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Week 12 and 13 in Review
I skipped the week in lab post last weekend because we were on minimum day schedule, so my lessons and plans stretched for 2 and half weeks. Here’s what happened…
Primary: The big new addition was Kidspiration. The Venn diagrams with second grade were AWESOME! The organizer on types of animals for third grade, well, that did not work well on any level, and I’ll leave it at that. We also added to Voice Threads on their unit themes. You can see the Venn diagrams at the end of the second grade Voice Thread
I’m having third through fifth grade start each session out with some time on Dance Mat Typing to improve their keyboarding skills. They are starting to get into it.
Fourth grade added to a Voice Thread on the theme of Dollars and Sense, and played Lemonade Stand for fun and concept development.
Fifth grade added to their Voice Thread by answering questions about Astonomy that they had developed. I’ve set up the Voice Threads as concept development tools, sort of a multi-media KWL.
Sixth grade was where I really changed things. Students are doing research reports on Ancient Civilizations. I’ve already shown them how to use Google Docs to save their work so they can get it anywhere with an Internet connection. I then created Diigo student accounts so they could save their bookmarks AND highlight information on Web pages. Not every student is using it (some kids are still writing their work on paper), but it’s a first step. I’m hoping to teach them automated/online research report skills over the rest of the year.
“Not every thing that can be measured is important. Not everything that is important cannot be measured” — Einstein
Brian Crosby at In Practice recently discussed the “safety” that educators can find in using set instructional programs. It got me thinking about how we love our numbers. Recent financial events show where an uncritical romance with numbers can led to. Much of what was done looked great on paper, but took on a less rosy hue when it met with time and reality. Numbers can be nice, and there is a a natural human tendency to trust numbers because they are solid, and unambiguous looking, but numbers are like all information and have to be approached critically. What is being measured? How were the numbers assigned? Do the numbers that you are measuring match the goal or standard you are trying to achieve?
“Inferential methods:
On average, students in the River City treatment scored b.2 points higher on the post self-efficacy in general science inquiry section of the affective measure (t=2.22, p<.05).
On average, students in this sample who saw higher gains in self efficacy in general science inquiry scored higher on the post test. These gains were higher for students in the River City project. (n=358)
Yet these results tell us nothing about patterns, behaviors, and processes that lead to inquiry.
We are also limited by # of variables we can build into our inferential models.”
from Dr. Chris Dede, Harvard University in “New Strategies for Educational Assessment” at ILC 2008 Conference.
Dr. Dede had one of the more interesting presentations for me at ILC. He’s worked on assessment theory on a federal panel. His conclusions, if you do formative assessment really well, summative assessment becomes superfluous. His presentation was a case-study of a project using an immersive environment, called River City, to teach students life sciences and problem solving. The project had the students gather facts, and going through the interaction to try to discover the cause for a mysterious illness in a turn of the century town. This was an unusual learning situation because rather than too little, they almost have too much information. What they found was that traditional testing measures missed mastery that was shown through the observational data.
Had most of us world enough and time, we could gather tons of observational information about our students. When you’re at Harvard, you get grad students to do it, so they combed the log files from River City, and coded the students activities. In addition to activities that students did trying to “solve the mystery”, they also had to do a “final project” writing up their findings in a letter to the mayor. They were also given a standardized test. This is where things got interesting. They found that students in the study who showed mastery based on the logs, did not always show mastery on the final project or the standardized test.
So the question is, what are we preparing students to do take a test, or solve problems with others? You could make the argument that they should show mastery on the report to the mayor, because being able to communicate what they’ve done is an important part of being a scientist, but you’ll never fill out a multiple choice grid to show what you’ve discovered.
One of the joys of growing older is seeing the kid you used to babysit become a productive citizen. One of the progeny of an old college friend has reconnected with us since moving up to Davis to go to school there. He’s even babysitting our son ;-).
Friend’s son is about to graduate with his bachelors in environmental science (which includes a healthy dose of mathematics). He is contemplating filling the gap between that and grad school with a stint teaching algebra through TSA. While I’m concerned about the lack of training time in that program (five weeks), this is tempered by the fact that little can prepare you for teaching in your own classroom, especially in high-poverty schools. Also, Friend’s son has had a successful stint tutoring community college students in economics, which is more than I had when I started substituting on an emergency credential. Here is the advice I’ve given him, and will be giving him…
You will need to learn classroom management first. Don’t look to the loud, pushy person like me, but instead find the little old lady that is 5 feet tall and still has the kids eating out of her palm. She’ll have more useful advice than folks who can fall back on a loud voice and their size. Use what you’ve learned about soft-power in international relations (many of the precepts are remarkably similar to classroom psychology and management). You will train the kids to respond to you, so try to make it clear that the quieter you are, the more serious it is (that also avoids the “yelling” game).
Focus on the necessary and pertinant, and don’t be distracted by ancillary issues in your rules and procedures. Don’t waste your time on stupid stuff. Your administration may have some issues they want enforced that are a waste of your time, don’t add to that list.
If you want to keep misbehavior down, try to have interesting lessons. Boring students to death will make your job harder. They are required to be there, and to take algebra. Only you can make them want to learn it. This will not be like community college students who self-selected in (even if they didn’t want to have to take econ). I’d also recommend this series of posts by Larry Ferlazzo on classroom management which is full of good advice and an honest look at the difficulties involved.
Build a network of others both in and out of your site. I’d recommend Dy/Dan, and Jackie B who are both high school mathematics teachers. I recommend them not just because of their subject but because I think their thinking is both well focused on the issues that should be your first concern, lesson planning, classroom management, and assessment. Read their blogroll to discover other educators. There are other edubloggers, like myself but many of us are technology focused which brings me to my next point.
Like Mathew Needleman, I think you need to focus on teaching first, and I will not be advising friend’s son to skate the cutting edge of technology. He’s only in the classroom for a couple years. If he was there longer, I would advise him to wait until after that period before plunging into Web 2.0. I have had discussions about tech in schools with him before this, mostly to suss out his thoughts as a science and math student. Based on those conversations, he likes a well done math lesson on a transparency projector better than some of the PowerPoint-less lectures he’s gotten. He also clearly prefers paper and pencil for mathematics problem solving, so he should stick with that as he goes into teaching. My only advice, if you’re going to do PowerPoint (or Keynote), look at Dan’s stuff to do it right.
Photo Credit: Can you take a photo of my hands too! from eviemaedavid’s photostream on Flickr.
I know, I know, I’ve been an awful blogger! My feed has grown to almost 400 unread articles (yikes), I haven’t commented on a blog in a month, and my last post was at least a fortnight past. Like many of you, I’ve had a serious addiction to political news, but I’ve also had some interesting things happening “in real life”. One of them may end up shifting my focus from my online community to my school-based peers. Seemingly before I could have predicted it, a small revolution has taken place on my campus. We have a bunch of “carry-over” funds from federal bilingual money that have to be spent. The principal pitched it to be spent getting an “extra” upper grade teacher so that class size could be lowered (from ~30-33 to 27 or so). With no prompting from me, the upper grade teachers who had the most to gain from this decided that the money would be better spent on getting technology for every teacher in every classroom, instead of just having it in my lab. I’m very pleased with this change, but it’s meant that I’ve had to shift my focus from you all, to my school site and peers.
What will we be getting? A teacher laptop for all classroom and resource teachers, along with digital projectors, and document cameras.
Why does this help with English Language Development? While this is far from one-laptop per child, I think it’s a necessary first step. We have teachers with broken VCRs and no DVD player. The district has sprung for Discovery Streaming, but for most teachers, the only way to show it is if I burn a dvd for them, or they have the kids huddle around a computer monitor. We have Inspiration/Kidspiration (another district-wide purchase), but teachers can only hand out paper copies, and can’t do class “webs” for thinking and sharing ideas. Since the classrooms have 1-6 outdated desktop systems, the computer is something that kids go an do by themselves in small groups (which is good), but there is no opportunity for teachers to share online images, and sound files to illustrate concepts (don’t know what a galaxy is? here’s a pic from NASA kids).
I also think that giving teacher a laptops of their own will be a big game changer. The flexibility of laptops cannot be underestimated, it gave me the ability to experiment and use technology in ways I never dreamed of. It will give them the ability to use computers for their lecturing in a way that will make it more visual and engaging. Since based on my observations (dropping in classes, etc.) they seem to give students independent work time, and not just play sage on the stage, I don’t think this will let them continue with outmoded practices, but instead make the amount of lecture time they engage in really count. Many have already used technology, like tvators (all of these are currently “dead”), to supplement their lectures (locating supporting images) and having that available on the fly is something they value. This tells me they already have some good instincts about how to use technology to improve instruction.
The next part is what I’m really excited about. Another order with digital recorders, cameras, and camcorders for each class should be next. This will let them document, and share student learning that is authentic. They can photograph illustrations, demonstrate concepts, show their oral listening and speaking skills, and it can all be saved to review their progress.
What would I like to see them do with it? How about using Inspiration to talk about stories they read, and record book talks they have about it too? How about demonstrating concepts, and narrating what they come up with, then sharing it with the class? How about showing videos as an into or building background? What about sentence lifting on the projector with color-coding of different elements? Why not show images and visuals of ideas and concepts that are being taught?
Will all my dreams come true? Probably not, but it’s a step forward, but scary because now I have to talk tech with the folks I work with, and make it work for them.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the groovinest tech teacher of all?
The title refers to this plurk, which happened this, not last week, but WTH!
It was a pretty good week, closing up thematic units at all levels.
Second Grade was finished up a unit on storytelling. I got some video with students sharing their thoughts on storytelling (shown below). My favorite part was showing students some “silent” movies from Weston Wood on Discovery Streaming THEN we went into Inspiration and did a story map of the events.
Fourth Grade finished up a unit on taking risks and looking at consequences. This is the grade that I am really struggling with. The students seem behind in many ways, and then this is also the first grade that I have working on a blog. I also have not always had materials or lessons that were “just right”. I tried to have the students reflect on what they had learned in this writing assignment. It’s a really good example of WHAT NOT TO DO. Seriously, I gave them choices but not ones they could quickly evaluate, and some of the sites were difficult to understand. In showing episodes from “When We Left Earth” I should have just show excerpts and not the whole thing. Messy!
Fifth Grade finished up a unit on cooperation and competition that was centered on presidential elections. I had the students finish up with comments on what they want the next president to focus on. Although not all are great, these turned out better than I expected.
Sixth Grade finished up a unit on perseverance. It finished up with students creating “motivational” posters on perseverance. THis was a much more difficulat task for students than I anticipated, even though I had broken it down as much as possible. The result were not univers3ally wonderful, but the best ones are here, and I’m giving students who needed to improve theirs a chance to do that, and most are taking me up on it.
Last, was my training on Multimedia: Beyond Power Point. I didn’t label it well because one participant thought it would be about Power Point. A lesson in assumptions and trying to be too cute in a title. That being said, it was a small, but really diverse group (everything from first grade and a couple elementary teachers, and two high school instructors). I seemed to provide something that all of them could use (even the fellow looking for Power Point). Flickr is shaping up to be the most versatile resource I introduce teachers to, and the one they get. Look at what I was able to do with the Sixth Grade project above, and it was also part of that Third Grade Voice Thread.
I think that gives you an idea of how behind I am at this point. It might not be that obvious because, usually I use this method, to have my posts appear throughout the week. I’m not that organized anymore. What went wrong?
I made the mistake of ignoring, and not updating my to do list after ILC. BIG mistake. I decided to wing it. That led to discursive forays into projects like this. At the same time, I was behind on planning for the lab–just as we were going into new units at almost every grade level, which meant I needed new unit plans. I think I’m out of the hole, but it was not pretty. I’ll try to have my “Week in Lab” post up tonight.
Why? He didn’t show up to my presentation, but I did see his, and I have to say he has a very different approach to teaching and learning than I do. Why would I bother doing a presentation to someone I disagree with and disagrees with me? Maybe it’s about being intellectually honest. If I can’t justify using tools like BrainPop (appropriately) and Voice Thread in spite of criticism, then it shouldn’t have a place in my practice.
Now I’m going to segue into my next point, who are you doing your presentation for ultimately, and how do you measure the success of your presentation? There has been a lot of talk about this around after ILC about what a presentation should look like and I’ve been doing a lot of presentations and trainings lately, so this a question worth exploring for me.
Why I think I was successful in my presentation at ILC:
I accurately billed the session as shown by the fact that almost all of my audience was people who teach or work with English Language Learners or had a (strong) background in that area.
I walked folks through how what I did fit into the standards and theory, and how I set up the lessons and units, and showed them examples of what my kids did.
I checked for understanding as we went along.
I did a few quick demonstrations of how to use the tools, and referred participants to later sessions on “how-to” if that is what they needed. This was a “why” and “how” not a “how-to” session.
The audience seemed engaged, and was following me as I moved around (which I do a lot, I’m a restless speaker).
I got some positive feedback, applause from the audience, a comment on my evaluation form, and a later discussion with a CTAP person who used to do presentations at CABE (the pre-eminent professional organization for bi-lingual and English Language Development teachers) was very positive.
Why I could be wrong:
I have my audience, ELD teachers and Specialist, and that is a solid one to start with, but would say a Math educator with high expectations, and little background in the subject be interested? Dan’s criticism’s seem rightly to be that we please most of the regular attendees at conferences, but maybe we miss the chance to increase the audience by having low-standards. Since my audience was not just edubloggers, I think I’ve already gotten outside the box a bit.
I don’t think I would have convinced Dr. Stager, just as he hasn’t convinced me that BrainPop is evil, Voice Thread is bad, and posting students’ work in progress is sloppy. Ultimately, he isn’t in my teaching situation, and I’d rather convince folks that are. I hope this doesn’t sound too dismissive.
I only have one response on my evaluation form, and it’s largely positive (organization was a weak mark at only “Good”). So there could be folks who left saying “meh?”, who applauded out of politeness and relief, instead of pleasure.
Ultimately, it is frustrating doing presentations to meet the “demands” of folks like Dan, and Dr. Stager, who will likely never attend them, but to the degree that Dan is dead-on with his comment to cover what Google can’t, I’ll keep trying ;-).
I know, I know, this is VERY late. I got swamped, and I still am, with stuff to do from work. Here is my reflection on the last, and in many ways, the best day at ILC for me…
Started out with a very early morning with Chris Walsh. He discussed how things are changing. It was good, and had some new approaches to it, but it just doesn’t feel like a critical topic to me personally. My takeaway was when he showed a You Tube video that was a “movie trailer” for The Shining that positioned it as a romantic comedy/family film. I see kids really understand genre like that in video form in a way that is not as accessible to them in print.
The next session was a hidden gem. Many others went to the session on Digital Photography by Leslie Fisher, which I understand was fantastic by people with good taste. I was going to go to a session on Professional Development, but it was cancelled. So I went into a session that was billed as being about students teaching students and podacasting. It was about the FANTASTIC program a teacher in sixth grade did where he had students make movies that were screencasts of them solving problems using tablet PCs and capturing it on Camtasia. They do the movies frequently and post them on iTunes, YouTube, etc. He has eliminated the text over time by having the kids use these videos to teacher others how to approach problems. This explained a lot of logistics and tools to overcome the specific challenges of doing equation solving on a computer. Wacom tablets were suggested as an alternative to tablet PCs, I’m already making plans for implementing this and other Mathematics activities online now.
Last was Gary “I hate BrainPop” Stager. This was the ONE session I was going to attend when I saw he was presenting because I have had some issues with some of his opinions in the blogosphere, and wanted to see what he believed in (it’s pretty obvious what he doesn’t like from his blog posts). He had a very spirited presentation about what he saw as the problems and the promise of computers in the classroom, and specifically 1-to-1 programs. Basically, he wants kids creating, constructing, and solving authentic problems. What he has kids doing looks like Waldorf, if they didn’t have all those notions about Jungian archetypes and wooden toys. The question I always have in a system where learning is largely student directed, is what holes will remain “unfilled”? I may be too critical in this respect.
The other area of difference I have is that he feels that most student work that is posted should not see the light of day, and only quality finished products should be published. I disagree, because much of what I’m putting up now, is work that is part of a “process” that may not have a formal ending. I do this for a couple of reasons, but most have to do with transparency. Unless i show “work in progress” the number of other teachers who can see what I’m teaching, and what my students are doing, will be very limited. When teachers post work, it lets others see “best practices”. If you just see the end product, you don’t see the process as readily. That being said, I understand his point, and why he is making it, and I can respect it, even if I don’t agree, or follow that advice. It was good because it makes me think, I do need to have more “finalized” and “formal” work posted, and I’d like to have final work vs. draft work better identified.
In summary, he had a clear, strong vision for computers in education, and that isn’t a bad thing.
Once again, I can’t say no to the opportunity to create a slideshow. It’s Slideshare.net’s The Economic Crisis in 30 slides. It’s a longer format than I’ve worked with recently, but I managed it in just 21 slides.
Here it is:
This day was much more fruitful for my learning. I only attended three sessions, and two of them were really helpful.
First up was Josh Burker’s Scratch Presentation. Scratch had been recommended to me for improving engagement with elementary algebra instruction, so I was looking forward to learning more. I had downloaded and played with it at one point a few years ago. The session went through the basics, which I needed, and gave suggestions on how to structure instruction for different levels. He suggested that for primary students, you can just let them play with gallery activities, while upper grade elementary students can do programming themselves. My favorite activity? He showed a program called “Cow-bell Hero” that has you playing a cow-bell to rock music like Guitar Hero.
Next was Dr. Arnie Abrams from Southern Oregon University on the wisdom of mobs. Almost all of it was information I already knew, but he had a decent delivery. This was best for those unfamiliar with the topic. I’m thinking less about the wisdom of mobs (which I read in prep for NECC this summer where the author appeared) and more on large system failures (hey, it’s timely). I’ve been hearing a bit about this fellow, and how “assumptions” about a normal distribution can contribute to this. Now I have to figure out if I’m up for reading it. Surowiecki is very readable.
Last, I saw Dr. Christopher Dede, who works in the Harvard School of Education. He discussed assessment, and it was from a pretty high level perspective. He has worked on publications from DoE on this topic, and it was pretty rich stuff. He showed the same clipthat annoyed Dan Meyer but with a different take. His point was about the type of datamining that commercial enterprises engage in, and how much more data they have than we do as educators. He discussed his position that if we had more and better quality formative data, we could do away with summative assessment. He first shared his project, http://www.edtags.org to collect bookmarks and tags from education school students, to analyze what they know and are learning. He then went on to look at River City MUVE project, which is an online immerssive environment to teach project based problem solving in groups with K-12 kids. Having world enough and time (hey, this is Harvard) they analyzed the trail students took, their chat records, the questions they asked, what they looked into, and the hypotheses they made. Here was the big take-away for me. By analyzing what they actually do (through logs), they showed that many students showed mastery of some objectives for critical thinking set out in the beginning of the project. Students were also given a culminating task, a letter to the “Mayor of River City” sharing their findings. Of the students who showed mastery based on analysis of the logs, some did not show that same level of mastery on the culminating report, so the formative data was more accurate. My only question would then be about the retention. That is a big issue because students are often being remediated for skills they have already been taught. Interesting stuff.
