Wanting a Wiki??

Oh the Wonderful World of Wiki

Several conferences in 2008 had a wiki as the star attraction. A video explained a wiki by having a hand place pictures on a white board.  The suggestion was that wiki’s were a tool to help facilitate instruction and collaboration, however a cloud of doubt rolled into my thoughts: Why haven’t I seen any suggestions on how to integrate wikis into classroom instruction? It took about a semester of deeper delving to realize that not many examples of classroom wiki usage were out there.  So after a semester of playing, I have come up with some examples of what I have done using a wiki in the classroom: 

1.      Narrative wiki page: Each student made a page on a wiki explaining an event, including an image, and a link.
   
2. 2.     Posting Discussions: the teacher posts a question or discussion having students respond for homework.
   
3. 3.     Students can create their own wiki for independent reading/ book reports/ or term knowledge and invite others to the page.
   
4. 4.     Students can collaborate on a wiki page for information (note: currently students’ are still having trouble collaborating on a page without erasing work)
   

 Benefits of a Wiki

1.       Class has access to a sort of mail on the wiki that they can all correspond.
   
2. 2.     Can monitor times/ and who is doing what work on the pages.
   
3. 3.     Can be used to link and share resources.
   
4. 4.      The Wiki can be private or public.
   

Of course, the wiki takes some dedication and patience; the students need accounts, as well as some practice on the wiki. Even though these students are the digital natives, this is a relatively new/ unused program for them. The difference is how quickly they adjust to the new technology. Several of my students used it throughout the summer after introducing it during the spring term, and by the end of the fall 9 weeks they were using it as a regular digital medium.

The Moon Lesson. . .A Hit!

The moon lesson from Friday went extremely well. I uploaded the Moongirl video onto my Facebook and first hour a fellow English teacher came up to me and said that she had viewed it on my profile and wondered if I had it downloaded. I did and she borrowed it for her classes. My sophties had great discussions over the bombing of the moon. It really freaked some of them out! Others thought building a base on the moon would be quite a trip. They all really got into the movie, and especially enjoyed when the span of glass jars were shown. The best part of this lesson was that after the first class read the article, watched the movie, and combined the two stories, students from each class afterwards were excited to see the information for themselves. The lesson generated such interest that students were talking to each other about it outside of class. AWESOME!!! Hats off to my friends on Facebook, You Tube, and my husband.

Facebook, You Tube, Wii Created Lessons, Oh My!

Fridays, I like them to be days of weekly reflection and fun, sneaky learning. I thought we were going to do our assessment over Footloose (style, form, p. o. v.), and then watch a slide show of the students' summer. (The show was not completed.) Time for a change of plan. I noticed on that one of my friends had commented on facebook concerning NASA blowing up a peice of the moon. He left a link and I followed. It was an interesting read, and he had many comments over the topic. So, I decided to make it my fun bit of reading tomorrow. Nathan, my husband, just realized we have an Internet channel on the Wii with all the benefits that entails, and was catching me up on some entertaining You Tube videos. Among them was Moongirl, a short film by Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline. I decided my students would write a collision between the two pieces of information (one fiction, one nonfiction). Moonday tomorrow! I'll reflect on the lesson.

The Lesson:

Objective: SWBT (students will be able to) analyze form, style, and point of view from the movie Footloose, and combine a piece of nonfiction and fiction into a reflection.

Standard: R.10.10.20  Explain the influence of historical context on the form, style, and point of view of a written work

Plan:

1. Take an assessment over form, style, p. o. v.

2. Read NASA bombing moon.

3. Reflect for 2 minutes

4. Share out/ discussion

5. Watch Moongirl

6. On a moon graphic organizer combine the two stories as final reflection.

Grant Wrangler K-12 School Grants

Grant Wrangler K-12 School Grants

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President Obama's Speech to Students

Wow, already I have missed a couple weeks in my blogging. I have a couple things that have been pressing on my mind. I will do my best to get one of these ideas down tonight.

For all you teachers out there, I'm going to put this blog in the "What", "So What", "Now What" strategy in order to better facilitate mine and hopefully other's learning.

What: President Obama's Speech to students became a 2 day collaborative lesson. The idea of this lesson sprang to my mind while driving to work a time where some of a teacher's best and worst lessons may emerge into existence. I was listening to the news and hearing all the controversy that was surrounding this address to students. It had me confused, so I called up my Social Studies teacher and asked her about the controversy concerning this speech. She was really put out that there was a controversy and wanted to address it. I asked what she thought about doing a team teach (she teaches seniors, Civics and I teach sophomores, English). She thought that was a good idea. Here is a copy of the plan:

SWBT evaluate Obama's speech for purpose and partisanship: What kind of partisanship is presented in Obama's speech? What is his purpose in this speech? What tools were used to get his purpose across?

WhenSep 8 – 9 2009

Standards     "R.9.10.1 Examine author’s purpose by connecting own background knowledge" R.9.10.9 Analyze techniques     used to convey point of view or impressions, including language, organization, tone, and context" SS: identify     role of government

Description1. American Dream Headliner activity 2. Look at Partisan, nonpartisan, bipartisan 3. Read Obama's speech for American Dream and Partisanship 4. Give an example of AM. Dr. and Partisanship from speech. Day 2 1. Review Partisan, Bipartisan, Nonpartisan 2. Watch President Obama's speech3. Discuss the purpose of the speech 4. Create a slogan for Obama's purpose 5. Present for class.

So What: We taught both our classes this lesson for two days. At the end of the days I had my students complete a survey to see how well they understood the information as well as liked working with two teachers and a different grade. Out of 144 students about 74% of the students retained the difference between partisan - one political parties ideas, bipartisan - two parties working together, and nonpartisan - no political stance. 57% of the students enjoyed working with a group from a different grade -- this was an interesting question because I included a spot for the students to write a statement under "other" and 17% chose to write in that and several of the students wrote a different positive comment. 52% said that they enjoyed working with two teachers. The team teaching and working with other students were a little lower than I imagined them to be, but this does not deter me from trying again. 

I really felt that it was a good thing to expose students to two different content areas at once. Also, I think it was very interesting for the students to work together as a larger group comprised of different people. I'm sure it was a little uncomfortable for them to be with older/younger students, and we made sure that the groups all comprised of at least one senior and 1 sophomore.

We moved our classes to the library for this lesson, and I think it was a good thing to displace the students a bit. One student mentioned that she really enjoyed working in a different place because it made it seem new and more fun.

Several parts of this lesson could have been improved upon, one of the most blatantly obvious improvement could have been the reading. We had the students read President Obama's speech which ended up being four pages. Whoa. Let me just mention that four pages in a 46 minute class hour has some serious drawbacks; namely THE STUDENTS WON'T READ!! Also, Obama's speech although long was meant for k-12 students so the language was not really on the par of our students' vocabularies. We should have had an excerpt of the speech and then included something of a higher grade level. The other part of the lesson that could have worked on would be that the teachers had a more division of teaching. I noticed that one or the other would almost teach the whole hour with the other adding simple additions when necessary. We should have lined up our parts through our lesson in order to both maximize the teaching arena.

Now What: I am really excited about the team teaching. I have always heard the research about it, and that we should be doing it. Unfortunately time restraints and the pioneer school house institution continually keeps me from trying it. I did it once last year during a remediation hour with a fellow English teacher and absolutely loved it! I felt it made us better instructors paired as we were. Overall I think team teaching could create an atmosphere of learning where the students learn to get along with different groups. They see teachers working together in a professional climate, and the instructors can make sure that the material is gone through thoroughly.

My Challenge: I want to try to team teach with all the content areas this year. Ideally, I would love it to be a two day lesson that we could have in the library. Wahoo! I didn't even realize I was creating a challenge before writing this  post, so already I am reaping the benefits of blogging.  Already I am thinking of a Math/ English connection that could be made. If anybody has any ideas, I would love to hear them. 

Alright, I have one my ideas down for last week. I hope I can do another next week. I'm going for shorter, and am considering discussing the benefits of job embedded PLC (Professional Learning Communities) meetings, or the new tech P. D. I created a professional development presentation over the basics of Google Applications. Maybe I will upload them at a later date.

Sophomore's most mentioned activities

Of the several activities that I did in class the first three days of school, the sophomores mentioned two the most.

They really liked the norms we did in class. Normes are the classroom guidelines that the class creates. Many students mentioned that felt they had a more relaxed classroom after creating the normes and that they had some ownership. It is a three step process: 

1. Brainstorm
2. Clarify (make sure each norm is understood by all)

3. Come to a consensus.

The other activity that was mentioned frequently was creating quotes for their groups/ class. My sophomore class will have home groups. They had to come up with a quote for both their group and the class.  I would love to see a collaboration develop with the students where they root for their classes, but can also appreciate other's work as well. Maybe we'll try for a bit of competition. Both activities invited them to feel more like team players both in their individual groups and in their classes.  It is my idea that both activities will be able to sustain themselves. I want the classes to be able to remember and re-adjust the norms to where they are good for all participants. I hope that they are maintainable. I will readdress both these topics later to reflect over the effect of these strategies in the classroom. I would be very interested to hear of any first week stories especially if something was done to get the kids more involved. 

First Day of School

So, the first day of school has come around again. Let me tell you it was kind of fun having the knowledge that I already knew several of the students who would be in my class. My final change to my room was to change my desks for tables. I think this change will be the most beneficial to my teaching style as it is mostly comprised of group work.

My activities today included a line-up according to vacation spots (who was the closest versus the farthest), swimming number, and technology expertise.  Although I liked learning about all the information, by far my favorite was the technology expertise. As an educator we hear so often how we are in the presence of the digital natives (the kids who have grown up with technology in their hands), but it is interesting to see just how comfortable the students are navigating the internet, or even better their; their fearless acknowledgement that whatever is asked of them technology wise, they can trouble-shoot it. (I realize that sentence is a little blotchy so any grammar gurus willing to help me out feel free.) The amount of students uncomfortable with technology is dwindling. Most of my students are at least at the point I am. I had maybe a couple of students in each class claiming discomfort, but I wonder how modest they actually are.

My other activity was going over norms with the students. What really interested me about this activity (One where you allow the class itself to make up its own guidelines, thus giving ownership) was how many teachers besides myself were doing this activity as well. By the time the students in the afternoon reached me, they had an idea of what they wanted for their classroom, and simply rolled with the idea of creating their own guidelines for the classroom. I am really interested in the long term application of norms. Will the students feel invested, thus creating a better atmosphere in the classroom? Will the teachers be able to maintain the guidelines along with the students allowing for a more trusting atmosphere to generate in the classroom? Both these questions are general hypothesis that I would like to revisit later in the semester.

I didn't get through my entire lesson plan, imagine that. I can't wait for us to come up with group names, and individual, group, and class quotes tomorrow.

Data Driven Even Farther

A whole day of data pummeled the LHS faculty today. The most interesting part of the day was where we were able to look at the data, and figure out how we can better address the academic needs of our students. I hope we get to share ideas from all the different faculty groups. One of things my groups came up with having the students become more aware of their scores and reward students who were proficient. I hope we can get that done. However, I also feel that the motivation piece is very important as well, but somehow we need to instill the want in our students to do well for their own means, not simply for the reward that they may get for getting proficient. Now, how we instill that want is a question I have been working on for the last year. I will continue trying. We educators fight a hard battle. By the time students reach high school, somewhere, they have lost their drive for education, or at least a lot of them have.

Maybe, if any of my students are reading my blog, they can help a teacher's plight. What can we do to make school more interesting to you? How can learning be something that is fun and entertaining? What is worthwhile and meaningful to you?

School begins tomorrow. I am very excited to have my old freshies again. I think we will have a good time. The class of 2012 have a lot of spunk, flare, and are not afraid to question the system. I can't wait to see what they will do!

An iPhone Relationship

August 12, 2009, the professional development was a fortune telling activity where the faculty reflected on past achievements and then created future achievements they were looking forward to seeing in the year to come. I think the final part of the activity went well. The faculty came up with some good ideas on how to make the activity work for them, including using it to build team and individual student goals. The beginning of the activity, had me coming out in a poorly masked parody of Professor Trelawney which seemed to get some guffaws. I wonder now if the good humored motivational bit lined up more with Michael Scott from The Office. What actually can be used in humor while still maintaining the integrity of the activity? Deffinately it should tie togther, but if the fun motivational bit ends up falling flat then what you've got is a yokel making nonsense up front while the rest of the group are avidly watching whether or not the DVD screensavor will actually hit the corner of the television screen this time.

As I delve farther into the realm of technology, I am trying new things. One is to blog from my phone. It has given me some trouble, but I think I am getting closer to achieving sustainability. If all goes well, it enable me to blog more frequently and with more ease.

Have I commented on the luxurious freedom of the iPhone? Well, there have been several technology "to dos" that get done more frequently with the use of this new tool.

1. I facebook more often, which is good because some of my friends are exclusive facebook communicators. . . .hmmmm, if that is so for the 30somethings, what does that mean for young adults I teach? How can I make this piece more accessable?

2. I check my email more. At least my google account sufffered some neglect.j

3. I am looking forward to the posts that I can look at from my phone during school.

4. I can't wait try the Microsoft Office Application that would allow me to create documents from my iPhone.

5. I have an automatic camera that I used frequently.

Ok. I think I will stop geeking out over my phone. . . . for now.

I am about to begin a new endeavor. A new goal is to attempt to reflect at least weekly concerning lessons and professional development that have been conducted during that time frame. I would like to have something I can look back on that shows what was done well and what could have been done better. I would love any comments that anyone would care to make concerning my ideas. One big, repetitive bit of research was to reflect. So, this will be it. I invite any fellow colleagues or students to follow along and comment their own reflections or not as they see fit.