Winding down

With time winding down before schools release for the holiday break, many of my colleagues are preparing educational to-do lists when thinking about 2009. I suppose it is only appropriate that I also attempt to brainstorm possible educational opportunities for next year:

(1) In October, my sophomores made digital storybooks using Windows Movie Maker. After studying a variety of literature focused on the theme of American Identity, they created digital storybooks to answer a question (e.g., focus on a time you felt un-American, focus on the first time you truly felt American, and explore a specific struggle or experience you have encountered as a “hyphen” American). Overall, students enjoyed the opportunity to create a culminating assessment. Because I spent multiple days in the fall teaching students how to produce these technological projects, I would like to give my students another chance at mastering the craft of media construction. Susan Sedro recently helped a group of fifth graders create movie trailers for books, and I wonder whether I could do something similar, with higher standards of course, with my students. In the spring, we are reading The Great Gatsby, and I am fairly confident I could construct a fun, innovative assignment related to the text.

(2) Like Abbi, I would also love to incorporate something with cell phones. One of the troubling issues related to the successful integration of technology in the classroom is lack of resources, and because I am a novice at the utility of cell phones, I am going to largely depend upon the advice and directions of experts in the field and my own students on how to use them. Recently, the International Society for Technology in Education released a new publication, by Liz Kolb, reexamining the role of cell phones in education and providing an array of educational opportunities revolving around the use of cell phones. Last week, when I came across Kolb’s Toys to Tools, I immediately contacted my Media Specialist in charge of purchasing and placed a request. I am anxiously awaiting her response. In addition to experts, I also think it is important to invite assistance from students. As David Warlick mentioned in a recent post, teachers are really Master Learners, and the sooner we welcome this title, the sooner teachers can work with students to improve their educational experience.

(3) Finally, I would like to incorporate grammar and vocabulary builders on a weekly basis. Last week, Karl Fisch reminded his readers about Free Rice. The website enables students to develop skills in a variety of academic areas, including art, chemistry, English, geography, language learning, and math, while simultaneously donating rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Everyone needs to check this out! If I did this at the start of class every Monday and Friday, students could build their grammar and vocabulary repertoires and donate food for international relief. What an awesome combination!

We’ll see what happens…

-----

Image Citations:

http://www.iste.org/Images/store/toytul/toytul_Cover.jpg

http://www.businessweek.com/business_at_work/time_management/archives/to-do-list.jpg

Rest, reflect, and respond

Over the past couple of months, my blog has suffered since I began teaching. Although I believe reflection, evaluation, and reform are important assets in becoming an effective teacher in the classroom, I have not regularly done so outside the classroom to improve my general teaching philosophy. Since mid-August, I have improved the quality of my lesson plans. In sixteen weeks, I have transformed my approach to assessments. After three-quarters of a semester, I have developed routines, established classroom expectations, and forged positive relationships. However, I have not stopped to rest, reflect, and respond.

Here is my chance.

Teaching is a lifestyle. As a student in high school, I was oblivious to the demands of my teachers. I knew lesson planning and grading were involved, but I had no idea how long both of those tasks took. While I believe my graduate program prepared me well to enter a teaching career, I misgauged the level of work done by a first-year teacher. I wonder whether education programs should have prospective teachers shadow first-year or second-year teachers to give them a healthy, although not toxic, dose of reality. Any thoughts out there? Teaching is real. Teaching changes lives.

On a different note, the blogs of many colleagues have rejuvenated my recommitment to instructional technology. In the coming months, I hope to continue to document the use of Web 2.0 in my classroom and my ever-changing perspective on an array of issues related to education and technology.

-----

Image Citations:

Danko, P. (7 August 2008). New office chair. Patrick Danko's Photostream. Retrieved on December 2, 2008, from http://flickr.com/photos/patrickdanko/2742450279/

New video updates on "Shift Happens"

Check out my side column for Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod's Shift Happens.


I came across this video almost a year ago, and I think its focus strongly parallels what I am trying to accomplish in my blog, that is, to make people, especially teachers, seriously think about the future of our world.

-----

Image Citation:

Shift happens. Retrieved July 8, 2008 from http://www.jonathansblog.net/userfiles/shift_happens_web-poster.jpg

YouTube and Chopin

This week, I tested a couple of new ideas in my English classrooms. First, I should explain that in one of my classes, we read short stories every week, and as many students and English teachers know, reading and discussing short stories can get boring quickly if the teacher does not integrate a unique approach into discussion. Of course, dialogues about themes, symbols, and characterization are exciting to me, but eighth graders for some reason do not have the same internal desire to discuss such things. Okay, I can live with that, but usually, students enjoy watching film adaptations of novels and plays, right? So, where do you find film adaptations of short stories? YouTube! After an effortless search for Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” I discovered numerous hits, and I had each student view a different adaptation while taking notes on the director’s interpretation of plot, characterization of Mrs. Mallard, and overall point of view. After watching their video clips, which were more than likely produced by high school or college English students around the world, I let each student share his/her observations and explain why they agreed/disagreed with the director’s production. Anyone up for some critical, reflective conversations? This was an awesome exercise, and I would recommend it to everyone. Now, only if I had enough time for them to create their own rendition of the short story.

For my younger students, I have been trying to teach research skills, and this week, we maneuvered Google Maps to develop mapping skills – which is somewhat related to research. In our novel for class, the characters travel along the east coast of Denmark hitting three large cities in addition to Copenhagen. With the list of other cities, students had the following mission: locate the four cities on a map, calculate the total distance traveled by train from Copenhagen to the northernmost city, and draw a map of eastern Denmark and southwestern Sweden. (The proximity of Denmark to Sweden plays an integral role later in the novel.) What made the activity interesting was that all of the city names were in Danish (e.g., Copenhagen = Kobenhavn). Overall, it was a fun activity. Students enjoyed using Google Map and found it “cool” that you could add destinations to extend your route. I wonder how they would have responded to Google Earth.

-----

Image Citations:

YouTube. Retrieved on June 26, 2008, from http://www.erikbosgraaf.com/images/youtube-logo.png

Kate Chopin. Retrieved on June 26, 2008, from http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/readings/authors/specific/chopin.gif

Copenhagen. Retrieved on June 26, 2008, from http://noerrebrolokalhistorie.dk/img/histbillederkort01s.jpg

Experiment with confidence

From reading blogs and instructional technology magazines, I come across quite a few different tools that I can supposedly implement into the classroom to improve instruction. With enough time and resources, I could probably make my classroom into one of the most interactive and rich learning environments around, but time is tough to come by. During the school year, it only takes a few months (if you are lucky ;) ) to fall a little behind schedule, and once behind schedule, you must utilize every extra moment to get students back on track. In the summer, however, teachers generally have a lot more time on their hands. Now, before I hear the cry of tired teachers, “We need a break from school, too,” trust me, I understand. Occasionally, though, over the next two-and-a-half months, experiment a little with various Web 2.0 tools. If you practice during the summer months, you may prevent many mistakes in the fall.

Last Thursday, for example, I used Audacity for the first time. First, the students wrote a 1 – 1 1/2 page response to one of two prompts. Second, they recorded their written responses using Audacity. After exporting the sound files as .WAV files, I easily inserted them into our Wikispaces classroom website. Once the two students were finished, each student listened to the other student’s recording and responded to the recording with a one-paragraph response. The exchanges were incredible! With a primary focus on a couple of character relationships from the short story we read in class, students generated original analysis of characterization by creating hypothetical verbal exchanges between characters. Overall, students found the experience enjoyable, and I look forward to experimenting with other tools over the course of the next few weeks.

On a slightly different note, I want to share an observation. The other day, I had fourth grade students perform some research on the Danish Resistance and the role between Denmark and Sweden in 1943 in preparation of our reading Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. I gave one group the former topic and other group the latter. After about 20 seconds, the second group began complaining that they could not find anything about their topic. When I asked them to show me how they researched, they demonstrated how they attempted to use Wikipedia and Google, but nothing was coming up. After encouraging them to use different resources and to search various key terms, they eventually found appropriate information. I was a little surprised how quickly students felt defeated when an online encyclopedia and a search engine did not find the right facts for them after a couple attempts. What’s the best way to teach students how to perform research?

-----

Image Citation:

The non-scientific partent's guide to science fair projects. Retrieved on June 22, 2008, from http://www.onlinescienceprojects.com/guide/scientist.jpg

Who else knows about wikispaces?

Tonight, I taught my first lessons as part of an intensive English workshop for local Ann Arbor students, whose parents believe nine months of regular schooling is not enough to prepare their children for whatever ends ;) With 90-minute instructional periods, it is important for teachers to consider two things: breaks and varied activities. The first point of consideration takes little to defend, and I think most teachers in block-scheduling environments incorporate at least five minutes or so for students to relax and stretch halfway through the class period. The second recommendation, however, I think very few teachers actually consider. In both of my 90-minute periods, I changed topics and modes of instruction at least seven times, and both sets of students could not believe the end of the hour had arrived when it did. When teachers take the time to meaningfully consider natural breaks in instruction and appropriate transitions from one topic to the next, students tend to become more engaged in conversation and less focused on the minute hand.

Shortly after introductions and reviewing the outline of the courses, I took my students across the hall to the computer lab. Each class participated in a jigsaw where half of them researched one topic and the other half researched another topic. Using Wikispaces, I created a quick, clean classroom website this afternoon for both of my sections, and with links already posted to the wiki pages, students wasted less time searching the internet for fruitful resources. Although I eventually intend to use the classroom website as a real wiki with students contributing content, I currently have them all believing (or excellently pretending to believe) that the website is an unchangeable electronic document. When I was reading the website address aloud for all the students to type one character at a time, a 10-year-old boy finished the URL by asking, “Is this a wikispace?” Now, I did not know about Wikispaces until last summer, so how is it possible that a fourth grader knows about it? I will tell you how – because Web 2.0 grows faster than any of us edubloggers know.

Future educators, I implore you to learn about how we can use various Web 2.0 tools in our classrooms to enable students to work with us in constructing knowledge.


-----

Image Citations:

Clock. Retrieved on June 17, 2008, from http://blog.wolfram.com/images/carlson/clock.gif
Wikispaces. Retrieved on June 17, 2008, from http://www.classroom20wiki.com/space/showimage/wikispaces.png

A new sandbox

While I had hoped my blog would become a record of my experiences with instructional technology as a student teacher, I never anticipated all of the time necessary to become an effective teacher. After allotting time for lesson planning, assessment creating, and assignment grading, there did not seem to be enough time to reflect on my practice in the blogosphere. Well, over the course of the next year, I hope to do a better job in recording my successes and failures in utilizing instructional technology in my classroom to enhance instruction, encourage student engagement, and maximize skill mastery.

This summer, I have a couple of new teaching opportunities. First, I will be teaching summer school at my field placement from graduate school. Although the courses are not in my first love, English, I hope to integrate a little technology here and there to help my students forget that they are actually in school during the dog days of summer. Primarily, I hope to introduce the calculator as a machine more capable of processing basic computations; in fact, I want to showcase our calculators, the TI-84 plus, as a tool capable of presenting information in exciting ways (e.g., bar graphs, histograms, box plots, scatter plots, trend lines, etc.). I want to show my seventh- and eighth-grade students that they can use calculators for other things besides playing Tetris or Block Dude.

Second, I will be teaching a couple of intensive English classes for middle school students at a local tutoring center in Ann Arbor. With small classes, excellent texts, and a computer lab (!), I envision students using blogs to produce original compositions accompanied with visual or auditory aids, which other students will read and leave comments. Both classes are four weeks long and meet every Tuesday-Thursday night for 90 minutes, and I think we will have plenty of time to experiment with different modalities and maximize teaching and learning. While I am a couple of months away from entering my own classroom in the fall, I am going to value the next month or so in testing a few ideas on a small scale in preparation for full classes next fall.

Wish me luck!

-----

Image Citations

TI-83 Plus Silver Edition. Retrieved on June 16, 2008, from http://www.ticalc.org/images/clacs/84plus-se-big.gif.

Dmmaus. (2006 November 1). Waves of sand. Dmmaus’s Photostream. Retrieved on June 16, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmmaus/311011350/

Web 2.0: The bigger picture in schools

As I focus my thoughts in preparation for my conference, I have constructed an opening address to those interested in Web 2.0 and education:

Web 2.0 encompasses a vast array of tools, including weblogs (blogs), wikis, social networks, and podcasts, that empower its users to move beyond the title of receivers of information and acquire the label of producers. Students of younger generations will inevitably be better equipped than their teachers and parents to maneuver and manipulate these emerging technologies to their benefit. Educators that grapple with these technologies and devote time and energy into understanding them, however, can meet students on a virtual middle ground where they can craft lesson plans that incorporate these technologies in hopes of building content comprehension and sharpening literacy skills. The percentage of American students between the ages of 12 and 17 reportedly using the Internet has steadily risen from 73% in 2000 to 93% in 2006 (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007). As these students begin to explore various Web 2.0 tools in their homes and at their libraries, they will certainly experiment with producing and publicly posting text, images, audio, and video online. Blogging in the classroom presents educators with a unique opportunity to enable students to engage with course content, individually or cooperatively, in seemingly limitless ways.

When I get back from spring break, I am going to begin a two-week lesson on technology in the classroom by exposing my students to multiple forms of Web 2.0 and educational technology tools. More details to come.

If you were planning a unit on technology in a 10th grade 21st-century English classroom, what issues and tools would you discuss for their benefit?

-----

Image Citation:

What's All That Networking Stuff Called? Retrieved on March 11, 2008, from http://support.morehouse.edu/whatis-network/patch-cord-ethernet-copper.jpg

Blogging in the classroom matters

Later this week, I will be presenting a conference paper at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on exploring Web 2.0 in classroom, specifically blogging. Over the past couple of months, I have read numerous books and blog posts, discussed blogging issues with friends and colleagues, and decided to take a hiatus from my own blog to think about the social and educational impact of blogging.

I have included below my proposal summary, and over the next few days, I'll probably share more of my proposal with my blog readership. Currently, I am thinking about possible ideas pertaining to blogging that I should make sure to address on my panel. Instead of thinking on my own, I thought I might pass on my concern to the blogosphere to see what type of feedback I can receive.

Here's the question: If you were going to present to a young group of professional educators on the issue of blogging in the classroom, what are some bulleted points you would make sure to mention?

Proposal Summary:

The age of the “Read” Web, where web pages were created by those who hoped to present information solely to be read by Internet surfers, has been over for a decade. Although teachers and students, alike, often maneuver the Internet as answer seekers, many remain unaccustomed to the burgeoning educational potential of the “Read/Write” Web. While teachers and parents are well aware that social networking applications and websites, including Facebook and MySpace, attract their students and children to engage with the Internet in ways unavailable to them years ago, the responsibility of deciding how to respond to the increasing number of teenagers who are creating content on the web falls upon adults. Blogging in the classroom, under close supervision and with adequate learning objectives, can transform the Internet into a matrix capable of producing multitudinous writing and reflecting opportunities for students to simultaneously demonstrate comprehension of material and enhance literacy proficiency.

-----

Image Citations

Devedi. (2006 July 14). Post of the day: Web 2.0 hell. Devedi's Photostream. Retrieved on March 9, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/83496054@N00/189392262/

The Catholic Sun. (2007 April 2). Technology in the classroom - 1.jpg. The Catholic Sun's Photostream. Retrieved on March 9, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/catholicsun/443767232/

Virtual worlds may present real concerns

Generally, I stay away from discussions about the virtual worlds, such as Second Life, because I don't really understand them or why someone would want to create an avatar. David Warlick, however, recently addressed the utility of virtual worlds in a recent post regarding literacy development, and this immediately piqued my interests.

Second Life has been described to me as many things, but I think it simply comes down to the fact that it is a virtual place where internet users can create a virtual "self" in order to participate in a virtual world and interact with other avatars. In fact, NPR reported that last week's worldwide stock market roller coaster ride even managed to ripple through the virtual world as well. Whether or not the creation of alter egos in a virtual world is beneficial or harmful to the well-being of students, I am still unsure, but this issue of literacy development should concern us all.

Warlick notes that students learn the skills of navigation, interaction, presentation, and communication, and while I agree that all of these skills are important to the success of students, I wonder if Second Life is the best arena for this type of learning. A virtual world probably innately includes a different collection of literacies, but I question whether there exists a point at which we should be trying to teach some of these skills in more tangible settings. I believe many of these literacy skills can be sharpened via blogs, but will the allure of blogging among adolescents someday fade and be replaced with virtual worlds where participants can create virtual selves? I guess I worry that students may invest themselves in a virtual world so much that they will begin to lose touch with the real world and the fundamentals of "real" person-to-person interaction.

However, I must admit that I am a little intrigued to hear more about Second Life's potential creation of an educational world. Aren't you?

----------

Image Citations:

Remeta. (2007 December 29). Second Life logo. Remeta's Photostream. Retrieved on January 27, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/remeta/2146826566/

Lamar, N. (2007 February 27). Second Life avatars in world literature. North Lamar's Photostream. Retrieved on January 27, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blazingdaze/404848910/

Blogs as branches from the same the trunk of thought

Will's unsuccessful attempt at finding student "bloggers" (writers) reminds me that there is still a lot of teaching and learning to be done on fruitful classroom blogging. While I cannot attest to the strengths or weaknesses of the blogs Will received from his Tweeting, I acknowledge the fact that Will's evaluation of student blogs was most likely fair and appropriate, given his professional background. If future teachers hope to incorporate blogs into their classrooms, perhaps there should be more of a focus on how writing is different from blogging.

Blogging is not simply writing online. Although blogging does ask students to produce text, it additionally provides a means for collaboration through hyperlinks. In a standard classroom, teachers provide writing prompts to students with the expectation that students will each write their own individual responses. When teachers read the assignments, they more than often look to see whether students succeeded in sustaining a thorough, complete argument. But what if teachers could evaluate a student's ability to continue a discussion rather than to complete one?

Every teacher wants to foster a safe learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing ideas in front of their peers without the fear of ridicule, and most teachers will give students the highest marks on persuasive and analytical assignments as long as the evidence supports the thesis, regardless of a teacher's bias. However, shouldn't teachers also strive to reach a shared understanding to some degree? Wouldn't a longer conversational thread (via a blog ;) )help in building this shared understanding? In the event students were providing hollow discussion tracks, teachers could step in to challenge or redirect thought. Now, I'm not suggesting that teachers lecture from the pulpit on the one, true interpretation of a text, but what I am intimating is that teachers should, perhaps, reconsider how they assess student thinking.

Being part of a conversation, as blogs enable its users to do, is a skill that all students should develop.

----------

Image Citation:

Mrhayata. (2008 January 3). Tree trunk. Mrhayata's Photostream. Retrieved on January 22, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrhayata/2161899616/

Fresh prespective brought by student teachers

With the recent debate on social networking producing numerous threads of discussions throughout the blogosphere, I have decided to create a thread of my own. I believe social networking has a place in the future of education, and I think teachers as well as students can mutually share in positive growth fostered by social networking sites and tools. Where years ago each individual scattered around the world had difficulty sharing messages with broader audiences, technology has now created seemingly limitless pathways to connect these nodes and persons from every country in the world. Finally, the pathways are easily accessible and anyone can provide commentary and original thoughts on virtually any topic of discussion.

Although I do not consider myself to be in the same edublogger social circles as Ewan McIntosh, Danah Boyd, Will Richardson, David Warlick, etc., I believe I do bring an important perspective to the blogosphere as a young student teacher who realizes the title of "student teacher" will most likely remain an integral part of my identity as an educator. Many edubloggers recognize their roles of "learner" will never disappear, but I think actual student teachers who are at the early stages of their careers have a fresh, unique perspective on education, that is, its state, direction, reform, practice, etc. Student teachers should begin to enter the conversations about educational technology and Web 2.0 now while their practice is undergoing, perhaps, some of its greatest maturation processes. I challenge student teachers across the country to weigh-in on issues discussed in the most popular and visited edublogger blogs in the blogosphere. I challenge my peers and colleagues, local and international alike, to share their questions, thoughts, fears, and advice with each other in hopes of creating a network created and sustained by student teachers.

The venue for these discussions and collaborations is underway, and I hope to begin to contact student teachers across the States and abroad shortly. Until then, increase the number of subscriptions in your aggregators to the point where you have enough resources to read daily about the conversations and debates taking place in the world of education.

----------

Image citations:

Lakerae. (2005 August 6). Earth n America plus. Lakerae's Photostream. Retrieved on January 20, 2007, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lakerae/31756773/

Christos_m2001. (2007 July 18). Earth - globe. Christos_m2001's Photostream. Retrieved on January 20, 2007, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/christos_m/846651493/

Who needs journal articles?

Scott McLeod presented some interesting analysis today in his blog. He points out that blogs have the potential to reach much larger audiences than academic journals. For example, his blog could potentially attract 4,200,000 people per decade; whereas, articles written by the same author in academic journals may only draw 166,667 people per decade. By the end of his post, McLeod poses the following question:

Why would anyone who wishes to actually reach educators and hopefully influence change in schools not be blogging?

Well, I simply agree. Blogs have the potential to reach wider audiences, but only if their authors take them seriously. According to StatCounter, I only attract about 15 unique users a week, but if I advertised my blog in local education newsletters or encouraged my colleagues to provide material for the blog, then maybe I could create a larger readership. Blogs serve as a medium of communication that links many people, and if we could create a virtual arena for discussions to take place, perhaps more educational endeavors could be begun. Perhaps, more ideas of reform could be discussed. The possibilities are endless.

I will end with McLeod's final question:

Why haven't more faculty caught on to this?

----------

Image Citation:

Automania. (2006 February 10). Spider web gravity well. Automania's photostream. Retrieved January 16, 2007, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/automania/97936640/

Classroom Blogging Resources

Today, I want to provide an array of excellent sources for blogging in the classroom. As teachers continue to think about integrating blogs into the classroom, I believe it to be essential for teachers to remain up-to-date on what types of research and studies are being completed on blogging.

Eide, F., & Eide, B. (2005, March 2). Brain of the blogger. Eide Neurolearning Blog. Retrieved January 4, 2008, from http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/brain-of-blogger.html

Ellison, N., & Wu, Y. (2008). Blogging in the classroom: A preliminary exploration of student attitudes and impact on comprehension. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 17(1), 99-122.

Kahn, E. (2007). Building fires: Raising achievement through class discussion. English Journal, 96(4), 16-18.

Lee, S., & Berry, M. (2004) Effective e-learning through collaboration. In T. Freedman (Ed.), Coming of age: An introduction to the World Wide Web (pp. 19-24). Ilford, England: Terry Freedman Ltd.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A., & Smith, A. (2007, December 19). Teens and social media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Penrod, D. (2007). Using blogs to enhance literacy: The next powerful step in 21st-century learning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Sifry, D. (2007, April 5). The state of the live web, April 2007. Sifry’s Alerts: David Sifry’s musings. Retrieved January 4, 2008, from http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html

Warlick, D. (2005). Classroom blogging: A teacher’s guide to the blogosphere. Raleigh, NC: The Landmark Project.

----------

Image Citation:

Krisde. (2006 May 18). Before high piled books, in charactry, hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain. Krisde's Photostream. Retrieved on Janurary 15, 2007, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristimeador/148787241/