A Trip to the Apple Store - An Opportunity for Flipped Instruction

On Friday I took my class downtown to the Apple Store where they learned how to use iMovie.

This was a great chance for my students to get out of the classroom, and hear a different voice from my own.

We went downtown and walked to the Apple Store. We arrived before they had opened to the public and the staff was waiting at the door to welcome the students as V.I.P.s.

I headed to the back of the store -- expecting to find a room there where the students could go and be out of the limelight of the now gazing customers.

I was wrong.

The staff had roped off a section in the middle of the store for us to use.

I will stop the story here and ask: Have you ever tried to talk to a kid with an iPad in front of him/her? Now imagine kids in the middle of the actual Apple Store and asked to listen.

No, it didn't work.

Not only were they distracted by the gadgets all around, but there were customers and music was playing the whole time as well.

But, then the instructor told them they had 30 minutes to go outside the store and take pictures and videos. The students ran outside and it was all I could do to stay in front of them and prevent them from not going too far.

Once they settled down though, they got really into taking pictures and videos. This was a great advertisement for Apple as well because passers by would comment on how young children were able to independently use the iPads. And, it is Christmas season and the new generation of iPads just came out. (Was this planned?)

When the students went back inside, it was time for them to put their movies together. The instructor explained how to do it, but many of the students could not or did not hear what was said. Despite that, they sat there, on the floor of the Apple Store for about 30 minutes putting everything together.

The students even got to keep their yellow t-shirts and also got a certificate of completion and a USB bracelet.

Flip the Trip

Right now in my COETAIL course we are looking at Flipped Instruction. As I reflected on the experience I thought how great it would be for Apple to flip the field trip.

In my thank you letter to them, I wrote:

I suggest when you have students come in, they watch a preloaded video of how to use the app you are teaching on their iPads. That way the students could rewind the video when they do not understand/hear the instructions.

Thinking about it now, they could make a video they put on YouTube. We watch it at school and start the movies. Then on the field trip, we go to the Apple Store and finish putting them together. Then finally show them there (in the middle of the store).

Students could still go out into the street and take video [or act as an Apple billboard].

Teaching Writing Organization

The writing process is messy. It can be unpredictable and can lead to a path that was previously unseen.

I like that about writing. I want my students to also like that about writing.

Writing is also hard to teach.

The Unknown Path

Four Square
I have my class use an adaption of the Four Square Writing Method when prewriting. I have not been trained in this though. Last year when I started teaching grades 1 and 2 for the first time, I need to revise the way I taught writing, and this was one way I found. I liked it because of its simplicity.

Four Square Writing Method uploaded to Wikipedia.org by Thespian, available 
under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Last year, I thought it worked really well.

This year, I have seen my students have more difficulty organizing their writing. There were students who were disconnecting thoughts. They would start talking about one thing, drift to another, then suddenly go back to the first thing. Then more of them started doing it.

This caught me by surprise, but I thought it could be because:

1) I have been teaching a watered down version where the students simply write four words in the boxes.
2) I teach writing by having the students write in multiple periods rather than try to do everything in 45 minutes. We prewrite on one day, then on the next day when the write it out, I encourage them to add ideas they may have left out.

Looking for Answers
A few years back I took a correspondence course on The Six+1 Traits of Writing. So when I was looking for some answers for organizational writing, I took a look in the lower elementary version.

There are some great activities on organization, but they are more pre-activities, and they don't really deal with organizing a piece of unorganized writing.


What I Did

Day 1

I wrote some sentences similar to what some of them had written in their own writings on the board. I wrote them in a list since I want them to move beyond the list format. Next to it I wrote the same thing in paragraph format in the same sentence order.

We talked about what I had written for a little bit.
What do you see?
Is there anything you would change?

One student remarked that the paragraph on the left was not a paragraph, but a list. That was a good place to start. Some more discussion brought out the idea that the ideas were not put together well.

After discussing what was wrong, it was time to discuss how they would change it.

Day 2 

The next day it was time to break up the writing. I gave them some strips of paper on which to write each of the sentences in their paragraphs.

I remember doing this in high school with research notes. I hated it. But, this was the best idea I had.

I then asked one student if I could use her writing and I put the strips up on a white board. I made sure that they were out of order when I did this.

Then we read the sentences together.

I asked them if there was anything they wanted to change. We then discussed different ways of organizing it. Since the sentences were on strips, and I had put them on the white board with magnets, they were easy to move around.

The students had several different ideas about ways in which they could order the writing. After one student would give what they thought was a good way, I rearranged the sentences and we reread it. Then I asked another student for their idea and rearranged then discussed. We did this a few times.

Talking about writing like this allowed me to talk about beginnings, middles, and endings to writing. We will need to get back to that after Fall Break.

At the end of this session I had them arrange their strips into a way that was different from how they wrote their piece. Here again some students decided to add some more detail to their writings by adding more sentence strips. I had them rearrange three or four times until the end when I told them to put the sentences into an order they liked. I told them beforehand that they might like the way they had their writing originally and if they chose that way it was OK.

They then numbered their strips of paper.

Putting It All Together

On Day 3 they spent time writing newly rearranged writings in their writing notebooks.

How do you teach writing?
How do you teach organization?

Asking Questions and Showing Your Answers

This year I have been trying to place an emphasis on questioning; both for myself and for my students.

When we have Show and Tell time and the speaker asks if there are any questions, there is always someone who says "I like that."

Is this one of my first graders?

So I am getting more practice in with simply asking questions.

For our current unit, our math focus is graphing. This is giving us a lot of practice asking questions when we survey other students.

To start with I am having the students do a one question bar graph. So today they brainstormed what question related to families they wanted to ask. After some students had already gotten up and started their surveys, one student was still sitting at his table.

I asked him what he was doing. He looked at me and he said, "I am thinking."

Think away.

A dragon watches over us.

A Focus on Thinking

In August our elementary team discussed what we would focus on for the year in our monthly elementary assembly. The last two years we focused on the environment and our responsibility towards it.

At the end of last year I suggested that we group students into multi-age groups, give them a few periods a week for a month in which to work on a project, and then present what they did at our monthly elementary assembly.

Well, that  idea did not fly.

So this past August when discussed what our theme should be I suggested thinking and helping students develop better thinking strategies. Then I suggested that we, as a team, read Making Thinking Visible.

This time, it flew.

I bought the book last year, and read some of it, but I was excited to get a chance to read it with my colleagues in a "book club" setting.

We read Chapter 1 last week and we discussed it. It is interesting reading and discussing the book with others and seeing their insights.

I am looking forward to seeing where this goes.

How Can I Make A Friend?

If only this student learns how to make a friend this academic year, it will be a success.

Just before we were starting our reading time today, a new Japanese-American student who started today came up to me and said, "Mr. Hammerlund, how can I make a friend?"

I told him that was a great question but we were doing reading now. "For now," I said, "could you read with this boy? His name is Jonny."

Jonny is also a Japanese-American boy who started this year.

I saw Jonny sitting by himself so I asked the new boy to go read with him.

A few minutes later the new boy again came to me and asked again how to make a friend. I told him that I wanted to talk to the whole class about how to make a friend and we would do that after recess.

A while later he came back up to me and said, "Mr. Hammerlund, I think I know how the make a friend."

I thought he might.

When the time came, I talked to the whole class about how to make a friend. For first and second graders, they have it. Now they just need to practice it.

Maybe everything they did need to know they learned in kindergarten.

One of Those Days

Today was one of those days. I switched around two lessons in my mind and almost missed our collaborative session with the kindergartners. Then when we were making our family trees, I forgot to cut the construction paper in half.

I was apologizing to my class telling them that I made a mistake. I was hamming it up a little expecting them to say it was OK, but instead I got:

Mistakes are welcome!
We learn from our mistakes!

They do listen.

The Movie in Your Mind

When I was in seventh grade I remember my teacher reading the Gary Paulsen book Hatchet. (All this time and I didn't know he was born in my hometown until just now when I looked up how to spell his last name. In Minnesota there are many Paulsons/Paulsens, Andersons/Andersens, Olsons/Olsens.)

In the book, the protagonist has to survive in Canada with only a hatchet. I remember one part vividly where he has to get his own food and I remember making connections to my own life. To this day I can still remember how I felt landing in the icy water and finding my own shelter.

Edited with GIMP

In the first of the 7 Keys to Comprehension is that of a "Motion Picture of the Mind". When talking about reading in the past, I have always told my students to "paint a picture in my mind". When I say that phrase I always get this image of an impressionist painting that is bleeding paint and the colors are almost swirling around.

Do my students see that?
What do they see?
Have I told them what I see?

When talking about the "Motion Picture of the Mind", Zimmerman and Hutchins stress the importance of talking with children about what you are seeing as you read.

So I have started stopping when I read stories to my class and taking turns telling them what I see, and asking what they see.

After doing this for about a month, I want to try another suggestion from the book. I will have them act out short scenes that we read. (And we are reading short books, so it will be quick.)

Enjoy the Process

A dual-level classroom is an interesting environment to teach in.

Every year the students I had the year before amaze me when I compare them to the new students coming in. I just started teaching the grade 1-2 class last year, so I didn't see it, but I have been happily surprised at how much the second graders can do by themselves.

The high of seeing what the second graders can do is seeming to distort my perception of them.

I have to constantly remind myself to see them for what they can do, and not what they cannot do.

This summer I had a list of things I wanted to do with my class this year. And we will get to that list, but it will not come right away. It is hard not to fall into the trap of rushing them, pushing them too fast, trying to get too much done. It is a hard thing not to do.

So I wrote myself a reminder and hung above my door, "Enjoy the Process".

Volunteering at the Neighborhood Festival

The beginning of the festival in a gym - this would be backed before long

A lady at my tennis school lives in the neighborhood. A few weeks ago I heard that she was in charge of setting things up for the neighborhood festival, and since I am interested in volunteering more, I told my wife that I want to get involved somehow. Today was the day of the festival, so my wife called the lady and said I am interested in helping out and she said I should show up at 3:30.

I got there and went to my area's booth (the cotton candy and popcorn booth)  at 2:30 just in case there was anything I could help out with, but they said there wasn't anything and to come back at 3:30. When I came back (on time this time) I talked to a guy at our booth who looked like he was in charge. He showed me around and had me practice making cotton candy a few times. Making cotton candy is harder than it looks. I bombed both times I tried and the guy asked me if I would rather help get the cups of sugar ready to pour into the machine. That I could do.

There I was scooping sugar in front of a wall of people while Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" and the odd mix of pop and rap when I got the call to step up and relieve someone making cotton candy. This time went better and for the next few hours I alternated between pouring sugar and making cotton candy with a mix of Western music and Japanese cultural dances.

Everyone at the booth was very friendly and it was a good way to get to know some of the people living in my neighborhood.

Unfortunately the fireworks were cancelled due to rain.

Teacher Tours of Duty

I have seen the term "teacher entrepreneurs" around on the Internet, but I never looked into what it meant assuming it was referring to teachers who make extra selling lessons or possibly those who facilitate teacher training.

Today I was listening to The Harvard Business Review's podcast (ideacast) and they had two authors on the show who wrote an article for hbr.org called, Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Compact.

This article is all about how the landscape of business has changed and how the relationship between employee and employer has entered a mutually-beneficial compact where the employee goes to work and builds their own skill set while helping the company prosper. In this scenario, it is expected that employees are "free-agents" and will leave for a better job and the employer should encourage it to maintain flexibility.

While I was reading this I could not help thinking of how similar this is to the international school culture. After all, we are on contracts that last as little as one year. Teachers are generally on the lookout for more professional development. Schools generally encourage [and pay for] it, and they benefit from the connections teachers make to other teachers through the knowledge gained from those connections.

So, if we teachers want to help the schools we work for, one way to do that is by growing our personal learning networks (PLNs) to tap the ideas and knowledge of the teachers outside our schools.

If you teach at an international school, this might be an interesting listen (if nothing else than marveling at how the rest of the world is caching up to international schools.)

No connection to the post - I just wanted to add some color here.

Goals and Motivation

I started playing tennis a few years ago. It came about as a perfect storm of influences came together at the same time: my wife was playing, we wanted something to do together, and my futsal club fizzled. (I really wanted to continue playing futsal.)

So I started taking tennis lessons on Saturdays. I did this for a while and I saw mild improvement in my game.

I switched tennis schools last fall and happened to be put into a class where I was the only student. This allowed for not only personalized instruction, but I also got to play against the coach.

Side note: For some reason three of three tennis schools I have been to do not have beginners play games. A topic for another blog post is how playing games shows the students why the coaches have the students play a certain way. Without playing the game, the drills and instruction have no meaning. Once you play a game, you can see why the coaches have you do certain things.

Playing against him was a lot of fun and helped me see [the many] flaws in my game. Which in turn got me thinking how I wanted to get better, so naturally I decided that I needed to play for more than one hour a week.

Knowing that I liked actually playing tennis matches, but not know what else to do, one day I told my coach I was interested in joining some tournaments in the region and asked him if he knew of any I could join.

From that day, even though I know I am not very good and entering a tournament would be futile, I have become much better.

Why?

One reason is that I went from playing one hour a week to playing 6-8 hours a week. Anyone who  did that would get better.

I think though it is because I set a goal for myself. I told that goal to someone who is watching me and who can help me achieve that goal which in turn increased my motivation.

I am not a goal setter myself, but maybe when I do set a goal for myself I am doing it wrong.

I have been thinking about goals, motivation, and tennis this through the summer and I have been trying to wrap my head around increasing motivation for my students. First and second graders love to learn, but I want to know how I can get a student who shies away from reading to like reading - or writing. How can I get my students to care more?

20% time is something I have wanted to start in my own classroom. Last year I thought about it, but I don't know what it would look like so I didn't implement it. Yesterday I was mapping out my weekly schedule and looking at my units for the year, and I calculated 20% of the week and was getting ready for the new school year.

This morning as I was starting to write this I came across a post on Google Plus by +Vicki Davis about a MOOC about 20% time. It started last week, and I don't like joining late, but I joined.

Now I need to motivate myself through this heat and humidity.

Taking the Time to Blog

Since winter break I have struggled to post to my blog. The words did not flow from me and felt forced; as a result blogging and ultimately reflecting felt like a chore.

I think that I was simply out of practice. As I allowed other tasks to fill the time I had been using to reflect, I fell more and more out of my rhythm and each subsequent post became less and less frequent. The downward spiral had begun.

I was still really good at coming up with ideas to blog about and I saved them as a draft post. Right now I have 45 ready to be completed. I hope I can remember what I wanted to say.

When the new school year starts in August and I find out what my schedule is, the first thing I am going to do is to take one period a week and block it off. I am going to use that period for reflection and writing.

Relax, They Can Do It

After moving from teaching grades 3-4 to grades 1-2 this year, I was unsure of what the students would be able to do.

I got into the classroom and I felt a little uneasy.

I felt off balance.

I put on the kid gloves and began the year.

We used a lot of paper. We painted. We cut. We did things you would expect a [1995] lower elementary class to do. Sure, we went to the computer lab, but I was not pushing them to explore technology.

Then I signed up for COETAIL and to complete my assignments I had to push my students into areas I did not think they were ready for.

We dove into using Google Apps, I had them logging into different accounts, researching, finding answers to their own questions, finding answers to my questions, and learning new ways to express ourselves.

Photo Credit: mariandy_gizfel via Compfight cc

I thought about how far my class has come this year today when one of my students asked me what roly polys eat. (A roly poly is also known as a pill bug or a wood louse. It rolls up into a ball when it gets frightened. See the picture to the left.) For the past week or so, several of my students have been spending their time making a roly poly town.

Town in the making

When they came in after building, one student asked what roly polys eat. Since I had no idea, I got the iPads and passed them out.

I wrote the question on the board and asked the students what they thought roly polys might eat. I wrote each response on the board. Then I told them to go ahead and find out what roly polys eat.

It only took a few minutes for one boy to come up to me and show me what he found. He got the answer off of a wiki answers site. Other students were right there with him. Several of the students (and it was interesting because it was mostly girls) used Image Search. They found the answer too, but they did not know it.

This brought forth a whole new set of questions about its habitat, if they would survive in the structure they built for it, and where its mouth is.

I sat there amazed at how much they can do, and how much we will do next year.

Poem

We learned a lot this year.
We learned we could have fun with a group of more than two,
We discovered a new sense of independence,
We found our voice and learned to communicate what we thought,
We learned that doing hard things can be fun,
We found new ways to connect and new ways to find information,
We surprised our teacher by what we could do,
We learned to take risks and we pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zone,
We learned that the times when we thought we would not have fun, we could,
We found that being under the lights can be scary, but we can do it,
And we found out that everyone in the class and learn, and sometimes the oldest one in the room will learn the most.

"It was hard, but fun."

For our current unit about ecosystems and rice, I had the students make a presentation using Google Slides that we will print and put together as a book.

I made the slides for the students. I put the titles on them and asked them to find a picture for each one. I then showed the students my example book that I made, with the same slides as they had, and I showed them how to locate legal images through Google Slides and showed how to cite their sources.

Most students caught on quickly to this. One of the hardest parts for them, which is hard for any new user to Google Slides, is the way the invisible boxes work. Many of them got stuck when they tried to select their text, but an invisible text box was covering it up and they could not do anything.

The next step for them was to add text. This unit I used some paper books I got from Scholastic and the idea was to use that as a guide.

Of course there were some students who got stuck with this too. Before we started I put the students into teams to help each other, but some students got so focused on what they were doing, it was hard to pull themselves away. So for those who needed the help, I gave them some cloze sentences.

This book is from one first grader who erased all the slides I made. After he finished I saw that not all the citations made it to the slides.





When I asked the students after they had printed their books if they liked doing this, they said they did, and one student said, "It was hard, but fun."

Another student taught me that you can adjust the transparency of the color of the text box. That was a lot better than the way I was doing it [and the way I showed them]. I had told them to I can learn too you know.

Break it down
While I saw a lot of good tech and design learning happening (not to mention great peer mentoring), it took several class periods to finish. This was at a time when many were being taken with school functions. It got me thinking about what I should have done.

I could have broke this down more for them. Instead of saying, "Here we go, do this", I could have done one slide a week in the unit.

Week 1 - cover page and a breakdown of the central idea
Week 2 - slide/page on plant parts
Week 3 - page about the plant life cycle
Week 4 - page about animal life cycle
Week 5 - page about rice field food web
Week 6 - page about how rice gets from field to table

I imagine the book being the assessment of what we learned. If we worked on it midweek, I could also use it as a formative assessment.

Could the summative assessment be ongoing like this?

Let's Dance!

I just came across this picture I took earlier in the year.

This is a picture from one of my favorite days this year. On this day, some students in the grade 5/6 class organized dance lessons for the other elementary students.

The session was run during recess by a fifth grader who brought together those students interested in learning some dance moves. It was amazing to see how interested in dancing the students were - even the more energetic boys enjoyed it without the shenanigans.

The dance instructor for the day led the students through some moves, and then at the end she put it all together. It was great to see students taking action. I loved that this student had a passion that she wanted to share with others - and then she did it.

What can I do to encourage my students to better follow their passions next year?

Combining Making Thinking Visible Activities

Honghe Rige Terrace Micro-Ecology
via Visual.ly

While planning for my current unit about the ecology of rice fields (ecosystems, food chains, and life cycles) I came across the above infographic on Visual.ly. Thinking it could make an interesting provocation, I printed it onto an A3 piece of paper and put it up in the front of the room on the first day of the unit.

Wanting to focus on the rice field in the upper left, I asked my class what they saw.

When they started talking about the people, I knew I had to take it further.

I started by taking out some See, Think, Wonder sheets I made up, and I covered up most of the picture, so they focused on the terraced rice field.

Image 1

Despite seeing the picture beforehand, when I asked what they saw in the small square, I still got interesting responses like fossil and alligator tail. After discussing their responses a little, we wrote them down and moved out.

As I zoomed out more, I again asked what they saw. This time I got responses like mountain, stairs, and one student said rice field.

Image 2

The students talked a little about the woman, but surprisingly, since I was focused on the terrace, they were too. They ignored the field to the top. I asked them to write down what they think about the image.

Honghe Rige Terrace Micro-Ecology
via Visual.ly

When I pulled back the curtain, again, I told them that it was indeed a rice field. I think every student's hand went up and the air electrified. Finally, I asked them if they had any wonderings or questions. I had them write them down.

I really like going through the questions the students have after they get worked up about a topic like this.

I will be ready for this in the start of the units from now on. This was as interesting as when I showed the students pictures of rice field art.

Course 2 Final Project - A Technology AUP for Grades K-6

The school I am working at just recently updated the school's AUP. When I saw it, I felt like it was missing something, something besides easy-to-understand language for the elementary students. The school's AUP needed some positive language in it.

Too often when looking at other schools' AUPs, the rules and regulations made me feel as if using technology were criminal.

I, however, think that technology should be celebrated. Students should know that technology can be exciting and fun. Yes, computer games are OK to play in moderation.

When writing mine, I tried to write rules in a positive manner that revolved around our school STARs, or ESLRs expected student learning results. I wanted to focus on the "cans" and "shoulds" rather than the "don'ts".

I also wanted to make a document that was all on one page so young students would be able to follow along.

I waited too long to try to find someone to collaborate with so I made a post to see if anyone was interested. I was fortunate to find a few people to collaborate with: Adam, Ben, Claudelle, Margriet, and Vivian. Thank you all. Using Google Docs, collaboration was relatively smooth; or as smooth as collaborating through time zones and through borders can be.

My collaborators gave me some great advice, but I think this is still a work in progress. For it to be a truly elementary AUP, I need to add some graphics.

With that said, this is a lot better than what I started with.



Something I noticed when I started reading the AUPs from other cohort members was how there is a shift from talking about dont's, to more positive language. Are we all drinking the same Kool-Aid? I think the shift is a great one for education.

The Mirrors in My Classroom

I remember the day in the beginning of the year when I sat down with one of my first graders to review writing. She was talking about something I didn't completely understand. When I asked her about it she pointed to the part of her writing she was referring to.

But the pointing was not pointing; it was a rude kind of tapping that left me wondering where in the world she could have gotten that from.

A few days later I caught myself doing the same tapping.

Doh!

Fast forward to last week. The mother of one of my students commented on my new haircut and how it looked different since the front of my hair was kind of up. I told her my hair was up because I have a habit of brushing my hair back. Now that it is shorter, it stays up.

"So that's where he got that!" she said.
"Got what?" I asked.
She explained, "He always does that with his hair. I hate that."

Doh!

I have been amazed at the ability of these younglings to absorb the information from around them. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad ...

The Power of Connection

Blog post reflecting on your own personal use of the Internet and how you use the connection and power of hyperlinks.

In college I was a foreign exchange student at a small university in Japan. I don't remember how often I called home, but I do remember that it wasn't very often.

Photo Credit: Endangered in Japan by kimubert via Compfight cc

When I did call home, I had to go to a payphone like this on campus, and dial a number to some phone company where I would have to dial another number that would connect my to my parents house. This was all before I had access to the Internet back in the U.S. (I was even sending hand-written letters then.) Fast forward to this morning when I used Skype to call my mom [from Japan] for free.

I am so glad I don't have to seek out a payphone.

I believe the power of the Internet, combined is how is is flattening the world and giving more people than ever access to information.

People can take free college classes. We can read newspapers from all over the world whenever we want, well, the free ones at least. There are ebooks, blogs, websites, videos, and infographics.

But all these tools are nothing without the people and the ideas behind them. Now, more than ever, it is so easy to find people with great ideas and hear what they have to say. We can get and give information quickly. (Sometimes too quickly.)

This is what the Internet is all about. The connections are where the power is at.

You Mean Google is not in My iPad?

This week I had a short discussion with my class about the Internet and what it is. While reading this article about a writer who spent a year not accessing the Internet. In that article, he writes about the conversation he has with his niece.

That was just the idea I needed.

I gathered my class onto the carpet and drew some pictures of computers on the whiteboard. I explained that when I was younger, [most] of the computers were isolated from each other.

Then I drew lines to connect the computers and explained that is basically what the Internet is, computers connected together.

Two excited students shouted out.

"It looks like a web!"

"It looks like a net!"

"Good observations," I said. "That is why those words are used when talking about the Internet."

My favorite part was when I was trying to explain again for the students who were not understanding what I was saying. I erased one of the lines and said when I disconnect my computer, or turn off WiFi I cannot access the Internet anymore. I become isolated. (These are not the words I was using by the way.)

Some students still did not understand.

So I opened Safari on the iPad and went to Google. I showed them that I am now connected to the Internet. But when I turn off WiFi, see? I cannot get to Google anymore.

You mean Google is not on the iPad!?

I also talked about hyperlinks and how they worked. My analogy was not very good, but if I were to do it again, I would bring them to the library. I would talk about how the library is like the Internet, and the books are like websites. All the websites have pages, like books.

Side note: Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net is the name of Homer Simpson's Internet start up company from a 1998 episode of The Simpson's called "Das Bus". When I was reflecting on the discussion I had on Friday with my class, this name is what came to mind.

For me, I use the connection of the Internet to, well, connect. I connect to information, content, and other people which would not be possible without hyperlinks.

Without hyperlinks, we would be isolated. (But I think there would be a different to hop from place to place.)

This is an interesting project: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/globe

So, How Will My Digital Footprint Affect Me as an International Teacher?

 All images in this post are screen shots from the infographic I made.


During this class I have been much about our online footprints the impact it has on job applicants when looking for a new job.

When I was reading the articles, I thought they were interesting, but I kept wondering what the hiring process of international schools looked like.

I went to my own headmaster and informally asked him what he does during the hiring process. While we were talking he said that he would be willing to send the survey out to other headmasters.

I got responses from 15 headmasters, headmistresses, or principals. See the survey results here on infogr.am.

Question 1

Do you perform an Internet/Google search about potential applicants during the hiring process?

The responses to question 1 surprised me. I assumed that everyone would "Google" an applicant during the hiring process.

After reviewing the results of this first question, I wondered if I should have asked that the survey go out to the person in charge of hiring. Maybe the two who answered no to this question don't do the hiring for their schools. Maybe they rely on references or they call the schools the teachers are coming from.

Question 2

If you answered yes to question 1, how long do you spend on researching applicants in such ways?

The responses here were what I had expected. School leaders are busy people and spend less than 30 minutes doing Internet background checks.



Question 3

Do you use Social Media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.) to find additional information about applicants during the hiring process?

I expected that everyone would be looking at Social Media sites during the interview process. It is faster to just do a Google Search though.



Question 4

If you use Social Media, which sites do you gather information from?

 

This is another question where the results were not as I had expected. 11 of the 15 respondents said they looked at Social Media sites. I thought it would have been 100%. The breakdown was unexpected for me as well. I thought Twitter would be much higher, but it only got one vote.

1. Linkedin - 9
2. Facebook - 8
3. Google+ - 2
4. Twitter - 1
5. Pinterest - 0
6. Other - 0

One headmaster had this answer to Question 4:

No, I don't [look on Social Media when reviewing an applicant], Google is a search engine so I use that. Social sites are personal so I don't dig.

If I had the chance to ask a followup question to that answer, I would ask if looking on Social Media meant specifically going to a site to look someone up, or if this included those in a Google search result as well.



Question 5

Have you found information that has positively or negatively impacted the result of your applicant search when using Social Media?

 

This question was to see what kind of information was found about applicants. The three options were:

• I have found information that supported the applicant positively.
• I have found both positive and negative information about applicants.
• I have tried, but have failed to find any information at all.

Question 6

If you failed to find any information at all, does that negatively impact your feelings about the applicant?

Seven of the 15 respondents answered this question. All seven said that it does not negatively affect someone to have no online presence at all. This did surprise me. I assumed people might think those without an online presence had something to hide.



Summary

• All though I had only 15 responses to the survey, it represents more than half of the schools that it was sent to and it was a bigger response than I had expected.
• Before I sent this survey out, I had assumed that background checks using the Internet was more common among schools than it has shown to be.
• I really thought that having no online presence would be thought of as a negative, but this group disagrees with me.
• I am surprised only one headmaster looks at a teacher's presence on Twitter. I think it should be more popular than it seems to be [with these heads surveyed]. Twitter is a great resource for information.
• Writing surveys is challenging. I proofread this one about three times, and I can still see things I would do differently next time.
• Making a nice infographic is also really hard. I spent too much time trying to make my own before finding the website infogr.am where I simply needed to insert my data.
• It's a good idea to be smart when you post anything online and regularly check your own digital footprint because people are looking.

Time to Vote For Your Stars!

On the first Monday of every month the whole elementary school gathers together to group, recently showing off student work (which I think is great and I would like to see this continue), and to recognize students who have been outstanding at exhibiting our STARs [ESLRs].

Students who have been "living the STARs" receive an award and are recognized for their excellence. I have watched the older grades now for two years choose their own class nominees while I have sat back and chosen the STARs for my own class.

Today I decided it was time to put the ball into their court and let them choose their own STAR recipients.

It was a revealing experience. For one, the students were much more serious about it than I had expected. We discussed it for about 45 minutes - a long time for my class to talk about something. The conversation also showed me how superficial their knowledge of the STARS, ESLRs, attitudes the school [and I] want the students to exhibit.

How many times did someone ask me today what each one of them meant. Was it that they only understood the meanings of the words in one way and were unable to apply them?

Whatever the reason, it helped me see that I should be doing this every month. I think it is a great way for the students to learn more about what they mean outside of the "cookie cutter" definition they usually learn.

I set it up so that we first reviewed what the STARs were, in our case they are Responsible, Open minded, Communicator, Knowledgeable, and Risk Taker [ROCKR]. I then asked the students to nominate another student who had shown that trait in the last month.

This was hard for them, and it was even hard for me, as I think that we tend to think more about people's actions as an accumulative rather than in segments of time as I was asking them.

I thought it was good for students who were voted for to hear their name called. I think that it is important for students to that others are watching their actions - even if they don't think so. An act that one might think of as inconsequential, can be enormous for another. And vice versa.

I am wondering, as I am going to start doing this regularly, if it will motivate students to start thinking more about their actions. One student told me after the [secret ballot] votes were in, that she was disappointed she didn't get the knowledgeable award. I told her I was sorry, but maybe she could try to think more about what image she was projecting when she was interacting with others, and that she could even try to make her good deeds more visible to others.

I really don't want to start a competition here, and if it starts to become one I will have to tweak something, but for today, and for the next and last assembly of the year, the decision will be in the students hands.

As it should be.

How Does Light Move?

This picture is from way back in March.

I was being observed, had a cold, and the lesson was about how light moves.

It was one of the more interesting class periods of this year. I set up a flashlight and asked the students where they thought the light would go. To my surprise, I had kids going all around the room putting markers on the wall where they thought the light would end up when I hit the switch.

I thought that they misunderstood what I asked of them, so I repeated the question. I had them retell me the question in their own words - everything seemed fine.

We spent an hour and a half inquiring into how light moves.

I expected that part of the lesson to last 5 minutes. But, I went with where they were and had a great time.

Thank you Craig For the picture.

Edit: To get started, I had the students draw a picture of how they thought light moved, and what they drew was pretty wild. Just today, two days after I published this post, I came a cross a blog post on Inquire Within and Tasha Cowdy writes,

Unusually, the children were slow to respond and when they did, their answers were not obviously related to the question. It occurred to me that the question I had asked required the children to think abstractly about something that they had never experienced. I hadn't asked the right question, offered a meaningful invitation.

... I am reminded of the importance of framing a good research question and thinking carefully about a meaningful provocation.

Understanding by Design Chapter 2

Photo Credit: perspicuus by
 woodleywonderworks via Compfight cc

Transfer is the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and is at the heart of understanding and learning. If students cannot transfer knowledge or if they donor have an opportunity to do so, they will forget.

So avoid forgetfulness
1. Uncover student potential misunderstandings

2. Uncover q's, issues, assumptions, and gray areas lurking underneath the black and white of surface accounts

3. Uncover core ideas at the heart of understanding a subject


Big Concepts
Wiggins and McTighe also talk about uncovering the big and hidden concepts. This got me thinking about my next unit about ecosystems. I came up with a few:

• Everything is connected
• [Almost] everything is a cycle
• Systems run the world

That's what I got off the top of my head. I'll have to revisit them this weekend.

The Three Players in Copyright

I believe there are three main players when it comes to copyright. There are the consumers, the publishers, and the authors. The burden usually falls on the consumers, and maybe it should, but I think all three have a responsibility to ensure copyrights are not violated.

The Consumers
The consumers are everyone who uses the Internet and digests information. The consumers are the ones who the copyright burden usually falls on. That is with good reason as the consumers are the ones using other people's materials.

I agree that people should give credit back to the authors of content when they use it. I would like to see it go a little further though.

Photo Credit: "189/365: Makin' Copiessss" by if winter ends via Compfight cc

We should add not only links back to the page where information is found, but also include site names, and a link back to the homepage of the website. When using pictures or art, I also think that the artwork's title should also be included.

All this is to ensure that a reader can get back to the original source.

The Authors
Today I was surfing around reading some COETAIL blogs and some other blogs in my Google Reader, and I came across Vivian's post, Seriously Trending #Cyberbulling. In it she gives a very personal account of her own childhood experiences, and she links to some worthwhile content about bullying.

One of the resources she links to is a pdf and I followed it to get more information. There I decided that it was good enough for me to use in the future, so I downloaded it to my Google Drive.

While reading the pdf, I was looking for the authors name, or at least the organization where the document came from. Afterall, if there was one good source of information, there would surely be more.

The problem was that the pdf does not have the author's name or the organization where it came from. It does however, contain a citation from where the author got information to make the document.

When I was looking into how to find the source for this document, I continued to think that this author should protect him/herself by putting a name on it. In a pdf, you can also place active links that would help readers quickly make it back to your website to find out more information about who made it.

Photographers also fall under the authors title. Photographers can add metadata including their name, date, and a copyright mark. (As a photography hobbiest I think pictures are better without the watermarks.)

The Publishers
The publishers are websites that post copyrighted content. I even classify publishers to be those sites that allow for the curation of copyrighted content i.e. Google Drive.

For these sites, I think it is their responsibility to give the consumers an easy way to cite an author when reproducing it. Imagine if when doing an image search on Google that it was as easy as it is on Compfight to cite an image. Imagine how easy everything would be if website publishers gave you a snippet of code tell the public where you got your information. PowerPoint and iMovie should include easy ways to insert and display a link back to the source of an image. Google Drive should also have something where you can put a link back to where the document or photo came from. Yes, we can do it ourselves, but these companies should have a stake in helping people to use content legally.

Come on - it's not that hard to do. And it can even look decent if done right like the way Haiku Deck does it.

I also think they have an obligation to forewarn consumers when they [we] are using, embedding, linking to copyrighted content. A lot of trouble comes when consumers take copyrighted content without knowing it should not be taken. A simple warning when right-clicking would do wonders.

The burden of responsibility will always fall back on the consumers, but all three players have some responsibility to help prevent copyright infringement.

Understanding by Design Chapter 1

I first read this book in March 2011, which as some people will know, was when Japan was going through a small crisis. I was living in Sendai at the time, but was not on the coast.

I think I could get more out of it with a second reading.

Note: This website has great information. In fact, there is a ton of UbD information online.

Chapter 1 - Backward Design

Why backward design?
If you don't know where you are going, then any road can get you there. Teaching with the end in sight allows for a focused curriculum.

"Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results." (14)
"Too many teachers focus on the teaching, and not on the learning." (15)


The Twin Sins of Traditional Design
Hands on without being Minds on + Coverage = No guiding intellectual purpose or clear priorities frame the learning experience. (16)

Students should be able to answer about activities: (17)

• What they are doing
• Why they are doing it
• What it will help them do
• How it fits with what they previously did
• How they will show what they have learned

The Three Stages of Backward Design
1) Identify desired results

Consider the goals, identify the standards, review curriculum expectations

2) Determine acceptable evidence

Think like an assessor

3) Plan learning experiences and instruction

• What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts  principles) and skills (processes, procedures, strategies) will students need in order to perform effectively and achieve desired results?
• What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills?
• What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals?
• What materials and resources are best suited for the learning?

A backward design template
Taken from www.wku.edu/.../designing_lesson_plans_using_backward_design.pdf




Design Standards





Here is another great resource that summarizes some UbD information.

The following was taken from the preceeding.


Enduring Understandings
Enduring Understandings are core generalizations about the big ideas. They are unobvious inferences drawn from the facts. An enduring understanding is an inference that requires inquiry and student-centered construction if it isto be understood. Just stating an Enduring Understanding does not mean that a student will understand it. Enduring Understandings include overarching understandings which focus on transferable, recurring ideas as well as topical
understandings that focus on a very specific idea in a content area or course. They relate to the real world and help to answer the question, “Why do we care?”


Guiding Questions
Guiding Questions direct whatstudentsstudy and investigate about a subject’s enduring concepts, important generalizations, critical content items, and processes and skills. Guiding
Questions are open-ended: there is no “single” answer. Guiding Questions are arguable and require a well-reasoned response. Such questions are generative in nature: they spark
inquiry and raise other questions. They are recurring questions that can and should be revisited. Guiding Questions lead students to the big ideas, or enduring understandings and core
processes. Just asthere are overarching and topical understandings, there are overarching and topical guiding questions. Teachers use guiding questions to organize programs, courses, and units of study.

What is Fluency?

What is language fluency?

Google Define gives two definitions:

The quality or condition of being fluent, in particular. The ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately.

The first definition is not very relevant (nor very good), but the second is better.

How can you measure this? Is it measurable?

I have seen (and taught myself) people who I felt are very fluent, but once I went to teach them, because the vocabulary and grammar was new, reverted to what they knew and struggled. I think it is important to continue to try to expand on your knowledge as a language speaker, foreign or even mother-tongue, no matter your level. I think there is always something to be learned or improved upon.

The purpose of language is communication, so with that in mind, what is the best way to achieve the second definition (The ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately) as a teacher?

From my own experience, fluency is extremely subjective. Someone who might appear to be "fluent", can easily flounder when put into an unfamiliar situation.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to teach young students vocabulary as I feel that is the best way to become fluent.

Can fluency be measured? No way. But we can measure learning.

The Homework Myth Chapter 9 - Idle Hands ...

I don't hear parents telling me they like homework because it keeps kids out of trouble. I have, and do hear, that parents like homework because it keeps kids busy.

I really wonder what these kids do at home. I did not have video games until later in elementary school; Legos are how I spent most of my time. I wonder what would happen if my students played with Legos more. Saying that makes me remember that in the beginning of the school year I wanted to give my students more time in school to do that.

The Homework Myth - Part III Restoring Sanity

Chapter 9 - Rethinking Homework
Kohn's three kinds of assignments to give at home

1. Activities naturally suited to the home - interviewing parents, replicating an experiment done at school, etc.
2. Family activities that we don't normally think of as homework - cooking together, playing games together, helping out the family -- just have the students keep a journal of their activities.
3. Reading - let the students choose the book and share what they read with the class. Assigning pages, logs, or a set amount of time to read, isn't helpful. 

Kohn also talks about student choice in this chapter. I am not very good at giving students a choice. For the last project we did, The Nocturnal Animals Project, really the only choice my students had was which animal they would research. I prefer to have a framework from which the students work from, usually all in the same medium (videos, picture posters, poems, etc.) but the students choose their own content.

Maybe I could outline the required parts instead saying the desired outcome. My next unit is about ecosystems, so maybe I could assign different groups/individuals a part or an animal to study and they could decide how to explain what they learned themselves.



Chapter 10 - Making Change
Suggestions for change

• Design what you assign
• One size doesn't fit all
• Bring in the parents
• Stop grading [homework]
• Address [cultural and or socioeconomic] inequities

The Time is Now

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="188"] Photo Credit: MrSchuRe [/caption]

Everyday at school I have to remind both my own students, and those in other grades, what to do when they get into a disagreement with another student. I remind them of some steps I picked up from another teacher to help students remember what to do in those situations.

1. Say stop
2. Walk away
3. Tell a friend
4. Tell a teacher

I think that it is very similar to what kids should do if they think they are being bullied online.

1. Say stop
2. If it continues, tell an adult

Let's talk about it
Cyberbullying, as defined by Wikipedia is as follows:

• actions that use information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm another or others.
• use of communication technologies for the intention of harming another person
• use of internet service and mobile technologies such as web pages and discussion groups as well as instant messaging or SMS text messaging with the intention of harming another person.

Examples of what constitutes cyberbullying include communications that seek to intimidate, control, manipulate, put down, falsely discredit, or humiliate the recipient. The actions are deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior intended to harm another. Cyberbullying has been defined by The National Crime Prevention Council: “When the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person."^[1][2]

A cyberbully may be a person whom the target knows or an online stranger. A cyberbully may be anonymous and may solicit involvement of other people online who do not even know the target. This is known as a 'digital pile-on.'^[3]

I think that cyberbullying should be taught in schools, as "offline" bullying is, in conjunction with it being talked about at home. I am a little disconnected from the issue teaching in early primary. I mostly deal with the offline kind.

The problems we have at the school I am working at seem rather trivial compared to some of the problems I have heard about at other places. I can see some of these problems beginning to sneak into our bubble of a school. While I do not think that we have had any cases of cyberbullying in our school, I think it is only a matter of time.

I think that now is the time to talk to kids about it so they are prepared and are able to handle it when/if it happens to them.

Students might also not know that what they are doing is not OK. They might think that what they are doing is only a joke and not realize that it is harmful.

When discussing Internet etiquette in class, I poured a glass of water on the ground and I had them try to figure out how to put it back in. This brought up some great questions and led us to conclude that Internet etiquette is (or should be) the same as offline etiquette. You should even be more careful online since your actions can be tracked and recorded.

I think that schools should be safe places for kids. They should not have to worry about being harassed by other kids.

I think schools should take action when students attack other students online. There is a fine line here, and it is where judgement calls need to be made.

What does an attack look like?
How do you know it is not a joke?
When does a joke go too far?
Would it be OK for a student or teacher to share disagreements about the school online?

I am going to evade these questions for now and say that judgement calls should be made on a case by case basis. It is interesting that a few months ago I thought there was no way that a school should have that kind of power.

Isn't it OK to wield that kind of power to protect the good of all?

When should we talk with students about cyberbullying then? I have been trying to do a class search lesson a week where we take a question the students have about what we are studying and see what answers we can find. I would like to extend this to talk more about staying safe online.