As much as I appreciate the vital role bees play in our ecosystem I still can't bring myself to add a few hives to my backyard. Today however I stumbled upon a website encouraging people to plant native plants in their yard or garden to encourage natural bee populations, and then join them in collecting and reporting data about the bees that they see. This, is much easier than donning a netted mask and figuring out how to keep boxes of bees away from my toddler. 

 

The Great Sunflower Project, http://www.greatsunflower.org/, seems like a unique authentic learning experience for a classroom project. Students would first need to research native plants to the area, would have a wonderful time actually planting them and maintaining the garden on part of the school grounds, and then could collect data (math, science, social studies...any subject!) This would even be a great school-wide project!

 

At the beginning of the school year, at a new school, in the newly created role of technology teacher, I found myself grappling with the question, "What am I supposed to teach?!" (It is after all very easy for teachers to preach about how important it is for students to be taught 21st Century learning objectives, but it is another thing entirely to actually start doing it.)

Now that I'm into the second quarter I've restored my footing on what I'm supposed to teach and instead am focusing on how to teach the content. I find that even though my classes are very small- four to eight students- I often have two or three different instructional strategies going on simultaneously. Working with special populations I quickly found it would not be possible to have a wonderfully synchronous class working together. Some of my students find more success working independently on software tutorials, others need one-on-one guidance with a step-by-step approach. Some students can accomplish their tasks after viewing a quick demonstration on the SMARTboard, and then I have a few students who need the actual assignment altered in some way due to special learning abilities. 

Slow, but steady, I'm gathering a collection of instructional strategies (read: bag of tricks) to use for various students. One population I still struggle with is my group of middle school non-readers. I want to teach the technology (computer basics) in a fun and creative way, but I'm having a difficult time finding resources that offer more audio and less text- AND (here's the hard part)- aren't juvenile.  Lectures, mini-lessons, demonstrations, and the like so far are not proving effective. Our teens respond well to anything that can be passed off as a video game. Trying to teach students who live in a virtual world seems rather difficult when you don't have the resources (or they don't exist) to access that virtual land.

Maybe programming language should be part of our next in-service.




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The article I just read by Jane McGeehan (which has no published date on it and that irritates me) on brain based learning brought up three key ideas:

• emotion is the gatekeeper to learning 
• intelligence is a function of experience
• the brain stores most effectively what is meaningful from the learner’s perspective. 

Scientific knowledge about the brain states that students will not retain information that is not meaningful to them. The article states that teachers can not know what is meaningful to their students unless they know their students. Students I work with are reluctant to share information about themselves- but almost everything I've ever read talks about how social networking in the classroom (like through Edmodo or Schoology) can make even the most reticent student open up in new ways.
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So.... if social networking can help teachers get to know their students....and getting to know your students = knowing what is meaningful to them (which would then lead to)... teaching meaningful "stuff," it can then be assumed students will retain more information.....

Perhaps yet another interesting thought to share with social networking naysayers. 
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I've used a class website every year I've taught, generally as way to inform parents of class activities, share deadlines with students, and occasionally post student work.  This year my class website is taking on a transformation as a productivity tool. Two key changes are:

• I switched from using yola.com to Weebly's education version. The only reason I did this was because yola is blocked in our school, and instead of going through the long process for unblocking requests it was easier to make the switch. Weebly is a little more user friendly for newbies, but I do miss the extra features yola provided.
• Because I have several non-readers I added more graphics to my homepage, students will rely more on the graphics than the text.

Tips:

• Create your account in PlanbookEdu and make your lesson plans.
• Share the book with a random address (I choose abc@mail.com- completely fake but it doesn't matter).
• After doing the above you will get a link for abc@mail.com to view the plans, add that link to your website.
• When students click on the link from your website they will be prompted to enter an email address (the fake one again) but then they will be able to see the plans.

My class website is set as students' homepage. Students click on the "What Are We Doing Today" button when they log in to see the plans, which includes the hyperlinks for any activities we have that day. This is also very helpful if I'm not in the building one day.

The one downside is that in order to have the plans shared you have to be a paid subscriber. I think the $20.00 a year fee is incredibly cheap to make my life easier.

1. Why do I blog?
2. What is the purpose of my blog?
3. Does it really matter if I post regularly?
4. Is it okay that my blog doesn't have one single direction?
5. What am I giving up in order to make time to blog?

Here are my answers:

1. I blog because I like to have a place to share things. It is an outlet for self expression, link sharing, communication, and yes, I do enjoy getting comments to see what others think.
2. The purpose of my blog is to give me an outlet for the above. It's not as involved as a full blown website, but more involved than twitter.
3. I've read a lot of posts that say edu-bloggers should be blogging regularly. I've decided I'll post when I have something worth posting. A thought to share. I am not writing to be a one-stop-resource for all teachers, others have time for that and I do not. I'm going to stop making myself feel guilty for it.
4. I've wrestled with this. Many education blogs have a very specific focus, where I blog about all kinds of things. True, I do focus more on technology, but this blog is about my journey in education, so it can't have a specific focus because I don't know where I'm going from time to time. I blog on topics of meaning to me and hopefully my audience. Down the road if I feel the need for a specific topic blog I can always start another.
5. This is huge. I refuse to give up time with my family. As teachers we are already over-worked, over-booked, and over-exhausted without adding blogging time. Blogging is something I enjoy, and want to do, but only after I've taken care of my other "hats."

After a few weeks off from my blog, and after reading some great posts about edu-blogging, I'm re-dedicating myself to my blog, but in a manner that will not suppress my other enjoyments, responsibilities, and wishes. We (the collective "we" being teachers) should not be made to feel guilty if we don't post regularly, or our posts are shorter than others. Edu-blogging is about sharing, communication, and collaboration- not about guilt, stress, and pressure.

Anyone else ready re-dedicate?!

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One requirement for the assignment was for the brochure to be comprehensive; however knowing junior high students (the audience the brochure was designed for) giving them too much information at once can be overwhelming; a brochure is not the correct method for distributing massive amounts of information, rather the tri-fold I designed is meant as an introduction to the idea of digital citizenship. I took a spin on this and designed it through the eyes of a Twilight fan.

• I used Open Office Draw to create the brochure, then saved it as a pdf.
• I used a website called morgueFile to find the picture on the cover. It was posted by jdurham.
• The other Twilight images were taken from the download section of the official Twilight movie website.

As mentioned on the brochure, I have no affiliation with anyone who has anything to do with the making or production of Twilight, I'm just a devoted fan! The brochure is purely for educational purposes, feel free to use it according to the creative commons license listed on the back of the brochure.

You can download the brochure here.

As always I welcome comments and thoughts about the creation of the document!

Update (July 20, 2010) I got an A+ on this assignment. Whoo-hoo!

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What's this about teacher's having more time during the summer? I've been on summer break for only a few weeks; and when I don't have a toddler attached to my leg I have a laptop attached to my hand- and I'm still not getting all my stuff done.

Here's 4 things I'm doing to keep myself sane:

• When you read a blog that shares several great links, don't open each link and save each individual one, just save the blog post. Ex: Richard Bryne over at Free Tech for Teachers recently wrote a great post about resources for teaching about presidents. I'm not teaching presidents right now so I don't need to open up each link and tag them separately. I just tagged the entire post in my delicious under "presidents." Then when I teach it, I can easily go back through the post.
• Ditch the "read it later" button. I love it but it's just another way for things to pile up and add additional stress. I deal with items right then and there, or file them into delicious where I can always go back.
• Unsubscribe. It's not necessary for me to follow someone's blog and twitter; I'm tidying up my RSS reader by getting rid of some feeds and just making sure I subscribe to the user's twitter handle. Most twitter users will tweet about their blog posts anyway. 
• Give up some of your ideas about the perfect summer. Sadly teachers can feel that they have to use the summer to make up for the past ten months of neglected parenting/friendships, etc. This is hard for me. I quickly learned my grand plans of daily trips out, blogging several times a week, reading fifty books, painting, traveling, and cleaning out the china cabinet this summer just might not happen. Not only do I need rest and relaxation- but my little tyke needs it too!
  

Bonus Item: For those that blog- keep your blogs short this summer! Save yourself sanity and consider those of us who read. We love reading your lengthy and profound thoughts- just not twenty a week. Keep your points short and sweet. Seth Godin is awesome at this!

(Author's Note: The photo was taken by Old Shoe Woman, found using a creative commons flickr search.)
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I told myself the last time I wasn't going to drink anymore.

I'm beyond addicted. It's just so good, I really think they put some sort of drug in the mix to make susceptible coffee drinkers like myself completely hooked. The McDonald's Carmel Frappe. It's delicious. And it's the perfect accompaniment to this beautiful, warm, summer June day, as I sit here in my hometown's public library. A few years ago they didn't even allow beverages in the library (so I can clearly blame them for the tall frosty beverage at my left, right?). For the record, I feel horrible about this purchase; aside from the obvious fact my tasty indulgence is laced with caloric guilt, as a budding vegetarian and common sense American I have huge health and ethical issues with McDonald's.

(pause to take a nice long carmel-y sip)

I've read numerous blog posts over the past few years, as well as studied the topic in one of my graduate courses, that books are on their way out- out of our shelves, out of our libraries, out of our cultures- in favor of ereaders, like the Nook or Kindle.

I'm not here to argue that point, because I think there is some obvious truth to that, and I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing; but as I sit here in the library I can't help but notice, this library is hopping- with or without books (though our library has a great selection, as well as subscription service to My Media Mall where I can checkout digital books). It's nearly noon on a Wednesday and it's packed, kids checking out books, adults at laptops, computers, in the stacks; talking, sharing, reading, typing, laughing (and yes, sipping those lovely beverages now encouraged to help bring about the "cafe atmosphere"), it's inspiring to a teacher to see. There is so much life in this building, and I can't imagine that would go away just because books might.

Libraries across the nation are innovative, they are working double time to keep up with our evolving digital culture; everything from changing the outdated decor, to offering more services. It becomes a haven for us cheap bibliophiles, and offers a non-threatening escape for emergent readers.

The library continuously amazes me and I look forward to exploring more it has to offer this summer.

For now, I may go look up books on addiction...

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Here's a quick list of 25 awesome websites with educational games that you can share with students and parents this summer! There are certainly many more, so please share your favorites in the comment section!

1. Chess Kid<script src="http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js" type="text/javascript"></script>- Learn to play chess and play against kids all over the world.
2. National Geographic Maps has some excellent exploration and geography games for young explorers.
3. Discovery Channel Man vs. Wild game requires a use of geography, math, and critical thinking skills.
4. Moppet Games offers math facts, hangman, memory, picture search, and other games for young learners.
5. The Ruler Game teaches you measurement using virtual rulers.
6. Inside the FBI Become a detective through history and current news with these games.
7. Starfall has various reading games for early readers.
8. Spelling Match Practice your spelling skills.
9. The Enchanted Palace takes you through the history of the Kingston Palace, a fun way to sleuth!
10. The University of Nottingham offers this website to custom make your own parts-of-speech practice activities.
11. The Children's University of Manchester has games online for all subjects.
12. Spelling City offers another way to practice spelling.
13. Grammaropolis A fun way to practice grammar with kookie characters.
14. Learn to Type with this alphabetic rain game.
15. Fun for the Brain is a huge resource of various fun math, science, and English games.
16. Math is Fun has games in geometry, arithmetic, and algebra and more.
17. ABCya! has games in every subject and every grade level.
18. Scholastic features a variety of games from the stacks.
19. Word Twist is an online game similar to Boggle.
20. The Problem Site has a variety of educational games based off solving problems.
21. Ghost Blasters the game might be spooky but math isn't!
22. Gamequarium features games in all subjects at all levels.
23. Primary Games feature a variety of games for our youngest learners.
24. Grammar Ninja lets you try to improve your grammar skills.
25. Maggie's Earth Adventure features games in geography, but also in math, science, and Language Arts.