Our students use iBooks, and the only browser they can use on them is Safari – which has a great, built-in RSS reader. Firefox does, too. I have no idea about the newest version of IE — I replaced my Dell over the summer with an iMac. Anyway, I have my students bookmark the course blog homepage RSS feed — Safari and Firefox both show the RSS icon in the URL window, and clicking on it reveals the feed for that page. So I have the kids bookmark those on their Bookmarks bar — that way when I update my blogs my students are automatically notified — in a place that is front & center on their screen when online — that something is new. I also have them do this for my class wikis. Even if your students don’t have laptops, you could provide the how-to information to your students for home use.

I prefer to use theoe browsers for the RSS feeds I read most often. Bloglines works well for things that I want to check daily or weekly, but for those things — like the news — that I check throughout the day, it’s most convenient for me to have those feeds bookmarked right on the Bookmarks bar, making new posts obvious.

Virtually none of my students — maybe 1 in 20 — knew how to make this happen on their own. It took a few minutes of a lesson one day, and now my motivated kids are getting on with their work without me needing to tell them. Some show up for class already having perused our work for the day, and they get started right away. It’s a building process, of course, but one that is paying off already. Anything I can use to help my students become more self-sufficient is good.

As I said, maybe this bit of advice seems silly for many of you out there — and believe you me, I am Mr. Junior Blogger in Training, still trying to make trackbacks work right. But don’t fault me if you think this is too obvious; others don’t, and when we assume that they — our students, their parents, our colleagues — know about the latest *stuff* without being sure, we’re creating problems for them and ourselves.
Thoughts?

jdg

First, some context. I recently had an interesting meeting with the president of a relatively prominent K12 online subscription service. I know that sounds cryptic, but I don’t want to drop names, and I don’t want to seem like I’m taking shots at something that others may find useful.

Anyway, some years ago my district bought a subscription to a web-based system that made a great many promises, and looked very promising — but after fiddling with it for a month or so, I determined that its clunky interface and (IMHO) unreliability made it a waste of time for me. So I stopped using it. Many other teachers did the same. When we were in the final planning stages for Empire I looked at it again, having read about all manner of improvements and such and such — and found it to be the same clunky, unreliable dog. So I decided to ignore it henceforth.

Last week the president of the company visited our district, and Empire, to talk to our IT people, administrators at various levels, and some teachers about how the system could be improved. So while my student teacher did a great job with one of my Government classes, I found myself sitting in a conference room explaining, along with another teacher, why we didn’t like the product, and therefore why we didn’t use it. It boiled down, in large part, to these two issues: the interface & organization weren’t intuitive, and required too much clicking and checking and clicking again — so that made using the system irritating and unnecessarily time-consuming. And second, the product of the system was not always delivered in a form that we found useful, and sometimes was not available at all — hence my comment that it was unreliable.  We chose (and still choose) to not use the system at all.

The president listened, and took notes, and asked some questions, and then started to tell us how “easy” the system was, and how well it worked….to which I responded that if it was so easy, we’d have figured it out already. I don’t think this individual got it — you’ve all had that, right? You just know when the listener does not really understand what you’re saying, and what your comments really mean. I, and other teachers on two campuses in our district, had mostly agreed that the system was not easy to use — case closed…regardless of how “easy” the president thought it was, we disagreed. I don’t think that sunk in.

My issue with the service was, and is, this: whether it works or not is irrelevant at this point. I already sunk time into it, and couldn’t get it to do what I needed, in a form that made sense to me, so I dumped it. I have long since found an excellent resource to take its place — and this one is intuitive, reliable, and flexible. So why waste my time? If the technology isn’t transparent, I just don’t have time for it.

When I first started using a computer, it was pre-DOS. The first computer I owned was an Apple IIc (w/128k RAM!!). I remember the non-GUI computing world — I programmed in BASIC and Pascal. I remember word processors that had a steep learning curve to climb before any papers could be typed.

Happily, those days are gone for most users — computers are supposed to be easy for the non-techie. I am a teacher first, and so anything that takes time away from that function, when I need to perform it, is bad. I’ve taken just enough Econ to appreciate the concept of opportunity cost. Thus, my need for transparent technology: tech that’s so intuitive, flexible, and reliable that it fades into the background so my students and I can get down the real business at hand.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in trying to find the latest tech for the classroom — and lose sight of the students in that classroom. If the tech truly improves the quality of the experience and the outcome, use it. If the tech absorbs more resources (in time and effort, at least) than it can add on the end, why bother?

Thoughts?

jdg

If teaching inputs — that is, what teachers do and how — are a prime mover in determining student output (hopefully learning!), then this is an important issue, and alongside it the issue of teacher freedom in the age of hyper-accountability and top-down regulation.

What do you think? I don’t have time at this moment to add more, but I will within a day or two.

jdg

I realized that my very recent foray into 2.0 tech (about a month and ticking) is just that — well, at least I think it is. I’m using a Wiki to help my advanced students (in a dual-enrollment American history course) write a college-level research paper. In order to model both use of the technology and research skills — as well as the creation of a final product — I’m going through the same process they are, and am writing a paper along with them. By using the Wiki, I can easily post updates, and they can all see that I’m working through the same steps they are, at the same time. Additionally, we’re using the individual Wiki pages within the space as workspaces for my students to research, draft, revise, and finalize their papers.

Check it out if you’re interested.

jdg

What I am going to comment on is the notion that computers — especially in 1-to-1 programs like that at Empire High School where I work — make for a better school. After all, Empire is an ‘excelling’ school, according to our test scores, and we’re only in our third year. Isn’t it because of the computers, and the fact that every student has one?

Apple will tell you it does…well, only if you use their products, I suppose (and note that I do use Apple computers, but I have not had a sip of the Apple koolaid). Some university researchers last year said computers don’t improve achievement (of course, they didn’t really define achievement, either). And here’s another perspective.

What do you think? I’ve got my hunch — what’s the prevailing attitude out there? What’s your evidence?

jdg

I really think that Web 2.0 can change how we teach, and how our kids learn, if we take the time to incorporate these simple technologies into our lessons and teaching — we just need to share ideas and get creative.

jdg

Let me be direct: I think Iron Maiden is one of the best bands out there, and probably the best heavy metal band, period. And metal is great stuff — and far more cerebral than you might think (go here to see how!).

Anyway, that said, this is a lesson I used two years ago for a freshman World History class. Since the course was of the survey sort, we had too little time to do too much, and I needed to blaze through Alexander so I could get to Rome — bt I wanted to do something that would pique the kids’ interest, and maybe push them out of their comfort zones a bit. Enter Iron Maiden’s great historical tune, ‘Alexander the Great,’ off their 1986 album ‘Somewhere in Time.’ If you read the lyrics you’ll see that they tell the story of his life — or at least sketch out the high points (minus Oliver Stone’s take on the poor guy). I had my students write L1 and L2 questions for each line of the song (see my LoQ post for information about that if you’re scratching you head right now), then guided them to the ABC-CLIO Ancient History database to hunt for answers. The questions varied depending on the student, but there were some that were universal (what 9th-grader knows about the Scythians?), but there was variety among the students, based on prior knowledge & extent of vocabulary knowledge.

As a final product I had the kids create a glossary of terms and concepts, based on the answers to their LoQs from the lyrics, and put together a visual (either on paper or digitally — all the students have laptops at Empire) showing Alexander’s travels & exploits. On the day it was due I played the song for them in class, and given the interest among the current crop of students in classic metal (their parents’ music), it went over famously.

See? Historical inquiry, laptops, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal can produce great learning outcomes — that’s what I call synergy.

jdg

ps: Maiden has a slew of historically–oriented songs, ranging from ancient mythology to WW2. And you can stream parts of the songs directly from their website..but if you want the full experience, you need to buy the CDs.

I’d project this on my screen (or you could display it on an overhead — it’s available from the Nat’l Archives.

Anyway, I’d start my class with that picture, and these instructions: “write as many relevant L1 and L2 questions as you can about this picture. Write questions that, if answered, will help you fully understand what is going on inside the frame of the picture — not outside of it, not related to or implied by it, but just inside the frame itself.”

I might give the students, early in the year, 5-7 minutes to write questions, after which we’d go over them as a class.

Going over their questions helps reinforce well-written questions, and helps the students recognize what sorts of questions are genuinely helpful in ‘unlocking’ a topic — that is, really helping them to learn about it.

Anyway, once the questions are written, the students need resources to dig through for answers. Empire High School subscribes to several of ABC-CLIO’s excellent social studies databases, and using them I can create customized ‘Research Lists’ of resources — pictures, quotes, biographies, essays, primary source documents, and more — for the students to use as springboards to learn about a given topic. As part of my lesson preparation I would have created a list of resources related to this image, or whatever image I was using for that lesson. I wouldn’t include anything too obvious — like an essay about women ordnance workers in WW2 — but I would populate the list with things like statistics about the demographics of the American labor force during WW2, a few biographies of major personalities from the time & topics, pictures of some of the many morale-boosting posters of the time, and other resources that would enable the students to answer the questions they had framed.

Then I set them loose for a given period of time, in class or out, to use the list of materials I’ve provided (which helps me stay on track to meet my mandated standards) to answer as many of their own questions as possible, and to write additional ones (more on that step later).

The point, at this simple, early stage, is that students quickly become more interested in the topic presented because they are approaching it and meeting it from where they are — not from where I want them to be. I might have some junior history buff who’d recognize the model of plane that those nose assemblies go to, and he/she would write questions based on that prior knowledge. I might have a student who has no clue at all what those things are — and he/she could frame questions that would be immediately useful in figuring out those critical basics — the key questions — that must be answered before any additional, deeper consideration can take place.

So it’s simple at the outset: students write their own questions, then go about answering them using teacher-selected resources that are topically-focused. More on what I do with all this in my next post.

jdg

Anyway, since TII embeds a discussion board in each class, I already have a user list, and they then post their thoughts, along with the article title & URL, and we’re off and running — it’s a nice asymmetrical discussion going on over a two-week period, but directly tied to what we’re studying in class at the same time.

My News Journals, as I call them, are due every two weeks — and since I set the due dates way in advance, all I need to do in TII is take about 10 minutes and I can set up all the journals for the entire semester at once. I set all the open and close dates for all the two-week journals, and I don’t have to worry about them after that — the system opens & closes the boards automatically. I did this last year and it worked perfectly — I actually ended up putting in all the journal windows (or whatever you might call them) for the entire school year…it took me about 30 minutes, and I didn’t give it another thought for the rest of the year. All I had to do was drop in periodically on the board that was open to weigh in with my thoughts, and check each open board a few times a week to assess & assign grades. Easy stuff, and it built a habit for the kids.

jdg