Down and Dirty Data Analysis

February 9th, 2010

Green is good.  Red is bad.

Here’s what they taught me in “coaching college” about how to read data.

Reading vertically indicates the teacher’s problem.  Reading horizontally indicates a student’s problem.

So, Harpo needs some additional help in all language arts areas.  However, in the vocabulary category, it appears that the teacher needs to examine his/her own instruction as its not succeeding for most of the students.  There’s all kinds of reasons why the teacher could say the students aren’t succeeding and there is validity to all of them…no help at home, trouble learning the language, poorly designed tests, a bad day in class.  This class in particular I hear is a bunch of class clowns.  However, the fact remains that the teacher’s vocabulary instruction with this group of students is not working and if he/she wants better results he/she must try something different.

Posted in English Language Learners, Fluency, Reading Comprehension, Reading Fluency, Writing | No Comments »

The iPad…Why Teachers Should Care

January 28th, 2010

OK, I don’t like the name (iTablet or iSlate are much cooler sounding) but I think the iPad bashers have got it wrong and that this new device has the potential to change education.  While many journalists are complaining about the $499 price tag, I keep thinking wow, only $499, that’s half the price of laptops!

Reasonable Expectations/ Reasonable Price Tag

First, you need to understand that the iPad is not a laptop.  You will need a traditional laptop if you want all the functionality of a laptop.  The iPad is a cross between an iPod touch and a laptop lite.  The iPad is sufficient for 90% of classrooms who need a computer only to do word processing and internet browsing.  In a perfect world, classrooms will still have at least one MacBook or iMac somewhere in the room but at $499 you can put more Apple computers in the hands of students at the half the price of what it would have cost you yesterday (the entry level iBook is about $999).

Advantages In Addition to Cost

1.  Battery life is much longer than existing laptops and more akin to the iPod battery life.

2.  Many of the shortcomings that analysts point to in terms of lack of complexity in the operating system are advantages in the classroom.  Unlike a traditional computer, the iPad should require very little setup, troubleshooting, maintenance.  Like your iPhone, the iPad should just run.  In classrooms without tech support, this is fantastic.

3.  Tactile computing.   Students now just touch need to touch the screen to select what they want.  This is intuitive and satisfying.  It would be as easy to touch an English Language Learner or my grandmother as it would be to teach a computer scientist.

The Future

There are some features missing that are already on my iPad wishlist.  This is a typical 1.0 version of the iPad.  Remember when the iPhone came out it didn’t have third party apps, voice activation, or turn by turn navigation.  I didn’t get an iPhone until version 3.  I’m not really an early adopter.  I personally would wait for future versions of the iPad before jumping in.  However, if you’re ready, none of the missing features are a deal breaker for the classroom.

No camera?  Does every student need a camera at his/her desk?  Would every student be videoconferencing simultaneously?

No multi-tasking?  Do students really work on two assignments at once?  Applications like Safari do save your place when you switch out of them and then come back for purposes of research.  People who have never used the iPhone don’t understand how you can live without multi-tasking, but trust me, you can.

No 16X9.  This is a bummer if your watching a lot of high def movies but in the classroom, who cares?

No Adobe flash when visiting web sites.  This is too bad but there’s no Flash on the iPhone and it hasn’t really bothered me.  I suspect it’s coming to Apple’s mobile devices if you can be patient.  Most sites will run fine without Flash.

If you need any of those things then you still have the option of getting a laptop.  Again, temper your expectations, this is a netbook and not a full-fledged computer.

If money and lack of tech support have been holding your school back from adopting technology.  This is a great first step in a positive direction.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of the new iPad and its potential in your classroom?

Posted in Digital Storytelling, Educational Technology, English Language Learners, Video in the Classroom | 18 Comments »

Your Days in a Sentence

January 26th, 2010

Thank you for submitting your sentences.

Elona Harjes had a Dickensian week:   It was the best of times; it was the worst of times- it was the end of semester.

Gail P also sees an end in sight:  I know we haven’t reached the middle of the year yet but I can already feel this vehicle’s momentum shifting to accommodate the race to the end of the year.

Bonnie K is looking forward to merit pay:  It’s been a tough week, dealing with the “small” election in Mass. I want to remain positive and will. Obama is my guy-BRAVO to his first year in the White House!
What can I say, I’m a political junkie and proud of it. Wait until we get to education reform.

Several teachers got teaching workouts this week…

Illya: What a wild week of work with grades, visiting student teachers, traveling, planning and teaching; now I’m looking forward to a calming weekend.

Mike says, “I taught/coached/presented to about every age group this week from 10 year olds to 60 year olds – some age groups are easier than others.”

Band leader, Joel reports, “This week was pretty busy in that I had no students on Monday, great classes and sectionals Tuesday through Thursday; however Friday’s classes were inexplicably bad; in other news, I walked 45 minutes, ran 15 minutes, Wii Fitted 100 minutes, lost 1.5 pounds, removed comments from my blog, got a haircut, downloaded MP3s, and watched the entire seventh season of 24.”

Nina Liakos: Teaching advanced (ESL) students for the first time in a long time, I have to figure out ways to ensure that the most highly proficient among them are sufficiently challenged.

Maggie:  Subbing for the first time last week reaffirmed my career choice and gave me confidence in my teaching abilities.”

Sara P-C: nothing improves my 5th grade students’ writing faster than having them score each others’ anonymous essays in groups – “mrs. p-c, it’s so messy, i can’t even *read* this!” “what is this person trying to say here?” “he’s missing his entire conclusion!” – welcome to my world, little friends…

Catalina: I had low key week since students were taking their semester exams.

Cynthia Calvert: I wonder why we senior English teachers feel we must assign research papers! Aug-h-h-h-h-h!!

Some teachers managed to get out of their classrooms…

Anne Mirtschin: After an amazing, exciting and exhilarating week of wildlife safaris in South Africa, where we were burgled by starving baboons in our apartment (with closed doors) and narrowly avoided an elephant stampede by mere seconds, I am now home safely on Australian shores.

Jim: Took a friend to the hospital today for a test on this beautiful sunny day.

Dkzody: A deluge of water made recruitment a soppy adventure.

Others need more time…

Mary Lee: I’d be fine if I didn’t have to go to any meetings!

Sheryl A. McCoy: Time, out of synchronization, speeds through the week leaving little time for reflection.

Janet Morrison: The emotional rollercoaster was in working order this week as I went from success to suck to success.

Some need to step away from the computer…

Cheryl Oaks: This week the technology gremlins appeared to cause havoc.

Ianin Sheffield: Lipsmackin’, Slidesharein’, Opensourcin’, Animotovatin’, GoogleDocin’, Tinychatin’, Flickrmakin’, Hivemindin’, Evernotein’, Youtubein’ – EdTech!

And rounding out the week …

Kevin Hodgson: The planning for a benefit concert of student and staff musicians at our school in a few weeks to support both schools in post-Katrina New Orleans and the Pennies for Peace organization is coming together but we are left with the question: what about Haiti?

From Middle Earth Ken Allan: Another wet and cold summer day with a sky choked with cloud and the wind howling lets me understand why so many people do not subscribe to this idea of global warming.

Tracy Rosen leaves us on an uplifting note:   My week is ending brilliantly as the sun stays out longer each day, brightening my world, my mood.

Posted in Blog Carnivals | 2 Comments »

How to Waste Money on Technology in Schools

January 22nd, 2010

Here is a typical district/principal purchase that undermines the case for spending money on technology in schools.  This is an anecdote from an actual school that I am not affiliated with but will not name.

Elementary principal knows she wants to integrate technology in her school (and also needs for teachers to be able to take online attendance).

Principal decides to buy each teacher a laptop and buys the best…Mac Book Pros for everyone! (MacBook Pros are about twice as much as MacBooks and are more powerful than most teachers would need).

First instructions from principal are, “Do not let students use these laptops.”

Laptop comes in box but school does not purchase laptop bags for teachers.  Laptops are either unprotected when transported or left in their box because it’s too much trouble to take it out and put it back in.

Laptop comes locked as per district policy.  Teachers cannot install software, change settings (even things like brightness and contrast), update software, or customize the computer in any way without an administrator password.  The administrator password is only held by administrators.  This particularly bothers me because it makes the experience of using a MacBook Pro (which is extremely easy and intuitive) and makes it frustrating and unintuitive.

Schools don’t need to spend more than they need to.  They need to make it convenient for teachers to use their laptops.  At some point we need to hand the technology over to students.  Unless we do these things, how are we improving education by introducing fancy technology into our schools?

What are the worst technology purchases you’ve seen in schools?

Posted in Educational Technology | 8 Comments »

Day in a Sentence

January 21st, 2010

This week I am hosting “Day in a Sentence” from Kevin Hodgson’s excellent blog.  This is a no-pressure activity for teachers to reflect upon their week and come up with a single sentence about it.

Here are the simple rules:

  • Boil down your week or your day into a single sentence
  • Use the comment feature here to share your sentence (comments are held in moderation so they won’t show up before Monday)
  • Please leave your blog address (if you have one) so that I can link to you
  • I will compile all of the writing for release in a new post on Monday

Enjoy!

Posted in Blog Carnivals | 3 Comments »

Do Teachers Own Their Lesson Plans?

January 13th, 2010

A New York Times article reports on teachers selling their lesson plans online and raises ethical questions about the practice.

Both the article and the letters to the editor in reaction to it are informative.  I have several thoughts about this which I’ll break down in three categories, business, ethics, and practice.  First I’ll address my own bias.

My Bias

In addition to this blog, I run Open Court Resources.com which contains thousands of teaching resources contributed by teachers (including myself) that are available for free.  The web site contains advertising that offsets the cost of running a web site including the thousands of hours of my time spent creating, maintaining, and editing the site.  If you read the article about how much money some people have made selling lesson plans, I will tell you that if my web site was a business, I’m in the wrong business.

I do sell a training CD through the web site that I created.  It’s the only pay item available on the site.  I spent two entire days of a summer vacation creating the CD and unlike the virtual resources, the CD is a product that is shipped physically to your house.

Business

As reported in the article, the top selling teacher on the web site Teachers Pay Teachers has earned $36,000.  It’s impossible to know how much the average teacher earns but it is certainly less than the $600,000 in sales that the web site itself has racked up.

I started my own web site hoping that if I gave away my own materials for free it would ultimately help me because other people would add to what I created and lessen the workload for everyone (like “Field of Dreams” for teaching resources).  Ultimately, my own web site helped me immensely when I moved from first grade to second grade and already had racked up hundreds of ideas and resources I could use in my own classroom.  Other teachers write to me to tell me my site has helped them as well.

I have no moral problem with teachers selling their lesson plans.  I applaud their ingenuity.  However, I do feel that the greatest value in the internet is in a free flow of ideas that allows you to browse resources quickly and try them out risk free in your classroom without paying.

Ethics

Do taxpayers own lesson plans?  No.

If a firefighter invented a better fire hydrant based on experience gained working for the fire department, isn’t that his own idea?  If a police officer wrote a book about how best to stop crime, wouldn’t it benefit society to have that book published? What incentive would the police officer have to write that book if all the profits went back to the government?

In terms of teachers specifically, lesson plans are written outside of school hours and I do believe that they belong to the teachers who wrote them.  If it’s legal for textbook publishers to market lesson plans, why can’t teachers who have the ability to market test their own ideas be allowed to compete?

Practice

What the article does not address is whether someone else’s lesson plans work.  I don’t believe they do.

My own scribbled plans probably wouldn’t do many other people any good.  Someone else’s plans aren’t likely to apply perfectly to my own students and my own style of teaching.  Only 10% of the materials on my own web site do I use personally in my classroom.  But the other 90% is valuable to other people and they tell me they use it.

While it is possible to get ideas from other people’s plans, blogs, web sites, lesson planning is a personal thing.  The best teaching…multimedia-rich, experiential, constructivist doesn’t come out of books or plans or sites—even though those resources can be a jumping off point.

Real lesson planning is personal to teachers, students, and the real world in which those plans will be carried out.  I suspect teaching by numbers doesn’t often work.

What are your thoughts?

Posted in Classroom Mangement, Misc. | 4 Comments »

Steal This Preso (K12Online09) Now Live!

December 18th, 2009

My presentation for this year’s K12Online Conference, Steal This Preso: Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom!, is now live and viewable below.  I’ve also included links to my favorite royalty free media sites and additional resources below.

The Presentation

BlipTV direct link to download video file
use this to download to your iPod or if DotSub is blocked in your district

BlipTV audio file
use this if you want only the audio portion of the presentation (not as fun)

Additional Information

Barely Legal Radio Program (available as podcast)
I’ve learned tons about copyrights and fair use from listening to Joe Escalante’s show.  It’s entertaining as well as educational.   I’ve recommended this before and it’s never caught on with other educators but if you are really interested in this topic, do check it out.

Public Domain Slider
Helps you identify if a work is in the public domain.  Very cool.  However, note that most work is not in the public domain.

Code of Best Practices in Media Literacy Education
I found this thanks to Joyce Valenza’s K12 Online presentation.  It supports what I’m saying and expands upon it.

Lawrence Lessig’s Book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
There are ways that current copyright law has not kept up with digital technologies.  Lawrence Lessig explores this in his book.  I recorded a section of this preso in which I talked about this but ultimately deleted for time and clarity.

Additional Relevant Information from my blog

Royalty Free Resources

Please see these posts:

Royalty Free Images, Movies, and Music Part I

Royalty Free Images Part 2

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Posted in Digital Storytelling, Educational Technology, Video in the Classroom, Workshops Upcoming | 4 Comments »

Please Update Your Feed

December 17th, 2009

Please update the feed address you’re using to subscribe to this blog.  You should be subscribed to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CreatingLifelongLearners

and not any of the needleworks pictures addresses.

Also, please update any links from needleworkspictures.com/ocr/blog to creatinglifelonglearners.com

Due to problems with my webhost, I’ve moved my site to its own domain at http://www.creatinglifelonglearners.com

Needleworkspictures.com blog links will continue to work for awhile but will eventually go offline.  I am not posting to the old blog any more.  This is the only blog I’m updating.

Thanks for reading

Posted in Site Updates | No Comments »

Finding Classroom Balance During the Holidays

December 16th, 2009

I write this post at the risk of being nicknamed Scrooge.  Let me preface this by saying that in my classroom, I have always bought the kids presents which they unwrap after lunch on the last day of school before the winter break.  Every year there is one student who tells me something like the art supplies I gave her, “were just what she wanted” or that “this is the only present I’ll get this year.”  I like bringing a little magic to school and building good memories with my class.

Some years I have had a party in addition to the gift giving but I got discouraged after buying the students pizza and having them tell me that they were serving pizza in the cafeteria that day.  It was much more fun and healthy to go out to P.E. and burn off some energy after gift giving than to hype up on sugar.  I still would get requests for parties or hear that “Ms. So and So is having a party, why aren’t we?”  However, I just point out all the things we’re doing that Ms. So and So’s class never does.  You have to resist that kind of student guilt because it can easily extend to logic like “Ms. So and So’s class doesn’t have to face forward in the auditorium, why do we have to?”

At schools I’ve worked at we’ve always had holiday performances and these do take time away from regular class work.  However, I’ve always felt that the act of practicing for our performances and the experience of being in front of an audience taught things like discipline and perseverance and allowed some  students who were less than stellar in their classwork to shine onstage.  My schedule in those performance weeks is cramped and hurried but when your time management is effective you can incorporate those kinds of extra-curricular events without them being a hassle or taking time away from the core subjects.

In contrast, as early as Monday or Tuesday of this week I’ve seen several classrooms shut down their academics to build gingerbread houses, color pictures of Santa, and make reindeer hats.  And it seems that it’s often the classes who need the instruction most who get it the least…the ELL class, the intervention students, the low-income district.  It’s not a coincidence that more time goes wasted in these schools.  (I refer you to my favorite blog post ever, Why Can’t Inner City Kids Learn, by City Teacher for more).

I realize that when working with disadvantaged students we want to give them more…more love, more happiness, more good things.  But I would suggest that giving a student confidence by nurturing a strong reader is longer lasting happiness than a sugar high.  I would also suggest that there’s a certain amount of laziness on the part of teachers.  I realize building gingerbread houses takes a lot of preparation but certainly there’s a lot less planning involved than an academically rigorous lesson.

I don’t want to take holiday celebrations out of schools, I like the Halloween/Fall Festival Parade as much as the next pagan teacher but I do suggest that coloring turkeys, reindeers, skeletons is a waste of time (to be clear, I see this as often in grades 4 and 5 as I do in kindergarten and first grade).

If you must do this kind of busy work, at the very least can you relegate it to the last hours on the last day of school before the vacation?  Can we stop complaining that we don’t have enough time to fit in things like technology integration, reader’s theater, and student led discussions when we have time for coloring and parties?  Can we avoid giving in to students’ desires for candy and fun?—we’re the adults.

Your thoughts?  Have I gone too far?

Posted in Classroom Mangement, English Language Learners | 8 Comments »

K12 Online Conference Starts Today

November 30th, 2009

The K12Online Conference has started today with its opening keynote by Kim Cofino.

The K12 Conference is entirely free and online.  You don’t need to register to “attend” and once presentations go live they are available forever.  You can never “miss” a presentation because you can always go back and see them.

Teachers attend the conference all around the world.  Unfortunately, since the conference is free, there’s no money for publicity and in many districts including my own, K12Online remains a big secret. Particularly when money to attend conferences is scarce, a free conference seems awfully appealing.  If you’re not involved in the blogosphere, trust me when I saw that some of the great minds in educational technology are presenting here for free.

Check it out, you have nothing to lose. My own presentation, Steal This Preso:  Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom! goes live on the very last day of the conference.

Here’s a downloadable flyer to share.  View this year’s presentations here and check out the upcoming schedule (as each presentation comes online, the link to the presentation will become active).

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Posted in Educational Technology | 2 Comments »

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