Teacher Bytes

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.

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.

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.