The Media Spot

We've accomplished some great things in the first 10 days of our 30-day residency at The Parkside School in Brooklyn (PS 130). The blog network is set up, first graders are making videos that will provide a window into their exciting school lives, we've developed a strong policy for online safety, and a framework for a technology plan is in place.

We started in November, working with the technology team to outline the short and long term goals for media education and school technology integration. The resulting technology plan framework outlines how they will integrate video and web publishing in the classroom, and how the school staff will use technology to drive instruction and maintain a baseline of tech proficiency to keep up with the students. These goals were added to the school's Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP) and filed with the District. We will revisit the CEP in February informed by our experiences since November.

As the hub for all of their technology-related development, we have adapted free Wordpress blogs into an "online learning network" in the tradition of PS 124. The network is made up of 2 Wordpress sites: 1) a staff web site for internal announcements, staff communications and the archiving of professional development resources, and 2) a community web site for publishing students' digital productions and writing, school announcements, and communication with the school community.

We started with an all-staff TMS workshop on blogging, which, as you can see from the responses from teachers, brought out the usual mix of enthusiasm, fear of technology, and hardware and maintenance-related obstacles typical of NYC public schools. Since then, key members of the tech team have taken ownership of the blog development and have been working with me on developing the design, architecture, and content of their new sites, and encouraging the staff to get involved. Our latest addition was an Online Safety Page outlining the goal of teaching students to be safe through participation in a monitored environment, along with critical safety issues on our radar, including cyberbullying and student privacy.

As the first phase of integrating media education in the classroom, I've been working with four tech-savvy first grade teachers who will be publishing collaboratively-produced iMovie projects to the community web site in a few weeks that are just as cute as the Dickens! Stay tuned for their release and related planning resources for those and more as we move on to 3rd and 4th grade production units in the coming months.