Viddler.com - Feeling Good - Uploaded by paulallison

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paulallison

New York, NY http://feeds.feedburner.com/paulallison

About This Video

This video is Public

Vlog from Saturday September 22, 2007.

Why aren't more teachers using weblogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networks in their classrooms? For a few years now, I've been doing technology and literacy workshops and summer institutes and presentations in the New York City Writing Project. A variety of teachers -- some young and savvy tech users, some who have avoided computers for many years, some "old-line" tech teachers who are more familiar static websites than blogs and wikis -- participate in these workshops and institutes. Yet only a few do the work once they get back to their classrooms.

This year, I've returned to being a regular 7th Grade English teacher in a pretty normal school (with a bit more technology support than usual). For the past five years I've been a technology teacher who has been given a lab of computers and a lot of support in keeping these computers up-to-date and working. Many of the workshops for other teachers that I've done have been in this lab. When teachers who are enthusiastic about doing this work go out into their own classrooms, they often run into infrastructure problems.

But what exactly do we mean by "infrastructure problems?" It isn't really true that computers aren't available. The schools are generally wired. So where is the rub? This is what I'm trying to pay attention to this year as a 7th Grade English teacher at East Bronx Academy for the Future.

As I say in this video, my focus this Fall is to keep track of all the things I am doing to make Web 2.0 work in my classroom. I want to be clear about the kind of commitment, vision, and hard work it takes to accomplish this. And, I want to demonstrate that it is possible.

What are the hurdles a teacher has to clear to teach with blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 tools? What does it take to clear these hurdles?

This is an early report. So far I'm feeling pretty good.