Learning as a Way of Teaching

Every morning on the way to work I drive by our local community college.  Actually, it is the nursing school attached to our hospital, but that is not important. What makes me laugh is the gaggle of students who stand out on the curb and smoke.  I think smoking is disgusting so my opinion might be a little bit skewed.  But isn’t it ironic that the future of our health care system is willing to stand out in the rain, shine, cold, and wind to practice a habit that everyone knows destroys healthy bodies?  And how will their patients react?  “Sir, you need to exercise and follow this diet if you want your heart to work properly.  Now if you will excuse me, I am going to suck on a cancer stick.”

But as my finger wags at these nursing students, I realize that I am just as guilty.  How many times have I told a student, “Why did you not bring a pen to class?  Did you not think you were going to need to write today?”  Students do not need that humiliation any more than I need the checkout clerk at the grocery store to say,” No, you cannot borrow a pen.  Did you not think you were going to have to write a check for your groceries?  Did you think we were just going to bag ‘em up and say, ‘Have a nice day’?”

Parenting is just as tricky.  The same mouth that tells my children how to speak nicely to others also yells at the idiot who didn’t take his turn at the four way stop.  Yikes.

So, irony is everywhere.  Walking the talk is not the easiest habit to maintain.

Is it possible to get too much 2.0?  Over the past three semesters, I have taken on a blog and several wikis for science, history, and English, I have been Skypeing, Twittering, social networking, video editing, podcasting, and interactive whiteboarding.

I have used Celestia in the classroom and soon will start with Stellarium.  Google SketchUp has sat on my hard drive and has not been used…yet.  I have downloaded videos from TeacherTube and YouTube.  Of course, YT is blocked so I have to get what I need while at home.

Our content mastery room and two science teachers have used iPods for oral administration of exams.  On our elementary campus, iPods are replacing CD players.

One teacher accepted the use of building Googlepages rather than traditional posterboard presentations.  Another teacher is looking forward to dusting off the wikispaces we created last year.  I started a blog with one of our elementary classes and hope to revamp it this year.

But how much is too much?  Is there a season of absorption that has to occur before I add anything else?  Mr. M and I agree that our culture has to change before we can infuse more 2.0 tools into the classroom.  Some intense training is needed to bring about all the nifty things I would like to use.  Google Docs are great, but I cannot get teachers to use them.  I have tried collaborating, but it takes time for teachers to see the benefits and want to become digital immigrants.

It occurred to me that I need to write a plan for using 2.0 tools in the classroom.  I need to decide what I need to do first and then put the rest on the shelf.  Perhaps there are steps to take to get it all in. Are there skills that are required before moving on to something else?  Do I need to learn to blog before I podcast?  Do I learn to tweet before I skype?

And what about our students who do not have Internet in their home?  How do we bring them into the 2.0 culture?

So, I have 10 iPods and 2 Macbooks at my disposal.  What shall I try first?

1.  A classroom podcast

2.  Creating spelling tests for various student levels

3.  Dictation practice

4.  Students record themselves reading and listening to themselves

5.  Video lessons for struggling learners (remediation through digital video)

6.  iPod Stations – listen to one lesson here, move to the next station

7.  Audio books (maybe that is too obvious)

8.  Put them in the hands of English Language Learners

9.  Students create alternatives to book reports (mock interviews of characters, stage a radio show interviewing characters from the book,etc.)

10.  Begin a student news program for making daily announcements rather than listen to the principal over the loudspeaker

The list can go on for a while.  I think this might be a good start.  Now if I can just get an extra 10 hours in a day……

I broke the sound barrier when it comes to purchasing technology in our district.  One morning we are using borrowed iPods to deliver oral semester tests, that afternoon I have a school credit card and approved purchase order to buy 10 iPods for our campus.  That has to be an all time record for our district.  I attribute that to an administration that believes that we (and all other public schools) are behind the technology front.  They believe that we need to move ahead (or is it catch up) to the technology that is available and integrate it into our classrooms.  There were some other roads we had to pave to make this purchase happen so quickly, but that fact that the road is paved makes me smile on the inside.  The bottom line is this…when the money starts going to technology, admin “gets it.”Film, or should I say podcast, at eleven… 

Thanks to Audacity and a few iPods, our students took final exams 21st century style.  Instead of leaving the classroom to have tests read to them by another teacher, students stayed in the classroom and listened to their test on iPods.  They had the power to listen at their own discretion without having to be singled out.  Of course, they did look different since they had iPods and the others didn’t.

Their teacher made this comment:  “Instead of hanging their heads, they were actually excited about getting the help.”

The hardest part of the whole process was creating the audio files, and that process is not hard at all.

Now if I can just get the school to buy 10 more……

A common problem of junior high students involves note taking.  So much of instruction involves lecture it is imperative that students learn how to take effective notes.

How many times have you said the following (or something similar):

•  ”It was on the board.  You should have written it down.”
• “Where are your notes?”
• “Why are you not taking notes?”

LD students struggle with note taking as much and in most cases more than their non-disabled peers.  Some of the struggle comes from disorganization, inattention, and unmotivation.  Even if those hurdles are cleared, there is still a skill that is unlearned in taking good notes.

Joseph R. Boyle, assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University researches note-taking, cognitive strategies, and early reading techniques.  He suggests that for students, notes serve two purposes:

1. They aid student understanding of lecture information, and
2. They serve as reference material for later study.

Students who struggle with note taking do so for various reasons.  It is important to diagnose the reason so that a plan can be executed.  Whether it is an attention deficit, mechanics of writing, vision, hearing, assimilation, motivation or comprehension; pinpointing the issue is key in developing an accommodation or modification.

“These students are not motivated.”  I hear it at least 5 times a week.  Students spend their days going through the motions.  They attend classes, sit in their desks, and produce nothing.  Teachers’ gradebooks are littered with zeroes for students who simply will not turn in assignments.  We preach to them, give them extended deadlines, threaten them.  We do everything possible to motivate them and get no results.

Granted, 80% of our students do their work and meet deadlines.  It is the 20% that make us scratch our heads and wonder what is in the water that this many students do not have any sense of urgency to take responsibility for their educations.

I know that there is not a magic bullet that will kill the apathy in the lives of my “20%ers.”  But what can a person do to get students to work when detentions, calling parents, and even bribery does not get the job done?

We are spending our last school day in the computer lab finishing up our space pages.  The students have really created some excellent looking sites and a few of them are ready to tackle adding a blog to the project.  I have used learner-blogs in the past, and I wanted to use them again here.

The hurdle I had to overcome was creating student blogs without an e-mail account for all of my students.  The Gmail trick is the answer, but Gmail is blocked by our Internet filter.  However, the filter cannot stop my iPhone!  HA HA!!!  So I registered my students using a Gmail alias that goes to my Gmail account, that I then retrieve using my iPhone.  I am able to activate the blogs and have the students blogging in no time.

In collaboration with one of our 7th grade science teachers, we were able to create The Great Space Race.  Students are building some great sites with great zeal and determination.  Googlepages has made it real easy for our novice web designers to make a good looking site with minimal effort or training.

The trick was getting Google accounts for our students.  After I went through the hassle of creating accounts for them, I discovered that many of our students had e-mail accounts that they could have used for the project.  We were not using e-mail, they just needed them for login purposes.  I consider it a lesson learned that perhaps I should get students to get an e-mail account before allowing them to participate in the project.  Hmm…

Kim discovered the power of subsidiary accounts with Gmail.  This trick did not work for our project because the alias e-mail would not work in order for them to sign up for a Google account.  However, I managed to get all the accounts created.

It is a common complaint of all teachers.  Not enough time to do the things that need to be done and the things that we want to do.  I would love to blog every day.  There are not enough hours in the day to do all of the things that I have learned in the world of 2.0. 

Since the fall of last year, I have learned the power of student blogging, wikis, and collaborating with educators from all around the world.  Unfortunately, the roles that make up my job description could not care less of my wishes.  Here is what I have to do (which prevents me from doing what I want to do):  I am the district’s inclusion facilitator, I am the special education coordinator for the junior high, I am on the district’s assisstive technology team, and I am the testing coordinator for the junior high.  If I could only have a few more hours in the day I could do things like:

1. Develop the wiki mentoring project that I started last year.  I had students at the high school encourage students from the jr high in their writing skills.  The seventh graders wrote stories that the high schoolers critiqued and gave advice on.
2. I would teach several teachers on each of our campuses how to use blogs in their classrooms.
3. Podcasting has appealed to me for a very long time and I cannot seem to find the time to delve into it.  I tried getting some students involved in an after school podcasting club, but it went over like a pregnant high jumper.
4. Last year, I collaborated with a class in Maylasia.  It was a lot of fun, it did not last as long as I would have wanted it.  I just do not have the time to try that again.
5. I would like to have a really informative website.  One that can be used by students and teachers alike.
6. Every heard of Moodle?  I have and do not know a lot about it.  I would like to teach classes online, but that requires time that I just do not have.

Could it be possible to just blink my eyes and have this list happen?  The amount of time it would take to launch some of these projects is several lifetimes…..

….and I only have one life.