Patience. That’s what I have had to learn to have with both my goals and my students. Last week saw me beginning to feel very frustrated with the students and myself because I wasn’t meeting my goals at a desired pace. I was greatly heartened by Vicki Davis’s statement this week’s resources: “You don’t get there overnight; you have to start small” (Laureate Education, 2009, Part 1). Hearing this caused me to take a step backwards and reassess my goals. Considering the age of my students I am probably aiming too high too soon. While I still have faith I can accomplish my goals, I need to set some smaller, more attainable goals to work towards for now.
I’ve decided to postpone social collaboration with another school until I’ve tried it on a smaller scale with just my students in the lab. In doing this I can get an idea of how comfortable and capable my students will be when communicating using technology. This being said, I’m still working to achieve both of the goals I set at the beginning of the course and would like to achieve them before I set new goals.
This week’s resources provided a great list of benefits social networking offers. Currently our district is not participating in any social networking (which I didn’t realize); sites that provide this possibility are blocked by our filter. I didn’t realize that it was not being utilized at all. I’ve got a big job ahead of me in order to be able to participate in any social collaboration on the internet. Our acceptable use policy and internet user agreements will have to be revamped. Davis’s list of benefits will be a good place to start when working to convince our district to allow students to take part in these types of projects.
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Spotlight on technology: social networking and online collaboration: part 1. [Educational video]. Baltimore: Author.
Allison,
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about collaborating with other teachers in the world to get ideas on projects and how to achieve your goals? I have not done this before and I believe this would be a great way for me to get some ideas. I also see that if I reach out to other teachers than my students can see that and be more willing to reach out to other students. I am in the same boat as you with getting social-collaboration started. There is a lot to do in my school and classroom before I am ready to use them.
Jenna Enevoldsen
Allison,
ReplyDeleteA site that you may not have heard of that is usually not blocked by filters is ePals. I was at an ISTE conference this summer and talked to their reps about it. It sounds like a cool tool to work with other schools. Though i ahve not used it since the class I want to use it in starts next semester.
Luke