Time part 2

This is the first week of having a true summer holiday and I am amazed at how much work I have gotten done.  Without the stress of classroom duties and divisional duties this week has provided a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of every day.

This break has made me realize that in order for me to survive in my current situation moving forward organization and routine are going to be key.

One of the things that I have done to help with the organization is to create multiple google calendars for the different things that I have going on in my life.

I have created 3 calendars for myself and so far it seems to be working quite well.  I have almighty Google send me a summary of what is going on for the day and while I get three emails every day it allows me to separate school from divisional from personal.

Another way of being better organized is using Any.do for my weekly and daily planning.  Any.do is easy to plan all of the things that I want to do.  I can have it sync with all my devices and even access it online.  I can create things that I want to accomplish at the beginning of the week and place them in a priortized list.  When I complete one I can cross it off and move on to the next task.  I must say that I do enjoy crossing off task from the list.

Finally with three children it is difficult to be organized with meal planning.  Our kids are in a rut when it comes to eating and seem to have only four or five meals that they like and refuse the rest of what we cook.  I am looking to change that by using a cookbook by Sandi Richards called Life’s on Fire.

 

It is an excellent cookbook that plans your meals for the week.  What I really love about it is that it has easy meals to cook with weekly grocery lists ready to go.  I go on Monday and pick up the groceries for the week and I have all the ingredients that I need to make nutritious meals for the entire week.  So far the kids are open to the new menu and are helping out with the preperation of the food.

now the dishes are another matter. . .

 

 

The Power of Twitter

Twitter has been a bone of contention with many teachers in my district, when the conversation about twitter comes up I have people talk about how they hate it. “I don’t care what someone has had for breakfast” is a common complaint.

I agree that some on twitter tend to tweet about way too much (I had Fruit Loops for breakfast by the way), I always try to stress to teachers that they have to filter.

I try to take the lessons that I have learnt from many avid tweeters:

Alec Couros has talked about how you don’t have to be looking at every single tweet that comes across your timeline. The important stuff will always resurface. Alec also talks about being a part of the conversation. That the benefit of twitter is that you build relationships with people all over the world.

I also love this post by Scott Mcleod If you were on Twitter which I didn’t actually see from Scott’s Twitter account, nor from my google reader (RIP) feed but rather from a retweet from someone else (which promotes Alec’s theory of good things will resurface).

Scott’s post talks about all the good things that you might have found if you were on twitter.  I do believe that twitter is a fantastic resource that allows educators to connect with like minded people that are connecting in new ways.

While I realize there will always be people that want to talk about the various details of their everyday life, these details make them a little bit more human and something that we can relate to.  The nice thing about twitter is that if you don’t like what they have to say you can tune them out with a single click.  The choice is yours.

Where does the time go?

I have posted so many times about the lack of time.  With the end of June coming up and no students for two months my whine about time is coming to an end.  I am excited about finding a great site called Modern Lessons that allows people to take a course on their own time on a variety of courses.  The ones that I am looking at taking are implementing ipads into the classroom, launching a BYOD program and a must have guide to education.

We will see how it goes, summer, sun and BBQ do take up a lot of time over the summer, I just don’t know if I will find the time. . . .

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Robert Schrader

The Problem with High Stakes Testing

Remember when learning was fun? I have three children at various points of their academic careers.  One is in junior high (13 years old) and is suffering from what I call the ‘dummining’.  This is a scientific anomaly where when children reach a teenage age they no longer realize that their parents have any knowledge whatsoever and what ever we say the opposite must be true.  This trait lasts for approximately 5-10 years and with patience it passes.  When we do have coherent conversations he tells me how much he hates school, how boring it is, how it is a waste of time.

I also have a 11 year daughter grade 5 who has not suffered the ‘dummining’ but also does not like school.  Boring she says.  When I ask her what the best part of the day was she tells me recess.

Finally I have my youngest who is 8 (and in grade 2) she loves school! She comes home and shows me what she has created at school.  She talks about all of the wonderful things that she has discovered.

All three children have had the same upbringing, they even have had the same teachers throughout their lives.  So why is it that the one daughter in grade 2 still likes school and the others do not?  Could it be that the 8 year old is 5 years away from the ‘dummining’ versus the 11 year old and the 13 year old who are either close to it or in it?

My belief is that my youngest will begin to dislike school next year.  It is not because of the teacher (she is a great teacher that my other two loved!), but rather of the grade.

You see grade 3 is the first time students write provincial achievement tests (PAT).  This is the beginning of a process where students are evaluated on how well they stand up with other students in the province.  This causes teachers to begin the process of taking away the glue and scissors and not allowing students to create anymore.  Students focus more on facts and less on creating knowledge.  I believe that students are working at a higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy earlier in their academic lives, they get to create!  By allowing them to create lets them be proud of their work, it allows them to work on many different skills rather than just basic recall.

While I do believe we need a form of assessment is required to examine how well students are learning, I disagree with how the data is being used.  It is important for teachers to make sure that they are covering outcomes to the extent that is required.  Where it is not valuable is to use it to show how good of a teacher you are or how good of a school you are.

There is a time and place for testing but use it as a formative tool and not the be all and end all of how good you are as a teacher.  Revise the test so you are examining some of the higher levels of blooms such as letting students create an artifact that demonstrate their knowledge.  This is a much more valuable assessment for student learning rather than just an assessment of student learning.  By doing this it allows students to once again own their own learning rather than just regurgitating something that they read in a text book.

Certificate System

Just reading “Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America” and had to laugh with one of their ideas to fix education

“There would need to be an online system that parents and students could consult to learn which certificates are needed for different career choices, what needs to be known in order to obtain each certificate, and what methods might be used to obtain the necessary knowledge.”

Collins, Allan; Halverson, Richard (2009-08-31). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America (Technology, Education-Connections, the Tec Series) (p. 114). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition.

 

How do kids know what they want to be when they grow up when they have no idea what their future holds, let alone the number of jobs they will hold.  Did they not see the Did You Know videos? 

 

Great thing about a PLN

I was just recently working on an action plan for implementing chromebooks into a classroom and I wanted to examine the effectiveness that they would have for inclusive education.  I came up with the beginnings of a logo and shared it to my google+.  I got quite a few responses and made some changes.  I even had Christian Ahlin remix it to something that is quite good for an introduction to what I want to do.

Thanks for the assistance!  Ask not what you cn do for your PLN, ask what your PLN can do for you.  (Greedy but very true) Will be on the lookout to assist someone else now.  Pay it forward!

What kind of leader are you?

I just love this picture by Edna Sacson it is so important to remember that in order to be successful in a school it is vital that we lead. Often times I think it is easy to fall into the trap of the manager and just tend to things from day to day. This is does not allow for a healthy system.

Get your Popcorn

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by jayneandd

I am reading an article by Larry Cuban titled Computers Meet Classroom; Classroom Wins.  Now I realize that hindsight is 20/20 and that you can’t shoot the messenger, but I am amazed with his statement

“the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

He goes on to further talk about the efficiency of textbooks being about 2 percent (not sure where he got this stat from).  I do agree with his vision and ideas whole heartedly  Watching students have to read from a textbook is painful at best, while watching students watch an educational video and allow them and yourself to pause the video and discuss it at various parts encourages conversation and makes the learning much more real than a text-book.  I am not sure if educational video’s will obtain one hundred percent efficiency (as the author claims) but they are a vast improvement from the textbook

As The World Turns

Just reading Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson.  In it they talk about the change in education from an apprenticeship model moving towards a factory model at the turn of the century at the time of the industrial revolution.  Has education reached a point in the pendulum where we are beginning to shift back towards this model?

Currently reformers are talking about passion based learning, practical applications of learning and just in time learning.  There is no point in memorizing facts when you can simply google it is what they say.  If this is indeed the case, are we not moving back towards this system of learning where students are not focused on a specific trade but are taught how to think for themselves and be able to teach themselves?  Is education moving back towards a system that groups of people will work towards learning how to do something by teaching each other, training each other.

Could we perhaps as educators begin to work with parents on helping them help us with the move away from factory education? With the 19th century model of education much of the teaching fell upon the parents are we moving back towards that?  We can not expect to be successful to force more and more on teachers until they break.  I think we have reached a point on the pendulum that we need to include parents in these conversations and have them, help us, help them.

I don’t think I will see it in my lifetime but it still makes me wonder if the pendulum is indeed moving in the other direction. . .

http://www.bcjobs.ca/content/images/PENDULUM_SWINGS.jpg

Rework

I just finished reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, The book was a light read and I had finished it in a couple of hours.

While I don’t think that it’s model of business can be transferred into education directly it does give the reader the opportunity to ask a few what if’s in education.  Things like:

“Learning from your successes”

– too often we are told to learn from your mistakes, the authors make a point of learning about what works well, chances are you are going to try to see if you can do it again, and do it better.

Another way of describing success is called evolution.

“Planning is guessing”

– In education we are in love with the three year plan.  The infamous line of “failing to plan is planing to fail” just doesn’t seem to work when it comes to long term planning for a school (or a provincial budget).  I do think there has to be a plan but there also has to be an opportunity to change that plan when it starts to go sideways.  Not next year but as soon as you see it sliding out of control.

“You’ll unlock star power in anyone with a rock star environment.”

– Imagine if schools would actually take the time and effort to create a ‘rock star’ enviroment for their staff?

“Draw a line in the sand”

– In education you have to have a backbone.  You need to know what you’re willing to fight for.  And then you need to show the world.

“Meeting’s are toxic”

(Now this is a blog post that will be all to it’s own but I digress)

– we are wasting way too much time meeting and talking about things rather than going out and getting things done.  I think we have way to much chain of commands and the idea of innitiative of teachers has been lost.  If a teacher goes out takes innitiative and does something wrong make sure they don’t do it again, but don’t take away their initiative to take the bull by the horns and take charge.

Oh yeah and get rid of meetings. . .

“inservice” by Doug Johnson flickr