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.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
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.
Monday, January 9, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, January 2, 2012
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.
Monday, December 26, 2011
The Undiscovered Country
The school has moved. This ought to be interesting. Everything is new and shiny and I am hoping to keep it that way. My room looks so different from the place I taught for 12 1/2 years. The students and parents have been helping move in a lot of different parts of the building. The one area that has been off-limits so far has been the gym. That will be unveiled on the first day of school. I imagine there are going to be a lot of ooohhs and aaahhhs at that point. The first days is going to be so exciting but is going to be a major change for everyone.
I excited overall but probably most excited about the new way that I am going to be able to use technology in the building. We are going to have a cart of chromebooks for check out for the upper school and middle school classes. I can see myself using those just about every day in my 7th Grade History class. Now that the Internet will be much more available with a server that is actually designed to have bunches of kids using the internet at the same time (not like the old building) I am planning on developing much more for the wiki for each of my history classes. I am still trying to figure out how to invite the kids to become members and will tackle that this week. My plan is for each of them to have a page to put their projects stuff on and then have topics for each of the major areas we are covering. They then will be able to add stuff. I spent one day looking for different media to add to my 6th Grade (Western Civilization) and 7th Grade (Non-Western Culture Focusing on Asia and Africa) pages and added probably 25 videos and another 2050 links just to show the students how it is done. Hopefully I will even be able to have the students blog about what we covered in the class on a weekly basis on the main part of my webpage.
I have some work to do on math so I can finish putting lessons up on the first half of the book. That should not take me too long since I only have a bout 3 more to go. Hopefully the kids remembered how to do percents over the break.
Starting to prepare for my talk at ICE on Flipping my classroom. I borrowed the IPad from the school and have started to experiment with using the Educreations and ShowMe apps. Still trying to figure it out but will over time. My gift to myself this year was a document camera. I am planning on using that to show how to record lessons using that system. I figure it is probably more likely for someone to have access to a document camera or an IPad than a Mobi board. I have a lot to do to plan for this but it should really keep me on my toes for the next couple of months.
No matter what these next few weeks are going to be some of the most exciting in my career.
I excited overall but probably most excited about the new way that I am going to be able to use technology in the building. We are going to have a cart of chromebooks for check out for the upper school and middle school classes. I can see myself using those just about every day in my 7th Grade History class. Now that the Internet will be much more available with a server that is actually designed to have bunches of kids using the internet at the same time (not like the old building) I am planning on developing much more for the wiki for each of my history classes. I am still trying to figure out how to invite the kids to become members and will tackle that this week. My plan is for each of them to have a page to put their projects stuff on and then have topics for each of the major areas we are covering. They then will be able to add stuff. I spent one day looking for different media to add to my 6th Grade (Western Civilization) and 7th Grade (Non-Western Culture Focusing on Asia and Africa) pages and added probably 25 videos and another 2050 links just to show the students how it is done. Hopefully I will even be able to have the students blog about what we covered in the class on a weekly basis on the main part of my webpage.
I have some work to do on math so I can finish putting lessons up on the first half of the book. That should not take me too long since I only have a bout 3 more to go. Hopefully the kids remembered how to do percents over the break.
Starting to prepare for my talk at ICE on Flipping my classroom. I borrowed the IPad from the school and have started to experiment with using the Educreations and ShowMe apps. Still trying to figure it out but will over time. My gift to myself this year was a document camera. I am planning on using that to show how to record lessons using that system. I figure it is probably more likely for someone to have access to a document camera or an IPad than a Mobi board. I have a lot to do to plan for this but it should really keep me on my toes for the next couple of months.
No matter what these next few weeks are going to be some of the most exciting in my career.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The End is Here
All that work I put in during the summer was worth it but I have had to start recording lessons again and posting them to YouTube. I started last week and plan to do a few lessons over the weekend so I can stay ahead of the students. We are moving on to percents and I have started to put together some of the graphics that I will need to keep going. It was definitely worth it and it seems to have helped quite a few students and even parents to understand the math more effectively. One thing that I am looking forward to this year is the semester exam. I am going to give back to the students copies of their tests from the six chapters we will have covered and let them know which videos they should review before the test. Hopefully this targeted review will be better than the one I normally do that covers all of the material. Since we are moving to a new building with better internet capabilities the students should be able to all watch at the same time different lessons.
Just today I found out that my proposal for the ICE conference has been accepted. I am going to be presenting on flipping a classroom by using wikis and videos. I have until the start of March to put something together and I hope that I will as interesting as the people who I have learned from at ICE before. I am hoping to borrow an IPad from the school so I can see how to use it to develop lessons through that format. Exciting times and busy times.
Just today I found out that my proposal for the ICE conference has been accepted. I am going to be presenting on flipping a classroom by using wikis and videos. I have until the start of March to put something together and I hope that I will as interesting as the people who I have learned from at ICE before. I am hoping to borrow an IPad from the school so I can see how to use it to develop lessons through that format. Exciting times and busy times.
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