Articles & Reference Links

While there was a lot of great resources on the Articles & Reference Links page, I have to admit that I am a sucker for TED Talks. I probably ate up all of my required time watching films from the TED links.

I loved the set-up of the TED Talks for Teachers link, organized by content area. As a lover of math, I was excited an amazed by some of the videos in the math section, but I did wonder a bit about wether I could find some more films that would fit in this category that would be appropriate to share with my students. Arthur Benjamin's Mathemagic talk would certainly engage them, I just wish that he had spent a little bit more time explaining how he performs his "tricks".

Teaching with TED was also really cool. The talk I watched by Dave Eggers through this site was so inspiring. My only disappointment was that some of the links in the Glogster section of the blog (that I was really excited to watch) didn't work for me.

This led me to the TED Talks by Name link which seems to be just a spreadsheet of just about every TED Talk out there. I wish there were better organization tools. I could not see exactly how the list was organized and wound up using the Find tool (command F) to find what I was looking for, which isn't very efficient. 

I will definitely be spending some more time on all of these sites!

Summer Work

The big thing I did as summer work for the Tech course was remotely attend Edmodocon. The annual Edmodo conference. For those of you that don't remember, my project revolves around using Edmodo (to over-generalize, an educational "Facebook") in my classroom to facilitate class discussions and check-in with student learning.

The conference was kind of intense. A solid eight hours of presentations over the course of the day (I had to step away from the screen after about six). There were some really cool projects. One of my favorites was Pernille Ripp's talk about The Global Read Aloud project. It was very inspirational and hopeful to hear the tale of this women who had never used Edmodo before, but had this little idea that just grew exponentially and how the Edmodo community helped it grow so much further than she could have ever imagined.

I felt like the conference was largely for veteran users of the platform and I was a little frustrated that there weren't more "nuts and bolts" type sessions for new users. As a result, the two things that I found most useful were the talk about Edmodo's support team by Kevyn Klien and the Digital Citizenship presentation by Christine Baker.

Overall, it was a great experience. I still would like to go back and watch the few archived presentations that I didn't have energy for on the day of the event. I'm looking forward to attending again next summer when I have more of a background using Edmodo with my students.

Curation Tools

I definitely have a renewed outlook on all three of the main curation tools we've been looking at over the past two days. Here are my thoughts on each: 

Twitter  - This is at least the fourth education-themed tech class where Twitter has been a topic. I've had a Twitter account for several years now, but have never got into the practice of using it. One thing that I appreciated about this course that was absent from the others (or maybe I wasn't listening closely enough) was the emphasis on using Twitter as a search tool for information. Using hash tags to help isolate useful information gives meaning to a tool that I have primarily viewed as a social distraction. Will I use it more? I'm not sure, but at least now I feel that I have better reason to.

Diigo - While I've been aware of Diigo, I have been reluctant to use it in the past because I was already set-up and had a community established in a similar program called Delicious. I decided to give Diigo a shot because I had stopped using my Delicious account, and really never used it for more than a dumping site for cool-stuff that I'd like to share/explore more "someday", but never had. I hope that I have better luck in this new format. I have a lot of cool things in there - many of which I've certainly forgotten about at this point. I hope with the ease of access in Diigo, I'll be able to unearth some of those gems. 

Feedly - Again, this reminds me of my old iGoogle account which I haven't used in years. I was happy that Mike encouraged us to look at personal interests as well as professional. I've always tried to keep the two separate in the past and I wind up with too many things to manage, so I wind up not using any of it. Hopefully, having everything in one spot will not only be a more efficient use of my time, but I'll be more likely to access all this great info.

Project idea

I'm thinking of centering my project around the use of Edmodo in my classroom next year. Just in my brief research today, I've discovered a myriad of uses offered by the program. Some initial uses I'm planning to use this tool for are: entrance /exit slips, surveys, quizzes, and sharing video.

For my project, I would like to have Edmodo groups set up for each of my classes and be using it regularly in a variety of ways in my classroom (is that a specific enough goal?).

I am planning to work on this on my own, possibly sharing it with the seventh grade team when the school year begins.

TED Talk Reflection

TED Talk Reflection

In Geoffrey Canada's TED Talk, There's an Educational Cliff we are Walking Off Right Now, Mr. Canada talks about how we are failing schools because we are following a business model in which we have not been changing even though we know that things aren't working.

I would argue that we are changing. While these things might not be as evident in inner-city schools, things like standards-based grading and the entire elementary math curriculum is very different from my experience as a student. These changes are also two of the biggest areas of complaint from parents how fear this change that is unfamiliar to them. So, while the population is screaming for change, it is very difficult because change is also resisted.

Some areas that our group talked about in terms of failing our students were finding time to address needs of all students - including: challenging more independent learners, the need to do more to engage all students in a lesson, providing an isolationist learning model (math class/ english class/ science class, etc.) when the world is not isolated.

Some solutions we discussed were using student mini-lesson models, using outside or online resources for feedback, and making students more in charge of their learning through choice.

Pre-Assignment TED Talks Reflections

First of all, I had a hard time getting the videos to play using the links that were provided on the assignment page. Was this an issue for anyone else? I tried Safari and Firefox browsers on two different computers with no luck. Finally, I just googled "ted talks education rita pierson" and found this link:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365006547/

The description and video length were identical, so I'm taking the leap that the content is the same too.

I'm glad that I was able to find a way to watch Rita Pierson's lecture because I found it truly inspiring. I loved the anecdote in which she tells a colleague, "Kids don't learn from people they don't like." It got me thinking a lot about perception and how that is essential to student learning. I feel this is especially true of middle school students, where there are huge amounts of growth physically, emotionally, and hormonally. Who hasn't experienced students totally shutting you out because they're upset with you / the circumstance?

One thing that I'm wondering about are ways to cultivate this positive relationship. In the sixth grade, I observed many female teachers using terms of endearment like "honey" or "sweetheart" that sound creepy coming from a male teacher. I have tried to use humor, humbleness (see the section of the video about apologizing), and an interest in the students' lives, but I think the more ways I can hammer home that I'm on their side, the better off we both will be.

I also worry about maintaining that balance between someone who is liked by students as their buddy versus someone who is respected by students as having their best interests in mind. I see parents struggle with this dynamic all the time. While I agree with Rita that students need to have cheerleaders, I think that a student view of you as their friend can actually be damaging - especially when you have to take on your role as an authority / adult in the relationship.

I had to find the other video, "Teen Talks: Think for Yourself", by googling as well. Here is the link:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365007978/

My favorite part of this video is when Julia, the teen being interviewed in this clip, talks about her "Mic/Mac" teacher and how he conveys his passion for the subject by sharing resources that he uses and connects curriculum to what's happening in the world. Julia describes this as "something that can bring me out of the classroom." 

I think in Yarmouth, we have the good fortune of having a community that is largely committed to education and an administration that is not quite as consumed with test results as many districts throughout the country. This affords us as teachers more opportunities to go "off script" and share those connections and passions where we see fit. Since we have the opportunity perhaps more than most, we should take advantage.

Some questions that arose for me were: 

-Is there a balance that can be struck between sharing passion and meeting the prescribed requirements of given course (or test)? What are some ways to connect the two?

-I like this idea of "bringing students outside of the classroom" without necessarily physically leaving the room. What are some ways to create this perception - especially for a teacher (like me - or Rita Pierson teaching ratios) who is regularly teaching new curriculum and might not be masterful in all areas of a topic?

Thanks,

-Jay