Silo: Oink, Mooo, Cluck

The other day I walked into the computer lab and saw a group of students using Google Docs to work on cool Supreme Court case assignments. I chatted with the teacher and saw a cool extension of the assignment that I never though of (more on that in a future post). In the distance I heard a cow moooo, a chicken cluck and a pig go oink. I am living in a silo. I am one of the Tech Integration people at my building and I have no idea people are using the same tools that I have been trying to hype.

Teachers (at least I do) live in silos. We are in our rooms, doing our thing and occasionally we get out to see that is happening around the barnyard (I have failed in my goal to each lunch in the lounge). The busier I get, and the more things I have on my plate the higher and more constricted my silo gets. The tools, like Google Presentations, are intuitive and do not require a lengthy sit-down. I'm not frustrated that people are not getting me involved and asking for help, because they are plenty capable. I am frustrated because I would like to collaborate and have discussions about new ways of doing things and making the classrooms more relevant.

I know there is a discussion happening about silos of information in education. I know that we shouldn't be in them.

Don't you wish you had more time to collaborate with those around you?

I do.



photo: onlinewoman

Chatting in Google Presentations!

Yesterday, our school had a 2-hour late start devoted to technology integration. The first hour was a large group session where we overviewed Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 and introduced Google Docs and ways it could be used in the classroom. The second hour was breakout time related to a specific topics (Activboards, Moodle and Google Docs).

During the large group session, the staff was invited to join the presentation online and follow along. What is nice about the Google Presentation tool is that it has a chat column that the audience can use for questions or comments. During the presentation I made the comment that students want to create and be active participants with technology and not just click links and watch. The comment/chat column in the Google Presentation is really great because it allows the audience to do more than watch and listen. There was a running commentary/dialogue that was approximately following the presentation and adding insights along the way. I thought everyone was very well behaved...was it because they were actively participating? Hmmmm.

There were a dozen or so staff members that jumped in and I decided to post some of the comments and chat topics during the presentation.

• Congress has it's own youtube channel now.

• There is some research out there that argues wikipedia is more accurate than an encyclopedia...I read a study where a person made over 30 deliberate mistakes, and theywere all corrected within an hour

• I've been using Google docs to get my ski team to sign in for races. It's pretty cool

• For our ALC team meeting notes, I type them in Google docs, and then we all have accessto them at all times - and can make additions, as necessary.

• the cool thing is that I can actually edit the document or make notes right on theirs as they type they like that immediate response

• google docs has a tool call revision history, too. So that if there was an innapropriateaddition to a document you can actually fetch back to the time before they added thatcontent and delete it.

• Sean and I used Google docs to write behavior contracts - we were both editing at the sametime. Worked perfectly.