I found humor in the errands I ran yesterday. Twenty years ago, if I said I had returned rented movies, bought some coffee grounds from the grocery store, and put gas in my car, you would assume that I would have had to interact with at least one human being. That was not the case yesterday, and it was the reason why I laughed at the stage society is in. I returned two Redbox movies to a vending machine, purchased my coffee at QFC's automated checkout stand, and paid for my gas at the fuel pump.
I do not want to make this posting about how technology separates us from human connection, because I do not think that is the case. In fact, technology expands our sphere of influence. One of my best friends is in Georgia, but staying connected is as easy as pushing a couple buttons, or talking on the phone. Whenever we see one another, which is only a couple times per year, we don't miss a beat. When I want to unwind at the end of a day I can play games online with others from around the world; its similar to a pick-up game of basketball from my couch.
This is the world kids live in today. Information is dispersed at the speed of thought. Mass amounts of information bombards kids' minds, and, at any given moment, they need to sift through it and make sense of it all while determining their own place in the world. How do we educators compete with this, and capture the minds of our students?
I propose that we do not compete with it. If technology has provided us a way to be entertained easier, to be informed easier, and to keep in touch easier, then why don't we use it to teach easier? Where does it say that teaching is static, and that it's only effective when it remains unchanged? Classes are now online, we can broadcast ourselves, we can podcast ourselves, and we can discuss in real-time at any time. Twitter, GoogleWave, iTunes, YouTube, Wikis, Forums, etc... The list is endless. How else do we expect to illustrate to students that learning is an ongoing process and can happen anywhere when we restrict it to in class or at their home desk? Why wouldn't they be able to jump on their phone, or entertainment device, at any given moment and have something class-related at their fingertips?
Problem: Student is absent during the explanation of a new unit or during a group exercise. Possibilities: Video/Audio Podcast of the lecture, Flip video or tweets from the student's group members. Sick student can participate in group discussions via webchat or web video, Twitter, or some other means. End Result: Student still receives participation credit, and is still part of the group exercise, and will not need to make up the project after school. This can be difficult to do for science labs, but I would allow it for only one missed lab per semester or year.
Problem: Student is stuck on a problem at home, and needs help in order to complete an assignment. Possibilities: Online whiteboards, GoogleWave, online forums, etc... The teacher could schedule a time a few nights each week to field questions, or respond to a request for help via Twitter. End Result: "I didn't understand it when I tried to do it at home," become irrelevant. Help is now always available to students, and they can have open discussions and brainstorm through the online forums.
There is no a single problem in education that can be fixed only be adding technology into the equation. Technology is just another tool that can be used the right way, or the wrong way. People have trouble understanding how to implement it, but I would venture to guess that these are the people who use pliers to tighten a screw or a monkey wrench as a hammer.
With proper respect and boundaries established, the days of a teacher lecturing at the front of the class, and punching a clock are coming to an end. Why correct endless essays by hand when you can do it in WORD, show the corrections and save paper by sending it through email? Why not improve upon the example you learned under? I have seen the tip of the iceberg of what technology can do for the education process, and the students therein. I am excited about what tools have yet to be developed. I am excited about educating and impacting lives. I'm definitely looking forward to moving education forward.
16 March 2010
12 March 2010
Needed: New Expectations
If you were to make a graph of the appropriate closeness of a teacher to a student, it would be inversely proportionate to the academic abilities of the student. Therefore, the more academically capable the student, the more relational distance to their teacher. This could be partially due to the number of students in general education classes, versus a resource room versus a student in a one-on-one situation.
Consider how much a teacher knows about a student's family of home life. The ONLY pet-peeve I have of general education teachers is when they assume that all students are coming into their classes from the same starting point; that the only determining factor on student success is how the student has chosen to participate in class. Last year, I overheard a teacher complaining about one of my alternative education students in the Teachers' Lounge that this student was choosing not to focus or accomplish any work in class that day. I told this teacher that the student had been kicked out of their house the previous night and came into school that morning after sleeping on the train tracks. The teacher had no response, and I don't blame them.
After getting over my initial annoyance with the teacher, I realized that the education system is not conducive to teachers getting to know their students. The expectation is to teach the content, raise the test scores, enforce the school policies, and not sleep with the students. How are teachers supposed to touch the lives of their students when the high schools resemble university lecture halls more than classrooms? A teacher may connect with 5-10 of the 150-200 students that come into their classrooms throughout the day. You place more than 25 kids in a classroom, and the teacher becomes a ring leader in a circus managing what is going on in class instead of guiding the education of children.
We have placed the weight of raising test scores on the shoulders of teachers who hope to create a love of learning in their students. We expect teachers to raise our kids for us; to teach them what they need to know instead of how to find it for themselves. Teachers are expected to teach effectively without giving an education. The expectation needs to shift to think of them as educators who give students the tools to learn and succeed at life. We want teachers to give children the fish of data without educating them as to how to fish for knowledge. We want our children to be able to duplicate so they can pass the next test or quiz, but we do not want to open the world to them and let them discover, explore, and create.
I do not believe that class size is the answer, nor do I believe that it is a matter of funding. The expectations of what learning is, and what educators need to do, needs to shift. We have turned the school day into the drudgery of the work day. Students have become more of a cog in the social machine, when they need to learn who they are and how to grow into contributing citizens. I am not from the school of thought that believes ALL kids should be successful on the same level. I hated having a losing season, and still getting a trophy for participation. If students are always given false success, then they grow to believe that they deserve it, and the sense of entitlement grows inside of them. Students need to experience the joys of achieving real success, which means thet need to learn the lessons of real failure. Students will not be educated if we do not shift our expectations to cultivate learning instead of test scores.
Consider how much a teacher knows about a student's family of home life. The ONLY pet-peeve I have of general education teachers is when they assume that all students are coming into their classes from the same starting point; that the only determining factor on student success is how the student has chosen to participate in class. Last year, I overheard a teacher complaining about one of my alternative education students in the Teachers' Lounge that this student was choosing not to focus or accomplish any work in class that day. I told this teacher that the student had been kicked out of their house the previous night and came into school that morning after sleeping on the train tracks. The teacher had no response, and I don't blame them.
After getting over my initial annoyance with the teacher, I realized that the education system is not conducive to teachers getting to know their students. The expectation is to teach the content, raise the test scores, enforce the school policies, and not sleep with the students. How are teachers supposed to touch the lives of their students when the high schools resemble university lecture halls more than classrooms? A teacher may connect with 5-10 of the 150-200 students that come into their classrooms throughout the day. You place more than 25 kids in a classroom, and the teacher becomes a ring leader in a circus managing what is going on in class instead of guiding the education of children.
We have placed the weight of raising test scores on the shoulders of teachers who hope to create a love of learning in their students. We expect teachers to raise our kids for us; to teach them what they need to know instead of how to find it for themselves. Teachers are expected to teach effectively without giving an education. The expectation needs to shift to think of them as educators who give students the tools to learn and succeed at life. We want teachers to give children the fish of data without educating them as to how to fish for knowledge. We want our children to be able to duplicate so they can pass the next test or quiz, but we do not want to open the world to them and let them discover, explore, and create.
I do not believe that class size is the answer, nor do I believe that it is a matter of funding. The expectations of what learning is, and what educators need to do, needs to shift. We have turned the school day into the drudgery of the work day. Students have become more of a cog in the social machine, when they need to learn who they are and how to grow into contributing citizens. I am not from the school of thought that believes ALL kids should be successful on the same level. I hated having a losing season, and still getting a trophy for participation. If students are always given false success, then they grow to believe that they deserve it, and the sense of entitlement grows inside of them. Students need to experience the joys of achieving real success, which means thet need to learn the lessons of real failure. Students will not be educated if we do not shift our expectations to cultivate learning instead of test scores.
10 March 2010
A Question of How
It's Wednesday of my first week of student teaching, and I'm seeing something that will become an issue for me in the future. Both classes that I am in and observing are not structured in a way that is conducive to a typical Teacher Work Sample. In one class the students are coming and going as they need to throughout the day. They come to class and they do their work without much external structuring or prompts. The other class I'm observing is a transition classroom where the stuents are out of the academic lessons phase and into the life lessons phase; this is where they learn to be independent and self-sufficient.
Therefore, the issues becomes a quesiton of how to create a Teacher Work Sample with pre-, during, and post-assessments within these untraditional settings. Do I interrupt their set of processes and force them into a learning model that they've either moved past, or that does not work well for them? How do I pick a subject when all the students are doing individualized programs that are customized to each of them? It's not a question of IF I'll be able to do this successfully. It's a question of HOW I'm gonna be able to pull this off.
09 March 2010
Technology At Its Best?
[Written 8 March 2010]
I woke up this morning with an annoying technological hiccup. For some strange reason, my district email was no longer being "pushed" to my iPhone. I knew this was bad so I went to my desktop to try and log in to my work email through the website. Since this did not work, my assumption, or rather my hope, was that my password needed to be reset, but I just reset it recently. When I finally got into a classroom and tried to login on a district computer, I was told that my account had been disabled. When I called the tech department, they told me that the high school deleted me from their system. Hurray for efficiency! So my first day is already screwy, and I have to wait for a work order to tell the tech department to fix this problem. This was all before 8 o'clock this morning.
[Update]
As of 12:30pm, I was able to log into the district system, I was not able to access my email since I was deleted at 6:30 this morning. At around 1pm I was able to access my email, however, ALL of my pld info was GONE! So, now, once again, I have to wait for the tech department to fix it. I am never without a backup to my backup. It turns out that EVERYTHING is gone and unrecoverable. My emails, my calendar, everything. I have a backup calendar that I can repopulate it through my google calendar, but it is a headache, and my emails are all gone as well. This is not a good thing. usually, it is the exchange server that acts as a backup, but it deleted all my info, and I've had to scramble a bit to recover it all myself. This is why I am NEVER without a backup to my backup plan.
I woke up this morning with an annoying technological hiccup. For some strange reason, my district email was no longer being "pushed" to my iPhone. I knew this was bad so I went to my desktop to try and log in to my work email through the website. Since this did not work, my assumption, or rather my hope, was that my password needed to be reset, but I just reset it recently. When I finally got into a classroom and tried to login on a district computer, I was told that my account had been disabled. When I called the tech department, they told me that the high school deleted me from their system. Hurray for efficiency! So my first day is already screwy, and I have to wait for a work order to tell the tech department to fix this problem. This was all before 8 o'clock this morning.
[Update]
As of 12:30pm, I was able to log into the district system, I was not able to access my email since I was deleted at 6:30 this morning. At around 1pm I was able to access my email, however, ALL of my pld info was GONE! So, now, once again, I have to wait for the tech department to fix it. I am never without a backup to my backup. It turns out that EVERYTHING is gone and unrecoverable. My emails, my calendar, everything. I have a backup calendar that I can repopulate it through my google calendar, but it is a headache, and my emails are all gone as well. This is not a good thing. usually, it is the exchange server that acts as a backup, but it deleted all my info, and I've had to scramble a bit to recover it all myself. This is why I am NEVER without a backup to my backup plan.
04 March 2010
Hurry Up and Wait!!
Waiting is a horrible trick that the inventor of time does to us all. It is Thursday morning and tomorrow is my last day as a Special Education Paraeducator. On Monday I start my student teaching internship, and in June I will be graduated with my MA ED in Special Education. It has been a long four years, but it has gone by quickly; from finishing my undergrad degree at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA to doing this two-year Master's program through the University of Phoenix. It has been a long road, but this last week has felt like it has dragged to a halt. If you believe that Hell is your own personal torment for eternity, then mine would be to have to sit and wait... and wait... and wait...
Am I excited to start my student teaching internship? No. For the first couple days and weeks, I am not doing much more than watching, observing, and waiting for my chance to jump into the fold. I am ready to get into it, and get things moving. This is my personality. One of my favorite things growing up was playing football, but I hated the start of the season. We didn't use pads, we didn't hit each other, there were no plays to learn or strategies discussed. All we did was run, and run, and talk about logistics. I'm ready to get things crackin' on the first days!
However, I know that things do not work this way. I read in my text that teachers who do course work on the first days of class have a harder time maintaining classroom management than teachers who take the first days to go over classroom rules, policies, etc... I understand this notion, and the class runs smoother, when the expectations are clear and understood; when behavior is not a distracting factor, then learning can occur. However, waiting is still my own personal Hell. It is painful, but necessary. So on Monday, I start my 12 weeks of student teaching, but it is still a process, and I will still have to wait. Time is a great equalizer; we are ALL subject to it.
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