Meet the students...

2 September 2008 - Labor Day - USA

So I have met the kids -- 3rd graders. How are we going to make this work? The 12th graders will be so bored they will do something stupid to embarrass me -- don't know if we should be doing this -- this will be the first impression these kids and this teacher will have of the United States. So I will write Tyrone:

"It was fun to talk to you and your kids on Monday.

Do you teach any high school classes? If so, I would like to have my kids blog with them also.

Have a good day!"

And his reply:
" I teach high school classes but unfortunately I do so in another school in which computers are not available. At Parque School, my students are those ones you saw on Monday. I'll ask the principal to teach high school students next year or teaching students of the community. If he accepts my suggestion, We'll be able to have a more meaningful conversation as students will be already or almost adults."

You will see as I go on that my fears were ungrounded. My seniors loved meeting the younger students, loved talking with Tyrone, and the girls were flattered by the admiring remarks of the 3rd graders.

The Conversation Begins...

August 29, 2008
Tyrone and I have e-mailed back and forth. His lab will be up and dedicated on Sept 8, so then we can start having classes together. We have agreed to start with just greetings. He wants to do blogs, so I told him to go to Gaggle.net where we do our class blogs. I also asked him to look at Taking It Global.

Received e-mail from Tyrone - How in the world are we going to cross the language barrier? I speak no Portuguese. We don't even know how to use the same programs. This could really be a problem. hmmm...critical thinking skills...maybe the kids can figure it out...

Tyrone writes:

"Another thing I'd like to discuss with you is about the subjects of our classes. You know, my students here have a very basic English or almost none! What can we do about that so that our classes could be not only interesting for your students but also for mine?

I thought of initial classes with greetings in English and Portuguese. Your students and mine would interect using both languages. What do you think? how long would we be online during such classes?

I've thought about the usage of blogs. Our students and yours could share information about their lives. Example:
name, age, photos, what they know about Brazil (in your case) and about the USA, in our case...With whom they live...how many brothers and sisters they have....Violence in their neighborhood...
Afterwards, we could work based on your previous and good suggestions. What do you think about that?"

And I thought it was complicated before...

August, 2008 - Dr. Parks is back from Brazil. Now she wants us all to incorporate something to do with Brazil into our plans for the year. As if we don't have enough to do already? And she has given me the name of a teacher to contact. I guess I will have to e-mail him.

And she wants us to do Capstone 2 -- even though we have a choice. I sure don't want to let this technology stuff whip me. I've got my pride, you know? Wonder if I can make this part of my Capstone project?

NECC 2008 - San Antonio

June, 2008
5th Day - Home again. Talk about Information Overload. Somehow I will have to organize all this stuff. I can't believe how busy we were. Too bad its two months until school starts. I will forget half of what I learned before we go back.

4th Day - Went to the exhibit hall with an agenda today. I wanted to talk to people at certain booths about problems we are having with their equipment and/or programs. Got lots of good answers. So glad I talked to them.

3rd Day - Met Nadyne today. As nice as I would have guessed. I hope we get her again for the next Capstone course. Listened to a guy from Ireland talk about global connections. Some of it was fascinating. Some of it I have no idea what he was talking about. Oh well, I've got the notes for what it is worth. Went through the exhibit hall -- what am I going to do with all this stuff. Glad my suitcase expands.

2nd Day - Podcasting - This sounds interesting. I stayed so confused. Saw a great YouTube spoof on Disney and plagiarism. It really seems to be quite the big deal. Of course, I knew about copyright laws on print material. I hadn't really thought about it much in relationship to video and audio in the classroom. Never did get an actual podcast done. They needed a whole room full of instructors for one on one help.

1st Day - Oh, my aching head -- talk about information overload. We came early to catch a seminar on grant writing. I don't like numbers -- never did, never will. Why do I let Dr. Parks talk me into these things?

Heading for NECC in San Antonio -- still don't know why it is called a computing conference -- I think it is time for them to upgrade the name to technology conference -- there is too much going on there.