Happy New (School) Year!

BEGINNING A NEW SCHOOL YEAR
I’ve always enjoyed the beginning of a new school year. It’s an opportunity to start afresh, to set new goals… both for my students and for myself. I can intentionally make changes in process that will help us come closer to those goals.

WHAT ARE YOU READING?
A comment by David Warlick in a recent blog entry (http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/08/16/another-question-for-interviews/) started my thinking about reading. What have I been reading? Many years ago that question would be answered with a simple list of recently read books and periodicals. However, when I started thinking about what I currently read, my list includes books—paper and ebooks, periodicals—paper and online, newspapers—paper and online, blogs, podcasts, and web sites.

What about my students? The state standards for reading (http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=330&ContentID=489&Content=32574) indicate that students are expected to read “print and electronic text”… and they are to “listen.” The purposes of their reading include “learning about a subject,” “doing a job,” “making decisions,” and “accomplishing a task.” The types of items they are to read include “essays, magazines, newspapers, textbooks, instruction manuals, consumer and workplace documents, reference materials, multimedia and electronic resources.” These standards include the variety of types of reading that shows up on my list. This will be the basis of conversations with my students and of assignments for their classes.

If all of us—my students and myself included—are to learn throughout our lives, then it serves us well to develop the habit of reading well-chosen materials. Thus, one of my goals for this new school year is to develop assignments that encourage (require?) my students to read a variety of types of materials in a variety of ways… and to share with them that I also do that as a part of my own growth.

STUDENT LEARNING
A video on TeacherTube—Digital Students @ Analog Schools (http://www.teachertube.com/search_result.php?search_id=digital+students+%40+analog+schools&x=0&y=0) --has some ideas that I think are important to consider. In this video, students share their thoughts about the teaching and learning processes which they’ve experienced. (Although these are college students, their words could just as easily have come from K-12 students.) Some of the students share that they are visual learners in a lecture environment; some, that they are learning skills for past jobs rather than future jobs. Others state that the learning environment is frustrating and that they do not have opportunities to be creative. Will the students’ future lives and the skills they need be just as they imagine? Probably not, but nonetheless they express some very important ideas. So, my goals this year include the increased use of teaching and learning processes appropriate for students who have grown up in a visual, creative environment.

TECHNOLOGY HELPS US SET AND REACH OUR GOALS
Technology plays a major role both in the setting of my goals and in accomplishing them. As the year progresses, my students and I will both learn more technology to help us meet our goals.

What are your goals for this school year? What do you want to learn to help you reach those goals? What resources will make it easier for you and your students? Write to me through a comment on this blog to share how I can help you with technology this new school year.

WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ZIP CODES
Have you ever been curious about how and where different ZIP codes in the USA have been set up? Tim Stahmer’s Assorted Stuff (http://www.assortedstuff.com/?p=2161) blog shares this site (http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode/) about ZIP codes. You’ve got to check it out!

TIMELINE OF MAJOR DECISIONS OF 20TH-CENTURY USA PRESIDENTS
(http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/links/showLink.cfm?linkID=353)
eSchoolNews.com (http://www.eschoolnews.com) highlighted the Presidential Timeline of the 20th Century this summer. The web site provides access to portions of the collections of the presidential libraries of 12 presidents. A multimedia exhibit features key decisions such as Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin. Some well-designed activities for classroom use are also available.

KEY IDEAS FROM THE MAJOR ED TECH CONFERENCE OF THE SUMMER
(http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7232)
If you did not attend the major educational technology conference of the summer, eSchoolNews.com has a site where you can learn what you missed at the NECC conference. Keynote speaker Andrew Zolli recommended we focus on students’ creativity and ISTE updated the National Educational Technology Standards for Students. Unrelated concepts? No… creativity and innovation top the list of traits in the revised standards. Read about these ideas and more at this site.