Teacher's Lament Part II

I imagine I could write numerous posts with this title.  It seems that life in the classroom rushes forward at mock speed, and teachers typically are thrust into the winds, racing, dancing, stumbling to keep up.  Ideally, we are forward-thinking, with the time and space to plan thoughtfully.  But reality is more powerful, meetings are more frequent, immediate needs more pressing...

And so, Teacher's Lament Part II is the continued saga of my 20-20 hindsight.  We just finished a unit on persuasive writing.  Students looked at models, marked key components of writing on these sample papers or on their peer's papers, wrote on many different topics, collaborated on ideas, posted online to a real debate forum, gave friendly feedback to peers and so on.

But it just occured to me that using iPads could have been another tool for interacting with the text.  Using Skitch, students could take a picture of their work and mark up or comment on their or someone else's writing.  Using some other PDF reading tool, students could do the same with the sample pieces provided online.  Yes, it is doing the same thing that we did...just with technology.  But, perhaps some kids would have been more engaged, or hands-on, or receptive to really taking time to think through the structure and ideas presented before them instead of rushing through.

It certainly would have been a good experiment, and a way to take my teaching to a new level.

Next time.

Teacher's Lament

Why, oh why, did I not use the iPad to assess students during their boat-building workshop? 

I had plenty of rubrics to fill out on their daily workshop planning forms...right there in their neat little packets that used up so much paper and took so much time to put together and copy.  And did I do it every day?  Open up to page 3...and the next day, page 4...and so on...to circle the appropriate standard for each student?  nope. 

And would I have been much more likely to click on a few items on a pre-made Google survey with drop down menu choices that could later be sorted by student name, day or category, and then saved for later reference?  probably.

Darn you, short term memory!

Code.org

Any educator is going to be intrigued by a video with the caption, "What they DON'T teach in most schools."

I went to watch this ~5 minute video and was brought to the website www.code.org which quotes Steve Jobs: “I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.” 

The video and website also highlights other successful people including coders, designers, entrepreneurs, actors, athletes, politicians and so on.  The message is clear: learning to code is essential.  It helps us problem-solve, create, and participate in today's technology-rich world.

I tried out a few (free) apps for the iPad that were recommended for beginners.  One stood out right away...called Cargo-Bot.  I played around with the tutorial.  The player needs to figure out how to drag and drop signals to move cargo from one platform to another.  Immediately, I found my brain working to problem-solve, to think in terms of cause & effect, and to find a plausible solution after a few failed attempts.  And this was just for the tutorial!!  :)  It felt like a great brain work-out.  One that might postpone Dementia for a few years...

And so how might this apply in a Humanities classroom??  Don't know!!  I'm going to work on that one.  But Coding 101 would make a cool "expert" or enrichment class option for middle schoolers.

123D Catch, Skitch & Floating Boats

Every year, 7th graders at our school embark on an adventure called Hopeameboatafloata.  It is a week-long interdisciplinary unit that uses inquiry to answer the following essential question:  How does the design of a sail powered boat maximize the forces of nature? 

This year, our teaching team decided to explore our own essential question:  How might the integration of technology maximize student understanding of the unit's essential question? 

Two icebergs appeared on our course right away before we even set sail:

1. The epiphany about technology integration happened about two weeks (maybe less?) before the kick-off of our unit.  Nothing new, here...the old "come up with a great idea but no time to plan for it" routine.  As always, we went for it anyway...what's the worst that could happen?

2.  The unit is crammed into one week.  Not enough time!

Nevertheless, Captain Susan Hennessey from Tarrant guided us with a steady hand.  She came in and worked with a small group of our students to pilot a few apps...123D Catch and Skitch.  I would have loved to have seen this group in action!  Apparently, our students were super excited about this opportunity and came up with lots of great ideas on their own about sharing out to their peers, sharing work in the cloud, etc.  And the excitement was noticed by their peers...many asking how they, too, could be a part of a pilot group.

The pilot group's mission was to teach their fellow sailors about the following apps:

123D Catch--capture images of their sailboat design and create a 3D model of the boat.  This would allow them to see areas of strength and weakness in their design.

Skitch--a mark-up tool that would enable them to label important elements of their design.

The group was also then supposed to use these apps on their boat design.  We hoped to be able to share these 3D labeled models with experts in the field who could then provide feedback to our students.

So...awesome ideas, right?!?!  Reality, however, is large and looming.  The icebergs mentioned above were significant enough to alter our proposed course.  At the least, a small group of students learned about the great potential of some interesting apps.  In turn, they shared this information with their peers.  A decent first step.  Who knows, maybe they will make a connection to these apps with a future project?  And there's also Invention Convention week coming this spring...

Perhaps these ideas will set sail once again.  :)