Finally, I had to know the most important answer of all:

Yes, it’s fun to play around with, but this kind of tool could be incredibly useful for our students and is definitely something to keep an eye on.  As opposed to links, it’s pure data and information.  It’s a search engine that will solve math problems for you and provide definitions for words.  I really do recommend you check out the gallery of examples to see the huge scope that this engine provides already.

Unfortunately, this year, the students just don’t seem to be as interested in learning for the sake of learning.  A month or so ago, I slightly restructured my rules to emphasize certain points, and drastically restructured my behavior sheets to provide less seemingly random points and more specific feedback for parents on behavior in the classroom.  Sadly, this wasn’t enough.

Needless to say, I’m well aware of the basic tenet that good lesson plans lead to less behavior problems.  There’s only one problem: that’s not really in my control.  I spend about two thirds of my instructional time teaching scripted programs.  Awesome for McGraw-Hill, certainly, but honestly not full of excitement for me or the kids.

So here I am, with one third of the school year left, and students still having difficulty focusing and controlling their classroom behavior.  I need to take drastic action, which can include upending some of my traditions and closely held beliefs in the effort to try and make the upcoming twelve weeks successful in a way that the rest of the year wasn’t.

I’m caving on rewards.

I’ve been pondering the best way to do that for a couple of weeks now.  Finally, this morning as my mind wandered while I showered, I came up with what to me seemed to be a workable system.

This afternoon I went out and hit the local Lakeshore Learning store, Staples, and Acme to get a bunch of stuff that I can use:
If you click on that, you’ll see my notes about the different items.

The basic plan: Each period of the day students can earn a sticker on the chart that will be attached to their desk.  They will earn those stickers for following the rules in class, as demonstrated on their behavior sheets.  I’m pretty understanding that my kids will slip as we learn a system, so I’ll give them the benefit of doubt.  If they make one mistake but fix it, they can still earn their sticker.

I’m looking for 80% compliance to start…students who earn four out of five stickers will be eligible for one of the reward items.  I’m going to do an interval reward system, so it won’t be every day, but will happen more frequently these first couple of weeks with decreasing amounts of prize days over time.  Students who meet the 80% mark for the week will also be eligible for reward time at the end of the week.

I figure that I’ll set alarms into my iPhone to go off at times when I want to give out rewards, which will then make it so it’s a set schedule, so that the students won’t need to ask me, they’ll just wait for the alarms.  I’ll probably have more than one reward tomorrow, , reduce that over the week, with at least one day this week with no reward to show it’s not every day.

Now to come up with a concise plan for presenting it to the kids tomorrow.

My favorite bit is definitely when he wants to save the image, but realizes he doesn’t have a folder to drag it to.  But every single point is spot on when comparing the interactivity of the learning experience when reading hypertext vs. plain text.

Now, I love a good book, as seen here:

But we need to face facts: texbooks are incredibly lame in comparison to hypertext.  I’ve had to attend a lot of reading trainings the past couple of years as my school fights for AYP, and the key point that’s always made is that good readers interact with the text.  The whole point of a hypertext setup is the interaction.

Of course, this doesn’t need to be just on a computer.  Earlier today I read an interesting writeup by Seth Godin in which he describes changes he would make to the Kindle.  Relevant ones for education in particular:

3. Anytime I send someone a book (see #1) or recommend a book, let me (with the other person’s consent) see the comments they write in the margins of the book as they read it. Imagine being able to read a novel this way with your book group, or a sales manual with your department.

6. Demolish the textbook market as soon as possible by publishing open source textbooks for free.

7. Give publishers the ability to insert quizzes or feedback. This creates a certification or continuing ed or textbook opportunity far bigger than a book can deliver.

In particular, #3 is just the kind of thing that would be awesome for a classroom environment.  Teachers could see the notes that students are taking to help them see if the students understand the material, and students can see what everybody else wrote to lead to a richer understanding.  Add the ability to do a quick gogole.wiki search for any word in the text, you have instant, limitless, connected, and relevant knowledge.

I also very much enjoy the idea of destroying the textbook industry.  Having recently listened to the audiobook version of A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (please note: that there is a link to the apparently full text of the book.  For free.  Awesome!) and also being a fan of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, I can pretty safely say that, at least when it comes to history, there’s a lot that can be improved there.  Being able to quickly and easily look up more information, possibly from a very different perspective, would be a huge improvement.  Science and Math books need some serious improvement, too, as Dan Meyer likes to point out.

This post started as just me wanting to embed a funny video.  Funny how my brain made all these connections as I worked.  Hyperthoughts!