What I learned from Neil Stephenson

Before I start with todays seminar with Neil I just wanted to say a few things about blogging and what I'm learning from that. I try to ride my bike to school as much as possible and I find that it allows me to do a lot of reflecting,  this is what I was thinking about today on my ride home. I remember last semester having to use a journal to write our reflections about our classes and our teaching experiences. The question I have is this, why did we not start a blog at the beginning of the two year program? Wouldn't it have been great to be able to look back at what we were writing about, feeling or doing in our teaching practices? Besides the fact that it would have been a great tool to use throughout our two years and would be an ongoing journal and efolio combined! I think the blog is a better tool than the efolio because it can be used like and efolio but people can also add comments to it, which would be valuable as well. Just putting it out there.
The other thing I was thinking about on the ride home is, why is this class not mandatory for all and it should be a class in each semester on campus, sort of like the lecture series. So far in the three weeks we've had in this class I've learned more about inquiry than in the year and a half prior. The information about technology is awesome but so is the information about inquiry and how to include it in the classroom. I think that after todays seminar I can truly say that I have a pretty good idea of what inquiry is and ways to use it to teach, not that I'd be good at it yet but at least I feel I can make a go of it!! Not blowing smoke up any butts but this class is it!!
Ok onto todays seminar, I felt like Neil presented inquiry in away that was understandable and useable to us as new teachers. He gave great ideas about how to form questions, what should be thought about in forming the questions, and how to use technology in completing a task. I also really liked that he emphasized not to use technology when it has no use in certain scenarios. I sort of feel a bit bombarded with the whole technology thing and he cleared that up a bit by saying it should only be included when it truly fits. I like the idea of not forcing it in any learning situation. It was great to see his ideas and technology used by real students and what they were able to do with it. I really need to see things to get a full understanding of their uses.
I'm glad that I was able to talk with Neil after the class about the RSS feeds. I immediately changed my home page to igoogle and added the google reader to it so I can have RSS feeds right on my home page. I'm very excited about it.
The other thing that was really inspirational in Neil's presentations was that the teachers at his school collaborating to make these lessons work. The fact that his school has built in the collaboration time into their day so they can plan more engaging work for the students should be and inspiration to all schools. It feels like we talk about how this should happen but I didn't see it happening in the schools that I did practicums in.
Well that's it for now, later skaters.

Google DOC's and Story telling

Wow, I too love the Google Doc's stuff! It's pretty easy to use and I love that it is at your fingertips when ever you need it on what ever computer you have access to. The Forms document will be really great. I just want to make up some survey or something just to try it out. I think that it will be great for use by students and throughout the school by the staff as well. The ability to collaborate without meeting face to face seems to be what people want in our society today. Kind of sad but true.
I also really enjoyed the prezi (sp?) site as well. I like the presentation in a non-power point style. I'm a bit bored with the same old style, and this is just a new and different way to see a presentation.
I really like the idea of the story telling work. I think that a lot can be learn through story telling. Whether it is about yourself or about another topic the idea of learning something and telling someone else via a story is a great learning experience. Darcy's presentation of the class that he is taking was very interesting. The class seemed like it was more for people just taking it for fun. I'm not convinced of the lack of structure of the assignments and the assessment of it. I'm open to learning more about it though because I think if the student were allowed to make up their own assignments in high school they might be more engaged in what they were doing. Perhaps you could have some loose parameters  that the students had to follow just to ensure that curriculum was met, other wise the students had the freedom to display their learning as they chose.