Guest Bloggers, Part I

Summer is here and it’s time to (in the words of my students) “dust off my blog” and get back to posting. I am, however, going to start slowly. I asked a couple of my students to be guest bloggers and share their opinions about the blogs we did this past year. Here is the first, who goes by her login name, clsh5a. Enjoy!

I had so much fun blogging during my time as a 5th grader!! I loved it so much, that I made my own blog on a website all by myself!!
Blogging is fun because you get to write about anything you want. The posts on your blog could be about a cool school activity, or maybe just a small little picnic you had that day. Whenever I had a bad day, I would write about it on my blog and I would feel better.
Blogs can also be for commenting on your friend’s blogs. I would always check up on my friend’s blog and comment on any new posts they wrote. It’s fun to comment because sometimes, you could check up on the comment you wrote earlier to see if your friend responded to it. Then, it could be like a little chat as you type another comment to respond to your friend’s and your friend could respond back to that comment, too.

Overall, I had a lot of fun blogging and I’m glad mching introduced blogging to me!

The SmartBoard Experiment

For those of you who have seen my Twitter account, you’ve probably glimpsed the occasional tweet about my “borrowed” SmartBoard. We were lucky enough to use it in our classrooms for about a month, and despite the steep learning curve and lack of formal training, use it we did! At first it was an “endless whiteboard,” a space to store a few lessons, a picture or two, and our thoughts and ponderings. Eventually, though, we really began to use it to make the teaching and learning by both teacher and students more dynamic, interactive, and, dare I say, fun.

We even did a quick video on the first day the students learned about rotational symmetry. While it’s not perfect, neither the video, nor their understanding, it was a huge step forward in terms of the possibilities. With this in mind, we’d like to share this video with you.

Alas, budget constraints brought this experience to an abrupt end. We’ll go back in January to our chart papers and static whiteboard, but the heart of it, the interactivity, was not lost on me. And perhaps that was my most important reminder of all.

Empowering your students…

We’ve had a class blog now for a couple of months, but I’ve noticed something recently. I was still the “sage on the stage.” I posted, the students responded. I responded to their response. No one responded to me.

Obviously, something was not working. I could do the same thing with student journals. Yes, the blog made their writing more visible, more public, yet it wasn’t anything that they truly cared about. In order to do this, I needed to turn the blog over to them. Once I had this revelation, I needed to find models of student blogs that worked. Blogs that mirrored the students’ passions. While trolling through twitter, I found one such blog in the Digiteen Dream Team.

To make a long story short, the Dream Team found an incredible learning tool in Lively, Google’s online virtual world. They have created their avatars, performed plays, and even “built” a virtual school. Unfortunately, this tool is being shut down on December 31, 2008. Needless to say, the students are upset. And they’re not taking it lying down.

Lively Avatar - Matty Bear

The Dream Team is blogging, using wikispaces, and continuing to use Lively to organize protests. The most incredible thing is, unlike the vast majority of people (adults included), they are doing this in a way that is respectful of others, including the corporation involved…Google. Their most recent post shows thoughtful, carefully crafted ideas that demonstrate their thorough grasp of the big picture:

• For-profit companies need to make money from their products.

• Google is a  for-profit company, Lively is their product, therefore Lively needs to make money.

• Solution – Let’s bring money-making ideas to Google.

The most recent post on the Digiteen’s blog is a solution; suggestions on 10 ways that Lively can make money for Google. Their suggestions run the gamut from t-shirts and avatar clothing to charging for company rooms to asking for donations. However, their “pay for eyeballs” idea is the most innovative I have heard of in a long time. Internet marketers, look out, because these students are your future competitors!

Pay for “eyeballs” – Let users “pick” their advertising “bling” of the day — what they support and like — then, the advertisers pay google for each avatar that picks their bling and pays by how many other avatars “see” the advertising “bling” — literally paying for “eyeballs” — something that cannot be done in the real world.

Is this a David and Goliath story? Probably…hopefully…But no matter what the outcome of this particular fight, these ninth graders from Georgia are mobilizing people à la Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody.

Now that’s real learning…and real power.

When Technology Goes Bad

I promised myself this school year that I would move forward full speed ahead into the 21st century, use technology to provide students with a wider audience than their teacher and parents, and find ways to present content that was both meaningful and relevant. I have not gone back on this promise, but neither do I feel like I’ve moved as much as possible. Will Richardson might call this a “Yeah, but…” post, and it’s a reality that many teachers, with very good intentions, find themselves mired in.

Just some examples…
• iBook mobile lab: keys missing, dead batteries that no longer hold charge, newest iBook is 5 years old, oldest is 7
• 6 mac minis to be shared among 40 students in an open classroom, only 5 actually working (did I mention that they have different versions of various software and just recently had the same OS installed?)
• 1 video camera (yay! this one works! but keep in mind that the equipment is shared among the grade level — 4 classes, 80 students)
• 2 still shot cameras (again shared among the grade level)
• A school lab with 10 eMacs and 10 mini-macs which have been pulled from various classrooms who are awaiting updates

All this in a school whose mission is to “prepare children for the 21st century.”

I’m not bashing my school. Really. I’m not. (totally sans sarcasm here) There are many reasons why technology is not at the top of a school’s priorities. The pie is limited, and everyone wants their fair share. Truly, at this point in my life, there is no where else I’d rather work. Part of the reason I love this school is that teachers are encouraged to dream big, to be innovative, to teach in ways that honor each child. And yet, when it takes the students 15 minutes to log into their wikispace because supposedly its been un-blocked (interject sarcasm here), but they get stuck in a vicious loop of logins and DOE error messages, I just want to scream. Then they finally get to start a post, only to have to logout because our lab time is up. In the meantime, the other half of the students haven’t even touched the keyboard…again…

So I know all the pat answers.
“Put the computers in a learning center rotation.”
“Make a schedule.”
“Connect the computer to a projector.”
“Teach the students typing skills so they get done more quickly.”
“Assign the students roles (i.e. spell checker, typer, reader) to facilitate sharing of the responsibilites.”
“Use the computer as a teaching tool.” (read…the students never touch the computer)

At best, these “solutions” are antiquated answers, no longer relevant in a 21st century curriculum. At worst, the computer is rarely used by the students in any meaningful way. This cannot be allowed to happen in our schools. The machine that is education in the United States cannot continue to churn out students who are prepared for jobs that are either outsourced or no longer exist. Why sort and select students instead of providing opportunities for all to succeed? Why indeed?

In answer to these questions, teachers are making a difference in their own quiet way, in their own individual classrooms. Despite the many technical difficulties, the students plug away, using edublogs and wikispaces, communicating with their teachers via email, creating portfolios to demonstrate learning, and, hopefully, finding an audience to share their thinking and learning.

Maybe, for now, this has to be good enough.

Beyond “Did You Know?” A Video for Viral Times: “Did You Ever Wonder?”

“Is preparing students to enter a system that is at war with itself really preparing them for the future?”

This is just one of the thought-provoking questions asked in this viral video. To describe it further would do it injustice. Watch and judge for yourself.

Beyond “Did You Know?” A Video for Viral Times: “Did You Ever Wonder?”

Posted using ShareThis

Blue Men Environmental Video

Time has absolutely flown by, and it’s been almost a month since my last posting. I’ve been consumed by assessments (not always a bad thing, just HATE the paper-pushing) and new programs and preparing my incredible student teacher for her solo period. It’s not that I haven’t been learning and reflecting…just not in writing. In one of my endless wanderings across the internet, I did come across a viral video that begs to be shared. (Is that redundant?) I linked a YouTube version, but I originally found it on a ning website called Inconvenient Youth. This is definitely worth your time to check out.

Find more videos like this on Inconvenient Youth

For Tech’s Sake!

A few years ago (well, maybe a little more than a few), there was a well known mantra in the DOE, “Don’t teach technology for technology’s sake.”

Basically the idea was that we shouldn’t be farming out our students to the tech teacher to get an extra break! Totally agree with this. After all, technology should be used to facilitate learning and communication, and the place to do this is in our classroom. But the other idea was that we couldn’t teach the students how to use a particular tech tool as a main objective. The learning objective had to be in a core subject area, and if we were able to incorporate Kid Pix or internet research, then that was a bonus.

My question is: Why NOT teach the students about a tech tool as a main objective?

Realistically I know that if you are teaching someone how to use a tool, and they don’t use it, then they will forget. That’s happened to me many times, and I’m sure it’s happened to you. Practice makes perfect and all that. The context needs to be meaningful and purposeful. In today’s world, use of technology IS meaningful and purposeful. One just has to take a look at India and China and any other number of foreign countries. As educators, we need to make sure that our students are able to recognize technology’s importance in today’s society. It’s the same thing we do for reading, writing, oral communication, mathematics, science, history, geography, the arts, etc.

I know. One more thing to add to the already overflowing plate. This addition, however, is one I’ll gladly take on. For our students’ sake.

SnagFilms Film Widget

SnagFilms is a great site for free, full-length documentaries! Planning on using this in my history classes!

No laughing matter

Here’s a “joke” I found in my email the other day:

Q: What do you call a person who keeps talking when no one is interested?
A: A teacher.

I know this was meant to be in fun, but call me humorless. In a profession whose members are not typically regarded as “professional,” we really don’t need to be perpetuating stereotypes. Instead, we should be promoting each others’ expertise, building our leadership capacities, and recruiting the best and the brightest to fill the vacancies left by those who leave the classrooms.
Yes, there are always the few who count the days until retirement or resist change and perpetuate the “sort and select” classroom of the early 20th century. Every profession has members that make poor choices. Call it malpractice, if you will. I would hazard to say, however, that the vast majority of teachers are sincere in their attempt to change the world (because that is what we do on a daily basis). When we sing with our students, read aloud a piece of literature that moves us, guide fingers and minds to the web to research current events, and have conversations that empower students to take action, we toss a pebble into that proverbial pond.

At any rate, I apologize for the rant. And we cannot object to something without providing what we deem to be an acceptable alternative. I propose that when we receive such well-intentioned email “jokes,” that rather than forwarding them mindlessly, we replace them with cartoons and images that empower educators. Here are just a few taken from Susan Ohanian’s Cartoon Collection to get you started.

Happy forwarding…

All Kinds of Learners

My 7 year old has been in school for over half his lifetime. Never did I imagine the kind of heartache this would cause for us. After all, we read together daily, talked and shared our experiences, enjoyed outings to the zoo and the beach and the aquarium.

Being my first child, he went to activities such as Gymboree and Keiki Sports, all meticulously recorded for posterity. With typical parent over-confidence, I was positive that I had given him everything needed to insure that school would be the right mixture of challenge and creativity guaranteed to stimulate mind, body, and spirit.

Then reality struck.

Nightly homework, long commutes, and early mornings combined with a difficulty decoding text, “poor” penmanship, and letter reversals added up to near disaster. As an educator, I began researching strategies and systematically applying them, but as a parent, I despaired. Not because I needed a child that would be “perfect,” but because I hated to see what was happening to him. Someone who rattles off scientific facts (especially those pertaining to dinosaurs!), sings songs word for word after hearing them once, and spends enormous amounts of time building and rebuilding Legos and Bionicles without instructions, puts on a brave face every morning and counts the days until the weekend.

By no means do I blame his teachers or even the school he attends. But, I do wish that our school system would allow for the kind of learner I know my child is. Somehow, I don’t think that the completion of a worksheet will ever bring that same glow and satisfaction that the Lego city which spans our living room floor does. Not a day goes by that I don’t worry and hope and pray that something will click, and my son will be able to approach school learning with the same enthusiasm that he does his own pursuits. So when I read Who/What is Smart? on a blog that I follow, I saw my son and his struggles reflected in that post. It was a call to recognize different kinds of learners, and I’d like to add my voice, and my son’s, to that call.

Just the other morning, as he worked through his first chapter book, he told me, “You know, Mom, I kind of like it when there aren’t any pictures, that way, I don’t have to think like the author thinks.”

Out of the mouths of babes. Lessons for us all.