Simple Childhood Dreams

I have been reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and really go to to thinking about my childhood dreams. (Yeah, I know most of you have probably read it long ago, but I am rereading for inspiration.) As I have read the book, I had a hard time coming up with what my dreams were. Maybe that is because my dreams were fairly simple and I would like to think that I dreamt bigger than what I did… don’t we all. I wish I had dreamt about being some great emancipator, or a healer, or a discoverer, or a celebrity, or something really fantastic. As I look back I realize that my dreams were all reachable if I chose to reach for them, even if they weren’t grandiose, in theory.

I know the “right” answer would be to say that I wanted to be president, or I wanted to cure cancer, or I want to travel the world, or I want to help create world peace. But if I were to be truly honest, my dreams weren’t big – at least not in that fashion. My dreams were to:
• get married and have a family
• to write a book (a blog is close right?)
• to become a teacher
• to be happy
• to not worry about money
• to have my grandparents for the rest of my life

I think at age 39, I can say that I have reached 4 of these goals - so far. I am happily married and I have 3 great kids. I am a teacher. I am happy. I still have one of my grandparents. I have not written a book... and I tend to worry about money, but for someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s when money was not a worry, I probably deserve to worry about money and prove to my parents that I did learn from them.

I know I still have a real goal to reach - writing a novel - and think I will reach it. But I also think it might be time for me design some new goals for myself and my life. If people aren't working toward something, then why are they working? "Opportunities are Like Sunrises. If You Wait Too Long, You Miss Them." ~ William Arthur Ward

My Head in a Filing Cabinet

People always laugh when I say, "wait I can't hear you without my glasses on." They laugh when I say "I can't see with my headphones in." And now I can add to the list, "wait, I can't think without my laptop open." I feel like I have started taking my laptop everywhere. I take in the car on short trips, because you never know when you might be stuck in the car waiting for someone who just "dashed in" to pick up one quick thing in the store. I take it on long trips to write and work while my husband (or my teenage son) drives so that time is not lost - even though I could have relaxed and listened to the radio, or, God forbid, I could have had a nice long talk with someone.

I have noticed that I take my laptop to all meetings, even those that are not technology related, because I can't be without my email, or my ability to take quick notes or write a quick blog entry about whatever topic the workshop is about. I take my laptop on vacation, and wonder if the hotel will have free wifi - and then I am irritated if they don't. I take my laptop along to visit friends and family, just in case they might want to see pictures that I have in my iphoto. I take my laptop to watch DVDs, to play Bejewelled, but mostly to "brain vomit" my writing, both creative and blog-like.

I feel like my laptop is a critical filing cabinet in my life. It has everything on it that I might need for most occasions. I find that I keep all kinds of critical information on it and without it, I am lost. Will Richardson discussed (referred to) his computer as becoming less of a filing cabinet and more of a connection device. “Is my head (and my life) in the clouds?” Though he was more questioning his need for connection, I am questioning both aspects. I don't feel like I have an unhealthy balance. I don't feel like a "digital species" who never gets out of the house, and only gets information from sources like twitter and facebook. I don't feel like my relationships are digitally based, but do wonder if my balance might be tipping. But awareness of the problem is the first step to recovery - isn't that was they say about addictions...

Life is pretty good here… we just need to remember it sometimes

I love the cliché of the double-edged sword. I know it is overused, but it so true, so often. As I was driving home this evening I was remembering so many conversations I had while at NETA last week. I realized that I come from a very rural community and that is not always looked upon favorably. Now don’t get me wrong, I love where I live. I love where I teach, and I love that we are different. However, I don’t love that others usually start sentences with “Really?” and then they usually get into a numbers thing. These number things I am talking about usually involve the number of students (only 150 in our K-12 district), or the number of miles I travel one way to get to school (which is 38), or the number of classes I teach while also being the technology coordinator (which is 4 in an 8 period day). Sometimes the “really” centers around conversations when they get interested and ask questions like: how many miles are you from a large town? (50 miles) How many miles is it to the nearest town with a grocery store? (15 miles) When was the last time you saw a live production/play that wasn’t done by the school students? (several years… well, more like 8… if we are being truthful)

Here’s the funny part… I answer all of those questions with a grin, a giggle and a shrug. What do you say when they get that funny look on their face that almost seems like pity? The pity makes me feel like we are inferior in some way. The smile is my lame attempt at covering up that feeling. This is when the double-edged sword comes in. What these people and these statistics don’t show is that small numbers are great. We have a low, almost non-existent drop out rate. Our ration of computers to students is 1:1. Our ratio of teachers to students is 1:15. Our number of divorced families is below 30%. The number of crimes committed in our town in the last month involving teenagers is 0. The number of police officers who are needed to monitor our town is 0.5 (he is only part time). The number of students the teachers don’t know by name is 0 – and that includes most substitute teachers as well. The number of teachers teaching outside of their endorsed discipline. And those numbers are great!

I could go the other way as well, and show some really high numbers. Our average ACT score is over 19, and the number of students who go out for some kind of extracurricular sport or activity is 95%. The number kids who go to a higher education school following graduation is 90%. But the inferior lesson to be learned here is just this: we should be proud of living rurally. We live in the clean air. We can see stars at night, they are not hidden by smog or light pollution. We have plenty of room to move without hearing everything our neighbors are doing. We can hang our laundry on the line outside without fear of it being stolen, or of others seeing our “unders.” We can trust that our kids can ride their bikes around town without worries, and they can go to the grocery store for us and simply charge the bill to the family account. We can get an on-the-spot loan from the bank “just until payday” without filling out the paperwork. We can shop online – and get things cheaper. We can watch any movies or television shows online because we share wireless connections between homes. We can watch plays, borrow from libraries, take virtual museum tours, and find great ethnic recipes. We know ALL our neighbors and we don’t have to plan a block party to meet them, they just come to the fence or we go knock on their doors. We even have the skills to make friends of all shapes, sizes, genders, ethnicities, and locations. Life is pretty good here… we just need to remember it sometimes.

New, New, New...

New venue, new session topics, new logo, new board members, new, new, new... it has been a whirlwind week for the Nebraska Educational Technology Association, and its governing board. I was a NEW board member three years ago, and I have had the honor of being on the NETA board and helping to put on a conference for over 2,000 educators in Nebraska since then. We began our work this week early Wednesday morning, which means that I left home on Tuesday evening to get clear across the state to Omaha. Now everything sounds like work, and it is, but while we are working hard, we are also getting a chance to talk with other technology "geeks," gather NEW ideas, network with NEW people, set up NEW opportunities for our schools, to help each other, and to socialize. This year my NEW job was to act as the airport shuttle. with my good friend Jane Davis from Hershey, we were in charge of picking up the keynote and featured speakers from the airport, bring them back to the NEW conference venue, get them checked into their rooms, take them out for some social time, get them dinner, check on them during their sessions to see if they needed anything, and also to make arrangements to get them back to the airport. And what an honor it was!

I met some really great thinkers, educators, and truly nice people. Now I would hate to be a name dropper, but this is my first time... but some of you might want to know what you have missed if you didn't get to attend NETA this year. But I am not going to tell you what they do, how important they are, how forward thinking they are, or how much they impressed me. No, I want to tell you about them as people.

• Hall Davidson was our keynote and he is a proud dad of a 12-year-old daughter (the same age as mine) and also has another grown child. He is very funny, appreciates a good joke, takes a ton of pictures (of everything) and has a really heavy computer bag (that I carried).
• Stephanie Hamilton is traveller! She was telling us he packed schedule for the next few days - on to St. Louis, Chicago, and back to California. Stephanie is funny and seems to have done everything from teaching to a being a technology director for a very large district, and now to working for Apple. She is amazing.
• Justin Karkow was a featured speaker and he was really fun. He has two young children (who appeared in Parents magazine this month - page 108) and they are adorable - his son's name was the same as mine - Carson. Justin was a first grade teacher, and he is a really nice guy who has a ton of ideas that he collects from the vast number of teachers he meets.
• Corrine Hoisington was a joy to pick up. She arrived the latest at night, and she knew who I was before I even got through the turnstyle at the airport. She knew my name, she remembered what I looked like from the picture sent a few days ahead of time, and she was very appreciatvie of us coming to get her. She was amazed that we did so much to make things easy for her and said that most conferences dont' work this hard to make things convenient for her - she usually gets a rental car and eats alone.
• Dave Edyburn was a very nice man as well. He was fascinating talking about assistive technology and the needs of students of all ability levels. I can't believe he walked as far as he did for his dinner, but after travelling as much as he did, he just wanted to enjoy the fresh spring air and go for a nice walk to clear his head and mentally prepare for his presentations. He must have done a great job because his sessions were well attended and talked of positively.
• Rich and Keith caught me by surprise. I had missed the memo that the COSN speakers were on my roster, but I am glad I had the opportunity to meet both of them. They were fun to meet but I only got to see them breifly since they were over at ESU3 for their sessions. But when it came time to get them to the airport on time - we handled it. I know one of them was a little nervous about the return trip, but we made with time to spare! No worries, back to Oregon and the coast.
  
• Tammy Worcester drove herself to the conference from Wichita (where both sets of my grandparents live) so I am sorry to say that I didn't get to talk to her much. I have seen her present in previous conference experiences, I have eaten dinner at the same large table as her, and I have read her evaluations - she must be the most amazing elementary teacher on the planet!

My experiences as the shuttle bus to the airport were only surpassed in enjoyment by the sessions I attended and presented. I loved presenting for 3 of the laptop initiative strand sessions. I met a lot of really great people, and feel like I have made some connections I would not have made if I hadn't presented. Believe it or not, I actually sat down after my session presentations and wrote some notes becuase I learned from the audience! I loved it. That was NEW strand for the conference, and it was NEW ideas. NEW video about NETA by a NEW teacher - check it out!

You Might Be a Teacher If… (edition 1)

If Jeff Foxworthy can call in people to help with his "you might be a redneck if..." series, we as teachers can write our own. Here are mine:

• You desperately think you need a vacation, then think about your class while you are gone.
• You can’t wait for the summer vacation to begin, but you have booked the entire summer with workshops, a reading list, and revamping lesson plans.
• Everything you read you relate to how it could be used in your classroom.
• The smell of an office supply store gets you excited for school to begin.
• You know which brands of crayons give the best color.
• You beg for someone’s junk drawer to sue for an art project.
• You schedule family events around prom, and your kids are in elementary school
• You use a spoon to spread butter or to cut meat.
• You feel the need to laminate everything so it lasts longer.
• Your body clock of hunger goes off at 11:20 and a soy burger actually sounds delicious.
• The only pen in your checkbook is red (with a chewed cap).
• Your car is older than the ones the students drive.
• All your magazines renew at the same time, during prom fundraiser time.
• You have a drawer full of small candles, hand lotions, and body sprays after Christmas.
• You look forward to days off so you can grade papers and catch up on lesson plans.
• You eat concession stand hot dogs for at least one meal a week.

Now, do you have any of your own?

10 Things I Hate About You: A Metaphor for the classroom

“You’ve had me on the bench for years, she, at least, lets me play a few innings.” Recently I was watching the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, and the dad admits to his oldest daughter that he is turning into to spectator in her life. There are times in my classroom that I feel the same way. Sometimes the student is neurotic, needy, and insecure enough to let me take a pitch for her now and then. Mostly I am relegated to a coaching position – I give advice – listen and then watch the inning, and wait for runs, hits and errors. But there are times when they hit a home run. The occasional double plays with the kids, and the occasional home run. But mostly, I strive for the small victories, the successful tournaments, the personal bests, winning seasons, and I hope for a career record.

Sometimes I am the opposing team, and we do battle. Some times I am a free agent who switches to other teams and even other leagues. Sometimes I am in little league, sometimes legion age, town team, double A, and if I am lucky I might make it to the major leagues. Sometimes I am the umpire, and sometimes I simply get to play catcher even if it means I might get “mowed over” at home plate. Other times I am on the right team, yet benched for most of the game. But everyday is a good day at the ball park.

Hope is the antidote to loss

Today was not a good day. Tonight I really feel like I need to write to feel better. So tonight, if you are reading this, you are reading some pretty raw feelings. Tonight I am feeling really down; a student of mine has chosen to drop out. I hate to feel like I have Lost a student. Now this may not be a permanent decision, I realize that, but it still hurts. I don' think my students realize how painful it is for teachers when a students makes a decision like this one. I hate to see a student leave school, no matter how bad things are. I hate to see that an opportunity or a diploma might be going out the door with them. The whole situation makes me evaluate what I have been doing in my classroom, and did I do enough? Did I extend every chance for this student to succeed? Did I put 100% of my effort in trying to reach that student, to make a connection? What didn't I do that could have kept that student in school?

If I try to answer all of these questions for myself, I can objectively list all of the things I have tried. I can objectively say that I gave the student more than enough chances to do make up work, to come in for help, to stay a few minutes later into the passing period to ask that one last question. I have found that student asked them to hand in more assignments, to give me a paper that would turn into a zero if I hadn't asked for something. I have sent emails explaining ways to improve your grade. I have redesigned lessons to make them more individually interesting for my students. I have done a lot... so why do I feel this sense of loss and regret that I should have done more? Why do I feel like I have let this student and his family down... when rationally I have tried my hardest?

So as I am writing this, I am thinking... "do I feel guilty for something?" I don't think so. So then I wonder, "do I feel regret for complaining to another teacher when I got frustrated with the student?" No I really don't because after a vent, I would have talked it out (similiar to blogging like this) and renewed my efforts and energy to try something new the next day. Maybe I just need to mourn. Maybe I need to just feel bad. Maybe I am just thinking of all the statistics that tell us a high school diploma often indicates success later in life. Maybe I am thinking of the stats that show that most drop outs don't go back to school. But where does that get me? That doesn't make me feel any better. I am sure other teachers have felt this way. I wonder how they got over it? I wonder how they coped with the loss. I wonder what they tried to keep the students in school...But maybe I should be thinking of all the kids I have heard about that went back, got their GED, went to job corps, and then made something of their lives. Yes, that is better to focus on. I can hope that this "break" from education will only show the students that they need a diploma. They need to learn to do something great with their lives. They need to take control of their lives and their education, and then they can do anything they set their minds to. One can only hope.

Teen Idols For the Ages (My Elementary Age)

There was a song on the radio as I was driving my daughter and her friends home from a birthday party and it made me think about my childhood. My daughter is 11 years old today, and the only thing she wanted to do for her birthday was to go to the new Zach Ephron movie. For those of you don't have a tween living in your home - count your blessings and then let me explain. Zach Ephron is the star of High School Musical 1, 2, and 3. He is THE teen idol of my daughter's generation. By the way, he is really cute with those blue eyes and charming smile... but I digress...All of my daughter's friends thought he was so "hot" and that the movie was the best! (It was a pretty good movie - 17 Again - if you haven't seen it. Even my husband would not have minded this movie.)

As I was chauferring the girls home from the movies, completely ignored, the song “You’ve Had a Bad Day” by Daniel Powter came over the radio. As I listened and sang along one line really stood out: “kick up the leaves and the magic is lost.” That is never more true than when you go back and look at your own teen idol crush. Teen idols from 1977-81 aren’t that great 30 years after the fact. Judge for yourself! But before you click these links, try to remind yourself, and be honest, if you were my age, these were the best out there. So here are my own version of the Historical Grammy Awards (maybe hysterical).

1. The best singing group, when I was nine... The Brady Bunch singing Sunshine Day. I caught myself singing this one outloud - out of the blue - in the car to my family and my husband actually remembered too, but would not admit to liking it.
2. The top male singing artist of 1977 and of my basement (while standing on a chair singing into the end of my silver baton)... Shaun Cassidy singing That’s Rock and Roll
3. The best movie of the year (and the girl we all wanted to grow up and be just like)... Grease starring Olivia Newton-John.
4. The best television show (disregarding The Hardy Boys since Shaun Cassidy already made the list) was Solid Gold which played the top songs of the week including Debby Harry singing the Tide is High.
5. The best Gibb brother. (No one wanted to admit that they loved the Bee Gees after a few years, but we all secretly had our favorite Gibb brother.) I loved Andy Gibb and his Shadow Dancing.
   

Maybe I need to do another post covering the awards from when I was in high school. These are definitely the best of the elementary years. And then... I could do one from the junior high years... but then I might get carried away...

The Tipping Point for Internet Safety:

This is one last trip through the book The Tipping Point written by Malcolm Gladwell. I know I have written about this book a lot lately, but there are a lot of really powerful ideas in it that I just couldn’t stop thinking about. One quote that really stood out involved the Power of Context. It said,
“Minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes… were Tipping Points for violent crimes.” In other words, if you crack down on misdemeanors, then you have less felonies. Now if you convert that one step further to the internet safety violations, if to talk to kids about minor things that they are doing wrong, you might be able to cut off making major mistakes that could change into really big situations.

Now, if you ask my students, I am the Internet police anyway. (Actually they have another name for me, but it is not politically correct and I am trying to convert my nickname.) They get tired of my telling them to protect themselves online. They are tired of hearing me tell them there are predators in the world and they can find kids, even in Arnold. They are tired of being told that they shouldn’t post things on Facebook and MySpace because it could get them in trouble later. But guess what, I am trying to keep them from committing “insignificant quality-of-life crimes.” I am trying to keep trouble from tipping…

I am “trying to infect them, sweep them up in our epidemic, convert them from hostility to acceptance…If you (I) wanted to bring about a fundamental change in people’s belief and behavior, a change that would persist and serve as an example to others, you needed to create a community around them, where those new beliefs could be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”

So now, as I say this, I realize that I do want an epidemic to tip, but I want it to tip to point that kids don’t make internet mistakes. They make wise choices all the time, without thinking about it. The wise choices would become an instinct and not a conscious choice. So when I said earlier that I don’t want them to tip – I guess I really do – just not in the direction I thought earlier. “Peer pressure is much more powerful than a concept of a boss. Many, many times more powerful. People want to live up to what is expected of them.” This is true of employees and it is definitely true for students.

The Tipping Point with Professional Development

What makes one speaker so much more effective than others? As I am planning presentations for the Nebraska Educational Technology Association conference coming up next week, I keep thinking about to make my thoughts and projects “sticky” to others. The book the Tipping Point talks about the stickiness factor and how we make people believe what we are saying is important and worthy of listening to. According to Gladwell, “my facial expressions, gestures, postures, and movements determine how well people pay attention, and credibility of what I am saying. These small things determine how much my audience believes the message I am sending.”

According to most advertising agencies, there is usually one little thing in an ad campaign that changes everything. For one company it was simply using a metallic golden box on their mailers. Before the gold box, they had tried many more complex ideas, but they weren’t translating into any action on behalf of the customers. What any customer (or teacher) really wants is give them a short way to accomplish a task without doing anything extra. They want it to be easy and convenient. They want us to eliminate the clutter. Again, I think this is key to working with teachers. Just like kids with television programs, teachers in professional development seminars will watch when they understand, and look away when they are confused.

What is the gold box of my presentation? What is the memorable or meaningful little piece that changed everything? Is it my project choices? – they have to be really different from everything else they have seen in other sessions. Is it my handout? – can they use the links, have I made the reference web site or wiki space easy to find and easy to use? Is it my presentation itself? – are the slides that important, or could my sense of humor and voice more important to get them to pay attention? I would like to say that my experiences, the fact that “I have been there and done that” is what makes people want to listen to what I am saying – so it might be my credentials, notoriety, and biography. “It’s no just do you know somebody. It’s do you really know them well enough that you know their skills and abilities and passions… it’s knowing someone well enough to know what they know, and knowing them well enough so that you can trust them to know things in their specialty. It’s the re-creation, on an organization-wide level, of the kind of intimacy and trust that exists in a family.” Or could it be simply the session title and description? I think that might be the key – but how do you learn how to write a great session title and description that will pull in as many people as possible?

A Tipping Point in My School

I have been reading the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell recently and I have underlined, folded corners, written in the margin, stuck post it notes on pages, read aloud from it, tried to get others to talk to me about it, and generally bothered anyone who would stop to listen to me. I am not usually a nonfiction reader, but I have read mentions of this book by so many people I decided I needed to see what the phenomenon was – or as I have recently learned -- I “joined the masses” and “helped reach the tipping point” for this author. (If he hadn’t mentioned Sesame Street and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere in the first chapter, I might not have gotten hooked.) “The tipping point is the moment of critical-mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

There are so many parts of this book that I want to talk about so I will just pick a few, and then post them over a couple of days. A general overview of the strategic elements, so we are all understanding what leads to the tipping point of any given epidemic (good or bad) are: 1) contagiousness – emotionally, socially, or intellectually, 2) little causes can have big effects, and 3) change happens not gradually, but at one big moment. So naturally this leads you to think, “Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics, and others don’t? And what can I do to deliberately start, and control, positive epidemics of our own?” This was key for me. This is what made me really start to think… to brain spin… to analyze all aspects of my professional life. Of course the first to rise to the surface is the tipping point of laptop initiatives.

The Law of Few, according to Gladwell, says that 80% of the work will be done by 20 percent of the participants. This couldn’t be more fitting for getting a laptop initiative started. There is usually a small group of people who are really passionate about getting a laptop initiative started. They work really hard, they convince everyone else that they want laptops. They start small, convince everyone else it is their idea, and then they sit back and watch the excitement build. This group brings in people who are already doing it, and they take their faculty to see schools who are having successes with laptops. They visit these schools so those people can share because they “want to help, to educate, broker their information, for no other reason than because they like to help … they share their opinions with others… and they are more compelling recommendations than the opinion of an expert.” (Smile – this is us.) Through this process “we are developing our professional learning network, we rely on this concept, we rely on our acquaintances and they are more likely to know something that you don’t. This is the strength of weak ties!”

I can’t help but think that Gladwell’s story explains the different types of people involved in technology. Gladwell talks of “the wild innovators, the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and the Laggards who saw no urgent reason to change… the visionaries set them apart from their competitors, and they are willing to take enormous risks. The goal of pragmatists is to make a percentage improvement – incremental, measurable, predictable progress… they want to know how other people have fared with it.” They see the word “risk” as a bad word, and not an opportunity. Then you get the “translators: they take ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand.”

I don’t feel like our school is a “wild innovator,” we can leave that for the schools in Maine, and those teachers at Westside. I would say that Arnold is more of an early adopter. I would also say that I had to become a translator. I had to translate what Westside did and scale it down for a smaller district. “Translators start doing it themselves, but they change it a bit. They make it more usable… they alter it in such a way that extraneous details are dropped and others are exaggerated so that the message itself comes to acquire a deeper meaning.” The question remains, as a translator and an early adopter, can I make an idea tip? The answer is hopefully yes. I realized just recently that I have talked to over a 1,000 people in the last few years about technology and about laptop initiatives. The more I talk, the more people have the opportunity to think about my ideas. The more likely something might tip. The goal is an epidemic of laptop initiatives starting in schools in a short period of time. Kind of like the example of the hybrid seed use in the 1930s spreading quickly.

Sharing with people who love the same thing I do

Just recently I was sent to work on Language arts curriculum, standards alignment, and assessments. I went with certain amount of reservation and dread. What I returned with was a renewed sense of excitement to teach English. Hold onto your hats, but I went to a really valuable inservice day. It was worth the extra hours of preparing for the substitute. I was worth paying for my own gas to get to the workshop location and worth buying my own lunch since the school didn’t give us money for that.

But here is something that might not surprise you. The valuable part of the day was probably not planned by the workshop presenter. The valuable part surfaced because of the people I was sitting with and the information, excitement and motivation we shared. I could really tell that the people I was grouped with loved their jobs, loved teaching, loved kids and loved sharing what they do so others could be excited and impressed with them. Was it fun to rewrite curriculum… not really. Was it valuable to rewrite? Yes, because it reminded me what I am “aiming for” in my lessons. The new standards added things to the curriculum that we are already doing (the multiple literacies section) and validated the hard work we were doing before it became a standard. It was fun to share new ideas for novels to try, for new writing assignments to implement. It was fun to talk with someone who enjoyed the same things I do… It reveved up my engine for next year, created a list of goals for the summer, and doubled my reading list… was this a good thing?

Just Wanted to Ask a Question: Tech Advice From Kids

Is it possible to post a blog entry that simply asks a question? I almost feel guilty posting this, but we will do it more as a social experiment than as an example of great writing and independent thinking on my part. So I will just ask the following question, and hope for a lot of comments:

“If students were to give advice to teachers about technology and its use in the classroom, what would they say? Would they ask for something? Would they tell us how to do something better? Would they not really have an answer?”

The Natural Habitat of the North American Adolescent Homo Sapien

Today, we are observing the natural habitat of the North American adolescent homo sapien, better know as the American teenager. These creatures tend to move in herds, some large and some smaller. They are a very social species, running with many different herds, sometimes switching to other herds due to relationships, and location. They prefer the more populated areas with plenty of food, exercise, drinking sources, and many nests to visit. Their own nests tend to be unkept, riddled with debris found from their nomadic travels, sometimes smelly from their lack of “housekeeping habits.” Though their own nests are not occupied for most of their day, they do tend to return to their own area, burrow down, cover their head, and sleep for extended hibernation periods. Often the adults of the species mistake this hibernation for illness or signs of an early demise, but the growling is a sign that they will soon be back to their hunting rituals soon.

The younger of the species believe they are the alpha males until the real alphas come along and battle for the power of the herd. The females enjoy watching these battles knowing that they can walk through the area, and the males will forget what they are doing and do whatever they are told. Though most North American adolescent homo sapiens are not monogamous, they know that with age, this tendency wanes as a suitable monogamous mate joins the herd.

Their natural attitudes and behaviors vary but mostly centers around avoiding the alpha males, minding the nurturing mothers, and hiding with those of their own age group. When unobserved, they tend to pair up, often drawn together by beauty marks, ornamentation, and sometimes by common interest. Their sense of smell must be hampered, which is evidenced by the most physically actively having a distinct smell. But after a quick bath, sometimes a ritualistic tribal dance ensues. The females tend to drum, prance or shake their tail feathers around the most “talented” males, and often make indistinguishable sounds of approval.

The feeding habits of these North American creatures are also quite interesting. They tend to eat at very short intervals, and are often not choosy about what they eat. If there is a long span of time between feedings, they will eat just about anything, as long as it is not in the “vegetation” category. Another common food factor involves the circular shape of foods and drinks. They tend to try to locate liquids that come from circular reservoirs. They also like other semi-circular foods, sometimes from the flesh of other creatures.

Favorite foods seem to center around their sense of hearing, they enjoy anything is noisy to eat. The desire for noise stems from a couple of characteristics: either the shell or outer covering of the food, or the food actually having a consistency that crunches or snaps when bitten However, this can be a detriment when sneaking a meal or snack from another creature. The animal usually gives away their position and thieving ways by glancing from side to side, moving quickly and then mumbling something unintelligible from the mouthful and smiling when they are caught.

Standing on the roof, with a bull horn…

Don Hall describe himself by saying

“people naturally seem to think I love technology and often introduce meas our district’s “tech guy,” which always drives me crazy. First, I really don’t like technology all that much, and second, my background is really instruction and professional development. The one thing I have always prided myself in being is a lifelong learner. I find great joy in learning new things, which is really a helpful trait if you are going to work in our industry.”

I feel like he is reading my mind. He said, almost in exactly the same words, how I feel about my job, the only difference being the guy/girl difference, and my background is Language Arts, Journalism, and instructional technology – but that might be the same thing as professional development…

Something that my district hates to hear me say is that I would go back to being a full time English teacher in heartbeat if they would just let me. When they hired me, I was supposed to be the LAN manager for ½ the day and the other ½ was to teach English. I loved this combination, it let me use both sides of my brain and it challenged me. But at the end of my second year with that job description, both of my other halves left the district to take other jobs. The administration decided that it would be easier to find one full time person for English than it would be to find someone with technology and English degrees. Not to mention the fact that “they had too much money invested in bringing me up to speed as the LAN manager” to let me just teach English. (Sigh)

Silly me, I agreed to this arrangement, but within a couple of months, I knew I had made a mistake. That mistake was never more clear when we implemented our 1:1 program (which was my driving passion for 2 years and still is) and our English teacher became so creative and excited in the classroom. I had a severe case of “green with jealousy” and wished I was in her shoes. I can separate myself from this jealousy a little better now that the district has added a journalism class, a credit-recovery English class and a dual-credit web design class with the local college. However, I have an announcement!!! Listen up… I am standing on the roof, with a bull horn, shouting at the top of my lungs, with a huge grin on my face, and a renewed lust for life to say… I am going to teach 4 classes of English next year, and I get to spread out my LAN manager duties with another teacher! (Giggle) I get to teach with all of the creativity that laptops can afford. (Woo Hoo) I finally have a release for all my ideas. I get to blend my two loves, and I get to work with a lot more our students. Life could not be better for me. (Smile)

The Dream Classroom

I was asked once, while presenting about laptop initiative implementation what are the elements of a dream classroom? And I could answer that question, for now… but tomorrow something else will come out. Something new and innovative, something that will revolutionize education, and that something could come tomorrow, or next month, or in a few years, but it will come. So my answer involves the following:
• Software
o Moviemaking
o Audio recording
o Photo editing software
o Desktop publishing
o Office software or Pages/Numbers
o Graphic organizer software
o Learning management software
o Web camera/codec to dial and connect to other locations
o Itunes
o Subscription to video and audio downloads
o Access to online libraries, newspapers, and databases
• hardware
o laptop for every student
o projector
o document camera (for my large collection of books)
o clicker system for interactive quizzing and feedback
o interactive white board
o networked printer/fax/scanner
o digital video camera
o digital still camera
o speaker system for audio and video
o headset microphones to record
o CD/DVD burner
• room arrangement
o powersources for each student
o more comfortable desks for students
• miscellaneous
o professional development (self-chosen) for new ideas as they come up
o extra planning period for planning and preparing new lessons
How close are we to having it in our school? Well, we have all of these things somewhere in our building, except for the clicker system. Many of these things are in most of the classrooms. Some of these things are in various classrooms. And a few of these things are only in a couple of classrooms. So, can we say we have a classroom of the future? I guess we can… with a but…

My room includes a projector, speakers, still digital cameras, laptops, microphones, fire drive storage, all the software listed above, and plenty of professional development, but not everything listed above. That would not be fair if I had everything. But the fair thing is to get for the teachers what they think they need, as they need it – not all at once. As they get comfortable with new technology, they will use it more and ask for the equipment. This method allows for less waste.

Now you are probably wondering how much of it did I buy with own salary and how much of it did the school buy with their budget? Most of it the school purchased. I only bought the speakers, my ipod, my desk chair, and some odds and ends. But that is also not the point. I don’t know many teachers who don’t buy for their classrooms. Some buy crayons, and pencils, others buy magazine subscriptions, poster materials, books and learning materials. I also do all of those things, but I tend to want the new technology also.

The best question I have been asked was “now that you have the laptop initiative, and you got what you wanted from that, what do you dream of now?” Many of my colleagues wanted more technology. They wanted a sound and video studio, others wanted an iPod lab, but when it got to my chance to speak, all I could think of was “my own classroom.” My dream would be to go back to the classroom and teach more. (I teach only part time now with my technology director duties.) I would want to be in the classroom more because it so much fun to teach with technology. It has so many new challenges and interesting approaches to teaching. I don’t think I would need the dream classroom, so my classroom today would be just fine for a start.

Minute Thoughts (“my-noot” not “min-nut”)

I am not sure how other people write, but I have a definite process for this blog, and for my other writing for that matter. I tend to be inspired in spurts. Sometimes I feel the need to write immediately, and I will write on anything that I can get my hands on. That might be the back of the church bulletin, a paper placemat at the local Chinese restaurant, the back of an envelope, or in a homework notebook that one my own children has in their backpack. Other times I will see a quote or a line from something I am reading and realize that it has peaked my interest. When this happens, that line tends to stay in my head longer, and doesn’t need immediate writing but requires immediate thinking. Since a lot of my reading comes in the form of web sites, tweets, and blog posts, I can capture the quote or sentence that sparks my writing instincts for use later. It is a process, but I keep everything.

I have since tried to explain this process to my writing students, and one student in particular. This student says that she often will begin her writing with something that she thinks will turn into something phenomenal and then gets 150 words into it and realizes that she is at a dead end and she saves it, and starts another. I keep trying to explain to her that is normal and that someday she will revisit that writing and it may turn into something-but if it doesn’t that is ok too. So today as I am skimming through my blog notes, searching for a spark since my Internet connection is down, I realized I have a lot of really great quotes, but they don’t lead anywhere. And these quotes are something that no one will ever get to see, or realize that I think they are intriguing thoughts. So here is the big moment… I am going to post my “minute thoughts.” (“my-noot” not “min-nut”)

“Sell stupid somewhere else.” I have always wanted to write about this… I have always wanted to say this to a student who is giving me a lame excuse that they think I should fall for, which is usually a lie. But I am not sure how politically correct it would be. So, if any of my students are planning to give me a lame excuse in the near future, and you see my eyes roll back in my head, and I look away quickly, know without a doubt that I am thinking, “sell stupid somewhere else.”

“The journeys are different but the trip is the same.” This is actually the title of a book by author Doug Polk who visited our school recently. He is a wonderful author and he has many good messages about people with physical and mental handicaps, so everyone should share this book with their kids. But the title as a quote is what makes my head leap in different directions, and I think that is why I struggle with narrowing my ideas down to one, blog post of reasonable length. The journey could be to a laptop initiative. The journey could be to a love a reading. The journey could be from a struggling learner to the doors of higher education. The journey could be through a good book. The journey could be self-discovery. It could be finding friends on Facebook and reconnecting with those people you have lost over the years. It could be anything…

“Whatever happened to manners?” Recently, my son was complimented by a complete stranger. This person stopped me on the way out of a door at sporting event and thanked me for raising children with such nice manners. My first instinct was to say, “surely you weren’t talking about my kids,” but I didn’t say anything, and if truth be told, my kids do have good manners. So I asked, “what did they do?” The answer, “they helped me catch one of the items I was about to drop as I was walking to my car. Then they divided up the rest of the things and walked me, and my belongings, to my car. They even loaded them in my trunk and asked if I needed any more help.” I was thrilled by the compliment, but not totally surprised, they do like to help people. So I said, “I am glad they could help, and thank you for brightening my day.” We talked for a few minutes about the fact that this person also had children, but they were inside waiting for him to finish loading the car so they could leave. As he was walking inside he said, “Whatever happened to manners?”

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.” When I first read this quote in the book Twilight, it caught my attention. It stood out as a metaphor I could use with my students that they would understand. It made me think of one of our teachers who, just a couple of years ago, was campaigning against our 1:1 laptop program. Just this last month he presented to a group of 60 educators from the region of how he integrates technology into his daily classroom. He actually said, “I don’t know how I would go back to traditional teaching.” Of course the quote is also so pertinent for the month of March and the weather at this time of year in Nebraska. This weekend, we had a horrible blizzard, and the month went out like a lion leaving us all really anxious for spring.

… Maybe these minute thoughts should become a regular post…

Multimedia: the 2009 Version

I was reading an article titled "Survey says students don't think their schools' tech is current" from Tech and Learning e-zine and found it very interesting. They were discussing the gap in perception of how well schools are doing with integrating technology. Of course administration thinks they are doing a great job with 56% as their total; the students have a different idea. Only 39% think schools are doing a good job, with the number being even less at 32% for parent satisfaction.

But this isn't wasn't sparked my interest, because most of us could have guessed this. I could have also guess the next set of information: students blame the filter, the teachers and the rules as barriers for effective technology use. This didn't seem like new information to me. It wasn't until much later in the article that something peaked my interest. Students and parents are interested in digital textbooks and they even have some suggestions of what they want:

• 63% want the ability to personalize their book with electronic highlights and notes.
• 62% want quizzes and test for self evaluation
• 46% want self-paced tutorials
• 52% want access links to real-time data such as NASA and Google Earth
• 55% want links to PowerPoint or class lectures that support textbook content
• 57% want games
• 55% want animations and simulations
• 30% want links to videoconferences
• 34% want podcasts from subject experts

Finally, some data that supports my professional development efforts! I have told my teachers, tried to explain to districts that visit our school, and preached in my presentations that we have to provide multiple methods of conveying information to our students. A long time ago, when I was a very young teacher, probably right out of college, the big push was regarding Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. And remember latching onto that idea and thinking this is exactly right! Now this same movement has much easier resources - technology and the Internet.

A few years ago, there was a big push to inservice teachers on use of multimedia in the classroom. From what I remember, we were simply trying to teach them PowerPoint, and how to add pictures to a lecture. We were trying to show them how to show an Internet web site on the projector in a one-computer classroom so they could see more pictures. We hadn't even gotten to the point where audio, video, simulations, etc. were even available. For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on creating an inservice in which we change the perception of what multimedia is to incorporate these "new" technologies.

Be watching and I will share my agenda and ideas once they finish taking shape in my head...