So I guess, here goes…

This week, Mike asked us to create a “dispatch” in the style of Culture Wars: A Struggle to Define America. He asked us to read a little bit of it to get the feel of how the book held a conversation within itself, then try to mimic the style regarding our own issue. The issue should be regarding moral lines within our culture.

I think that I’m going to tackle a problem that was posed last night during my night class — teacher accountability. However, I would like to narrow this topic to parent-teacher interaction. I suppose the moral line I’m going to investigate is at what point do parents need to step in and at what point to students need to become independent and handle issues for themselves?

I learned in my internship that being accountable is very important. I documented everything and sent out several updates to the parents. I was blessed to only have a few run-ins with parents who thought that “the intern” was using “their child” as a guinea pig, but overall I had a pretty easy go of it. However, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories of helicopter parents phoning about absolutely everything, coming into the classroom every day, or emailing to find out what happens each day.

I’m not a parent, and I’m not going to pretend that I know what it is like to be responsible for a child. I can imagine that you want your child’s life to be as easy as humanly possible. You would want your child to have an easy time of school, learn a lot, and not feel any stress. You want your child to have direction in life, a passion about a sport/activity, and a bright future. I can imagine that when something or someone seems to get in the way of that, parents will feel a responsibility to resolve the issue.

I have a unique view on the situation because I was that kid — I had no problems in school, I have an activity that I am deeply passionate about, and school, overall, provided next to no stress for me. I’ve also been on the other side of the teacher’s desk in my internship. I’ve seen students struggle, succeed, and, sadly, fail. So the moral line, in my opinion, is when does the responsibility of the student flip to the responsibility of the parent?

I guess that view depends on how independent the student is and how old they are. I come from a high school background, so I expect students to be independent for the most part. Students should be able to handle grade disputes, questions over material covered in class, failed exams, and similar things. However, I do believe that the informed parent has a responsibility to step in if they feel that the teaching methodology is skewed or if they feel that their child is being treated unfairly. Please note that I chose to use the term the “informed parent.” This is to say that prior to making a phone call or coming for a visit, explore the information provided to you–speak with your child, check out the class webpage, look at progress reports, look at your child’s notebook/textbook, and check out anything else that you can get your hands on. This then opens up the conversation with two informed individuals so that it can be productive and reach a solution.

How much parent-teacher interaction do you see as healthy, and at what point does a parent cross over from involved to “helicopter-esque”? I’m starting to toy with this idea and I don’t have an answer. Hearing from parents is healthy and it keeps teachers accountable. It lets me know that the parents really do care, which is great. Usually it indicates that the student has a great a great support system at home. Once the support system and I are on the same page, that child is set up for success, and that is all that really matters.

Let me clarify a few things with this:

1. Using technology doesn’t mean that is pops up once in a while. Using technology to me means that it is a critical part of education within the classroom. Technology isn’t something you try out a couple of classes per semester. It is something that is inbred within varied teaching strategies. It also means that teaching goes beyond only using one specific type of technology. Just as our teaching strategies need to be varied and cover a broad spectrum, so does our technology. After all, we are using technology as a tool to enhance our teaching.
2. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve met many teachers who are doing a fantastic job of using technology and who are working at becoming more comfortable with technology in the classroom, but these mentors are going above and beyond. They are revolutionary in education. The scariest part of using technology in the classroom is knowing that your students know WAY more about it than I do. Why not use this to my advantage? Instead of being afraid of what could go wrong, I need to get over it and figure out what could go right!

I’m reading a really good book right now called Focus on the 90%, written by motivational speaker Darci Lang. When I say motivational speaker, I really do mean it too. I had the opportunity to listen to her talk during a Teacher Professional Day while I was interning. She was fantastic. The basis for her talks, her books, and her life is focusing on the ninety percent of life that is good. She explains that people tend to focus on the negative ten percent of their lives. She preaches that we should instead focus on the positive ninety percent. I think that using technology in the classroom could follow a similar trend. Everyone is so careful and concerned about the negative ten percent (I do believe it is more like one percent) that they forget about the ninety percent that will enrich education.

During my internship, I always made sure to plan for the worst. I tried to not let the worst scare me off from what I could offer at my best. There is a lot of pressure from the community to be very accountable – this a good pressure as it keeps us on our A-games – but it also creates a tension that we live in fear of making mistakes. Just as I want my students to feel comfortable and safe enough in my classroom to not fear making mistakes, I should feel that same comfort to try doing something new. I was blessed with a cooperating teacher who enabled me to try anything I liked. Some of it was great, some of it wasn’t, but I learned a lot more than if I feared making mistakes. Shouldn’t that same privilege be afforded to educators? After all, we want the best from our teachers, so why not let them continuously learn too?

Now back to the start of this post – meeting our mentors. I am so excited to partnered with Aviva Dunsiger and Daryl Bambic for my virtual internship. They are leading the way in using technology in their classrooms, and I can’t wait to be a small part of it and learn from them.

So today, I have the privilege of reflecting on a presentation by Karl Fisch, who spoke with us on impact. He started off telling us about his “little presentation” that ended up having well over 40,000,000 views. Holy. I hope that one day I can make even a fraction of that impact.

I found it interesting that Karl posed the question of what literacy looks like now. It has certainly changed. He brought up the topic of multiple and malleable literacies. Literacy to me means being able to function within the social world in which we live. Several years ago, the social world consisted of being able to write a letter to a friend and read the response or hold a conversation at the town hall. Hmm.. that sounds a lot like reading and writing.

I’m going to venture to argue that in the last fifteen years, typing has emerged as a form of literacy. It is yet another way to communicate. Even though the typewriter has been around for quite a while now, the need for typing in today’s world is like knowing your multiplication tables–yes you can scrape by with kind of sort of having knowing how to multiply, but it really is an essential skill because it leads to so many other things. Same goes for typing. It is a given in today’s world.

Typing leads to interpretation of all the forms of communication in this very social age. Facebook, twitter, cell phones, even the now “primitive” email, and anything else that keeps you connected requires some sort of computer knowledge that has all stemmed from typing and understanding type-written language. Basic computer use is essential to surviving in today’s world. Heck, even my 88-year-old grandmother types up her Christmas letter.

Part of this computer literacy leads to yet another interaction. This one is not with friends, but with the world. Youtube enables anyone with a video camera, which most people have on on their phones, and internet connection to instantly upload anything they like. Karl told us that Youtube content in past month is more than if the three major American networks could broadcast for 63 years all day every day. Pretty amazing to think about now. The power that every holds in their hands at any given moment is tremendous. The ability to create, share, and critique content has never been so simple or accessible.

The constant debate is whether or not Youtube is acceptable in schools. That debate is filled with landmines. On one hand, why would we limit our students? Ninety percent of our students will use it for good, but the other ten percent will misuse the privilege. Do we benefit the ninety and deal with the ten, or do we focus on the ten and limit the ninety? It might be a little harder to do as a classroom teacher, but I think the choice is clear. Why limit our students?

Part of letting our students have access to tools such as Youtube requires that we, as teachers, can guide our students to be savvy with these tools. Guaranteed my students will be up on the latest technology and I might be a bit behind, but it is still my responsibility to guide my students how to ethically and effectively filter, understand, and consume anything they come across. My future students will undoubtedly be bombarded by new technology. Knowing how to use that technology to their advantage for education, entertainment, efficiency, and any other purpose needs to be innate in today’s curriculum.

Part of our job as teachers is to educate today’s students. I agree with Karl that we are not teaching students from 1985. I wasn’t even born then! I have a strong belief that educating our students on how to carefully negotiate all the media they have in their lives is important. One of the greatest things we can do for our students, in my opinion, is educate them about facebook and the power it has. I don’t mean how we can use facebook in school, which I still would like to do, but how to use facebook in a productive mannor to create content, upkeep connections with friends, and how to keep that environment positive for everyone. Cyber bullying is a huge problem. I think this is largely because students feel that teachers, parents, and the like are too far behind the times to even know how to handle cyber bullying. While non-cyber bullying is still a big problem in schools, cyber bullying is almost untouched with regards to finding a solution. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if there even is one. But, the first step would be to take the taboo off of facebook, chat rooms, IM programs, and such. Educate our students on how to use them positively. Use them in school. That might be a good first step to finding a solution.

I loved what Karl said: “If you have an internet connection in your classroom, then you are no longer the smartest person in the room, and you need to get over that.” Those words have rung in my ears for the past two days. He is in essence saying that I have this mega-tool, a fantastic opportunity to enhance the learning of my students. I need to use it. With data plans on Smart Phones, many students don’t even need an internet connection. Society right now has an amazing power that have never existed before: we know everything. There is always an answer. If you don’t know something, google it. If you don’t understand something, google it. If you don’t remember something, google it. I think this also leads into the questions of whether or not we need to test students in a setting where it is just them, their exam, and their number 2 pencil. Why not let them have access to the internet? Instead of scratching the surface of something, we can get into amazing depths by letting our students use the tools they have in their daily lives and, quite frankly, will have in the workplace.

Speaking of which, publishing in the workplace looks very different now. No longer are reports printed, photocopied, and distributed en mass. That is what email is for. Wait! What if you need to reach a wider audience? Put it online. Start a blog, have a company website, or work with a wiki. Karl mentioned that his school is doing something called a “wikified research paper.” This is the same concept as a research paper, but it is online. Now, there is no need for reference list — you can link directly in the paper. Content is published online, is continually editable, multimedia can be added if required, and so much more.  The possibilities are endless, and the same curriculum standards are met. In fact, this probably exceeds the curriculum standards. Clicking “print” is not a curriculum standard, so why not save a few trees and enhance learning at the same time. What a good deal. This is not to mention that the feedback they will get is immense. The whole world (or a subset of that depending on the accessibility set by the teacher) has the opportunity to read, comment, critique, and compliment the student is far better than one teacher reading and providing feedback.

Opening the possibilites for conversation can enhance learning so much. The best example of this, in my mind, was on Monday night during Karl’s presentation. Our class used the chat box almost like footnotes for us to add comments, bounce related ideas off of one another, and such all while Karl was speaking. It seemed like we were annotating an article almost, except in real-time and with 16 authors. I cannot believe how powerful that was. Karl was an outstanding presenter, but he was 10x better because we had another opportunity to interpret and understand concepts he was discussing. We were forced (in a good way) to critically consume his presentation, rather than sitting back and watching it like a movie.

This got me thinking about my own teaching. What would happen if I had a class where talking was perfectly acceptable? I bet my students would get so much more meaning out of my class if they had the power to have quick conversations about what I was talking about? Maybe this would be in the form of a chatbox like we had, or maybe in small groups whispering. I don’t know. I don’t know if it would work, but I am certainly willing to give it a shot. I hope that they can get as much meaning from me as I did from Karl.

Well, I think that’s all for now. I’ve typed my fingers off, so I’m off to get a warm cup of tea.

Well, to start off, having a social network has proven to be the most useful resourse I found at University. It is better than a library, a computer, or the gym membership. I have depended on my network to go over math assignments, share notes, and work through tech tasks. Being in person is my favourite way to socially learn, but I have found the web to be a great medium as well. Amber and I contacted each other, Dean, and Rushton about our final project and learned how things need to be done, how to do them that way, and why it is better to do them that way.  We discussed meeting times, plans, layouts, what the project looked like, how to make it better, and many other things via email.

Blogging has also been great for me. I’ve learned to read other people’s blogs and comment on them to build connections, see ideas, and converse on specific topics. I’ve also really enjoyed blogging and getting comments. On my blog about blogging, I had several replies from bloggers internationally with ideas on how to improve my blogging lifestyle and learned great tips and tricks to incorperate blogging into my life and make it a lot easier to do.

I’ve also learned through asking for help on my blogs, like when things aren’t working properly, like on my screen shot. I asked if anyone had any suggestions, and don’t you know, people replied with answers! It was great.

I also have learned that there are several sites, including youtube and nextvista, that are excellent resources to use that people have put up for me to watch and comment on. Having this in my life means that I can share my work with others and build great digital connections too.

I also have to say that I really really liked learning how to do the pechu kacha. I have sat through billions of presentations that were WAY TOO LONG and boring. With a pechu kacha, they are short, sweet, and to the point. No more messing around, so to speak. I liked also learning that I don’t have to write a novel on every slide and that a picture is way better than soooo much writing. This was very cool for me. I liked getting to go first as well because I was able to set the stage, and get over my nerves very quickly. Getting to present in front of my peers, who are also people I really respect and admire, was pretty cool. I learned so much from them this year that I was proud to show them what they helped me learn.

Finally, I think the biggest social learning thing for me was learning how to use elluminate. I loved having the chat box and throwing links in every now and then, having a white board, web tours, desktop sharing, and audio/video. Getting to have so many guest speakers in my classroom was amazing, mean while sipping tea in my PJs. I don’t know anyother class like that. I loved learning from so many other people world wide. It was great to get several perspectives on topics, other than one proffessor for 40 hours straight and only his or her ideas. This built up a way better basis for me to form opinions, make connections, and create new ideas.

If I had to mark myself, which apparently Dean thinks I do (that was a joke; you can laugh now!), I would give myself 13 or 14 out of 15. I think that I really embraced social learning. I always hated group projects and never really got into blogging. I think that my perspective has changed dramatically and I know I will continue to social learn, as well as promote it in all my classes.

I think I was helpful because I encouraged students to be creative and think out side of the box. Having someone there soley to say good work and keep it up is important because it provides the students with someone besides their teacher and parents who read the blog and take time to actually reflect on what they were doing and saying. I feel like I was contributing to the class, which was a really good feeling to have.

Thank you so much, Mr. Harbeck. I really appreciated you letting me into your classrooms. Thank you to your students as well for being to so kind as to let me partake in your after hours classwork. I really appreciate it!

The other class that I got to mentor was Sophie Rosso’s class. They had a wiki. I found that it was cool to see how the class site was more kept up by Mrs. Rosso than the students, but it had lots of useful information for students. Had I been in her class, I would have found it great, but as a third party, I found it confusing and hard to use. I really didn’t know where I was supposed to comment, what to say, or how to say it. I didn’t want to start editting the wiki because I don’t want to mess up other people’s work. It scared me off a little bit because I found it really intimidating. I left a few posts, but nothing to in depth. I really found it difficult to connect to the students because everytime I went on, not a whole lot had changed, at least from what I could tell.  The stuff that was on the wiki, however, was really good and I really liked reading and learning about what the class was learning.

It was great to see the different styles of the websites for each classroom. It helped me think about how I want to run my class blog in the future. I want it to be something that is easy to use for parents, students, other teachers, as well as anyone else who wants to look at it.

Thank you, Mrs. Rosso for letting me into your wiki. I really appreciate your generousity.

Outside of physically being in a technologically “advanced” classroom, this was the best experience I could have asked for. Seeing the development was very important and getting to participate was more that great. I really loved this project.

As for my self-assessed grade, I would say I think 7 or 8/10. I think that I did a pretty good job with Mr. Harbeck’s classroom, but I feel like I let down Mrs. Rosso. Thanks Dean for organizing such a great experience!

I would really like to have at least one assignment using technology every week. I know that that may prove very hard in math, but if I get lucky enough to teach English or Psych, that is something I would really like to do. As wonderful as questions from the textbook or play are (can you hear the sarcasm?), I would like to expand on this by doing technology literature cirlces, such as going into small groups. Each member would be responsible for a certain “job” each week, such as character charter (using a program such as Smart Draw), plot diagramer, geographer/historian (google earth), and reflecter (thinks of questions that make you think and perhaps creates a podcast for the class to listen to with his/her ideas). I think that doing something like that would be really exciting and way better than reading and answering questions from a fuzzy overhead.

Environment-wise, I would like to have a very bright classroom, as well as a green classroom. I would like to have a semester long project for my students to present how to make the classroom more efficient and greener. For a math class, I would have them present their ideas in terms of cost break down, savings, etc.

I would like my classroom to have lots of lights and a lot of natural light. I know I really can’t control the windows, but I just love having the blinds open and the window open too, if possible. I hate working in dark rooms, so why would I put my students through that. I also hated my classrooms that didn’t have any windows or always had them closed, so if I can help it, I will make sure that natural light is always shining. I also would like to have some plants to help with oxygen and just a generally fresher scent in the classroom. I really am not too fond of stale air or the smell of “just in from minus forty” scent that a herd of small children all have after recess, so plants may help with that.

Instruction-wise, I am practically willing to pay just to get a SMART board in my classroom. I think that would be the most useful teaching tool I could ever have. Using this would make my life and the lives of my students much easier and would provide a lot more interest in the material being covered. Think about it–when your teacher turns on a computer and then puts something on a SMART Board, doesn’t everyone in the classroom immediately pay more attention? Well, I do at least.

I think that because students are growing up in a world (as am I) where technology is very prevalent, they need to learn what they need to know in order to survive the real world. School’s job is prepare students for the real world, and in the real world, there aren’t a whole lot of text books or worksheets filled with factoring problems. There are presentations, group work, public speaking, summary reports, project proposals, and a heck of a lot of technology to do these with. Why wouldn’t I teach my students how to creatively and effectively use these magnificent tools? Why would I give them a 10 page textbook assignment for their “Christmas present” instead of a podcast or proposal about how to reduce power on Christmas Day using actual numbers and rates of change? Why wouldn’t I do that?

I do understand that the basics need to happen, which does mean that I may have to crack open a text book or assign a research paper, and definitely I need to have old fashioned tests, but not everything in my class has to be that way. Variety is what I am aiming for. I really don’t like doing weekly assignments by one month in because they are always the same and with in a month they become monotonous. Why would I give my students something I don’t even really like?

So, in conclusion, I don’t plan on running a paperless classroom, but I do plan on running a technologically dependant classroom with a variety of real life things that students will run into eventually. I don’t want students to even have to ask why they are are learning is important. I grew up with my peers asking “Mrs. Teacher, Why do we have to know this?” with a general response of “Because it’s on your test. Now do your work.” Well, what on earth will that do? Oh, because it is on my test I need to learn it? Well, if it doesn’t matter beyond a test, why am I even teaching it (sorry curriculum, I really do like you)? Even if the students may not run into derivatives ever again, the way I teach them or the way they demonstrate they know them will have some relevance to their lives eventually, if I can help it.

Finally, I really like what Chris Harbeck is doing in his classroom. He has a daily scribe who posts about what they do each day in class, along with the assignment and nice and colourful diagrams. I really want to do this in my classroom. It helps out students and parents to keep on track with what is going in the classroom, as well as for homework.

Finally, I used a classroom arranger tool to create a classroom (below). I really don’t want my desks all in perfect rows of five by five, if I can help it. I want a technology corner, lots of bulletin boards, windows, and board space as well as bookshelves and perhaps a filing cabinet. In my dream classroom, I would have the desks in a semi circle or some cool shape that allows all students to have a front row seat. 

If anyone has any suggestions or questions, please feel free to comment back! I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

I found this hilarious to watch. Math teachers are continually preaching about the need have math to get a good job, but Eddie Gosling pokes a little bit of fun at this principle, at the expense of NASA. I would definitely recommend watching this podcast if you love math or if you hate it, as both sides of the spectrum will find this clip incredibly funny.

My only complaint is that it is too short and there is a long commercial at the end.

Happy Watching! I hope you all give it a quick peek!