Category Archives: Student Access

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Shuttle Launch Experience – What Are The Possibilities For Student Learning?

In my last post I shared that I have this fantastic opportunity to watch the Space Shuttle Endeavour launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next month. One of the ways this new pedagogy changes things is in how my students can be included in my trip.

If I really manage to go (at best a 50-50 possibility because of budget freezes here) my students would learn about the Space Shuttle program, Cape Canaveral and other topics associated with the trip before I ever left. We would travel there through photos, but also via Google Earth – Where is this place? – why did they choose the eastern Florida coast to launch spacecraft from? We drop right down on the roof of our classroom and travel to locations and back when we Skype to build those geography skills and schema, so we would do that for this trip too. My students all have their own blogs, so I can post photos, videos, blog posts about what I am learning, topics for them to do research on. I will be able to post all my photos and even video on our class Flickr page (often within minutes of taking them) – the students could be asked to make a slideshow – write captions for the photos or any number or possible writing projects or research projects.

NASA is asking me to be there to use Twitter to report out what I am doing, seeing and learning. But I would blog about it and would hope to Skype back to my class to share with them, answer questions and maybe do on-the-spot interviews with some of the people I am supposed to meet there. My students are used to taking notes during Skype-conferences and when we have guests in our class, and this would be no different. I could have it set-up with my substitute that I would call the school and let them know to get on Skype and expect a call.

Students could even have pre-written questions to ask – what would they like to know if they get to interview an astronaut or scientist or anyone else that works there? If NASA would allow it I could use a video streaming application like USTREAM to broadcast out so other classrooms could take part … later they could even share blog posts and comments about what they learned with the classes we connect with all the time. All those students have access to our Flickr pages as well – so they could utilize our photos for their learning.

The point is, my students would not be waiting for me to return to find out what happened during the trip – to learn during the trip … they would participate before, during and after. I can comment on their blogs (even grade them), think of new assignments to give them while I am still in Florida, and my students are learning about a place they can only imagine about now. There are so many other possible ways to include them (and feel free to think out loud in the comments). And we do these things often, so this is not pie-in-the-sky – this is what we do as a big part of our learning. Things really have changed since we went to school haven’t they?

Learning is messy!

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How did you begin your technology journey?

A reader named Diane left these questions for me on a recent post and I thought I’d answer her here too. I wonder if others should post their experiences on their own blogs … and in more depth than I did here because of time, if that would help others somehow? Just a thought. Here are her questions and my short version answer:

How did you begin your technology journey? I would love to have access to equipment for my students to use, any suggestions on where to go to begin the process?

Hi Diane – I doubt you really want me to go all the way back to my Apple II+ days, and everyone else will be happier if I don’t : ) Most of my experiences have been chronicled here amongst all these posts. But basically I’ve been at the right spot at the right time when, because sadly so few have much experience using technology in education, my very limited experience  was enough to make me the go to person. 25 years ago my class got 4 Apple II-E computers because literally in a staff meeting I raised my hand when we were asked if anyone had any experience with them and I said I used one once for a week 3 years before. It’s been like that ever since.

My classes’ 1:1 laptop experience came about because my school was getting new HP laptops and no one else wanted anything to do with our 6 or 7 year old Apple iBooks (or really even the new HP’s which to this day are used rarely by more than 1 or 2 teachers- they use them a lot though) so I explained to my principal at that time that for the price of new batteries ($3000 for 30 batteries) we could have the only 1:1 laptop class in the entire school district of 60,000 students. She had the money and we went from there. Then because we did a few things (blogs and the like) a rare time when there was some money to try out new things, our class was named the school district’s model tech class (they had to designate a classroom because a grant required that). We got an interactive whiteboard, some cameras and a few other pieces AND permission to try things out – that’s the key right there.

It’s a much longer story than that, but that’s the gist of it. Hope that helps.

Learning is messy!

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The Tightwad Tech – The Interview

A few weeks ago, after many attempts trying to find a time we could all make, Mark and Shawn at The Tightwad Tech managed to coral Lisa Parisi and myself across timezones long enough to interview us about how we utilize a changed pedagogy utilizing tech (usually for free – hence the “tightwad” connection). Here is a link to the podcast. We had a great time. Give it a listen … and Thanks to Mark and Shawn for inviting us!

Learning is messy!

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Baseline

So a new year is upon us! I have rolled my last class of 4th graders to fifth grade as I usually do. I have 25 students – 19 returners from last year (the others moved) and 6 newbies.

We used to give the state or district writing test in 4th, 5th and 6th grade. But in a cost cutting measure, the last few years, only 5th grade takes the writing test and the whole school is judged on those scores. Our scores were pretty miserable last year, so one of the interventions we are implementing is 3 practice tests that mimic the real one right down to being scored by paid scorers.

We gave the first practice test this week. It takes three, 1 hour + periods spread over 3 days to administer.  Since this is the second week of school, we are using this first one as a baseline. I decided since we had used gobs of class time to write them,  to use them as our first blog posts and not do any editing beyond what the students did during the test. That way because we had no time to write anything else, we could jump into our blogs. It was a great review for my returners, and a chance to learn how to post for my new students.

I had the young writers put “Baseline” in the title box, and their real title in the same window with their story. That way we have a baseline example of where they were at the beginning of the year, because it was written under “testing conditions” they got zero help, and since it is the second week of school the students thought it was cool to have something to build on. Now they (and everyone else can see their growth for the year. I will probably have them edit these same stories again after some instruction so they can be aware of where they began and what they have learned. You can view the posts here.

In addition you can peruse the posts of last year’s students to get an idea where they began last year. Also my last class has 3 years of posts further down the page.

Learning is messy!

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Going From 1:1 To Not 1:1 … Temporarily Even Is Tough … More Thoughts

We have 30 laptops charged and ready that are still not on the school district network after 15 weeks of school … should be put on soon … fingers crossed! For the last 3 years my class has been a 1:1 laptop class … but for various reasons we are not right now … and dealing with that has been difficult for me for several reasons (not for my current students so much because this will be new to them).

For one, being an elementary teacher I’m used to acquiring support and supplemental resources, materials and lessons for Reading, math, social studies, science, art, and so on that in the past have provided me with loads of schema building …  much more than we could ever cover. At one point I had 4 – four drawer file cabinets full of great stuff in my classroom and more in our garage. Everything from volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens, to newspaper clippings of the first moon landing, various brochures from NASA on anything you wanted to know about space or space travel, to art projects based on the masters.

Several events conspired to limit those resources. First, we’ve been 1:1 for three years and the internet is a tremendous resource all by itself … those NASA brochures were 5 years old and older … very out of date, so chuck those … and likewise happened with other old resources until I was down to 2 file cabinets of “stuff” (but I still have the ash and newspapers) … on the web everything, well to a point, is updated and new … so much of your old stuff becomes obsolete. Then my school was refurbished and we literally had to strip our rooms down to the bare walls AND we were encouraged to get rid of stuff … so I’m down to one file cabinet … and from 2 large storage cabinets to one … and nothing (almost) in the garage.

Now we are not 1:1 … and have been so longer than expected … and I yearn for all those resources. I’m prepping for a half day sub tomorrow and keep thinking about something for the sub to use that would be perfect … but I don’t have it anymore. The internet and writing and numerous other online productivity and math and reading, science and other learning activities more than took the place of 3 file cabinets, one large metal cabinet, and 200 square feet of garage space (and more).

The great news is that at some point here my students will have all those resources back … whew … it will be a good thing.

Learning is messy!

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Why It Will Be Hard To Not Have A 1:1 Laptop Classroom

I have mentioned I really like that we have stretched the useful lifetime of an important resource but that as cute as it is to have a 1:1 laptop classroom based primarily on 9 year old laptops the end is near. Our IT department has already told me the old iBooks we have probably will not work on our new network, and at 9 years old they have really been showing their age of late. Sticky and missing keys, hard drive issues, and some won’t “see” a flash drive when you plug one in to download files.

In comments and Twitters about past posts I’ve written mentioning this some have stated that even if we are no longer 1:1 we will still be fine because we will leverage or “MacGyver” what we have and do great things. I agree with the what we will have to do part, if it comes to that, but it will still be a huge blow.

It’s a step backward. A 1:1 classroom done at least fairly well becomes a an intense learning environment. Students are engaged, empowered, active learners instead of sitting learning to be taught. It is an active process a far greater amount of the time (and this is one area I need to improve, is getting that and letting that happen more) and the feel of the classroom changes. People that visit pick up on that. It changes from a 1:1 laptop classroom into a learning environment that uses laptops and other tools to leverage learning.

Being “MacGuyver” is hard work and takes valuable time during class stretching out assignments meaning you can do less – often much less. And the periods before and after class setting things up and downloading and uploading files takes extra time. Time many of us would be willing to give when we can, but time is a teacher’s enemy and counting on having that time leads to stress and frustration. The technology becomes something you have to think about and do something about much more instead of a tool you just use. It adds layers of difficulty to everything you do. If you’ve ever had  your pencil sharpener break in your classroom, look at how something that you usually don’t have to think about becomes a distraction and time killer.

Ubiquity is a big part of what makes 1:1 powerful. When it is your laptop and you are used to it, you stop having to think about it much and the focus becomes the learning, the producing, the design, the doing. I’ve suggested before watching 1st graders just learning handwriting. Many of them are focused as much or more on holding the pencil correctly, and where it goes on the paper. and how to form the letters, and what the next letter is and so forth and the work is prodding and the spelling and what the writing is about become secondary.

I want to move forward, not backward. I have learned much from 3 years of 1:1 and am ready to use what I’ve learned do things better, provide more powerful learning experiences. Not having that will be hard. Not impossible, but knowing what we COULD be doing IF … will be hard.

So I’m still putting out feelers for funding sources.

Learning is messy!

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Now That I have Some Experience At This 1:1 Thing…

Looking more and more like I’m going to lose 1:1 in my classroom next year because 19 of our laptops are just too old to deal with the new wireless network and security system that is being put in this summer. Many of the laptops are showing they’re age too. Keys are missing, some do “funky” things at times. Some won’t save reliably.

The great news is my school is being “stimulated.” It is over 50 years old and the electrical and plumbing systems are more than obsolete. I’ve done some really great math lessons over the years (really!) having my students figure out how much water drips down the drain in our class sink each minute, hour, day and year. Well all that is being replaced and fixed and renewed.

Just when I’ve learned so much, and IT really improved our wireless with fast connectivity this fall, it looks like I’ll be an 11 to 28 classroom instead.

I know, some of you are yelling at me right now about how you wish you had my problem of being 11 to 28.

1:1 is all that it is cracked up to be ….  and so it will be hard to adjust. Yes there are still things we can do, and do well, but blogging constantly and consistently, which was really key to how my students progressed, will be impossible to make up. Going into a 1:1 program I never foresaw just how it would be so language intense and engaging.  I wish I had seen that from the beginning, because I think my students would be even further along than they are now. I have to remember though that we had to wait until almost December of our first year before the funding came in to purchase the new batteries for, at the time, our 6 year old laptops. So we didn’t charge “out of the gate” into 1:1 … and about the time we got started we were on winter break.

Honestly one of the reasons it has worked as well as it has, was all the feedback and learning I got from my learning network. As we blogged and Skyped and wiki-ed and researched, I slowly figured out that for my almost entirely second language class, that one of the huge benefits was that ALL those things we were doing were  written or spoken or about analyzing text and reading, AND that melded together they were extremely powerful at building the language skills and schema my students so lacked. One area I did “get” was the power of field trips and classroom guests and project based experiences to build students understanding of their world. Now I get how having 1:1 capability leverages that so powerfully.

So yes, we will survive, but I’m afraid our days of 1:1 are numbered (3 to be exact – that’s how many days of school are left this year). Nevada is taking as big a hit as any state to its education budget, and we were already close to last in the country in funding education, so help from there is improbable. I’m looking where I can for funding, but if you know anyone with 19 Macbooks with nothing to do … send them our way! : )

Learning is messy!

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Reno Bike Project Winding Up!

We still have a few minor loose ends to finish up, but today we finally can say we have completed our Reno Bike Project, project. Amazing what we got done when we got some consistent time to work the last two weeks (although we took three required assessment tests this week). As I’ve mentioned in my last 2 posts, I turned the responsibility for the last 6 web pages over to each of the six groups in my room with minimum direction (each group was given one of the pages to do randomly – they had to do the page they got). At the end of the day Tuesday the pages were pretty sad and I was afraid maybe they weren’t ready to take this on. But Wednesday we looked at each page as a class and brainstormed ideas and I saw major improvement. Thursday we looked at some professionally made pages and things really improved, and today they just went nuts. The wikis really came out well, with only “consulting” duties on my part, mainly at the request of the students … “does this look better or should we do it like this?”

We also put the final touches on our PSA (video) which had to be re-edited to change the URL it references. So today we burned multiple DVD copies to send to local TV stations.

So what went into doing this project?

*We had a class meeting when this opportunity first came up to decide whether or not to take on the project in the first place.
*We took a field trip to the Reno Bike Project where we shot video and took many of the digital photos we archived on our Flickr accounts.
*We had guests visit our classroom and talk to us about the Reno Bike Project, bicycle racing and the health benefits of bicycling.

*We researched on the web for information for all the wiki pages we designed and to learn more about the science curriculum that was much of the basis for this project.

*We used our Diigo account to archive and annotate much of our research.
*Maggie Tsai from Diigo visited our classroom and taught students about Diigo and encouraged them about the work they were doing.

*We storyboarded, wrote (as a whole class shared writing) the script for our PSA.
*We had numerous discussions about the order of scenes and wording and which clips made the most impact.
*We practiced and then recorded the voiceovers for the video.
*We designed posters, one of the loose ends we need to finish … we have to change the URL on those before we publish them … will probably put some on our Flickr account later.
*We peer edited each others’ work over and over checking writing style and content and whether or not links worked correctly or whether someone could be understood on the video.
Students set up various photos to use in class and outside and took them themselves.
*We Skyped in Will Richardson to talk about healthy eating habits, specifically being a vegetarian.
*We blogged about various aspects of the project.
*Students designed graphics for the PSA and for images on their wikis and posters.
*Students designed the layouts for their wiki pages.
*Students noted “experts” (classmates) at certain aspects of getting the formatting of their wikis to look “right” or import a photo and would enlist their help … which was fun to watch. “Why is she over in your group?” … “Because she knows how to get this photo to show up on the right part of the page with the caption under it and she’s showing us how.”
*Lots of collaboration, planned and not (see above).
*Lots of “messy” learning … mostly NOT planned. : )

*I’m sure I left out lots, but it’s getting late.

Learning is messy!

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Skypeing, Learning, Blogging, Iceland


Students take notes on their laptops as Alan Levine
explains his experiences in Iceland.

We have been studying the environment, climate, climate change, energy and more in science getting ready for a new project we will be taking on soon. We got an unexpected boost when Alan Levine (AKA Cogdog) offered to Skype into our classroom from his temporary  digs in Iceland.

Alan and I met in China this past September, and by chance he will be visiting the Reno area in a few weeks to talk with educators. He made arrangements to visit our classroom during his trip here so this way the students will get to see him both places. We talked about Iceland in general, and Alan shared why he was there (house sitting for friends for a month) and some of the sights he has seen. He explained some about geothermal energy, which supplies 90% of energy in Iceland (the other 10% is hydroelectric btw), and told of visiting volcanoes and geysers.

My class has had experiences with Skype now for 3 years. Early experiences were quiet … well except for me blabbing to fill in the void. My students are almost all second language learners and they shy away from speaking period, so imagine them speaking publicly! We have done many lessons on speaking and putting yourself out there and learning/practicing English by getting your feet wet in a real situation. We never force anyone to talk, but we encourage and have students practice what they might say. Some have spoken up, but generally we’ve been pretty quiet. In the last 6 months (I have had this class since 4th grade – now 6th graders) we have really improved in oral language and that came shining through today.

I have to give Alan some of the credit, he was very easy to talk to, and at ease speaking with them … even when they asked him questions like, ” Do they have Sponge Bob on TV in Iceland?” The more questions that were asked, the more at ease they were. I thought we would run out of things to talk about in 15 minutes, but the questions and comments flew for 20 minutes more. When we started to get a bit off track in our questioning we ended the conference and got to writing about the experience. We started making a word list of vocabulary that came up as students needed them … we worked together looking up spellings and locations. I had used Google Earth to travel from our schoolhttp://farm4.static.flickr.com/3004/3059747474_fd839fa3d9.jpg?v=1227645695 to Iceland before we met up with Alan, and we re-visited Google Earth to make sure we had a good understanding of where this really was (especially when one student wrote how Iceland isn’t far from the equator) … so as usual just-in-time learning was prevalent. This is also a great way to note misconceptions and deal with them before they get set.

We hope to finish our posts tomorrow and might even post them to our blog before we break for Thanksgiving. We spent a total of 40 minutes of class time to travel to Iceland and learn about a place most had never heard of for free, built schema, learned more about connecting and networking, and now we can research more, write, discuss, … good messy learning!

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