In Your Face!

In Your Face! Students challenged teachers to complete boot camp in under 10 minutes. This teacher got excited when he met the challenge and posted it on a co-worker's computer!

So after the kids completed boot camp, I wanted them to challenge the teachers! For each grade level I asked for 2-3 student volunteers to coordinate a time to meet with specific teachers and challenge them to complete flash drive boot camp. We talked about how while we want to challenge the teachers, we wanted them to be successful—so students would be acting more as coaches.

I provided paperwork for the students—a challenge tracker and a printed list of problems. Students were directed to come see me when the teacher finished the challenges. Then I would have the students fill out an award certificate to present to the teacher.

The students who volunteered to challenge their teachers were excited about doing this. They excitedly came to me to share their teacher had completed the challenges. They especially like when they had to teach the teacher how to do something or when the teacher finished it really quickly.

I wanted the teachers to participate in this so they could see the students as “experts” which doesn’t always happen in the classroom setting (especially with elementary aged students). The kids who had to teach the teachers were excited and felt like they were knowledgeable in this topic of using flash drives. Teaching someone else is one of the best ways to increase your own learning.  When someone asks you how to do something, you really have to think about how you present the information to them.

This intergenerational learning reminded me of Lily’s job. I don’t know all the details, but it’s cool to hear tidbits from her about how she has senior citizens and 8 year olds working on technology skills together. I think learning opportunities between older and younger generations are often limited in the education setting–but are valuable when opportunities are present.

Flash Drive Boot Camp: Part 3

Feedback from students and teachers

After boot camp- a teacher told me it has really helped her second graders a lot! She has them complete a huge poetry project (each student writes 20 poems over the course of a few months).  She said her work has been much easier because students are more autonomous. In the past I have gone over saving and finding documents with second graders, but it is mostly once during class when we are working on creating a document. This did not allow for the review and repetition that flash drive boot camp created.

Students reported that they liked working with each other and had a better understanding of how to save/create/manage documents etc.  They said it was more fun than if they had had to do it all independently. They liked the videos (except when they didn’t work) and thought Captain Silk was cool.

Why did this work so well?

I think we can see that social constructivism played a big role in this project and getting it to work. Students all started our at varying levels of understanding, but by working together they were able to combine what they knew with what a classmate knew and create their understanding together. For some of the challenges there were more than one way to complete it and it was interesting to see how students solved the challenges. Some students preferred other ways to how I would do it, but because they had the freedom to choose what method made more sense to them, they were able to be more successful than if I told them all you have to do it one way.

Flash Drive Boot Camp: Part 2

 Working with Second Grade

Second graders were the hardest grade level to work with.  Saving and creating docuemnts is a fairly brand new topic to the majority of these students.  Our class sessions are only 45 minutes, while I see the other grade-levels for an hour.  Looking back, I probably could have reduced their workload, but halfway through I didn’t want to change my expectations.  After a couple of classes of bootcamp, the second graders were all over the board.  Some were completely done and some were still on challenge number two of seven.  This surprised me because there was not this wide a range in other grade levels.  To try to help the kids that were behind I tried a few things.

1. First I grouped students by how much they had done—homogeneous grouping.  So I found four kids who were at challenge number 3 and sat them together—then put kids who had gotten to challenge 6 at another table.  I tried this for a class period and didn’t feel like we got anywhere!!

2. Then I tried soemthing else the next week and this worked MUCH better!  I found the kids who had completed the challenge—and these kids became coaches.  Then these coaches were paired with a  kid who was still at the beginning of the challenges (this could have been due to absence, learning disabilities/differences, being off-task).   I tried to pair kids I knew would mesh well too.  For some classes I had some strong students who were almost finished.  In those cases I would sometimes pair a student who had finished with small groups of two or three students.  This worked out really well in all the fourth grade classes.  I continued using this second model until all had finished.  I even had students work as “teachers” and gave them stickers to approve students’ challenges.

*To come: Jonathan, uh hem, I mean Captain Silk,  is going to record a video to congratulate all the students for completing flash drive boot camp.  Going to play this at a school assembly for all the students!!  HOOAH!! 

Flash Drive Boot Camp!!

I had a learning problem at my school—students needed to be better with saving and finding their documents. We have a network for some computers but not all. Students currently cannot access this network at home so having flash drives is a fairly simple answer in this situation.

I emailed Jonathan, a cadre-mate and army man to ask about using the theme of boot camp.  I wanted to see if there were any ideas or terms I didn’t know about that I should include.  I didn’t really know what I was going to have the kids do yet, but I figured I’d get the idea generation going.  Jonathan mentioned students working in teams to solve challenges and this surprised me because I always perceived boot camp as just hard, intense work.  I didn’t think of it with teams.  So I pondered this team idea for a while, I was initially thinking all my students would work individually and really hard.

Click here for Captain Jonathan Silk’s Blog: http://jonathansilk-maltwarrior-cognitivetoo.blogspot.com/

So after some thinking, I decided I would hold students individually accountable for completing seven challenges that deal with using a flash drive.  However, each student would have to prove to another student that they complete the challenge—and another student in their group would sign off on it.  Then, to make sure the kids really got it, I (the teacher) would go and ask each student to show me two challenges.  I would give them a sticker for this. 

Challenges located at: http://www.sandi.net/Page/28818  (some video links are not compatible on all browsers, written directions are provided for your help.)

Challenge # 1. Insert your flash drive into the computer. Then eject your flash drive correctly to avoid an error message.

Bonus Challenge: Take 3 pictures and save them (or copy them) to your flash drive.

Hint MacBook: Photo Booth

Netbook: Picassa (or Video Debut Software)

Challenge Tracker Used by Students

My Learning Theory

My learning theory is an ever-evolving idea, but here is where I’m at right now. I believe that learning is malleable and not fixed. One can always learn more. I don’ think people can ever max-out what they can learn.  You do have issues arise with people who have learning disabilities or other conditions that can make learning difficult. I think a lot of this has to deal with seeing information in a way that makes sense to them.  Everyone processes and learns differently.  Sometimes just more time or repeated exposure to information can help a person to fully “get it!” People also need time to process information and relate it to themselves and how it fits into their world. I agree with Gardner’s idea that people have varying intelligences.

From http://www.howardgardner.com/books/books.html

• Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence (body smart)
• Interpersonal intelligence (people smart)
• Intrapersonal intelligence (self smart)
• Linguistic intelligence (word smart)
• Logical-mathematical intelligence (number/reasoning smart)
• Musical intelligence (music smart)
• Naturalist intelligence (nature smart)
• Spatial intelligence (picture smart)

I think that certain people learn better in certain situations and have different aptitudes toward different situations—this can be part of the reason why some people seem to learn things more quickly than others.

I do think that education and knowledge are important in the way that Dewey and Freire see education as being able to open doors and liberate people. Not just formal schooled education, but knowing about the people and world around you.

I have read several different views on social learning theory. I absolutely agree that we learn from others whether we realize it or not. Each person we come into contact with requires us to think about our beliefs about the world and who we are as an individual and our place in the world.

Constructivism is also a theory I strongly believe in. We need to construct our knowledge when learning something new. I really like the idea of social constructivism where we construct meaning with the context and feedback of others. This is why I work to use groups in my classroom.  Students can learn so much more from each other than just from me!

We the Kids…

In my learning theory paper from 2004 there was also a section where I talked about how I would set up rules in my classroom.  Here’s what I had to say:

In the beginning of the school year I will have the students help me construct the class rules. I will lead a discussion and ask the students what they think rules for the class should be. I will write down the suggestions for rules as they give them to me. Once they are finished sharing, I will add any rules I think are important to include that the students may not have mentioned. Then I will ask the students to revise and combine rules so we can come up with a concise list that everyone understands and agrees with. We will then determine fair punishments for breaking these rules. By having the students come up with the classroom rules (with some guidance from the teacher) they are setting their own expectations for the year. They know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the classroom. They will also have a better understanding of why certain behaviors are and aren’t acceptable. When students break these rules they will be more willing to accept the punishments and not feel that they are unfair. Ultimately, having the students set the rules and punishments will help the classroom to run more smoothly.

I did this with my first class, I can’t say anything remarkable resulted form it—our list looked like a list that you’d see posted in any ordinary classroom.  When I was teacher third grade one year, we had a list like this. In the late fall we were having issues with students not getting along. There were constantly students getting upset because someone made fun of them, teasing, and a lot of other petty behaviors we going on. Our standard class list of rules was not enough. It just so happened that we were studying American history in social studies at this time—in particular the U.S. constitution & preamble to the constitution.  While lesson planning I decided it would not only be cool to create our own class constitution, but also I felt it was necessary—to go over how we needed to treat each other in the classroom.

Unfortunately I can’t open the file that had our class constitution (we posted on our SmartBoard each morning and recited in after the pledge).  It went something like this:

We the kids of room 8 agree to respect each other, not make fun of each other’s bodies or moms. We will not talk about who we are friends with and will treat each other nicely.

Students reported to me when someone had not followed the class constitution. They even complained to me that other third grade classes didn’t follow the same rules that we did. Students more easily accepted it when they had a consequence because they understood the expectations. During the year we edited this constitution if we felt that a problem had gone away or if the constitution did not address a behavior that was happening. Talk about student buy in!! I think educators can plan and plan ahead of time (as so many during undergraduate coursework and student teaching experiences) but you don’t know until you try something exactly how it is going to go.  And the happy ending here- behavior problems didn’t stop completely, but the classroom environment was a much happier once this constitution was in place.

My Learning Theory– From 2004!

Before writing my current theory of learning, I wanted to check out what I thought when I was still an undergrad in college (before I really started teaching). I found a paper from 2004 that was all about my educational philosophy.  I won’t copy the whole thing here, but here are some things that I thought were important.

*Collaborative constructivist approach is the most important for my classroom- this is where my classroom can become a community of learners.

*It is important to give students some control and say in what goes on so that students are more willing and eager to learn and participate.

*In an adult-run classroom, students don’t have a say in what goes on. They don’t get to take control of their learning.

 I find this interesting, because aren’t all classrooms (perhaps except for a true Montessori classroom) adult run? I think the degree to which adults lead the class versus kids leading the class and guiding their learning is the bigger question here.

* A student-run classroom (would be hard to meet all content standards if students completely led the classroom. – ideal setting but hard to do!

*A strong community in important because it encourages all students to get involved and to work with each other.

I do agree with this one. It can be hard to establish a community in your classroom—but it can be done! This greatly depends on the characteristics of your students and how you require them to work together. The teacher is a role model in this situation in how she interacts with students and how she pushes/encourage/expects students to work together.

*I will arrange the students into groups and include many group and partner activities in my lessons. I will combine my class both in homogenous groups and in multi-level groups.

This isn’t always the easiest thing to organize or execute- but I have seen many benefits to getting students to collaborate and work together. Once students know the routine, things run smoothly.

*We can all learn a lot from each other; not just the students learning from a teacher.  Teaching is a great way to learn, even when you think you already know all about the topic.

Right on! I think that also shares why I think it’s important to have students work with each other.

This project was a great way to get me thinking. However, it was very hard to decide how I want my classroom to run. These are my ideas now. They have changed a lot since I began this major and are still changing today. When I am actually teaching in a classroom I think I will have many different parts of each of the educational philosophies present in my classroom. This will result from finding things that work and finding things that don’t. A lot of it depends on your students too. Each year as a teacher gets a new group of students I am sure that things are done differently and changed around to adapt to the new community of learners in the classroom.

I think I like my conclusion paragraph the best!  You could view it as a cop-out that I don’t know what I’m going to do…but I think this is pretty accurate in the real world that things change and how you teach is affected by various factors.  I also think that pulling features from differen theories that suit your values and beliefs is important.  I feel that my method of teaching has a core set of practices, but does vary from year to year as I improve as an educator and as I have different compososition within student groups. I know I’m not teaching the same way I was when I first started, but I do know that I’ve held some of the same ideals throughout.  As I voiced in my mission statement for Design Class, I said that I hope that at 80 years old I will be a refined version of my current self—with all the good traits and ideals from before, but even better!

There is a quote from learning theorist Paolo Friere that captures this idea well.

“If I was the same as I was 40 years ago, I would be profoundly disappointed.  But, at the same time, if I was nothing of what I was 40 years ago, I would be profoundly sad.”

Montessori Ideas in My Classroom

Montessori Ideas in My Classroom

According to cadre-mate Harmoni’s research, http://mindmaps.wikispaces.com/Montessori_Cadre14 Maria Montessori believed that learning is student-centered.  In a Montessori-style classroom, students are guided to learn from their environment or from other students.  The teacher does not directly teach students, instead she follows the lead of the children and can provide them with materials in the classroom she think will interest them.  This type of setting provides freedom for children to decide what they’d liked to do.  In this method of teaching, great value is placed on the idea that children learn and develop naturally when they are motivated.

I have never experience a Montessori classroom first hand.  I did interview for a pre-school that followed this model so I learned a little bit more about it during the interview.  (I never wound up taking the job due to other obligations, but it sounded like a cool way to work with young students.)  I was thinking about what my kindergarten technology classes and found a few common threads with the Montessori ideas.

In technology class, I have students work on a variety of age-appropriate websites.  We do this to improve navigation skills on the computer and I also find games that will address content standards (such as math games that work with adding).

For three classes students have been working on the Sesame Street section of the PBS kids website.  There are about 21 games total—easily organized for kids to get around and all are kid-friendly and easy to use. http://pbskids.org/sesame/#/games

In the first day that we used Sesame Street, I showed students how to navigate to the games sections and showed them how to play a few games to excite them. Then students went to the Sesame Street website and played any games of their choosing.  A good amount of kids started out with the games I showed them, but after a while I could see students on all different games.  During class I also saw students asking each other how a game worked or how to get to a specific game they saw a friend playing.  In my classroom, I have always worked to encourage kids to talk to each other and getting up out of your seat is ok.

After our first class, in which I introduced the games, I have students share games they like with the class.  I’ll have about three students come up to our computer that is projected on the wall and show a game they like.  I’m there to help explain the game (or help the kid out if they forget what to do).  The other students watch very excitedly and there are always a bunch who are eager to share.   Then I send the kids off to visit games they have played before and like or maybe try one out that one of their classmates recommended.

In previous years, I was very strict as to which games students could play.  I would teach a couple of games in a class period and then require that students play ONLY the games I showed them.   Looking back, I think I was worried about students getting to a game and not knowing how to play it.  I was worried this would discourage them, make them feel defeated and also be harder for me as the teachers if students continually had problems that I needed to solve.

Well, that was worthless worrying on my part! I have found it is much better with kids picking their own games—they have more opportunity to explore and they don’t get bored or ask when they can play a game they want to play. A parent volunteer recently noted how focused the students were in playing on the Sesame Street website.  She was right and I have almost no complaining from students because they were bored or tired of playing a specific game.

I think one thing that is important when looking at learning theories is that one may not necessarily be all bad or all good.  I think it’s important to pull different elements from a variety of learning theories.  I don’t think my classroom will ever be fully in the Montessori style, but I do believe that giving students choices and chances to explore are important.

The Race to Nowhere

http://www.racetonowhere.com/ Here you can watch the documentary and find more information on this documentary about education.

Today at work a group of teachers and I watched the documentary, The Race to Nowhere.  This documentary covered a plethora of issues in the education system today.  I could write blog after blog on my thoughts, but here are the ones that really stuck in my head.

Do I want a doctor who can pass the test…or a doctor that can think critically when faced with a new disease?

Good question! This question was posed during the film to contrast the ideas of having students learn/memorize a lot of information contrasted to whether they should be learning how to be critical thinkers and problem solvers.

When I think about testing and where it is necessary to use it, I often think of professions (not elementary school kids).  I would prefer to see a doctor who passed the board exam versus one who has not (same with a lawyer or even professor).  I think that teachers should have to pass an exam or two.  However, I do know some great teachers who have had trouble passing state required tests on the first time around.  I have passed numerous tests (to hold licenses in several states) but have found that passing them isn’t extremely hard nor have these tests prepared me fully for the teaching I have had to do or the situations I have encountered.  Still these tests allow for accountability (or even some standardization), which I think is important. But I wonder if there is a better way to do this without testing…

Now back to that question about a doc that can think critically or pass the test.  I want both!  I want a doctor who knows the background information and can apply that to figure out new problems/diseases that arise.  That leads to another question…How do we best prepare doctors do this…

No More Homework!! The film calls for reduction or elimination of homework.  They cite how studies have shown that homework doesn’t necessarily correlate with better grades/increased learning. I think the bigger question is why is homework given and how is homework used? I don’t think that homework should just be omitted—but I think there are better ways to do homework than what is seen in many classrooms.

Flipping homework- This seems to be a newer idea that is catching on in more situations. Technology has helped to aid this too. Instead of the teacher teaching the concept during class time and having students work on practicing it at home—class time is now used for the “doing” part with help from classmate and teacher. The teaching part is what the kids watch at home for homework. The teacher may have recorded a video, screencast, or shared a link that teaches about a certain topic. I think homework in this sense can bring about less stress. The hard part of the work is done in school.

Grading homework- I don’t think homework should be graded. When I have given homework to my students it was looked at for completeness (or at least effort to do it) but often students and I corrected it together. If I corrected it, I did not assign a grade for ability. It was an important piece of evidence for me to see what the student could do (or what the parent could help them do). Or in one case what the parent could do while the child was sleeping…

How Hard Should Homework Be? The film talked about how homework would take students hours and it was hard for them.  I think homework should be easy/low stress.  It should provide some review, require students to think—but not be so challenging that they cannot get it.  Ideally a project that required some type of exploratory (maybe even self-guided) learning seems like it would promote learning and also engage the student.  Perhaps this could be an extension of the regular classroom content.  What about worksheets? How do they fit in? I often gave quick fact review worksheets when I taught third grade math.  It was usually a quick and easy way for students to review their facts at home. Yes they all had flashcards, but how did I know all of them used them.  Should I have designed an amazing math project that authentically taught math facts— perhaps—but did I have the time for that…NO!! In the film many teachers explained that they felt so crunched for time in having to meet so many standards that homework helped them to cover all of the topics. That led to the question about the effectiveness of the standards… or are our standards too difficult (particularly with high school A.P. classes).

All in all I don’t think there are exact answers to these questions. After this film, one can feel very defeated and not want to set foot in a classroom again. The film showed one woman who appeared to be a passionate and well-liked high school English teacher. She talked about how she loved working with the students and being a mother, mentor, and friend to the students. Then it cut to her saying she had to resign because she couldn’t handle working in the “system”.  Boy did I feel for her.

I think this type of situation I think one has to look to Zander & Zander’s philosophy of leading from any chair. As a teacher you are such an influence on your students whether you realize it or not. There are things that teachers can do to advocate change and improvement in our education system. Often times, however, we are stuck with what we’ve got and it can be a slow process to get big changes underway.  In any work situation I think it can be easy to get defeated by the system. But if you look for possibility within your situation, you can make your situation better. You can make your classroom a haven away from the madness. While teachers may be required to cover certain topics in certain ways—there is usually enough freedom for your classroom to be your own.

This reminds me a bit of Weiner’s theory of attribution where one attributes their successes or failures to different factors. It seems that a teacher who could still feel successful even if repressed by the system would have a different take than a teacher who felt defeated when repressed by the system.

Promoting Critical Thinking with Students?

Working as a technology teacher can be challenging. Technology in and of itself is not just a simple process. It involes problem solving and trial and error. When I first started this job students always came to me with problems and often hadn’t tried anything on their own. I have been working with fourth and fifth grade students on creating a poster infographic about technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_graphics

Learning theorist Vygotsky talks about how we learn socially and that learning is focused on the devlopment of understanding concepts and new knowledge. I have used a few strategies to implement this idea into my teaching and prevent the narration sickness (teachers talking to much) that Paolo Freire warns about in education. According to Freire, dialogue is a vital part to learning.

This project has required that students use a lot of skills including Internet research, copying/pasting/cutting, insterting and editing pictures and text boxes in Word.  The list goes on and even though I go over skills with students or work with them to cover specific topics, we can’t possibly cover everything they need to know to complete this project. So there are many times when students forget what to do, or just get stuck.  My interns and I created screencasts to help students with some topics.  For example we created screencasts about creating timelines in Word. This was helpful because some students are using timelines in their work.  Creating a screencast about drawing and grouping lines has helped out these kids—then the kids who aren’t creating timelines (or other drawings) don’t really need to know how to do this right now. Click to see Screencasts

I often have students come to me and ask for help when they can’t get a picutre to move or are having trouble copying URL’s into the footer of the page. In these cases I refer students to screencasts that cover these specific topics or refer them to students who know how to do this or I’ll refer them to a student for help. I can clearly help them, but there are also students in the class who know what to do. I’m happy to help a student who may still be struggling after they watch the screencast. Then I can ask them questions to promt them to recall and apply what they just saw in the screencast.

Let’s say a student knows what they need to do but is having trouble with text boxes.  Instead of me going to help them, I’ll call out to the class, “Who’s really good at using text boxes and thinks they can help Joe work on his?” Typically a whole bunch of hands go up.  Then I’ll ask a student who has volunteered to help out the kid who needs it. Putting students together to solve problems forces them to think and work together. I like to hear the dialogue that happens between the two students. It’s also cool to see how they apply their knowledge to solve the problem. Observing this can help me to see what their strengths and needs are. If several pairs of students are stuck on something, it is time for me to step in and present a new topic or review something.