Mr. Bass

Hello world, I have returned to St. Louis from the Steel City and have had a few days to recover and get to know my twin toddlers again. For those of you out there who are English teachers I cannot encourage you enough to attend. This is my second year attending and I’m hooked. So many brilliant people and ideas that it makes myhead spin. Not only that, but I met (and remet) so many great people who are doing wonderful things in their classes.

For those of you who have never attended, let me give you a brief idea of the weekend as I experienced it. We flew into Pittsburgh on Thursday, arriving in time to register and get to the opening banquet. The dinner was packed and I, unfortunately, had to take a phone call from my wife so I didn’t hear the speaker but I understand she was excellent.

Friday morning was the opening session with Frank McCourt who was amazing. Paul Cryderman posted a great synopsis of this session at the Red Cedar Writing Project.

From there the fun began. The convention is basically set up with different sessions to attend on a variety of different topics. They last about 75 minutes with 15 minutes between sessions to get from one to another. My first session was chaired by Nancy Patterson on the topic of CyberEnglish. This was a great session. I was intrigued by the idea of a completely online teaching class. On Saturday I had the pleasure of spending about 2 1/2 hours with Ted Nellen talking about his experience with CyberEnglish and how I might implement this in my school. Ted’s vision is amazing and I look forward to more interaction with him. More on CyberEnglish to come.

There were two other items that I think I would be remiss to leave out from my first post-NCTE post. One of the people that I met last year at NCTE in Indianapolis was Louann Reid, editor of the English Journal. She is a brilliant woman who gave me some of the best advice about the NCTE conference

In addition to Louann, I want to recognize the following people and thank them for the conversation and for including me in the after hours get together. It was great to see you whether you are new friends or those I’ve met before. Stacy, Brannan, Terry, Michael, Greg, Jeff, Amanda and Kevin.

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Last night as I was diligently typing using the hotel’s wireless connection, I somehow lost all that I had written but recreating that last night was simply not going to happen, so here is my rewrite, same ideas, just different words.

OVer the last few weeks a reoccurring comment seems to be omnipresent. Yesterday as I flew to Pittsburgh it came back again. I was reading an article by Stephen Downes entitiled “How To Be Heard” and I came across the comment that “…the point here isn’t to create something great every day – the point is to create every day, and through that very process, in time, something great will emerge.” Now this is not a new comment or technique for an English teacher, I often try to impart the same knowledge to my students on a regular basis. However, I had not used this advice in my everyday life when it comes to this blog. I know that I won’t be able to write a post everyday between my family and my classes, but I can at least make the attempt. Over the next few days I will probably be posting often reflecting on the ideas that I find and the conversations I have.

Well, I’m off to the conference. What will you create today?

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This weekend I have the pleasure of leaving my classes for a little professional development in Pittsburg, PA and I can’t wait. Last year I went to the National Council of Teachers of English annual conference and it seriously changed the way I view education.

I just wrote an entire posting about the beauty of using technology in education and how excited I was to be here connecting with and speaking with others that have these same kinds of ideas and interests. Then, as I was about to post, my connection was severed and I lost the rest of my post. What a drag, but such is life. I’m sure over the next couple days I’ll find many things to post about. Until then I bid you adieu.

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I was reading Will Richardson’s blog yesterday talking about an online tool called Suprglu. This is a really cool site so I wanted to spread the word. My Creative Writing students are using Blogger as an experiment in blogging. Suprglu allows me to aggregate all the blog posts to one site. This is a great tool for both students and parents to view what students are writing about. Take a look at the posts at http://wbass.suprglu.com.

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Over the last month or so my district has supplied every teacher with Dell laptops to replace our old, completely outdated desktop machines.  Many of our teachers were using computers running win98 on machines that were purchased in 1997.  While it is certainly a tragedy that we have been using machines that are so old, to me it’s more of a tragedy that we have not trained our teachers on how to use the technology in the classroom.  Showing students a PowerPoint in which they copy notes is not using technology in the classroom. 

We were given these computers to provide us with a portable means in which to create lesson plans, enter grades and give us an updated operating system and software so we can catch up with the rest of the world.  This part is awesome.  I was so tired of 366 mhz Pentium II computers running win98 that froze or crashed at least once a day.  Not to mention the fact that when something did break, it took our techs approximately a week to get it fixed simply because they were spread way too thin.  Bottom line, this is a good thing, it gets us headed in the right direction in terms of the technology that we use in the classroom.

However, we have not sufficiently been given training to use this new technology effectively.  With my background in computers and technology I learned these skills and techniques for my degree, most teachers don’t have an Instructional Technology background and are too busy with all of their other duties to explore the world of blogging and RSS.  In my building I am the technology evangelist and also the person people come to when they have problems.  I have been working to spread the word about how to use technology in the classroom (this blog, my student produced podcast and conversations with my collegues) with limited success so I’m curious to know how others are helping their fellow teachers enhance their classrooms through the use of technology.

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