geek.teacher

Check out this article about a new study.  It describes teenagers’ social interactions using modern communications tools.  It finds that, amazingly enough, they do not represent the coming of Satan.  In fact:

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

So can my school district please unblock Twitter now?  That would make me happy.

Ask and ye shall receive!

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While I know a lot of us who like edutech are already on board with the realization that the mobile phone is the computing platform of the future for teens (and us, if the number of new iPhone users on Twitter is any indication =), it now appears that advertisers are more and more looking to get into the game:

Among the predictions: Mobile phones in the United States will surpass the popularity of desktops for teens. Only an estimated 20 percent of teens currently own a smartphone such as the iPhone, but mobile phone and content companies are counting on the idea that smartphone adoption will spread fast among teens in middle America and other areas.

Most schools of course, including mine, ban cell phones right now, but the question will increasingly come up as to whether or not this stance is either feasible or pedagogically sound.  I strongly recommend you check out From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning, which is a great blog devoted to ways to use cell phones in the classroom.

Things I’m doing instead of blogging these days:

• Paperwork (wrapping up IEPs and RRs)
• More paperwork (getting grades ready)
• Tagging things on delicious.  Thanks goodness for setting it up to autosend to the blog, or this place would be a barren wasteland.
• Twittering.
• Going to Wizard World



• Going to the Devon Horse Show



• Taking adorable pictures of kittens



• Did I mention the paperwork? (getting all of my files organized for turning in)

Monkeys control robots with their minds

Robots could soon rove Antarctica

I always thought the Apocalypse presented an either/or scenario, as in “either Planet of the Apes or Terminator.”  Little did I suspect that it would be both!

It’s funny how you can be so surrounded by an idea that the counter-argument never even comes to mind.  Considering that I will frequently throw my self into the role of devil’s advocate, I find it frankly embarrassing that I never thought to challenge the common wisdom that cell phones in school are the enemy until I recently saw some thoughts about it at the Conference recently.  The ridiculousness amplifies itself when I consider how much I use my iPhone for…well, everything now.  Thankfully, some people out there, smarter than I, challenge the conventional wisdom and give me ideas that I can use in the future.  Check out this NY Sun article where Lisa Nielsen talks about ways to use cell phones in the classroom, which, of course, one can’t actually do when cell phones are banned.

Finding Lisa’s blog there has now brought me up to 37 education blogs I’m following.  Considering a month ago I know that number was below ten, that’s a whole lot of new and interesting info to pop up for me.  Hooray!

I only wish that I could make up headlines half as hyperbolic and wrong as that one, but I didn’t.  Instead, that delightful headline came from here, where apparently the Chicago Tribune thinks that tools can do things on their own.  of course, the ridiculousness of this stands on its own.  People in Second Life could sexually exploit children.  There are definitely no educational uses to speak of for Second Life, so clearly it must be banned.

If you could have seen me this morning, you could have tasted my excitement.  It hung heavy in the air.

Today I completed my first Educational activity using a Web 2.0 tool.  My class made a map of our community using Google Maps.

But first, some background: I teach a class that we in the school district call “Intensive Learning Support.”  General characteristics of my students include:

• Very low academic levels, but too high to be in life skills
• Extremely immature, they mostly socialize on a level similar to young Elementary students, and many of them are also small for their age
• Wide variety of disabilities.  In recent year’s I’ve seen students with autism, mental retardation, specific learning disabilites, and other health impairments.
• Mostly adorable, eager to please, and very fun to be around.  

When I say low academic levels, we’re talking some frustrate on the pre-primer level in reading when I first get them in sixth grade.

After the conference last week, I couldn’t keep my brain from moving.  It would have melted if I tried.  So I started to work with it.  All day Saturday, I plotted and planned.  I thought about the kinds of things other sixth graders do.  Social Studies in sixth grade teaches Geography.  Easy fit.  What kinds of projects do they do?  They make maps of their neighborhoods on paper with coloring pencils.  How can we do that better?

Community mapping.  I figured out the ins and outs of My Maps.  I saw the possibilities.  I started to design a step by step set of directions.  My first one sucked, but the kids put up with it anyway.  I came up with some criteria.  I figured out how I would teach them.  Then I put my plan into action.

Day 1: Monday

I showed the kids GMaps on the projector.  We talked about uses for Maps.  I talked with them about how you can add your own stuff in.  I put in my address, and bam threw it in there.  My kids love it any time they get a peek into my private life.  Then I talked about finding stuff nearby.  I told them I really like the movie theater I can walk to, so I did a search for it and boom added it in.  Every step of the way I’m asking them to read the directions to me.  I’m not just doing it, they’re helping me do it.  Do they know GMaps can give directions?  Of course they don’t.  Minds are blown.  Guess what, kids?  You’re going to do this, too!  They practically cheer.

Day 2: Tuesday

Time to get to work.  I delete my stuff from the map, because this map will show their community, and I don’t live there.  To teach them how to add stuff in, they’ll start by adding in all the schools.  Again, they step by step me through the deal of adding in our school and the high school.  Now, who wants to add in one of the schools?  They all do!  Good thing we have eleventy-hundred schools (approximately) so there’s enough for everyone.  I pick some of the more savvy ones first, the ones who pay attention, and we get through it with some light prompting.  the others watch as we go through the same steps over and over.  By the time I get to the end, everybody’s added one school, and they need less help as we go through them.  Rock on, students who have a harder time understanding, you did better than the first couple kids.

Day 3: Wednesday

Want to find your way around town?  Let’s get some directions!  Every kid comes up, clicks on a school, then types in the address for our school.  Again, they get more confident as we move through, and everybody knows we need to click To Here.  I make sure it’s cool to use the computer lab and send an e-mail to invite an administrator to come see my kids work magic.*

Day 4: Thursday

They’re ready.  While my assistant gets homework and stuff collected, I run down the hall to the computer lab to log them all in to my google account and get them set up and ready to rock.  Permission from parents to use addresses: received.  All signs are go.

The mission:

• Type in address, save to map, assign an icon (Point A)
• Type in the name of a favorite store or restaurant, save to map, assign an icon (point B)
• Get directions from Point A to Point B

The breakdown: Kids need some help with making sure they typed correctly, and some of them asked for confirmation on things they already knew to do, but then, those kids always do that.  When a kid didn’t know the next step, half the time another kid helped them out and I didn’t need to intervene.  When they get directions, I show them Command+P to print, they go whoa and then run to show everybody else who’s ready to print.  If they finish early, they get to go to a url I set up with notlong and learn about states.

The final tally:

• 10 students
• 14 schools
• 10 home address
• 10 stores and restaurants
• 10 printed copies of directions from A to B
• 1 map with all of their information on it so pretty I could cry:

Mission accomplished.

During my prep I turned one of the bulletin boards in the hallway into a showcase for the project.  When they came back from related arts, the kids were juiced.  They all stopped to look at it, and they pointed to places they had put on the map.

Victory.  So, so sweet.  That sense I had?  That missing something in my development as a teacher?  This is it.

Welcome to the future, Mr. Callahan.  Try to keep up.

*He didn’t show.  Or write to say he couldn’t make it.

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Westley!

Played around with Animoto today, thanks to @kjarrett. Here’s the video I made with pictures of my cat.

It makes me glad to see this interview, because she comes across as way more clued-in than she did in that terrible press release from before.  She still blames internet communications for terrible writing skills:

You would think that with blogging and text messaging, the younger generation to be among the “super” communicators; but I feel that iconic text messaging, while certainly an enhanced skill, is without substance. It takes little critical thinking or analysis to reply with an acronym, nor is there any punctuation involved.

But she also says a lot of things I agree with, such as:

If you teach children to take tests, they will learn the answers. If you teach writing skills, you teach children how to think about the consequences of a statement; and how to draw on the historical aspects, the why and wherefores of how events evolve into a present situation. Writing makes one draw on all possible resources of intelligence—the factual, historical and emotional. An answer is an answer, but why?

She also artfully doges this terrible question blaming special ed:

Many, many , many teachers that I talk to blame inclusion and mainstreaming for many of the poor writing skills- they indicate that so much time is consumed with IEP meetings, paperwork etc relative to mainstreamed students, that there is little time for writing instruction. Your thoughts?

So, hooray for KISS lady.  While we disagree about the use of internet communications, we share a lot of other common ground.