the practice is being done in the classroom with a teacher is not really his goal, but it is a better approach if you are using this instructional format. It allows the teacher the ability to see who is struggling and provide immediate assistance. Third, I like how he emphasized that this is all about freeing up the teacher for better use of his or her time. No more do we have to devote half of the period to lecturing, but instead can provide small group or individual assistance and develop other activities, such as authentic problems, to situate the learning. By offloading the concept delivery, it frees up teachers to do some of the million other things we have to do in a classroom.

Web 2.0

Interactive Internet... funny, it was just a few years ago that I was begging the county to let the students put the newspaper online. They were nervous about the instant publishing and the freedom that students have with Internet publishing. Now, we use blogs and wikis all the time, and running the newspaper articles through three levels of editors seems like complete overkill.

There is something engaging about publishing your work on the Internet, even if it's only a retweeted quote. Our TRT says that it speaks to our need to feel important. Interesting theory. At any rate, there are a number of tools that make it very easy. Blogspot, which is free and very easy to use, is one example, and the one we are using right here. Tumblr has really taken off, and the compelling thing about this tool is that everything is seamless: e-mails, tweeting, posting, photos all can be easily stored and posted, and even sorted into private and public files.

These are the kinds of tools that our students are growing up using, and they won't find their use in the classroom novel. Instead, they may find these kinds of activities an extension of their lives. Hmmmm, sounds like authentic learning.

Frailty, thy name is YouTube Access

We have been suffering from withdrawal. YouTube was given to us, and then, for the last three weeks, YouTube was taken away. I'm still not clear why; it had something to do with testing. I use YouTube almost every day. I look at the latest clips from the news, as I am the journalism teacher, and share them with my class. My husband, the Bluegrass Club adviser, shows students how to play songs. We watch videos of how to do things in Photoshop that we can't figure out in yearbook class. Teachers use YouTube for excellent short videos that engage students better than a talking teacher in front of the classroom, and usually in a shorter amount of time.

I heard that higher ups were not particularly concerned about our loss of YouTube. There is a general feeling in certain circles that YouTube isn't really useful in the classroom, and that teachers use it to avoid teaching. Hard to believe, in this day and age, that there are those who would dismiss the power of visual learning, or of immediate access to information. And best of all, it's FREE! It doesn't cost them a dime! unlike all of the movies that teachers used to show, which typically cost about $20 a pop.

It's high time teachers spoke out about the benefits of resources like YouTube. I use it so that the information comes from the source, and I am not pushing a political agenda. Other teachers use it for instruction that is seamless in their classrooms. It shouldn't be looked at as something that teachers use because they are "lazy."

We got YouTube back on Friday. Smiles throughout the building. It truly is the little things that make us all happy.

Podcasts and other adventures in recording

Podcasts are great thinking tools for students. They require similar thinking skills as video. Writing the script, evaluating audio, synthesizing the clips, managing the overall work for effect: these are all higher order skills that ask learners to be educated members of the community. Learners also add to their repertoire of software skills using Audacity or a similar program for simple podcasting.

While it is easy to see the educational value of creating podcasts, it is more difficult to see the interest in listening to them. My own experience listening to them is very limited. Last year, our online school newspaper ran a few podcasts that discussed pop music, but they weren't widely read. If you read them in the car, you have to download them before you leave your house or use up some of your precious data on the road. The key to getting good listenership seems to be having a specialty niche in a particular area. For example, my husband is a bluegrass fan and plays mandolin. He has listened to a few podcasts from musicians to get tips on playing the instrument or to learn about the bluegrass tradition. There really aren't a lot of sources for this type of information, although, if he has access to the Internet, there are a wealth of video and print sources on the subject.

For students, podcasts could be useful in this same way, catering to small special-interest groups while providing students an outlet for their opinions. There may be a way to use these podcasts as marketing tools for something like the school newspaper, as well.

I'm a convert. I admit that I have always been skeptical of wikis. But through our work during the last two weeks, I see the value of a wiki. It is very much like a collaborative discussion that a group could have on Blackboard, but it also incorporates the collective knowledge idea and allows contributors the sense of accomplishment that people have when they publish their work. As a publications teacher, I leverage that sense of accomplishment with my students every day. I just opened up our class wiki, "Do You Want Fries With That," and showed it to my husband because I was proud of the work that my group did collectively. Our collaborative problem solving was there for everyone to see. And if we don't like it, we can go back and edit, collect more ideas, and build on what we have.

The possibilities of wikis in the classroom... wow. It's exciting to think about. Just like our ITSopedia, students could create a cumulative wiki of their class knowledge base. They could create wikis for particular areas of expertise as well. For example, in my Photojournalism class, we experimented with three or four methods of cutting out the background (COBbing) photos before finding the one that is the most effective. Wouldn't it be great if we could create a wiki of those types of skills, and then students could add on to those as the technology changes and improves? What a great resource for the students coming up next year!