So it is that time of year again. That stressful time where you must demonstrate to the admin from a school that you are in fact a competent teacher and improve student learning. I have probably gone through the process a dozen times and also been on the other side of the coin in leadership roles where I was an evaluator as a team leader (more on that later). I still go through the hoops, get my observations done, schedule the meetings, do the paperwork and attend feedback post-observation meetings on one or two lessons that are planned to the minute detail so that everything runs smoothly. This seems like an awful lot of time and energy for a brief snapshot into a day and the life of my classroom. So the important questions remains, does all this actually improve my teaching practice? Perhaps, early on in my teaching career but at this stage, I would argue that very little of this actually improves teaching and learning. So why on Earth are administrators and teachers wasting all this time to begin with? Historically, research in this area has shown that the two main purposes for teacher evaluation are to:
1. Assure that teachers meet a minimum competency level
2. Promote the professional growth of teachers
So assuming a teacher achieves the minimum competency level, do formal evaluations by principals actually improve or encourage growth of teachers? I would argue no.
Much of my growth as a teacher has not been through these feedback sessions but through watching others teach through co-teaching or collaborative planning. I still remember my first year as a teacher when my principal observed me and I was barely learning the ropes. The feedback she gave me, although informative, did not lead to any direct change in my teaching practice. Only through experience and working with phenomenal teachers as role models, did I alter my practice.
At my last school, we actually had a very effective teacher evaluation/appraisal system. Administrators did no formal observations. Instead, they were done through grade level leaders who were often your friends or colleagues who often co-taught lessons with you. They did give written feedback but I also learned an incredible amount through watching them teach, planning with them and reflecting with them. We did meet with our administrators to discuss goals and identify professional development opportunities that supported these goals. This freed up time for administrators to actually do what they are paid to do, administrate. The assumption was that 99% of the teachers at the school, were extremely competent teachers (that’s why they were hired) so why waste valuable time having administrators confirm what they already knew? After all, teachers are truly the experts when it comes to teaching and learning.
Recently, I have been using a program called Neighborhood Map Machine to support the Grade 2 Social Studies unit on Communities and the Grade 3 unit on Mapping and Landforms.
Above: A map mystery of an island community created by a student.
Overall, I’ve been very impressed with the program. Not only does it have many map mysteries and activities that reinforce mapping skills such as measurement, compass work, coordinates and direction but one of my favorite features is the ability for students to create their own maps and mysteries.
Above: Students creating 3D models from their maps designed using Map Machine
Neighborhood Map Machine allow students to not only create their own map and add roads, houses, people, buildings and landforms but also record audio, video or text clues for a mystery. They choose a mystery location and have students follow their own clues to find the secret location. All of this involves some considerable higher-order thinking since they need to plan their clues in advance and ensure that they communicate their clues clearly.
A colleague of mine had a great idea to take this a step further. We found out that you can print 3D nets of the buildings so we decided to have the students create a 3D model of their 2 D map that they had done during technology time.
I would love to hear how others have used this program in the classroom!
Here are my current iPod Touch Apps. Some of my favorites are:
Instapaper-Great little app that allows you to save web content to read offline. This is great for traveling at airports. You can view all content later while you are flying
Air Sharing-Great file management and for downloading and transfering files between computers. Allows you to add keynotes, ppt, word documents and view them on your iphone/ipod touch.
eReader-Love this one for traveling as well. Same as a Kindle in that you can download books and read them. Makes traveling all that much lighter!
Convertbot-Handy conversion tool for just about anything that you could possible think of including weight, length, volume, currency, speed. Love the interface too!
Drinks Free-This is great for parties and wondering which drinks you can make with which ingredients. You can put in what you have and it will tell you which cocktails you can make with it
iFitness-If you are into physical training, this app is amazing. If you are like me and forget what exercises you have done a few days ago and how much you lifted, this helps a lot. It allows you to view exercises for any specific muscle group, log reps and weights and even graphs performance overtime. Also, has nice photos and even videos.
For the most part, most would argue that technology in the classroom is a good thing. Despite the technical mishaps, the learning curve for teachers and the occasional frustration of things not quite working the way you would like, it bring enormous rewards in terms of learning, student engagement, creativity and collaboration, especially with the development of web 2.0 tools.
The current school that I am working in, recently purchased a number of SMART boards for classrooms. On average, one per grade level/department. As a Information Technology teacher, I also have one in my computer lab. SMART boards definitely have that “wow factor” for everyone. Students would gasp at my apparent magical ability to prerecord welcome messages to them and play them back through the screen recorder. Parents who were CEO executives would beg me to come to their board meetings to give demos on the presentation power of these devices.Teachers would pop in for visits during my classes and then ask me how they can get one in their classrooms.
Full disclosure:I am by no means a SMART board guru. I just starting using them a few weeks ago.
So in my limited use of them. I still have learned the basics of using them and all their fun little tools attached to the Notebook software. I am dabbling into the vast sea of resources out there. The fact is, SMART boards are not new technology by any means. Many schools in the UK have them installed in every classroom. SMART technologies first introduced the interactive whiteboard in 1991. 18 years later, they are finally making their way into some schools as a new technology!
Despite all their advantages, some might argue that they are just a gloried chalkboard. Think about it, when the first chalkboards were introduced into classrooms back in 1801, it must have turned the education system upside down. Imagine, being able to write your ideas on a board for students to read, copy and recite! Revolutionary indeed. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the SMART board as an instructional tool but I’m not convinced it is the best learning tool..if that makes sense (and if my principal is reading this, please don’t take my SMART board away ). I taught in a classroom that was 1:1 and at the time, our Technology Director had the choice of buying SMART boards or getting laptops for each student. He chose the latter for this reason. I would put SMART boards in the same category as instructional tools such as overhead projectors, document cameras and data projectors. They are all really nice to have. However, as I watch one student come up to the SMART board at a time while everyone else watches, I go back to one of the greatest teachers of all, Confucious, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” How can we increase the “doing” in classrooms?
So how can we make “SMART” classrooms?
Let me put it this way, if you had $10 000 to invest in the learning of a classroom through technology, how best would you spend the money?
On my travels through Cambodia this summer, I debated on whether to bring an expensive but incredible toy, my ipod touch. (A) because I thought I wouldn’t use it that much and (B) I didn’t want to get it stolen or lost. Well, at the last minute, I decided to take it just in case. It turns out that it was probably the most important item I brought save my passport and clean underwear. Why? Well, there were many hours I spent waiting and long bus rides with blaring Cambodian music and I could withdraw into my musical sanctum. Besides getting very addicted to the app Scrabble, I had some TED videos saved on there as well.
I watched the TED talk by Bill Gates on Mosquitos, Malaria and Education. Mr. Gates in addition to being a successful billionaire is also a philanthropist. I do respect him for this. Besides trying to find a cure for malaria, he is also deeply interested in improving America’s educational system. This is where it gets interesting (at least for me).
If you haven’t watched it and don’t have time to watch the beginning part about malaria, skip to the 7:55 mark where he talks about education.
Now, he is right about one thing. The american educational system is suffering. However, he rationalizes that the problem is that the US doesn’t have enough exceptional teachers. What does he use as his main supporting evidence for this claim? Test scores. I cringe every time I hear these two words. I am very thankful that I wasn’t brought up as a student in this environment nor do I have to teach in it. Now, this is where things get sticky. Well, standardized test scores have their place, they should NOT be the sole indicator for students achievement, a school’s achievement and especially not an indicator of the effectiveness of a teacher!
Here is my list of the 5 biggest problems with standardized tests:
1. They are typically culturally biased and ethnocentric-Many of these questions have reading passaged that are based on a north american’s culture. I remember giving a reading assessment on a passage about baseball to some of my korean students. The questions ask about homeruns and rules that would be much easier if she had of seen or played baseball before.
2. Performance-based tests can cause increase anxiety and stress-Imagine that for every unit of study, you would be asked to stand up on stage while a professor grills you about what you have learned. That’s how some students feel under these types of conditions.
3. Only measure one kind of learning modality-Standardized tests are usually in the form of multiple choice or short answer. This rewards students who are visual and logical learners and not those who learn through kinesthetic, auditory, intrapersonal, etc.
4. Only reward students for the “right answer” and not correct thinking- This is why Mathematics professors design tests which give points to students fo the correct thought process, even if they don’t get the right answer.
5. Does not measure attitudes and creative thinking- Standardized tests are usually one dimensional. What about students attitudes towards a subject area or original thinking?
So if all these inherent problems exist with standardized tests, why are we basing funding for schools on this alone? Why are we using these test scores to determine who is an “exceptional teacher” and who is not? While I will give Mr. Gates some points for actually asking a more important question, what qualities does an effective teacher exhibit? I think that many teachers do plateau in their teaching methodology unless challenged to learn from others.
Teaching is only one of the small factors in improving America’s educational system. I think more importantly, school’s need: smaller class sizes, more funding for resources, improved professional development, increased teacher support roles and improved facilities just to name a few. I believe Bill Gates whose heart is in the right place but his head just needs to be steered into the right direction.
Picture this, we are 4 weeks into a unit on Life Cycles and ordered over 200 caterpillars for our grade level for students to observe as it goes through each stage of the life cycle. Sounds like a great idea right? Unfortunately, 199 of the caterpillars went through only 2 stages of the life cycle..caterpillar and death. The other one somehow managed to go through a Darwinian miracle and ate all the leaves so none of the other caterpillars survived. Ironically, he ate himself to death. Not exactly a great start to the unit.
Fortunately, this story has a happy ending (or this wouldn’t exactly be an exciting blog post).Last week, one of my Grade 2 students came rushing into class, practically bouncing off the walls with sheer excitement. She had managed to find 2 huge caterpillars in her backyard that were sitting on a tree. She carefully placed them in a see-through container (that was much better than our class one) and diligently picked the right leaves from the same tree as she remembered from class that caterpillars are particular about the type of leaves they can eat. She came running to my desk and said, “Mr. Marshall, Mr. Marshall, I think they are molting and getting ready to pupate” All the other kids gathered around and agree. I told her that I thought it was a great idea and we should put them on the display table to observe. Every morning, her and a few others would come in with new leaves and methodically clean the container, put a little bit of water and put them back in the container as if she was taking care of a baby. A few days later, some students excitedly discovered that they were now in a chrysalis. Sure enough, as I looked at them and they had created silk buds on the leaves and were now in the pupa stage. I got out my video camera and used iStopMotion to take a time lapse photo of it every 30 seconds so we could observe any changes. The news spread like wildfire and soon, other students from other classes came to observe these two caterpillars. This revitalized and infused a sense of excitement and curiosity into a unit that was quickly fizzling out. In a sense, the small action taken by this one child had created a huge impact on the learning of the rest of the Grade 2 community.
3 of my students with the caterpillars they found
So what does this mean?
We as teachers sometimes dismiss, neglect or acknowledge one of the most fundamental parts of the learner inquiry cycle- action. This is evident in the Primary Year’s Programme (PYP) from the IBO in this learner profile.
As you can see from this diagram, action is put on the same level as concepts, skills, and attitudes. In fact, the IBO states this in the PYP Handbook, Making it Happen:
The PYP believes that international education must extend beyond intellectual attainment to include not only responsible attitudes but also thoughtful and appropriate action. International schools can and should meet the challenge of offering all learners the opportunity and the power to choose their actions, to act and to reflect on these actions in order to make a difference in and to the world. The PYP believes that every student, every year, has the right and the duty to be involved in such action. In order to make the action component of the curriculum as powerful as possible in terms of student learning the PYP advocates a cycle of involvement which provides students with opportunities to engage in meaningful action.
Here is a diagram of the action cycle:
The action component of the PYP involves service in the widest sense of the word: service to
fellow-students, to the staff and to the community. Through such service, students are able to grow both socially and personally, developing skills such as cooperation, problem solving, conflict resolution and creative and critical thinking. These actions are, moreover, ways in which the students exhibit their commitment to the attitudes that we seek to engender within the PYP classroom.
I always thought action had to be big service run projects like building schools or raising money for orangutan sanctuaries. However, after attending a workshop on Action and the PYP, I learned that action starts with small, student-driven, spontaneous connections to learning that is happening in the classroom. In fact, the PYP planner even has a space to record student actions that took place in the unit during the reflection stage. While working at WAB, it was always exciting to hear from other teachers about some of the action that students engaged. It would also show the level of interest from a students’ point of view and how well we engaged them. Here are some examples of student action that we recorded in our planners:
Bringing in books related to the unit of inquiry
Creating a poster about an issue
Discovering a website
Sending an email to an author
Creating a science experiment at home
And of course, bringing in caterpillars from home
Guidelines for implementation of effective action (taken from PYP Making it Happen handbook):
should be voluntary and involve students in exercising their own initiative and in taking
responsibility for their actions
should be based on balanced understandings and not biased stereotypical thinking
usually begins in a small way and arises from genuine concern and commitment
is usually, for younger children, grounded in their own concrete experience
demands appropriate adult support in order to facilitate students’ efforts and to provide them
with alternatives and choices
is not always concerned with raising funds.
I recently had a parent meeting and he was telling me a story in which his child once brought in a learning puzzle connected to an animal unit they were studying. The teacher actually punished this child for bringing in toys from home! He said this affected her for months after and she was unengaged, disliked school and scared to bring in anything from home to school again. He was so happy and relieved to hear that I was actually promoting students bringing in games, objects and books from home.
Just Pay it Forward
We sometimes forget that some of the biggest changes we can have as educators often goes unnoticed. One of my favorite movies of all time is Pay it Forward (I challenge you to get through it without shedding a tear)in which Kevin Spacey plays a teacher who at the beginning of the year introduces this bonus assignment to his middle school students to come up with one idea to help change the world. Anyway, one student in his class takes this to heart and comes up with the idea of “Paying it forward” and does one good deed for someone and in return, they must do 3 good deeds to others. This is an example of action at its best. Perhaps idealistic but shouldn’t we be at least striving to foster these kinds of things from our students?
Although I am not working at a PYP school currently, much of pedagogy remains the same. I suppose the old cliche, “you can take me out of a PYP school but you can’t take the PYP out of me” applies here.
This the venue of the summit-Canadian International School. And yes, that is canadian timber imported from BC on the roof. They even served Canadian back-bacon for breakfast. Made me feel like I was home..
What the Conference was really about:
It’s taken me a week to finally get my head around the learning from the Hong Kong Apple Leadership Summit. In a word, it was inspiring. Many people asked me afterwards, “Hey, how was the conference?” and for whatever reason, it was difficult to summarize. Others commented, “Wow, with all those technology gurus, you must have learned some really apps.” Surprisingly, I couldn’t recall a single application that I learned about that hadn’t already used. Then again, it wasn’t so much about learning about new tools (although there were some hands-on workshops), it was the how to use these tools to improve learning for students. This is exactly how it should be with our students. I truely believe that technology has turned a corner in their evolutionary path in education. Technology conferences used to be about everyone opening the same computer program and a supposed “expert” stand in the front of the room teach us non-digital natives how to do all the ins and outs of the program. It was mind-numbing and overwhelming. There was usually no context for the learning and a week later, we would forget everything we learned. Nowadays, we have gotten a little smarter and we know there are better ways to use technology in the classroom. Best practices integrating technology show that we must be teaching skills “just in time” so that skills are meaningful, appropriate and relevant. Just-in-Time (JIT) learning challenges the traditional educational model that assumes the information is tied to one source (usually the teacher or textbook). JIT learning happens because the learner is motivated to learn and they need to learn something in order to accomplish the task. There were so many of these types of moments during the conference.
A Conference-Web 2.0 style
So back to the conference. I really knew that this was going to be a dynamic and engaging conference when many of the participants were twittering #hksummit (this was the tagline of the conference) while the conference was going on. There were over 50 pages of tweets and it was the one of the top 5 “trending topics” on Twitter. Very exciting stuff. In addition, there was a backchat channel where some of the most exciting conversations were happening in response to the speakers. People where streaming the conference live on their iPhone and then broadcasting it via ustream. There is also a Facebook group page that was created during the session. Imagine if we had this level of engagment in our schools..
Keynote Speakers:
Tom Kelley, author of Ten Faces of Innovation spoke about innovation and how vital they are for organizations to develop.
Stephen Heppell, a professor, a wealth of information and recipient of the first-ever “Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in ICT Education” award
Marco Torres, a high school teacher, media coach, and education technology director for San Fernando High School. He is a professional filmmaker and photographer who uses his digital storytelling skills in education
Here is a great summary video of the conference that could probably summarize it better than I could.
Following the keynote speakers, there were fantastic break-out sessions led by Apple Distinguished Educators and other leaders about these topics:
Technology and Pedagogy in International Schools-An Introduction to iWork
1:1 @ The Canadian International School of Hong Kong
Connecting with your Community: Podcasting for leadership
Proof of Effective Learning: A Case Study of Concordia International School, Shanghai
Social Studies Integration
Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow-Today! and Challenge-based Learning
Supporting Technology Infusion using Laptop Carts-A Case Study by Shanghai American School
Behind the Red Door (Research Education Development)
Multi-platform integration-A Case Study of Renaissance College Hong Kong
Framing Acceptable Technology Use in a 21st Century Learning Environment
Rock Out (and learn) in Your Class
IBO/DP Oral Assessment with GarageBand
Models for Teaching Teachers Technology at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong
Get Connected! Video Conferencing in the Classroom
Creating Student Film Festivals
Setting Leadership Examples with the use of ICT
Reinventing Western Academy of Beijing
Korean International School 1:1 Lesson Learned
Unfortunately, I was only able to attend 2 break-out sessions because they were being held simultaneously. There were so many interesting sessions as well and if anyone had further links to these sessions, I would love to see the notes.
One thing that was interesting was that the evaluation forms by Apple were all in given to us in paper form. Sigh..well I guess there is always something to improve upon for next conference
So many great links and videos shared. Really enjoyed this one and feel like it encapsulated the essence of the conference.
My Favorite Quotes:
“We look at technology as a tool, students look at technology as an environment” Stephen Heppell
“Attendance is compulsory and learning is optional” vs “Learning is compulsory and attendance is optional”-Stephen Heppell
“Technology is only technology to those before that tech was invented. To children it is the world they live in.”
“You don’t develop water safety by waiting until kids are 16 and then throwing them off the pier.” Stephen Heppel in response to AUPs and online safety
I’m still amazed at how I ended up in the world of blogging and web 2.0 tools coming from a background in experiential and outdoor education. As I reflect on it, there are more similarities in both disciplines that I originally thought. Both emphasize social interaction and collaboration, risk-taking, and personal reflection. Although one takes place in remote lakes in the wilderness in a canoe and the other in the depths of cyberspace, the learning experience is very similar. Both involve going from the known to the unknown.
Blogging evolved in my classroom out of a question that I’m sure many teachers face in education. How do we allow students to read and write for an authentic purpose? I was probably into my 4th week of teaching my students narrative writing. We had been focusing on the several traits from the 6 Traits Writing program which were sentence fluency and word choice and my Grade 2 students were absolutely loving it. I had created a culture of writers in the classroom in which students craved time to work on their imaginative stories. How did I create this culture? Through a very simple idea that has been around in the world of pedagogy for years. By allowing students the opportunity to share their stories. Sometimes I would read them aloud or they would volunteer to do the same. This simple act of sharing was fundamental in creating this culture of writers (and readers!). We as teachers sometimes forget how powerful this part of the learning process.
All too often, we rush to finish up final assessments, throw their work in their portfolio if we are lucky and quickly start gathering resources and planning for the next unit. I would argue that this sharing and presenting is vital to the learning process and doesn’t necessarily have to happen at the end. Feedback is a powerful learning tool is essential. Moreover, feedback doesn’t need to always come from the teacher. True, we need to model what good feedback looks like but the feedback from their peers can reaffirm things that they are doing well as well as areas to improve on.
So here are my top 5 reasons to set up a classroom blog:
1. Motivation/Enthusiasm-As soon as you introduce technology and being able to showcase their writing, students are very motivated to write as it gives their writing an authentic audience and purpose. Publishing their writing digitally allows students who are kinesthetic or visual and helps differentiate writing tasks. Even my ESL students can’t wait to blog. I have seen a dramatic increase in the quality and quantity of their writing
2. Feedback-we all know how vital feedback is for the learning process. Classroom blogging has allowed me the chance to give feedback on students work more regularly than if it was hand-written. Why? Perhaps it is the ease of it all and being able to read their blogs at my own time and comment (I’m a much faster typer than writer). Also, it is convieniently organized online and I don’t have to worry about bringing home 17 writing notebooks. Not only does it give me the chance to give feedback but more importantly, their peers get a chance to give feedback. This all takes higher-order thinking skills that are so important for life long learning.
3. Flattens Classroom Walls-all too often as teachers, we keep everything inside the classroom. There could be amazing ideas and learning happening in your classroom but how often do we get to share this with other students, parents and colleagues? Some of these ideas do trickle out to grade teams/departments but rarely beyond that. We as teachers always complain that we are “reinventing the wheel”. Through classroom blogs, you can share and celebrate these great things with other students, colleagues and parents.
4. Multimedia tools-With the explosion of Web 2.0 tools, most blogs allow you to publish music, photos and videos. Now blogs don’t even have to have traditional text but students can share work through digital storytelling, podcasts, and video
5. Differentiation-This allows students to engage through both their learning style and interest. How often do we have students who simply don’t want to write through a traditional method? Blogging allows for those students (sometimes ESL) who are sometimes not interested or engaged in writing. ESL students are given the opportunity to write through a digital medium or through podcasting software. Also, students who enjoy through technology are suddenly motivated. The writing I get as a whole class-level is amazing!
you will learn a whole host of new technology skills that you can share with your colleagues. This can help revitalize your interest in learning and teaching with something exciting and new.
So where to from here?
There are so many amazing blogs out there that I have read, podcasts that I have listened to and online conferences that I have partipated in that have furthered my understanding in blogging.
I would recommend that you as a professional have your own blog to actually see the benefits of it. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, then you won’t understand the learning that your students are going through.
Here are some great resources to get your started:
Rachel Boyd has a great site about the “how to” of blogging using Blogger.
This wiki goes over some of the rational for blogging as well as many examples of elementary blogging sites.
This Moving forward wiki again has a wealth of information and resource
So are there any arguments against using blogging in the classroom?
Despite all these great reasons and benefits to student learning, there are some teachers or administrators that might have some concerns.
1. It is not developmentally appropriate to younger students- This argument as it relates to education stems from Piaget’s work in developmental education. Educators then took this theory and said, well if Student A is not understanding a concept, therefore it is not developmentally appropriate. Since then, many cognitive psychologists have proved that this theory is fundamentally flawed.
Willingham (2008) states:
If a child, or even the whole class, does not understand something, you should not assume that the task you posed was not developmentally appropriate. Maybe the students are missing the necessary background knowledge. Or maybe a different presentation of the same material would make it easier to understand.
Willingham (2008) has an excellent article about “What is developmentally appropriate practice?”
Furthermore, Jay Matthews discusses this article in his blog post, he writes:
This, I think, is the largest flaw of many of the common education memes like developmentally inappropriate practice. It provides a convenient excuse to focus the student’s failure to learn on the student himself rather than on how the material was presented to the student. If the student has failed to understand, there is often an underlying reason which needs to be discovered, analyzed, and the presentation remedied to avoid the confusion preventing the student from learning. Labelling the task as developmentally inappropriate allows the teacher to avoid this difficult task. Being able to remedy the presentation to avoid students’ failures of understand is one of the reasons why we pay for highly-educated professionals, and not merely trained technicians. Yet, oddly, educators are often reluctant to engage in this difficult activity, preferring the recourse of a myriad of labels that shift the blame for failing to learn to the students.
It is frustrating to hear this excuse from teachers or administrators who have not read recent brain research that contradicts this old theory. So when I hear this concern, I wonder, do my students actually understand what blogging is? Here is one student’s response.
Clearly, she has no trouble understanding what blogs are. So then I think, maybe blogging is such a difficult skill that it is developmentally inappropriate. Just because some teachers do not understand what blogging is, does not make it developmentally appropriate. Instead, we need to be advocating blogging for teachers so they can personally see the benefits of blogging.
What skills do students need?
How to click save and post-if we even expect students to use computers, this is a much easier skill then playing Club Penguin online
How to type-Students who are 7 years old are not the fastest typers but neither is my mom. So maybe computers are not developmentally appropriate for my mom. Arguebly, my 7/8 year old students are not fast handwriters and some of them could barely write a complete sentence at the beginning of the year but we still expect students to write stories right? I would argue that typing is a much more useful skill to learn then handwriting in today’s digital world anyway. Count how many times per day that you write a handwrittern letter versus typing an email. Guess what? If we don’t allow students to practice these skills, they are not going to get better.
Furthermore, blogging does not require extensive writing. Most of my students posts range from a couple of sentences to a paragraph. Hardly time consuming. In addition, blog posts can take the form of video or photos. Students can quickly reflect on an idea, capture it using PhotoBooth and upload it all in the span of 20 minutes. I get much more information assessment-wise as a teacher then I would if I asked them to write a handwritten reflection about it.
If blog posts are too long, we could be having students Twitter which limits them to 140 characters, but that’s a post for another day…
2. It takes time from other areas of the curriculum
This is just simply untrue. Any teacher who has their students blog will tell you otherwise. It actually does the opposite and enhances the curriculum as it combines learning outcomes from reading, writing, speaking, listening and science or social studies (not to mention technology). This is integration at its best. If anything, we should be recognizing the amazing work done by teachers and students and note this as best practice. Students are motivated, do extension activities on blogs, and since tasks are set up with a real audience and purpose, it is deeply meaningful. We preach about differentiation and blogging is differentiation at its best! Why? Because you are differentiating to ability, interest and learning style. Ability-wise, students are extending their writing skills at home and at school. From an interest standpoint, students are writing about topics they are interested in. Students who blog, are very visual and kinesthetic learners.
If you are still not convinced that many students are blogging in elementary, look at this extensive list
For me, the benefits seem obvious. We need to be responsible for responding to the needs of a new digital learner and era, sooner rather than later.
I’ve read many blogs and sites on the “how do you twitter” but haven’t come across many about the why you would twitter. So I thought I would blog about my thoughts on the why aspect.
The first time I saw Twitter, I didn’t get it at all so don’t worry, you are not the only one. It took me almost a month before I saw any point to it. Now, it has revolutionized how I learn and relate with others.
I actually think this video doesn’t show the whole picture. If you only tweeted about how you had coffee this morning or mowed the lawn, people wouldn’t follow you. You need to provide something substantial and interesting.
So what is Twitter?
Simply put, it is a social networking tool. The best analogy I can make is it is much like the status updates on Facebook. It provides a quick way to say what you are working or doing now. However, Facebook limits your status updates (unless you make it public) to friends or people in your network. Twitter extends this to the rest of the world.
You can follow practically anyone. Many prominent faces in the world are twittering from Obama and McCain to Britney Spears and Shaquille O’Neil. Read more about it here
Great, now why would I ever want to share what I am doing with a bunch of strangers?
Think about it this way. Why would you go to a educational conference or workshop? To find out about what best practices are out there, make connections with teachers and hopefully learn something new. However, sometimes you go to workshops that are fascinating and want to learn more from the presenter. Usually you forget about this workshop or lose their business card they gave you. Twitter allows you maintain contact and read updates, new blog posts or interesting websites that they find automatically. You do this by “following” them on Twitter.
Slowly, your network grows as you follow more people. You develop a niche of people who are interested in similar things as you. Once you have this network, you an ask them questions and build on a shared knowledge from this network. This is often referred as a PLN (personal learning network).
If you don’t have a network, I agree it is useless. If you just had a random group of people that you were following, you might ocassionally learn something new but significantly less that you do in your own PLN. I would say you probably need to find and follow at least 20 or more people who have a common interest you. I usually add international teachers or people involed in technology. My passion is technology so I get all sorts of links and great information from them.
So how might I get followed by others?
Like any team, you need to give as well as take. If you don’t “give anything” than people aren’t going to follow you. Everyone has some knowledge to offer others whether it be a good website, a great technology tool or a better teaching strategy. Share it! Slowly, you will start appearing in search results and people will recognize this and add you. This creates a culture of reciprocity. If you aren’t a team player, Twitter might not be for you.
Here is a image from my recent twitter history:
On the left is all tweets from people I have followed. In the middle, are specific replies from others to me. As you can see, each tweet is short and have links to interesting topics or ideas. It’s like 1 big sharing circle! A twitter friend (@mscofino) posted some photos her class had taken about fractions. I am teaching Fractions next week and gave me a good teaching idea to do.
So that is a little about the what and why. It may or may not make sense to you at this point. The best way to understand something though is to go and experience it and defer judgement. Try it out for awhile and slowly you will start to see the benefits and become addicted.
For a detailed how to get started, go to this blog site that is designed by and for teachers:
“Wow, why haven’t we been doing this all year?” we both said to each other. We are both Grade 2 teachers, passionate about teaching, and had very little time to plan these experiments. Our team had been planning a series of science experiments for our Grade 2 classes. We had the same schedule and so the logical thing was to try and put both our classes together (16 in each) and team teach each experiment. On top of that, we were given some rather mundane outdated science lessons (although very comprehensive). We decided to spruce them up. The results were amazing.
Not only did it enhance the actual instruction we gave to the kids but the students benefited with working with each other through a series of hands-on experiences on Changes in Matter. We had both our classes sit together on the floor of the science lab while we walked them through essential understandings, big questions and had students make predictions. Students were partnered up with their science buddy.
One of the greatest benefits during the lesson delivery was that we could piggy-back on each others questions and ideas. When you are doing a lesson on your own, you don’t have that think time during instruction. The beauty of having another set of teacher eyes and ears is that you could clarify points that the other teacher made or left out. We would also learn teaching ideas from each other. Simple things that sometimes you forget to use as a teacher but seeing it modeled by a colleague with you quickly reminds you of the benefits.
The other benefit was that we could plan ideas to extend the experiments or reteach areas that students were struggling with. For example, we had an extra experiments set up at the back where students could go if they finished early and make observations on shells and rocks, draw diagrams or combine different mixtures. This idea came out of planning together.
Furthermore, we would always have a wrap up whole class(es) discussion at the end where students could summarize their observations and inferences and we could guide them in their understanding. We added some fun to it and would choose “Top Scientists” who made great observations, helped out, answered questions carefully, etc. We would give them little stickers that they put on their science lab books. Although extrinsic in nature, stickers motivated students throughout the lesson and increased the quality of work. Who says stickers are a bad thing?
Finally, it helped with classroom logistics. Luckily, we had a lab assistant set up all the experiments beforehand. But during the experiments, problems happen. A students spills water or loses their lab work. Having 2 teaching bodies in there allows one to deal with the issue while the other can move the class along.
So the questions remain, why did it work so successfully between our 2 classes? We both have similar constructivist teaching styles which helps. Another reason is that we have a “yes and..” approach. In other words, if one teacher has an idea, the other says yes and builds upon the idea. Will it work with other classes and teachers? Who knows but would love to hear about other success stories.
We are both so excited about the idea that we are now going to team teach Math lessons..in the science lab!
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). I taught in a classroom that was 1:1 and at the time, our Technology Director had the choice of buying SMART boards or getting laptops for each student. He chose the latter for this reason. I would put SMART boards in the same category as instructional tools such as overhead projectors, document cameras and data projectors. They are all really nice to have. However, as I watch one student come up to the SMART board at a time while everyone else watches, I go back to one of the greatest teachers of all, Confucious, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” How can we increase the “doing” in classrooms?
