Presentation #1

Mike and I presented in Bemidji today as part of the MNHS grant our school district received. This is likely the last year of the program - the grant wasn't approved beyond this year. And though I have loathed some of the readings - simply because they were useless to me as an English teacher - I will miss the facilitators and the presentors as well as all of the teachers. I've learned a lot from them.

Alright, on to the presentation. I talked - at length I'm afraid - about blogging, creating imovies, using itunes (particularly podcasts), creating iDVDs and other things in the English classroom. I think the participants enjoyed it - they seemed to be appreciative anyway - and they all had great questions - but I won't know I guess. I know they fill out feedback forms and I wonder if I could take a peek at them. This is my fourth time presenting, and I never thought to ask about feedback from past sessions.

The odd things was, as the presentation was going along, that I felt like I really knew what I was talking about, though I don't. I mean I've been blogging for over a year, but all of my 'training' has come via trial and error. I've never taken a class on blogging or even suffered through a tutorial. The same is true of itunes and imovies (though Larry the Tech guy gave us a great demonstration at the RRVWP last summer). And to be honest, I kept telling the Bemidji particpants, "Now, I'm not Larry, so I don't know exactly how this works or why it works . . ."

But the presentation was the first time I was able to sit down and show others some of the things I've experimented with on my computer - and that made me feel like I have to potential to do some really cool things technology wise. That made me feel good. One of my favorite moments in the presentation came when I illustrated for the teachers just how efficient blogging and technology is. I created a test blog for them (so they could see how to do it from scratch). Then I opened 'photobooth' on my MacBook, snapped a picture of me at that moment, copied it to my dekstop, and within a minute, I had that picture posted on the blog. All that technology and power. So what does it mean to us in our classes? Pretty much that we don't have to lecture or give notes the same way we used to. Students are no longer empty vessels waiting for us to fill them full of our knowledge. It's a two way street. What has taken me months to learn, most of my students already know how to do fluently. Just imagine what the could teach me!

In fact, I really like this idea I gave one particpant, who was wondering how to apply this tech stuff to his classes. I said, "Let's say you're teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird. And you want the kids to read chapter 26. So instead of having them fill out a boring old worksheet or answering the questions at the end of a chapter in the textbook or taking a quiz, you could have them go home, open up garageband on their computers, create a podcast in which they share their ideas about the chapter, summarize it, critique it, dramatize it, or whatever you want them to do. The next day they bring that in on a flashdrive - or email it to you - and then you copy that to your itunes, download it to your ipod, plug your ipod into your car's stereo and listen to them on the way home from school." That got me fired up.

I am really looking forward our own two day session for the grant tomorrow and Friday.