Me Manifesto Story: #30goals Challenge

Me Manifesto: Spilling it Plainly on Storybird

My New Favorite Web Tool - Socrative

I believe I have stated before that my teaching situation is unique. I teach at a very rural school, with limited technology. There is also not a lot of teachers that desire technology in their classroom here. Because of this situation, I am able to park our lone mobile lab of 20 computers in my classroom. So far, no one has expressed an interest in driving it to their room.

So my kids have their own laptop, all day long. I realize this does not always happen, and I am grateful for it. Well, since my kids all have a computer, we get to do some pretty cool stuff.

The latest tool we have been using is Socrative. I believe it is still in some form of beta, as you have to sign up and some people have expressed that they have not been given access.

After signing up, Socrative gives you a space for you to interact with your kids in a secure room. You can set up questions for them to answer in the form of short answer, multiple choice, and a few others choices. This website actually removes the need for a classroom response system. (Woohoo since we are never affording that!)

So far we have used the site as a place to conduct our spelling bee, answer group questions for social studies, and do math problems together. To allow my kids to be anonymous, I have given them a number from 1-21 to include with their answer. This allows me to know who answered what, and without the other kids making fun of their answers. After the kids respond, I can project all the answers up on the big screen.

After you have signed up Socrative will give you two links. One will be for the teacher, and the other link will be for the kids. A great feature is that the kids must sign into the room, and you get to keep the same room. Another great feature is that you can create pre-made quizzes that you can load up for the kids. It would be great to see a hub form where teachers can save and share quizzes they have made.

Have you had a chance to check this tool out? How are you using it?

A Dangerous Road for Teachers

I know that I say things that reflect my flaws in my heart and motivation. It is part of being human, and often we say things in frustration as teachers. The issue I want to bring to light today, is one I believe to be the most destructive in the attitude of a teacher.

The conversation that brought this to light happened a few weeks back. Some teachers were talking about having a special guest come in to school. The guests were going to present to multiple classrooms, each at their own scheduled time. When a particular teacher was asked if they were having the presentation in their class, they responded with, "A course I am, then I don't have to teach my kids." That statement really shocked me.

Later that week I was talking with a plumber at the youth center I am working on. We were talking about enjoying our jobs. I was talking about how much I enjoyed teaching, and how I also enjoy doing construction work like plumbing. Dale, the plumber, when on to share a story about a work he had a year ago. The young guy was trying so hard to make a living out of being a plumber, but his heart was never in the work. Dale told me how one day he had to stop the young man, and tell him to find a new job. He told him that he needed to do something he enjoyed. It seems like an unlikely reason to relieve someone from their work, but just think for a moment how contagious that attitude can be. When we don't enjoy what we do, we create systems of actions that allow us to just do enough to get buy. We suffer by not getting joy from our products, and the customers or students we work with get a flawed imitation of the best.

This young teacher that made this statement about not wanting to teach is on a dangerous slop. Can you really put in 30 years at a job that doesn't drive you to always want to teach your students? Shouldn't we be looking for more opportunities to invest in our students. We are stewards of young minds, and we only get a modified year to pour into each classroom full. If you find this attitude creeping up in yourself, you may need to evaluate your motivations. If this attitude exists in those around you, stand up and be a beacon that leads others to cherish each teaching minute. You need to love what you do.

What's Yours....

My son has hit the stage where everything is now, "Mines!" He is out to claim every object like some explorer on a quest through a new land. This got me to thinking about the way we deal with possessions here in America. Ownership is one of the underlying themes of the "American Dream."

In February 2010, my wife and I went to Ethiopia to pick up our son. One of the best parts about the people of Ethiopia is their willingness to share. When there is an abundance of goods, everyone stakes claim and makes it theirs. When there is a shortage of goods, everyone shares the goods.

What does this mean for us in the classroom? It means that we like to label everything, assign seats, designate lockers, and stamp names upon objects. The problem I am finding in this is that it runs counter to our desire as teachers to create a cooperative community of learners. Why share with my neighbor when we are all self-sufficient? We have so much abundance that we have killed the notion of borrowing a cup of sugar from our neighbor.

In my classroom this year I am hoping to make sharing a normal day routine for my students. That means there are no designated hooks and storage for their belongings. They keep a minimal amount of things in their desk, because I could have them move at any time. We also have a huge cart in the room that is on wheels. The cart is full of supplies the kids can share.

So far into the school year everything is running smoothly. Kids are not fitting over their own space.

What are you doing in your class to help build a better community? Share your idea.

Cast Your NETS-S

How much do you know about NETS-S? I am not talking about the ever stumbling basketball team from New Jersey. NETS-S stands for National Education Technology Standards for Students. These standards were established back in 1998, but were later updated to now include these categories:

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Decision-Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepts
   (You can read the sub standards of each category here.)
   
   

When looking at these standards they are quite a lofty goal, especially for teachers who are always looking for more time to get everything done that is required of them. For many teachers, we are ready to explore new ways to allow students to learn. One of the avenues that is getting a lot of attention is the value of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. These tools allow our students to communicate, collaborate, and publish in easier and more creative ways then we ever imagined. There are new tools being created all the time, and the great thing is that these tools can help us hit on the NETS-S.

In just looking at communication and collaboration along, we find tools like Epals, Skype, and Wikispaces. Each of these tools alone allow our students to communicate easily with secure environments and produce products that highly creative. Just looking at Skype, we can now make calls to classrooms all over the globe. Classes are no longer limited to the walls of their building or the borders of their county. Are you studying about earthquakes? What would it mean to your students to communicate with a class in California who has experienced quakes? There is really no limit to the collaboration that can take place through many of these tools.

Do your students need more instances of problem-solving and decision making? Why not seek about a project on GlobalSchoolNet that requires them to help solve a problem with other classrooms around the globe? Your students could now use their understanding and knowledge together with other students to work towards a unified goal.

Lastly, the need for learning digital citizenship is something that cannot be overlooked. We cannot assume that our students are being safe and respectful online. Many of them are already taking place in compromising activities outside of school. As teachers, we can be using these tools to help our students learn classroom concepts, but they can also help our students to learn about being safe, courteous, and kind when working on the web.

This is just a few of the ways that Web2.0 tools can help address NETS-S. There are certainly many other ways to work towards these goals. For me this is just a place to start. As I move on through the school year, I hope to rethink the ways I can help touch on all that NETS-S lays out.

*This post is for a Wilkes class.

PTL it's PBL!

After reading the articles and viewing the videos clips located at :“More Fun Than a Barrel of . . . Worms?!” - Diane Curtis, Edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/more-fun-barrel-worms, “Geometry Students Angle into Architecture Through Project Learning” - Sara Armstrong, Edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/geometry-real-world-students-architects, “March of the Monarchs: Students Follow the Butterflies' Migration” - Diane Curtis, Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/march-monarchs, one can start to form a framework of what Project Based Learning is all about.

In all three articles there are central circumstances, principles, and roles. These central parts are what make project based learning unique. In looking at the circumstances, you can see that all the schools were looking for active projects that were relevant to the students' lives. Each project was designed to create an authentic learning experience that could be assessed beyond the normal means of test and pencil. The principles that seemed to guide these projects were quite clear. One guiding principle was that each project presented a problem or essential question. This drove the project forward as the students worked collaboratively to solve the problem or question. Another principle was a large focus on authenticity. The teachers who created these projects spent time to make things as real as possible, and even at times took the reality and expanded it to reach thousands of students (i.e. March of the Monarchs). The roles in project based learning are create in a such a way that the teacher serves as only a guide to the students learning. The teacher is not the chief authoritarian, and does not simply lecture to stimulate learning. The teacher helps present the students with the problem or question, and then backs off to the let the students use their creativity and ingenuity.

The role the students play is an essential part to project based learning, because it gets students engaged. As educators, we know that if a student is engaged, they will most likely take ownership of their learning, and ultimately become knowledgeable in the content. This is the style of learning that seems to fit most soundly with students today. We do not want our students to simply be robots, and regurgitate information. We want students who are equipped to lead our country, and we need to start teaching them as if they will be.

*This article is written for a class I am taking at Wilkes University.

Having To Send Them Back

This is my least favorite time of the school year. The kids I love teaching, skip and parade to a summer of swimming and sleeping in. I always get a case of the blues for a few weeks (I can't help it, I love my job).
As I reflect back on the year, there are many highlights:

• My students read over 3,000 books and 8 million words on Scholastic Reading Counts.
• We Skyped with 3 different classrooms this year.
• We participated in Epals with a class in Texas.
• We took part in the Global Read Aloud.
• Some of my students were personal recognized by author Wendy Orr (Nim's Island).
• We used used the mobile lab, a Nintendo Wii, and a class Ipod Touch to assist in learning.
• We successfully just completed our first ever, Project Day, and built three wooden pieces for our school playground.
• The students collect or earned $97 for BloodWaterMission, $120 to buy a goat, $55 to donate to Tom's Shoes, and $50 to help pay a teacher through Central Asia Institute.
  

The list could go on, but the point is that great kids make for a great classroom environment. I couldn't be more proud of the achievements these 2nd graders have made. I will miss them.

What was the highlight of your year?

The Fear We Must Face

I have been looking back on my school year and doing some reflection. This year has been a huge year of growth and change for me. I am in my third year teaching at the 2nd grade level. In comparing what has been accomplished this year to the others, it feels like I did very little in my classroom the previous two years. That may just be my perspective.
One of the big lessons of the year was an exercise in giving up control of my classroom. You let your kids run wild like monkeys? No, not in the least. In fact I am usually pretty tough and demanding of my students. By control, I mean that I have tried to phase myself out of the role of "Chief Propagator of Knowledge." Here is where the fear sets in for many teachers. The fear comes from an unhealthy pairing of Authority and Control. Far too many teachers have confused these terms to mean the same thing, or have even melded the two into one ghastly beast that drives their teaching. When I talk to teachers many often talk of being tired and worn out from a long day of teaching. I know how they feel, because I ran the same race my first two years. Spewing out lesson upon lesson from all subject areas is a tiring task. I propose that far too many teachers are driving themselves towards burnout. It is sad to see the statistics of teachers leaving the profession or even the stats on job satisfaction. We truly have one of the most influential and meaningful jobs one can have. Somewhere along the line we have lost the passion that boiled out of as we loved our student teaching assignments, and the prospect of our own class. We all had big dreams and aspirations for our own classroom. How do we get that passion back?
To return to our passion, I believe we have to give up control of the classroom. When I say control, I am only talking about our role as teachers in creating a learning environment that centers its focus on a top down approach. Part of our goal as teachers should be to create learners who could still grow and succeed if the teacher dropped over dead. When we give up some of our control, we are opening the door for student ownership. Kids only seem to take a true active role in their learning, when they get grab the steering wheel for a time.
For my students this year, they have gone through distinct periods of change in dealing with having learning control. At first, many of the students acted as though they were put in charge of a complicated machine that made toys. They were scared of what to do, but they were excited about where this was going. The next phase I saw in my students was many of them doing the double take. They kept reflecting back on how their learning had been in the past, and asking ,"Will we be doing this the rest of the year?" It was almost as if they were scared to get their hopes up if this was just another rug to be pulled out from under them. The last period of change is ownership and active participation. Here are some of the things I qualify as being active students:

• Using Kidblog to actively blog their reflections on class lessons, summarize books they are reading, and explain math concepts in details.
• Posting to Edmodo, participating in polls that let me know what they enjoy in class, and creating reading group discussions.
• Creating their own group stories on Voicethread that shows the parts of a story. They also recorded the story to accompany the pictures.
• Importing pictures from Pics4Learning into Microsoft Word and creating informational reading.
• Writing with penpals in Texas through Epals, and recently took part in a Skype session with that classroom.
• Constructing group summaries on TypeWithMe for read alouds.
• Building self-reflection glogs on Glogster.
• Working individually and collaboratively on Sumdog, and Sokikom to reinforce math concepts.

*Though these activities are technology based, we can certainly still design a classroom environment that still encourages student ownership.

What are you doing in your classroom to call your students to an active role? As the end of the year approaches, are you reflecting on what you should change for next year? A good idea for making changes would be to ask your students what they hope to do in the next grade. This will let you know if there are things the students enjoyed in your class, and what maybe you could add for your next class.

Riddle Hunts: How To Guide

The Riddle Hunt Wiki is growing and changing daily.

I hope you have had the chance to visit. If not, check it here: Riddle Hunts.

I just added a "How To" guide for people desiring to make their own Riddle Hunt.

See it here: How To Guide.

Wendy Orr: Nim's Island Writer, Does it Again!

Now our amazing author friend, Wendy Orr has posted a video thanking my students. Check it here.