Educational Technology Weblog

Me neither but I felt like I was very close!

Today, I had the pleasure of video conferencing with a 5/6 grade class in Central Butte, Canada. Participating in the activity was (teacher) Barb Mcinnis (& her students), Tim Lauer (Portland, Oregon), Tom Barrett (Nottingham, England) and Dean Shareski (Moose Jaw, Canada). This is direct from Mrs. Mcinnis’ class blog

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The grade 5/6 students had the chance to meet people from different parts of the world thanks to wireless technology!  On Tuesday, November 4 we participated in a web conference.  We had the opportunity, thank you to Dean Shareski (division technology) to interview educators from Nottingham, England;Portland, OR; Florida; and Moose Jaw via a web cam.  We were able to see and talk to these individuals. We first asked them questions to try and locate them, then we talked about the wireless technology that exists in their classrooms and schools.  Wow!  there are sure some great pieces of technology being used!! This project came about from an article we had read called “Get Set For the Net”. This article helped us understand how past inventions lead us to the wireless age we live in. Most of the students take this age for granted and do not realize the negative and positive effects it can have on our lives. We watched “Smart Guy:Stranger on the Net” to help us become more “Net” smart. Then we decided to do something positive and exciting with our wireless technology.

I’d like to commend Mrs. Mcinnis for her innovative vision as she seeks out relevant technologies to make learning for her students relevant. Wouldn’t you love to be in her class? This is an easy and free activity that took less than 40 minutes and can easily be replicated in YOUR classroom. Where would you find another class to communicate with? Try ePals, for starters.

This is the edited version that Dean created (5 min):

This is the entire conversation (40min):

Thank you, Dean, for asking me to participate. It was truly a pleasure to “meet” Tim, Tom, Mrs. Mcinnis and all of her students.

P.S. I hope my clues (about where I live) still have them stumped!!

The Technical Stuff:
We used Adobe Connect to have our online conversation and I recorded the session. When we were finished, I downloaded the video in .flv format (the default for recorded Adobe Connect sessions) and then uploaded that file to our school district’s Vodcast server (Video On Demand). I was then able to copy the code (anyone know how to read code??? Certainly not me, but I know how to copy and paste!) and pasted it into this blog. Code like that can be pasted into ANY webpage, including Edline! The video is also available on MediaShare along with a description so other teachers can easily access and replicate similar activities in their classes.

An excellent and thought-provoking article appeared in the New York Times this week, and the teacher who published this piece speaks eloquently about the challenges of teaching and learning in a technology-driven environment. In “Putting Technology in Its Place”, teacher- blogger Matthew Kay discusses his experiences in a one-to-one laptop school. His article makes a couple of excellent points that serve as reminders that technology in the classroom has to be about teaching and learning and not about the technology. Here are some of the tastier bits, but do read the entire article–and just as importantly–read the comments that come after the article. That’s where you see the beginnings of the collaboration that takes place on the modern Web.

“…technology provides sexy alternatives to older methods of instruction and assessment. (I once) spoke about my “podcast year” — when, as a first year teacher, I discovered the joy of digital microphones. Every piece of creative writing was recorded, an activity that ate up entire class periods. By the time I reached a unit where it actually made sense to capture student voice (speeches), the kids were ready to fight me. I too had allowed myself to be distracted.

Technology is also expensive. The kids have to buy insurance, and they constantly lose and replace parts. Schools feel the pinch, too. There is the myth about the Soviets using a pencil when we spent millions developing a pen — and I’m sure that’s how many feel about schools using technology. In hard economic times, there certainly is an argument to be made against unnecessary expenses.”

And yet, as he sums things up, Mr. Kay still finds incredible value in the role technology plays in the education of today’s students.

“As important as it is for students to expand their sense of community and learn to collaborate — it is more crucial that they learn how to sift thoughtfully through increasing amounts of information. The Internet presents a unique challenge to scholarship — many of the questions that once required extensive research can now be answered with 10-minute visits to Google. The issue now is distinguishing between rich resources and the online collection of surface facts, misinformation, and inexcusable lies that masquerade as the truth. It will be hard for our students to be thoughtful citizens without this ability to discern the useful from the irrelevant.”

Hmm. Being able to discern the useful from the irrelevant. Now there’s a 21st Century skill!

If you wold like to add a little personality to your Edline page, possibly lighten up the presentation of some of your content, or try and inject some creativity into your project based learning. I recommend checking out Go!Animate. You’ll find this web based publishing program at www.goanimate.com and it does require an email to create an account, but the service is free and FUN!! Here’s an example of something I put together in about 15 minutes, and I am still learning the interface. Your students will amaze you!!

Here’s a great way for elementary teachers or parents to help your students practice for those weekly spelling tests that we all know and love!  Also, you can search for a huge number of provided lists that cover a large range of age appropriateness, and content specific subjects.

As a teacher or parent, you can very easily create a “weekly spelling list” that can be accessed at home with a username and password of your choice. You have the choice of making your list public and searchable, or keep it private so only your students will know how to find it.  No email or identification is required of the student, and when they log in, they will be presented with several very interactive ways to learn their words. They can hear their words, take practice tests or play one of several games.
Jump in and give it a try!  I am using it with my children and they really seem to enjoy it.  I am sure you’ll find the same results with your students.  Let us know how it goes, and if you’ve shared any great new lists!

5th grader, Dalton Sherman, was the keynote speaker for the Dallas Independent School District Convocation for the school year 2008-2009. His motivational speech is incredible.

Do you believe in your students? If you can spare 8 minutes and 55 seconds, I urge you to watch this and show your students that you believe in them.

If you are watching this from school, the video below will not play because YouTube is blocked. Instead, please click here. The full text of his speech is available here.

(crossposted from here)

In this time of elections and monumental decisions you might find yourself evaluating your stances on any number of topics. If you would like to revisit some of the things that may have crossed your mind in the past, you might want to check out the poll archive at www.teachermagazine.org. This archive encompasses many subjects of interest to teachers and dates back to June 2006. Please comment on any of the results that you find intersting, or suggest other topics that we might want to explore ourselves!

Well, here it is, pre-school week for teachers, and I’m sure that things are as exciting, frustrating, challenging, and fun on your first few days back as they are every year. It’s always a thrill to see your old chums and colleagues after a summer of taking things easier.

Of course this means it’s time to trade in that beach bag full of books and suntan lotion for one that has teacher’s guides and projects to develop.

And the question this time around is simple: What do you have planned for the coming year that will be new for you and your students? Did you attend a great workshop over the summer, do online research, or just get your head clear so you can come up with new things on your own? Whatever the case may be, we’re hoping that you’re looking forward to some great challenges and some new teaching methods that you’ll try out this year.

So how about it Palm Beach teachers? What are you looking forward to this year? What new and exciting things do you see in your crystal ball as you prepare for the coming school year? Do you have something brand new in store for your classroom for the coming year?

As always, this blog is intended for two-way conversations, so if you’d like to share something interesting that you’ve added to your bag of tricks for the coming year we’d love to hear about it!

An interesting article today from the Washington Post had its beginnings in a rather strange story–the forced expulsion of a student in a prestigious and popular Washington D.C. magnet school where students are required to maintain a 3.0 GPA. In response to that story and the fallout from it, Jay Matthews shares Five Ways to Motivate Students, excerpts from Engaging Minds: Motivation and Learning in America’s Schools by David A. Goslin (2003). Here are some excerpts from those 5 tips:

1. Only work on those who need it. Goslin, past president and chief executive of the American Institutes for Research …says grades are often not as motivating as we would like them to be… Goslin suggests, among other things, well-planned teaching, more optimism about each child’s chance to learn, closer teacher-student relationships, smaller schools and grading by mastery, not the curve — meaning you tell the students what they must learn, check off each concept or skill as they master it, and don’t fret if some students take longer than others.

2. Stop telling them they’re smart. Goslin writes, “…most Americans act as though innate abilities are the primary determinants of their most important accomplishments.” Goslin favors the contrasting Asian philosophy that effort, not brains, brings success. He also wants teachers to make clear to each student what has to be learned, and express confidence each can learn it.

3. Make sure the homework isn’t stupid. Goslin calls this problem “inefficiencies in the learning processes.” He says, “There is a great deal of evidence that an enormous amount of effort on the part of children, not to mention their parents and teachers, is wasted.” … He prefers a national curriculum and nationally certified teaching methods based on research on what works, and what doesn’t. I sense he would also support letting teachers with good track records do anything they want.

4. Show some respect for learning. We Americans, despite our bookish founding fathers, have always had an anti-intellectual streak…Maybe we should point out to our children that although Bill Gates doesn’t have a bachelor of arts degree, he sometimes goes off for days at a time just to read books and think.

5. Involve the kid’s family. “The school is only one of the two principal socializing institutions in society, the other being the family,” Goslin says. He wants more support at home for learning. (But)…motivation comes from many places…If teachers don’t know how to produce it, none of the rest of us are going to have a chance of having any impact on our favorite reluctant scholars.

Definitely worth a read, as some interesting viewpoints are offered by the author of the article. And as always, your comments are welcome here as well!

What role do you see student motivation playing in the overall educational climate of our schools and homes? Do those tips ring true with you and your experiences in the classroom?

At the close of the last school year we conducted a poll of our teachers asking them about their general attitude about the use of technology in their classroom, as well as the impact that certain specific programs and services have on instruction and learning. Nearly 1,000 teachers responded to our survey and the feedback was terrific!

Personally, the chart below is my favorite of all of them as it demonstrates just how critical our teachers find technology to be.

 We asked other questions too of course, including this one that asked teachers how technology impacts student interest and attention.

You can see the full results of the survey at the two links below. While these results are specific to Palm Beach County Schools they are well inline with the results that other surveys produce.

The Impact of Technology in the Classroom

The Impact of Specific Programs and Services in the Classroom

Have a comment about these results? We’d love to hear from you!

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has released the first of their policy briefings on the role that technology plays in student achievement. This is another peer-reviewed longitudinal study based on the results achieved in state-wide programs in Michigan, Texas, and Iowa. You can download the PDF file of their article–Technology and Student Achievement— The Indelible Link–directly from this link, or visit ISTE’s Support EdTech site.

There’s a lot of interesting conclusions in this article, including ones that track closely the results we received in our own internal survey of teacher attitudes towards technology. You can see the results of that survey at this spiffy little page with pie charts and all, but the real keys to both the ISTE study and our own results can be seen in the statistics. In Palm Beach County schools our teachers have this to say about the use of technology in their classroom.

• An astounding 97% of teachers agree or strontly agree with this statement: My students show increased interest and attention in class when I incorporate technology into my lessons.
• Nearly the same number of teachers agreed with this statement: The use of technology in my lessons allows my students to see real world connections to the subject they are learning.
• 84% of our teachers agreed with that The use of technology in my classroom has a profound impact on student motivation and classroom behavior.

Does this provide definitive proof that technololgy has a major impact on learning? Between the ISTE study of the work done in other states and the same results from our own teachers it certainly appears evident that the debate about the efficacy of educatational technology has been settled in many ways. Is there “bad” uses of instructional technology out there?

Do we need to do a better job of training our teachers and choosing the best technologies for use in our classrooms? You betcha. But the question on whether there is value in educational technology is continuing to be settled in study after study.