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?