Personalizing Learning

Edutopia gives a list of ten ways to personalize learning for students using technology. I think this is one of the big strengths of technology- to be able to tailor the lessons and the work o each student using thing that will grab them and help them immerse themselves in the lesson. Reading and writing about things like these strategies helps me become more excited about diving back into another school year. I hope I'm able to find a place to each next year so I don't miss out on using so many of the new strategies we found out about during this class!

ISTE

I have been reading a ton of stuff about the ISTE conference in San Diego this year. It sounds like it would be an awesome conference to attend. ISTE is the international society for technology education. I am laid off this year so I'm obviously not flying to San Diego to attend this conference but I think it would be awesome to try to attend in the future. I think gathering to see what so many other educators had to say would be a great way to expend your teaching strategies. I am making it a goal of mine to attend a tech conference next year locally. I know that I will see when they come up by watching the nerdy teacher on twitter.

Best Teacher Practice

The Nerdy Teacher wrote a blog entry about best teacher practices and how he thinks that there is really no such thing as one best practice because so much depends on the way the students in your own classroom learn. I think this makes a lot of sense. Why would someone who works with students totally different than mine know better than I do about how to teach them? I think it makes a lot of sense that we have to do what we know to be best for our own students.

Teacher's are Too Big to Fail?

In the nerdy teachers recent blog entry "Too Big to Fail" he asks the question of whether teachers are too big to fail. If it's possible for us to continue to try new things and do things that might now work out the first time in order to improve our overall skills as a teacher for the benefit of future students. This reminds me of all the issues going on with our schools now and it probably hit home because I found out yesterday that my school will be closing next year. I don't know what my alternative students will do now that their school is slipping away. It makes me sad to think about them not having a place of their own next year. For that matter I don't know where I will be next year. I guess when I read that blog entry title it made me think immediately that apparently schools aren't too big to fail because they are falling down all over the place.

The Un-Grade

The blog entry "Not Grading is Awful" was an interesting read. The teacher was talking about her class and how much more work it was to not use traditional grades. She was talking about having to struggle to assign grades to students who were in a constant revision of their work in order to improve upon it. That doesn't fit well into a world where every single thing the students do has to be documented and evaluated and then input into a gradebook. I think it's very brave of her to launch off onto this quest to try something new, different, and probably difficult.

Blogging Isn't Necessary

In the educationrethink article "It's OK if Teachers Don't Blog" the author talked about how he didn't feel like it was required for teachers to use blogging websites. He made the point that we would not expect every teacher to use the same thing or software and what works for some might not work for others, so why should we be shoving all teachers into the blog world if that's not what they're into. We should allow teachers to express themselves in the way they are most comfortable! This makes a lot of sense. We differentiate for students all the time. Why shouldn't we differentiate for our teachers?

The Best Peeps on Pinterest

The readwriteweb article about the top twenty Pinterest personalities was cool. I was able to find a few people to follow who look like they will be sweet. I have found that I am really interested in Pinterest lately. I have been able to find a lot of great ideas for food to make and have actually made it and loved it! I am also using it to find neat things for my daughter’s birthday which is coming up soon. I think things like Pinterest are great ways to include technology in your everyday life. I am interested to see how it evolves and to find if there is a way to use it in my classroom!

Make Smart Choices

In the edutopia article about helping kids make better choices they bring up some really good points. The author says that maybe the best way to let kids learn to make good choices is by practicing! I think this makes a lot of sense. If we are hovering around and constantly telling them what to do for every decision they make they will not be able to develop the skills to make good decisions themselves. Part of the issue is that some students have parents that are so involved they won’t allow their child to fail. I think we all need to remember that failure is one of the best ways to learn. You don’t really learn anything by doing something perfectly. That is probably a lesson we could all remember.

Help Each Other!

The edutopia article about the schools in Shanghai was very interesting. It explained how they were able to improve the performance of underperforming schools by pairing the lower school with a high performing one. The teachers from the better performing school would work with the other teachers and help them understand what they needed to do to improve. Instead of the teachers just having a single meeting, they would work together to develop lesson plans and the mentor teacher would observe the lessons being taught. It provided a lot of support for the teachers needing to improve. I feel like this would be a way better idea than leaving the underperforming schools to their own devices or taking them over financially. I think the assistance is what we need to give teachers because probably those who are not effective aren’t doing so because they don’t want to be, and they would probably benefit.

What Happens to Your Facebook When You Die?

The article "Social Media is Changing How We Die and Mourn" is a really interesting read. I hadn't thought about the notion much before reading this. I've seen a few people post of their friends walls after they passed and left comments. It seems to almost act as a memorial. I am interested to see how this continues with people who have grown up with social media all their lives.

Where to Look?

Nick Provenzano's article on Edutopia, accessed here, is a great resource for teacher resources. It lists a few different sites that he uses to find answers to questions that people ask him. He starts with Google which doesn't surprise me because that is a pretty logical place to start. He talks about not needing to hold all the ideas and information in your head because this resource is always at your fingertips which is a good point. The other things he lists though are really helpful. I will absolutely be using the list when I start to lesson plan fro next year. There are a lot of things to keep in mind for the next school year that will make my lessons even better!

Standardized Testing and PBL

The article from edutopia about standardized testing and PBL was meant to give tips to teachers about utilizing PBL while still maintaining their prep for standardized testing. I think this is a great idea. Instead of waiting until after testing, teachers should just tailor their projects to work within whatever constraints their testing schedule puts on them. I have been doing a lot of reading about using PBL in the classroom and think this would be a great thing to try next year.

Facebook Money

In the article "How Does Facebook Make Money?" the author explained how advertising makes up almost all of Facebook's profits. I have been wondering how they could possibly make so much money because of the fact that it is inherently not a money making money. Much to my surprise it is almost ALL from advertising on the right hand side of the page. It doesn't seem like people would actually click on those ads but apparently they must. I wonder if this is the reason the stock didn't do as well as it was thought it would do- people thought the same thing I did.

Equal Schools?

The article "After Brown v. Board of Education" made me think about something that I have often thought about. It makes sense that all students should have the same access to materials and good teachers, and nice schools. The issue is that the school your child goes to directly correlates to the neighborhood your child lives in. This is good for people who live in nice areas and not good for people who live in bad areas. I know thank you captain obvious. To me, the separation isn't about race anymore it's about socioeconomic status. The issue is, it's not just a money thing, it's a while mindset that is different. I believe integrating lower income students into higher income schools would be beneficial to lower income students. My question which is probably unpopular is what about the higher income students? I teach in a low income neighborhood and have experienced all kinds of things students have said or done that I would not want my own child exposed to. I would be curious how being exposed to students who seem not to value their education as much would effect those students in higher income areas.*

*This is not to generalize and say all lower income students are bad students who don't care about school or all high income students are angels who take school seriously. It's just a question of how to integrate all students without negatively impacting any of them.

Consequences

The Edtopia article "How to Make Consequences Count" really hit home with me. I think anybody who teaches today has to deal with student behavior. With my alternative kids I frequently have to deal with behavior issues while teaching. Sometimes my class can feel like one disturbance after another. I like his idea of the P.E.P. talk with a disruptive student which is talking to them in private with eye contact and position yourself close enough. I think this is a great idea but I'm not sure how practical it would be for my environment when I would have to stop my class many times to pull kids out for a private talk. I often call kids to my desk and talk to them quietly there, away from others.

Two other sections I found even more helpful. The idea that punishments in sequence (first detention, then parent meeting, then suspension etc.) is not helpful and takes the teacher out of the consequence makes a lot of sense.  I also think it makes sense that not everything that is fair is equal. I think that makes so much sense and it's a lesson that is sometimes difficult to teach students (and parents) :o)

#GoodTimes

I use Twitter all the time, and I use hashtags almost every post. I think they are fun. I have my personal twitter on private so it's really only a handful of close friends who see my tweets anyway. I do have a school twitter account as well and would not use funny witty hashtags just for giggles on that account.

I read the readwriteweb article "What's the Point of: #Hashtags?" and found I agreed with it a lot. It is annoying to have people write stupid hashtags all the time. I hate when people try to get a topic trending by writing some lame hashtag with a bunch of misspelled words and text language. It just makes someone come off as less intelligent. I then think that if someone read my tweets maybe they would think my hashtags were lame too. Regardless, I think it is a really useful idea when it comes to using hashtags as a way to search for ideas or topics. I think twitter is a great place to turn to for information on all kinds of things. I use it all the time for school and it does end up being helpful when people use hashtags correctly. Besides, the young teens using hashtags in a silly way today might be the heads of companies coming up with new innovaive technology tomorrow!

Computer Programing

I have no interest in learning how to write code for computers. I think one of the great thing about the internet and computers in general is that it has only become easier to use them and they require me as the user to have less and less knowledge about the actual code necessary for me to be able to use them.

In the readwriteweb article "Computer Programming for All: A New Form of Literacy" the author writes about how important it will become for future generations to learn how to write code. He compares this to the class separation when only the most wealthy people learned how to read and write. I think this is a little extreme. I have to hire someone to fix my car too. Would it be faster and easier if I was highly skilled in fixing cars and could do it myself? Yes, not to mention cheaper, but that is not something I am interested in or choose to learn.

Kids will learn all kinds of stuff when they go to school and maybe they will learn to write code, but I don't think this is something that every kids will learn how to do alongside reading. I think the inherent growth of the internet and computers shows is how unnecessary it is. I can write this blog with no knowledge of code. That is partially why blogs are so popular. If I needed to know code in order to write it I wouldn't have gone into this type of masters program. Obviously this is just my opinion but I will be very interested to see how this idea progresses as computers do. It is easy to see we are only becoming a more technological world.

Student Relationships

The Edutopia article "Fostering Relationships in the Classroom" gives some good ideas for how to create good relationships in the classroom between the teachers and students. I think this is a really important aspect of teaching that I didn't really think about until I was actually in the classroom. The relationship you have with students obviously needs to be professional but it also has to be positive. I have had experiences where students don't like the rules in my classroom or feel like I'm being too strict. I think if a student knows you care about them and their education they will be more likely to go along with the rules and realize that you are doing things for a reason. I think this may be a bigger deal in the environment I teach in but I believe it would be important in any room.

In the article they provide several good tasks that would be great for icebreakers at the beginning of the year or as a way to break up the class. I think in order to get the class to act as a team it is important for them to have time to do team building activities. If they view each other as teammates they will be less likely to bully each other and more likely to support each other.

Student Engagement

The article "Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement" had a lot of the things I would have expected kids to want in their classroom. They talked about group work and using technology. They also want to see that you're passionate about the subject and that you can connect it to their lives. Something that I wasn't necessarily surprised to find but which seems to be making a recurrent appearance on all of my feeds lately is project based learning.

Kids seem to be very interested in project based learning. The new testing seems to be moving toward a more project based interactive evaluation instead of the go to multiple choice test. I think this is a great shift to make, but I think it will also be a tough one. I think it will be scary to jump off the edge of doing things the way we always traditionally have. I think it will be even harder because I am a department of one so I don't have the ability to work with other teachers going through the same thing in their classrooms and bounce things off each other. I think this is another way for me to connect on the internet. I think I will try to find some places online where I can collaborate with other teachers and make it my goal to have at least one of my four classes start off the new year using a project based learning approach.

Power Trip

I read an article by @Thenerdyteacher about using open ended projects to assess learning in the classroom. He said that the reason most teachers don't use projects like this is because they feel the need to control the project because the teachers probably think this is the best way to make students learn the material. He also says that he believes that by giving them the power they actually learn more.

This really got me thinking. I tend to try to control most aspects of classroom assignments. I do this because I think my students need guidelines or they go off in their own direction which usually includes popping on their headphones and browsing Facebook on their phones. It can be a total battle to just get them focused on an assignment, let alone trying to convince them to come up with their own creative project to do in relation to the book. I wonder how it would go if I did give them that control though. I think they might actually feel a bigger sense of responsibility. Maybe if I was willing to give them that power they would step up in ways I never even imagined they would. I think the reason a lot of teachers don't give up the power in the classroom is because it's scary! What if the kids don't live up to expectations and you're left with no way to assess their learning?

Has anybody done this before? How has it worked?

Twitter in the Classroom

I read the educause.com 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter and was pretty disappointed. I thought the fact that the article was citing numbers from 2006 and 2007 showed how outdated it was. While 5 years isn't that long ago the use of Twitter in the last 5 years has skyrocketed. That being said it did get me thinking about Twitter. I think using Twitter is a great thing. I use it all the time in my personal life and have recently opened a public account for use with my classes. The reason I decided to open one was because I noticed that in the past year or so my students have totally gotten into twitter. They love to scrawl FMOT (follow me on twitter) with their twitter names on my board. I am constantly erasing them. Then it finally clicked that it would be a great way to stay connected with students and leave posts about stuff that is happening in class, assignments, quotes, or other things.

Another reason I use Twitter professionally is to follow other teachers to get ideas. I follow @thenerdyteacher and find that his posts are incredibly inspiring. I followed his blog as part of my rss feed and have found a ton of great resources that I am able to bookmark using my delicious account. He also started a real time Great Gatsby which my class is currently reading. It is really funny for the students to follow along and it is a good tool to use for extension of the novel.

I love that all these new technologies I am being introduced to are really starting to work together. I think this is a class that I will actually be able to use. I know I am able to take a couple things from all of my Masters classes but this class seems like it is transforming my online presence and I'm excited to have that happen!