This site is a product of two teachers; Reggie & Kelly Ryan. This site includes study and writing on the use of technology and it's integration into classroom instruction, teaching strategies as well as an online portfolio of work.

Reggie holds a PhD in Educational Leadership/E-Learning, and has nearly ten years integrating technology into classroom instruction. Kelly has fourteen years teaching students ranging in ages from PreK through 2nd grade. She also holds specialized training in the intergration of Science through instruction at this age group.

You can find observations, resumes, contact information as well as technical and pedagogical material.

Reggie's blog

3rd Grade Social Studies test

Posted Tue, 04/22/2008 - 18:10 by Reggie

My third grade daughter has a Social Studies test today. I've been helping her study over the last few days. She's been asked to memorize the Great Lakes, capitals of some states and come other general geographic locations. It's been grating on me that this is the type of assessment, the type of work that she's been asked to do.

She can get the answers to these questions at any libary, or off the internet in a few minutes. Instead of teaching her something rich in context, information or how to find reliable sources, she's memoring.

This has been written about many times before, but when it's my daughter its hard to smile and encourage her without ripping up her assignment in frustration. 

Flickr Video upload

Posted Sun, 04/13/2008 - 15:16 by Reggie

With Flickr now accepting videos for upload, I was excited to have a single place to put family pictures and videos for relatives to consume.

However I've quickly come to realize that uploading videos to Flickr is, at best, a pain. So far I've not been able to upload a single video. Their web-based uploader times out. Their installable uploader doesn't let you add videos, even though it mentions them on their website.

Clearly Flickr is not ready to make it easy for users to do this.  

Rss anyone?

Posted Thu, 04/10/2008 - 13:13 by Reggie

I try to read as much as possible, especially from source and writers who hold views that I don't. I'd like to know alternatives, and what the 'other guys' think.

So the other day I was browsing The Weekly Standard, a conservative political site. There were some interesting articles, but they don't offer RSS feeds for anything. That means I have to visit the site, browse through current articles when I should be able to pull up new offerings in my RSS reader. 

Bottom line- I'm not going to. 

LMS evolution

Posted Sun, 03/30/2008 - 14:10 by Reggie

I've been and continue to be a proponent of LMS/CMS implimentation in the classroom for a while. I've deployed Drupal and Moodle for a number of years with varied success. However with the introduction of Twitter/Diigo 3.0 over the past month I've come to realize that with a combination of both free and paid services, students might be better served with something better- more flexible.

Providing students with tools such as free wikis, Diigo accounts, Edmodo (twitter for the classroom) and blogs allows them to utilize the best-of-class social tools without the ponderous LMS offerings that are not use.

I'm not ready to abandon Drupal and Moodle. They can offer a safe option for those environments when suppport or restrictions dictate. Plus I don't see a viable alternative to online testing that Moodle offers.

One of the biggest hurdles is the requirement or restriction in terms of student email accounts. We can't utlize student's personal email account because of privacy restrictions. To provide something like Gaggle accounts costs a lot of money. I'm convinced that a majority of students wouldn't use their Gaggle accounts because its 'not cool', plus they don't want someone else reading their email- and I don't blame them.

So to take advantage of all these exciting 2.0 tools, we've got to provide expensive email account. The price is too high. I'm aware of the Google email hack- but this is OK for a classroom of kids, not a whole school.

Unsaid is that teachers themselves need to be aware of these tools and how to utilize them in context. It's one thing to discuss their use with other techies. Its another to approach a teacher, put it in context of class curriculum and successfully integrate it.  

 

1:1 Laptop initiatives and cost

Posted Sat, 03/29/2008 - 14:38 by Reggie

In looking at 1;1 initiatives there are many possible hurdles that need to be overcome. Many are technical in nature, but some are instructional and institutional. On top of these hurdles are the fact that it is expensive and if it fails, fails dramatically and can sour a district on future technology investments for years to come.

In many cases, laptops that are used are full-fledged machines. Apple's products are usually mentioned, or Wintel TabletPC's. I'm a big fan of Apple's included software; GarageBand, iTunes, iPhoto. Apple's GUI is unsurpassed in easy of use. It is an elegant and education focused company.

Yet do student really need machines as powerful? Do we need to sink the money into capability that might never get leveraged. Especially when applications are moving online? With the new eePC, OLPC, HP offerings, which cost half as much in initial cost coming out, should schools be looking at purchasing these instead?

The new student NETs that stress 21st Century Skills are centered on communication, networking and reserach skills. Practically, schools and teachers have to pick and choose the skills that they can teach. While applications are important, they are being shoved aside by the networking tools and web-based mediums.

Why invest in machines that are oriented towards local applications? Why not invest in basic, low-cost machines that are network enabled. Invest in robust connectivity and mechanisms that allow students to connect and exists safely online. Invest in school wide Flickr accounts. Investigate district Google email/document systems. Use Skitch, EduBlogs and wiki integration. Some of these are free and some aren't cheap. Invest in a robust support package- if one exists. At the lower price point would replacement be easier and more palatable for districts?

I'm given a MacBook for work. I didn't pay for it. I use Microsoft Word, kind of use iPhoto and use iTunes for my personal use. By far and away the applications I use on a daily basis are online. They are not installed, and the only one I pay for is Flickr Pro ($25 per year). I almost refuse these days to learn or invest time in a machine based application. Although I ended up 'compiling' my dissertation using Word, I wrote much of it online using Google Docs.

My package might include:

eepc: $500

Installed Applications:
Open Office with sync to Google Docs
Firefox with student extensions

Network Applications:
School Flickr connection
School Delicious connection
School-wide Google App suite connection
Google Reader Setup with feeds
Individual student EduBlog membership (500 students @ $3750 per year)
School wide Voicethread subscription ($600 per year)

With this package the student has a great start at online, networked collaboration. Training would concentrate on using applications to communicate. Students would be given an inexpensive laptop computer that would be half the cost of a MacBook. Throw in Moodle and possible NING usage and you can get close to a tool that is more affordable and usable.

The OS would be Linux, admittedly not as elegant as XP or OSX. Yet exactly what difference does it make? Right now I support both OSX and XP in school. We have 'issues' with both.

Questions I have center mainly around support and the robustness of the machines. However our MacBooks seem no more robust than our Dells.

 

Community Involvement

Posted Thu, 03/27/2008 - 11:03 by Reggie

As I work in a rather large community with a number of schools, I realize that i have almost no contact with the corresponding high school that my student feed into. We also have little community contact, even though that is high on our district's planning. Over the past few months I've stumbled upon a number of methods through which K8 schools can leverage members of the community to increase contact and communication.

High Schools:

Use high school students as part-time tech support. Allow them to do base-level tech support that would otherwise tie up tech support personnel. Create high school partner teams to partner with teachers and provide productivity support. If a teacher wanted a blog set up, they'd email high school students. If they wanted an after school tutoring session on Flickr- use the high school kids. Allow high school students to function as online writing coaches for student blogs and wikis.

Adults:

Allow adults in the community, retired folks or even parents to function as mentors online as well. Allow them to come in and volunteer in labs after school hours. Bring them in the talk about how technology is integrated into their professional lives. 

Colleges:

Bring in college student and/or professors to offer brief in service classes. Contact colleges to see if they'll allow students to make use of facilities and content material. Can staff development be offered through a local college at a reduced tuition that will give teachers a customized staff training opportunity as well as college credit?

As an aside, nearly five years ago I had the chance to offer a community college class to teachers in my district. The local community college was hurting for students and I pitched a class customized to our district's professional development needs. Teachers would enroll and pay tuition to the college, but I could design and then teach the class locally. Unfortunately I didn't fly and we lost the opportunity. 

New Ideas Nine Years Ago

Posted Thu, 03/27/2008 - 10:24 by Reggie

"21st Century skills" dominate the conversation at tech conferences, UStream presentations and edtech Twitter posts. The efficacy and need to 'transform' teaching and the use of technology to support the learning process as opposed to a final product are well stated.

Yet this has been around for a while. Browsing The Journal's website, I came across an article dated from January of 1999. The author, Jolene Dockstader, discusses how and why to use technology in class:

True integration comes when students learn through computers, not about them. There is no value of learning word processing unless it is used to further content comprehension.

The author goes on to comment on research done in 1996 on learning in context and the use of technology. It is a short article and obviously does not mention the current 2.0 technologies that are so in vogue.

Technology's relationship with content has been discussed and studies long before the current 'revolution'. Studies, leaders and teachers have known that technology can't exists outside of the parameters of the core content areas.

This is nothing new and the fact that we are still talking about it is disappointing. Our 2.0 conversation has been on-going for nearly a decade- and some of the answers aren't all that hard to figure out.