4th Great Information Age

In Matt Allen's post, Reframe Your Thinking, he shared links to MIT research papers from the McArthur Foundation.  The first article got my attention as it describes the learning institutions of the future.  This scholarly research paper was questioning the traditional structures of universities.  Specifically they questioned the top down, authoritative, departmentalized model of delivery content.  Included was a reference to the HASTAC, humanities, arts, science, technology, advanced collaborative. Interesting thought as we have formed our learning institutions whether college, or secondary into content areas or departments. How will learning institutions of the future be organized?  Will learning institutions be more collaborative around ideas instead of areas of content?  How will students be prepared not only for careers and college, but also for life in a digital world for socializing, participation as citizens, or other daily functions?  Will we teach them about sharing and interacting with their learning?  Will we teach them about judging knowledge and content.  Will they know how to work around problems?  All very heady and also very interesting reading.  Our school team has been enthusiastic in our work at the GTFS 2012.  I wonder what other faculty will say to our enthusiastic efforts to create a Google domain and trainings for the Google tools.  Reflecting on the research work compiled in the McArthur Foundation paper will be helpful as the day to day work of retooling our school and thinking gets mired down by the struggle to keep kids and technology moving ahead at Colchester Middle School.  The article stated that Robert Darnton described this age as the fourth great information age following the invention of writing in 4000 BC and going from scrolls to codex in the 3rd century and the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1450.  Are these tools and our push to bring technology into our school just another educational fad or one more new initiative?  Is this as important for our students as our Google team thinks that it is?  Thanks for the articles, Matt.  This type of inspiration will be important for us as we push along our work to bring technology to CMS.

The Colchester Middle School Google Team - Our Final Project

Yesterday, Thursday, was an extremely productive day.  While each of us had many thoughts and interests regarding a final project, our team met and sifted through the ideas, the realities and the next steps to generating a launch for Google Tools for our school.  Jen Roberge has been the main cheerleader and mastermind behind the move to Google.  She has spent endless hours communicating and learning and trying out these tools with students.  The other members of our newly named Google team are Carol Smith, Sue Rosato, Amy Tosch, Julie Tanguay, Bil Albright and myself.  We are the team that is attending the GTFS 2012.  These colleagues are terrific, energetic and thoughtful.  Each of us brings a perspective to our project.  Stepping back from the project and our goals for the school, I want to experience our collaboration using technology. What are the problems?  Of course there are problems.  How do we "skilled' adults handle these situations?  How will our students deal with collaboration?  They will have conflicts and problems.  They will have a collision of ideas and priorities.  As educators, these are wonderful opportunities to teach about social skills and negotiation.  This has been a great opportunity to experience collaboration for ourselves.  Reflecting on Ken Robinson's statement that the best learning takes place with collaboration, I would say that this has been very true of our work at the GTFS '12.  While I use tools one way, watching and working with my colleagues, I see multiple ways to create using the tools.  Together we problem solve and trouble shoot. My colleagues approach the work with different lenses to build a strong final project.  For my part, I feel validated by my creative skills set and basic understanding of some of the Google tools.  Our final project has not been the personal professional development plan that I had envisioned, nor does it directly link to my work as the Inclusion Facilitator at CMS.  However, I can support this final project as a step to move our school toward the 21st century learning initiatives that actually do support my inclusion goal of "access for all students."  The resulting use of technology in our school could bring our curriculum to include the elements of Universal Design.  When teachers, special educators and other related professionals are able to collaborate, using a technology like Google Tools, then we are all much more capable of creating lessons for all in a timely and thoughtful way.  Thanks to the hard work and multiple talents of our Google team yesterday.  Work like this keeps me energized and excited to be an educator at Colchester Middle School.

Google Forms for Data Collection

Google Forms has been an excellent tool to collect daily data, which we do, extensively in special education.  Additionally, we have shared these data collection results at meetings with teams.  Doing this has been easy and visually appealing.  I feel like teams working with students have been able to focus and more effectively plan new goals for students based on the data we have collected using the Google Forms and Summary of Responses.    I would like to see how well the Google Forms will work with an Ipad once we download the Google Drive App.  Our students could potentially carry an Ipad to take their own data using a simple form. In this way, a student could become part of his own learning by reflecting on his own daily data.Example of C's Daily Data collection using forms.

Google Spreadsheets and Sites

I have not spent any time previously working with Google Spreadsheets.  Having time to play with these google features individually are quite helpful.  M & M Spreadsheet Sample

I look forward to spending more time on Google Sites.  I have created many in the past but have often abandoned the Site as it does not suit my needs or I get frustrated with the formatting.  I hope to leave this class with enough information to effectively create Sites for my professional use.  More importantly, I would like to be a resource for our teachers and students who are just beginning to create sites using Google.