Copyright

Tonight's information session was very informative!  I was not aware of almost anything that we talked about tonight.  I found fair use to be good information!  When we first started talking about copyright tonight I got very worried.  I was under the impression that I have been doing everything illegally.  I am CONSTANTLY going online, finding new articles that I bring to the classroom as a reflection on what is going on in our world.  I became very worried that I am going to get a good spanking for doing such things.  It was helpful to see the fair use information  (and I have every intention of finding out more about it) because it occurred to me that almost everything that I do falls under fair use.  I wipe the sweat from my brow and move on...

Going Deeper

I am really glad that we have thing 7 to reflect upon.  Some of the sites talk about how students don't know how to search beyond a general google search.  As I have been reading some of the information, it occurred to me that I don't know how to go deeper in searching online either.  I really like the colleg@home.com website because it gave a lot of really helpful ideas on how to get what you are looking for.  Also, at times I feel like there are soo many resources available that I don't know how to bring it down to the ones that will be of the most use to my students.  I really like this website because it breaks down which search engine to use for which need.  I hope that these things stay on the mili wiki for a long time because I use the mili website to go back and find what I used.

The google educator was ok, but not super helpful.  For the most part, I have been disappointed with sites for educators.  Maybe I am not doing them right.  Does anyone have an educator website that they use frequently and they find super helpful?

Thing 6

I have been using a lot of online collaboration tools and I have been LOVING it!  I created a wiki for the Social Studies department at Edison.  My ideas is to have all the Social Studies teachers post their favorite lessons that fall under the curriculum map for different classes.  Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to  teach the members of our department how to do it, so there is very little on the wiki.  Last week at our DL meeting, Kate Andrews (the social studies tosa for the district) said that she wanted to create a moodle for the district.  It would operate the same way as my wiki, but it would be at a district level.  It was exciting to me, but it also made me wonder if it would be worthwhile to do it at a building level.  I think I will try to build our wiki at Edison anyway.  Although it is totally under construction, here is the link

edisonsocialstudies..pbwiki.com

I have also been using google docs a lot.  I like that you can share things with other people.  My husband and I actually use a spreadsheet to do our personal budget.  It works great because we can work on it at the same time.  Also, you can set up formulas with excel that will do all of the math for you.  It is just great.  It has made us both much more accountable to our personal expenditures.

A little Behind

It occurred to me today that I have been a bit lapse about my mili responsibilities. My family just moved from North Minneapolis to South Minneapolis, and our lives have been turned upside down lately. I went to the wiki today and I realized that I am doing the things but I am not blogging about them. I think that my information literacy has increased significantly since I started mili. I now use the internet as a resource in many more ways than I used to. I am really enjoying the google docs because I can access them anywhere without having to have a flashdrive on me.
Thing 2 has been a challenge for me. I feel like blogging is like an online diary. It is hard for me to show my thoughts to the world, and I am not that interested in what other people's opinions are. I know that sounds really bad, but I don't even really have the time to read the things I want to. Maybe I just haven't found the right blogs yet. I will reflect on more "things" later.

Jonathan Kozol

Last night I went to see Jonathan Kozol speak at St. Thomas.  Here is a man that has known privilege his entire life, but has committed his life to justice and equity.  I often wonder how people who have only known the best,  and been exposed to the best, develop a heart for making our world a more equitable place.  He said some things that were not new to me, but are always shocking every time I am reminded of them.  He talked about the fact that our schools are more segregated now than any time in our history since Martin Luther King Jr.  That is a travesty!  We all know that separate does not mean equal.  Test scores will show us who is getting enriching, questioning, inquiry based education and who is being taught militantly to a test that is inauthentic to begin with.  It would seem that transient children and children of poverty can not afford to waste one minute to things like art, music and play.  I left the meeting with a heavy heart.  I have two children who are three and one.  What is my role in this unequal world as it pertains to my children?  I would like to be part of the solution rather than the problem, but at what cost?  There's a group of us "northsiders" that meet and struggle through these questions together.  We don't want to ship our kids out of our neighborhoods to schools with great test scores.  One of the women in our cohort just started her white son at Hall elementary because it is her neighborhood school.  She loves the school and the programs therein, but she worries about the fact that her son in kindergarten is the only white kid in his class.  He will certainly be empathetic to what it means to be a minority.  One thing is certain!  It is not good for our nation to have such grave inequities, but what are we called to do and at what cost?

New Year

I am so excited to be embarking upon the journey of this school year.  There are many new and exciting things going on at Thomas Edison High school and I am really enjoying myself.  Here is my class schedule:

Period One:  Gilder Lehrman Coordinator

Period Two:  TOK  (Theory of Knowledge)

Period Three:  Team Prep

Period Four:  United States History

Period Five:  Spanish Geography

Period Six:  United States History

Period Seven:  Prep