Just Janene

What if you plan a web 2.0 workshop and no one comes?  I am volunteering at the Great Computer Challenge, an event hosted by CII and ODU.  My role is to provide a diversion for the adults who are here.  When I used to coach teams at the competition, I used this time to drink coffee and chat with colleagues.  As I sit here in my empty lab, I suppose that is what the coaches and volunteers are doing now.  
However, it does make me think about some recent articles and blog posts I have read about whether teachers are ready for 21st century students, skills, teaching, learning…you add the noun.   It would be easy for me to sit here and grumble that teachers are disinterested in technology.  Of course, I am at a technology event.  The teachers here have invested a lot of time and energy working with students to prepare them for this technology-based competition.  I could swing wildly in the other direction and conclude that these teachers are already aware and active users of web 2.0 tools.  I think, however, it is somewhere in between. 

I hear the grumbles all of the time and I even occasionally hear that teachers already know “all this.”  I think both types of thinking are faulty.  I think we need to not sit in our empty labs wondering where the teachers are but seek them out in their classrooms, the lounge, the parking lot, wherever we have a few minutes.  And I think we need to think about our approach.  Probably my description should have been less focused on the cool and more how these tools could make lives easier or teaching more efficient and effective.  I was thinking on a Saturday morning, “cool” would be more attractive but I am always into checking out what is cool.  I need to remember that I am not like all people. 

So for now, I am going to leave my empty lab and go seek out some teachers…and maybe some coffee.

Welcome Virginia Beach teachers!  This is the one year anniversary of my blog…apparently the reading conference is my best motivation!   Please try out adding a comment by sharing an idea you have for using blogs with students.   To see all of the resources for our session- please visit the wiki.  

This has to be the saddest attempt at a blog ever.  And it isn’t even my first (or second blogging) attempt.  I am an avid blog reader, an advocate for teachers who are working with blogs in their classrooms…but can’t seem to sustain a blog myself.  I am not sure if it is my attention span- I seem to have no trouble with Twitter.  However I am going to try again and this time I am going to focus!  Of course I have spent a good deal of time changing my theme, trying to make a decision about the layout, the name, the tagline, uploading my avatar, contemplating a custom header…all of which is the unimportant stuff secondary to the content.    Focus!

I think I am resigned to being a day behind real time and I can see the time gap extending as the conference progresses.  This is a picture from the boat cruise.     I tried to upload more but I think Edublogs could only handle the one picture for the time being,  Here are some ideas that are percolating in my head from my sessions…internet safety- just what are the boundaries. what are our responsibilities for the activities of what our students are doing away from school.  

Much more to share…later…

I am not overly opotimistic that Edublogs is going to be stable enough to allow me to report regularly from NECC but I am going to try.

Tonight, we were the guests of Tom Snyder Productions for a dinner cruise at Stone Mt.Lake.  I will post pictures tomorrow.   Joan won a beach towel.    

Edublogs is sloooooooowwwwww! Hope you get a chance to look around.  Please leave me a comment and tell me how you  think you might use a blog!

I have started this blog just to show you how easy it is to manage a blog!