Really? Is it really this hard to upload movies?

I've decided that my next techy experience will be to get some of my videos of myself conferencing with my son, Benjamin, uploaded to the Internet so other teachers can view them. I didn't expect this task to be so hard! I will provide updates as I figure this out! So far I have accounts with both Teacher Tube and You Tube. I love using Roxio to edit my movies but for some reason they won't upload... I'm trying to figure out Windows Movie Maker but when I put a clip in it will only load on the audio line, it won't show up on the video...this really confuses me!

I thought I figured it out! I was so excited! I watched the red bar slowly fill across the page indicating the percentage of video being loaded...finally, it's done... I go to view... I get

Sorry! Errors found. Internal problem occurred in your video.

MAN!!!!! This is not cool!!!

Teacher Inquiry Community (TIC) with many miles between us

Seven folks, three locations, one meeting, one community, a teacher inquiry community. Winnemucca TIC! I didn't think it would work but I love teacher inquiry so much that I was willing to give it a chance. Tonight was session two of a year-long teacher inquiry class where teacher-researchers come together as a community willing to help one another think deeply, think differently about their work as educators. I've facilitated this work for a handful of years now, all face-to-face and all extremely powerful in building a strong sense of collaboration and community. With the Winnemucca TIC we have participants teaching and living in rural-extreme! Video conferencing, Google Docs, email and fax machines are our way of making the connections necessary to build our long-distance relationships! Tonight was session two of a year-long class. Session one started with a face-to-face where all participants were required to meet in one room. I knew I needed that opportunity to meet everyone face-to-face before starting this experiment of video conferencing etc. to facilitate the group. I am pleased to report that tonight was wonderful! I think this will work, although I still prefer the face-to-face. Maybe that's human nature. Session three will involve seven folks and four locations. That will be interesting!
Side-note: I'm exhausted! It's been a very long day of traveling and working. I'm in my hotel room wanting dinner and sleep. Despite these wants/needs, I chose to post on my blog. This tells me that blogging provides a unique motivation for writing. I wonder if this motivation will stand the test of time. I do not plan to reread this post...too lazy tonight. That's interesting to note!

Is email for old people?

I once heard that according to the younger generation, (current teenagers) e-mail is useless and/or obsolete! Hmmmm... I check my email several times a day. It is a tool that much...maybe all of my work, at some level, is coordinated through. Considering the rate of change when it comes to technology, I can imagine a time in the near future when e-mail becomes a concept of the past, kind of like dial-up connections to the Internet. I wonder what I will be using to coordinate my work then! Some version of Facebook? Texting on my mobile device? I find that most of my coordinating of life with three teenagers is done with my cell phone!

I think that any anxiety I experience on my journey toward techy-ness is due to the fear of the unknown. I don't have that willingness to just go with whatever may come at me. As a classroom teacher teaching writing I am comfortable teaching this way, responding to student writers according to what ever may come at me. I don't know what I will be teaching from one conference to the next during a single writing workshop and I am completely okay with that. There is plenty of the unknown and I thrive on it. I trust myself and my knowledge as a teacher of writing. I wonder if that same level of comfort and confidence will come related to my experiences with technology. Only time will tell!

A side note: I have read and reread this post, checked spelling and other conventions, something I would not be doing if I were writing these reflections in my research notebook. I've noticed after reading past posts that I have numerous errors...they are small and a reader can easily figure out my intended message, but still, the errors are there. What does this mean for students that use a blog to communicate with their readers on a regular basis? Will they become more conscientious of their writing? I know I have, and still, I bet once I reread my post a day later I will discover there are still errors that I've missed tonight. Hmmmm....

Blog Audience Implications...Just Wondering

I thought to check in on my blog this afternoon, just to make sure it was still there...where ever "there" is! I scrolled down checking each post glancing at each comment counter. Comments 0....Comments 0....Comments 0....I wanted to reflect on my emotions as I noticed the lack of comments. After wondering why there are no comments I found myself thinking about why I would expect comments, just because I made a blog doesn't mean random folks are looking at it. And if they are even looking at it that doesn't mean they would be compelled to comments. I've read several blogs and I have not commented on one. So, what is going on here...what is the psychology around commenting on blogs, and bloggers wanting comments? I recall reading that students get hooked on blogs when they have others commenting to their posts. Could it me a variation to facebook or email? The one that composes a message using either tool will go back looking for replies. Is the digital generation accustom to instant response? If so, I've wired my brain for that!
Now, another thought....If this were my research notebook I would not worry about others reading my mindless wonderings of words and I write to figure out what I'm thinking. As I type these thoughts on my blog I feel uneasy knowing that once posted, these thoughts are exposed for anyone to read. It's like I don't want to post on my blog unless I think I have something amazing to share but if I waited for something amazing and always censored myself I wouldn't have anything posted. So what is the balance with this genre? With this blog am I writing for a particular audience? How can I adjust my style, my presentation, my level of synthesis if I am just posting for the general population? Should I have created in my mind a hypothetical audience, identified what is appropriate for them and based my writing on that? Again, if I can't freely write my wonderings, if I'm worried about my audience, I may never post.

So...what does all this random reflection mean for me and my blog? Knowing that web 2.0 tools are to connect and share... For now I'm going to go with being my own audience, writing for me. As my blog evolves, maybe who I'm writing for will evolve. I will have to wait and see.

It's about thinking differently

I pulled this off of Dr. Mishra's site, http://punya.educ.msu.edu/2010/02/11/exciting-new-possibility-an-invitation/
"...we know that we are living in exponential times. Clearly the status quo will not do. Most of what we know (and teach) is becoming dangerously irrelevant. We need new ideas, new research, new tools, new institutional structures, and new pedagogies that fit this new “conceptual world” we are living in."

This brings great anxiety to me. Again, I'm feeling that pressure to catch up with the times. Why do I keep coming back to that? Why can't I just recognize that my role is to jump right in with both feet and get going, get going with whatever technology I want to try and as I play around think about new ideas, new tools, new pedagogies...it's that simple...but really, it's not! Ugh!!!!  I have to retrain my brain. I have to trust myself, I have to take risks, I have to become vulnerable and willing to step into the unknown. I think these are all the same things I tell my teacher researchers to do while doing their action research projects! It's not easy, but it transforms the way we think. It is worth it. But...I need support, just like my teacher researchers need the community we create that gathers periodically to provide probing questions, encouragement, new points of view, reassurance.... how is this created in the digital age? Social networking? But...what about the need to be with actual humans...all breathing the same air, tuning in to body language, providing a comforting pat on the back, a smile, a round of applause....what does this look like in the digital age? Does this have to change? I've been taking a class using Elluminate...we can see each other with our video cams, we can post a smiley face, or even hands clapping for a round of applause... it's not the same!

Technology conference in Las Vegas

This weekend I had the privilege of attending a technology conference in Las Vegas. I am still trying to synthesis all that I learned into one stream of thought. My brain is full of hyper links and I need everything to become linear! This makes me think about Will Richardson's reference to Prensky, 2001a in his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Corwin Press, 2010...I'm thinking proper blog etiquette would have me put a link there rather than so much text...I need to find out about that! Any way, Prensky says, "...years of computer use results in children who 'think differently from us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It's as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential'" p. 8. If this is true, what does that say to teachers with non-hypertext minds trying to learn all of this technology? Will my mind become a hypertext mind? Will I learn to adapt my needs for sequential learning to a more multi-leveled matrix of thought processes that allows my brain to comprehend a mass of information in one block of time? Do students with hypertext minds have that ability? I don't think that is what Prensky meant. I'm not sure if I know at this moment what he meant as I am experiencing a "mash-up" of information right now and I can't make sense of it.
How am I feeling right now...overwhelmed. When will I quick feeling overwhelmed?

Following my thinking...becoming familiar with technology

A teacher friend of mine facebooked me a link to a teacher friend of hers so I could benefit from his site, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10317635 Cool Teacher Podcast. This type of communicating and sharing is the essence of what I am understanding to be the importance of using the world wide web. As I struggle to figure out how to create my own family web site using Google sites, I find that I have help just a click away, and I'm not referring to the template tips Google offers in it's site templates. Going to Cool Teacher Podcast takes me to a collection of videos I can rummage through until I find just what I'm needing at just the right moment of my frustration. So, thank you, Jan, for facebooking me this link and thank you Cool Teacher Podcast for freely sharing your podcast collection. 

The day after class

I am truly exhausted. Again, I am running a race where I'm miles and miles behind the pack, and again, I ask myself...do I need to catch up? There is so much to learn about technology, I just need to do what I am capable of doing, a day at a time, maintain momentum, and keep moving forward. That's all I can do...it won't "catch me up" but I'm moving in the right direction.

Our first class was fabulous! How could it not be? A room full of people I think are amazing, all energized to learn together. I was surprised at how fun the polleverywhere activity was! I can't wait to hear about how some teachers incorporate that into their classrooms! Wordle was also a lot of fun. Such pretty word clouds!!! The one disappointment...Blogger!  Yahoo was blocked so those that needed to create an account could not get their work done.

White Pine Technology in the Classroom Session One reflections

This is my first ever blog! This is the beginning of my journey into the read/write web as an educator. I have to say, I'm a bit nervous, I'm a bit excited, I'm even a bit frightened.

I'm getting ready for tonight's class. I've spent weeks and weeks reading about how technology should be used in the classrooms. I've spent hours and hours preparing for this one session. I have so much I want to share, I know I will cram way to much into our first 2 and a half hours. After reading so many books: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom by Will Richardson, Toys to Tools by Liz Kolb, The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks, Bring it to Class by Hagood, Alvermann, and Heron-Hruby, Empowering Students with Technology by Alan November...  I feel this intense sense of urgency to "catch up" to where we should have been so long ago with incorporating technology into our everyday teaching... as if catching up is even a possibility. It's not that we are starting way to late, it's that technology is moving, changing, re-inventing so fast that it is humanly impossible to ever be caught up.
I need to start somewhere! I'm taking that first step with tomorrow night's class! I hope all goes well!

Just a note: I know I should be putting the titles or the books I've referenced, or the authors as links... I will figure that out with my next post!