15th October 2007

Eric Langhorst’s keynote at MOREnet

posted in assessment, blogs, digitalstorytelling, history, web 2.0, workshops |

These are my text notes from Eric Langhorst, 2007-2008 Missouri state teacher of the year, at the MOREnet conference (MITC07)on 15 Oct 2007. “Why Is My Classroom Web 2.0?” This was the conference keynote address. Eric recorded it and will be posting it on his podcast channel in upcoming weeks.

“It’s amazing what happens when students show adults their work when they have created something”
- story of sharing “Liberty Minutes video project” with local school board members
- students are going to remember projects and units like this for the rest of their lives

Encouragement for teachers to have a web presence
- 8 years ago I put up my first website, maybe 3 people visited it
- each week I tell my parents what is happening each week in class via email and via the blog
- parents feel more a part of the classroom
- blogger is the most important tool I use in my classroom for communication

I know the digital divide is real, but I’m not going to wait till the gap goes away and access goes to 100%

Be ahead of the game

Expert sources
- teacher sends the email
- 10 question limit
- we have done this for several years
- 1 year we had a hurricane literally hitting the coast of Virginia, students were asking about protecting an archeological site
- Jamestown archaeologist answered questions from her laptop in the kitchen of her home

I now have contacts in Boston at museums so when students have questions, we can get answers quickly via email

Expert sources: Donner Party debate, record class debate, send experts mp3 of debate and they respond with comments

Assessment:
- we use quia and quizstar
- when we test for content we like immediate feedback
- if it is a constructed response / paragraph
- also use for pretest and postdata
- administrators love data of any kind
- I do a pretest before any unit
- can find out about students’ pre-existing knowledge on a topic
- this is how I found out my students had incorrect ideas about Pocahontas based on the Disney movie
- this permits me to change my instruction the same day or the next day

I do not have a 1:1 computing ratio at our school

“You want to unleash me, give me an environment where every student has a laptop they can use in class and take home”
- right now, we have to use the computer lab

eLections from Cable in the Classroom website
- manage a campaign
- platform, electoral college decisions

Presentation: Screencast of notes for class

I have used CamStudio several times this year to create

What do I do now?
= be a leader: team, building, district
- we have to train each other
- if we slowly chip away at it, we can accomplish great things

We use studycasts as a way to provide accomodations for students who must have a test read to them

Ask your students how they learn best and would like to learn
- give students choices with video production, drama, other options
- allow students to choose how they want to learn and demonstrate their understanding of concepts

kids now have choice between a creating a comic book or a journal from the perspective of a soldier
- I had 5 emails from students last night asking questions about our current project

build a technology dialog with your administration
- I helped my principals start podcasting last year
- this is much more effective than explaining to them in a theoretical way

technology is just a tool: nothing more or less
- we have to include it in our toolbox

it is not a reality that people coming out of college know how to do all these things, how to effectively use web 2.0 tools

Contact info: speakingofhistory@gmail.com
8th grade American History
South Valley Jr. High, Liberty, Missouri

slowly we can transform our classrooms to more collaborative environments

a big reason studetns like my class is I engage them and give them choices
- make learning alive!

Check out more posts from MITC 2007 on HitchHikr

Technorati Tags:

On this day..

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under assessment, blogs, digitalstorytelling, history, web 2.0, workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There is currently one response to “Eric Langhorst’s keynote at MOREnet”

Join the conversation!

  1. 1 On October 15th, 2007, Roger Osburne said:

    Getting each student a laptop is a good start, but we can’t stop there. We need to make sure all students have access to affordable broadband. Applications like live interactive study groups rely on high speed access. My kids regularly have friends over to use our DSL, because they don’t have or can’t afford internet access, to work on their school projects. We can’t afford to let our children get left behind.

    The Communications Workers Of America are currently working on a project called Speed Matters to help achieve this goal. We are also seeking teachers who are using the tools you decribe to help us spread the word on how important this is.

    Keep up the good work and check out our website at http://www.speedmatters.org