Glogster – Inclusion & Diversity in Education poster

I’ve had a few people ask me about Glogster.  It’s easy to use.  I think most kids would probably enjoy using it.  You could use this as a presentation tool for most topics, so it would allow students to first find resources and then design/create their poster.  Posters can also be printed and embedded….unfortunately I can’t embed it here (WordPress won’t accept the file type).

I whipped-up this Glogster poster quickly using some of the resources and content I have been looking at recently regarding inclusion & diversity in education.

Click here!

Screen casting: How to create Java class using NetBeans

So I ventured over to the ScreencastOmatic site today (as suggested by my mentor teacher) and was pleasantly surprised at how easy this is to use.  The best part is that it’s FREE!  🙂

Once I got over the embarrassment of recording my own voice, lol, it was actually quite fun to use.  This is obviously going to be a great tool to use for teaching.  It’s also going to eliminate the need for those occasional How-to documents that I send to my family for “important” things such as How to add a photo album to Facebook!  🙂

Using the FREE option of ScreenOmatic, once you’ve created your screen cast you then have 3 options for saving your masterpiece.  You can publish to their site, publish to YouTube (you can remove their label if you pay for an upgrade) or you can save as a video file (mp4, avi, flv, gif).

So here is my first attempt for you to enjoy….probably only interesting for beginner Java programmers, sorry.

 

Monitoring the Internet

Interesting!  Privacy, monitoring, safety, ‘digital handcuffs’, freedom of speech, open web, innovation etc….

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/17/tim-berners-lee-monitoring-internet

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/19/digital-handcuffs-ec-vice-president

What do you think?

My personal philosophy of education and PRAC

Obviously there are loads of great reasons to do prac (pre-service teacher  practical experience) which “…includes supervised professional experience, wider field experiences and/or internships and involves actively engaging in all aspects of the teaching process, in different school settings, and with a range of learners” (Department of Education, Training and Employment, 2009). Prac allows pre-service teachers to experience teaching with all of its complexities and also experience different school cultures and settings.

I have learned a lot on my prac placements so far BUT the reason for my motivation to teach and the philosophies/principles behind it are rarely able to show in a prac setting, at least not to a personally satisfying extent. Yes, I am able to show my technical and content knowledge/skill and I’m also able to develop my style of teaching (to an extent ~ this really depends on the mentor teacher’s flexibility). Yet, my underlying motivation to teach, which can be simplified to showing that I care and want to help young adults become critically thinking citizens, is difficult to show in a 3-week experience. It might be possible in a primary school where you teach the same students everyday but in high schools I may only see the same set of students 3 times per week for only 70 minutes.

Imagine being thrown into a classroom of 20+ teenagers/young-adults, you don’t know their names and you really don’t know much about them at all except for maybe hearing snippets of often biased viewpoints from other teachers.  You’ve also found out that you have to teach a programming language or use software that you don’t know (ahhh!) and don’t forget the massive 70% Uni assignment that’s linked to the lesson plans, just to add more significance/pressure to the whole experience.  What do you have to do?  You have to shine!  You have to experiment with different teaching styles, techniques etc.  You have to reflect and ultimately become a great teacher while desperately trying to not neglect your young family.  Oh and it helps if you get along with your mentor/s too.  🙂  Overall the experience at the end is usually good and there is always lots to reflect on afterwards.

BUT is it possible to foster an ethic of care in a democratic classroom (or some other philosophy that you might hold dear) if you’re “thrown” into this type of situation?  No, in my prac experiences so far this has been impossible to accomplish.  There have been glimmering moments, highlights, where I know I made a great impact on an individual student’s learning but nothing compared to what you could achieve in a classroom over several months or terms.  I guess that’s ok and I’m sure it’s not expected (or else we’d all fail!) but does this mean that possibly there is something missing in teacher training? Are we getting the full-picture of teaching?  Or am I more sensitive to this because I have taught previously?  Or maybe it’s just an individual thing that is part of a teacher’s pedagogy and something you just can’t judge or practice in the limits of prac.

I can’t help but wonder how pre-service teachers are assessed and interviewed for becoming a teacher.  Admittedly I am still quite oblivious to what actually occurs during the interview and internship process for Secondary teacher qualifications; that’s still a year away for me.  I think my personal philosophy and motivation for teaching is very important to me, obviously, but is it important to the Government and schools that will eventually hire me?  Will the focus of my employment criteria be similar to prac expectations, which seem to be based on my classroom behaviour management skills and my level of content knowledge/skills?

Of course, I know things change and it’s very possible that my experience of teaching at the secondary level will impact my personal philosophy of education.  I can’t help wonder how my personal philosophy might change and why…..

Here is my personal philosophy of education written in 2010 for you to read if you’re interested.  Please note that this was written in the context and structure of a University assignment, so it would probably be better termed as “part” of my personal philosophy of education.  Since writing this I already have some minor things that I would add/change but the overall idealistic view of education is still true for me today.

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Department of Education, Training and Employment. (2009). Professional experience (webpage). Retrieved on 18 April, 2012 from http://education.qld.gov.au/hr/recruitment/teaching/pro-exp.html

aha! moments in learning & teaching

This morning I drove my son to school (should have walked/biked but we ran out of time).  It’s a short 4 minute drive and yet in those 4 minutes I taught my son a few things and he taught me something too.  🙂

I asked him what was “on” at school today and he said “nothing much” but then he told me excitedly that he had done a science class yesterday.  In this science class (grade 3) they were learning about Space; “you know, the earth and planets and stuff”.  I told him that I thought that was a fun topic to learn at school and the rest of the conversation kind of played out like this:

Mum: “So, does the earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the earth?”

Son: “I don’t know.  We haven’t learned that yet.”

Mum: “Ok, but just for fun what would you guess?”

Son: “The sun revolves around the earth?”

Mum: “Well, that’s what a lot of people thought for a very long time but we now know that the earth revolves around the sun.  So how long do you think it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun?”

Son: “one year?”  (cool guess dude!)

Mum: “yep and the earth spins and that’s how we get day & night and that’s why it’s day-time in Australia and night-time in Canada at the same time.”  (I then proceeded to use my left-hand as the sun and my right index finger was the earth spinning around the sun…….while driving!)

Son: “oh yeah, kind of like a spinning top moving slowly around the sun”  (aha! that is an awesome analogy and much simpler than my clumsy display with my hands!)

 

So, in the span of 4 minutes I got to learn about part of my son’s day at school yesterday, teach him some basics about the sun & the earth and then he taught me how to think about it in a simpler way by using an analogy.  Now that is a TRUE example of learning where we both learned from each other; and only in 4 minutes!  Awesome.  🙂

I have since done some quick online searches and it seems that this analogy is quite commonly used to explain this, obviously I must not have been listening in Physics class in high school….oops!

Homework – A Necessary Evil Or A Waste Of Time? – ABC Queensland – Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

Homework – A Necessary Evil Or A Waste Of Time? – ABC Queensland – Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Interesting interview with Dr Walker about homework.

Argues that homework has been shown to be of substantial benefit in only years 10 to 12.

In regards to things like NAPLAN and MySchool Dr Walker said “Social comparison doesn’t improve learning, it just makes people aware that they’re not doing as well as someone else. Makes them anxious and it doesn’t help with development of better understanding”.

Do you think homework is a waste of time?  When is homework a good thing?  Does it depend on the child?

 

“deep learning is really messy”

I love Alfie Kohn. I stumbled on his work when I had my first child and bought lots of parenting books to read. His book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes made me rethink parenting techniques and has also had an impact on how I have taught and how I want to teach in the future.

It is painful sometimes to hear my son tell me how he was rewarded with something at school for being good, kind, smart or tidy.  Hey!  You’re a good, kind, smart & tidy kid just because that’s who you are, because it gives you intrinsic value, because it makes you feel good to be good, to be kind etc.  Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t want to be a kill-joy, my son likes the rewards because he sees other kids value these rewards.  I just don’t want him to turn around and say “what’s in it for me?”…..oh how I dreaded hearing those words when I taught at the College in my past work.  I want my son, and all children, to learn because they love learning.

I’ve got to be realistic though….when I start teaching in High Schools I will be teaching young adults that have been brought up to cherish rewards (it’s part of schooling, parenting and society!).  How do I avoid rewards/punishments and focus on learning?  Is this even going to be possible considering the curriculum pressures and expectations?  I think like many things it’s going to come down to ‘balance’ ~ balancing what I have to do/teach, covering the curriculum and then also trying to include as much real learning, deep learning and exploration learning as possible.

Here is an interesting video of Kohn describing “real” learning via discovery.  Instead of looking at the negatives, such as how easy it is to miss this type of learning because of our focus on standardised testing, I think it’s important to see/hear a great example of teaching and learning.

eduTopia Parent’s Guide to 21st Century Learning

I highly recommend that parents, teachers and pre-service teachers take a look at eduTopia’s (2012) guide for parents: A Parent’s Guide to 21st Century Learning.  This guide has great resources and information.  It also informs parents about what their children might be learning in school and also describes ways that parents can help their children with ICTs.  Here’s some main points that I found important or very interesting:

• Page 2 gives a brief description of the 4C’s – 21st century skills/competencies
  • Collaboration
  • Creativity
  • Communication
  • Critical Thinking
• Critical thinking, social responsibility and emotional intelligence are all focused on in the primary years
• Interesting that World of Warcraft is being used in schools – I must investigate this more!  Very cool!  🙂
• The Ten tips on page 7 are great and would be good conversation starters.  Includes more resources.

deficit theory & classism

I have been doing research on diversity and educational equity.  One particular section/component that I am especially interested in is educating students that live in ‘poverty’ or have low socioeconomic status (SES).  I think it’s important to think about your views on diversity because often we believe stereotypes that our culture prescribes to us without actually thinking them through ourselves.

I stumbled on Paul Gorski’s website today and some of what I read definitely made me stop and think.  Wow!  I recommend checking it out and consider what the impact of our stereotypes might have on the people we know, especially the people that we teach.  Have a read of his article called “The Myth of the Culture of Poverty” and ask yourself if you had ever believed in any of the 4 myths that he discusses.

Do students living in poverty get a fair Educational chance in Australia?

“The most destructive tool of the culture of classism is deficit theory. In education, we often talk about the deficit perspective—defining students by their weaknesses rather than their strengths…The implications of deficit theory reach far beyond individual bias. If we convince ourselves that poverty results not from gross inequities (in which we might be complicit) but from poor people’s own deficiencies, we are much less likely to support authentic antipoverty policy and programs. Further, if we believe, however wrongly, that poor people don’t value education, then we dodge any responsibility to redress the gross education inequities with which they contend. This application of deficit theory establishes the idea of what Gans (1995) calls the undeserving poor—a segment of our society that simply does not deserve a fair shake.” (Gorski, 2008).

Gorski, P. (2008). The myth of the culture of poverty. Retrieved on 25 March, 2012 from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr08/vol65/num07/The-Myth-of-the-Culture-of-Poverty.aspx

iPad3 is hot!

I’ve mentioned before in my delicious account about how much I would like to own an iPad.  But maybe I should wait for a few more user reviews and possibly a cooler iPad4?  Supposedly the iPad3 is a hotty!   iPad3 ‘too warm to hold’

Do you own an iPad3 and do you think it runs too hot?  Could this be a problem with implementing/embedding iPads in education?

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A couple of thoughts came to mind when I read about Marc’s reactions/views on mobiles. First off, I can imagine that seeing those behaviours/issues due to student mobile use would be worrisome….but they are all great teachable moments that could involve discussion on netiquette, appropriate use and time management. I also got the feeling that this teacher might still be stuck in the traditional teacher role with control issues over the learning/teaching relationship.

the Evolving Classroom

A friend, who is a former educator, emailed a link to a letter published in the San Jose Mercury News from a teacher expressing an opinion about using digital devices in the classroom. This letter to the editor read like a typical frustrated 20^th century teacher trying to cope with a digital generation of high school students. I couldn’t help but think…this English teacher represents a majority of the public education teacher’s “mindset”, teaching America’s future generation of 21^st century citizens. My digital “ah ha” moment… how can this apparently good teacher be helped to appreciate the value of mobile technology to teach young people critical-thinking life skills? To answer this question… let’s begin by reviewing his letter.  

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Cyberbullying – IMPACT on teaching and learning

At the end of my recent post, “Does Crackbook (oops!) Facebook make you unhappy?”, I touched on the idea that it is important that learners understand and have knowledge of how to be good digital citizens.  An unfortunate side-effect of online activity is that there have been numerous cases of cyberbullying, especially amongst school-aged children/young-adults.  Here is a presentation I created last year on Cyberbullying in the Middle Years.  There are some really good resources, including Australian resources in the slides.  Please note that I have taken out all reference to specific school names.

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Wow! 5th graders with phones in and outside the classroom using public wi-fi.

Jason E Fennell's Blog

Going Public: The Simplest Approach to Mobile Security — THE Journal. by Dian Schaffhauser * 3/21/12

HOORAY! BYOD – well,  Katy Independent School District is supplying them. This is really cool and encouraging, too. I look forward to seeing the impact and effect of the 2012-13 tablet program.

 

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My 8 year old is blogging!

My 8-year-old son has started blogging and loving it!  He has been reading my blog and he liked the idea of sharing his views, drawings and stories with people.

I thought blogging would be good for my son because he is constantly reading and writing his own stories, so why not type them up online and get some feedback from friends and family.  Blogging has also been a great learning opportunity for him, some things that he’s learned are:

• how to use a new Web2.0 tool.  He is getting very good at navigating around a new app and figuring out how things work.
• how to compare the usability of different options, such as the differences between using wordpress and edublogs
• the importance of internet privacy, digital footprint and online writing etiquette
• how to use the Snipping Tool to capture images on the screen, save them and then upload to a post

WordPress Vs Edublogs

First we tried creating a “Private” and invite only blog which was attached to my wordpress account.  Interestingly we found that some family members had difficulty logging in, even though they had been invited personally via email.  Another issue with going Private on wordpress is that invited people need to create a wordpress account before they can read a private blog….a bit of a hassle for some.  The other weird, technical glitch, was that every time we updated the pages, viewed them and clicked on each post the Stats hits increased!  The owner of the account shouldn’t be increasing stats so that was a bit strange.  Also, the blog was Private but you had to go into every individual post and mark it as Private since it was set as Public by default.

In the end we decided to go over to Edublogs instead.  Compared to using WordPress there were less Themes, no Follow You widget, and no stats for the Free blog sites; bummer!  His edublog is Public but blocks search engines.  Edublog does not allow “Adult Content” since it’s focus is for Education.  There is No exposure to other blogs, which is probably why there is no Follow Blog (or perhaps this is kept for when you pay for the Pro package).

Many schools have tight Internet access restrictions due to “Adult Content” issues, so Edublog is more likely to be accessible at schools since it does not allow this type of content.

Camping != ICTs

I like ICTs, I like programming (especially in Java) and I can’t imagine not having Facebook to stay in touch with family & friends all over the world.  But sometimes I get SICK of it (and studying!) and I will be the first to admit that it can be addictive.  Using ICTs are so embedded into my everyday activities that sometimes I like to get away from it.

This past weekend my family and I went camping at Girraween National Park.  I drove the 3 hours there so that my husband could work on his laptop & mobile phone for work in the passenger seat.  The kids were in the back glued to their 3DS games.  I couldn’t wait to get to the campsite because 1) camping is fun!, 2) the grandparents will be there, 3) the kids and I made a deal that the 3DS were only for the car drive and 4) there would be no mobile phone service at the camp grounds (YES!).  The camping was fun, Girraween was beautiful and I enjoyed nearly 3 days of no ICTs.  There were Kangaroos everywhere and a great view of the Pyramid at our campsite.

    

The “Pyramid” walk at Girraween is fantastic.  WOW, the climb up the massive rock mountain is crazy fun and the scenery is amazing.  We managed to get ourselves up the mountain (complete with our love-to-twirl 4-year-old daughter).

Once we got to the top we all enjoyed a big drink of water, some snacks and the magnificent view around us.  There were a couple of other climbers at the top and to my annoyance there was a man talking on his mobile phone, oh no, we’ve got reception up here!  My husband sees this and proceeds to whip out his mobile so that he could check his work email and upload some photos of our climb up the mountain onto Facebook.  WAIT! This was supposed to be a family weekend with NO work, NO study and NO checking of emails & Facebook!  Fortunately my husband put his phone away after a few minutes and we walked around the top of the mountain checking out the views and rocks.  When we left the top that man was still on his phone and I’d like to imagine that he was still enjoying the view in front of him too.

       

Bye bye Encyclopaedia Britannica!

No longer can you buy a freshly printed 32-volume set from Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Why would you want a set anyway?  As soon as it’s published you know that it won’t be current, arguably not as current as the constantly updated information in Wikipedia or even from a subscription to the Encylopaedia Britannica website itself.  Ah the times are changing and if you don’t change you’ll drown!  Encyclopaedia Britannica has seen this coming and have changed their business model accordingly.  They’re even blogging about it themselves: Looking Ahead

Encyclopaedia Britannica iPad App Demo

Have you been “Twitterized” lately?

I’ve been twitterized!

Yes, I am a total Twitter noob; 0% for “enthusiasm”, “chattiness” & “interestingness” (is that a word? lol).  I will have to start using Twitter and maybe then get twitterized visually again to see the difference….it can only get better!  Or just come back to this post because my Twitter Data-Generated Infographic gets updated automatically, very cool!

For a teaching tool, visual.ly, could be fun to use to display a student’s information visually.  Creating infographics with this site is easy and fun.

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Brief overview of Twitter.  I’ve got the account, I know the basics….just got to start tweeting, eventually!

It's All About Learning

Our district has been engaging administrators in a Digital Discovery Series this year. We have had two very powerful sessions. Our last session was just last week, with George Couros speaking to us about Social Media.  You can find my blog post about that evening here.

After our session with George, there have been a number of administrators wondering where to start with Twitter.  As a result, I thought I would make a very basic blog post for those just getting started.

Interestingly enough, one of the quotes made by George that stood out for many was

“If you are not on Twitter and don’t know what # or @ mean then you are slowly becoming illiterate.”

So, let’s start with the basics:

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Pocket-Based Learning: My Cellphone Classroom | Powerful Learning Practice

Pocket-Based Learning: My Cellphone Classroom | Powerful Learning Practice.

Love this post!  This is how I envision teaching can be but as of yet have not seen this in practice in any of my pre-service teaching experiences.

At the three High Schools that I have visited in the past two years mobile phones (cell-phones) have been BANNED in the classroom.  School Administrations and teachers had decided that mobile phones are distracting and have the potential for in-class cyberbullying and therefore had a NO-tolerance policy.  In all 3 schools students were advised to either a) hand in your mobile at the Student Services counter at the beginning of the day and get it back at the end of classes or b) keep your mobile on you but if a teacher catches you using it in class they should tell you to stop using it and take it to the office.  This is a HUGE barrier for allowing students to use their mobiles in the classroom; I will have to overcome this massive obstacle first before I will get to successfully practice this type of teaching.

The advantages of having students use their mobile phones in the classroom:

• majority of high school students have a mobile phone that allows surfing the web, taking photos and videos.  So if I want students to take photos of experiments, create new posts in their class blogs, create video for blogs or creative activities or just find some fact quickly, then students could do this quickly via their phones whether we are in the classroom, outside on the school oval or out on an excursion.
• as mentioned in the blog students are also very comfortable with using their mobiles and so why not use this tool in the classroom since it’s something they use all the time outside of the classroom anyway = authentic learning
• the use of personal mobiles does mean that the school can’t CONTROL what students access or what they write during class time.  This is where an introductory lesson on netiquette etc. would be beneficial.  Reminding students about online privacy issues and the effects of cyberbullying would all be topics that could be discussed.  These types of teaching moments will help students generally learn the appropriate ways to communicate online, whether it is during class or not.

Mobile (cell) phone use in the classroom is a great idea; I’m all for it!

Throwing technology @ Education is not always a good thing

Leading on from my previous post I started to think about how important it is that we find a GOOD reason for integrating ICT in the classroom.  Just using technology because it’s in front of us, because it’s ‘colourful’ does not mean that it instantly equates to increasing a learning potential.

A good example of where the use of technology has been pushed but arguably without a good implementation/integration base has been the ‘One Laptop Per Child Program’. I remember when this first started a few years back and I thought it was a GREAT idea, but now to my dismay have found that there have been no big increases in the learning of Maths and Language, although some cognitive increases have been measured. To read more about this study: Technology and Child Development.

An interesting post called “There Are No Technology Shortcuts to Good Education” by Kentaro Toyama (January, 2011) argues, specifically for developing countries, that technology should be avoided when trying to improve Education. Instead increasing good teaching and having solid education administrations in place are important.  Throwing technology at these schools without first having a good teaching base is a waste of time & money.

For the University student learning to become a teacher, or for the parent out there that think technology is the key for their child’s success at school, please first consider how important it is to have well-trained, critically thinking teachers and a good school culture FIRST before we attempt to integrate ICT.