Instructify

BY LISA HERVEY

Many K-12 teachers are very interested in and/or are already effectively leveraging free Web 2.0 tools and other forms of media (audio/video) in their classrooms. This reality was especially evident to me this summer as I worked with teachers from all over the country at The New Literacies Teacher Leader Institute, a week-long professional development institute that focused on new literacies and associated Web 2.0 tools and multimedia.

Several of the teachers attending the institute work with student populations such as English as a Second Language (ESL), Hearing Impaired (HI) and Visually Impaired (VI). Many of the internet-based tools and applications available to teachers are certainly wonderful, but may immediately marginalize these same students. Tools that use English in text or audio may not be accessible to an ESL student. Videos and podcasts may prove difficult for students with hearing impairments. Engaging with tools or media that have small fonts and or images may be untenable for visually impaired students.

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Earth Day is coming up on April 22. With that holiday approaching and the glorious springtime weather, aren’t you in the mood to get outside and do something for the environment? Well, if you’re feeling this way, it is likely that under your leadership, your students can attain this feeling also. I think that one of the most current and important topics for educators feeling the “Go-Green” bug is climate change. This year, climate change has been one of my environmental education focuses with my students, and I wanted to share with you some of the excellent resources I’ve found for teaching about this important topic.

By the book

I started with a book called How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch. This book is a great place to start teaching about climate change. It presents the scientific evidence for climate change in a straightforward, understandable, and readable way. My 7^th graders had no trouble comprehending the one to two page vignettes on serious research. Most of the chosen research highlighted in the book involved collaborations between scientists and students or other “regular” citizens. Also important for students, the book is not all gloom and doom. It presents the evidence that scientists have gathered, explains their conclusions drawn from evidence, then completely skips the “we’re all going to die” mentality that some doomsayers have, and gives students real options for taking action. As an educator, I appreciated this truthful-but-positive spin. Also as an educator, I appreciated the separate teacher’s guide for the book. While not all of the activities were flashy, it gave me some good ideas on where to start with students.

Citizen science

Inspired by the book, I have gotten my students involved in a couple of citizen science projects in which we are helping climate scientists and others track seasonal changes in wildlife and vegetation. While there are many options for this kind of involvement, the two I have chosen are Journey North’s Tulip Garden project, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Sleuth program. Both of these programs allow for what I think is an easy entry into the world of citizen science. Both also allow for online data entry and visualization, allowing you as the teacher to use that data in many ways for various projects with students. Check out this year’s tulip map and see the little red dot on Morehead City — that’s us! Journey North also offers many other data collection projects besides the tulip garden project, and most are free or cost very little to participate. For example, I spent about $40 on the tulip bulbs to plant at my school. Granted, I had received a Bright Ideas Grant from my local electrical cooperative for my climate change study, but even without the grant, a couple of parents may be willing to sponsor. The Bird Sleuth program also offers both free and paid resources that you can explore through their website.

Online tools

In addition to having my students participate in citizen science so they could get that hands-on feeling, I used several websites and blogs in my classroom. First, I happened to hear this podcast on NPR’s Science Friday just a few weeks ago. During the program, they talked about the USA National Phenology Network. In case you don’t know, phenology is the study of regular seasonal changes, and something that climate scientists study closely and use as evidence for climate change. Through this website, you (or your class) could become a phenological observer, providing valuable information to scientists nationwide. It would allow one more way for your students to get involved.

For background information, I used Windows to the Universe. It has pages of text, images, and multimedia about many earth-science topics, including climate change. An excellent feature of the site is the ability to select from three different reading levels on the text pages — a must for an inclusive classroom. Another reference is the EPA’s Climate Change for Kids site. It offers another source of text, images, games, links, and other media to help your students gain background information on climate change. Of course NASA also offers an excellent website for up-to-date information at Global Climate Change from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website offers some interesting interactives as well as text and images to help explain the evidence for climate change. As an added benefit, you can subscribe to an RSS feed from the site. This would be a great way to integrate the information on a more regular basis in your classroom. Finally, for a more editorial point of view, I look to Dot Earth. This is a blog published by the New York Times that “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.” You could use posts from some of these blogs as starting points for verbal debates or position papers.

I hope I have given you some ideas that you can integrate into your classroom in celebration of Earth Day. Of course, don’t wait for Earth Day to encourage your students to get out there and make a difference. And if you’re not convinced that this is a worthwhile use of academic time, take a gander at this video. This man’s logic seems pretty solid, and all of us, especially those of us responsible for educating the next generation, need to take action and make a difference. -REBECCAH HAINES

How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate from Amazon

Journey North

Bird Sleuth

USA National Phenology Network

Windows to the Universe

EPA’s Climate Change

Global Climate Change from NASA

Dot Earth

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Photo credit: CRASH-candy on Flickr.

This is the second in a series of feature articles about online teaching. Keep checking Instructify every week for a new feature. Click here to read part one, click here Taking the plunge into online teaching — your students.

Every educator knows that a significant component of good teaching is good communication, and most of us are quite skilled in communicating with students who are in the same room with us. But some of the communication cues that we use in brick-and-mortar classrooms don’t always translate to the online environment.

Online vs. face-to-face

In a face-to-face classroom, we can see who is in the room and can use students’ facial expressions and body language as informal feedback, helping us gauge students’ interest, engagement, and understanding.  A simple glance around the classroom can tell us whether or not students “get it” and help us realize when we may need to slow down, speed up, add another example, ask a question, or explain something again. Students working on group projects see each other in class and can easily talk to one another about their ideas or quickly compare schedules to set meeting times for a long-term project.  Students and teachers have time before, during, and after class to check in with each other, ask questions, and request or offer advice and feedback. Our physical proximity, ability to interact instantaneously, and visual and auditory cues all help us communicate with one another and understand how our students are responding to our teaching.

Online courses present a different set of challenges. In an asynchronous online course, participants often log in at different times, making it rare for everyone to participate in the course simultaneously. If a student doesn’t post comments or ideas in class discussion forums, she can be “invisible” to their instructor and their peers. That silence could signify any number of problems — perhaps the student simply isn’t logging in. Maybe she doesn’t understand the material, or doesn’t know what to add to the discussion. Unless your online course uses video chat options, you won’t have visual cues (facial expressions, body language, etc.) teachers and students take for granted in classroom interaction. In an asynchronous environment, the lag time between posting a question and receiving a reply may make it more difficult to quickly resolve a question or to schedule times for group work sessions, chats, or other real-time features of the course. As instructors, we need to make an extra effort to overcome these potential difficulties and help our students become effect online communicators.

Find your students’ comfort zone

In my experience, students differ in their comfort level with online communication. Some students are hesitant to join an online conversation if they don’t yet feel a sense of connection to their peers. Others may be uncomfortable with the technologies involved or may not log in regularly enough to take a meaningful role in an ongoing discussion. On the other hand, some students may be shy in a face-to-face setting or prefer written to oral communication, making them more comfortable in an online discussion than they would be in a face-to-face classroom. Others may appreciate the ability to think through their answers to questions and write them out in a deliberative way rather than being put on the spot in a real-time discussion. Whatever your students’ preferences, you’ll find that establishing a rapport and encouraging interaction early and often will probably help everyone participate more fully and begin to create a vibrant online learning community.

I like to use introductions and ice breakers early in the course and to encourage a lot of first-week interaction to try to get to know my students and help them get to know each other. I usually post a photo of myself along with a warm introduction that shares my professional qualifications and some of my personal interests in an effort to make myself real to my students, and I invite my students to do the same. I start to make connections between students by noticing common threads in their introductions and suggesting ways that the students might benefit from each other’s experiences and expertise.

Lines of communication

As the course gets underway, I use all of the communication tools at my disposal — email, discussion boards, chats, etc. — to stay in touch with students and foster communication (both student-teacher communication and student-to-student communication). If someone hasn’t posted to the discussion board in a couple of days, I send them a personal message making sure that they aren’t having technical difficulties and inviting them to jump into the conversation. Don’t forget that the telephone is also a tool that online teachers can use to get in touch with students when higher-tech strategies have failed or when speedy communication or a stronger personal connection might be more beneficial.

Of course, one of the best ways to ensure good communication is to model it for our students. Logging in daily (even several times a day), promptly replying to emails and discussion posts, reaching out to students who are not yet participating fully, posing open-ended, thought-provoking questions, and responding generously to student questions and comments all set the tone for an inviting, engaging learning community. Once you’ve found your own communication style in the online environment, I think you’ll find that online communities can be places where students and teachers communicate very effectively, developing a strong rapport and engaging in exciting discussions that will get everybody thinking and learning.

In my next Instructifeature on online teaching, I’ll explore some of the ways that you can share information with your students in an online course. -KATHRYN WALBERT

Dr. Kathryn Walbert has developed and taught several online courses in the fields of online teaching and U.S. history. She serves as a consultant on U.S. history, oral history, and academic skills to LEARN NC and other organizations throughout North Carolina. 

Photo credit: larskflem on Flickr.

This is the first in a series of feature articles about online teaching. Keep checking Instructify every week for a new feature.

If you’re considering taking your teaching skills into the online classroom, you may be wondering what to expect.  How is online learning different from face-to-face learning?  What does it demand of learners and teachers? How will I get to know my students, build a rapport with them, and communicate effectively?

When I got started teaching online in 2001, online learning was not as widespread as it is now and there was very little research on effective teaching and learning strategies for the online environment.  Fortunately, today’s new online teachers can draw on the experiences of veteran educators, training programs like LEARN NC’s COLT program, and on a great deal of new research to help them acclimate to this new environment quickly and put best practices into action in their own online classrooms.  In this first of what I hope will be a series of Instructifeatures about online teaching, I’ll focus on the learners in your online course.

One of the keys to successful teaching in any environment is the ability to tailor your instruction to the needs of the students in your course.  So who are the people who take online courses, and what special challenges do they face?

Online learners come from all walks of life, as this article by Jennifer Williamson points out.  If you are teaching K-12 students, your students may be taking credit recovery courses, enrolling in advanced or specialized courses that are not available in their brick and mortar schools, homeschooling, or participating in alternative education programs.  If you are teaching professional development courses for adult learners, your students may tell you that they are interested in exploring a topic that isn’t offered in their school system’s professional development offerings or they may simply appreciate the flexibility and convenience of online learning.  Understanding students’ reasons for taking an online course can help you anticipate and meet their needs more effectively.

Whatever their reasons for enrolling in an online course, online learners will need to be motivated, organized and independent.  Without the face-to-face contact and regular schedule of an in-person class, online learners must take the initiative to login regularly, complete assignments on time, and make connections with their instructor and other learners in the course.  Online learners also have to have a certain degree of tech-savvy so that they can navigate the course and use online tools successfully.

There are a number of tools available for online learners to help them determine their own readiness for the challenges of online learning.  SORT, the Student Online Readiness Tool from the University of Georgia system, offers an online quiz with suggestions to help learners fill in any gaps in their preparations.  Building some sort of self-assessment of readiness for online learning into your course can help your students understand their level of preparedness, allowing them to plan ahead for a successful online learning experience and allowing the instructors to understand which students may need some additional support.

Online education can help fill many needs for K-12 and adult learners, allowing them to explore otherwise-unavailable topics, learn in a flexible and convenient environment, and step outside the boundaries of the traditional classroom which may, for a variety of reasons, not fully meet their needs.  The online environment presents its own special challenges for students, but if instructors are aware of those challenges and can help students prepare to meet them, online learners and their teachers can look forward to a fantastic experience. In my next Instructifeature on online teaching, I’ll share some ideas for communicating effectively with the learners in your online courses! -KATHRYN WALBERT

Dr. Kathryn Walbert has developed and taught several online courses in the fields of online teaching and U.S. history. She serves as a consultant on U.S. history, oral history, and academic skills to LEARN NC and other organizations throughout North Carolina. 

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If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.- Winston Churchill

These troubling times give a whole new meaning to the term dismal science, but all this despair brings lots of opportunities for teaching. Aside from the obvious moral lesson in the person of Bernie Madoff, as with most economic catastrophes, this one brings a lot of data, and in that data can be some great lessons for your kids. Here is a recent post from Flowing Data, an infographics blog. It originated at The Big Picture. While Flowing Data is suitable for students, The Big Picture is run by a Wall Street type, whose language can be blue in keeping with his milieu, so be forewarned.

The post features four different line graphs about unemployment in this, and past, recessions. Looking at them there can be a great lesson in critical thinking. I’m going to show the graphics, and share some thoughts of my own about each at the bottom. I would NOT teach based on the notes at the bottom, but instead, see what your students can dig out of it. You may notice things of interest in this that I’ve missed, I only provide commentary to get your thinking rolling.This first one from Time Magazine shows job losses in recent recessions.

Graph number 1 has only recent recessions on it, so it’s missing some of the context that some of the next graphs have. It is also comparing based on numbers, rather than the percentage of the population. Since it is only looking at recent recessions (1990, 2001, now), the population figures have some growth (~13% between 1990 and 2000) this can cause some problems in comparing the numbers, but we’ll see in some of the other graphs with older data, this is a big difference.

Graph number 2 looks at percentages, and goes back to all recessions in the post-WWII era. this gives context, and by using a percentage, makes it a comparison of apples to apples (as opposed to apples to kumquats). Two things stand out — the job loss is still not as severe today as in 1940s and 50s recessions, but there is also a trend towards recent recessions lasting longer, so we may not even be at the mid-point yet.

Graph number 3 is similar to number 2, but it looks at job loss numbers like graph number 1, and you can see how that skews things quite a bit when you compare historic data

And finally, graph number 4 uses 100 as a baseline for peak employment, so it’s like it’s looking at percent of employment rather than percent of unemployment, but it can go above 100 because employment can be higher than it was at the peak. This was very confusing for Bill, my editor, so here is how I explained it to him:

Let’s say you are a sales person paid on commission, and your salary is one line. Your salary hits a peak of $100,000, then drops at the recession starts. 100 is equal to your peak salary. Your salary begins to free fall for about 12 months, so that it ends up at $50,000. You would then be at 50 on a 100 point scale. Then it starts going back up, at 18 months, you’re back to $75,000 (or 75 on the scale). There is a recovery and at 24 months, you are exceeding your old salary, and you are up to $125,000 or 125 points on the scale.

Then let’s say another line is your smarter, but less well-paid older brother. He has a PhD, but he’s an adjunct professor (lecturer) at local community college. He manages to take home $50,000 before the recession hits state education budgets. So that month his salary is 100 points. It drops rapidly too, hitting $25,000 in six months which will put him at 50 points (half his peak salary), and then drops to $10,000 which is 20 points at 12 months. Stimulus money to the state arrives just as the food stamps do for old bro, and he shoots back up to $50,000, or 100 points at 18 months, when the local university goes on a hiring spree for retraining. The lines would looks similar (with some differences) for both of you, even though the “real” dollars earned is not the same. This is good for comparing numbers that are not apples and apples, like the number of people employed in 2007 versus those in 1981, but unlike percent of employment, you can exceed 100, if your employment level goes above where it was at the start of the recession which is what you want to happen. The other graphs show something like this by showing the job losses as negative percentages, and job gains as positives. This is a sophisticated way to represent things, but can be confusing, right Bill? Let’s hope that helps us get our thinking caps on. Please let us know if this helps explain things to your students! -ALICE MERCER

4 Different Looks at Job Losses During Recessions via FlowingData

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Monday by the Numbers - 10/20/08

Very few of us think data is fun, unless, of course, you’re an accountant or some kind of math or physics whiz. I would guess that even fewer of our students get excited about the prospects of analyzing and graphing numbers and data. This doesn’t always have to be the case. Through the use of an interactive white board, graphing can be fun. It doesn’t have to be just about the numbers, it can be about interaction.

An interactive whiteboard is a whiteboard connected to a projector and computer that allows users to control it through touch. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or other device (using the finger is the most fun for most students — it gives that magical feel to it). Through the use of an interactive white board such as a Smartboard or ACTIVBoard and one of the many great graphing web tools out there,  graphing and analyzing data can be fun and exciting.

One of the more popular online graphing tools available is Create-A-Graph.  This great tool comes to us from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. Exciting stuff, huh? Well, exciting or not, they’ve created a great tool.

Create-A-Graph gives you the choice of five different styles of graphs, from bar charts to XY graphs. The choices are great, but your capabilities for interaction with the Smartboard are limited. This site is very data-driven. All of the data must be typed in via keyboard and there is no way to “play” with the graphs using the interactive capabilities of the white board. It was fun to “mark up” the site using the Smartboard’s notebook software, which allows the user to draw on the screen using a pen or a finger, but there was no way to play with the graphs themselves. If you’re looking for a great online graphing tool, Create-A-Graph is the obvious choice, but if you’re looking to fully use the capabilities of the white board, it wouldn’t be my first choice.

However, there is a graphing website out there that allows you to fully use the drawing and interactive capabilities of an interactive white board, IF you can get past it’s name: Crappy Graphs. It’s too bad the name might prevent some educators from using this site in class because it truly is a great tool. The site allows users to create freehand line graphs or Venn diagrams, which really allow students to be creative and experience the “magic” of drawing on the board with their finger (regardless of grade level, all students love this.) For example, one might want to graph the Food to Mess ratio of various foods. Students can draw, using their finger or pen, the line graph, then easily add text and name the X and Y axes. With Crappy Graphs, drawing and creating the graph is so much fun, students will not even realize they’re learning. This is a fantastic and fun tool to introduce students to the wonderful world of data and graphing, if only we could convince it’s creator Brian Shaler, to change it’s name.

The third and final tool is not as data-driven as the previous two. It’s more of a diagramming tool, but it allows educators to fully implement the power of the interactive smart board. Lovely Charts allows you to create incredible flowcharts, site maps or people diagrams. What makes this site so perfect for interactive white board use is the ability to drag and drop almost everything onto your diagrams. Then, by clicking on the Create and Connect option, I can connect, using only my finger, multiple items or people in my diagram. There are many images, symbols and graphics to choose from and all of them can be added to your chart by simply dragging them with your finger. If you want to get your kids out of their seat, get in touch with the kinesthetic sides of their brains, and get them excited about the capabilities and the “magic” of an interactive white board, then Lovely Charts would be a very good place to start. You can view an excellent screencast describing the tool here.

Interactive white boards, combined with online tools can be an amazing way for kids to have fun and not even realize they’re learning. Introducing students to data and graphing can be a difficult sell, but using an interactive white board can make this introduction a bit less painful for your students.- JERRY SWIATEK

Create-A-Graph

Crappy Graphs

Lovely Charts

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My first electronic portfolio was done six years ago using Mozilla Composer and burned to a CD, and my student teaching advisor was thrilled to not have to wade through another four-inch-thick binder filled with plastic sleeves and teacher-themed paper.  Back then, the CD was my compromise for privacy, as setting up a password-protected website was a lot more complex than it is now. These days, I’m helping student teachers create their own electronic portfolios, and Google Sites is the go-to tool for us.

Security and privacy is still a concern, and always will be, thanks to FERPA. Google makes it easy to make your site private, to share it with select individuals, or to make it entirely public and open to the world. Changing the sharing settings is a click away. If you’re submitting resumes, include a link and a note explaining how the hiring committee can access your portfolio, and in an interview, be prepared to share it.

Since Sites is a Google product, it works seamlessly with Google Docs (to save space, if you’re approaching the 100mb limit, storing files like your teaching philosophy in Docs and embedding them won’t count against your server space), YouTube (Google Video is sunsetting this year, sadly), Google Calendar,  Picasa web albums…you get the picture.

One of the reasons we’ve gone with Google Sites is that the portfolio is never married to the university’s servers, and long after our students have graduated, they can keep updating and accessing their portfolio without worrying their alma mater will someday push them out to make way for new student portfolios. It’s ad-free, unlike many other free websites, and very simple to edit and maintain. If you want your own domain name, you can purchase it and have it redirect to your Google Sites page.

It’s not perfect, though. For instance, you can’t download the source files easily, although I’ve heard rumors it’ll eventually be possible. I prefer Vimeo for video hosting, and the only embeddable content would have to be stored on YouTube, and be publicly available. There are several pre-designed themes (including one for teachers, if you’re into that!), and you can change the colors for just about any part of your site, but you can’t install custom themes. The limitations make it fairly foolproof, both for creators and for readers. If you are really committed to other services that don’t mesh with Google Sites, consider the Site a portal to your entire online presence.

To get started, get yourself a Google account if you don’t yet have one (and if you do have one, make sure it’s under a username you’d feel confident sharing professionally). Helen Barrett has a great tutorial (built within Google Sites) to guide you in creating your portfolio. You’ll have to sign in to each Google feature the first time you use it (Docs, Sites, etc) but your Google account name will be the same throughout. And since Google also allows you to have multiple sites, once your portfolio lands you a job, set up a new site for your classroom, and keep on learning. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER

Google Sites

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Grading can be the bane of any teacher’s existence, especially when it’s not just a matter of comparing a bubble sheet to an answer key. A teacher can spend more mental energy grading a paper or a proof or a problem or a project than the student spent doing it.

David Allen’s popular productivity system “Getting Things Done” (GTD) has at least some concepts that can help with this task, a task unique to the profession of teaching. Much of what GTD recommends would help any disorganized person: get a physical inbox, buy some great filing cabinets and plenty of file folders, make sure that you write down every single task or idea in a place where you will be sure to see it, take full advantage of software and shiny gadgets. If you feel generally disorganized, then any organizational system, including this one, might help. But GTD is specifically intended for people whose work, like that of a teacher’s, is potentially infinite:

“Most people I know have at least half a dozen things they’re trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn’t be able to finish these to perfection. You’re probably faced with the same dilemma. How good could that conference be? How effective could the training program be, or the structure of your executives’ compensation package? How inspiring is the essay you’re writing? How motivating the staff meeting? How functional the reorganization? And a last question: How much available data could be relevant to doing those projects “better”? The answer is, an infinite amount, easily accessible, or at least potentially so, through the Web” (p. 5).

The fact that Allen has been working mainly with managers and executives is clear, but it should be equally clear that teachers have the same problem of potentially infinite excellence. Say that I want to do something as simple as “Teach Bobby to use commas.” I could spend days on that single task: reading up on all the latest comma-teaching research, trying first one method and then another to find the one best suited for Bobby’s individual learning style, testing and retesting to make sure Bobby is retaining the lesson and honing the skill. Bobby surely needs to learn other things as well, and of course there are probably a dozen or ten dozen other Bobbys for whom I am partly responsible at any given moment.

This “infinity issue” becomes particularly acute for me, I find, during two activities: writing (don’t ask me how long this article took me) and grading. Say that Bobby turns in a paper on World War Two for my History class, and I see at once that his knowledge of World War One is decidedly deficient. Moreover, he doesn’t know how to use commas (see above!), and I can see a lot of grammar errors, and he doesn’t know the difference between primary and secondary sources, and he cited Wikipedia inappropriately, and I strongly suspect he thinks Winston Churchill was the king of England. What can I do? He was supposed to learn those things elsewhere, but clearly he didn’t. I could give him individual tutoring, but I don’t have the time, and in any case most of those topics are outside the purview of the course. In GTD terms, what has happened is that a whole slew of “open loops” have been created in my mind. According to David Allen, “open loops” are “anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is,” and these nagging problems are constantly “being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you” (p. 12). Thus: stress.

The GTD remedy for the stress caused by open loops in the subconscious is basically to get them out of the subconscious onto a piece of paper or digital equivalent, then to collect them into a place where you will be sure to see them (developing such a system is a major part of the book), and then to make conscious decisions that close the loops. Some tasks and ideas will turn into actions to be done, others will be thrown away, saved for later, or delegated, but nothing will slip through the cracks, hanging around radiating a menacing aura of incompleteness. The subconscious mind is then relieved of its stress. (A famous application of this process to e-mail is called “Inbox Zero.”)

I once had the interesting experience of reading through a huge stack of student applications for a program I wasn’t affiliated with; what I noticed was that the experience (unlike that of grading) was utterly stressless, even though the pile was easily twice as large as an average pile of papers to be graded. It was relatively easy to decide whether a particular application should go in the “yes,” “maybe,” or “no” pile, and then to keep processing the piles until I had only two: “yes” and “no.” Seeing applicants’ errors was stress-free, because I wasn’t responsible for teaching the applicants not to make them. The loops were easy to close.

But it’s harder to close those open loops while grading: with limited time and energy, what can I do about Bobby’s commas? Sure, I can write “Commas!!!” in the margin, but a part of me knows that that’s no help at all. The loop stays open. It’s easy to get distracted and frustrated while grading; it can be like trying get to a particular destination by driving down a highway lined with smoking wrecks and bleeding people.

Well, if you can’t stop every half a mile to give CPR and wrap tourniquets, you can at least write down the milepost numbers and call 911 when you get where you’re going. In other words, here are three ideas based on the GTD system about how to close the unconscious open loops that grading student work can create in a teacher’s mind:

Make and maintain a list of “Things to Learn” for every individual student.

I’ve heard of cases where, for instance, the history teacher has openly castigated the English teacher for not teaching Bobby what he should have learned by now. (Certainly there’s a lot of private complaining that goes on.) That might help to close an open loop in your mind, to be sure, but it probably won’t affect that other teacher’s practice: he’s probably doing the best he can in any case. A better way to close the loops caused by grading is simply to make and maintain a list for every student of “Things to Learn,” and then decide what concrete action to take about the items on that list. You might refuse to grade the assignment until the student has learned those things, or you might require the student to learn them before the next assignment, or you might give the list to the student’s parents, or you might give the list to the student before she leaves your class, or you might publish it in the local paper, or put it on the web, or send it to the school board — whatever will ease your mind and give you a sense of completion. Or, of course, you can choose some or all of those unlearned lessons and commit to teaching them to that student.

Regularly review the individual lists of “Things to Learn” and move commonalities into a list of “Things to Teach.”

Plenty of teachers do this kind of thing already, of course, going in to class the next day and saying, “It’s apparent from your homework that many of you didn’t understand the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: let’s review.” But David Allen suggests that there’s a significant organizational and psychological benefit to developing the habit of “externalizing” such insights into lists. Again, what you do with the lists you make is entirely up to you: you could use them in your current class or use them for version 2.0 of your lesson plan or make a conscious decision not to teach any of it. The important thing is to collect, review, and take some action on the information.

Make lists of websites or other resources that students can consult.

Recommending a $45.00 dictionary to a student who writes “to a certain extinct” probably wouldn’t be any more effective than commenting “Wrong word!” in the margin of a paper, but directing her to Merriam-Webster.com, or teaching him to type “define:” into Google, or giving her this list of student bloomers might actually have an effect. Heck, even making your own list of hilarious and frustrating student errors might help to clear your mind. And there are are always some students who would genuinely like to know where to go to get some help, whether that’s to Strunk and White or to a writing tutor that you recommend.

At this point you might be saying, “Enough with all the lists!” But one of the main things that technology can do for us is make it easy to manage documents. Technology may not save time, but it certainly saves space. Even if you have eighty students, it’s not difficult to start a simple text file for each one and keep it in a folder. But plain paper or index cards would be fine, too, as would sophisticated-but-simple note-taking applications such as Evernote, which allows for powerful searching and cross-indexing. For beginning teachers, especially, starting the habit of keeping such rich files can be a real help: over the years it will develop into an enviable archive. And sooner than that, it might develop into an even more enviable “mind like water” that ripples with peace. -AMANDA FRENCH

David Allen. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Viking, 2001.

Robert Talbert, associate professor of mathematics and computer science, writes about teaching and GTD on his blog “Casting Out Nines.”

Related stuff:

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Get everything done. (Maybe).

Evernote: Never forget anything ever again. Ever.

It seems that nothing in the education field is safe from the permeating presence of The Test. We spend hours analyzing data from The Test; We teach lessons to prepare for The Test; We review for The Test; We get funding as a result of The Test; We are praised or put down in the media because of The Test. Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, and PE are ousted from schools in the name of The Test. The latest victims of The Test are museums. In this recent NPR report, a new trend amongst museums is exposed — namely that of tailoring exhibits and school field trips to, you guessed, it, The Test. While making museums more relevant and engaging for today’s youth is a positive thing, forcing museums to bow to The Test is like forcing kids to make sure their imaginative play aligns to the standard course of study. Museums, like free time play, should allow students to gain experiences they can’t attain in the classroom.

I believe that at their hearts, field trips are most valuable for all of the other learning opportunities and experiences they provide aside from their relevance to state standards and curricula. For some kids, a school field trip is the only time they will ever get to go to a museum, an aquarium, or a play. Field trips expose students to a world beyond the classroom, a world where regular people are learning, and where they can focus on their own interests. Field trips inspire students to “wonder and discover,” and isn’t that really why we all became teachers? I know that I didn’t become a teacher in order to have the most “Level 4s” on the End of Grade Test. Especially as a Science teacher, I came to this profession because I wanted to inspire students to develop a curiosity about the natural world. What could be better than a museum exhibit or aquarium to inspire a child to learn more? Imagine the questions students will have and the explorations they could be inspired to undertake after seeing Willo, the dinosaur with a heart, at the NC Museum of Natural History. Or perhaps a visit to the Living Shipwreck exhibit at the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium will spark an interest in your students.

But while field trips shouldn’t be viewed as test-preparation endeavors, they certainly can improve student test results. Teachers know that activating prior knowledge is an effective reading comprehension strategy. Field trips enhance and reinforce the topics to which students are exposed in the classroom. They widen students’ experiences and provide them with a background of knowledge that they can draw on later. In a testing situation, imagine students having to read a passage about dinosaurs. Which student do you think will do better on the questions about the dinosaur passage, a student who saw the Willo exhibit at the museum, or one who spent the same amount of time doing EOG testlets in the classroom? Whether or not museums actively “teach to the test” with embedded math problems as the NPR article seems to suggest, they will always be helping students prepare for testing.

Museums are one of the last educational bastions of resistance against The Test, and it would be a shame for their exhibits to be forced into the confines of standardized testing. By all means, museums should adapt to the changing characteristics of today’s patrons by incorporating new technologies and inquiry based learning. However, museums should allow themselves to be museums, not test preparation centers. Teachers, administrators, and school districts should continue to value museums and field trips for all of the things they do for students besides prepare them for standardized testing. Museums should help keep students and adults alike wondering and discovering. These photos show it better than I can say how museums can keep students, past and present, inquiring, engaged, and enjoying learning, and that’s the way it should be. -REBECCAH HAINES

Museum Field Trips Tailored To Teach To The Test

Related stuff:

Sound Field Trip Advice from Kidcast

Travel the World with Project Explorer

I have been using VoiceThread a lot this year with my students. VoiceThread is a great online tool that lets you link or upload pictures, add video, and audio narration, and leave text comments and “doodles.” Many folks end up using it like PowerPoint for final projects, but I like to use it for concept development from the start of a thematic unit. I’m going to go through the steps I used in one Voice Thread as an example. Are we ready campers?

This is an important part of vocabulary and language development, critical when you are working with English Language Learners, or students with a learning disability. We’ve all used K-W-L (Know, What I want to know, what we Learned) charts. VoiceThread is a great way to make them interactive and visual.

The VoiceThread was for a unit on friendship. Since I have a large number of English language learners, starting with the visual is the best approach. Even if they don’t have the vocabulary, they know what friendship looks like. I started by locating Creative-Commons-licensed pictures on flickr with the word “friend” in the title or the tags. I then shared the pictures with the class by showing them on the digital projector, and had them help pick out the pictures they thought showed friendship. In addition to letting them show what they knew about friendship without reading or writing, their choices also let them express their creativity.

These were the first photos I added to the VoiceThread. The important thing is to get the URL for the photo (you can do this by right clicking on the picture in your browser and selecting “copy image location”). The tool in VoiceThread to add flickr photos will only access your photos, not pictures posted by others.

Next, I had students “show” what friendship looked like. This is an important part of vocabulary development because it lets students show what they know, AND it helps them create examples for others to view. Acting out is great way for both language learners and students with social/emotional issues to show what they know, and to practice appropriate social behavior. You can upload pictures to VoiceThread from your computer or memory stick.

This is where I have students add their voices. I had students tell me what people were saying in the pictures showing friendship. This is oral language practice for the students, and another way to show what they know about social skills.

Next, we’re ready to work with words. This should be at least a little ways into the unit to get the most interesting questions. For primary, I have them come up with oral questions they have about the concept, and I type it into a PowerPoint in front of the class. You can upload a PowerPoint slideshow directly into VoiceThread, just like you can with a regular picture.

You should be far enough into the unit that they will be able to provide some answers to the questions. This is where students can perform higher-order and deeper thinking. I usually do this by calling the students back in pairs or triads, and asking them to pick a question to answer. I have them go through their answers one time before I hit “record.” They then record their thoughts into the VoiceThread, showing what they’ve learned. All during the process, I have students checking to see new things that are being adding to the VoiceThread, so they can see it building. Voila, your K-W-L is done. -ALICE MERCER

Photo credit: Mii Friends from natliej’s on Flickr

No, as much as I would like it to be, this isn’t a post of 100 different students who will make you want to stand up and be proud to teach. This is, however, a compilation of reasons you should remain a teacher or to become a teacher if it is something you’ve already considered. These lists from blogs and websites have some great influential content, and I hope that somewhere you’ll find your reason.

Top 10 Countries Spending Most On Education in the World - The first thing you might notice about this list from Interesting Top 10 Lists is which country is sadly missing: the U.S. Countries like Denmark, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe all spend more than 8% of the GNP on education. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that we aren’t spending a fair amount on education, the priority of the education received in these other countries is much higher. You’d think our government might look into bailing out our education system, but what’s left after Wall Street?

Top Ten Reasons to Become a Teacher - If the prospect of sharing your gift of teaching wasn’t influenced enough by the thought of other countries spending more on education than the U.S., then let these inspirational tips from About.com make you think. If “excellent pay” isn’t an option, then maybe Staying Younger or Job Security might float your boat.

50 Reasons to Love Your Job as a Teacher - If you’re already teaching, and you’re getting to that point when you might be asking yourself “what’s the point?” these 50 reasons might be heartwarming enough to take away your ho-hums and doldrums. So You Want to Teach.com reminds us that teaching can be humorous, thrilling, and sometimes an outright adventure. The humorous tone of this list will at least make you smile.

Top 10 Reasons I Should Teach - Blog Fumbling on Track had a post quite some time ago about 10 reasons she (?) should teach. Let her reasons be her reasons, but let yours shine, also. I hope you’ll be able to find some inspiration from this post and realize that despite these other 90 reasons to teach, you’ll be able to give yourself 10 or more unique to you.

10 Reasons to Appreciate Teachers - To end on a positive note, I’d like to include these 10 reasons teachers are some of the most wonderful people on the planet. Susan Dunn, MA Psychology presents some of the most influential teachers in her life, and what each of them taught her. Here she speaks of Mr. Porter, a Greek and Mythology teacher she once had:

He taught me to love learning. So incredibly passionate about his field, he made Greek (the language), interesting … every morning at 8 a.m. He couldn’t wait to begin class. He never wanted to let us go. “Just one more thing,” he would say, his eyes gleaming.

-JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo via Wonderlane on Flickr CC

How many of you are still keeping up with your New Year’s resolutions? How many of you even remember what they were? It’s easy to give up on a goal after a few days of slacking, whether that goal is to exercise every day, or to grade student essays faster. The problem with long-term goals is a lack of any short-term reward (which I guess is why they’re long term goals). I’m not saying you should expect to lose ten pounds in a day, but you should have just a little incentive to remind you why you’re grunting and sweating instead of watching TV.

Teachers give incentives every day when they hand students back their homework. Scrawling an A+ or, for young’uns, affixing those little gold stars to a well-done math assignment can give them the short-term confidence boost they need while they strive to meet the long-term goal of learning mathematics.

As an adult, I’m not ashamed to admit I need a little gold star once in a while to keep me motivated and productive. Here are a few tips on how tiny rewards can make a big difference in meeting your goals.

(more…)

A few months ago, I posted about reasons you should be blogging, but now, I want to extend that idea and give you some more reasons why. As if the first post wasn’t convincing enough.

• Not Enough of You Are Doing It - For those of you who are already blogging, skip to the next tip. For those of you who aren’t: why not? Blogging is a great avenue to connecting with other teachers and sharing information. Of the blogs I search on a daily basis, not enough are based in personal experience and lessons learned from the classroom. Sites like ours are designed to share tools and tips, but you are the ones on the battlefield. Who knows? You might connect with someone and learn some valuable lessons yourself.
• Your students are already doing it - Your students are already spending a boatload of time on the web. In fact they’re the ones who are making it. Do your part and represent your teacher brethren and sistren by having an online presence. In order to understand what youngsters like these days, you have to get in there and take a look around yourself. I’m not saying you should be a snoop or a tattler, but it is a good idea to know how and what they are talking about in hushed snickers around Billy’s iPhone.
• Organization - Remember last year when you had that one great comparison of Tom Sawyer to Sawyer from LOST? How did that metaphor go again? Drat, if only you had blogged about it when you got home, you could use it this year, too. Oh well. Blogging can help you keep a searchable record of your lessons.
• Get Some Attention - The web is a big, big place, and just because you teach in Greasy Corner, AR doesn’t mean you can’t be a rockstar on the web. With social networking sites in your niche, it is easy to become a teaching authority by accessing information from all over the world and helping to aggregate it.
• The Tools Are There - Remember that the web is growing, so you might want to have a good grasp of the tools that are available before 20 more pop up. There are some great blogging platforms out there, many of which are free. Check out Wordpress, Blogger, and perhaps a more appropriate, niche built-in platform like TeacherLingo.

Until next time, friends. Remember: there’s no better time than the present to get going. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Related Stuff:

A Few Good Reasons You Should Start Blogging

Find Teacher Blogs at Teacher Lingo, or Start Your Own

Get Blogging with WordPress

Blog at Conferences Like a Pro

Photo credit: aditza on Flickr

You’ve finally gotten a laptop to work with, and maybe you’ve started to use it in the classroom. Now you’re going to conferences, and you’ve heard about people “blogging” and using laptops at conferencing, but you’re wondering how to do this, and why?

First, think of blogging as a more efficient and effective way to take and share notes from your conference experience. Next, you don’t have to have or keep a blog to more effectively share what you learn. Now that we have that out of the way let’s think about this some more. You are probably being sent to that conference so that you can learn lots of new stuff, and then come back and share what you learn with others. Traditionally, you’d take handwritten notes, but unless you take shorthand, even minimal touch typing skills (I’m only a 35-50 wpm gal myself) are much more efficient than hand-writing notes. Give up the note pad, and use your laptop. In electronic form your notes can go to the whole district, and save you the awkwardness of reading your chicken scratch notes at your department meeting.

Now for the how part. I recommend this great article on blogging conferences from the TED site. As they point out, “Even if you don’t blog, it’s worth reading before your next conference, for tips on getting the most out of your time in the audience.” Here are some highlights:

1. Set up your documents in advance, and type in background links (their website, blog, who they work for, etc.) and the name of the presenter before the session.
2. Arrive early and have your physical setup (the back or somewhere near an outlet. My tip is to bring a good surge protector with a long cord - mine is eight feet long). Keep your laptop fully charged and plugged in whenever possible, so that it is ready to go should you not have power access.
3. Check in with others who are blogging or using laptops, to share notes and fill in any gaps.

But what should you use to take notes? Start with your word processing software of choice. If you are not publishing on the Web but will be emailing the notes, what I often do at district meetings is take notes in Power Point. This forces you to summarize, because if it won’t fit on one slide without reducing the font below 24 point, you are probably writing too much. Whatever you use, save often (most blogging editors have a way to save without publishing).

How do you share the information if you don’t have a blog of your own? Use your school/district LMS, email it, put a wiki page up, or put it on a Pageflake.

Now, if you are working on a blog, and expecting wifi at your conference, you may be disappointed. Some convention centers like to charge for access, some conferences (especially education technology ones) have been having their wifi overwhelmed by all of us coming in with our spiffy new wifi laptops. Do not count on having online access all the time, be prepared to type in Word now, and post and share later. -ALICE MERCER

How to blog a confeence via TED

Related Stuff:
Avoid Killing Students’ Interest and Attention with Power Point
Turn Useless Totes into Stylish Messenger Bags

Photo credit: Arbron on Flickr

If you are already a blogger, and you get a kick out of sharing your musings and findings on the web, then you’re already doing a great job. If you don’t blog, then here are a few reasons why you should start.

Understand Your Voice - Your voice (no, not that nails-on-the-chalkboard noise that comes out of your mouth every time you say something) is an important part of your identity. The more you write, the clearer that voice will become. You might even find that the voice in which you write is clearer and more easily understood than what you say out loud. Write now, and write often.

Understand Your Audience - As a teacher, you’ve already got a captive audience. But you probably say a lot of things on a daily basis that you have given little to no thought to. Blogging or journaling allows you to formulate your thoughts to a specific subject, and with the power of the web, puts it right in front of your audience’s face in a matter of moments. When you blog, you can say what you need to say as clearly as you need to say it. Blogging also allows a feeling of proximity and intimacy for the reader, and is more like a conversation than you think.

Vent - Got something you want to say? A public outburst could cost you your job, but formulate your opinions and thoughts into a well constructed blog post and others might feel your pain. Its certainly not a good idea to go publicly denouncing the principal as a bonehead, but you might find solace researching and suggesting best leadership practices so next time the poo hits the fan you can have a compelling argument.

Be Creative - There are no rules to blogging. There are guidelines and things that have worked for others in the past, but there is no right or wrong way to do it. If you have a strong enough voice and you know your audience and topic, then post away. Try something new, give in to cutting corners and color outside of the lines. You spend a lot of your day dealing with bureaucracy and structure, so live a little– make yourself laugh once in a while.

Reach Out / Keep Up - The blogosphere and Web 2.0 are happening. They are going to continue to happen and exist as long as there is electricity. And here’s some news for you: it’s all only getting bigger and more important. I’m not saying that there isn’t room for you here, you just owe it to yourself to stay connected. Blogging immediately throws you into the global environment, and is a great way to share and explore ideas with people all over the world.

Make Money - While I can’t speak from too much personal experience on this one, I know it’s possible. If your blog is successful, you can charge a pretty penny to advertise on your site. Likewise, if you are a great writer, you can always freelance write for existing blogs. Now might be the perfect time to quit your second job as a diner waitress.

Why Not? - Do you have anything to lose by blogging? Absolutely not. Blogger and Tumblr are just two of many intuitive and FREE sites that allow you to start writing and sharing your discoveries and ideas with very little hassle. If time is an issue, then maybe this could be an opportunity to find where you can cut a few minutes out of your day just to prove to yourself that you can do it. After all, you’ve seen all the reruns of 2 and a Half Men anyway, right?

The tools are there. You have a brain full of thoughts. You work hard teaching others all day, now its time to learn something for yourself. If you already know how and love to blog, we’d love to hear from you in the comments on how it has affected you and your teaching skills. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo via DeclanTM on Flickr)