Posted on

Ed Tech … Is It Just Too Cool … Or Not?

    This past fall my fifth graders video-conferenced with Mr. Mayo’s eighth graders in Maryland. He wanted an authentic audience to give his students feed back on some “moral stories” his students had written and produced into 3 minute videos.

    My students, most of whom are second language learners, watched and critiqued them and did their best to articulate what they liked about them and what the message or “moral of the story” was. I jumped at the opportunity to put my students in an uncomfortable position of using English correctly and as articulately as possible. They don’t come across those opportunities very often outside of their comfort zone with their teachers … and these kids were not only strangers, but eighth graders … “big kids.”  

    But why my students almost 3,000 miles away in Nevada? There is an elementary school next door to Mr. Mayo’s school. Why not just make a connection with those students?

    I bet you can figure it out. … That’s right … It’s the coolness factor. Why talk to students next door when you can use cool technology tools to share with students as far away as possible … the further the better … that makes it cooler. As Matthew Tabor noted recently:

    “The ed-tech crowd’s unyielding commitment to Google Earth Diversity – that is, cooing and fawning over a project just because other participants happen to be 5,000 miles away – isn’t as important as the genuine intellectual diversity they largely avoid.”

   
    Except the coolness factor wasn’t really the reason we were asked to participate. Mr. Mayo was new to this Skype thing and he knew we had experience with it … and at the time he didn’t know of too many other classrooms that did, so he contacted us.

    But the telling part came towards the end of our conference when he shared that they had tried to set up a time with the elementary school next door, but because of their schedules they hadn’t been able to find a time they could coordinate. It was easier to meet with us BECAUSE of the time difference and our flexibility than it was with the students next door …  and both classrooms’ students learned from the experience.

    Lisa Parisi’s 5th graders on Long Island are deep into a writing project with us right now. Lisa’s students also have better English grammar skills than my students and come from not only another area of the country, but a different culture too. Because my students had to truly collaborate with hers in writing their stories they had to learn vocabulary and usage that really stretched them (and Lisa’s kids often had to find the right words to explain the meaning to mine).

     Now because this is THEIR story too, they WANT to understand the vocabulary and subtle and not so subtle meanings behind the words and phrases. Since they will be reading these stories orally to their classmates and practice proper pronunciation and fluency in speaking, they will have had experiences with reading, vocabulary, comprehension, oral expression, all aspects of writing and more … and were (and are) highly motivated to do so.

    To be fair I could easily have linked up here locally and paid $80 for a field trip bus and visited my wife’s school and done the same thing live with students there face to face … but we met numerous times … and it was free … doing the same locally to meet face to face would have cost hundreds of dollars … Hmmm.

    Lisa and I, and I ‘m sure at least a few of the other 12 teachers involved with this project, have written about our experiences and made other teachers aware of the whys and wherefores of our project. I wonder if other teachers smarter than us will see a much different, even more valuable use of video-conferencing and online applications such as Google Docs?

    I just finished teaching a class here in the Reno area to teachers about using technology and field trips to augment writing instruction. They even had the privilege of having Lisa “Skype” into class to help explain our project and demonstrate video-conferencing. Each piece I showed them and had them dabble in … Flickr, wikis, blogs and so on dazzled them and piqued their interest.

    But something was different about this group’s reaction to the technology. They loved it, but they saw something else more important. The tools they saw were the easy part. The tools have been made easy to use, ubiquitous. The questions they started asking were about how do you make the connections with all the different people your students work with? “How do you do THAT!?” They saw the value of making connections all over the world without having to charter a bus or a plane (although I would rather do that … “Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?”).

    I guess it has become “The Network” that is important.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , , , ,

Posted on

Male or Female?

Got this in an email today … couldn’t resist:

Male or Female? –  You might not have known this, but, a lot of non-living
objects are gender specific, actually either male or female.  Here are some
examples:

FREEZER BAGS? –  Male
They hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

PHOTOCOPIERS? –  Female
Once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again.
They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed,
but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.

TIRES?  –  Male
They go bald easily and are often over inflated.

HOT AIR BALLOONS? –  Male
To get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butts.

SPONGES? –   Female
They are soft, squeezable and retain water.

WEB PAGES? –  Female
They are constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

TRAINS? –  Male
They always use the same old lines for picking up people.

EGG TIMERS? –  Female
Over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMERS? – Male
In the last 5,000 years, they’ve hardly changed at all, and are occasionally
handy to have around.

THE REMOTE CONTROL? –   Female.

Ha! –  You probably thought it would be male, but consider this:

*  It easily gives a man pleasure.

*  He’d be lost without it.

*  And, while he doesn’t always know which buttons to push, he just
keeps trying.

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Posted on

…But … But When My Teaching Duties Subside … That’s When I HAVE Time To Be Networked!

Think it is interesting how several edubloggers have again been disconnecting from the network because of the feeling of “network/technology overload” and the feeling of needing a break (which I understand completely) or not really taking a break but coincidently not blogging because of feeling overloaded. The latter example is constantly thrust upon me (and I’m sure many of you) just because of the nature of being a teacher.

However, when things slow down around my teaching job that is when I yearn to be part of the network … all that pent up… seeing what is going on and being discussed and not having the time to be part of it finally getting a chance to be unleashed. I’ve actually noticed now that I often DON’T blog or comment on certain topics just because I know I won’t have time to deal adequately with comments or blowback that beg for a response from me. It’s kind of a self imposed censorship really.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Posted on

Shaken Not Stirred

Seismograph – University of Nevada, Reno, 11:45PM last night

Reported to be a 5.0 quake

 

UPDATE: Quake now said to have been 4.7 … cracked some house walls in northwest Reno, busted some sprinkler pipes, busted the flume used to bring lumber down to Reno from Lake Tahoe in the 1800’s … now used to bring water to the Chalk Bluff Water Treatment plant.

We’ve had numerous earthquakes in the Reno, Nevada, area this week. Mainly a cluster of them in the northeastern part of town. Most of course are 2.0 on the Richter Scale or less, which means few even feel them, to some in the 4.0 range which are good jolts. Right after watching the local news coverage about them last night the strongest one yet hit at 11:40PM – a 5.0. Shook for 3 to 5 seconds at our house and you could hear windows rattle some. Haven’t heard yet whether there was any damage anywhere … wouldn’t be surprised to see stores with stuff spilled on the floor from shelves though.

My wife and I lived in the San Francisco area during the 1989 quake during the World Series between the Giants and A’s. I was in the East Bay and got shaken really well, but my wife was on the 38th floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco. Power went out. No elevators. Had to walk down 38 flights of stairs. The engineers later told them the building tipped 6 feet in each direction during the quake, which is what they are designed to do to absorb the movement.

Earthquakes are messy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , ,

Posted on

Marsopolis “Mars Creature”

Unfinished creature designed to live on Mars

 

One aspect of “messy” learning that not everyone gets are the disconnects … the misconceptions and fuzzy thinking that were really not the target of your plan that come up or become apparent as students work. Today as part of getting ready to take a trip to Mars, students were asked to demonstrate their learning about the conditions and composition of Mars by designing a creature that could survive there based on what is available to eat and drink and breathe and the weather conditions … you get the point.

When I explained the project the other day I pointed out several posters we have up around the room that display photos of Mars. One photo is very high quality and it really shows the color of the Martian surface. There are several others available for reference, along with searches for photos students did on their laptops. I stressed that when it came time to color their drawings they needed to pay attention to coloring the ground and sky accurately. The creatures were mostly being designed well, students have to be able to explain the design of every part of their creature … how does that mouth, nose, appendage, whatever help the creature survive on Mars?

As students were getting to the coloring-in stage I noted over and over how students were NOT choosing accurate colors. I would stop the class, show them a drawing and ask them if the sky or ground color was accurate. They would note it was not, I would then demonstrate again, how to try colors and mix colors on scrap paper that you could hold up to a photo to check for tone and shade and then color in your background as close to the real colors as possible. Students would nod their heads in understanding … AND I would get the usual questions from unsure students not willing to make a judgement on their own … but instead of giving them my opinion I would send them over to check for themselves. Many made poor decisions. 

Is this a good color match? The student thought so.

It finally became apparent that this approach was not working, so we stopped everyone and took 10 minutes to really talk about what they weren’t understanding. “Well we’ve learned that the surface of Mars is red and I used a red pencil so shouldn’t that be right?” questioned a student … several students nodded their agreement. So I took their drawings over to the photo and asked them if the colors seemed the same (see photo). They would get puzzled expressions and say no, and you could tell they just couldn’t get why that didn’t work. Red is red after all.

I quickly grabbed a few drawings that were a better match and asked the struggling students (more than half the class) what was different. They noted mixed colors, different shadings and so on. I quickly made sure no one threw out their drawings … I showed them how to cut them out of the “flawed” background, paste it on a new paper and continue. As they worked, these puzzled students became excited students, and I was continually approached by artists showing me how much better a match their colors were and that lead to them being re-excited about their drawing because they could see it was a more accurate depiction. Now if you think this was terrible on my part … “art should be done for art sake and who are you to decide the correct colors” … I would often agree. However, this was art for science sake, the problem solving and thinking was the point.

 

Learning is messy!

Posted on

Are We Twittering Less And Enjoying It More?

I was introduced to Twitter last year at NECC in Atlanta and jumped in with both feet. Since then I have been as guilty as anyone with going through a period of almost obsession with the constant chatter and immediate feedback it provided … much of it just fun give and take, but the quick advice and support from experts was the real hook.

Some evenings as I worked on other things while having a Twitter window opened, I would be amazed how in just minutes there would be 2 or 3 windows of “Twits” to catch-up on … and at that time I was following less than 100 people. Now I’m close to following 200 and generally I’m noticing fewer Twits overall with spurts at times.

Why is that? I’m thinking the newness has worn off, other applications that have come along or changed are taking peoples time, families are demanding less Twitter/more attention … what else? … or am I wrong and people are Twittering as much as ever?

I know I’ve cut back, but I still find Twitter invaluable. So are we Twittering less and enjoying it more?

Learning is messy

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags:

Posted on

Build Schools Not Prisons!

Another ASCD gem. In the Article Build Schools Not Prisons! a study by The Brookings Institute is cited. Some of the findings:

– When you invest in highly effective educational programs, the benefits to society (in increased tax revenues and decreases in public medical services and incarceration) far exceed the costs of such programs.

They include interventions that are “Highly Effective” in reducing the dropout rate:

– Early childhood education programs, serving children from preschool to 3rd grade.

– Increase teacher salaries.

– A high school program called First Things First–a comprehensive program that includes small learning communities, personalized learning, more counselors, and less teacher turnover.

What a surprise!

Learning is messy!

 

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Posted on

3 Layers of Groups

I realized today that we are in one of those phases when we have several projects going on at once and some of them started so long ago that we are dealing with 3 layers of groups right now. What the heck do I mean?

Well, my students work in cooperative groups a lot. They sit at tables in groups of four that we change every quarter. I used to change the groups very often, but I found that the population of students we have will not always buy into cooperating if they know they will change groups in a week or two. So now I keep them in a group for 10 weeks at a time and It has worked well. We started a blog video project back in December that we have worked on here and there, but it has been superseded several times by testing and various other things. We have changed groups twice now since then, so when we work on that they have to move back into those groups … which is kind of like going home in a way … it’s like, “Oh yeah I remember working with you guys.”

In addition we are in the middle of our Harris Burdick Google Docs collaborartive writing project and we just moved seats again, so today when we worked on that we had to move back into those groupings. Tomorrow it just might happen that we will end up in all three groupings in the same day.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Posted on

Whose Problem Is Poverty?

NOTE: Cross posted over at “In Practice”

“It’s no cop-out to acknowledge the effects of socioeconomic disparities on student learning. Rather, it’s a vital step to closing the achievement gap.”

So begins the article on the ASCD web site:
Whose Problem Is Poverty?
Richard Rothstein

This might be a “must read” for teachers in Title 1 schools. Mr. Rothstein explains why students from low socio-economic groups have lower average acheivement:

“Because low-income children often have no health insurance and therefore no routine preventive medical and dental care, leading to more school absences as a result of illness. Children in low-income families are more prone to asthma, resulting in more sleeplessness, irritability, and lack of exercise. They experience lower birth weight as well as more lead poisoning and iron-deficiency anemia, each of which leads to diminished cognitive ability and more behavior problems. Their families frequently fall behind in rent and move, so children switch schools more often, losing continuity of instruction.
Poor children are, in general, not read to aloud as often or exposed to complex language and large vocabularies. Their parents have low-wage jobs and are more frequently laid off, causing family stress and more arbitrary discipline. The neighborhoods through which these children walk to school and in which they play have more crime and drugs and fewer adult role models with professional careers. Such children are more often in single-parent families and so get less adult attention. They have fewer cross-country trips, visits to museums and zoos, music or dance lessons, and organized sports leagues to develop their ambition, cultural awareness, and self-confidence.

Each of these disadvantages makes only a small contribution to the achievement gap, but cumulatively, they explain a lot.”

One quote I especially liked was this one:

“Some critics cite schools that enroll disadvantaged students but still get high standardized test scores as proof that greater socioeconomic equality is not essential for closing achievement gaps—because good schools have shown they can do it on their own. And some critics are so single-mindedly committed to a schools-only approach that they can’t believe anyone could seriously advocate pursuing both school and socioeconomic improvement simultaneously.”

And this one:

“And yes, we should also call on housing, health, and antipoverty advocates to take a broader view that integrates school improvement into their advocacy of greater economic and social equality. Instead, however, critical voices for reform have been silenced, told they should stick to their knitting, fearing an accusation that denouncing inequality is tantamount to “making excuses.””

There is much more … follow the link.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , ,

Posted on

Twitter … Another Why? Example

I’m writing this after upgrading my WordPress Blog from version 2.1 to version 2.5 without having my heart completely stop … but almost! I stupidly did not back-up my files … just followed the directions after being advised by WordPress that my old version was open to security issues. 

I did save my old WordPress files … sort of … probably not the right ones though … and did everything right, but when I went to my blog the header was there with a message like you get when you first set-up a WordPress blog and all my old posts and links and all were gone. 2 years of posts GONE!!!! And probably no way to get them back … or at least not without A LOT of work.

I started Twittering my panic asking for help, and Doug Noon and a few others chimed in. After 10 or so minutes that seemed like an hour, Doug finally Twitted a suggestion that I needed to follow-through on updating my database and that did it … everything came back … my heart was beating again and everything.

This is one of those examples that those of us that see value in Twitter tend to bring up from time to time … the quick response from many minds you can access (in 140 characters or less). This is not the ONLY way I’ve found value in Twitter, but tonight it was good enough.

Learning is messy!