A Teacher’s Thoughts

Yesterday, Diane Hammond and Susan Stiff of the Yes-I-Can Science program came to my school to do some presentations and hands-on activities with our eighth graders. The experience was incredible for these students on a number of levels. The academics and learning about space science and exploration was fantastic. But hidden behind the entire event was the lesson of the power of a network and the power of connections.

Some time back I caught a Women of the Web 2.0 show on Ed Tech Live, where Diane Hammond was interviewed. It was at that show that I learned of the International Space Station blogging with astronauts program. I checked out the site and it seemed that it would be wrapping up soon. I was disappointed but still thought I could leverage some additional enthusiasm from my students who were new to blogging. I posted a short article on my class blog. Sure enough the students thought the idea was grand!

One early morning, when I checked my mail, I noticed comments from Diane on both this site and my class site. She was impressed with the students writing and wanted us to join the program. I couldn’t wait to tell my students. The problem was I was home with my son that day. So I posted the news to my class site then Twittered Julie Anderson, the Language Arts Teacher on my team, to have the students check their Google Readers. She told me later the kids were just boiling over.

In the days between then and yesterday I struggled to connect what we had been currently studying and getting to know the ISS07 project. I was able to relate a lab activity we did with activity on the Space Station. Not to give away the prize, I have left it to my students to figure out just how our activity may demonstrate a useful concept in the space station. I think that I did better with the fluid mechanics we had been working on and less well with the ISS07 project. The kids had been reading parts of the ISS07 site and most had some disconnected bits of information about the space station. They all knew that “dhammond” was the person who asked us to join. But the best part was yet to come.

Just a little over a week ago, Diane said she was coming for a visit. When I told the kids, they were excited. Of course, at the time they thought that astronauts were coming to visit us. I was worried that the students may be disappointed when they learned that Diane and Susan Stiff were not astronauts. I was wrong, having visitors is great, if they were astronauts that would be awesome, but having visitors from Canada, well that was supreme!

Following an incredible visit with great presentations and activities offered by Diane and Susan my students were buzzing with energy and activity. When they went back to their classes it was hard to get them back to work on other topics. They just wanted to get on the ISS07 site and read! Before yesterday they had known who Diane and Susan were. Now they know them. The power of this new connection will be revealed over the coming weeks as we engage in conversation on the blogs at the ISS07 site.

I can’t complete this post with out mentioning how the network affected my other students, the thirteen staff members who come in each morning at 6:30am to learn to blog. I put out a post introducing the KMS Bloggers. The next day, when someone (Diane) from somewhere else had left comments on many teachers first blog post, their eyes were wide open. If any of you are doing professional development on blogging I recommend arranging to have that happen. What a convincing experience of the power of blogs.