Supporting Student Teachers Online

How did I support a student teacher prior to the tremendous technology tools we have available today?  The use of tech tools allows me to coach my student teacher with much greater accuracy and care.  It's incredible.

For example, my student teacher is working carefully on his multidisciplinary teaching unit.  The unit is focused on biomes and includes standards in reading, writing, math and science.  He will lead the students through 8-12 lessons as they research, write and depict the main biomes of the earth.  I'm so happy that he has agreed to teach this unit as it is a wonderful extension of our animal adaptation unit and a terrific precursor to our endangered species work.  By the end of the unit, I imagine that our room will have beautiful paper-cut murals including informational paragraphs, captions and lists on the bulletin boards that border the classroom. Then as students research and learn about their endangered species, they'll add paper sculpture animals to each mural.  This kind of integrated, ongoing research and learning creates a vibrant classroom community of learners.

As my student teacher works, the once lengthy student-teacher meetings, have been replaced by back-and-forth communication online using Google docs and our closed social network, NING.  The list below demonstrates the many ways technology is enriching and enhancing the student-teacher dialogue, collaboration and learning.

• The weekly teaching schedule is clearly created with a color coded chart on Google docs.
• Collaboration with regard to lesson planning and unit design is done on Google docs which lends itself to real-time collaboration and exchange at convenient times for both the student teacher and classroom teacher.
• The student teacher created a Google site for all unit information allowing ready access for students, parents, professors and teachers. (Example of a Unit Website)
• The student teacher introduced the unit on our closed classroom social network as a way to invite parents and students into the unit study, unit website and conversation related to the unit.
• Student teacher and classroom teacher communication is aided by the use of emails for procedural, quick-response communication.
• In a similar way, the student teacher's advisor uses email and Google docs to communicate with us.  He has also joined the NING to stay abreast of classroom conversations and events.

Though the student teacher and I continue to meet regularly during the week to plan and learn, the use of technology has made the experience far richer promoting growth and learning for all.  I can't imagine hosting a student teacher without utilizing the wonderful technology that's available today.

How do you use technology to enhance the student teaching experience?  In what ways does the use of technology aid your work as a student teacher or advisor?  Thanks for joining the conversation. 

Online Scrabble: An Engaging Ed Tool

I recently took the plunge into online Scrabble and I finally realized the feeling my passionate video gaming students have when time flies and they don't want to stop when playing a video game.  It's amazing!

What's also amazing is the rate of learning with online Scrabble.  My Scrabble abilities have grown ten-fold in only two short days, and this is incredible when you consider I've been playing the game for decades.

What increased my playing power?  There are many design factors that contributed to my quick learning including the following:

• The chance to play multiple players at many levels.
• The speed of the game as I was introduced to new words at a very fast rate.
• The ready access of the online dictionary that I used to check words.
• The fact that I was seeing so many words I hadn't heard of which prompted me to look up the meaning of those words oline by opening another window.
• The competition: Yes, I want to beat my brother-in-law (a Scrabble expert) before I die!
• The play at your own rate aspect of the game.

I'm sure that online game designers employ many design factors to create passion for their games.  What are those specific factors?  Can educators profit from understanding video game design and the factors that underly these games?

I'm been at the periphery of this discussion, taking note now and then, but I definitely am seeing the link between quick learning of what can sometimes be painstaking, dull, rote learning of essential facts and processes becoming a passionate engagement in game-like play.

Are you employing online games in your classroom?  Do you design online games? What factors are essential to promote efficient learning in a motivating, student-paced, multi-modal way?  Please send me your links, thoughts and ideas related to this discussion. I want to learn more as I believe my students will profit from this information.  Thanks!

Blogging: One Small Voice

You won't be surprised to hear me say that I really enjoy blogging.  I love writing about ideas and gaining proximity to truth.  I like to debate the ideas, revise, and renew.  Writing and thinking for me is sport, passion, and pleasure.

I can't forget though that words are powerful.  What you say has the potential to effect, yet the words can also lay dormant without any response.  I accept both.  I speak and write because I believe it's important to voice your opinions, thoughts, experience, and knowledge if you think it can make a difference. I also like the venue of blogging because of its give-or-take nature. You don't have to read it, but it's there for the taking if you desire.

I've written about this before, and will write about it again.  It is important to consider the focus of your work particularly after a powerful, passionate burst of activity to ensure that the purpose is aimed well, and the intent is honest.

I'm only one small voice in a sea of action, thoughts, and ideas, but I know that it's the connectivity of small voices alining together that create positive change and movement, and that's a potential I don't want to pass up.

Learning Without Evidence

I was struck today by the great moments of learning in my life that aren't supported by evidence.

Fortran: I struggled through that programming course and didn't receive a high grade, yet it underlies the way I run my classroom for success and differentiation each and every day.

Pilgrims, Prophets and Lovers: My Jesuit instructor was very upset that I didn't do all the reading and put little time into my work, yet that course taught me about "journey" and gave me confidence to journey throughout my life--very powerful.

Professor Cording: He ignited my passion to learn, question and wonder.  He gave me tremendous insight to words and phrases, poetry and literature, yet when he asked me to meet with him and discuss my work, I was too shy to do it.  Yet, I bring his inspirational teaching into my grade school classroom each and every day.

Ms. McLaughlin: I wasn't the strongest reader, in fact it was only in third grade that I began to read books on my own, and that's because Ms. McLaughlin made time every day for us to pick up books and read them without constraint or heavy oversight. Instead, she created wonderful displays that enticed us to read.  That's the first year I actually saw myself in a book that I read myself.

Ms. Ball: I've written about her before as she was the cause of my first, memorable revelation.  As I've mentioned, before kindergarten and my teacher, Ms. Ball, I thought the world only consisted of my neighborhood and city, then when she showed us the slides of her trip to Holland--a fire burst inside of me, the powerful heat and excitement of a revelation exploded: There's a world bigger than the one I imagined, I thought.  Ms. Ball was also the person who first read a book to me that I could identify with. It was Make Way for Ducklings, and that revealed to me that a book can be about a place you've been to and enjoyed.

Gym: I was the worst runner in grade school.  In fact, many decades later, I run faster now than I did when I was ten.  Yet, that powerful experience of being the last in the 300-yard run taught me what it's like to struggle, be at the bottom and not achieve.

I could go on and on, but the point I want to make is that some of our most powerful learning doesn't show up in the evidence; cannot be captured on a test or piece of paper, and can only be described as amorphous.  That's something we can't forget as we create systems, instruction and environments for our students' optimal learning, growth, and development.

Replacing Either/Or with a 3-D Continuum

It's not either/or, it's a 3-D Continuum: forward/backward, right/left, up/down, diagonal, in/out and more. I'm wondering what model in physics or math demonstrates this.  In life we usually think this way or that: Republican/Democrat, girl/boy, good/bad, up/down, but that's not the way it really is--we're all part of some and part of the other, we can find ourselves on the 3-D Continuum (for lack of a better phrase) at all times.  The either/or dialogue does us harm as humans, innovators, visionaries, educators, friends, parents and citizens. I'm looking for greater depth, insight, vision with regard to this discussion.  Please send me your thoughts, ideas, links and images.  I want to know.