Teacher Bytes

There is a moment that is almost every teacher’s nightmare. That moment that has sweat pouring from the forehead like a golf course’s watering system. That moment when the heart rate rises faster than a rocket. That moment teachers dread: a question from a student you cannot answer. Some teachers handle this moment better than others, deftly deflecting the inquiry with a subtle changing of the subject. Other teachers resort to the “sit down and be quiet” card. The problem is that teachers who must maintain order in a class and feel they must be the dispensers of all knowledge, cannot know everything because the information is growing too fast.

This moment happened to me today when Stephanie asked what I thought was an easy question: how do you embed a YouTube video into Edublogs? Easy, until I realize that Edublog does not work like Blogger which I have more experience with. All you had to do was just highlight, copy, and paste the embedded HTML code from YouTube into the HTML of your blog post and you have embedded video. Easy, except I found out it does not work that way in Edublogs. I tried everything I could think of to no avail. Nothing like failing to do something with a 6th grader eagerly looking up to you to give her knowledge. Don’t I look like the fool.

To call what came next a rescue would be debatable by some teachers. Another student, Zach, spoke up and told me he had embedded a YouTube video into his blog. He calmly explained that he clicked the yellow button on the tool bar on the Write Post page. He further went to tell me about how he copied and pasted the video’s URL into the box that opens by clicking on the yellow button. I tried it and despite every instinct telling me otherwise, it worked (Cathy Nelson you can stop snickering now). Zach actually looked sheepish when his tip worked. Obviously he was unsure how I would take the fact that he knew something his all-powerful teacher did not know. I just smiled and thanked Zach for doing a good job for teaching me something. I further explained that part of the class was for use to learn from each other and that he would be expected to teach teachers how to do some of the things we are learning in our class. The smile on his face showed it all.

The lesson to be learned  is that teachers should not be afraid to admit they don’t know something, especially with technology. With the Digital Native – Digital Immigrant divide we are going to have to realize we can and have to learn from each other. With an unpredictable future, the ability for students to learn things on their own and then teach us what they learn will actually help them be successful.

We have robots that clean houses (Roomba). We have robots that play with children, although the Panda looks suspicious  (WowWee). We have robots that look for bad guys around the corner. We have robots that carry out military missions that save soldier’s lives. In the future we will even have robots that become self-aware and try to eliminate mankind (The Terminator and Battlestar Galatica). In the latest of robotic adventures a robot designed by Bluffton High robotics students won the South Carolina FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Tournament at South Carolina State University on February 8th. These students were advised by my good friend Kevin Sandusky, a science and robotics teacher at Bluffton High.

The winning robot design had a tank tread system for movement. It also had an alignment bar which could extend to move objects around the playing field. The objective was for robots to place rings on a series of goals and to move the goals around the playing field. The robot was chosen to be part of a three-team alliance  which won this competition. The Bluffton High robot also won the AMAZE award for the most unusual and innovative design.

Kevin assured me there was no prize category for the robot to be most likely to become self-aware and try to wipe out humanity. However, with tank treads and extending alignment bars should this robot become self-aware and determined  to destroy humanity, it could become potent weapons platform that can traverse almost every type of terrain. I just hope future Bluffton High robots are programed with Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics outlined in I, Robot. All kidding aside, congratulations to Kevin Sandusky and his students on their achievement. Good luck at the national competition.

Today I got an e-mail from Pownce announcing the micro blog is now out of beta and open for anyone to use. I blogged about Pownce earlier as a way for teachers to share announcements and assignments with students, parents, and colleagues. I also use the popular Twitter which has proven to be an invaluable means communicating with friends and colleagues interested in education technology. However, Pownce has some features that I think could be more useful to teachers. Some of the features include:

• The ability to view videos and images in the notes.
• An improved calender to keep track of events.
• E-mail notifications of new postings, if needed.
• And my favorit, the ability to attach files which could allow teachers to send out necessary files to students and others.

One piece of advice, if you wish to keep your communications with your students and others separate then sign up for two accounts. You may be bombarded with requests to follow your postings and you to follow others. When this happens important student communications could get lost in the multitude of messages.

Web 2.0 is great for students to publish creative works using blogs, podcasts, or videos. However, the Internet is probably the worst place to put your deepest, darkest, secrets. Even if you use every security precaution known to man, someone can eventually find what you have posted. That is why I always tell students and teachers two things. First, what goes on the Internet, stays on the Internet. Second, don’t post anything you would not want your mama to see. As the first wave of digital natives grow into adulthood, eventually some of them will have aspirations for public life in entertainment or politics. That is when all of the pictures and writings will come pouring out of the digital woodwork.

The Island Packet ran a story by Hillary Rhodes of Associated Press yesterday entitled “Teens encouraged to take deep, dark thoughts offline.” In the article Rhodes tells how Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot is working with the American Library Association to hold events across the country, telling students it is okay to write about secrets but to do it in a traditional journal or diary. Cabot is concerned teens are putting TMI (too much information for you digital immigrants) on the Internet. The article does mention parent concerns regarding cyberbullying and stalkers but I believe teens putting too much information that should be private would help prevent some of these threats. With both cyberbullies and stalkers, they find and turn sensitive information against the intended victim. Students need to realize there is a time and place for everything.

Here are some tips Meg Cabot has for teens starting offline diaries

Hide it: don’t let prying eyes find and read the information. Find good hiding places.

Say whatever’s on your mind right now

No strict schedule

No strict rules

Keep it: Cabot says diaries are important historical documents. You never know when you or a decedent may need to look back on your life. As a historian, I would have to agree. Mary Chesnut’s diaries are an important look at how Southern women viewed the Old South and the Civil War.

Source: The Island Packet. Monday, February 11, 2008. Page 9C.

Anyone who as been around educational technology or even technology can identify with this famous line from To A Mouse by Scottish poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” Yesterday was such as day as my attempt to produce a live webcast crashed and burned, with the principal as a witness.

The failure was not from a lack of planning. The student assigned to host the show did her background research to come up with questions she was going to ask. She even sat down with the principal to go over what was going to happen. Failure did not come from a lack of preparation either. The day before, I set up the laptop and webcam I was going to use. I logged onto the website, uStream.tv, and did a test broadcast. Invitations where sent to people in the school, some people at the district office, and friends from the Twitterverse. Everything worked better than I expected as reports came back of being able to see the video and hear the audio. I was feeling pretty good about the webcast the next day.

Everything went wrong when the appointed time came. The laptop was slow to log into the network, never a good sign. The uStream website continued to freeze up and crash several times. There was one time I was able to get good audio but no video. All this was happening with 13 hyper people, 12 students and 1 principal, buzzing around me asking what was wrong. Eventually, I had to admit defeat because time was running out of class but vowed to fight another day. Later, I was able to get everything working but the webcam. It was doing all kinds of crazy zoom ins and outs.

Another attempt at the live webcast will be made next week but with the Girls Basketball Coach as the guest. I would say that would be less pressure but her team just entered Perfectville with a 14-0 record and a conference championship. I am sure she will expect perfection next week from us. However, this weekend I think I will sit down with a mouse, eat some cheese, and try to figure out where things went astray.

In my last year of teaching at the high school level, I had a somewhat difficult World Geography class. This class is usually comprised of Freshman who are trying to adjust to the riggers of high school academic life. In my observations of the class and its actions and reactions to my teaching: the most successful classes where the ones where I let the students get on the computers and do research on their own.

Yesterday was the first day in which I allowed the teams to do independent work. Two teams were working on editing videos they had shot last week and the other teams were researching their video assignments. All of the students were engaged in their assignments. Some of the teams were sent to other classes to access computers for their research and they were always engaged whenever I went to check on them.

After the class was over, a couple of teachers who teach in the hall where my class is commented about how hard the students were working on their projects. They were amazed 6th grade students did not need me to stand behind them to keep them on task. I was proud of my students and I am sure this little experiment is going well. While there will be problems, there have been many, this is an encouraging sign. Soon I should be able to share with you the fruits of students’ labors.

Imagine the power to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people to your cause? How could you do it? Yesterday, February 4th, millions of Colombians around the world protested the violent actions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia aka FARC. How were organizers from a South American country able to rally so many in less than three weeks to a cause the mainstream press rarely mentions? The answer is the social networking site Facebook.

Miss Veronica, our Colombian Bi-lingual Liaison at our school , proudly wore a t-shirt in the colors of the Colombian flag protesting FARCS actions. On the back of that shirt is a picture of her grandfather who was kidnapped by FARC rebels over 13 years ago. The group was started in 1964 by Colombian Communists. Today, FARC uses kidnapping, terrorist tactics, and illegal drug smuggling to finance and bring attention to their cause.

I assigned students in my Web Media Communications class to interview Ms. Veronica about the protest for our class show. During their research, the team noticed Facebook was used to turn this protest into a worldwide event. Recently social networking sites are constantly maligned in the press again for a variety of reasons, usually causing some harm to children. However, it should be noted how one social networking site was used to communicate to millions of people the call to show Colombia they are not alone in their struggle to maintain peace and justice in a country with a perception of lawlessness. This use of Facebook will not go unnoticed as political campaigns, activist groups, and businesses will see the benefits of social networking sites to rally people. Schools too could use social networking sites to rapidly distribute information and seek support whenever needed.