Web Cams, Storage and Social Bookmarking, Oh My!

I kind of feel like Dorothy these past two weeks. At first I was just landing in OZ and very unsure of my surroundings - and now I'm on the yellow brick road with a purpose in mind. I'm still reeling from the differences between my world and this technological world and most if it surrounds the vocabulary. For example, does a browser plug-in mean the same thing as a bookmarklet or is it a stand-alone toolbar that can be added to access a social bookmarking site faster/better? So although I have a clear purpose, I'm still befuddled in some of the details. (Enough about the vocabulary - as I tell my students, vocabulary is simply something you've got to get before you can really "get it" and it's a process that doesn't end.)

Another reason my mind reels is that I am filled with all of these new ideas of what I can use in my classes and we start a new semester on Monday so I'm pretty excited. I really need to decide what one or two things to try and implement so that I can focus on those items and make them valuable tools and not just a whim. I'm seriously considering planning on leaving video directions for my students and substitutes whenever I'll be out of the classroom for conferences or training days. I really am intrigued by the idea that instruction can continue on without my always having to be there physically to drive it. I think that the substitute teacher (or teachers as we teach in block and often have two teachers covering per block if a regular sub can't be found) can act more as a proctor to oversee the students progress much like is done in a distance learning class. This would be a change from my choosing less than desirable assignments to be sure that the students would "have something to do" in order to avoid potential discipline or behavioral issues.

The second item I really want to implement is the usage of Google Docs for class projects and teacher collaboration/information sharing. I ran into the issue today with a student trying to turn in her final exam project. She had one of the pieces printed out for me, another was locked up as an attachment in her email account (which was frozen on her computer) and the third part was on her personal laptop which she had to haul from home to school where she could get a jump drive to download it to my computer. Come to find out, she had made the project on notepad and because it included images and other items, I couldn't open it correctly with the programs available on my school computer. AAAHHHHHH! Does any one else face these kinds of problems with project based assignments? It always seems like I'm trying to ask more than the students are capable of pulling off and I keep thinking that it can't be that hard. I'm sure if I had given explicit instructions on what programs the students could use and that they would have to only work on the school computers and use their school email to turn in the projects that I wouldn't have quite as many issues... I fear that other issues would crop up as well.

Another application for me would be keeping the teachers updated on the status of our Earth Day activities. I'm the National Honor Society Adviser at the high school and one of our service projects is to organize sites at which our student body can volunteer at for a day of service (leaf raking, spring cleaning, marking sewage drains with "Drains to River" signs etc.) Ultimately, I'm responsible for signing up our 570 students to these sites around the county and keeping the teachers appraised of which students have been assigned to them. The students get to choose their sites by turning in their permission slips to me - these obviously come in at various times and I try to process them quickly, meaning that the data changes up to a dozen times in a day. This year, rather than email an attachment with the updated lists 3 or 4 times a day to teachers, I want to set the table up in a Google Spreadsheet and then invite the teachers as viewers of the file. This way they could have access to the most up to date student assignments without a pile of emails from me everyday. Any idea how to get 40 people (many who really dislike computers) to all get their own gmail account so they could view it?

So here I sit, in the hotel breakfast room (yes, I'm still working out the tech glitches at school - almost done but have no webcam there. Maybe the hideous wallpaper here is contributing to my head reeling...) thinking that I do have a purpose on this yellow brick road. So although there may be twists and turns and unforeseen obstacles, I'm ready to proceed to the Emerald City... next week. (If you haven' t figured out yet, I'm a fan of musicals - anybody seen "Wicked"?)