Tinkerings

I am one of those people that believes that all children need to learn their multiplication tables.  Early.  Backwards and forwards.  And they should learn some basic grammar rules.  Imprint them on the gray matter of their brains.  And maybe they should memorize all the states, state capitals, presidents, the Gettysburg Address, and the PreAmble to the Constitution.  And probably the Periodic Table of Elements.

Ok, you got me.  Maybe we don’t need to memorize all that stuff.  But, the fact remains that “when I was in school” we memorized a lot.  And much of what I memorized stays with me to this day.  Maybe not like the girl in my junior high Bible Quiz team who memorized…yes, memorized….the first 13 chapters of the Book of John, but enough to put basic ideas and facts in our brain to serve us a lifetime.

And why did we memorize it?  Because it was for a grade!

So you can imagine the shock that came to me recently when a friend of mine was telling me about her walk down the greenway after a big rain.  She explained to me that if something had happened to her phone (like falling into the water) on her walk she wouldn’t be able to call me because she hadn’t committed my phone number to memory.  What?!?  I have known this person for probably six months by now and she doesn’t even know my phone number?

And then it hit me.

I don’t know hers either.  Why would I bother to memorize it?  It is tucked safely away in the Contacts list of my Droid.  If I need to call her, or text her, or send her an email, I can do that.  Why?  Because I have the technology.

So, before you get upset with your students because they simply refuse to memorize something in your classroom. Before you accuse them of not having a brain cell in their head.  Before you throw up your hands in surrender and shout, “What is this world coming to?” (Which, by the way, is a misuse of a preposition…something I memorized in junior high).  Think.  Think about who they are.  Think about the generation to which they belong.

Think about the phone in their pocket.  Yes, the calculator-search-engine-app-filled-Internet-connected-text-messaging-video-creating-YouTube-playing-tiny-computer of a phone to which they are connected.  Why bother to memorize something so easily found with a few simple thumb clicks?

It isn’t that this generation can’t memorize things.  You just have to justify the need differently.

“It’s for a grade” simply doesn’t cut it any longer.

Yesterday I trained some teachers on a few basic techniques for making their Interactive White Boards more interactive in the classroom.  We focused on ways to use the boards with direct instruction by the teacher.  (Next week we move to student interactions).  All-in-all, it was a good day.  I enjoy working with teachers.  And, I enjoy working with teachers of all skill levels an abilities.

Nearly any group you work with can be broken down into various sub-groups.  You know what I mean. You go to a restaurant and you immediately see singles, couples, and groups.  You go to the gym and you see those who are overweight and trying to regain control of their lives in some sort of….oh wait, that’s me.  And then there are those who are die-hard fitness trainers.

Immediately, yesterday, it became clear I had two major groups of teachers, but they were not the groups I was expecting.

The first group I have worked with any times.  This group was made up of older teachers (again, I include myself here) who are not comfortable with technology.  I spent most of my time helping them find their way around the toolbar.  When you are unfamiliar with something, many times you can look right at what you want and still not see it.  As part of the training I do for the Discovery Educator Network, I run into this group more than any other.

The second group surprised me.  This group was made up of younger teachers (OK, I’ll put myself in this group, too).  It was difficult to get these teachers to follow my lead in creating new content.  I would draw a rectangle on the board and then add a small star just to the right of it.  We would add color to the shapes and then group together to move around as one object.  Simple.  Or so I thought.

Then I would walk around the room.  Some had chosen the square tool instead of the rectangle tool to draw their shape.  And no matter how many times you try, or how many different directions you tug at the corners, that shape is always going to be a square.  Some had their rectangle in the  middle of the screen, but the star was in an upper corner far away from the other object.

And yet, because these were adults I knew were unfamiliar with the program we were using, I did not get upset or frustrated or short-tempered or…..

Wait a minute!

OK, you got me. Yes, teacher training is a metaphor for all classroom instruction.  Sometimes, the brains of other people just don’t work exactly the way the brain of the instructor is working.  Sometimes it isn’t that kids “don’t get it.”  Rather, it is just that they aren’t seeing it in their own head the way you think it should be done.  Does that make it wrong?

On a standardized test, yes, its wrong.

In real life, not everything has to be “just like I said it should be.”  There’s room for differences.

Toward the end of the day, I had a teacher ask me, “I’ve had a training like this before, and I learned to do this a different way.  Is it ok with you if I do it the way I learned before?”

You betcha.

This afternoon I went to one of my best sessions so far at FETC (and most of them have been pretty good).  Steve Dembo was presenting on the topic “iThink iNeed an iPhone, iPod, or iPad.”  Steve is always fun, high energy, and extremely knowledgeable.  He is one of the true Rock STARs of the DEN.

His goal was to demonstrate the iPad’s usefulness for classroom use.  But he was having a little trouble with his connections.  He would transition to anew slide in his presentation and then wait for several seconds for the changes to appear on the big screen.  At first he kind of kidded around that he knew why he was having problems, but he wasn’t going to tell us.  Then, toward the end, he changed his mind.

The iPad is great for a lot of things, but it isn’t quite there yet for using to present at conferences or even in the classroom.  There is a new adapter that allows you to connect the iPad to a VGA cable and show some apps on your monitor or projector screen.  But many apps just won’t show up.

As a result, Steve told us he was using an app called Good Reader to display his screen through to the VGA cable.  The only problem was that the convention center wifi had blocked the port used by the app to display over the VGA.  So, Steve connected his iPad to his iPhone and that to his Mac, created his own wifi network on his iPhone and was moving back and forth from iPad to Mac through the phone to the VGA cable and onto our the projector screens.

Say Wha…?

I know.  It was almost too geek-speak for me, too.  But it just goes to show you that there is always a way to make technology work.  At conferences.  In workshops. And in the classroom.

Steve Dembo gets an Attaboy for his out-of-the-box efforts to make sure the audience could fully grasp the utility of the iPad.  Even if some of those utilities become its own flaws.

I am about to finish up my first experience with ATIA in Orlando, FL.  I have to say I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I got here.  I don’t work with assistive technologies in my job, so I just had no clue what this conference would be like.  However, I knew the hotel would be wonderful and the weather better than my own, so agreeing to come to Florida in January was not really a difficult decision.

I have been amazed at the change of nuance in the way this conference has been conducted compared to others I’ve attended.  First of all, there was no opening or closing keynotes.  People showed up, registered, and went to the first group of workshops.  And, although there were a myriad of workshops on various topics throughout several strands, the schedule took a break from 10:30 to 1:15 for attendees to visit the exhibit hall.  Priority was given to the vendors to be able to demonstrate their products because learning about these products was equally as important as learning new techniques.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised by the amount of people attending the conference who actually need assistive technologies.  Visual impairments seemed to be the most prolific, but that may only be because I am untrained in what to look for.  There were dozens of blind individuals with tapping canes making their way from session to session and building to building with no help whatsoever.  A prolific number of seeing-eye dogs (and one pony) blended into the landscape of people seemingly unnoticed except for a first-timer like me.  A number of volunteers walked the hallways with bright yellow t-shirts that read “Sight Guide” and worked to help individuals get from one place to another.  A number of vendors were, themselves, visually impaired.

But the biggest thing I’ve walked away with from this conference (other than a couple of great software programs we really need to purchase) is realizing the disconnect between the technologies we teach general education teachers and the ones we teach special education teachers.

When I go to general education technology conferences people are all buzzing about Voicethread, Edmodo, Twitter, Glogster, Blabberize, and a host of other creative suites of programs.  As session leaders asked for raised hands, the number of teachers attending this conference who have even heard of some of these were paltry at best. Of course, I have been a bit lost as they talk freely about NIMAS, Chafee, Window Eyes, JAWS, and more.

So, while I am taking back at least two really good recommendations to help high functioning special education students read and write better and make the transition from high school to college easier, I am also taking back the knowledge that as a secondary tech coach, I have an entire group of teachers out there that I am missing.

So to those of you who attend technology conferences on a regular basis, I highly recommend you take some time, step out of your comfort zone, and attend a different kind of technology conference.

Like Microsoft’s new round of commercials for Windows 7, everything seems to be going to the “cloud” these days. It is an interesting transition to watch.  It means a lot less privacy and a lot more connectedness.  The yin and yang of social computing.

Today as I was perusing my Twitter feed on my Droid (sound sufficiently “cloud-y”?), I ran across an article tweeted by one of my PLN members, Peter Schneider. The article, How Will Content Be Purchased in the Future? really got me thinking about the benefits to teachers, parents, administrators, and district level personnel when our curriculum goes to the cloud.

Yes, I’m talking mainly about digital textbooks, but it could be a lot more than that before its over.

Currently, we hand out heavy textbooks to students and assign reading passages, problems at the end of chapters, and quizzes and tests as we move students through the process of learning each subject.  We have little way to track whether any of this work gets done, or how long they spend doing it.

But the cloud will change all that.

When curriculum content is posted to the cloud, students will log in using their unique and secure username and password.  Teachers will get a report that tells them what time the student logged in and logged out, how long they spent reading a particular page in the “textbook”, whether they watched the accompanying video, which of the links to other sites were clicked, and every other action the student takes.

When curriculum content is posted to the cloud, students will take quizzes and exams online.  Results are automatically graded and immediately posted to the teacher’s gradebook.  Reports that identify trends in what students know and don’t know guide how instruction can be changed…overnight.

When curriculum content is posted to the cloud, administrators and instructional coaches can look at grade-level trends, sub-group trends based on ethnicity, socio-economic status, and other reporting categories that impact a school’s standing on state standardized tests.  Teacher effectiveness could be judged on hundreds of data points rather than just one each year.  And the academic direction of an entire school can be moved, tweaked, and prodded back toward gains.

When curriculum content is posted to the cloud, budgetary decisions can be tracked on a minute-by-minute basis if necessary.  Each module purchased can be tracked as to the number of students who accessed the program, how many assignments were created by teachers, and whether or not there is a correlation between the use of that content and student success.  The programs that are underused can be evaluated based on real-time data.  Decisions based on opinion or anecdotal data can be eliminated or refuted.

When curriculum content is posted to the cloud, parents can have 24/7 access to everything going on in a classroom.  They can easily track what their students are reading, watching, and learning.  Parent engagement can even be tracked as teachers and admins look at reports of how often a parent has accessed information.

I could go on, but I think you’re beginning to see the point.  Hard copy textbooks are so last century.  Everything is moving to the cloud (or an app tied to the cloud).  Education should be going that direction as well.

What do you think?

As you may have noticed by now if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or read this blog regularly, or visit my 365 Photo Challenge page, I am trying to learn how to take better pictures.  One of the first things I learned about improving my pictures was a little thing called “the Rule of Thirds.”

You will see what I mean in the picture in this post.  Each picture is divided in thirds from top to bottom and from left to right.  If you are shooting a horizon, for instance, you may want the horizon line to be on the blue line at the bottom to give you a lot more sky, or on the blue line at the top to show more depth to the image of the land or water.

Fairy Cake

The ideal (many times) is to get faces or objects of interest on one of the intersections of the lines as shown in the red dots.  In this case, I lucked into a shot that had both my granddaughter’s face and her cake on a red dot spot in the picture.  I accomplished this by turning the camera slightly to put the image at an angle.

The Rule of Thirds will help anyone with any type camera take a more interesting picture.  Gone are the days of putting a small head and body smack dab in the center of the frame where he or she gets lots in the surrounding scenery.  Of course, this is just one rule of photography; and, like most rules, there are times when it has to be broken in order to use another rule.

For me, teaching to standards is a lot like that small head and body shot that gets lost in the scenery.  Not only is it uninteresting, but it makes for a pitiful education experience.

My advice? (from the sidelines, of course)

Teach to the red dots.  Those are the ideas and thought processes just off center from the standards.  Those are the areas where students have to think and not just recite.  Those are the areas where students create and not just list.  Those red dots are where rigor, relevance, and relationship line up to make education interesting to the students again.

Engage your students in thinking again.  Its difficult, I know.  Believe me, I know. I know.  But don’t take no for an answer.

I’m committed to the 365 Photo Challenge.  Taking one good picture a day and posting it online.  Not just taking a picture, but taking a good one.  Sometimes I get that shot in 10 or 12 attempts.  Sometimes I have to take 100 or more pictures to get that one.

Your classroom won’t be any different.  Keep asking the questions.  Keep pointing them in the right direction.  Keep hounding them.  Give them questions in the classroom.  Give them questions over lunch.  Give them questions at home.  Post questions on your website.  Ask them in your blogs.  Engage the students.  Engage their parents.  Make them think.

If you can get a student to think, the standards and the standardized tests will take care of themselves.

You can use the Rule of Thirds to take better pictures.  And you can use it to create better learners, too.

As I was out looking for places to find interesting camera shots, I found this crumbling building on Lee Highway, just off the Bonnie Oaks exit in Chattanooga.  It is surrounded by flourishing businesses and newly constructed buildings.  Yet, here it sits looking like a bombed out shell of a former building you might find in a war-torn country.

In the midst of all this devastation, I noticed a purple plush toy face down in the debris of what appeared to be a former garage.  Boxes and paper and cups and other trash were strewn everywhere, and yet this plush toy jumped out at me in the midst of the clutter and color.

A child lived here.  More than one by the looks of other things I found in other rooms as I wandered around taking black and white shots of what I was seeing.  Something happened to these families that made them leave so much behind when they moved out.  Their lives were uprooted and cast away to some other location with such force that they could not pack all of their belongings.

As I stood there, camera in hand, taking in the site of destruction I was witnessing, my first thought was about these kids.  I’m a teacher, yes.  But I’m a parent and a grand parent.  And at one point, oh so many years ago,  I was a kid trying to find my way in new schools, seemingly one after another at times.  Our family never faced a crisis like the one these families must have encountered.  I still had a healthy, happy to go home to at the end of the day.  But these kids….it was a sobering moment.

Teachers, these kids are in your classroom.  Maybe not these exact kids, but kids like them.  Kids who come to school for food because there isn’t any at home.  Kids who come to school for safety because they don’t feel it at home.  Kids who have nothing but the same clothes you see them wearing practically everyday, clean or dirty.  Kids who are haunted by the devastation of being removed from one home and cast into another.  Kids who go home to see the depression and shame and servitude in the eyes of their parents and wonder if that is the future written in stone for them.

These kids need more than standards.  They need more than benchmarks.  They even need more a free breakfast and lunch. They need more than the latest and greatest technology your district office can afford.

They need teachers that care and care openly.  Teachers that connect and connect freely.  Teacher with compassion and compassion that touches the very core of their being to let them know they are not alone in the world.

They need you.

This has been quite the week.  We started off feeling pretty confident that we would have Monday off from school. (And the crowd cheered loudly).  Then, we got work that Tuesday was also going to be a day to stay at home. (The cheers reverberated off the foothills of the nearby mountains).  Then…Wednesday we also had no school.  (A few smiles appeared across the youngest among us).  Finally, we received word that we would also be out Thursday and Friday.  (The crowd stood, stunned, in total silence).

Yes, it was fantastic to be out of school for a couple of days.  For me, the longest day was Wednesday.  But then, on Thursday I realized just how long it was to the following Tuesday when we would finally be going back to school.  Wow.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve enjoyed the time off.  For the first time in a long time I have not sat at home at night with my Mac in my lap working on reports or professional development or Promethean flipcharts.  OK, the Mac has still been in my lap, sure.  But I’ve been catching up on really reading my RSS feeds, chatting with people on Facebook again, and learning to use my camera more effectively.  Why, I even cleaned the house once.  Correction. I cleaned a couple of rooms in the house once.  Correction.  I swept the kitchen floor and emptied the dish washer.  But I digress.

The one thing that started creeping into my mind about Wednesday afternoon when I realized we would be out all week was this: What are our kids doing at home to continue learning? Yes, they needed to enjoy the snow as much as I did.  Yes, they needed to blow off some steam (as much as I did).  But did learning come to standstill?

All of our elementary kids have a set of math flashcards to work with.  I hope parents continued to drill them on basic math facts.  Believe me, they need it.  Some of our kids had taken an AR book home.  Maybe they will be ready to test on it when they get back.  But that’s only a small part of what I’m talking about.

If they built a snowman, did they try to calculate the total amount of snow displacement it took to built it?  Did they find the diameter or circumference of each section? (I saw on Facebook that some parents had their kids do just that.  Bravo!).

Did they estimate the slope of the hill down which they used their cardboard or shovels or boogie boards to slide down?

OK, these are extreme.

Did they log onto an educational game site on the web and play something in which they had to really think to win?  Did they fire up their smartphones and play something educational like Angry Birds?

Angry Birds?

Yes.  My 4 year-old grand daughter is teaching her daddy how to play.  You have a series of different sized birds who are trying to destroy a brick and stone fortress of sorts to wipe out all objects and win a round.  It is extremely difficult to do.  And she loves it.  (They even played dress up the other day to play the “live” version!)

Each bird is a different size.  The bigger the bird the heavier it is.  You shoot them from a slingshot, so you have to learn about angles, arcs, speed, weight, force, and more.  There are hidden actions the birds will do if you tap the screen while they are in flight.  Figuring out when to tap that screen is difficult.

All kinds of synapses are fired up when playing a simple game of Angry Birds.  Dendrites are forming.  Connections are growing. The mind is learning.  And kids are being educated.

So use those flash cards.  Read those books.  And then find a way to use everyday activities around the house to help your kids learn.  Believe me, their teachers will thank you for it.

Those that know me well know that I do not exit my comfort zone easily.  I am a man of habit.  A loner even.  A quick glance at my Facebook status updates will reveal FourSquare check-ins at the same places on a regular basis.

And yet, occasionally, I like to push the envelope.

This past week I took a trip up to the Ocoee Outpost.  This is the spot where the Atlanta Olympic games hosted their kayak races.  It is a beautiful place along the river, and with the new-fallen snow in our area I thought it would be a great day to go take some pictures.  A friend and I left before the sun came up to make the 30 minute drive.  When we arrived it was obvious we were the first to stop there since the roads cleared.

My plan was simple.  Walk down river to the lower bridge, walk back up the other side, and cross back over to the car near the visitor center.  Quick. Simple. Painless.  But fate had other plans.

We walked down by the river and saw the sign for the Old Copper Road trail.  We stood there in 8 inches of uninterrupted snow powder and decided to go down the trail “a little ways” to see if we could get some decent shots there.  About a half-mile down the trail we came across a tree that had fallen.  My comfort zone mentality decided it was a great place to turn around and head back toward the car.  “You’re not going to let a little thing like a tree stop you are you?” was the question that confronted me from my photographer partner.

We found a way around the tree.  Through the thorns. Under huge clumps of snow that fell from the overhanging branches all down my back as I carved a path back to the trail.

And there I was.  On the outside of my comfort zone.  After 2.3 miles of the most amazing, visually stunning walk I may have ever made, we arrived at the end of the Old Copper Road Trail.

Between us, we had taken more than 300 photos.  We had witnessed some of the most beautiful snow patterns I had ever seen (even after growing up in Indiana and Illinois where it snows a lot!).  Snow arches covered the trail.  The sound of the river slamming over rocks became more and more distant as the trail wore on.  There were moments of near silence.  No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t a good enough photographer to capture the play of sunlight and shadows.  But I tried.  And tried.  And tried.

By the time we started on the 2.3 mile walk back to the car the sun had already started to do a number on the snow.  Big bare spots shown themselves where the snow had melted and etched its way down toward Mother River.  It wasn’t nearly the same, but it was still beautiful.

One of the hardest parts of teaching is getting kids to leave their comfort zone and just “explore” a subject.  Step outside the text book and read on their own. Practice writing when it isn’t for a grade. Play number games in their head.

And yet, it is outside our comfort zones where the real joys often are.  Real teaching and learning happen there.  Life happens there.

May 2011 be my year of exploring where the beauty lies.

This is my third conference in 2 weeks.  OK, 2 and a half conferences.  I spent 3 days in Nashville at TETC and NSTA, and now I am in Memphis at MSTC.

Wait, wait.  That’s the Tennessee Education Technology Conference, the National Science Teachers’ Association, and the Mid South Technology Conference.  Now you know why educators, politicians, the military, and healthcare prefer acronyms.  I’m just sorry that none of these acronyms actually spell anything.

I think TETC and NSTA could learn a few things from MSTC.  Here are a few I’ve been mulling over in my mind.

1. Free wifi for everyone. You would think this would be a given in this day and age.  However, I know that the convention centers have not really kept pace with the demand.  Three conferences produce three very different results.  I thought TETC was bad for not providing wifi for attendees (presenters get an ethernet connection), but NSTA provides NOTHING for anyone.  They wanted $500 to provide me with a cable connection for 1 hour!  But at MSTC they have provided free wifi for two years.  Great choice.  TETC uses the excuse that the wifi is undependable for so many people.  Yet, their own keynote speaker said something to the effect that “to try is to succeed.”  Stop worrying about 100%.  Give us 60% and we’ll be happy!  The wifi went down for about 15 minutes at MSTC this morning.  Everyone just seemed to understand it was part of the price of doing business.

2. Teachers teaching teachers. I can’t really speak for NSTA since I was just there for one session, but at TETC this year it seemed that every other workshop was conducted by a vendor.  I’m all for vendor workshops, but I would like a little more choice.  MSTC has a few vendors giving presentations as well.  Who can fault the vendors for wanting to talk about their product to a captive audience?  But the vast majority of sessions seem to still be from teachers.  Those are the people I come to hear.  Tell me what’s working in your classroom.  I don’t have any money, or authority, to buy anything.

3. Truly push the back channel. TETC tried this year.  They had a twitter hashtag (#tetc10) and encouraged people to post there.  Yet, without wifi access, everything was limited to smart phones.  The back channel is where the real conversations take place.  It is where the learning starts to solidify as it bounces off the minds of others who aren’t even at the conference. You can follow the back channel here at #mstc10 on Twitter.

4. Stay in the trenches. Last year at TETC I tried to talk to people about the lack of wifi.  I got a cold shoulder and an unsympathetic ear.  Look, I know it is all about costs, but at least act like you’re listening when we complain.  Today, MSTC had some glitches with their registration system.  They even had people coming into my room to use the bank of Dells provided in order to register.  The blue shirted staff seemed to be everywhere on their radios.  I had a problem with my Promethean Board, and they kept checking on me until it was resolved.  I was in my room 2 hours early just to get set up.  I got the problem fixed 5 minutes before my session started.

Is MSTC without problems?  No.  What education conference isn’t?  But they are setting the foundation for a great conference down the road.  Right now they’ve got around 1,000 attendees.  It could easily rival FETC in 5 to 10 years.

And I’ll be proud to say, “I presented there when….”