Redefining Cheating on Dreams of Education
I wrote a post today over at my other blog, Dreams of Education, about cheating. I’m not sure that we define cheating appropriately in education. Here are my thoughts about it: Redefining Cheating
Category: Grade Level
Treasures MacMillan McGraw Hill Supplement
I am not a fan of canned curriculum. It has some benefits and is relatively easy to teach, but there is a lack of differentiation for different learners and the activities for practice are often shallow. Treasures has some fun stories and themes but they are really lacking in their activities to practice the essential learning. The activities are often shallow and don’t change from first grade to fifth grade. The same copy from the dictionary activity is suggested for learning vocabulary for every unit in every grade level. I created the Treasures supplement as a way to help teachers provide students with multiple ways of practicing the essential learnings. I just finished the supplement for unit 1. This is the supplement for first through fifth grade.
Storybook Web
What it is: Storybook Web is “based on popular children’s stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers.” There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing. Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.
How to integrate Storybook Web into your curriculum: Storybook Web is a fun way for students to interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about. This site helps students think like an author. It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing. Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity. Students can watch the author videos and get an inside look at the process that a writer goes through. This can be done using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Storybook Web would also make a nice addition to a writing center on classroom computers. When I taught second grade, I set up an “editing and publishing” center on my classroom computers. Here I gave students access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, word processor/publishing program, and Read Write Think. Storybook Web would be an excellent addition to a writing center. Students can go to be inspired, encouraged in the writing process, and given a place to practice their own writing. I like the word bank on Storybook Web, word choice is hard for beginning writers. By interacting with the word bank activity on Storybook Web, students will begin to think about their own word choice. You may want students to go through their own writing and pick out words that they would add to their word bank. I have found that activities like this make students think about the words they are using. Often, students will self-edit and find richer vocabulary to use in their writing.
Tips: This is an easy website for emergent readers and writers to navigate. Students can choose to have the site narrated for them or they can turn the audio off and read on their own.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Storybook Web in your classroom!
My iPad Journey
The story above is meant to be an illustration of the school/learning experience. The first explorer’s journey represents the traditional school model. Here, students are given set tools and led in one direction down a river of scripted curriculum and standardized tests. Some wonderful things are learned along the way, but there is little freedom to stop and explore more. This is further limited by the tools provided that allow for little or no discovery. On this journey there is a single goal in mind: graduation.
The second explorer represents a rich learning experience made available when the proper tools and experiences are made available. In this model, there is still a destination and objective, but the journey is one of discovery, adventure, and opportunity. On this journey, students are given the resources that will allow them to explore and learn at their own pace, deepening the learning experience and passion for a life of learning. While there are many resources that could enrich the learning experience and help students on this journey of discovery, the tool I am recommending is the iPad.
I choose the iPad over other devices (such as netbooks) because it is an intuitive device (particularly for the elementary level) that puts the focus on the journey unfolding. Other devices may be cheaper, or offer Flash, or allow multi-tasking but these devices get in the way of the journey because they must be learned before the journey can even begin. These type of devices can end up being THE journey because there is a learning curve for using the device. The iPad is brilliant in its simplicity. Students can pick it up and immediately understand how to navigate and use the device with little guidance. The iPad offers portability not available in other devices. It is the go-anywhere, all day learning device that allows students to explore, communicate, and collaborate at their own pace and in their own way.
In the current school system, students aren’t afforded the luxury of having the teacher to themselves all day. The iPad can fill some of this void by guiding learning, offering instant feedback, giving the ability to pause-rewind-replay learning, and allowing students to learn collaboratively. This frees the teacher to spend more time guiding students individually on their individual learning journey.
As I have written previously, one device may not make sense in every school, in every classroom. In another demographic, the cellphone may be the best portable learning device. I am proposing an iPad study pilot program because for my students at my school, the iPad is the right tool for the journey. I have had an average of 400 students each year. I know every one of them by name. I know many of their families. I know their hobbies, interests, fears, and passions. Being a computer has afforded me the opportunity to teach these kids every week of their elementary school lives. I know these kids. The iPad is the device that would make the second explorer’s journey possible for them.
Before the school year was over, an idea formed to start a 1-to-1 iPad pilot program in first and fifth grade (180 students). I decided to make this program a formal research study to find out what affect the device really had on student learning and achievement. I wanted the results of this program to be farther reaching than my school and my students. It is my hope that by turning this into a research study, not only would my students be given the best, but others could benefit from the results. Perhaps we could provide the road map of how to implement a 1-to-1 iPad program. I wrote out my proposal and immediately sent out a tweet asking if there were any research professors or graduate students who might be interested in something like this. Many from my PLN responded positively with help, Jason Schmidt was the one I chose. Then, I got the wild idea to take the study to another level and sent my proposal to Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering. They agreed to partner with us on research! The problem? We are still working out a way to fund this project.
Below is a pared down version of my proposal:
Objective/Purpose of Study
The purpose of this pilot program is to examine the effectiveness of the Apple iPad multi-touch, mobile device on student achievement and learning in a 1-to-1 environment. The iPad mobile device will be used to augment instruction, differentiation, inquiry learning, and innovative classroom practice with a focus on reading/English language arts and Math. Reading/English language arts and math are the primary focus of the study since these are the two subjects that all states have been required to develop assessments under the No Child Left Behind Act.1 The study will also seek to determine if instructional practices are influenced by the use of iPad mobile devices in the classroom.
Goals
The goal of this pilot program is to provide a 1 to 1 mobile device learning environment which will:
- Provide consistent access to technology for a fully integrated learning experience by providing each student with an iPad mobile learning device for use inside and outside the classroom.
- Make provisions for on demand learning opportunities which will expand the reach of the classroom with the iPad learn-anywhere platform (applications, podcasts, video, e-books all selected for individual learning needs).
- Allow for customized, individualized content to meet each student’s unique learning needs.4
- Increase student motivation and engagement in learning.5
- Increase collaboration among students and teachers resulting in improved achievement.6
- Provide students with student-focused instruction that is multi-level (for different student abilities), multi-sensory (for different learning styles), and individualized.7
- Provides students with immediate feedback on learning.8
- Provides teachers with the ability for immediate and individualized learning assessments.
Questions to Address
- How can the iPad mobile learning device influence student achievement?
- How can use of the iPad improve student motivation, attitude, and interest in learning?
- How can the iPad mobile learning device be introduced into curriculum and instruction effectively?
- What learning strategies are most effective in instructional applications of the iPad?
- How can the iPad be used to extend learning beyond the classroom and school day?
- In what ways can implementation of the iPad be a catalyst for a restructuring of school?
- What are effective ways of evaluating the impact of mobile learning devices on teaching and learning?
- Will there be an increase in student ability to use classroom or computer lab computers?
- Will there be a change in the way teachers think about the use of mobile technologies?
- Will there be a change in the process of learning from being largely teacher centered, to student centered as a result of the introducing the iPad?
- Will there be a greater sense of student ownership, responsibility, and empowerment in their own learning (how does this differ in 1st grade to 5th grade)?
- Will students use technology more purposefully to complete a task or discover new information?
- Will there be a change of teacher’s philosophy, pedagogy, or approach to the learning process?
Conclusion
The iPad pilot program offers something innovative in the classroom. It provides the potential to empower and uplift students in their learning. To maximize effectiveness, education in the 21st century has to be active, engaged, and customized for students. Students must have universal access to mobile technologies that will enable critical thinking, differentiation, and problem solving. It is our belief that the technology in Apple’s iPad meets these needs and more.
I tell you all of this because we are still searching for funding. We have applied for grants, talked with individuals, entered contests, emailed Steve Jobs, etc., etc., etc. I am stubborn. I refuse to believe that money is going to be the thing to stop us in our tracks. I refuse to believe that in all of my PLN, Twitter, and Facebook connections that there isn’t an answer. Surely Twitter shrinks the six degrees of separation between me and someone who can help get this moving. Surely someone knows someone, who knows someone who can make this happen.
So here is my plea:
- Spread the word as often as you can to everyone you can.
- Tweet like crazy!
- Vote for us in the Kohl’s Cares $500,000 give away
- Send me any ideas you may have!
I am convinced that with your help I can get this program started and that our ripples will be felt throughout the education community.
Reform Symposium Virtual Conference Call for Moderators
I am so excited! The Reform Symposium Virtual Conference is just around the corner. The line up of Keynote speakers and presenters couldn’t be better and we are putting the finishing touches on making sure the conference goes without a hitch. If you are planning to attend the conference, we would love to have you join the Reform Symposium social media site. By registering on the site, you will also be entered in raffles to win some incredible prizes, check them out here.
As we are getting ready for the big days (July 30, 31 and August 1), would you consider volunteering some of your time to help moderate the sessions? You would be co-moderating the Elluminate session with either Shelly, Chris, or me. I am happy to train anyone who needs to be trained on how to moderate using Elluminate. As a moderator, your job would be to help the presenter check their audio prior to the session, record the session, introduce the presenter, and help field questions from the audience. Not to mention that you get a backstage pass to some of the BEST presenters in education. If you can help out, please contact me via Twitter by reply or DM or you can leave a comment below offering your help.
I hope to see you all there, can’t wait for the opportunity to get such amazing professional development without leaving home!
Answer Garden
What it is: I learned about Answer Garden from an interactive post on Suzanne Whitlow’s excellent blog, Suzanne’s Blog. Answer Garden is a “new minimalistic feedback tool.” It can be used as an online answer collection tool or embedded on a website or blog. An Answer Garden is created as easily as entering a question and clicking create, no registration needed. Embed the Answer Garden on any blog, website, or social network page using the embed code provided. You can also give students a direct link to the Answer Garden. Students can post answers to your questions by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. All of the answers are represented in the form of a word cloud. 25 answers are visible per garden but as students submit the same answer, that word will grow bigger. Creating an Answer Garden is SO simple. Just type in your question or brainstorm statement and click create.
How to integrate Answer Garden into the classroom: Answer Garden is a fun way for students to brainstorm, plan, and work together. Pose open-ended thinking questions on your classroom blog or website for students to answers. Use Answer Garden to host a classroom poll. Create a geography Answer Garden that gives students a place that they can describe a state or country they are learning about. Use Answer Garden during reading as a place for students to reflect on different characters, plots, settings, and themes. In history, give students a date range, event, or historical figure and let them add words to the Answer Garden that describe. In the primary classroom, type in a phoneme combination and have students submit words that fit the phoneme rule. Create an answer garden to recognize VIP students in your classroom where each child can answer with a character quality that they appreciate about that student. The possibilities are endless! This tool is SO easy to use, try it out in the Answer Garden below.
Where will use Answer Garden?… at AnswerGarden.ch.
Tips: The default settings on Answer Garden only allows students to submit one answer. You can check the optional “Unlimited Answering” to give students multiple opportunities to submit answers.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Answer Garden in your classroom.
Energyville
What it is: Energyville is a game sponsored by Chevron. In the game, students have to provide enough power to meet the energy demands of a city with a 5.9 million person population. As they play, they must keep the city prosperous, secure, and clean. The energy decisions that students make for the city in 2015 are based on current lifestyles and the projected energy demands and costs for developed countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. The Energyville game environment is a lot like SimCity in the way that students build and maintain the city. Students begin by dragging energy sources to the city to bring it to life. Students can choose from biomass, coal, hydro, natural gas, nuclear, petroleum, solar, and wind. As they add energy sources to the city, they can observe the impacts on the economy, environment, and security of the city. The goal is to keep the impact low. There is a comparison chart where students can view the impact of the different energy sources on the environment, economy, and security to aid them in their decision-making. As students move their mouse over the different energy sources, they can read about that energy source in the Energy Advisor panel.
How to integrate Energyville into the classroom: Energyville is an excellent simulation game that helps students to experiment with energy sources. They are able to see the way that their decisions directly affect people and the environment. Students can see how some energy sources may have a low impact on the environment but are high in cost or impact security. This is a great way for students to weigh decisions and defend their choices. Set students up in a computer lab setting where each student has their own computer. Give students a set amount of time and see which students can get the highest score (lowest impact) on their city in that time. Afterward, discuss the best and worst energy sources, and have the highest score walk the class through their strategy. If you don’t have access to a lab, you can send students to Energyville in small groups as a center activity on the classroom computers. You could also play as a whole class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer.
Tips: There are two levels of game play. In the first level, students make decisions to meet the city’s energy demands in 2015. In the second level, they must make additional decisions to prepare for the energy demands of 2030.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Energyville in your classroom.
Can Do Street: Hector’s Being Selfish
What it is: Can Do Street is a website that has games, lessons, and videos focused on character development for young students. The site is membership based but does have some free content. Hector’s Being Selfish is a free video on the site that teaches students what it means to be selfish. The cartoon is easy to understand and helps kids recognize selfishness and what it means to be a good friend. Throughout the video, students are given the chance to interact by answering questions.
How to integrate Hector’s Being Selfish into the classroom: Selfishness is one of those characteristics that young kids find difficult to understand. It is hard to separate wants from being a good friend and expressing empathy! This videos helps children recognize selfishness and offers ways that they can be a good friend. Character education needs to be taught, we can’t expect that all children will naturally pick it up. Kids come from different backgrounds and differing expectations at home. Hector’s Being Selfish is a good video to begin the school year with, and would be a great reminder mid-year. Watch the video as a whole class and invite students to vote on their answers throughout the video.
Tips: Each section of the Can Do Street website has a preview so you can get a feel for the types of activities they offer. If you decide on a membership, plans are very affordable from $4.95/month to $24.95 for the year.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Hector’s Being Selfish in your classroom.
JASON Science: Eco Defenders
What it is: Eco Defenders is another excellent Filament Games simulation/interactive. In this game, students design “alien” invasive species and set it loose on an imaginary ecosystem. Students must use their knowledge of ecosystems, adaptations, and competition to design a simulation of an invasive species. Students find out that when an invading species occupies the same ecological niche as native species, they can cause problems for the ecosystem. The game allows for a lot of customization and decisions for students as they choose one of three ecosystems and then design their own alien. As students go through the simulation, JASON host researcher, Russell Cuhel, will ask questions about how invasive species invade an ecosystem giving students the chance to be the expert. Before students play the game, ask them to click on the “Learn More” link where they will receive a tutorial for the game and some background information about invasive species. Students can learn about different kinds of invasive species that exist in our world.
How to integrate Eco Defenders into the classroom: In the Eco Defenders game/simulation, your students will: design their own invasive creature, watch their creature as it interacts in the ecosystem and competes over resources with native creatures, and analyze the interactions among the organisms in the ecosystem. Students will select a creature to target in the ecosystem they have chosen and then design a species that will compete in the same ecological niche. Students will design and then run a simulation to test their invader. Afterward, they will discuss what happened with the virtual host scientist, go over the results, and analyze the data. The great thing about this game/simulation is that no two students will have the exact same results. Eco Defenders is best in a computer lab setting where each student can play individually. After students have experimented and run through the simulation, come together as a class and discuss what students observed. What made their invader successful? What would they change for the next time? As students learn more about ecosystems, eco niches, and invaders throughout the unit, have them run through the simulation again and see if they come up with different results. If you can’t manage access to a 1 to 1 computer setting, play the game as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. The class should discuss each decision, weighing the pros and cons, before making a move. As the students work through the simulation, talk about what they are observing and what tweaks might change the outcome of their simulation.
Tips: JASON Science is worth a look. The tag-line of JASON Science is “Education through Exploration”. I couldn’t agree more!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Eco Defenders in your classroom.
The Goal of Education
Tonight’s #edchat topic on Twitter was: Can we agree on a common goal of education?
My response:
The goal of education is to provide the conditions for learning. I think that it is a broad enough goal for everything else to fall into place. I engaged in some discussion about how current conditions keep us from that goal. While I agree to some extent, I think that excuses are an easy way to stay where we are. We can create conditions for learning without administrative support, without funding for technology, without the best conditions. How do I know this? Because I had teachers who did it for me. They used what they had, within the system they were in, to provide us with the conditions for learning. And guess what? We learned.
Now, this is not to say that the goal wouldn’t be more attainable if we weren’t mired in a system that is run by testing and policies. It is better to have ubiquitous use of technology and freedom within our classrooms. I believe that those things will come. But right now we are working within this system. For now we can create conditions of learning for our students using what we have available to us. Is it ideal? No. Is it possible? Of course. All it takes is some creativity.
I want to be clear, creating conditions for learning does not mean that every classroom looks the same. It means that the conditions created match that unique student population. The conditions that I learn best in may look different from the conditions that you learn best in. This means that teachers have to know and understand the needs of their students. The conditions of learning may change every year, every month, every day, and even every hour. We are human, our needs are constantly changing.
Someone mentioned during the #edchat, that it would be great to see how students answered this question. I actually know how my students answered this question, because I asked my 3rd-5th grade students to answer it last year. My students answered something like this: the goal of education is to get good grades and pass tests so you can go to college. Not the answer most of us would like to hear but there it is. Did we really expect differently? This is what our school system breaths. This is the current goal of education, to move students through so that they graduate and go to college.
Being the computer teacher has some major advantages, one of which is that there is no curriculum to follow. I write my own curriculum every year. I have a scope and sequence of skills that I want my students to gain and I use a different path to get there each and every year. I didn’t originally intend for this to be a year-long project, but that is what it became because it made my students think differently, creatively. It made them question, discuss, and debate. It was brilliant.
We had just finished learning the Internet safety rules, and were practicing netiquette. I wanted my students to have an authentic place to practice their newly acquired skills so I sent them on their way to write their first blog entry. The topic: Write about your dream school. If you could make a school look like whatever you wanted it to, what would it look like? How would learning happen there?
After the students had a chance to blog their dreams, I asked them to pick their favorite idea and add it to our class Wallwisher. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was with the answers. They were the most unimaginative answers I had ever seen. I’m talking zero in the creativity department. It was as if they were writing what they thought I wanted to hear. Then it hit me, they were writing what they thought I wanted to hear. Isn’t that what their education has primed them for? Guess what the teacher is thinking. There is only one right answer and then we move on to the next thing.
Not willing to let the project go, the next week I sat all of my students down and asked them again what their dream schools would look like. They hadn’t gotten more creative with their answers in the week they had to think about them. The look of utter confusion on their faces was obvious. They couldn’t figure out what the right answer was, the one that I wanted to hear that would move us on to the next topic. I showed my students pictures of the inside of Googleplex and Pixar. You have never heard so many “oohs” and “awwws”. By the end of the slide show, every kid was declaring that they were going to work at Google or Pixar some day. I asked them why they would want to work there?
“Because it is SO cool!”
“Did you see the Lego room?”
“They get to play all day!”
“It is so colorful.”
“It looks like a playground.”
“They have a chef that cooks lunch for them.”
We talked about why Googleplex and Pixar look the way they do and the philosophy that each company has. We talked about what it means to be creative and the things that help us get in that creative element. Then I showed them some pictures of schools, one had a slide in the building, another had students singing and dancing on top of desks, another of students sitting on exercise balls instead of chairs. The common phrase uttered was “they are so lucky!” I also showed them the YouTube video of the piano stairs.
I asked them to go back to their seats and blog about their dream school again. I told them that there was no right answer. The right answer was their answer. The sky was the limit. This time the ideas were infinitely more exciting. Some students still played it safe and stuck to what was possible in the confines of the school system they knew. Others wanted anti-gravity classrooms. There were common threads in every one of my students blog posts: they all wanted flexible learning spaces, they all wanted more hands on/active learning, they wanted school to feel like play, and they all wanted animals to be involved in some fashion.
You can see some of their answers on these Wallwishers:
My students got so excited about this little blogging activity that they continued to post about what their dream schools would look like (even though I hadn’t assigned it). I had students stop by my classroom and tell me another idea they had for a dream school. Then I had students start asking if I would ask the administration to make our school a dream school. I can only imagine how that would go, so instead I expanded the project.
I asked my students to imagine that they actually got the go ahead for their school, and now they had to advertise for it. They had to convince me to send my imaginary children to their imaginary school. They had to make a convincing case for why their school made the best place to learn. Each student made a brochure advertising their school. They highlighted the features of their school, promised amazing things, and sold it! I am telling you, I have never seen such amazing work out of my students! I would have sent my imaginary kids to any one of their schools. Boy did they sell it! The brochures looked amazing. I brought them into the teacher’s lounge to pass around. The teachers couldn’t believe what their students were capable of. It was great! A few of the kids brought the brochure they created to the administration to show off.
The kids hadn’t had enough, they wanted to explore the idea further. I had them create commercials for their school. I showed them the Kaplan University commercials and told them they could be inspiring like Kaplan, factual, funny, or any combination of the three. They set to work using their method of choice. Some used Keynote, others recorded in Photobooth and edited in iMovie, some used Xtranormal, some GoAnimate, and others used the ZimmerTwins. The commercials were fabulous.
Toward the end of the year I had the kids create websites for their imaginary dream schools. They used Weebly to create the websites. I cannot tell you how impressed I was with the level of creativity, innovation, and fun that showed up on those sites. The kids were convincing, but more than that, they were right. They may have started with every student having a laptop, pony, and anti-gravity rooms, but where they ended was with rich learning experiences. At the core what our students want is an opportunity to discover, play, and experiment with their learning. They want to feel safe. They want to be active. I wish I could share the finished sites and commercials with you, I can’t because they contain pictures of students and other identifying information.
I learned a lot from my students as a result of the project, at the heart of it is this: provide conditions where we can learn.