My Vicarious MACUL Experience

Sadly, while all of my fellow cohort members were attending the MACUL Conference two Friday's past, I was doing my very best to ensure that Kleenex stays a profitable business. However, thanks to technology and my cohort members' wonderful blogging skills, I was able to see how many of them felt about many of the speakers at the conference itself. In my not attending the conference, I was actually given the interesting position of being able to judge the reactions of others without having any experience of my own to interfere with their reactions. So with that in mind, I'd like to talk about some of the trends that I saw in there various posts.

First of all, the one thing that I saw in all of the posts that I read were senses of optimism and eagerness. All of the blogs that I read had positive things to say about one or more of the speakers and presentations that they observed and attended (Liz Kolb and Friday Night Lights to name a few). Beyond that, they all suggested that there was at least one component of one of the talks that they would like to, or are going to try and incorporate into their classrooms (authentic audiences in English classrooms). This suggests to me that the speakers had some very nice things to say, and that my fellow cohort members were prepared and excited to hear about some things that they might be able to use to make their classroom better. That seems to be a common theme in all of our classes, yet it seems like it was heightened at this conference.

The second thing that I saw was a very sensible and focused nature to the sessions that were attended. I read blogs from science, foreign language, English, and history teachers and they all were attending conferences where they could pick up some information directly related to their classroom practices. This may seem like a pretty obvious thing, but some of them chose to attend these discipline specific speakers in lieu of speakers that they would have found more interesting personally. This suggests a dedication to our profession and an earnest interest in making their classrooms better for the students that come through. Again, this is not something that is surprising to me based on the time that I've spend with these individuals, but it reaffirms the perceptions that I already held.

Third, I saw some very inquisitive minds as well as some challenges to some of the things that they heard. Some of my cohort members were critical consumers of the various speakers that they heard and didn't take what was being said as it was likely conveyed. We have been taught to think about how information supports, extends, or challenges our already existing knowledge and I saw that happening in some of the posts of my classmates. One of the biggest was the value of some of these practices in their own placement for one reason or another. Many of them saw restrictions regarding student interest, access to technology, mentor teacher acceptance, and other reasons. Again, this shows me the dedication that many of my classmates have to the students and to the placement schools that we are in right now. They were considering not how these technologies might be able to benefit some future classroom, but rather how they might benefit the students that they have right now which is wonderful. I'm not saying that they weren't cataloging things for later, because they certainly were, but they seemed to have a high priority on the classes that they are in right now.

Sadly, none of them talked about getting swag from the conference.

 

Finally, I'm constantly blown away by the support and the encouragement that is shared between this group. Whether it is rides to a distant conference, support with some sort of assignment, or a simple text conveying well wishes to a classmate that was unable to attend a conference they were all at, they are compassionate, sincere, and altruistic individuals. And if any profession deserves people such as this, it is teaching.

If you are interested in reading some of the blogs that I refer to above, they are listed below:

http://schoolofgoldfishcrackers.blogspot.com/ (Science)

http://mrpepptalks.blogspot.com/ (History)

http://futurebiologyteacher.blogspot.com/ (Science)

http://croakmonsieur.blogspot.com/ (Foreign Language)

http://emteach.blogspot.com/ (English)

http://historyofyesterday1066.blogspot.com/ (History)

http://gettinstraitas.blogspot.com/ (English)

Google Classroom Screencast

Find it below!

Teaching the Digital Natives

I have to start with a quick rant. When I was a child, if we went out to dinner I was required to, among many other things, sit at the table the entire meal, keep my elbows off of the table, draw only on the paper that my mom would bring for me (but mom, the white tablecloth is perfect for it!) and stay attentive and enjoy the time with family and friends. These days, I go out with my friends and half of the table spends most of the meal tweeting their food (which I typically steal some of while they are hashtagging it #delicious #2fresh #FoodasArt). Meanwhile, the young parents at the tables next to me feel like the only way that they can entertain their little monsters (not a Gaga reference) is to give them their phones, pads, etc or let them tear around the restaurant. Withholding my beliefs on those parenting tactics, I'll just say that these kids are missing valuable opportunities to establish memories and relationships with friends and family to play Jewel Runner for the 232nd time.

I bring this up, because these are the children that will populate the classrooms that I hope to stand in front of some day soon. What must I do to ensnare their focus? I think this is, in a way, what we have been trying to answer throughout our time spent in Teaching with Technology. I think there is an unexpressed understanding that technology must be involved in the classroom for kids to glean the most from the lessons and teachers. How should we do that though? Do we try and teach all of our lessons with technology? Do we let students bring their own technology into the classroom and hope that they "respect" us enough to stay off of Twitter and Snapchat? Do we find a way to engage them through technology outside of the classroom so that they connect the home to the classroom? Which technologies do we bring into the classroom? Prezi? Vocaroo? Cel.ly? Youtube?

 Or perhaps it is a combination of some of all of the above? It's such a tough conundrum because we all come into this profession with some expectations of what will work best for us and for our students. Then when we are in training learning how to become a teacher, we are given even more information about what is best and what should work. Yet, what matters more than anything else is understanding your students, the context of the classroom, and what will be best for the most students at that moment. And this shifts from space to space and year to year. The same questions and quandaries are applicable to technology as well. Every year there are new technologies, new problems and new solutions to be understood and implemented. So how do we manage all of these problems to properly engage a collection of students who have the attention span of a goldfish (which is a saying I've never understood, are we to assume because of their confinements that they are easily distracted? Perhaps because their reflection is all around them? Thoughts of a goldfish: "Hey who is that?" "Wait who are you?" "Man why won't anyone talk to me?"). I'm not sure I really have the answer to that question, but equally doubtful that anyone has an answer that works in every context. What I do have, is a willingness to try and a great (developing) background knowledge in technology and education which will serve me well. Hopefully that will persist and I won't ever become a grumpy old jaded teacher saying...

 The phrase digital native is a curious one. To me, it suggests that these kids are born into, and have no choice but to grow up with the fingers on the keys and their eyes on a screen. I wonder how true this is though. Right now, as elementary and middle schools exist, most students aren't imbued with technology in the classroom. The trajectory of schooling though is such that, pretty soon, we might create that environment. If we do, will we be fulfilling the "digital native" label for even more students, making that label even more appropriate and honest? Would that ultimately be a good thing? Based on my experiences and opinion of technology I would hazard saying yes...but then I think back my restaurant experiences and I'm not so convinced. How about you?

Cell Phones in the Classroom

Imagine a kindergartner with a smartphone. To me, and I would imagine many others, it's too baffling to even take seriously. What would they do with it? Who would they call? Are we to assume Billy down the street has a cell phone as well? Imagine that conversation.

Jimmy: "Hey Billy, which caterpillar is your favorite? I had an ice cream sandwich today."

Billy: "Girls are gross. I picked the weirdest thing out of my nose earlier. What did you say?"

Jimmy: "I said that I like bugs and I think...."(drops phone in sandbox and decides to bury it).


Even though this is pretty far off topic, as far as my blog post is concerned, it does have some relevancy. Liz Kolb, a professor at U of M, came in and spoke to our class about using cell phones in the classroom. During her presentation, she posted a graphic about what percentages of children have phones at various ages and there were actually kindergartners with smartphones. Anyway, just an interesting aside.

To the actual topic though, Liz brought up some very interesting points arguing for students to have their own phones and/or technology in a classroom. Among them were access to the internet for questions, an alternative way to participate in class (through a polling website or via text), and increased participation. She gave some examples of how various teachers were using cell phones in the classroom in subjects such as history, math and even English. After listening to her give her talk, I'm not sure how I really feel about the subject anymore. Before her talk, I would have scoffed at the idea of letting students use their phones frequently in the classroom. I may have entertained them being able to access them once in the middle of class, but certainly not have them out on their desks all day. I remember how I was in high school after I got my cell phone, and I was one of the better students in my grade.

After her presentation though, I can see some of the benefits that might surface from this availability. In my classroom, there are a number of students who are very bright but very shy. As a result, they rarely speak up in class and contribute to conversations which is quite sad because they have so many insightful comments on their homework assignments. If they were able to send in their thoughts electronically though and remain anonymous, I'm sure some of them would contribute a bit more. Additionally, I think that the idea of being able to quiz students online or even have them submit things via text or voice recording is really appealing as a teacher. It would be much easier to access these assignments, there would be no concern over losing papers or assignments and I feel as though students would enjoy this more than writing out all of their answers all of the time.

Despite these benefits, I'm not sold to the point that I would implement it overwhelmingly right away. In many classrooms still today, there are marked differences in the quality and cost of students' phones. It is very possible that a student would feel very self conscious having to pull their phone out if they felt that it wasn't as nice as some of their classmates. To that point, some students might not even have cell phones yet and they would be put on the spot for something that they can't (and shouldn't) control. The urges to use them for reasons other than academia are incredibly strong, and I can say that as a perpetrator of such restrictions. The school could make an effort to restrict the internet but as long a student has a data plan, these restrictions are meaningless. Despite the study that she showed us yesterday, I don't believe that texting has any effect on increasing the reading level and literacy of a student. I think that students who have access to phones and to large texting plans also likely have access to greater resources such as books and tablets which are far more likely to improve a students reading level and reading scores than text (Rite? Itz cray 2 thnk that talk lke this wld improve a students reading skillz. lol. Neway I'll ttyl, gtg start studying). Regardless, I certainly appreciate Liz taking the time to come in and speak to our class. I think that there certainly are great ways to involve cell phones outside of the class (polling students, having them turn in quick synopses via text, etc) but I'm not sure I would let them into my class with any sort of frequency yet. I mean, there are still ceiling tiles in a lot of classes, what if someone hid another person's phone in the ceiling?

And then this happened in your room?

That. Was an overreaction.

Tech(nology) Spec(trum)

My parents love to tell stories about writing papers on typewriters when they were in college and younger. Anytime my sister or I complained about our relic computer, my parents (as many do) started to remind us that, "we didn't even have computers to type our papers when we were younger." I used to roll my eyes and return to whatever I was doing. Now that I am back in a school environment though, and putting myself back in that culture, I'm starting to understand where they are coming from.

Reflecting on the tech in our placement assignment, it is surprising to see and hear how much things have changed since I was in high school. Even at Community, where there isn't a major emphasis on technology in the classroom, there are laptop carts for teachers to check out, a state of the art computer lab for the students, and encouragement from the administration to incorporate tech more. What was even more shocking than my experience though, was listening to the other students share their schools and classrooms. On one hand, you have Andrew's classroom in John Glenn where they don't even have wireless in the building and on the other you have Saline High School (Griffin and Laura) where they let students carry their phones with them at all times and even provide them with chargers for their phones in the classroom. I wonder what the effect of this access vs. absence of technology has on the students? Will students from Saline be more prepared to deal with the technology they are likely to encounter in their professions or will the students from John Glenn be better suited moving forward because they don't have the distractions of technology while they are in the classroom? Community seems to lie in the middle of these two extremes. There is technology, but it isn't all over the place nor is it the center of attention. I guess what I found most interesting from this assignment is the difference in how technology is used throughout high schools and classrooms and the difference that it might have on the students that attend these classes. Even within Community, there is a marked difference in how much the teachers utilize the technology that they have at their disposal. And what sorts of experience are students bringing to the classroom? Laptops are fantastic to have for the students, but if you have to spend two weeks teaching the students the basics of the technology, is it worth it?

These themes are not new to this class. On the contrary, we have been having conversations about these topics throughout the program. What is new though, is that now we are seeing it play out in actual classrooms and getting a better sense of what the effects are on students as opposed to just speculating and discussing in our classes. It will be interesting to see how these technologies become more or less involved during the rest of the year. And because I've included an Office reference in nearly all of my posts, here you go because...

Prezi vs. PowerPoint

"PowerPoint." "PowerPoint." "PowerPoint." For many of us, that is probably not something new to hear. In high school and in college, PowerPoint seemed to be the universally accepted best means of relaying information. History, science, english, you name it and I've seen a PowerPoint of it. So when I was introduced to Prezi the other night during our ed. 504 class, I was certainly intrigued. Our colleagues (and presenters) made a pretty convincing case as to why one should choose Prezi over PowerPoint the next time they want to present some information visually in a classroom. Prezi is far more interactive. You can zoom from slide to slide, choose your own design and transitions, imbed photos and documents into other photos and documents, and easily set your slideshow to music among other things. As a history teacher, I can certainly see the benefits of this vs PowerPoint (this word is starting to look and sound really strange to me....PowerPoint....same effect for you? PowerPoint PowerPoint) or some other means of conveying information. If you were presenting famous battles during the Civil War, you could have a map of the Eastern side of the United States and then zoom in to a particular part of the map to illustrate a battle that happened there. Then, when you were done, you could zoom over to a different location to present another battle that happened in this new spot. In my opinion, this caters to different types of learning intelligences (as expressed by Howard Gardner) therefore making the impact and retention of the knowledge much more possible. If you wanted to do something like this with PowerPoint (ugggh), you would have to set the map on a wall or the whiteboard, or you would have to create a new slide showing the map in between the slides of information for the various conflicts. But there is a bit more to these presentation tools. Speaking of presentation tools...

PowerPoint does have its benefits. For one, it can't induce the same nausea that a poorly designed Prezi apparently can. Second, it presents things in a neat and organized fashion, and the emphasis is on the material and not on the showiness of said material. With Prezi, depending on the age/maturity of the students you are presenting to, one could run into some trouble keeping kids focused on the necessary information when they are zooming all over the place between slides. But for what PowerPoint does well, I think there are far more things that aren't so great. Along with all of the ones that I have mentioned above, you have to have the program downloaded onto your computer and if you wanted to show it on a different computer you would have to be sure that the other computer has the program as well. All Prezi needs is the interwebs and everyone has that now, except people who have dial-up...and people who don't have the internet at all (duh). Fun fact, Dial-up is actually the original inspiration for the creation of Dub Step, just ask Skrillex. Finally, PowerPoint requires constant upgrades, downloads, and takes awhile to get used to (see model below). Prezi has a simple and easy to use tutorial and can be mastered fairly quickly. So next time you are going to Prezient something, Use Prezi.

A Camping Checklist

There are very few places in this world where I feel completely at peace; and I mean undoubtedly, absolutely, and unequivocally at peace. Camping is one of those places. Something about the experience affects me in a way that I cannot properly convey. It gives me an appreciation for the things that I have, the people I am with, the places I am in, and the life I am so lucky to be living. Camping can mean any number of things to any number of people. What follows below are my necessities to finding that peace and appreciation that can come from a trip "into the woods" (you don't always need to be in the woods but I certainly recommend it).

1.) Camp in a Tent -- Even if you have access to a camper most times, struggle through setting up a tent at least once. In doing so, I'm confident you will gain a sense of accomplishment unlike anything you have felt before.

2.) Eat S'mores -- Be liberal with the chocolate and don't burn the marshmallow. Spoiler alert, you will likely end up burning it by accident.

3.) Camp Near Water -- Eventually you will want to swim. And I will tell you some of the most picturesque moments of my life were watching sunrises and sunsets over water while camping. (See below for example)

4.) Bathe in Said Body of Water -- You may be somewhere that has showers, don't use them. Be that family that wades out into the water and tosses the shampoo bottle around to the dismay and confusion of others.

5.) Go on a Hike -- Whether 2 or 20 miles, pull out a pair of appropriate walking shoes, grab a bottle of water and a granola bar, and just start walking. You will find that you have time to think, appreciate nature and enjoy the company you choose to keep. Bonus points for taking your phone (for emergencies) but turning it off for the whole excursion.

6.) Make Food Over the Fire -- Some of my favorite meals come straight out of a pie iron. Hot Dogs, Eggs, Grilled PB&J, Brats, Fish, where there is a will to cook something on the fire there is a way. Embrace the smoke following you around, enjoy the conversations you have while cooking, and have fun with it.

7.) Get Dirty -- There are so few times in life that it is socially acceptable to be dirty. Camping is one of those times, so grub up.

8.) Bring a Deck of Cards and a Good Book -- Especially in Michigan. The weather can turn in an instant (Crazy right??) and if you are stuck in a tent all day, you will be thankful that you have something to do. Even on nice days, it can be very enjoyable to just sit by the fire and play a game of Euchre or Rummy or get lost in a novel.

9.) Look at the Stars -- I'd imagine a surprising number of people have never seen the stars, and I mean really seen the stars the way that you can in the wilderness. Once clear of the pollution, both light and otherwise, appreciate the colossal nature of the universe, and world, that we live in/on and understand your smallness. Don't adulterate the moment with ipads, phones, charts, or anything, just be in that moment.  

10. Leave The World Behind -- Again, just be in that moment. Don't bring tablets, computers or (heaven forbid) video games/ gameboys and use your cell phone as little as possible. In fact, leave it in your vehicle and only check it every few hours, if that even. Bring a camera, but use it sparingly. I recently went camping and the night that the above photo was taken, on our way to the beach for the sunset, we passed a family of three; a mother, father and son. The mother was on her Ipad, the father on his cell phone, and the son on a laptop, all in their camper. If they only new what lay just beyond the walls of their camper and their screens. Be in that moment, leave the world behind.

(A Superheroine for one thing!)

Finally, and last but most certainly not least, watch the video below and do exactly zero of those things.