I know all of you are just as despondent as I am to know that the end of the year is rapidly approaching and that we are faced with seemingly endless summer weeks without our daily dose of classroom wondrousness.

With that in mind, it’s highly advisable to back up your data on a regular basis. At this point in the year, you probably have gigabytes of worksheets, notes, tests, etc., that you have worked long and hard on. If you haven’t been doing it on a regular basis already, now is the time to back everything up to a thumb drive! There are many different ways you can backup your data, but here’s one way for you:

1. Go to Start/My Document (Note: if you have your files stored somewhere else on your C Drive other your My Documents folder, then use these steps to copy those, too)
2. In the My Documents window, highlight all your documents and folders.
3. On the left pane, click Copy the selected items. The Copy Items window displays.
4. On the Copy Items window, select your Thumb Drive (this is usually your E: drive). Click Copy.

And that’s it!

Would it surprise you to know that the dropout rate among new teachers is higher than the average dropout rate of students over the same four-year period? And the biggest reason why is NOT poor salaries. Check out Pete O’Reilly’s post from The Pulse.

Who could have imagined?

Download Video: Posted by shaggyhill at TeacherTube.com.

You are teaching class. You are incredibly excited because your lesson utilizes some very neat Web 2.0 technology. Your ITRT is very proud.

You set the stage for you lesson by introducing the blog (or wiki, or podcast, or any other Web 2.0 teaching tool) that you’ve integrated into the day’s lesson. You look out into the their eyes, expecting to see looks of appreciation for your awesome lesson planning creativity. Instead, you get nothing but blank stares–nada, nothing, zip. Where is the excitement for technology that your ITRT and the experts have promised will be there?

Yes, it does happen. In spite of the studies that tell us that our students know more about and are more comfortable with techology than any of us born before 1990 could ever hope to be, the fact is that we do have kids who are still wading in the shallows rather than riding the technology tidal wave. And that’s OK.

David Warlick wrote about this recently in his post, Such a Quiet Revolution. In it he wrote, ”Today’s change is fast. I suspect, aside from great cataclysms, faster than any at time before. But it’s not so fast that it really stirs up the wind.” And that’s what we have–a technology revolution that’s moving rapidly, but the winds of change are more like a whispering breeze rather than a hurricane gale.

Does that mean we should give up on technology? Of course not. Just because some of our students are still waders, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t learn to swim. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, technology needs to be an integral part in our students’ education if we hope for them to be able to compete in today’s global economy.

So what does this mean for teachers? It means that in spite of the occasional blank stares, don’t feel disheartened. Like virtually everything we do in teaching, we just have to keep trying. It’s hard to imagine, but just a few years ago “surfing” meant something totally different and “googling” and “blogging” were gibberish. Things are changing. Our kids WILL “get it”.

They have to.

Every year since 1984 leaders in their respective fields have met in Monterey, California, to present at the Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Conference. Over 4 days, 50 speakers are each given 18 minutes to share their thoughts and ideas about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. From Al Gore to Bono to Bill Clinton to Jane Goodall, the list of speakers is truly impressive. Out of this event have come some very good (to put it mildly) video clips that TED has made available for viewing and download. Here is a complete list of all the presentations. Some of them would be great for class.

Interestingly, the most discussed presentation is where Ken Robinson presents his ideas about how schools are killing creativity. The video is almost 20 minutes long, but the topic is interesting and Robinson is pretty funny.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

I was reading Karl Fisch’s post, Is It OK To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? (caution - even he admits he was grumpy when he wrote it), when something he wrote in response to a comment by a Language Arts teacher really stood out to me. He wrote:

“You see, I don’t think it’s your job to teach literature, that not why you “exist” as a teacher. Literature is just a means to an end. We don’t teach Macbeth in order for kids to understand Macbeth, we use Macbeth so that kids can understand good and evil and trust and betrayal. Our goal is not for kids to be experts on Macbeth and know who Malcolm is, our goal is to explore some of the universal themes of humankind and help make those themes meaningful and relevant to our students’ lives. To help our students better understand those big ideas so that they can apply them to their own lives and to the lives of those around them. And it doesn’t matter whether we use Macbeth, or some other piece of literature, or no literature at all.”

He goes on to say:

“… it’s not about what you teach, it’s about what students learn. And what students need.”

This one was a tough one for me. When I was teaching Social Studies, it was the subject that I loved. I used to tell my students that history was filled with everything that you could find in the best movies–the difference was that movies weren’t real, but our history was.

I knew, though, that leading them to the mastery of the content was not enough. They had to be able to DO something with that knowledge. The greatest “highs” I had in the classroom were when the “lightbulbs” would go on and you could tangibly see when students made important connections, applied critical analysis, and truly understood the relevance of the content in relation to today’s world. Admittedly, those moments were few and far between for me.

David Warlick has written that in today’s changing world one of the most important things we need to teach our students is how to learn. If we concentrate primarily on the subjects that we teach, on the content, are we doing them a disservice? They will know enough to pass the SOLs, sure, but will they know enough to live in this digital age where what is true in one instant is no longer true in the next?  How do we teach them to adapt, to learn, to live in today’s world?

And with all of our other responsibilities, where on earth do we find the time to even try to do more?

Thoughts?

I know you’ve heard me talk about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. The idea behind the program is to provide sturdy and inexpensive laptops to children in third-world countries. Well, the laptops will be in production and available starting in November! Check out the New York Times article on it!

Here’s your chance to employ all your creativity brain cells and win a complete technology makeover for your classroom from Interwrite Learning and Teachertube!

http://www.teachertube.com/makeover.php

Submissions are due by October 21st!

I’ve embedded the video for you here.

Download Video: Posted by jfitzpatri at TeacherTube.com.

And Mr. Fisch’s sources here.

And here is a wiki with even more info related to the ideas behind the video.

Welcome to our Instructional Technology blog! The purpose of this blog is to bring you tips, resources, and the latest news related to technology and education. Since this is a blog, please don’t expect any literary masterpieces to follow. It is basically a dumping ground for anything tech-related that I’m hoping you might find useful, interesting, or, at the very least, amusing.

First - a mini-byte of information for teachers returning to school and putting their computers back together - If you aren’t connecting the the network, make sure your network cable is plugged in to the correct port. Most of our computers have TWO ports for the network cable (just to confuse you a bit), so if the one isn’t working the other probably will.

On what’s new in IT - I recently read The Future of Learning Manifesto, originally done by Christian Long and then “cleaned up” by Scott McLeod, and found it pretty powerful. Sometimes it’s in the voice of the teacher and at other times in the voice of the student, but you’ll get the gist of it. Like the “Did You Know” video I shared with you at our kickoff faculty meeting, it’s designed to invite thought and spark conversation.

Welcome back and have a great year!

Download Video: Posted by lowrytp at TeacherTube.com.