Edubloggers: Playing In The Big Leagues Now

So, I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I found it a bit scary to reach out and talk with other teachers about our practice. I decided to take this opportunity to hopefully get some advice on my practice from the more seasoned professionals out there. The first blog I commented on was The Nerdy Book Club. I immediately was intrigued by the title of this blog for two reasons:

A. I'm Nerdy! and..
B. A book club is something that I'd like to make central to my practice

This blog was a great find. Recently this blog posted on the top 10 ways to get middle school students involved in reading. Here's my response:

"Thank you for the ideas to help students get involved in reading! I'm a new teacher, and one of my goals as a teacher is to hopefully get students to become passionate about reading for fun. Currently I'm working with 11th grade students, and I'm wondering if anyone has had success with using these strategies in a high school classroom? Also, which strategy was the most effective? As a newer teacher I want to incorporate independent reading into my classroom, but I'm not 100% sure how I want to encourage independent reading. I can see a lot of these tactics working well with high school students, but I wanted to see what has worked best with older students.
Thank you again for the tips! Your insight is appreciated!" 

While writing my response I thought my blog comment would be a great opportunity to talk with seasoned teachers and how they can incorporate reading into their classroom. As I stated before, I'm a new teacher, so I thought that asking for advice would be a good place to enter the conversation because I don't have the same amount of classroom experience as the blogger. Currently my post is awaiting approval from the moderator, but I'm really hoping this post will give me the chance to get some great ideas to help me incorporate independent reading into my classroom!

Feel free to check out the blog! It's a great read!
Nerdy Book Club

Padlet Has Won Me Over!

Now that we've completed our Tech Tools in Use presentations I have to say that Padlet was my favorite tool that I plan on using in my classroom. Prior to the presentation I had never heard of Padlet before. What I learned is that it is a fantastic space to collect material for students and it is also visually appealing. I immediately thought that this tool would be great for my students and I really enjoyed the examples that the presenters provided for us. I really liked the idea of using Padlet for creating timelines because it makes all the information visual for the students and also interactive because students can click on each event to access another Padlet that is more specific to that point on the timeline. I can see potential with using this style of Padlet to give an overview of styles of literature over time.

I'd like to try and create a Padlet in "real time" with students. I can also see potential with Padlet when my students read novels that include many different characters. I know I have trouble with reading novels that include many different characters, so I think Padlet may have value in making a visual organizer for the students. The ability to create a Padlet within a Padlet (a sort of Padlet Inception) where we can classify characters and then create individual descriptions for those characters to hopefully prevent confusion. I think there could be value in doing this with students as we read a novel. Then, because Padlet is so easy to use and share, I can easily post this Padlet in a space that is accessible for the students as they are reading at home. I hope using this tool can help us easily answer questions like "Who is this character?" and "Why are they important?" as we continue with reading texts. I also find merit in the fact that the students will be building the character maps along with me because the students have helped construct it. I'm thinking of creating a lesson around this idea, and I'm hoping Padlet will be successfully incorporated into my lesson!

Does anybody else have any plans for incorporating Padlet into lessons? I'm curious to know what you're planning to do!

David Theune and New Ideas

For lack of better words I have to say that David Theune's presentation was AWESOME. I thought the ideas he had for helping students learn how to write were fantastic. I thought the concept of teaching students to write for certain audiences, instead of writing for a rubric, was a great way to hopefully help students learn the process of writing. I'm really hoping that I can implement the idea he had about writing for your community. I thought this idea was fantastic because it gives the students a sense of agency in who they are writing for and why. This project seems like way more fun than the typical 5-paragraph argumentative essay. It doesn't help that this type of essay is typically extremely formulaic and not the most exciting piece of writing you'll ever create. This project also takes the boring, tired prompt that is usually along the lines of, "Do you think students should wear uniforms" and changes it. Having the students argue for a charity of their choice makes every decision made regarding the paper the student's own. I say this because often the argumentative essay comes down to which side I can support better, even if I don't personally agree with the side I'm arguing for. With this prompt for the essay, I've made the decision on which charity to argue for, and I've chosen the evidence that I want to use to support my claim of why you should vote for my charity.

Finally, the ending to this project is what really has me psyched to try it in my own class. I think that having the students vote on the best essay, and then having the winners give the money to the charity of their choice is the ultimate embodiment of empowerment. This gives the students the power to see the effect that their writing had on other people, which is an opportunity we typically don't get. This project does a fantastic job of putting the agency into the student's hands, and this is something I want to strive to do with my teaching practice.

I thought that most of what Theune had to say was great, but I struggle with the idea of not using rubrics. I agree with him in the fact that students will typically only write for what will give them an "A". I myself am guilty of doing this. I'm all for scrapping the rubric, but then I find myself wondering, "If I don't have a rubric, then how do I set expectations for myself and my students?" Currently I don't have an answer to this issue, and I don't expect to have an answer any time soon, but I will keep my eyes open for better options.

Tech In My Placement

To be honest, when I signed up for this whole teaching adventure using technology wasn't even a thought that crossed my mind. Very simply, I thought technology would just be throwing images up on a projector, showing a movie or two, and that's about it. While working on my Tech in My Placement survey I was enlightened to what opportunities technology can provide and I can hopefully use some of these tools to help my students. This survey really got me thinking about what pieces of technology will be available and I'm beginning to think about how I will essentially put the pieces together to incorporate technology into my lessons.

One lesson learned from this survey helped me understand what a lack of technology can do to a classroom and also helped me start to think of contingency plans in the event that technology doesn't want to cooperate. From my time at my placement we've had a few occasions where the internet wasn't working or the computers were operating so slow that the students couldn't get any work done. This is where I think it would be extremely handy to know what technology is available at my school in the event that my first plan doesn't work. Hopefully I can have a second computer lab or a lesson I can easily exchange with my lesson to make sure that we are still productive without the technology that I had originally planned on using.

Another limitation that I began to think about was the actual hardware available for students to use. I'm not just speaking of computers, but also items like camcorders or audio recorders. I have some ideas for projects that my students could work on that would require recording devices. This Tech survey has caused me to take a hard look at what may be possible. I may have to rely on my student's technology to get the project done, which I don't have a problem with, but it adds another element of how I should plan for a project. Here I think it will be a great idea to have the students fill out a form at the beginning of the school year to make sure that they have access to certain types of technology, such as using a cell phone to record video. Essentially I see the process as figuring out what my lesson is, what technology I have available to me within my school and with my students, and then putting the pieces together. Let's hope it works!

Connections Across Disciplines

For this post I reviewed Lisa, Branden, and Kelsey's lesson regarding a Skype based classroom. My first impression was that this lesson is almost like a modern day pen pal without the letters. I see this activity as being very beneficial for second language learners. As someone who studied a second language, I feel that getting the students exposed to native speakers at an early stage helps expand their skills beyond the classroom. To me it seems that while learning a language a student tends to hit a point where they know a great deal of grammar and vocabulary, but until the students expand those skills past the classroom and into the real world, they can't truly express their skills in the language. I thought this lesson was a fantastic opportunity to bring the world to the students without traveling to another country.

Their approach to this lesson was also very thoughtful. At first I thought that it was weird that the students couldn't see who they were talking with, but after they explained why the visual part of Skype was removed, I thought it was a fantastic idea to not allow the students to see each other. Overall I felt that the group was trying to create the most comfortable environment possible for their students to allow them to succeed. We see the lesson trying to encourage a comfortable environment with the chat function of Skype only being used as a last resort for students who are struggling. From personal experience I know how stressful it can be to try and develop your speaking skills in a foreign language, especially if you're not confident, so I thought it was awesome that this group addressed that issue while planning.   

Another aspect that I enjoyed about their approach was the timing of the lesson. I felt that 25 minutes was the perfect amount of time for the students to speak with their "pen pal." This amount of time allows for the students to talk and listen, but since the time with their pen pal is very limited, it will hopefully encourage the students to stay on task while they work. The lesson also gave adequate amount of time for prep (what kind of questions should we be asking, what will be the "norms" for this activity) plus enough time for debrief through formal and informal assessments. After reading this lesson plan I wish that I had this opportunity while studying Spanish!

Organizing My Life... electronically!

I'll openly admit that I have trouble organizing my life. For that reason I like to have lots of structure around me to make sure that I'm organized. Evernote was possibly the coolest program I've found yet to help me with organization. From my professional to my personal life, this program will be awesome for organization. Since I can share notebooks with people, this will be awesome for sharing recipes with friends or even for creating my weekly grocery list. From a teaching standpoint, this will be great for collecting and storing notes, storing material for lesson plans, and being able to store lesson plans within a cloud. Let me mention that this is the best part of this program! Everything is stored in a cloud, so all I have to do is log on, plus there's even an app I can load onto my phone. To me Evernote is so versatile that it'll make my life that much easier when it comes to organization.

For our presentations I was assigned to Google Drive, which is also a great program. I can see this program being extremely useful for group work or assignments during my classroom lessons. Again, I love that everything I do is saved to a cloud so I can access it at any time from anywhere. I'd like to incorporate this into my classroom with group projects so I can easily monitor what the groups are doing and it also creates a shared space for the groups to work. I was really impressed with Google Drive, but from an organization standpoint, Evernote seems way more useful for everyday life.

Blendspace was also fantastic, and I'm hoping to use this tool for enhancing my lessons with more material. I may choose to run lessons from this website, but so far I'm planning to use this site for supplemental material. Anything extra that I think will be relevant, but not necessary for a lesson will be uploaded here for my students to explore should they be interested in further information regarding a lesson. All three of these tools will be used in my classroom, and I'm completely sold on Evernote.

Just Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Seriously... 20(ish) years later and I still don't know...

Borrowed from thegeektastics.com

The game I chose to take a further look at was Carmen Sandiego series. There are many variations of the game that include "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego," and "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego." I remember spending hours with these games as a kid, specifically "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego ?" and "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?" While this game has the obvious history connections in regards to tech and teaching, as an English teacher, it has some other fantastic qualities. Granted my memory is a little rusty, but I remember learning tons of vocabulary from these games. I was able to learn adjectives to describe the suspects that aren't typically learned in school. For example I learned what flaxen-haired was while playing the games. Secondly there were some awesome connections to culture and works of literature that this game promoted. In the 1997 version of "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?" I was introduced to Shakespeare and helping him find his stolen manuscripts in the Globe Theatre. Looking back at this experience through my English teacher lens I see an awesome opportunity to start building factual knowledge without the student actually knowing that they're learning something. Later in my career I was able to draw on this knowledge to have a mental picture of what I thought the Globe Theatre should look like along with some lines of "Romeo and Juliette" already memorized.

After watching the Gee video about video games and learning plus reading his article, I think we owe it to our students to expose them to games like this. In my personal experience I didn't even realize that I was learning. I was building base knowledge about things like Shakespeare before I even knew how to read it! It was really interesting to work backwards and apply Gee's learning principles back to this game. The game really focuses on well-ordered problems because you are a detective with clues to try and catch the bad guys. This game does a great job leading the student to higher order thinking where they are making a hypothesis based on the clues they are provided. This game also does a great job with risk-taking. The student is allowed to make mistakes, and it's ok if the bad guy gets away. The student is allowed to pick the game back up from the beginning of the mission and there's plenty of room for trial and error until the student is able to capture Carmen and her cronies. It's fun looking back at this game through a teaching lens now that I see this game as more of a tool than a toy.


Want to play the games? They're available online! Click Here!

Tech and Teaching... Some Concerns About the Future

So after class on Wednesday I had a few thoughts about tech and my profession. After taking the GRE on a computer and after having an opportunity to experiment with the Smarter Balance lessons, I left the class worried about how I'm going to help my students succeed on tests that are computer based. Now, I'm not that old, but the majority of standardized tests that I've taken were on paper. The strategies that I know how to use on a standardized test are for a paper based test. What really stood out to me on the ELA potion of the Smarter Balance test was the fact that my normal strategies for test taking went out the window.

In preparation for standardized testing I had teachers give specific tactics on how to make a test more manageable. Simple things like crossing out answers that I knew were bogus was always a favorite tactic that my teachers helped me with. I've also been taught/trained myself to look for words I don't know and circle them, make notes in the margins, or even underline phrases that I think are important. With these computer based tests, we can no longer do that. I was appalled that the difficult words in the paragraph were defined for the reader! Part of learning comprehension involves using clues to figure out what words mean. I was really disappointed that the words were served up on a silver platter for the student. Also, because I will be an English teacher, this really concerns me. Many of the Reading Apprenticeship tactics that I will try to teach my students may not work in this situation, so I ask myself "How can I modify my lessons for this new test?"

Another issue I'm concerned about is the comprehension level of my students while they read. During my EDUC 695 class we read the Mangen et al. study titled Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension. Essentially this study found that reading comprehension is dramatically lower when the text is read from a screen. Again, as an English teacher, these computerized tests really worry me. Comprehension is a major skill of reading, so I want to make sure that this is a skill I can help my students practice with the least amount of interference as possible. So here I am now, a very confused intern. I feel that this will be one of the biggest challenges in my career, learning to compensate for the new technology that may not be the best tool for my students to use while teaching my students the essential skills that they need to become an effective learner.

All Aboard the Dewey Train!

Not this guy. Malcom in the Middle anyone? (borrowed from USAtoday.com)

This Guy (borrowed from http://dewey.pragmatism.org/)

So I'm hoping I can focus this blog around the "Habits of Mind" that I plan to apply to my theory of teaching, but I have to add a little humor. Hence the pictures above. While I'm still just a novice at this teaching thing, I've already found some nice theories that I want as my foundation for teaching and John Dewey's "My Pedagogic Creed" just became another block in that foundation. While reading I kept thinking, "This Dewey guy is definitely onto something!"

The line that drew me in hook, line and sinker was, "Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." After reading this sentence, I immediately pointed at my screen and yelled, "YES! THIS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" (Well not really, that might disturb my neighbors, but I hope you get the idea.) To me, this phrase emphasized the importance of skills, not factual knowledge. We're teaching our students skills that work for the community as a whole, not the individual. I thought this tied in well to teaching students skills and dispositions, something close to what Ritchhart spoke about in his Intellectual Character piece. Since Dewey does place a heavy emphasis on learning skills rather than facts, he immediately won me over. I'm hoping my classmates may want to start a fan club with me. We could get jackets.

While reading the piece I couldn't believe it's taken almost 100 years for this theory to take hold, and I feel that it still isn't widely practiced in schools yet. This is something that I will want to look into further as I continue my teaching adventure.