I just spent 40 minutes on a Friday night approving a few blog posts and a ton of comments my 5th graders authored today, and I was thrilled. We’ve been working really hard on editing our writing and finding the obvious mistakes … like not capitalizing words we know should be (“You can’t find the mistakes you don’t know are mistakes … but the others you should find). Most of my students are second language learners so they often make syntax and basic errors in grammar too. While the posts and comments they made are not entirely error free – they are greatly improved, and the students are so motivated to do their best right now. As my students got to work this morning word processing the posts they had written for homework about their experiences on Halloween, I was calling a doctor about my daughter who has been sick with migraine of late. Linda Burge, the ESL teacher that spends a lot of time with my students, watched the class as I stepped outside. She has not been in class much the last 3 weeks because of a spate of testing she has had to do with all the second language learners. When I returned she came right to me to report how sharp focused they had been and how improved their writing was since she had last been in class. She mentioned it several times.

So this is probably not the first post you’ve read by someone singing the praises of blogging. But this post is not so much about the improvement my students have made … but about how I’m almost the only person that can look at their work and note that. (well, Linda comes to mind). Go look at what my students have written of late on their blog. Much of it is not polished prose – its mostly pretty simple stuff … you probably won’t be overly impressed. But I sure am. Why? Because I know from whence their work came. I have had students in the last few weeks read back to me all or parts of their writing that are fractured and misspelled and mis-punctuated to the point of incoherence and not notice a thing wrong. So when I see what they put out today I just about want to shout hallelujah! … they’re finally getting it!!!!

The point? Those that come by school for a walk-through visit to see how things are going … look at some classrooms … note work displayed on the walls … can’t really appreciate it unless they know the students, the individual students, and from whence they came. How did this student get here, this piece of work get here? Why is this piece posted on the wall (or the blog)? I mean, I see mistakes … they posted this? Yes we posted this because it shows growth and learning and progress and this student has the right to be as proud of their improvement as anyone else. Don’t they?

Learning is messy!

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 Well in about 9 hours according to my clock, from when I am writing this, my keynote for the K12 online Conference will be posted. I was chosen to keynote the “Obstacles to Opportunities” strand. I hope what I put together is useful. I ended up making my focus examples of what my students have done the last few years, with an eye to making a case to those that haven’t used technology as a learning tool … much. You’ll note I kind of “hammed it up” accordingly. Give me feedback … but be kind. : )

Working on my Keynote took a lot of the thinking that I usually put into my blogging, but it isn’t the only reason I haven’t been blogging as much or as thoughtfully of late. I’m really trying to do things differently this year … not just doing the same old stuff but with technology … and I have been somewhat successful, but it takes more thought and planning to do school this way. I don’t exactly have a road map for this, and maybe more importantly, I don’t have other teachers at my school site that are doing this with me to help work and think through this … to “draft off of” so to speak. On the other hand I do have my network here and on Twitter that help more than I know, and I plan on accessing their (Your) expertise more now that we are really off-and-running since my class size was reduced (from 33 to 26) and we all have laptops again. All of this has conspired to cut down on my blogging, but I suspect will give me much to blog about as we progress. Actually I have a list of blog topics to write about which is unusual for me, I typically blog on something soon after I get the idea.

One of the issues I’m dealing with right now is how to do things differently when faced with mandatory curriculum programs that don’t lend themselves to “doing things differently”. Instead I take time to think through how to do “the program” while at the same time trying to approach it and evaluate student learning differently … but still “do the program”. On top of that is the pressure of not wanting to mess up this opportunity. Not many teachers get to do this (1:1 laptops and blogs and wikis and more with “at risk” students – more than 90% of my students receive free lunch, and some get 3 meals a day at school)… although I’m kind of hanging out here on my own. I’m doing this “at my own risk” which adds to the pressure. On the other hand it is very invigorating and I’m mostly having a blast … my family doesn’t have my attention like they deserve, but I’m re-learning how to do a better job there too. And so far I’m not feeling stressed out and I think that is a good sign because I have been very busy.

I think too that Twitter is to blame somewhat for fewer blog posts. I find I sometimes will “Twit” something that happened that day, or something I read about or saw … i plan to blog about it in more detail … but somehow my “NEED” to blog about it is dissipated by the fact that I Twittered it and the blog post doesn’t happen. Although that may seem like a reason to stop Twittering I find the ability to ask for info … and knowing what others are up to and issues and celebrations they are experiencing right now to be both invaluable and addictive … um … but in a good way addictive … mostly.

I’m really pushing my students hard right now to be more critical and careful of their written work … and we are doing that with blogging. I can tell that there is a “gap” between what they already have the ability to do and what they are putting out generally. In other words, like I tell them … you aren’t going to catch the mistakes you don’t know are mistakes, but you can catch the mistakes you do know about – capitalizing the first word in a sentence, grammar, spelling (“you spelled “there” 6 times correctly – then you misspelled it here and here”), and it is paying off. They really are trying harder because the work will be published. Right now they are kind of the “Not Ready For Prime Time Writers”, but they are already doing much better …can we sustain that progress? Is blogging and other forms of publishing going to help us get there? Stay tuned and find out.

Well with interruptions in writing this it is now only 7 hours before my keynote goes live … so again be critical, but be kind.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: K12online, 1:1 laptops, Twitter, blogging,

… but, not because she couldn’t come to school … a camera crew dispatched by Skype came to film us reenact a day of Skyping Celest.

They came an hour before school started and strung lights and did sound checks. Then we just ran our day and Celest joined up from home. Our overstressed network was dragging along today and so Skype dropped a lot – but the students in her group just re-established the connection each time and we continued on.

After lunch they filmed from Celest’s house to get her side of the story. In-between the crew allowed us to interview them about their work – I video taped it – it was very informal – the crew was great with the kids, and one spoke Spanish, so my 2 non-english speakers were able to join in – I might post it later.

I used Google Earth to set the scene for the book we started to read today – it takes place in Pennsylvania, so I started out at our school in Nevada and then “flew” to Pennsylvania … they were filming the front of the room at the time and missed the reaction of the students, so they had me “fly” to a few more locations just to get their reaction. As the main character in the book visited different locations we flew to each one and talked about the distance involved, terrain and general geography.

I guess this will be edited this week and used by Skype at a news conference in New York in a week or so. The representative from Skype that was there hinted that among other things there might be an announcement about something new from Skype … we’ll see.

Learning is messy!

Blogged with Flock