Entr Flickr Refreshr

Have you ever had an obstacle placed in front of you that you wanted to conquer? The thrill of the climb? The joy of the hunt? The breaking of the iceberg? And then after diving in, you realized that your obstacle was much larger than you had anticipated? Maybe teaching has been like that for you. Perhaps your school year has been a never-ending uphill climb.

I took a class through CUE and FPU called Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom. Honestly, that class was an uphill climb for me. So much information had been pushed through this brain and explored with these fingers on this computer that I was feeling exhausted. I had reached that point in Will Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms as well. I wanted to try all of his ideas, but I was overwhelmed by so much information...and his ideas were supposed to help me save time by using web 2.0 tools!

It’s similar to when my family was hiking up to Scott’s Lake just off the Tahoe Rim Trail outside of South Lake Tahoe. We decided we’d take the boys for their first “man-sized hike”. Shucks, my wife and I had hiked pretty hard core before we had kids. Now our kids, ages 10 and 8 at the time, were finally ready to go hard core with us. We took in God’s wonders, the rocks, the trees, the meadows, the mountains, and our destination was Scott’s Lake.

There was a point where we were kind of done with the whole taking in the scenery thing. Some mountain bikers pedaled past us, and we put on a smile, but I think we were all wishing for the lake, the destination. My limited map-reading skills didn’t help us either: “Oh, from the looks of it, we should get there in about 10 minutes.” Try closer to 45...

It wasn’t until those bikers started coming back down the hill and encouraging us--“You’re almost there!” “It’s just around the bend!”--that we started smiling again. We were tired, but we were making the most of it, working on having a good attitude as we awaited the sight of the lake. Needless to say our feet were sore and needed some massaging action.

And that’s where I was at with Will Richardson’s book. 

And that's about where we are right now in the school year. It's the beginning of April, and we all could use a good foot massage. Ah...enter spring break!

Enter Flickr.com

Flickr is just fun. I have no doubt that when I introduce photo sharing to my students, they will feel refreshed, as I was with Richardson’s chapter. His ideas were straight-forward and engaging. Perhaps it was my visual learning style that was sparked by the visual literacy possibilities within Flickr, or maybe it was the storytelling potential of each picture I saw. I was refreshed. And boy, were we refreshed when we halted our hike at Scott’s Lake! Our shoes flew off, and our sore feet got the foot refresher they needed.

It’s this storytelling that motivates me as a teacher. I want to tell stories to my students, and I want them to be able to share their stories with each other as well. On Flickr, I especially like the idea of using Flicktion, using photos on Flickr as story starters. If you look at a photo, it’s meant as a social tool; it’s meant to tell a story.

I plan to upload photographs to Flickr or Picasa and allow the students to choose one to base a story around. I have done something like this with a Chris Van Allsburg story.I do something like this with a Chris Van Allsburg story. We will work on story elements and writing process as we go.

After my family soaked our feet and put our shoes back on for the hike down the hill, we ended up singing some hiking songs, and we even tried some trail-running. We made predictions on arrival time and had a couple good conversations with fellow hikers. The obstacle had been overcome. Even though it was larger than we initially thought, we persevered and conquered.

The end of Will Richardson's book and the end of my Web 2.0 course was inspiring. I look forward to the end of the school year working out the same way. May the trip down the hill be quickr!

Take Back the Teachers' Lounge

When I was a kid, I remember my parents harping on me about who I hung out with and how important it was to choose my friends wisely, to surround myself with "good" influences. Honestly, I got pretty sick and tired of their advice and had to make some mistakes of my own before I figured out they were right.

Now I'm a dad, and I can see exactly how right my parents were, and even how carefully they led me without forcing me, and I can take their parenting cues to lead my own children.

I'm also a teacher, and I notice the relational decisions that face the middle schoolers I see every day, not to mention my own 5th grade son who is approaching middle school himself.

But I would like to speak to the relationships we form among teachers and how important it is to surround ourselves with good influences. I can share with you how I try to do this, and you can use my opinions to shape your practices if you wish.

Beware the teachers' lounge...
You've heard it before. That teachers' lounge can be a hotbed of negativity. Yes, I understand it's your sanctuary, a place to escape the little rascals running through your classroom, somewhere you can let it all hang out. I can't count how many times I've heard (and said), "Little Johnny is driving me crazy today!" It's only natural to seek out other teachers with whom we can commiserate, but I think we must be careful when venting without looking for solutions to problems we come across. Use the lounge for problem solving, and then celebrate your successes together! You might need to be the one who turns a conversation around.

...but don't isolate yourself
I am an introvert. I like to study up and do my own thing. I've had many times in my career when I've hidden away in isolation and have taken care of my classes, quietly proud of my own accomplishments. As I reflect, I see an issue when teaching in this manner.

I don't want it until I see it
I view it like I view advertisements for products on TV: I don't want it until I see it. In my own little bubble, I design my lessons the best I know how, but when I pay attention to what and how my colleagues are teaching, I can consider my approach afresh. It's when I open myself up and share my ideas and listen to others' perspectives that I feel I need to continue to extend my pedagogy; I have a desire to improve my teaching. My wife checks Zulily almost every day, and man, I didn't even know I wanted new flip flops until she had me looking through that awesome deal online. Similarly, when I see the innovation in education, I want it for myself, too.

Enter social media
I like setting goals. I continually need to earn continuing education credits. Put the two together, and I signed up for the Innovative Educator Advanced Studies Certificate, aka the IEASC. Fast forward 6 months...I finished the 18 credits and have a fresh perspective on technology and the need to be informed. Within the program, I took an elective course through FPU called Twitter for Educators from a stand up instructor who jumpstarted my twitter heart. Through the online course and the interactions he encouraged, I was brought way back to my parents' advice: "Choose your friends wisely."

The Twittersphere
With Twitter, I can choose who to follow and build a Professional Learning Network (PLN). I can consider their ideas. I can unfollow them if I feel like it. I can have a big group of tweeps, or I can keep it small; it's completely up to me. I don't follow any celebrities (I don't care that LeBron James just gave his mother a new car--and I only know that because I just Googled it for my purposes here), but I've slowly learned to focus in on the cutting edge themes, ideas, and technologies in education. I can choose my friends wisely, those who can counsel me and help me grow as an educator. And with the Internet being the social monster that it has become, I have multiple options: Google Plus, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, EduClipper, even individual blogs through RSS feeds like Feedly. For me, I keep my social networks to a minimum and try to dive deep into the few I care about. They say Twitter is an ocean in itself, and you can really only take a dip.

A little help from my friends
I'm finding, too, that educators on social media are truly helpful and positive, just the sort of influences we all need in our lives. I've been watching back some episodes of The Two Guys Show with @Techbradwaid and @Techminock. One of their guests (see episode 7 with @4_teachers) created an app called QuickKey that acts as a scantron machine right from your device. I thought I'd try it out and give him some feedback, you know, as an encouragement, so I created a quick video demo of his app and shared it on twitter with him. He was ecstatic with the demo and retweeted it right away. I wanted to share with teachers at my site as well, so I shot them an email of the video. Alternately, I've been encouraged by others to try new and innovative things, and others have given me a +1 on a blog post within Google Plus. To steal a line from The Beatles out of context: "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Take back the teachers' lounge
Somehow we've got to transform the teachers' lounge into the type of place where ideas are shared, problems are solved, and real innovation occurs. It starts with you; yeah...it starts with me. We have got to make our schools safe places to try new things, where failure's just a quick stop on the road to success. And as teachers, we have to build our students up, not only in front of them, but also behind their backs. Surround yourself with the teachers who you know will help you do that.

One last challenge
I learned an important lesson as a kid that I didn't fully realize until I was much older--influence is a two-way street. I strayed a bit off the straight and narrow to become friends with the guy across the street, and though he may have been a poor influence on me (granted, I was no angel), my positive influence turned out to be life-changing for him, my best friend. Is there a teacher who needs your positivity today?

4 Excuses of the Tech-Nervous

I recently led an iPad workshop for our elementary and middle school teachers. Valentine's Day was an inservice day at our school mostly for curriculum mapping, but I was given 45 minutes to share how the iPad could be implemented into classrooms K-8. While the middle school teachers have been sharing an iPad cart of 30 since early in the school year with varying degrees of success, elementary teachers recently received 2 iPads per classroom. Some teachers have been researching iPad implementation on their own, but others struggle with where to start. Others don't want the iPads anywhere near them or their classrooms.

I know a widespread issue surrounding technology integration in general, and iPad implementation specifically, is the lack of professional development for the teachers. I think sharing within the workshop was a good first step, and I supplied a resource for iPad implementation that logically takes a teacher from learning the basics of the iPad to full integration into the classroom. You can see it here. But after presenting, I feel some common excuses abound. Before the iPads get shoved into drawers and forgotten, I would like to refute a few of the excuses I commonly hear.

Excuse #1: My current strategies work just fine.

Now, if you're okay with "fine", I can understand where you're coming from. A few years back I was on cruise control. I taught Spelling, English, Reading, and Social Studies in the sixth grade, and I had fine-tuned an efficiency standard for myself and my students. I taught well, the kids learned well, and I merely tweaked lesson plans from year to year. While I still feel I had designed above average lessons for my students that taught depth of reading and writing skills, there was something missing. The something that was missing was a focus on student learning style and strength; I relied on my strength as a teacher. Students learned the way I taught, but since then I've discovered that I need to teach the way students learn, and technology is a huge piece of that process.

credit: www.usm.edu

One thing I hate to see on my iPad is the little red notification on my app store icon that shows how many of my apps are in need of an update. The higher the number the more frustrating it is. One thing I love, though, is how simple it is for me to tap into the app store and press "update all". App developers are always looking for ways to improve their particular apps, and they listen to the critiques of their customers by using the reviews we submit. What an ideal situation for the classroom! What do our students and constituency need? What do they want from me? Am I willing to change with the times? Am I willing to ask my students or their parents what they desire? Check your current strategies and see if it's time for an update. I am willing to bet that using your iPad(s) or other tech tools will add to the students' learning.

Excuse #2: The 3 R's R all we need.

Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic. I teach the reading and the writing in my role, so you're preaching to the choir if you say these things are important, but I have two things to say about the 3 R's. First, I think we need to be careful about how we approach the 3 R's in education. Instead of a focus on the actual reading, writing, and math skills as an end, the 3 R's must be taught through discovery using critical thinking and problem solving. Second, we've got some new literacies to deal with. Since the explosion of the Internet into our culture, new purposes for reading and writing and even mathematical thinking have emerged. Students access the Internet daily and sometimes exclusively. The reading skills we need to teach students include interpreting and discerning the mass of information on the web. Information on the Internet is much more current than the textbooks we keep referring to in classrooms year after year; literacy education has changed dramatically. Students must be taught how to navigate the types of writing that appear online; it's our task to put the proper tools in students' hands in order for them to understand the world around them. Writing has also changed. I am teaching my sixth graders to blog--see my blog2buds site--for the first time this year, and their purposes for writing have expanded greatly with a chance to connect with others across the globe. Teaching proper responsibility while posting and commenting online is necessary when understanding the new literacies that result from an always connected culture. Additionally, mathematical thinking in our digital age will likely produce the computer programmers of tomorrow. Times have changed, so our teaching must as well.

Excuse #3: The technology is too overwhelming.

This one, I believe, takes a change in mindset. Do you remember when you were in college earning your education degree, or afterward earning your masters' degree or taking classes, going to workshops, perhaps earning a certain certification? I've done each of these things, and I constantly fight the temptation to achieve a letter grade and then fall back into my old routine, the one that I was so comfortable with before I was challenged within the classes I took. I have to battle the mindset that my continuing education is a series of hurdles to leap over in order to finish the race. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to finish, take a breather, and celebrate. But what if we could change our view so that we're not jumping (or stumbling) over hurdles. Instead, we could choose to see those hurdles as gateways, and with each pass, the new opportunities that abound.

When I was in school at Calvin College (Go Knights!), the catch phrase in the education department was that we were preparing to become "reflective practitioners". Instead of taking a course or workshop to earn a required credit, we must use the courses we take to carefully reflect on our current teaching and learn new strategies for quality implementation. The same is true for technology integration. You've been handed an iPad--now what? It will take time and research to figure out how to use it to the students' advantage within the classroom, but isn't it worth the work load? Have you seen the student outcomes when you try a new cutting edge technique? Have you seen the student engagement? Do you have class management issues that have disappeared? I have. The students are excited to try new things. Please continue to be a "reflective practitioner" in your teaching and don't fall into the trap of efficient routine. Energize your teaching with some engaging possibilities, including tech, and I think you will find new joy in teaching rather than focus on how overwhelming your job is.

Excuse #4: I'm too afraid to make mistakes.

I am an analytical person, and I like predictable outcomes, but this school year after completing the Innovative Educator Advanced Studies Certificate (IEASC) through Fresno Pacific University (FPU) and Computer Using Educators (CUE), as well as receiving an iPad cart in our middle school, I've chosen to let go of the reins (mostly) and allow the students to run out of the gates so that I can feel out where their strengths lie. Interestingly, I found that toward the beginning of the year many students were wary of my new approach. Though sixth grade is typically quite a transition anyway, a lot of kids still weren't prepared when I handed them a Google Apps for Education (GAfE) email, and only now they are beginning to better understand the power behind the Web 2.0 tools I've presented. It was slow-going at first, but now my students are coming up with their own solutions to problems that occur.

They and I have made mistakes along the way, and we've found that failure is a completely natural piece of the educational process. My students have seen me try to present something (with or without technology) that failed to work, only to see me make decisions to alter my approach. From there, they settle into taking their own risks with the iPads I hand to them on particular days. Similarly, I've heard stories from frustrated parents who have had tech breakthroughs at home because of the problem solving they've had to spend time on related to course work I've assigned.

Every day we ask our students to take risks and to try things that are uncomfortable for them. Why won't we?

What now?

In my previous post, I played with the phrase "failure's not an option" and instead titled it Failure's Not Optional. I just re-read the last part of it, and one of the sentences I shared about students was this: "Let them loose." I guess a related idea would be, "Let them lose." And by losing, by failing, students learn to approach the problem from another angle; isn't that what learning is?

So what about you? Have you used one of the above excuses when considering technology? Do you visit the teachers' lounge and complain about what is required of you regarding the technological nuances you face? Do you find that your established routine is paramount to your teaching? I would encourage you to step away from your comfort zone.

View the hurdles in education not as an obstacle to overcome but as a gateway toward further success. Perhaps your change in mindset will spark a movement in your classroom or school. Collaborate with your colleagues, check with your PLN on social media, and get on the cutting edge.

blog2buds

Well, I finished the Innovative Educator Advanced Studies Certificate, the IEASC, an online educational technology certification through Computer Using Educators (CUE) and Fresno Pacific University. I can say to everybody who cares that it has transformed how I teach. It was quite a ride: I was able to succeed in completing 18 units in 6 months from April to October. Completely done.

From learning Google Drive...to exploring numerous Web 2.0 tools...to implementing iPads...to taking the plunge into classroom blogging with my sixth graders, using technology as a tool to help students create deeper meaning has become an expectation I have of myself, and I hope to spread the joy within my sphere of influence.

As a class, we have published our first blog posts to our Australian

photo credit: Lisa Nielsen

friends. In the welcome paragraphs that the students shared with the Australian class, they made sure to begin with a jovial greeting, continue with some information about themselves, and end with a few questions for their buds across the globe. After a 2 week term break in Australia, we eagerly await responses within the blog comments. This will be our first real communication with our buddies who live almost 8,000 miles west of us!

We have just completed one quarter of our school year, so you could say that our road has been slow-going. But I believe it is extremely important to do something like blogging for the very first time in a deliberate manner. We laid the groundwork in August, September, and some of October, and now we will continue our journey and see what's around the bend.

As a teacher who just completed an intensive series of courses to earn the title "Innovative Educator", I feel as if a journey is ending, but if I'm completely honest with myself, I know my journey is far from over. And I want to take as many as I can along for the ride.

Part of the requirement of the IEASC program was to create a project that could innovate education and be effective on a global scale. As I took an elective course as part of the program through FPU called Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom in June and July, my eyes were opened to student blogging, and I decided then that I wanted my Language Arts students to blog their way through sixth grade. I didn't quite know where to start: some pieces fell into place and some had to be pounded into the proper shape, but my final project became blog2buds. It is a website that documents my blogging journey with my students, offers suggestions for other teachers who would like to start blogging in class, and connects educators by using my blog2buds Google Plus global community.

If you haven't already clicked on the link above, you should check out blog2buds now!

This is an unveiling of sorts. It's the road I'm taking. As I travel, I hope to see you along the way. Perhaps we could travel together for while and get to know each other and share some stories as we walk along toward our destinations.