The first sign that something wasn’t right was the pile of glass shards piled below my classroom window and the jagged, gaping hole that used to be a smooth pane of glass. As I entered the room our earth globe and it’s stand lay on the floor. Broken glass was strewn across the floor and a large rock sat leaned against the leg of a table. The contents of my desk drawer lay piled on my desk.
The laptops! Were they OK!? What about other valuable pieces of equipment? … I won’t say much more … I’ll let my students do that. To find out more about our break-in go to our class blog and view our Flickr photos.
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Brian,
Sorry to hear of your situation. It appears as if this is a break OUT. Too much glass is on the outside. Maybe I’m watching too much detective shows, but that would be something I would look at carefully.
Ric – Good thinking, but … The rock was inside – the glass is thick and there are 2 panes – glass was sprayed through the whole room. Probably took several throws to finally break through. Jets fly over our school at less than 500 feet so the airport paid years ago to install this special, thick, “noise reduction” glass that usually doesn’t break and layers of insulation in the ceiling.
Brian
Sorry to hear about your break in. Looking at your pictures generated a question. I have been wanting to use flickr before but am sort of hesitant because frankly I am concerned my kids are going to get places they shouldn’t and getting both me and them in troulbe.
How is it working for you?
🙂
Jim – Great question. I may make this answer a post – I found that for the first year plus that I used Flickr we used it with minimal teaching from me about “inappropriate” photos they might find. Why? – 1) because we only ever accessed our class account … they didn’t know there was more than that. They got to Flickr through a link on our wiki page. 2) When we used it I was usually giving them step-by-step instructions on how to download or upload or whatever, and then moving on to something else … they weren’t sitting there perusing photos on Flickr.
Last year during a project we were working on we didn’t have all the photos we needed in our account … we would have to go looking elsewhere, namely searching photos on Flickr.
It was then that I did a lesson on ethical use of Flickr. Also how to do searches safely – very specific, we practiced some and hen kids were doing searches I kept my eye out and wandered around the room. I explained what kinds of pictures COULD be found there – why that wasn’t what we were about, that Flickr had been a great resource for us and that perhaps NONE OF US would be able to use it if anyone used it inappropriately, and that anyone misusing it would be disallowed from using the internet for AT LEAST a year by school district policy. We then focused on all the positive things we had used it for and how it had impacted their learning. We reminded everyone of that pretty much each time we used it after that and so far no problems. I do think that the key is we keep that discussion going.
My goal is to get my students where the work they are doing involves THEM making the decision about what tool to use and when … access will be at least mostly up to them (remembering that they are 5th graders and that the plan is that I keep them as sixth graders). At that point those “ethics” become even more imperative. Also since things are likely to go wrong on occasion, lessons on “Oops,what do I do now,” will be important too.
Jim – hope that helps.
See Brian, I knew I was watching too many crime/forensic shows.
I really appreciate the follow-up on Flickr use. I plan to share this with admins in our system. I think it is about a) the teacher interacting with the students as they use the tool, b) the teacher trusting the students (and telling them they trust them) to do the right thing, and c) enforcing a policy that punishes on the abusers of the privelege. This is probably not as messy as it is good teaching and common sense.