Teacher Bytes

Last week I had the pleasure of doing two presentations for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) at their annual Summer Leadership Institute in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is the event where school and district administrators gather to learn new things they can take back to hopefully improve education for their students. It was a great experience meeting with these people and getting a look at what is important these professionals at the management levels. There were two things that struck me during the four days I was in attendance.

First, unfortunately there is little in the way of literature marketed to administrators about technology integration. In fact I saw nothing on the subject. The conference operated a bookstore in one of the hallways. As I perused the titles I saw a multitude of subjects including but not limited to motivating staff, raising math and literacy proficiencies, management styles, and interpretation of test scores. The closest thing I saw to technology integration was a book about electronic portfolios and two books on bullying that had chapters on cyberbullying. This is disturbing to me because I heard the same story from other technology intergrationists or coaches: technology innovations are not getting administration support needed to be successful. Granted that administrators have other concerns than technology to run their schools but to find no books on the subject for sale was disturbing.

On the bright side, breakout sessions dealing with technology were very well attended. My cyberbullying session was near capacity and I was happy with the numbers in my session on using wikis as lesson plans. The audience was engaged, asking very good questions and taking notes on what I was talking about. Other sessions I sat in on did very well too. I found out that many schools in South Carolina are in the process of installing interactive whiteboards, another encouraging sign. The impression I came away with was that administrators do want to do more with technology but are not sure how to proceed. At least this is a start and more important a hopeful sign of things to come.

For those of you who has been reading this blog for the last few months you know that I taught Web Media Productions to a group of 6th graders. The semester is over, the grades are in, equipment packed away, and I have taken time to reflect on how the experiment went. As I look back and look ahead, I have come to this conclusion: it was a successful failure.

To recap, in January my principal asked if I could take one class of 6th graders and do something with the various technologies I have been advocating for the past year and a half. The class would be using blogs, podcasats, wikis, video, and other Web 2.0 tools to complete a variety of assignments. These assignments included school news and in work in each student’s academic classes. My purpose was to demonstrate to teachers and administration how technology could be integrated into everyday assignments and no computer labs would be necessary.

Here are the things I liked:

• The students enthusiastically worked with the technology. Other teachers who observed my students told me they were impressed at how much pride the students took in doing their work. Very few times did I have to discipline a student. There were three students who failed the course but even they did very well when they did their assignments. Also, these students were having troubles in other classes as well.
• Students took ownership in the course and quickly realized their work was out for everyone to see. Some took longer than others but got the point when I was constantly commenting on writing skills, spelling, punctuation, etc…. It started driving home the point their ELA classes mattered. There was also one funny time when one of the students got a response back on her blog from someone outside of school. It scared her. In another incident, a student e-mailed me that there was some inappropriate content attached to one of our videos on YouTube and wanted to know if I could take it down. He was proud of the work he and his classmates had done and did not want it ruined if it could be helped.
• Students realized they were an equal partner in the class. When one of the students taught me how to do something on the blog he later told me that was the first he felt what he knew was important. He when scared when he taught me what I needed to know but bought into the class when he realized I listened to him as a student should listen to a teacher. It was the first time it had ever happened to him. The students worked as a team to solve problems. However, I would send other students to help answer questions and sometimes I let them work it out on their own.

Here are some of the things I did not like:

• Not all of the teachers participated or cooperated. Even after I explained what I was planning on doing more than a few would not help with sharing computers. Even though teachers shared what they were doing in class and gave feedback on my ideas, almost all of them did not follow-up on work students did for their classes. One even got annoyed when she was asked to allow students to do a survey so graphs could be generated, the unit she was on at the time.
• Only two teachers asked how I did something or asked the students to explain what how they did an assignment. Sad considering this was an exercise in showing what the possibilities are.
• While administration was supportive and gave me a free hand to run the course as I saw fit, they only saw half of what the course was about. They loved the videos that were produced. So good the principal has assigned me to do this class on a full-time basis. The idea was for the teachers to see how to do things not me do it for them. In other words, in spite of trying to teach everyone how to fish, now I will be called on to video things in other classes instead of the teachers doing it themselves. This is why I call it a successful failure.

Things I would do differently:

• Say no! At least it sounds good but I loved my students.
• Have a couple of days where we would do nothing but sign up for the accounts needed.
• Make wikis the first assignment so students would have a better overall portfolio platform.
• Work more with audio podcasts but I am sure there will be pressure to get videos out.
• Make sure to have an individual video project so every student would have to demonstrate basic videoing skills before moving on to other tasks.

I am now in the process of designing what I like to call the Multimedia Activity Center or MAC for short (goes well with McCracken Middle School). As this summer project moves forward I will be blogging about that adventure. Don’t worry, I will also be blogging about technology integration as well. It is going to be a busy time.

According to an article by Jacqui Chengon ARS Technica, the United States Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that a school was within its right to remove a student from the student council because she called an administrator a “douchebag” on her blog. What struck me was a school’s punishment of what a student posted on her personal blog with her personal computer was upheld in court after the student sued on First Amendment grounds.

While the court acknowledged adults’ rights to use vulgar or offensive speech on the Internet to make a point it said schools are different. The court said in its opinion that schools, “may legitimately give rise to disciplinary action by a school” if the school “was responsible for teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.” Even though the blog post did not use any school resources, it was related to a school activity and did cause some disruption of the educational environment. The final point the appeals court made was that it claimed that being on student council was a “privilege” which the school could rescind at anytime, especially if the student’s actions undermined the values of the extracurricular activity.

Federal courts have given schools extraordinary powers to go outside of the Constitution provided schools could show where an action could undermine the safety and security of the school. However, the court has also backed up student free speech in certain circumstances. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District the United States Supreme Court said schools could not restrict the right student speech as long as it did not disrupt school. It is possible that if the student in question had been suspended the court might have sided with the student. However, the court of appeals ruling does open a door for schools to regulate what students say on the Internet that has been previously closed. This case should closely watched, especially if it goes to the United States Supreme Court.

One other thing that should be mentioned about this case. To the young lady’s credit, she called for fellow students to e-mail, write, or call the school district’s superintendent to show support for a concert the school kept postponing for one reason or another. Never in the language of the blog post did the student advocate anything else. This shows the students of the school in question has learned their lessons in civics. However, it is unfortunate the student decided to use vulgar language in her call for action.

Should students be punished for what they write, podcast, or vodcast over the Internet using their own comptuers and access if vulgar language is used to critize school officials? Let me know.

Trying to predict the future can be tricky thing to do, even Jedi Master Yoda had trouble when he tried. Yet, there are times when you have take a guess at what will happen, especially when you work with education technology. The other day after finishing my class on wikis, one of the participants asked me where all this technology was going. It lead to an interesting discussion in which nobody left.

I told the group that, in my opinion, one direction technology is taking us is our classes will be radically different. Teachers in the future will not have all of their students in one physical location all of the time. My statement led one teacher to ask, “Will technology eventually replace teachers?” “No,” I replied, “It will help ease an anticipated teacher shortage but there will always be a need for teachers.” The United States Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says that educational services jobs will grow by 10.7%  and add 1.4 million new jobs through the year 2016. According to a Yahoo website, education followed only healthcare and information technology as top career prospects in the future. I think there will be plenty of work for everyone.

One of the trends that leads me to make my claim about the future of teaching is the growth of online education. Insight School of South Carolina will be starting operations next year. This venture is an accredited public high school where students can earn a diploma, all online. Any South Carolina student who is accepted into the program are allowed to participate tuition free as well. This is not the first time high school students could earn high school credit online. Bluffton High School in Bluffton, South Carolina had offered a few courses in cooperation with the South Carolina Department of Education. Online summer school classes are becoming more popular each year.

Another trend might be an indirect consequence of the No Child Left Behind law. Our district uses NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests during the year to help teachers prepare students for state-mandated tests. The great thing about MAP tests is they pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses. With this data, teachers know how to prepare lessons for individual students to help them achieve higher scores on the important year-end tests. However, these tests could also pinpoint teachers’s strengths and weaknesses. On the surface this may sound like a bad thing for teachers but we must realize we cannot be perfect in everything (even if parents, principals, superintendents, and school boards expect it). The answer here is that students and their weaknesses could be matched up with teachers whose strengths could help. If they are in the same building, great. Thanks to technology and distance learning, students and teachers could be in different buildings if that is the match-up that best helps the student. At different times of day or week, students will head to computers in the room to work with their teachers while the classroom teacher is at their interactive whiteboard working with students from other schools.

In either case, teachers will be needed to provide the human interaction needed in education whether it is a few feet or thousands of miles that separates them from their students. I did tell the group that teachers who are comfortable with technology will be the ones who will succeed in the future. At least this is my vision of the future of education. Please share your ideas of where the technology will take education in the future.

A friend of mine, who is a Pharmacist at our local Kroger supermarket, told me about a little in-house contest they have. The older employees will bring in old-school vinyl album covers and place them in different groupings. The object of the game is to guess the groupings such as dead artists. I asked my friend if the older employees usually wins since the albums would be considered oldies and released before the high-school aged employees were born. “Oh no,” replied my friend, ” the (high-school aged) kids usually win because they just do a Google search to get the answers.” Interesting how much research skills our students have but we sometimes don’t see it because we don’t understand the tools students like to use.

There is a new book I plan on reading in the near future entitled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein, an English Professor at Emory University. The author purportedly claims a generation of our young people (anyone under 30) are so busy with technology they are not reading, not engaging in civic issues, and do not have a solid work ethic. This is the opposite of an enlightenment expected with the coming of technology. This is from the review on Amazon.com. I will withhold judgment until I have read the book.

A blog post by Stefanie Olsen on CNET’s News.com has some evidence that might poke holes in Professor Bauerlein’s research. Some Silicon Valley teens gathered together at the Teens in Tech confab to share how they are using technology to start businesses and do charitable work. Here are a few examples of what some participants have accomplished. Anshal Samar, 14, has invented the fantasy-chemistry education card game Elementeo and hopes to sell 50,000 sets and is well on his way to becoming a millionaire before entering high school. There is also Sejal Hathi, 16, who founded Girls Helping Girls, a nonprofit group hoping to inspire young women around the world to bring social change in their communities. So much for no work ethic or civic responsibility.

What technology are these teens using? Facebook because of its better layout and professional look. They still prefer e-mail but have not caught on to Twitter. All of the participants worry about their privacy and take steps to protect it. While the participants admitted to not being able to read as much as they would like outside of school related materials, they did say they kept up with news online. One thing they do regret is the fact they don’t have as much time to build personal relationships because of their work or use of Facebook or other social networking sites but understand personal relationships are important.

Ms. Olsen does point something out that makes me wonder if Professor Bauerlein’s book may be premature. The attitudes about using technology responsibly is coming from parents. Silicon Valley is one of the technology centers of the world so its inhabitants are probably very tech savvy. This knowledge of how things work on the Internet is passed on to their children. In other words, responsible adults who understand how technology works are taking time to instruct their children properly and it works. The cover of the book says not to trust anyone under 30 (funny coming from someone who proably said not to trust anyone over thirty once upon a time) but when I read Professor Bauerlein’s book it would not surprise me that he makes another argument supporting the idea of the Technology Natives/Technology Immigrants divide.

Do you ever have a lesson you like to teach except for one little thing that confuses everyone and causes the lesson grind to a halt? Whenever I teach Audacity in Podcasting classes, it is trying to explain why you need to add the LAME MP3 encoder separately when setting up to record podcasts. The reason stated by the makers of Audacity is that software patent issues prevent Audacity from including LAME. Maybe I am not doing a good enough job sharing with the class about legalities or maybe another solution is needed.

If PC users wanted a digital recorder without having to add extensions you had to pay for it. Since it is free, most people live with Audacity’s little quirk. Mac users spare us from lauding over Garage Band. However, there is a new recorder which is fairly simple to use, has some nice audio effects, convert files to MP3 automatically without a separate download, and is free, WildVoice Studio.

When you open WildVoice Studio you will see a screen divided into four sections: Show Builder, Mixer, Background Tracks, and Sound FX. The Show Builder is where you will record most of your podcast and put the show together. Here you will find a display that shows your sound levels and control buttons such as play, record, pause, stop, and cut. Once you record a clip it will show up below the display. While there is the ability to cut unwanted audio, it is not very accurate. You will want to record small segments of your podcast then assemble them later into a finished product. The mixer allows you to control volume levels of your microphone and other parts of your podcast such as the FX. Background tracks allow you to upload audio files such as music or pre-recorded interviews and insert them into your podcast later. The section that is the most fun to play with is Sound FX. WildVoice Studio has several audio clips such as a gunshot, a rooster crowing, a toilet flushing and others. You may also add other audio effects to this section thanks to programmable radio buttons. Needless to say, a podcaster could go crazy adding various effects while recording.

Once you finish recording you will assemble your clips in any order you wish. Next you will click a rather large Save + Publish button to save your work. The software saves the podcast as a WildVoice file but then switches to converting the file to MP3 automatically. Once you are done the software tries to get you to upload the file to the WildVoice hosting site but you can skip this step if you wish to upload the file to another site.

WildVoice Studio is in Beta so expect various bugs to come up and it does occasionally crash. There is one problem the folks at WildVoice need to address soon, it only works with Windows XP. You can make all the snide comments about Windows Vista you want but it is not going anywhere for a few years. Therefore, I hope a Vista version will be coming out soon. Overall, once some bugs are worked out this could become an Audacity killer and the answer to the prayers of those with Garage Band envy. One thing I would hope for in the future is the ability to have more control over editing clips. A cursor you can place on the display along with zoom in and out, undo and redo would help make this product more attractive to experienced podcasters. While I won’t ditch Audacity yet, I will keep watching and experimenting with WildVoice.

The other day our Spanish Language liaison e-mailed the parents of one of my Web Media Productions students wanted to have a conference with me. This was not surprising because the young lady, an honor student in other classes, got off to a rocky start. Seems she had a hard time adjusting to the fact that all work was being done online. I thought this would be one of those conferences where I would have to explain and justify everything that is going on in class. Frankly, I am surprised that I have not had more conferences like this given the nature of the course. It also concerned me that we would have to work through a translator given the family was from Mexico. Things get lost in translation.

When the conference started I explained to the parents why their daughter got low grades on her report card. The biggest problem was she missed several assignments. The young lady started the course late and had to play catch-up with an assigned peer tutor. I also explained the work that was missed before she entered the class was not counting against her. Fortunately I had some good news too. After seeing her report card, the young lady realized she was going to have to get to work like any other class. She has never missed an assignment since and is taking the lead on several projects. Definitely a candidate for most improved. Another observation I shared with the parents was the girl was a bit shy and unsure of herself at the beginning. Now she is more outgoing and confident in how she handles herself. She now attempts to work with applications like Voice Thread by herself first before asking for help and readily goes before the camera.
The parents listened and were pleased to hear their daughter was making gains in the class.

Then came the shocker. They told me their daughter has been showing them her work and explaining how she does it. This so pleased and interested the parents they purchased a computer and Flip video camcorder so she may continue using the tools learned in my class with future other classes. They also liked the idea of sharing things such as video with extended family in Mexico. The parents thanked me for teaching new ways to learn with their daughter and I hoped I could teach her more in the future. I never get tired of hearing I have made a difference in someone’s life.

Recently Cathy Jo Nelson, author of the Techno Tuesday blog wrote a post entitled “Do you recognize these southern voices?” In this blog post Cathy lists several blogs from South Carolina she recommends everyone should read for a variety of reasons. I am honored that my blog is included in this select list. More importantly, Cathy reminded me that blogging is a network community in which we can share, laugh, cry, rant, praise, inform, and educate about our passions. I did not recognize all the bloggers on her list but you can be sure I will be checking them out.

Thanks Cathy!

I think I know what my next big project will be. Next year, armed with my trusty Flip Video Camera, I am going to create a new reality show that will have people from all walks of life attempt to enter a middle school classroom and teach. My inspiration for this show came from watching Hell’s Kitchen on the Fox network. This show, like American Idol and The Apprentice, show people from different backgrounds who get to audition for jobs with millions of people watching each week. After the end of each show that has contestants performing some difficult task, some one’s dreams of fame and fortune is crushed when they are voted off.

Hell’s Kitchen is no different. Chef Gordon Ramsay, famous for a bunch of restaurants I have never heard of, gives the contestants a task for cooking a meal for customers (last night was family night). While the contestants are running around cooking and trying not to kill themselves (one woman burned her hand) or give the customers food poisoning (someone served “raw” chicken to a kid), Chef Ramsay is standing around yelling obscenities and throwing food at everybody (Blutarsky would have been proud). Thinking back, the chef who served raw chicken deserved this treatment. The chicken chef should have been voted off for nearly costing the network a huge lawsuit but he lived to cook another day. Of course they have interviews with contestants on what was going on and why they deserve to stay. The winner of the contest will get to work in a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Back to my idea. I would put contestants who met certain requirements, especially being catty on television, into middle schools with similar demographics with the purpose of teaching students over the course of the season. The supervising teacher will be an experienced administrator with a reputation for chewing up new teachers and spitting them out of their school. Each week the “teachers” are given various tasks to prove they belong in the classroom. One week is creating a lesson plan to see who can keep the most students awake at the end of class. Another episode will have contestants teach with technology. High marks will be given to those who don’t call tech person or worse get one of the kids to do it. A sure fire ratings winner will have contestants give quarter grades then try to defend those grades to parents who think their child got a bum rap. Another interesting show would be contestants trying to organize a field trip with high marks given for not leaving a child and the destination staying intact. Of course contestants will have to attend faculty meetings, committee meetings, sub-committee meetings, district mandated training sessions, extracurricular activities, and getting a second job waiting tables evenings and weekends to make ends meet. At the end of each show the emcee will gather all of the contestants together for the dramatic voting off segment. That unfortante contestant will have an exit interview in which he or she tells why they should have not gotten kicked off although it would be fun if they said “take this job and shove it.” The last person standing will get the grand prize, a teaching contract good for one year.

Now that I have developed my show concept it is time to market it to network executives. That means doing presentations to the heads of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, USA, Turner, and (for good measure) GSN (aka The Gameshow Network). The thing scares me the most is that every network would pass on the project with the same response: “Reality shows are about real events. Nobody would ever believe what you propose is real.” There might be one network who would accept the show, Spike. They allow anyone to post videos to their website.

Update: Now that I have posted this idea, anyone who takes it and actually makes this and puts it on TV without my permission will get treated in the time-honored techno way, getting sued