Students 2.0 In 3 Days!

The edublogosphere has developed me professionally more than any other experience in my teaching career so far. And Clay's Student 2.0 project is cranking this whole thing up several notches. The idea of having conversations with students around the world about effective learning has changed the way I interact with my class here, and the way I think about the role of young adults in education. Get ready. Check it out in 3 days.
Technorati Tags: education, students2.0, blog,

Checklist Stoke: Creating A Caring Classroom

There are some new bloggers and seasoned bloggers writing less about tech-tools and more about classroom instruction and anecdotes. And they're getting me stoked every time I open my reader. On of those blogs is Slam Teaching (is there an Edublog award for coolest title?). There, in a post about the fundamental calling of teaching, I found the following checklist that after a few frustrating tech-filled days centered me again. Besides, a good list to check always makes me feel better.

* I provide opportunities for success to each child in the classroom, encouraging growth from wherever they start.
* I assess student ability and adjust instruction to maintain an appropriate level of challenge for each.
* I offer students a variety of ways to demonstrate their knowledge, intelligence, and mastery.
* I attempt to build interpersonal skills, positive social behaviors, character skills, and resistance to failure.
* I attempt to accommodate a variety of interests, motivators, modality strengths, and learning preferences in my directions, instructions, and assignments.
* I attempt to accommodate tactile, kinesthetic, visual, verbal, and auditory learners.
* I make sure kids have ample opportunities to move around and help them learn to maintain an appropriate level of alertness without disturbing others.
* I avoid using humiliation, sarcasm, ridicule, anger, impatience, or manifestations of disappointment in dealing with students.
* I honor students' needs for respect, dignity, purpose, success, acceptance, attention, and motivation.
* I model standards of behavior, language, and tone of voice that I expect from my students.
* I work to eliminate prejudice toward students based on racial or cultural background; physical appearance; sexual orientation; academic, artistic, or athletic competence.
* I strive to stay aware of put-downs or slurs expressed by students or staff, responding immediately.
* I sometimes allow and encourage students to make decisions about their learning (what, where, with whom, how, or how much).
* I sometimes allow students to create, design, or renegotiate assignments to make them personally meaningful.
* I motivate through access to positive outcomes, rather than avoidance or fear of negative outcomes. I emphasize the positive consequences of cooperation.
* I consciously anticipate what students, teachers, and parents will need in various situations in order to prevent problems from occurring.
* I follow through immediately, avoiding warnings and threats.
* I make students and their parents aware of changes in behavior or performance that could affect grades or promotion.
* I utilize parents, administration, and support staff for feedback and support (not for punishing students).
* I attempt to meet students' needs for attention in positive, constructive, and proactive ways.
* I reinforce positive behavior with positive outcomes.
* I communicate with parents, regularly and frequently, about what their children are doing well.
* I respect students' affective needs and am committed to listening and supporting their feelings and problem-solving skills in positive ways.
* I respect confidentiality to the degree that doing so will not put anyone in danger.
* I immediately respond to incidents involving any form of bullying, harassment, or threat to safety.

Flickr Credit: I Na Aina E
Technorati Tags: classroom, bestpractice, blog, teaching

New Edition To Our School's Blogosphere

...that makes five blogs. Check out Laura Davis's blog Flint To Spark.
Technorati Tags: blog, teacher, edublog

Another Creative Video About The Power Of Blogging

I came across this video on Rachel Boyd's blog. Once on YouTube I found that there's a whole series of "...In Plan English" videos.

Technorati Tags: commoncraft, blog, leelefever, rachelboyd, inplainenglish

Learnerblogs Blues

In the name of blogland security, I've been trying to make decisions, as Technology Resource Teacher, that represent my school's interest in carefully dealing with the privacy-security-student-blogging-online-learning-environment issues. So I went with Learnerblogs (I have really started to dig WordPress) instead of Blogger, which I used last year with little to no issues. My school has Moveable Type on our server. But it has proven hard to set up, difficult to customize, and all together pretty inflexible and inconvenient. But now that we're up and blogging, Learnerblogs is beginning to disappoint. I like to move from my Google Reader to original posts for commenting. And I want to comment on nearly every post that my students write. But, man, Learnerblogs is so slow, both to load and to post comments.

Restructuring Homework In My Class, Starting Today

The philosophy, practice, and dividends of homework are perpetual topics of discussion at my school. For me, they meld with other questions of what it means to be a serious student, what it means to be a learner, and what it's going to take to be successful and happy in the 21st century. To move beyond discussion, I decided to make some fairly significant changes in the way I assign, collect, and assess homework. The seed for this change was planted a couple weeks ago when I was in a meeting listening to a proposal for a 'hybrid' course, which (at my school) means less class time, more independent work and individualized instruction via Moodle and various chat and videoconferencing tools. Personally, my favorite hour of the day is class. I couldn't do less of it. But what occurred to me was that homework in an online course is inherently more independent, individualized, and flexible. These are the values that drive our school's technology initiative. And I want my homework assignments to embrace these values. So here's what I changed:

*First, I set up every student with a Learnerblog and Bloglines account (for more on this, see Clay Burell's post visionary student blogging). Each student put together their own blog reading list consisting of 5-10 feeds, and proposed a purpose or topic for their own blog.

*They are required to publish one thoughtful post a cycle (our 6-day version of a week).

*In addition, during class time each cycle, they meet in small groups to report on their reading of feeds.

Okay, here's the homework part:

*On the first day of each cycle, I post 5 items to our class Moodle page:
1. A prompt for this cycle's post. (They can use it or not).
2. Required reading and viewing. This cycle, for example, I posted a TED talk, a YouTube video, and a link to an educational post.
3. Cool Tools. I post links to tools they might like or find useful. This cycle: Quotiki and del.icio.us.
4. And a mini-lesson. This cycle is commenting on blogs: why do it, why not to do it, and opportunity to practice.
5. A forum for discussion of any of the cycle's homework activities.

What's in it for me:
*I feed their posts to my reader and leave individualized comments.
*I can see when and how often they access the homework activities in Moodle. Doing this allows me to monitor and coach students in the art of time management.
*Now, we all do the same kinds of homework, which creates a different kind of learning environment.
*My class time is freed up to do the things I always feel I don't have time to do, like sit in a circle and read literature together, slowly (10 pages in 3 classes - this is a good thing) and critically.
*I always know they've done the reading (no need for punitive quizzes:)

Blog Reading Level Or Student Writing Level

I've always struggled with teaching grammar and vocabulary in and out of context. I don't know if this tool could be helpful, but it's sparked a few ideas to help students direct their own mastering of these necessary communication skills. I ran across the Blog Readability Test on Jeff Utecht's blog, and I think it could be an interesting feedback tool for student bloggers. Although, I'm suspicious of it's calibration.