Teacher Bytes

Recently Cathy Jo Nelson, author of the Techno Tuesday blog wrote a post entitled “Do you recognize these southern voices?” In this blog post Cathy lists several blogs from South Carolina she recommends everyone should read for a variety of reasons. I am honored that my blog is included in this select list. More importantly, Cathy reminded me that blogging is a network community in which we can share, laugh, cry, rant, praise, inform, and educate about our passions. I did not recognize all the bloggers on her list but you can be sure I will be checking them out.

Thanks Cathy!

I think I know what my next big project will be. Next year, armed with my trusty Flip Video Camera, I am going to create a new reality show that will have people from all walks of life attempt to enter a middle school classroom and teach. My inspiration for this show came from watching Hell’s Kitchen on the Fox network. This show, like American Idol and The Apprentice, show people from different backgrounds who get to audition for jobs with millions of people watching each week. After the end of each show that has contestants performing some difficult task, some one’s dreams of fame and fortune is crushed when they are voted off.

Hell’s Kitchen is no different. Chef Gordon Ramsay, famous for a bunch of restaurants I have never heard of, gives the contestants a task for cooking a meal for customers (last night was family night). While the contestants are running around cooking and trying not to kill themselves (one woman burned her hand) or give the customers food poisoning (someone served “raw” chicken to a kid), Chef Ramsay is standing around yelling obscenities and throwing food at everybody (Blutarsky would have been proud). Thinking back, the chef who served raw chicken deserved this treatment. The chicken chef should have been voted off for nearly costing the network a huge lawsuit but he lived to cook another day. Of course they have interviews with contestants on what was going on and why they deserve to stay. The winner of the contest will get to work in a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Back to my idea. I would put contestants who met certain requirements, especially being catty on television, into middle schools with similar demographics with the purpose of teaching students over the course of the season. The supervising teacher will be an experienced administrator with a reputation for chewing up new teachers and spitting them out of their school. Each week the “teachers” are given various tasks to prove they belong in the classroom. One week is creating a lesson plan to see who can keep the most students awake at the end of class. Another episode will have contestants teach with technology. High marks will be given to those who don’t call tech person or worse get one of the kids to do it. A sure fire ratings winner will have contestants give quarter grades then try to defend those grades to parents who think their child got a bum rap. Another interesting show would be contestants trying to organize a field trip with high marks given for not leaving a child and the destination staying intact. Of course contestants will have to attend faculty meetings, committee meetings, sub-committee meetings, district mandated training sessions, extracurricular activities, and getting a second job waiting tables evenings and weekends to make ends meet. At the end of each show the emcee will gather all of the contestants together for the dramatic voting off segment. That unfortante contestant will have an exit interview in which he or she tells why they should have not gotten kicked off although it would be fun if they said “take this job and shove it.” The last person standing will get the grand prize, a teaching contract good for one year.

Now that I have developed my show concept it is time to market it to network executives. That means doing presentations to the heads of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, USA, Turner, and (for good measure) GSN (aka The Gameshow Network). The thing scares me the most is that every network would pass on the project with the same response: “Reality shows are about real events. Nobody would ever believe what you propose is real.” There might be one network who would accept the show, Spike. They allow anyone to post videos to their website.

Update: Now that I have posted this idea, anyone who takes it and actually makes this and puts it on TV without my permission will get treated in the time-honored techno way, getting sued

This is an example of blogging for some teachers in Hilton Head Island.

Over the weekend I purchased the Nintendo DS game Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I got this game after a review I read from Game Informer magazine which peaked my interest. The story is a professor and his young apprentice are called to a village to solve a mystery about a lost family fortune. To find the fortune, the team must solve various puzzles to gather clues that will unlock the mystery. When I read about this, I had to see if the good professor might have the key to solving a puzzle I have been working on, an entertaining game that can teach at the same time.

I have written many blog posts and had numerous discussions with educators about the use of gaming in education. During these discussions I always look back to how video games are set up. To achieve the next level the player must either learn a new skill or solve some kind of problem. Kids will sit for hours doing something teachers would love to have them do for just one hour. The mystery is putting together an enjoyable game with a storyline students would actually buy into. Throughout this game there would be problems in math, science, language arts, social studies, and other subjects that must be solved for the player to advance to a higher level. While Professor Layton does not have strict academic puzzles, some math, reading, reasoning and logic skills are needed to solve some of the 130 puzzles in the game.

It is my understanding Professor Layton and the Curious Village along with a sequel have been out for some time in Japan. This shows the Japanese are leading the trend towards games with higher order thinking skills and educational benefits. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a step in the right direction for commercially viable educational games in the United States. Hopefully,  American game designers will start working with educators to produce more games that are both educational and fun to play. If this combination puzzle can be solved by others than Professor Layton, it could prove a commercial success for game makers and a bigger success for teachers and their students.

Just now getting around to claiming this blog for my Technorati account.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/zabitm725″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

I don’t want to start an argument about First Amendment rights protecting freedom of the press but there is a paradox brewing. Interesting how one set of rules and values works for one group but is strictly taboo for another. Take my Web Media Class for example. I could only imagine what would happen to me if my students where to publish their full names, class schedules, and where they live on their blogs, podcasts, and (soon) wikis. Parents would riot outside the school, burning me in effigy, a group breaks into the school (or the principal lets them in) who takes me out to the nearest tree. There I will be hung, burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, stoned, and beheaded. At the end of all this, the principal comes up to me and says “You’re fired!” in a more condescending manner than Donald Trump could ever muster.

Let’s take these same students and sign them up in a you-name-the-sport recreation league, school or club team. All of the students do great (at least in their parents’ opinion, coaches’ opinions don’t count) in their sport. The same group of parents who would be facing lynching charges after what they did to me will descend on the offices of our local newspapers threating sports editors and reporters with the same fate that befell me if, get this, newspapers does not write stories with pictures of how their budding stars got that game winning hit, scored a hat-trick, and set a world record all in the same game (according to parents, again coaches don’t count). Heaven forbid there should be a a college athletic scholarship or professional prospects in the future and the exploits are not recounted in minute details. How will the college coaches and pro scouts find their 8 year-old prodigy? Let some academic achievement or arts event go by without press coverage and the outcry is almost as loud. Recently, both local papers wrote stories about my Web Media class which printed the full name of a few of my students.

The paradox is most newspapers post online copies of their articles everyday. Newspapers, like all businesses being affected by technology, must move to the online world to stay competitive. However, I pick up a paper one day and in one section there is some student poetry published with students names, ages and pictures. In another section the paper is printing “trading cards” of players in a local baseball league with names, picture, team name, position, favorite team, and favorite player. Again, all of this information, a potential treasure trove for predators, can be found online. I asked a sports reporter about this last year and he admitted that he never thought about it that way but said he would report report what he thought was news worthy. Personally, I have few problems about how our local media reports the news. I have worked with reporters on the local, state, national, and even international levels in my role as teacher, soccer coach, and technology intergrationist. There are a few reporters and editors I consider friends. Yet, at the risk of sounding anti-press, it sometimes irks me about how the media shrills about how online predators can find all kinds of information about children online in an effort to sell newspapers or get ratings but don’t realize they help contribute to the problem they warn people about. Again, it makes for an interesting paradox.

Note: Normally I would insert links to annotate my points but since that would mean posting information about children online you will have to trust me on this one. Thanks.

Update: Here is a link to an example of a news story designed to scare people about online dangers. Thanks to CNET’s Buzz Out Loud for the link.

Click here to get your own player.

Yesterday for my Podcasting Class, I sat down and recorded my first podcast in months. There were many reasons I put it off but it boiled down to laziness. I would tell myself I just don’t have a good place to do it where I would have no interruptions. Yesterday, I just sat down, started the record function on my Sansa Clip and went at it. Here are the show notes with links.

Kid-Cast.com: A kid-friendly site for students to upload their own podcasts. All podcasts are reviewed before they are put on the site.

Blog post “Should Video Games Replace Classroom Learning?” Nice post by Andy Carvin in his Learning.now blog about a discussion at South By Southwest Interactive on whether gaming should replace traditional classroom teaching.

Another Andy Carvin blog post on Learning.now about a student who was expelled for using Facebook to do an assignment.

Adobe has released Photoshop Express online.

An ARS Technica post about where online safety belongs. The article argues it should start at the home.

Brazil and Chicago are moving along with plans to place technology into the hands of students without waiting for the OLPC.