Today I once again felt like the digital immigrant I am. As we surfed through YouTube selections and Celestia, a really cool simulation of the universe, my head was swimming and often I couldn't get Jupiter to spin the way I wanted it to go. I felt like an ESL student who isn't speaking the same language! It is obvious to me that I need to assign myself some homework to spend a few hours a week surfing through all this stuff and learning how to access it!
The resources available online in general and specifically in the collection at the YETC are seemingly without number. I really wish I knew more what grades I will be teaching so that I can be stockpiling podcasts. My peers shared experiences in their practicum classrooms how they are using smart boards and other teaching tools, but the only technology we've used so far is the CD player for the "Days of the Week" song and the standard overhead projector to direct-teach how to fill in the "Ll"s on the Saxon paper worksheets.
I loved the discussion of how best to teach the Civil War: the difference in student attention from a teacher saying "Now, class, open your textbook to page 758" to "Now, class, log on to this website that offers a virtual simulation of what it was like for a young Confederate soldier on the battlefield." I also recognize that being able to manipulate the rotation of the planets and their position in the solar system is much more relevant and exciting than reading about it and creating a written report. The time-honored coat hanger mobile of construction paper circles no longer creates the enthusiasm for students that spending a few minutes on the Celestia site will.
I am excited to go home and show my children some of the sites we visited today and let them show me how to use them. I know they will be able to get me over my techno-stupidity and gain a better appreciation for what is available to me beyond just the "push the planet number and the Gkey (for go there)" commands I used today in the lab. I plan to glance through the core curriculum topics for the upper elementary grades to refresh my memory of what the students in the grades I want to teach are studying in science, for example. That will give me a roadmap of the sorts of resources I should revisit in the YETC lab as I begin my stockpile.
I appreciate this course for FORCING me to dig into this stuff. One of my reasons for going back to school to be a teacher was to translate my enthusiasm for learning into a career and I can't be "dumber" than my students when it comes to technology. I am overwhelmed with the resources available to me at no cost and will on longer accept the common excuse I hear that "if we just had more money, we could do some really great things in the classroom." So now I need to go home this afternoon and open that new laptop that has been sitting in the box downstairs "daring me to come open it." James, my son asked me this morning when we can play with it. I hate to admit that it intimidates me. But I'm getting up the courage .....
Monday, September 22, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
UEN Lesson Plan idea: The Black Snowman
Interdisciplinary units always seem to catch my eye when I am searching on UEN.org. I found an intriguing lesson idea to be taught during Black History Month (February). It claims to cover seven standards from the Utah State Core Curriculum for 6th grade Language Arts.
"The Black Snowman, An Interdisciplinary Unit" is the lesson plan title.
The link is http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=13696 .
I like this lesson because it has ideas for teaching oral language, concepts of print, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing as well as the main curriculum tie: Develop language through listening and speaking. The focus book, The Black Snowman, is written by Phil Mendez and illustrated by Carole Byard. It is about an African-American boy and his family, a dirty snowman, and a magic Kente cloth from Africa. The lesson suggests students create a PowerPoint presentation about a famous African American, but I also think some of the writing prompts that become essays could be generated on electronic student journals I'd call student blogs. I also found some very interesting and colorful websites about the Kente cloth, such as http://art-smart.ci.manchester.ct.us/fiber-kente/kente.html , and other creative winter weaving lesson ideas at http://kids-learn.org/winterwonderland/central.htm.
This lesson emphasizes a multicultural perspective and is more complex than just teaching about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. during Black History Month. It also touches on family history and self-esteem. I admit I've never read this book but I plan to check it out!
"The Black Snowman, An Interdisciplinary Unit" is the lesson plan title.
The link is http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=13696 .
I like this lesson because it has ideas for teaching oral language, concepts of print, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing as well as the main curriculum tie: Develop language through listening and speaking. The focus book, The Black Snowman, is written by Phil Mendez and illustrated by Carole Byard. It is about an African-American boy and his family, a dirty snowman, and a magic Kente cloth from Africa. The lesson suggests students create a PowerPoint presentation about a famous African American, but I also think some of the writing prompts that become essays could be generated on electronic student journals I'd call student blogs. I also found some very interesting and colorful websites about the Kente cloth, such as http://art-smart.ci.manchester.ct.us/fiber-kente/kente.html , and other creative winter weaving lesson ideas at http://kids-learn.org/winterwonderland/central.htm.
This lesson emphasizes a multicultural perspective and is more complex than just teaching about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. during Black History Month. It also touches on family history and self-esteem. I admit I've never read this book but I plan to check it out!
Monday, September 15, 2008
My Public Page is http://my.uen.org/212817
Today I created a public page on my.uen.org, a site students and parents can access for detailed reminders, calendars, and homework help from me. This tool could really streamline communication between teacher and parents: remind the student to wear a jacket and bug spray for the day's field trip to Logan Canyon, for example. If the parents and students habitually checked this page I could avoid copying notes and stuffing backpacks for a classroom full of students, saving time and paper. This way parents could still see announcements in the event that papers are misplaced between class and home. As a parent I have to sift through piles of various notes from each of my four children's teachers and it often takes 30 minutes or more every afternoon. Then my trash can is full!
My daughter Jessica's 6th grade Language Arts teacher has created a similar site with email reminders to visit it often: at any time we can see what happened in class and what is due tomorrow. If she stays home sick one day, we can look up what she missed and be prepared when she returns to class with makeup work. He has assigned that we visit the site at least once a week and respond by email (Jessica gets points for "my homework" as a parent). As a "digital immigrant" I was at first frustrated that I would have to take the time to log on and check it out, but more than other class she has, I feel like I know what she is learning and never worry that there will be surprises at parent-teacher conferences. I love that we are working as team and saving trees in the process by eliminating all the paper notes back and forth. My attitude is slowly evolving from technology being a hassle to technology being a powerful tool linking parents, students, and teachers as a community.
My daughter Jessica's 6th grade Language Arts teacher has created a similar site with email reminders to visit it often: at any time we can see what happened in class and what is due tomorrow. If she stays home sick one day, we can look up what she missed and be prepared when she returns to class with makeup work. He has assigned that we visit the site at least once a week and respond by email (Jessica gets points for "my homework" as a parent). As a "digital immigrant" I was at first frustrated that I would have to take the time to log on and check it out, but more than other class she has, I feel like I know what she is learning and never worry that there will be surprises at parent-teacher conferences. I love that we are working as team and saving trees in the process by eliminating all the paper notes back and forth. My attitude is slowly evolving from technology being a hassle to technology being a powerful tool linking parents, students, and teachers as a community.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Blogging in a classroom
I think daily journaling is important for students of all ages. My son James had several teachers who used journals as daily self-starts and HE HATED IT. He doesn't like to write and his handwriting is, he admits, illegible. He would only write sentences like, "Yesterday was fun." I am sure that if, instead of paper and pencil, he was instructed to post on his blog, he would write a lot more. He is in 8th grade now, still hates writing, but has two blogs and a website AND HE WRITES ALL THE TIME ON THEM! I hope I have the technology available in my classroom to be able to have daily blogging for my students.
Hello Blog World
I wrote this in response to an in-class reading assignment during the week following August 25, 2008:
I love using my kids as guinea pigs and I have to admit that as the article "Synching Up with the iKid: Connecting to the Twenty-First-Century Student" (http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner) points out, kids today are not at all the kid I was 25 years ago. I remember watching The Jetsons cartoon on Saturday mornings (we didn't have cable so that was the only time all week that cartoons were on, except for one night a week when Wonderful World of Disney was on--that's when you got to see Mickey and 101 Dalmations because VCRs were just coming out and nobody owned a zillion Disney moview on VHS) and being fascinated by robots vacuuming and talking to your boss via TV screen. I remember my dad (a mechanical engineer) bringing home a computer from work (nobody we knew actually had one in their home) to show us this cool game: on the eery green screen would appear this prompt: "Guess the number between 1 and 100"; you typed "8" and ENTER and it would type "Higher" so you typed "99" and ENTER and it typed "Lower" until you guessed the computer's number. Our whole family was mesmerized; then a few years later we thought Space Invaders on the ATARI was the coolest thing ever invented. I grew up actually swimming at the pool, not sitting in the lawn chair next to the pool texting my friend who is sitting right next to me.
Last night my 13-year-old was texting on his cell phone at lightning speed while listening to his iPod while searching the Internet on one of our family's three computers for resources for his 8th grade current event paper on global warming on one window and MSN-ing other friends on another window while eating a burrito and flipping between the Republican National Convention, Channel 5 news, and some dirt bike race on ESPN. When everyone's homework was done, we played Wii Rockband (and as usual, my vocals got me boo-ed off the stage).
Earlier this week I talked with my kids about this article and they agreed that I am definitely a digital immigrant. Sometimes my first thought when they have a research assignment is to drive over to the neighborhood community library because that is how I did it growing up. We looked in encyclopedias and card catalogs (index cards in an actual card file). I resist the latest digital scrapbooking craze because I like holding the pictures and books in my hand. We talk about doint their best legible cursive handwriting and one says, "Why? Typing is ten times faster and the teacher can actually read it!"
They brought up my college textbook editing job. For 13 years as they were growing up, I worked as a freelance editor/proofer for a local textbook composition company. Weekly I brought home manuscript piles taller than I am and used probably millions of yellow sticky-notes and red ink pens. So, last year the company closed its doors because it has been bought out by a larger company on the East Coast who later was bought out by a larger company in India. This company asked me to continue to freelance but it would suddenly be all-electronic workflow. That meant I needed a new computer with super-high speed Internet connections, new editing software, and a monitor that would display both manuscript and folios so I could read it and mark it up. I struggled with this for months because my eyes, my neck, my brain couldn't adjust. For one job I actually did print the files out (two reams of paper) so I could do it my old-fashioned way, which is still a lot faster for me! I'll never meet my project managers or co-workers face-to-face. The textbook industry is changing to because more professors are going electronic.
I saw more computer use at Back-to-School night last week at my kids' elementary school than ever before. Each teacher had a PowerPoint presentation of class rules, explanation of improved Reading Counts school-wide book computer quiz program, and every week I'm supposed to look up on PowerSchool their grades (no more grade reports on paper!).
One thing I've noticed in my son's writing (and a few instances in the responses to the article cited above), having the eye of a print editor, is that the abbreviations used in email and texting are creeping into writing for all purposes. "Y" means "Why". I am not fluent in the new language so I don't automatically get it. When I get the cell phone bill and see that my son wrote 4051 texts in two days, I realize that his brain thinks in abbreviations because they are faster to type and read, and why spell "why" when "Y" works? It reminds me of the Newspeak described in George Orwell's "1984". I guess I still use Oldspeak.
After I click "Publish Post", I am going to log onto my on-line Psychology course to listen to an 0n-line recorded lecture of my professor in Denver (again, someone I'll never meet face-to-face), follow along with his PowerPoint slides and accompanying lecture notes, and then post my responses to my course peers (who abbreviate too) on Blackboard, and then take a test on-line about it all. I remember reading a science fiction story in 2nd grade about a boy who did his homework on a little typewriter box that had a brain and he did all his learning at home; he never stepped foot in a classroom, never held a book in his hands, never wrote with a number 2 pencil. Now I am that little boy.
I love using my kids as guinea pigs and I have to admit that as the article "Synching Up with the iKid: Connecting to the Twenty-First-Century Student" (http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner) points out, kids today are not at all the kid I was 25 years ago. I remember watching The Jetsons cartoon on Saturday mornings (we didn't have cable so that was the only time all week that cartoons were on, except for one night a week when Wonderful World of Disney was on--that's when you got to see Mickey and 101 Dalmations because VCRs were just coming out and nobody owned a zillion Disney moview on VHS) and being fascinated by robots vacuuming and talking to your boss via TV screen. I remember my dad (a mechanical engineer) bringing home a computer from work (nobody we knew actually had one in their home) to show us this cool game: on the eery green screen would appear this prompt: "Guess the number between 1 and 100"; you typed "8" and ENTER and it would type "Higher" so you typed "99" and ENTER and it typed "Lower" until you guessed the computer's number. Our whole family was mesmerized; then a few years later we thought Space Invaders on the ATARI was the coolest thing ever invented. I grew up actually swimming at the pool, not sitting in the lawn chair next to the pool texting my friend who is sitting right next to me.
Last night my 13-year-old was texting on his cell phone at lightning speed while listening to his iPod while searching the Internet on one of our family's three computers for resources for his 8th grade current event paper on global warming on one window and MSN-ing other friends on another window while eating a burrito and flipping between the Republican National Convention, Channel 5 news, and some dirt bike race on ESPN. When everyone's homework was done, we played Wii Rockband (and as usual, my vocals got me boo-ed off the stage).
Earlier this week I talked with my kids about this article and they agreed that I am definitely a digital immigrant. Sometimes my first thought when they have a research assignment is to drive over to the neighborhood community library because that is how I did it growing up. We looked in encyclopedias and card catalogs (index cards in an actual card file). I resist the latest digital scrapbooking craze because I like holding the pictures and books in my hand. We talk about doint their best legible cursive handwriting and one says, "Why? Typing is ten times faster and the teacher can actually read it!"
They brought up my college textbook editing job. For 13 years as they were growing up, I worked as a freelance editor/proofer for a local textbook composition company. Weekly I brought home manuscript piles taller than I am and used probably millions of yellow sticky-notes and red ink pens. So, last year the company closed its doors because it has been bought out by a larger company on the East Coast who later was bought out by a larger company in India. This company asked me to continue to freelance but it would suddenly be all-electronic workflow. That meant I needed a new computer with super-high speed Internet connections, new editing software, and a monitor that would display both manuscript and folios so I could read it and mark it up. I struggled with this for months because my eyes, my neck, my brain couldn't adjust. For one job I actually did print the files out (two reams of paper) so I could do it my old-fashioned way, which is still a lot faster for me! I'll never meet my project managers or co-workers face-to-face. The textbook industry is changing to because more professors are going electronic.
I saw more computer use at Back-to-School night last week at my kids' elementary school than ever before. Each teacher had a PowerPoint presentation of class rules, explanation of improved Reading Counts school-wide book computer quiz program, and every week I'm supposed to look up on PowerSchool their grades (no more grade reports on paper!).
One thing I've noticed in my son's writing (and a few instances in the responses to the article cited above), having the eye of a print editor, is that the abbreviations used in email and texting are creeping into writing for all purposes. "Y" means "Why". I am not fluent in the new language so I don't automatically get it. When I get the cell phone bill and see that my son wrote 4051 texts in two days, I realize that his brain thinks in abbreviations because they are faster to type and read, and why spell "why" when "Y" works? It reminds me of the Newspeak described in George Orwell's "1984". I guess I still use Oldspeak.
After I click "Publish Post", I am going to log onto my on-line Psychology course to listen to an 0n-line recorded lecture of my professor in Denver (again, someone I'll never meet face-to-face), follow along with his PowerPoint slides and accompanying lecture notes, and then post my responses to my course peers (who abbreviate too) on Blackboard, and then take a test on-line about it all. I remember reading a science fiction story in 2nd grade about a boy who did his homework on a little typewriter box that had a brain and he did all his learning at home; he never stepped foot in a classroom, never held a book in his hands, never wrote with a number 2 pencil. Now I am that little boy.
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