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Final Blog - Helping Teachers' Lives

Helping Teachings: In reviewing the top 8 technology resources from the beginning of class and the 20 educational tools, there are still so many resources to explore.  I jumped on WeVideo, as I'm concerned about how to do screen captures if I ever do not have free access to CaptureSpace.  I did not sign up for an account, but with a free account, teachers can create 5 min. of material, and with an account for $3 a month, teachers can create up to 30min of material per month, which seems like plenty and worth the tiny annual free to continue creating fun and interactive materials students can access from home. There is just so much value to providing screen-capture instruction to help students complete homework assignments, refer back to lecture materials, and to cover information as homework and save time in-class for discussion and even deeper development and comprehension. I also took a closer look at Really Good Stuff, as I was hoping the site had the teacher supplies ...
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Buscando Vida

The topic of Victor Rios' Ted Talk for teachers, Help for Kids the Education System Ignores, is how to look at kids and change their label from At Risk to At Promise. Victor shares his real stories from his own childhood. He explains how as a child he saw the system fail himself; he was "fatalistic" and didn't believe he would make it to his 18th birthday.  If he didn't think he would make it to 18, then what resolve would he have to change his ways and fulfill his promised potential? He was given hope by a teacher and his uncle who told him "Buscando Vida," we are looking for a better life. His teacher took the power his uncle gave him and shined a light on how that work ethic was his strength. By showing him he really had it inside of himself, his teacher helped him graduate and go to college. Rios suggests getting rid of our "deficit perspective," start valuing the stories our young people bring to the school house, and provide the resourc...
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Progressive Classrooms: Getting Started with a Long Way to Go

I have to say, I loved having Neil deGrasse Tyson narrate this. I was not surprised to hear this was at a private charter school in Washington D.C. as a school would need the funds to create learning environments that "meets students where they are" in terms of technology. It is concerning to hear speak of middle school level being a last chance to learn necessary cumulative math skills before falling too far behind to catch up. It is also a bit of a concern to expect students to have a computer at home and access to email in assignments. It would be great to have the expectation that students could use websites and email at home, but it may not be a fair expectations of all households. It is very impressive to see the number of lap tops available to the students. The student's responses shows how they appreciate the resources and interactive learning. It's great to see the teacher has access to view each student's screen collectively. The teacher explains...
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G Suite

In reading about G Suite for Education, I am realizing that the Google Chromebooks may be the most common in-class technology resource nationally. I have heard classmates say they have had Chromebooks in some of the classes they taught, but I have never used Chromebooks or Google Classroom previously.  I have had a free Edmodo account for the last decade, without ever having utilized it for teaching unfortunately: https://www.edmodo.com/ .  At the community colleges I taught at, we always had access to Blackboard. Hearing how expensive Blackboard can be, although relatively inexpensive, I am surprised Google Classroom or Edmodo are not more commonly used at the college level in place of Blackboard. There must be setbacks or limitations to the free resources that make Blackboard worth it still.  I think Edmodo gets teachers using it and then may require fees for advanced features, though, again, I have not used the website enough to know for sure. I went to ac...
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Online is a Real Place, with Real Consequences

First off, it's great to know there is a non-profit organization out there, run by C.L. Lindsay, aiming to help students and professors stay out of academic trouble as well as educating students about responsible use of the multitude of online cites available today. While watching Trouble Online: Campus Computing and the Law presented by C.L. Lindsay III, I was reminded of how vulnerable we all are and how much experience I personally have that should be shared to help others, especially youth, to avoid issues and gear up for success as well.  ( http://uishelix2.uis.edu/vod/vod/2012/032212eccelindsay.html ) Having taught at the community college level for half a decade or more, I am very familiar with the plagiarism issues and tools available to teachers through turnitin.com and other online databases. I am familiar with the pitfalls of providing credit card numbers for a service that results in additional charges, though in my case I could fight the charges witho...
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"I Don't Know" - The 14th Incarnation of The Dalai Lama

As for Sir Ken Robinson's talk, I couldn't agree more that knowledge is more about what you don't know (what you are open to) than what you think you do know (what you are closed off to learning).  In fact, I will briefly note here that I practice Zazen, which is Buddhist practice, but that is not the pertinent point. So, I will jump right into my thoughts on what teachers could consider doing to better reach and engage students. Teachers could openly share with students their own biases. Biases tend to work themselves intrinsically into the way we think and communicate with others in ways that sometimes makes a bias sound like a fact or even wisdom, when it is more like an opinion or feeling. Even when we are aware of our own biases, they can still subconsciously affect how we treat people and probably affect how we teach. This kind of conversation between teacher and students (and students to teacher as well), in my opinion, would help c...
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Erin Brockovich

Reading the Beloit Mindset List made me think of the faux commencement speech published in the Chicago Tribune in 1997 called Wear Sunscreen. I graduated Jr. High in 1998, but had not read the article. I must not have been a big news paper reader at age fourteen.  But, the year I graduated high school, in 2002, that speech was remade into a recording by Baz Luhrmann. It was called "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen." I was 18 graduating high school just like this Beloit Mindset list was delivered to 18-year-olds today, so this was what we listened to the entire summer before going into college:  Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen I have actually had students in my classes listen to this audio version, as an assignment, and write their own version of advice to pass down to seniors at their old high schools to provide any guidance or wisdom. The Mindset List would be a fun assignment to give students.   When reading Mindset List, I was surprised to...
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A New Name for Blogging

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Blogging: a personal or group-generated map of material with a general, unifying theme The word blog can sound like work, just like "writing" sounds like work to most, yet we do it everyday. We write on Facebook, we write emails at work or school, and we write notes and to-do lists probably daily for most people. Ambitious minds might think, "I'm going to start my own blog," and then never achieve the goal because it sounds lofty and like a big project.  However, we create blog-like material everyday when we post on Facebook or Instagram.  It is a place, a space, to build upon thoughts, to develop your knowledge base (of yourself, a topic, or a field of interest), and over time, it takes its own organic shape. If we were to post on a personal blog rather than a public social media site every day, we would all have blogs.  Why do we find Facebooking fun or even necessary, but blogging or having a personal site we can choose to share with family or friends priva...
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