Category: Classroom management

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Molly:

I really enjoyed your article on students blogging.  It seems like a great way to get them writing willingly since they love to be online.  I was wondering, what are some of the problems you have run into and how did you solve them?  What pitfalls can teachers watch out for long-term?

Three big–not necessarily ‘problems’ as much as issues to address:

Digital rights and responsibilities

You don’t want to roll out blogging in your classroom without a sturdy program educating students on digital citizenship–privacy, profiles, footprints, safety, fair use/copyrights. I have lots of information on those topics on my blog. Another good resource is Common Sense Media.

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An efriend and former NYC teacher, Steve Koss taught in China (winner of a top spot on the annual PISA best-education-in-the-world) for part of his career and was not surprised China came out with some of the best test scores in the world. He shared his experience while teaching there. Compare what he saw to what we have here in America keeping in mind that we languish somewhere below middle on that international PISA test.

• Every classroom was a bare, cinder-block-walled enclosure, no heat in the winter, no cooling in the early summer, virtually nothing decorating the walls. Students spent their entire school day in the same room – teachers came to them.
• Every classroom held 48 – 50 students, lined up in traditional, ramrod-straight rows. Textbooks and workbooks for students’ full set of the day’s classes were piled on and under their desks – no one had a locker.
• Teachers lectured from a dais at the front of the room. Students sat quietly at their desks and listened, took notes, occasionally recited in unison or responded, standing, to a direct question from the teacher. Questions from students were a rarity.
• Many, if not most, lectures were straight from students’ texts, sometimes nothing more than
• teachers simply reading from the textbook.
• Teachers appeared at students’ classrooms just before lessons began, departing back to their subject area offices immediately upon finishing their lessons. Casual student-teacher interaction was minimal at best. Teachers spent much of their office time (they only taught two class periods per day) playing video games and reading the daily newspaper.
• Copying of assignments was rampant – and tolerated. As, all too often, was cheating on exams. Scores counted more than how they were achieved.
• I saw no evidence of what in the U.S. we would call “student projects.” Classroom activity appeared to be the same lecture and recitation style every day.
• Students were actively discouraged from asking questions. I was told on more than one occasion that students’ parents could actually be called into the school so that a teacher could complain that the child was disrupting lessons because he/she was asking too many questions.
• Schools had no clubs or activities and minimal if any organized sports teams. One school where I worked claimed to have two or three interscholastic sports teams, but only for boys.
• Students typically took seven or eight classes each semester, leaving no time for activities even outside of school.
• Never once among the hundreds of students I saw and taught did I see a student with a physical handicap or a visible learning disability. I don’t know where those students were, or if they were even still permitted to attend school by high school age, but if so, there was no inclusion.
• Physical education consisted mostly of lining students up in straight rows and performing low-impact calisthenics and movement.
• The last semester of senior year is dedicated nearly exclusively to preparation for the gaokou, the national, three-day-long, college entrance examination.
• Schools were evaluated, and principals and teachers rewarded, according to their students’ standardized exam results.
• Teachers earn extra income from tutoring. They are allowed to accept money from their own students (or gifts from those students’ parents), a sure-fire disincentive to effective teaching in the classroom setting.
• There was no parent involvement in the schools whatsoever. Parents visited a school for only one of two reasons: to be roundly chastised for their child’s behavior/performance, or to present a gift for extra tutoring services rendered.

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App use is taking over classrooms, but what as teachers really want are authentic, educational apps that promote higher order skills like critical thinking and problem solving.

Here’s my list, culled from my students and my PLN. Bookmark this page  because this is where I update throughout the year. Then, you’ll always be current (for example, it used to have just 107 apps).

If you have an app you use in your classroom, please add it to comments at the bottom. I’ll update as soon as possible.

If you’re the developer of a great educational app, please contact me. I’ll review it. If it meets Ask a Tech Teacher standards (high quality, ease of use, no/low advertising, quality educational value), I’ll list it. More details here.

Animation

• Puppet Pals HD (free)–Create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time
• Toontastic–empowers kids to draw, animate, and share their cartoons through imaginative play.

Audio

• Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder (free with ads or $0.99 without ads)
• DropVox
• iTalk Recorder (free with ads or $1.99 for premium)
• QuickVoice Recorder (free)
• Sock Puppet–record movement and voice–changes voices to funny ones
• Sonic Pics–voice-over slideshow of pictures
• Talking Tom Cat–repeats what students say
• Voice Thread–Talk, type, and draw right on the screen.

Backchannel

• Socrative

Bloom’s Taxonomy    

• Bloom’s Taxonomy for iPads–highly relevant apps that do the job
• iPad apps categorized with Bloom’s Taxonomy–Kathy Schrock

Brainstorming

• Lino–share notes and photos

Classroom Management

• ClassDojo–class behavior
• Edmodo

Classroom Resources

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If your state adopted Common Core, 75% of you will administer yearly assessments online. If students haven’t used online tools or software for classwork, this can be a daunting task. Having computer devices as optional education tools is a massive difference from requiring students to use them for grded assessments. This can be intimidating for both students and teachers.

The tood news: It doesn’t take as much time and practice as you might think to prepare. What it does require is a techie mindset, the acceptance that technology is part of the daily economic landscape, that it be integrated into assignments, practice, modeling, homework, assessments, projects, portfolios, grading rubrics, expectations.

There are ways to get students in shape that won’t take much out of your already-packed day.

Here are twenty-two strategies to use next year that will make your teaching life easier, bump up your effectiveness with students, save time complying with Common Core standards, and prepare students effectively for next Spring. As you’re in your grade-level teams, planning lessons for next year, include these. They will add spice to your classes, build flexible learning paths, , and contribute to sustainable, transformation learning. Once you start using tech in the classroom as a tool (not a separate activity), you will find students self-selecting it when given a choice, coming up with their own ways to make tech today’s adaptive answer:

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If you’ve been swearing all year to get students online using some of those amazing digital tools. I have some ideas for you. These eight projects will be so much fun, they will eagerly welcome the new school year, hoping you have more for them to learn.

The trick with so many of these online sites is: Let students explore. Don’t rush them. Don’t teach them every twist and turn. Don’t expect perfection. Expect inquiry and enthusiasm and self-paced discovery. Let them solve problems as they create.

Here are eight ideas for amazing end-of-year projects that leave students thinking school is ending too soon:

End-of-year Multimedia Summative

Students take pictures of each other holding up favorite projects or working on tech skills–humorously, of course. Use these pictures in an Animoto movie to share light-hearted details of their Year in Tech. Open it with a magazine cover of student (created in Big Huge Labs). Accessorize with music, transitions, and text bubbles. Save to class network and load onto the school set of iPads. Students can play these movies on the last day of class as they celebrate the end of school. If you don’t have iPads, gather students in comfortable seating, play a student video as they reflect on another successful year of Tech.

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At a certain point in a student’s education journey, they start having a lot of school work that needs to be:

1. saved for future use
2. accessed from home and school
3. shared with multiple students for collaborations
4. submitted to teacher for grading
5. returned from teacher digitally with comments and grade
6. collected and displayed in all types of file formats–Word, Google, Photoshop, pdf
7. organized to find data easily
8. linked to other pieces of work or online sites

For example, a student can create a project at school, access it at home and link key words to websites found by a classmate that supports the project discussion.

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Computer technology isn’t as hard as it sounds, but it does require consistent use. You can’t learn a skill and stick it on a shelf for three months without it molding. Here’s how you do that: Read this blog. I cover the stuff you will use daily. It won’t get stale. Take my test. Try these eighteen:

Basics

• 7 Education Trends You Don’t Want to Miss
• 8 Education Tools That Are Going Away
• 11 Ways to be an Inquiry-based Teacher
• 12 Tips on Handling Hard-to-teach Classes
• How to be a Tech Teacher
• Mouse Skills
• My Classroom
• New Students? 7 Tips to Differentiate with Tech

Common Core Basics

• 11 Things I Love About Common Core
• Common Core Writing–Digital Quick Writes
• How to Prepare Students for PARCC Tests
• What are Common Core keyboarding standards?

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Google Apps Meets Common Core

by Michael J. Graham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

Michael Graham’s Google Apps Meets Common Core (Corwin 2013) is exactly what I hoped it would be. As a teacher, there couldn’t be two bigger topics than ‘Google Apps for Education’ and ‘Common Core’. Juxtaposing the two instantly caught my attention. My only question was whether Graham would be up to the task.

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Teaching technology is not sharing a new subject, like Spanish or math. It’s exploring an education tool, knowing how to use computers, IPads, the internet, and other digital devices to serve learning goals. Sure, there are classes that teach MS Word and C++, but for most schools, technology is employed strategically and capably to achieve all colors of education.

Which gets me to the four subjects every teacher must teach, whether s/he’s a math teacher, science, literacy, or technology. In today’s education world, all of us teach–

• vocabulary
• keyboarding
• digital citizenship
• research

They used to be taught in isolation–Fridays at 8:20, we learn vocabulary–but not anymore. Now they must be blended into all subjects like ingredients in a cake, the result–college or career for the 21st-century student. Four subjects that must be taught–and thanks to technology, CAN be with ease. Let me explain.

Vocabulary

 Common Core requires that:

Students constantly build the transferable vocabulary they need to access grade level complex texts. This can be done effectively by spiraling like content in increasingly complex texts.

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Are you drowning in students, sure that the flood of bodies that enter your classroom daily will destroy your effectiveness? Does it depress you, make you second-guess your decision to effect change in the world as a teacher? Do you wonder how you’ll explain to parents–and get them to believe you–that you truly CAN teach thirty students and meet their needs (because you must convince them–of all education characteristics, parents equate class size to success)?

Take heart while I play Devil’s Advocate and offer evidence contrary to what seems by most to be intuitive common sense. I mean, how could splitting your finite amount of time among LESS students be anything but advantageous? Sure, there are many studies (US-based primarily) that support a direct correlation between class size and teacher ability to meet education goals, but consider how you–personally–learn. Sure, it occurs through teachers, but just as often by trial and error, peers, inquiry, student-centered activities, play, experiencing events, differentiated ways unlike others. Educators like John Holt believe “children [and by extension, you] learn most effectively by their own motivation and on their own terms”.

Is it possible the root of the education problem is other than class size? Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City (National Bureau of Economic Research) indicates that traditional success measures–including class size–do not correlate to school effectiveness. According to this study, what doesn’t matter is:

1. class size
2. per pupil expenditure
3. fraction of teachers with no certification
4. fraction of teachers with an advanced degree

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