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.
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.
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.
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.
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")
