Techno-Tragedy

I love the new school and the room that I work in.  I there are only a couple of periods a week that I need to be out of it.  So when I sat down and started to record my math lessons for the day for the students to watch on Tuesday I had a plan.  Unfortunately it got derailed when my microphone did not work.  I tried it on a couple of different computers but now it is in the garbage.  So I did not record the lesson ahead of time for the first time this year.  Oh well I think that the students were fine.  We went over 3 lessons on Tuesday anyhow because it they were all about the basic definitions of geometry (rays,  lines, angles, and triangles).  It was pretty easy and we skipped over the one lesson that I do not like in the book on constructing angle and segment bisectors. I was kind of disappointed I had a great picture of Samuel Jackson to talk about when we went over planes.  It was from "Snakes on a Plane"  so I was pretty sure the kids would find it funny. I got a new set of headphones so I recorded today.  

The Sixth Graders started on the wiki process on Tuesday and worked on it today as well.  After giving the 7th Graders total freedom to create something on Japan,  I realized that the students needed a little more guidance.  Within the project set up, each has a page where they can put stuff.  They needed to find material on the four chapters that we are studying about the successors to the Roman Empire (Germans, Franks, Irish and Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings).  They seemed pretty into it.  I did have limit the amount of "Deadliest Warrior" video time in the computer lab.  It was fine providing it was on topic but once they started roaming and looking at other episodes I re-focused their attention on the topic.  Some of the students had set up the pages in the wrong section and I was able to easily change them to the right place by cutting and pasting.  They were all into the project but some got it quicker than others as expected.  Good start and a good way of reviewing some material that I have always found kind of boring.  We are probably going to go back again tomorrow and I will likely take the 7th Graders to so they can work on their Japan pages.  Two of my kids have been adding stuff in their spare time for fun.  Now that is buy in from the students. 
   

Halfway Home and All Hail the Power of the Wiki

           So the semester is over and I am currently working on grade reports.  I started working with the students on the wiki pages in my Non-Western Culture (7th Grade).  We are working on Japan and we went as a class down to the new computer lab to start talking about the wiki. I set up accounts for each of the students and it really was pretty easy once I added the word griffin at the end of their first name and the initial of their last name  (like: joesgriffin).  I had divided the students into project and showed them how to set up the wiki.  I showed them how to add videos, links, and pictures and to edit the text.  After going through it a couple of times I let them just start to play.  They leaped right in and immediately got started. The started grabbing things from all over the place.  I had divided the students into groups that I knew would work well together, but showed them how they need to save their work so they do not over write each others work. One group decided to focus on sushi,  another group on WW2, another group on the tsunami, and another one on ninjas. Some of the students just started putting additional random stuff they liked.  It was a beautiful, amorphous mess.  We only had about 10 minutes of them finding stuff and they did not want to leave when the bell rang.
           The next day they came in and wanted to go back down to use the computers again.  We could not use them but then something unexpected happened.  I have two students who want to use their computer all of the time in class.  Now that we have a better wireless system they are on them in class adding stuff to some of the lectures that I give whch is great. One of these students is very much a self starter who I really have to make sure to challenge,  the other student is smart but hard to motivate. So both of them came in and said that they had spent some of the rest of the day adding links to the wiki so they could share them with the other students.  It felt awesome seeing how excited they were and once I went on to see what they added it was great to see the results.  They needed to tweak things a little bit and I am going to have to suggest to them that they organize the page a little more clearly so it is easier to follow but it was great to have such a buy in from the students. 

   This coming week I am going to try to set up the wiki for the 6th graders.  I am once again going to not provide a lot of structure partially so they can play a little and get to know the system.  So they will be focusing on the groups that came after the Roman Empire including the Franks, Germans, Vikings, Irish and Anglo-Saxons.  We will have read the chapters from the book but this way they will hopefully be able to explore in a way that they are interested in and enthusiastic about.

In math,  if I look at the progress of the students I am happy.  The average grade for the second quarter was 85%.  I think that that is the highest average I have had overall.  I did stuff differently but my sense is that this has been a really good quarter. I am going to talk the students on Tuesday about what if any changes they think should be made to the class.

Grading myself

Thankfully at the school I am at we do not put a whole lot of focus on standardized testing.  In math, we go through the book about a chapter every 2 1/2 weeks, and the students take a test and maybe a couple of quizzes. But I do not really know how things are going compared to other students across the country.  I am looking forward to seeing how the students do on the Terra Nova tests that they will take but until then I have to go on what the students have done in past years  Clearly I have changed the way I teach and when the students took their semester math final focusing on the first six chapters of the book I was a little nervous on how they the students would do. Well they took their final and they significantly improved over last year.  I do not have the time right now to do a statistical analysis of the data but I am guessing that the average went up by about 10 points.  It was exciting to see the progress and that the concepts have stuck enough with the students.  We did a brief review the past three days in class but that was all and I did that the previous year as well.  I am just hoping that the gains are as dramatic on the Terra Nova tests they will take in spring.  That way maybe I can argue that other teachers might need to give this method of instruction a look. 

TIme for the Students to Step Up

Big week planned.  In math, this is the week students will take their semester final.  And in my World History (6th) and Non-Western Culture (7th) classes the students will be able to start adding to the wiki pages. 

In math class, I gave each students a copy of the tests that they have taken so far this year.  So they have a reminder of the stuff that they did not understand completely.  I then have gone over some of the more difficult problems.  I sent a long e-mail to parents recommending how their children should prepare and have reminded both parents and students that the videos are there if they have any questions.

In the two history classes, I figured out the way of adding permission for the students to be able to add to some of the pages without having to have their e-mails.  It was really pretty easy to do it trough the bulk user e-mail  feature on the wikispaces site.  I was able to use this because I have a K-12 education site.  That was pretty easy to get since all I had to do was e-mail the good people at wikispaces.  It should be an interesting experience this week when I start to introduce to them how they can easily add stuff to the pages.  I am going to start on this on Tuesday and have not decided yet whether to set clear parameters or to let the students just find stuff that interests them and that they think might interest others.  I am torn between these two feelings.  the 20th C. teacher is worried but the 21st C. teacher in me thinks the possibilities are worth the risk.

3000 views and counting

       Either yesterday or today my YouTube channel passed 3,000 views.  I created my last video for the first semester and there is now officially a video for each of the sections for the first 6 chapters in the book.  Now that I have figured out more bells and whistles like the calculator function I think it is going to go better for the rest of the year.  Few things are more annoying I am guessing than watching your teacher do long division.  It might be a good review but if you know how to do it then what a waste of time.  This also should cut down on the time for each video that involves calculations.
       I have started to add more images and am looking into adding other things the videos.  Now I feel like the videos that I did at the beginning of the year are pretty boring and lame. I still looked at the video counter every night and saw that the videos were not being viewed by every student each night.  So once I added the images I came up with a new idea of how to get the students to watch the videos more regularly.  Every day after a video I have started to give them a 1 or 2 question multiple choice quiz. It is something simple and visual  like what color was the Muppet who was  the waiter (it was Grover and he is blue) or what was the Lego set that I mentioned (the Death Star).  The answers are really easy and obvious and sometimes in the videos I even mention that you will want to remember this for tomorrow. The first day I did this I had not told the students and I was able to sense a shift in the class.  They realized that I did have a way of making sure they at least looked at the video.  So I am trying to find interesting and memorable images for the students to see for each video. 
        Now that I have one semester under my belt I feel like I am going to be able to really work at this and make the process even better for all involved.  

The Downside of YouTube

I was looking up videos today to explain an important battle that the Romans fought against the Gauls and had trouble finding something appropriate.  There are videos that are appropriate but I can't use them.  The problem is the suggested videos that come up on the side of the YouTube video if you go to that instead of using the embedded version on the site.  I was surprised to find what looked like inappropriate sexual content.  I can almost imagine the discussions I would be having with my supervisor if I had not caught it.  Unfortunately this is one of those areas that is hard deal with.  I want to have the kids be able to look up and see all the great stuff out there but worry about the muck that will get through.  I looked up videos on TeacherTube but there were a lot fewer options. I will have to work to figure out what the balance is on this.