To Teach or Not to Teach

This year has been an eye opener. Teachers are supposed to be helping the students learn. I think I have learned that we are more of a yes man than a leader. The parents that complain the most are the ones that get their way - regardless if they are helping their child. This year I have had to justify every thing that I have had to do, not to my administrator, but to a begrudged parent. This parent wasn't even looking out for her son's best interest but trying to get me fired. Everything I did was wrong. Is this worth the end result which is getting the kids to learn? Why don't the parent shave to take responsibility for their child's lake of caring? Why is is all up to us as teachers to make the students learn?
As teen agers, students aren't going to do something they don't want to do. If the teachers are trying to get the students interested in the subject, but the parents show no interest, what are we to do? By teenage years, kids know how to play their parents and know what they can and can't do. Is this battle worth it?

Irony

Technology has taken over our lives - we email instead of snail mail, we no longer use encyclopedias instead we search the web. Our students are required to create eportfolios to share their learning experience. The DOE, however, wants us to print out our teaching portfolios and mail it to them,. They don't want to be look at an eportfolio to see if we are qualified to teach. The irony of them requiring our students to be tech savvy but they want the paper to look at. How can the world be so backwards in terms of the people that are making the laws and enforcing them?

Final Post (I Hope not)

My goal is to keep up this blog - use this site as a place to reflect upon my Web 2.0 experiences with my students (and myself). I will start by talking about facebook. I had never looked at facebook before yesterday. My nephew was in a life threatening car accident on Tuesday. Within hours after the accident dozens of his friends from college and high school posted their prayers to him on his facebook site (search on Nick Cacio). Usually I wouldn't name people, however, this instance is moving and I encourage those of you that belong to facebook to send your prayers (Nick can really use them!)
I am going to end this post on a happy note - my latest web findings - videos for Math

Reflections

In this post I am supposed to reflect on the course Teaching and Learning in a networked environment. What I really want to do is rant. I am so excited to use the tools we learned about over the past 2 months but I hit a roadblock at every turn. Don't use wikis and blogs that aren't secure - sure I can do that. Than they get blocked by the tech coordinator. Don't use tools that may cause the kids harm. Well, how do we teach the kids right from wrong on the web without introducing them to the tools and telling them the dangers? Beside, what is the definition of harm? Use the laptops all the time - I can do that. BUt I'm going to limit what you can do with them. Well which way do you want it - have the kids use them all the time or limit what we can do?

I'm supposed to be the most tech savvy of the staff, hwoever, they won't let me show them to possibilities. How do I convinve them that part of the technology training we are to give our students is safety - not just preventing them from doing the wrong thing by blocking it?
I will look back in a few weeks, after I have my wiki and blogs unblocked, and see what else I can easilty implement this year. Definitely will include podcasts (I just did one for my R&D course). Garageband is a great addition to any powerpoint or website.
Thanks jeff for taking us on a journey that expanded our (and our students) minds!

One-to-one solutions

Client/server computing -- thin clients communicate with an LTSP terminal server via a LAN
(Drawing courtesy of Mark Rais)
Thin-clients save schools money because they are low-powered, diskless, and fanless and use Open-source software. The Linux servers the thin-clients run off are stable and virus protected, thus making upkeep very easy.

PDAs
www.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/handhelds.pdf
The characteristics of the PDAs that met universal
approval included:

• small size – always with you
• instant-on (no waiting for an operating system to ‘boot up’)
• much longer battery life than laptops
• the quantity of data they could hold
• the ‘up-to-dateness’ (currency) of the data
• the ease of synchronisation and sharing of data by infrared ‘beaming’
• the price advantage over laptops.

At their current state of development, responders
suggested the following possible weaknesses:

• small screens
• not rugged enough for school use
• lack of print-out capability (not applicable if networked)
• the time it takes to input data (especially free text)
• the necessity to charge batteries every night (cradles are a must)
• costs of software and accessories
• unstable data storage (but only if the battery is allowed to go flat) leading to lost work.

Advantages for Administration

• Sync with outlook
• Carry student contact information
• Make PowerPoints through PDA
• Portable
• Able to email
• Store documents
• eBooks available
• wireless

Laptops
Having laptops available for every student allows them to learn all the features of a computer but still be able to carry the computer with them. Of the three, which is best? I know of some districts in NH that use each of these types of one-to-one computers. My opinion - buy what you can afford and make it work (a phrase from Project Runway). As tech coordinators and teachers we always make what we have work. That not only provides us with flexibility but teaches our students flexibility. Isn't the purpose of having the technology teaching the students how to chose tools, not one particular technology?

One Computer for every student

Our students have their own laptops. Are we fortunate? Well, depending on the day, I would say yes. I like being able to say "You need to make a table with this information" and have the students decide if they are using a piece of paper or Excel. Or assign a project for them to look up 3 items from the year they were born and compare them to prices now to work on percent change. I like not having to worry about getting access to the laptop cart, however, students don't stay on task. They customize their computers (which is fine with us, if its not during classtime) or say "I couldn't complete that assignment because I didn't have time" We'll time is relative! Given in class time to work on technology projects (we use calculators too) but expecting them to complete it outside of class should be a reasonable expectation. Our students can't take the laptops home as the administration is afraid they would get destroyed, however, they are getting destroyed in school. I just don't think kids care about even their own property. I don't think kids care if they ruin things they own, much less, something the school owns. I understand Jeff's comment about making the laptops their own, but I just don't think kids are responsible. They don't take care of their backpacks or iPods, why would they take care of their laptops?
My biggest concern is the IM and personal webspaces. Kids think they are immune to the bad people out there. we recently had a student who was using her school email to talk to men she had met on a dating website (she's 13!) These men were talking about inappropriate things for any age. She just had no clue it was wrong.
So, the one computer for every student is a great idea - but how do you get them to understand what's right and wrong, when in person they don't seem to know right from wrong?

Second Life

Our tour of Second Life was interesting, to say the least. It was interesting trying to maneuver through the course of the night, especially when my Internet went down. I did finally get to go on the carpet ride, but as you can see, I lost my tail. It seemed to amuse my husband and son who were watching! And, although not the point of our visit, I never did figure out how to put it back on.
I can see using Second Life to get information (a very fun way!) I have been watching shows like CSI and Without a Trace that have people who go missing after using Second Life. I didn't know it was a "real" place. I would have to check it out to see if I could use it in math. There must be lots of math involved. I definitely could show my colleagues how to use it for the other subjects. That will be interesting to figure that out.
I'm a perfectionist of sorts (although you can't tell that from my house right now). I was so concerned about walking that I originally forgot to look around SL. It made me realize that perhaps my students forget to look around and get hung up on the colors and look of their computers instead of what they can do with them!
Hopefully, I will see you in second life again soon.
-Lotus Henhouse