P-Tech: Setting students up for success or failure?

A new technology-based school, called Pathways in Technology Early College High School (or P-Tech) has been approved for the Albany, New York area.  The idea is that when students enter the ninth-grade at this school, they will stay in for the entire six-year program that focuses on technology, science, engineering, and mathematics.  When students successfully complete the program, they will have earned both a high school diploma and an associate's degree at no cost to them, giving them the ability to step directly into the workforce.  One speaker has explained that this is their "ticket into the middle class" because it gives them a jump start to the head of the line in business, technology, and engineering jobs.

It's an interesting concept, but I'm torn.  On the one hand, I think this is going to give a lot of students who normally wouldn't be able to afford to get any degree a chance to get their associate's.  It may give kids who could afford college but weren't considering attending a chance to spark the fire in them that will inspire them to go on for a four-year degree or more.  It will prepare students for a job after P-Tech, and give them the skills to enter the middle/working class.  But at the same time, how far will an associate's degree actually get you?  Will you be hired by Microsoft, Apple, or even IBM (a sponsor of P-Tech) with only an associate's degree, or will they overlook you for someone with a bachelor's or master's?

I think it's great that this program has been approved because it's going to give kids the opportunity to obtain a degree that they may normally would not have been able to get, but I have to wonder if it's setting them up with unattainable expectations when you only have an associate's degree...

Want to read more about this?  Check out the article I found.

Technology Quote #2

"Teachers need to integrate technology seamlessly into the curriculum instead of viewing it as an add-on, an afterthought, or an event." 

-Heidi-Hayes Jacobs, Educational Consultant

Changing Technology = Changing Education

“A young boy today in Africa with a very inexpensive secondhand smartphone has access to more information than Ronald Reagan as president had throughout his entire administration."  

- Matt Dunne, Google Head of Communication

How does education need to change as technology changes?  Matt Dunne, Google's head of communication, talks to Dartmouth about the need for education to evolve as technology evolves.

http://thedartmouth.com/2013/10/23/news/google

Core Curriculum - Blessing or Curse?

I've had the chance to teaching in two different state since graduating from college with my undergrad, and they couldn't be more different from each other.  I've also had the opportunity to watch as education has gone through a huge overhaul in terms of testing and curriculum in the 14 years since I started attending high school and now.  I experienced Ohio Proficiency Testing when I was in high school but was also in the "guinea pig" testing group to see how the implementation of the Ohio Graduation Test would go; I helped administer the OGT's during my method's block.  I was educated in college about how to teach to the Ohio benchmarks and standards, but within a year of graduating they had already voted to implement new core curriculum standards, and in the first five years of my teaching career I have taught under both systems.  In Ohio, I experienced what the core curriculum would look like before it was actually required; in New York, I've been teaching with the NY CCC, which is their very strict interpretation of what the CCC should look like. 

Changes.  So many changes.  And where is this all leading us?

I can't say for certain; I'm still too new to my teaching career and learning how all of this works, so even if I had an opinion, I don't feel like I have enough experience to really back it up.  What I do know is what I'm experiencing with the New York CCC this year - and it's not pretty.

Granted, my opinion of the CCC is based from the New York implementation.  I have so little experience with the Ohio CCC, and what experience I have was a few years ago, so I can't even say how accurate it is today.  Just a warning, I don't have many nice things to say about NY's.  Also, this is a topic I could go on about for a very long time, but I'm going to try to keep this somewhat short.

In NY, the CCC has been structured into a very strict teaching formula.  I'm in a first grade classroom, and we have a script of what we say when we teach, the exact supplements we use, the exact assignments we give, the exact assessments we administer.  We're on a set teaching schedule to follow this curriculum, and there is very little room to adjust and account for creativity, reteaching, or even differentiation. 

I'll let that sink in for a moment: there is basically no room to differentiate the curriculum (outside of what is required for IEP's and 504's) for students who are not on-target. 

So how in the world are we supposed to reach out to these kids who come in below what the NY department of ed has determined to be necessary prior knowledge to understand the content in the CCC?  From what I can tell, it's an issue that most teachers are finding to be a bigger and bigger problem as the first year of required CCC moves forward and more students are falling behind.  Many teachers are beginning to use their planning period or after school time to help work with students who need the differentiation, since there is little room to do that during the class period and the structured curriculum.  Teachers are rushing the CCC Monday through Thursday in order to have a little extra class time on Friday to try to catch everyone up who fell behind during the first part of the week.  What are teachers being forced to go to these more extreme measures just to be able to reach the majority of their students when this is the whole reason the CCC was implemented in NY in the first place?  NY prides itself on having some of the highest educational standards in the country, yet their choice to ignore the fact that the majority of the students in the state may not have the prior knowledge to meet the rigorous pace of the CCC and be able to meet those standards shows what little consideration for actual student ability and knowledge is being used.

I'm watching as first graders cry during testing because the expectations of what they learned in kindergarten last year (pre-CCC) don't meet what NY CCC has kindergarteners learning this year (under CCC) and therefore they don't know what's on the test.  I'm trying to figure out what to do when my lessons require kids to count backwards from 20 by twos and I still have kids who struggle counting forwards to ten by ones.  And I'm seeing kids who had an excitement for learning when the year started just a few short months ago become frustrated and let that excitement begin to diminish because the pace of the CCC is just too fast for them to keep up with.  And there's very little I'm able to do about it.

As a compassionate person, it breaks my heart for these kids.  As an educator, it makes me sad that we are so quick to implement these high standards and a CCC that meets them (in NY, the math CCC still is not complete, and teachers get only a couple months of CCC at a time) that the implications and prethought about this system are being brushed to the side.  And the children are suffering.

Do I have a solution?  No.
I only have a few years of teaching experience, a passion to see kids truly engage in learning and succeed, and the interaction with a core curriculum structure that is failing the kids it claims it's trying to help.

More Glogster!

Last week I posted about Glogster, a Web 2.0 tool that I used in one of my classrooms.  If you haven't checked out Glogster yet, go do it because it's an amazing tool that holds a lot of possibilities for your students!

Anyway, this week for another class we had to create online presentations based on two different Web 2.0 tools of our choice.  I was excited, not just about getting to explore new technology tools to use in my classroom, but also to have another reason to use Glogster :)

Check out the two Glogs I created!

Tagxedo is a very customizable and easy-to-use word cloud program.

Make Belief Comix is a fun comic book creator that's easy for kids to use.

If you haven't played around with Glogster, do it soon!  And check out Tagxedo and Make Belief Comix while you're at it!

Technology Quote #1

“There can be infinite uses of the computer and of new age technology, but if teachers themselves are not able to bring it into the classroom and make it work, then it fails.”  -Nancy Kassebaum

Google Forms Assignment

Glogster

This week in my curriculum theory class, we had the opportunity to play around with a website program called Glogster.  Prior to this assignment, I had never even heard of this website, but I am so excited that I had the chance to use it - the application to my future classroom is endless!

First of all, what is Glogster?
Imagine an informative poster on a specific topic, the kind you'd hang on your classroom wall to talk about sentence structure, chemical bonds, or a historical event.  Now imagine you can alter the appearance and content of that poster as you see fit for your classroom.  Sounds nice, but nothing special, right?  What if that poster was interactive: you could watch a video playing on the poster, or touch a picture and have more information or activities related to the poster topic pop up?  And for my next trick, you can allow your students to make their own posters just like this for interactive presentations!

Seriously, this thing is awesome.

For my class, I had to make a Glogster about a chosen curriculum theorist.  We had to include embedded objects like videos, links, and documents, making it more than just a pretty digitally-created informational poster.  I was able to control everything from the layout, the appearance, the graphics, everything.  And it's extremely user-friendly, save for the short pause when the Glog autosaves.  It's definitely a program I would want to use with my classroom, and I've already started thinking of great ways to use it:

• Student created projects: book reports, author biographies
• Group work - multiple students collaborating on one Glog
• Presenting assignments and step-by-step instructions to students with interactive pieces for student reference
• Jigsaw teaching

Here's a screen shot of my Glogster (about Maria Montessori, an amazing educational theorist). Click on it and it will take you directly to my Glogster so you can interact with it and see how it works:

I guess it's another tool I can add to my classroom tech toolbag!

Digital Photo Assignment

This past week, we worked on editing photos using various digital photo editing software.  I edited two different photos for my assignment, using Picasa and Pixlr.

My husband and I at Burrville Cider Mill in Watertown, NY

At my husband's Army ball in March 2013

It was great using the various software to manipulate the photos and brainstorm ways to utilize photo editing software in my classroom.  I think that as an English teacher, finding ways to use photo editing in my class on a regular basis can be harder than expected.  But after talking with my classmates, I realize that there is a lot to be done using photos and digital photo editing software, including using it to teach mood and tone, symbolism, and creating story prompts.  Overall, I've found that there is more potential for photo editing with my lessons and students than originally believed.  I can't wait to start using it in my next classroom!

Social Influences in the Classroom

Social media.  It's hard to remember what life was like before I had instant access to way more information about friends, family, and random people from high school at the touch of an app icon.  Now, within seconds, I can see what my cousin is making for dinner, how my friend's dog is doing after surgery, or every "selfie" shot that someone from high school has taken this week (even though I haven't spoken to them in almost ten years).  I can update my status, post a picture of my breakfast, creep on my favorite (or least favorite) celebrity, and watch a six-second video of someone's cat being cute all without having to leave the comfort of my couch.  The idea of being disconnected from social media makes many of us feel like we're naked, as if having that connection to the outside social world is as necessary as food or clothing.

What's even more interesting is trying to remember what classroom life was like before social media was available on every cell phone.  I can remember in high school using my brand new gel pen to write a perfectly worded note on actual paper, intricately folding it, and stealthily passing it to my best friend in hopes that it wasn't intercepted by our teacher or the cute boy we were writing about.  That was over ten years ago.  In the past five years since I first set foot inside a classroom in the role of teacher, I don't think I've intercepted one note.  And not for lack of trying.  But how do you intercept a note when it's being passed from cell phone to cell phone in the form of a text message?  When it's being posted on someone's Facebook wall?  When it's in a 150-character tweet?

Social media is an integral part of our lives, but it's influences in the classroom are becoming more and more of a distraction every day, and not just on cell phones.  At the school where I did my first full year as an English teacher, social media was an issue I dealt with every period of every day.  Students who couldn't even figure out how to use word to type up a research paper could figure out how to use a mirror site to log into Facebook and Twitter, effectively getting around the firewalls and security programs on the school computers.  Fights broke out between girls who has posted something rude on each others wall, while boys shared MySpace pics of scantily-clad girls, all of which caused a huge distraction from the poem we were analyzing or the story we were interpreting.  With every student having a cell phone with apps and internet access, the chances of totally cutting off students from social media influences in the classroom is almost impossible.

So how do we as teachers combat it?

This is the question I still don't have a great answer for.  I can make every policy against social media when we're in the computer lab.  I can ban cell phones in my classroom and follow every school policy in terms of cell phones and discipline.  But in the end, the social media influences from outside of my classroom will find a way to affect what's going on inside my classroom.  An argument will break out between students about a Facebook post; everyone will come in talking about the video that so-and-so uploaded, unable to settle down and engage in the lesson I'm trying to teach.

I hope you didn't come to this post expecting a solid answer you can apply in your classroom tomorrow morning to deal with social media influences, because you're not going to find one, at least not from me.  I don't have the answer to end it all.  Maybe the influence of social media is a permanent change in our culture, one that we have to accept and embrace, to find a way to work around it instead of avoid it.  No matter what, we as educators have to realize that social media has a strong influence in our students' lives and in our classrooms; to ignore that would be ignorant on our part. 

I think the best we can do is learn how to adapt our understanding of social media's influences on our students, establish policies in terms of how you allow it to influence your classroom, and pray that one day we can all revert back to handwritten notes on actual paper that can be intercepted and thrown away while we continue on with the lesson at hand.

Wordle

Here's my completed Wordle:

I wanted to not only include what technology we can use (wikis, presentations, software, etc.) but also what students gain from it (learning, discussion, engaging in information).  I also included things like "tweet" and "social media" because I firmly believe that we as teachers need to recognize these outlets and find ways to appropriately incorporate them into our classroom learning experiences. 

Back to School!

This is the first August in four years that I will be returning to the classroom not as a teacher, but as a student.  I'm really excited to get back into classes again, and I guess that's part of what makes me a teacher - not only do I love to teach, but I love to learn.  I'm taking four online courses through BGSU towards my Master's in Curriculum and Teaching this semester, which is going to be a lot to take on, especially since I'm going from not taking any classes in four years to suddenly taking four at once!  I'm excited, though, and I know that I'm on the right path to getting my New York certification so I can once again teach in my own high school classroom.  All those boxes of teaching supplies in the garage that are going unused are starting to get lonely...

I'll be using this blog as a means to discuss the ups and downs of my semester, as well as meet my requirements for my EDTL 6820 class that focuses on technology in the classroom.  Technology has changed so much since I graduated high school back in 2004 and I know that in order to effectively engage my students, I need to be able to utilize technology as more than a way to find information, type papers, and demonstrate presentations.  Our first assignment (besides creating this blog) is to create a Wordle.  I love Wordle, and I'm excited that it's been incorporated into this class.  I used it at the charter high school I taught at in Ohio, and the kids thought it was a pretty cool way to present ideas and information.  It was a great tool for understanding theme, as well; I had the students come up with words to describe a story or poem that we read and place them into the Wordle.  Then, they had to summarize what all those words were about, thus identifying the theme.  It worked great, and I think it's an awesome tool for students to visualize concepts and ideas.  I'll be creating my Wordle and posting it here this week!