Ed Tech in the Classroom

The guiding question should always be, "Is this what is best for kids?"... Right!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Suter) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:45:00 +0000

@arneduncan Arne Duncan I couldn't agree more. RT @DellaCCS @arneduncan The guiding question should always be, "Is this what is best for kids?"

Am I the only teacher that is tired of hearing this? There was a time when I believed we should ask, “Is this what is best for kids?” or “Does this affect our students?” before discussing any issue. I thought this would be a good way to avoid the 45 minute conversation about the pros and cons of assigned teacher parking at a school faculty meeting. Just imagine how much fluff could be dropped from the numerous meetings we attend each week. Anyway, my opinion has changed slightly. Why? Simply because the words have no meaning. How can they?

I have no doubt that the people that utter these phrases, and then proceed to push their detrimental educational policies, truly believe that they are doing what is best for students. My problem is this, simply saying you are doing what is best for kids does not make it the case!

I braved the heat to attend the Save Our School’s March in DC this July. As a teacher I felt a responsibility to my students to do so. I figured I have no right to complain about the problems with standardized testing if I am not willing to do anything about it. Here is the thing, I have a ten year old son who is diagnosed with autism. I know he is behind grade level. When he started kindergarten he could not speak a complete sentence. As he prepares for fifth grade he reads, writes, talks in non-stop complete sentences, and does math. His standardized test will show he is behind grade level and could aid in labeling his teachers and school as failing. When in truth, his teachers are all incredible and we owe them so much. I do not need a standardized test to tell me how his school and his teachers are doing. I also know exposing him to one is not what is best for him.

So I have to ask, with all the educators, parents, students, administrators, authors, bloggers, and other invested parties across the United States expressing their dissatisfaction with NCLB, RttT, and standardized testing is Arne Duncan even listening? I get the feeling that the guiding principle is not, “Is this what is best for kids?” Rather... it is, “Is this what I think is best for kids?” Or possibly...”Is this what is best for kids within the confines of the agenda I am pushing?”

We need to be honest here, if the “educational reformers” were really concerned about doing what is best for kids they would stop ignoring and vilifying the people that work directly with our students every day.

When I read the above post it really annoyed me! I am sure I am not the only one irritated by this post though, why does it bother you?

What happens when you give students choice?

noreply@blogger.com (Jason Suter) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:19:00 +0000

Last week I told my environmental classes to pick a topic that falls under the umbrella of the BP oil spill. They could pick anything that interested them. They then had to develop five research questions that would guide their research. I created a google doc and shared it with everyone in each class. The students posted their topic, research questions, and eventually their answers. The students used google doc's collaborative capabilities to leave each other comments and suggestions. The students were then given the challenge of publishing their work in a way in which our district and community could learn from it. Students again used the google doc to make suggestions and comments about how they would do this. I love that all three classes picked a different tool to complete the challenge.

The students were given choice in both their individual topics and in how the class would publish them. Although they worked individually or in groups of two on their topics, they worked collaboratively throughout the project in making comments on each others work, proofreading posts, developing a reference page, and in making other formatting decisions.

This was the first time I have attempted a project with so much freedom and I am extremely happy with the results. That is not to say that it went perfectly by any stretch of the imagination though. In many cases I wish the students research would have went a bit deeper. Many of the students might have taken the project a bit more seriously. It may have taken a day or two longer than needed. Many students would claim they were done when there was many ways in which they could have continued to contribute. Considering all these flaws, the bottom line is that this was a very new experience for all of us. I will get better at facilitating it, and they will get better at working together. In the end, you can be the judge if it was successful or not.

I am posting the following message on our district website tomorrow after meeting with each class one more time:

April 20, 2011 marks the one year anniversary of the BP gulf coast oil spill. Environmental science students were asked recently to research a topic that related to the spill and interested them. They were then asked to work together as a class to find a way to share what they have learned with each other and the world. Below are the results of their endeavours. Please take some time and discover for yourself the effects such a terrible disaster has on the environment. The students would love to hear from you, feel free to leave comments for them!

Environmental Science Period 5
Environmental Science Period 7
Environmental Science Period 10

An Alternative to Live Student Presentations

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:48:00 +0000

Background:

Have you ever had a great idea for a student project only to get to the presentation day and realize that you have done something terribly wrong. Without proper planning sending students to the board to give presentations can be a nightmare. The time wasted in just getting their presentation, often a PowerPoint with way to many words on it, on the board can be horrifying. Once the presentation is on the board, no matter how many times you advised against it, there is always the group that insist on reading every word on their slides. Not to mention the time wasted while the students stand in front of the room arguing about who is going to speak.

OK, well hopefully this isn’t the norm, but I am sure we have all been their at one time or another. I picked up a great tip a couple weeks ago from the TIEnet Collaboration Day Training held for Classroom For the Future teachers in York County, Pennsylvania. Hopefully someone will read this and be willing to give the presenter the proper credit in the comment section. Basically the idea is to have students record their presentation using a screencasting program.

The Lesson:

Taking on my role as a CFF coach, I worked on this lesson with my student teacher. The lesson took place in her/my ninth grade general biology classes and was used to review the characteristics of vertebrates. We assigned each group a different class (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and had them work collaboratively to create a slide show about the characteristics for their topic. The students used Google Docs to collaboratively create the slideshow and were not allow to incorporate anything but pictures. The only text in the show was to be on the title page. The students then prepared what they would say over each slide, making sure that everyone in the group would have the opportunity to speak. After that they used Cam Studio (very simple to use) to record a screencast of their presentation and uploaded their final product into a Moodle forum.

You can see the instruction sheet here: Vertebrate Characteristics Presentation

The Results:

Discussion:

I thought I would include a list of the reasons I really like this project.

Once students share their presentation to the Moodle forum I had quick and easy access to them. It is very easy to scroll through the forum, click on a presentation file, and play it for the class. No time wasted changing groups and finding presentations. That time can be replaced with meaningful conversation about the presentation itself. Due to the nature of this project the presentations themselves are very short. Making things go quickly.
The presenter (wish I could remember her name), from which I got this idea, said that she set up stations and had the students rotate through with a set of headphones. She also placed questions at each station that the students had to answer. This is also a great idea, but I did not use it this time around.
When students give a live presentation it ends when they finish. This method allows their complete presentation to be stored in Moodle. Students can access each others presentations on their own time and easily use them as a study tool. I even suggested that they watch them with the volume off and see if they can guess which characteristic each slide is trying to portray. They can then go back, turn the sound on, and see if they were correct.
All members of the group had a role to play. During the creation of the slides students were working collaboratively using Google Docs. Once the slide show was created students had to prepare what they each were going to say during the recording. Since we can look at the revision history in Google Docs and hear there voices on the recording, it is pretty easy to confirm all the students level of participation.

Setting up Student PLN's

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:46:00 +0000

This year I am experimenting with setting up student PLN’s in my environmental science classes. We are using them to follow people via Twitter and Google Reader that post information about environmental issues. Students will browse their PLN over a two week period to come up with a topic that relates to class, in which they will write about using blogger. We are going to set aside every other Friday to read each other's blogs and use them to have a class discussion.

Our first blog was due last week and I have to say it was quite the success. I was very pleased with their posts and how they related them to class. The wonderful thing is that they will only get better! Already students are incorporating different forms of media into their posts, as well as linking them to relevant websites. In the beginning I had a few students question if they could just google “environmental issues” to come up with their topic. The way I explained it to them was that their PLN will be a group of experts in the field that are locating and filtering the best information on the web and then sending it right to them. By incorporating these tools they are essentially eliminating the need to search for articles and rather are focusing more on finding the ones in which they are interested. After the first blog was due I had a few students tell me that they are really starting to understand the benefits of using the PLN and are loving the project.

I thought I would dedicate this post to how I accomplished aiding the students in setting up their PLN and the tools I used to make following each other a bit easier. To start off I put together a page on our class website about setting up their PLN. Directions, how-to videos, and other sources are included on the page. I also included a Google Form for them to fill out to turn in their screen names, url’s, and other information. Right off the bat I will admit that following directions has been the biggest hurdle in the project. Apparently a little knowledge can be dangerous, and most students figure they can set up a Twitter account without reading the directions. Unfortunately, since I was requiring them to use specific screen names this created problems. The other major obstacle I have run into is students entering information (such as a password) and immediately forgetting it. Frustrating! It was quite the headache to get every student set up and running with a Twitter, Blogger, and Reader account. It can be done, but I spent many hours working with individual students to do it! You can find my directions here: http://environmental.hanoverpublic.org/pln-and-blog-instructions

After getting everyone up and running I wanted to find an easy way to have them share their information with each other. To do this I entered all of their blogs into my Google Reader account. From there I sorted them into folders by periods. I then used the period folders and created a subscription bundle for each class. Links to each bundle were posted on the website. With a single click students could subscribe to everyone's blogs. I had my students subscribe to all periods.  I was able to accomplish the same goal for Twitter using TweepML. With TweepML it is easy to create a list of twitter users that can be shared with others via a link. They can then follow the entire list by clicking the link you provide. Links for each class were posted to the same section on my website. I named this section of the site Follow and Join the Discussion. Not only can my environmental students use the links provided, but I encourage others to follow and joint the discussion as well. Hopefully we will start to see some comments from parents show up on the student blogs. You can find this page here: http://environmental.hanoverpublic.org/follow-and-join-the-discussion

Due to my wordy introduction to this project I started to get the feeling the students were having trouble deciding exactly what I wanted in their blogs. To aid the students I added the following page to the website in which I tried to briefly outline the blog requirements. http://environmental.hanoverpublic.org/class-information/blog-requirements

There is a lot of thought going into this project on my part and I am honestly really excited about it. I will try and post more about this project as the year progresses. I think by incorporating these technologies into the classroom I will find more wonderful uses for them. I already suspect that Google Reader will open some new doors due to its sharing abilities.

I would love some feedback from anyone doing a similar project. One of the big questions I am researching right now has to do with comments. I would love to read all the comments students are leaving on each others blogs but have yet to find a good way to do this. It is too bad that this is not an option in reader. It would be really nice to be able to view and leave comments right from Google Reader. Although any web app that will allow me to follow and read comments would work! Any ideas?

Below are two examples from the first round of blogs:

Disney saves Bahamian coral reefs!!!!

Old Shows are still around and Fighting the Environmental Issues

Student PLN's

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:36:00 +0000

Copied from my blog: Suter's ED620 Class Blog

In my previous post I discussed the possibility of having my students create their own personal learning networks for environmental science class. After pondering this for a while longer I have decided to start the year by having them take some initial steps in doing this. The first thing I am going to have them do is to create a wordpress blog (If blogger becomes part of the Google Apps for Education I will use it) like we are using for class. In fact, I have “stolen” much of the directions for this assignment from this course. I set up the blog assignment on an environmental website I have been working on for class. Students will be required to blog a minimum of once every two weeks. Students will receive class time every other Friday to read each others blogs and comment on them. I envision using the last part of these periods to have a group discussion about what the class has blogged about. I modified the rubric from class a bit and plan on using it to grade blog entries.

One of the big issues for me was determining how I was going to keep up with reading three classes worth of blog entries and also give the students access to each others blogs. I believe I have solved these issues. As for keeping up with the students blogs, I plan on subscribing to them in Google Reader. By making a folder for each class following their blogs via their RSS feeds will be relatively easy. When setting up the website I posted a google form with two questions. Students will fill out the form adding both their period number and blog address. Right below the form I inserted a google spreadsheet. Once the students add their information to the form it will show up in the spreadsheet. Until Google Apps starts to include Google Reader (which the tech guy at school believes will happen soon), I will have the students access each others blogs from this part of the page. Once Google Reader becomes part of Google Apps I will be able to aid the students in setting up feeds. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could set them up and share them with the students.

In addition to blogging I am also going to have the students set up twitter accounts. We are going to start by just following all the students in the environmental classes. Twitter will be used for various class activities at first. When Google Reader is added, I might have students start following some environmental bloggers and tweeters to aid them in finding topics to blog about.

Why do all this?

The first answer that comes to mind is that it will aid at bringing current events and expert opinions into the classroom.
There are a few major issues that act as an umbrella over almost every topic we discuss in class. Some students might find that they have a passion for one of those issues (recycling, global warming, etc.) and start to develop a voice and a love of learning for a specific topic as the year progresses. This is really the reason that excites me the most. I hope to find a few students that really become passionate about a topic in environmental science and start to apply themselves well above and beyond my expectations.
Even if a student doesn’t become an avid self-directed learner of environmental science, helping them to see the value of these tools, and the application of a personal learning network, might prove an invaluable skill they later apply to another field of study.

Feel free to visit my environmental page’s blogging section and offer any suggestions about any of this. I am entering uncharted territory here and value the opinion of other educators.

PLN's and Students

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:26:00 +0000

Copied from my blog: Suter's ED620 Class Blog

I have been toying with the idea of having my junior and senior environmental science students create their own personal learning network next year. I have put a lot of thought into this but am still at a loss for a way to make this happen. Keep in mind that I am talking about trying this with approximately 60 students. I also want to point out that I do not want to do this because I want to use the tools mentioned below in the classroom. They are just a means to an end. I think the “big idea” here is to find a way to connect students to people working and writing about environmental issues outside the classroom. How do we tear down the walls and connect our students to a world that is already globally connected and discussing the same issues? Below are a few of the ideas I am working with right now:

Have the students create Twitter accounts and follow me and each other. This way not only would they have an account to receive my class updates, but would be able to connect with each other and others outside of school. It would be cool to require them to make relevant tweets each week. My main concern with this would be grading them. They could post links to relevant articles and websites but the reality is that it could be very difficult for me to grade this effectively. I love the idea of using Twitter at the end of a class period to have the students post about what they learned that day. I also used Twitter last year effectively on a field trip to the Chesapeake Bay in which the students used their cell phones to tweet what they were learning about to a Twitter hashtag. At the end of this post I embedded a great video on using Twitter in a college classroom.
It would be interesting to have students create a blog just like we are doing for this class. They could blog about websites or current events that relate to what is being discussed in class or blog about the many green initiatives that they discover in their area. Again, as I go to the blog address page on D2L and click through 13 other blogs I wonder if it would be possible to grade student blogging on such a large scale. Today, I went through all the class blogs and added them to my Google Reader. I then filed them in a folder called ED620 Class Blogs. This makes seeing updates so much easier and leads me to believe managing numerous student blogs might actually be possible.
I am hoping Google Apps for Educators adds Google Reader to the education suite soon. If they do I think it would be cool to have students find and follow a handful of blogs dealing with environmental issues. If this requirement was done in conjunction with a requirement to follow similar people on Twitter it could be even better. By following some blogs and twitter users the students would undoubtably hit on great references to items that deal with class discussions. In turn, giving them an abundance of material to blog about on a weekly or biweekly basis. Not to mention Google Reader could be used to follow their classmates blogs and aid them in posting comments.

I see some real benefits to having students set up personal learning networks. First of all, the potential for bringing in real world current events that relate to class is enormous. There is also the possibility that some of the students will hit on ideas and topics that really interest them and encourage them to take part in some serious self-directed learning. I love that by publishing their writing to a blog rather than handing it in, we move away from an audience of 1 (the teacher) to an audience of many (peers).

There has been a lot of conversation lately in the education world about how wonderful, necessary, and beneficial PLN’s are to educators. I wonder why I haven’t seen more discussion on how to have our students create their own. Would love to hear some comments and ideas on this!

Demonstrating Mitosis Using Digital Flip Books

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Sat, 08 May 2010 22:33:00 +0000

Backgound:

Students normally do not have trouble understanding that mitosis is the process of cell division. They can even memorize what happens in each phase and identify representative pictures. I wanted to come up with an activity that would help them to see that this was a fluid process and would allow them to demonstrate their understanding. Last year, during our mitosis unit, I was speeding through a bunch of pictures I took of a clay figure with my iphone when I was hit with the idea behind this lesson.

Students:

This lesson was done with two general biology classes. 70% of the student population in the first class are ESL students and 42% of the student population in the second class are learning support. Both classes have learning support and ESL students. The students did an awesome job with this project and I really felt it ended up being the best unit I taught all year.

Technology Requirements:

Digital Cameras - I gathered cameras from around the school and many students brought personal cameras to class as well.

Tripods - This lesson is much easier if they have tripods to mount the cameras. Ring stands from the chemistry room might be a suitable substitute as well. I found a quick email to the faculty provided me with all the loaner stands I needed.

Microsoft Movie Maker - This program worked well for this project. Just make sure to change the default time for still pictures before adding them to the movie. Otherwise you have to do each by hand. Many of my students had over 80 pictures.

Handouts:

Pre-activity Graphic Organizer
Digital Flip Book Handout
Digital Flip Book Rubric

Student Samples:

Using Twitter to Document a Class Field Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 01:34:00 +0000

I haven't had much time to write here in the last couple months and hope to have more in the near future. Until then I thought I would compose a quick post about our recent field trip to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We had a great day! This was the second year I have taken students on this trip and I knew it was going to be a great educational experience for them. The students spent the day checking out the CBF headquarters, which one the first buildings to win a platinum award for green construction. They also canoed in Black Water Creek and dredged for oysters on the bay.

This year I tried something new. I had the students set up twitter accounts before we left and sync them to their mobile phones. We then gave them a few questions to keep in mind on the trip. During the trip we set aside a few minutes after activities for them to post tweets about what they were learning. We used the hashtag #cbfft to post the tweets. This allowed them to be searched by teachers and students at the school so they could follow what we were doing on the trip. It worked pretty well too. However, something must have happened with Twitter's ability to receive text messages because nothing the students posted from about 10:00 (When they got off the bus) until lunch time posted. Luckily tweets showed up for the rest of the day.

This was a really easy way to document the field trip and many of the students really seemed to enjoy it. I am going to include a few links below, feel free to explore them to see how I set this up and the results. As always thoughts and suggestions are welcome!

Twitter Setup Instructions
Field Trip Questions
#CBFFT Search
Trip Video

Cell Phones in the Classroom - Lesson 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:02:00 +0000

In addition to my high school courses, I am currently teaching half a day at our middle school. I had the pleasure of working with Lisa Smith, our afternoon science teacher, in developing the following lesson.

In our eighth grade science course we have been preparing for the upcoming PSSA tests by exposing students to current events that relate to material from past science courses. We normally do this by having the students blog outside of class about various current event articles. However, this particular lesson took place in the classroom. We decided to have our students take a closer look at President Obama's decision to build new nuclear power plants in the United States. This lesson would easily be adapted to any current event issue that has a pro and con side.

We began the lesson by creating an online poll using polleverywhere.com. This poll asked students whether or not they believed it was a good idea to build new power plants in the United States. The students had the option of voting with their cell phones or logging into moodle and following the available link to vote with a lap top. Due to the students willingness to share cell phones, all students voted in the poll long before the first lap top was logged in.

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

After the students took the poll they were given two articles. The first dealt with President Obama's plans and the second discussed the pros and cons of nuclear power. The students read the articles in groups of two or three and were told to write three to five main points from each article. After the students finished reading and writing their main points they were instructed to come to a group consensus on the topic. They then had to write their opinion in 1 to 2 sentences and post it using their cell phones to a Wiffiti board (Below).

Once all the groups comments had been posted, read, and discussed the students watched a two minute video found on youtube.com that served as a great summary of the discussion. The lesson came to an end with the students once again taking the same poll they took in the beginning of class. It was very interesting to see that many of them changed their opinion after the lesson.

Of course this lesson could have been completed without the use of cell phones. Below is just a few of the benefits I found due to their incorporation:

Students love using their cell phones! I think this is sometimes an understated reason for doing things in education. How can you go wrong if the students are excited for class before you even tell them what they will be doing?
We handed out two articles consisting of four pages of text to eighth graders. There was not one groan, whine, or complaint! I think the student's eagerness to read the articles so they could send another text message speaks volumes.
Every eye in the class was glued to the Wiffiti board to read the next posted comment.
Every student had the opportunity to voice their opinion in the pre and post discussion polls.
The students left the classroom and raved about class and using their cell phones during the periods that followed.

Resources Used:

Poll Everywhere - www.polleverywhere.com

This resource allows you to set up a poll where students can submit responses with their cell phones. The poll can be reset making it available to be used with multiple classes.

Wiffiti - www.wiffiti.com

Wiffiti allows students to submit a text message an online bulletin board. Messages can also be submitted to Poll Everywhere, but the Wiffiti board is large and animated. Not to mention the students love the fake names it assigns to their posts.

Poll Everywhere and Wiffiti are easy to set up. I do think it is necessary to do some preplanning before the first time cell phones are used in the classroom. Prior to this lesson we used Google Docs to survey our students to learn more about their cell phones. We also had them use wallwisher.com (an online bulletin board) to post possible rules for using cell phones in the classroom. Additionally we sent a letter home with the students to explain our intentions to parents. You will find these resources below:

Cell Phone Survey

Letter to Parents

Student's Wallwisher Board

Who says class has to stop for a snow day?

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:16:00 +0000

Recently I created a facebook page using my school email address and opened it up to friend requests from my current students. I will not go into detail about my facebook page and its rules now, you can find more information about it under the communication link on my website. This page has been up for about a week and I currently have 29 students and 3 parents as friends. Earlier tonight I got the idea to post the following update on my page:

"Let's experiment with the power of social networking. I am going to create a moodle chat room. If we get 50 students to join I will give each chat participant bonus points! Let's go..."

In a very short period of time I had my first couple chat participants. Over the course of the next hour or so the chat grew and hovered around 15 students. That is about 50% of my facebook "friends", but a far cry from 50 students. These were my 8th grade physical science students, and since I only teach for half a day at the middle school, I invited the other physical science teacher to join as well.

Of course the students still wanted their bonus points. It was my initial intention to wait until I had 50 students and then offer to double the five bonus points I intended to give them if they could answer some questions. With the realization that the chat was not going to get 50 students, the other science teacher and I offered to give them one point per correctly answered question. They jumped on it! We initially asked six questions, but how can you refuse when they ask for more. We ended up asking them ten questions, of which they got nine correct. Five of the questions came straight from current class material. The other five came from past science courses and where about topics they might see on their upcoming PSSA exams.

This was a blast! I have one question for those teachers and administrators out there that do not think social networking applications and course management software like moodle have a place in education... What were you doing on your snow day? I was having class, and my students loved it!

Web 2.0 & Moodle Technologies Training

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:37:00 +0000

This Friday, February 12th, another teacher and I will be running a technology training at our middle school. Below you will find links for the schedule and the slide show that I will be using to run the web 2.0 session. I tried to incorporate some web 2.0 applications like xtranormal, animoto, and wifitti into the presentation. Of course, I am going to focus mostly on Google Docs and Moodle for this introductory training. We are hoping to help teachers with the initial setup of Moodle and expose them to some of the other web 2.0 applications available to them. I am also trying to provide them with a host of reference materials. Many of these can be found on my website under the Ed/Tech Resources link. Feel free to look through these materials and comment. Your thoughts are appreciated!

Schedule - http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhh4shps_63crqsk2gf

The 1 to 1 Computer Initiative does not Produce Measurable Results!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Looking for some help from my new personal learning network. The following is two snippets from an email exchange I had with one of my district's board members. I don't think he would mind me posting this, especially if it produces the results I hope it will.

"Just wondering if there has been any more talk about going to a 1 to 1 (student/computer) setup in the near future. With having moodle, google docs, and other free software at our disposal, this really would be such an easy and beneficial transition! I know this has been discussed in past board meetings and thought you would definitely be the person to ask for an update. " - me

"Yes. The topic just came up in a discussion with Al. I am still convinced it is the future, but I am not getting the evidence from other schools that it actually produces measurable improvement." - Board Member

So, I am hoping that some of you have bookmarked sites that I can forward on that will shed some light on this matter. I personally do not see the any evidence that pencils, papers, or blackboards produce any measurable results either, but I do not think the philosophical argument is going to put laptops in our students hands. Help with this one is greatly appreciated!

Help Needed with a Blog/Forum Assignment

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:04:00 +0000

Yesterday the other 8th grade physical science teacher approached me about doing some blogging with our students after the start of the new year. Specifically her idea is to have a weekly assignment for students that would review science content from previous years as a way to prepare for the upcoming PSSA tests. Biting my tongue so I don't launch into a diatribe about the ridiculousness of a standardized test on a non-standardized curriculum, I do believe this could be a great idea. The question is how to pull it off considering it would be done with a total of 120 students.

I was reading the Tom Barrett's blog "Do You Have a Class or School Blog?" and found some great ideas but nothing to really aid me in figuring out how to pull this off. I love the idea, presented in one of the comments, about having students taking turns blogging about the days class and then using their blog to start class the next day. This might work really well with my environmental or biology classes in the high school, as well as with my 8th graders. However, if we are going to do this with a PSSA focus, and such a large number of students blogging on a weekly basis, I think we need to come up with a different approach.

I am wondering if we would be better off doing this in Moodle using one of the various forum styles or setting up a blog page like Edublogs or Blogger. I love the flexibility that Moodle offers for an assignment like this, but it lacks the more public appeal that the blogging sites have. Maybe with the specific questions students will be addressing, and the number of students that will be responding, the public aspect is not needed or even appropriate. I would love for people to leave me some feedback in a comment to help me think through this assignment. How would you approach this and what platform would you use to pull it off? Maybe someone with a large following could retweet this to help increase the collaboration. I am pretty new to this world and my PLN is fairly small right now... :)

The right focus!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:17:00 +0000

I am really enjoying all the new doors that have been opened up to me as an educator since I started playing with this blog, reading other educator blogs, and twittering. It seems like there is a never ending stream of new ideas and resources now flowing into my world. During my cyberspace travels I keep seeing the phrase "personal learning network" being thrown around, and I really could not agree more with this assessment. While I am reading and browsing through my new found personal learning network I always take the time to check out new Web 2.0 sites that I see mentioned.

Tonight I was reading and clicking through some links and I ended up at Jonathon Wylie's Top 10 Wordle Lessons. You can find this resource here: http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/top-10-wordle-lessons?xg_source=activity. His blog peaked my interest so I decided to visit wordle.net and play for a bit. To see wordle in action I entered the product of the "One Class, One Paper..." project I did with my students, and a link to this blog. I spent some time looking at these wordle webs thinking about what they mean and how they might be used in the classroom. Both wordle webs are pictured in this entry.

I finished this little 2.0 experience with two thoughts. One, I should share this resource with a specific teacher in my district who I can see putting it to great use. What better way to promote using these technologies in our own districts than by sharing what we learn online? Two, I am very happy to see that the word "students", apparently the more a word is mentioned in the input the bigger and brighter it will be, was the predominant word on my blog's wordle web. I am very new to this blogging thing, but apparently I am getting one thing right and have not lost sight that students should always be our main focus.

Your valuable tools should be off and in your locker!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:07:00 +0000

By hanoverscience | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

I have been playing with the idea of trying to incorporate the use of cell phones into my classroom. Classroom 2.0 held a live webinar today entitled Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools with special guest Liz Kolb. This was an excellent presentation and I highly recommend taking the time to watch the archived show on their website. Just beware, there is so much good information being offered in this show that you might find yourself sitting in front of a computer for a very long time. I finished watching this webinar amazed that we are not making better use of the devices our parents are happily paying for and sending to school with their students everyday!

Personally, I think it is going to take me a while to digest everything I learned, and I probably will be watching the webinar again myself. Of immediate interest to me was the information provided about the drop.io website. I took some time to play with this site already and think that this is going to be a great resource. I have been loving the toondoo website and let my juniors and seniors create cartoons as a way to review some of the concepts on their upcoming test. Drop.io provides a great way to not only collect these cartoons, but to let the students view and comment on them as well. Add to that the possibilities it presents in incorporating cell phones into the classroom, and I think my class and I are going to be trying some new, fun, and motivating things with it in the near future.

Check out the following sites:

Drop.io

Toondo

A great Simpsons episode dealing with cell phones - Bart gets a Z

Link to a cartoon about the History of Tech in Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:32:00 +0000

This cartoon reminded me of my first post on this blog. I feel that those of us that are using new technologies, and are constantly trying to encourage other teachers to use them as well, are watching the divide grow larger every day. When you consider the exponential rate in which new technologies are being developed, teachers that are hesitating to jump on the technological band wagon are falling further and further behind. The cartoon ends with the author waiting for the next big thing... my guess is that the wait will not be long!

The highlight of this cartoon for me was recalling my "programing" days in middle school...

10 print technology

20 goto 10

run...

The Innovative Educator: A (Subjective) History of Tech in Schools

Funny Green Men!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:55:00 +0000

By hanoverscience | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

While trolling the 21st Century Learning blogs tonight, I discovered the fun to be had at www.toondoo.com. This website allows the user to easily create cartoons. Later, while going over my son's site words with him, we decided to try and incorporate some of them into a cartoon of our own. Above is the results of our efforts. We were able to incorporate five site words into the cartoon above and changed their font to make them stand out a bit. He loved this and is so excited to go to school tomorrow and share it with his teacher and classmates. He is really hoping she will let him share his cartoon with his class on their smart board! We had so much fun I couldn't resist posting this...

Check out Toondoo here.

Here are some links to other blogs about using toondoo in the classroom:

http://yoursmarticles.blogspot.com/2009/05/mind-mapping-and-toondoo-uses-for.html
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/09/16/toondoo-comic-strip-maker-coming-to-a-classroom-near-you/
http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/toondoo-and-more.html

One class, one paper...

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:08:00 +0000

I have been spending an over abundance of time considering the new doors technology can open in the classroom. Using technology, just for technologies sake, just does not sit right with me and I am constantly trying to ensure its use is justified. One of the things that has been running through my mind deals with the ease in which Google Docs allows collaboration to take place. In education collaboration is really nothing new, I certainly can remember swapping papers with other students to get feedback on rough drafts. What I have been pondering lately however, is whether or not we can take collaboration a step further, and start exposing students to the creative process their peers use when working on a project. What would be the educational benefit for students to be able to witness other students collecting research, writing, proofing, editing, and documenting each others work?

With this thought in mind I set out to have my environmental science students write a paper on seed dispersal. I have had my students research a method of seed dispersal for the last couple of years. They would write a small paper and then we would discuss what they found and how it relates to succession. This year I decided to do something different. I expanded the paper to relate seed dispersal to succession and include multiple examples of seed dispersal. I also decided to have the students follow APA guidelines for the paper's format and documentation. In the past this was done as a quick assignment to gather examples to discuss in class. Besides making a major increase to the requirements of this assignment, I made one more major change. The class would be writing this paper as one large collaborative effort. Thats right, a group of twenty!

My environmental science class is definitely a heterogeneous group of students. Before proposing this assignment to them I came up with seven different roles and a description of each. I then went over each role with the students, and had them volunteer for the role in which they thought they would excel. I will include a link at the bottom of this blog to the roles and descriptions that I came up with. Once the roles where selected I let the students get to work.

I would love to report that this activity went off without a hitch, but as is so often the case when we venture into uncharted territory, it has had its fair share of problems. The first major problem I ran into was a limitation imposed by Google Docs. Apparently only ten people can edit a document at a time. More can view the document, but they will not have editing rights. This problem was easily solved by splitting the paper into sections and only sharing it with those students working on each particular section. The students that took on the roles of editors have access to all sections and are responsible for cutting and pasting the final document together. I also rearranged the room so students working on a particular section would be sitting together to better enhance communication. I found it funny when one student asked me how they would know when a student in another group was done. My response was to simply ask. It does not all have to be done with sophisticated technology.

Another problem, which I realized even before starting the assignment was the fact that the researchers would be busy at the beginning of the process, and the proof readers and editors would busy at the end. Thinking about the progression of the whole process I realized that student activity would basically take place on a bell shaped curve. I accepted this reality before starting and have looked for ways to try and keep all students active throughout the entire process. This has been achieved by having students aid others and sometimes pick up the roles of other students who were absent. I have also run into issues with some students who just are not able to get their job done in a timely manner. This unfortunately has a rippling effect on the project, especially if that student has one of the preliminary roles, like that of a researcher.

With all these problems in mind, and granted I am writing this before the project is even finished, I would like to share my initial thoughts on the success so far. Quite honestly I have had a blast doing this project. I think in the future, with applying what I have learned in this attempt, this definitely will be an even better learning experience for the students. We have worked on it now for three days and I definitely hope to finish it up tomorrow or the next day at the very latest. Each night I have found a few minutes to sit down and look through all that was completed during class that day. I have used Google Docs ability to go through and leave comments where I felt they were needed to help give direction for the following day. I have had a ton of fun with this and really feel that I have had the opportunity to facilitate the learning taking place during the writing of this paper. I have also been impressed with the comments students have been leaving for each other and have been amazed to watch paragraphs totally reconstructed and made better because of them. One of my goals for this project, besides the content in which they are being exposed, was that students get the opportunity to witness each others creative process and learn from each other. So far, it seems that this is taking place.

Link to the roles and descriptions - http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhh4shps_20cm6pc52f

Spontaneous Collaboration... How cool is that?

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Google Docs has officially been added and I did some preliminary testing with it this week. What a cool addition to the available technology we have at our disposal to use with our students. The thing that has really blown me away so far about using it with my students is how easy it is to manage. Beyond that, I can not believe how quickly many of my eighth graders began using it, and using it to its full advantage. I showed them Google's Love Letter video clip and the next thing I knew, students were signed in, sharing their work, and leaving comments for their peers. Wow, spontaneous peer reviews! It really doesn't get much better than this.

The thing that makes Google Docs so useful in the classroom is it's collaboration capabilities. I shared it with my eighth graders with two thoughts in mind. First that it would provide them with an excellent avenue to work on their assignments both at school and at home without having to worry about how to move files back and forth. Second, as a means to collaborate on a slide show. Part of their current assignment is to create a visual aid and some students are creating slide shows. I thought Google Docs would aid them in doing this since they can collaborate on the project at the same time, from different computers, at different locations.

I really did not expect them to embrace this technology so quickly and start using it to review each others work without being asked. Granted not all students did this, but the handful that did was pretty astonishing. There are so many educators/administrators out there that think many of us use technology just for the sake of using it (this thought could be a blog in itself someday). That attitude is unfortunate because they miss the fact that by putting the tools in the student's hands that they use in their daily lives, we find that students often exceed our expectations and create the productive learning environment we strive for on a daily basis.

I am also in the process of having my junior and senior environmental science students collaborate and write a paper together. I created roles for the students and gave them a topic related to what we are learning about currently in class. This little experiment started off kind of rocky because I did not realize only 10 students can edit a document at a time. So I have retooled a bit and I am ready to see where they take it after thanksgiving break.

It is one more thing!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason K. Suter) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:32:00 +0000

I truly wonder if teachers throughout the ages received the same looks and complaints that I sometimes get when I am advocating for using a new source of technology in the classroom. Imagine the first teacher to show up to school and hand out pencils with erasers attached. How about the first chalk board or ditto machine. Did people complain when the first modern copier showed up to replace the ditto machine? Can you hear it? "You want me to throw my dittos away and start over? You are always adding... one more thing!"

Paper, the automatic pencil, pens, overhead projectors, film projectors, slide projectors, VCR machines, and DVD machines were all at one time new technological advances to the classroom. Although I have no physical evidence, I imagine that these technological advances were easily accepted and received eagerly by the teaching community. Why? My guess is that teachers could see an immediate benefit to using these technologies in the classroom.

The question now is why do so many shy away from you when you start talking about google docs, moodle, youtube, social networking, cell phones (really!), digital cameras, smart boards, wikis, and what seems to be a never ending source of new software, internet experiences, and devices? Unlike the introduction of the pencil, these technological advances are not as easily used in the classroom. Actually, maybe it would be more appropriate to say that they are not as easily understood and applied by the instructor. Today's students are commonly referred to as digital natives. This accurate little label gives educators the ability to explain why our students are so adept at using technology while they continue to inhabit the days of old. This isn't intended as a dig at the technologically impaired, but instead it is a reality check. Yes our students have grown up using this technology, and it is definitely time that educators realize we also need to jump on the technology band wagon. I don't feel that we will be left behind if we don't, but I am pretty certain our students will.

To me technology in the classroom should be considered in how it affects both the students and the teachers. Our students are in fact digital natives. This is the world they are growing up in and it is the world we need to prepare them for when they leave school and hopefully become productive members of society. Just like the technological advances listed above, some which are considered classroom relics, and others which are still in heavy use today, current technologies provide teachers with new ways to engage our students. Beyond that, they also make our job easier. I know that is a taboo thing to say in some circles, but it is the truth, and more importantly, it is a good thing. Using technology to reach our students increases parent/student communication, aids in using performance based assessments, helps to gather data, and organizes our classroom/materials, increasing our productivity and time spent working with students. Educators don't have to be a digital native to incorporate new technology into their classroom either. In fact, they don't even necessarily need to know how to use it. More on this later, as looking at ways for educators to incorporate technology into their classrooms will mostly be the focus of this blog.

I don't know how often I will post to this blog, truthfully I never had anything to blog about before, but this is a topic where much of my time and interest in education is currently focused. I have spent a lot of hours trolling through the wealth of information on the web about using technology in the classroom and hope to pull the fruits of those efforts into a valuable resource here and on my classroom website: Suter's Education Page.