Week Five: You Can Never Step into the Same TaskStream Twice

Okay, so the inspiration for the title of the post comes from an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who was a proponent of the ever-changing nature of the universe. . .His actual quote:

"No man ever steps in the same river twice"

This, of course, is reference to TaskStream and the nature of your TPE 14 narratives. I will spend a lot of time this evening discussing TaskStream and how to use Google Drive to write your narratives. While you may not love the narrative writing necessary for TaskStream, you will love the features and possibilities of Google Drive. The power of Google Drive might even be referred to as "life-altering," but that will be determined by you. .

I am trying to finish the grading for the School 2.0 assignment. I only have about three  students who need to either revise or submit. And don't forget about your Journal 1-5 assignment. We are actually on week 3 of 4 so you should try to keep up.

I will ensure everyone has submitted the classroom newsletter and answer any question from the Diigo/social bookmarking assignment. We will also revisit the use of Twitter as an educational tool. (Would someone remind me of educational chats. . .) And let's not forget to talk about Google+

This Week's Question: Who was one of your favorite teachers at any level and why??

Week Four: Getting Social with It!

My oldest daughter Zoe (r) and her friend Taylor

Here we are at week four. It seems that you have begun to get the hang of the pace and the expectations of the class. We have already had to overcome a website that disappeared and did so without much issue. There should be nothing we can't handle, right? 
The School 2.0 assignment should be complete. I have already archived the week 1 assignment, and everyone received full credit! Don't forget that your journal articles are a week in progress and it is definitely best if you can keep up with the weekly journals so that you don't have a crazy amount of work to do the weekend before they are due. Also, your ISTE and TaskStream subscriptions should be up and running. I will need to send a class list to my boss in order to get everyone enrolled in my TaskStream group.
Tonight, you will learn about a few social tools, Diigo and Twitter. We will use Diigo to save our bookmarks and share them with a global audience and Twitter to connect to a vast network of other social media using educators. . .Please reserve judgement on Twitter until after class. . .trust me.

This Week's Question: What is your current favorite musical group or musician?

Week Three: Finding Your Peaceful Place. . .

Have I mentioned how much I love our small class? I'm sure I have, but it's worth mentioning again. I can tell the we have a variety of technology skill in the class. With a class this size, it is the perfect opportunity for those of you who feel confident to help your peers. Not only does it help the community, everyone feels better when they are contributing, and helping others deepens your understanding of a topic. I am reminded of one of my favorite Einstein quotes:

"If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself."

This is a great rule of thumb for future teachers! My favorite teachers were always the ones who could explain any concept or topic simply and thoroughly without making anyone feel unintelligent! Anyway, we are off and running for week three. Wednesday night, tomorrow, we will be working on the classroom newsletter assignment. If time permits, we will even begin to look at how we could use social media to connect with other educators.

If you didn't notice, the School 2.0, etools, website is unfortunately down. . .perhaps it will be renewed, but maybe not. Such is life when you are dealing with the Internet. I posted an alternative way to meet the expectations of the assignment in Edmodo.  One thing I noticed in the first assignment was that some of you were not using the actual assignment area to submit your assignment. Some posted on the weekly subgroup and some on our home stream. Remind me to go over this in class.

Lastly, don't forget to get your TaskStream and ISTE subscriptions taken care of before class on the 6th. As usual, I will do my best to be in the lab an hour before class if anyone needs extra assistance.

This Week's Question: What is your all-time favorite or current favorite teacher movie?