Teacher Bytes

Last week I had the pleasure of doing two presentations for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) at their annual Summer Leadership Institute in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is the event where school and district administrators gather to learn new things they can take back to hopefully improve education for their students. It was a great experience meeting with these people and getting a look at what is important these professionals at the management levels. There were two things that struck me during the four days I was in attendance.

First, unfortunately there is little in the way of literature marketed to administrators about technology integration. In fact I saw nothing on the subject. The conference operated a bookstore in one of the hallways. As I perused the titles I saw a multitude of subjects including but not limited to motivating staff, raising math and literacy proficiencies, management styles, and interpretation of test scores. The closest thing I saw to technology integration was a book about electronic portfolios and two books on bullying that had chapters on cyberbullying. This is disturbing to me because I heard the same story from other technology intergrationists or coaches: technology innovations are not getting administration support needed to be successful. Granted that administrators have other concerns than technology to run their schools but to find no books on the subject for sale was disturbing.

On the bright side, breakout sessions dealing with technology were very well attended. My cyberbullying session was near capacity and I was happy with the numbers in my session on using wikis as lesson plans. The audience was engaged, asking very good questions and taking notes on what I was talking about. Other sessions I sat in on did very well too. I found out that many schools in South Carolina are in the process of installing interactive whiteboards, another encouraging sign. The impression I came away with was that administrators do want to do more with technology but are not sure how to proceed. At least this is a start and more important a hopeful sign of things to come.

For those of you who has been reading this blog for the last few months you know that I taught Web Media Productions to a group of 6th graders. The semester is over, the grades are in, equipment packed away, and I have taken time to reflect on how the experiment went. As I look back and look ahead, I have come to this conclusion: it was a successful failure.

To recap, in January my principal asked if I could take one class of 6th graders and do something with the various technologies I have been advocating for the past year and a half. The class would be using blogs, podcasats, wikis, video, and other Web 2.0 tools to complete a variety of assignments. These assignments included school news and in work in each student’s academic classes. My purpose was to demonstrate to teachers and administration how technology could be integrated into everyday assignments and no computer labs would be necessary.

Here are the things I liked:

• The students enthusiastically worked with the technology. Other teachers who observed my students told me they were impressed at how much pride the students took in doing their work. Very few times did I have to discipline a student. There were three students who failed the course but even they did very well when they did their assignments. Also, these students were having troubles in other classes as well.
• Students took ownership in the course and quickly realized their work was out for everyone to see. Some took longer than others but got the point when I was constantly commenting on writing skills, spelling, punctuation, etc…. It started driving home the point their ELA classes mattered. There was also one funny time when one of the students got a response back on her blog from someone outside of school. It scared her. In another incident, a student e-mailed me that there was some inappropriate content attached to one of our videos on YouTube and wanted to know if I could take it down. He was proud of the work he and his classmates had done and did not want it ruined if it could be helped.
• Students realized they were an equal partner in the class. When one of the students taught me how to do something on the blog he later told me that was the first he felt what he knew was important. He when scared when he taught me what I needed to know but bought into the class when he realized I listened to him as a student should listen to a teacher. It was the first time it had ever happened to him. The students worked as a team to solve problems. However, I would send other students to help answer questions and sometimes I let them work it out on their own.

Here are some of the things I did not like:

• Not all of the teachers participated or cooperated. Even after I explained what I was planning on doing more than a few would not help with sharing computers. Even though teachers shared what they were doing in class and gave feedback on my ideas, almost all of them did not follow-up on work students did for their classes. One even got annoyed when she was asked to allow students to do a survey so graphs could be generated, the unit she was on at the time.
• Only two teachers asked how I did something or asked the students to explain what how they did an assignment. Sad considering this was an exercise in showing what the possibilities are.
• While administration was supportive and gave me a free hand to run the course as I saw fit, they only saw half of what the course was about. They loved the videos that were produced. So good the principal has assigned me to do this class on a full-time basis. The idea was for the teachers to see how to do things not me do it for them. In other words, in spite of trying to teach everyone how to fish, now I will be called on to video things in other classes instead of the teachers doing it themselves. This is why I call it a successful failure.

Things I would do differently:

• Say no! At least it sounds good but I loved my students.
• Have a couple of days where we would do nothing but sign up for the accounts needed.
• Make wikis the first assignment so students would have a better overall portfolio platform.
• Work more with audio podcasts but I am sure there will be pressure to get videos out.
• Make sure to have an individual video project so every student would have to demonstrate basic videoing skills before moving on to other tasks.

I am now in the process of designing what I like to call the Multimedia Activity Center or MAC for short (goes well with McCracken Middle School). As this summer project moves forward I will be blogging about that adventure. Don’t worry, I will also be blogging about technology integration as well. It is going to be a busy time.

According to an article by Jacqui Chengon ARS Technica, the United States Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that a school was within its right to remove a student from the student council because she called an administrator a “douchebag” on her blog. What struck me was a school’s punishment of what a student posted on her personal blog with her personal computer was upheld in court after the student sued on First Amendment grounds.

While the court acknowledged adults’ rights to use vulgar or offensive speech on the Internet to make a point it said schools are different. The court said in its opinion that schools, “may legitimately give rise to disciplinary action by a school” if the school “was responsible for teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.” Even though the blog post did not use any school resources, it was related to a school activity and did cause some disruption of the educational environment. The final point the appeals court made was that it claimed that being on student council was a “privilege” which the school could rescind at anytime, especially if the student’s actions undermined the values of the extracurricular activity.

Federal courts have given schools extraordinary powers to go outside of the Constitution provided schools could show where an action could undermine the safety and security of the school. However, the court has also backed up student free speech in certain circumstances. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District the United States Supreme Court said schools could not restrict the right student speech as long as it did not disrupt school. It is possible that if the student in question had been suspended the court might have sided with the student. However, the court of appeals ruling does open a door for schools to regulate what students say on the Internet that has been previously closed. This case should closely watched, especially if it goes to the United States Supreme Court.

One other thing that should be mentioned about this case. To the young lady’s credit, she called for fellow students to e-mail, write, or call the school district’s superintendent to show support for a concert the school kept postponing for one reason or another. Never in the language of the blog post did the student advocate anything else. This shows the students of the school in question has learned their lessons in civics. However, it is unfortunate the student decided to use vulgar language in her call for action.

Should students be punished for what they write, podcast, or vodcast over the Internet using their own comptuers and access if vulgar language is used to critize school officials? Let me know.