Should I Punish Students for Bad Behavior in Another Class?

My school has in-school suspension for students that behave inappropriately. I am not sure if it is because of not doing homework or because of what they have said or done. As the "computer" teacher I have never given any work for those students to complete, not much of a punishment if I let them use a computer in my opinion.

Today a teacher asked me if I ever sent any work for the student to do. When I replied I didn't she implied the student was "getting off" from doing the work in my class. My reply was that it would be hard for them to do the work in ISS when we are using the computers. I could figure out some make-work for them to do, but our administration is just as capable of that as me.

Thinking back over the exchange I have a different response. I really don't think I should punish a student by giving him/her make-work for improper behavior in someone else's class. What do you think?

Journaling Using Pen and Ink

In my media history class I have been having my students create journal entries detailing events that happen during the American Revolution. Here is a link to our blog where you can find the posts.

A few years ago I received a calligraphy kit to use for teaching an after school class. It has a class set of pens and points that we used to create handwritten journals entries. While the students enjoyed the activity (I may let them continue to do them that way if they choose), they did have a problem with the pens. They are extremely messy and since my students are not used to working with this new medium, there were a lot of spills.

I think that having the students use the old-fashioned tools helps them to understand a little more about the complexity of the process of writing that the soldiers would have had. Imagine having to carry around all that material just to write a journal entry!

Using a Comic Book Creator with Character Education

This week my students will be using the Marvel Create Your Comic web application to illustrate this month's character education word peace.

Originally I thought I would have the students use the application to create a fractured fairy tale. That entails re-telling a fairy tale from the point of view of one of the characters. I start that lesson by reading The True Story of the Three Little Pigs an amazing story by Jon Scieszka. Unfortunately, the application does not allow the comics to be saved. The students would have to create a couple pages in class then download them. I think this would really alter the flow of the story (even if they had already written it out.) That is when I decided to go with the character ed. word.

This may sound like I am trying to fit a lesson around a web app, but that is only because I am :)

Why EdCampKC is Important to Me

On Saturday, November 6 my wife and I will be attending EdcampKC at the University of Central Missouri. EdcampKC is an unconference where the attendees are also the presenters.

Many districts, including mine have focused all or a very large percentage of professional development money toward communication arts and mathematics. Unless the conference can be tied directly to either or both of those areas, there is no monetary support from the district. Obviously, this means that I must pay my own way to any conference I wish to attend that deals with technology, even unfortunately technology that can be tied into those areas. Thanks to the sponsors, this conference is free. All it will cost my wife and I is a hotel room, gas, and some money for food. When you consider how expensive other conferences such as METC or ISTE are, you can see how inexpensive this conference really is.

Speaking of METC and ISTE, are you aware that presenters are still required to pay to get in to the conferences they are providing the professional development for? While METC gives a discounted rate for presenteres, ISTE requires payment in full! If you choose to present at edcampKC it will cost you nothing. If you choose to just attend edcampKC the price is still zero!

I will be presenting this year at METC on the importance of commenting on student blogs. While I have never been to this conference before I gather it is a rather large conference. When I went to the ISTE conference in San Antonio I was overwhelmed by the number of people attending. My point is, I am looking forward to edcampKC because it will be small enough for me to make real connections with others. I went to ISTE to attend, I am going to METC to present, but I am going to edcampKC to meet people. These are people that share my passion for student learning who I will not only learn from them at the conference, but I will be able to continue to learn from them online throughout the year.

Ever since I really started to participate on Twitter, my goal was to find passionate educators that care about their students and want to focus on learning. While I have made many contacts and even a few good relationships I cannot wait to develop the types of relationships I have jealously followed others making at unconferences they attended.

I also want my wife (a pre-service teacher) to develop a few relationships to that can help guide her through the rest of college and into her teaching career as well. :)

I Got Your PD Right Here!

I am receiving the best professional development I have ever experienced at school. I am "team teaching" a math class.

Math is definitely not my strength. I got through by following patterns. I am very good at identifying them. I am not good at being able to understand the "why" of math. Does it make you wonder why I was placed in a math class to team teach?

So, I find myself sitting in a class that I do not feel comfortable in. Not only am I unfamiliar with the objectives (even after reading/studying them over the summer) but with the vocabulary used. Students are expecting me to be able to help them identify why they don't "get" something.  How can this be great professional development for me if I am not comfortable?

I have become a student again. I am learning the math concepts and definitions with the students. I ask more clarifying questions than they do. I am remembering my student roots, learning in a classroom.

The first full week I taught the math lessons. I wanted to pull my own weight and show that I could do the job. After teaching a lesson my teaching partner broke the lesson down for me and we talked about what I could have done to make it better. For some veteran teachers this would be a problem, but not for me. I know I am in over my head and I am grateful to have an experienced teacher help me out.

Although the team teaching has been difficult and we have not yet found our comfort zone with the shared responsibilities I would still say this has been successful for me. I am learning math and how to be a better teacher.

A Work in Progress?

My goal this year was to use my lab to extend learning from the core curriculum. The eighth grade students have an assignment they are working on where they create a presentation about the European explorers from the 15th and 16th centuries. Here is a link to the actual assignment information. (Please note I did not type the assignment;)

Is this an incredible, transformative assignment? No, it relies too much on factual information which my students are getting online (not that there is anything wrong with using the net to gather info). If you looked at this assignment at face value it probably would be considered inadequate, but is it? What non-assessed things will my students be doing through this process?

They will have to analyse the information they gather for accuracy. One of my students found an explorer's birth date on Wikipedia to be in the 1800's! She brought this information to my attention and started a good conversation about reliability of all information.

They are working on their presentation design. Will their choices work with the assignment? Will they create their own Death by PowerPoint? How will the other students react to their choices?

They will have to present their PowerPoints. Will they read the information off of the slides? Will they speak with a loud, clear voice? Will they show sings of nervousness or even refuse to stand up in front of the class?

We often discuss the importance of grades, here is an example of where the most important parts of the assignment are not graded. This is a work in progress, but it is much farther along than it first seems.

Classroom Hack: Creating Postcards Using Student Work

Here is a quick way to let your students show off their artwork and get in a quick lesson on writing postcards. The picture above is a postcard I made in class from picture a student drew to go along with a media history assignment. I took the pictures and printed them onto card stock and cut them out. Then I had them write a postcard explaining the assignment and had them mailed. Soon the parents will get a surprise in the mail!

You can do the same thing with pictures of the students as well. Why not take a picture of the science experiment they are doing, the activity they are doing in their PE class, or them working on a computer? There is something special about receiving handwritten mail and it is even more special when it is from someone you love!

Please note: If you are using a laser printer you need it to heat up before running card stock in it. I print 25-30 blank pages first before I run the card stock through so it heats up enough that the toner sticks to the paper.

Universal Design Tool: VozMe.com

While I have had the VozMe code on my blog for several years, it has just been brought to my attention that VozMe can be used in two other wonderful ways.

VozMe allows text to be read aloud. One way to do this is for the publisher of a site to add html to the site that allows a button to be placed on the site. You simply highlight the text you want read aloud and then hit the button. The text is then read to you.You can also download the audio as an mp3. This is great for accessibility when the site owner has the technical skill to add the code. 

Another way to use VozMe is to copy the text you want to have read to you and go to the VozMe website. Paste the code into the box and hit the Create MP3 button. You can even choose between a male or female voice. Very simple to do and the audio can also be downloaded this way.

The third way, and in my opinion the best, is to add VozMe as a favorite or bookmark to your browser. You will need to find the instructions for your preferred browser on this page. Once you have the bookmark, all you have to do is highlight the text and click on the bookmark. It will open a new page and read the text too you. You can again choose from a male or female voice and download the mp3. How cool is that?!

Special thanks goes to Ira Socol for pointing these functions out to me. If you are interested in Universal Design (and you better be!) read Ira's amazing blog SpeEdChange. 

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.