Tinkerings

Today SMART Technologies came back to our school district for another presentation of their software and various hardware configurations.   As you may recall, a couple of previous posts I didn’t have much good to say about the first one.  Today, however, was a totally different story.

SMART brought in the right equipment (the document camera didn’t make it in time, but hey, that’s life) and the right trainer.

Bill Jarrett spent some time outlining exactly what an interactive white board is, the various components available through SMART to produce an audacious classroom, and a little bit about the history of SMART Technologies.  Then, he turned the show over to his star, and my friend, MaryAnn Sansonetti.

I’ve known MaryAnn for three years now, but this is the first time I’ve been privileged to see her in action in front of a group of teachers.  I have to say, she impressed us with the things you can do with a SMART board, but more importantly, she impressed me with her poise, grace, and knowledge.

We had a couple of teachers who did not make the presentation easy.  It wasn’t that they were being ugly or rude.  They were totally engaged in the conversation and asked questions….lots and lots and lots of questions.  Sometimes the questions were from three or four sentences ago, but MaryAnn hung in there and answered every one of them.  I, on the other hand, might have been…uh…shall we say….less diplomatic.

Now the ball is in the hands of people higher up the food chain than me.  The resellers are working out pricing details (installation costs are going to make or break this deal for someone).  Principals are in charge of making the final decisions for their buildings.  The district office has to process and place all the orders from our various schools.

As for me, I feel my Personal Learning Network (PLN) did a great job bringing all this about for our district.  And then, there’s MaryAnn.  She went above and beyond by driving down here from Columbia, SC.  She wowed our teachers with a fantastic product.  And she changed the minds of several teachers today….myself included.  Thanks, MaryAnn!  You are the best!

Today is the last Monday of my summer.  Where did the time go?  What happened to all my big plans at the end of the school year last year?  Where are all the video tutorials I was going to create?  Where are the rest of the lesson plans I need?  Why isn’t my website updated already?  When will I get around to firing up the computers in my lab at school to see if they all work?

These and many more questions are swirling around in my head today.  I don’t know why it hit me today.  I have to be at our district office part of the day Wednesday and Thursday.  I have an in-service Friday.  I’ve already passed my last of those free days.  But there is something about Mondays.

Never start a diet on a Monday.

Never buy a car manufactured on a Monday (or a Friday)

Never give a test on a Monday

Monday gets a bad rap.  I’m not really sure why.  Other beginnings get celebrated.  Spring is a great beginning.  Birthdays celebrate our own individual beginnings.  Anniversaries celebrated the beginning of wedded bliss.  We celebrate the beginnings of new jobs.

But not Mondays.  Mondays are the days we “drag into work.”  They are days we just want to pull the covers back over our heads and extend the weekend.  They are days we have to “face the job again,” “go to school again,” or “start another week again.”

I guess it stands to reason out of 7 days, one of them has to be the brunt of all the “day jokes.”  It is our nature to poke fun at something.  It is our nature to be negative about something.  It is our nature to complain about something.

It is our nature to be ignorant.

The beauty of mankind, the beauty that separates us from other animals, is that we can fight against our nature.  We can “unlearn” all those things that our base nature places inside of us.  Education is the way to fight against our nature.

The ignorant bully others.  The educated find common ground.

The ignorant complain about things they don’t understand.  The educated find ways of understanding

The ignorant find negativity in everything.  The educated look for the positive and fan the flame of good.

Our job as teachers is to educate.  Not teach.  Educate.  Our job is to help kids unlearn and relearn.  Our job is to make a better citizenry for our country, better spouses for our marriages, and better parents for our kids.

Then why do teachers hate Mondays so?

There are really only two kinds of people in the world: Those that “get” technology and those that don’t.

Those that “get” technology see the positive side, the half-full side, of things.  They see the limitless possibilities of creating a social network on Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, LinkedIn, and more.  They are connected to people who can help with lesson plans, interact with students via Skype, offer professional development, and more.

Those that don’t see the glass half empty.  There are too many dangers out there.  They see social networking as a means to avoid real life, take time away from families, and harbor pedophiles and serial killers.  It is a scary place, and they want no part in it.

Those that “get” technology understand that our kids’ brains have fundamentally changed.  Television, music videos, video games, and the multiplied thousands of other distractions have created a generation that no longer thinks in linear realities from point A to point B.  Their brains jump around.  Their lives are now hyperlinked.  This means teachers have to rethink the way lesson plans are created and delivered, the way curriculum is offered, and a host of other things that impact the ability of students to respond positively to schools.

Those that don’t argue that “the way we were taught worked for us, and it will work for these kids.”  They see technology integration as providing one PowerPoint slide as a writing prompt or class starter, and then they go back to the same old same old of the last 25 years.  Is it fundamentally “wrong” to teach this way?  Heavens no!  These are good teachers who are doing a good job.  But how much better would their results be if they taught the way these kids learn?

Those that “get” technology understand that kids already use a ton of technology every day, every minute.  They embrace cell phones in the classroom.  They embrace allowing kids to work collaboratively in social spaces.  They also understand the negative possibilities.  But, instead of simply denying access to these things, they advocate teaching kids to use them responsibly.  What a concept!

Those that don’t want filters everywhere.  Shut down social sites.  Shut down game sites (even educational gaming).  Confiscate cell phones.  Take away every tool kids have readily at their disposal.  Their claim is that the risk for abuse is too great, and teachers shouldn’t have to tackle that responsibility on top of everything else we do.  However, the greatest abuse of teachers on campus is the abuse of the school’s copy machine to make all kinds of personal copies.  Why don’t we shut down the copier?

I think by now you can see which type person I am.  I get it.  I envision textbooks online that are tied to other products like DE Streaming, NetTrekker, and more.  I envision kids able to use text messaging and chat rooms to work through homework assignments and group projects.  I envision kids having their own netbook or notebook or iPod or smart phone to facilitate school work.

Our district has been given stimulus money to increase technology in our classrooms.  Our school alone will be spending between $150,000 and $175,000 on new technologies for every classroom.  That means that both the teachers who “get” it and the teachers who don’t will get the same technology to integrate into their classrooms.  They will have access to the same training and resources.  Finally, every classroom could be on an even playing field, and the biggest difference will be two kinds of teachers.

A couple of weeks ago I got an unsolicited phone call from a home security service wanting to install a security system for free.  No doubt you’ve had such a call yourself.

The gentleman on the phone was nice enough.  I explained I lived in a very small home with nothing much worth saving and did not feel like I needed a security system.  He thanked me for my time and we hung up.

That’s when it started.

Over the last two weeks I’ve had 4 or 5 calls from that same number.  It is an automated, computer-generated call.  When I answered the phone, there was no one on the other end.  It started to get frustrating.

Then…on the last call (I hope)…

I answered the phone.  This time there was a gentleman on the other end.  My conversation went something like this:

Me:  Hello?

Him:  May I speak to Tim Childers please?

Me.  That would be me.

Him: Mr. Childers, I am calling on behalf of XYZ Security systems.  We would like to offer….

Me:  Excuse me, but I’ve already had this phone call before.  I already told the first gentleman I do not need a security system.  Please remove me from your call list.

Him: Mr. Childers, did you take the time to listen to our offer during the last call?  Are you aware…

Me: Sir, I don’t need to listen to the sales pitch.  I do not want your product.  Your computer has called me several times over the last two weeks.  Each time I answer the computer does not connect me to a person.  I do not want any more calls from you.  Please remove me from your call list.

Him: Sir, are you aware that you filled out a form online asking us to call you?

Me (more heated):  I can assure you that I have never filled out a form asking for a home security company to call me.

Him: Sir, yes you did.  You filled out a form with a sister company of ours and that generated our calls to you.

Me: Listen, all I’m asking is that you take me off your list.  Do not call me again.

Him: Mr. Childers, why did you fill out the form online if you did not wish to be contacted?

Me:  OK, you are not hearing me.  I DID NOT FILL OUT A FORM ONLINE.  I DO NOT WANT YOU TO CALL ME ANYMORE.

Him: Sir, I would suggest that you stop filling out forms when you do not have any intention of hearing about the offer you were interested in.

CLICK

OK, yes, I hung up.  There was no longer a need to continue this conversation.  I was fed up.  Completely.  Totally.  Over it.

But here is my question.  How many times have we been so determined to get our point across to kids in our classes that we totally missed the fact that they really just didn’t want to hear it?  The reason is not important.  Maybe they had a bad morning at home.  Maybe they didn’t eat breakfast.  Maybe their boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with them.  Maybe they are just obnoxious and rude.  What difference does it make?

The more we talk when they aren’t listening, the more we risk having them hang up the phone in their brains and cut us off.  Back up.  Take a breath.  Teach another student.  But don’t do this.

Copyblogger has a very nice list of the 11 traits of highly creative people (paraphrased).  I am not going to elaborate on them here, but here is the list:

Creative people have COURAGE, use INTUITION, like to PLAY, are EXPRESSIVE, can find ORDER in confusion, are MOTIVATED by a task, find SOLUTIONS, CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS, make CONNECTIONS between the old and the new, PUSH THE ENVELOPE, and TEST new ideas.

As I read through this list, I realized I exhibit many of these traits.  That isn’t a statement to say, “Hey! Look at me! I’m creative!”  Oh no, not me.

Rather, I look at this list and begin to realize why I am often misunderstood at work.  In education, we say we want creative people, but in practice we really want the status quo far more often.  We want teachers to be creative in their classrooms, but we have pretty strict and rigid rules for things beyond those walls and doors.  If we carry our creativity too far, we open ourselves to ridicule, attack, or just being misunderstood.

But this goes further than misunderstanding teachers. Teachers often don’t want creative students either.  After all, we spent hours, sometimes days and weeks, perfecting this lesson plan, this PowerPoint, this exam.  We don’t want to be challenged on any part of it.  That is insubordination.  But is it?

I can’t do anything about what other teachers think about me when I try to exercise my creativity in the workplace.  I can’t do anything about what my assistant principals, principal, secondary supervisor, or even the district superintendent think about it.  It is an inherent part of my total being.  To cease to be creative is to cease to exist.  I can’t do it.

But I can change the way I respond to my students.  I can accept them more and disregard them less. I can feed off their energy rather than squash it to maintain “order” in my room.

What about you?  What will you do when you are faced with a student who exhibits these personality traits?  Will you encourage?  Mentor? Emulate? Build up?  Or will you maintain order above all.

I just read Seth Godin’s latest blog post on Dashboards.  In it, he says:

Years ago, I had an automatic transmission car with a tachometer. Why I needed to know my RPMs when I couldn’t do a thing about it is beyond me.

In local education we seem to collect a lot of data that we really can’t do anything about.  At the end of the year, sometime in the summer, we learn what our TCAP scores were for our kids.  We learn their Average Yearly Progress (AYP) and calculate our TVAAS.  For what?

All this data shows us is how we did with a group of kids we will never see again.  If we change our instruction based on these numbers, how do we know what we’re doing is going to impact the kids we have in the coming year?  The data is interesting, but it is useless (unless our goal is to pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves what a great job we did).

As a classroom teacher I need different data.  Here are pieces of data I am interested in:

How Good Are My Assessments? If I am using assessments to track student progress, it would be good to know if the assessment is any good or not.  After all, “Garbage In/Garbage Out” as the saying goes.  It isn’t enough to say my assessment is too easy if everyone got an A or too hard if everyone failed.  I need to know what is going on inside the assessment.  On question 13, how many students (across all classes) chose a particular distractor?  (I will post later on the structure of multiple choice questions and how to get kids to increase test scores when they don’t know the material.)  If one distractor didn’t get any responses, it is faulty and should be replaced.  That will make my assessment better.

What Am I Assessing? We spend so much time in language arts classes going over good writing skills.  Those skills are very, very important to be successful in life.  But on our state assessment there are very few questions about writing.  It is nearly all related to reading.  If I am teaching grammar, how can I tie what I’m doing into student reading skills?  Math is another subject that is hard to assess properly.  If we are doing worksheets with tons of math problems, we simply are not preparing kids for the state math assessment.  Our state test focuses on two things primarily: Reading skills and Calculator skills.  If the students know these two things, they don’t need to know math.  Last year I had a student showing another how to solve a very complicated algebra problem using her calculator.  I asked if she could solve the problem on paper without the calculator.  “Are you kidding?” was her response.  She had no idea, but she was teaching math in my classroom.

Where Are My Kids At Today? This is hard to quantify.  I don’t need to know where they are at with the skills or objectives we are studying.  I will assess that in other ways.  I need to know if they are fully present in my classroom.  What happened last night?  What happened this morning?  Did Johnny get breakfast?  Is Suzie still having problems with her boyfriend?  What happened between homeroom and 4th period that caused Billy to be so angry?  This is data.  It is powerful data.  It tells you whether to press forward or back off.

How Do My Kids Learn Compared To How I Teach? I will be the first to admit that when I started teaching I used the tried and true lecture method.  With 7th grades.  Diagramming sentences.  Yeah.  I know.  That’s how I learned, so that’s how I teach.  Kids today don’t learn that way.  Their brains are not wired that way.  They don’t learn sequentially, but we love to teach things in a strict order.  Kids are used to pushing buttons on the Internet and getting taken to whatever interests them.  Take that button away and they are zombies.  So how do I teach?  How do I get kids involved?  Data tells me the answer.  I have to ask questions.  As my friend, Lee Kolbert, puts at the end of each of her blogs, “Ask questions!  Ask lots of questions!”

There is so much data, and so many ways to collect data.  Are we looking at something that can change the way we teach?  Or, like the old tachometer Seth Godin talked about, are we looking at data about which we can do absolutely nothing.

What data are you collecting?  How are you using it?

I really don’t have a point to this blog. It is more a sense of streaming consciousness today as I think about getting ready for school to start in just over two weeks. I’m so not ready.

I have to get things organized in the labs. We are remodeling two of our rooms this year and it will be a miracle of they are put back together by our first report day. All the computers are in the library. The carpet was pulled up and tile is about to be laid. The rooms have been painted and all cabinetry and water fountains removed. After the tile is laid we have 5 coats of wax to put down. Then the computers have to be brought back in, re-imaged, and re-assigned static IP addresses. I’m not ready.

I have to get things organized with my team. Our principal has agreed to hire a 4th person for our labs this year. I’m still not sure who that person is. We need to sit down and talk about strategies for the year. How are we going to teach keyboarding, reading, and math to 6th graders in one semester? What language arts lessons will we do with the 7th graders? How will we incorporate 4-year plans, career education, and TCAP prep with the 8th graders? Without that 4th person in place, the meeting is moot. I’m not ready.

I have to finish lesson plans for 6th grade. My goal when school was over was to have the first six weeks of new lessons together for our 6th graders. This would include the basic lessons, any online tutorials, quizzes and assessments prepared, DE Streaming videos chosen, and more. Although I’ve done some work on this over the summer, it is obviously not enough to be ready in 2 weeks. I have a lot of organizing to do. Jing will be working overtime. The class website and wiki has to be updated. Students have to be enrolled into DE Streaming so we can assign them to classes. I’m not ready.

So, while I am supposed to be organizing things for the beginning of school I sit here at my favorite Panera Bread Company and write this blog. That’s the part of organizing called P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N. And it is my favorite part.

I’m not ready.

Like many of the people in my Personal Learning Network (PLN), I do some training on creating, building, and maintaining a PLN. Some teachers get it. Some don’t. That’s OK. Some want to get it, but are not sure it is really something they need. Or want. This post is for those teachers. Everyone else can move along to something more interesting.

If you read my blog at all, you will know that in the past few days I attended a presentation for SMART and Promethean boards hosted by our district. You will also know that the SMART reseller in charge of the demonstration did not do a great job. I was very disappointed because I knew many of the things SMART is capable of, and we did not get to see those. In addition, you will know that SMART is doing everything it can to make up for the problem.

What you don’t know yet (unless you’ve read the comments on my last blog post) is the power of a complaint (or concern, or praise, or whatever) when it is given in the context of a PLN.

I had already told two members of PLN about the problem. Both are SMART certified trainers. They are passionate about SMART technology. They got the word to SMART for me within a matter of hours, maybe minutes.

But then I saw this comment from Gerard Newsome on my last post:

Thanks for giving a tweet on this. I was able to send this site to my director who just came from a SMART camp in Canada.

Only yesterday she made several calls and was contacted by several SMART regional directors and the CEO about this. They were interested in how she heard about it. They were amazed at how the news traveled so fast…and far.

Gerard is the man singly responsible for putting me in the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) which is the foundation of my PLN. I had lost track of Gerard over the last couple of years. And in case you need some translation, my blog is automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook. Gerard saw my post on Twitter and sent the blog to his director. And look what happened. Several regional directors and the CEO of SMART contacted this person to find out how they knew about the situation so quickly.

How did they know? Because my PLN was put into action.

I would like to think that my little blog post stuck out in the nether regions of the vast empty space of the Internet had some impact on SMART. But it didn’t. They would never have known about this incident at all except for three others who knew. And they contacted some people. And those people contacted some people. And it snowballed into something much more than it was at the beginning.

The end result is that SMART gets a do-over. They have been invited by our district to try again. Our teachers deserve to see what SMART can do. They deserve to see these products in action as they are meant to be used. The classroom experience of over 10,000 students is at stake.

Still wonder if you need to develop a PLN?

Yesterday I posted a blog about how SMART blew a presentation to the schools in my district. I contacted a couple of people in my Personal Learning Network (who are SMART certified trainers and DEN alumni to let them know what had happened. One talked to the TN Sale Rep. The other contacted the CEO of SMART.

Literally, within a matter of hours the wheels were turning at SMART Technologies. They did not make any excuses. They just admitted that they had brought the wrong equipment and, perhaps, the wrong people to the table. But they didn’t stop there.

SMART contacted my district office and asked if they could have a second chance at the presentation. This time they would bring in all of the right equipment andthe right person to show it. The district contact agreed to let them come back next week. But they didn’t stop there.

The Regional Sales Manager contacted me by email and by phone. We spent nearly thirty minutes together talking about the things that went wrong with the presentation, and what they could do to make things really click next time. Again, there were no excuses. Just a commitment to do things the way SMART is known to do them…with total professionalism and perfection.

I would like to thank the two wonderful ladies in my PLN for knowing who to contact to get the ball rolling. I would like to express appreciation to the people at SMART for admitting they got it wrong without throwing blame at anyone. That is absolutely refreshing.

I can’t wait for next Wednesday!

Today was the big day. Teachers and principals from all over the district converged on Ocoee Middle School to participate in 4 hours of demonstrations from SMART and Promethean. Each school was tasked with the challenge to choose one system for the school.

I knew something was a little off when I pulled in ten minutes before the first presentation and saw the SMART people unloading their van. The presentation started a little late. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Our reseller, Southern Business Machines, decided they could do the presentation on their own. They brought in a software tech to demonstrate the board. Not a good idea. The guy stumbled through his presentation. He kept forgetting to change the touch screen from pointer to pen to eraser to highlighter. After a few minutes he was sort of in a groove. But he thought the window shade effect was really cool.

Someone asked about pre-made lessons. We are, after all, teachers. We are busy. We “borrow” lesson plans. We don’t create them. So he pulled on up. It was a rather simple slide on the screen. And this is what he said (I’m paraphrasing), “I don’t really know what this lesson is about, but you can see we have them.” My hand is on a Bible. Honest.

We didn’t see the interactive writing pad or the student response system. They were talked about, but we could not see them in action. Very few teachers went to the board after the presentation to “play”. We just sort of stood around waiting for the next demonstration time.

Next up: Promethean. I had already told my principal that SMART was an easier software to use, the fact that we could use our fingers to write would negate extra costs for those teachers that lost their pens, and on and on. Whatever.

Promethean sent in their #1 trainer from Nashville. The head honcho of trainers. He let it “slip” that he had to sort of cut our meeting short so he could get to another presentation at our local university. And then he began.

One after another, the features of the Promethean board were demonstrated. Lesson plan after lesson plan was put up on the screen for math, science, social studies, and language arts. He showed how they worked along with the magic behind them. “You don’t have time to create these?” he teased. “No problem. There are literally thousands of lessons just like these on Promethean Planet.” Eyes widened. Nostrils flared. Mouths drooled.

And then, the killer finish. He brought out the clickers. We took quiz questions. Saw how they came out in instant results. He demonstrated how to export them to Excel. He even told us that you didn’t need the board to give a quiz. You can send out a pre-made quiz that kids take at their own pace on the clickers, and then just look at the scores later. Even my eyes got that lustful look in them. I wanted that technology.

Every school in our district is looking to buy interactive boards with federal stimulus dollars. This is a once in a lifetime (or a presidential term) chance. Promethean stepped up to the plate and delivered a homeroom out of the ball park. SMART wasn’t so lucky. It was a nice base hit. Nothing fancy. But the runner is still on the bases. I’m not sure if he’ll get home or not.