The Digital Native Teacher

3 Little Things That Bug Me

Hopefully you have seen the "Scrollwheel" video based on this Reddit comic. If not view it now (it's short)...

I have experienced this feeling many times before, the following 3 things are comments I have been known to yell at people (I know it's rude but they really bug me). Follow these pointers and I can promise you that I will be polite as you use the scroll bar to move down the page.

"Don't Click The Arrows in PowerPoint!"

There are enough technical mistakes a person can make before they even step up to make their presentation. I can take a poorly designed PowerPoint (not all of us can be presentation Gods), I can take a person stumbling through their presentation because they are ill prepared, but what I can't stand is when somebody changes to the next slide by walking over, grabbing the mouse, looking to the screen, scrolling over and clicking the "next" arrow. There are so many quicker ways to advance slide it is literally not funny. Here is a list of ways to advance to the next slide (available by pressing F1 in the slide show):

1) Click the mouse: Click it anywhere, it will advance
2) Use the Arrow Keys: Up/Down or Left/Right will advance the slide or take a step back to the previous.
3) Pg UP/Pg Down: This will also advance forward or backward.
4) Space Bar: Also advances forward
5) "N"/"P": Advances forward or backward
6) Press Enter: Advances forward
7) Slam Your Hand on the Keyboard: I actually tried this. When in doubt aim for the lower half of the keyboard.
8) Get a Presentation Remote: I recommend this. It's under $10 with shipping.

"TAB to Advance!"

Few things are more gut wrenchingly boring than watching someone else fill out an online form. Please know the following; If you are filling out a form in any browser, you can press TAB to advance to the next fillable area in the form. Trust me, it makes things much faster.

"F11 For Full-Screen Browsing!"

When I use "the internetz" as my students call it to present a new article or application to my class the first thing I do after getting to the page is press "F11". This button will rid your window of all the superfluous items your browser application uses (and in the case of Internet Explorer those dreaded toolbars).

I have witnessed this atrocity in person

Not only does this make whatever you are presenting look better, it also keeps people from discovering any other tabs you might have open. Try it now to experience the difference. You can easily press "F11" or "ESC" to quickly return back to standard browsing.

There are many more tech things that bug but I think that is enough for now. Let me know in the comments about things that bug you.

Get Em' Talking!

image courtesy of zinjixmaggir

I am always looking for ways to get my least active students to participate in class discussions. Many time the student that talks the least will have the most relevant question or comment relating to the topic at hand, however due to fear of being wrong or asking a stupid question they refuse to communicate it out loud. Below are 2 tools that I have had lots of success with in getting those non-communicative students talking and discussing in class.

TodaysMeet.com

TodaysMeet.com (thats with 2 e's, won't make that mistake twice) is a site that facilitates what is known as a "back-channel" chat. The students participate in a closed chat room with a 140 character limit to each message. TodaysMeet could not be easier to set-up and use. Simply navigate to the site, choose your room name, how long it's available for and (optionally) a Twitter Hashtag; hit "Create Room" and your ready to roll. Now you only need to send that link to your class and they can begin commenting. If you have a projector in the front of your room there is a "projector mode" which will display the chat full screen in order to better fit on the projector in the front of the room.
I love this site for quick introductions to topics. I ask a question or for a definition of a term and let the students use any resources they can find to create a concise (remember 140 characters) answer that requires them to synthesize the information they gather into a short but sweet answer.
A warning when using this site: The students are able to create their own user name each time they sign-in. I have each student post their real name next to their user name so that we all know who everyone is. The smart ones will navigate away from the page and return to create a new name but proper moderation will keep this to a minimum.

Google Moderator

Google Moderator is similar to TodaysMeet but with an interesting twist. The students are able to not only able to ask questions and make comments, they can respond to other comments and vote on the questions they want to see answered. This may seem familiar to those of you that have heard of Purdue University's collaborative micro-discussion application HotSeat. Google Moderator brings that incredible power to your classroom (or speaking engagement). While it's mobile functionality seems limited to Android devices if you have an audience that has netbooks or access to a computer lab this can be very useful.
I have used it in several instances for class reviews. Students are able to post any questions they have about our current unit and they then vote on the questions they want answered. We then go from the most popular to the least popular questions and discuss each one.
While setup is not quite as simple as TodaysMeet it is still a very useful and viable way to facilitate class discussion. A word of warning: This application requires a Google account to use. My school uses Google for their email system however we did have some trouble getting some students signed in (luckily Google accounts are free and you can use an existing email address to sign-up).

Both of these sites are very powerful and extremely helpful in facilitating class discussions. I like to use TodaysMeet for the introductions to topics, and Moderator to conclude them. Try them out and see for yourself which you prefer.

Teacher Tenure?

Let me start this by saying that at the time of this writing I am a first year teacher. I currently teach in a private school where tenure doesn't really exist. So the comments I make here are simply me thinking (and typing) out loud. In no way should my musings be mistaken for professional political discourse. Thank You.

Not to long ago I got into a pretty heated debate with my then fiancée (now wife) about tenured teachers. My wife was a teacher at the time of this debate and she stood on the pro tenure side. I myself represented tenure reform side of the debate. We eventually had to stop the discussion because our food arrived and the subject mostly slipped from my mind, until I came across this article. NJ Governor Chris Christie is calling for an end to teacher tenure. Suddenly the memory of that argument came rushing back.

Before I was a teacher I worked in small design shop. I knew that if I did not do my job than I would face being fired. This was known and understood by everyone in my place of employment and nobody really thought anything of it. We did our job, got our paycheck and went home. At that time I thought that the school system should work the same way. Successful Teacher = Learned Student; if that simple equation was not fulfilled than the teacher was not doing their job and should risk being fired. As I began studying to be a teacher however I realized that the equation may be much more complicated than that. I'm no math professor but I think it could look a little more like this: where t=teacher, s=student, p=parent, m=available materials, x=student performance, e=environment; (t+(s*p^2))/-m = x/e. Correct me if I'm wrong but that is to many variables to put on the shoulders of a teacher alone. I do however still believe that the tenure process is too protective in many ways. Check out this chart below to see what a worst case scenario looks like for a tenured teacher who is not doing their job (click image for a larger version);

This is a problem

A teacher that is blatantly not doing their job does not deserve 2-5 years to continue not doing that job. Very few (if any) jobs offer that kind of protection.

One of my professors related a story to me from when he was a principal. He had a tenured teacher who would literally clip his nails during class while the students copied from the text book. My professor (we will call him Mr. A) attempted to start the process of getting this teacher fired. He was unable to get sufficient evidence that he was not doing his job and therefore was unable to proceed. Eventually Mr. A witnessed this teacher push a student into the lockers and Mr. A was finally able to move forward with the process of firing the teacher. Because the accusation involved physical student contact the teacher was suspended with pay while the process began. It took 2 years for the evidence to be gathered, and all the paper to be signed and verified. After all of this, the day before the hearing the teacher's lawyer called the school district and said the teacher would be willing to tender his resignation if the school would simply pay one more year of salary. The school was forced to accept the offer seeing as if the trial went to court the teacher could have appealed and cost the school much more than that one year of salary.

The above story is a worst case scenario, however the opposite can be true as well. Teachers must be protected from arbitrary action against them. One of my excellent friends is a very capable teacher in the public school system and facing the possibility of being fired by the new principal of her school. The principal does not get along with my friend and because she is not tenured she has little protection from an arbitrary dismissal. Without tenure our students face a possible problem with schools attempting to slash budgets and do so by releasing their highest paid (and commonly most effective) teachers.

As I said above I am a first year teacher in a school that does not have to worry about tenure. I am unsure of where I stand on the line. I find myself however balanced very precariously. If someone was able to present a viable option of tenure that did not protect the teachers that were simply incompetent I would probably fall on the side of tenure reform.

Where do you fall on this issue? Do you think that teachers should be protected just as they are? Do you think that there should be a little wiggle room for principals to purge teachers that are under-performing or even prove to be making the school worse?

Collaborators or Cheaters?

Image by humanityhealing

As I was watching my students work collaboratively on a review packet I couldn't help but feel as if they might be cheating. I suddenly realized that I had never really though about the difference between collaborating and cheating. Sir Ken Robinson briefly mentions (10m:05s) collaborating vs. cheating in his RSA talk but while I knew there was a difference I hadn't yet decided what the line was. Can they copy answers from one another? Can they split the work in sections and then group the work together? They have done all of this in my classroom but I've never really considered it cheating.

Before being a teacher I worked for a private business and in that business we constantly collaborated. We know that each person understood a specific set of information and that we could rely on that person to understand their aspect of the project. This can be seen as similar to students in the classroom. When given a group project or told they can work in groups I notice that some students split the work into sections and then once each section is finished they combine the work together. Is there anything wrong with this? I am really not sure. I want the students to learn collaborative skills but I also want them to be able to do well on the tests they need to pass. What bothers me is that I understand that humans naturally collaborate (we evolved to do so), but when all parties involved must learn all of the same facts, is collaboration really beneficial?

Project Based Learning

The Buck Institute for Education commissioned this video that simply explains Project Based Education. This is something my school is pushing for and I think is a great way to help students gain skills that are important to the real world. Check is out below and visit their site to learn more.

Are We Giving Students to Much Credit?

I recently saw this posted in a list on the blog Teaching Paperless under the title 21 Things that will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020

13. Organization of Educational Services by Grade
Education over the next ten years will become more individualized, leaving the bulk of grade-based learning in the past. Students will form peer groups by interest and these interest groups will petition for specialized learning. The structure of K-12 will be fundamentally altered.

Maybe it's just the students I am around but of all of the ideas on this list, this one seems the most unlikely. Maybe it's because the students don't have the proper role models to do this or that they don't have the drive to get out and do something. I think however that the biggest problem in making this happen is the fact that students still feel as if they are under the thumb of education.

I like the idea of students petitioning their schools for learning environment that better suit their needs. Students need to know that they can make a difference, even against something as big and lumbering as the American Education System. It is our job as reformers to let the students know that if they want something to change they need to make it happen. Sitting back and complaining to each other will only get so far.

Maybe what we need is a spark, someone to get the students started and let them take it from there. Maybe a Facebook Group?

Technology ADD?

EDUCATORS BEWARE!!

I came across this article today while browsing through my PLP Ning community and had a pretty strong reaction to what I read. I have posted some of my thoughts on the article below.

You can read the entire article here

-“When rock ’n’ roll came about, we didn’t start using it in classrooms like we’re doing with technology.”

-The problem with this statement is that it shows a person that does not truly understand the impact that "technology" is having on the world. Rock 'n 'Roll had an effect on the aesthetic opinions of many people but did not fundamentally change the landscape of anything except music. "Technology" (quoted because they are using it as a generic term and refuse to be specific) has changed the face of the ~~country~~ world. It has affected the way people buy and sell (Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, iTunes), they way people communicate (cell phones, video chat, instant messaging, Facebook, email) and most importantly to us the way people learn (Google, Khan Academy, iTunesU).

-technology lovers ... are often quick to claim that today's students are "digital natives" who learn differently and need a different kind of school."

-They often mistake the glib and facile use of technologies for competence

-This article uses a misrepresentation of the term "digital native". The term does not imply that the students immediately know how to use technology in a relevant way. The definition according to Wikipedia (the irony is not lost on me btw): "A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3s." Notice it says nothing about them innately knowing how to use technology. Our job as teachers is to change the "glib and facile use" into significant usage. To make a comparison, If you sent a group of kids into the library 30 years ago to do research you never just assumed that they understood how to find all the relevant information, they had to be trained how to use the library and conduct research. This is the same concept with technology, they must be shown how to use it productively.

-Several recent studies of home use of laptops by low income students have reported disappointing results in terms of academic performance at school.

-The first issue that strikes me here is the fact that they are rating these kids by academic performance. If the technology advocates are saying that kids need a new way of learning that involves technology, you can't refute their claims by handing laptops to kids and testing if their academic scores go up. They need to test if the students understanding went up anywhere else. I doubt that many of you make it a point to research the proper use of colons vs. semi-colons during your free time on the internet. Instead you probably choose to research the things that interest you on a personal level and which are probably not accounted for on a standard academic test. I posted a video on here previously that touches on the fact that kids are significantly different than their predecessors when it comes to learning. The other problem is that the laptops were given to "low income" students, who we could assume have had little to no access at home before this and would most likely be interested in playing around on the new gadget that they haven't had significant access to before. I would like to look more at this study and see exactly where these results came from but the way it is stated in this article it doesn't make logical sense.

Maybe choose a more current book?

-When Matt Richtel reports in his article that many bright students at Woodside High do not finish reading assigned classics like Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle because they favor activities like Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos, it is evidence that the quality and depth of thought of such students has been weakened.

-So the fact that today's students, some of whom have never seen a video-cassette, don't want to read a novel from 1963 which "explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way" means that they lack quality and depth of thought? The fact that students favor creating and watching YouTube videos and posting on Facebook in no way shows a lack of quality or depth of their thought. Instead of just writing the kids off and saying that just because they don't want to read what we tell them, let's incorporate the activities they enjoy in the learning process. Have them create a digital video re-enacting one of the scenes from the book, or get them to create a Facebook profile for one of the characters. There are plenty of options open to those willing to think outside of the box.

-"Look how modern we are! Our students have learned to express important ideas in just a few monosyllabic words and characters. No need for paragraphs, logic or evidence. No need for figurative language or a carefully constructed persuasive essay. No need to read Vonnegut or Eliot or Dickinson. The Cliff Notes and YouTube will suffice nicely."

(I will assume the author is being facetious here but I will argue against it anyway...) Who actually says this? Logic and evidence are two of the most important aspects when discussing technology and the future. Why is it not important for students to learn to "express important ideas in just a few monosyllabic words and characters"? This is how the world operates now. Students need to learn figurative language, they need to learn to be persuasive but guess what, people aren't persuaded by essays anymore. They are persuaded by blogs and Twitter and Facebook and Google and all of those other technologies that you seem so afraid of. Ideas are related quickly and succinctly today, and students must learn how to both create and navigate that stream of information properly, not be taught to demonize it.

-Is that book worth the time and attention of every high school student or do we buy into the notion that each student should be allowed to study whatever they wish?

-So standardized testing is the better option? How about a balance? Students do need to be guided along their studies, but force feeding them literature, often chosen by non-educators as classics is not the way to do it. Sure it may require a little more work on the teachers part but that may well be part of their job.

I know teachers like this

-Unfortunately, in some schools the 1-on-1 imperative is so strongly voiced that some teachers will be reluctant to ask students to give full attention or to close the lids of their laptops.

-A teacher who can handle a standard classroom and gain attention can learn to handle a 1-on-1 environment will equal efficiency. This is a problem that will happen but cannot be the end all for tech in the classrooms. We must adjust, not outlaw.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Is Jaime McKenzie right in saying that Education Technology should kept out of 1-on-1 and limited to computer rooms? Should teachers learn to teach with technology?

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