We spent today’s Social Studies classes with my two sections of Grade 9s coming up with and then choosing questions on what people know and understand about Canada and being Canadian. It was tough to keep 50 Grade 9s on track and distill their hundreds of questions down into only ten for our survey, but we did.

The next step was to go to Google Docs and set up a spreadsheet and a form with our questions. It took a little bit of tinkering (which I made sure I did a few days ago so I would know the project would actually work), but I got it all in there.

Going a bit further with Google, I then took that form to Google Sites where I’d set up a simple website (for free, of course) and embedded our form from Google Docs into our Google Site. That took a bit of figuring because the way to do it is not immediately obvious. It’s really simple once you know how, but, of course, you have to know how first.

If you’re a bit technically minded (the supergeek) you can add a subdomain to your Google Site. You can find our site at either http://sites.google.com/site/whatsacanadian/ or http://www.canada.ishere.info. Either address will work for you.

Now, hopefully, we can get hundreds of people to fill in our online survey. If you get the chance, please do that in the next few days. It would make the project a lot more interesting for the kids. Then we get to sit down and analyze the results. It should be interesting.

Early this morning I stumbled across a neat site, Great Summary (thank you, Delicious). The website does exactly what the name suggests; it provides a great summary of text you paste in, or webpages whose URL you give it.

I’ve only tried a few pages, but the summary does seem pretty good. How well this website may summarize your pages probably depends a lot of how well written they were, but you’re probably not having your students learn from really disorganized websites anyways.

If this site works as well as my initial tests, it should be really useful helping weaker students glean information, or even stronger students working with material that’s a bit above their heads.

I’m looking for an excuse to play with this site.

We had a discussion about Facebook at our staff meeting last night. The principal pointed out that a couple of teachers in Manitoba had gotten into trouble (and one fired, if I understood correctly) because of comments on Facebook. One had inadvertently taken a comment that was supposed to be private and made it public, and one had his child repeat something he’d said about his supervisor which then eventually got back to the supervisor.

Fair? Probably not, but it does happen, and, as our principal pointed out, you need to be really careful. As teachers (and especially as Christian school teachers) we’re moral examples to the kids so both our professional and personal lives need to be in good order in case someone happens to notice how we live. Whether that seems fair or not, it’s reality and part of the job if you choose to become a teacher. You’ve got to live with it.

The other side of the equation, which I don’t think we really covered enough, is that social networking has a lot of power. I’ve noticed that through blogging, hanging out at Classroom 2.0 and “following people on Twitter, I’ve become an observer (and even someone with whom to share ideas) of some of the most creative classroom computer users in the world.

This kind of networking is only possible with Internet social networking. Social networking certainly has dangers when used frivolously (in the way many people use Facebook or MySpace) but can become a very powerful tool when used well.

I think the trick is not to stop the kids from using sites like Facebook, but to show them how. They need to understand not only the dangers, but also the potential. You have to be careful about letting out personal information, yet you can also make some incredible contacts.

It’s a balancing act. Without the risks, you don’t get the rewards.

I’ve been noticing a bit on Google Sites on Dogtrax’s blog (aka Kevin’s Meandering Mind) and I have to admit, he’s got me intrigued about this latest of cool Google tools.

Like Kevin suggests, using Google Sites is a dead simple way to create a simple website. It allows for collaboration between users with Google accounts and by doing that it acts as a pretty impressive wiki. If you use Google Sites within Google Apps all your Apps users can be automatically added as users of your Sites (which is pretty cool in a geeky kind of way).

Basically, I’m just looking for an excuse to use Google Sites and I think I have one next month lined up when I cover databases with my class. If it works, I’ll let you know.

I have noticed that, as a teacher, I really don’t like to stand in front of a class and lecture to/at my students. Over the years, I’ve noticed that other teachers do like to do that.

My approach forces me to move from lecturing to a more inquiry or discovery learning approach. Computers are an ideal tool to accomplish that. You can ask leading questions, give places or approaches for the kids to find the answers, and pretty soon your students will find out what they need to know without you having to stand up in the front and force them to take notes.

If you do like to lecture (and, let’s be honest, all of us do like to hear ourselves talk to at least a certain degree), computers aren’t that useful.

Could this be at least part of the reason why so many high school teachers are slow to adopt computers in their lessons?