An Edublog Nomination

Think Like a Teacher

I am nominating a blog for an Edublog award: Best Individual Blog.

The blog, Think Like A Teacher (The TeachersFirst Editors Blog) is a great blog for dissection of various topics in education. This blog is affiliated with the non-profit TeachersFirst, and is a free resource for teachers.

Why do I like this blog? The message is always clear with clever writing to promote thinking about the classroom and everyone's role in it. Her thinking is our thinking. As the originator of #Eduwin, her blog celebrates the everyday successes of the classroom while encouraging Teachers to step out of our comfort zone just a little bit more!


 Because we all Think Like A Teacher!



*I have been woefully behind on blogging for some time, taking instead to a few tweets on Twitter or posts on Facebook with items that I have been reading. My reasons are varied: same conversations over and over, not enough time to formulate posts, and a bit deflated with the test prep culture that has taken hold of the Biology class that I teach. Maybe I should start again.

Wiki woman?

Not sure if I qualify as a wiki woman and know I have a long way to go towards true PBL, using student voice...

I was fortunate to be acquainted with Grace Rubenstein from Edutopia through our classrooms for the future coach, Missy Fedigan. She followed my ramblings and observed work in class during her visit. I shared material I used to present wikis at the One-to-One conference in the Spring and for technology training for my district. It was a great day. My students were great as usual and seeing their hard work appreciated was something.

I thank Missy for connecting me with her, my principal for allowing the freedom to use the wiki as a tool, and my school for being a part of Classrooms for the Future, which has been an incredible opportunity. I also thank Vicki Davis for inspiring me (she was mentioned and quoted often in the first Classrooms for the Future class).

What follows is a series of articles about the use of wikis. I know it seems self-promoting but not intended as such. This is intended as a thank you for those who stood back and softly encouraged (thanks, Missy!).

Ten predictions for the future of public education

This has some great articles in it and the links about the wiki in my classroom are in #7.

They can also be found here:

Wiki Wisdom
Wiki Woman
The Way of the Wiki



Tags: wikis, Vicki Davis, Classrooms for the Future, Edutopia

Action research: Writing skills

Now that my second Embedded Learning class is coming to an end, we are asked to formulate action research that we would continue with next. I have really been thinking about this, and mentioned to my coach Melissa Fedigan that I believed that their writing skills have had to increase through the extensive use of the wiki. I believe that it would be a good focus of action research to actually try to measure this and generate data. Blogging is new (okay, maybe for schools), and looked at as a fad, but an incredibly rich tool for getting deeper into the content. I have not really pursued blogging in all my classes and would really like to focus more on this.

I am looking at working with English teachers to see if points can also be give in English (not sure how this will work as I teach multi grades and not all of a particular grade). I definitely need assistance in assigning a measure to the writing. There are many points that need to be discussed with students prior to blogging from etiquette in writing and commenting, plagiarism, writing conventions, and more. Let's not forget the content as well.

A recent post from Jeff Felix on Teen Writing Skills improve with Blogging, provides information on students who blog vs. those who don't (data can be viewed from PEW: Writing, Technology, and Teens). Jeff writes:

Blogging allows a student to write more with more insight into the topic. The student will have deeper thoughts on the subject at hand and will be more motivated to write about the subject. This motivation for writing will assist the student in a variety of other subjects in school and may even lead to a better understanding of their own psyche.

The report notes that teens write for a variety of reasons such as part of a school assignment, to communicate with friends, to share their creations with others, or simply to document their thoughts. They are more motivated to write when they can select topics that are important to their lives and interests, and they report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the chance to write creatively. Teens also report that writing in a blog for a local or worldwide audience motivates them to write clearly and more often.

...and...

Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class.

Jeff has also completed his own research here ("Edublogging: Instruction for the Digital Age Learner"). Will spend more time looking through his research.

Off to finish the last part of the course. Once it is outlined, i will write more about it prior to the start of next school year.

Tags: Jeff Felix, blogs, education

Becoming a "read-write" individual instead of a "read only"

I read an interesting article discussed in the 21st century collaborative.

In the article is a great you tube video from Larry Lessig in Ted Talks. The video is here and I will not go into the discussion of the video itself as the 21st century collaborative post does a wonderful job of it.


What I will write about is what I am taking from it. Most notably that we are different from this present generation of youngsters. In terms from the video, my generation is "read only". We played music and video from whatever format was there that decade and found some way to copy it (sometimes). Our ability to show that off in any way was limited. If you look at how we learn, we sit neatly in rows, and we read, listen to lectures, and memorize information.

The present generation is a "read-write" generation. They remix video, music, information, and ideas into clever, unique works (though some students cross lines). They do not always believe the authority, they are not passive learners, and are pretty bored with the current stagnate way of learning.

The video primarily has to deal with how copyright law needs to change as technology is an evolution and so should the standards and laws change. I see this as another example as how our educational methods must change as we continue to teach using a "read-only" method with very little "read-write" opportunities.

Sometimes you need to step back...

...and look at how it is going. I am too bust, I keep adding more to my plate. Maybe I should say balls in the air. As long as none of them drops, then I am doing well, right?

Well, now I am thinking. Hy husband has high cholesterol and now some serious side effects from the statins he is on. His chest pain makes me think of how stress can take its toll and sneak up on you pretty quick. My 43rd birthday is also Monday.

You must know that I enter the holiday season with a list. After all I can get a lot done during the break and I plan on this. This season is no exception, but I have had to rewrite my list. I suffered an accident on the 15th that dislocated the pinky of my right hand. The temporary splint gave me movement in 3 fingers (I am right-handed). Using it though was a problem. Turns out that I tore the ligaments in my hand and now have a cast that prevents movement of any finger in the right hand. That has changed my list completely.

So I will start out with a mission statement so to speak. After all I have been thinking of this but need to make it more formal and write it down. The fact that I now have more time to read blogs and peruse websites has me thinking more.

The touching and eloquent writing of Vicki Davis always leaves me thinking. In her last post Blogs are not the death of writing but the evolution, she says:

However, as we move forward to a society that can send and receive education any place any time from anyone, the best teachers will become SuperTeachers and the worst schools, districts, and teachers may find themselves completely without a job.

You know, I thought I was a great teacher. I am in the sense I use critical thinking and I motivate students. But anyone can walk into my room, take the activities I made, and teach them. Yes, some of them are original but anyone can do it.

That makes me replaceable. Doesn't it? We all think we are irreplaceable. But we aren't. If the activities are reproducible by anyone, then you are replaceable.

So, my point: I want to be irreplaceable. I want to use technology to its full ability and continue to change with it. I want to make connections with other teachers in order to collaborate. I want to be an example of what it should be.

Sure it would be easier to take a paper out of the file drawer and just do that activity. I think I can do better and will be using this time to craft some great lessons using technology, authentic activities, publishing, and collaboration. I want to show that this is more than just using word, creating powerpoints, and iMovies. One of my students posted a discussion thread on my wiki about tech use in the school:

Macbooks-- threshold to the future or finale of exploration?
I love the all of the new technology in our school, I just don't understand why Mrs. Maine is the only one who's challenging us to use anything other than Microsoft Word. I feel that half of the teachers who have laptops in their rooms don't even fully deserve them, only because I honestly don't think they even remember they are in their rooms. I don't understand why almost all of the teachers that have them give us work to do on them that could easily be done in the Mac Lab. Why is it that there are so many programs on the computer that I've never even heard of, none the less opened before? We have the opportunity to explore, but if someone were to see us we'd probably get our computer privileges taken away. I think that if we could just take one day, just like the C4F teachers do, and have some sort of 'training' just to let us grow a little in our Macbooks, all of us would be a little more satisfied. And don't get me wrong, I do fully understand that this is only the second year in this program and that it will be growing, but don't you think that using them in the first place is the only way we can activate? And the educational part of it? If all the teachers got ahold of some type of discussion board, like the ones on Tiged, we would maybe learn something other than the vocabulary words in our textbook. I think that the only way we can learn something is by interacting with others and communicating, without being restricted by our Proxy Server.

I replied that the learning curve may be steeper for others. That really is not the whole story.

Cool Cat Teacher also references a blog post from Jeremy Zawodny: The 10 habits of highly annoying bloggers. Funny, but I must be one of them. Which ones have I modeled? Not creating all my own content. After all, I am just learning and finding my voice. Some bloggers get me thinking.

I also did not have a blogroll for some time but had one up there before I read his post. The last is an rss feed. I had one with atom but wanted to update this. Remember the balls in the air? Not all of them were being juggled smoothly.

So, now what? Better planning and management to keep track of all the great things I have seen and want to do. And finish what I start. After all, I am a list maker!