Going through the nine strategies these last few weeks, has made me realize that I want to make a concerted effort this coming year to focus on two areas. They are providing feedback and recognizing effort. I think I have always known that it was important to give feedback on in class discussion, assignments, writings, and tests, but I think over the last couple of weeks I've discovered a new tool that I can use. I really want to have my students submitting their work online prior to final draft, so that they can get comments and feedback, make corrections, if necessary, then submit their final work. I think this can be huge for me and for them. I also want to create rubrics for all work, so that the objectives are clearly laid out and I can focus on them when I'm grading.
The second area is recognizing effort. I really feel like there is a problem at my school with students feeling that they can just go through the motions and do marginal work and feel like they deserve an A or a B. I think this year I'm going to try and incorporate some of the characteristics of effort into my calculations. I think that this will be a good way to encourage the top level students to push their capabilities and reward the average students who really do give their absolute best effort to succeed. I'm looking forward to the year and these changes.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Organizer Comparison
This weeks assignment was the great organizer comparison, specifically the functionality and ease of use of three web tools. The three tools that I chose to use and kick around for the last couple of days were Bubbl.us, Exploratree and the Education Oasis section on Graphic Organizers.
In terms of the three I choose Bubbl.us is slightly different because I viewed it as a place where students could go individually or as collaborative groups to help with organization of ideas. I think this tool would be great for students to work on a project together and divide up roles that could be color coded within Bubbl.us. Each could contribute the majority of their notes to their sections, but still help the others. They are then able to manipulate their concept map to make connections and bring all their information together. Bubble.us would be a great 1st step for a group that was wanting to create a project or write a paper together, making sure they were all on the same page and were writing with the same ideas and organizational structure.
The last two tools have the feel, to me, of teacher tools. The seem like a way to create and deliver a method for students to organize their knowledge. They would not be as adaptable for the students once they received them. I have already bookmarked these two sites for this year, because they had a lot of options and were well organized by goals. I liked how both sites offered suggestions on how each type of organizer might be used in the class. One of the sites, in my opinion, was significantly more valuable to me than the other. The key difference was adaptability. The Education Oasis organizers were given in PDF form and needed to be printed out. On the other hand Exploratree's organizers could be manipulated, shared, displayed and saved all online so that a teacher could create their own personal virtual binder of specific organizers that were geared towards their subjects and objectives. This overwhelmingly impressed me. The thought of being able to go back online and simply and easily edit my organizer making changes, even for a period later in the day is very impressive.
Overall, all three tools were easy to use from day one, but the best ones were those that allowed collaboration between students and teachers, as well as between students. Those were bubbl.us and Exploratree.
In terms of the three I choose Bubbl.us is slightly different because I viewed it as a place where students could go individually or as collaborative groups to help with organization of ideas. I think this tool would be great for students to work on a project together and divide up roles that could be color coded within Bubbl.us. Each could contribute the majority of their notes to their sections, but still help the others. They are then able to manipulate their concept map to make connections and bring all their information together. Bubble.us would be a great 1st step for a group that was wanting to create a project or write a paper together, making sure they were all on the same page and were writing with the same ideas and organizational structure.
The last two tools have the feel, to me, of teacher tools. The seem like a way to create and deliver a method for students to organize their knowledge. They would not be as adaptable for the students once they received them. I have already bookmarked these two sites for this year, because they had a lot of options and were well organized by goals. I liked how both sites offered suggestions on how each type of organizer might be used in the class. One of the sites, in my opinion, was significantly more valuable to me than the other. The key difference was adaptability. The Education Oasis organizers were given in PDF form and needed to be printed out. On the other hand Exploratree's organizers could be manipulated, shared, displayed and saved all online so that a teacher could create their own personal virtual binder of specific organizers that were geared towards their subjects and objectives. This overwhelmingly impressed me. The thought of being able to go back online and simply and easily edit my organizer making changes, even for a period later in the day is very impressive.
Overall, all three tools were easy to use from day one, but the best ones were those that allowed collaboration between students and teachers, as well as between students. Those were bubbl.us and Exploratree.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Electronic Student Response
A couple of items are available to me this coming year. The first is Moodle, which has been great. One of the features that I started with this past year is the journal feature. It is exactly what it sounds like a journal that the students will be keeping about my class. The really nice feature for me is that it is private, so the kids don't need to worry about what their peers will see or say about their posts, and it also allows me to post feedback to them and comment about what they write and to ask questions that work as great starters for the next post.
The second tool that I like is Google Docs. I started adding comments to their assignments before giving their grades, so they can make a round or more, if necessary, of improvements before final grading. They then send me an email when they have made their changes and they get their grade plus a second round of comments. I like this because it makes these assignments better in the end and helps the students to see what I'm looking for, where they are succeeding, and where they need to do a little more work. The only major change for me is that I really need to set two deadlines, and it is hard to track down my students who have trouble making one deadline.
The final tool, and also the newest is the Centio sp? system that my dept. is going to purchase this summer. We have them in the math dept for quizzes and such, but I envision using them as conversation starters and a way to check for understanding. I'm really interested by the option of polling my class and seeing where they stand on a certain issue initially, after discussion, after learning more on the topic.
I think all three of these tools will help me to do a better job of keeping my finger on the pulse of my class as a whole, and the pulse of individual students.
The second tool that I like is Google Docs. I started adding comments to their assignments before giving their grades, so they can make a round or more, if necessary, of improvements before final grading. They then send me an email when they have made their changes and they get their grade plus a second round of comments. I like this because it makes these assignments better in the end and helps the students to see what I'm looking for, where they are succeeding, and where they need to do a little more work. The only major change for me is that I really need to set two deadlines, and it is hard to track down my students who have trouble making one deadline.
The final tool, and also the newest is the Centio sp? system that my dept. is going to purchase this summer. We have them in the math dept for quizzes and such, but I envision using them as conversation starters and a way to check for understanding. I'm really interested by the option of polling my class and seeing where they stand on a certain issue initially, after discussion, after learning more on the topic.
I think all three of these tools will help me to do a better job of keeping my finger on the pulse of my class as a whole, and the pulse of individual students.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Feedback
I really liked this week's blog article and see it as a skill that I do need to work on. It is primarily to help with feedback that I am making an effort to create rubrics starting with all the major assignments during my year, and some generic rubrics that will work with some of my smaller daily type assignments.
My hope is that these rubrics will do exactly what the article suggests, which is to focus on the learning objectives. Having the rubric at the top of the assignment will allow me to have that reminder of what I asked of the students and where my primary focus should be when grading and giving comments.
The second benefit I'm hoping to receive from creating rubrics is to increase the speed with which grading and feedback is given. I know it probably isn't appropriate to do something simply to speed up the process, but I've found that the time commitment to grading is killing me. I'm sure many of you are in the same boat, but I have approximately 140 students on my team, and they all take Geography. That means whenever I give out a major assignment, I have a huge, imposing, heavy, cumbersome stack of big time assignments to grade. Sometimes I'm almost too embarrassed to hand them back because of how long it has taken. I need to find a way to pick up the pace, and I'm hoping that the rubrics will not only help my students focus on the objectives of the assignment, but also help me focus more on the specific stated objectives.
This article spoke to me much more clearly than last weeks and I also felt like it was offering me a way to make myself a better teacher not only for my students, but for myself, and I appreciate that.
My hope is that these rubrics will do exactly what the article suggests, which is to focus on the learning objectives. Having the rubric at the top of the assignment will allow me to have that reminder of what I asked of the students and where my primary focus should be when grading and giving comments.
The second benefit I'm hoping to receive from creating rubrics is to increase the speed with which grading and feedback is given. I know it probably isn't appropriate to do something simply to speed up the process, but I've found that the time commitment to grading is killing me. I'm sure many of you are in the same boat, but I have approximately 140 students on my team, and they all take Geography. That means whenever I give out a major assignment, I have a huge, imposing, heavy, cumbersome stack of big time assignments to grade. Sometimes I'm almost too embarrassed to hand them back because of how long it has taken. I need to find a way to pick up the pace, and I'm hoping that the rubrics will not only help my students focus on the objectives of the assignment, but also help me focus more on the specific stated objectives.
This article spoke to me much more clearly than last weeks and I also felt like it was offering me a way to make myself a better teacher not only for my students, but for myself, and I appreciate that.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Week 1 - Enhanced Learning Through Technology
I just finished reading the two online articles for the first week in class. I'm struggled with the Waxman meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning with Technology on Student Outcomes. I think there were a few reasons for why I did not connect with this article. The first is the statistical analysis. I took stats, once, in college and now it is gone. I was really bogged down and put off by the jargon of statistical analysis. What I did get out of all the statistical discussion is, despite the fact that we are supposed to be having this data driven system with NCLB, there are still very few studies done in the area of education and technology's impact upon it. Also the studies that are done are often not set up or operated with statistical integrity. This does not surprise me very much given my colleagues response whenever a piece of educational research may be put in front of us. Normally it is disdain and frustration that comes out of the fact that the place and conditions of the research projects so often don't look or feel anything like the place and conditions of where we work.
The second part of this article that I was frustrated by was the admission of the wild inconsistencies of the articles they included in their meta-analysis. I was shocked to see that studies that were conducted in the 90's were being included just because the findings had been published in the last five years. Given what the average person knows about the rate of change in the world of technology it seems criminal to include studies from approximately 15 years ago.
The main finding was pretty obvious, that integrating technology will result in a positive correlation with outcome results. I was not really surprised to see this. I was also not very surprised to see that by integrating technology the dynamic in the classroom changed from a teacher led to a teacher moderated classroom. I think this is the appropriate way to manage the class setting and allows students more freedom to follow their interests and to form more natural collaborative units. Of course this structure of student independence does lead to more abuse of privelege by students who aren't capable or comfortable with the freedom and you will see the increase in behavioral issues that were found in the study.
Overall, I wasn't that impressed by the study. I felt it was an overly technical reading for my tastes and it admitted to too many serious flaws. I also felt like the conclusions were pretty obvious from my experiences and I'm guessing most of us in this class would have ended in pretty much the same area based simply on our daily classes.
The second part of this article that I was frustrated by was the admission of the wild inconsistencies of the articles they included in their meta-analysis. I was shocked to see that studies that were conducted in the 90's were being included just because the findings had been published in the last five years. Given what the average person knows about the rate of change in the world of technology it seems criminal to include studies from approximately 15 years ago.
The main finding was pretty obvious, that integrating technology will result in a positive correlation with outcome results. I was not really surprised to see this. I was also not very surprised to see that by integrating technology the dynamic in the classroom changed from a teacher led to a teacher moderated classroom. I think this is the appropriate way to manage the class setting and allows students more freedom to follow their interests and to form more natural collaborative units. Of course this structure of student independence does lead to more abuse of privelege by students who aren't capable or comfortable with the freedom and you will see the increase in behavioral issues that were found in the study.
Overall, I wasn't that impressed by the study. I felt it was an overly technical reading for my tastes and it admitted to too many serious flaws. I also felt like the conclusions were pretty obvious from my experiences and I'm guessing most of us in this class would have ended in pretty much the same area based simply on our daily classes.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Week 4 - Online Children's safety
Internet Safety for Kids -
I know this is important, but sometimes I have real problems with parents in our district who get all bent out of shape about kids using their computers at home. In our school we have seen parents call in about students accessing De.lic.ious accounts at home, downloading GoogleEarth, using district served Moodle Forums. I understand that for some of these people they are nervous about the security of their computer and their response is to let their kids do absolutely nothing with them. Even when you try to explain your reasons for requests and comfort them with the knowledge that a Google Download is definitely coming from a trusted site, they still won't do it.
One of the big challenges we are going to be facing next year is to educate our parents and community about appropriate downloads and ways they can actually improve their computer and its capabilities. As ironic as this sounds I think we are planning on having a newsletter (on actual paper) go out about some of these technology issues.
The flip side of this of course is that some of these same parents let their students go on all sorts of sites without any sort of supervision at all hours of the night. They care so much about their computer, but not really what their students use it for. My last story of frustration was a student who came in and told me they couldn't do their homework, online, because they had been grounded. Thinking this was impossible, I emailed the parent. Sure enough they were not going to let their child use the computer at home because of some discipline issue. I'll never understand how someone would tell their middle schooler who was trying to do their homework that they couldn't do it because they were in trouble.
Sorry this post became so negative, but this is a frustrating issue when we do so much to try and protect and guide our students online and it often is lost on our parents, whether it be through lack of understanding or lack of concern.
I know this is important, but sometimes I have real problems with parents in our district who get all bent out of shape about kids using their computers at home. In our school we have seen parents call in about students accessing De.lic.ious accounts at home, downloading GoogleEarth, using district served Moodle Forums. I understand that for some of these people they are nervous about the security of their computer and their response is to let their kids do absolutely nothing with them. Even when you try to explain your reasons for requests and comfort them with the knowledge that a Google Download is definitely coming from a trusted site, they still won't do it.
One of the big challenges we are going to be facing next year is to educate our parents and community about appropriate downloads and ways they can actually improve their computer and its capabilities. As ironic as this sounds I think we are planning on having a newsletter (on actual paper) go out about some of these technology issues.
The flip side of this of course is that some of these same parents let their students go on all sorts of sites without any sort of supervision at all hours of the night. They care so much about their computer, but not really what their students use it for. My last story of frustration was a student who came in and told me they couldn't do their homework, online, because they had been grounded. Thinking this was impossible, I emailed the parent. Sure enough they were not going to let their child use the computer at home because of some discipline issue. I'll never understand how someone would tell their middle schooler who was trying to do their homework that they couldn't do it because they were in trouble.
Sorry this post became so negative, but this is a frustrating issue when we do so much to try and protect and guide our students online and it often is lost on our parents, whether it be through lack of understanding or lack of concern.
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