Going Campaigning...

After reading an article entitled “Batter Up” in NEAToday, I’m thinking a little more politically this week. This article was about various NEA members and how they are making a difference in education by campaigning for candidates who they feel will best support their goals for education. The members varied from elementary to high school teachers and political parties. Some teachers were content to work in their communities supporting local candidates, while others were thinking bigger with the presidential candidates.

This article seemed to come along at a perfect time for me. As I’ve been working on a teacher leadership class this past semester, I’ve been wondering how I can make a bigger difference in my chosen profession. Campaigning will be a great summer project for me and will help me feel empowered by making others aware of important educational issues. If these teachers in the article can do it, why can’t I? The only thing the article didn’t tell me was where I can find more information about getting involved in political campaigns. I did visit the NEA website, which has some other activities related to politics, but I still didn’t find what I was for. Locally, I’m not even sure who’s up for re-election in November, so visiting candidate websites is a little pointless. As far as the presidential election goes, I’m pretty sure I know who I want to support, but I’m not positive. However, going in this route seems like the best way to get the word out about educational issues. I’m even considering talking with some of my friends and seeing if they would like to join me. So for now, my goal is to figure out who to completely support this November.

In hopes of narrowing down my candidates, I visited www.glassbooth.org, a website I heard about on a podcast from BBC5. This website allows you to take a quiz about your opinions on various issues and matches your answers to the candidate who most closely resembles the same answers. It’s a great website to inform students about and have them try. However, for me, it wasn’t much help. There was a one percent difference between the two I’m trying to choose between. At least I got the political party right! :)

Although this doesn’t completely go along with this topic, I did find a website this week that I wanted to share. It’s called freerice.com and was created by a parent of a high schooler who wanted to prepare their child for the SAT’s. This vocabulary quiz website will donate 20 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Program for every correct answer. When I was testing it out for my Website Wednesday newsletter I got up to 220 grains of rice! I was psyched about this website and its generous goals and wanted to make sure the news got out on the web. Visit it for your chance to send rice to people who need it.

How Can We Create Change

Last week, I was at the World Color Guard Championships, which is a whole other part of my life. While there I was trying to find free time to finished up grad school stuff and continue to write reflections for my portfolio (due in two weeks-yikes!). Other than that, I didn't really see how two of the facets of my life; educational technology and color guard relate. However, as I sat watching Marian Catholic High School from Illinois, I realized I was wrong. Their show was all about change and we can be a part of it-changing the way people think, how they treat others, how the treat the environment, changing how we relate to cancer, and more. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it made me realize how I've changed in this program and how technology has changed me.

I believe that learning about technology and educational reform has made me a better teacher, colleague, learner, and person. Although I sometimes feel overwhelmed by it all and have to stop and catch my breath and "power down", I have found more ways to learn about new things, stay involved, and keep in touch through technology. As I student I didn't have the advantages students today have. I would have loved to show off my talents and my thoughts by using video or a podcast. Even a blog-as I'm doing now. I was pretty creative growing up, but I really think this would doubled my creative energy. However, I do see where I probably would have had a problem with doing everything online, and neglecting everything else. That's why it's important to show students that while technology is great, they also need to go enjoy the sunshine and personal time with a human being outside of instant messenger.

Technology has changed us in other ways too. Just look at television, the writer's strike came out because of the increase in demand of shows and specials being available online. At TVguide.com, actors and actresses, writers, and directors are keeping blogs and answering questions and talking to fans like never before. I also keep up with my favorite shows by listening to podcasts created by fans, who interview the staff and stars. That couldn't be done ten years ago; that wouldn't have been done ten years ago.

And now in color guard, something very near and dear to my heart, the evolution has begun. Instead of using tapes and tape players to record judges' comments, the local circuit here and many others, have started using digital voice recorders. Tape and tape players are so hard to come by now and this process is so much easier. When the comments have been recorded, the comments can be burned onto a CD, copied to a flash drive, or added to your ipod. The way music is used in color guard is also changing, we've been using CD's for some time now, but will the next move be to hook up your ipod or mp3 player? Will there be a need for CD's soon? A very interesting thought.

Way Cool Review Tool

I just found a great site, thanks to Steve Dembo! I was reading his blog this morning, Teach42, and he was talking about MyStudiyo.com, a site that you can create interactive quizzes on that can be put on your website or blog. I checked it out and I'm pretty impressed with the results! What a great way to review curriculum with students. I created my own quiz using some CMS/CFA questions on 6th grade Social Studies. Check it out for yourself below:

More Learning

I was reading David Warlick's blog today, 2Cents Worth, and he was talking about PLN's or personal learning networks. This made me think about our leadership module from class and how we are working to create our own professional development and leadership plans. He made some great comments about knowing when too much technology is too much and when you need to take a break and enjoy the sunshine! That was certainly true today as I sat outside on my porch after work and caught up on the additions to my Google Reader.

In keeping with Mr. Warlick's suggestion, I think I found a great website to add my "network". In tomorrow's Website Wednesday, I feature an Instructional Technology Department from Wichita Public Schools. I found all kinds of great resources here and it's amazing to see how much they are doing. I especially like their newsletter section, called Tech Focus, where they explain in video (!) some of the projects schools within their district are doing. I watched a video on podcasting tonight and I was very impressed. It also seems appropriate since we are creating podcasts in class this week. Look under January's features.

I also recently extended my "network" when I learned more about wikis from some colleagues. We came up with a way to share our SOL resources for all middle school teachers in the county to see and use. It's called MSSOL and online SOL resources are divided into each curriculum category.