Reflections of a Techie

I Hate ROBOLAB

That's a pretty strong statement but it sums up my 7 years not so pleasant experience with the software. 

Picture this...we're working on our bots and my kids have been working hard to figure out gear ratios.  OK, they're 6th graders and ratios are still a bit foreign to them.  We've spent the whole week talking about ratios and what they mean.  And they've got their bot built and are ready to start the trials...we were to change into different gear configurations and see what the effect was on speed.

I only needed Robolab to allow the kids to create the simplest of programs...just a short 4 second turn on of both motors.  Not so much to ask.  But Robolab IR interface is a continuing problem in our school environment. 

First of all, we don't have the proper network permissions for the kids to be able to plug in the USB Infrared Tower...so I have to log onto the computers.  So much for network security.

Then it won't "see" the IR tower because we have too much light.  We try putting the tower in a box, under a desk in a box and so forth.  Still our program won't download into the RCX brick.  I find out that we haven't installed the patch.  Whatever the darn patch is..........

It's enough to discourage teachers and students.  It's why I hate technology.  When it's so complicated that you just want to throw in the towel ....well, all the cool learning is gone.  The kids were so disappointed that we could run their tests...

Not to worry.  I called a friend who has a stand alone computer not invovled in the network.  She brought it over to my room and we just wrote one program that everyone used.  The IR towers worked great and the bricks got the instruction set. 

Monday we'll run our trials.  I wish I could permanently borrow my friend's computer.  That's so not practical.  I simply lack the resources or know-how to get this to work on what I have in my room.  And by the way, let me tell you that our NXT software, LabView, works like a charm.  If I only had enough NXT bots, I'd be just fine.

Design Flaws in the Creative Projects

Oh the tricky places they've put the old commands in EX. I'm so lost in navigating around the new EX and students are stumbling around....having learned some of the basics during their 6th grade experience. We are truely co-learners in the truest sense of the idea.

It's great when the numbers are small. But when I'm faced with a class of 28 and a poor classroom layout. Frankly on those days in 8th hour, I could cry somedays. I can't clone myself and I do a terrible job of meeting their needs. I swear that every single student is saying "Mrs. Ratzel" at least 200 times in the 43 minutes. I'm faced with either giving them such a low level exercise that they simply copy instructions or I can help them enough.

So I clearly need to restructure how I design this creative project in the future. I think rather than build this creative project as such a large---do or die kind of thing----I will need to chunk it. By doing that I can do more demos and they can work on those demos. Possibly as groups. I was thinking I could do one as a demo, then one as a triad group and then one as an individual. When we had completed 4 or 5 of those chunks, THEN I could assign this creative project.

Also I would like to redefine the creative project. Right now the only types of creative projects I am seeing are storybooks. While I like storybooks, I think there are so many other possibilities.

That's where my demonstrations have fallen short. I needed to present other options for them to see. If had shown more examples of gaming and of simulations, I think I would have some of those. When I did Squeak creative projects, I had many other kinds of projects that showed a wider applications of their programming talents. These projects fall short of creativity.

Inch by Inch: Progress to Building RoboLab Programming Expertise

Reflecting back on the first group of our students made me realize that something was really not working. The girls just sat there like bumps on a log. They did not take on their roles. The boys just rolled over the tops of them and the girls let them.

No matter how much I tried to go into a group and talk to them. As soon as I turned around and left, at the first sign of trouble the boys took back over. And the girls were in the passive role. I didn't understand what was happening. In the opening class meetings we would talk about it. We tried listing this as a problem and talking about it during those meetings, but still it continued.

It was something that plagued the Robolab class throughout the 3 weeks we worked.

Not that there were not some wonderful things that the students learned. One of the groups just blasted through the material. They must have had loads of previous building experience. You could just tell that one student, Tom, had used Lego during his younger years. He could "see" how to put the pices together and consequently, their robots worked flawlessly.

Most of the other groups worked well. One of the things that didn't work very well was their understanding of program icons. This will be something that we need to improve upon next time. We are not reaching the level of understanding that I believe they could reach.

All in all, I think we gain insight as to where we could go with this program. The student made significant progress towards programming with new kinds of tools. It was an experiment and it was successful. But I think we could improve it in many ways to make it more efficient next time around.

Started a Publisher project...ended up teaching summarizing

Starting off with a new group always presents the challenge of teaching them the basic information that they don't want to learn. There's no way getting around it and these bunch of 7th graders are no different....

they want snap
they want crackle
they want pop

they most definitely don't want read, summarize and learn.

But so sorry, so sad. That's what they have to do. Without a foundation, there can be no building. So we will continue with the boring stuff. Oh, did I say that there are computer animations and Flash movies that illustrate every "boring" point. As I re-read my writing I can sense that I am slightly miffed, but not really because I remember being this age and wanting everything to be fun, so I'm not surprised and I'm not really unhappy with them.. It is a good opportunity for them to take that next step towards figuring out school is about learning and it won't hurt them or kill them to read and learn.

Yesterday I realized though, that they were rushing through the material without learning anything. So today I revised my gameplan and they learned today. I'm using the Intel Journey Inside the Computer website.

It's full of short articles and wonderful information. We're doing the introductory article on computing. I'm having students copy and paste the article into a Word document. Then then are using the Format tool and the Strikethrough feature to eliminate the information that they don't need in their summary of the one page that they are reading. Their goal is to write a 2-3 sentence summary of the page.

Using this strategy, they are NOW reading the article. After they do the strikethrough, they can go back using the Review toolbar and get the highlighter and pick the most important ideas they want to include in their summary....still aiming for a 2-3 sentence summary. In addition, they must look up and include the glossary words in their notes. I'm not sure whether or not this is in the wrong place in the sequence, though. Maybe the glossary words should be in the beginning. I may change that tomorrow.

When all this is completed, students will change font color and write a 2-3 sentence summary of each page and turn their notes into my Assignment dropbox. So I will have 7 summaries. I'm trying to decide how many glossary words they should use in those summaries....I don't know if I should require them using the words or not. Hummmmmmmmmm I 'll have to keep thinkin' on that one.

Anyway, I know this is going better and I'm more pleased with the outcome. It's a better lesson. And the bonus of it all is that as their computer teacher, I'm teaching more Word tools before I start the Publisher project.....which was the whole purpose of reading these Intel sites to start with!!!! Ironic isn't it!!!!

Head on Collision with Grade Cards

I'm hitting a wall with my computer. The darn thing is acting up so I can't count on it...laptop tops are just that way. It's so flaky that I never know if it's going to work or not. The cursor just flies down and "falls" off the screen. Man, I could just scream. And it's time for me to be training our teachers to post their December report card grade to the grade cards.

This is not the favorite part of my job. I'll admit it. I don't hate it...(which of course I thought that I would going into this year). I like helping my colleagues learn how to ride this tornado and whip it down to size. But without my computer I'm going to have a dickens of a time demonstrating how to do things. I've got little Camtasia movies built that really take the pressure off me.

Enough griping. I'd better figure out plan B. Time's awasting and I"m not making progress.

I Need a Clone

How can I split myself into pieces so that the hue and cry...Mrs. Ratzel I need help. No Mrs. Ratzel I really need help much more than he/she needs help. No Mrs. RAtzel I really, really need help and I've been waiting all class. Too many needs, too little me.

Well, I'm going to work all weekend on creating some little videos from the Camtasia software that my district bought. It lets me create little Flash movies of things that they need to do inside Microworlds that I can create an "onscreen" movie of and store in a library. Then when they need to do one of the standard procedures, I can tell them to go and watch the tutorial movie I've created. Hopefully this will cut down on the "Mrs. Ratzels" and get students the help they need much faster than I am able to now provide.

I feel terrible. They are frustrated with having to wait so long. It sounds like it could be win-win solution to my situation. Now if I can just teach myself the software on Friday night. Make enough videos on Saturday and then on Sunday create the library so it's ready to go on Monday. Maybe I'll shoot for the top 10 questions that are asked over and over and over for starters.

Well, off I better go. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Logo---Success and Failures

I've hit a big snag.

I have 2 sections of students and one is streaking along like a greyhound...lots of terrific ideas. Building on a wonderful website of seed ideas (ala Bernie Dodge's termanology). They are going to undertake the most fantastic of storybook animations, games and other projects. I can hardly wait. They want to attempt shopping sprees, football games, car races, maze games, guessing the jellybean jar games and on and on.

And then there's my other class. I am struggling to know what to do with my other class. 5 of them are right there with the first paragraph kiddos. They are more than capable of doing the things the other hour are doing, but I'm not teaching them those things....I can't find the classroom management structure yet to organize my time so I can get to them. I am neglecting to ignite their imaginations. I have to spend the time today.... no excuses. If nothing else today gets done in this hour I have to spend time with the high end kids.

Then there's the middle group. They're great kids, but they want to be walked through everything and handheld. Problem solving isn't their "bag". They need me to teach them problem solving. What they want me to do is to solve their problem. So we are at a crossroads and I need to help them understand it isn't about solving this animation problem...it's about them learning to try something and if it doesn't work then trying something else. I am wondering if I can enlist the help of one of my principals to come in and work with them. Or some other adult? I just don't know. But they are acting like helpless girls and I don't like that.

And then there's my last group of kiddos. They can't read very well and they can't write. So programming in Logo and writing commands is very difficult if done on grade level. I tried modifying the assignment. But it wasn't enough. So I went and asked the 8th grade teachers for some peer tutors to come in and help...I'm going to try a 2:1 and see if that will help out. I think I may be able to then write some of the subroutines for them to just call up from the network share folder and cut/paste into their procedures file. They should get the experience of writing the main program and doing the big thinking of the animation, but without all the detailed programming that is expected of the other 7th graders. Is this scaffolding or modifying appropriate? I don't know.

I need to do some soul searching over the weekend and over the Thanksgiving break. I have listened to other teachers talk about how they use Logo with younger students and I need to contact them and see what they do with younger students and try and match that to my student's academic abilities maybe? So many ideas and so few solutions. I only have these students for 6 weeks and then they'll be off and I'll get another bunch in for 6 weeks. It's so little time to get to know them well enough to adjust, plan and implement.

Carpet Chats and Sharing Problem Solving Wins

An exhausting day and I'm ready for rest. We've just finished installing a new gradebook program and I have been tasked with the part-time responsibility of training 4 middle school buildings. Teachers hate the program because it's so buggie---it is really more like a beta program than a finished product, but they do their best. It makes for a long morning's work. The only way to survive is accumulate lots of OJT and just know how to solve problems because of the acculumated experience.

Then off to teach my students with their MW projects. I decided to take at least 10 minutes at the start of class to make a T chart of the victories and the struggles they've encountered so far in the Countryside project. This was the best decision I've made. As they talked about their work, students found what was a struggle for one of them was a victory for someone else. Then they chatted about why it was different for each person....lots of ohhhhhhhhhh and ahhhhhhhhhhhhs. And when someone had discovered something that was universally helpful to everyone, then that was literally starred as a biggie learning for everyone involved.

I called them together for what I'm calling a Carpet Chat. It's virtually impossible, from a classroom management perspective, to get them to really focus if they are sitting at their machines. There's just too much temptation. So by moving the conversation to the carpet, they really plug into what we're talking about, it decreases my behavior corrections, and shortens the time we have to spend talking because we're so much more efficient.

Skimming vs Scanning

Is it a reading strategy or not? Well, there is certainly no agreement on that as I've read through a multitude of online articles. But I don't really care...what I want to know is how to help students.

Skimming is done to get the gist of the reading selection. Most of the articles I read said you try and read anywhere from 3 to 5 times as normal speed. But it's important to remember that reading from a screen or monitor is already slower to begin with than the same text on paper. It would seem that you use this technique to identify the main idea(s) of the article.

Most articles advocated looking at titles, subheadings, captions, or maybe even reading the first line of each paragraph. From this assortment of odds n ends, you should be able to figure out what the author's trying to say. You use skimming to find specific information not engage in comprehension of the entire thing.

Scanning by contrast is to go straight for the details. Keyword identification is a biggie here and something that I could easily incorporate into my instruction.

I think I'm understanding what this is all about. Now I have to apply what I've learned to my content and figure out how to proceed with my students.

So what did YOU learn?

I'm sure that this last week I have failed to be effective in what I wanted to accomplish. The why of it is what's important.

My students' writing was terrible. Shallow, lacking content or thinking. Not universally, but enough of them to provide convincing evidence that my instruction had missed its mark. So I've been thinking about why. And while there's no single factor that comes forth, I can see that I failed to chunk this online writing task into enough components with guided practice to produce a quality product in the end.

Writing starts with reading. Here lies another big source of problems. From discussions, it was apparent that comprehension wasn't very good. I need to go back and review the websites I picked. I thought I had carefully screened them for interest and reading ability. But maybe I missed the mark. I also need to segment the reading portion of the assignment.

Here's where I don't know enough about reading online. Certainly skimming and scanning are the prequisite skills...so I need to do more research about how this is best accomplished. As I have thought about this, it also occurs to me that I need to include some kind of a metacognitive checkpoint....that point being where a student realizes that they can't absorb information from the screen alone and makes a decision to read it in print. I wonder how I can teach that to them? I guess I should think about how I do that for myself for clues.

Once we hurdle the reading part, then I need to revamp the writing. Sure needed to incorporate more of the writing process steps. Initially I didn't think I should check outlines/drafts but the quality of posts really makes me reconsider that decision. How can I do this in an inobtrustive way....or is it just a pain until they get the idea? The faster the learn and apply what they know is a good quality post, the sooner they are free to jump through the teacher approval hoop?????????

I also am wondering if I shouldn't work on teaching some of the HTML tags so they could go back, strikeout pieces of their writing and insert new ideas/words/etc. That preserves the original but allows them to revise their online writing. I need to surf some other people's blogs to see what they are doing and giving students a way to incorporate steps of the writing process electronically.???????????

Lots to think about, more research to be done. I do think, on a positive note, that all 100% of my students learned how to use the discussion board, create a post, answer with a reply. So it wasn't a complete waste of their learning time. They also were able to glean from each other enough tidbits of the articles that they added to their understanding of a sometimes pretty complex topic---AUP and copyright.