Teaching Handwriting?

An experiment: I'm going to make a bold statement here, and I'd like you to notice your gut reaction to it, okay? You'll have to scroll down the page a bit to get to it, because I don't want you to read it immediately. Ready for this? All right, start scrolling...

How Can We Expect Our Students to Cite Sources if We Don't?

A couple weeks ago I was doing an EdTech workshop with some 4th grade teachers and the topic of teaching kids to cite sources came up. How should we do this at the 4th grade level? How should we do this at any grade level?

While it is important to have explicit instruction in how to cite sources, I'm convinced that we have to model this. All. The. Time. This will make it a "normal" part of kids' culture--an expectation that they have to give credit for the work of others.

Thank you, someecards.com for
allowing me create things like this...

And--honestly, teacher--you can't in good conscience admonish your students to cite sources without also doing so yourself!

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Let's be real about this: we are busy people. Most of the time we want to do the right thing, but we are in a rush and figure, "what harm can it do?"

It's not that skipping citing one source is the end of the world. But a pattern of not citing your sources is a terrible model for your students. Getting yourself in the habit can be a great chance to point it out to your students later when you are teaching them (and requiring them) to cite sources themselves.

The Internet Changed Everything about Education

I recently came across this site, and I was pretty amazed by the perspective shown here. It's worth taking 30 seconds to check it out: One Second on the Internet.

It got me thinking about how much the Internet has changed education. I've been teaching for 15 years. In my first classroom, the extent of educational technology at my disposal was an overhead projector and a chalkboard. (CHALK! The kind that got my pants all dusty--remember that?)

I think about how much my teaching practice has evolved over the years; I recognize that I rely heavily on my computer for lesson planning and preparation and so many of the other "behind the scenes" tasks of teaching. Could I still teach without a computer? Yes...I think so. But the habits of mind I've adopted for my planning and prep have been fundamentally altered by the technology available to me. And it isn't really about the computer itself anymore.

It's about the connections to all the other computers out there. More than that...connections with all the other people using all the other computers out there.

Ah, network cables and switches. This is the Internet, people.
Image via jerryjohn CC BY-ND 2.0

Easy to Use iPad Animation Creator

So you want to have your elementary or middle school students create short, narrated animations on their iPads? I just came across a nifty app to do just that.

Check out Tellagami. This free app is ridiculously easy to use. After downloading it, I handed the iPad to my 7-year-old and told her to check out the new app. First use, she had figured it out in about one minute with no coaching from Dad.

Easy to animate. Gestures added automatically and the mouth
movements sync to the audio (or text-to-speech) quite well.

The Overwhelming Flood: Supporting Teachers Using Technology

We've had several days of heavy rain, but my basement has stayed dry so far. Our sump pump has running almost continuously.

Growing up on the West Coast of the U.S., I didn't have much context for life with a basement, let alone a sump pump. But I've learned the value of that submersible pump in a hole in the corner of the basement. The good people who built our house were planning ahead for the eventuality of lots of rain, and they put a series of tile lines (think 4-inch [10 cm] plastic tubing with perforations on the top to let water in) under the basement floor to drain water away from the inevitable cracks and crevices. These tile lines all drain into a sump--a pit in the corner of the basement--which fills up with water when it rains hard, as we've had these past few days.

A sump hole with a submersible sump pump. Thanks to Joan for this image.

Here's where the sump pump comes in: it can be submersed in the pit, and pumps the water up a pipe and out through a hose and out into the backyard. And while the water is still around...it isn't in my house.

Haiku Deck: The Anti-PowerPoint

Check out haikudeck.com

I've been seeing a lot online about Haiku Deck lately. In a nutshell, it's a free, web-based PowerPoint alternative. Part of me said, "Well, whoopie-ding...another PowerPoint alternative."

And then I tried it out.

Wow.

This is more than just a PowerPoint alternative. It's a different way of thinking about presentations: tell your story, and make it beautiful.

The biggest immediate difference is the focus on images instead of bullet points. This might sound crazy, but hear me out. I think one of the biggest problems with PowerPoint and related ilk (Keynote, Open Office, GoogleDocs Presentations, and even Prezi) is that there is almost always too much text. And often way too much text.

Here we are, using a supposedly visual aid--visual aid--and then all we do is add lots of text.

Zeen: A Beautiful Way for Students to Display their Work

I'm always on the lookout for great ways for students to share their work--and especially with authentic audiences. Zeen looks like one of those ways! (Thanks to @mrsebiology for the tip.)

A screengrab from zeen.com. Go explore!

Heifer Village: A Simulation

Heifer Village: Nepal is an interactive simulation to help students think about poverty and community development. In some ways, it's similar to Third World Farmer, but it's more of a simulation than a game, if you want to get into semantic differences.

What I like about Heifer Village: Nepal in particular is that it leads participants through the steps and thought-process of developing a community-centered micro-loan organization. Through this structured simulation, participants can see the benefits of impoverished communities banding together to help each other out. I have dreams of getting students involved in providing micro-loans to such organizations themselves, through groups such as Kiva. (I hope you'll check out Kiva and think about how this organization might help you broaden your students' global view!)

In any case, a simulation like Heifer Village might be the first step. Check it out!

Geographic Ignorance

I was talking with a friend and fellow teacher the other day and she was sharing how appalled she was at her students' lack of geographic awareness. Can't find Paraguay on a map. Not sure where Normandy is. No clue where the Romans were from. We sort of laughed about it. But our laughter was the hollow sort where you are confronted with something so unbelievable you can either laugh or cry.

C'mon people...the Romans? Ugh. Geographic ignorance is rampant in America.

I'm sort of fascinated by people's lack of geographic awareness. Given how interconnected global events have become, you would think people would be more interested and aware of how geography shapes culture, and politics, and economics, and a host of other aspects of our modern life.

Image courtesy freedo

I think this should put a burden on schools to do a better job of increasing students' global awareness. I know the curriculum is already overstuffed--that's another whole blog post in the making. It surely would take some pruning of the curriculum to make room for teaching more geography, culture studies, and world languages, but I think these are only going to be of increasing importance.

Here's a fun little map quiz for you that I found online today. Just 15 countries for you to find where they belong on the map. My challenge: time yourself and see how long it takes you to figure out which one is which. If you're feeling really brave, comment on this post with your time to match all 15 countries.

What do you think? Am I blowing this out of proportion? Or is this a real shortcoming for 21st Century citizens?

It's not 1989

I saw this online the other day. It's too good not to share...

Interesting Tech Tool

Check out phrase.it. It will let you do things like this:

Or this:

phrase.it will let you add cartoon word bubbles to your own images. I have all kinds of ideas about how you might use this for school projects--is your mind running yet? At it's simplest, you could have them very easily create a comic. More complex: I'm imagining multigenre lab reports in science class including a comic-style series of pictures to illustrate their procedures.

No sign-in required, so students could use it with out an email account. Completely free, and very, very simple to use, and free and simple is the best!

Do take a minute to read the fine print. You have to own the images you use, so keep that in mind. Also, be wary of how this sort of tool could be abused. (Have you met middle schoolers?) But with some guidance, this could be a great, useful tech tool to add to your toolbox.

Preparing Highly-Effective, Tech-Savvy Teachers

I had a meeting this morning with a couple of colleagues to talk about how we are using technology and how we are teaching our students to use technology. This is a big deal for me, and I've been thinking a lot about it over Christmas break.

Education Week shared this story earlier this week. It resonates with me very strongly; it gets at what Teacher Education Programs need to think about as we prepare pre-service teachers for the realities of technology in school. Because I'm guessing many beginning teachers--despite their digital native status--are simply unprepared to really teach with technology.

My friend Josh recently shared this infographic with me, and it sums up much of what my colleagues and I were discussing this morning. The big idea here is that there are clear habits of mind for how teachers who are effective at using technology in their teaching practice approach their craft.

Apps for Education in Higher Ed: 1:1 Goes to College

I'm thinking a lot lately about a 1:1 environment in higher ed. I'm going to be teaching in a high tech classroom this spring, and I'm working on rethinking my pedagogy accordingly. I'm debating about whether I should expect my students to come to class with a device every time we meet. At this point, I don't think I'll require it (it won't say so in the syllabus, anyway), but I'm curious to see how many will start to bring a laptop or tablet along anyway on a regular basis.

Photo courtesy Sean MacEntee (CC BY 2.0)

At any rate, I think the day is coming--and probably soon--when a tablet will be as commonplace in higher ed classrooms as they are becoming in elementary classrooms. MacFan that I am, I'm thinking especially about iPads right now. I'm wondering about the mindshift that will have to happen for professors to embrace tablets as a pedagogical tool? Because I'm convinced that tech tools should be able to transform teaching, and not just replace old assignments with newer, shinier versions of the old.

Tips for Better Searching with Google

Who doesn't use Google when conducting research these days? (Yeah, I know...there are a few die-hard Bing-ers out there yet...but humor me here...)

I just repinned this from my friend Dawn on Pinterest, but I thought so highly of it I'm sharing it here too. I'm especially thinking of elementary and middle school teachers who need to teach their students how to conduct research. (Okay, and high school teachers, and probably even college professors. Let's just call a spade a spade and admit that many of our students at most grade levels are just not very good at conducting research.)

Dawn shared this great infographic from How-To Geek. It's worth bookmarking, or pinning, or Diigoing, or whatever tool you use to keep track of great resources.

Here's to improving research skills!

Shifting from "Digital Natives" to "Digital Citizens"

I just read this blog post from Education Week...and I agree. I'm quick to label my students as "Digital Natives." This term comes from a now-classic 2001 article by Marc Prensky. I've been using the term digital natives to describe my students for at least the past seven or eight years since I encountered Prensky's piece, because it is a helpful metaphor.

Even more helpful is his idea of digital immigrants. In my previous role as Technology Coordinator, I sometimes thought of myself as a translator--perhaps an "immigrant" by age, but one well-integrated into the culture and with very little lingering accent. Interesting to see how some teachers--like other immigrants--can cling to the old ways and long for the old country. Their accent can be very, very pronounced.

I worry a little, as I get older that this may happen to me as well.

That's why I like the idea in this piece: all of us, students and teachers alike, are digital citizens. All of us--regardless of our level of comfort working with technology for teaching and learning--have a responsibility as citizens in this culture, whether native or immigrant. And for teachers (even immigrant teachers), we have a responsibility to teach students to be thoughtful, productive, law-abiding, constructive, self-aware citizens.

At my last school, as I served as Technology Coordinator, I took very seriously the role of teaching students to become good digital citizens. From my predecessors I had inherited a great project: the Internet Driver's License. Clever analogy, but one that the students got excited about. And the basic idea is sound, I think. They need to learn the "rules of the road": How to be safe, how to be responsible, how to play well with others online.

Just because they have a natural facility with the technology does not mean they automatically know how to be wise. And that's the point of digital citizenship, right?

Get Your Kids A-Bloggin'!

Are you an elementary or middle school teacher who would like your students to blog for school, but you're worried about privacy and safety? Kidblog.org might be the answer for you. A twitter-friend recently mentioned this resource, and it looks pretty fantastic. (Thanks to @wfryer for the tip!)

Basically, Kidblog lets you create a safe classroom blog for each of your students for free. It's super-easy to get started; I had signed up and created my first post in about five minutes. Great controls--it's clear that the folks behind this tool get it in terms of what teachers and students need:

• No student email addresses required--just a teacher email to create an account for your class.
• Ad-free, so you don't need to worry about offensive or questionable content.
• You can determine the level of privacy: public, just your class, or just the author and his/her teacher. (Student blogs are set to class-only by default.)
• You can determine who may leave comments (same options as above).
• Teachers can create password-protected parent or guest accounts to allow people outside the class access without making the blogs open to the whole world.
• Teachers can moderate posts and comments, if you want to set it that way.
• It's easy to create individual student accounts, or you can create them in bulk for a whole class at once.
• Individual students can be given permissions to customize the look of their blog to some degree.

Wikipedia for School Work?

Oh, Wikipedia...what shall we do with you?

I'm so torn. I use Wikipedia myself regularly. But...not for academic work. What is a teacher to do?

This piece came up in my Twitter feed yesterday. It's a pretty thoughtfully written piece, though I'm not thoroughly convinced by his arguments.

Of course, I had a piece published back in the Spring of 2011 that basically makes the same argument (you can read it on pp12-15), but I was thinking more of elementary, middle, and high schools here.

Why does it feel different in Higher Ed? Because I clearly advised my freshmen in Intro to Education to not use Wikipedia as a source for a recent research project.

Do I need to get over myself here? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...

Alternatives to PowerPoint

If you are the teacher who assigns students to create PowerPoint presentations to show what they have learned, consider a few alternatives. This is on my mind because my students in Intro to Education are  giving presentations on school reform and some historical topics in education, and one of the requirements is to use technology to create visual aids...and I'm encouraging them to try something other than the PowerPoint they've always used.

So here they are: three alternative technologies you might consider:


1. Prezi

You must at least check out Prezi. It's a zooming, swooping alternative to PowerPoint. You can check out a sample presentation I created as an exemplar for my Intro to Education students here.

A couple things I love about Prezi:

A Gem from Sir Ken

This video is old enough (2010!) to be considered a classic now...but in case you haven't seen it, you must. Great explanation of the current situation in education--including some history of what brought us to this point--and some pretty brilliant thinking about what could be changed for the future.

Thank you, Sir Ken Robinson, for sharing your wisdom with us.

3 R's...or 21st Century Skills?

Since my last post on 21st Century Skills, I've really been thinking about the current state of American school culture. Pardon the history lesson that's coming, but I recently had an epiphany I want to share, and I hope that thinking through the history will help me make my point.

Back in the 1800's, school was pretty much dominated by the 3 R's: readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. If you could read, write, and compute, you were considered educated.

By the early 1900's, John Dewey at the University of Chicago was advocating for a more holistic view of education. Dewey (among others) argued for experiential education--that students should experience a great many things first hand, and this would provide a more well-rounded and comprehensive education. (Side note: Dewey is also usually cited as one of the forebears of Progressivism...maybe another history and philosophy lesson there sometime.) This was the beginnings of more student-centered educational practices as well as arts education, experiential science education, inclusion of social sciences, etc. Probably not very similar to our view of these subjects today, but it helps to illustrate.

Enter Sputnik in 1957. The beginning of the Space Race also sparked a shift back toward an emphasis on basic skills--math and science, especially--lest the American Dream fall prey to the communists.

Along came the hippy-dippy 1970's. Here we see another swing towards the experiential, culminating in the far-out idea of Open Schooling. Imagine a school without interior walls and you get the basic idea: a whole passel of kids with a group of teachers, all in one large room. "Who wants to learn some math? Come this way? Want to work on writing stories today? Right over there..." (I'm picturing some of my former students with a diagnosis of ADHD in this setting...whoa...)

In 1983, an extremely influential report was issued by the National Commission on Educational Excellence. The report was entitled, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform. It outlined  the likely failure of the American educational system--unless dramatic reforms were enacted. This prompted a turn back towards the basics. By the early 1990's, the Standards-based Education movement was underway, with national education standards being set forth by different educational groups: the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics produced Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences generated Benchmarks for Science Literacy, the National Council of Teachers of English created the Standards for the English Language Arts, etc.

In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law (this was actually a reauthorization of the earlier Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but with new requirements for schools.) This solidified the Standards-Based Education movement and tied it to high-stakes testing as the primary means for assessment of students' mastery of the standards.

And now, my epiphany: with the Common Core State Standards (not a national standards document, by the way) adopted in principal at least by 45 states as I write this, it seems we have come back to whence we began. The Common Core State Standards really only emphasize two subject areas: language arts and mathematics. So...our focus once again is on...the 3 R's.

Sort of like it was in the 1800's.

Seriously.

The pendulum-swing of American education between these two poles (3-R's-back-to-basics and wide-open-experiential-education) has continued its back and forth for at least the past 100 years. I'm not advocating that we need to swing the pendulum all the way back to the experiential side of things, but I do think we're pretty far to the 3 R's side currently. Certainly we need students to know how to read, write, and compute. The trouble is that there seems to be a growing over-emphasis on these elements of education in contemporary school culture. I predict that we'll swing even further toward the "just the basics" side before a cultural shift back towards a more balanced, central position might take hold.

Not that there aren't already advocates for such a shift in our school culture. The 21st Century Skills movement represents one of these. I'm not a member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, but the more I read their stuff, the more I think I agree with it. (My biggest hang-up is the corporate sponsorship of this group--not a huge fan of having the major textbook publishers behind this... You can see the list of "strategic council members" here.)

The more I think about what have been dubbed "21st Century Skills"--things like teamwork, critical thinking, creativity, global perspective, initiative, integrity, risk-taking, and personal accountability--the more I think this is what I want my own kids to learn and practice. Of course I want them to be able to read and write and compute...but I don't want their education to be reduced to these things. And I fear, in our assessment-crazy culture, that this might be just what will happen. Because if this is what is deemed important, this is what will be tested; and if this is what is going to be tested, this is what will be taught.

What do you think? Is this an either-or proposition? Or is there some room in the middle for both "the basics" as well as the higher-order thinking present in 21st Century Skills?