Daily Reflections
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Personal Teaching Connection
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Monday
After breakfast, Lennie offerd a reading
from a book she purchased here in town. The reading was linked to
Lennie's residence. Downstairs, the group split into sub-groups and
worked out mental maps of the Fading Footprints webpage. The maps
ranged from literal site maps of the web layout to deeper depictions of
the teaching resources needed to develop such a unit with students,
including a chronological list of expedition items.
The
exercise provided alternate views of
how the webpage in particular worked, from inception to the actual page
layouts. David Grant described how this plan for a webpage is now
somewhat dated, when one considers how individuals using web sites
today are looking for direct access to all available information on the
site - such as what is seen on a navigation bar.
David Grant followed this exercise
with a workshop on using Mozilla Composer (i.e. Netscape also) to
layout a webpage for the individual species given to each summit
participant. (Species were distributed to participants Sunday evening,
after the folder and files systems were introduced to the group.)
The workshop provided some
common language followed by written instructions on how to layout each
page. The structure resembles that used by several government and
private organizations when writing species fact sheets. This framework
would work in a classroom because of such structure. There was
information on linking and anchoring text that provided useful for
footnotes in the status section of the page.
After lunch, David Sparks gave a
presentation using live animals, hitting familiar messages about wild
animal care versus pet care.
At 2:00pm, Ellen lead a
session on
enlarging a photo of each species through illustration. This
illustration will ultimately be used on this species page. At the
beginning of the session, the sky became increasingly darker until rain
fell hard on the building for hours.
After dinner, David provided a
demonstration on using Picasa, an on-line photo sharing service where
all photos taken during this summit can be uploaded. Photos were taked
from my camera as part of the demo. Time was given after this demo for
writing this
reflection.
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Product Design
I feel we (all "we" references
from this point on refer to the science team at BSSCS) have already
spent time on how mapping will be an intergral part of our planning and
our student work. Regardless, it could be worth some planning to relate
the webpage design site maps to other scientific models, and possibly
even turn those models into webpages.
David mentioned something about
how his technology students were each responsible for creating specific
pages about types of technology, like biotechnology. In biology alone,
there are many fields of study that students could investigate for
individual research projects, although I don't know if I am ready (or
if the school is ready) technologically to produce such webpages.
From our morning questions,
there were several purpose questions I thought would be helpful to
answer before working through such a unit with students;
- Why is this information valuable (how does it apply to me,
why should I care?);
- What can I do with this information (where do I go now,
where is other related information, how can I help?); and
- Where did this information come from?
I also wondered how webpages
are effecting our communication of information, and how it compares to
our most traditional forms of data communication, such as spoken
stories, written narratives, movies, television, print newspapers and
magazines.
Relative to the species fact
sheets, information research is still left unstructured - and possibly
because our information could be entered solely based on our
observations. It seems this type of product could be planned from two
angles. First, from the perspective of a research paper focusing on
summarizing documents and citing work; and second, from the perspective
of pure observations focusing on observation skills and reflection
writing.
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Tuesday
The day
started after breakfast with a reading by
Tom (myself) about Pete Dunne, David Sibley and the Guide he created,
and was immediately followed by heading out to Goose Rock Beach for
Piping Plover surveys and observations of Least Tern nesting sites. Two
Audubon staff hosted a tour of the site and talked about the success
and stress of the birds nesting at the site. The site has had up to 16
nesting pairs of plovers, which has actually lead to some difficulties
in management. (Species
list here.)
Back at
the center we read an article written by
David Grant on the Fading Footprints unit. Our task was to find out
what the key components of a learning expedition were relative to this
unit. We did this through conversations which yielded some
expedition product criteria (later revealed as a document already
completed by KMS staff.) Critera we discussed included; having
resources available and at an appropriate level for students, product
structure is clear and consistent from student to student, content is
on level and background skills have been considered, enrichment
opportunities exist through the topic pages, there is an abstract type
of competition that occurs where students are producing their own work,
but know the work will be offered to a greater community for
enjoyment/scrutiny, and all product examples are equal.
Another
artwork session followed at 3:15 with Ellen
where she introduced watercolor techniques. This began with an
explanation of the characteristic wet blending and drying of watercolor
paints. I had difficulties blending a proper gradient of color before
each previous paint stroke dried, and even when dried, each subsequent
stroke would darken the subject far more than my desired effect, while
also bleeding out of the lines of my subject.
The day concluded with a check-in, where group
participants expressed which elements of the summit they were
comfortable with, which elements they had questions about.
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Anatomy
of an Expedition
I
want to think more about the different
research pathways students can take when preparing similar products to
those created during the Fading Footprints program. I have
traditionally structured my classroom products using MLA format
mini-lessons, emphasizing the importance of citing works used for
research. Research resources (web, books, articles, etc.,) were used
following note-taking strategies taught in class, which lead to student
written summaries of that text. I wondered at this point, could a
student write a content summary from their own observations (and those
of the students around them) without using other documents? My theory
is that this would not, of course, be an end goal, but a step in
developing students who have not built any trust in the learning
expedition process.
At one
point towards the end of today's sessions
either David or Scott said that the end product - the species page -
was not important. It is actually this process that is. Where ever or
what ever you are working on so far is fine, but most importantly that
we are working on these reflections and thinking how to bring what we
found important here back to the schools we work at. I asked them if
they held that same mentality when addressing the students, and the
answer was a definite no - for the students, it's all about the birds
and those fact sheets.
Another
important element from today was the David
used a "Making the Puzzle" slideshow that had tips on the anatomy of an
expedition. It would be helpful to get that file.
Relative
to the expedition product criteria,
the broad concepts related specifically to the learning standards set
up by the state of Maine, therfore we should be looking at specific NYS
standards when thinking about a unit. Also, the unit's broad concepts
must apply directly to the specific examples which students can
then do specific research on those examples, using the resources that
must be available. If those criteria are not in place, we would have a
difficult time making that unit work. And I am using difficult lightly
here.
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Wednesday
At 7am the group departed South Portland and
headed to Scarborough Marsh for a canoe trip. The environment was tidal
marsh, Willets and Tree Swallows dominating. The Willets actually nest
in the marsh, and were disturbed at several points by our canoes. We
also saw a peep, which I ended up listing as a semi-palmated sandpiper,
but it just as easily could have been a least.
At some point during the iMovie workshop I
realized I had not been doing much to bring back to the team at BSSCS.
I still haven't solidified what to bring back, but I started
documenting some thoughts of the facilitators and some shots of people
working. (It also became clear during this workshop, that I had no
video to actually edit, so I started shooting whatever.) I taped
interviews from Ellen, Scott and Peter, but still need David. It would
be helpful to get comments from others as well to round out the
overview of the summit.
I updated the species list from
the morning's
trip, adding the Glossy Ibis and peep, and announced the location of
the list to the other participants.
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Fieldwork
and Community
I've acquired a titled of "Super Tom" in jest
(?) and have been
somewhat concerned what that means. All of our products are so similar,
and so many people are more than competent in completing each task.
What behaviors am I exhibiting that is producing this response? How
would this situation apply in a classroom? Do we ever compliment
students in situations where they feel like their work does not need to
be compared to that of others? Of course it happens. And as
facilitators, the task of offering compliments is complicated when the
products are so similar. There must be clear cases where a student is
excelling before we offer praise, otherwise we loose the student's
faith. The group has a decent comfortability, but the labels we give
people always make me think about how roles are given and how titles
affect student roles, both positively and negatively.
I'm not sure how iMovie will translate
to my classroom instruction, because the resources are unreliably
available at BSSCS. It is difficult when all staff are sharing two
laptop carts. Also, when planning the unit, we have to consider server
maintenance and such.
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Thursday
I don't remember Thursday. It was a blur. Today is
Friday, at about 6:55PM. I am sitting on the gray, wooden porch at the
front of the McKernan Hospitality complex, breathing in a slight breeze
and enjoying sunlight.
I was just told by Nicole that it was,
indeed, this day that the topic teams were selected, and shortly
thereafter I became another person. I became someone who was addicted
to a computer program, who took on way more than I should have -
something that is/was no longer, a competing commitment of mine.
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Differentiation
and Assessment
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Friday
Spent the day on iMovie, cursing, kicking, swinging
my arms wilding every time the pinwheel of death showed its rainbow
face.
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Technology
Prior to this summit, my teaching concerns were
primarily about individual observations, taking on personal
responsibility for the world around you, and not depending on others or
even expecting others to always do the right. Our society has reached a
point of almost unlimited media works in television, film, theatre,
music and gaming. A student today not only must be taught how to access
research in a class, but which research is worth acessing.
Independence from this boom of available
information seems socially responsible. However, now, anyone working in
academic professions must not only have access to this information, but
also know its formative processes as well as the philosophical and
ethical elements. These elements have evolved as our human minds have
done what they do best - finding the most efficient ways to access what
we need.
Human mental development is tied directly to
the methods and styles of information distribution. We are data junkies
from birth. This summit raised some important questions about
technology education, particularly about web use for information.
Teachers have spent years in dialogue about reading strategies. Now,
strategies in web use must be considered, if we are to follow the trend
of communication, and assure consistent literacy across all academic
discipline.
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