Twitter…in the classroom?

You read that correctly. I’m using Twitter in my classroom. A service that I frequently condemned as banal and self-serving is suddenly something I use on a daily basis. Before you judge me, though, please finish reading.

In case you live under a rock and don’t know what Twitter is, check out CommonCraft’s “Twitter in Plain English.” As always, CommonCraft gives the best quick introduction to a tech tool. Those that are well-informed are likely familiar with Twitter thanks to the likes of Ashton Kutcher, who won a “Race to a Million” contest with CNN. 

Aside from the inherently self-serving belief that someone actually cares what I’m doing, there was always one problem I had with Twitter – how am I supposed to use this in my classroom? I couldn’t see past the inane updates people put on there (you know the ones: “had cheerios for breakfast. off to school.”).

Fortunately, I took another chance and listened to a colleague teach at our district’s winter tech mini-conference. He shared something really great that he was doing – using Twitter to update parents on what was happening in class. I was impressed with the simplicity of the idea, and also a little disappointed I hadn’t thought of it myself. In any case, I decided to take his idea and add some of my own ideas. What follows are the many ways I have found Twitter to be useful in communicating with students and parents.

• Class Updates. I update parents and students on what we’re doing in class. I’ll post periodic updates both during class and after school telling parents and students “here’s what we’re doing today.” This is a great way to provide people with a little window into our classroom.
• iPhone Apps. I’ve been using the Echofon app for normal Twitter updates, but I also have been using the Twitpic app to take photos of students working in class, which I then upload to the class Twitter. In addition to that, I found the Vidly app, which lets me upload videos and share them on Twitter. So far, I’ve shared pictures of students working, photos of their work, and videos of skits they did in class. This has been a great way to let parents see what we do in class, and makes that little window into our classroom much wider.
• Class Website Widget. Our class website has an “Announcements” page that I had to update at least once a week. After signing up for Twitter, I created a widget that now fills that same Announcements page and displays our “tweets” (that word still makes me cringe). This has been a nice time-saver for me. I just add a quick update during down time during class and don’t have to spend 15 minutes updating it during the week.
• Reminders (by SMS!). I’ve been using Twitter to send reminders about due dates and upcoming events, and there is a really nice bonus to this. Since I teach 8th and 9th, most students have cell phones. Those that have unlimited texting are able to follow our Twitter page and, more importantly, have updates send to their phones via text message. The small handful of students using this feature have found it really helpful to get reminders texted to them about the assignment that is due this week.

That’s where I’m at right now with Twitter. I’d love to hear what people think.

Do your kids use Formspring.me?

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, largely because I’m trying to keep up with more responsibilities than I can count at school and home. Nevertheless, I feel a compelling urge to post on a fairly new tool I came across called Formspring.me, which has the potential to be more dangerous to students than most other websites I’ve heard of. Just to give you an idea of it’s prevalence, I took a quick poll of my 8th graders. About 1/3 have a Formspring page. About 3/4 know about Formspring.me.

Usually I like to post tools that could be useful for teachers to use – either to make the administrative side of our jobs easier or to help students learn something better. In this case, however, I want to make those few readers of this blog aware of this site, which is quickly replacing MySpace and facebook as the site du jour for the teenagers I work with.

Formspring.me is a very simple site. Users like my 8th and 9th graders create accounts, which give them a formspring page. If you or I go visit that user’s page, we see a box to type in with a title that reads “Ask me anything.” You fill out this box and it anonymously asks the user any question you can come up with. The user will then post his/her answer, along with the question, for all to see. Simple concept, right?

Here’s the dilemma: anyone who works with young people can quickly point out that anonymity nearly always breeds irresponsibility. This case is no different. While doing a little research, I was (un)fortunate enough to come across a couple of former students’ pages on Formspring.me and can honestly say that I will never look at those students the same way again. After only a couple of minutes browsing around, here are a couple of things I saw that set of alarm bells in my “teacher brain”:

• Conversations on each page quickly degenerated into some general types of questions/comments:
  • “I hate you” comments were remarkably prevalent. I saw people calling each other names that I wouldn’t use around my closest friends. Moreover, the frequency of these comments was staggering. In a lot of ways, this site more or less encourages cyber-bullying, and does it in a public space.
  • “You’re awesome” comments are much less disturbing, but encourage a pretty self-centered view on life. For example, I saw a few comments such as, “Why are people judging you? You’re so nice!” Not surprisingly, the students in question respond with statements about how they are good people that don’t judge other people but that other people actually judge them.
  • Questions/comments about sex. Every question that can be asked about a person’s sexual history, preference, etc. is being discussed in public for the world to see. Like I said – I’ll never look at some kids the same way again.
• This site allows a space for kids to do discuss these things in an uncontrolled environment without talking about issues with parents or teachers or people who may have a little more experience and wisdom.
• Think MySpace encouraged risky behavior? Looking at two pages on Formspring, I saw full names, cities, and cell phone numbers posted for all the world to see. At our school, we try to teach kids what information to put out there and to be responsible citizens of the internet. Apparently our lessons aren’t sticking.

Now, I’m not saying we should sue the website and get it shut down or anything like that. I’m not even necessarily saying the site should be blocked by school web filters. What I am saying, though, is that this is just another site that parents and teachers need to be aware of and, hopefully, talk to their students about using responsibly. I know I will.

Have some experience using Formspring.me? Do your children or students use it? I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts, comments, and questions on this one.

Working Towards Sustainable Schools

Today is Blog Action Day 2009 – a day in which thousands of blogs will be posting on one topic – and I wanted to share some thoughts on education, the environment, and most importantly, sustainability. This year’s topic, as you can see, is Climate Change. Say what you will about climate change, global warming, whatever-you-call-it – whether you’re a die-hard activist or a nay-sayer, there are some aspects of the discussion that I think we can all agree on.

First and foremost, I think we can all agree that we must become better stewards of our planet. We need to find ways to preserve natural resources and work towards becoming more (to use a now-cliched buzzword) “green.” Education is no different than the oil industry – we have a lot of room for improvement here. Our school recently began focusing more on recycling and composting, both as a more environmentally friendly and a more cost-effective pursuit. However, our school also continues to function under a 20th century education model. Not sure what I mean? Here:

This is a photo of all the copies one teacher needed for one unit in our standardized curriculum. That’s five classes. We have 9 English teachers who teach about 40 sections, so multiply what you see in the photo by about 40, and that’s how much we would theoretically need for one unit. You can probably understand why I’m trying to go paperless.

I recall reading somewhere that the average teacher in the U.S. uses enough paper to kill about 11 trees each year. If this statistic is true, that means that my building alone kills at least 500 trees every year. Now, how many schools in our country? Honestly, I don’t even want to go there.

But paper is just one of many considerations that schools need to begin thinking about. Think about how many classrooms have lights on when nobody is in them. Think about how much food is sent to the landfills from each cafeteria. Think about how much electricity is wasted by idle computers or other appliances. There is a lot of waste in our schools.

Even going “paperless” as I am hoping to do is only so beneficial. True, I will be destroying fewer trees because I’m using less paper, but the cost of going paperless is that my students will be spending more time on computers, which uses more electricity. And unlike proponents of “plug-in hybrid” cars will tell you, this is not a “green” power source. Electricity still has to be generated primarily by fossil fuels like coal, which is also one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet.

 But what to do about it? Here are a couple of suggestions for how educators can quickly and easily begin working towards more sustainable schools:

• When you’re alone in your classroom, turn off all but the light you need. For example, I have 3 light switches in one classroom, and one of them controls the light above my desk. That’s really the only one I need, so I can turn off the other two and conserve energy. Turning the lights off also cools the room down so you don’t need to use the AC as much.
• I know it’s harder to read, but have students write on both sides of their paper. You will quickly cut in half the amount of paper being consumed by your students.
• Speaking of paper, save all your extras. If you make too many copies, if you printed out something and don’t need it any more, or even if you find unclaimed copies lying around in the copy room, save them. You can then print on the blank side of all these pieces of paper. I went an entire year without using a new piece of printer paper on my classroom printer. My students even printed out their essays on the backs of other documents that I didn’t need any more.
• Utilize technology. While still not perfectly clean, this is still more “green” than paper. Have students use Word or Google Docs to write essays. Use online surveys like SurveyGizmo. Stop sending home paper newsletters and start emailing them. Instead of using overheads, use slideshow tools like PowerPoint or Animoto. Not only are these better for the environment, but they’re likely to engage more students, as well.

Sustainability means a lot more than just conserving energy. The thinking behind sustainability is that our consumption of natural resources is balanced out by our production of natural resources. For example, if I’m killing 11 trees a year, I should theoretically be planting 11 trees a year, as well. Most of our schools, however, are only just beginning the journey towards sustainability. In reality, we must begin with baby steps – efforts to begin minimizing our carbon footprint by cutting our paper usage, reducing our electricity output, and taking further steps to conserve energy.

Working towards sustainable schools is certainly a long journey, and we have a long way to go to get there. Efforts towards conservation and decreasing our collective carbon footprint are certainly admirable first steps. In order to prevent climate change and be good stewards of our planet, however, we must continue to work towards not only decreasing our energy consumption, but towards contributing natural resources, as well.

Blog Action Day 2009

Last year, I participated for the first time in Blog Action Day – a day when bloggers write about the same topic from whatever perspective they see fit. I shared this post on poverty and what we should be doing about it in education.

This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is climate change, and I will again be participating. So on October 15, check back here as I share some thoughts on the effects our schools have on the environment, both positive and negative.

Classroom Tech, Part VII: “Everything’s Amazing; Nobody’s Happy.”

In this, the final post of the summer-long Classroom Tech series, I conclude with a little reflection on the state of educational technology (for previous posts, feel free to click here, here, here, here, here, or here).

Our amazing librarian shared this video during a training a while back and I thought I’d share it with those few who read this blog. While I wouldn’t recommend this comedian’s other YouTube videos, this one is pretty funny (and of course it would be on Late Night with Conan O’Brien). I think it fits with what I’ve been covering this summer in the Classroom Tech series.

As I conclude this series, I am very excited about integrating some of these ideas into my classroom, whether keeping students organized with iGoogle or teaching students how to make more effective presentations. But I am now in my third year of teaching. I have two summers’ worth of excitement under my belt, and those have been greatly tempered with two years’ worth of harsh reality. The reality of our schools is that, while we may get excited about some of the new things we’re planning or some of the technology we’re using, our students likely will not be.

I am coming to realize, however, that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Do I want my students engaged in what we do in class? Of course. But I also know that not all students will be engaged in the sense that they are excited and eager to come to class every day. It is still school, after all, and no matter what teachers might do, some students will apply their paradigm that school=boring. This is true of writing, watching movies, or using cell phones in the classroom – because it’s happening at school, students’ paradigms are often negative.

But what I must continue to remind myself is that technology is not about engagement. I am not integrating technology because it will be more fun for my students. My job isn’t to make all of my students happy, no matter how amazing the technology is that we’re using. While I certainly hope this is true, it is not the goal. Instead, I am integrating technology for two much more important reasons:

1. The technology I am choosing to use will somehow enhance and improve the lessons I am already teaching. For example, Google Docs is not useful in and of itself. It is useful because it will make the writing assessments I’m creating more relevant and more efficient.
2. Technology is, and will be, an integral part of my students’ lives. If I choose not to use technology in my classroom, then students may not learn how to use it or use it responsibly. In addition, if they don’t learn how to use today’s technology effectively, then the technology of the future will be even more confusing. For example, if I had never learned how to use MS Word 98, and I tried to immediately jump into Word 2007, it would be much more difficult to learn.

As I continue on this teaching journey, these are the two things I feel I really need to remember about using technology. As much as I want my students to love coming to my class, and as much as I want them to have fun, it is infinitely more important that they are coming to class and learning something that is valuable, both to their future educational pursuits and to their lives in general, even if they’re not happy with the amazing things I’m trying to do with them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this summer’s Classroom Tech series. I’d love some feedback on what you liked or what you would like to see improved. Best of luck to all of you in this upcoming school year, and stay tuned for more discussions here on Edumacation.

Classroom Tech, Part VI: Cell Phones

iX-Ray, by slowburn (on flickr)

I’m nearing the end of a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the comments section, or on your own blog (just let me know if you do!).

As I wind down this summer’s Classroom Tech series, I want to focus a little bit of time on a tool that most students are not even allowed to use in their classes – cell phones.

Before sharing some ideas and resources, though, I have to preface this. I don’t like cell phones. I never have. I’ve always felt that they allow people to get a hold of me whenever they want, that I am on a sort of electronic leash that can be yanked back anytime I’m doing something I want to be doing. I’ve felt this way since I was in high school, when cell phones were becoming more popular (we had one cell phone in our family car for emergencies only). Since high school, I’ve had three cell phones that I have called my own. The first was a very basic flip phone that came free with our family plan. The second was also a basic flip phone, but with free calling over wi-fi. Both were simple and easy to use, but weren’t really special. I’ll share about my third (and current) phone shortly.

Last school year, I was asked to try experimenting with cell phones in the classroom by our district’s instructional technology coach, Kimberly. She was really excited about some of the possibilities and had no idea about my cell-phobia. I took her up on it, as it was a chance to try something new and get pushed out of my comfort zone. I used a couple of the tools described below – PollEverywhere and Wiffiti - to experiment with SMS polling. I asked groups to submit discussion questions via text message, which then appeared on the projector screen. I asked students to vote on who they blamed for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, and the results appeared in a nice bar graph. And I asked students to vote on whether they thought cell phones could be really useful in school, and their votes were also tallied and graphed.

In hindsight, I am very impressed with that one possible application for cell phones, but several sources have continued to push my thinking on using cell phones. The gist of what I read and hear is simple: 90% of my students have very functional, very powerful computing devices in their pockets/backpacks. Some have cell phones with internet access, others have iPod Touches, while still others have smart phones. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of this unprecedented access?

This summer, I chose to embrace this new thinking as my wife and I changed cell phone carriers. We weren’t happy with the customer service at T-Mobile, and my wife’s sister (who works at AT&T) told us about the 15% educator discount, so we decided to take advantage. I wasn’t content, however, with another simple flip phone. Instead, I decided to put a high-powered computer in my own pocket. In spite of my personal cell-phobia and even stronger Apple-phobia, I turned to the Dark Side and invested in an iPhone 3Gs.

While the iPhone isn’t without its problems, I have quickly realized the unprecedented power I now carry around with me. At any given moment, I have access to the internet, email, instant messaging, social networks, telephone, up-to-the-minute news, and a whole host of other unbelievable tools ranging from the practical (maps with GPS location) to the completely useless (my custom purple light saber, complete with Star Wars music).

The realization that I have this kind of access at any given second is yet another reason why I have to ask myself a simple question: why not? Why not use this amazing device in school? Why not take advantage of what they already have? Why not quit whining about not having a netbook cart and, instead, get students to use their cell phones for *gasp* learning? While I’m looking forward to increased computer access for more frequent computer-based writing activities, we do a lot of things on computers that kids can do on their phones.

So that’s where I’m at heading into the new school year – with a fancy new phone and some new ideas on how to use cell phones in the classroom. What follows are a couple of those ideas and some resources to check out if you’re interested in learning more about using cell phones to help students learn.

• Obviously, I intend to continue using cell phones as feedback devices. I found it quite helpful to get student feedback over the course of a class period, and polling like this is a great way to formatively assess students as they are learning. Websites like PollEverywhere and Wiffiti are excellent resources – they provide a digital bulletin board that turns text message responses into visible results (usually either written text or tallied votes). Of the two, I prefer PollEverywhere, as it offers more options for formatting your poll. Feel free to check out a couple of polls I ran last school year to see what it looks like.
• For students who are so inclined, most cell phones have some sort of audio-recording feature that could be used to record lessons or notes. While it may be something that students can choose to do themselves, it might also make sense for a teacher to use his iPhone to record lessons and post them to the class website.
• As nearly all cell phones now include integrated cameras, students could use their phones to take photos pertaining to a class assignment and either bring them to class or post them (via MMS) to Facebook, flickr, or their blogs (Blogger and WordPress each have this functionality). This would work great for vocabulary – students are each assigned a vocabulary word and have to take at least 3 photos that help others understand the meaning of the word (I saw an example of this idea using the word “dilapidated” that was very cool).
• Students could utilize the wi-fi/web functionality of their phones or iPod Touches, or even utilize educational apps, to look up words, use a thesaurus, or find an answer on Wikipedia. These are all things students do in their classes already – now they are simply using a different tool to accomplish the same goal.
• My iPhone has an Animoto app. I can create Animoto videos anytime, anywhere. Example: visited Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast and created this Animoto video on my iPhone from the pictures I took…on my iPhone. Think students might enjoy doing this with their free Animoto account and their iPod Touches?
• Usage is a big issue when considering cell phones in the classroom – costs for texting, minutes, and data are relative unknowns. Why not make it an assignment for students to understand how much their use costs? Have them calculate their dollars per minute of talk time, or average their text messaging habits? This will help them develop some basic math skills, but will also help make them aware of the cost of cell phones and plans.

Before moving on to some resources, I want to mention that there are management issues with cell phones. I am not naive enough to deny this. In my own brief experience, I had a student take a picture of me and post it to his MySpace (I heard this via another student). Another student texted a rude comment about a friend instead of a discussion question. But there are management issues with anything. Students throw balled-up paper and paper airplanes and give each other paper cuts and write mean things on paper, but we don’t ban paper from the classroom because it’s a valuable tool. Instead, we try to teach students how to use paper responsibly – cell phones are no different. Like all technology, students must learn how to be good citizens with their cell phones. They need to understand the amazing possibilities, but must also realize some of the consequences of their actions (once again, all the news around “sexting” comes to mind).

It is this management/citizenship issue that I am currently learning more about. There are a number of resources I’ve used, both for the instructional and management pieces, that are out there to help others who are interested in using cell phones in the classroom. Here are a couple of great resources if you’re interested in learning more.

• Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, by Liz Kolb. This is really one of the only books out there that deals with the topic of cell phones in the classroom. While I must admit that I’ve only glanced over this book, most of the ideas I’ve gotten have been attributed to Ms. Kolb’s work, which is all over the web. She has a blog, From Toys to Tools, that has a lot of interesting ideas, including using Twitter. Also, check out her presentation (iPhone ready, of course) on cell phones in the classroom. Finally, she has a “support” wiki – cellphonesinlearning – that has ideas, resources, and even a link to her Delicious bookmarks.
• A short article from Teaching Today that includes a couple of management tips.
• Wesley Fryer over at Moving at the Speed of Creativity shares notes from a seminar he attended, taught by Ryan Collins. He links to Mr. Collins’ seminar page, which has several helpful links, including the slides and audio from his presentation.
• The Clever Sheep posted last year about this topic. Several ideas and links that are worth checking out, particularly the links under “Documenting Learning.”
• There’s a nice presentation on Slideshare – Cellphones in the Classroom – that is worth flipping through for some ideas.

Just a few resources, but hopefully enough to get you started.

Only one more post remains in this summer’s Classroom Tech series, and I’d love to hear your feedback. Next time: Everything’s Amazing…Nobody’s Happy.

Classroom Tech, Part V: PowerPoint

I’m in the middle of a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the comments section, or on your own blog (just let me know if you do!).

This next tech tool is nothing new to any of us, and at this point, it barely counts as “technology.” The use of PowerPoint in schools has a long and sordid history, dating back at least to when I was in high school. So it’s not necessarily the tool that I’m focusing on here, but the way in which the tool is used. Over the last year, I’ve been frequently exposed to blog posts, seminars, books, and other resources on making learning visual. PowerPoint, originally, was supposed to help with this. Unfortunately, it has become a tool for presenters/teachers rather than for learners. Rather than spend a lot of time sharing ideas, I want to sum up the concepts that I’ve learned and share some valuable resources for using PowerPoint to make learning more visual.

Concepts:

• Much of the learning I’ve done centers around using lots of images and minimizing text when using presentation software. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, check out the following two examples. First, the “old” way of doing PowerPoint (or, “what not to do):
  
  And now, the “new” way of doing PowerPoint (pay attention to the visual:text ratios):
  
• The core concept for successfully using PowerPoint is to connect what you are saying to some simple, concrete imagery. Allow the images and visuals to add to what you are saying; let your audience make connections of their own between your words and the visuals in your PowerPoint.
• Photos are infinitely more meaningful to audiences than clip art. Take the images below, for example. Both might connect to my main idea of “baseball,” but I think we can all agree that the photo is far more visually appealing and meaningful than the clip art.
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources

• Many of the concepts I’ve learned about are nicely captured in Garr Reynolds’ book, Presentation Zen. This is the key piece of literature for those looking to become better presenters. It focuses a little more on the theoretical aspects of presenting, but is an all-around good read.
• Some other books and resources for the theory behind better presentations: A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink, which focuses on brain research and visual thinking, and Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte, which focuses a little more on the practical side of presentation creation.
• In addition to those books, here are a few online resources to help get you started in creating “zen” presentations:
  • Flickr Creative Commons
  • Morguefile
  • Stock Xchange
  • Everystockphoto
  • Slideshare
  • For more resources on creative commons, feel free to visit my CC Delicious page
  • And for some resources with free images/audio/video, visit my “stock” page on Delicious

And that’s all for this edition of Classroom Tech. Next time, in Part VI, we’ll discuss one of the most contentious pieces of classroom technology: cell phones.

Classroom Tech, Part IV: Shelfari

A snippet of my "Books I've Read" shelf, complete with ratings

I’m in the middle of  a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the comments section, or on your own blog (just let me know if you do!).

Unlike the other tools mentioned in the previous three posts, Shelfari is not something I am just now starting to use with students. I’ve used Shelfari with my students for a year and a half now, with a mixed bag of success, and I’ve posted before on what it is and on some of my experiences with Shelfari. All told, it’s been a great tool, and my experiences using it with classes have yielded a couple of strategies to make it more effective.

• I primarily use Shelfari in my English classes as a way for students to document their outside reading. To do this, I ask that they write a book review (which includes both summary and evaluation) on Shelfari. From a management standpoint, the most effective way for me to grade this is to create a group for each class period and work through each class separately. This is really nice because I can stay up to date on what kids are reading, they can recommend books to me or their peers, and their reviews can be read by anyone on the website.
• Shelfari would also be a great resource for students who are looking for books to read, particularly if you’ve been using class groups. They could use other students’ shelves and reviews to find books that they might be interested in. This could also include an added writing component in which students have to explain why they selected the book that they did, encouraging them to use some metacognition and think about the criteria that they used to select that book.
• There are numerous other groups on Shelfari that students could be encouraged to join, many focused on a particular literary interest such as a genre, title, or author. Students could interact with other Shelfari users in these groups and hear from like-minded people. There is an obvious safety concern here, as we don’t know who students are interacting with, so that is something that would have to be discussed thoroughly before encouraging this activity.
• One oft-neglected feature of Shelfari is the “on loan” check box for individual books. Say you keep an inventory of all your books on Shelfari. If a student borrows or checks out a book from you, you can find that book on your shelf and go to the details page. Under the “Editions” tab, there is a check box that says “loaned to a friend.” If you check that box, you can fill in the information – who you loaned it to and when – and save that until the book is returned. While I do wish it was a little easier to access this feature, it’s pretty handy nonetheless.
• I often use the Wish List shelf to keep a list of books that I’m interested in reading. This might be a really great way for students to build up some interest in a variety of books and let you see the kinds of books they want to read. This opens the door for recommendations, reviews, and other great interaction. You might even make it an assignment to add 2 books from different genres that the student is going to read. One additional benefit to doing this: if students have a list of books they want to read on their Wish List, they should never be telling you they don’t have a book to read.

These are just a few of, I’m sure, innumerable ideas for using Shelfari in the classroom. Unlike some of the previous tech tools, I can say with complete confidence that most students – particularly young adults – enjoy using Shelfari. They laugh and make fun of it early on, but once they start getting into the different possibilities (particularly interacting with their friends), they really do start to engage a little bit more.

Next up in the Classroom Tech series (Part V) will be an oldie, but a goodie: PowerPoint.

Thoughts on “Race to the Top”

I’ve been reading lately about the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” fund and have read a couple of blog posts about it. I thought I would post my response to a post on Seeking Shared Learning, as it sums up my thoughts on this new funding/mandate from the Secretary of Education. Feel free to comment.

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“It will certainly be interesting to hear your perspective as more details of these guidelines become clearer. I have yet to read all 80+ pages of the guidelines, so I can’t say I know everything about what is being proposed.

Even so, my wonder at all of this – dating back to ESEA – is the constitutionality of this sort of move. In my eyes, the whole thing seems shady at best.

As the government has no constitutional standing to make educational mandates (that being left to the states in the 10th Amendment), it seems that the federal government has found its loophole, along with a way to wholly influence the education system through federal funding. While initially it was a series of grants, once schools were accustomed to the money (and it had been factored into state budgets), conditions were attached. States and schools had two choices – accept the conditions and continue receiving the funding they had come to depend on, or refuse the conditions and turn down a massive amount of money that would benefit your school/district/state. The funding issue became a lose/lose situation for many districts.

As we’re seeing, this process only continues to intensify, through NCLB and now RTTT. Again states are left with a choice – accept the conditions/mandates attached to the billions of dollars in funding, or turn down billions of dollars in federal funding because they believe in the kind of education they are giving students. It seems to me that this is a hazy issue, and if this had different players and wasn’t about funding, I think we would consider it a despicable move (give someone a product for free, then once they’re hooked on it, slowly raise the price on the product), but that’s just opinion.

The more practical question is what effect this will have on our district’s curriculum efforts. If we believe that thinking skills and habits of mind and our outcomes and indicators are what education should really be about, does the RTTT “fund” really help us reach that goal? Does putting more emphasis on test scores – particularly as a way of rewarding/punishing teachers and principals – really help us teach students these skills?

My gut answer is no. I expect teachers and administrators would act like most creatures do. We would either pursue the reward of higher compensation by focusing students almost exclusively on test results, or we would act in self-preservation and try to keep our jobs by focusing entirely on test scores. In either case, it is the things Tahoma espouses – thinking skills, habits of mind, etc. – that would be sacrificed in the exchange.

Of course, I’m just a small fry in a vast ocean of educational politics, and could be completely dramatizing the situation. Even so, I wonder if, from an administrative perspective, you see this (RTTT) in the same way, or if you are envisioning greater benefits from this set of guidelines than I currently foresee.”

Classroom Tech, Part III: Animoto

I am in the midst of a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the comments section, or on your own blog (just let me know if you do!).

Another tech tool I’m planning on integrating this year is Animoto, the free slide/movie site. I’ve previously discussed Animoto and some of the highlights here, but I’m finally starting to figure out how I can use it productively with students without maxing out our school’s bandwidth.

Without getting into too many details, Animoto is a way to convert slideshows (read: Powerpoints) into visually exciting movies. It allows users to upload and rearrange images, add text, and add stock or custom music. Once these are all set, it will process them into a short (or, if you prefer, long) video complete with well-timed and animated transitions between images and text. Here’s an example of Animoto at work:

As you can see, Animoto creates something that the average educator could never hope to duplicate. It gives us a product that can be used to better engage the visual learners in our classrooms. I’ve struggled to think of ways we could use Animoto in our school, particularly because a classroom full of students using Animoto would create a bit of an overload on our servers. In spite of this, I’ve found a couple of ways to use the tool that are worth sharing. As always, please feel free to share your own ideas with me and other visitors to this site.

1. Book trailers are a great way to pique students’ interest before reading a book. If you’re reading a book as a class, you can create a short Animoto book trailer to advertise/preview the upcoming unit (like I tried to do above with Romeo & Juliet). If students are doing Reader’s Workshop or Literature Circles, they could do a group trailer after they’ve read the book and share this trailer with the class.
2. If students are doing presentations, they could use an Animoto video in lieu of a Powerpoint as their visual aid. The omission of text encourages good “presentation zen” and makes them focus on how the visual enhances the aural.
3. Animoto would be a great way to create a sort of visual dictionary for the class. As a homework assignment (so students aren’t tearing up the school’s bandwidth), students could create a short 15-second video on a particular vocabulary word. It would have the word, a definition, and several images that help visually convey what the word means. If these were each submitted to the teacher, they could then be shared on YouTube or some other video sharing site (Fliggo, perhaps?).

Obviously these are only a couple of ideas, so please feel free to share your own.

Stay tuned for the next post in this Classroom Tech series, which will be on Shelfari.