Everybody loves podcasting

OK, more technology boot camp. As if the podcasting class itself were not enough--another podcasting homework assignment. This (very poor) podcast was created during my vacation with my kids at the John C Campbell Folkschool this past week. Computers and other electronic devices are frowned upon and the only three pronged outlets with wireless access were in the library of all places. I had a tiny netbook with a poor mic and a script I could barely read in the poor lighting, trying not to disturb those around me while the talent show was wrapping up in the next room. But anticipating my post-vacation desk at work, I really didn't want to be a week behind.

The rest of my folkschool experience was great. This is the fourth year I have taken both kids to Intergenerational week. As each child is required to have an adult with them, a friend from Quaker meeting, Linda, comes to be the other adult. Linda lost her husband in the 1983 Beruit bombing and raised her too children mostly alone so she gets it about single parenting. She's a very good sport, great company and has a comfortable van to tote all our stuff in and all our shopping and finished craft projects home. This year she brought with her a map of all the quilt/fabric shops in NC so the trip home was almost as fun as the week there.

Ben and Linda took Blacksmithing with Judy Berger, a wonderful woman who is great with kids, and their sometimes less than enthusiastic parents. This is Linda's third stint with blacksmithing. Fortunately this was the coolest week we've had up there yet. Jessie and I took glass beadmaking. Both kids were thrilled. Where else to they have parental permission to play with fire?! The classes are punctuated with extraordinary meals and each day ends with a program of music or dance or folk heritage.

My first trip to the Folkschool was five years ago with my son, Ben, for Little Middle Week. It's sort of like a daycamp for younger kids with a few class opportunities for the adults. I took felting. He took, among three other activities, lap dulcimer. It was a fortuitous event. He was getting bored with piano and I didn't want him to lose interest in music. He took the class on a lark and discovered he really liked it. He's quite accomplished now. His sister has taken up hammered dulcimer and is pretty mean at it, too.

This is our last year for Intergenerational week. Jessie is too old and Ben wants to go to a dulcimer week in Cullowhee that is always this same week in July. Linda and I may just come by ourselves . . .

The best laid plans . . .

Today was largely about extension cords. And the fire marshall who didn't like where they were. By the end of the last school year, the workroom of the media center was full of new data projectors waiting to be installed. The library spent considerable funds on those rubber strips that lay on the carpet and keep folks from tripping on the cords. And they'd bought lovely new, heavy-duty extension cords to go in them--and somehow managed to find the cords in the school colors of red and black. I was there just after all the installing was finished. Sandra and Diane were full of stories about crawling on the floor and using miles of duct tape to keep them down. Well, all of that was undone yesterday and today after the fire marshall declared the extensions cords inappropriate, despite their colors. So all the data projectors had to be moved to AV carts, the extension cords removed, and the AV cart cords inserted into the rubber strips and then re-taped to the carpet.

The good news is that it is all done. The library now has a generous stash of brightly colored extension cords. And someone had the foresight to put all the cabinets in the classrooms on trolleys so they were easy to move away from the recepticles we needed to access.

In and amongst all this excitement I was able to visit with the art teacher who would like to do a section on weaving. I gave her my contact information (I'm a weaver in my other life) and hope I'll get to help her some when she's ready to plan. I also got to observe another research class in the library. The teacher who was having students write resumes for volcanoes was having them create "wanted" posters of famous scientists following a biographical outline. Not only were they learning about the lives of the scientists, but were learning to insert pictures into Word documents and explore formatting. And the 8th graders made it in for their library orientation.

All in all, it was a busy day. There were classes in the library for all but one period which meant lots of circulation. Generally volunteers do the shelving. But today, Diane asked me to shelve a stack of books with stickers on them. The popular series books are all housed on shelves just inside the library door. They have yellow dots on them. Diane said she wanted them back on the shelves ASAP as they were so in demand. So I got the stack on the shelves just before lunch. And after lunch, I was checking those same books out again. Think I could develop circulation envy.

New School Year

School has been back since July 7. It must have been a rough July 4 weekend as I was startled by the number of students in braces and casts! Or maybe I just didn't see them last time I was there, but there seemed to be a bunch.



The library assistant, Liz, is tracked out this week. She works the schedule her children attend school so she's off for three weeks. This is the week of library orientation so Diane and Sandra greeted me with instructions. My jobs today were to (wo)man the circulation desk and work the laminator.



We had 6th and 7th grade students today. Orientation consisted of a Camtasia PowerPoint created for each grade level. Sixth graders needed to learn how to log into the computer and receive their user names and passwords for Blackboard. The school does not allow personal email, so students use the Digital Dropbox function in Blackboard to make assignments available at home or to turn in assignments to their instructors. The seventh grade orientation was focused on plagiarism--note taking and using citations. Afterwards, students were allowed to check out books and magazines.

Lots of happy students plowing through the books. Diane was right, the shelves had plenty of room again for reshelving. And the new computer system kept a couple of 6th grade students from checking materials out as they had overdues from their elementary schools.

Some observations: I teach handweaving and have for years. One of my discussions with beginners is that there is a body English to working at the loom. Your head gets it before your fingers do, but once your fingers get it, it gets a whole lot easier. Apparently laminators and barcode readers operate the same way. Except I haven't had enough time with them to master either one. Fortunately, the students were patient while I wrestled with the barcode reader. And a teacher, to whom I apologied for my "creative laminating" just grinned and said that forgiveness was a requirement for working here. The good news is that Destiny is a whole lot easier to use (and much easier on the eyes) than our Sirsi Dynix system at work and I don't think I made too many mistakes there.

But the big discovery of the day was a book on Diane's desk, The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher. I didn't have to read too far to realize what an outstanding resource it was. My personal copy, via Amazon, is on the way . . .

Technology Boot Camp

This is week three of Technology Boot Camp, an effort by the community college system to offer technology training to educators. This is a six week program of distance ed funded by a grant from AT&T and hosted by the Center for Organizational Research and Development. Even though I have a foundational background in the topics they are discussing, it has been both demanding and interesting.

There are 28 of us in the class, but based on this week's discussion posts (or lack thereof) I'm wondering if we haven't lost some folks. Through my library training, I've been reading about, and to a degree, using the web 2.0 technologies the class is reviewing. I can see their applications in other libraries and have worked with a couple of instructors on campus to explore their use in the classroom.

Apparently, some of my class members have not had such exposure. Some of the feedback from the class is beginning to sound a lot like overwhelm. "How am I going to use This?! in my class??" A few folks already have been implementing what we've discussed and have examples to share, but they are the minority.

The Internet as we know it is less than 20 years old, but the exposure to all the new technology it has spawned may actually have physically changed the brains of the students now flooding our schools. Those of us whose education predates the 'net are now forced to learn to teach in new ways. And while I, too, am struggling to determine just what use some specific applications, like Twitter, have in the classroom, it strikes me that the time for reluctance is over.

I turned 55 a week or so ago, so the brain is not young. I don't expect ever to be fluid with this stuff. But I'm doing my best to jump to the seargent's call. I do want to be effective. And that means I have to learn the turf and the language. I just hope they make earbuds that will fit around my hearing aids . . .