Reflections of a Techie

Microloans can make a difference

Kiva is now 4 years old and it is one of the greatest things in my life.  What is Kiva?  It's a microloan website that allows me to make small loans to people in other countries.

What is the best is that a loan is probably made from at least a dozen people...maybe more if the loan amount is larger.  All these random people who don't know each other, read the loan need, decide to fund part of it, are combined with other people who felt the same way, and the loan is made.

I took a screenshot of a loan I made to a women in Peru who needed money to help her farm the land her folks had left to her.  Bacilla needed money for fertilizer and seeds..promising to repay the loan within 8 months.  True to her word, the entire loan amount was repaid within 7 months.  I can't tell you how it makes me feel to help someone who has very little...hopefully making a difference.

Look at where the microloaners came from.

They came from all parts of the world.  If I look at the Google Maps of my other loans it's the exact same story again and again.  People like me who have only $20 or $30 to offer periodically can make a difference in the world.

I started adding to my Kiva accounts when I was frustrated that the world was in the dumper and I could do nothing.  I'm not famous.  I'm not rich.  I'm incapable of going anywhere and doing anything.  I don't trust large organizations to do what they say they will do.  And then I found Kiva...they ask for donations whenever you make a loan to help pay their overhead expenses and the rest of the money you send goes directly to the person.

So far I have made 13 loans.  I try to add $30 to my account as often as possible...once the loan is repaid I have that money to relend.  My goal is to leave my children and future grandchildren as big of an account as I can so they will carry on my dream of helping others from around the world.

OK 13 loans isn't that many.  But it is 13 more people than I had helped when I started 2 1/2 years ago.  And that is what counts...I'm not powerless.  I can make a difference and I am doing it.

How about you?

Can you draw with a temperature probe?

It's such a busy few class days...on Friday we had our first temperature probe lab.  This one is mostly about getting them to start learning how to use the probes.  I think it's quite brilliant of the lab designers to have students manipulate how the graph looks by dunking the probe in warm and cold water.  It's a totally engaging learning activity because students love to make a "M" on their graph or a "N".  It's funny..they beg to try it again and make their letter look better.  Almost immediately they begin to internalize how to make the graph line rise or fall.

Our only problem was that we couldn't get it all done in the 43 minutes.  I have to wait 4 days until I can get the laptop cart signed out again to finish the lab.

Students have asked me over and over again....can we do that again?  when are we going to finish our lab?  What I love is that they understand why the graphs move in the ways that they do.  This is something that I used to never be able to achieve with days of instruction and tons of worksheets.  Now I hook up the probes and in about 2 class periods, they are "pros".  This is tech integration at its finest.

Help!!! NBCT Recertification...brainstormers needed!!!

My life is overwhelming right now...too much to do and the pressure is huge.  It's the start of my two year window to renew my National Board Certification...and I just didn't know if I had enough energy to do it.  Luckily for me, I have a great group of folks from which to take my inspiration.  I read through the Teacher Leader Network posts on doing renewal.  Sounds like everyone pretty much felt like me before they started.

So I'm putting aside all my fears and just going for it.  I've tried to read through the directions and have no idea what I do that would even qualify as a Professional Growth Experience...but I'm sure it will come to me.  Hopefully my virtual community can continue to help me struggle through this experience.

The thing about is this....I know I have the essence of a National Board teacher but to take the time to sit down to write about it in a coherent way is frightening.  I know I can do but I only remember the amazing amount of time it took me to do the initial certification.  I know that I don't have that in me...but I think this one is easier.  I just need a mentor...someone who knows what is going on and that can help me brainstorm.  If I could get a plan in mind, I know I can execute it.

So anyone out there that thinks they would like to help me, I'm open to all suggestions and help.

Good tidings abound in my halls

I think I must be on a roll because usually I write about assessment or technology...today I have more than those usual topics to write about.  I have to tell you what a cool bunch of colleagues I teach with.

My mother is old, 87 years young right now.  She fell about 3 weeks ago and she's in pain.  More pain everyday and it is heartbreaking watching her get worse and worse.  Over the weekend, I found in her a state when I checked on her early Saturday morning...a state better left to one's imagination.  I knew I had to get her seen by a physician.

Early Monday morning (my first day of school at the middle school and in teaching my grad school classes), I called to get her an appointment...first time they could see was today at 2pm.  So on the 2nd day of school, I had to get a half day sub.  Normally I am never absent.  I'm the one everyone else asks for favors.

Today I had to ask others for favors.  Boy did they respond.  instead of having to write out sub plans, they told me to combine my class with theirs and they'd take care of it.  I couldn't have appreciated it more and it relieved my fears that while I was taking care of my mom, my students would be lost with a sub.  Mind you, we're still at the critical phase where they tend to cry because they're overwhelmed with starting in a new school.

Cutiest story of the day...one of my little guys didn't show up for class.  We looked for him in the hall and in others classes and he wasn't anywhere.  We were going to the pod to combine with another class so we weren't in our classroom.  When I went back in about 20 minutes later, there he sat.  Big crockodile tears in his eyes because he didn't know where we were or what to do.  So he sat very quietly in the back of the room, hoping someone would eventually come back for him.  he had gone to PE instead of my class because they are alternate day classes.  He was so relieved to see me, I thought he might hug me.  So sweet they are in this first week of school.

So sweet are my teammates who helped me out and saved my kids from the dreaded substitute video lesson plan!!!!

Lifelong learning is a personal responsibility....

My dear friend Bill Ferriter is writing about another one of my hot topics!!!  Go Bill.  His wondering is about how we will change our profession into lifelong learners.  I have to say that this is a topic that is very close to my heart...probably because I really believe in the whole idea of lifelong learner and how it keeps me young and curious....

Also this fall I am teaching another grad school class on Teaching and Learning with Technology.  My introductory unit is all about Lifelong Learning.  I make the case for it by citing some pretty well known stats....only 7% of teachers who use technology use it effectively (ie seamlessly and appropriate for the learning target).  Parker Palmer says it so well.....“good teaching is rather more than technique: 'good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher'.  This is where we find the push to be better than we are today...when it comes from our identity and the integrity of finding out who we are as a teacher.  That is the heart of the reflection process and that I learned during my National Board process almost 10 years ago.  The folks in these grad school classes, for the most part, are very motivated, committed individuals...they are smart and have developed a good sense of their cohort community.  I think they are really helpful to each other although they are mostly online, virtual classmates.  Their discussion forums last summer were inspiring, so I'm excited to see what they do with this kind of challenge.

I am going to be bold in this class I'm teaching.  I designed a learning activity where my grad students will have to join a virtual community.  I picked Classroom 2.0 because it fits the wide range of content areas and age groups that are reflected in my class demographics...and because it offers something for the beginning to the experienced user.  What is bold is that they must pick one aspect of the community to investigate each week and then use a reflection blog to record what they learned.  Many may believe this is too much to do...many may believe I should be more directive...and I'm hoping that many will enjoy the freedom to define for themselves what it is they want to learn while....many will benefit from the requirement to reflectively blog.  I'm not "grading" the blog so we'll see how many will do it.... 
For 6 weeks they'll investigate, try things out and write about it...then we'll post our individual conclusions and do an online discussion to try and generalize the experience beyond what each person found out by themselves.

I think if we gave teachers more learning experiences like this, we might begin to develop more independence.  Yes, they'll hate that it's not more defined and prescriptive.  But as we do more and more like this...places where we can't really fail or there isn't one single path to follow, we can develop a culture that embraces this kind of learning.  How many PD experiences have you attended where this open-ended, long term learning is the target or objective?  I can tell you I haven't been to many.

Great question Bill.  I'll let you know how my 6 week experiment goes.

Amping up the efficiency of creating enhanced podcasts

All day I've been making enhanced podcasts...you know the kind with the audio file and slides at the same time.  I use GarageBand and it's really pretty simple to use.  I've taken a bunch of lessons using my One-to-One training at the Apple Store.  (If you haven't taken advantage of this inexpensive way to get tons of lessons..look at the possibilities.  For $99 a year, they'll give you one-on-one training and you can sign up pretty much every 10 days.  I've taken in partially done projects where I'm stuck and need a bit of help...all the way to them teaching me toolbars.  My only reservation is that if you have a project where you need help ASAP, the wait can be too long to really help.)

The tip I want to share with anyone who is interested is this...I've tried a couple of ways to make this a more time efficient process.  Sometimes I've recorded all the audio, then gone back and put markers into where the pictures/slides should go...and sometimes I've recorded the audio one slide at a time and inserted the pictures/slides as I go along.

I have to say that my very unscientific experimentation shows that recording the audio one slide and inserting the image then is more time efficient.  By almost 15%.  I think it's all the doubling back I have to do when I record all the audio and then I have to go back through to put in the markers and then back through again to drop in the images.

I'm sure that someone who is much more schooled in this technology can see all the flaws in both my methods.   I think this is where if someone wanted to do some real educational research you'd probably discover that self taught folks have ways of doing things, but that formally trained folks have better, more efficient ways of doing things.  Just a guess and I don't know either to be true.

Did you feel the spirit of the 4th of July? I did!!!!

Yesterday I had the good fortune to stumble across a pre-Fourth of July parade.  I happened to be in Oceanside, California which is just outside the gates of Fort Pendleton...a huge Marine base.  Oceanside seems like city of contrasts...there's a big dose of surfer types, another big dose of tourists and a huge chunk of Marines.  An interesting mix, huh?

This parade was like so many I've been to or when I was in the marching band.  Yet it had such a different feel.  I think it was the presence of Marine families and Marines in uniform standing along the parade route.  I stood near an Iraq war vet who had 2 hearing aides in because of an injury who was in his uniform.  I haven't stood near many Marines recently and let me tell you....they are a presence...take up a lot of space both physically and psychologically.

As the parade went on and the twirlers had passed by along with the beauty queens and city council members....car loads of veterans started.  This section of the parade was dedicated to Pearl Harbor Survivors, WWII vets, Korea vets, VFW members, Desert Storm vets, and Iraq and Afghanistan vets.  As each group came by, the Marine captain next to me would snap to attention and yell out Semper Fi.  If there was another Marine in the car, that person would yell "hoo ra" back.  Other people in the crowd would applaud and yell out "thanks".  This parade made me remember my Daddy.  He served as an artillary spotter in the Army Air Force before there was a separate branch of the service.  I know, in small chunks, how he changed from what he went through in those two wars.  It was a good thing and a burden to carry...but he felt like it was his priviledge and duty to protect our country and his family.  I felt that same sense of things while I was watching.

I was reduced to tears.  The spirit of brotherhood that went back and forth between the captain and vets...well, it was special.  The unity of people standing and thanking these vets for their service and sacrifices was humbling.  I am so glad I happenstanced upon this parade.  It was a blessing in my life and one I won't forget....ever.

It's almost time for wiki camp!!!!

Last summer I was thrashing about trying to learn how to use wiki more effectively.  I was a self-taught wiki user so I had gaps and holes.  Along came the PBwiki Summer Camp.  I found it by chance and enrolled...faithfully doing all homework and watching the videos.  I was so pumped.  I did use what I learned in putting together a wiki for an NSF grant that I was working on.  Most of those teachers hadn't used a wiki, so I felt like I was true to my commitment to use the resource although it wasn't with my students.

But I had planned to use it with my science students.  That didn't happen.  Unfortunately I really have to do one thing at a time.  Otherwise I find that I don't implement anything well.  So when I had a chance to get some totally rad Vernier probes to add to my science labs, I jumped at the chance to integrate those into my classroom.  I'm not sorry I made this choice, but it did mean that I didn't do wikis with my science students.

Along came a new invitation (along with a new wiki name) to join the Summer Camp again.  I'm enrolled along with 1700 other teachers who are all committed to learning how to integrated this kind of writing into their classroom.  I couldn't be more excited...even though I'm overwhelmed with other work obligations.

PBworks summer camp starts on Monday and I am excited.  I'll keep you posted on how things are going and what I'm learning as we go along.

Expository science writing...part 2

I wrote about using the Essay Map to help us do our scientific writing.  The first day seemed like things were going fine and then we fell off the track.

My students are so young and literal that they couldn't make the jump from a English class assignment to using that something in science class.  When I'd talk about the main idea of their lab, they would just look at me astonished.  (It sort of felt like when I ask them who was the "Who" in a reading passage.  Remember when you learned the 5Ws + H as a way to read for information.  They couldn't jump to thinking about the WHO as anything other than a story's character.)

I had to go back and rework the whole Essay Map.  I actually combined with the Persuasion Map because writing a science lab conclusion is a bit more persuasive than essay in nature.  At least at 6th grade.  I try and convince my students that their job is convince the lab report reader that their evidence "proves" that what they've concluded is accurate, reliable and valid.

I also thought if they filled out this graphic organizer that they'd be able to write their paragraphs using the graphic organizer.  They weren't able to do.  So I regrouped again and wrote my own paragraph and shared that with them.  They actually copied exactly what I wrote on the board as their essay.  I asked..."If I had written My name is Mrs. Ratzel", wouldn't you know to substitute your own name where my name was?"

"Well, we guess so now that you say it that way." ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Now that I knew where they were in thinking/writing like this, I highlighted each place in my essay that they needed to substitute their own data.  In a different color, I highlighted the words they couldn't just copy..that they needed to find their own way of explaining what they were thinking.  Honestly I was about to give up at this point....and it was then, from the depths of discouragement, that their light bulbs started going off.  Thank goodness for my SmartBoard because I could still use the essay I originally wrote and I just used the different colors for the different purposes in their writing.

"Oh, this is what you wanted us do?"   "well, that's easy".  Easy????  Easy?????....if it's easy, I thought...do it.  Sure enough they did.

Are you falling off your chair laughing?  You should be.  It's why teaching middle school kids is the best.  They keep you young with their innocence and on your toes as you stretch them to unimaginable places.  The last part of this writeup is to get their data tables and graphs in a more formalized looking fashion.  At least I know that won't be as hard as this writing piece has been.  Boy will I be ready next year with some interim steps to save all of us some frustration and gnashing of teeth. 

Can you prove that? using evidence to support conclusions

We're coming to the end of the Journey North...a study about how to use photoperiod data to track down mystery locations throughout the world.  Students have said this is "the best" and "I hate this project".  Actually both comments delight me because they reveal, at least in my opinion, the depth of this study.

Students are used, at least in 6th grade, to knowing the answer off the top of their head.  If they don't know, they just say something like...

"I don't get it."  or "I need help". 

To which I always reply, "What don't you get or "What do you need help with". 

Usually the answer is "Everything".  And as any teacher worth their salt would say..."I can't help you until you know a bit more about what you don't know.  Or at least be able to tell me what you have tried and where you got stuck".

Students hate those kinds of answers.  All to frequently they want you to give them the answer or they will badger you with so many questions that you will give in and just tell them what they ask you.  This project has been like that.

It has been painful and has made me wonder why I chose to do this project again.  It's my  5th year.  Yet now that we are down to the end, my students love the project and are thrilled that we're about to find out if they have correctly deduced the location of these classrooms.  They have used math, they've analyzed sunrise/sunset patterns, looked through atlases, had to discuss their reasoning and defend their evidence, and they've had to suffer through their teacher not knowing "the answer" or if they are on the right track.

It has been a wonderful experience (albeit I don't think they'll realize it for years to come) in using evidence and data to "prove" that your conclusion is reasonable and logical.  They've ramped up their conversations with each other.  It makes me laugh because they are both delighted when they get the same answer (because then they think they must be onto the right answer) or if one of the holdouts can prove their point better than the crowd and the crowd switches their thinking.

The SmartBoard has been invaluable during the Journey North. We save all of our thinking....I convert those thinking drafts into PDFs and upload them onto our class webpage.  That helps the kids at night when they are working on a clue and they need to review what we came up with in class.  I can also display anything we've done because I've saved everything in weekly folders.  Lastly when someone is gone, sick or disorganized (read:  they lost their notes or spiral)...the notes are downloadable off our class page.  The SB has made a huge improvement over past years and I can't imagine how we did this without the SB Notebook software.  (BTW..in the middle of Journey North they upgraded me to a different version of SB Notebook.  That took a little adjustment, but we LOVE the table function and use it all the time to aggregate all 10 mystery locations)