Do You Make Room for Teaching INefficiently?

We all love how efficiently technology helps us find, recall, and create information, right? I can more efficiently contact the parents of my students through our online Student Information System. I can recall and edit old documents and lessons plans from my Google Drive just by searching. I can grade assessments more efficiently through my MasteryConnect GradeCam, Google Forms, and/or any number of apps and websites set up to give our students fast, formative, differentiated practice and feedback. (We use Renaissance Learning's, Accelerated Math most in my district, I just saw MathSpace at the St. Louis EdSurge event, Khan Academy has a coaching/practice element, and FrontRow has contacted me before - seems like a good product.)

But sometimes, in our hussle to meet and assess our power standards, track students progress and remediate/differentiate, or run class through our time-tested, "this works best for me" classroom procedures, we get TOO efficient. 

I have an old friend from college, Matt Inman (now a private-practice therapist in Austin), who started a podcast and blog this year titled, Inefficiency. His motto is, "Going out of our way, for that which we love most." The idea has really resonated with me personally as I've binge-listened to past episodes this month, but the idea that is sticking with me professionally came from episode 6 with psychotherapist, Dr. Roy Barsness. Dr. Barsness was describing a patient he had invested a lot of time and energy with, spent a lot of "inefficiency" on, who wound up becoming inappropriately attracted to him - to the point of suicide if he would not go to bed with her. He recounts his experience with this difficult patient:

"Many people would have dropped her...what i hated was the difficultly of working with a borderline patient, and that the patient was the problem. All I knew was my patient wasn't my problem. The problem in that room I was me - I didn't know how to be with that patient. And so I tell my students, be really careful with psychopathology, because this is the only way the patient knows how to be, and YOU have to learn how to be with that and to discover together where there's a different way of being. And so I hated that blaming of the patient, and especially of the borderline during my training... I thought, "I can work with her. The problem is... she needs a lot more than I can even give yet, but I was scrambling like crazy to find out if I could find it..." - Dr. Roy Barsness, Inefficiency Podcast, Ep. 6

My wife and I joke(?) a lot at home about how often on TV and in movies that teachers end up sleeping with their students, so lets steer away from that as NOT the point of this example. Think about those students in your school who bounce from teacher to teacher, never really connecting with anyone. How often do we talk with out colleagues that, "if she would only figure out ______," or "I really need his parents to ______ before he can be successful in my class."

Don't these kids get the most lost when we rigidly stick to the efficiencies that technology afford us in our classroom? Flipping out classrooms is a terrific use of video and so transformative for many students' ability to better understand lecture content, but I've seen a lot of students turned away at some of their neediest moments with, "Go watch the video." Its inefficient to say something that they should have gotten from that lesson's video, but it might be most caring. We go to great lengths to set up our class websites, and get all of our handouts/content online. It's quite efficient to always directly dismiss students to the class website or Google Classroom when they need something we've put on there, but sometimes, I think the right thing is to just stop what you're doing and serve that student.  It's inefficient, but our students matter, right?

"But you're just dismissing their immature behaviors and lack of responsibility." You were just thinking that, weren't you? I'm not writing this to excuse irresponsibility from 16/17/18 year olds that should really know better (and often DO better at their after-school jobs, or even in other teachers' classrooms). The key to building that relationship with that difficult, needy student is, as Dr. Barsness put it, "to discover together where there's a different way of being." Whether they are or not, I think our default assumption as teachers has to be one our best intentions from our students. That on most days, most of the time, they're giving us the best of what they have to work with in the situation.

As much as legislatures across the states want to make clear the evidences of our work after just a few months, education is a marathon. You might get thanked by a great lecture or a particularly interesting/engaging project/lesson/activity, but the things that matter most for our students happen after they leave us. in the NEXT math class, they pull that nugget of knowledge out and apply it to a project. In someone else's class they come up with a creative inquiry question to drive a project and then see it through. Our students that end up learning the most from us are the ones that needest us and we were able to give - we inspired or gave to them more than others.

I think finding moments to teach inefficiently in the midst of all the efficient technologies we build around us makes all the difference in finding satisfaction, purpose, and reward in our work. Nothing about scanning a bubblesheet makes me want to go back to class everyday, but taking time for creatively engage my students or reflect on one more thing to try with my students gets me there often.

Where is your well? In order to continue coming back, again and again for our students, we must have more to give. What are you filled with? How do you renew? ONE important life-giving activity is reflection and looking forward.

Matt posted a 2015 Year End Review on the Inefficiency website that I would wholeheartedly encourage you to fill out before returning to school. Don't pressure yourself to do it all at once, though. I think I took 3 different sessions of sitting for about 20 minutes to get through it, but it was great for thinking back and on setting personal AND professional priorities for 2016.

Is Technology Spending Wasteful?

Education writer +Bill Ferriter  (Twitter: @plugusin) has written twice the past week questioning the efficiency/effectiveness/wisdom of schools driving change and improvement with technology initiatives. The two posts, titled "Note to Principals: Stop Spending Money on Technology," and "Is YOUR School Wasting Money on Technology" have got me thinking about our own district's technology policies and ideologies. I mean, I literally JUST finished a grant proposal to outfit all of my school's math classrooms with Chromebooks.

The argument that grabbed me most that Bill shares is from Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein. Ferriter paraphrases it as -

His argument is simultaneously simple and scathing: The students sitting in our classrooms are nothing short of complete failures because despite growing up in a world of incredible intellectual opportunity, they have made almost no progress on traditional measures of performance.

I feel like there is a lot of truth to be explored there - our students have volumes of knowledge in the  devices in their pockets, and we still have students struggling to pass Algebra 1 in the 10th and 11th grade at our schools. If you believe that technology should be helping these kids learn, then it should be helping students learn faster and earlier, to close the achievement gap, to engage at-risk learners, and whatever other buzzwords you're seeking to create new problems for.

I don't think the problem is in the technology, however. its in the way that the average educator/administrator/district continues to leverage it. Instead of developing systems in which students are encouraged to explore those vast libraries of accumulated knowledge via the web, we have labs and carts of desktops and laptops that stay locked away or out of use until its time for benchmarking, practice testing, or real testing. The technology isn't producing any new results because we aren't expecting any different products.

When technology is used as a substitution for worksheets, nothing has functionally changed.
When technology (or flipped learning) is used as a substitute to kids reading their textbook, nothing has functionally changed.
When the teacher uses the technology to present notes, to lecture, and to lead multimedia, nothing has functionally changed from dry-erase and filmstrips.

Ferriter's theme between the two posts ends up steering here - TECHNOLOGY is not going to save failing schools. TECHNOLOGY is not going to pull students ahead of their parents' generation. TECHNOLOGY is not going to teach children. What we DO with TECHNOLOGY affects the change we seek. When we use technology to support pedagogy that is student-centered and aims to develop and nurture students into young adults that seek out knowledge and can leverage tools to solve problems, THEN you can change students, schools, and communities.

The question is not, "What can we do with technology," but, "What do we want our students to do? How can we use technology to support that?"

@plugusin image

How do we run this grand experiment? Is pedagogical change on systematic scales possible, or should we scale back technology expenditures in favor of supporting students with human capital like tutors and teachers?

What's a Library For?

Recent posts from MindShift, Slate, and Good on the future of libraries have got me thinking- 

Of the pictures below, which best typifies why does someone goes to the library? What's the main activity?

Historically, you're probably thinking of the picture on the left, but what about the future? What's the mission of a library? Let's take a look back to the gilded age and see what Andrew Carnegie, the tycoon philanthropist responsible for many, many public libraries' founding in the US, had to say about their importance:

"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."
“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” 

The irony of modern library funding is that organizations or regions with the most resources (and therefore, best libraries) are probably less in need of their power to democratize information and learning. What do our impoverished communities need more in 2015: books, or internet access? Is there still a role for physical books? Of course! There's nothing to replace (at least for now) the warm fuzzies of cracking open a new book and cuddling with my kids to read. 

But back to the role of libraries - it took a billionaire philanthropist to get the public library system a kickstart because books are expensive. Building up personal libraries or archives of books took a wealth of time, space, and money. But their role in expanding the knowledge base of a community are invaluable. Today, relying on books (a traditional, conservative view of libraries) is a model that can only be sustainable to a community that is not reliant on the real point - lifting the learning and resources of a community it serves. If you have reliable, consistent access to the internet to gather information, then you may not need the library in a traditional sense. You can use it more for memories-with-kids-warm-fuzzies. But ask someone who does not have that access, and a student will tell you how much they rely on the library to complete online assignments, an adult will tell you how hey went to the library to apply for new jobs or prepare their taxes online. 

This graphic from the New York public Library says a lot:

How Do You Define a "Calculator"?

As our technology shifts from being based on hardware (music player, camera, "computer," telephone, datebook, notebook) to based around software (all of those things living on your smartphone or tablet), we've also seen a shift in the tech capacity of our classrooms.

Humor me for a moment and tell me this - which of the following are "calculators?"

All images under Creative Commons license

Did I surprise you with any of those choices? There is probably some debate between #6-8, and the thought of 1 and 2 being very useful to you might be amusing, but my point is that what we call "calculator" has evolved to match the power of our technology. 

Most everyone I teach with grew up with access to a graphing calculator (even if it was a TI-81), so its quite natural to have your students use it in the same way, but there was a lot of debate in the 80s about whether or not kids should be using calculators, and then again in the 90s about kids using graphing calculators. 

To me, the next phase in this discussion is the use of physical calculators with algebra solvers or apps like PhotoMath (which I wrote about here) or HomeworkSolver (picture above as #8).

Similar to how students hover over the problem with their device's camera in PhotoMath and identical to how a student would use Wolfram Alpha, students enter the equation to be solved and what is returned to them is a step-by-step solution that gives them the value of the variable.

I found a kid using this app a couple of weeks ago while he was working on practice solving some level of inequalities. The discussion went something like this after he came to show me all of his answers.

"I'm done, Mr. Baker"
"Cool. Next time, do that all by yourself."
"What do you mean? I did do this!"
"Nah, man. I watched you over their on your phone looking at the answers."
"This is just a calculator!"
"No, calculators just do things like 9*6=54"
"You CAN do that on here." [which wasn't a lie]

I was kind of stuck. He was right. I finished with what I feel like is a cop-out answer: "Well, you can't use that in here." That's fine that I set that rule for class, and I am responsible for making sure this kid can solve an equation in Algebra 1, but it ignores the real debate.

What constitutes a "legal" calculator in your classroom? 

• Is it scientific? (Better stop giving those order of operations problems, and operations with integers, then.)
• Is it scientific with a muli-line display? (Don't assess your kids ability on fractions, then. Those have a fraction button. They also simply irrational numbers.)
• Is it a graphing calculator? (Are kids "cheating" then if they use their calculator to produce a graph on their paper "by hand?")

Let's frame it in the context of our real job - which calculator best prepares our students for the "real-world" ahead of them?

If I'm answering that question for myself, the least I get to is to allow graphing calculators at all times, and I'm still on the fence about algebraic calculators. We need to change what we ask of kids in our curriculum, because we can't erase the technology.

What's It Mean to Innovate?

Source: dictionary.com

Do you think of yourself as an innovative teacher?
What do you think of this definition?

verb (used without object), innovated, innovating.
1. to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.

It's all relative, I think. What may seem like innovative instructional methods (new, challenging to the establishment) could be common place somewhere else. What I might do with my students on my class iPads when we are writing or even drilling with interactive practice might look innovative to a teacher who doesn't have individual devices for each of their students, but would be ordinary in an established 1:1 environment.

Here's a quick list contemporary buzz-word areas of innovation:

• STEM-integrated focus
• STEAM-integrated focus
• Game Based Learning
• Project Based Learning
• Flipped Classroom
• Flat Classroom
• Virtual School
• Global Classroom
• Parental Involvement
• Special Needs Learning
• Makers Spaces
• Robotics
• Coding

It doesn't take long reading blogs, scanning social media, or sitting at a technology conference to know that there is a wide range of implementation across education of all of the items listed above. Imagine you were in a school that does the flipped classroom very well and you were feeling very average as far as your implementation. If you were to move to a school in which NO ONE was flipping, you could make quite a name for yourself using the exact same instructional methods you had been using at your old school. When you have new skills and knowledge to share, don't you feel more innovative? I wonder if +Jon Bergmann still feels like an innovator now that he's been doing the flipped classroom for a decade. 

Do you have to be pushing the envelope on more than one of these areas to be "innovative," or just hitting one really well? Is there a layer of influence to earn the title of "innovator"? If you are the only teacher you know doing something new and no one knows about it, is it a "worthy" innovation?

Perhaps the answer is that "innovative" must be have a dynamic meaning because its definition is so subjective to its context. Remember, incandescent light bulbs were once an innovation.

Here's my own definition of innovative education technology practice as we teach at the end of 2014.

It should really go without saying that the teacher is using technology in the classroom, but where the "innovators" are defined begins in the varying degrees of student use of technology in the classroom. During an accreditation visit two years ago, we lost a lot of points for student use (or lack thereof) of technology in the building, so you don't have to be too far on the scale here to be a tech "innovator," but in a different setting, more would be required. 

So back to the "Are you an innovator" test. Let's just use the definition for where you are.

Are you making changes to what is established? Do you introduce new ideas?

The PhotoMath App is Good, and History Says Its Here to Stay

In case you haven't heard about it yet, there is a new education app for iOS and Windows Phone devices called PhotoMath. Most basically, the app utilizes the camera on your device to recognize numbers and letters, runs an algorithm, and then displays a solution on the screen. From there you can follow the solution it generated step-by-step.

Here it is in action.

There are two ways to respond to the Photomath app, really. One is a reaction of fear, and the other one of promise.

This app is really cool,  people! The computational power behind pointing a camera at an equation or expression and having it solved or simplified step by step for me (nearly instantaneously) should really impress us, right? My hope is that the PhotoMath app and it's future iterations will be the disruption in math education we've been looking for. How much longer can classrooms ignore the technology and force students to solve everything by hand (and then stop there)?

Let's look at a brief (and roughly estimated) timeline of math technology in education:

• 1970s: 
• Computers are cool and all, but we mustn't let them replace the computational and arithmetic skills of our students. What if the technology goes away?
• 1980s: 
• Handheld calculators are cool, but we should only give them to students once they've learned their math facts anyway. What if the technology goes away?
• 1990 and 2000s: 
• Graphing calculators are a great tool, but students still need to know how to do it all by hand. What if the technology goes away?
• 2010s: 
• That's really impressive that you can make full color graphs on your smartphone/tablet, zoom in and out, change axis scales, and locate points of interest with a swipe and a pinch, but they can't use those on "the test," so they aren't worth the time.
• Wolfram Alpha can solve equations for you? That's a really cool tool for college students to use as they explore upper-level mathematics. I hope my kids don't find that and cheat. Besides they need to know how to solve equations for "the test."
• 2014: The PhotoMath app

What side of history will you be on?

As I noted in the timeline above, technology to solve our kids' equations on their homework has been in their hands or laptops via Wolfram Alpha or CAS graphing calculators for years already. The PhotoMath app makes it even easier to access that power, but I think your attitude toward Wolfram Alpha should mirror the opinion you ultimately take of PhotoMath. Will you embrace the technology and lead conversations and work to push for lessons and assessment in your school that expect more of students than x=_____, or will you wait for someone else to make that decision? I think history foreshadows that you'll be dealing with it eventually, anyway.

Algebra on a Chromebook: LucidChart Diagrams

I've heard more than once that laptops or Chromebooks in a 1:1 environment get relegated under the desk during math class because the classroom teacher struggles with finding ways to integrate the technology into what is usually a much more hands-on process with graph paper, pencil, and exercises.

I think the easiest answer is to have kids using the laptops for watching videos, looking up examples on webpages, or drill and practice on websites. The sexy answer is to have kids engaged in problem-based learning, integrating their math work into relevant reports, graphs, images, and presentations, but first you would have to also sell problem-based learning on the teacher.

In between the easy answer and the sexy answer lies LucidChart Diagrams, whose collection of education templates can facilitate note-taking, critical thinking, the problem solving process, organizing and summarizing, sequencing, and concept mapping.

Let me show you briefly how a student could use LucidChart Diagrams to integrate writing and list the steps to solving an equation.

You can find LucidChart Diagrams in the Chrome App Store

After clicking on "Create," this box pop-ups, giving you a selection of templates. There is an extensive "education" collection.

This is the "sequence chart" which you could use for any technical writing task. 

Your next task is inserting an image of a worked out equation for students to write about. Scroll to the bottom of the menu on the left and select the plus icon to add an image. This box pops up in which you can do a Google search or upload your own (student or teacher created)

Here's what mine looks like after resizing the image some and inserting each of my steps. (click to zoom or pop out to new tab)

Other charts you might use - 

• Venn Diagrams
• Cluster/Word Web
• Compare and Contrast
• Concept Map - use to connect similarities and differences in characteristics of functions
• Planning Chart - problem solving or think alouds
• Vocabulary Chart - visualizing unit vocabulary, grouping similar/related words
• T-chart - change the headings and use as guided notes/interactive notebook. students import images of examples and type in on the right side.

On Being An Expert

Think about anything you consider yourself an "expert" in - a skill related to your profession, a hobby, a category of trivia or knowledge. How did you become an "expert?" You probably have a certain acumen for learning new things related to your area of expertise, but ultimately, it came down to a decision you made at some point to seek and find knowledge about a topic. And then to do it again and again and again.

Talent is something you are more or less born with. Expertise is nurtured, coddled, and deliberately tended to so it will grow. You may have few talents, but anyone can develop expertise. It's a numbers and perseverance game.

That said, my district is in up to our knees in a software transition for every major information system we use. Every employee in the district is in effect relearning how to do their job this semester. Through a little bit of formal professional development and a whole lot more informal and self-directed, I've become the go-to guy for SIS tutorials, questions, and gripes.

The switch is affecting our students and families, too, because we don't have their access to online grades and attendance unlocked yet, so the school newspaper is working on a piece about it. I was approached by a student-reporter today for some quotes about SIS. 

I spent a lot of time crafting these responses, and I like 'em, so I decided to post them here, too. :)

STARGAZER: If you know, why was there a change from Edline to Tyler?

CHUCK BAKER: The way that SIS can manage and integrate the data we generate in our gradebooks and attendance with your student records is a leap from Edline. Our attendance software was from the 80s, our gradebook from the 90s... Data is KING in the 21st century, and SIS is going to make how we manage, manipulate and analyze our student data much easier.

SG: How will the affect students and their ability to view their grades easily like they did with Edline, and will students be able to access grades on Tyler like they did with Edline -- if yes, when?

CB: Right now, teachers must give students and parents print-outs or post grades on the wall of the classroom, which is what a teacher with more than 6 or 7 years of experience used to have to do anyway because it was the ONLY option. You know how things are a little bit sucky when an app is in beta? We're in beta with our SIS implementation still.The plan according to the district technology department is to open the student/parent portal (your side or SIS) for 2nd semester, but there's a chance it could be sooner.

Some elementary teachers were using NO form of electronic gradebook, so putting everything into SIS is a HUGE leap for them. We have to wait until the majority of teachers in the whole district have the gradebook figured out.

SG: Will there be any long-lasting affect of this switch during the current school year, if yes what will they be?

CB: I don't think you'll notice any long-lasting effects of this switch during the current year from the your teachers. The grade level offices are able to check attendance and discipline much quicker now, so they might be able to be more proactive in addressing patterns of absence or behavior before they are too late to fix. I think we might see more differences next year, when much more of the staff is very comfortable with the system.

SG: Have students complained to you about their inability to easily view their grades?

CB: My AP Stats students (my seniors) complained on like, the 2nd day of school, but my other students have been cool with the printouts I've been giving them. From my experience, giving students a piece of paper is sometimes more effective in focusing their attention away from the Snaps and notifications bombarding their devices. I find it in myself, too. I often will open my laptop or grab my iPad to do some actual work, but I get lost in social media or crushin' candy - if I need to leave the distraction of iPad, I do the work on paper first.

SG: What will be noticeably different from Edline?

CB: My favorite noticeable difference for students and parents to look forward to once your side of SIS is unlocked is that there will be much more information available to you in once place. Besides just grades, attendance will also be readily accessible, and teachers will be able to post any extra directions or links to web and/or multimedia content for a lesson right on the listing on the grade report. You would not have to specially ask for such and such handout that you need to complete missing or make-up work, or to find the link to your math teacher's video lesson.

SG: If you could chose a few of the positive affects of implementing this system, what would they be? The negatives?

CB: 

Positives:

1. The parent/student side of SIS looks more user-friendly than the reports Edline gave you, and I like the idea of being able to provide lesson resources right there instead of uploading them to a different site that you have to access separately.
2. Our various data sources integrate more easily - student attendance or behavior patterns can be caught, monitored, and addressed before they become larger problems.

Negatives:

1. Online grades being inaccessible for now
2. CHANGE. A lot of people really hate change, man.

"Good" Use of Education Technology

What makes for "good use" of a computer lab, laptop, or tablet cart?

The prevailing pedagogy for "21st century" or "rigorous and relevant" learning would say the ideal involves students engaged in some relevant, collaborative inquiry-based project, or simulating/investigating a model not otherwise possible or enriched by software/the web.

But what about other times?

Is standardized testing good use?
Is practice-testing for computer based standardized testing good use?
Is content-related gaming good use?
Is word processing good use?
Is watching tutorial/flipped classroom videos good use?
Are drill and kill practice websites good use?

The answers to all of these questions depends on the current situation in your building and the current needs of your students. Clearly, if all of your students have access to computers and a lot of bandwidth at home, using  the lab for students to finish projects or watch videos may not be a good  use. However, if you're choosing between students turning in 1970s-era projects or giving kids access to create polished, media-rich projects at school, the best use of resources is to have kids create in the lab.

Bottom line, the best use of school technology resources is to USE THEM. Once we're fighting everyday for access to the lab or carts then we'll be more selective and demanding of the way they are used. 

Create Digital Manipulatives with PicCollage App

Searching for a fun way to enrich my students who had already watched and accounted for the videos for today's lesson, I decided to have them create and use manipulatives to model the addition and subtraction of integers that I had presented in my flipping videos.

My first decision was to just have them use paper, but with other kids in the room catching up on the videos on the class iPads, that almost seemed like a PUNISHMENT. "Good job doing your homework and getting ahead. Now give me back the technology - you can cut paper squares." Not exactly the engaging environment I was hoping to create. While rethinking it during my prep, I opened my iPad just to look through my apps to see which of them might give me some of the create-a-shape-and-then-move-it-around functionality I was seeking.

I settled on the app PicCollage (iOS | Android), which I previously used last year to have students construct a Frayer Model for our exponent rules.

Here are some student examples. Taco vs. Nachos was my favorite. :)

That was "-6 + 12 =" in the blue text, in case you're thinking this kid was as lost I was first thinking when I looked at it. :)

This was is also -6 + 12

7 + (-12)

The real winner was when the creator of smileys vs slushies above used HIS OWN MODEL to help out the kid next to him who was a little confused on how to use the model. Student win!

SMART Notebook Template for your #Flipclass Videos

One of the more common complaints I here from students in flipped classrooms are that they want their teacher to teach the class. This is usually in response to the model as a whole, but using other teachers' videos definitely exacerbates the complaint.

+Lodge McCammon's method suggests teachers K.I.S.S their approach and do their video with a simple whiteboard behind them in one take. The approach is certainly more luddite-friendly than editing an iMovie project or even screencasting on an iPad or other tablet, but it also passes on the opportunity we have to include multimedia in your lesson.

For the first time in the "studio" this year, my Algebra 1 co-teacher and I decided to put some slides together in SMART Notebook and present at the board as we would in class. Expecting that he and I will be doing this dozens of times throughout the year, I created a template to make our video sessions more efficient during our common planning period or PLC times once the school year begins.

Download this template as a SMART Notebook file here

Here are our first efforts. I think we're still working on the lighting - putting the guy with dark skin on the dark side of the room was obviously a problem. :)

Calculating with Siri and Google Now

It may not be most practical or efficient, but there are some advantages to doing calculations with Siri or Google Now on your smartphone or tablet.

Advantages:

• Hands-free
• Other relevant information and representations also given (only on Siri, via Wolfram Alpha)
• Don't have to open a separate app
• Opportunity to judge reasonableness, check answer - if Siri comes up with a value that doesn't make sense, you have to reevaluate how you communicated that calculation.

Is voice search ready to take the place of your students' scientific or graphing calculators? Of course not! It's not even a practical replacement of the calculator app. However, especially with Siri/Wolfram Alpha, I really appreciate that it gives the students information that didn't even ask for. You know, sometimes they might be bored enough to check it out. ;)

On Recommending Scientific Calculators

Tops on the list of any middle or high school math class is always (at least) a scientific calculator. There are, of course, many makes and models for a price range of $1 to $25.

Parents often ask at summer house, "Which calculator does my child need?"

This is a nuanced question for me because the answer often depends on the course and the student, and the family budget (or lack thereof) for such things.

In a best case scenario, I would hope a kid could have a multi-view display that allows for entering data in tables and editing matrices, like this TI-36X Pro (http://www.officemax.com/technology/calculators-accessories/scientific-calculators/product-prod3490004). It does all the work the average student would do with a graphing calculator except for the actual graphing. (Which may be good or bad, depending on your beliefs on students doing graphs by hand). I do not, however, suggest this for everyone, because if the student is prone to losing supplies, once its lost, there's probably just going to be a longer period of time until a replacement is purchased. 

For the average student, which calculator they have is probably less important than simply the fact they HAVE ONE. Whenever possible, I find it most useful for myself and my students to have at least a 2-line display so I can view what calculations I've entered (plus, these usually also will do simple descriptive stats). Anything similar to these: 

For the most lost/stolen inclined, i usually recommend they go to Dollar Tree and pick up SEVERAL, so they can stockpile extras. (Buy 'em by the case online! http://www.dollartree.com/Jot-10-Digit-Scientific-Calculators/p339865/index.pro) They're obviously less functional and durable, but its far more often I see calculators lost before broken from usual wear and tear.

So, quality or quantity? Which do I recommend?

If I were buying for my own children, I would pick up something in the mid-range that has at least a 2-line display to send with them to school. If you buy in July or August during Back-to-School sale season, you can get these for just under or just over $10. (If you wait until later in the year, the regular price is usually between $13-$18.)

If the likelihood of your student's calculator being lost/stolen/damaged is pretty high, I do suggest going the bulk route via the $1 models at Dollar Tree. I'd thrown in a if-you-keep-this-until-November-we'll-buy-you-something-better condition, too, because they really are better off with the 2-line display.

For teachers, buying these $1 models are great for loaning out or selling in class for a couple reasons:

1. You'll care less when they inevitably walk away
2. Since they're less functional, they'll be in less demand (students have incentive to get their own)

3 Reasons Your Classroom Needs a Charging Station

With the exception of the last two weeks of May, I had a corner of my classroom near my iPad cart that had two different surge protectors available for kids to plug in and charge their phones/tablets/eReaders. I needed one of them to power the iPad cart anyway, so I figured the other open spaces would be a good opportunity to be "cool" about my students and their devices.

My initial expectations were that I would avoid a lot of conflict from kids unplugging classroom materials (like the iPad cart or my printer) to plug in their chargers without asking. What happened were two outcomes that had me second-guessing my experiment. The students began to fight over 6 or 7 charger spots (because many were charging when they didn't really need to), and instead of losing a distraction at their seats, the phone became more distracting as they would want to go back and forth to check for new texts and notifications. 

I announced to my friends in the math office last week that I was deeming the charging station a failure, and that it would not be returning next year. "Honestly, I thought you were crazy just for trying it," a friend in my PLC said. My own assessment was that perhaps I'd been naive about my students maturity to put the devices back there and leave them alone.

Today I'm rethinking. 

I read this from an ongoing series from Fast Company featuring creative people (http://www.fastcompany.com/3029506/most-creative-people-2014/charmian-gooch)

"When people say something is really crazy or naive, that's when you know you're onto something," says Charmian Gooch of her latest campaign to end corporate secrecy laws.

Double-whammo. Between my colleagues and my own self-doubt, I confirmed that perhaps, the charging station could be worth it. And I'll tell you why you need one for your students, too.

1. The charging station is a chance to practice discipline, self-control, and responsibility. 

It bugs me when kids tell me how grown up they are,  but we DO have a responsibility to give them opportunities to practice responsibility in the grown-up world. Controlling access to outlets in your classroom against people who have a legitimate use for them just feels to me like one of those things that look crazy out of the context of my little classroom-kingdom.

2. The charging station allows kids that want to use their devices for class to use freely without fear that their battery won't make it until they can plug up at night at home.

Many kids really DO have their cellphones (at least in some part) as a safety device to allow parents to more easily keep track of them. 

3. You'll save time and frustration from students asking you if they can charge their phones in the USB on your desktop, or anywhere else.

Besides the unintended consequences I mentioned, the charging station DID also do what I'd hoped. I spent much less time dealing with charging requests and anger with kids sneaking behind my back to charge their phones in outlets I was using myself.

Having to exercise classroom/behavior management (the kids going back and forth from their seat to check their phones) isn't a reason to not try (and keep) something new. So, you'll find a charging station in my classroom next year, and I look forward to the cool things my kids show me they can do on their own devices.

Edtech Principles

I've got a friend at school that is trying to choose his first Master's degree and has narrowed it down to  education technology, school leadership, and math.  

After seeking my input, I told him I felt a lot of value in my edtech degree from Mizzou not in how to USE technology, but in how to APPLY technology. The tools change, but the principles should not. Trying to find different ways to express that I came up with the snippet above.

I find that the PEDAGOGY is hardest to communicate in tech PD sessions because people are often only listening for the how-to, not the why. It's not sexy, and won't always impress your audience with flash, but setting the instructional foundation for the technology in our classrooms in most important for learning.

Email Ninja Trick: Add A Like Button

Some emails don't necessarily need a reply, but you want to let the sender know you read the email and will act accordingly or approve of the course of action. Most email platforms have send receipts, but they require the sender to set them up prior to sending, and still at best prove that you opened the email.

To solve this conundrum and clear my inbox, I took a page out of my social media habits and saved my own facebook-style "like button."

In the example above, I responded to one of my assistant principal's emails about make-up fire and tornado drills we'll be having next week.

How can I get my own? 
(PC/Mac)

1. Do a Google search for "facebook like button"
2. Save your favorite image by clicking on one and dragging it to the desktop
3. Rename it to something more descriptive (mine default-saved as "imgres")
4. Open any email reply
5. Drag your image from the desktop to your email text field.
6. Send.

(iPad/iPhone for GMail)

1. Do a Google search for "facebook like button"
2. Save your favorite image by touching it until the box pops up to "save image"
3. Rename it to something more descriptive (mine default-saved as "imgres")
4. Open any email reply
5. Click on the paperclip icon and "attach a photo"
6. Select the "like button" from your camera roll
7. Send.

It's a pretty quick process on a desktop/laptop, but you're probably better off just using an emoji on a phone or tablet. 

1 Simple Question for Evaluating Lessons

Is it cool enough to put online?

Would there be any value on sharing this with others online?
Would people outside of your classroom want to see it? (Do the people inside the classroom really want to see it?
If you posted all of your students' work, would they all look relatively similar?
Is it cool enough to put online?
Would you want to blog about it?
Would someone want to showcase it on your school or district's webpage?

Positive answers to these questions represent varying degrees of relevance and rigor in instructional design, but they are all questions I ask myself when evaluating lessons, assessments, or applications of technology.

Does the work your students do in your classroom have any last relevance beyond the end of the unit? Beyond this week? Beyond tomorrow?

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that my own interest in teaching is pretty closely related to the creativity I'm putting into students' learning activities and products. You know the feeling - you come back from a conference on a buzz because you saw the coolest demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem, or a self-assessment tool, and all you want to do it share it with others, talk about it, and try it out.

That sharing, the excitement - we don't have to try and desperately cling to it as we survive on fumes from conference to conference. Yes, the infusion of new ideas helps to get your started, but I'd argue that high you feel from the experience is in the sharing. In talking with others about it.

Why must that feeling be confined to someone else's work? I think its a relatively attainable goal to wrap up our week in reflection with this simple question: "Did I do anything cool enough to put online?"

And there are even several activities you could reasonably answer that question with -

• You put together a concise, clear, engaging tutorial for flipping your classroom.
• You (and/or your students) used a web 2.0 tool as a forum for class responses to a prompt or a container for shared information.
• Your students create presentations or videos and share them with social media
• You enhanced a lesson you usually feel is rather dry with a video, photo, or song to grab students' attention
• Your students explored a problem relevant to their lives. This one isn't even necessarily technology related. Our senior lit comp classes do an EXTENSIVE project that one teacher started several years ago that is essentially a semester-long, super in-depth career exploration. They write papers and create presentations, but a lot of the work I've observed secondhand doesn't necessarily depend on tech-rich environments. The point being, its a COOL project.
• Your students created something
• You created something
• You used technology to enhance or improve a common task

Your answer to the 1-question lesson evaluation is in many ways reflective of where you are in your professional development, with a scale of answers being appropriate.

In the Web 2.0 class I just finished teaching after school once a week for teachers in my district, I had a group of eager learners that always came back with tech celebrations from the week before, but in varying skill levels of implementation. "Cool" for one might be "normal" for someone else. Just as an example, here are two applications of Padlet that they came up with: a space to get a discussion going, and a student-controlled medium for class art critics and portfolio.

As an excuse to show a super adorable video I rediscovered as I went to make the one at the top of this post, here's "something cool" I made after my first son was born in 2011. To link it back to your classroom (even math), why couldn't your students use Animoto to put together a review product linking unit vocab to processes and applications? #ideafornextunit :)


Landon Jude

Choose Your Ed Tech Like a 500 Year Old Saint

Having a plan for the education technology you use in your classroom, school, or district must be the first thing you do when considering technology implementation.

You could do worse than designing your technology plan around the educational principles of a 500 year-old saint.

St. Ignatius and the Jesuit Educational Mission
Quick background for the Igna-ignorant like I was several months ago (with apologies to my Catholic friends who know more about this than I do).

"Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight from a local Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and, on 19 April 1541, became its first Superior General.[2] Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation. Loyola's devotion to the Catholic Church was characterized by absolute obedience to the Pope.[3]" - from Wikipedia, "Ignatius of Loyola"

"The Ignatian pedagogical paradigm is a way of learning and a method of teaching taken from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.[1][2] It is based in St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, and takes a holistic view of the world.[3]

The three main elements are Experience, Reflection, and Action. A pre-learning element, Context, and a post-learning element, Evaluation, are also necessary for the method's success, bringing the total to five elements. Ignatian pedagogy uses this dynamic five-step method along with an Ignatian vision of the human and the world to "accompany the learner in their growth and development."[4] 

The Ignatian pedagogical paradigm is also used in spiritual retreats and learning experiences as an active means of developing and questioning one's own conscience, as well as in making sound and conscientious decisions." from Wikipedia, "Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm"

These 5 elements of the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm and the Jesuit motto, ad majorem dei gloriam ("to the greater glory of God"), serve as a educational framework for the numerous Jesuit sponsored high schools and universities in North America and around the world. (including St. Louis University, St. Louis University High, and De Smet Jesuit High locally)

To the greater glory of God and the salvation of man

Wrapping Your Faith and Your Professional Life Together
Its been my experience teaching in public schools as a Christian that the further I want to make all of my choices in accordance with my mission to Jesus, the more fulfilled I feel, the more I can stand in the conviction of my choices, but also, the less some of my colleagues, students, and parents may understand where I'm coming from.

Being a teacher that's a Christian is about more than "being Jesus to my students" as the most honest, or most compassionate, or most just teacher in the school - its a challenge to make every pedagogical decision in light of you and your students as spiritual beings with imbued worth as beings created in the image of God. As just one example, being a standards-based grader is a great opportunity to silently craft a narrative of mercy, repentance, and redemption to your students. (The analogy falls apart when I think about grace - if our sins are really analogous to grades, we don't try and try again until we get it right, Jesus takes the failing grade for us and we're granted "mastery" through his sacrifice, but you get the point.)

A lot of money gets thrown at technology because it looks good, or because its the next lastest, greatest savior of education, but following Ignatian principles and reflecting on "to the greater Glory of God," we can be more sure of the stewardship and utility of our technology choices.

For more reading on the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, this paper from the Jesuits, "Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach" was very helpful for me.

Using Technology to Enrich Your Students' Experience and Call to Action
How can education technology affect or serve each of Ignatian elements of education?

1. Context
Thinking about your students contextually should always be a consideration when evaluating a technology tool. Can my students use this? Would my students be willing to try this? When I was anti-flipping the classroom on the basis of home access for some of my students, I was sitting here in context.

2. Experience
When a lesson affects your students on more than a superficial level with little active engagment, the material is less likely to "stick" or to spur students to action to apply the knowledge. Integrating multimedia resources to affect senses, reaching out to professionals in the field of study with social media, creating discussion boards via Padlet, or creating a digital artifact to link to the lesson in the students' experience are just a few examples

3. Reflection
Ignatius and the Jesuits went against a "monastic" life of seclusion, which made reflection and solitude in the midst of mission of vital importance. We see times in Jesus' ministry where he left the crowds to be alone with the Apostles, and separated even further to be along in prayer.

Reflection in the Ignatian paradigm is the opportunity to look back on the experience and action of the day to find their worth and to seek what the Holy Spirit is doing next. Even if you're not a Christian, reflection is VITALLY important to teaching because it is the time when we see how we've done and what we have to do next. Reflection is when we sort out our perceptions from reality. Blogging is the only edtech application I see here, but really, why try to do more with it than that? :)

4. Action
The Jesuits were all about being on mission (some compare them to "Catholic Marines"), so the purpose of any learning experience is to compel the student to want to do something with what they've learned. Action is where you put into practice what convictions you found in reflection. This is an excellent opportunity to use technology to reach out to community leaders, upload a video to launch a viral campaign for a cause, or even use a 3D printer to make a product to meet someone's need.

5. Evaluation
How'd you do? What your action effective? Evaluation is the last element in the Ignatian cycle because it then affects the next lesson's context. As far as technology goes, here's another chance for students to blog as self-assessment, use adaptive software tools like Study Island, Manga High or Renaissance Learning for testing, send students a Google Form to fill out, or depending on the product they created in action, using site analytics or view counts as a real-life metric to their success.

YouTube Video Analytics of my most popular upload

"What's in it for me?"
As I mentioned earlier, once I started researching St. Ignatius' educational philosophies and how they fit in with the Jesuit mission for education, I found a lot of clarity in what the Holy Spirit had begun in me several months ago as far as what it means to be a teacher that's a Christian. I have always believed that whatever technology we use in schools should be in service to the learning, but it was harder to go further with that - "and what, exactly, beyond "math," do I want the kids to be learning?"

I felt a little embarrassed at "discovering" educational principles that teachers have been using in my own cities for nearly 200 years, but its been a refreshing response for me to the subjective, everyone's-truth-is-good-for-them attitudes that often prevail in education.

Blended Learning and Unintended Consequences

A relationship with one of my AP Stats students went sour this week, and it was a little unexpected.

Stats is the class in which I usually have my edtech act "together" because its easier to pilot apps or tools in the smaller classes, they're better at "playing" school so they're more readily willing to try new things, and because they're generally more mature, if things don't go well, we can generally recover, go more "traditional" and still have a worthwhile class period.

Of my preps this year, AP Stats class is the most "blended." Many of those students contact me via email or texting my district monitored Google Voice number. Every project I have them complete is submitted (and completed) electronically. I have a Google Drive folder that they all have viewer access to for notes, handouts, PowerPoint files, worksheets, lesson plans, etc. - there's a lot in there. 100% of these students are signed up for my Remind101 messages. 

So when I had a student complain Friday morning before our quiz that I hadn't "taught [her] the Central Limit Theorem" because she had missed some of class on Tuesday, I was at a loss for words. 

All teachers have to lie (to themselves).

For many reasons, chief among them hope and forgiveness, there are many instances in which teachers have to "lie" to themselves about their students or their classroom in order to walk through the door the next day, teach students, and inspire whatever growth they can conjure from their pupils. It's quite common to give the benefit of a doubt to the student. "She does have a job, 3 other honors classes, and plays basketball - she's got a lot going on." "He has to spend a lot of time looking after younger siblings." "I could have done a better job catching her up after she was absent." "I forgot to get him the homework assignment from yesterday..." 

But. The more we blend our classes, put our materials online, make ourselves (technically) available 24/7, the more we must be real with ourselves. The more the learning opportunities extend beyond your 4 walls and 50 minutes, the more you've got to let it go.

You can lead a student to water, but...

This student was frustrated because she felt like I had not done my job in this particular respect. It's arguable; "if there is no learning, then there is no teaching," might certainly apply to this student's circumstances this week, but when you teach high schoolers, where does your responsibility for effort ever end?

Does it?

The Unintended Consequence:
Because I felt completely resolved in my efforts to share everything with my students, because I had made two content videos last week for note-taking, because I had posted students' class Evernote summaries in our shared Drive folder... I could not rationally wear my teacher-lenses and excuse this student. All I could see was a girl who wasn't taking her responsibility for learning all she could about sample means this week. Using tech in the classroom is supposed to make you feel better, right?

---

RESOURCES I USED THIS WEEK:

I've asked a lot of rhetorical questions in the post - I hope you made it to the end. Just wanted to share something useful, too.

Evernote - after I noticed a student was doing it on his own with his iPhone, I decided to designate a kid a day take the "official" notes for class in the Evernote app and send them to me so I could post them on a doc in our Drive folder. I'm already in love with this because it saves me 1 or 2 steps in my desire to archive our class sessions for the students. We used the new doc-scanner settings, text, and audio. If I had a premium account I wouldn't have to touch the notes at all because students would be able to upload to a shared Evernote notebook. #gotmethinking

Present.me - One of my videos for the week was made with this #flipclass tool. I like that it makes slides+you easy to create, but there are no YouTube upload options, so it fragments my resources.

Touchcast - The first video I made this week was via the Touchcast app in iOS. This was needed more actual examples worked out, so I needed the whiteboard functionality that present.me does not have. I wrote about my students using touchcast here.

Remind101 - We started a really cool activity from our textbook about the ages of pennies, but didn't get as far as I thought we would be able to, so I had to switch up the plan for the next day. I compiled some numbers they would have had if we'd gotten further, got a share link, and sent it out with instructions for the next day.

Google Voice - Two students texted to my Google number (which shows up in my Gmail inbox) to ask clarifying questions on what I'd sent to them with Remind101.


Google Drive - cre