MOOCs Boldly Go Where We've Never Gone Before!

Credit: Photo by Giulia Forsythe under a 
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 License

The internet sustains an educator's need to be a life-long learner, to create, share, network and collaborate with others. MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses can provide educators with the means to boldly create and engage with one another for professional and personal development like they've never done before. MOOCs are FREE online courses offered by reputable universities around the world. Anyone can sign up and pay nothing. As a matter of fact, I signed up for a course on E-learning and Digital Cultures taught by the University of Edinburgh that begins January 28th, 2013...paid nothing! (If you want to join me, please sign up. I would love to engage more personally with my followers.)

I can't wait to create my own content, and also interact with my teachers and peers globally to see how they will influence the content and products I will create. MOOCs are different than traditional courses, many following the connectivist learning model, where the learner is in control, and many still being more teacher-centered. In the connectivist MOOCs, or cMOOC, the instructor acts as a facilitator, a coach who models proper online communication, helps learners identify credible content among other roles, but does not "pave the path" for what or how students will learn. Yes, the instructor sets learning goals for students to meet at the end of the course, but it's up to the student to decide if and how those goals are met. For students who enroll in a MOOC for credit, the instructor will be the assessor, as in a traditional class, but for non paying, not for credit participants, the learner both self-assesses and is peer assessed.  The instructor provides specific readings and other content, but this teacher selected content is meant to spark conversations among learners, prompting learners to take charge of their own learning. Learners set out to build their own personal learning networks searching for credible content via various credible sources to share with other learners.  Learners organize the variety of credible content found and prove they've made sense of it all by  creating original digital content in the form of learning spaces, such as a blog, wiki, video, social media, etc. showing what they have learned so everyone can then learn from it.

Although it may sound like learning is haphazard, it's not because the theory behind learning in a connectivist MOOC, or cMOOC, contends there is always chaos in learning, and part of the learning process is for the learner to find effective ways to make sense of that chaos. Learning should be an ongoing process that never ends the way it does now in traditional courses; learning never stops if we continue to have conversations by blogging, tweeting, emailing, videocasting, and creating digital content about the topics and subtopics we set out to learn in the first place (Watch George Siemens, cMOOC pioneer explain.)

It may sound a bit confusing, but just think how learning takes place now. Let's say we're taking a class about incorporating problem based learning in our curriculums. In a traditional course, the teacher selects the content, students read, discuss, and may even create a product, but the learning stops once the course objectives chosen by the school or teacher have been met.  The interaction with fellow students is finite, and the teacher and the texts he/she select are the only sources for learners to acquire knowledge.  

In a cMOOC, knowledge comes from many credible sources, and learning about the original subject becomes infinite since students create their own original space to learn, whether it be wikis, Twitter hashtags, blogs, videos, FaceBook group pages, Google Hangouts, etc. The interaction about and around the original topics never ends because the students create content in these learning spaces based on the knowledge they gain from the networking experience. Isn't this what life long learning is all about? Passionately pursuing a subject in as much depth as possible and learning not just from one source or from one person, but from a MASSIVE group of people's sources and perspectives?  Connectivist MOOCs use aggregation tools to organize participants' individual learning spaces so that students can make sense of it all and then create their own valid digital interpretation.   

George Siemens, cMOOCs pioneer explains, "The content isn't what you're supposed to master at the starting point; the content we provide you with at the start should be the catalyst for you to converse to form connections with other learners in the course, with other academics around the world. To essentially use the content as a conduit for connections." 

Now, as excited as I am about taking my first Massive Open Online Course, I understand from my research that MOOCs aren't perfect, nothing ever is, and I accept that. From what I've read online, it appears that the Coursera course I'm enrolled in will be more teacher centered, or xMOOC, following a more traditional approach where the learners consume the information from   several sources, but don't necessarily get to create an original product. However, whatever my MOOC turns out to be, connectivist or traditional, I think what's perfect about any type of MOOC, for now, is the fact that learning is open and free, monetarily (also, at least for now) and intellectually. I hope I get to choose how I synthesize what I learn, and how I network with participants through a blog, wiki, videocasts, social media or whatever digital format I want. Dave Cormier, another MOOC pioneer who coined the term MOOC, says, "In a MOOC, YOU can choose what you do, how YOU participate, and only YOU can tell, in the end, if you've been successful, just like real life."

What I don't get about MOOCs is why educators haven't leveraged the power of this technology to improve the quality of professional development. I guess the answer to my question is the same as why so many still don't incorporate tech in their classrooms. We really have no excuse now, the power to improve our content knowledge and even our teaching methods is instantly available at no cost.

Whether connectivist or not, I would also love to see MOOCs disrupt the status quo in higher education, so once and for all we realize a test score doesn't determine a student's intellectual worth; there are a gazillion and one ways of learning something, as much as there are a gazillion different sources and presentation formats for the same topic; above all, MOOCs prove every student is worthy of the opportunity for global-networking, problem-solving, and creation to make a valuable contribution in a medium of choice to further his/her learning and the world's.  

Check out the video with Dave Cormier explaining how MOOCs work:

 

Here are some MOOCs you may want to explore for yourself or to recommend to older students:

Coursera

edX

Udacity

Venture-lab-Learn from Standford Professors, for FREE

SpanishMOOC

Udemy

    10 Interesting Udemy Courses You Should Know About

I-Tunes University
The Great Courses
The Open University

International MOOCs Past and Present

• Some MOOCs have prerequisites; some don't.
• MOOCs may use both synchronous and asynchronous tools.
• cMOOCs encourage students to engage with both teacher and student selected materials throughout the course. The teacher and student select digital content, such videos, guest speakers, blogs, tweets, articles, FB discussions, emails, etc. are meant to spark conversations and interactions so learners can in turn create original content.  The content is aggregated so "the massive" group can then "re-mix" the information, creating a solution, product, or outcome.  
• When participants pay for the MOOC since some students do sign up for college credit, then the learning outcomes are set by the instructor, but when you enroll in a MOOC for no credit, you determine your own learning outcomes. You assess if you met your learning goals, and your peers in the class evaluate you through the level of engagement you receive on your culminating or ongoing digital product.

As a teacher there are learning management systems allowing you to create your own MOOC like courses. Visit Canvas-Instructure.  I'm working on creating a course now for sharing my ideas on problem/passion based learning. Look for a future blog post about this.

Success in a MOOC Requires YOU to:

"ORIENT, DECLARE, NETWORK, CLUSTER, FOCUS"

Watch Dave Cormier explain how:

 


The Networked Student In a MOOC

Learning Spaces: Teacher Centered VS. Student Centered Instruction in MOOCs

In Memoriam Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012)

A few years ago, I had one of the most challenging groups of students and parents I had ever worked with in my entire teaching career. I must confess that Ray Bradbury helped me get through that difficult time because one of his stories in particular spoke to me and showed me I was not alone in what I was experiencing and feeling. I did a lot of soul searching that year about why I became a teacher, and if I even wanted to continue teaching. I thought a lot about expectations, especially what the "powers that be" expected me to expect from my students and from their parents. My decades of experience, and my National Board certification carried absolutely no weight. And, I found myself fighting against the dumbing down of quality teaching to make students and parents happy. Late one afternoon, as I scoured through old and new literature books, searching for the panacea to cure some of my students of their learned helplessness and entitlement, I literally stumbled across one of Ray Bradbury's gems "The Veldt". The minute I saw the name Bradbury, I knew the story had to be good. I also thought Bradbury's writing style might just help these students who resisted critical thinking connect to literature like no other piece they had ever read. Best of all, teaching "The Veldt" allowed me to express my civil disobedience of sorts by sending out the message loud and clear about our public school system's student, parent, teacher dynamic, that adults are often at the mercy of children's demands. "The Veldt" opened the eyes of some of the brightest students in my class, but as much as I hoped it would not, the story's true meaning went over the heads of my most rebellious students and their parents.

My students that year had been conditioned not to think and technology had been used to baby sit them, not to make them think. My high expectations and my attempts at getting them to think proved to be too much for them to handle because they were not used to being challenged. I realized their resistance to work was natural since no one had ever really expected much from them to begin with. Like Wendy and Peter, the children in the story, they had been used to doing what they wanted, when they wanted. And like Wendy and Peter, they naturally fought back when I threatened their status quo, imposed rules for the first time just like the parents in the story, or expected them to use their imaginations or critical thinking for the first time. Reading "The Veldt" was like holding up a mirror for these kids and their parents, and yelling, "Hey, learn from George and Lydia’s mistakes! Stop enabling your kid to resist thinking and working in my class!" So it was natural, that the message fell on deaf ears. There was a small minority who did realize after our class discussions and activities, that the story was a social commentary about this type of dynamic between parents and children, and so much more. Their efforts to stay after class to converse and provide their own insights about the story proved to me they wanted to learn, and they knew what I was trying to tell the rest of them, but the rest of them interpreted the story at face value: children who think up the world of the veldt, a grassland in Africa so they can have their parents eaten alive by lions. What Bradbury wanted to convey through this ending was difficult for some students to swallow…pun intended, but in the end "The Veldt" fascinated all the students, making them think and wonder how someone had the nerve to write about children killing their parents. Akin to the children's character in the story, some questioned whether I had permission to allow them to read such a disturbing piece. (Luckily the selection was featured in the state’s approved text.) Unlike the parents in the story, I stood my ground, feeling successful at getting them to at least question why I wanted them to read this. And standing my ground, setting high standards, demanding that they learn and work, and produce original thoughts are what I realized students and their parents resisted the most. Like the children in "The Veldt", they threw tantrums whenever I asked them to think, and their parents, like George and Lydia, enabled the students to do the bare minimum, protecting them from ever experiencing failure, reaching their potential and expecting their children to earn As with little to no effort. If I refused to accommodate these needs, I risked unhappy parents and students.

For me, Bradbury's "The Veldt" poignantly captured my dilemma with these types of children and their parents, who as Bradbury characterized want to “do nothing but look, listen and smell…what else was there to do?” Shockingly for my class and for me, we learned Bradbury wrote and published the story in 1950. These behaviors, which I thought were part of a growing trend of insolence and indolence, I realized were not new, and were Bradbury's warning of future generations gone awry because of technology. Although he wrote about the future, and described technological advances in prophetic detail, Bradbury criticized technology, i.e., television, cell phones, the internet, etc., and always warned us of the coming dystopia if we allow technology to replace our most human needs. My classroom that year was a glance into the future Bradbury warned about children, parents and technology. “The World the Children Made” as Bradbury originally titled “The Veldt” existed in my classroom. The children had in years past been allowed to make a world with rules convenient for them, allowed to use tech in ineffective ways, and there were plenty of adults who allowed them to enforce these rules.

But my students, like the children in the story were not blameworthy as Bradbury underscores in his story. In our public school system, as adults, sometimes, we try to protect children so much by expecting less from them. For a variety of reasons, students are often conditioned to do the bare minimum. We end up doing them more harm than good, stifling potential rather than encouraging it to develop. Like George and Wendy, the doting parents, we throw money at the problem, ignoring the root causes of the academic problems, as well as failing to educate parents about the importance of rigor and allowing students to learn from mistakes.

We all need to be more cognizant of academic expectations for children’s success in school and for later in life. Both teachers and parents need to constantly reflect on how we can most effectively implement technology at home and at school so adults do not lose children’s respect, and attention, and children do not lose their imagination and ability to think for themselves. 

Bradbury's stories wanted us to think about all of these issues, our relationships with each other, and the price we pay in our relationships when we abuse technology. Technology can never replace the human bond we must make with our children. Technology, if abused, reduces us to a base state. The children in “The Veldt” lost their humanity and thought nothing of killing their own parents. Their parents’ attempt to provide the best life for their children backfired, and they failed to connect to their children.

Our attempts to make concepts easier for students to understand often backfires too, and we end up underestimating their true abilities and condition them to perform at standards below their true potential.

When it comes to technology, we must also be careful not to allow our desire to integrate technology to overshadow our need for rigor in our classrooms.

As much as I love technology, hence this blog, I know we must always maintain a balance between the analog and digital world and never ever ignore the human facets of teaching and learning. Some concepts are learned best without technology, and we can't ever lose sight of that. 

The point of my entry is not only to write in memoriam of Ray Bradbury and express how much I loved his writing, but also to reflect on our expectations of students in the classroom, and our expectations of how we will use tech in the classroom to teach students how to think, not just play. If we don't, as Bradbury and the band deadmau5 who wrote a song based on the short story said, “this happy world of technology” we have designed for our children will end up consuming us and dehumanize them; if we make them "fall in love with the way they are", the children "will not ever want to leave", or try anything new but “looking, listening and smelling”, they will not want any authority figure unplugging them from their state of complacency.

Thanks Ray Bradbury for your bold imagination, for inspiring my civil disobedience and for teaching me to recognize when it's time to shut off the machine.

Bradbury veldt

View more documents from firstclasstutoring.

 "The Veldt" - song lyrics by deadmau5
Happy Life, With the Machines;
Scattered around the room.
Look what they Made; they made it for me...
Happy Technology!
Outside, the Lions roam, feeding on remains...
We'll never leave, look at us now;
So in love with the way we are...
...Heeeere!
The world that the children made...
The world that the children made, Heeere!
The world that the children made, Heeere!
The world that the children made.
Every night, the World goes to sleep,
Digital Family! Is it real? Or is it a dream?
Can you believe the machine....
Outside, the beating sun, can you hear the screams?
We'll never leave, look at us now.
So in love with the way we are.
[Chorus]
[Long Pause/Instruments, then a slightly less happy tone]
Happy Life...With the Machines,
Scattered around the room.
Look what they made, they Made it for me;
Happy Technology!
Outside, the Lions roam, Feeding on remains.
We'll never leave, look at us now;
So In love with with the way we are. Heeere!
[Chorus]

Jump Start The Writing Process With StoryJumper.com

Everyone loves a good story, and now students of all ages can write their own using storyjumper.com. Students can customize their stories using their original ideas or use storyjumper.com's templates which provide settings or pictures of characters to prompt students to write original storylines. Storyjumper.com gives students several publication options. Students can embed their stories in a website, share it through social media, print a paper copy, or purchase a hard copy. For $24.95, students can purchase a copy of their storybook including a hard cover and pages in color.  Storyjumper.com has an intuitive interface students of all ages can easily use. There is tool bar at the top of the screen showing each individual page of the storybook in a timeline format. On the left of the storyjumper.com screen, students have several options for their story: Props, Scenes, Photos and Text. Each of these tabs have pre-selected options organized by theme, or students can choose to upload their own pictures of people and places to personalize their storybook even more. In the scenes tab, students can choose different settings or upload their own picture of a place and time to add that personal touch.  Of coure, all of these props, scenes, photos and text can be edited or resized to create a desired effect.

How much fun it would be to have students take their own pictures of people and places in their community, or even from places they have visited and incorporate these images into a story.

Storyjumper.com is not just a elementary tech tool. I can see the potential for middle or high school students to use Storyjumper.com to retell a complex plot using the page timeline. In chronological order each of the pages could help them retell the most important plot events, climax, falling action and denouement of a piece they may be having difficulty reading. 

Storyjumper.com has a free sign-in and provides various handouts for helping teachers teach plot and character development. Storyjumper.com not only jumpstarts students' attitude toward writing, it also encourages students to use their imagination and creativity. 

Check out my storyjumper.com story at http://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/5182782/-It-Came-From-Outer-Space- ! Watch the tutorial video by eduTeacher! Let your class jump right in to WRITE their own story!

"When You Wish Upon A Wall..."

No offense to Jiminy Cricket, but this time, we'll leave the stars shining in the night sky and make our wishes on www.wallwisher.com. This brilliant site will make every teacher's dreams come true! 

Wallwisher.com is a virtual bulletin board of sorts to post and share what you want--text, images, videos, and links. It's a great tech tool for informal or formal assessments at all levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

It's a free site with a no registration option, and it's easy to build a wall in minutes.  Teachers can build a wall by registering. However, if you do not register, you will not have editing abilities. Teachers will want to register to be able to receive emails for screening student posts and offer feedback for post revisions. Once registered, you are prompted to create a unique URL for your wall so you can share it, and determine who can view and post on your wall. Wallwisher.com allows you to personalize the wall by picking a color theme and image or uploading your own. Most importantly, you can add a title and subtitles at the top of your wall so contributors to the wall know what they should or shouldn't post. Titles and subtitles serve to state the wall's purpose, and can be in the form of questions, descriptions, thought-provoking quotes, or whatever purpose you want the wall to serve. 

Here's how I have used wallwisher.com:

1.) I have used wallwisher.com to practice vocabulary. I have asked students to post original sentences for their assigned set of vocabulary words, and include an image, video, or link to illustrate the word's definition and connotation. Since students see each others' contributions, it's great practice for students to click on each others' posts to read other original sentences and see the attachments illustrating each of the definitions. 

2.) I have used wallwisher.com to assess reading comprehension for pre-reading, during reading and after reading practice. At different stages of reading instruction, I have asked students to stop reading, reflect and post predictions, connections, inferences, personal interpretations, comparisons, cause and effect examples,  and more. Students have posted what they believe to be the themes of a piece; they have identified the tone and mood of a reading piece and then included a post with an image, video or link expressing that particular tone or mood.

3.) My students have used wallwisher.com to have virtual sticky note conversations by responding to each others' posts. Students have practiced how to elaborate, agree or disagree with each other and how to provide textual support for their arguments in the form of images, links, videos they attach to their virtual posts. 

A classroom wall can be theme based or can be used for brainstorming. Teachers can post content for students to edit on the wall, and students can always include additional links, videos, or images to elaborate, extend and support whatever they post. All posts are limited to 160 characters which also teaches students to be succinct. 

As a virtual bulletin board with unlimited postings, there are as many possibilities for wallwisher.com's uses as there are stars in the sky to wish upon.  Not only can wallwisher increase student engagement, but it is a great tool to encourage a sense of collaboration and community in the classroom.  

"When you wish upon a Wall, 

Makes no difference who you are 

Anything your heart desires will come to you..."  

As Jiminy always says, "Let your conscience be your guide" when you design ways to use www.wallwisher.com in your classroom. Feel free to share how you have used this stellar tech tool! 

Check out a video from eduTeacher on how to use wallwisher.com, and my Fearlesstech4teachers Wallwisher to post how you will use this tool in your class!

It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Makes You Think!

I've realized that although we consider students digital natives, students still resist using tech tools in purposeful ways. We somehow expect that digital natives have the instinct to want to use tech tools to have insightful discussions, write collaboratively or to produce a thought-provoking, original piece of content. However, we fail to realize that creating original content requires a lot of time, effort, perseverance, trial and error, and above all, lots and lots of critical thinking. 

Lately, or perhaps it's always been that way, students don't want to work that hard. It's easier for a student to function in a teacher-centered classroom than it is in a learner-centered one. Some teachers or should I say, the system, have trained our "millennials" how to be straight A students with minimal effort in a pseudo critical thinking learning environment, and when we shift the paradigm, not only do the teachers resist, but so do the students and their parents.   

Teaching students to use tech tools in a purposeful way may cause some tension because kids want the fun games; many parents want the least amount of work for their kids, and teachers either don't have the time to design critical thinking lessons using tech, or they simply don't know how. The tech tool cannot stand alone, and is not going to make students think critically. It's how we use the tech tool that will teach students to think. The problem is that some kids have a lot of unlearning to do. By the fourth grade, students who have had ineffective teachers learn exactly how to manipulate the system so they are perfectly comfortable filling the blank and bubbling in a circle. Students will resist when we make them write a script using their imagination, or add their thoughts to a wiki, write a script for a video, or collaborate with peers directing their own video.  Using tech tools effectively is not all fun and games; at first glance, tech tools appear to be flashy, but there's nothing flashy about them. Used effectively tech tools require lots of hard work, and it's hard work to think!  So students, teachers and parents have a lot of bad habits to unlearn. Sometimes parents enable a lot of the "I can't" attitudes too. We assume that because kids love using tech that somehow they are going to want to use it to think critically. Thinking requires effort, perseverance, even sacrifice.

It's hard to believe the statistics of students underperforming on standardized tests while attending schools with cutting edge technology. We must constantly evaluate how tech tools in the classroom impact student achievement.  All educational stakeholders are responsible for constantly evaluating what we expect students to do with technology, and how tech will impact student achievement. Without this constant accountability, educational tech tools lose their effectiveness.

Educational tech tools cannot be all fun and games; otherwise, it's the students who hurt in the long run.

Writers' Workshop Works Better with Paperrater!

Teachers know how difficult the editing and revising stages of writing can be. Along comes Paperrater.com to help students improve their writing skills. With this free resource, students upload their writing and paperrater.com checks it for plagiarism, style, grammar, spelling, word choice and overall quality. Paperrater.com offers specific suggestions for improvement, and assigns a grade to writing. Paperrater.com even offers a printable writing summary report with a detailed explanation, tip and/or suggestion for improvement for each of the different writing traits analyzed.

Regardless of grade level or subject matter, I definitely see how teachers could assign students to upload their writing to paperrater.com before holding individual or small group writing conferences. Students can bring their writing summary report to a writing conference with the teacher or writing workshop with peers to discuss the suggested editing and revisions. Paperrater.com has the potential to save teachers a lot of time, and obviously students benefit from the specific feedback. Students can submit the writing summary reports with their papers, and teachers can identify common needs to design specific writing mini lessons; teachers can also use the feedback on each student's summary report to pair up students according to writing strengths and weaknesses. Students can also make revisions, resubmit their writing and compare initial and final drafts to demonstrate growth. 

What other uses can you generate for paperrater.com?

Unlike other online writing analysis software, there is nothing to download, paperrater.com is absolutely free, and has a higher degree of accuracy because not only does it use artificial intelligence, the site is also maintained by linguists who have developed according to Paperrater.com: "a core Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine using statistical and rules based NLP to extract language features from essays and robustly translate that into statistical models."  So, it's ok to trust paperrater.com when they identify a fragment, a misspelled word, or wordiness because the site is run by writing experts. I tried paperrater.com using this particular text, and here are is my printable summary report.  

I guess a B ain't so bad...(I mean isn't)!

How Fake Facebook Profiles Support Reading Instruction and More!

Teaching author's perspective, author's purpose, tone and mood, characterization and other literary elements are some of the most difficult reading skills for students to untangle. Because of time constraints, teachers often ignore discussing an author's life experiences as part of front-loading a text to be read. I have always been a proponent of less is more, so I make the time to let kids learn aboout a writer's life before we read his/her book, and we research the historical period in which the book was written. Both the author's life experiences and the historical period provide an invaluable insight that helps readers understand themes, allusions, plot events, characterizations, conflicts and other literary elements. Of course, now more than ever technology can facilitate teaching all of these reading concepts.

Using myfakewall.com, students can create a fake profile page `a la Facebook to explore the life of an author, a character, a historical figure, an idea, a process, an animal or anything students would like to personify. 

Using Myfakewall to teach Author's Purpose
Teachers can assign students to create Myfakewall.com profiles and posts that reveal the author's purpose, i.e., why the author wrote a piece: to entertain, inform or teach, persuade or convince. Students can add "friends" such as other writers or people who influenced the writer to write a particular piece, or even characters, and have those influential "friends" post questions or comments on the writer's wall so the posts and the writer's responses to the posts reveal the author's purpose for writing.

Using Myfakewall to teach Author's Perspective
The concept of author's perspective can also be taught in the same manner by having students write posts revealing the writer's feelings or beliefs and how these views prompted the writer to create a particular piece of writing.  High order skills are at work because students apply what they learned after reading a biography or autobiography about the author's life. To write thought-provoking posts and comments on the Myfakewall.com page, students must analyze and evaluate the author's life circumstances, choices, and beliefs and synthesize a post using texutal examples to reveal how and why an author incorporated his/her life views in his/her writing.    

Using Myfakewall to teach Characterization, Historical Events, Tone and Mood, Connotation and more

• Of course, Myfakewalls do not have to be just about a writer's life. Students can create fakewalls about characters to learn characterization. Posts could feature the characterization strategy S.T.E.A.L., which focuses on analyzing a character's Speech, Thoughts, Effect on Others, Actions and Looks. 
• Other fakewalls to challenge students to use critical thinking skills and textual support would be profiles for historical figures with posts that explore a famous or infamous decision, its repercussions, and the historical figure's controversial thoughts and conversations with his/her associates, friends or family.  Imagine how primary and secondary sources could also be used to incorporate textual support on all of these pseudo profile pages.
• As difficult as it is for students to identify the tone and mood of a piece, myfakewall.com can support teaching this concept if students are asked to create a profile using particular textual examples that reflect a specific negative or positive tone while comments could show reader's positive or negative mood after reading these text examples. Myfakewall.com could even be used to reinforce connotation if students create fake posts using negative connotations sharing them with fake users to see the effect words have on other readers and writers.  

Myfakewall.com supports so many different critical thinking activities that allow students to step inside the mind of notable figures, use textual examples, primary and secondary sources, and their own creativity.

Whether students create fake pages that are serious or funny, they will be engaged in creating original content.

I would love to see what Myfakewall.com profiles students could create to explore the minds and lives of scientists, mathematicians, artists, and other noteworthy individuals or ideas. 

Please check out these Myfakewall page profiles!

One Scoop or Two?

Building your own "sundae" of information is as delicious as a double scoop of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top! Scoop.It is the banana split of bookmarking when browsing the web because you get to choose and garnish an information "sundae" with content you find deliciously interesting.  You can share your scoops of information with a community of readers on various social media, and on Scoop.It.

Here’s how you scoop your way to a delicious "sundae" of information! 

1.) Pick a title for your topic, e.g., “Tech Tools To Improve Parent Communication”

2.) Enter a brief, but engaging description of the type of content your scoop will contain e.g.,   

     Connecting with parents in a snap using web 2.0 tools!  

3.) Identify the language the content will be in: English

4.) Enter keywords to describe your topic: parent communication, parent contact, etc.

5.) Upload an icon to represent your scoop if you’d like.

Then, watch the magic happen! Scoop.it scans the web to scoop up any relevant content related to your topic. Like an ice cream bar with unlimited toppings, Scoop.it presents you with content choices to add to your information sundae. You decide to add or discard the content depending on its relevancy and interest.  You can also decide on sources to locate your content. Adding a Scoop.it bookmarklet to your browser also makes it easy to scoop up content whenever you're browsing and come across content worth adding.

Once you have scooped up content for your information sundae, you can share your scoops on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress and Tumblr, join a community of scoopers, follow their scoops or be followed.  Scoop.It is still in the beta stage, so I hope they will sweeten up to the idea of adding Blogger to their sharing options. However, you can add a sweet widget of your scoops to your website or blog! 

Students, teachers and parents are in for a real treat with Scoop.It because it’s a delicious way to organize content and taste each scoop of information one at a time to meet so many instructional purposes and needs.  


Different reasons for creating your own Scoop.Its:

• Disseminates information such as important articles, videos, links, and other content to parents, colleagues, and students
• Organizes resources for group projects for struggling students to save time and help students see various content that reveals a topic's focus or theme.
• Facilitates students' research efforts for projects. As they research a topic, students can scoop their sources and submit their scoop.it page to the teacher as their lists of works cited. 
• Supports reading instruction. Students can work individually, in pairs or small groups reading content the teacher has pre-selected and saved on Scoop.it. Students can analyze the differences in the text structure of each selection featured in the scoop.it page; they can set a purpose for reading each selection; identify key or difficult vocabulary in each selection; summarize each selection, and find connections among all of the selections on the Scoop.It page.  

Here’s a double scoop I created. I will be adding the Scoop.It widget to my blog, so you can always see new content I’ve scooped up, or you can get a taste on my Twitter page, Facebook, or by following my scoops on Scoop.It itself.    

We're Lucky To Have Tech, But Are We Any Wiser?

In the age before tech tools, a.k.a. the analog world, teachers had to find creative ways to engage students with difficult texts or concepts, and help them transition to more challenging reads and ideas, but it wasn’t always easy or even achievable in 180 days! And, naturally some teachers were better at it than others. Now that we’re lucky enough to have tech in schools, are we any wiser? What’s changed in terms of how we use our resources? How are we using tech tools effectively to motivate reluctant learners and help them make the necessary transitions to become literate, educated adults? 

If students reach the fourth grade without strong math or reading skills, how many of these students overcome their deficiencies in middle school, high school or even adulthood? How are we truly using tech tools as interventions to stop the cycle of illiteracy and aliteracy?  

Today’s tech tools proclaim to boost critical thinking and combat all types of illiteracy, and I believe they can...someday in the near future, not just yet! I visited a Title I school recently where thousands of dollars had been spent on lap top carts, yet no one had bought the software for the lap tops. How effective was that decision to buy the hardware without the software? How long will the lap top carts sit in a closet before students and teachers can take advantage of them? Like this school, not all of our nation’s schools have caught up and established the infrastructure needed to support complete tech integration, and in those schools that have, we need to ask if the tech is being used wisely to teach critical thinking. 

With good reason, there’s been a lot of buzz about the September 3rd, 2011 New York Times article revealing the stagnant test scores of the Kyrene School district of Arizona. Many pro tech educators, including me, claim these statistics don’t tell the full story. However, what is the real story? I am a firm believer that learning how to critically think, without ever teaching to a test, increases a student’s chances of scoring high on standardized tests. Of course, for some students, it’s just not that simple; there will be other factors that affect their test performance. But, on the whole, if there is an entire school who has been using tech wisely and meaningfully for several years, statistically wouldn’t the scores tend to be higher? So, the questions remain: With tech tools as support, what critical thinking skills do students need to learn from year to year, and how are all subject area teachers across grade levels working in vertical teams to achieve “digital” continuity from kindergarten to high school? How are teachers building on the tech and critical thinking skills students mastered in previous years? We need to reflect on our curriculum goals that integrate tech and identify exactly how these goals help students develop critical thinking, study habits, and mastery of concepts to progress to more rigorous thinking levels. 

  

However, if schools have struggled to achieve this continuity and consistency to build vertical teams and meet benchmarks when we first began to use pen, paper and books, what are we going to do differently now that we have tech?  Have we grown wiser? These are questions  I think we must continually ask:

• How are we using specific tech tools to effectively address illiteracy and aliteracy?
• How does my school or my district’s vertical team create continuity, consistency and increase rigor year to year? What conditions create successful tech integration?
• How are we using specific tech tools to effectively teach critical thinking year to year?
• How are we using tech tools to engage and build autonomy?
• How are we using tech tools to help reluctant learners transition from less challenging work to more rigorous academic levels?
• How has tech integration lead to increased academic achievement? 
• What specific tasks and roles are we assigning reluctant readers and writers when we use tech tools in the classroom? How we are we using tech tools to help build these students’ skills so that they can have an active role in our classrooms, and become independent learners?  

Tech in education remains undiscovered country for many schools, and our students exist as digital natives held back by an analog world. Many of our nation’s teachers remain afraid to abandon the analog world. The sooner we begin to coordinate our efforts, the wiser and luckier we will be.   

Please check my webdoc and share your thoughts! Thanks for reading!

Peachy Keen Presentations!

Have you heard of http://photopeach.com/ ? It's just a peachy site! Students will be able to upload images, choose music to complement the image, add a brief description and voila, there's an amazing slideshow presentation!  Imagine the possibilities in your classroom! Students can use http://photopeach.com/ to summarize a text they have read, using images and sound that capture the main idea or theme of the text. They can create images of various steps in a math problem, upload these, and then add text to explain each step and solution. What about uploading images, music and text to demonstrate their knowledge about a historical or scientific event, or notable figure? Creating a slideshow to showcase a writer, define literary terms, vocabulary, or book genres won't be the pits anymore! Photopeach.com is sweet! 

Hope you'll check it out and share how you used this easy tech tool in the classroom! Endless possibilities!

See my photopeach sample featuring the web tool logos of tech tools I've talked about, and those you can look forward to learning about in future posts.

Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen to Analog!

Now no offense to Lawrence Welk. I have fond childhood memories of watching the show on our analog TV with my grandfather. I remember the bubbles while the big band played, the pretty singers in the flowing pastel dresses, the young female Mexican singer, and the African-American tap dancer.  When I think of it now, Welk was ahead of the game in terms of multiculturalism. He featured minorities as regulars on his show when most shows in the 60s were not. Maybe that was one of the many reasons Welk's show became a hit with American audiences. He was progressive! However, that was in the 50s and 60s!  Some people reading this blog may not even know who Lawrence Welk was, which serves as a case in point.  When it comes to teaching and learning, many schools are still operating in the Lawrence Welk era...students are still being required to sit in quiet rows; answering questions at the end of a textbook; forbidden to speak to each other, or even to the teacher for that matter; forbidden to ask questions; bored to tears listening to monotone lectures; copying notes from poorly lit overhead projectors; forced to answer multiple choice questions, and fill in the blanks on worksheet after worksheet, and punished to write lines, or behavior modification essays at the slightest sign of dissension. The Lawrence Welk era came and went. It served its purpose for our needs then, and maybe it didn't because we didn't know better. But when we realized there was something better, we embraced change. When we discovered that there were "Moves Like Jagger", and our needs were no longer being met, we created and searched for ways to do better. We progressed. Our lifestyles and perspectives evolved; we said "adios" and good riddance to so many aspects of society that the Welk Show represented, and we embraced something different: we embraced progress.  However, how have we truly progressed inside our classrooms since then? It's human nature there will be those who forever argue life was better in yesteryear, and that teaching and learning of yesteryear was superior to ours. They are not wrong because society then is nothing like society now.  Students then are nothing like students now. However, inside our classrooms, why do we hold on or revert to antiquated methods, turning on Welk and ignoring the rock and roll?  

If we were to visit every American school classroom, public and private, how many schools do you think are still tuning in to Welk rather than Maroon 5? ("Moves Like Jagger" reference full circle here, and another case in point if you're over 40 and have no idea what I'm talking about.)  If you're an educator of children, tweens, teens or young adults, it's essential that our classroom culture and technique is not a relic of the past, but a constant thriving and evolving source of inspiration where the next generation discovers their voice and identity, and is not held hostage by our own.  

As Lawrence Welk and his singers used to say every night:  

"Here's a Wish and a prayer that every dream comes true":  

Be not afraid to use at least one web tool in your classroom per week. Remember you can't break anything by clicking and pointing; the majority of web tools are super user friendly; you won't lose data as long as you remember to save it beforehand. You will save time; you and your students will have fun in the teaching and learning process, and most all, you will engage and challenge students to think so everyone can have "moves like Jagger" and not Welk.  Sorry Mr.Welk! Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen to analog! (P.S. For those under 30, these words were part of Welk's "Good Night" song lyrics.)
      

Are They Talking Behind Your Back?

Whether you want to admit it, or not, there are two societies thriving in your classroom; one is in plain view which you take credit for leading fearlessly, and keeping under control,and then something very human begins to happen right behind your back. Whether we like it or not, an “underground” society emerges which you as the teacher are not privy to, a secret society inaccessible to you because of the role you play: “The Teacher”. Regardless of how cool you may think you are as a teacher, and how much you think your students admire and respect you, students do talk behind your back!

Todaysmeet.com is a service allowing us as teachers to enter the teen psyche and surreptitiously discover what they are talking about “behind our back” during a lecture, a discussion, a guest speaker, a viewing of a film, and so many other school activities requiring them to be a passive audience member. Todaysmeet.com EMPOWERS you as the teacher because students are held accountable for listening; they are no longer spectators, but participants in an interactive audience requiring them to hold their own by providing comments, questions, speculations, arguments, answers, solutions, evidence, opinions, explanations, reflection, analysis, application…the list of possibilities is endless and dependent on the criteria YOU set for the * “backchannel” conversations students undeniably have behind our backs. Obviously we cannot control the conversations students have outside of our classrooms, but Todaysmeet.com EMPOWERS us to control the conversations students are having “behind our backs” inside our classrooms.

* Backchannel is a term used by James Socol, creator of Todaysmeet.com. Socol says “backchannel” is “everything going on in the room that isn’t coming from the presenter… where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, and give you the most immediate feedback you’ll ever get.”

The temptation for students to pass notes, and have sidebar conversations is virtually eliminated with Todaysmeet.com.

Todaysmeet.com EMPOWERS you as the teacher to know exactly what students are thinking, and therefore instantly obtain feedback about a student’s depth and breadth of understanding during any type of presentation.

How does Todaysmeet.com work

Step One

Prior to any type of presentation, demonstration or listening activity, visit Todaysmeet.com to create and name a room where your students will be talking to each other while they hear the presentation.

• You can choose to have students talk to other students who are in the same classroom at the same time; or you can collaborate with another teacher to have two or more classrooms engage in a conversation by listening to the same content at the same time. Every student will need to have his/her own computer. If computers are available for every student in a school building to use all at the same time, an entire school can view a presentation and engage in conversation on Todaysmeet.com integrating subjects, grade and achievement levels, and encouraging cooperation and communication among all students and teachers.

Step 2

Decide when you would like Todaysmeet.com to delete the room, i.e., in 2 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, one day, one week, one month, or one year. The type of presentation students will be listening to will determine the longevity of the meeting room. If you plan on having an on-going discussion, you may want to extend the time so you can return to the same room where the feed of previous posts will appear and serve as a recap of a prior conversation.

Step 3
Once you have created and named your “talking room”, provide your students with the URL of the room. For example:
Create a room
Name a room: Lab demonstration # 1
Delete a room: in 2 hours
Click on Create a room.

• Note: If the name you chose for your room is already taken, a red X will appear next to the URL under the heading of Name a room.
• Once you click on Create a room, the next window to appear will be a split page with two sides; “Listen” on the left and “Talk” on the right as well as a window for students to type their names.
• It is important to set specific norms regarding the names students will use. When working with middle school students who may hesitate to share their true thoughts and feelings for fear of how their peers may perceive their posts, a teacher can EMPOWER her students by asking them to generate a pen name, which only she will know. The teacher can keep a log of the student names along with the secret pen names. This will ensure confidentiality and afford students the piece of mind they will not be criticized for their posts.

At this point, the teacher will have a URL to provide her students once they enter the classroom and before a presentation. The teacher can write the URL for all students to see and enter once they each have their own computer. Upon typing and entering the unique URL of the teacher created “talking room”, students will see the split page of Listen and Talk and will need to enter a name and click join to begin adding their posts.

How can Todaysmeet.com EMPOWER you and your students

Students can use Todaysmeet.com to engage in conversation after listening and viewing a myriad of activities, such as a lab demonstration, a lecture on any subject, a guest speaker, a film, an audio recording, a student presentation, a play, a written exercise practice while learning how to write a second language, a debate, and so much more.

• You can even have a silent Socratic discussion after reading a specific text; instead of discussing the text out loud, both you and your students can post questions and responses on Todaysmeet.com rather than having an oral discussion. This may enable the more reticent and timid students to gain confidence in their role in the class since they can use their pen name to posts their thoughts and keep their posts anonymous.

How will you use Todaysmeet.com in your Empowered Class?                        Share your ideas

Teachers can use a Todaysmeet.com as an assessment tool in a variety of ways. Student posts offer teachers instant feedback showing a student’s understanding of concepts being discussed. Student posts can provide teachers with an instant assessment or even a summative assessment of concepts taught. The possibilities to use Todaysmeet.com as an assessment tool are endless. An Empowered Teacher needs to determine the content of what students will hear and/or see and identify how this content will help students meet the specific learning goals the teacher would like to students to reach.

Teachers can even use posts on Todaysmeet.com to teach students Self-Assessment. Teachers can use both teacher and student models as examples of quality posts. Teachers can allow students to experiment with the technology first so they can feel comfortable writing posts and then lead them in a discussion about posting etiquette and what makes for an acceptable and unacceptable post. Providing a rubric indicating the frequency and quality of the posts, and posting etiquette is a must! Before using Todaysmeet.com it is essential to explain norms for acceptable posts and provide specific examples of unacceptable posts. You may want to ask students to give you examples of what would be considered acceptable and unacceptable posts.

The Todaysmeet.com discussion can be used as a springboard to study and explore other topics, which will naturally come up in the conversations.

Allow and accept the natural digressions, which may surface away from the topic at hand since it is not unusual for people to get off topic if for a moment during discussions.

Assist students in evaluating and interpreting their posts and those of others; Teachers can print the posts(feed) and have a follow-up conversation out loud about the thoughts posted. Questions teachers can ask are endless such as, what were the patterns? What comments stood out? Who had the most insightful remark and why? The wittiest? The strangest? Evaluate the off-topic comments as well and discuss what effect they had on the conversation.

Always consider their strengths and weaknesses of your students and their varying degrees of ability regarding critical thinking, spelling, typing speed, etc. prior to the Todaysmeet.com session and after. The teacher should take time to self-reflect on what were the advantages and disadvantages for the different ability groups. What modifications can be made next time using Todaysmeet.com? What worked well and what needs tweaking? What did students appear to be confused about? What may have caused the confusion?

Bring your students’ hidden questions and thoughts to the surface of your classroom to promote conversation, critical thinking, and most importantly to determine the homogeneity and/or heterogeneity of your students’ thoughts. Todaysmeet.com lets you enter your students’ mind. Empower yourself in your classroom by guiding what your students are saying “behind your back”.