Progressive Education: Isn't It Amazing We Are Still Having This Debate

I stumbled upon this little vintage gem today. It is amazing how relevant the message of this film is to the state of our schools today. How many classrooms in our "normal" schools today still look and feel like the classroom in the beginning of this film? How has modern technology reframed this debate?

Wii Can Play

I got a bit of great news today. One of our physical education teachers received a grant to start the Wii Can Play program in our school from CVS Pharmacy.

What is Wii Can Play?

Last fall I blogged a short article about webcams in the classroom. That post, and the playing around with the technology I did surrounding it, led to our elementary physical education and adaptive phy ed teacher using Game Star software with her adaptive phy ed students. Wii Can Play sort of evolved as an idea from there. We have spent a lot of time this year investigating how interactive video games and game platforms like Game Star, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Nintendo Wii can be used to promote wellness and keep students physically active.


Wii Can Play is a program we conceived that integrates the Nintendo Wii into various school functions. First and foremost it is meant to help include students with limited mobility and physical impairments in mainstream physical education classes. Second, it fits into our district wellness initiative by providing physical activity for students of all ages during their lunch hour. Third, Wii Can Play will be implemented in Community Ed. by offering video game mediated physical activities for seniors.


The grant money is just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things but it is enough to get our idea off the ground. We will continue to look for further support as this program grows. I will also make sure to blog about our progress in implementing this project.

Free Software

Our school district is likely to make the shift to Linux next fall. Right now I do not know if this is going to be an all out shift or if we will still keep some Windows machines (right now the only Macs we have are dinosaurs). While I love open source and have written before about how the right combination of open source, online apps, and web 2.0 tools can create an ideal technology setup for school settings I still see a need not to totally sever the cord with Microsoft. If only because we still have some software that will not work on any other machine. However, by fall this might not be so true when you look at the rapid growth in the open source sector.

Since the beginning of the school year I have wanted to create a feature on our website where teachers, students, and community members could go and find free software they can trust. With our almost certain shift in operating system I anticipate a small learning curve come September. The biggest confusion will be what software to use or which programs roughly equate to what we used before. I think we can kill two birds with one stone if this downloads page on our website is presented as both a resource and instructive. I have spent the better part of today putting this together. If you have seen our digital backpack you will recognize the style since I hijacked the code to make this.


I am looking for feedback.

• What programs should I include that are missing?

• Are there better alternatives to the programs I included?

• What would you include in a resource like this that I have missed?

• What download links are faulty (I don't have a Mac to test the Mac downloads)?

P.S. I am still looking for feedback on the digital backpack.

New Tutorials Blog Locked!

What is going on? I am wondering if anyone else has had trouble with Google's bot that is supposed to detect spam farms on blogger? I created a new blog yesterday to use as a place to share tutorials with the staff I work with. Today I tried to edit it and I got this message:


I have requested it be reviewed for a false positive. I don't know how this happened. Lets see how long it takes Google to get around to letting me back on my new blog.

Screencast-o-Matic

I have been frustrated lately. Part of my contract states that I will offer weekly morning technology mini workshop sessions for teachers in our district. I have been planning these and offering them every Thursday morning all year long. Unfortunately I am lucky if I get just one or two people in attendance. I know it is not that teachers don't want or feel they need this training, it is a time issue. If you are strapped for time you are going to cut out everything that is not essential. Attending an optional training session is usually viewed as something that can be cut out if there is no time unless what is being offered is crucial to what is happening in your classroom today. I find my position is far more effective as an on demand resource that teachers can call in when they need something NOW or if they have specific projects they want to work on and need advice.

I am going to try a new approach. Instead of always planning a session, showing up, and having all that planning time and energy wasted I am going to make these sessions available in small snippits that can be viewed when teachers have time or when they are at home. Hopefully this will help. For this I am going to use a combination of Screencast-o-matic and Ustreamtv. I have set up a training blog that I will post these to for our district teachers.

I believe this approach to professional development is in keeping with what we are trying to accomplish with these new 21st century tools and is a step toward developing a new 21st century pedagogy. If teachers are going to alter their teaching methods they need to experience alternatives from the learner's perspective. Hopefully this method of content delivery will be more effective, reach more of our staff, and in turn have an effect on how these tools are utilized in the classroom.