A Teacher’s Thoughts

Wikis it Seems

It seems this falls’ theme was the wiki. Starting with our team’s Amistad project, students and teachers alike began to discover how to leverage the features of a wiki to enhance, inspire, and document learning. While most students and teachers had used a wiki to retrieve information, only a couple of students had contributed to a wiki previously. Four classes embarked on creating separate wikis around the Amistad incident and the Industrial Revolution in general. Students and teachers practiced key skills in online content creation and collaboration. The one thing that struck me most was when the students moved into the content management role. They assessed their wikipages for gaps, self-assigned tasks for finding information, and spent time double checking each others’ work. This was exciting to watch.

Launch of the Science Fair Wiki

Inspired by the first annual Mount Washington Valley Science Fair and the many student scientists who participated (including two from my class), all the middle school teachers in our district agreed to jump on board with a science fair this year. A wiki was a perfect solution to allow students to showcase their developing work to each other. You can view the wiki here.

Implementation of Online Grading

This move just seems to make so much sense to me. Honestly I feel that having just made the move to online grading, our school was way behind and it really felt that way. Maybe its just our close proximity to the the often progressive state of Maine that made me feel this way so I was surprised to see how infrequently schools use this type of tool. In the end the transition was smooth.

Lessons learned:

• Commit and move forward

This worked for us because of what we did next

• One step at a time

In moving online, we were able to stay with our previous gradebook software. This meant there was no real change at first. Grades were simply stored in a different place, which has no effect on teachers or students. Only after we offered training (we have a few new teachers this year and a few that still used paper gradebooks) and confirmed everyone was using the software we opened up access to students. We allowed this to run for a few weeks. We offered more training and individualized help. The final step was to send home parent accounts.

• Set clear expectations

1. Use the gradebook
2. Update your gradebook weekly

• Differentiate Instruction

How often do we see this rule violated? Our whole-group training lasted less than 10 minutes. Afterward there we a few follow up sessions for those who needed extra help or wanted to learn more. Following that individualized assistance was offered through our team structure and via our tech committee.

I see this as a structural change in our building and likely why it has been so easy to implement. While this isn’t an example of an integration of technology into classroom practice, it does create a more technological environment in the building. It also offers a confidence booster to individuals who are good teachers, who have always been good at communicating about student progress, but who may lack technology skills. In the end there is more communication with families and families have more ready access to information. This can only be good for students.

Digital Tools and Technology Leader Grant Awards

These grants are providing for increased technology access and case studies on the use of technology in science classes across four schools in our district. The opportunity for case study comparisons will provide us with needed data to inform our decisions regarding further technology implementations in our district.

All in all, a great way to end 2008!

With a lot of excitement I am pleased to announce that my eighth grade science classes and another seventh grade science class will be going one-to-one with laptops. Following a bit of hard work we have received grant funding necessary to make this happen. In addition we will be putting laptops and hand-held data collection technologies into three elementary classrooms in our district. Our goal is to leverage the technology to increase students’ science inquiry skills. I am looking forward to working with the team we have assembled for this project. These educators are passionate about childrens’ learning and about technology. This will represent change for all those involved. People willing to undergo change are those who can make change happen.

Nothing pleases me more than when students, eighth graders I might add, are speechless. I mean how often does that happen? And, how often does a group of say 22 eighth graders go speechless? All it took was using ice to boil water. Science and curiosity in general are fueled by that one observation, that one irrefutable observation that flies in the face of previous understanding. When kids experience this, when what they thought they understood has just been shattered, their minds are open, engaged and eager.

Can that eagerness last a year? Can it last two years? I believe the desire to learn and to be challenged is in us all, though we may have forgotten some along the way. For these kids, is this a predictor of future success? If 21st century learning requires a life-long learner isn’t the willingness to see the new ideas and engage in thinking about discrepant events and ideas paramount? The skill itself is not new to this new digital landscape.

When I think out 20 years from now it is the engagement with ideas that I hope continues. This is a skill that takes a lifetime to tune. And those that do will apply themselves where they are needed and where they do well. And will they remember they boiled water by adding ice? Maybe.

Dave Riddell got me thinking about the different tools that many in the edublogosphere use for their classes. He poses the question as to why many of us choose to use third party tools over solutions provided by our organizations. So what is it about educational software? Or rather, what isn’t it about educational software that is when it comes to other available tools? I usually find educational software products lacking in some way or another. I expect most educators who are using 3rd party tools are vigilant in finding and adapting tools. In short we think of this as fun. As a result we are very aware of what is really available out there. The many different successful tools that exist, such as blogging engines or hosted blog sites or hosted wikis which become popular have proven their worth with a broader audience than education. Edublogs for example, while targeting the education market, is built on the successful WordPress engine. Successful products have had to respond to market demand, and the global community can place a lot of demands on a piece of software. Educational products however have a much narrower market. And, I expect there is often a disconnect between the end consumer (teacher, parent, student) and the purchaser (IT crew, administration). As a result the drive for improvements in the product cycle is weak.

I use a variety of third party tools for my classroom. Thus far the use of these tools has been well supported. Other teachers are adopting some of the same tools too. However, there are no tools provided in the first place (other than basic productivity software).

I think there are times when the supplied product is the right choice to use, even if the product is lacking. For example my school adopted an online grading and reporting system. I need to use this to maintain consistency with other teachers and facilitate communication with families. Whether I like the software or not, we were not reporting student progress online last year and we will be this year, so this is progress. If there is a better solution out there we will be looking for it.

Having done this twice now I will call it an annual survey. I did not elaborate on last year’s questions. Students were asked if they used a small variety of tools. With the beginning of the school year, I did not have time to revise the survey. Last year I wanted to get a handle on how connected my students were. This year is much the same. The simple informal, formative assessment of watching kids log on to the network and navigate is very telling. But as we are all creatures of habit, I have found that the picture can be a little more complex. Last year’s results can be seen here. So here are the results:

Overall 93% of my students are reporting home internet access this year. This result is up slightly from last year. Like last year I did not ask about broadband vs. dialup, which is still an issue in our area. Some students reported not always having home internet access. The percentage of students with cellphones and ipod/mp3 players came in at 73%, which is about the same as last year. Students with their own email accounts was up about 10% from last year at 86%. Lastly the number of students using a popular social networking site, either Myspace or Facebook was 41%. That is down from last year at about 55%.
Implications
At 93% of students with access at home and knowing that the remaining students have free nearby access at one of the public libraries, I feel comfortable requiring some online work from home. In addition there is some available time during the day to help those students who need access. Reliance on email is still not an option since too many students do not have an account. Of course there are other means of communicating assignments and needed documents.

Cellphones still are too far from ubiquitous to be really useful. Last year when we did the ROV simulation that fact was made apparent when we had difficulty getting enough phones together for our groups. Middle school students of course don’t have independent streams of income from part-time jobs as many high school students do so whether or not a student has a phone is probably entirely dependent on his/her parents.

The most interesting aspect of the 41% of students with a social networking account is that at the time of the survey, the percent of students old enough to meet the terms of service was less than 41%. I wonder how many parents really know what their kids are up to online. I expect for most it is very little. I am always reassured when I talk to students and find that their parents are on their friend list. Parents, if your child is on MySpace, Facebook, or other social site then you should be too.

The question now is what to add to the survey. I would like to know more about my student’s online activities. I do know a fair amount just from talking to the kids, for example online gaming and MySpace stories make it to school regularly. But what else do they do? What would you ask? Any suggestions?