A time to reflect

How often do we take the time, while we are teaching or learning to reflect on what we are doing? As a teacher, I long for the slow summer days where I can spend hours at a time remembering moments from the past school year, and figuring out how to recapture or prevent their recurrance in the following year.

How often do we ask students to stop and reflect on how their actions are perceived? Or received? How often are they encouraged to examine their daily actions and habits under a microscope, to evaluate what they have mastered and what areas they can grow in?

As the result of what I saw as a continued lack of respect for property & time related to technology use, I thought it would be good to give the kids some time away from technology. Give them an opportunity where they would be able to reflect on how much technology has become a part of their everyday life.

Recent events have prompted me to re-evaluate how this pilot program is working. The question is, "How do we get kids to accept responsibility for the appropriate care & use of technology equipment and software?"

Throughout the year, I have been working hard to individually correct inappropriate behavior, and have regularly asked kids to reflect on technology and its use in class. We have regular class discussions about what is appropriate and not appropriate, and yet, two weeks ago, there was an incident where a student thought it would be funny to rearrange the keys on a laptop computer. That in itself shows me that the individual has a lack of respect for the property, but what really frustrated me was the number of students who stood by and watched & didn't do anything...not even get me... What does that say about the success of my current methods of helping students feel ownership & responsibility for the technology that has become a daily part of their lives?

To me it says that I've been mostly unsuccessful. So, again, I ask what can I do to help them get engaged in the ownership & care of technology? Well, with the help and advice of Dr. Esther Silvers and Kim Boswell, I believe we may have an appropriate hands-on, interactive, engaging activity, the final result of which could provide us with valuable teaching tools. Kim & I are designing a unit where the students are creating short "how-to" i-movies for different aspects of the care & use of technology and software.

We are currently in week 2 of the project, still brainstorming & organizing the group structure, but the students seem to have really taken this task to heart. We first told them that the movies would be used as instructional tools for next year's seventh graders, but after further thought & discussion, Kim & I realized that we could also use these i-movies to show the teachers the appropriate behavior they should expect from their students as they are using technology.

After all, the use of technology is no longer limited to a few classrooms. There are several of us who have been using technology long enough to make the management of the hardware & software standardized across the school. All we need is a creative way to share the standards. This may be it...At least we hope so.

End of Second Quarter

Well we've finished our first 9 weeks of the blogging projects & I'm fairly excited by the results. I'm still finding kids who are not keeping their blogs up to date. I've made it the first blog assignment of the new 9 weeks to fix what needs to be fixed. The thing I'm struggling with the most is making sure that students have ample time to complete their work in class. I think I will try creating a schedule for the computers so I can guarantee each student a certain amount of work that they can complete.

I'll need to find a few extra computers for my second block. That class keeps getting larger and larger, and it is making the management of people and resources increasingly challenging

Portable Technology

This week, our blogging session went on the road. Well, actually, instead of going up to the computer lab, as we usually do, we brought a mobile laptop cart into my classroom because I was bumped from the lab for teacher training. I'm flexible...not a problem. Kim did a great job of helping me figure out where I could get the number of laptops I needed to be able to have one for every student. Many thanks to Mr. K. McMahon for his loan of the 6th grade tech cart.

When it comes to whole classes on computers at the same time, I prefer working in the lab because the distribution of the laptops is cumbersome & time-consuming.

As far as the blogging assignment goes, the majority of the class is really getting the hang of the blogging assignment, but I'm still not sure they are using their class-time wisely.

It's frustrating that I'm still having to chastise students for going to websites they shouldn't and for spending more time playing with font colors than with creating their posts.

Success Sometimes Appears in Surprising Places

I had mixed feelings about yesterday's blogging sessions. On the one hand, I really think the kids are starting to get the hang of things. On the other hand, I am frustrated by the inability of kids to remember simple instructions even after it's been explained and modeled, they've done the task once, it's written in front of them the entire time, AND they've been walked through it.

Some notes for next year. #1 Firefox is key. What a time saver it is to use firefox's password manager. Also to open web pages in tabs is really useful. I'm suggesting that the kids have a tab open for their blog, the blog dashboard, and my rms web page where their assignment is posted.

#2 Take advantage of the RMS website. I've been working with it only for about 2 weeks, but I am noticing beneficial results. I anticipate that as students become more independent in their use of the technology, they will see the website as the "motherload" of useful information and tools for not only my class, but also for school in general. I've loaded lots of information for our "Giver" unit. It is not only making things easier for my students, but easier for me to share with other teachers as well. That will be one of the first things I set up for next year. I only hope that as the year passes, it doesn't become to long and unwieldy that students won't use it.

#3 It's never too soon to move to a paperless classroom - sort of. How hard would it be form me to have a "classroom" set of computers for student use. I can see that kids would have one that they are issued (and share with a student in the other block) at the beginning of the year, and it is stored in my classroom. Kids should be able to take notes, and keep their "reading notebook" on the network instead of in a notebook? Is that unreasonable? Hmmm...something to think about.

In general, kids are not only getting used to blogging, but they are asking their friends and family to read their work. To me that's the coolest part ever! I'm glad to be a part of this project. I'm learning as much, if not more, than my students.

Watch Out for That First Step...

Well, here I am at the end of another LONG day at RMS. I have to ask myself, what did I learn today?

To start, herding seventh graders is like herding cats...wait...I already knew that...

To start again, no matter how simply you try to explain something, it's never really simple. I understand that repetition is a good way for kids to commit to memory, but does it have to be the same thing 3 time for each individual student? Lesson learned: it is effective to preview, practice & then perform... The blog set-up went rather smoothly.

Second, concrete examples are never quite solid for everyone... Lesson learned: have more than one example to show what you mean.

Finally, the kids are excited about the blog. I know the first blog entry seemed simple, but I felt like the key was to get them going. Now that we've opened the door, the students are ready to run into the world and express their thoughts electronically. Lesson learned: this is a good idea, challenging as it may be to plan & implement. We will all be better readers and writers from this experience.

An introduction

One might ask oneself, why exactly would I want to set up my own blog...or, for that matter teach 12 & 13 year old kids how to do it. The truth is... I think it is a unique opportunity for publication. We all have opinions, and most care to express them. This is one more outlet which allows students to reach a broader audience. I am both eager and apprehensive.

The purpose of this blog project is multi-faceted. I have to wonder, am I expecting too much? But the truth is that the skills learned during this workshop are useful not only in the classroom, but in the workplace and in the personal realm. I believe we have a responsibility as educators to bring our students to the cutting edge of technology, teach them the skills to move forward, and let them become the leaders of their generation.

So, what do I want the students to get out of this project? I want them to have a particular comfort level with the technology. I want them to have a regular reference for assignments, and a way to ask questions & get feedback on their time... as they are completing assignments. I want them to have a format for their thoughts and musings (reading journal/writing journal) that is accessible to me without limiting their own access.

I'm optimistic that most of these goals are attainable, if not immediately, at least through the course of the school year.

A new hope

It seems not so long ago that I was in the seventh grade and was learning to type... on an old-fashioned type-writer... not even electric. I learned to type for many reasons. Probably the most important for me was that my handwriting was slow, and it was hard to read. I was frustrated by the fact that I could never keep up with my own train of thought. Learning to type helped... I even began to complete thoughts, to save them for posterity. The development of the computer and word processing programs is nothing short of miraculous! But as much as I wrote, volumes of words, seldom was I read by any other than myself. What a shame.
My hope for this year is that I will learn, along with my students, how to share some of my questions, my conclusions, my ideas, and my beliefs with a larger audience. We are, after all, a global community.