A Little Taste of Reality

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of hosting about 20 college students in my classroom.  They are completing an introductory course in technology and education at the local college, and the instructor wanted them to see what it really looks like in the classroom.  I was excited to have them come in, and knew that my students would be ready to show them all of the great things about our eMINTS classroom.  I didn’t really change our plan for the day, I just decided to let them get a little taste of reality.  I didn’t mean to scare the pants off them, but I think I did.  I forget how chaotic and overwhelming my room can be to an observer, because my kids and I are just used to it by this time of year.  Let me paint a picture for you…

24 students, 20 college kids, 13 pc’s on tables, all in one classroom- that in itself was a victory.  I had the list of tasks and projects on the board, the kids know that they can pick and choose what to work on, but eventually everything has to get done.  Some are scanning doodle4google pictures into a folder on my laptop so we can make them into a voicethread next week.  Some are adding to the never ending story wiki that our class started this week.  Some are using Inspiration to create a circle story outline.  I am attempting to conference with a student before he prints and publishes his book for the end of year writers exhibit.  Some are commenting on our spiderwick voicethread.  The rest are reading, blogging, journaling, working on a math review page.  The room is louder than usual as my students explain what they are doing, and answer questions.  I stand at the front and field questions about my website, lesson planning, our online curriculum.  Then the hour is over and they file out of the room with their heads spinning.

My students breathe a sigh of relief, and get back to what it is they need to do.  I flop into my chair and immediately start analyzing the whole event.  I wonder what they thought?  Did they think I was crazy?  Did they get what was going on?  Should I have toned it down? Revved it up?  What good did that do them?  What will they take away from this day?  What can I do?

I have talked many times about shaking up the world of pre-service teachers, and this just made me realize that I need to get with it.  Those students need more than two hours of mass submersion in a tech classroom!  They need to eat, drink, and sleep it for months!  They need to understand how it changes the lives of those kids!  They need to see what I see every day!  They need a little bit more reality if things are ever going to look different in the classrooms of the future, and I need a plan…to take over the world of pre-service education:)  Maybe Dembo will help me!

Never Ending Story Project

Quite a few months ago, Riptide/Fred and I were having a conversation in a ustream chat window and he said…”if your kids are doing wiki projects, how come I don’t know about it!?”  We chatted about setting up some sort of writing project at some point, and I put it on the back burner but never forgot about the idea.  So now it’s time to DO IT!! 

It’s a quick, fun, end of the year project that could turn out pretty cool I think.  If you wish to participate, just email me your username, and I’ll add you to the space.  I created one username for my class to use just to make it easier.  If you have done wiki with students, you know that only one person can edit at a time.  I would set it up as a center or something if I only had a few computers.  I happen to have more than that, so I created a hallowed wiki cup (just a cup;)) and that is the person who may edit.  When they finish editing, they pass the cup to another. 

Hope you will all participate, and I look forward to seeing how it turns out.  I hope to have something cool to share at our NECC poster session:)

Here’s the link-  www.neverendingstory08.wikispaces.com

The End of the Tunnel

Next week we finish our round of state-mandated testing.  We have been on the review and test track since Spring Break…..well, really since the first day of school.  Everything feeds into how they will do on this test, whether I want it to or not.  Sure, we have done some great inquiry lessons, my kids have become real thinkers and questioners, and for the most part I feel like how they see themselves as learners has changed.  But always in the back of my mind looms the question- is this important enough to be taking up time? Well, that tunnel vision is about to come to an end, when the final test booklet is in the box, and we have reached the light at the end of the tunnel…finally!  I am giddy with the thought of what is to come!

Now, most teachers at this time of year are just counting down the days, wondering how to keep the kids busy for another 6 weeks when all they want to do is be outside.  Meanwhile, my kids are ramping up, because they know that this last 6 weeks belongs to them…their ideas…their projects….their imaginations!! They are READY!  The little seeds of creativity have been sown all year, and now all of the time can be devoted to growing.  While a great number of teachers will be struggling to engage, here’s an idea of what we’ll be doing:

A student of mine decided to write an advice column in his journal, and ask other kids to submit questions for him to answer.  The class thought it would be cool if he could really have his advice column in a newspaper- chaos ensued, and out came the class newspaper project.  We’ll be diving into that next week.

My students have a huge interest in widgets, and spend a great deal of their choice time creating them.  They started with the standard iknowthat.com kind, then graduated to their own designs on phun physics.  Now they want to make them in real life, full scale.  They want to turn my classroom into a giant widget- we’ll be planning for that as well.

Each student will be choosing an independent project to complete,  we’ll finish and publish our stories for the writers celebration, and probably mess with an idea for a never ending story on wikispaces.

Will we “finish” all of this in 6 weeks?  Do I care?  The best thing about this part of the year is that we all get to soak up the excitement and knowledge of learning, and it’s really more about the process than the product.  I love to sit back and watch …it’s a chance to really appreciate how far they have come, and how much they can now do without me.  They don’t need me to lead their small group planning session because they have learned how to work together.  They don’t need me to troubleshoot their tech issues because there is most likely some 9 year old in the room who can figure it out faster than I can, and they know that.  Camera experts, scanner masters, fairly decent collaborators….yep, I’ll just sit back and smile, and hope that they are loving it as much as I am.  I wish the whole year could be more like this, and I am really working on that, but for right now……WOO HOOO!!!  I see the end of the tunnel!! 

The comment that became a post

I was surfing my reader tonight, and fell upon this post by Cool Cat.  My comment seemed more like a post once I got finished, so I put it here:

This is always such a hot topic when it comes up on blogs, or in SL, or twitter.  I have a couple theories on why this always seems to hit a nerve.  First, I think that it’s human nature to want to be accepted and connect to others, especially when it is with people who potentially have so much in common that matters to us.  We are not the kind of educators that teach because of the phenomenal pay or the never-ending recognition.  We are the kind of teachers that want to change things, impact the future of education, create the greatest environment for our students!  I want to know you, talk to you, suck every bit of genius that I can out of you!  I feel the same passion for education as you, so of course I want to connect with you.

Second, I think it is especially sensitive because this is perhaps the only group of people we truly feel connected to when it comes to how we think and feel about our profession.  I don’t know about anyone else out there in the tech teaching world, but it’s lonely outside the box…I don’t have much of a sounding board at my own school, just a couple really, so this is where I come to feel  NOT like a freak:)  Of course I want to be invited to the blogger party!  Of course I want to feel connected and valued in this community.  It’s nice to see that I am not the only person who has an unhealthy attachment to twitter, or can’t seem to get their hair to look right in SL.  I mean, if people still talk to you after you turn yourself in to a box on the virtual dance floor how can you not feel some acceptance there!

After kicking it around for a year now, I realize that it is really more of a spectrum of acceptance than a closed circle.  I sometimes pop into a ustream and feel like it is 100 miles over my head, so I sit on the edge and absorb.  Sometimes though, I pop in and realize that I actually know enough to contribute, and usually the contributions are welcome, and I realize that there are others sitting on the edge listening and absorbing from me.  I have felt the occasional “who are you, and why are you talking to me” vibe, but I have learned that for the most part, we are all just trying to soak it up and learn from each other.  I don’t think you can take anything here in this world of virtual connections too seriously, or you’ll lose sight of the real reason we are all out here doing this. That’s just my take on this never ending hot topic….read it..or delete it:)  After 16 years outside the box, my skin is pretty thick- 

Thanks to Cool Cat for the inspiration it took to get me posting again:)