Google Teacher Academy - Chicago

Back from Chicago and looking forward to implementing some of the ideas and plans that were hatched in Chicago.

Details to follow...

Update: The New Book of Knowledge

"All books on this cart are garbage. Please throw away."

Apparently there was another set of The New Book of Knowledge floating around the school. What amused me was these books are not just headed to the garbage, they are garbage.

I'm inclined to agree, but the wording is a little strong. I would offer an alternative. "All the information in these books is already on Wikipedia, please recycle."

tweet tweet!

School starts in a week and I will have to adjust a few of my habits. For one, I am addicted to Twitter. My school blocks Twitter, which may be a good thing, because I'm not sure I would get much done. Twitter is a way to post stream of consciousness thoughts limited to 140 characters. Here are some sample tweets from my last week of summer.

can you eat sukiyaki one-handed?

making enchiladas and looking at a 3lbs bag of tortilla chips!

i won a $25 dollar prize in a raffle! success!

Now, there is a community of people that actually collaborate and effectively use Twitter for professional reasons. I'm not sure I could do that, or be that committed to keeping up. There are actually entire conversations that play out using less than 140 characters at a time. Check out the example of a Twitter feed from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog where good things are happening on the professional development scene.

What I will miss is keeping up with friends and tracking the minutia of daily life. I have friends that don't have phones, but I could send them a tweet and they would be able to meet me for lunch. I actually...gulp...twittered throughout the first 16 hours of my wife's labor. We had friends and family on both coasts tracking the tweets for news of a baby.

If you haven't checked it out, you should. If your school hasn't already blocked it, tweet like its going out of style...because it won't be long.

The New Book of Knowledge!

I found this set of "knowledge" while cleaning out cabinets that are slated for renovation. I wonder if they have ever been used? I had a flashback to 1994 when I sent my first email and began using Gopher and clicking through menu-based links and Netscape. Just a little show and tell for the last post of the school year.

It's a good thing Pluto was demoted!

WARNING: Grumpy Blogger Alert!

I'll tell you what, it was a good thing Pluto was demoted as one of the nine planets because I won't have time to teach about it because of the mandated MCA tests (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment). The Science MCA is a computer-based test and is spread out over two class periods. While I am being dramatic, the amount of time spent gearing up the MCA tests results in less time for just about everything else. I lost seven 88 minute classes this year because of the MCA. I thought I would just bullet a few of the frustrations.

• Ummmm.... I lost seven 88 minute classes this year because of the MCA.
• The tests need to be cached. This means that before the test is given it is grabbed from the testing site and put onto the district server. This can take over an hour. While you can plan ahead the success of the testing should not fall on an overworked tech support person to show up on Monday at 5 am.
  
• The technology support people have the worst computer to tech support ratio in the business. These poor people have to maintain computers for users that by their nature want to pluck out keys and wallpaper the desktops. I heard someone say that this should have been done on Sunday. I disagree.
  
• Our school gave students water and mints for the Reading and Math MCA. I think this is a good idea other than the huge volume of plastic bottles in the garbage. For the computer-based MCA the students didn't get the same treatment because water and computers don't mix.
  
• I was told that Monday was a bad day for testing because so many schools are doing the test on Monday. Well, Friday was a field trip and there is something else on Tuesday and Thursday is a bad day too. There are no good days for these things but the point is that if you are going to do it then it has to work. If you can blame it on a Monday, you should question whether you should be giving it at all.
  
• Our school has done a great job of preparing kids to write constructed responses. Not that it is always done well, but there has been a school-wide effort to focus on writing skills. There have been a number of students over the course of the MCA who have not been able to type a full answer for a constructed response because there is a limit on characters. I feel like they should let you know there is a limit like on those online customer comment forms. I also feel like the students should be able to write at least two sentence before being limited. Who knows, maybe it is a computer issue....
• Luckily we have decent computers. Can you imagine the chaos of a school where there are 36 in class with 27 working computers.
  
• Insert your frustration here!

Does what happened today in Lab 611 determines whether my kids learned this year? I sure hope my kids got all those fossil questions right because I cut that unit as a result of losing so many classes to the MCA's (this is just an example...I did sign the non-disclosure form).

Desktop Post-it Note:

This computer sucks!!!!! The internet dosn't work and like a bazillion things pop up. so find a diffrent computer!!!!! somebody thought they were super funny and made it so everything popped up 5 times each!!!! NOT funny!

(this post-it was on a desktop in a student computer lab because someone changed the settings to open every application at startup.)

Poll:

Should schools lock computers down so that kids can't mess with the settings, change desktop images and install Pac-Man Widgets? (This allows students to be less distracted and keeps the over-worked tech support people happier)

Should schools leave computers "open" so that students can use them them way they were intended and deliberately teach students how to maintain and use computers? (This eats into class time, but will always insure that a student can access the built-in camera and change various settings depending on the project.)

I think schools wrestle with this on a day-to-day basis and just wanted to see that people think. Please vote on the poll to the right.

Mario Chalmers, Moodle and Online Assessments

The NCAA tourney is over and my Jayhawks won it all. Thanks to Mario Chalmers I got my first good night of sleep in weeks. As I was drifting off my brain started thinking about school, but just for a moment of two.

Standardized test season is upon us. This year we are adding an online science assessment in addition to the usual pencil and paper varieties. I have a few thoughts on these new online assessments and wanted to share them with a larger audience to see what the response was.

(some low scores out of 40)

Last week I gave a short online Moodle-based test on material that was largely review. There was some stuff on phase change, pressure, and other weather related items. The scores were abysmal. I remembered something I heard from students last year after a Moodle test.

"I like Moodle tests...they are so easy. It is so easy to click when you don't know the answer...it doesn't feel like a real test."


Hmmm, I don't think students take a lot of online test so maybe it is more like a video game. Maybe the students think they are simply deciding how to cross a river in Oregon Trail. Should we caulk the wagons and float it or just pay for the ferry? In a game, it is an easy decision and there are no real-world consequences.

Tests are not necessarily the same because there are real-world consequences. I currently dedicate one block to helping my students to prepare for the high stakes standardized tests. Our school does a good job of organizing this and dividing up tasks. As more tests go online, I think that we'll have to rely on more on our anecdotal experiences and the growing research base to address how students approach online tests.

Will those online test taking skills need to be deliberately taught? Is it really any different than paper/pencil? Are the scores really lower or is it just easier to generate statistics? Are some students more disadvantaged because of tests going online?