To Blog or Not to Blog

I am just a math person. As I can appreciate Principals Heavin's blog, it is just not my style. As it is very nice how she does share her personal stories and relate them to her career to inspire others, I just don't know that I could be that profound each month. I related more as a mom to her blog than as an educator. My own son has just taken the training wheels off of his bike and it is a big deal, a milestone he will remember for the rest of his life. He however, will not tie this event to his education, other than to mark the time period in his life as he just “graduated” kindergarten.

If I were to publish a blog every month, it would turn into more of a newsletter, because that is just more my style. I personally would want the facts. I would want to know any events or assignments coming up and the drop dead deadlines for these. I am not shy about giving my opinions or sharing my thoughts, but I tend to wait until they are solicited, not just put them out there to be commented on by whomever.

If her goal is to be uplifting, a cheerleader, to say we are all in this together, don't give up, then I think her blog has fulfilled it's purpose. But, if this is the sole communication to parents about the school, I think it is lacking what the parents would actually care about, which are the actual events effecting their child's life. If her target is her staff, on one hand it could be a moral boost. On the other hand, some months I'm sure it would feel like a waste of my time to read it. The demands on teachers' time with evaluations, domain paperwork, working extra events to qualify for stipends, let alone quality lesson plans, having great classroom management all while being engaging as they present the state standards at a highly effective level is taxing. Now you want me to read about your life? I think it just comes down to personal preference. I am not a blog reader. So, I don't see myself as a blog writer.  

It's Bracket Time Baby!

I don't have a classroom of my own anymore, but the week before spring break I was back in the classroom collaborating on a project with one of our teachers.  He had found this great article about how the NCAA teams are selected and seated for the NCAA tournament.  We decided to start with this as, he is the 8th grade math teacher, so students would work out the same formulas the selection committee work out, but then we decided to expand it from there to include a more rounded project. Here is how it took shape.

Monday - Student's work out formulas on a worksheet to understand the rating process.  Students find the RPI - (Rating Percentage Index), SOS (Strength of Schedule), and WP (Winning Percentage) for a sample group of colleges.  - They then draw a name of a collage from a hat - that earned their way into the tournament.

Tuesday - Let the research begin.  We are a one to one school with ipads, but for this project we booked a computer lab for ease of having a keyboard.  Students had to research about their school, half basketball related, half academic related.  The teacher provided them with a rubric stating all of the required questions for both parts.  Example questions are what is your schools RPI, what rank were they in their conference, what conference are they in, what is their mascot, who is their best player.  For the academic side, students had to find out what type of institution it is, what degrees are they known for, when was the school established, where is it located, what is the size of the student body, and what is the freshman retention rate.

Wednesday and Thursday -  Student continue with their research and start their creative piece.  They have to design an advertising poster for their school.  This flyer is to address all of the questions, therefore showing how competitive their college is both in basketball and academically. We used www.canva.com for the creation.  Some of the posters blew me away.  Students can be so creative if given the chance.  Projects were due Thursday end of the class period.

As each period finished up their posters - they downloaded them as either a PDF or an image and shared them with Mr. Davis in their class's shared Google folder.  Mr. Davis in turn shared this folder with me.  I then took the PDFs and compiled a Symbaloo www.symbaloo.com for the class.  This class symbaloo was then posted on the the classes MBC account for all students to see. We did this for half of the classes.  The other half he shared with me and I compiled a Google slide slides.google.com presentation with the images.  Since this was the first time we had done a project like this, we wanted to test a few different curation methods to see which we liked better.

Friday - was presentation day.  Mr. Davis pulled up either the Symbaloo or the Google Slide and the student pointed out the main features of the design and proved that their school was the best as they answered all of the rubric requirements.

We chose Symbaloo and Google Slides for a few reasons, both were easy to work with to compile a class composite of posters. However, they required a different download from Canva.  Symbaloo required a PDF by Google Slides required the image download. Both were also easy to post for the classes to see each others work.  Mr. Davis also posted them for the staff to see, as he wanted to highlight some standouts in each class.

I realize this was more the teacher and I using the Symbaloo and Google slides - but now that we know the requirements for each, next year the student could straight upload their slide to the class's Google slide.  Overall the project was a success and it showed off the creativity of the students.

I wish it was as easy as a cartoon (Feb. post)

Sir Ken Robinson's talk and illustrations were spot on.  I think it is great, there is a link between standardized testing and the ADHA rate.  I wish the states in the East would look at this static and heed it's warning.

Schools are factories, the model he showed was easy to follow and made perfect sense.  It however is not so easy to undo this structure as it is to erase the Expo marker.  Even small changes are hard to push through with all of the political struggles over education.  Most decisions are made by people who have never held a classroom of their own. Teachers are the work horses of this factory, we take the lion share of the blame when our "products" do not turn out satisfactory.  Yet, there are so many factors that go into the education of our children and not all of them are found in the schools.

Some people want to run schools as businesses - yet we can't treat children as we would a bad employee or an undesirable client. I once read an article about a Chinese school that at a very young age, students were put into two groups, academic and non-academic. We still hold the dream of "be all you can be" nobody has the right to determine the life path for another human being at such a young age. However, this would put our test scores higher, if we got to "pick and choose" who actually took them. So, what do we do?  We can see the problem as Sir Ken Robinson as described, but are we willing to go through the "pains" of change to "fix" it.

I personally don't think it will happen. We are no longer a new country trying to figure out some basic structures for the first time.  So it comes down to personal desire, work ethic, determination, and fortitude. Yes, students, you can be whatever we want to be.  You will have to want it, work for it and overcome many hurdles both common and personal, but there will be work horse teachers to support you.  Seek them out and thrive.

What Can I Do With Technology?

This is not the right question people!  After reading Amy Heavin's blog, "Technology is NOT an Add-on", I now have the right words to use to convey how I feel.

Yes, my school has gone 1:1 with iPads.  It was very much about the device when we started in year one.  The selecting of the device was a huge decision, and not everyone was thrilled with the outcome of that decision.  Like any good solider, you march forward with what you have and do the best you can.  That first year didn't just contain a learning curve, it was a learning circle.  We had to figure out how to teach without books, how to teach with students having access to the outside world at their fingertips, and there were actually limitation to the ipads - "flash" is a dirty word.

Year two has been better, like I said it was a learning circle.  We are back at the start of a new year, but with some fundamentals under our belt. So, it is now time to say, we know we are doing this, we know we can do this,  how can we do this well? This is where Heavin's blog comes in.  It can't be a device mentality.  Yes we are lucky enough to have a device, but we need to use it to better our curriculum, not dictate it.

So starts the journey of the paradigm shift to not just having the 21st Century Skills as "Add-ons" to the curriculum, but at the center of the curriculum.  We cannot allow ourselves to be stuck on any one tool or any one device, because it is certain that technology is ever evolving and so must we.