Nominate an Educator Using Technology Creatively

In a session at Educon2.0 we came up with an action plan centered on getting the word out about what we were all doing in our schools/districts/states to bring technology and learning to the 21st Century Student. This just landed in my lap and thought it would be a great way to promote the people out here doing some fantastic things with kids:

Hello, I am a graduate research assistant from Northern Arizona
University currently working with Dr. Jess House on research for an
upcoming book Creative Classrooms: Technology in America's Schools.
This book will feature exemplary uses of educational technology in the
21st century. It will illustrate how classroom teachers, technology
specialists, and administrators are creatively integrating technology
into the curriculum and using it to increase student achievement.
Currently, we are seeking nominations for recent programs or projects
from your region that demonstrate unique and creative approaches to
using technology in the K-12 classroom setting. We are especially
interested in projects that are occurring at the classroom level (e.g.
teacher created projects that integrate technology into a specific
curriculum area). We would like to represent fine models from each
state and hope that you can assist us in nominating exceptional projects
from your area.
If you are interested in nominating any notable programs or teachers
for this book, please send nominations to: merri.nau@gmail.com by Friday
February 15, 2008.

In the nomination please include:
• Location
• Contact information for the teacher or educational professional
• Brief description of the program (technology and resources used,
subject matter, grade level, unique qualities)

Thank you for your time and efforts.
Sincerely,
Merri Bath
Northern Arizona University

Simple, but Cool Afternoon with Kids

A little background. Our school is an online high school with a single day face-to-face component. Our interaction with these kids is limited for a number of reasons. They only come on campus once a week and its usually not to see their online teachers (me). Many of the phone numbers they provide us are disconnected and/or they just don't answer. The main form of communication is email, and whenever I send out an email asking for all students to reply back (usually at beginning of semester to set up my Outlook) I get only about a 20% response. The kids at our school aren't the tech savvy teenagers that are rumored to be about and email is often ignored even though that is how we "talk" with kids. On top of all those factors, I'm working from home and taking care of my son right now so even more limited on communication. That's what made the other day so cool.

I received a new student at the 2nd semester and she was turning in her first short essay paper too me. She uploaded a .wps file which our computers won't open so we ask all docs be converted to .rtf. I have a form email that I send out for this very occasion. A day later I received a frantic email from her saying that she tried and tried to convert the document but just didn't understand what my email was saying. I asked her for her phone number so we could walk through it. A few hours later, I was using Skypeout and showing her this process. While we are on the topic I taught her how to make folders for each of her online courses so she could organize her work. Then the little light bulb that is Google Docs went off and made a deal with her to get her Google Doc account up and running (I couldn't do it at that moment because we were 20 minutes into the call and baby was screaming).

A few minutes after I got off the phone with her and the baby had calmed down, I received an instant message from another student. She needed some assistance with a class assignment so we walked through that via chat. An hour later I received another message from my Facebook account that a former student wanted some tutoring for her high school writing exit exam. We made temporary plans to set that up soon. While I was on Facebook another student chimed in with some concerns about a grade he had received at the semester, it wasn't in my class, but as his mentor teacher I promised to talk with his English teacher on his behalf.

Could all of this have happened at a traditional school in such a short period of time? Of course. Could all of this have happened at my virtual school a year ago, no way. The use of these social tools has changed the way I collaborate and interact with my kids. Now just hoping others at the school will see the benefit.

Don't Despair

Don't despair even though the numbers aren't there. This is still going to be the best year ever. Okay, what do I mean? Well last Friday we submitted unsats for each of our classes. Any students with a 'd' or 'f' in any course would receive an unsatisfactory notice home. Our Assiss. Principal ran the numbers today and here is what we got. 726 students, 650 receiving at least one unsat, 76 with none. That means, hold on let me get out my trusty windows calculator, 89.5% are not passing at least one class 6 weeks into the school year. I like to think of it this way, 10% are passing every one of their courses, yayyyy!

Pretty disparaging. So why am I optimistic? Change takes time. We have implemented drastic changes to our school from the way we deliver our content to the methods we communicate with our kids. Its a HUGE change and we are only 6 weeks into the year. I know that I'm doing more than Ive ever done before, and I trust that is going to save more kids from dropping and failing out than Ive saved in previous years. There are a couple of us doing this, we will make a big difference to our students. Other teachers will begin to make the necessary changes, jump on the bandwagon so to speak, as we get into the school year further. They just need a little time, but not too much time because students drop like flies at our school. Also, they may need some not so gentle nudging from admin. I know some of us who are maxed out would like to see some swift kicks to those who waste sooooooooo much time. It's obvious to us admin, just ask.

Alone

The weirdest thing happened to me this morning. I was driving to work, listening to NPR as usual, and I hit the magic BBM spot. Behind Black Mountain. Around here that means NPR goes out for a few miles, no other station does, but NPR does, maybe because its public. Anyway, I switched over to the one other station in Vegas I dare listen to, the pop station which has the #1 morning show. It was a commercial. I looked at my radio, gasped, took a deep breath and pushed the power button. It was about 6:45 in the morning and when the radio went off the only sounds I could hear were the ones coming from my tires bouncing, pot holes and all, along these desert highways. And the whoosh of cars passing me at 80mph. Then something interesting happened.
I started to get panicky and wondered why. Then, in a split, mind numbing moment of clarity I realized where my anxiety was coming from. It was the first time I had the radio off in 4 years of driving this route. Maybe longer, cant remember the last time I turned the radio off and just listened..... just.....thought.
Well, for the first 10 minutes I tried to convince myself I could make it through this new experiment. The anxiety was overwhelming, whats wrong with me? I tried to focus on something to help me get through the silence. I kept thinking about a thought I hadn't finished from last night, how Podcasts could help my kids?
I couldn't focus, couldnt come up with anything. All kinds of thoughts went in and out of my mind, but nothing productive. I took a couple deep breaths, tried to envelope the silence, and then just went with it. Go with the flow Cheech and Chong always said, or some unproductive person, cant quite remember who. Anyway, I went with it. All of sudden swarms of clarity came to me. Thoughts of making my classes better, posting on blogs, communicating with at-risk students, all these thoughts hit me. Of course the only thing I didnt think of was another way to use podcasts in my courses besides students making audio essays, but I did come to one clear resolution.
Monks are smart. Take time to meditate. Its almost impossible for me but the unnerving silence of this morning was the only point of relaxation I had all day.

3 Goals

Ive put a lot of thought into what my goals are for this school year, and Ive narrowed it down to 3 things.


1. Be persistent- Drive the kids crazy with communication. Yes, utilize the face time as best as possible but more importantly, talk to them when they aren't on campus. Many kids in our model dont reply or dont read their emails, so I have to call. Call often , email often, track them down on campus, be persistent!

2. Be resourceful- This is multifaceted. First off, I need to learn a lot more. I need to engulf all the possible resources out there for teaching kids online. Secondly, I need to get my students to use the resources I give them. I want them to create, imagine, construct, be engaged. Maybe if I can get them to find a few methods that interest them then they will use those to complete more of their work. I don't really care how students turn their projects in to me, I just want them to do some work. We can only go up from there.

3. Be Positive- This is the hardest one for me, 1 week into the school year and I already feel it being beaten out of me. I don't want to complain as much. Well, sort of. I question authority, its in my nature, but I need to learn how to do it in a constructive way. From another angle, I need to be more positive towards my kids. Simply meaning, I can't give up on them. Ive given up in the past but Im learning. Setting this goal is the first step, and I think its a big step, to promoting student success even when it is REALLY hard.

Not sure if this can be a meme, but I will tag a few people to see if they have any goals for this year:

Mr. Moses
Kimberly McClain
Belinda Shllingburg

Charter School Staff Development vs.....

I am now entering my 4th year teaching at a large charter school. The school is a distance ed, online curriculum based education model with a hybrid component(which involves one-on-one mentoring). I will talk more about that later on. Tonight I need to rant about staff development.

Staff development in traditional schools is a joke to almost everyone Ive ever talked to. In my school it's not, not normally. Our school prides themselves on shared decision making between administration and teachers. Normally teachers have a say over the type of staff development we do. For example, when we were really frustrated with a speaker who came to our school 3 times in a year to help us work together better, even though their weren't many problems with that, we voiced our complaints and she was taken off the schedule for the next year. Our admin team, Principal and AP, are very cognizant of not wasting the staff's time, I love that about my school. What made me bring up this topic is what happened today.

1. We start school next Monday. Our school is incorporating an entirely new Learning Management System, which is software that integrates all of the teachers curriculum and courses onto one platform for the students to use. Its brand new to us, we have had 1 full day to work on it since we came back to school this Monday and most of us aren't ready to start teaching kids in this new system.

2. Our school is radically shifting its focus this year. First of all, I love radical, and I love change so I'm all for everything that is happening in our school right now. We are shifting our focus to helping At-risk students become successful learners. Prior to this, most teachers, myself included, gave up fairly easily on students who didn't show much motivation and effort to complete their course work. Maybe giving up is the wrong phrase, but we didn't persistently accost them, we didn't persistently motivate them, we basically said "this student isn't right for this learning model." This year we are changing that, at least I know I am, and admin is pushing the rest of the staff to do the same. "Every student can learn in an online environment" is a belief that has overcome me after watching most of my kids fail the last 3 years. That's quite a turnaround. So, I have a high at-risk population with a high dropout and failure rate, how do I get that to turn around. It starts with me, but I need some tools. Our entire staff needs some tools, so today we spent an entire day of our coveted pre-student time to get staff training in working with At-risk students.

3. We start school in 2 days, kids will be in our classes in 2 days, and we have an entire new platform to learn in order to present students with the material for their best possible education. We also need to get some tools for mentoring students because that will be the key to getting these kids to do their work. If we build relationships with more students, more of them will do their work, and more of them will take and pass the HS proficiencies and our school will live to breathe another year. We are on probation through NCLB right now, really bad probation. We had a guest speaker come in today to give us strategies on how to build those relationships with AT-RISK students, to give us tools to help them, to keep them in school, to get them to pass their classes, to get them to learn something. At least that is how the guest speaker was billed, that's the only reason she would of been brought in to take a full day of our very important first week time, because we really need to learn how to work with these kids.

Conclusion: What did we get? We got a lady who came in and spoke for 6 hours. She did not once mention the words: online, distance education, or At-risk (or any of the alternative terms that mean the same thing). She didn't even recognize the uniqueness of our charter. Her presentation did not apply to our service delivery model. She gave strategies for working in a traditional classroom that maybe applies to 1/4 of the teachers in our k-12 program. It didn't apply to the HS, yet the HS faces the biggest risk of closing down next year. She spoke on fundamental first year teacher ed stuff like Gardner. What did we get? another day of lost opportunity to make our classes better for our kids. Not only that, a little bit of hope is gone. I really wanted some staff development that would help me to become better at my job, especially in communicating with our student population. Motivating our student population. So the key question is, if we are a charter school and can do pretty much what we want when it comes to staff development shouldn't we be avoiding the types of development that cause the staff to say, this is a joke? I was pretty mad when the day started and one of the older teachers said to me "you got to know how to play the game," aren't we in this to change the game?

Why I Started this Blog

Tonight I received a meme from a colleague and was asked my opinion about some fundamental school beliefs. Thats a great topic for me to rant about, especially because I am a teacher and teachers need to rant. However, the blog I had set up is designed to be a resource center for my students, and I didn't find it a valid spot to spout my opinions about education, my school, or my philosophies. For the first time since I started blogging, I thought, well I need a place to do that. See, I also have a family website and blog where I talk about my life, my wife, my baby boy, and other things in a well mannered, not to offend, not to philosophize, not to leave the little nest of vanilla family imaging. So I need this place now, mostly just to talk about my views on education, and what is happening in my life at school. But also to philosophize, question life, question life at my school, question life in education, and question my ideas.