From the desk of Mr. Walters

Disclaimer: This is for the purposes of generating discussion within a community of teachers. It does not reflect the views of any school districts implied within. One of the primary complaints I hear from teachers about integrating new technologies and 21 st century skills into their classroom is that while administrator say they want to see these things, District or Network policies often prevent their use. When teachers try to make changes to these limitations, they meet little real support. Frustrated, they return to their classroom bubble and break out the composition books, colored pencils, or overhead projectors. Blogging is a perfect example of this frustration voiced by many teachers. Originally, we in the education community were given Edublogs.org as the official answer to our desire to have students blog.  Signing up students with no email account was difficult, but after discovering a somewhat shady work around using gmail, teachers were able to sign up classes. Ed...

My Quest This last October, Lanette and I had a discussion about my increasing lack of physical activity. I used to work out somewhat regularly at a local health club that shut down suddenly amid much controversy . Though I am not in the worst shape, walking into a gym or fitness club feels like giving a speech in my underwear to me. It doesn't matter whether anyone is looking at me or not, I feel like an impostor when I walk into a health club. The new place my wife works out just wasn't doing it for me, and I felt ever more awkward when I went there. In the midst of our discussion, a light went on in my head. I've dreamed for most of my adult life of taking a Japanese martial art, at least one on this incredibly broad and inclusive list ( note: broad and inclusive used sarcastically here) . Kenjitsu Iaido Kendo You see the unifying theme here? Basically, I wanted to "play Samurai", and this workout deal was my "in". I shared this list with L...

An Authentic Curriculum As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I am working hard to develop a curriculum that “ Get[s] Past Teaching Apps [and helping students] Build and Use a Student Technology Toolbelt “ (Cool Cat).  This focus is defined in my curriculum in terms of  students’ technology fluency , which is defined in Cool Cat’s post as: the ability to determine and use the appropriate technology tool(s) for the task at hand in a manner that allows seamless transfer of created objects and documents to flow easily between the selected tools without outside intervention. I also want students to be able to think critically and solve problems within a computing environment since things keep changing. As Cool Cat notes and Karl Fisch supports, “We cannot fathom what the future holds for them but we know what it won’t hold: It won’t hold the software that we taught them this year in its present fashion.”

Okay, so you haven't heard from me for awhile because I''ve been a bit pre-occupied with the harsh realities of public education.  Specifically, the reality that the policy makers involved often have such little knowledge of the realm they're overseeing. Economics or Steel? I teach students a variety of technology related concepts and applications with in my seventh and eighth grade course called "Technology".  The course centers on the following skills: