Education, Stading Style

Well, I lost the National Novel Writing Month challenge. My final word count for the month was 30,248 words.

Let me say that differently:

MY FINAL WORD COUNT WAS 30,248! GO ME!

That is a lot of words, and was a lot of time. I found I could do about 1,000 words and hour if I stayed focused on the task…which wasn’t the easiest accomplishment given the young humans in my home. I also realized that I did better when I mulled over the story in my head for a while before trying to write it.

I haven’t given up on the story. I think it is sweet (okay, maybe trite is the better word) and I have a new goal: 50,000 words in 2011. I’m 60% of the way there.

One of the unforeseen effects of this novel writing thing is that I’m now teaching Creative Writing next semester. I had so much FUN just writing, I tossed that elective into the hat for our High Schoolers, and two are going to take it. Maybe I’ll have some time to write some more, because you always want to model learning, right?

The Office of Letters and Lights sponsors Script Frenzy in April: write a 75 page script in a month. That might be fun…we’ll see what my students think!

Write on!

Let me update you on where I am write now…I mean right now.  I’m writing a novel!  Really!

I’m breaking all the writing rules we teach in class to do so.  I have no prewriting.  I have no plot structure lined up.  I don’t know who my characters are until they show up in the story.  I don’t actually plan to revise, and I’m not killing myself over perfect word choice.

It is National Novel Writing Month and I took the challenge:  write 50,000 words in the month of Novemeber as a novel or beginning of a novel.

I’m at 4575 words.  I’m not on track to successfully finish the challenge, but I am not going to let a little thing like that stop me.  This is me writing…just writing.

What do you do just to do?

(Check out NaNoWriMo.org for more about National Novel Writing Month.)

We are getting ready to learn more about Kentucky than any Alaskan students ever expected to learn!

My 3rd/4th Grade Language Arts group has penpals in Kentucky.  How did that happen?  Check out ePals.  It is a site connecting students and classrooms globally.  We just happened to connect up with Kentucky.

We will write letters (so old school!  But, I think the best of Old School.)  We will research the questions they have for us.  We will find a way to post our information online.  (Wiki?  Blog?  Webquests?)  We will find a way to video-conference with the other classroom.

This really is driving the LA curriculum with the group.  Well, no, the Standards are driving the curriculum, but this is going to be the vehicle to travel through this part of  Learning-ville.  I am SO excited.

Here are a few Youtube videos that I’m showing the kids as advanced organizers:

Kentucky Adventure

Eastern Kentucky

Here is a quick video about how Google uses The Cloud to make our lives amazing.

Click here! (I’m not taking the time to embed…)

(Sadly, it is on Youtube…via Twitter…and students can’t see it from the school’s network…but you can see it from elsewhere!)

It looks like I have a thing of using commas in substitution of “and.”  My Language Arts Co-teacher would know what that particular use of a comma is called.  So would Google, if I took the 1.7 seconds to search for it.

My examples include this very blog (Education, Stading Style) and perhaps my class blog for Journalism:  The World, A Click Away.  (Not much on that right now, but that should change when I return from FMLA this week.)

Introducing another of my comma-titled websites:  Knowledge, Created.  This is my graduate portfolio for my M.Ed degree in Early Childhood Education.  I started the degree in 2000 or so, going for an Alaska Teacher Certificate.  When it came to decision time about turning that certificate work into a Master’s Degree, I opted against it:  I was almost finished with a Special Education Master’s and really, who needs two Master’s?

Well, me…though it took me a few years to decide that, a decision made even easier when the director of the program told me I would only need nine more credits to obtain the degree.  Cool.  I could do that, even with two young kids at home and a full-time teaching job.

It wasn’t the easiest finish of a degree; it came complete with plenty of late Friday nights, interrupted web classes, and some no-you-were-told-wrong-you-can’t-finish-like-this drama.  It hasn’t meant much for the pay scale or my current teaching assignment, but what’s another step on the pay scale anyway.  I finished something I started.  I’m three-fifths of the way to catching my dad and his college degrees (a Bachelor’s, three Master’s and a Doctorate).  There are some bragging rights to holding dual graduate degrees, though more from my husband than myself.  (He likes having an educated wife.)

I think the most important reason for this M.Ed, though,  is that it models continued learning to my students, my colleagues, and my own children and family. I decided to build the portfolio as a Google Site with embedded Google Documents, with which I had limited experience.  Reviewing it, I still see editing mistakes and the pages are a bit wordy.  But that is okay.  That is who I was as an educator in the past years.  It will not be who I am as an educator in the coming years.

Knowledge, Created.

Me, learning.

(According to Google, that’s a newspaper headline thing, to use the comma instead of “and”…though I think I’m setting off some sort of clause with these commas.  Strunk and White’s non-restrictive clauses, perhaps?)

You’ll notice some new links to the side there…these are blogs I want to read, found through Twitter, including the founder of the very cool #edchat.  I’ve also added a link to my own daughter’s blog, Answers Below Zero.  Here’s that story:

At ASTE this year, our junior senator gave a welcome speech to the crowd.  It was the same old I’m-doing-stuff-for-you-in-DC-I’m-on-your-side speech that politicians give to a room full of teachers.

Yada yada.

But he also shared a story about his own son.  His son had started an online storefront and was selling Christmas gifts from past years.  Clever, as his son is 10 or thereabouts.

That awoke my Mother Bear, because while this son already has an advantage to success in life because his dad is a politician (in fact, ask both our senators what their daddies did for work), I don’t see any reason why a senator’s son should have a technological advantage over my own daughter.  He shouldn’t.  The internet can be an equalizer, or at least should be.

After the speakers, I emailed my school administrator to ask that my daughter be given an online account with our school district.  That is standard in our district starting in 4th grade.  She was in 1st at the time.

The internet is an equalizer…if you are on it.  She is.  She likes the internet, and she likes having a presence there.   Answers Below Zero is completely her idea.  Check it out!

On the off chance that someone from my twitter account clicks on the link to my blog, I suspect it would be good if it were a little more current. =)

Granted, I’m not supposed to have time to blog these days. I’m on FMLA after the birth of my 3rd child. She’s so easy, though: sleeps a lot. The hard part is keeping my two-year-old son from “loving” on her too much. Constant vigilance, as Mad Eye Moody would say.

First Day Home -- June 2011

I started my twitter account during our start-of-year inservice because the speaker told us to do so. It wasn’t a bad keynote, but it was a lot of him on the computer showing us tech stuff and us watching…which isn’t a very effective delivery message to 1000 people in a stuffy HS auditorium. So I made my twitter account and started following people…him included. (He doesn’t tweet much).

So far, so good! You all share things I’d never find on my own. I click, read, then save some of those to delicious.com for safe keeping. It is a whole new educational world out there!

And you know what I’m finding? I’m not alone in my thinking. There are those of you out there who are teaching because you want to help students develop critical thinking skills, to be ready for the world that has already left so much of education behind. Some of you LOVE technology and are using it effectively in the classroom…not just as $500 pencil/paper. You want to teach using projects and real-life problem solving. You want to connect with other classrooms across the world, and have your students learn other cultures through collaboration, not text books.

I like this twitter thing! I’m getting up the courage to start posting hashtags that people actually follow. (Perhaps, I’ll know I’ve arrived when I post my first #edchat…that is one powerful hashtag there.)

Teaching is not just my classroom–as a special ed teacher who co-teaches…a lot…I know that already–my network need not be limited to my colleagues (though we are developing into an effective PLC). The world is RIGHT HERE.

Welcome to my blog.

And me, welcome back to my blog. I will find time to use you.

You should be, too.

http://committedsardine.com/blog.cfm

See it here!