Congratulations to Karen Rose and her 3rd grade class from the Melissa, Texas. Selected by attendees at the 2009 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) as "Best Picture" from among digital shorts produced and edited by students and teachers from across the country.
Motivating Students – A Make and Take Workshop for Teachers
This week I head back to Edison School of Engineering & Manufacturing, to conduct a two day follow up workshop. Our previous work together identified four target areas:
- Motivating students
- Making learning relevant
- Student-centered learning strategies
- Effective use of technology
We are going to start by modeling a “Brainstorm, Group, Label” activity (See Tool 13). It will also set our agenda for the “make and take activities” of the workshop. Day two begins by modeling a “Fishbowl Discussion Group” on the topic of effective next steps. We’ll use the ideas generated in the fishbowl to design a Strategic Planning Grid (below) to prioritize their staff development for the fall.
Most of our time over the two days will be spent assisting teachers in designing specific lessons. I’ve assembled some Literacy Strategies that teachers can use as starting points for modify their existing lessons.
“Non-readers” for students who lack decoding skills.
“Word-callers” for students who can decode, but lack comprehension skills.
“Turned-off readers” for students who have the decoding and comprehension skills, but lack motivation or engagement.
I’ll also be showcasing some web tools that are very engaging for students.
Wordle (text analysis)
Many Eyes (data and text visualizations)
Prezi (presentation tool)
Dipity (timeline builder)
Bubbl.us (brainstorming)
Flickr Tag Related Tag Browser (image tag analysis)
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Lost All Your Contacts on iPhone? Here’s How to Get Them Back
I sync my iPhone, MacBook and iMac over MobileMe. I like that a change in an appointment or contact on one device shows up on the other two. But MobileMe has a problem! Twice in the last week I have opened my iPhone to find that all my Contacts were gone. This calamity mysteriously happened on its own. (I did not make any setting changes to lose my contacts.) But here’s how I got them back.
Note: This post detail the process for restoring contacts when running iPhone 3.0 software. If you are using iOS 4, follow this link to my July 2010 update.
1. On my iPhone I went to “Settings” and picked “Mail, Contacts, Calendar.”
All the email accounts you have on your iPhone will be there as choices along with your MobileMe account.
2. Under accounts I selected my MobileMe account. You get a list of all the data that MobileMe is syncing.
3. I turned Contacts “Off.” (It’s the only sync I turned off.) You get this dialogue box asking you if you really want to do this. Be brave and agree to “Stop Syncing” your Contacts.
4. I waited a few seconds then I went back to the screen in Step 2 above and turned Contacts “On.”
5. I gave the iPhone some time to sync. It probably helps to be on wifi.
6. When I reopened my Contacts on my iPhone, they had all returned. Note on this last step you might have to open and close Contacts a few times to get your iPhone to force a MobileMe sync.
I have no idea why this is happening. Looks like MobileMe has some work to do!
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Why Don’t We Teach Sequencing Skills? It’s an Essential Higher-Order Thinking Strategy
We spend a lot of time in school getting students to learn sequential information – timelines, progressions, life cycle of a moth, steps for how to. Typically the teacher teaches the student the sequence and the student correctly identifies the sequence for teacher on the test. Thus we treat a sequence as a ordered collection of facts to be learned, not as a thinking process for students to use. This memorization reduces the student's "mastery" of the chronology to lower order thinking. I was guilty of this when I first started teaching history "Can someone give me two causes and three results of WWII?"
When students are asked to observe a process and develop a sequence they have an opportunity to use a full spectrum of higher-order thinking skills – they must recognize patterns (analyze), determine causality (evaluate) and then decide how they would communicate what they've learned to others (create). Sequencing can be taught across the curriculum at a variety of grade levels – we simply have to ask the students to observe and do the thinking.
There is some interesting research that demonstrates that students have trouble when asked to develop sequences. It comes from the Program for International Student Assessment. PISA is an assessment (begun in 2000) that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. PISA studied students in 41 countries and assessed how well prepared students are for life beyond the classroom by focusing on the application of knowledge and skills to problems with a real-life context. For more examples of PISA questions and data see my blog post.
Sample sequencing problem from PISA 2003.
The Hobson High School library has a simple system for lending books: for staff members the loan period is 28 days, and for students the loan period is 7 days. The following is a decision tree diagram showing this simple system:
The Greenwood High School has a similar, but more complex library lending system:
All publications classified as “Reserved” have a loan period of 2 days.
For books (not including magazines) that are not on the reserved list, the loan period is 28 days for staff, and 14 days for students. For magazines that are not on the reserved list, the loan period is 7 days for everyone.
Persons with any overdue items are not allowed to borrow anything.
Task
Develop a decision tree diagram for the Greenwood High School Library system so that an automated checking system can be designed to deal with book and magazine loans at the library. Your checking system should be as efficient as possible (i.e. it should have the least number of checking steps). Note that each checking step should have only two outcomes and the outcomes should be labeled appropriately (e.g. “Yes” and “No”).
The student results were rated on a rubric scale. Only 13.5% of US students were able correctly answered the question. Their international 15-year-old peers didn't fare much better – 14.3% of them answered correctly.
The correct response looked something like this.
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How to Become a Teacher: Resources for Certification and Interviews
It’s been 40 years since I set my goals to become a teacher. (You might be amused by my blog post on the 1971 evaluation of my student teaching) Fortunately today there are some great online resources to assist you. Here’s two that impress me.
CertificationMap
Teacher certification requirements vary greatly by state and are often difficult to understand. A new website, CertificationMap informs future teachers about the requirements for certifications in every state. It’s sponsored by MAT@USC, a Master of Arts in Teaching program delivered online from the University of Southern California. I tried it out and found it to me much more user friendly than the individual state Department of Education websites.
Click on a state link and you’ll find salary statistics, prerequisite coursework, steps to teacher preparation, testing, and useful links for teaching in that state. If you would like additional information, you can input your email and phone number. I tried it out, expecting not much more than to be solicited by USC.
I did get a very welcome surprise when I was called two days later by Nicole Dillard, a counselor at the USC’s Rossier School of Education. She was more than willing to use her state-by-state database to supply me with additional information not found on CertificationMap regarding certification requirements. Of course, she also explained the merits of USC online certification program and noted that in the site’s first two months it had generated nearly 300 interested leads for the program. Bottom line – try CertificationMap and feel free to give your contact info without fear of the hard sell.
Road to Teaching
A second site I’d like to recommend to folks interested in a teaching career is: Road to Teaching: Resources for Aspiring, Student, and Beginning Teachers. It’s a site written by teachers for new and aspiring teachers. Here’s their overview:
A cadre of dedicated educators, known as star contributors, have committed to providing support to student teachers. These star contributors will answer your questions, address your concerns, provide advice, and give encouragement. There are several ways to connect with a star contributor. You can (anonymously) post a comment or blog by joining Road to Teaching. If you prefer to email a specific question (e.g. content related question) to any of our star contributors, please feel free.
One of their most popular posts is Teacher Interview Questions. It contains an impressive array of questions, many with sample answers. It’s well worth a visit before that next interview. Road to Teaching also includes valuable links and the chance to dialogue with others who are starting their teaching careers.
