Conference Time!

Well, the conference has come and gone.  I'll say I'm glad it's over, but it's definitely been a good experience.  I can say that I've definitely never had a year that I've even come close to using technology as much as I have this year.  The Inspired Learning cohort has been an invaluable experience as far as having a chance to work with other people going through the same experiences.  I think it would be neat for groups to come together for an hour a month or so(maybe after school or something) and everyone that can would come with some ideas that have worked for them or a new thing they have found.  Then this could be a totally (teacher as a student-driven) opportunity for people to show new ideas or to ask questions about something they've tried. Sort of a tech brainstorming hour(for a stipend of coarse)

Not a Boyscout

Lately, I haven't been too happy with my pursuit of technology.  It's not to say that I'm not using tech in the classroom, but it's more that I'm not trying anything new.  I do have an excuse(or at least one I tell myself to feel a bit better.)  In science, we're at the point where we're teaching things we've never taught before.  To make this even harder, we're doing this with a resource that hasn't been very helpful so we're basically scrounging around though a bunch of possible resources looking for things so we can build our own lessons. I feel like I'm lucky to be a day ahead of the kids.  The idea of being prepared ahead of time is pretty much a joke, and backwards planning  is only happening if you consider the fact that everything I'm doing is backwards.  I will say that it's times like this that you truly learn what kinds of people you're working with.  I can say that if I didn't have Liz Blei and Tom Andrews as my PLC team, I don't know what I'd be teaching these kids.  It's sort of interesting to me that I'm struggling teaching the kids the concept of collaboration, but it is going so well for us.  I couldn't imagine if I was dealing with all of this and had to deal with difficult colleges at the same time.  I definitely need to remember this stuff the next time I'm lecturing my kids about working with others.

Character

OK, so what's happened lately.  I know this is supposed to be about technology.  Right now I'm still very overwhelmed with the amount of work I'm doing for my classes and while I'm still incorporating a lot of technology, very little of it is anything new.  I have a lot of ideas of things I'd like to try out, but can't seem to find the time.  So I'm going to digress a bit from the technology.
My kids have been doing some martial arts classes lately.  Other than the idea that they might be able to beat up a bully sometime, the main reason we've enjoyed these classes is because they have a big emphasis on character building.  I would say the character building is considered of equal importance to the martial arts.  This has led to me thinking about the character of the students I teach.  Like everything else, I find quite a wide range when I consider their character, but overall I'm really not impressed.  I find that a large part of this population is happy doing average or below average work.  The amount of students that really strives to excel in their work is so very low.  Are we creating a society that is satisfied with mediocrity?  I really don't know.  I think that sometimes this is my fault as there are definitely times where I feel like I've had to lower my own standards just so students don't get failing grades.  But then it seems like our grades also reflect this acceptance to mediocrity as it is rare for a student to repeat a grade or to have any consequences, even when this student is failing.
Is there a solution?  I don't know.  I'm presently talking to my son's martial arts instructor about him possibly coming in to teach some of this character building to the class.  I already find myself repeating some of the things he says.  I guess I just wonder about these kids growing up.  Are they going to have the ability to achieve their life goals?  Are they going to be able to persevere and push through the difficulties that they are bound to have?  Was it any different when I was growing up?  As usual, I'm left with more questions than answers.

Gamification?

I try to keep up with new things in the area of teaching and technology.  This tends to lead to new websites(that I never get around to using) and new ideas such as Gamification(although it goes by many names at this point)  It's the idea that kids like games and the idea of learning through technology and techniques also used in gaming may be a good way for students to learn.  There's even a guy that's totally changed his classroom to fit the idea of gaming in the fact that students must achieve certain standards to be able to "level up."  Other teachers are using things like Minecraft or other popular games in their curriculum.  I guess this just get's me thinking of yet more ideas of things I'd like to try(given enough time)

I've definitely spent some time looking around for some more game-like simulations that I could use in my curriculum.  I think the Science Sleuths that I've mentioned before from discover education is somewhat along these lines, but then I find myself somewhat conflicted.  Sure kids are in this gaming/technology generation, but does that mean that they shouldn't have the ability to actually sit in a traditional classroom and be able to gather some information?

Sometimes it seems that we need to change to some form of entertainer to get our point across to our students.  Should we have to make our presentations as exciting as their favorite cartoons?  Isn't it necessary for student's futures to at least have the ability to learn in a variety of ways.  Every year the students seem to be more and more passive in their education.  They seem to see us as something(like a television) that they can just sit in front of and hopefully soak up some information(which doesn't seem to happen.)  So the question is, do we just deal with the students we are given as they are as we rack our brains to come up with ways to teach them while entertaining them, or do we continue to attempt to get our kids to realize that they must be part of their education as they are an active participant in their own learning?

So much Tech, so little time

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but sometimes all the technology out there(along with everything we already have on our plates) can get so overwhelming.  I am a technology lover and I often find myself in one place or another finding out about some new website with a new type of technology.  The problem is that I never seem to be able to find the time to really get into it and understand it.  It doesn't help that I'm getting older and that leads to me forgetting some great sites that I've learned about and want to try.  Sure I use Diigo to save these sites, but then I have to remember to go back and look at them.  I think I'm just in a frantic state of mind right now, and considering the upcoming break and the mood of the kids, it is somewhat understandable, but it never seems to end.
Since this is a tech-y thing, I would also like to report that in my rare spare moment I'm trying to learn a little computer programming.  I can't say I'm exactly sure why I'm doing this other than the fact that I've always been interested in it.  I figure I can teach my son a bit when he gets older as he seems to like technology(by that I mean he likes to play video games)  I actually think it would be neat for the students to start learning some programming at a younger age.  I remember moving the turtle around on my Apple IIe eons ago.  I even learned some language called Pascal in high school, but I could see things like programming becoming bigger in schools.  If any high school teachers read this, I'd love to know what programming is being taught in high schools these days.  Well I feel like I'm rambling a bit now so I'll sign off.  Something tells me I've got something else to get done now.

Kids Respond to Tech!

Now I can't say that I've been the best teacher this year.  Not that I've been bad or anything, but I know I could always be better.  I will say that this year has included a great deal of change in my lessons.  The biggest thing is that my lessons have included a lot more tech than usual.  What I have found is that the kids are really responding to the fact that there is so much technology.  My kids are really liking my classes and I'd say that has a lot to do with the technology(along with my wonderful sense of humor) I'll admit that I don't work as hard in developing my Social Studies lessons this year due to the fact that I only teach one class a day and that anything we do will be gone next year as the curriculum is changing.  I even had one unit where I basically divided the class into groups and let them decide how they would learn and present their information.  Considering the time and effort I put into this(very minimal) the results were excellent.  The kids came up with a bunch of different ideas and the final products were very good.  I even have them wanting to do it again(which I will)
I guess what I'm learning is that I need to keep trying these new ideas with new types of technology as the kids really seem to want to try these things as they are more comfortable with the change than I am.

Discovery Ed Tech...Finally

OK, I'll be honest, I haven't been overly impressed with Discovery Ed this year.  It has a lot of good information, but the organization is lacking and you really have to sort through a lot of bad stuff or inappropriate things to find the good things.  Well this week my class did a science sleuths "lab." The way the science sleuths works is that there is a whole interactive science lab.  The students are presented with a problem.  Even with this problem it is not specifically written so the student has to determine the problem.  At this point the student can watch videos(interviews), do testing, or research with articles, dictionaries, or an encyclopedia.  Their goal is to solve the problem and one of the best things is that not all the information will lead them towards the answer.  It's the best real-world type science simulation I've seen.  The kids really have to do some critical thinking, and since I had them work in pairs, they had to do some collaboration.  I believe these are called 21st century skills!  Sure some of the students were a little frustrated at times, and they did find it challenging, but overall I would say that when I polled the kids they really liked this activity.
Now if any science folk out there are interested in using this,(Kendy), there are some problems. The one we did was the frog files, as there are many science sleuths.  The save function doesn't seem to work well so the kids sort of have to start over each day.  I'd recommend having them take notes on a google doc because of this.  I've made one for the frog files that I like and would share if you'd like to use it.  I also don't like the way they conclude the experiment with certain questions.  I included my own conclusion in my google doc.
Its always nice to find something good.  Now I need to do that searching through more of these science sleuths to find some more to use this year.