PortablePD.ca

We have had requests for a copy of the permission letter that we send home to parents at the start of the year explaining what podcasting is. Nathan and I created our own letter to meet this purpose. Our school has the parents sign a media release document and computer use document as well but we wanted something specific to podcasting. I understand that some families and school administrators are leery about posting student work on the Internet. This is something that Nathan and I have had a lot of concerns about too. Initially we never identified students by name either on the class blogs or the podcasts. In the beginning, we used nicknames or numbers but as time has gone on we have relaxed a bit, and now, with permission, we use student first names (sometimes the kids prefer to make up names. Billy Bob is a very popular name with our students).

When addressing concerns about maintaining student privacy and security I would point parents and school administrators to the community newspapers that we have. If you look at local papers you will see that in almost every edition there are pictures published of children involved in sporting events, community events, school events. These pictures often contain captions identifying the children with both first and last names and often the schools that they attend. It’s exciting for the kids and parents to see their pictures in our local paper. It is funny to me how many people are not concerned at all about this sort of coverage but have fears about predators finding kids on the internet. I guess it is all about what we read in the paper?

Anyway…here is what we send home in September to our families. I  post it here as an example.

September, 2008

Dear Parents/Guardians

Our classes maintain class websites (5nt.ca and 56js.ca) and a podcast (portableradio.ca). These sites are used to share information about what is going on in class and provide an opportunity for continued discussion outside of class. Students will use the sites as areas to explain their work and interests to a larger audience. We teach our students lessons of safe internet use through the experiences that we offer on the websites and podcasts. All work is moderated by Mr. Toft or Mrs.Smith before it is posted or uploaded.

Please read the attached permission form and return it to Mr. Toft or Mrs. Smith.

Sincerely,

Jane Smith and Nathan Toft

I consent to allow my child’s school work (text, audio, video, art,…etc) and first name to be used on the class websites and podcasts.

Student name: _____________________________________

Signature of parent/guardian: __________________________

Date: ____________________________________

In this week’s workshop I learned about Wikis. I had created one a while back but never used it. I have been a fan of blogs and wasn’t really all that clear on how to use a Wiki or why I would use one.  I still have some questions and concerns that perhaps you can help me with.

I found that Wikis were really simple to use. We all created accounts with Wikispaces. It is very easy to get an account. Be sure that you specify that you are using it for Educational Use in order to get all the features that you can for free. In the workshop I learned all sorts of little tricks on how to import files and how to create more Wikis. You get a fair bit of space to upload files and pictures. I was really happy to see that my little trick for including Flickr pictures on my pages works with Wikis too (see the screencast on how to do this by clicking here). It is easy to embed video and calendars and to manage the pages and contributors on a Wiki. The idea of collaboration on the Wiki appeals to me but being the control freak that I am, I have some concerns about using a Wiki with my students.

One of the things I really like about my blog is that I approve all the posts and comments that appear on it. Anytime anyone writes anything, their comments or posts wait until I see them and approve them before they appear on the blog for the rest of the world. If I understand it correctly I would not have that ability on a Wiki. I can decide who has permission to change the Wiki or to join in the discussion but once someone writes something it is out there. I understand that I can subscribe to my Wiki so that it alerts me to any changes that I have been made, but I worry that is a little after the fact.

The other concern that I have is that if a contributor writes something inappropriate I can correct it but the changes will always be visible in the history unless I remake the page. I can see how some enterprising students would get a kick out of writing something cheeky, saving it, even by accident or on a dare and then changing it so that their writing appears to be proper on the main page but their naughty exploits are still visible in the history for all to see. I don’t know if I want to be policing this. Sometimes students write things with the best intentions but don’t realize that a turn of phrase or use of words can be read the wrong way. Sometimes students share user ids and passwords with their most trustworthy and bestest friends only to have that trust betrayed and used against them. Having an opportunity for a second look before things go on air has been beneficial to both me and my students on the blog.

This year, I want to get my students collaborating on writing both in my class and with Nathan’s class. I am interested in how you might be using a Wiki with your class. At the moment I am leaning toward using Google Docs for the collaborative work and sticking with the blog for discussion and sharing. Any thoughts??

I decided in June that since my children were keeping me close to home this year, I would take whatever tech workshops the OCDSB was offering this summer. It was a great decision, I enjoy my weekly trips to Confederation Learning Centre computer lab. Today’s workshop was about Excel. It was called “Advanced Excel” and I don’t mind saying that I was a little nervous about the “advanced” part of the billing. Fortunately, it was all good. I actually figured some stuff out on my own! We imported text, learned about Pivot tables (really cool) and how to tweak some formulas (the IF ones are my favourite). It was a morning well spent.

It was a predominantly secondary teacher crowd. I think there was only one other elementary teacher there. I don’t normally get to hang out with secondary teachers. Our tasks in the workshop were to import student records and have Excel organize the data, sort it and play around with the numbers. The records that we imported included marks like 23/25 for different assignments. We worked on having Excel calculate averages, percent, highest score and lowest score. The secondary teacher beside me was really enjoying all that she could do with the program to organize her marks and classes. I was finding it neat too but I don’t know that I will be using Excel the same way she does.

Over the past few years, I have experienced a lot of change around assessment and reporting. With the reporting that we do, and the comments that we write, anecdotal records now hold more information for me than marks. My mark book that used to have things like 23/25 or 72% has been replaced with copies of rubrics with levels 1,2,3,4 and scrawled comments. I wrestle with how to marry my achievement chart based comments with a final A, B, C or D. I try use Excel to keep this data in some order. While the workshop today was looking at coming up with an overall average to create a final percentage mark, I think that I will be looking at finding the “most recent, highest scores”. I am looking at how to organize my data to sort different level readers into guided reading groups. I am thinking of doing “IF” formulas that colour code my level 4s as red, 3s as blue, 2s as green and 1s yellow in order to differentiate my program. I wonder if I can do that.  =IF(J3i=4=red) … this is going to take some thinking. I didn’t ask at today’s workshop, didn’t want to sound too elementary, pretty colours and all.

I really enjoyed today’s workshop and learned a lot about Excel that I will put to use in ways that make sense to me. But, I wish that I had spent some time speaking with the secondary teachers to find out the mysteries of their jobs and assessment methods. I have always known that elementary and secondary schools are not the same. I began to wonder about how different we are. It made me think about how we don’t really have a dialogue between elementary and secondary teachers. I hope that someone out there sees the “big picture”. I really hope that we are doing things at the elementary level that support our students as they go on. Perhaps we at elementary could learn a few things from our secondary colleagues and vice versa … Oh, oh sounds a bit like crazy talk, too much time spent with IF,OR,NOT,TRUE,FALSE, and AND.