I have a tab opened in my Firefox browser that I have not been able to close for several weeks because it keeps drawing me back to it. I figured I would post it here for my teachers to see as well in the hope that it will allow them to stop and ponder at the same time. The list is “20 Uses for Our Classroom Blog,” and it comes from Sheryl Forsman via Miguel Guhlin in San Antonio ISD. Thanks to you both. It is a great list that gives both wonderful ideas for immediate use and the opportunity to extend to newer ones.
Why did we create a classroom blog and how will we use it? 1. document our growth across the year 2. inform families of what we are doing 3. expand our audience 4. collaborate with other first grade bloggers 5. use another form of writing 6. learn about writing for an audience 7. learn about digital literacy 8. document favorite events of this year 9. integrate writing with other subjects 10. write book reviews 11. write journal entries 12. respond to class assignments 13. free choice writing 14. develop keyboard skills 15. communicate with each other 16. collaborate with reading buddies from other classrooms 17. collaborate with teachers from the university as blogging buddies 18.post pictures of our work 19. learn about visual literacy through the design of our pages 20. to have fun!
Nope. That’s not my title. It is the title of a site by Mark Warner (picked up via Kevin Jarrett). This is a great site to visit when you are trying to find ideas for instruction to engage your students. Mark has done a nice job of categorizing the ideas by either subject area (core and elective areas) or possible Web 2.0 tool that you are considering using. He has also provided nice, shared Google Presentations to walk you through them. Each slide is an idea. This makes it easy to just keep adding more as they come in.
If you don’t find exactly what you are looking for, there are enough ideas there to inspire something new in your mind. Then you can go back and share your idea with him so it can be added and maybe help the next person looking. That is what the collaborative web is all about.
Visit Ideas to Inspire today. In the meantime, consider these science ideas:
Sometimes what my former students post on the web or the poor decisions they make in real life really surprise me. I try telling them during the middle school years that things have a way of catching back up to them. Some listen. Some do not.
Now, the “digital tattoo” is living proof that it is more true now than ever. Consider this great story from Seth Godin (bold print mine):
A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.
Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.
The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”
The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”
And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.
Three for three.
Google never forgets.
Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.
And that is just someone looking for a housekeeper. Imagine if it were really important to you: college application, internship, scholarship, promotion. Yes, employers, colleges, and organizations are scouring the Internet to see what they can find out about you before they meet you. It is a part of the process these days.
Remember what your mom always told you? No, not the underwear and the car wreck thing. She also talked about first impressions when meeting someone for the first time, and you only get one of them? Well, now you are doing that BEFORE you meet them for the first time. As a matter of fact, it just might cost you meeting them for the first time. Google me. Be more specific in your search: “Scott S. Floyd”. You will see me everywhere: literacy sites, political sites, newspapers, blog comments, video comments, and who knows how many virtual communities I participate in. What I do know is that I work hard to maintain a web presence that I want my mother to be proud of. Funny enough, my wife (who spends nowhere near the time online that I do) casually mentioned over dinner one night, “You know, you have a lot of good stuff on the Internet.” Yep. She Googled me. I was proud of what she found. So was she.
So, it is time to add this component to the technology application standards we teach our students in a focused way. Our goal is to teach it through electronic portfolios. If we show our students the proper way to present themselves to the virtual world, then maybe some of that training will stick with them when they are growing that tattoo outside of the school walls.
Will Richardson blogged recently about a conference he attended where he heard Andy Ross, vice-president of Florida Virtual High School speak. The quote does not need much lead-in, so here it is:
Finally, I think the conversation that most blew me away was the one with Andy Ross, the VP of Florida Virtual High School. They’ve got almost 1,000 full time staff now and over 20,000 kids on their waiting list to take classes. They can’t hire teachers fast enough. Kids can take their entire high school curriculum online without ever meeting a teacher face to face, though there are plenty of phone calls and e-mails. Andy said that their research shows that those kids do better on the standardized assessments than kids in physical schools, primarily because of the deep alignment of the curriculum and the programmed delivery.
Will’s reflections got me to wondering about where my son will be attending high school six and a half years from now. Sure, if it has four walls and a physical teacher, it will be White Oak High School. But, if it is a virtual environment that he excels in for whatever reason, then that is an option he will obviously have available. Texas has already started down that road, albeit years after Florida took the lead. Our own East Texas Virtual High School via SUPRNet has been ahead of the game (and the rest of Texas) on this as well since they visited Florida in the beginning to help get started on the right track.
Yet, we are talking 6.5 years from now. That’s like 30 years in tech life. How far along will we and our technologies be by then? Will Cisco Telepresence be the home solution? Or will it be like CNN’s holograms or more like a real hologram?
Regardless, consider the technologies we use and take for granted today, and think back five years. Yeah. Tremendous, huh? My son has some awesome times ahead of him. Will Texas public schools be ready? Will TCEA be a part of that preparation? Florida already is. They even have openings for Texas elementary teachers to work from home. That means they are taking OUR kids out of OUR classes and OUR teachers from OUR students. Now. How far behind are we?
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach mentioned at a conference recently, “We are preparing kids with the end in mind, and we don’t even know what the end is.” She’s right. But let me take that one step further. We are planning, prepping, and funding our schools with the future in mind, and we don’t even know what the future holds. Can we even begin to plan keeping unimaginable learning environments in mind? Is it possible for us to get out of the mold where we expect 100% of our students (K-12) to arrive for learning on a bus instead of in their pajamas?
I’m not sounding the Armageddon Alarm for public schools. I’m just saying, if we all think the trends we are seeing in places like Florida are either going to pass us by or fade into another realm as the pendulum swings back, I think we are making a huge mistake. What are we doing in our state and school districts to prepare for this paradigm shift?
For the last few years, one of the items I had on my list of things to do was to get published in a national publication. While it was on the list, I had not spent a lot of time focusing on achieving it. Besides, I was too busy blogging.
Well, it seems as though blogging was what I should have been doing. Back in May I got an email from one of the editors at ISTE’s publication Learning & Leading with Technology. She had read some of my blog posts and was interested in publishing one of my posts in the magazine. Needless to say, I agreed. Woot! Above is a photo of the page in all of its half-page glory. Feel free to read the original post HERE.
Since Learning & Leading is an international magazine and not just a national one, I guess I get bonus points for that goal. Sweet. Another goal accomplished. What’s next on the list? (No sarcastic comments on that rhetorical question Tim Holt, Miguel Guhlin, Paul R. Wood, Brian Grenier, Kyle Stevens, Dean Shareski, Mike Gras, ……..)
Note to my teachers: See. Blogging has added benefits. Imagine what your kiddos would do with a little notice of their writing outside your classroom. Just imagine.
I had the opportunity to speak with directors of technology, curriculum directors, and other school leaders at Chapel Hill High School. The event was sponsored by SUPERNet Consortium. SUPERNet is a collaborative of twenty-six rural schools that originally banded together to share technology resources, evolved into one of the most successful virtual high schools in Texas, and is now poised to become technology integration leaders for our portion of Texas.
They are on the cusp of getting it. Many of them have, but now most of them are. They realize that the curriculum drives the technology. That is part of what this meeting was about. I was sharing my experiences of working through the process in White Oak ISD as well as what we feel that we still have ahead of us. Feel free to give it a listen (if you have 1:45 to spare). I am always open to criticism and other comments. I also added the PDF of the Keynote presentation as well. You will get the gist of when I move on to the next slide, I think.
One of the questions asked was about how we handle copyright. If you have read my blog before now, you have seen a post or two about this. We have not had ANY issues with this in our district. We are blessed with a very professional staff. So, that is where my response went. We train our staff on utilizing Creative Commons Share Alike images, video, audio, and other items. We ask our campus administrators to make sure to inform us if additional training is needed. If a situation comes up, we would handle it with that person on a one to one basis. If it is a repeated event, we would handle it however the campus administrator and superintendent prefers. The ultimate responsibility is on the teacher. When a copyright question came up during a presentation at TCEA last year, I called ATPE and got my response. Those are the folks covering my rear in court. The school district would not be responsible for that if they have tried to show me the light. I must repeat again, our staff is very professional. I cannot tell you how much easier that makes my job.
There was an interesting question that came up after the mic was off and I was packing up. An IT from Tyler ISD approached me with the question of how we handle public information requests concerning the blogs. I have to say, I did not have a clear cut answer. The simple, honest response is that the information is already public, so they can just print it off if they want it. There really is no need to put in paperwork to get it. We do not hide our teacher blogs. The other side of my mind is wondering about a post that creates an issue (which I hope never happens), so the teacher deletes it. Then a parent shows up wanting a copy of it. How is that handled? That is the question that has me stumped. I know we will have regular backups of our WPMU site, but what are the chances we catch it while an offending post is live? Feel free to comment below.
I would also like to thank my PLN for all of the PD you give me on a daily basis. Sometimes you feed my current beliefs. Sometimes you smack me down and change my mind. Other times, you challenge my thinking, and who knows where that will go. In my presentation I used material from Chris Lehmann, Dean Shareski, Dr. Scott McLeod, Miguel Guhlin, Kim Estes, Dr. Helen Barrett, and Darren Draper (who still has iTunes U K-12 while Texas doesn’t). There is no telling who I drew ideas from over the years, but I assure you this. If you are in my PLN, you are making a difference. Not only for me, but for every kid that ends up being affected by what I say through the people that hear it. Thanks to you. Stop by when you are in Texas and I’ll buy you some BBQ. Or Mexican.
One of my favorite literacy lessons with kids is exploding their writing. I tell them that if they want it to pop with the reader, they have to explode it. Telescopic Text is a great example of that. This one little website does a nice job of turning a three word sentence into a story worth hearing. It is a wonderful visual for the kids to see up on the projector. Keep clicking on the grayed out words to see just how far you can blow that baby up.
Consider letting them start this in a Google Doc or a wiki and watch it grow.
I love being on this side of teaching. Don’t get me wrong. I miss my English and reading classes at the middle school, but now I get to work with all of the staff and students on every campus. Being able to see our brilliant teachers and their students expand their technology use and enjoy it makes it even better.
But I also get to network with some really great minds outside of White Oak. One of those great minds resides only a few hours west of us in Burleson ISD. Kim Estes has gone above and beyond what many people would do outside of their every day jobs in helping us. I will expand on her work with our ePortfolios after I finish the monument to her in my office, though.
As I was reading through her newly redesigned blog, I found what every tech-loving, literacy teacher dreams about: a course outline complete with 6+1 Traits standards (our ISD uses New Jersey Writing, but they are basically the same) seamlessly meshed with technology integration where the curriculum is driving the technology. She created the outline, and then she found tools that supported the work.
Kim, you are a jewel to share this with everyone. I honor you by reposting it below with credit to you for the hard work it took. Thank you for being so generous in so many ways to us. Everyone who uses any part of this: I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment below to let Kim know what a valuable resource this truly is for us.
I am re-posting below a blog post from my good friend Dean Shareski entitled “Do you have time for beauty.” I think where we are headed with our in-district training in Capturing Kids’ Hearts falls right in line with what is at the heart of Dean’s writing. I shortened my blog post title because the crux of the training our staff has undergone is taking the time out to get to know each of the kids as individuals. The post below and the video inside of it hit home in that respect.
I have profound respect for Dean. Sitting with him in San Antonio discussing education and learning is one of the highlights of my personal learning. It is great to have someone like him to turn to and learn from. Thank you, my friend, for letting me re-post this thoughtful piece of writing you have shared.
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HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
The rest of the story goes on to reveal that world renowned violinist Joshua Bell performed on a priceless Stradivarius as hundreds passed by barely noticing. While his concerts command prices over $100 a seat, he made $32 in just under an hour. The article details this experiment and offers some interesting ideas into human psychology.
For me it reminds me that so much of life is hidden in plain sight and too often we aren’t paying attention.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?
School is beginning for many. Fall is often a start up for many organizations. There will be to do’s, deadlines and pressures. But hopefully we’ll have time to notice really great things that happen everyday. If you’re involved in education I’m guessing there are a few Josh Bell’s in your building.
I hope you’ll make time for beauty. I know I need to. That’s my sermon for today. Stay well.
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Note from Scott: My only edit to Dean’s post above was to use the video from Edublogs.tv instead of YouTube since YouTube is filtered in our district.
Okay. So it wasn’t the wallpaper of Miguel Guhlin on a computer that got my middle school teachers engaged and excited on Thursday. It was something better.
MacBooks, iPod Nanos, two 165 quart all terrain Igloo coolers, and plenty of Pasco science probes. So it cost a bit to get them going, but it worked. As we rolled in the two huge coolers with boxes stacked on top of each and two rolling carts with a dozen Higher Ground laptop cases, I felt like Vanna White as I unveiled the new tools these educators have at their disposal this year. For the record, all of this was planned and ordered months before my wife ever was hired to teach 6th grade ELA (which I am extremely proud to have her in our school district now). I am already getting the “She is way better than you ever were” comments, and they are right.
Anyway…..We began with 4 GB flash drives. Each teacher received one with his or her name engraved onto it. We felt like that gave them the true ownership each of them needed to feel free to utilize the thing without fear of it being taken away or whatever. It was a hit to say the least. Michael and I had some grant funds we used for them, and the teachers thoroughly appreciated it.
Next, I handed out iPod Nanos to each table. No, it wasn’t for them to keep. They did get to help me unwrap them and got to play with them for a little bit while we discussed possible uses in the classroom. With two 15 unit docking/synch stations, they should see plenty of action even with being new to teachers. My hope is that they become in such high demand that we must buy more. This is, of course, meaning that they are being utilized in the classroom to improve content knowledge, deeper understanding, and a higher level of student engagement in the entire learning process. See, Gary Stager. I was paying attention.
Then we opened the coolers up and shared some information about the probes inside. Some may wonder why we put them in coolers. Well, we are building a 23 acre nature center (behind our elementary schools in the picture above) for all campuses to use. The coolers will make it easier to tote the tools out to the learning site while also giving some heavy duty protection to the equipment. The pneumatic tires will make them easy to roll over even big brush, rocks, and what have you. For the most part, the only folks worked up here were the science teachers, but that’s okay. I was excited, and I am an English teacher. Well, and a techy (and all of the probes had USB jacks, so that made it click for me). For me, the highlight of this part was having the sixth grade science teacher figure out what the nearly six foot long physics probe bundle was all about. Something about inertia, speed, something, and some other somethings. Truly, that baby is on its way to the high school since they are the real physics folks. That will be true of other probes we bought as well. Our middle school science teachers will be working their way through all of the science probes and helping us move them to the appropriate campus for other teachers to use. Thank goodness for those ladies, because I would have been lost on that sorting deal. I do plan to stick close and learn more about it, though.
Finally, after about thirty minutes of the other stuff, we hit the MacBooks. I had each person grab a laptop, battery (fully charged from the battery dock), and a comfy chair. Since Macs are new to our staff, I spent plenty of time walking them through the basics (icons, Finder, shortcuts, the cool Ctrl+two finger zoom function). We spent a few minutes in each of the iWorks apps: Numbers, Keynote, and Pages. Then we hit the popular suite of iLife: iMovie (I downloaded HD since no one can figure out 08 anyway), iPhoto, iTunes, and Garageband. I showed them how easy it was to record a lecture in Garageband, add a quick audio clip to the beginning as if it were a news show, and export it out as an MP3 file. Then we uploaded it to the Apple podcast blogs we use. I think they were relieved seeing that it was as simple as sending an email. I showed them how easy it was to do the same thing in iMovie with the built-in iSight camera to make a video podcast. Cool enough. They really enjoyed the part where I had one of the teachers use iChat in the back of the room and call into my session. Once they saw how easy that was, I think their attention got even stronger with the Mac. Everyone loves a good video chat.
Throughout the session, I stuck to the same mantra: You now have a very powerful tool in your hands to create, captivate, engage, enthrall, and any other snazzy verb you can think of. You can capture priceless learning with the students. You can provide resources for absent students or those needing remediation. You can allow the kids to teach you. You can allow yourself AND the students to publish. They NEED a creative outlet to do this.
That is my son. Give him a MacBook (or Legos or piles of scrap whatever) and a little instruction, and he can create like crazy. He will show you how his understanding goes beyond what he might could show you on paper or on a state test. That is my son. He will show you how the right brain can engage in ways the left never can by sharing beautiful bits of himself that his teachers, his mother, and I helped to create by teaching and loving him. That’s my son. He will WOW you with his awesomeness of a sponge-like brain, not by regurgitating facts on a score sheet, but by composing his own score sheet to share with the world. That is my son.
It’s also your son (or daughter). We must provide new outlets for kids to practice and publish their learning. They need to showcase their content knowledge in some way other than a bubble sheet, a test proctor, and a newspaper article reporting the results. When they publish personally in these new ways, there is immediate feedback and reflection and relearning. When their knowledge is judged by one day and a few hours on a test, the only thing they get there is a snapshot result. They do not use that to motivate themselves to learn more, to discuss the successes and failures with peers, or as an opportunity to find a mentor to further their knowledge. The most they get is either a party or extra tutoring (my rant on the state, by the way, not the teachers).
This is the driving force behind what we are doing at our middle school. We are working toward building electronic portfolios (Wordpress MU) that the students can upload these types of products to where they can showcase their learning and skills. They can build on them and add new ones. They will be able to edit, recreate, share, and even take the portfolio with them when they leave our district. They will be the models for the campuses they left and the ones they head to. Their expectations will be higher than ever before when they enter a new classroom. They need the freedom to produce, reflect, rethink, and react in their learning. This is their chance. This is an opportunity to collaborate with peers and teaching faculty at a whole new level.
While we work through this process, I will share more of my reflections in this blog.
I want to leave you with the same video I left my middle school staff with (and I shared back in June on this blog). My wife said it tied everything together beautifully (not consciously planned on my part). My lead in (off the cuff) was that we are the ultimate force in the classroom. How we prepare and present ourselves to our students is ultimately how they decide whether they turn themselves on or off for learning when they enter our doors. Is our focus on teaching the same year of instruction for thirty plus years? Or is it to refocus how we perceive actual learning with today’s youth and offer and foster an environment that promotes their full participation in the process with an open mind and an innovative spirit?
Photo Credits: (1) Miguel Wallpaper – me, taken at TCEA office in Austin during Thinkfinity training; (2) Google Earth snapshot of WOISD – me in Google Earth; (3) “I like my voice” – Peter H. Reynolds, scribbled on a napkin if I remember the story correctly.
Photo credit: 
Or will this be what his classroom looks like?
For the last few years, one of the items I had on my list of things to do was to get published in a national publication. While it was on the list, I had not spent a lot of time focusing on achieving it. Besides, I was too busy blogging.
