Ideas from November 10 Interaction with Elementary School Teachers

Had an excellent meeting on Wednesday 11/10 with more elementary school teachers.  I love working with these people on technology integration.  I think it’s because they are so tech-starved and under-equipped that they NEED technology.  What happens in my class when there’s a great need?  The students turn into sponges.  They start every conversation with, “I need some ideas” and not, “Can you show me how to put a link on my Schoolwires page?”(last Schoolwires bash I promise*).  We have moved our elementary teachers forward in technology integration more in the past 2 months than high school teachers have budged in 3 years.  I’m extremely proud of us and those elementary school teachers for the work we’ve put in.

So the ideas that have fallen out of Wednesday’s meetings...
1.  Comic Life - kids create comic books and use photographs of themselves to build their own digital story.  Without futzing around in movie maker, iMovie, or some other Web 2.0 tool that is blocked.  I rarely see a need to purchase software (save Fathom) but can see potential here. 

2.  Google Earth - I want to find pre-created maps for every possible subject area that uses Google Earth.  Then we’ll compile them all into one location, let students/teachers use them once, then never let them use them again.  You want them?  Make them!  What better way to learn ancient history than to create a map about what you think is important.  Not just a concept map...a real one!

3.  Grade Level Sharing - A common place (wiki) for every grade level to share ideas, links, resources, etc.  I'm thinking that when something good comes up (blogging a Heritage project, podcasts/movies of students reading, games created in SMART notebook) we can add it to the appropriate grade level.  Now, if we could just get people to actually go to the Tech Tools Wiki...wait, not yet, I need to have the Diigo feeds show links more recent than August.

4.  Networked Learning - There's no reason to isolate students, be it individually or by classrooms.  Every kid in Grade 6 should share learning experiences with every other kid.  To a further extent, it should be shared to all other grades above and below.  More to come on this subject as I explore and completely ramp up this idea in the future...like an online AP Stat textbook being created from my Class Wiki.  If every Stat student had a hand in organizing, adding, and filtering information found on an endless homepage we could make a sweet textbook.

Smartboards are something that comes up frequently in my elementary school interactions.  Every teacher wants one,  no teacher needs one.  Your students need it, so let them use it.

*This week

Challenge to Myself to Start the School Year

The greatest outcomes that I achieve in my room are realized through challenging myself in an oftentimes extreme way.  Past challenges include...

1.  Never lecturing
2.  Stop using paper
3.  Move your desk to the back/middle of the room

What these have all done is forced me to think in a different way.  They are a risk, and while most educators are risk averse, I will take every risk that I feel can benefit my students, my classroom, or my teaching style.

So I'm beginning this year with a challenge that hopefully improves a cooperative learning environment that I have maintained for the past 5 years.  I want to turn up the volume on generating a small-scale crowdsourcing classroom. 

I'm going to challenge myself to allow my students to sit wherever they wish...every day.  I'm doing this because I want to create more opportunities where I facilitate creation of different student groups many times within one classroom. 

Ideally I will accomplish this by having my students walk in, sit wherever you like, in 5 minutes you'll be grouping with people that are learning what you are learning.  When that activity is done, you'll be in another group/partnership with a student you've NEVER worked with before.  Let's hope this model creates an environment where every student is comfortable having a conversation and learning with every other student in the class. 

Classroom management enthusiasts(is there such a thing?) are cringing now telling me that I won't be able to maintain order in my classroom.  Good, I don't like order.  Neither do high school students.  I guess students  will need to be working on some pretty engaging activities that keep their interest in order to keep those management enthusiasts at bay.

Yours in organizing chaos for the sake of cooperative learning.

P.S. I've already thought of another challenge I want to embark on...not referring to students in my classroom as "my students". 

First Day of School Lesson Plan

So here's my contribution to the slew of first day of school posts in the edu-blogging world.

I want to start my year by creating a climate of collaboration, friendliness, INFORMALITY(in school? you're crazy!).  From day one, I want my students to begin to take ownership of the class.  There is more than one person to learn from in the room, in fact, there's 30...and millions of others easily reached online, but that's for another day.

Something I will definitely do differently this year is not go over the grading policy immediately.  My main reason for this is that I want to set a tone of a collaborative environment, not that of a teacher saying, "This is the way it's going to be, there's the door if you don't like it."  Why would we want to start a year believing a class is difficult, instead of developing that conclusion on our own?

So, yes, you will have homework an assignment given the first day of class.  It's not going to be Read pgs 1-100 and do ALL odd exercises once you've completed your outline.  Your homework assignment will be to read my grading policy (Standards-Based all the way!) and be prepared to discuss it with your group members and with me.  If you're not going to read it or formulate ideas, how (more importantly, why) should we allow you to contribute to the class discussion?

So, what will we do the first day?  Probably get to know each other.  Once we're all comfortable with a learning community instead of a classroom, then we'll start with the content.  AP exam in May you say?  If you're not worried than I'm not.