Schools Are Banning Powerful Teaching Aids (BCE 8C1)

I was recently asked what I thought the classroom of the year 2020 would look like… hmmm… that’s just 10 short years away.  Thirty years ago when I was in middle school, it was believed that the school of the new millennium would be significantly different than the classroom in which I was sitting; however, I find that MOST things about the middle school classrooms in which I teach are not really that much different, after all.

Now, yes, there have been many new technologies available to the general public but most have not been capitalized on in the classroom.  Look at the mobile phone, for example.  My students are amazed when I share with them the fact that when I was their age, we had exactly two phones – not personal phones, but family phones that were tethered to the walls.  No conversations were private and certainly none were mobile.  If you were “waiting for a call,” you were stuck at home literally waiting for the call until it came because, at that time, we did not even have an answering machine.

Fast forward now to 2009, over half of every middle school student that I teach owns a cell phone and carries it to school each day.  Using the cell phone at school, however, is banned – just as it is in most schools across America.  Here I am with four antiquated desktop computers in the back of my room that are just waiting to have the software updated from Windows 98 while many students in my class have a powerful computer right in their pockets that they are not permitted to use at school.

I’ve put together a small collection of videos and articles about the power and potential of the mobile phone in the classroom.   Perhaps it will get us thinking about a few things and rethinking those signs that hang on the front doors of our schools.

I’d like to start off with a powerful little video entitled A Vision of Students Today that is posted on YouTube.  Actually, there are many like this one out there, so I’ll get you started by sharing a few others, too.

Okay, let me preface this next video with, “I hate the Simpson’s cartoon!”  I know that many of you, like my husband, find it hysterically funny and perhaps a bit Seinfeld-ish in that it reflects back the world in which we live (God help us!).   Take a peek at this Simpson clip.  And as Steve Dembo points out, it is funny because it bears some truth.

My next little find was a video produced at a real school with a real teacher featured in the video.  Besides the insight she offers about the  power of using cell phones in the classroom, I cannot help but be struck by the irony of my own learning here that has resulted because of technology:  This video was made in Lithuania and the woman is speaking Lithuanian.  When I was in school, I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you where Lithuania is on a map and now my students are able to access an interview with a Lithuanian woman and hear authentic Lithuanian speech with a few clicks of a mouse or taps of a cell phone key.  Amazing!

How can a cell phone be used in a high school classroom to motivate students to learn about circumference and line of best fit?  Check out this site to learn how one Colorado teacher did just that.

Would you want to attend “Mobile Phone U”?  Sound strange? Or perhaps the potential sounds exciting?   See how the cell phone is being put to use at a university to motivate students, teach concepts, communicate with students, share ideas among learners, take surveys, and even guide them around the campus.

There are many videos available about the power and  potential of cell phones in the classroom.  Below are a few more if your appetite hasn’t yet been satiated.  For more, just Google “cell phones in the classroom” or “mobile phone applications in education.”

• Education and the Mobile Phone
• Mobile Technology in Education

So… you’ve seen a sampling of what is out there.  Now I’ll share my ideas with you.  I started teaching exactly 20 years ago and although there are many advances in what we know as a society, little has changed in the public school setting.  Our students need to be challenged and engaged at much higher levels.  They deserve to learn using the tools that they will be expected to use in their own lives and on the jobs that they will one day hold.  As one of the videos points out, many of the jobs that the students of today will hold do not even exist, yet.  How do we prepare students today for tomorrow’s jobs if we don’t know what those jobs will be?  Well, for starters, we need to teach our students to be thinkers.  More than learning information and memorizing facts, they need to learn how to access information and apply facts.   Let’s try a little experiment.  I’m going to ask you three questions that students are asked to memorize during their middle/high school years in history class.  You are going to use your brain power to recall the information and I will “Google” for answers (you already know who’s going to win, don’t you?).  Ready?

1. Who was Lewis and Clark’s guides?  Name both the Canadian fur-trader and his “wife.”
2. In what year was the Louisiana Purchase acquired?
3. What events mark the beginning and end of World War I?

Okay, it wasn’t a fair race because I had the power of technology and billions of brains to help me and you had to rely on the recall of one brain – yours.  What?  You thought I would provide you with the answers here?  I found all three AND lots of additional information, too.  Google it.  You have the power of the internet or your cell phone right at your fingertips right now.  Use the power and unlock the potential now and in your own classrooms.

I leave you with this parting cartoon created by datruss and posted to toondoo on 7/20/2009.

Technology in the Classroom (BCE 8A1)

I took a closer look at the Zoho Notebook this week and its potential seems fabulous for classroom applications.  I have signed up for a free account and have been playing with the features which so far seem intuitive enough that my middle school students could easily use it.  As I venture into the Read/Write Web with my students, the Zoho Notebook seems to be a terrific way to keep track of all of their (and my) web resources.   It allows my global-thinking students to incorporate video, audio, text, images, and links all in one place.  They can take notes, save pictures, collect relative links, and create or save audio and video segments related to the topic at hand.  I’d love to see an actual page created by a student.  If you have a link, feel free to leave it in the Comments for me to visit.

Data Respesentation Vocabulary (7C3)

The measure of central tendency is an umbrella term that incorporates many types of mathematical averaging.  Mean, median, and mode are certainly the most used measures of central tendency.  Here’s a clever little video that helps to sort out the ideas of mean, median, and mode.  This humorous presentation uses a number of puns and would be best geared toward adult or high school learners:

• mean – memory hook:  this one’s “mean” because you have to do a lot of work to find the value
  

• median – memory hook:  “middle”
  

• mode – memory hook:  “most”
  

A histogram is used to summarize and display a data set in a graphic manner.  Take a peek at this example to get a better idea — you might not know it’s name, but you’ll definitely recognize what a histogram looks like –

Samples and Surveys (TMEE 7C2)

Let’s talk a bit about Sampling….

Posted on October 2009 by griffinshockey

I am an advocate, and regular user, of sampling in my classroom.  Literally, hundreds of papers cross my desk each day as I review the homework of my 120 students.  It would be nearly impossible and certainly foolish of me to spend the MANY hours that would be required to grade every item on every paper.  I incorporate a sampling systems that has proven to be quite effective for serving the purpose of finding out if my students have an understanding of the topic at hand.  On each homework paper, I have randomly selected 3-5 equations to grade.  These sample items are selected prior to collecting papers and generally include items from the beginning, middle, and end of the task.  Here’s how it generally works:  Let’s say I am grading 3 items on a homework paper of 10 equations.  If the student misses 1, he earns a B.  Miss two?  Earn a C.  A grade of D is given if the student completed the work but missed all three of the sample equations.  The first year I did this, I graded the sample and then graded the entire paper — the grades were VERY similar and the few discrepancies in points made very little difference in the overall grade in the gradebook.

In our text, we read about sampling and surveys.  As we discovered, this method can work beautifully if we take precautions to ensure that the sample reflects the greater population.  In the telephone survey, for example, folks who had an unlisted number were not represented at all.

Then we saw an effective example of sampling with the Railroad Company.  The difference between the amount calculated through sampling was a mere $83 which was a bargain compared to the extra $4,000 they had to pay to have someone review every freight bill.  Just as the railroad would have made better use of their employees’ time by using the sampling method, I am able to make better use of my time by using sampling when grading homework for 120 students.  The time not lost on grading is spent on analyzing the information and planning for the needs of my students.

Paperless Classrooms? (BCE 7B1)

There are many ideas out there about the future of “paperless classrooms”.  Each vision has it’s own definition of what this would look like.  For the sake of THIS arugment, let’s envision a paperless classroom that is completely paperless:  All writing is done via computer, submissions via internet, no books except electronic books, no papers to return unless it’s through an attachment to an email, no paper permission slips, forms from the office, etc….

When considering the paperless classroom, there are many points to ponder:

• How would a paperless class change your role as a teacher?
  In some classrooms, I imagine that there would be dramatic changes, in others, the changes would be minor.  For some, the changes would be exciting and welcomed and still in others these changes would be stressful and foreign.  A paperless classroom creates an opportunity for the teacher to take on a greater role as facilitator.  Much of what the students would need to study and discuss could be accessed almost instantly via the internet.  I teach mathematics and I can easily envision my students visiting various instructional sites to watch online lessons, practice and learn from interactive math sites, and then holding face-to-face conversations about the topics with me and fellow classmates.  I can not totally envision a room with no hand-written practice of equations and algorithms and use of manipulatives, but this can all be accomplished with a dry erase clipboard or an electronic tablet that works like a notepad and is displayed on the computer as the students write on the electronic pad.

• How would paperless classes change learning?
  The way that I am envisioning learning in a paperless classroom, I believe students would before more engaged since they would need to actively seek solutions and could pursue a line of questions with instant answers that continue to fuel their learning fires.

• How would you measure learning in a paperless class?
  Really no differently, in concept, as I do now.  I would want my students to demonstrate a mastery of the topic.  It is that demonstration of mastery that would take on a new and exciting form.  Instead of sitting before a piece of white paper in a quiet classroom, students would be engaged in their demonstration of mastery through blogs, wikis, discussion boards, and what I perceive to be a world of possibilities beyond my imagining.

• Would a paperless space make it easier or harder to build a learning network? Why?
  It would more difficult for some to transition — especially teachers who are comfortable in their current practices — but, I believe it could one day make building a learning network much easier — not to mention a network that has both greater depth and breadth.

Big Shifts! (BCE 7A1)

I’m reading Will Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, and he has a section entitled “Big Shifts”.   In this section, he brings up 10 Big Shifts that have occurred in education as a result of the Read/Write Web.  All ten are relevant and accurate.  In discussions that I have regularly with fellow educational colleagues and my students’ parents, I often discuss many of these changes that have affected the way I teach and the way that my students learn.  Here’s a quick look at just two of Richardson’s Big Shifts:

1. Know “Where” Learning — Richardson points out that it is less important for students to memorize facts and formulas and more important that they know where to find the information.  Our students have very powerful computers right on their desks and in the their pockets (cell phone internet) and can access just about any piece of information that they want IF they know how to access it.  In that light, it is my responsibility to teach my students HOW to access information.  Do they really need to know the formula for converting Fahrenheit degrees to Celsius or do they just know how to push a button or two and find the formula or, better yet, use an app to calculate the conversion.
2. I really could not decide on which to discuss next (many, many discussions to consider)…. but finally decided on “The Web as Notebook”.  I chose this one because I have recently been inspired to try having my students (8th graders) create Weblogs this year instead of keeping a paper writing journal.  Publishing their writing to a global audience will not only give them an opportunity to write for a real audience, but I think it will inspire them to write with greater thought and precision.  I’m working out the details in my mind this week and would love any insight into the process…. please share any links that you know of that are student produced blogs and any information that might help me to create a meaningful experience for my 8th graders.

Connectivism: Is This For Real? (BCE 6A3)

As the way in which we learn changes, so too will the theories about the way we learn.   The manner in which we learn and the access to information that I had as a child is much different than the manner and access that my students have today.  When I wondered about how something worked or what something was, I rarely had the opportunity to go to the library and look it up in a book or in one of the antiquated encyclopedias on the shelves.  My students, on the other hand, have unlimited access to information via a computer and even through their mobile phones.  Within seconds, they can find the answer to most anything that has piqued their curiosities.  And then… through that search, they often find other answers or questions to continue tickling their brains.

I am, by no means, a theorist.  This year marks my 20th year teaching anniversary, and I cannot really tell you to what single theory I subscribe.  The very nature of a theory lends itself to being legitimate regardless of its content:  To develop a theory, someone or a group of folks make an observation and then organize those ideas into a theory.  Now, we do not have the power to eliminate that theory, but we have the ability to dismiss the theory as relevant or not.

In our Wiki assignment this week, Group A included many important factors (loved the TagCloud, by the way!), but the one I want to mention is their rebuttal that learning can reside in non-human appliances.  On this detail, I am not so sure I can yet agree.  I know there is much in the technology world that I do not understand, but… isn’t all “learning” that exist in non-human appliances simply a product of human programming?

While working with my Wiki group on the Connectivism theory position paper, I was introduced to the Sudbury Model.  I had not previously been exposed to this particular theory.  As a public school teacher, this theory certainly does not fit with traditional learning theories, but I find some appeal in its concept.  Just as the Sudbury theory holds some truth for me, so, too, does the Connectivism theory.  As we enter a new age of technology and its applications, so too will we develop new theories about learning.  My students were born into a life filled with technology — of course the way that they learn, access information, and apply it will be much different than when I went to school over 30 years ago!

Using Skype in the Classroom (BCE 6C2)

Skype was originally developed in 2003 and then sold to eBay in 2005 according to Wikipedia.  A couple of years after that, I had my first Skype experience – it was exciting to use the technology and to think about the potential for it at that time.   I was helping to develop the content for a new online course and needed to “meet” with the IT and several others involved in the project.  Well, I am in Maryland and the others were based in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.  Traveling would have been much too expensive when you factor in time, airfare, food and lodging.  Talking on the phone in the tradional manner would have been cumbersome and ineffective since there were five of us who needed to have this discssion.  Email would have been slow and frustrating.  We needed to find a way to have a real-time meeting without the expense of interstate travel.  The IT suggested Skype.

Using the technology for my own professional purposes got me thinking about its applications in the classroom.  The possibilities are endless….  But how could I use Skype in a manner that makes using this technology meaningful and more effective than using another, more traditional, means?  Afterall, if I can do the same thing without using Skype, why use Skype?

Consider the benefits of this application:  My own three children are currently taking beginning French in school.  They do not have access to any native French-speaking people.  As a matter of a fact, very few people in our region speak French at all (now Spanish would certainly allow for more direct contact with native speakers).  Now, what if my children’s teacher used Skype to connect with some of her French-speaking friends and colleagues in different regions of the world.  Think how exciting that would be for her students to hear the language and then practice the language with someone who would know if the pronounciation and intonation was correct.  THAT would be a highly effective use of the Skype technology AND the learning that occurs would be more powerful than anything that could be obtained through tradional means.

Pascal’s Triangle & Matt’s Homework Completion (TMEE 6C1)

Module 6 Vocabulary Lesson (TMEE 6C3)

FUNDAMENTAL COUNTING PRINCIPLE

This principle states that “If there are r ways to do one thing, and s ways to do another, and t ways to do a third thing, and so on …, then the number of ways of doing all those things at once is    r x s x t x …”  (as defined by the Worsley School site).  This site used an interesting (and real-life application) of the FCP — check it out!

TREE DIAGRAM

Tree diagrams are a great visual means of showing the Fundamental Counting Principle in a more concrete manner.

PASCAL’S TRIANGLE

Pascal’s triangle is a great tool to use, especially with algebra and probability applications.  The Dr. Math site hosted by Drexel gives a pretty thorough explanation that’s not too hard to understand.

PROBABILITY

Probability is the mathematical likelihood that a given event will occur.  The world of gambling is based solely around the idea of probabilities — casinos count on the fact that many folks do not fully understand the laws that govern probability and allows the casinos to separate you from so much of your money.  To help you introduce your cuties to world of gambling (oops!  I mean probability), there are several online activities and lessons to guide you.

BINOMIAL EVENT

As the name implies (bi = two) and (nomial = to number or name), a binomial event is an event in which there are two fixed possibilities.  For example, when flipping a coin, the possibilities are either (1) heads or (2) tails.  Interestingly, though, when you flip the coin more than just once, the probability shifts from the expected 50% chance of the event repeating itself.  You can find out more at the Connections website.