This week, I found an interesting link on the OLDaily site which discusses the “Net” generation and how significant of an influence the web has been on their lives. The article goes in-depth about the social behaviors of students, and then branches out to education. On the good side, I absolutely love being part of this world because I have instant access to just about anything I want to know. I can pick the brains of other educators by reading blogs or joining discussion groups. I can go to sites like MarcoPolo or Edutopia and find great activities to use with my students. So in that respect, growing up with Google is a good thing. On the flip side is this quote that I found of particular interest:

“Other mental models also present challenges. Many of our students, and their parents, are focused on achievement: ‘getting an A’ so they can get a good job. If there is too much focus on getting the grade – and getting it as easily as possible – students may not be learning all they should. Problem-based learning methods and authentic learning models have been proven to be highly effective. However, students often complain that these alternative approaches require too much time. We need to help our students, parents, and communities see the value in these more complex learning environments. If instructors and students don’t see the value of putting additional work into learning, it will be impossible to change the status quo or improve the competitiveness of the future workforce.”

We live in a society where instant gratification now seems the norm. My biggest complaint about my students is that many of them do not have a good work ethic. They don’t retain materials that they learn from year to year. Their parents pressure students to be part of honors courses and to get the A, and when they don’t, the blame is put on the teacher. Honors courses get slowed down because the teacher has to be sure everyone learns, and some students just can’t keep up with the pace. When the students can’t make the grade, the parents come in on their behalves wanting extra credit.

I feel like the biggest challenge as a teacher is to teach my students how to think. I have been able to motivate some of my students, but I do have others who just squeak by. I am trying to instill values on them that will help them in the future. I feel like my job is more about teaching them to be good human beings than to teach them content that they will never need and will forget in the blink of an eye.

Discuss the various roles that Education serves in the preservation of Culture. I believe that education plays a big role in the preservation of culture. History classes teach our students where they came from and what events have shaped how society functions today. By being in school, students are part of a society, thereby participating in culture. The adults in our society pass on their belief systems to their children.  School provides the setting where we can enrich students lives by reminding them of the past and showing them the road to the future.  English classes accomplish this task by reading and discussing literature and having students compose pieces of writings that reflect today’s views.  Math classes teach concepts, then supplement with activities that tie in with the real world and future careers, like engineering, construction, graphic design, consumer sciences, health sciences, and so on.  Classes like Global Issues give students the opportunity to discuss what is shaping their world today.  So with good teacher planning, supportive administration, technology, schools help preserve and shape the future culture of our children.

Technology and Learning: I found an interesting article while browsing the web that talks about how adults are the driving force behind the technology that children use today. The link is Technology and Youth Education. It points out that the availability of technology does not always have a positive effect. For example, the article states that there is a lack of supervision in our society with technology use. Without supervision, how are students supposed to learn responsible use of technology? If we want our students to use technology for learning, then we as teachers need to model the best and appropriate ways of using that technology. We need to educate our students about harmful uses of technology and how they can avoid those pitfalls. When technology is used responsibly, both teachers and students benefit. For example, having students create PowerPoint presentations teaches them good organizational skills and good communication skills, provided the teacher gives the students guidelines to follow (modeling) what an effective presentation looks like. Students can create podcasts to educate other students about current issues, such as the environment, how to solve a particular type of math problem, or the best way to approach a scientific experiment. With the new technologies available, it is now possible to have students communicate with other students at different locations, just like Clarence Fisher is doing.

Although this was one of the shortest chapters in this book, I believe that it is one of the most relevant for education reform. The most thought-provoking statement that I read was “professional development provided the teachers at Union City [New Jersey] was a process, not an event…” I feel like most of my professional development has been just that, an event, because I never used any of the materials I got, and there was no follow-up to see if individuals who attended the PD trainings made improvements in their teaching. I attended a training on Access, but I don’t use it; I use Excel instead.

Yet, there have been events that I have attended which have been meaningful and changed my teaching approach and helped me grow into a better teacher. One is the Math Leadership Support Network sponsored by PIMSER and the University of Kentucky. The purpose of this program is to provide materials and leadership training for teachers and administrators to take back to their district and distribute the information and improve schools from within. Since I began attending the meetings in August (they occur about once a month), I have a huge binder full of activities, informational reading, and have acquired eight books, including Vandewalle. The 5-8 activities work well with my high school kids. Their focus for learning is to teach students conceptually. Because they model the activities with us, I finally have a good understanding of how to design and teach good conceptual lessons. I will be adding them to my wiki from last semester sometime during this week (I am officially on spring break). They will be under the heading of Activities That Work. The address for my wiki is:

http://pamcallahan.wikispaces.com

A second PD that was successful and was more a process than an event is one that I have already blogged about (the successful high schools at work). I recently received a mailing from them of a technical math test with some really good questions. If anyone would like a pdf copy of this test, just reply to this post, and I will get them to you via email, and I will post it to the wiki, too.

So I was trying to locate public groups that teachers might join and discuss classroom issues. Well, while searching for groups on MySpace, did a search on math. I did not select all categories, I was just on whatever group it had defaulted to, and to my surprise (gasp), I found 15 groups, most of which were hate groups! But on a serious note, when I searched for teaches in all categories, I did find this one, which has over 1700 members.

http://groups.myspace.com/theteachersroom

The current discussion is on class size, which I know many of us struggle with. Large class sizes are harder to teach. The kids just distract each other, making it harder for them to learn and for us to teach.

So if anyone has a MySpace account, you may want to check this group out.

I sent the following response to a classmate who was undecided about how much to be involved in SNS’s.

I was one of those people who said I would never get a social networking site. But once I set up my pages (MySpace and Facebook), I told my students about them and asked them to add me as a friend. I have gained a small group of students between both sites. My students have wonderful poetry, blog writings, comments, and pictures to offer in return. Yes, some of them are silly, too, but that’s okay. They come to my MySpace and Facebook accounts and look at my pictures and send me comments. The way I see it, my kids have a lot to offer, just as I have a lot to offer them. They have given me great advice about how to spruce up my pages, and it pleases them to be a part of my world. I don’t feel like I am giving up my privacy; I see it as sharing more of myself with them. If I do get to the point where it becomes too overwhelming, I can always disappear into cyberspace. I know that inviting students may not work for everyone, but teachers know their students and can gauge whether it is a good idea.

As far as renewing old acquaintances go, it is up to you. Remember that people do change, so people who were not very interesting ten years ago can be very interesting to get to know now. I say take the chance, and if you don’t like them, just delete them out of your cyberworld.

On Friday, I am going to a math leadership meeting in Lexington, and I am going to collect teachers there who have SNS sites and add them to my list. In order to build relationships, you have to put yourself out there, for better or worse, and see what happens. As the Kentucky lottery slogan goes, “you can’t win if you don’t play.” So I encourage everyone to get out there and try.

I have yet to broaden out and find more adults for my Myspace and Facebook accounts, but my student population is growing. I find that I get to know my kids even better by reading their postings and viewing their pictures. I have almost thirty friends between the two accounts. Some of my former students have found me and are writing about their college experiences.

Having once been a person who said she would never take part in such forms of communication, I am definitely a convert as I can now see both the educational and social value of using SNS accounts.

The last post to my Myspace blog is a thread where students can discuss their memories of two of our students who died in a fishing/boating accident this weekend. I knew both the boys from my ESS group, and they were both wonderful students and will be dearly missed. I have such a heavy heart about the whole incident, such a tragic accident, and it will be a very emotional day tomorrow.

I had the pleasure of going to Atlanta from Wednesday to Friday of this week for a conference sponsored by the Southern Regional Education Board and the National Career Pathways Network (formerly National Tech Prep) on Making Successful High Schools work. We spent one and a half days coming up with projects based on a very detailed and thoughtful guidelines for lesson planning activity and collaboration. I was a part of the Agriculture Construction team with a fellow teacher and several teachers from Louisville, KY and McCreary Central. Our project was to design an environmentally friendly house. We called it the “Green” house project. The Louisville school had already gotten some of the funding for their project from State Farm, so I am going to check and see if we can do the same for Powell County. They are supposed to take our lessons and post them to their web site, and when they do, I will post a link here on the blog. The basis behind this program is to use Carl Perkins money and grant money to integrate more mathematics into the vocational classroom. By coming up with comprehensive unit plans, teachers work as teams to focus on the mathematics that needs to be taught in order to ensure kids learn the math and the vocation at the same time. The hope is to raise the math skills of students so they are more marketable to employers, and employers were surveyed to see what was lacking in new employees, and it is the math skills. The school in Louisville is also getting help from local businesses, including one of the local banks who has bought property for the building site. The finished product will be sold to a first time home buyer at a discounted rate.

We did make it out of Atlanta before the tornado hit, we were held on the runway when the severe storm warning was issued earlier in the evening, and then they flew us out at such a high rate of speed to get us out quickly.  We weren’t allowed to use our cell phones, and no refreshments were served.  We were supposed to fly out at 8:03 p.m., left at 9:23, and the tornado hit at 9:45. We had been in that area being tourists around 6 that evening. We just missed our connecting flight from Charlotte to Lexington, and ended up spending the night in Charlotte with no luggage. The airport was kind enough to give us an overnight supply bag with toothbrush and toiletries, but we did have to pay for the hotel, and it took two hours for the shuttle to get everyone there because it was 30 minutes round trip and they could only take 10 at a time. After getting three hours of sleep, we got up and ventured to the airport for our 7:40 flight, which was delayed by fog until after 9:00 a.m. We finally made it home to Bluegrass Airport at 10:15, but our luggage was not at the baggage claim. We finally located it at the baggage office with the tags of our original flight, not the new flight.  So even though we were all very tired, it was the best trip I have ever taken and we all really bonded over the experience.

If any of you travel to Atlanta in the near future, the MARTA train system is an inexpensive and wonderful way to see the sites of the city.  The people are very friendly, and there is lots to do in Atlanta.  I hope to travel there again sometime soon.

I have gotten three SNS site subscriptions going, and am starting to collect friends. So far, I have only people that I know, either from class or from my school. I will next try to go out and recruit educators from other places. None of the educators at my school do either Facebook or MySpace, so I am going beyond the local boundaries. More to come…

TechLearning has some great articles about current technology practices for teachers, tech coordinators, and administrators.

Well, I am totally revising what I had in the space earlier in the week. I am closing out the Twitter account and have created a Facebook account. It was very easy to set up, and I personalized it with some of my own photographs. For those of you who are nature lovers, I have photos to share from my area (Stanton). I have added a couple of friends to my page so far and signed both of their walls. I even got “bitten” by a Zombie. I see why kids love the SNS pages. It gives them a chance to share their creativity. Several kids are still trying to talk me into a MySpace page, so they can add me as a friend and get the chance to show off their page. Guess I know what I will be doing this evening…

Addendum: http://www.myspace.com/education4ever is my url for MySpace