Reflections of a Techie

I've got several ideas on Best Of......for the Edublog awards

I'm so lucky to have lots and lots of virtual colleagues all over the world.  Honestly they are a big foundation to my professional practice because they help me, the push my thinking and reading/dialoging helps me work out my thinking.

My students and I blog via Edublogs at LMS Eagles.  Since we use that software, I realize that all sorts of nominations are flying over the cybersphere for Best of _______.  Our class blog is not prime time ready yet, but it did give me pause to think about another blog that is shaping my thinking almost every day.

My nomination for Best individual tweeter is Paula White @paulawhite.  She is also one of the Quadblogging partners I have.....boy did I feel like I was the luckiest person ever when I was partnered with her after watching tweets for the past year.  She's always quick to respond and has tons of great ideas she shares continuously all year long. 

Who but Larry Ferlazzo could I nominate for the Best Ed Tech blog.  I think any time day or night I find Larry offering ideas...non stop.  When I asked him to help me present some of his excellent ideas to a group that I was hosting, he couldn't have been more gracious.  Sharing his knowledge and sharing his expertise.

A group that calls itself Voices from the Revolution makes a big difference in my teaching and the way I think about the classroom....don't you just love that name?  I do believe I'm part of this ninja group of teachers who is promoting an education revolution by elevating the teaching profession from within as I read, write and comment on blog posts here.  I believe this blog should definitely be considered for the Best Group Blog award.

This blog is chock full of pedagogical and assessment ideas from such different perspectives.  Just today I scanned thru the blog and noticed articles about how to implement Problem Based Learning in a classroom, deploying a 1:1 initiative, how to find time to teach students to stop and reflect and even an insightful post called Throwaway Lesson about getting over yourself so you can see what students are really needing and feeling.  Relevant?  Oh my gosh....right on.  Useful?  Full of hard-won wisdom from people who are doing it 24/7.  Practical?  Usually I leave with at least one or two ideas that I can immediately implement with my students.

My vote for Best twitter hashtag is #scichat.  While I haven't been attending this semester, this weekly meeting between all kinds of science teachers is outstanding.  Just like the VFTR blog, #scichat is where people push your thinking, share freely and really don't come with any judgment.  I've met a ton of really cool teachers who I've been able to help and who have helped me.  To my mind's eye, that's why someone should be nominated for this kind of award.  Gaining my sea legs here, I then branched out to #teaching 2030, #6thchat,  and #pbl to name some new haunts.

Sharing artifacts from 9000 years ago...our 1st class blog post

Friday was a big blogging day for this year's class.  We took our first tentative steps and posted what we've been learning.

Students have been documenting their findings in the mostly marl soil we have using a camera. It's full of small snail and clam shells...and students have meticulously picked those out of the soil using toothpicks  and spoons.

I'm very excited because we just got a new microscope that should make the documentation much easier. Next week I'll have it up and running....take a look at this amazing little machine.  You never know how much a slick little digital microscope could change things for the kids...but I think they'll be thrilled at the detail they can see on the tiny shells, twigs and bits of beaver sticks.  

It's not a fancy post but I think it covered the essential things they've learned this past week.  That's something I've been working on with them, too.  Finding the essential ideas and then summarizing those ideas.  Students have been reading background materials on mastodons to learn this skill....first the brochure from the Museum and then a Highlights article called the "Wounded Mastodon".  We used the post-it method I wrote about in an earlier post. 

For this blog entry, it was time to put all those practice skills to work.  What did we learn this week, I asked?  And what pictures would best summarize our activities?  They decided we needed to focus on the process we used to examine the marl and that pictures that would expand on that idea would be best since most people wouldn't know what marl was (none of us did before this project).  They also thought they should show their "best" artifacts.  We took pictures of those. 

I should also note that there were lots of pictures that they wanted to use.  But we don't have all the media releases signed and returned.....it gave me a terrific moment to talk about why I couldn't just publish their picture on the internet.

We'll keep up working on blogging this way for a while....writing the posts together.  Do think alouds so students can "hear" the cognitive processing that goes on behind writing in this style and learning how to apply the ideas of safety with communciation. I'm also thinking that once we get their Google App accounts up and working, we could collaboratively write the post and then paste it into our class blog.  That might be my next step.

I'm very excited and proud of them.

 

1st steps of science blogging...board blogging to summarizing & finding the essence & rich details

Before I can turn them loose on the internet there's so much to set-up and for them to learn.  Safety, writing skills, reading skills and researching...not to mention just knowing something that's worthwhile enough to publish!!!

I start off with blogging on the board in my room.  This week's prompt was for them to compare the hurricane of Katrina with Irene.  Irene was fresh in their minds and they had just learned how to follow the progress of a hurricane using the National Hurricane Center and a map of the Atlantic Ocean.

Each student wrote up 5 comparisons they could make.  Then in small groups, they read everyone's individual work and wrote a summary that paraphrased all the ideas of the individuals they'd read.  Now that's not an easy skill to acquire.  I used a strategy that Stephanie Harvey explains her book, "Strategies that Work; 2nd edition".

What I thought was especially helpful she explains in the section called paraphrasing to summarize expository text.  Here she shows how to use a bracket (a new word for my 6th graders).  You bracket off a section of the article an then re-write it in my words in the margin.  Writing in the margin might seem like it would crowd student writing too much....and I'd have to agree.  But that seemed to be a good thing as I went through it.  By not giving them too much space, it forces them to use fewer words.

The Harvey strategy shows how to model it and then have students use sticky notes to summarize the next passage part.  Using the letter "S" for summarize and the gist (another new word for my 6th graders).  And here's the real strength of the strategy....you have them work with their stickies in a two-column format.  6th graders really struggle with knowing what fun to know and what's the most important things they should remember.  It's deciphering what's "the essence" and "rich details".  Using that 2-column strategy on big poster paper, student groups began their work to summarize the comparisons.

 

  It's not a finished product. But it is the beginning of a long journey in improving writing skills in my science class.  High quality posts go along with this whole notion.  If you can't summarize what someone has says, it will be difficult to write a quality response.  I believe by taking the time to do this interium step, students will have enough scaffolding in their writing process to do the scientific thinking.

Each group then wrote their "best" summarization on a sentence strip or piece of construction paper we posted on the board.  They got better and better throughout the day as later classes could see the models of work from the previous hours.  Next week, each of them will have to start writing a response to the summarized post. 

I'm planning on starting off with a small audience of readers.  I'm experimenting with something called Quad Blogging.  Learned about this from one of my PLPeeps....Kathleen Morris @kathleen_morris  and her co-teacher Kelly Jordan @ kellyjordan82. They have already done some of this kind of blogging with great success.   Both master bloggers extraordinare!!!   In this strategy, 4 classrooms partner to read and respond to each other's work.  It provides a safer way to introduce students to blogging, gives them a built-in audience and they meet kids from all over the world.  That starts for us once the Southern Hemispherers get back from their  break in mid-October.  I'm super excited but realize I have so far to go before I'm ready to actually do the blogging.

Sigh.....so much to learn but it's fun and they are busting at the seams to get online to blog about what they are learning.

Scientists @ the Smithsonian & Middle School PBL

All kinds of people become scientists. And scientists do all kinds of things. Watch and read about these scientists at the Smithsonian. What kind of scientist would you like to be?

via www.smithsonianeducation.org

By any chance did you see this Scientists @the Smithsonian online exhibit?  I've been wondering how to get my PBL on the scientific method started and this will be a great hook.  I know they'll be intrigued by all the different disciplines represented in this Hall of Fame.  The introductory videos are captivating and I'd imagine that students will be completely engaged listening to these people describe their areas of passion.  Things I've never heard of, and yet, vital to the healthy functioning of our world.   This will tweek their emotional connection to the topic of the scientific method.

My introduction for the unit is

for the bookkeeper to arrive in my room, very exasperated that she has all these kilos of dirt being delievered to her for processing by the UPS man.  She has no idea what to do with them because they've come without an invoice and no addressee.  Since she knows we are young scientists in the making, they will be asked to investigate the dirt, develop any conclusions about what it is and then report back to her.  She's promised to be quite aggrevated and plead for our help.  Luckily we'll have enough kilos delivered that she can repeated this scence every hour...hopefully getting more dramatic with each hour as ANOTHER package is delievered.

My thought is that we'll talk about how to develop an investigation method....and tie it to their knowledge of the scientific method.  We'll have to come to her aid and help her figure out who might have ordered "dirt".  In the act of doing this, they will discover that it's more than dirt.  There's something in it...and I will help them come to understand how to process it.

We're going to participate in the Mastodon Matrix Project . There are very clear directions on how it's to be processed and I will help students discover this kind of scientific inquiry based on the Museum's protocols.  They've really done quite a bit to help a classroom teacher know how to do "real" science.  Right now I'm just waiting for our kilos of matrix to arrive from the Museum of the Earth.    As part of the Science for Citizens Network,  @Sci4Cits    I'm very excited to use this as the entry into 6th grade science, PBL and the start of school.  Love Science for Citizens motto

"Science you can do."

Just today I was brainstorming with a new f2f colleague who is going to be the art teacher at my school next year.  She was sharing "The Creative Process" with me...steps outlined on her bulletin board that students should follow in working on their projects.  It looked remarkably akin to the scientific method and the historical inquiry procedure. 

We decided that it would be great fun to teach this at 100,000 feet so students could see that inquiry projects---be they from science, art or social studies---all start with a question.  And then someone goes about this general methodology for answering and testing out their conclusions about the answer.  We're going to weave into the lesson parts of her curriculum on relief, scultpure and maybe even try to help them build a plaster mold of the mastadon's footprint.

I've been learning in my Unleashing Student Passion class to release control to students and this will be one of the first lessons where I'm focusing.  I've learned so much from the course instructors (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Shelley Wright) as well as other teachers who are taking the course.  I love this kind of learning....relevant, hard hitting, making you feel uncomfortable because you know you can be better, and satisfying.  It's been hard to make time to do this but it's going to be a huge forward step in my professional practice.   I've had all the pieces but not such a good framework on which to hang them...so the organization of this has been the biggest help to me in thinking about the work.

I have brainstormed a conceptual map of all the learning I know is required by my district for the scientific method, communciating about scientists, the history of science and process skills.  I will repeat this with my students...and then merge those two maps into a mindmeld concept map where I will teach the parts where I'm required to cover and leave huge gaps for students to fill in with areas surrounding this topic about which they are passionate.

I can't tell you much about what they'll pick but with the whole subject of scientific inquiry and mastodon's available to them...well, I'm imagining they'll find something about which they can be passionate.

One thing is very disappointing about the Smithsonian's website, though....while there is a good split between men and women...there's a lack of diversity in the people. Even the NYTimes had trouble only finding 2 non-Caucasian looking faces in their test-yourself..."Name that Scientst".

Maybe my students will remedy that.  Maybe that will be their area of passion....and a way to connect to the world!

 

Update: Accumulating a digital footprint...what students should know

via teachingtechie.typepad.com

I was writing about this important topic about a month ago because it's been on my radar of things to do. Since then I found out every student will have a gmail account now, so it's become even more important.

Digital citizenship can and should mean more than staying safe. It should also be about letting students know they can make a difference by invoking the power of communication. UNICEF must feel the same way.

Here's their video on how the web can make a positive impact by leveraging digital footprints of issues.

Accumulating a digital footprint...what students should know

"Digital footprints?  For real, Mrs. Ratzel?  I've never heard of anything like that...I can surf the web and no one knows who I am or where I come from." 

"Do I worry about who sees my work that I post?  No way."

"I love talking with my friends online and posting on their walls.  It's a blast and there's no one to tell me what to do."

Image licensed under Attribution CC http://goo.gl/AjLSL

I hear these whenever I bring up the subject of digital footprints to my students.  They feel all the power of surfing the web;  going wherever they chose, no one to say yes or no;  the perfect place for them to flex themselves as they grow and mature.  Can you blame them?  We felt that way too and just expressed it in different ways in our generation (doesn't matter how old you are, does it when you think of it like this).  I think the idea of a global generation is important with which to come to terms (the link will take you to a wonderful online speech by John Palfrey).  Digital identities leave behind traces of who you wherever you "travel" online.  Something like Google will bring these little pieces of "you" all together into a composite picture which mutates into a singular digital footprint.

So digital footprint matters.  As the adult in my classroom I know it and what I must do is to provide a learning experience to help students arm themselves with understanding.  I've been thinking about this idea of  digital footprints before.  Will they still feel that invincible power of teenagers?  Sure.  But maybe it will give them just enough of an awareness that they can hesitate (ever so slightly) and make a better decision.

Do you think they realize that all this goes on?

  

Now I've always used a digital driver's license approach.  It worked pretty well and it includes a set of 4 lessons, based on the Common Sense curriculum, that students must complete before I allow them to do much with computers. 

1. What information should be private and what can I share with the world?
2. How can I be smart about online talk and messaging?
3. Cyberbullying---it isn't funny and what you should do to make sure it doesn't happen to you as well as what you can do to help stop it
4. Sharing what you do with your parents---how to keep them informed, sharing passwords, and teaching them about what you're learning

Last year when I started blogging with students, I  incorporated a tiered system of gaining access to student publishing by having another gaunlet of skills that they must demonstrate before they were able to get their own blog, publish blog posts without my moderation and/or write posts for the class blog.  I read lots of materials, including some interesting work at the Youth and Media project which considers not only how this issue affects American youth, but youth throughout the wordl.

This year in a graduate course I teach, we started talking about all the aspects of digital citizenship and the driver's license.  They questioned whether a driver's license was broad enough to incorporate all the places students would be going.  Their questions made me realize that I need to revamp the idea and turn the driver's license into a passport. 

Changing from a Driver's License to a Digital Passport Makes Sense

It makes sense to me to manage the footprint with a passport because a student has to "visit" so many different places.  It allows me to use the metaphor of the internet being another world...and each place we go will be like another country.  To enter that country, you have to have a valid passport visa.

 

 I'm in the process of defining each of those "countries" right now.  Here's my brainstormed list so far

• Searching---synomyns, keywords
• Twitter---how to read, how to interact
• Images---copyright, how to find them
• Image alterations---where to manipulate the way they look both online and with school software
• High quality posting and commenting
• i Touch skills
• Recording audio & editing it
• USGS and NOAA websites---where to go; what you can find;
• Citation---how to do it; web-based citation helps; citation apps
• Scribe posting--how to notetake for the class; where to post
• Archiver--what to document, where to store what's been gathered; how to curate what you've done so other people can find it in the future

If there are things on this list that you think would be useful, please make a suggestion.  I've been designing an electronic version of the passport which I will post in the near future so that everyone can use it.

So what would you add?

 

Passport picture Image licensed under AttributionCC http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitywave/366712496/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

 

Beefing up my Twitter skills

Ronnie Burt has done a fantastic job explaining and creating a set of screenshots that help add a Follow-Me button on the webpage.  I'm always trying to find ways to improve the accessibility for readers to more of the content that I have....without junking up my blog.  This little button is perfect because it's easily findable right at the top.

I think this accomplishes my goal.

I didn't have to do much to tweak Ronnie's directions into Typepad.

 

 

I went to the Twitter/Follow Button just as Ronnie directed and copied the HTML embed code.  Then from my Dashboard, I went into Design.

 

 

 

Next you'll import this HTML into the Typepad Widgets section where you can customize widgets with your own HTML.  Luckily the website generates this for you and you don't have to do anything but copy/paste.

 

 

Then at the Design page, you click on Content, Widgets and Add your Own HTML.

 

 

 

Then I pasted in the embed code that the Twitter/Follow button genereated for me on the screen below.

 

The only thing I did that was different from the directions was I didn't fill in the Label box.  I didn't think the button would need a label...since I thought it would be self explanatory and would add more words to the page.

 

 

And then I "Saved Changes" and went to check how it looked.  I couldn't be more pleased and think this was very easy....so thanks to Ronnie for giving me these great directions from which to start.  Keep the suggestions coming because they are wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Giving Proper Attribution a Reality Check

via yollisclassblog.blogspot.com

Look at these faces!!! Do they look like they are happy? I just love the expressions of exasperation.  Mrs. Yollis played a lifelong lesson of how it feels to have your work credited it someone else.....making the lesson of copyright attribution real to these adorable 2nd graders. 

Here's what she did.  She took their artwork and intentionally mixed up the names of the artwork so that no one's name was on the right piece.  Clearly students didn't like that their work was being attributed to another student...and then the lesson of why they needed to give attribution to somone's photo or words meaning.

Take a second and visit Mrs. Yollis' blog to watch the video clip.  I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've seen.  It's inspired me to pull a similar experience on my students.....and then I plan on trying to pull off a "Mrs. Yollis's class" on my own students.  We learned to write high quality comments from these kiddos and we've been hard at work to put those lessons into practice.   and now we're going to learn another brilliantly simple but powerful online learning lesson from them.

So I think you'll want to to bookmark it and share it with your students.  Or take the challenge and have you own Mrs. Yollis moment and share it with others!!!  Keep coming back because I plan on taking my own pics and sharing it with everyone to show how much they've learned. 

Thanks Mrs. Yollis and her students.  You're #1 in my book.

And you help illustrate the point that we're all smarter when we share and work together for the benefit of our students.

Blogging frenzy continues as students unravel the mystery

via teachingtechie.typepad.com

Just an update on our efforts...the deception continues. Students are busy answering akadangreen's questions.    We're rapidly approaching almost 200 comments.

My favorite interchange was between one of my most reserved students who hardly ever speaks loudly....akadangreen wanted to know about his mineral...lead.  Lead you might ask?  How did he pick lead?  Well, his dad is a radiologist so what other kind of mineral would he pick?  Don't you love that?  akadangreen asked him how much lead was exported from the US every year!!!!

He looked at me because he had no idea what that even meant.  So we talked about what an export was.  And then we on a hunt.  We tried a bunch of keywords...and pretty soon we had a group of 10 kids standing around trying to thing of synonyms we could use to find data on how much lead the US exports in any year.

Eventually we found it at the USGS...of course students said.  We downloaded an insane .pdf chart detailing the export #s for every mineral in the whole US and we followed the list down to lead where we found the 2009 #. (One of the kids asked me if everything was answered at either USGS or NASA or NOAA!!!  I guess that tells you a lot about our classroom.) Here's what Nick wrote and posted on the blog about what he did with the number....

In 2009 the US actually produced 82,000 metric tons. This equals 180,800,000 pounds. How I got that answer is 1.808 multiplied by 10 to the eighth power. Your answer from that is the amount of pounds.  The computer told me 10^8, then the calculator made it into 180,800,000.

Sources: WolframAlpha.com

The USGS only had metric ton info.  That meant we had to have a discussion about the kinds of tons.  Which then meant we had to change the metric tons into pounds.

Jokingly I asked him if he could do that conversion.  His eyes sort of popped out and then I told him I had no idea how to do it either.  But I knew a place that could help us.  Wolfram.  Oh yeah he said,we've used that before.  So off to Wolfram we went where he typed in "How many pounds is 82,000 metric tons?" which came back with

Immediately he whips out a calculator to find out what that looks like.  And is able to come up with 180,800,000.  I think he was super pleased with himself and actually looked forward to going home and posting this answer to akadangreen.

What a fun couple of days where kids have learned so much about minerals PLUS about a million other things.  Who would have thought the ensuing conversation---with all the questions back and forth would keep them wondering, asking and answering.

Another fantastic way to use Google's spreadsheet for formative assessments

While I've been using Google docs for quite a while but this week I tried a new assignment with my students and happened (and how I wish I could say that I planned it) on a fabulous ah-ha.  Formative assessments are terrific AND the goal should not only be for me to learn something about where the student stands in their learning, but also to give them feedback AND for them to learn something as they complete the assessment.  Instead of creating the typical checklist in a wordprocessing format, I created a spreadsheet.

As students completed each task, they entered the required info or a yes/no to indicate where they were on the checklist.  They could also enter data into the spreadsheet about the sources of information they were using for their work.  That I anticipated and expected to happen.  But I was thinking of the document in a more static way....I knew multiple people could edit on it at the same time in Google Docs but I had never actually thought about monitoring their progress as they did it.  It was that dynamic quality that allowed me to give the feedback which then resulted in them learning more during the assessment.  We didn't have to wait until the next lesson to remediate where they weren't "getting it" and I could draw in an expert "student" to help them get what they needed to know.  Right then...on the spot.

Usually I walk around the lab and find that I get pulled into a protracted conversation with someone about doing a particular process...which is fine and OK...except that I don't accomplish what I really need to do which is to keep surveying the whole group and getting everyone moving along.

BUT  I had this EUREKA moment when I saw that keeping the Google spreadsheet open gave me that gave me a unique bird's eye vantage point as they did their work and I could also ask questions and ask for clarfication.  I was so overwhelmed, that I tried to capture as much of the experience as I could on a Jing screencast to share.  I was stationary and staying to my purpose and not being sidetracked.   I was still able to direct extra help to the people who needed it but I called on the expertise of my students to meet those needs instead of me!!!  instead of cloning myself I figured a way to develop more capacity from students.  I've long been a believer in this but I hadn't seen this method for deploying that student expertise before.

I made this on the fly and it is filled with the chatter of the students in the background but I think you'll be able to see what I mean.

I know it's sounds dorky but I was able to help students know exactly what to do and I knew exactly where they stood with getting their blogs up to speed on each of these elements. 

I think I hadn't appreciated the dynamic nature of watching the information transform before my eyes.  I could see where they were struggling to get something filled it and they were able to see what other students had done to get that part of the assignment finished.  This is such a wonderful example of a formative assessment that is outside the box of what most people think of formatives....but it is part of my imagining how formatives can and should be used in the future to help students learn in a powerful, connected future-forward (I hate the term 21st century) way.

Sometimes you're good and find something.  Lots of times, you're just lucky and have to be smart enough to see that you've stumbled on something wonderful.  I'm lucky!!!!  So how cool is that I figured out how to do a formative assessment AND tap into the student expertise of my kids....all just by using a tool that I've used a million times before just not in this way.

Have you discovered anything like this that could be purposed for formative assessments?  I just know that there are many, many more possibilities just waiting to be discovered out there.