Student Learning Manifesto

My goal for my students this year is to require them to be more reflective with their learning experiences. I have spent the first week of school having my students create a Student Learning Manifesto. Here is a link to the post for the students. 

Here is Kiley explaining her manifesto. 

I am having my students share their work this year on Grou.ps. You can check out our grou.ps here. The best manifesto (so far) was written by Yolanda. I was very impressed by her critical, reflective thinking and plan on using this as a student example for the other students.

I have decided to be much more transparent with my reflections this year as well. I will be posting (hopefully) weekly reflections of my teaching and learning. Maybe you would like to join me?

I Had Cancer

I had a rough week last week. Tuesday my wife and I took our two youngest children to get their back to school shots. My wife had also made an appointment for me because she was worried about a mole on my shoulder that had gotten significantly bigger in the last year. Wednesday I had surgery to remove a very large piece of skin and the mole.

Both the nurse practitioner on Tuesday and the dermatologist on Thursday were convinced I had melanoma. Honestly, the dermatologist really scared me. She was visibly shaken when she saw the mole. I am pretty sure that when the doctor is worried enough that the patient shot full of Novocaine notices the prognosis is pretty bad. She told us we would find out on Monday what the pathologist found. She explained that I was likely looking at biopsies and all sorts of other unpleasant things.

Saturday I received a call from the dermatologist. She quickly explained that she had gone into work and checked the fax machine. She saw the report from the pathologist and wanted to let me know that although the mole did have melanoma, it was in situ  which means that it was contained in the skin removed and I would not have to have biopsies or other horrible procedures. Before she hung up she told me I needed to go home and celebrate with my family.

There is no way for me to explain how the shock that I felt after meeting with the dermatologist affected me. I virtually shut down any thinking about the upcoming school year. I went in to school on Thursday and Friday, but spent less than an hour both days because I couldn't focus on any work. The only thing I could do to get cancer off my mind was by diverting myself by watching movies at home. I am still not back, I have no idea what I will be doing my first two days of school. School starts in three days.

I had the support of caring medical professionals, my wife, and my family, but I still couldn't function. Today I was thinking about my students and all the major, life altering situations they face: divorce, death of loved ones, neglect, and abuse. Most of them don't have the support system in place that I was fortunate to have. What hubris we show when we expect them to continue to work.

It is time for us to reflect on our tough times and how they affected us. We need to make sure we show compassion for students going through stressful situations. We need to be part of their support system.

One Teacher, One Smartphone: How I Plan to Use My Smartphone in School

Always one to leverage technology as best I can I decided that getting a smartphone would be a great way to add some new tools in my teacher's tool kit. I have had a Droid X for a couple of weeks and have been experimenting with it. Of course, the idea is to find ways to make the my life a little easier.

Pictures

Those of you that visit my class blog Mr. C's Class Blog know that I like to add a lot of pictures and video from things going on in my classroom. Being able to add pictures to a post is very important because it allows me to share student work, recognize students, and make posts more interesting. Because the Droid X runs on the Android operating system which is made by Google I can easily take pictures using the native camera app and share the photos directly to Picasa where Blogger stores the pictures used on blog posts. It really makes adding pictures a breeze. Here are a couple of examples I took in my classroom.

Video

Video is also a very important tool I use in the classroom. I record student presentations, science experiments, some assemblies and (my favorite use of video) student reflections. I use Ustream to stream video from my classroom to my blog all day and I really like the service.  I downloaded the Ustream Android application and I am really pleased with the result. As the video streams live it is also being recorded on the Ustream site and when the streaming is finished it allows me to save the recording or discard it. The app streams video using 3G (don't know if it will stream over wifi) which is great because I don't have to worry about the network when I make the video. As you can see from the short video, it seems to work best if the camera is stationary. Since I plan on these videos to be mainly student interaction I see no problem with it.

Of course the camera will take video which is stored in memory on the camera and that video can be shared through wifi to places like Youtube, but this adds a little more complexity (plus the video upload is pretty slow).

File Sharing

If you like to keep certain files handy with you and you use Dropbox on your computers then you will be happy to know there is a Dropbox Android application that is great for sharing files. You can have your students get Dropbox accounts and set up a class shared folder that will not only allow them to drag and drop any work they have for easy access from your desktop, but also from the smartphone. And you can add things from your phone into the folder as well.

I will be using this with other teachers in the building to share files really quickly. It is much easier to use than setting up a shared folder on our network and the files will be accessible at home (or on my phone!)

Note Taking

If you need to take notes or even share notes with students Evernote is a great addition. You can use it as a pretty good file sharing program like Dropbox, but you can also take notes on the program. Again, this will be a great fit for sharing notes with other teachers in the building. Please note, unless you pay for the premium service the shared notes will not be editable by the people you share the notes with.

Have an iPhone?

Good news, the iPhone has these apps available for you to use too.

Ustream Live Broadcaster

DropBox

Evernote

Pixelpipe HD this application allows uploading to Picasa as well as a number of other picture sites. 

Please Share

Are you using your smartphone in the classroom? Do you have any suggestions or applications that I can add to my digital tool kit? Please share them in the comments.

Twitter, School and Schrodinger's Cat

I use Twitter as an aid to learn about teaching methods, get teaching ideas, or to help others looking for the same. It seems that lately there have been many conversations describing how classrooms (a little) and schools (much more often) have to change for the benefit of the students. I have not been as engaged in these discussions, instead I have usually chosen to just follow them.

Now that school is starting I am beginning to view these conversations as a Twitter version of  Schrodinger's cat. The (very basic) idea is that you put a cat in a box with a device that may or may not kill the cat. While the box is shut the cat is neither dead or alive, it simply has the potential to be one or the other. 

When we open up the box what will we see? Will we see more Van Meter/SLA type schools or will we see a dead cat? When school starts we will realize the outcome of this summer's experiment. I hope the cat is still alive.

Online High School

Who doesn't want to join this school?

I would like to think of myself as a advocate for increased integration of technology in schools and someone who is not "old school" in anyway whatsoever. However, here lately I'm starting to feel like that push for technology in education that so many of us are calling for are starting to be addressed in the wrong manner.

Recently I was contacted by a nice young named Victor who worked for a company called UDEMY. Victor asked me to answer a few questions regarding technology and education, and last one he asked was one that kinda lit a fire in me...the question was:

As a teacher, do you think it is possible to one day have all-online classroom in the future?

A fairly harmless question at face value, but it was compounded with countless advertisements I have heard in the past few months that promote attending high school online. This got me thinking, is using technology in this manner really an making valuable use of technology? I can see the purpose of online courses and degrees for adults, but do we really need to move high school to the internet?

Call me old fashioned, but there is something special about the human component that comes with junior high and high school. While I do advocate the integration of technology into education, I don't think that making a high school diploma available online encompasses what school is all about. The way I see it technology should be used as a tool to help engage students in a lesson. In my ideal classroom, I would use heavy components of technology with my students that would require them to use technology outside of the classroom to connect with what we are doing in class. However, I still believe the the relationships that are built in a physical classroom are too valuable to leave behind and cannot be replaced by any form of technology....but, that's just this old timer talking (Class of 2003!)

Joe McClung
Fayetteville, AR USA
http://mcclungsworld.com

Amazing TedX Denver Talk By Brian Crosby

We Should Listen to the Kids!

As teachers, most of us tend to think that we know everything and that the students should listen to us all the time! Well that was how it was like when I went to school. The students' opinion was never taken seriously. How could it be as the teachers were always right! My dad was a teacher and a principal when I was a little kid. I had to keep quiet or else I was not allowed to get any treats from him.

Then I became a teacher in the 21st century and guess what I had found out or rather what I had learned! As a first year teacher, I had never used Mac computers when I arrived at my present school. I didn't even know how to use the mouse which has no right or left clicks. I felt quite embarrassed that I had to ask a Year 6 student to show me the function. I dared not ask my colleagues because I didn't want them to know that I couldn't use the mouse! I am proud that since then I have advanced quite fast and actually know a lot more than the six and seven years old children in my class. Even then I find myself asking them about certain things that they had learned from their ICT lessons and they never hesitate to show or teach me! They never ask me why I don't know how to do certain stuff because they have this collaborative learning nature which many adults are still struggling to get used to.
A week ago, a Facebook friend has posted the following video on my wall and I thought that it is a wonderful video to share with my friends-whether you are a teacher or not.

Let's Try to Move Beyond the Echo Chamber

I think I am getting a little stagnate with my PLN. I follow great people and get lots of ideas, but it seems that everyone I follow also follow the same people. (Not really unusual since as I said I follow great people ;) I would like to expand my PLN a little bit, how about you?

There is nothing wrong with following great blogs from David Warlick, Wesley Fryer, and Dean Shareski. I think it would be good to see what other, less well-known, bloggers are writing about. Diversity is a good thing!

Let's make this week, July 5-10 a week of discovery. How about we try to find a few new blogs to follow this week that we are not already following and share them on Twitter? We can tag them with #NoEcho so we can see what is being discovered. (I know this will just expand the echo chamber, but at least it will get bigger.)

Repurposing School

Rexford School, Rexford, Kansas

On my way to Colorado with my church youth group we stopped in Rexford, Kansas for the night. I noticed the school building as soon as we came into town since it is the second biggest building around next to the grain elevator. Since Rexford is so far away from other towns and is not very big I asked a local about the school.

This building and the gym next to it house the 6th through 12th grade for Rexford and another town that is ten miles away. The other town's school houses K through 5th grade. This was an innovative way for both communities to keep a school in their town in the 1960's when so many small schools were consolidated (including the schools in my district.) While neither community were able to keep their own schools intact, they came up with a solution they could live with, they repurposed their schools.

Again we are going through tough economic times where schools are being closed and innovative ideas will need to come out and schools will need to be repurposed again. Will technology give us some of the answers schools need to survive (if not thrive?) Is this the opportunity for more online classes to be integrated into a school's curriculum?

Should Public Education Be Free?

I have been listening to Chris Anderson's book Free: the Future of a Radical Price. In the book he talks about the perceived value of free. The perception of free is often something without value. Of course this is something we sometimes ignore because of our experience of "free" sites we use on the internet.

I have often thought that more of the public would be interested in public education if they had to go to their local schools to pay their taxes. (In Missouri property tax helps pay for local schools.) This would make the person paying actually see the connection between schools and taxes. Obviously the problem is there are a lot of people that don't pay property taxes directly.

Recently my jr. high team was creating a supplies list for next year's students. I made a comment about the expense of the list, I thought it was pretty low compared to some of the other grades. The other teacher told me that he knew of a school that just collected money from students to buy supplies. Then the teachers use the money to buy supplies for the whole class.

What would happen if we required our parents to give $30 dollars to the school at the beginning of the year for supplies? Would parents value their children's education more if they had to write out a check?

I Won't Teach Facebook in Class

Facebook has become an educational pain in the butt. There are lots of good arguments about why students should be educated about it, especially the privacy issues that keep cropping up. Still, I won't teach it.

The first reason,  Facebook is blocked at my school. I have no opportunity to leverage it as a learning tool. I can't even use it to promote the work our students create there.

I find very little usefulness for myself in Facebook. It isn't that I am less social than others that are online, I just use other tools like Twitter. Therefor, it would take a lot of my time to learn how to not only use it fully, but to know how to make it private.

The last reason is what convinced me to not teach Facebook. I am not the parent of my students. I am tired of being the social site police for my school. Parents need to take responsibility for their own children when they are online at home.

I will still teach digital citizenship at school, but I am done with Facebook.

Here There Be Dragons

I am fortunate because I have great conversations with intelligent educators through blogging and twitter. One theme that is revisited over and over again is the lack of "professionalism" in education. Many of my friends and acquaintances online are dynamic educators in their settings with a large percentage of them involved in leading professional development sessions. It is easy to forget these are not the norm.

Much of the conversations we share have to do with technology. Much of that deals with how we can disseminate the use of tech through our faculty. Again, I am not having these conversations with the average teacher.

There is often a conversation about how we, the teachers that use technology in our classrooms, have a difficult time getting other teachers and admin in our buildings or districts to see the value of using the tools technology offers. Does it have something to do with technology?

I came across this tweet by Gary Stager on my Twitter feed Friday. I questioned him about that, honestly I did not understand what he was trying to say. I asked him if there was an entry barrier to the teachers that didn't "get" technology.

I have thought about this for several days. Gary, you are absolutely right. We should no longer make excuses for teachers that choose to stay ignorant of the advancements in education. We have allowed them the comfort of the cycle of poor teaching, teaching the same ineffective way they were taught because that is what they know.

It is no longer enough for us to allow the teaching profession to wallow in what is known and comfortable, we need to push them into the unknown. We need to place them in the unexplored territory and allow them to fight the dragon known as change.

Maybe an Inch Deep Isn't Bad After All

Yesterday as I was checking out the apps I had downloaded for my new iPad a thought occurred to me I never use a productivity application to its fullest capabilities. I learn to use what I need to do when I need to do it, nothing more. This made me think: Is there something wrong with using only part of a tool if it fulfills my needs?

 I realize that it is a ridiculous question. My next thought was what if curriculum is the same way? Do students really need to have a deep understanding of every objective?  Is a basic understanding of plants good enough or do we really need to know the names of all the parts? Can't we look up what we don't know?

I understand that some knowledge is very necessary, but can you say that about most of your curriculum? Do the students really need to "deeply understand" all of it? If we spent more time teaching critical thinking, problem solving, and information vetting they could find the answers they need. Shouldn't we stop wasting their time focusing on the trivial?

Let's get back to teach curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Are We Having Real Conversations Using New Media?

Two days ago I became aware of a flurry of commenting being done on Mary Beth Hertz's blog Philly Teacher. Two posts in particular make me think about conversations: Politics and Education and Encouraging Dialogue.I would suggest you read the posts and comments in their entirety before you keep reading here.

What I have floating through my head is something that really bothers me. What if we are not really having conversations with Twitter or with blogging/commenting? Can true conversations take place when we limit ourselves to delayed back and forth dialogue? A large percentage of communication takes place through body language and we sure can't see each other when we are typing responses. I wonder if the personae I project online misrepresents who I really am (and I rarely filter anything, ask my wife ;)

The back and forth dialogue on Mary Beth's blog would suggest that no real conversation is taking place in several of the threads. It seems to be more of an outlasting match. Is there a better way to handle these moments?

Could this lack of connecting conversations explain why we still covet face-to-face conversations and are willing to spend our time and money to attend conferences?

Where do we draw the line on commenting?

I use Feedjit a lot as a way to monitor where traffic to my class page is coming from.  Its not perfect, although I have to say that overall I think it provides a good free service.   Its been a way of locating classroom blogs and I really believe the importance in paying dues and acknowledging sites that are promoting yours. 

Its also been the source of three sites that have 'riled' me over the past three years.

The first was in 2009 from a blog in the USA.  It was directly critical of the semantics emanating from my class page.  I know that my language can be a bit loose at times, it always has.   At first I was offended by the criticism that I read, and it was very negative.  However I effectively took the bait and commented back. That's what the sites author was after and they took it upon themselves to launch a series of posts criticising the work that my students were publishing online.  On behalf of the students I suppose that I took offence that someone should criticise them, and tried to stand up for them on their behalf.  The funny thing was having done that, to little effect (except as I said fuelling the 'fire' of the other blogger) we had a class discussing about it.  One of the students in my classroom during that discussion likened it to name calling in the classroom.  They said "Mr Webb why don't you just ignore them so they get bored and go away and bother someone else?"   I just sat there and had one of those moments of clarity thinking "uh-huh".

A few weeks ago I found another linking site to my class page taking the work, taking one piece of work from one of the students in my class and using that as the basis for the critique of teaching, students and the New Zealand education system.  I felt it prudent not to respond in a similar vein to the point the child had made about "ignoring" them.  So the other day I received this comment from the author of the same site, which was left in a form of a comment on my class page.   Again as I felt it wasn't in the correct context I chose not to publish it, but felt it was worth repeating here:

"Is it wise to get young children all worried about things like global warming? Especially when it isn't scientifically proven. I worry that such teaching is merely going to raise a generation of neurotic overly anxious young people who have little hope for the future.  It seems wrong to inflict such concerns on the young who lack the maturity to process it. Childhood should be a time of joy in learning not taking on the concerns of the adult world."

As I say I believe the person leaving the comment was looking for a reaction for their site.  Its taken a piece of work from an individual student, completely out of context I believe and made some assumptions, and judged a particular student for it.  I know on some class sites that comments are automatically published, and possibly I could have published this, but where do we as 'gate keepers' for our site draw the line?

Did I do the right thing in choosing not to publish this comment? Has anyone else had similar experiences?
Should I have discussed this with the student concerned or the classroom? In opening our students up for the greater community by publishing it online do we take the good with the bad?

Myles Webb/NZ Waikato

Learning How to Fish

 Fly Fishing the Beaverhead River, Montana by Circumerro

I've taken up a new hobby, fishing! Although I have lived around water all my life I have never been that interested in fishing. I went a couple times when I was young, but I was never "hooked".

The church I attend has a lot of men that love to do outdoor activities. They hunt, fish, and some even trap. Since I prefer sleeping in hunting is generally out of the question. I decided that I could take up fishing since it can be relatively inexpensive. (I spent about $40 dollars on a rod/reel, tackle box, and some lures.) The most expensive part so far has been the fishing licenses.Oklahoma non resident license is $42!!!

Since deciding I have been fishing five times so for. Four times I accompanied a more accomplished fisherman and once I went on my own. The only time I didn't catch at least one fish was when I was by myself. Last night three of us caught 77 white bass. It was a good night.

Until I have a lot more experience I will always be more successful when I fish with someone else with experience. They don't catch the fish for me, they simply model where, when, and how to fish. I become successful emulating them. What implications does this have for my classroom?

Violence, Bad Language, and Nudity

Photo by Publik16

I have been thinking about my prejudices lately. I can honestly say that I have changed a lot in my 40 years on the planet. When I was in my teens I used a lot of profane language (to the chagrin of my teacher grandmother.) I decided at the ripe age of 18 that it had become too big of a part of my vocabulary and stopped. (It is amazing how well operant conditioning can work!) After 20 years and 4 children I find it offensive.

This is why I have a problem. Every night on television there are shows on almost every  channel that show very violent acts. It isn't unusual to watch a police show where several people are murdered and assaults are commonplace. We don't allow potty words on broadcast tv, but shooting people is just fine!

I have decided that the reason violence is allowed is because we are an empire building nation. We want to expand across the globe. Manifest Destiny on a global scale. To get citizens to be soldiers we have to make them immune to the psychological problems violence causes. That is why we encourage our citizens to watch violence on television. I gets them ready...

As an educator I have to ask myself the question, "Which is more damaging to my students: violence, bad language, or nudity?" I can honestly say I would prefer my children to be called names or exposed to a naked body than to be assaulted or killed. I would assume you believe as I do. Why then do we allow/encourage our students/children to watch violent content? Give me four letter word or some nudity over that any  day.

Artcyclopedia: The Art Teacher's Best Friend

I have been showing art teachers Artcyclopedia for years. It is a fine art search engine that allows you to search by the name of the artist, name of the art work, or even the name of a museum. It also has a list of clickable art movements that you can look at and get a quick overview.

For example, if you do an art search for the painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat it will take you to a page that links you to four sites about the painting. (One of the links no longer works though so make sure you check before you assign students to them.)

If you click on browse artist by movement you will see a list of the artists in that movement that are also linked to a search page about the artist.

While your first stop may be to Wikipedia to get your information for a painting or artist, you may want to give Artcyclopedia.com a try if you are interested in browsing or want to get a larger picture of art.

Are We Really Sure That Our Successful Students Are Really Successful?

I was reading a post by Donte Rome where he says:

' I've been in college for about 3 years now and it amazes me how i can pass classes without ever having to buy the books for them. I can just google any information i need and the informations is just as accurate.'

This made me wonder, Are our successful students really successful? If our students can make it through our classes by using a search engine are we really measuring what we should be measuring? What do you think?

Is Disney Leading the Way with Digital Content?

I received an email from Disney Movie Rewards last week that shows an interesting feature that Disney is trying out. When you purchase certain Blu-Ray discs from Disney and enter the Movie Reward code onto the site you suddenly have the opportunity to watch the movies streaming online.

Here is how the page looks that shows the movies that are available to watch online after you put in the code. (The Hannah Montana movies is my daughters, I swear!) All you have to do from here is click on the watch now button.


Depending on the download speed you have, the movie starts within a few seconds. The quality of the stream is adjusted to meet the download speed you have available. You can also watch the stream full screen.


While this is a great feature that Disney has come up with, think about the implications. Disney is a huge media company that creates a lot of content. This feature may change copyright as we know it. We already know that when we buy a disc or download a movie we don't really own it, we simply own the right to view it. Now Disney has begun to give us a different license where we can purchase the physical media and have the rights to watch the digital content that is stored on the cloud. Is this the opening move in an all online presence for Disney where content will only stored and accessed on the cloud? Will the rights to the media be transferable after death? (Can you see the massive library of content that will be available to our great-grandchildren?)

I like the idea of my content being online, I also like the idea of having the content in my hand. Are we seeing the beginning of the end for all physical forms of content? There are a lot of implications to this and it definitely bears keeping an eye on.

One last thing, I am curious if this is available outside of the United States?