I Teach Science

Looking to the Year Ahead: My Learning Goal

2010-09-29T10:58:00.001-07:00

Like most eternal students/teachers, I don't consider January 1st as the beginning of a new year. Instead, this is it for me. Fall is here, and there is motivation and energy, adrenaline rushing creativity, and a desire to improve my teaching and do some learning.

Since I graduated in May, learning is now less structured (and more meaningful), but I had to pick something to focus on.

Without a classroom of my own, and limited funding at the museum for my programs, my opportunities and needs for creating new lessons and improving old ones was limited.

But I still have my GECOS. My Girls Engineering classes, two groups (upper elementary and middle school), 3 sessions (fall, winter, spring), and grant funding for new curriculum. This is my focus!

I'm writing this a month after I meant to, so we've missed the chance to follow me through those weeks of confusion and uncertainty. Having a hundred resources for lesson ideas and trying to group them into themes, narrow them down into interesting projects with real-life applications, mentally testing them for feasibility. But, that was all there (and amplified by personal-life struggles and stresses that kept me unfocused).

I've come out on the other side, ready to tackle this year with my girls. And truly, WITH my girls. Not only in creating this new curriculum for them and needing to prototype and test and all that. But also in learning some physics. I took a year of physics in high school (I vaguely remember building rockets and wondering why my physics teacher - who was also my chem and bio teacher - was such an idiot). I took a year of physics in college (my memories here are even fuzzier - I remember the prof made a big deal about how he and his wife hyphenated their last names oppositely in order to keep their own first, and the lab notebooks were a pain). I NEVER understood physics when I took it as a class.

I started to get really excited about it and learned it when I started teaching it to kids. The simple things - Newton's Laws, friction, force, etc - suddenly made a LOT of sense when I was teaching it. But I still haven't been comfortable with it. I understand physics on an elementary school level, maybe even a middle school level, from a textbook perspective. I still don't know that I truly get it from a higher level. And I would like to. I would like to be able to add a Physics endorsement to my teaching license. I would like to feel more confident about teaching it and knowing I'm not teaching any wrong ideas, and that I can challenge gifted students as well as average students.

So, I pulled my college physics textbook off the shelf, and two middle-school lab book texts (An Introduction to Mechanics published by National Science Teachers Association) from the museum shelves. And I'm going to go through them, page by page, theory by theory, example problem by example problem. I'm going to do the hands on experiments. I am going to understand the vocabulary. I am going to remember the formulas.

And here's where I explain this is NEVER how I would teach physics. This is why I don't understand it. Because in high school and college, some teachers had me go through these books at their speeds. Skipping some chapters, rushing through some examples, taking too long on things I did get while not explaining the things I didn't get. I would NEVER teach it this way. But this is the way that I learn. It always has been the way I learn. I taught myself biology in high school by reading every page of the text, copying every definition, taking notes on every interesting example they shared. In college, when a topic was especially difficult or interesting, I would do the same thing (in bio at least, not always in physics).

When I teach, it's hands-on. Always. Things for students to hold, short stories of real-life application, experiments, testing hypotheses, watching demos and asking questions. Conversations. Never text book boredom. They won't stay engaged that way. In deference to those who learn the way I do, I share with them resources they can read, vocabulary lists and textbooks if they choose to find other definitions then those they get in notes or through labs. But I keep class interesting. I make it fun.

And I'm going to make this hands-on for myself, as well. I'll spend time at the museum setting up experiments and collecting data to get through these lab manuals and the "Stop Faking It!" books I have upstairs (also from NSTA press) on force and energy. But I'm going to use the textbooks as my guide. Page by page, theory by theory, until I understand it. Until I can teach the subject matter confidently, not just a few hands-on lessons that I've researched and practiced and watched done by others.

That's how I've taught physics up to now - a few things I'm confident about, internet research to fill in the blanks, and a lot of Mythbusters for inspiration. But I want to share the theories with my girls, I want to give them the confidence I never had that the formulas and the theories related to the experiments in clearly defined ways. That the math is worth understanding, and the hands-on experiment makes it interesting. I want them to not give up on their high school physics teachers, or go into their college physics class saying, "Why can't they dumb it down for us biology majors? This is too hard!" I want to bring physics to them in a way that gives them confidence and prepares them for their future math and physics classes. To do that - I have to understand it better.

So, I set myself the task: 5 physics texts and one Physics endorsement on my teaching license by June.

I hope I don't have to pull out the calculus book too often. I refuse to start over with that one!

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Current Reading List

2010-08-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

So, if you haven't read Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, you must RUN to a book store and pick it up. Normally, I would say read it on your Kindle (as I did), but I apparently got to it in time, and it's no longer offered as a download. Ironic for a book about ecology and conservation and how much we humans have messed up the world.

Secondly, Rick Riordan has done it again. I loved the Percy Jackson series, and have just devoured The Red Pyramid in less than two days (including time to teach summer camp!) Really looking forward to the next in the series.

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Summer of Catching Up

2010-06-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

Catching up on professional development? Seems like an odd goal for someone who JUST graduated from a Masters program. But that was all about theory. Now, it's practice time.

Finally made it through my Google Reader. Now, trying to figure out what I prefer: starring favorites in Reader and tagging them there.... or saving everything to Delicious (since I was just reminded of the joys of Packrati.us which was already copying over my Twitter favs). Maybe both is the the answer? Then, there's Evernote, which has proven it's brilliance again as I plan for my next camp.

Is it technology overload? Using the iPad means I need solutions that are iPad friendly (so Delicious takes an extra few steps for some blogs/news stories that don't include 'save to delicious' links). And it really emphasizes the need for universal access to information (including access when no wifi is available - points to Evernote). But, one-stop-shopping is always preferred, otherwise I forget to look somewhere and miss a good resource (points to delicious, thanks to packrati).

Catching up this summer is not just about catching up on the reading. it's about establishing patterns and habits that will make life easy in the future. Changes in technology mean changes in habits and behaviors. Getting the iPad means I shouldn't be trying to do everything the same way, just with more portability, it means i should be looking for the new way to do things with new tools. Catching up? No. Leaping forward.

What's the answer? Don't know yet. Keep using them all until one that makes sense stands out.

Time to go read some magazines.

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Summer of Professional Development

2010-06-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

Graduated! Have my Master of Arts in Teaching. After two years of required, directed professional development of becoming a classroom teacher, I finally have a long summer ahead of me that I can use for my own personal pd choices.

So, I am taking my cue from Clif Mims, and setting goals for the summer.

Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2010 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/06/2010).
Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.
Link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/3669.
Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme2010.
Tag 5 or more bloggers to participate in the meme.
Achieve your goals and "develop professionally."
Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals

1. Get through the stack of trade mags from this year. Save lesson ideas, Best Practices, etc for future, deeper reading (keep notes, scan articles, utilize Evernote)
2. Research ideas and find literature for Girls Engineering class. Girl-oriented projects, tested pedagogy, etc.
3. Study for the Chemistry, Integrated Science, Physics, and Math tests to take in the fall.

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Read the Procedures

2010-04-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Setting: High School Biology Class. Spring Semester. My first day back as their Student Teacher since before Winter Break.

Me: "After you turn in your starter, grab a lab packet and start reading for today's lab."

time passes

Me: "Can I have a volunteer to read the introduction to today's lab?"

Volunteer reads introduction

Me: "I'm very strict about labs. Paying attention during the pre-lab readings and reading the procedures before you begin is important to me. If I feel that you aren't prepared for the lab, you will not participate. Please read the procedures quietly - you may read to yourself or partner read."

Time passes.

Student: "Can't we just read it while we do it?"

Me: "Not really. The first instruction asks you to write a hypothesis, but without understanding what you'll do during the lab, you won't be able to guess what will happen."

Student: ...

Time passes. All eyes are off the packets.

Me: "Who can summarize the purpose of today's lab for me?"

Pause.

Student: "It's about natural selection of rabbits from genetics and alleles."

Me: "Yes. We'll be seeing how alleles are randomly mixed in populations, and how those genes that are not suited to the environment are selected against. Here's how it will go," picks up paper bag with beads, "In this bag, there are 100 beads, 50 of each color. When I shake it up, that's the bunnies 'breeding.' Then, I reach in and take out two beads. These two beads are a baby bunny that is born. If I draw two yellow beads, it has fur; if I draw a yellow and a red, it's a carrier for the furless gene, but it has fur and will survive; if I draw two red beads, the bunny is born furless and dies before it reproduces. Take the beads, make a tally mark for which kind of bunny it is, and put them in a pile. After all the beads have been taken out of the bag, set the double recessive bunnies aside, they've died. Count how many surviving alleles remain of each color and record the data. Return the beads to the bag, and repeat."

(Okay, to be fair, I meant to say all of that, but found that the students were not paying enough attention and I decided to give up around "put them in a pile.")

Me: "You will work with a partner. Find a lab station, and begin."

There are 7 lab tables, there were 16 stations for this activity. At each table, I repeated the following after seeing how students were progressing:

"There are three questions at the top of your worksheet, including the prompt for the hypothesis. Answer ALL of them before doing the lab."

"Don't count the beads from the bunnies that died. Only count the ones that survive to the next generation."

"Count INDIVIDUALS in one column, and ALLELES in the other column."

"You will always have 50 of the dominant allele - it can't be in a dead rabbit in this simulation."

"The instructions for calculating frequency are in the procedures."

"The procedures clearly said to write frequency as a decimal, not percentage."

How do we get students to read procedures? This was really an incredibly straight-forward lab, with well written instructions (borrowed from another source and I had tested it out several times). Labs are only effective if they find the purpose in them - unfortunately, the purpose is in the procedures, and the procedures are ignored.

Balance

2010-03-28T14:21:00.001-07:00

I'm gearing up for my last term of Student Teaching and the return to a high school classroom. I spent the last 10 weeks in a 6th grade classroom teaching Science (Inquiry and Ecology) and a little Math too. Their energy, enthusiasm, and interest in anything "hands-on," made them perfect for my teaching style and experience.

But, I enrolled in this MAT program to get my certifications in High School Biology, so, back to the high school. The Fall went well, and I should be feeling more confident about my abilities with this task. But, I'm not.

Why am I worried? Because the units I'll be teaching are Cycles and Ecology/Populations (according to my cooperating teacher). I did not verify with him that "Cycles" meant biogeochemical cycles (which, I think he meant) or Cell cycles (which is totally possible since the lead-in unit is Mendelian Genetics). So, that's one reason I'm worried: he's not answering emails and I'm not sure what I'm teaching.

The second reason I'm worried is that, no matter which unit it is, there's a slight problem with the teaching style, classroom set up, etc, that I need to come to grips with. These students do not have their own textbooks - there's a classroom set. There are no computers in the classroom (let alone computers with internet). The plants we were supposed to get started in Fall/Winter haven't been started so that will set me back a bit. And interesting, hands-on discovery-type labs are not very plentiful for either cell or biogeochemical cycles. These are the features that have me feeling like the entire unit will be lecture and worksheets - and no engaged and active learning. In my world, classroom time is spent in labs - in DOING the science, not hearing about it. And, when reading and memorization and diagrams are necessary, there's got to be room for individual interests to drive the learning. That's significantly less possible when they don't have their own text books or when classroom time can't be handed over to them.

This means planning library days (if that's even possible) so they can do research on human impacts on biogeochemical cycles. Field trips to a park for the ecology lessons. And other "out of classroom" experiences that, as a Student Teacher, make me nervous. So, here I sit, torn between wanting my students to "own" their learning and wanting to plan things that will be successful and not cause additional unknown stresses on me (or my CT).

How can they "own" their learning in a room with limited resources? How can I plan projects that engage multiple intelligences and encourage creative thought, in a room where they've spent the last 6 months filing out lots of blanks on note-taking worksheets, watching movies, and not finding motivation to think outside the box? Do I want to work within the patterns they know and expect, or do I want to do things that will effect classroom management because they are so different from the norm?

And, how hard to I want to push myself, how many risks do I want to take? Is there is a significant advantage to planning those library and other field trips that I actually can't gain for my students in the classroom?

I think the answer to the last question is "YES!" Now, I need to convince myself of it and keep planning those units until they work - for ALL students, for my CT and the MAT program, and for ME.

Student Teaching, Part I

2009-09-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

The last 3 weeks, I've been in a Biology classroom in a local high school, learning through our MAT program's "September Experience" how to prep a classroom and all the other things that go along with getting off to a good start to the school year. I wish I had remembered to blog more while doing it, but I did manage to take some decent notes that I'll be able to use for the associated homework assignments, and might refer back to as I catch up here.

Though not exactly overwhelming, the amount of information from different sources and variety of different activities that were occurring all around me did provide me with lots of data to compile and analyze. The relationships between teachers, administration, and other staff; the ways different teachers prepped their rooms and curriculum for the year; the policies and behaviors that established the tone of staff meetings; and how all of that related to me and helped me establish my place in the classroom and school. Overwhelming - no. I'm too good at compartmentalizing, handling insanity, and blocking out everything that doesn't directly relate to me or what I need to accomplish. But, when I took time to look at the bigger pictures and think in larger terms (whenever I was thinking about how my new goals include wanting to not only teach, but write and publish about it), I could see the complexities and start to consider how the relationships and communication between peers could really set up the school year for success or failure. As someone used to working rather autonomously (being an outreach-teacher-on-the-road, who has to be ready to step into a classroom and take over, coordinates their own program, and all that), it was important for me to see that and consider how I need to adapt the individualism that makes it possible to run my classroom well to a team-work spirit that would help me work with the members of this school's staff and the staff at any school I find myself in in the future.

So, I sat through a week of staff meetings, working with my Cooperating Teacher (what the MAT program at SOU calls the established classroom teacher I'll be working with in my Student Teaching) to get materials and plan some of the first few classes, and mostly, not doing much. I didn't mind any of it, but found it confusing to be so calm before a set of classes. The week before I teach a camp, I'm running in circles making sure I've tested curriculum, collected more than the necessary materials, set up the room, labeled the materials, printed a dozen versions of the curriculum, etc etc. Same for any class I haven't done a hundred times and know I can do blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. Here I was, not knowing what all the curriculum would be, not knowing exactly what my role would be. And I had almost nothing to do. Normally - this would freak me out. Somehow, that feeling held off. And now that I'm starting to ask enough questions and work my way around the information that my CT has put together for the curriculum and lesson plans, I'm feeling pretty good about the school year as a whole. Skipping that adrenaline-rush-insanity that usually comes before teaching seems strange, but good, on the whole. I've even managed to teach a day's worth of classes with the sub sitting in the office not doing much more than introducing herself so the class knew a 'real teacher' was around.

Now I've moved on from September Experience to Fall Term Practicum, which means being there for the first two classes of the day, 4 days a week (about 12 hours a week, since the school has a block-type schedule). So, Monday's are my work day. Today: cleaning up the house including getting my MAT & Student Teaching paperwork cleaned up and organized cuz it sorta got thrown everywhere in the last 3 weeks.

Looking forward to more.

Love technology

2009-06-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Mostly, love Google.

Just used Google Maps (satellite view) to measure the lengths of sidewalks and open space around the museum. Why? Because I had to decide what scale to use for the distance between planets for my Out of this World camp in July.

Yay.

Building Challenges - Curriculum Change

2009-03-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

So, I'm getting rid of the "pick up the ball and put it on the table without touching it" challenge, and adding a full second day of Crickets. I haven't been getting as excited about Crickets as I should be - but maybe with this camp format will be better for it - more contact time to really get to play with the pieces and build on ideas to get them thinking creatively.

Or, it will bomb.

And I'm definitely going to do the solar ovens (or wind-powered cars if the sun doesn't cooperate) on Friday. I think it's fun to end with a "build your own snack" challenge. And it's a whole Renewable Energy is the Future concept to put on the last day.

I may still be short on projects - but I think I can make it work.

Building Challenges

2009-03-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

Teaching a Spring Break camp next week (and working on the curriculum today .... shh! don't tell my boss!) and trying to figure out one more "Building Challenge" to add for the last day.

Here's what I have so far:

Building towers & roller coasters to address the "How Big can you Build it?" question.
Building airplanes & parachutes as introduction to the challenge of "Can you save our pilot, Egg-bert, from certain destruction (when I drop him off the top of the 12' ladder)?" More commonly called an "Egg Drop" challenge.
Using the RAFT bin (named after Resource Area for Teachers but we always tell the kids it means 'Random Assortment of Fun Things' since it's just full of any reusable random materials I can get my hands on) to solve the challenge of "Can you move the ball from Point A to Point B without touching it?" Similar to this idea from PBS Design Squad, but with a PAJMZ-style twist, of course.
Using the Crickets software for a "Build a Robot and Animate It" challenge

And here's where the problem starts. Camp is 5 full days (8 am - 2 pm). And I can make each of these challenges into at least a full day, but I need something for day 5.

One idea is doing a Solar Ovens challenge, and having them test their ovens with s'mores (and thermometers, of course). I'm a bit worried, because it's March and the weather can be temperamental. But if we do the challenge early enough in the week and can adjust the test time for whenever we get enough sun, it could be fine.

The second idea is having a "finish it up" day at the end of the week, where they can just work on making their designs better.

But I'm still trolling for a third idea. Any suggestions?

Outreach Adventures

2009-03-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

Outreach science at its best.

This morning's commute...
Two hours and fifteen minutes of this... on a commute that should take about an hour and a half (still long, about 55 miles, but faster). It was gorgeous - if I hadn't been watching the minutes add up on the GPS telling me I wasn't going to make it to the school on time, I would have really enjoyed it.

I spent the day watching out the classroom windows, hoping that the snow would stop. It finally did, at least at the school. But when I got back up on the hill headed home, down roads that I know had been plowed earlier (since I was stuck behind the plow for awhile this morning), I found this:
Yup, more snow. Fresh. I got to create the first tracks through much of it. 40 miles of this... Now, with the added bonus of sun glaring off of it half the time (the other half of the time, the snow was falling too thickly to see the road).

But, I shouldn't complain. It's gorgeous. I get to see it every day as I go from Talent to Klamath Falls

View Larger Map

And, this week's school rocks - they have SMARTBOARDS! OMG! I want. I really really want. So, despite the commute, I'm having a good week. They're doing the Hot Stuff lesson, and I think it's going well. I wish I had known about the SmartBoards before going in - I would have had some awesome graphics ready for the heat stuff, to try and work with what they're used to and reap the benefits of the technology. But it's still cool. I like that a slide from 3 days ago is still there in the same notebook and I can refer back to it, sure that it's what I did in that classroom and that it will trigger some previous memories for them. One of the problems of teaching the same class 4 times in a day is that I forget what references I made in one room, and confuse the students when I bring up something that didn't happen in that room.

I'm also thrilled that I'll be able to ask them to email me what I've drawn/written for my portfolio. Yay.

Technology? What's that?

2009-02-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

This week's outreach was three classrooms (2 3rd grades & 1 4th) just chuck full of ADD/ADHD kids. And overhead projectors that were fuzzy and unfocused. And no room to set up a computer/projector if I had even thought that it would help enough. Although, I really am leaning toward needing to prepare that to ACTUALLY work. At least one of the rooms had a projector I could have plugged my laptop into, if I had been prepared with the right presentation. Then, it would be easier for the kids to read - and I wouldn't have to worry if I'm writing my "e"s clearly enough for the 3rd graders to read/copy.

In the midst of my Language & Literacy class for the MAT program, I found myself highly concerned over vast differences in writing abilities in these classrooms. Some, the writing was small and neat, nicer than many middle schoolers'. Some, still large, messy, indistinguishable - worse than most 1st graders. How do we teach writing? These kid's need to learn it, but what do we do to teach it? To form words, to space them properly, to have a sentence that begins with a subject and ends with a predicate. They learn their pronouns ("it" "they" "them") and suddenly, they can't answer the question, "But what was 'it'? What did you measure in the experiment?" The sentence I try to get them to write - "My hypothesis was right because the circle magnet held more 3 more papers than the rectangle magnet" - becomes "I was right because it held more." Doesn't matter what grade either - they look for shortcuts and don't understand the importance of clarity of communication - no matter how many times we repeat and discuss and ask questions like "what did you do, how did you do it?" and "pretend I've never done this experiment."

How do we teach clarity of communication? Full thoughts and well-written sentences? How do we do it without making it more overwhelming then the content? How do we help the students who need it, without holding back the students who have the skills already? We learn to teach models of reading and writing. But how does that address the gap between students? And if I spend time with students who need extra help on the reading and writing, what are my students who don't need that help doing? Getting farther ahead in the content, while the 10% who need direct instruction and guided tutoring on the reading and writing fall father behind and the majority of the class, the average kids, have noticed that I'm distracted and take full advantage of it.

How do we, as teachers, fix it? How do we teach the content & the communication skills so that the students can learn more than how to copy a sentence off the board, so they can learn the content and explain their understanding of it?

I was planning on going a different direction with this post - more about how I need to develop the right materials to be able to use my computer & projectors instead of unreliable overheads - and how my video camera got its first uses this week - but I guess that the real story about Outreach this week wasn't the technology - it was the lack of a very basic skill amoung a very high percentage of students. How do I teach the content without leaving one half of the class behind, or the other half bored?

Redemption!

2009-01-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

Made great progress with the Animal Adaptations class in the last two weeks. Took it to 2 schools, a total of 6 classrooms, grades 2 to 6. And it was a hit in every one. The students loved the chance to pretend to be birds. The teachers loved how excited their students were. And, here's the kicker, they learned something!

Evolution of the class:
Not much has changed since the first time. The one change was that there was no hands-on activity in day one. It was all thinking and discussion. The eating-like-birds gets a bit old after two days, so a third day seemed unnecessary. They get the chance to "observe" the tools and foods in day 2, before making their hypothesis, but I focus more on teaching them the vocabulary of Adaptations on day 1.

So we start by having them pick an animal they know really well. Preferably not a pet-like animal (no dogs, cats, etc) so that we can focus on their natural adaptations, not the adaptations they've made to live with humans. Or, more specifically, the adaptations we've bred them for.

We then list characteristics of the animal and of the habitat that the animal lives in. After we fill the board up with as many things as we can think of, we talk about how the characteristics listed on the left help the animal survive in the habitat. What helps the animal catch the food and eat it? What helps the animal stay warm (or cool)? What do they do, how do they do it? Is that how all animals that live in that habitat survive?

When I'm lucky, which I was in the first classroom, the animal they pick is a bird and the transition to adaptations of birds is smooth. When I'm less lucky, and the animal is a dolphin, I need to make the transition to get them thinking about birds: an animal they don't generally think about often. I found, after some hits and misses, that the way to do it was with different ways that animals move to hunt their food or run from predators. They can run, swim, dig, or fly. Then we can talk about the adaptations of animals that fly, birds. With their example animal, I write down anything they say, relevant or not. With the birds, now that they understand what an adaptation is, they need to tell me what the characteristic is and how it is an adaptation. Does it help them fly, why do they need to fly? Does it help them hide, why do they need to hide?

When the concept map is drawn, we can look at the 7 pictures of birds, and focus on the most important adaptation: the beak.

This conversation kept every student interested in every classroom for the entire hour. I was shocked. And thrilled.

In a replay of last week..

2008-12-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

New school, same lesson. In Hot Stuff this week, again in a 4th grade class, I tried the "Let's review some bad answers" technique... and fell on my face. It worked well in the already engaged, but not sure where to go next class of last week, and was a struggle to use in the less-engaged, more focused on blurting out answers group of this week. It's a great tool in classrooms where they're ready to answer and willing to raise their hands to be heard, thus providing an opportunity for every student who thinks they have the answer to give it. It's a less effective tool in rooms that are, in the words of their teachers, "squirrely." Their lack of respect for the idea of raising their hands to be heard leads to a lack of understanding that what I'm going for is group responses - a thumb's up to say, "yes! this is a good answer," or a raised hand to add "well, it could work if we change some words."

All in all, it was another example of some things work in some places some times. And the rest of the time, come up with something new.

Tried something new...

2008-12-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

Tried something new in my 4th grade Inquiry class this week. The lab, Hot Stuff, focuses on heat and energy, asking the basic question, "What can we do to melt the most ice in 2 minutes?" It can be fun during the data collection and hands-on stages. Handing a kid a film canister (oh, and can I mention that half of them didn't know what it was?) full of ice and saying, "Do whatever you want to this except putting it in your mouth or opening it; get it to melt completely melt in the next 4 minutes," tends to get their attention.

But, that writing portion is still a killer. I can't do any of the things I really want to do - a serious hands-on experiment every day, an engineering challenge with every lab (this one would be a great time to build solar ovens or just test different materials for insulation), truly self-directed inquiry - because of the time constraints. I need ways to get every student in the world actually excited about writing. Not exactly easy.

So, I needed something that would get them to, energetically, participate in the steps of how to write up a good question, a good hypothesis, and - MOST IMPORTANTLY - a good plan.

I put up an overhead:

I told them these were answers I had read on another class' papers, and asked them if they were good. They quickly identified (since I didn't make it hard) that C was the right answer on both. The first classroom was VERY enthusiastic about this method. I had hands raised from students who hadn't participated at all in the previous 2 days of class. The 2^nd and 3^rd classrooms were not as excited about it, but there was greater participation then there would have been if I was just talking. Now, they could see and read the wrong answers themselves. They could discuss what made them right or wrong. It took 5 more minutes, but I think that in the first two rooms, it made hypothesis writing go faster than usual.

So, I tried it with the Plan too. Hoping, desperately, to avoid having students tell me that the plan for their experiment is to, "do their experiment," I gave them three examples:

It worked, in two out of three classes. We still didn't have time to finish our experiments - they'll be melting ice tomorrow too - but it was better. I didn't leave it up on the overhead in the first room - they had the talent to do it on their own. They had been impressing me all week (I had to invent an extra experiment to model on Tuesday, they had finished my regular experiment on Monday), and still managed to get to some of the trials today. The second room didn't work as hard, but they'll start the experiment on time tomorrow. The third room... well, no one told me today was their early release day, so we lost 20 minutes of class. And they work a bit slower still. We'll finish tomorrow, somehow. The teacher has offered extra time after lunch tomorrow.

Geography Lessons - Through Games!

2008-11-29T15:18:00.001-08:00

Geography was never my strong suit. Plus, it seems like all you ever learned in school was the names of capital cities, or maybe some cultural or climate-related information for various regions or countries. It was never enough to feel like a global perspective was achieved. Has it changed since I was a student? Or do I just not remember it correctly?

Anyway, about a month ago I found (through my brother), a game on Facebook. GeoChallenge has three rounds: in the first, you identify the flag for the country or union. The second round gives you the outline of the country, and slowly fades in the surrounding countries too, and you identify the name. The third round is full map, and you need to 'stick a pin' in the city they give. 60 seconds per round, you earn additional time after getting 10 right.

It's educational, whether you might call it scaffolding, or just building on prior knowledge, it's NOT totally random. The first few times you play, you're looking at a basic selection of flags, always the same ones, very different color combinations so you can start to associate the right patterns or colors with the country. Then, they add in a flag you haven't seen, then another. Only adding new ones when you've made the correct match a few times on the ones you already know. Same with countries and cities.

If I had played this game once a week in school, I'd have had WAY fewer misconceptions about Europe, the Middle East, and southeast Asia. And maybe understood a few more things in the news since then.

Adapting the Animal Adaptations Class

2008-11-27T11:45:00.000-08:00

I taught my Animal Adaptations class (bird beaks) a few weeks ago for 4th graders, and last week for 2nd/3rd. I thought it went well. Two or three of the 7 teachers commented on how interactive it was and that the activity was fun and appropriate. Then I got back the evaluations and found out it "wasn't scientific enough," that the "emphasis seemed to be on competition, not scientific methods," and that they don't believe "it would be valuable to repeat next year."

The summary of the lesson plan is pretty simple: take a bunch of household tools, simplified "bird foods" (i.e. seeds, dried beans or peas to stand in for 'bugs,' pieces of rubber bands mixed in with shredded paper to stand in for 'worms,' etc) and have them test the beaks for successful eating. The inquiry question they're basically answering is: if seeds were the only available food, would a bird who's beak is more like a toucan (fruit-eating) or more like a grosbeak (seed-eating) survive? It requires being a bit competitive - put the food in the center of the table, have two students with different tools see who can catch and 'eat' the most in 1 minute. They first, of course, write out their experimental design and then collect the data during the experiment. It seems like inquiry to me - ask a question, plan a method for finding an answer, use data to support your answer.

What went wrong?

Things to improve on the next time I teach it:

In general - my description of how to design an experiment (using variables, setting up a control group, etc) has been lacking this year. I just hadn't remembered to incorporate all the details into the general lecture that introduces that section of the class. So, I have to remember to bring that back in to satisfy the "not enough focus on inquiry" people. I had hoped to allow more self-directed discovery of the best methods, not force-feed it. Oh, well.
I had done two-students-at-a-time to speed up the data collection (and, honestly, to make it more fun - the competition increased their focus for the most part; if your classroom can't behave and gets too competitive, step in and break up the groups that aren't working). I will need to ponder the options for either (1) explaining more fully that the reason for it is to demonstrate adaptation and survival in competition, or (2) removing that aspect and providing two bowls or having them go one-at-a-time.
Having time before the scheduled class time to set up stations, thus allowing them to experiment with a wider range of foods and in a more inquiry-focused way. I'd like them to have the chance to discover on their own which tool is associated with which food and which bird. And that's how I wrote the class. It just turned out that in practice, when time was a major issue, it was faster to say, "okay, here's a toucan, what do you think he eats?" and then show them the tongs and say, "these are a good tool for picking up big fruits."
Then, I need to improve the pre- and post- lesson communication with classroom teachers. One of the problems at this school was that the secretary had done all of the scheduling and I had (apparently incorrectly) assumed that she was communicating a lot of information to the classroom teachers. Somewhere, the communication broke down and the teachers seemed unaware (especially the 2nd/3rd grades) of what the program was about.

This is fine, though, because it feeds in well to something I want to do anyway. I want to build a wiki that provides more information about the class, and allows participating teachers an opportunity to discuss pros and cons, ways they expanded on the lesson, how they worked together with me to improve the overall experience for their kids, etc. I think that will help those teachers who aren't familiar with the program, or are looking for a different topic then they did in previous years, to have more of an idea of how they'll incorporate it into the class before I get there.

Mostly, I'm sad that this class was so poorly received. Yes, I wish I had more money, more supplies, and more time so that they could get more hands-on activities. But I get 5 hours, over 4 days, to show your kids how to "think like a scientist" and I need to keep it interesting, get their work samples done, and do my best to provide the opportunity for them to 'exceed the standards.' You know it's hard - it's why you have me come in. Why do you make it harder?

Paperless

2008-11-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned this before, but Evernote is making my life so much easier. And way more paperless.

I'm sitting here reading a chapter in my EdPsych text, and the term "implicit memory" came up. And I knew we talked about it in class at some point this semester, but have no idea when. In the old days, that would mean pulling out a notebook and flipping through until I found where I (hopefully) highlighted the term. Now, all my note are typed into Evernote; each day, each class is it's own note. So I searched for "implicit memory" and it came up, highlighted straight to the term I was looking for.
There is no reason to NOT go paperless, people. At least in our personal lives. Yes, we still need students to fill out worksheets, tests, etc. There isn't enough money in our budgets for every student to have a laptop and do all their classwork on it (plus, I think handwriting is an important skill worth learning). But taking notes at a conference? In class? From websites that you might bookmark but never remember to go back to? And then being able to search them. Even the pictures are searchable. Why would you still carry a notebook??

Joys of Outreach

2008-11-20T07:12:00.001-08:00

The kitchen table had become a dumping ground of pieces from the classes I've taught this month and it was time to clean it up and get stuff back to the museum so that we could potentially eat Thanksgiving dinner at the kitchen table.

This was the result:
That's my Little Red Science Wagon, with materials from 4 different classes. The little boxes shoved all around the bottom had escaped from the Magnetic Personalities class and been stranded on the kitchen table all alone for a week. Then there was the box from the class I actually taught this week, Animal Adaptations. The two file boxes, the K'Nex box, and the general mess on top were from the after school Crickets class of two weeks ago. And, nestled among it, out of sight, is the bottle of "blood" (water, small pieces of red and white sponges) from the Follow Your Heart class (4 weeks ago).

But the kitchen is finally clean. And Thanksgiving dinner can be enjoyed there (hopefully).

55 is not 30

2008-11-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

Last week, I agreed to allow a school to combine their two 5th grades into one group (of 57) for their Inquiry program. Things I did not know when I agreed: they aren't accustomed to working together (the two teachers didn't know the names of students in the other group), there are no tables/chairs in the gym we were using ( 2 days of the program are based on WRITING their 6 page Inquiry Work Sample), and there is no whiteboard or projection screen and overhead (clearly listed in the "materials you need to have ready for the program" they received 2 weeks prior to this).

I spent the week trying to clean up the mess this made. The first day, I muddled through. Couldn't write the steps of Inquiry on anything for them to reference, so I had to repeat and use big arm motions and repeat again until I thought it might sink in. Then we did the animal observations (they had picked my Happening Habitats class) which, fortunately, doesn't require any written notes or graphical representations to understand. Look, it's a pill bug. It's a crustacean. What does it do? It runs around the Petri dish. No, we don't know if it likes it, all we can do is see it doing that.

Day 2, begged for a portable whiteboard. Got 2' x 3' of worn out white board on an unstable easel. Woo hoo. Okay, so I wrote out the steps of inquiry, copied our question, erased, wrote our planned procedure for the experiment, erased, drew a data table for them to copy. Felt useless.

Day 3, continued down this path of uselessness. Finally noticed that there's a giant projection screen (like to show movies to the whole school) hanging behind the basketball hoop. Hit head against floor in frustration.

Day 4, 'borrowed' a projector from husband. Had him Frankenstein an infrared pointer for me and download Wiimote Whiteboard onto my laptop. Set up for class. Wondered where this had been all my life. Okay, so the pointer couldn't write on the board the way I wanted it too. The quick Frankenstein job didn't quite cut it - the power wasn't consistent or something so I'd get disconnected letters. But I got their attention (something which had been lacking for 3 days). I could type things for them to see and copy. I could point and highlight. I could draw data tables and graphs. I could demonstrate how to write a conclusion for their experiment! Hallelujah!

This week:
The school says "oh, one of our classrooms is really a double, there's 55 kids in it, but it's okay, they're always together, there's two teachers, they're used to it" uh, no. Not an option. I may have made it work last week, but it was a disaster. It just doesn't fit my teaching style.

Me? I give instructions, including the "If you get this done..." instructions so no one (should) be bored. Then, I circle the room, and see who really understands, which groups aren't communicating well, which students still don't understand what a hypothesis is, etc. When the majority are ready, I give the next whole-class instruction. In a room of 30 (the supposed maximum for the program), I have, at most, 6 groups to check on. In a room of 55, I have 11. And spend WAY too much time saying "it has gotten too loud, please sit down, and review your work and your group's work - you can't start the experiment until everyone in your group is ready" then getting to groups that are swearing they're done just to find out that one person has no data table, 2 have incomplete plans, and the 4th is distracting someone in another group instead of helping his teammates. Yes, they're 5th graders. No, this isn't too hard for them. But I only get 5 hours. My style works 99% of the time, your classroom is the exception, and you need to help me out here.

Also, I get to this room, and it's really two rooms. In one, big projection screen, white board space, etc. And the risers they sit on. No desks, I don't see any clipboards, and the cues I'm picking up on say that they don't do any writing over here. Okay...

The other side of the room? Desks that are too close together, one cluster set so far back against the door that they have no hope of seeing the tiny white board space on the other end of the room, some groups so close to the board they can't see because of the angle, etc. And today (end of day 3) I pick up on more clues like one of their teachers saying "I know we never work on this side of the room..." Well, WHERE do you work? Help me out here! I need to show these kids suggestions, spelling on the new vocab I'm introducing, how to draw graphs. AND THEY CAN'T SEE IT IN ANY EFFECTIVE WAY!!!

And I can't even just bring in my laptop - THERE IS NO SCREEN or clear wall space on this side of the room - ANYWHERE!

NO MORE GROUPS OF 55. None.

Update:
Got back evaluations from these teachers. Apparently I get to take the fall for all of these problems. Awesome. I'm sticking to the rules from now on: 30 students, maximum! 4 classrooms/teachers a week. And you WILL tell me when you want our "student-free" conference time to discuss scoring the work samples.

Wordle

2008-10-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

Here's how I got there..
dy/dan posted about Martin Krzywinski's use of Wordle to analyze the US Presidential/Vice Presidential debates.

So, I went to Wordle and ran an analysis on my latest Blackboard postings for Human Development and Cognitive Learning.

I like how this lets me analyze my homework. What was I really trying to say? I'm glad that "student(s)" were large, I want my posts to be about how I'll implement ideas in my classroom to help students. I'm glad "steps," "lab," and "behavior" were large because this unit was about behavioral learning and the steps we can use to affect students; and since I teach a lab science, it's in that lab that I need to affect their behavior. Yay, I was mostly on task.

I'm not happy about how large "may" is. My post must not have sounded very definite, like I don't really know what I'll do or how it will work or change things. Too vague, uncertain, and undefined. "I may" do this and "students may" react that way. I know I can't know what will happen, but shouldn't I be trying to take things out of the abstract realm and make it real? "I will" do this, and "I think students will respond" like this. I think that's the point the professor has been trying to make for the last 3 class meetings when he's been talking about how our writings aren't sounding like we know how we'll try implementing things in the classroom. He wants us to say what we will do, not what may happen when we try.

Reflecting on observations in the classroom

2008-10-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

There was some miscommunication between the teacher who scheduled the Inquiry Outreach program for this week and the teachers participating in the program. So my schedule has me starting my last class of the day at 12:40. The teacher doesn't dismiss her 6th graders (the program is for the 5th graders while the 6th graders go do Social Studies with the other 6th grade teacher) until 12:50. And I always show up 5 minutes early so I can get my supplies organized without wasting any of my precious 75 minutes fumbling through my stuff. Which basically means I get 20 minutes to observe her 5th/6th grade class doing their math assignments.

As long as I'm not bothering her, I'm going to continue for the rest of the week, because here's a chance for me to observe how another teacher handles students, to take time and reflect on the behaviors I'm seeing, etc. When I'm teaching, I get really wrapped up in what I'm doing and my observations of how the students react and what things work/don't work get trapped in my subconscious, and I don't take time to think about how to change what I'm doing until something reaches a critical level. Also, it's hard for me to learn what works/doesn't work when I'm only able to observe my own teaching. What I'm looking for is what other people do, how they handle the same kids I'll be working with later that day. I don't have enough time in my 4 days to get to know the students, the unique needs each one has for assistance in writing, staying focused, or getting involved they have developed solutions for with their teacher. I like getting to observe this room. It also helps that I'm getting a chance to observe 6th grade. Though I plan on teaching high school, SOU's MAT program basically requires being certified for multiple levels, so I need to know how to work with middle school too.

One of the things I observed was the self-management techniques that are in place in the classroom. They're working with the Accelerated Math program, which uses the computer to score and generate assignments and tests for each math objective. I hadn't seen this program in use before, and I like the way it gives them more freedom to move through material at their own pace. The program can even generate extra exercises to work on skills they're consistently missing on the assignments. While students are working on the assignments, the teacher can then pull certain groups up to the front to work on new skills. Lots can get done in a day, hopefully.

Although separating groups for varied-level instruction is a technique mostly found in elementary and middle school, I don't know why it wouldn't work in a high school class as well. It even seems like this is the time to really get into it - it develops a greater sense of community and team work and it gives them a smaller group they may feel more comfortable in for discussion. There's often time when they may be working on some reading, group discussions for assignments, or a lab, when I could pull a group forward either because they're a group that needs some extra help with a section or they're a group that needs an extra challenge. If I set up a class with collaborative learning groups, 2 or 3 lab partner pairs working together in groups of 4-6, then those CLGs and I could meet in smaller groups, set goals closer to their needs, challenges that meet their interests, and check in with each other for more regular formative assessment throughout the year.

I'm glad I saw that in a classroom this week. I hadn't thought so much about using CLGs in my classes before, but I'm now really excited about the idea. I'll need to do more research on it.

From class: Diversity in Education

2008-10-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

For my Diversity in Education class this semester, we read "Multicultural Education, Social Positionality, and Whiteness" by Christine Sleeter. My source for the article was different from the one in the link, so the page numbers may not line up, but it'll give you the idea.

This isn't a topic I bring up very often on this blog, but as I'm working my way through the MAT program and getting together drafts of my Teaching Philosophy, it seems valuable enough to add some of these topics here as well and examine them on some other levels.

Here's the response I wrote for this article:

Christine Sleeter (2000) addresses the issues of educating preservice teachers in how to be prepared for multicultural education in their classrooms. I felt like this article was a challenge to white preservice students. She's challenging us to critically examine our own understandings of culture, expand it to incorporate the causes and effects of race, gender, and social class, and to make choices that will lead to greater understanding of how to be a true leader in multicultural education. The trouble Sleeter sees is the differences in perspective and attitudes between those who are white and those who are not. For people of color, the concepts and issues of multiculturalism are much more obvious, and are a part of daily life in the systemic discrimination they face, and how they identify themselves, historically and in the present. Teachers of color "grasp [these concepts] much more readily than white prospective teachers because these concepts mesh with their life experiences" (Sleeter, pg 121). For white preservice students, the issues of discrimination, racism, and opportunities for minority groups are altogether different. They "have difficulty going beyond a focus on how 'we' can help 'them,'" (Sleeter, pg 119) and their focus tends more toward choosing to ignore the problems they have not experienced.

I would hope to fully incorporate the true meanings of multiculturalism into my own life and not fall into the trap of 'us' helping 'them.' However, I can see the point that is being made, and believe I have more frequently seen and participated in that behavior than I would like to admit. Having not been the victim of daily, systemic discrimination means that I need to reach beyond myself to try and understand life as a person of color. How can I fully teach my students without bias, and teach them in a fully multicultural way when it takes an effort to do so, and I am still more likely to phrase it in a 'me' versus 'them' way?

Sleeter points out that if we are truly learning from our multicultural studies and using multicultural education to address the issues that need to be faced, then "building on analyses of race, social class, and gender that have been advanced over the past two decades, multicultural education should also direct our attention to concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of a small elite and to manifestations of that concentration in contemporary culture and social institutions" (pg 120). The point Sleeter makes here is very powerful. Here we are: educators who are researching multiculturalism; studying the historical and contemporary roles of race, gender and social class in our society; and supposedly teaching how to evolve a meaningful discourse on how to fix the problems and celebrate the victories; yet, we remain trapped in our old thought and behavior patterns. My first course in college was "Race, Gender, Justice," a discussion of how the historical development of the constructs has created the world in which we live. I felt at that point that I was ready to accept and discuss these issues in ways that will make a difference. Yet, I cannot name any time when I consciously acted in a way that was different than my instincts because of the things I learned in that class. Multicultural education is the perfect avenue for advancing understanding among all members of our society of the historical and current attitudes toward and treatments of various groups. We should be able to have valuable discourse and create social change; but, we see very little of that coming out of our 'multicultural education.'

One of the roadblocks to a real multicultural education is that white racism is mostly left undiscussed and patriarchy and class hierarchy are ignored. We focus "mainly on cultural difference" (Sleeter, pg 120). "That multicultural education often skirts around white racism results from white people's reluctance to address it more so than people of color's disregard for it" (Sleeter, pg 120). White people who consider themselves open minded and non-discriminatory have a tendency to begin that belief with the idea that they are "colorblind." Yet, we continue to make certain negative assumptions about various groups, or carry some prejudice ideas about them. "For teachers, trying to be colorblind... means trying to suppress the application of those negative associations to individual children one is teaching" (Sleeter, pg. 125). Additionally, those who consider themselves colorblind are also denying that there are racial boundaries they see and do not cross, such as when they choose a neighborhood to live in. I too, am guilty of this. I have often been encountered with an individual of color and can stifle my biases and be 'colorblind,' treating the individual as an individual. However, when confronted with a situation where there may be a larger number of people of color, I will not cross the racial boundaries and will stick to the white side.

Sleeter suggests that to begin understanding and incorporating the perspectives of people of color in multicultural education, teachers should engage "in regular dialog and collaborative work with people of color in our own communities, but that dialog and work needs to include regular and continued self-analysis" (pg 131). We need to be aware of where we come from and what influences will be affecting our perspectives as we try to incorporate those understandings into our own. We should also work to make multicultural education more than a study of a different famous person every month or a different country or ethnic group every other week. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the multiple aspects of diversity that extend beyond most definitions of culture. Multicultural education must consider the definition of culture that Sleeter uses, "the totality of a people's experience" (pg 127), and through integration of projects and discussion on the whole spectrum of cultural characteristics, students could understand more than just a small aspect of small sampling of the cultures in our society. I hope that as I continue to develop my teaching philosophy and my identity as a classroom leader I will also be continuing to reflect on my cultural perspectives and how I can best use my background and understandings to effectively teach in a multicultural world.

Somewhere between Old Things in Old Ways and Old Things in New Ways

2008-10-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Found my way to a December 2005 Edutopia article on the evolution of technology in the classroom. Marc Prensky describes the stages of adopting and adapting that must take place if we're going to use technology well and for "educational progress."

From "Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom"
1) Dabbling
2) Old Things in Old Ways
3) Old Things in New Ways
4) New Things in New Ways

Where do you fit in?

My outreach program is definitely stuck in Old Things in Old Ways. In fact, due to budget constraints and trying to "model lessons in simple ways that can be recreated by the classroom teacher" I am mostly stuck in the position of "Dabbling".

Evaluating my current program and goals I'd like to see implemented to improve the educational value:

1) Dabbling

I want to try using video to enhance the presentations. I count this in Dabbling and not New Things because without funding for a projector and time to implement video thoroughly in the program, it doesn't feel like much of a commitment.

I have been trying to work on ways to put our pre-lesson materials on our website so teachers can prep their classes for the program and have access to appropriate additional materials, but am being held back by time and access to our site development.

2) Old Things in Old Ways

Scheduling and confirming programs with schools is done through email, and my calendar is on my Google account. These are useful ways to make the job easier, but could also be done with pencil, paper, and a phone. Not really anything innovative.

Pre-Lesson materials are typed and emailed to teachers. Again, nothing innovative. The one nod to technology that exists is that by sending as a pdf, these materials can have embedded html links to additional resources that are easy to use.

3) Old Things in New Ways

The Resources binder is now a CD of pdfs, allowing teachers more flexibility in their use, and easier access, rather than flipping through a 2" or 3" binder.

4) New Things in New Ways

I would love to get a projector and be able to show really cool videos to enhance the presentations that introduce the classes. "When we begin adding digital demonstrations through video and Flash animation, we are giving students new, better ways to get information." (Prensky, 2005). I can stand there and show them a model of the heart, have them draw the flow of blood on the drawing of the heart in front of them, but wouldn't it be better to show them this: "Human Atlas: How the Heart Works" before they do that?

Also, they are required to do a lot of writing for the class that I wish they could do on a computer instead. They need to write their hypothesis, experimental design, data collect, procedure, and data analysis. It's all valuable information, and the practice of writing it is important to the inquiry process. They don't know it, but they're really learning some valuable skills while doing all that writing. However, many of these students struggle so much with the act of writing and spelling that they are unable to focus on the science skills they're learning. There is a value to learning to write, but is this the time and place to practice those skills? If students were able to type their data and procedures, we would spend less time correcting spelling or improperly written numbers, and be able to focus more on the processes they're using for science. They can get their ideas down on the paper more quickly, instead of agonizing over the formation of the letters and words. And editing is easier, as we talk about being sure to get all the steps of the process into the plan and they see they've missed something, we need to decide is it easier to erase everything and start over, or try to squeeze something in and use messy looking arrows to show that this step should have happened before that one? With a computer, they could just insert the necessary information.

I would love to be working in classrooms where students could create their work samples on a computer instead of on paper. And we could save a lot of trees in the process! Some might say this is still an "Old Things in Old Ways", but I see that the educational progress - the students gaining experience, ability to focus on the content and not the writing - brings this out of "Old" and into "New." It creates the 'real world scenario' in their classroom and they get to be part of it.

The debate on learning and using handwriting (printing or cursive) versus teaching students typing earlier and emphasizing it as the medium they're more likely to use outside of school and a skill they will need more often is extensive. Here are just a few places where you can read more about the debate: LiquidLearning.com, eLearning Technology.

Resources:
Prensky, Marc. 2005 "Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom" Edutopia.com. Available: http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt

Outreach - After School Crickets

2008-10-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

Went to the third site of the after school crickets program today and met with the site director. When I called him 3 or 4 weeks ago and left the message "Hi, I'm the new outreach coordinator and I'd like to the talk with you about the after school Cricket program that was planned 3 years ago but never executed," I got the impression that maybe he didn't remember much about it. Specifically, he didn't remember why he should spend any of his time working with me to get 8 measly hours of after school programs into his building.

After meeting with him today, he's talking about how to get more grants that could bring more of this and similar projects into his club. That tends to be the general reaction. People see this program and get very excited about the possibilities.

Oh, and did I mention the great idea I came up with for my longer classes? I wanted to give them a fun build-it-animate-it challenge but didn't want it to be the roller coasters again (too specific). I found an old idea on the Playful Invention and Exploration website: building a chain reaction based on a nursery rhyme, poem, or story.

I think this will be a great challenge. I immediately started searching for nursery rhymes and came up with about a dozen ideas of animated story scenes I could build. And it could be anything... they could animate a scene from Harry Potter if they want. The only requirement - use the Crickets to take a simple scene and animate it.

There's more to Formative Assessment then meets the eye

2008-10-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention. I don't know what lead to the question in class, but I heard the professor say "Who knows the difference between formative and summative assessment?" No one responds.

This is a topic that I tend to think about a lot. I want to know if I'm getting through to my students before I have to grade them on it. I'm always hoping to do a better a job with formative assessments in my classrooms, so that I can feel like I've done every thing I can (in the 5 hours I'll see these students) to help them succeed on their work samples. So, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.

I raise my hand, and give a response: "Formative assessment is on-going. Its when you check in with your students during class and try to get a feel for what they're understanding or what you need to clarify. Summative assessments are at the end; the tests and papers that are graded to see what they retained." My definition wasn't complete enough for him, but he said it got an "A". That was his own formative assessment - he was telling me, you have the idea, but there's more to learn - pay attention.

So how else can I use formative assessments? Not just asking the students to answer a question or list the forces of flight and seeing who can recall it. What else can I do in my classroom now?

One of the activities that is usually part of my class is on the last day when students are finishing up their work samples. I have two or three of them come forward and read their Experiment Procedures. While they read what they've written in their rough draft, I mime their actions, setting up and doing the experiment exactly as they've described. This is a great tool when the first one or two are really bad. When they're good, its harder to use as a tool.

"Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students." Catherine Garrison & Michael Ehringhaus, "Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom"

Are my students a tool I'm using (asking them questions and gauging their responses verse what I want/expect) or are they also benefiting from the assessments? During those demonstrations, they're helping each other, they can watch each other, listen to each other, and offer advice. It's a technique that works, it involves the student and it gives them a fair opportunity to review their draft before completing the assignment. What about other times in my lesson plans - do I offer more opportunities when they can assess themselves and each other, or do I wait for them to regurgitate information to see if it stuck?

"..[F]ormative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process." Staff, FairTest; "The value of formative assessment"

Not as easy as we want it to be.

Technology is...

2008-09-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start collecting these quotes. Some are thought-provoking and some are funny, but mostly, the value is in considering the instinctual reactions that people will have when you say you want to bring "technology" to the classroom.

Here are three to start us off.

"Technology is anything you don't trust. It's the things that break. If it's going to work, you call it a toaster." (Paraphrased) - the Director of IT at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

"Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff." - Alan Kay (via Drape's Takes)

"Technology is anything that makes something else easier to do. This pencil is a form of technology." - (paraphrased again) Dennis Dunleavy, Assistant Professor of Communication, Southern Oregon Universiy

El Paseo

2008-09-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Back in school for the first heavy-duty term of the Master's program. Of course, every term is supposed to be relatively light, so it can be worked around jobs, family obligations, etc, but this term will definitely be more work than last.

We started our Multicultural Education class with an interesting activity last night, an El Paseo "Circles of Identity" activity (click for link to pdf). It was a good way to integrate the basic "get to know your classmates" first day activity with the class' topic and a teaching tool that is relevant to the topic. The activity started with listing the categories of things that we consider part of a student's identity. What pieces fit together? Race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, family environment... the list goes on. Then we needed to build our own web of identity. Using specific terms in place of the categories, what makes us who we are? What is our own identity? We then went around the room having one-on-one conversations to share reflections on those characteristics. We didn't stand there and list off what we wrote - we talked about why those things made us who we are. Using our identity web and our conversations, we should have a good start on our first assignment, writing an autobiography.

The "circles of identity" I came up with last night.

It wasn't until today that I realized the subtle work the professor did in bringing the standard first-day classroom introductions, the class content, our first homework assignment, and a useful teaching tool together in one activity. We're taking these classes to learn to be good teachers... how often do we notice the tools the teachers are using and recognize the ways they're demonstrating technique in addition to the content?

After drifting a bit for the last month, and falling behind on posts and reflections, getting back into class is motivating. A lot of it comes from the increased stimulation: reading assignments, discussions, class time, etc. I want to remember to reflect on this stuff, so that 'el paseo' (the road) to my Master's definitely won't end with the degree. It should all be part of the learning experience and the never-ending quest to improve my teaching strategies and abilities.

Trying to go Paperless

2008-09-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

How do you take an Outreach science program and go paperless? This is the question I'm trying to answer. Classroom teachers have that advantage of knowing and controlling the assets their students have access to: PDAs, computers, programs, etc that can help them go paperless. Though budgets may be tight, when you can get those assets into the classroom and use them right, everyone benefits. But, when I go out to some of the more rural schools, I may be faced with classrooms where finding a sharpened pencil is a challenge, let alone having a computer each student can enter their data on.

If my programs were just a hands-on science experience, I could totally do it. My big challenge comes from the state: required work samples for all students grades 3-high school. They need to write out an entire scientific experiment, from question and hypothesis to data analysis and conclusion. Not a small task by any means, and certainly not one that can be done without paper.

I can still cut down though. Teachers used to receive a binder of information (additional lessons, background on the Science Inquiry Cycle, scoring guides, ideas for designing their own lesson) that they may or may not use. This year, they'll start receiving a CD with the same information that they may or may not use. (Personal goal: be able to dress up the CD so it's more than just a bunch of files).

On my side, instead of a dozen notebooks full of random notes, I'm now fully engulfed in using Evernote to carry my information and Toodledo to keep my to-do lists in order. Notes from meetings are typed, not hand written; websites I may need to find again are bookmarked (thanks to Foxmarks); I go nowhere without laptop and iPhone.

There are times my hand twitches and makes me feel like I can't focus without drawing out my plan for the day. But I take a deep breath, open up OmniGraffle and draw a flowchart of my ideas. I've upgraded my Toodledo to a Pro account so I can track subtasks and watch progress get made toward goals I've set, but it still didn't do the visual flowchart of ideas for me. OmniGraffle picked up that piece. And the only thing on my Christmas wish list at this point is a graphic pad (though a Kindle wouldn't be bad either). That should help me make that last push to just being done with paper, at least on a personal level.

Now, to implement as many ideas as I can for doing it at work too.

Day 2: OTS Conference

2008-09-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

First: an opening for Outreach Coordinator at the Imaginarium in Anchorage is very tempting. There's a Center for the Performing Arts right across the street. Maybe they need a Theater Technologist?

Anyway, the conference continued to be a source of good inspiration. We dragged ourselves down into mucky areas as we debated the "what comes next" question, how do we move beyond the grant and into sustainability and all that. Our Collaboration of museums work well together on sharing ideas for how to do things during the grant, but because the museums are so different, we all have our own needs and ideas about how the exhibit becomes self-sustaining, or even if it can.

Also, our museum was the stand out of how we ran the program this year, and the only one with a change in direct management of the exhibits between years. Those are our challenges. I don't feel like I have the information and data necessary to make good choices in venues for next year, and I plan on using this year to experiment, collect data and make good choices for the following year. Everyone else had reached more of the types of venues they needed to for their data, and have information for making choices this year.

We also got a chance to hear more about the Imaginarium's Outreach program. They take planes to the villages, sleep on mattresses on gymnasium floors, pack in their own food (so they don't have to eat smoked fish dipped in seal oil), and get to reach entire families with programs and science they'd never see otherwise. Dog sleds, snow mobiles, the Alaska Ferry system, and lots of snow - all to bring science to some of the most rural villages imaginable. And totally worth it.

It was a good day. I've made good contacts for future collaborations. Got to know a guy from the Exploratorium who invited us down for Maker Faire in May. Sounds awesome, and would help me make even MORE contacts at Exploratorium - a very good place to have science museum contacts.

Summary - interesting discussions, great brainstorming, fun conversations and dinner, and an overall good time.

Day 1: OTS Conference

2008-09-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Despite my hestitancy in taking over this program, nothing can stop that instinctual desire to improve, control, brainstorm, research, etc, etc that makes me the perfect person for (most of) this program. The presentations and discussions yesterday helped prove that. I couldn't help but be interested in hearing their experiences and ideas for improvement. I couldn't help but start getting excited about how I could improve what I had seen in our exhibit set up and implementation. We've been missing the boat (shuttle) on this one.

I'm still not excited about the extra hours, the truck driving, the dealing with venues, the crowds, the set-up/tear-down. It's a lot more manual labor and organization then education - and I'm too good at teaching to spend so much time on it. That's always been one of the things I really like about teaching through a museum - a higher percentage of time is spent on actually developing curriculum and teaching it then on the bureaucracy and administrative responsibilities of classroom teaching. But, there's a chance I could do this, with minimal suffering.

OTS - Anchorage

2008-09-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

Headed to Anchorage for a two-day conference for the Outreach to Space exhibit. Unsure what to really expect when I get there, just a general outline of Day 1 - talk about exhibits; Day 2 - talk about how cool Outreach is when you need dog sleds to get you to your schools.

It should be an interesting experience. It is the first of what I hope will be many conferences and professional development opportunities for me this year. I've been teaching science outreach for several years, learning from those who have done the job before me, from research and websites, from experience. And now I'm starting to see it from other perspectives, expanding the resources of experience that I can call on when looking for solutions to problems. It can be overwhelming - there are thousands of educators in the world, hundreds who do outreach. Trying to gain the sum knowledge available from their experiences is more than an lifetime of work.

I was talking to one of the museum's many volunteers this weekend. He comes from the Silicon Valley and the technology-insanity with years of attempting to just keep up with the tons of knowledge that are being produced every day. And now, retired and comfortably living in a calmer world here in Oregon, we were contemplating the value of always being so concerned about knowing what everyone else is learning and doing. If you're always reading the new information, the reviews of the new discoveries, and the debates about them, how much time are you leaving yourself for learning something new yourself? On the flip side, without knowing what's out there, what opportunities do you miss out on? How do you find the balance?

Coordinating the exhibits for the next year or so was not necessarily an opportunity I sought out, but there is a good feeling involved in bringing science out to the community. Perhaps being here and talking with other people who work with these exhibits will help me find something to be excited about.

Outreach

2008-09-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Over the next few months, I'll be taking the Crickets program on the road. The no-longer-shelved grant is finally getting off the ground and reaching teens in after school programs.

And not a minute too soon.

I met with the director of one of the after school teen clubs I'll be taking the program to, to get a feel for their layout, talk about the requirements, and discuss options for the program. I'll spend 8 hours total at each of the clubs, and it had seemed like enough until I saw this one. In a tiny town in the middle of the mountains, this is a club that barely scrapes by, and offers everything from meals to a place to sleep, games to educational programming. The kind of place that deserves all kinds of support from its community. Not the kind of place that should be broken into to have its new computers stolen. No, not even stolen - gutted. Anything that wasn't traceable. Same as the library and the school that share the parking lot. WHO DOES THAT???

Grr...

I'm taking technology to these kids. I'm bringing them toys that none of them will have access to outside of our 8 hours together. It's not enough. But at least it's something. When I did this with the kids during summer camp, half of the families were talking about getting the kits for their kids after the program. They didn't have to worry about having the computer or the money for the kit. The kids I'll see in this after school program? Maybe 1 of them has a personal computer with internet. They'll be in the workforce a lot sooner than those kids I saw this summer, they'll need the skills for college (if they go). And they don't have access to it outside of a computer class.

We need to overhaul education and the economy. This isn't acceptable.

A Thought-Provoking Article

2008-09-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, Gary Stager's recent article in GOOD Magazine does more than provoke thought. I hope it provokes communities into action. Read the whole thing here.

This is how he starts:

Schools are seeing recess eliminated, electives are being cut, and teachers are insulted by the prospect of having their career and income threatened by their students’ scores on a single multiple-choice test. All in the name of No Child Left Behind, a mathematically impossible piece of federal education legislation, which requires all of the nation’s schoolchildren to be above the mean on standardized tests by 2014.

And here's how he ends:

...Parents need to be vigilant and take a stand. Parents can go to back-to-school night this fall. If the science lab contains no equipment, they should demand to know why and not wait patiently while the district hopes they forget. If their first grader was excited about going to school, but by the third day cries hysterically and says, “The teacher hates me,” his concerns should be taken seriously. If their kid’s school is test-obsessed, parents should let teachers and administrators know that they expect more of an education. If every parent was vocally fighting for the best public schools for their children—instead of some of the most involved and caring opting out in disgust—the government would be forced to listen.

Because despite their flaws, inequities, and shortcomings, public schools are an American treasure owned by the citizens, and we should treat them as a public trust."

And everything in the middle deserves your attention.

WoW = Science Inquiry?

2008-09-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

I love this:

...What is science? It's a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And videogames are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren't "real" world, of course, but they are consistent -- the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules.<

This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method.

- Clive Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers" Wired.com September 9, 2008

The article goes on to discuss the findings of Constance Steinkuehler, a game academic at the University of Wisconsin, who studied almost 2,000 messages posted on a World of Warcraft discussion board. She found that a majority of these messages were analyzing the game, with posters going back and forth positing hypotheses and responding with experience-based rebuttals - the marks of good science inquiry.

Indeed, the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out. - Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers"

In the classroom, it's difficult to inspire student-driven inquiry. How do you get them to ask their own questions and seek out their own research to answer it? We can see that teens will use this method on their own, and do to play games - shouldn't we be able to get that same behavior to test gravity, momentum, chemical reactions, etc? They don't realize they're doing it when the goal is to win the game. How do we get them to try it in the classroom?

Early Ed and Teenage Literacy

2008-09-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

In one of those moments of shear, but strange, coincidence, I stumbled upon the following article today, shortly after my kindergarten-teaching mother-in-law asked me if I had found anything interesting in the realm of early ed lately.

Britain has a national curriculum with specific goals, and schools there are rigorously inspected and evaluated. Most kids enter school at 4, instead of 5 as is the case here, and pre-kindergarten programs tend to be more academic than in the United States. American programs are often more play-based than academically structured, and standards vary widely from state-to-state and between public and private settings.
It's not an open-and-shut case as to whether one country's approach is better than another. On a recent international reading test, U.S. fourth-graders and their peers from England had the same results. They weren't all that impressive. Students from the two countries posted lower average scores than students in Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Hungary, Italy and Sweden, along with several Canadian provinces.
In math, kids in the United Kingdom, which includes Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, outperformed their American peers on an international test given to 15-year-olds. - Nancy Zuckerbrod, AP, "Mom finds U.S. lagging in early education" August 25, 2008. CNN.com

The math is especially telling. By requiring 6 year olds to know fractions (well before the Oregon State Standards - 3rd grade (Oregon Math Standards available here)), they get an incredible jump on all future math learning. And it isn't beyond the reach of a Kinder, I've watched my younger cousins determine that their half of the cookie isn't actually half. The games we play with young students to demonstrate halves, thirds and quarters can be comprehended by a 6 year old if done correctly. Why isn't it pushed more, why not include it in the games we play with our preschoolers and kinders? I don't spend all day with kids this age - is there any one out there who disagrees?

The reading is interesting. Britons are pushed to read far and above Americans by the age of 6 - but 4th graders test the same. If they're pushing so hard at the beginning, and developing those skills early, why aren't they continuing to build on them? The following is a quote from a Canadan news network, Globe and Mail but sounds very similar to the things written about American students.

And yet everything conspires against children learning to love books. Ubiquitous electronic devices, whether desk-bound or small enough to fit in their pockets, occupy an alarming proportion of children's days, and seem to shorten attention spans. Organized sports and music take up much of the remaining time. Homework - often mindless rote activities done by one tiny segment of a brain otherwise occupied by television - uses up time better used for reading. School literature courses often seem designed to expunge any traces of love for books. Parents may hector their children to read but tend not to read much in front of their children; children are quick to ignore such lip service. - Editorial, Globe and Mail Staff, "The Reading Habit Forms in Childhood", September 2, 2008.

What can we do, after they have the basic grounding in reading, to continue developing the skills and interest? Or, is the emphasis on reading out-dated? Does it really fit with our culture and world as it once did?

In an article in the New York Times addresses the issue:

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online. - Motoko Rich, "Literacy Debate - Online R U Really Reading?" New York Times, July 27, 2008

The debate will rage on, I'm sure. But what will be our driving force? What's best for our kids and our world, or what gives us the better test scores compared to other countries?

References:

Globe and Mail Staff, "The Reading Habit Forms in Childhood", The Globe and Mail September 2, 2008. CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080902.wereading02/BNStory/specialComment/home

Rich, Mokoto, "Literacy Debate - Online R U Really Reading?" New York Times July 27, 2008. The New York Times Company. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Zuckerbrod, Nancy. "Mom finds U.S. lagging in early education" August 25, 2008. Associated Press. http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/25/early.education.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText

More from Turtle Bay

2008-09-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my vacation now, and should be back in the habit of daily updates too. Here's an easy one to start with: pictures from Turtle Bay...

If anyone could help me identify this butterfly, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Turtle Bay encompasses many types of museums and areas of study. They have sections devoted to forestry and natural history, animals from a rescued box turtle to a black vulture, as well as an arboretum and gardens. We didn't get to see everything, of course, since the trip was cut short due to a vegetation fire on the grounds. But we did see a lot.

This was an interesting juxtaposition to me: the old and the new technologies.

Turtle Bay

2008-08-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

Got to go to Turtle Bay in Redding, CA today. It was a group field trip organized by our museum director and their CEO so we could see their organization and compare notes. They're also a relatively new organization, and one that has had its own challenges in development and growth. We really had some great conversations with them regarding how their experiences and ideas could work in our situations.

Then a small vegetation fire started working its way through their Garden and Arboretum forced an evacuation and we had to cut our conversations short. Article and pictures can be found on Redding.com.

I'll post a pic or two (of the parts of the park we did get to see) later.

Evolution

2008-08-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.
“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”
From "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash" - New York Times, August 24, 2008

Teaching evolution in the classroom is not an easy task.

Even states that require teachers to cover the basics of evolution, like natural selection, rarely ask them to explain in any detail how humans, in particular, evolved from earlier life forms. That subject can be especially fraught for young people taught to believe that the basis for moral conduct lies in God’s having created man uniquely in his own image.

That's a perspective I never really considered. If you can reach them and have them understand that life evolves, how do you get them to understand they still have a responsibility to themselves and their community to act with a code of moral conduct, when the source of that had always been the God that created them?

I attended Catholic schools for 12 years. Fortunately, in an environment that was open to the idea of science and religion as two ways of looking at the same world, and believing in one did not mean that you were disbelieving of the other. I worry sometimes about how I would answer questions from students about evolution. I would need to follow my state's guidelines, the need for the students to pass the assessments, and my own personal choice to never lie to a student or mislead them, to give them the best information I can.

I like the response the teacher in this article has:

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”
“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”

Sometimes I forget the debate is still going on in some states about whether or not evolution should be taught in a classroom. I'm glad I stumbled on this article, it's inspirational, and a great example of a teacher who deserves praise for courage and determination (as well as creativity in reaching students).

A Good Teacher or a Great One?

2008-08-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

As I sit at my computer today, trying to gather thoughts and to-do lists into a more organized chaos to address as needed before my classes start in four weeks, I want to take five minutes to review a list of questions I found on Edutopia.org a few weeks ago "Pride of Profession: Striving to Become a Great Teacher".

Here are the seven questions the author, Ben Johnson, asks at the end of the article:

If I think of myself as at least a good teacher, what would I do differently in order to be a great teacher?

What student outcomes do great teachers achieve that I don't achieve?

What qualities does a great teacher possess?

What sacrifices would I have to make to become a great teacher? What am I willing to give up to become great?

What does a great teacher's classroom look like?

What kind of relationships do great teachers strive to create with fellow teachers and administrators?

What will be my first step toward greatness?

I'm going to answer just the first one and the third one today, because to me they work together: "If think of myself as a good teacher, what qualities do I want to develop to become a great teacher?"

I do think of myself as a good teacher. My students like my classes, parents share with me that their students come home excited and ready to go back for more, students learn something from it, and I generally have good control over a classroom. But I know of several things I wish I could improve on to become a great teacher.

greater patience
increased calm assertiveness to maintain/regain classroom control
improved skills in communication and idea sharing to work with other teachers and the educational community

If I could improve those three things this year, it would be a great year.

Blogs I'm Following Now

2008-08-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

My newly developed interest in seeking out the blogs and digital communities of educators has led to a few new discoveries today. Here are four new blogs I've added to my sidebar today. Each had it's own "that's why I want to follow this person" moment that I wish I had had time to record in this post, but my day is like all the others this week - a battle to remain even partially focused on getting prepared for classes and everything that needs to be done before, during, and even after this school year. So, I link, but I can no longer remember why. Except that at some point I want to go to these blogs and really absorb some knowledge from them.

And what I really need is advice on how to not go crazy in trying to get ready for the first day. Right now, I still have a month to go, but that could change any day. And I have enough to do during the month to stay busy, if it doesn't.

How do you balance the hundreds of ideas of how to make this year better than last with the time that you have?

The First Day

2008-08-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

When the first day of school comes, will you be ready?

I have a 'first day' every week in my job. With every new school I visit, I have to create that image of who I am to my students (and their teachers!) so that they will trust me and be willing to learn from me for the next four days. I have minutes to gain their respect and control over the classroom if I want my five hours with them to be worthwhile for any of us. I take to heart a lot of what's written here: Teaching Secrets: Take Charge of Your Classroom. It's been my perspective for awhile now that I'm not there to be the students' friend, but to be their leader, a good role model, and mostly, to have them leave and say "I respect her and what she tried to teach me."

Get Organized!

2008-08-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

The school year is about to start, and I know I'm not alone in looking for how to stay organized and feel confident about to-do lists, calendars, and other stuff that piles up.

Cool Cat Teacher was just talking about it this morning. And my husband and I have been on the lookout for the perfect on-line, mutli-functional, integrated, use-it-anywhere to-do list we can find for the past few months. I think I've found it: Toodledo. Talk about integrated! iGoogle gadgets, iPhone apps, Twitter compatible, Jott compatible... it goes on. The best part for me - the Google Calendar sync, which I can view from either my personal Google calendar or my work Google calendar (due to some security on my work calendar, I can't directly sync one to the other without losing info). So, one to-do list, for both halves of my life. What else can you ask for?

Shed a Little Light

2008-08-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight I witnessed my second Daedalus Project Oregon Shakespeare Festival AIDS Benefit Variety Show. It is the most humbling display of the best humanity has to offer. In talent and in heart. It is funny, it is touching, and it is incredible to see. If you ever have the chance to attend, you should. This was the 21st annual, and it will continue as long as there is an AIDS epidemic that needs to be fought.

State Science Standards

2008-08-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

This is the year they revise the Science Standards for Oregon, and I'm currently reading my way through the first draft. This will have a definite impact on what I teach this year and what new curriculum I will need to design for next year. I have to do some serious research into the resources and references they're using to support their decisions, and put some real time into thinking about how to implement them in our outreach classes next year and beyond.

Too much to think about... I still have to get through this year with the old standards and all the changes I wanted to make. Must remember to conserve energies and be efficient in how much I put into improvements this year when they'll need to be revised again next year.

There's Always a Solution

2008-08-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

I love this line:

Noticing that Michael’s attention strayed during math, she hired a tutor and encouraged him to use word problems tailored to Michael’s interests: “How long would it take to swim 500 meters if you swim three meters per second?” - from "Michael Phelp's Mom on Parenting an ADHD Superstar" in the April/May 2007 issue of ADDitude

You do what you gotta do to get'em interested. And when it works, it's incredible.

Trying to Calm my Creative Jitters

2008-08-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Educational Technology course stimulated those creative energies I rarely allow myself time for these days. I did the whole "create a banner for a webpage" thing (my SOU home page) and thought about actually designing that page to store some of the curriculum I've done that isn't more-or-less 'owned' by the museums I've worked for. (tangent: does any one really understand how those rules work? If I write the curriculum I'm using to teach a class through my employer, the museum, who 'owns' the curriculum?)

Anyway, back to the topic of Creative Jitters. I've added a new tab to my iGoogle page just for my teaching/education resources, thus separating them from the Science resources I had originally grouped them with. So, I wanted to put an educational theme on the header of the page. I searched for "education", "chalkboard", "teaching", "classroom", "student", "write", "math", etc etc looking for something like a chalkboard background - that very traditional "school" feeling. And turned up a big nothing.

But, there is that "create your own theme" option. And they give some pretty good instructions. So I'm thinking of creating one. I'm hoping it will be a good way to focus my energy on something creative, so that when I'm back in the office this week finalizing the curriculum for this school year, I can actually focus.

Another Member of the Zoo

2008-08-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

Weekly off-topic voyage into photography...

8/26/07; f/4.5; 1/15 shutter speed.

This is Dawn, about a year ago. Back when she was little and cute (about 4 months old). She's still this beautiful, but not quite so little. She also won't pose for me any more, so getting new shots is tougher.

Infinite Source of Community

2008-08-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still in awe of how many resources I'm discovering for teachers. Technologies that make it easy to create a community for sharing ideas and support.

In addition to those I've mentioned before (like Twitter, Edutopia) here's a few more:

more blogs: as I search for new ideas, support for the upcoming school year, etc, I'm realizing that the blogs I may have overlooked before as unprofessional are actually good resources for feeling like I'm not alone out there when I'm in front of my class
sites like About.com or Yahoo! Answers where strangers can read and respond to questions (here's an example with suggestions for taming unruly students)

I like this new perspective I'm developing on things I was taking for granted. I've been using the Internet to search for curriculum ideas and for hundreds of other things for years. But never for finding a new community to belong to. I think I had forgotten how much I still have to learn, and how much support teachers need from others who go through the same thing every day. Yes, lots of websites are poorly maintained, some blogs or sources may be too personal or unprofessional to consider as good sources, and we always have to be cautious of what we say and how we say it to protect ourselves and our students... but the Internet is a great way for teachers to come together as a community. And the more I explore it and set myself up to follow people who are good resources, the better prepared I am for my classroom.

Twittering Teachers?

2008-08-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what I think about this. Apparently, Twitter, a micro-blogging site, is a growing source of information for the educational community. In 140 characters or less, you share your questions, ideas, observations, and general thoughts, which are then shared with your "followers", who can respond, send messages to you directly, or create their own posts for you to follow.

This is strange. I've been on Twitter for a few months, ever since Dooce talked about it back in March. And so far, I've used it as a place to write those things you can never really say out loud, or funny thoughts I have when there's no one around to share them with. Out of context, they're usually even funnier. Often, they're inside jokes or slightly inappropriate. It's almost like a conversation where you don't care if the other person responds. You're saying what you think when you think it, and throw it out there for the universe to read. If I'm going to use this for following other educators, I might need to be more cautious in the future. Though, I just read through every thing I've written there, and there's really nothing that bad.

It's one of those things that's an exciting idea, because it's so easy to check from the computer or the iPhone. You can share ideas and those quick thoughts you might not remember to post about later. But is it professional?

I agree with the idea that it's another good way to develop that national or world-wide community of teachers - sharing ideas and feeling connected to those outside your school or district. But even for those using it to be part of the education community, it's still a place to post things that are more personal then we normally allow on our websites.

I'm on the fence on this one. I'll follow some of the people mentioned in the article and see where it leads me. And start watching what I say in my Tweets.

Technology in My Classroom

2008-08-13T11:50:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in my office at ScienceWorks today, thinking about everything that needs to be done before my calendar fills up with in-classroom obligations. The teacher packets I've planned on preparing are far from finished. The curriculum on my new classes needs to be cleaned up, and, because I'm just a bit OCD, all of the lesson plans need to be reviewed and revised to be more consistant in presentation and format. And I need to schedule about 10 more weeks of classes just to feel secure for the year.

And I'm thinking about the technology I use to help me accomplish those things. The last few weeks have really been making me think about how I take so much technology for granted, and how much of it I already use. And wondering how I can make it even more effective.

It's every where. It's how I market my classes - emails, brochures created in MS Publisher, descriptions on the website. It's how I stay organized - calendars in Outlook and on Google that sync together and can be accessed from anywhere, to-do lists written on 'sticky notes' on my Mac Book, documents created and edited in Google Docs so I can work on them any where I have an Internet connection.

Here's a list of the (computer/Internet) stuff I use in a typical week:
- MS Office - Word, Excel, Publisher, Outlook
- Google - calendar, docs, email, news, search
- Evernote - tracks research
- iPhone - phone, calendar coordination, email, text messages
- Aperture - photo organization and editing
- Dreamweaver, Fireworks and/or Photoshop Elements - website and graphics creation/editing and photo editing
- iChat, Facebook, LiveJournal - for keeping in touch with friends/classmates

Technology is a big part of how I develop and expand my classes. One of the big issues I'm facing this year is making the Illuminating Science Inquiry lessons truer to their goal of "professional development." Which means providing teachers with more information they can use in their classrooms before and after my class. Websites that provide more background information or activities they can use, lesson plans and worksheets they can use, etc. I need to understand and use technology thoughout that development, and know how to present it to classroom teachers who may not be as technologically (or scientifically) savvy.

And that's a lot to think about. But the school year is starting soon, and it's time to stop thinking about it and time to jump in with both feet and get to work.

Back to School

2008-08-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks, I've gotten really excited about the possibilities for technology in the classroom. I've done research and experimented with it in camp. And there's a lot to be excited about.

I know that for me, it's because I understand the value of communicating with students in their language, and giving them that opportunity to explore and think outside-the-box to solve problems. But in my recent, intense focus on thinking about how to bring technology into the classroom and what new things I can try and what things I'll want to use in the future, I've forgotten to think about the 'simple things.'

Here's the inspiration: on impulse, my husband and I packed up the car yesterday and went to Howard Prairie Lake (about a 45-minute drive from our house) to camp for the night. We got away. For the first time in months, we spent a day not looking at a TV, computer screen, iPod, etc. I caught him checking his email with his phone once. And his 'book' is the Sony Reader digital book. So we weren't completely disconnected, but we had a night to take a deep breath, slow down, and get away from technology. We reconnected with the non-wired world, with nature, for the night. We focused on some simple things. And came away relaxed.

What are some simple things that I want to remember this year in my classrooms? I look to other teacher's blogs (i.e. a fellow classmate, About.com's Top 6 Keys for Being a Successful Teacher) for ideas, and focus on the things I know are my weak points.

Be positive and have a sense of humor. It keeps the atmosphere open and productive, instead of tense or stressful.
Be flexible. As I'm revising some of the old curriculum and writing some new, I need to keep in mind that I won't be effective in a classroom that can't keep up. And I can't go too slowly or be too determined to finish every piece if I want to be sure they learn the big picture before my short 5 hours with them is over.
The work sample they're required to finish is a LOT of writing, and if they aren't excited about the science they're exploring, they will not want to finish the writing. I can't make them get excited about the work sample by focusing on the writing. I need to focus on having them be excited about the science and learn it, and then have them focus that interest on telling me about their experiment through the work sample. Not the other way around.

So, it's time to get ready to back to school. And think about how we'll balance the 'simple things' with the new innovations, ideas and technologies we want to bring into our classrooms.

More than just our subject area

2008-08-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Top Six Keys to Being a Successful Teacher: (thanks to Melissa Kelly at About.com

- Sense of Humor
- A Positive Attitude
- High Expectations
- Consistency
- Fairness
- Flexibility

And I agree. Those are six things that I try to do every day when I walk into a classroom. And on any day when I've walked out of a classroom and felt like I could I have done better, I can identify the failure as having forgotten one (or more) of those things. But there's something else missing in this list. Not so much a seventh item as a reminder that these six things need to be applied to both sides of education - our subject area, and the student's social and emotional development. We are a major influence on a child's life for years, and that's more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic.

We hope that when children arrive in school for the first time, for preschool or kindergarten, that their parents have given them enough support and assistance in basic development that they are prepared for the social interactions of school, as well as the mental challenges.

"In the first five years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed," said [Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical school], "Those early relationships, more than anything else, help wire the brain and provide children with the experience to trust, to develop language, to communicate. They need that system to relate to the world." (Lane DeGregory, "The Girl in the Window", St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 2008)

How is this important to us as educators?

"...It can be said that the human being is born with various body systems and biological programs, and that these programs are switched on not only by some inner mechanism but also by interaction with the environment, particularly emotionally rich and tender stimuli from daily life. We must provide this warm, loving quality at home and school, so that we can make the most of the innate programs of the child. A child can learn better with the "joie de vivre" that is an essential part of the best kind of education. A positive and emotionally rich environment is not a luxury but actually a necessity for better education in the coming 21st century." (Noboru Kobayashi, M.D., "The Emotional Basis of Learning", 1991, New Horizons for Learning)

If they have not been prepared in their homes, their development will be stunted, and that includes their ability to learn our subject matter. What responsibility do we then have?

According to one judge, we (as a school district) still have full responsibility because "the emotional and educational issues were so interrelated that there was no way to determine whether [the student] would be better served if only educational or psychological services were provided." ("What School is All About", Valerie Maholmes, 2007)

It's important to remember that those 6 characteristics listed above must apply to how we as teachers reach out to students in more than just how we approach the content we try to teach.

"...Healthy development is essential to learning. Students thrive academically when there is support for their development as human beings. Young children whose teachers encourage exploration, take care to explain what they are doing, listen to them, and tailor the classroom environment to the children's abilities and interests tend to be more successful academically."("What School is All About")

Web Design Day

2008-08-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

My photography website, designed in 2006 and (more or less) regularly maintained - Frontlight.com

My school/teaching/class assignment website, designed today and (probably not going to be) regularly maintained - "Explorations"

Photoday

2008-08-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

We're in class today, delving further into the mysteries of Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I spend a fair amount of time using those programs already, but it's always interesting to learn the shortcuts that someone else uses, or find something new while randomly searching around when time is available.

I also, shockingly, ended up with some time to take photos last weekend. Nothing great, but at least I had time to hold my camera and play with it.

After a bit of photoshopping (really, not much) here's what we end up with:

Eh, not really anything to be proud of, but that's how it goes sometimes.

GoogleLit

2008-08-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Google Lit Trips is a cool use of existing technology for the classroom. Free, easy, and, most importantly, interesting to the students who will use it.

Using Google Earth, which can be installed on almost any computer, students create virtual tours that follow the travels of their favorite literary characters. Each significant location in the book can be marked on the map, and includes notes and descriptions that are associated with that location. Use it to present a book report, or to encourage interest in a book in other students. Or, for better understanding of a book you're reading, you can follow along through a tour created by someone else, follow their links to background information, read their notes about the significance of that location to the storyline, or just get a better feel for the journey the character is taking.

For example, here's an image from the tour for Grapes of Wrath. It shows the journey they take across the US, and each of the cities mentioned along the way. You can learn more about any of these locations by clicking on them, and various quotes from the story that are directly associated to a location are also marked on the map.

Anyone who doesn't use this technology is missing out. It's simple, it's fun, and it encourages deeper, more meaningful learning while integrating different subjects and technologies. This is one way to reach those students whose strengths may lie outside of reading and literature, and get them interested in more reading.

Read a description/review of Google Lit on Edutopia.org here.

Using what you have to do more

2008-08-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

Often, what intimidates classroom teachers is the fear that they aren't sure they have enough of the technology or experience to use technology in their classrooms. But, we can, and must, start somewhere.

In a July 29, 2008 article on Edutopia.org, Suzie Boss collects five great tips from educators about what simple steps we can take to start integrating now. The following 5 steps come from this article, "Overcoming Technology Barriers: How to Innovate Without Extra Money or Support"

     Step 1: Innovate with the Tools you already have

          Look around your classroom: what do you have that you can use for a different kind of project then you usually do?

     Step 2: Seek out Free, easy to use Digital Resources

          The internet is full of podcasts, free software, research, resources, and tools that can be used. You just need to find them.

     Step 3: Overcome your Fear of the Unknown

          This includes using peer learning groups to share ideas among educators in your school.

     Step 4: Start with Small, Fast projects that Enhance Learning

Education professor Mike Muir, who directs the Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning, recommends introducing educators to an engaging task that's relatively easy. "Teachers need to be successful early," he says. "You want to start with something familiar and close to what they are already doing, but so different that it can be a portal to new possibilities. It's about paradigm shifting." Muir suggests starting with inquiry-oriented lessons called WebQuests. As part of the lesson, students use Internet resources (typically preselected by the teacher) to answer higher-order questions about a specific topic. "Find some that relate to what you are already teaching," Muir advises.

Step 5: Learn with your Students

GenYES encourages teachers to learn about technology in the context of their own classroom, side-by-side with their students. Professional development that's embedded in the classroom has more staying power than one-shot workshops.

What else can we do with what we already have? Let the challenge to reach the students overcome the challenge of 'how'.

NSTA in PORTLAND with MYTHBUSTERS

2008-08-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

I must find a way to get to the NSTA Portland conference this year. I had friends who attended 3 years ago when it was at Disneyland and they said it was fantastic (also, where I learned about the Paper Roller Coasters used in camp this year) And, I've heard that the Mythbusters will be presenting again. I must go! I really hope I can find a way.

Scratch

2008-08-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

Check out Scratch, another technology product from the guys at MIT who brought us Pico Crickets. This time, the entire program is computer-based, with no physical components, though you can, if you really want to, run it with some light and sound sensors.

Imagine the possibilities with this one. Programing the motion of your 'Sprite' - the character that you control - requires working with an X-Y coordinate graph. There are potential geometry or algebra lessons in here, I think. And the hardware requirements are almost nil... it can probably be downloaded onto most computers, even in classrooms. If nothing else, it's a great opportunity for encouraging students' creative and critical thinking. There's even room for some language arts curriculum: they could create and program some animated graphics to go along with a story they've written, or even tell the entire story on the screen.

It seems like a simple game, but as with most technologies, if you look a little deeper and imagine the possibilities, there's plenty of room for education as well.

Is the Evolution of Teaching with Technology Hindered by NCLB?

2008-08-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

In a 1995 article "The Future of Learning and Schooling in American Society", James Bosco poses the following challenge to educators:

"Those who wish to determine the extent to which schools are using information technology to change more than merely the cosmetic aspects of schools need to begin by asking school personnel what they no longer do or what they have eliminated from the school because of their use of information technology. The next question is: What is happening in this school which did not, or could not have happened, in the past without the use of information technology? The least important question is: What was done in the past and is now being done in a different way because of the availability of information technology?"

To genuinely improve schools and education through the use of technology in the classroom, the integration of it needs to go beyond putting computers in every room and showing teachers and students how to use MS Word instead of a pen and paper to write the same report they would have done before. The actual process of teaching needs to change and incorporate the many options that technology offers us for how we can reach every student to improve their education.

Also in 1995, Simon Hooper and Llyod P. Rieber further defined what it means to use technology in education:

"Technology in education is often perceived in terms of how many computers or videocassette recorders are in a classroom and how they might be used to support traditional classroom activities, but this is a misleading and potentially dangerous interpretation. It not only places an inappropriate focus on hardware, but fails to consider other potentially useful 'idea' technologies resulting from the application of one or more knowledge bases, such as learning theory. Educational technology involves applying ideas from various sources to create the best learning environments possible for students. Educational technologists also ask questions such as how a classroom might change or adapt when a computer is integrated into the curriculum. This integration means that the curriculum and setting may also need to change to meet the opportunities that the technology may offer."

This is a challenge for most educators. Many want to increase their effective use of technology in the classroom, but they don't have the time or resources. These two observations were both made prior to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the resulting emphasis on requirements for reading, math, and assessment testing. With teachers now focusing on getting their schools up to the required 100% proficiency in reading, math and science by 2012, and "teaching to the test," they aren't able to spend the time needed to truly integrate technology into their content while making the technology valuable and meaningful in the education of their students. Without the proper integrations and curriculum designed to use technology in ways that best fit each student, it doesn't matter how many computers the school has - in the end they're just paperweights.

When we look for case studies of schools that are making significant gains in the field of educational technology, we often find that it is the private schools, charter schools, and other schools that are not concerned with maintaining NCLB funding that are achieving with technology. (Here's a great one I stumbled upon recently: an all-girls private high school using a technology known as DyKnow Vision to make note-taking an interactive process) Does this mean that our private schools are 'better' schools? No, they are simply less focused on passing the required tests, and can enjoy the freedom to explore new options for reaching students through technology. And their students benefit from it; they learn the problem-solving and critical thinking skills that come from using technology; they are more fully engaged in the classroom and challenged to take learning into their own hands, which has repeatedly been shown to improve overall education.

A 2005 article on Edutopia.org titled "Syncing up with the iKid: Connecting to the Twenty-First Century Student" addresses these issues in its discussion of technology at work:

"Christopher Moersch, an independent Internet-technology consultant who helps schools incorporate tech into the class, says most teachers he encounters are eager to engage their students with classroom technology, but federal testing requirements consistently get priority over technology initiatives. Consequently, teachers spend most of the day in drill-and-practice mode, preparing for standardized tests."

Are we blocking our own evolution, our own connection to this generation and the incredible possibilities that technology should be offering them, because we're stuck in a 20th century view of how to assess education? How much more could our students learn if they are challenged through the technologies they understand?

References:
Bosco, J. "The Future of Learning and Schooling in American Society" U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Education and Technology: Future Visions, OTA-BP-EHR-169 (Washington, DE: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1995).

Hooper, S., & Rieber, L. P. (1995). Teaching with technology. In A. C. Ornstein (Ed.), Teaching: Theory into practice, (pp. 154-170). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Online at: http://www.nowhereroad.com/twt/

Play, Invent, Explore - Summary of Final Project

2008-08-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

The last day of our Play, Invent, Explore (previous posts, Pico Crickets website) camp at ScienceWorks went really well. To assist in documenting the experience, we asked Dennis Dunleavy, Associate Professor of Communications at Southern Oregon University to come in and take some photos of the class (click here to see his blog, "The Big Picture").

(On a side note, thank you, SOU, for the loan of the laptops!)

Here are two of the kids in the class integrating their marble roller coasters with the Crickets software, and an example of the types of programs they were writing. In this one, the program requires a sound that is louder than "20" (on a scale of 0-100) to begin the program sequence. This represents the approximate volume of a ringing bell; therefore, when the marble rolls down the ramp and hits the bell, the bell rings, the requested sound plays and the light begins to flash randomly.

The campers just loved this project. It was a great integration of a physical, creative process with a technology & software component. In order for their project to be most successful, they had to solve the problems of how to make their structure strong, how to keep the ball rolling down their ramps, and finally, where and how to integrate the Crickets to create the 'chain reaction' that was the project's goal. For some of them, those first two steps were more than enough of a challenge and they limited their Crickets integration to just turning on a light or a sound before dropping the ball down the ramp. I still viewed this as a huge success. In five days, they learned to create their own program, and they used valuable skills of problem solving to find ways to roll a ball down a track, test it, fix it, improve it. Some of the other campers went well above and beyond what I had anticipated, created incredible programs, built highly impressive roller coasters, and learned much more than I expected.

On the whole, this was a great experience in what much of the education technology research discusses about how to make technology in the classroom an effective tool. Over and over we find evidence that "improvements in student learning occur when technology is paired with instructional strategies like project-based instruction, which actively involves students in intellectually complex work that demands higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills" (Les Foltos, "Technology and Academic Achievement", newhorizons.org, December 2002)

How this tool could be used in a classroom is a difficult question to answer, however. There aren't really any direct links to the reading, writing, math or science goals that most states describe in their content standards. But the value as a tool in developing skills in problem-solving, creative thinking, and information technology cannot be measured. This is where the problem for most educators comes in, I believe. That we see great tools, and can't relate them to the content we're required to teach. So we fall back into our patterns of only minimal technology involvement for most things. The challenge to us is: use these tools that generate interest and learning in students in a way that we never would have thought to teach our content before - and the achievements our students reach will be incredible.

The Weekends are for Photographs

2008-08-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

The weekends should be for taking photographs, but there's not always time. Fortunately, thanks to this class, I'm taking time every day to sit at the computer and do some blogging, some website design, some research, and some thinking about how it all ties together with teaching. My brain is full. So, I spend the weekends working on the same skills, but with an easier target: posting some favorite pics.

This is a water fountain in Lithia Park, Ashland, Oregon. Taken with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, 10/7/06, f/7.1, 1/25, ISO 200.

The same image was used for the new 'picture of the week' on my Frontlight website, but cropped down. For those who saw it there first, this is the full image.

Puppy

2008-08-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Meet Hunter, our yellow Lab.

ISO200, shutter speed 1/15, f/4, shot on my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
January 8, 2007

Back then he was a big ol' bundle of crazy energy. We adopted him from the animal shelter when he was a year and a half old. He's now about 3, and a big ol' sweetie. He still has lots of energy, but now he listens to commands, is calm when we have guests, and I LOVE that I can walk him without a leash. And he's got great big brown eyes and floppy ears that give great expressions for photos.

Review: Evernote

2008-08-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

I was talking with my I.T. guy (aka, my husband) about Furl as an option for clipping websites, articles, etc for future reference. He asked me if I had checked out Evernote.

So, I went. On the surface, it seemed to be a bit like Furl, offering website clipping and tagging, easy search features, etc. And it doesn't have Furl's community features "most tagged," "share with others," and so on.

But here's what it does have: integration. Multiple forms of media. Smart searches. You can take a picture with your phone, email it to yourself, it will read any text in the image and in future searches through your Evernote "notebook" those images will also appear. Imagine - take a picture of a complicated image drawn on a whiteboard, save it, tag it, and search for it later (either by tag or by searching for text in the image itself). SWEET!

With Furl, you clip the whole webpage. You can highlight a quote from it and include it in your information when you save the page. Evernote takes it a step farther - highlight the text in the page, use your "Clip to Evernote" tool, and it saves just that quote for you, saving the URL in the "Note Attributes" (highlighted below).

This is a great feature if you're doing a lot of research for a paper and you just need to save some references or quotes. I definitely appreciate it because I have a hard time absorbing large amounts of information from a screen. I still want to print out a hard copy and use a highlighter. But I can't search that. Here, I'm essentially doing the same thing and now my 'highlighted' notes can be tagged, saved and searched.

I'm going to keep both Furl and Evernote around to see how they work in the longterm. But for now, I have to say that Evernote is more impressive to me. The user interface is more attractive and easier to use. The media integrations and ability to use it from cell phone or email, not just browser, are exciting and useful features. Try it out!

Play, Invent, Explore - Day 4

2008-07-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

A new set up for the classroom made a huge difference in how I was able to teach the computer portion today. They had more room to work and fewer cables and distractions in their work space. We also integrated some other technology into the class, by watching a video of a Rube Goldberg machine. We were discussing the similarities between chain reactions like those to a computer program.

Their assignment was to begin a two day project where they would spend most of their time building a chain reaction or marble ramp roller coaster (the patterns came from paperrollercoasters.com) and then add in details using the Crickets. Examples: when the marble rolls down the ramp, it hits a bell, the bell rings and the sound sensor will be triggered and turn on a light or play a song.

For the most part, they got really into building the roller coasters. It was a good change from the computer work for those who were less interested in the programming, but still teaches the same concepts (cause and effect, linear progression).

Tomorrow, we'll see how well the integration of the Crickets goes.

To Blog or Not to Blog...

2008-07-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

That is the question posed by Professor Dunleavy for today's assignment.

I have always liked blogging. It's a great way to keep old friends updated on current life. But I find, more and more, that personal details have no place on the web. I try to remind myself anytime I post that someone else will see it in the future. So, all of my future blogging will be done with this in mind, and written from a professional or instructional perspective. I like the idea of it being something that benefits my students as much as it benefits me.

Reasons to be cautious:

- You don't know who's going to read it. Even if you protect it with passwords, they can be hacked, passwords can be shared, anyone can be reading over the shoulder of someone who's 'allowed', it can be copied and posted on public sites. You maintain no control over it, once it is posted, it is out of your hands.

- In not knowing who's reading it, you don't know who you'll offend with it. You risk offending the people you work with, the parents of your students, or your students themselves. Offending them can lead to losing respect, or worse.

Reasons to do it anyway (just be careful):

- Students in school today know more about computers than we can imagine. They're comfortable with it.

"[E]ven though the world of fifth grade may seem remote to educators in the college and university system, these students, when they enter postsecondary education, may have had more experience writing online for an audience than writing with a pen and paper for a teacher. Such students will bring with them a new set of skills and attitudes." - Stephen Downs, Educause.edu.

They understand, or need to learn, how to write for a global audience, because it is part of their lives.

- Tracking myself. I would like to believe I will keep a physical journal, notes about what works, doesn't work in a lesson plan. But if my lesson plans are electronic, it's easier for my notes to be too. And it should be shared with my students. Did they think it worked? What else did they need from me to learn the content more thoroughly?

- Encouraging learning outside the classroom. They'll be online at home anyway, why not let them use that time to check in with their classmates, their homework for tomorrow, hints for the homework tonight, links to further information?

- Promoting your school, your class, your students. You're doing good things, the world likes using the Internet to find good things - be one of those things!

Summer Camp - Play, Invent, Explore

2008-07-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

We're 3/5ths of the way through our Play, Invent, Explore camp, and I'm still just making it up as I go. All of my camps follow the same general outline every day: some non-specific activity to get everyone into the room and excited about camp, 15-20 minutes talking about our plans/activities/the science behind what we'll be doing, activities for about an hour, snack, activities. This camp required a lot of talking the first 2 days in order for the students to learn some of the features of the software, and more "instructional" time then I really like for a camp. I tried to keep it limited, and make sure they had time to explore on their own, but I kept feeling the pull to show them (all, as a group) new pieces to the Cricket puzzle.

Background: This camp is for 8-10 year olds and is run at ScienceWorks. They're working on laptops on loan from Southern Oregon University. And some of the parents walked in, saw the computers, and expressed concern that they weren't too sure if their students were computer-literate enough.

Well, relax, your kid knows how to use the computer. They may not understand how to trouble-shoot all of it, but they are more than capable of learning to use (and create) programs with limited assistance and guidance.

Lesson summary - Monday:
We talked about computer programs, focusing on how the computer doesn't think, it just follows the instructions we give it. The kids each selected a computer, and together we created our first, very simple, program. We turned on a light. Then we changed the color. We added in a few other pieces, one at a time. Each time, I need to draw in their attention and walk them through the step of putting the pieces together to run a new program. The more pieces they had, the harder it became. We added the ability to repeat, to use "random" so the computer would pick the color or brightness, we added the touch button and "wait until - touch" to run pieces of the program. The more I showed them, the more they started to grasp the pattern of how it would work. We made it through light, touch, light sensor, random. Then they had about 15 minutes before the end of camp (3 hours went FAST), and I gave them free reign. Most of them discovered that the speaker worked the same as the light, so it was pretty loud when the parents came in to pick up students.

Lesson summary - Tuesday:
My goal for Tuesday was to show them the similarities between the way the light program pieces worked and the way the sound program pieces worked. First though, we did a verbal review. I drew a short program on the board, exactly the way it would look on their screens, and asked them to tell me what the computer would do if I ran the program. They were stumped for a minute. This was what I was afraid of. They had figured out how to change numbers, move pieces around, use the speaker, etc, but they still didn't understand how to 'read' the program. But we figured it out together. Then they did the speaker. They were given the challenge to use their computer to write part of a song, and then work in groups to play a song together. Most of them figured it out, some stumbled through it, all of them had fun. This is a lesson that would work in an hour or so. After snack, I had them build a Lego 'motion module' - called the "up and down". It was really the only one all of them could build using the materials in their kits. Some of them had time to add bouncy toys on the top of them, some only had time to run it once or twice (and had to have their programs written for them while they finished building the module).

Lesson summary - Wednesday:
My goal today was to have them combine their skills from the first two days into one large project. They were asked to build an animal to go in our 'zoo', an idea I borrowed from the Playful Invention and Exploration website, which has lots of good ideas for the Crickets. I anticipated it taking the first half of camp, and that after snack we'd be able to learn how to collect data (brightness, loudness) and graph it, so that they would understand how the numbers related to reality. Some of them were still finishing their animals and setting them up in the zoo when their parents arrived at 4.

I'm now very nervous about my plan for tomorrow and Friday. It might still work... or I might need to have an 'easier option' for the less agile. We'll see.

On the Topic of: Multiple Intelligences

2008-07-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

The following is a response to Concept to Classroom: Multiple Intelligences, a workshop on understanding and using the theory of Multiple Intelligences to improve classroom teaching.

No debate here. I've seen it in action too many times, that need to explain things in more than one way before everyone in the room understands what you're trying to say. I understand my own issues with it very well, I am generally a visual learner and understand things best when I see them, which includes preferring the written word over verbalized communication. In college it was very important to me to copy anything the professors wrote on the board, especially drawings, add drawings to my own notes on topics that were being discussed to help me remember what I visualized at the time of the discussion and copy down as much of the lecture as I could, since it would be remembered and learned in the very act of writing it, where listening went "in one ear and out the other."

Implementing it in the classroom is much tougher. You have a limited amount of time, and in our current educational system, too much to teach to get the students to pass the test. The effort to address each topic from a variety of perspectives in order to reach students of all learning styles is difficult, at best. But certainly not impossible, and definitely an effort that pays off and is necessary if you want to reach everyone and give them the best possible chance to learn the material.

For science, there are many ways to implement techniques for teaching to multiple intelligences. Most topics in a science class lend themselves to either the traditional written or multiple choice tests or for experimentation and presentation as ways to evaluate learning. Interpersonal and Intrapersonal intelligences are stimulated through lab work (generally a group activity) or report writing (an individual activity). Reading and discussion aids the verbal and linguistic intelligences, while diagramming a cell or the process of respiration brings home the message for the visual intelligences. What I love about science is the way it brings together so many subjects and can be a gathering point for people of many intelligences.

Learning centers are a common way of addressing the needs of multiple intelligences in a classroom. They are most popular in elementary and middle school; however, as a future high school science teacher, I can still consider ways that they can enrich learning in my own classroom. In a science classroom these can be places where various long-term experiments are taking place, where related research from other sources are available, where related experiments can be done by individuals or groups and conclusions can be drawn. Lab work is a common idea here, where the jobs of data collection, note taking, mechanical operations for the experiment, observation and discussion can be shared in a group, with each student taking the role that fits their intelligences best, but then in sharing the work and the results they all can learn from the experience.

Presentations are another great tool, and one that can be used for assessment. Here, students are motivated to learn the material because they know the test of the material will be on their own terms. The more visual or musically inclined will include those types of elements in their presentation. For the verbal intelligences, you may see more of a lecture-type presentation. Whatever they use to present the material, there's probably been a greater amount of research, work and effort made then there would be in preparation for a traditional test.

The way information is presented by the instructor (me) should also follow those ideas. A basic and traditional lecture won't be received by all students the same way. Using elements of each of the intelligences, even in a limited way, will help to trigger the learning process for each student and draw them into the topic, even if not all material is presented in the way that is best for them. This is part of the multiple intelligences theory, that we all contain the ability to learn through each way, we just have tendencies toward faster development in certain areas. Using those ideas to draw them into the topic, then stimulating another aspect of their intelligence is a way to further their all around growth.

In teaching to multiple intelligences, we risk not having taught students the skills and information they need to pass the standardized tests that are now mandatory in our classrooms. This is one of the fears and, along with the time-consumption involved in finding multiple ways to reinforce material, it's sure to be raise alarms with classroom teachers and critics alike. However, the ways that people minds function are certainly different, and the expansion of learning options that come from increasing technology and access to Internet and vast stores of knowledge means that we can't continue to ignore the obvious fact that some students will learn faster in some ways then others. The educational system needs at least some revision from the bottom up in order to make it possible to fully explore the options of teaching to multiple intelligences, so that the assessments and requirements are also fair to all, giving all students the opportunities they will most benefit from (not, "all the same opportunities"!) before they enter our ever-evolving society.

Review: PlanetPDF

2008-07-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

PDFs add a new option for ways to share articles and books with a class. It's cheap, it's easy and, for students who can read and comprehend without needing the hard copy, it saves paper. They're a good tool with many applications.

PlanetPDF's free ebooks are excellent. Their site is a bit overloaded with ads for their products, but their resources are valuable and worth fighting through the visual clutter to find books that can be used with classes.

Developing my Philosophy of Teaching

2008-07-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

As I was browsing through the required readings on Teaching Philosophy Statements to accompany my future portfolio, my thought process went from, "eh, this isn't so hard" to "geez, I don't think I can really define my whole philosophy yet, I mean, I know what I like, but it's in 4th & 5th grade classrooms... not high school biology labs... how do they relate?"

So, some day, I'm sure I'll need to write a whole Philosophy of Teaching. This is neither the time nor the place for it. But it's a good place to take some notes. One of the interesting things to consider about the philosophy statement is that it is both cause and effect, as well as ever-evolving. While refining ideas and committing them to paper, you start to really consider what actions you use that demonstrate (or don't) the things that you claim to believe in. In writing it, you can create the effect of working toward being the teacher you want to be. And as you experience more as a teacher, you develop and change your philosophy, defining it and re-defining it as the situation requires. Though, hopefully, your true philosophy, what you really believe to be true about how a student learns your subject, and how to reach students and aid them as they develop skills they need in your subject or in life as a whole, doesn't change to meet a new situation, just changes in the way it is implemented.

Which means that there must be some underlying ties between what I believe works for me in a classroom full of 4th graders, or will work for me in the future when faced with a room of high school sophomores. What, though? Where are the similarities, what will be the same?

First, every student has the ability to learn the basic skills to study science. They may not be able to memorize every chemical reaction in the steps of the Krebs Cycle (part of cellular respiration) but they can understand the role of the different cycles in the life cycle of the plant. They may not have any interest in knowing names of species of trees or insects, but they may find a connection to the study of ecology and the cycles therein. And biology is about the systems and how they work, from the large to the small. Understanding that any topic is about putting together the pieces to see the big picture of the system is a basic skill, and some students learn it best from the top down (how the system works and what small pieces it needs) and others from bottom up (what the chemicals are, what the pieces are, how they fit together to create a system). So any topic must be presented to show both. I teach whenever possible by explaining the big picture and narrowing in to some of the pieces. And I believe in testing on both equally. Can you tell me why the system is important? Can you identify the pieces?

I love working with students one-on-one. I tend to begin a majority of my classes with a brief introduction-lecture and then do an activity/assignment. In my current teaching, that's the hands-on activity that's more-or-less planned for them. In the future, it might be some reading, an experiment, a research project, or other assignment. During the activity, I work the room, looking for common questions (which help me know when there's something I should have/could have explained more fully, which things the majority may not have the prior experience to fully understand without further guidance, etc) and then know either what to do differently next time while I answer the questions in a personalized way, or know when to interrupt the class and bring them back to a discussion or further lecture/review from another perspective. What will help the majority, before I go back to the individualized guidance that will bring the perspective each student needs in order to learn the subject.

Which means that it's very important to me to know the content of my subject matter inside and out. Can I explain it from multiple perspectives, can I create activities that stimulate learners of any style (the visual processors, the verbal communicators, the artists, the engineers) to guide them into the topic? And, no matter how they've gotten to their question, will I be able to understand it to also guide them to the answer?

Guiding them (not leading them) to the answer is imperative to me. I'd rather they use a good, clear thought process, and get the wrong answer then have them use a muddy thought process or a simple guess and be right only because I gave them the answer too soon. Can they take their wrong answer and test it again? This is of course a best-practices tactic only on experiments and activities when testing the wrong answer doesn't become dangerous, but will lead them to see that they've obviously made a wrong turn somewhere. Then we can work together to backtrack to where their answer came derailed and try again.

I guess I had more to write then I thought. I hope my philosophy becomes better defined over time, but those seem like good ideas to start with.

Review: VLIB

2008-07-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry, VLIB, but technology has evolved beyond you. Though the World Wide Web Virtual Library was probably once at the forefront for cataloging the data and websites of the Internet, it doesn't seem to have kept up with the 21st century. Too many of the links are broken and outdated, their search engine is behind the technology of Google or any of the others (when it isn't broken), and the information available can be more easily reached through one of those same search engines, or Wikipedia. Of the five or six topics I tried to research through this site, 4 of the links were broken or led to sites that were significantly lacking in information verse a quick search on either Google or Wikipedia. I can't say I'm likely to use this tool in the future.

More on iGoogle...

2008-07-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

My love for iGoogle is now complete. I've discovered how perfectly they've created it to be used on my iPhone. When I'm at my computer, I can search for the gadgets I want that will display the best news, headlines and information I want to learn about, with links to the best RSS feeds and websites. And then I can see them from anywhere, any time. And they were smart about how they manage it for iPhone. The same way that gadgets can be collapsed to be out of the way when browsing online, I can collapse them to save space and scrolling time on my phone.

I love integrating technology. That's what makes any tool more useful to me: does it work no matter where I am? Can I use it for more than one task, or in more than one way? As I move deeper and deeper into cyberspace, I need to be sure I'm not alone out here - can my phone, my laptop, my email, my instant messages, my camera, and, oh, all those other people I want to talk to, come too?

Because I can

2008-07-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

This is from the San Francisco Zoo, sometime in 2006. It's a good example of my typical work - usually flowers in a nearly abstract way. Some of it comes from a Georgia O'Keefe influence, her flower paintings are always very powerful to me. Some of my style just comes from (as my art professor deduced in college) looking though a microscope one too many times - I like to really focus in on a detail of the image, enlarge it, and let everything else get lost out of focus. I believe it was a compliment.

Review: Furl.net

2008-07-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

Bookmarking tools are useful for any researcher, or research-based profession. The Internet is not only a wealth of information, but can be an overwhelming source of information. Trying to sort through all of the results of a search, or even just the countless daily headlines available as more and more local newspapers 'go live' with their own websites can be a daunting task. As a science teacher, it is important for me to stay up-to-date on new discoveries, research and technology. Often, I read a good article, and want to remember to apply it a class later, but can't remember where I found it. Thanks to social bookmarking sites like Furl, this becomes significantly easier.

The Pros: In my previous post, I talked about how it's great that iGoogle (and RSS feeds in general) will search out the newest headlines on any topic of my choice. Here is the tool that I can then use to save them, so that even as they're replaced in a feed by newer headlines, I can still access them, tagged and annotated to help sort for relevancy. Furl, with it's quick and easy toolbar add-on, makes it easy to save something now and come back to it when I have time. And you never lose an article - because Furl archives a complete copy of the page's html, it can't be lost due to outdated or broken links. Also, easy tagging with topics/keywords for future searching is a big bonus. In terms of using technology for teaching, this isn't a bad way to find articles to assign for additional reading.

The Cons: It may seem petty, but I find the site visually unappealing. I feel like I'm reading a bunch of Google text ads and not a list of my favorite articles. This is an important reminder: you can have the most relevant, useful, high-quality content and usability out there, but if your website isn't appealing, the negative associations destroy what you've set out to do.

That's not to say I won't use it. I'm sure I can adjust to the layout in time. Certainly as a tool for tracking articles for future reading and reference, it has a valuable place in teaching.

References: Furl.net, Wikipedia:Furl

Review: iGoogle

2008-07-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

As a dedicated Google-geek already, I find the addition of an iGoogle page to my extensive digital footprint easy. In fact, as I was setting it up I was wondering why I didn't already have one.

It's pretty, things move around easily, it has gadgets for tracking or displaying anything one can think of, and a thousand things you never considered wanting to keep on your homepage for daily viewing. Who wouldn't want one of these?

Then I remembered - I haven't found these types of things particularly useful in the past. I had a My Yahoo page for a decade, and in the past year have given up checking it. Despite the edition of RSS feeds to my favorite blogs, Daily Pictures, weather and more, it had become the place I went to to find out if I had mail. And I stopped using my Yahoo mail account due to the overwhelming spam that came to the inbox after 10+ years of distributing that email address across cyberspace.

To be fair to iGoogle, their variety of gadgets alone makes this page a dozen times more interesting already then the quickly forgotten My Yahoo, yet it still seems as though in the effort to consolidate, to expedite the browsing process, we go looking for more to distract us. Do I really need the "Art of the Day" gadget? No, but it makes my page look pretty and I feel like I'm learning something by being exposed to it. Yet, as I go to my iGoogle page to get the day's headlines, check my email and the weather, I look right past it - it's already become background noise.

As someone who has a life with so many facets that it can often seem chaotic, I have mixed feelings about these pages. I love them for their opportunity, their hope that in one page I can find simplicity, all of my daily needs presented to me in one quick location. Show me which of the blogs I track have new posts, show me my calendar, my to-do list, show me the day's headlines, what's the teaching tip of the day? Great. All in one place, easy to find, a good use of technology to simplify life and give each day a starting point. But does it really help keep it all organized? Couldn't I just set up Bookmarks in Firefox for my favorite sites, my mail, and the MySOU page that's supposed to help me keep all things school-related together? How would this help me find new information for teaching any better than just doing a Google search when I have ideas that need more research?

So I explored the idea of the tabs. Not a new idea by any means. Look at that first screenshot again, I have a dozen tabs open already. Again, why not just use my browser to help me keep things organized? Okay, iGoogle, what have you got that's going to impress me? I started to break out the items into tabs: items that are relevant to the student-me on tab 2; news and headlines from around the world on tab 3 for when I have time to explore the world beyond work or school. I even created a "Science and Teaching" tab, then used Google's famous "I'm feeling lucky" button to let it select gadgets for me.

That's when I started to get hooked. This might be different enough that I can get excited about it. I started out thinking "it's all too much, I'll forget to check it, get bored with it." Now, I'm excited. Look! Headlines from a dozen different good science and teaching sites. Updated every day with something new! I don't need to go browse those sites, I can read their headlines and go from there. Clean, neat. Organized by topic and relevancy. This I can get excited about. New ideas, topics, discussions. Things that help me learn more and that I can apply in the classroom to help my students - all easy to find thanks to iGoogle. And that's what makes this a step above bookmarks and browser tabs - as the sites update, so do the gadgets on these pages. I don't have to go looking for what's new at Discover Channel or ScienceNOW, it updates here for me to see, and in just a quick click I can read more. That's where this becomes a time-saver and innovative tool in broadening my daily browsing into a daily dose of research. And that's what teaching and learning is - a daily exposure to new things and using that information to learn more.

Welcome to the next (little) thing

2008-07-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the newest blog for Stephanie Farrell. There have been others, Facebook, LiveJournal, my own Frontlight.com, and even brief jaunts through Friendster and MySpace. But this one is something different - it's a class assignment. So it is likely to remain well updated and current, at least for the next few weeks.

First, a bit about me. I have several passions; science, photography, and education among them. I am currently a grad student in the MAT-PT program at Southern Oregon University. For those not familiar with the abbreviation, that's the Master of Arts in Teaching, 2 year/part-time program. Teaching is not just academic for me, however. I put it into practice nearly every day as the Science Inquiry Outreach Coordinator for ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum in Ashland, Oregon.

This blog will serve as both a home for posting class assignments and as a learning tool while developing my own sense of using technology while teaching. This topic is extremely relevant to me in many ways. In the forefront, I'm teaching a summer camp next week called "Play, Invent, Explore" which will use the PicoCrickets technology developed by MIT and LEGO. This is a really interesting program, but using it in a way that develops some further understanding in the kids of what can be done with technology will be the challenging part. There's too much of a desire to just have fun with it. Though even by just having fun they should hopefully learn something through the creative process.

"Teaching through technology" is the theme of our current class. There will be much to learn, and some of it will just be re-learning how to approach some of the technology I already use to see how it can be applied to teaching. There will be reviews of the various technologies we'll be testing as we go, stay tuned!