Does managing a new gadget for your blog...

...ever make you feel a little crazy?

Twitter Decision Made Easy

Need a few quick, high-energy reasons to jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Read Bill Ferriter's article, "Taking the Digital Plunge", and you just might decide to spread your wings sooner rather than later!

Mr. Ferriter acknowledges that he is the staff member constantly complaining about his district's firewall and that he considers experimenting fearlessly with digital connections to be part of his job as a teacher. He's built a network of innovative colearners with whom he collaborates regularly even though he's never met any of them in person.

Finding partners beyond borders has not been a problem, nor has learning how to make his thinking transparent. Ferriter knows all about revising positions on the basis of feedback, how to access valuable information from colearners and about creating shared content. He feels strongly that though our kids have no trouble connecting, no one has taught them about the power of these connections. In his mind, few are using these networks to pursue meaningful personal growth. Mr. Ferriter feels that our challenge as teachers is to identify ways that students can use these tools for learning.

The article goes on to detail that it's all about experimenting with every new tool that bursts onto the teenage radar and showing our students how these tools can translate into opportunties for learning. First steps are offered for interested educators to consider:

* Build your own personal learning network. Begin by signing up for a Twitter account (www.twitter.com) and visit the Twitter for Teachers wiki (http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com)to find colleagues to follow. Or you might join an online community of educators discussing teaching and learning. His current favorites are Classroom 2.0 (www.classroom20.com) and the Teacher Leaders Newwork (www.teacherleaders.org). He reminds us to keep in mind that new groups form every day.

**For those a bit nervous about taking the plunge quickly, Ferriter suggests following some of the good education blogs written by teachers. Many are listed in the Support Blogging wiki (http://supportblogging.com) and on Ferriter's list of resources (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/16618841).

In closing, Ferriter reminds us that we must model new learning transparently. He feels we should share with students how the digital connections we engage in enhance our skills and deepen our knowledge. His hope is that we will pair high-quality teaching with a meaningful understanding of today's tools for networked learning and therefore be prepared to support tommorow's networked kid.

Expression First

I wonder if Jason Ohler considered placing the last paragraph of his essay, "Orchestrating the Media Collage", in a more prominent spot...say, in the beginning? He writes that his "advice to teachers concerned with digital literacy is to focus on expression first and technology second--and everything will fall into place."

I found this advice to be comforting in that it connected to what I already felt and that common understanding, in turn, offered me a jumping off point to a less wary view of digital literacy.

Ohler states that we formerly defined literacy as being able to consume and produce words through reading, writing and, to a lesser extent, listening and speaking. He lists digital expression as changing this definition in three respects: new media demand new literacies, new media coalesce into a collage, and new media are largely participatory, social media.

Mr. Ohler offers eight guidelines for teachers who choose to promote the crucial skills associated with digital literacy. (Though he does note that the descriptor "digital" is probably no longer necessary.) The eight guidelines are as follows:

1. Shift from text centrism to media collage.--Experiment fearlessly.

2. Value writing and reading now more than ever.--Digital stories, movies, documentaries, and many new media narrative forms require clear, concise, and often highly creative writing as a foundation.

3. Adopt art as the next R.--These skills fit best into an art curriculum where concepts of color, form, and collage are part of the everyday narrative.

4. Blend traditional and emerging literacies.--Don't make room for the new at the expense of the old.

5. Harness report and story.--The report-story continuum is rich with opportunity to blend research and storytelling in interesting, effective ways within the domain of new media.

6. Practice private and participatory social literacy.--Crafting a collaborative media collage project and contributing to international wikis and collective research projects with colleagues you have never seen are now "normal" kinds of expression.

7. Develop literacy with digital tools and about digital tools.--We want our students to use technology effectively and creatively AND to be concerned with not just how to use digital tools, but also when to use them and why.

8. Pursue fluency.--The fluent will lead, the literate will follow, and the rest will get left behind.

Ohler wraps with a section titled "Teachers as Guides". In it, he worries that some teachers are leaving the field due to a lack of digital skills. His pertinent message is to remind us that we don't have to be "advanced technicians and that now more than ever, students need teachers who can help them sort through choices, apply technology wisely, and tell their stories clearly and with humanity."

TERRY'S TWO TAKE-AWAYS:

1. First of all, I took away the feeling that this is very do-able--as long as we focus on expression first and technology second. The joyful part of this order is that the technology is so varied that we eventually end up working side-by-side with our students, pushing one another in a way that blurs our roles.

2. My second take-a-way is an almost overwhelming concern for the new illiterate that get left out. In many towns in Maine, there are groups of young people who passed through our schools before the laptop initiative became widespread. Some are parents of my students. They are the small number each year who request a hard copy of our school newsletters and/or blog entries. What can we do for them so that they aren't left behind?

The Look

Waller's image never fails to make me smile. The little boy in the photograph was an orphan and he had just been given a new pair of shoes by the Red Cross. His six-year-old look of pure joy gives ME a momentary feeling of pure joy every time I look at it.

It is because I get a kick out of trying to capture the joy of six-year-olds (in order to share it with families) that I am taking this course. And I am here because of Sam, my formerly six-year-old nephew.

Sam visited Maine last July and the first thing he wanted to show me was his classroom blog. He laughed as he logged on to share his part in all of the cool things they did in first grade. First stop was a podcast where he had made a blooper and so his teacher, Mrs. Rogers, had titled his reading "Sam's Blooper". Hearing him giggle with his teacher as he misread a word was and still is unforgetable. That's when I knew it was time to let go of my classroom website and create something more alive--something that would breathe and somehow enable me to share the short, joyful bursts of learning energy that are a part of every day in first grade.

I have listed Sam's teacher's blogs because they are my inspiration. They have given me a simple format to use as my template and as I become more confident I borrow new elements. Someday I will post a comment on her latest site to thank her for her unknowing role in my education.

We've been asked to list two blogs from the "Moving Forward List" and explain why we chose them and how we might use them for personal learning.

As I mentioned earlier, I am drawn to simple formats and therefore my biggest decision is to determine how much action my blog can handle without overwhelming the viewer. In visiting KinderKids' and Kathy Cassidy's blog, I immediately started to wonder about the following:

*What is it that makes each blog seem so alive?
*Is everything posted on the fly or do teachers get together and map out what is to be shared?
*How often is news posted?
*What sites are used for managing classroom images?
*Is there a balance between the various subjects?
*How is student work archived?
*Does each video or slideshow have one picture of everyone?
*How does each teacher convince parents to sign off on posting images on the web?
*What is said to a family that does not want to be part of a classroom blog?
*Does the school have a community of bloggers that the viewer can link to?
*Does the look of the blog evolve or is it rather like a Hogwarts newspaper template complete with moving images?

My next learning step will be to take the list of image sharing sites that I've compiled from Alice's suggestions, Ms. Knee's and Ms. Cassidy's blogs and become more familiar with what each has to offer. Once I understand how to navigate the sites, I'll figure out which type of image sharing works best for the parts of our first grade day where we'd like to capture that pure joy of six-year-old learning.