80 minutes a day

I’m kind of excited that it’s snowing on WordPress right now.  I really like winter and snow, so I felt very peaceful watching the ‘flakes’ roll down the screen, though I did get a little concerned that my computer would get wet.  I wish it would snow as much as they say it would.  It seems like once a week or so there is a severe weather warning that many inches of snow and ice are about to fall any minute–stock up on canned goods, bottled water, and generator fuel, for this time we mean it-it’s going to be a big one.  24 hours and 1/8th of an inch of snow later, I’ve decided to stop hanging my hopes for white Christmases on weather people.  We’re due for another dump this week, which is a highlight–if it happens.  Otherwise, I have more than enough to fall back on:

Final presentation.  I have to thank Scott for posting his extremely comprehensive PowerPoint early this week.  It first of all gave me something to look at and be intrigued by, especially since I have an interest in smart classrooms.  It helped me realize, as this entire program thus far has done, that it’s a good thing for students to look at one another’s work.  It also helped that Scott was so thorough, he prompted a response from Kona asking him to hone his focus to three things: highlights, pertinence of results, and what we have learned as a result of this project.  This whole semester I’ve felt like a troll

Flickr photo by photogirl7

, hiding in shadows, eavesdropping on conversations, stealing the comments made to, for, and by others, using them to my own advantage.  My early first draft was not a first draft at all–it was the culmination of everyone else’s comments and conversations synthesized into a marked-up evaluation extravaganza; the result of reading all the advice Kona made to classmates before finishing mine enough to post.  Once again, I benefited from others (Scott and Kona) and tuned up a PowerPoint that tries to address those three ideas into a manageable number of slides.

Bizarre sense of calm.  Could it be that 474 is wrapping up?  Could it be the lovely dusting of snow across the Elgin area?  Could it be the odd sense of quiet around the house, now that Masayo is gone?  Could it be the result of two action packed weeks of school left before break?  Could it be the numerous trips to Chicago (MSI yesterday-and just as soon as we get $400,000 we’re going to get us one-a-them smart homes) to see art, culture, fairy lights, and commerce?  Who knows, and it could all end first period tomorrow when I get into my class and realize something crazy like, “Wow, I have to do a million things before the end of the semester” or “Oh, wow, I totally forgot to grade these essays…from September” but for now, I’m holding on to this.

Too much to do, too little time.  I distinctly remember my first year teaching–I was completely confused as to how I was supposed to fill up 50 minutes a day for 180 days.  It seemed like a cruel joke, like when, during my years as a carpenter, we used to send the new guy to get the board stretcher out of the truck.  I think I probably talked a lot that year.  Nowadays, I have turned into one of those teachers that wishes he had his students for 80 minutes a day.  I think  I’m pretty happy about that even though I really struggle to fit it all in effectively for my mixed ability co-taught class (memo to self, get in touch with Brendan soon!).

474.  I’m also really excited about this class.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before–in a forum post?  In an e-mail to someone?  During a conversation with my sister?  Right here in a previous week’s WordPress blog?  I can’t remember–but I’m just feeling good about this class.  I’ve really enjoyed learning about Appreciative Inquiry.  It has helped me look at what has started happening in some of staff meetings.  I see tracings of AI in some of the activities we do, and wonder if they would be more effective in a more comprehensively AI context.  Or if we didn’t do the same post-it note activity at every meeting, would we work harder on them as a staff?  I don’t know, but knowing what they are trying to do, I feel better about participating.

474 pt. 2.Also, I’m really excited about using an AI approach in informal evaluations of lessons, of texts, of assessments.  I’ve always been fairly positive, but AI further enforces the importance of looking for what went well in that failed lesson, or that terrible activity, or that abysmal assessment, and making good changes for the next one.  Using success as a foundation instead of failure.  Lastly, I really enjoyed my evaluation plan as a tool for exploring Moodle as an online supplement to teaching.  I’m not sure how close our school is to 100% access, but being forced to think about all of the aspects of online supplement that needed evaluation forced me to think about all of the components of my pilot program.  Great great great.  What a great way to create a program: evaluate it!  And this tied in so nicely with AI as a method for program creation as well!  So a lot of good things happened this semester.

There is so much more that is worth writing about, but I’m afraid I’m going to start repeating myself from precious weeks.  I’ll close for now, but for the past 14 or 15 weeks, I’ve been plugging this in every Sunday night.  Hopefully that’s long enough to help me remember to keep doing it this time.  If nothing else, I’ll see most of you all in January in Virtual Worlds.  Have wonderful holidays everyone, and to all a good night.

Wood

What a great week.  I feel a bit like myself again.  I saw Chagall, Calder, Oldenburg, Nevelson, Picasson, Miro, Dubuffet, Wright, Seurat, Hopper.  I saw a cloud gate, a bp bridge, a wave crashing over pritzker pavillion.  I saw how an imposter tries to fill the shoes of the cultural icon it liquidiated.  I saw lights and crowds and floats.  I saw some old friends.  I saw holes in my career choice (oddly, a sign of normalcy–doubt is a very powerful tool to aid conviction).  I saw snow!  I saw 8 pumpkin pies.

I feel like the plug has been pulled, I got out of dodge, and am a bit more myself.  This week is the week I’ve needed for a long, long time.  I still have kind of a lot to do, but have accepted this as a part of the rest of my life–and I’m ok with that.  The thing is that, for this past week, I did almost everything that I’ve been wanting to do for over a year.  I swear, we’re going to have friends come visit more often!

It’s short this week.  But I’m feeling pretty good about it.  See you in a week, surely long-winded again.

Free Dr Pepper Day

In  千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away, here in the US), there’s this great scene where this stink god walks into the onsen where Chihiro is prison working as a prisoner.  Everyone is grossed out as his large, blobular, stench is killing all plant life that it comes near, but Chihiro, being the new kid on the block, is forced to take him to his bath and wait on him as he sees fit.  Eventually, the stink god takes her in his hand in his dripping, mucky, disgusting hand and brings her near what looks like a handle.  She realizes that she must remove this handle and whatever it’s attached to.  So with the help of most of the staff, she pulls and pulls until finally a mountain of garbage is vomited out.  It turns out that it wasn’t a stink god after all, but a river god that was covered in disgust.

This scene is amazing for two reasons–first, it’s such a simple, yet strong allusion to the problem of pollution.  Few have made anti-pollution, be good to the earth sentiments so subtley poignant as the director Miyazaki has.  When something as beautiful as a river god has been turned into something as disgusting as he is portrayed, how can a person even think about dumping trash and waste into our water?  He makes taking care of the world we live in seem inherent (as it should be), not some new fad that the GAP is selling on a t-shirt.

The other reason it is a great scene, especially now, is because of how much I stink–no wait, I mean, because of how I too feel like sometimes all I need is someone or something to unplug the mountain of crap that has been collecting inside of me.  Lately, it has been a few things: actually working on a paper/project before the last minute and receiving such helpful advice and commentary, having a friend take the time and energy to visit us from very very out of town, Seijiro being back on a normal sleep schedule, and knowing one of the best friend of a friend that I could have ever hoped to luck into, oh yeah, and having a student-less week.

I honestly, physically could see the stress leaving my body on Friday night, sitting around with Masayo and Ryoko, Seijiro fast asleep in the next room.  For once, I wasn’t worried about getting it all done (though I started to get a little freaked out today since I still have to finish my discussion section which is hiding behind this window even as I type) in time.  I had, gulp, planned ahead and made sure to get most of my plan done during the week off.  This is a totally new thing for me, and I think I like it.  For the last 30 years I have been stressing until the last minute, frantically trying to get everything done in time.  It has helped immensely that we have had so much “class time” to work on it (seriously, I can’t imagine having to work on the project as well as other assignment–were that the case, I’m sure that this post would have a different tone).

Anyway, I’m almost done, but have to get this over to CTER before midnight–have to get my free Dr. Pepper as well!!  Thanks for reading this, and have a great week!!

I’ve been rubricized

I keep writing assignment descriptions for my students in prose–you know good old fashioned sentences and paragraphs?  And when I share them with my colleagues, one of whom I respect greatly and am happily planning curriculum with this year, they want to whittle them down to bullet lists and ‘rubricize’ them, for if the students know what we are looking for then they can give us what we are looking for.  Thinking that checklists are easy for students and let them know just exactly what it is that we are asking of them, I guess I never really gave it much thought.

Until tonight.  Over the last three years, I have slowly been transforming my teaching away from literature units and into non-fiction analysis.  I know it sounds boring (and, as an English major, so totally not what I signed up for) but I a) really think it is more important for my students to read an article from Time magazine and be able to understand it and talk about it and shape their view of how they should be in society and b) it’s almost more fun extracting meaning from non-fiction that may have been written yesterday (and in an election year!!) than coercing students to appreciate the blue flowers that Simon finds in Lord of the Flies. They are far more excited reading about drugs at parties, wives, and latino style–at least my students are.

Having had time to think about school this week, I sat back, snow falling down outside my window, trying to decide why I was bothered by the rubrification of my project descriptions.  Here’s what I came up with:  we are asking students to read and understand pieces of non-fiction text on a daily basis so that they may better understand pieces of text in the future.  And yet, when we give them a description essay (ok, maybe not an essay–I’m just trying to make a point here), we take all of the ‘need to analyze’ requirement out of it.  Sure it may be more challenging for students to read through 700 words to figure out that a definition essay may use a formal definition, synonyms, negation, etc–but isn’t that what we’re teaching them to do in the first place?  I think that, from here on out, I’m going to ask my kids to read the 700 words and make their own darn checklist.

Speaking of making checklists resulting from reflection, I am so, so happy to have submitted a draft of my essay to both Professor Bullock and Kona this week, and am so, so grateful to have recieved excellent feedback from both of them.  What a lucky man am I!!  I was pretty sure that I had most pieces written, so it was nice to get some affirmation about my progress!  I am equally excited about this week-to revise and complete my draft, to get feedback from my peers, and to begin my presentation–I have ordered my spandex body suit and ribbon on a stick and have been practicing such moves as “reaching for butterfly” and “weeping softly while it rains”–shoot, I think I’ve said too much.

Seriously, however, I really ended up having a lot of fun working on my final sections of my paper, and am exited to present in a couple of weeks!

I’ll be happy to write next week, surely with many adventures to share, as our friend from Japan will be here on Tuesday for 2 weeks.  We are so excited we can’t wait!!  Have a great week everyone, and thanks for reading.

Five

I’ve missed my deadline…nuts.  Oh well, I’ve been hard at work this weekend getting in a little bit of everything, so I guess I don’t feel too terrible.  But, since I’m the last one awake in the house at the moment, I’ll make this quick:

474.  It has been amazing to have a light load the last week and a half or so.  I was able to take a much needed step back from class, focus on a few other pressing things in my career life (grading papers, anyone?) and return to my evaluation renewed and refreshed.  In fact, as I have spent the last few days rewriting my introduction section and working on my results section, I have felt a sort of cohesion that had een missing from the start.  I mean, I guess that is to be expected when writing a plan one step at a time–but the fact that I was able to work it all out in my head and rewrite accordingly was very nice.  Yay for school

Baby.  For some reason, just two days after explaining to our pediatrician that our baby goes to bed at 7 ish every night–falls asleep right away until 11, eats, falls right back asleep and is out for the night, he has decided that he doesn’t like going to bed–not one bit.  This translates into screaming bloody murder for a good hour or so.  The only good thing is that once he’s asleep–he’s down for the count.  He’s getting better, for sure, so hopefully this is just a phase (brought on no doubt by the recent round of vaccines that has been pumped into his body–I’m caught between not trusting the vaccine vendors and not wanting our son to get meningitis–it’s a tough spot to be in).

Baby 2.  Also, very excited that Ryoko and I splurged this weekend buying books galore for our son!  Ryoko was able to find some wonderful selections at the local Sanseido bookstore.  I trolled Amazon because, even though Better World is such a better, more socially conscious place to shop, we can’t pass up the “32% off” on every book we buy–even moreso when we are buying a bundle of books.

Collaboration.  I am working with another teacher this year, and I love it.  I mean I have planned here and there before, and have shared ideas with other teachers before, but this year, my colleague and I are actually sitting down and planning lessons and days and weeks and months together.  For the first time in five years, I feel like I am actually teaching the way teaching should be.  I love it.

Ok, the clock reads 1234, so I’m going to 5 my way into bed.  Night.

Closed for Cleaning

Ugh.  I got it.  I’m not terribly surprised, really, but I always try to beat it–I always try to convince myself that if I don’t act sick, and I keep up the same pace, same schedule, same everything, then I won’t actually become sick.  Like Monica says on Friends, only weak people get sick.  Surely one look at my plate would convince anyone that a meal that big could never fit in the body of a weakling.  Yet there I was, trudging through school barely able to make it up the stairs without a breather, then white spots in front of the class, then a sweat-box style break.  And that was just the first day. So maybe, just maybe, I’m not as strong as I thought.

And while that thought originally bugged me, it has kind of been nice.  Our son has been a champ, and will sleep about 8 hours at a time now.  This has been great, as I have been able to stay up into the wee hours working on any number of things.  But the last few days, I have had to use my free time to sleep.  Sure I didn’t plan very good lessons, but they didn’t flop either.  Sure I didn’t grade everything that I wanted to, but the kids will be ok for another week or so.  And sure I didn’t get around to finishing my last pieces of my evaluation project, but I have a whole week ahead of me–a week I am entering with more rest in my body than in weeks, so my head is high and hopes are up that progress will be great.

Thankfully I spent time early in the week working on revising my previously completed pieces, making them more cohesive.  This should allow me time next week to work on my results and discussion sections.  I am really excited to get one on one feedback in two weeks from Prof. Bullock or Kona, so that is motivating me to keep on working despite the ‘no class this week’ status that is flashing in neon in my head right now.

Sometimes, in a given situation that finds me on the spot, I think of just the right thing to say…two days later.  I’m afraid that’s how my questions and comments for this week’s blog post will end up.  I’ll have a great series of questions, poignant concerns, and intelligent commentary–after the class is over.  I promise to try and use my powers of foresight to find something really good for next week’s blog.

as a break-up song plays in the background, I am, for some reason, and not because I am breaking-up with anybody or anything, reminded to think about how everything is, really.

7:18

Let’s drive to Brighton for the weekend.  That’s what I need.  I need to get out of here for awhile.  I need to go somewhere.  Get out of Dodge.  Somehow, I have been trained to appreciate leaving town.  Maybe it’s a result of traveling a lot as a kid, or yearly moves in college, or post college travels around the midwest and world–I don’t know.  But right now, save for a few day trips here and there, we’re going on 12 weeks of waking up in the same place every day.  I have friends that never think twice about this–they go on one week of vacation to Florida every summer, and otherwise are almost always at home.  It’s so nice, so stable and comfortable, but I just can’t get there.  I want to wake up to different scenery and take a walk somewhere I haven’t walked a hundred times already.  Just for a couple of days–just long enough to get in a different frame of mind, a different schedule.  A kiss of escape.

Surely this is compounded by the end of the quarter grades being due (yikes.) and the end of the semester project coming up quickly, but getting so enveloped in work in the fall, I forget about the rest of the world and I guess I get a little but boring.  I have been having such fun at school and at school this year, but I get a little sad when I have an easier time analyzing case studies than writing in my blog (pushing rocks in wordpress).  So a trip, then.  Where to?  Of course Washington awaits, but that’s not until Christmas.  Perhaps to Madison to visit friends?  Who knows, but when it happens, hopefully I will return and my blog will gush with creativity, fresh ideas, and flow.

Before I get all arty, though, I am excited to begin the final pieces on my evaluation project.  Though I still don’t think that I understand all that goes into creating an evaluation (nor should I after just one class) I feel that I have a much much better idea and investment.  Creation is always tough for me–but having created a program that I hope becomes amazing has helped motivate my vision and design.

Yet, implementation and financial responsibility is a grey area for me.  This whole time, I have figured that in my evaluation, myself and one other teacher would be collating the data, conducting the interviews, and implementing changes into our program.  I guess I’m looking at it like another prep, another set of meetings after school–will I need to hire someone?  Can I really expect to get money from the district for this?  I don’t know just yet.  I am slowly moving to the consciously unaware stage right now, and it makes me worry that I am going to get overwhelmed over the next couple of weeks.

I’ve pretty much been keeping up every week, so my final project still requires revision of my first three sections, creation and revision of my final two sections and a presentation idea.  I am hopeing to come up wihth something other that a powerpoint, but I don’t know how well an interpretive dance can be presented over elluminate.  A rap song perhaps?  a collage? I’ll figure something out.  I am very excited for the next couple of weeks, though, to have quarter grades behind us, and a couple of weeks to focus on my project!

Hope everyone is having a great fall and thanks for reading!

Tendril

I’m not sure if I haven’t been paying attention over the last few years, but Autumn is way better than I ever remember.  Are the leaves more brilliant than before?  Has there always been sweet corn at Klein’s until the middle of October?  Are there aways this many amazingly beautiful days?  Something about this year finds me consistently asking my wife to grab the baby and come look at a tree that has turned bright red, or a, well, yeah basically just a nice looking tree. You know, though, even when it get’s freezing cold and the leaves turn right to brown and drop off over a weekend, I still love autumn.  The frantic, sweaty, laziness of summer is gone, Halloween and Thanksgiving are snowily wonderful winter are lined right on up.

Despite my tree hugging love of fall, I can’t help but feel a little boring (when I was first in Japan, I was trying to explain that something was boring–though when I looked in the dictionary I chose the first definition of boring, which meant ‘making a hole’.  You can imagine the looks on the faces of my colleagues as I mentioned that Gone in 60 Seconds created an actual hole through my body).  No no, the boring I feel now is mostly related to being a teacher.  The excitement of the year has worn down, the kids are getting tired of getting up at 5:30, and I am feeling that the last tendrils of summer have dried up and broken off leaving me in the middle of a routine surrounded by essays and state standards.  This happens every year, and it’s not really bad, it just reminds me of habit.   This year, though, I am really excited to be planning curriculum with a colleague.  We have very similar ideas about education and what is good for our kids–so it’s wonderful working together.

This week, when we planned our surveys, I had a similar experience.  I realized that, as a participant, closed surveys are great–I fill in some bubbles, check some boxes, make a short comment, and I’m merrily on my way.  Making these surveys–not so much.  They weren’t just routine or boring–there were no tendrils to be seen.  Instead, they became like an English teacher’s nightmare:  I was there–shackled to a chair while yes, no, agree, and disagree all beat me with empty boxes and check marks.  Never again would I be able to ask why?  or write “please explain” when discussing writing and reading.  My brow was damp, my pulse was high; I was skittish, nervous, jumpy.  Then, like deux ex machina in a young adult lit, I was pulled out of my terrifying alternative universe and told that these closed questions weren’t all that bad.  I could use certain patterns in these questions to find out why certain students chose the answers they did.  I could get more than just blank data, but data that could really help me make positive changes in my program.  That was really great to find out.

This week, I also liked being paired with the same partner from last week.  It’s nice to dedicate focus on one person’s work sometimes!

Next Sunday

My plan for a relaxing, beautiful, Sunday afternoon in the fall ended up being a ridiculous exercise in rhetoric.  I won’t bore anyone with details, but having had to watch a beautiful day pass by through an open window should be punishable by law.  The police should have come to my house, knocked down my door, and dragged my butt outside.  While Ryoko and Seijiro did spend most of the day outside, I was able to join them in the  evening.  Spending time with them was better than using bailout money to take all of my friends to a spa.  Oops, I mean, it was better than abusing my power as governor, wait a sec–how did I segue from enjoying my day as a husband and father to political sarcasm?  A reflection of my day, perhaps?  Today’s theme?  Who knows.  I do know that I look so forward to this blog assignment every week and am aggravated that today I have squandered my creative energy on an unneccesary task.

To address the assignment at hand: the process of designing an interview guide was really good, actually.  I loved working hard to make sure that my interview questions would tie directly into my key questions.  ut in order to do that, I had to go back and make sure I understood why my key quesitons were important, and how I wanted to use them to learn.  Since I am basing this off of what I am actually doing this year, I was forced further to think about why I was doing this, and how Moodle really could help my students.  All this forcing and thinking was good for me this week.  It helped glue some things together, making me more confident in my choice of evaluation subject.

The interview itself was a little more challenging.  I had a wonderful partner, and we both read up on each other, looking at introductions and evaluation plans prior to the interview.  When it came down to it, though, it was hard for both of us to come up with answers to each other’s questions.  I feel like this is a cop-out, like when my kids come to me and say, “I didn’t understand so I didn’t do it.”  As a teacher, that drives me more crazy than a whole lot of things.  But I tried to be very deliberate in creating questions that would yield the data I needed to make sure that I was doing a good thing in my class.  Likewise with my partner.  Having had no experience with SRSs, I couldn’t think of very many uses for them outside of multiple choice type questions, and therefore had a very limited range of responses to his questions.  I struggled to think of how they would help learning because I was so preoccupied with trying to fit them into my class. What would have helped me was if part of our assignment working together would’ve included a brief summary of  anticipated responses sent from my partner before the interview.

We both really wanted to work together, though, so we decided to share our questions in full.  By doing that, I was not only able to have a better understanding of what Dave was trying to get from his interviewees, I was also able to offer better advice and support for the questions he was writing.  I feel that he did the same for me.

While we weren’t able to contribute data to one another’s research, we were able to contribute a lot to the question design.  As outsiders without preconceived ideas of what the answers should be, we were able to offer a neutral perspective on how questions might be perceived.  We played around with potential answers and worked through the answers of various subgroups, wording our questions to be more inclusive.

In the end, it was a very helpful session, and it was great to spend time with a classmate, one-to-one.  And I can’t wait until next Sunday night, where hopefully my mind will be fresher and I will once again have the creative energy to enjoy the fun that this assignment always provides.  Good night.

Bigger than my stomach

I have a bad habit.  Or maybe not so much of a habit as an estimation-impairment.  OK, that’s not really the best way to describe it.  It’s like, well, sometimes, my parents, seeing me as a child loading my plate with tons of food that they knew I’d never finish, would comment that my “eyes were bigger than my stomach.”  I would try to prove them wrong, but to no avail.  They were right, I had no idea how much was really appropriate for my hunger and the size of my body.

I still do that–but not with food.  I get so excited about having a baby that I fail to think about how much work it’s going to be and get swamped with unpreparedness.  Or I am so excited to try a new lesson idea or activity failing to understand how much work it is actually going to take and spend hours rushing to finish everything in time.  (I do it the other way around too, like panicking about how hard it is going to be to drive to Milwaukee to see a show at the Pabst–where is it, where will we park, how long will it take, etc–when in actuality it’s easy as pie.  Or taking the baby to the apple orchard (all that talk two weeks ago made me want to go so badly ) with us this year and having a great time despite my panic and apprehension before leaving.)

This week was one of those times.  I never felt that it would be easy, but I have been thinking about my ‘hypothetical’ evaluation pretty consistently over the past month or so for two reasons: this class; my own classes at SEHS.  I am trying to integrate Moodle into my classes even as I write this, and therefore am trying to plan this evaluation in concert with what how I want this to work.  I have a lot of ownership here, so I figured that three questions I want answered should be no sweat.  And I guess they wouldn’t have been if I only had three questions, but I don’t.  I have a hundred questions.  I’ve never done this before.  I’ve got no background.  I’ve got no history. I don’t know where this is going to go or if it’s going to work.  Patrick saw right what I was doing, and asked if I “want there what [I] have here” at CTER.  Yes I do!  I love what we have here, and I want to emulate it as much as I can, but I have only been doing this for 8 months now, though never once in the exact capacity that I am doing with my students.  I’d like to think I’m pretty good at synthesizing information, but there’s no question that I have no place thinking that I know how to do this well.

So, thinking of the three questions that could really nail the marrow of what I want to happen in my classes was hard.  I came up with the following:

1. How has an authentic audience of peers and a greater focus on writing in class affected student writing?

Really, thinking back over the summer classes, I have wanted to make sure that I use technology only that will help enhance learning for my students.  I think that Moodle is one of those tools.  I’ve written about this a hundred times I’m sure, but I am constantly trying to find a way for my kids to get their writing out to more than just me.  When kids don’t like writing anyway, asking them to do a bunch of it for a one ma audience is hardly motivating.  I’m sure that my teaching style would be VERY different if I only had one student per class a day.  (yes, I’d love it, but I think the point I am trying to make is that I would not be nearly as worried about making mistakes and having everything polished off, as long as I had a decent relationship with the student.)  Anyway, asking students to post their work, never knowing who from their class is going to read it should have a positive effect on their motivations.

2. How has Moodle affected students’ ability to work, think, and discuss independently; does it prepare students to apply their knowledge to the classroom?

My pre-AP students are not very responsible right now.  Printers are breaking left and right, computers are getting viruses on a daily basis, and folders are being left on kitchen tables at an alarming rate.  I need my kids to get past that for a lot of reasons, and I think that this could be a good way to do it.  Everything is there–no loops, no surprises.  The kids will have plenty of advance notice that assignments are due, and they will have plenty of individual time to do them.  I want to see how much of a difference this makes on their levels of responsibility.  Also I want to see if they can learn to apply their knowledge to their writing that they do in class–this is just bonus goodness.

3. Have the occasional foibles of technology been offset by the advantages for students and teachers?

As Jennifer has already experienced, and I am dealing with a bit, there are plenty of issues when using high tech in junior and senior high schools.  It’s a new way of working and therefore will cause some problems as all new programs do.  But, once the kinks are ironed out and the results are in, will it even matter that 3 students took 4 months to get their accounts on Moodle?  Hopefully not.