Dazed and Confused

I felt kind of dazed and confused last night--so many programs and possibilities flying at me that they all started to blend together into a technological tsunami. I do think there are many practical applications for Skype and video conferencing in classrooms-- kids and schools are so disconnected from the "real world," and with budget cuts, opportunities for field trips will undoubtedly be waning. It's a great way to get "experts" into the classroom, and to get kids out into the world without having to spend any precious funding. I guess I'm a little more skeptical about the file sharing Prof. modeled with her daughter via ichat. I think it would be AWESOME between professionals, but with all of the firewalls and blocks that schools routinely put on, I can see it really bogging down or falling apart as a classroom application. "Permission denied" for this, "access denied" for that." That's kind of what I'm envisioning...
I know we are the next generation, and we need to think outside of the box if we expect our students to learn that skill as well, but I think what prevents a lot of current teachers from attempting anything fancy like video conferencing are all of the technical impediments, like clearing it with the elusive technology person, the principal, the school board, letters to the parents, etc...I know that's how schools work, but human nature being as it is, I can see how teachers get frustrated and just take the well worn path of least resistence.
I know Prof. M-G kept noticing that I looked lost in class last night, and I think what she saw was the skepticism on my face. I'm trying to reconcile all of these fabulous ideas and possibilities with the realities of how schools operate on a daily basis. If I'm being completely honest, I'm anticipating being overwhelmed in the first few years of teaching, and to compound that by attempting to implement technologies that I have a VERY superficial understanding of myself, seems daunting, to say the least.
I want to drink the technology Kool-aid, I really do, don't get me wrong, but I think I need to be very selective about which ones I choose, b/c at the end of the day, there are only so many hours I can spend bumping into the walls trying to learn new things when there are piles of papers to be graded or written.

Smartboard meltdown

Well, I'm late getting to my own blog post, because I got completely bogged down on the SmartNotebook software, which made me feel anything but smart, frankly. I remembered all the things we did in class, and how I wanted them to function in my own lesson, but I couldn't keep all of the steps straight. The help menu within the program is totally lame, and slogging through the tutorials to get a specific answer is cumbersome and a major time sucker. Relief came at last from the message boards--some kindly techie at last pointed me in the right direction, with the assistance of my husband. Without both of them, frankly I would have been screwed on this project. The SmartNotebook doesn't seem as friendly with the Mac OS, even after I hunted down the Teacher Activity Gallery, the program was freezing up and acting funky all day and night. It was, to be sure, a huge exercise in frustration. Today was better, and by the time I was finished with my lesson, I had gained a modest comfort level with the interface. I'm still massively confused about how to make all the little gimmicks work, I think a full seminar would be necessary before I would feel comfortable breaking out the Smartboard in front of a room full of kids. I'm still kind of afraid of it, frankly, and I also still feel it's usefulness in an ELA classroom, at least the one I envision, is more limited than with other subjects.

Very late post-sorry!

Got so busy with the podcast, neglected my poor little blog. Last week's Thinkfinity class was extraordinarily helpful. Perusing all of those delectable lesson plans, I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning, overwhelmed by the big pile of presents and wondering which one to open first. I still can't quite get over it. I could get lost for days on those partner sites, and pretty much did during class. In fact, from occasionally popping my head up from the screen, I'm pretty sure everyone else was doing the same thing. How could you not? So many great ideas--I'm thinking a great feature would be some kind of user ratings system, like they have on recipe sites, where people can post a rating 1-10 or something, so other teachers can know how successful a particular lesson has or has not been. I know there are a lot of variables, but still, it would be one way to pare down the overwhelming array of options.

2-5-Podcast Mania!!!

I had an absolute blast last night creating the little practice podcast. I freely admit that when Audacity first showed up on my monitor and I saw all of those sound waves and buttons, I started to panic a little bit. But the tutorial was well-written and easy to follow, and sitting with my group partner Patrick was a godsend. He claims to be a techno-phobe, but his instincts are much better than mine and together we muddled our way through it. Initially, I thought this would be a fun little exercise that I would never actually use, but now seeing how easy it really is, I can imagine offering this as a creative project option for my students. The one concern I have is how much time I would need to carve out of my English content to devote to software issues, and whether that would even be considered appropriate by watchful administrators in my pre-tenure years.
I am looking forward to creating our podcast and can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with as well. Great class last night!