Tech Refresh

At my school, I am the technology contact for our district. We are beginning the process for a technology refresh at our school. In other words every few years we a re given a budget to replace tech at our school, with newer and better machines. While tech refreshes for the last 10 years have all focused on replacing desktop computers in labs, things are starting to change. We are going through a process to try and figure out how we can integrate strategies to get more technology into the building. Currently we have 4 computer labs that are available for teacher use, and about 4 carts of 30 or so chromebooks. The question right now, is if we want to replace some of the lab computers with chromebooks so that we can get more devices into student's hands. While we think this is beneficial, it brings up concerns about what software programs we are using that require a hard drive. We are also mildly concerned about the durability of these personal devices. If any of you have been through a similar process I would love to hear your input. Have you had issues with the durability of devices? Have you found that there is anything you cannot do on a chromebook? Let me know! Thanks.

Design Based Learning

On Saturday I went to a Professional development training located at the Colorado Academy. The focus of the training was on design based learning. This is a relatively new idea to me, and one that I didnt know was a growing strategy. The idea of design based learning is to integrate problem solving into the classroom, by having students think about real world problems in the light of solving it. It focuses on a set of steps used to solve the problem.

Step 1- Interview/Identify the problem- In this case the learner is trying to identify the problem that needs to be solved. In the case of our PD we were interviewing students from Colorado Academy and interviewing them on their school experience. What did they like about school? What didn't they like about school? How would they go about changing the current system? After interviewing 4 different students we compiled a list of problems, and sorted them into categories. WE then decided what category was the most prevalent. It turned out that students were most disenchanted by the process of learning. They all said that they often only learn to get a grade, and therefore take shortcuts to work the system for grades. This was the problem that we ended up addressing.

Step 2- Brainstorm-

In this step we brainstormed solutions to potentially solve our problem. We came up with a list of over 60 ideas to solve our problems. In this step there are some important stipulations such as shooting for quantity of ideas, and not being afraid to take chances on an idea.

Step 3- Prototyping

In this step we we came up with a visual representation of our final solution. Which was to have students take base in an expeditionary learning environment. We then had the students come back into the class to critique our idea.

Step 4- Analyze

In this step we took a look at our idea, took the feedback from students and modified our solution where it needed to be changed.

The whole idea of Design based learning is intriguing to me. I thought this was an interesting way to learn. Does anybody have any experience with this form of learning, I would be interested to hear about your opinion on this method.

Public Schools

Recently in INTE 5200 the topic of discussion  for the week focused on the idea of "un-schooling". The focus of the article was about a family who has forgone traditional employment and schooling, and now focuses on farming to create revenue and learn. The father of the family was also the writer of the article, and advocated for more families to follow their lead and ditch public schools. He even went as far as to compare public schools to prisons. While I think that public schools are certainly far from perfect. I think this is yet another in a long line of examples of blame being unfairly placed on schools and teachers for the educational shortcoming in our country. I am not going to sit here today and convince you of all of the reasons why the system is creating that "prison" like feeling that the author is referring to. However, as a teacher in a public school, I would like to share a few of the reasons why I feel like shedding public schools in such a negative light is flat out wrong.

 Schools allow students a variety of choices. While the parents in this article may believe that they are allowing their students a variety of choices in their development that otherwise wouldn't be available. I would argue to the contrary. Allowing students to choose from a small set of experiences may actually shelter them from interests that they didn't know they have, In our school we have a variety of career focused electives that allows students to fall into something they didn't know they were initially interested in. Some of these classes include, a publication class where students create daily announcements, and learn technical skills that are used by real broadcasters. An engineering class that exposes students to the field of engineering through hands on creative work. Students typically love this class and a typical day in this class looks something like this..































To me this looks like all kids are engaged in their learning. None of them look to be suffering too much.
    Schools expose students to dynamic personalities. This is a bit of an age old argument, that homeschooling limits kids socially. While I don't believe that this is an absolute truth. Typically the homeschooled kids that I have come across are lacking something socially. People are very different and have a wide variety of traits and skills. School exposes kids to this. Teachers are all very different and bring a variety of styles and expectations. I think that it is important for students to learn how to interact with this  variety. In the real world we constantly learn what we can get away with, or how we can relate to our superiors. Home-schooling only exposes you to one type of these types of personalities.
      I also know that at my school students are exposed to a large amount of diversity. The other day I was coaching football, and noticed that on my team we have Caucasian, Hispanic and African American players on our team. I also noticed that the cliques of players on our team had nothing to do with the race of our players, but rather who they are as people. I think this is something that home-schooling shelters kids from.

I am not saying that public schools are perfect, and I recognize that not all schools have the programs and initiatives that my school does. I think schools can focus a lot more on allowing students to be a part in picking their own path. I would also love to see the pressure placed on kids in standardized testing disappear because I think its counter productive. However, I think that the idea of home-schooling, or "un-schooling" as the author refers to it as, might only work for a very limited amount of students.

Are we too attached?

Recently I read an article in the New York Times outlining our use of technology and it's outcomes on our lives. The article focuses on an event that occurred recently, where an author named Scott Welch was on a flight that led to a mechanical malfunction filling the plane cabin with smoke and dropping the support masks from the ceiling. While other people on board cried or sat quietly to reflect. Mr. Welch began recording his last moments on video and took numerous selfies. This seems to be an interesting new phenomenon world wide. Life's moments are often times not lived, but rather recorded with videos or pictures. This article makes one defining statement that I think is worth investigating. 

"To live the moment or record the moment? It’s become a defining dilemma of the iPhone age"

To say that our culture has changed over the last 5 years is a vast understatement. The use of smartphones has gone through the rough, and honestly I am not sure that I currently know a single person that doesn't own an, I-phone, Galaxy, or some-other form of high end device. The benefits of these devices is tremendous. However, sometimes I wonder if the downside is equally great. I am from Boulder, and thus I spend my fair share of time outside, nature loving, and generally being a hippy. I truly love the quiet moments in life, where my phone doesn't work, and I can sit back and enjoy the tremendous beauty of earth. However, I have at times in my life found myself feeling like I need to take a picture of a moment to capture it and share with the rest of the people that I know. I think that from time to time that this is ok. However, I hope that people can find a way to be selfish in some moments and just enjoy the moment they are living for themselves. Rather than experience all moments figuring out what cute caption they are going to put under their selfie. I also wonder as an educator, how we teach our students to be able to put their devices down sometimes to sit back and enjoy our time on earth.  

Technology changes in the classroom 2008 vs 2014

This is my 6th year working as a teacher. I started student teaching in a 7th grade life science class in 2008. While time has flown and its hard to believe that I have been at this for as long as I have, the changes in technology have been quick moving and remarkable.  In my student teaching year this is what technology in my classroom looked like.

• E-mail was done by Microsoft Outlook (I am so very happy that it is no longer)
• Class documents were distributed by paper.
• Powerpoints, documents and any other file had to be turned in and shared by thumb drive.
• Content information was distributed across the internet to various sites. Usually sites were created by random people (possibly from their grandmothers basement) and weren't very engaging. 
• Content projection occurred using a mobile projector that had to be constantly fidgeted with to make a readable image.  

While quality teaching still happened in this environment, tools have made the learning process much more streamlined and efficient. Today technology looks much different in my classroom. 

• E-mail is done using gmail, which conveniently connects to other important web based applications.
• Class documents are ubiquitously distributed using a program called Edmodo. This allows me to post instructions and seamlessly give assignments to students. This saves me a ton of time, especially in regards to catching sick students up and making copies.
• Thanks to Google Docs, documents and presentation are shared with the click of a button. This all collects to one digital file for me, which makes grading much more convenient. 
• Content information can be found using many different websites, including...Teded, Brainpop, Discovery education and Kahn academy. These sites are convenient and very engaging. 
• Projection is done using a mounted projector and a SMART board. These are both set up to my computer, which makes my presentations much easier to do. 

 These advances are clearly very significant. Without these, I don't think that blended learning would exist. It amazes me that we have shifted to this model of learning so quickly.

September 7th- Post 1

For my first post I read an article that I found on Eduptopia.org, a very useful website that is funded by George Lucas(of Star-Wars fame). I frequently use Edutopia for finding inspiration, specific strategies, lesson plans and to learn some generally cool things. They are very focused on providing examples of effective schools that are using cool new strategies to reform everything from culture to test scores. Typically the strategies that I focus on this site involve project based learning or flipping the classroom. Under the area for lessons on flipping the classroom, I found a recent article that describes a school's transformation through the use of blended learning.

Revere High School in Massachusetts, was a very low performing school. They decided to try a new strategy to raise school scores and lower drop out rates. They decided to make their entire school a blended learning-school. Meaning that they blended the use of technology focused lessons, using modules and flipped classroom applications to change the school climate. The change over focused on a few key factors.

1. All teachers in the building were certified in blended learning
2. The use of iWalkthrough, a program that allows teachers and administrators to digitally walk through co-workers classrooms and give important feedback on lessons.
3. Use of applications and LMS such as Schoology to provide lesson material

The results were incredible. Revere went from being classified as a low performing school to winning the High School Gold award at the National Urban transformation conference!

Typically when I see articles like this I can usually find some root causes that made a particular school seem unique in its ability to change. I found it very interesting that they were able to certify all teachers in their building to be versed in blended learning. Having 100% by in from teachers seems invaluable in this situation. Also, I am very interested in the program iWalkthrough that they used. Sometimes when teachers flip their classroom, their lesson development gets lazy. It is clear that this school was unwilling to accept any form of mediocrity when approaching their transformation, and the results speak for themselves. I would love to hear everyones thoughts in the comment section.