This past year was a mixed bag of both personal and professional challenges. One of the goals I set for myself this past school year was to set up a personal learning network, and find out what other educators were doing around the country and the world. This past year I was happy to be team leader for the MI Champions project in my school. I was honored to have a student article and a profile published in the MACUlL journal. I was thrilled to be able to present at the MACUL conference in Detroit, and got to meet in person several people I knew through MACUL SPACE. I had several articles published in England through Ictopus, and kept a professional blog on Edublog and Macul Space. I enjoyed meeting with Mark R in early August and he allowed me to use a great new tool called Curriculum Crafter. I managed to get a simple webpage on the GRPS website so the Shared Time Program has a presence there. I won the MEMIC grant and was able to buy two GPS devices for geo caching. I even sat on the unions executive board, since we are 2 years without a contract. My classroom wiki at http://computerkiddoswiki.pbworks.com grew as a resource and at last count had over 30,000 guests and was viewed from more countries than I care to count.. This past year I blogged, I twittered, kept a group calendar on Learnport, and have even attended professional development in Second Life.

<
One of the most exciting developments was meeting Prof Nyhoff from Calvin College. He visited my school and yesterday I had the opportunity to take my 7th graders to Calvin. The kids got to see how computers were used at the college level, play in VR, meet the professor who wrote the book on Learning Alice Programming, saw a “Super Computer”, meet with the Art department to see Digital Photography, and Set design. Hats off to Prof Nyhoff who is working to reform education, increase students interest in Computer Programming and is building bridges from the college environment to the K-12 world.

This past school year my 2nd grade students created a collaborative wiki using a virtual Flat Stanley, my 7th graders created a Treasure Island wiki, and my 8th graders began blogging. We build virtual bridges and then models using gumdrops and tooth picks. Students at various grade levels programmed in Squeak, Scratch, Alice, Logo, and HTML. We created animated features, used the computer in digital photograph, drew in Google Sketch up and Anim8or, created podcasts, photostories, scrapblogds, and voice threads . We researched, we collaborated, and we published. I spent way to many after school hours donating time to create “the yearbook” In giving the students zero hours before school and giving up my lunch hours for study hall, left me drained at the end of the day. Teaching 8-9 classes of 45 minutes each is likely enough. Finding balance is a new goal yet to be achieved. I would like to try using a green screen next and would like a Bluetooth tablet or interactive whitebard. However I remain determined to not let the lack of resources limit the opportunities for my students. It is such a wonder to have so many free web based tools.

The challenges in my personal life were equal to that in my professional one. My husband finally got a job he loved and was plagued by headaches so severe he missed a lot of work and was let go after 6th months. The doctors are still trying to find the source of the headaches and mood swings, and continue to try different medications. My daughter totaled her car, but was fortunate to have only minor injuries. I am still dealing with a root canal, just need to get fitted for the cap. All way to expensive for words. Y car needed a new transmission and still needs more work done. My hopes of returning the school for a PhD are on hold once again. With so many jobless in the state I am happy to have a job. Grand Rapids Pubis now the record for the lowest paid teachers in the KISD. We are also plagued by a group from Muskegon called the EAG who is not shy about their desire to “break” the union. I moved my youngest ADD child to a private school with smaller class size.. We have 2-3 hours of homework each night, and the finding the money for the tuition is difficult-but the school has been working with us. I never lost the weight I wanted too, and there were many days I needed more time, or spent too much time at work and too little time at home. The one constant in the world of technology is that there is always someone who needs help with something. My hair dresser has given up on me-too many cancelled appointments as I ended up dealing with one crisis after another at school. . Right now the dreaded m.exe virus is haunting the systems and so far nothing I have tried as worked. Help arrives on Monday.

So overall I did the best I could at both home and school with the resources I was given. There is much more to look forward to next school year. Maybe I will even lose the weight I want to.

In an attempt to give the miracle a helping hand I applied at the Microsoft site. Microsoft is giving away 5 scholarshops to NECC. So maybe…? I have never been to the nations capital so being able to go to NECC would be a real thrill.  But I am a realist as well, so I will be looking into the opportunities to attend in Second Life and through Eluiminate.   

In any case, change is education has become critical.. Our economy  is changing from manufacturing base to a glonal community where information is becoming the new currency. This is going to require schools to step up and use technology tools to teach children. engage them, and prepare them for jobs in the new economy. We are3 going to have to use the resources we have smarter, ask our teachers to do more if we are to reach our children and prepare them for the future. Education is critical factor here.

We have been sitting students in rows, talking at them,  making them memorize.  We talkàthey memorizeèwe test àrepeat.  Areas the students memorized well in became their career, If they were not good at memorizing-off to the manufacturing jobs they were sent. Research and studies for years showed this was not the best way-yet we continue to do more of the same. Teachers were told to do more hands on learning, more projects, more higher level thinking skills, but at the same time prepare the kids for paper and pencil exams, with school funding and their jobs on the line. Incorporate technology into instruction-but make it difficult to teachers to use the technology by locking down the machines, and blocking, blocking, blocking content . While the potential is there for technology to reach students that have been underserved-those resources need to be user friendly for the instructors. We still need those trained teachers in the computer labs to teach and engage both the students and the educators, in technology use. But then there are the yearly budget cuts.  Those who legislate require more and most tests- children’s scores used to measure teachers effectiveness.  We have longer school days, more school days and somehow think more of the same will lead to a different result. We have a new Secretary of Education that thinks more the same is the recipe for success.  Putting all these pieces together it is easy to understand why  teachers become discouraged. They are being asked the equivalent of running and standing still at the same time.

 How many great minds have been wasted because they were perceived as not smart=simply because they learned in a different way? How many students have we lost to boredom? How many great teachers have we lost because they could tolerate the low pay and long hours, but the not the lack of respect for the profession? What happened to  students who got all A’s?  Many struggled to get and keep a job because they lacked the ability to work well with others, and felt entitled to the same special treatment they got in school as the “A” student.  Once in the work world there was no longer a parent to run interference for them, and responsibility fell on their shoulders like a ton of bricks. Since jobs don’t test every week-the expectation was for these graduates to be to apply the skills they learned. Again a huge discontent between what school were teaching and the skills that are needed for success. Everyone can agree that change is needed. Some want to peel off the good students and create a separate system of “Charter” schools-the separate but equal philosophy.

Project based learning challenges students=but also parents who  need a new understanding of assessment.  Universal Design for Learning does stretch every learner but makes it difficult for parents to understand how a student working on what they think of, as an easier project can get an A, while their child got a B+.   I still stand by the notion of giving students choices. I also think that there is way too much emphasis and pressure on grades. The challenge to change really lies in convincing the parents and Politian’s,  who really run the schools that there is a better way. Then getting them to trust the process —HUGE GOALS

Gripes and Brags
Reflecting back as the school comes to a close, it was a mixed bag of wonderful innovation and challenges. In my second year at a new building I have worked hard, challenged myself and my student’s and have been pleased with the results. We have  used C.A.D. (Computer Assisted Design) programs, written digital stories, create slide shows, made movies, created wiki pages, blogged our thoughts  in response to literature, programmed in Scratch, Alice, Squeak, and HTML. Students have review using MS Office, made stop action animations, worked with stop action animation, and explored digital photography.  Over all. a positive experience engaging student learners. While not everyone loved everything, I feel that each student picked up some necessary and essential skills.

 Yet ,as any educator knows classroom management remains an important  part of teaching. What remains as a frustration is the lack of parent understanding in redirected student behavior.  I try to have the students reflect on their behavior, write a note to me explaining why they did what they did. Then having students go home and report that –they did nothing wrong and the teacher doesn’t like them.  It amazes me that parent’s can announce so boldly that “I believe my child and not you” Why would I possibly: pick on a group of children”. It’s not like any of us want to disciple, it is just part of the job. Children have not changed so much= but parents have. The same parent who doesn’t come to conferences- appears weeks later to complain about a B+ on a report card.   We take the advice of doctors, lawyers and even the cable repairman=but not educators. I really do have the best interests of my children in mind-allowing them to get away with bad behavior really does them no good in the end.  Unfortunately most of us only hear from the few parents who complain and not the many that are happy!

So…this year… It was a mixed bag. I take consolation in the two grants I won, the designation as a MI Champion, and the amount of positive feedback I get from my peers on Classroom 2.0, MACUL Space and Twitter. I remind myself that 2 parent complaints out of 408 students isn’t the end of the world.  Social networking has created a community of educators and for the first time we are out there supporting each other and learning we have much in common no where we live or teach. So our hope for change rest on the possibility that together we can do more!

First I have to confess I did vote for Obama, so my dissappointment in the statements of the New Education Secretary is leaving a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

“Secretary Duncan also noted that the budget overview includes a $500 million grant program for a new federal-state-local partnership to improve retention and graduation rates, particularly for low-income college students. Funds would support research into what works to help increase college completion.” Wow, didn’t that sound good?

Unfortunately, the stimulus money is earmarked for professional development and equipment. This is happening at the same time that districts are forced to increase class size, pull computer/media specialist out of the Literacy Hub of the school, and place just one more hoop out there for classroom teachers to jump through.

My school district recieved a bond issue and grant to improve the schools and many of our buildings have wonderful state of the art computer labs. The only problem is-no one uses them. When teachers try to use them they are so locked down that they are not even able to run updates for Flash, Adobe, or Real Player. So the teacher prepares a lesson at home checks the links, and then after logging all the students on with the individual passwords the districts mandates, finds out the the sites won’t run at school because install updates requires “administrative rights” that the teacher doesn’t have. Add to this the fact that she had checked the site at school the week before and you can see how easy it is to discourage teachers from incorporating technology.

Unfortunately most of the teacher on the elementary level (in my district) are using technology skills to grade their report cards- (with a lag time that is frustrating and no rights to go back in and correct typing errors) ,and use programs such as Exam Review and other programs to do data analysis. If all you ever are taught to do with the computer are record keeping and data warehousing activities, you can see how technology is simply not getting to the kids.

I was at a meeting yesterday with a group of college professors who are concerned that the amount of students seeking a Computer Science degree has dropped 45 % in the last five years. According to this group,the students that the colleges are getting are ill prepared for advanced computer skills, and often cannot test out of very basic office functions. So much teacher time is now spend on testing, assessment, and data research to meet AYP and MEAP that we somehow managed to suck the creativity right out of the teaching process. All of this paper work and additional testing has done nothing to raise scores-it has stressed out teachers and students, with discipline and hands on learning have suffering as a result.

“U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that $100 billion in federal stimulus money for schools will save thousands of teaching jobs and promote education reforms. ” Except that with curent budget cuts my district is telling us it will simply reduce the number of cuts necessary and to expect a class size increases. After working 3 years without a contract and no cost of living increases, the district now wants to take away our PPO health care. I am not sure how this plays into Secretary Duncans vision of recruiting more and better teachers.

Recently Duncan told the students: “I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short. You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; eleven, twelve months a year.”Duncan reportedly expected the students to react to his comments in a negative manner, but AP writes that the teens simply gave him “bored stares.”

You have to love the honesty of teenagers. Does he actually think that more of the same thing is going to change education? And here’s my big question….Why doesn’t anyone ever ASK the teachers what they think needs to be done to improve education? You would think that these share holders might have something to add to the conversation! I have to agree with David Warlick on this one: “The two statements, attributed to the education leader, not only make my blood boil — but they are simply “Dead Wrong!”

According to David,”Arnie Duncan was nominated to the Secretary of Education post by President Barack Obama in mid-December last year, and smarter men than me immediately called foul (See Gary Stager’s “What Do Arne Duncan & Paul Bremer Have in Common?). I wanted to give Duncan the benefit of the doubt, but all doubt’s gone now. We’ve gotten no where and we’re going nowwhere, especially if we are going to extend the sentencing of our children.” You can read his entire blog here.

Just in case he is actually interested here are the issues as I see them. I know ..I know -who am I ?? Just a 20 year veteran educator who believes in education and wants to see REAL change occur.!

1. Discipline-allowing students to get away with almost anything in order to stem dropout rates is a receipe for disaster. A respectful attitude is required in the work place and should be demanded at school as well. Classrooms cannot solve the issues of poverty and crime. We should provide programs that address the needs of students without making an entire classroom a place where teachers can’t teach because they have to spend there entire time on discipline.

2. If you are going to compare-be fair- Inner City students that have attended 3 schools in one year are simply not going to do as well as any other student that has been able to spend an entire year in one building. Teachers have no control over housing and evictions, parents remarrying, and poverty that force children and families from their homes. Yet everyone loves to compare the test scores of these children who are just happy to have a home, with the priveldged kids in the burbs. Secretary Duncan also compares us to China where frankly they track kids. Here in America we strive to educate everyone-that is a good thing. However comparing our system which leaves no child behind, to a system that tracks children and only reports scores of the “Choosen” students is just plain unfair and misleading.

3.Testing Time deceases teaching time all those paper and pencil bubble in tests take time away from Project Based differentiated learning which all the experts and data support as the road map to long turn learning and retention of essential skills. Can you think of any job where you are tested 5-6 times each week? Neither can I . I do know that most peiople work in teams, on projects to get things done.

4. Seperate is Not Equal Creating another system of Charter schools seeks to do what busing sought to undo-segregation. Charter Schools that are often run by for profit companies, can expel students they do not wish to have and they are sent back to regular public school. Charter schools also do not have to provide special education services nor busing. How is this EQUAL?

I know my comments are likely to get lots of feedback- but here they are

While this is a discussion is ongoing, what has been an unknowable trend has been the large amount of non-educators that seem to be defining what education is and should be. The coming focus and shift to Charter Schools may in the short term show some positive results. But-and here is the rub-who are we leaving behind in the “regular” schools?  Should we peel off the students who have interested, vested parents and create schools just for them?  Without realizing it would we be setting up unequal school systems?

An an educator in a large city district I can assure you there are real problems. Unfortunately, many of the issues urban educators face are issues over which they have very little control. If we really want education to become the great equalizer then we should at the very least look at the real issues teachers in the inner city face.

Student mobility is a HUGE problem. It is not uncommom for students to attend 3-4 different schools during one school year.  This also adds to huge gaps when the child is not in school at all, as they move between homes, parents,and even cities.  A child actually has to be there in order for a teacher to teach them. The loss of a caring teacher to an At Risk student is seen as another rejection. Many of our kids face way to many rejections.

Discipline. My girlfriend teaches Kindergarten and spends at least 50 % of her time explaining school appropriate words and behavior. Most of these 5 year old come to school with vocabularys that would make most of us blush and striking out and hitting someone is natural way to resolve differences.  By the time some of these children reach middle school it is not uncommon for them to have expereinced more fear, loss, and betrayal that most adults experience in a lifetime. 

Materials and Supplies. While Walmart and other run ads  for back to school supplies, most  children in city schools arrive with very little. It is the classroom teachers who out of her own paycheck buys crayons, markers, glue, and even copy paper. While a box of crayon runs around $2.00 just times that by 30 children. Add in socks, backpacks, and stickers and you get the picture that teacher in the inner city is investing a much larger portion of her paycheck in her classroom. A high school friend of mine has taken to buying golf pencils for his classroom because students never have pencils and the ones he buys tend to walk away the last student who borrowed it. Teaching over 100 students a day-he has tried everything to keep enough pencils in the  room so students have something to actually write their assigments with. Golf pencils just don’t seem to walk away as quickly. As city educator make far less than their counterparts in the more affluent subburbs, it becomes harder and harder for teachers to use their salaries to make up the difference.

Paper work- until my own children attended a suburban school I never realized that paper work, reports, data sheets, were not used everywhere. My childrens teachers apparently just keep grade books and grade report cards. They do not have data review sheets, they do not have to track trends. ect. I understand that perhaps more assessment is needed to reteach-but I am hear to tell you-all that paper work- it really good at killing creativity. 

Respect. I have always considered teaching to be a higher calling. Yet as the years have gone by it is very common for  parents to yell at me for giving theur child a B+. There is an entitlement that if I don’t give an A I must justify-justify-justify. The pressure on the poor kid-to have to get A’s in everything. Not to mention the very demeaner of students and parents who challenge. It is okay to vent, yell at and educator-we just stand there and take it.

Note to the new education secretary-education has some very real issues, running away from them and ceate seperate but equal schools is no answer. Blaming the teachers-just not going to work. It is going to take a real discussion with teachers who work with kids to come up with some solutions. There’s a unique idea-how about including us in the discussion.

2.Tag Galaxy and Gimp- I want to use some higher level digital photography programs that work in layers. I have played with GIMP a bit but really need to learn more.  I will start will GimpLite quickies http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/ then offer some of the advanced Tutorials http://www.gimp-tutorials.com/;

3. Learn how to program in Flash so I can teach students how to program in Flash.

4.Combine digital story telling and animation to address the different types of writing.
Fluxtime, Zimmer Twins,Shidonni,Kerploff, Movie Blender, Dvolver, Anibom, and wildlife film maker.  Writing Genres http://www.thewritingsite.org/resources/genre/default.asp

5. Incorporate more of Blooms Taxonomy into my digital lesons. http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670 great article from Teach and Learn.

6. Use United Streaming more and http://www.teachersdomain.org/collection/k12/sci.life.gen.birth/ for brief video intro’s for topics in language arts, science and social studies.

7. Put together a GPS geocaching unit. Some resources pages to explore for ideas;  http://eduscapes.com/geocaching/kids.htm; http://www.springhurst.org/geocachingkids/how.htm; http://www.geocachingkids.com/

8. Get organized for MACUL conference

9.

10.

I love January- March. There are a lot less “special “assemblies, field trips, and parties that pull students from my classroom. I look forward to these nice long uninterrupted times for instruction. Here is where I hope to begin. A kind of road map for January.

Student Projects:

1st GradeAfter examining the last few projects I want to challenge my students to write more descritive stories using adjectives. Since this group of students studies mammals, fish, reptiles and birds I thought it might be fun to make up imaginary animals.  We will start by using the “Make my Wild Self Website” and then move to KidPix where we will design our own mystical creatures and give them  magical powers.  Using the 5 senses template  from Inspiration students can brain storm descriptive words to use in their writing.   After the pictures andword banks are saved, Students will have the tools to write desriptive sentences about their creatures. We will then email these to a class in the UK and have the student there draw a picture using the descroption the students sent. It will be fun to compare the two drawings.  We may even submit our drawings to http://www.monsterexchange.org/ ”Monster Exchange”This should segway nicely into a unit of Fairy Tales.

1st Grade

Virtual Flat Stanleys

I am going to read a funny book called “FLAT STANLEY” by Jeff Brown to students.

This book is about a young boy named  I am going to have students email virtual Flat Stanleys to visit cities in the US. We will be asking each person who gets a Stanely to tell us about the city he is visiting and email us back.

3rd Grade-

 I tend to ignore much of the preparations for the elections as  I have found politics and religion have caused more headaches for classroom teachers then they are worth. That being said, once the election is over and the new president has been choosen an  opportunity presents itself to have students  learn about the inauguration, and discuss the issues our country is facing. To this end I am having my third graders write a friendky letter to President Elect Obama, After the letters are completed I am going to have the students read the letters using voice thread.

4th Grade-

Our school  gives out something called AtACats. It is a similar to at-a-boys.These are read over the school PA and everyone looks forward to having their name read as someone who did something nice. Since 4th grade is a real transitional time for children and learning how to be more accepting  andgetting along with other is always a good thing….I am going so a  project that prpmotes  and looks for positive quailiesin others. We will begin with a word web and brainstorm qualities of good friends. After each student has typed in the word list we generated it  will be  copied  and pasted  into Wordle. A quick screen shot will save the list for each student. During the concluding sessions eaxh students will Open a word Processing Document andtype their name  at the top. We will them play roundrobin with students rotating through each computer station typing in a compliment about that person.

5th Grade

The term thinking outside the box is likely one of the most over used terms . My goal is get them to look and think beyond the worksheet written text and  memorized facts. My goal is to make use of the knowledge that they have been assimilating, and use it in new and different ways. To this end we will be using a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system  called squeak. We will be making toys- well actually e toys. We will begin by using http://www.squeakland.org/tutorials/demos/ .  Printables for my visual learners will be found here.

6th Grade-

Animation is a highly engaging avenue for student learning. By 6th grade students have put pen to paper to write any  number of stories and sometimes you can hear the groaning sounds, when you are passing  in the hallway , when a writing is assigned. This generation of Brief Facebook type sentences and instant messaging  tells us students will write -when it is important to them. Add cool little avatars that will act out the drama-and write they will. Using Divilver, and Keerploff students will be able to write scripts and create animated features. Digital Story telling+animation

Junior High

Students will learn how to license their creations.. http://creativecommons.org/videos/  Students choose Gimp or Google to create a unique design and then upload it under the creative commons license. We will viewed several videos at the Creative Commons website: Wanna Work Together, Building on the Past, and Mix Tape. This has introduced the concept of selecting a license based on how you want others to use your work.

Projects for the Teacher

I also believe students need to see that their teachers are still learning as well. So I have given myself a few assignments as well

• I need to check out Twitter and see if it is any different from Facebook and figure out if I have time for it.
• Do a better job of keeping up on my RSS reader
• Learn Flash
• Put together a unit for GPS devices
• Start creating handouts for the MACUL workshop I am giving.

If there is a area in education that is more murky I am unaware of any. There is so much conflicting information on what educators may and may not use for classroom instruction ,that most of us end up hopelessly lost reading the small print. So after reading everything I could find on the subject I am going to take a stab at figuring it out. Since I am not a lawyer ,just a humble educator , I always hope that the effort I put into citing sources counts. So here is my best understanding.

Copyright is the right attached to an original work of art or literature. That means whoever wrote or drew owns it and only the person /organization the author has extended the rights too, can use it. If you take someone else’s work and claim it as yours, they can seek to recover compensation (in a court of law) That’s the part that always scares us! HOWEVER there are the list of exceptions-otherwise know as wiggle room.

1. Copyright does not apply to opinions nor facts. So you cannot copy an entire sections of a work without citing the source-but you can rewrite the facts in your own style and you have not violated copyright.
2. Government works are not protected (The ones they protect are top secret and we never get to see)
3. Things published over 75 years ago-the thought is the author who owned the work has passed away.
4. The author gives permission and places them in the public domain. ( So if someone put something on the internet without reserving the rights it is assumed they have put it in the public domain.
5. Fair use- “Through the fair use provision, teachers have access to works far beyond classrooms or textbooks and thereby may expand and enrich learning opportunities for student learning.”

Fair Use
An educator’s best friend is the Fair Use Policy. They are many different definitions of Fair Use –and Fair Use DOES NOT Mean we get to use as much of everything that we feel we need to.

1. Copying- Is okay if done spontaneous, for temporary use. ( If you copy it do not use it year after year)
2. Copying a paragraph or section of a web page is okay-but copying the entire chapter is not. ( A good rule of thumb is to place the original authors name in parenthesis and/or the URL-giving credit where credit is due.)
3. Anything you copy in part, cannot be sold under your name without the author’s permission. No making money off from someone else’s work.
4. Music- general agreement seems to be 1/3 of a total song but not more that 30 seconds. There are many artists and sites that offer free music. I encourage the use of those.

On Wiki pages…
It is permissible to copy a paragraph to refresh your students recollection. Just give the source a credit.
If you use a screen shot and links to other sites-mention where the original content came from.
If you use 30 second clips from popular artists in a multimedia presentation for students, give the artist a credit at the end.
The main thing is do not sell the work.

The real issue behind all of this for teachers is a question of Morals and Ethic’s. As role models for students, teachers have a mandate to practice integrity and trustworthiness. While funds are always tight, we cannot be tempted to take what is not ours-it is in fact stealing. My district has not given any of us a raise in 3 years and with the cost of living going up I do understand how tight money is. The good news about Web 2.0 is that there is now so many wondeful resources that are available the public domain.

The best way I can describe fair use is this- you may uses pieces and parts-not the whole -and always give credit where credit is due.

Here are web sites that do a far job than I desscribing these issues:

Has a great chart you can print-so you know how much you can use
http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm#Fair%20Use%20Matrix%20for%20Teachers

Standards for stermination if something meets fair use criteria
http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm#Teachers%20and%20Fair%20Use

Fairuse Guidelines for Multimedia projects
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml

A quizz covering many situations we all deal with-seee how you did?
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/10/copyright_quiz.php

Tags: copyright, copywrong, fair, use