All in a Day's Work

The story you're about to read is real. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Benchmarks are upon us.

For those of you not in the teaching or education sphere, a benchmark is a test we give kids before the  state exams that is as much like the state exams as possible so we can judge how well kids are going to do on the state exams. It's a very important assessment tool, and is extremely helpful in determining what we need to cram into our kids' brains in the two months we have left before the Big Test.

Because I'm a special education teacher, and I'm always in a classroom with another teacher, I ALWAYS get pulled to give tests like these. Also, because I'm a special education teacher, I usually end up administering the test to students who need it read aloud to them. Before all of you who are not special education teachers freak out, telling me high schoolers should be able to read, let me assure you that this is perfectly legit. All the tests except reading comprehension can be read aloud to students with documented learning disabilities related to reading, like dyslexia. My kids CAN read. But when their reading is poor through no fault of their own, we don't want that to affect their scores in math or biology. We read it to them to prevent exactly that. So chill.

Just chill. I got this. 

So it's a lovely Wednesday morning. I'm testing sophomores today, and I arrive at 7:45 as usual. I put my lunch in the teacher's lounge, lock my purse up in my classroom's filing cabinet, buy a cookie from the cafeteria, and check out my tests. Yes, I eat cookies for breakfast. Don't judge. My kids file in, moaning and groaning about the test they are about to take. I counter their whining with obnoxiously over-cheerfulness on purpose, and we get down to work.

The kids have 4 hours to complete the test. They usually are done in about two hours.  I'm walking around, reading questions to anyone who raises their hand and asks, and I have to tell a student we'll call Adam to wake up. He rouses, and gets back to work. I make a circuit of the classroom and have to wake Adam again. And again. And again. I wake Adam 12 times in the first hour. At this point, another teacher comes in to relieve me, because I have second hour conference. I wander off down the hall to a disused classroom to file paperwork and call parents and design a lesson for 7th period.

2nd hour is about to end, and I prepare to return to my test takers. As I walk down the hall, I see another student from my group, Eddie, exiting the boys washroom, giggling. Now that's always suspicious, so I go ask him what's up. He tells me that Adam is asleep, in a stall, in the restroom. Now this is a first for me. Eddie tells me no one else is in the washroom, so I open the door wide (I can't see in) and holler "Adam, wake up!" as Eddie laughs his head off beside me. I am reward with some incoherent mumbling, and direct Eddie back to class, leaving Adam to finish whatever business he fell asleep in the middle of. I swear folks, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

I swear it's true.

I get back to my classroom and the teacher I'm tag teaming with informs me that Adam has been in the restroom for 45 minutes, but when she called the office, she was informed that he had some kind of doctors note indicating that he might need long restroom breaks and to let him be. I don't think anyone expected him to fall asleep in there.

My students had all begun to write the essay portion of their exam at that point, so I had time to contemplate whether if we had been taking this exam by computer, the artificial light would have helped Adam stay awake. About this point in time he returns to the classroom, and stays awake and actively working on his test for almost a whole hour.

Now most of my students have finished. I have been instructed to let them play on their phones when they finish, so they'll stay quiet. You may or may not agree with this particular tactic. All I'll say is that it is effective. John and Ashley are brother and sister. They're both finished, they're both on their phones. John clicks his tongue, and looks at Ashley who is smiling slyly at him. A second later he looks at her and hisses "Stop!" I give him my evil eye, and they both fall silent. Now it's Ashley who is giving silent signals of frustration to her brother. I look over at him and catch him hitting two buttons in rapid succession, over and over, as he grins at her evilly.

They had been texting each other. Sending the same random one letter message over and over and over so that the other's phone had a rapid fire alert going constantly, and I'm assuming, preventing them from being able to play flappy bird. I suppose this was the high tech equivalent of putting your finger an inch from your sibling's face and saying "I'm not touching you!" over and over. I really hope they have unlimited texts.

Must've looked something like this.

Third hour passes. Some of my students that are finished are allowed to leave for lunch, because their next class has a teacher that isn't testing. Some have to stay with me. Adam is still testing. He falls asleep, and I wake him. Again. James is lying on the futon. (I've no idea why there is a futon in my classroom. It was there when I moved in. Sometimes teachers who stay late grading papers come and take naps on it.) Whatever media site James is on has a video with sound. It pops up. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Adam, begin the only one still testing, has fallen asleep, and the noise wakes him. James apologizes, and shuts off his sound. Now, I have several options at this point. I could chew him out. I could chew him out and take up his phone. I could ignore it. Instead, I walk over to my cabinet, grab one of the three pairs of dollar store headphones I keep there, and toss them over to James, who then switches to Netflix and silently watches some cartoon for the rest of the testing period.

When fourth hour ends and Adam still isn't finished testing, we all go to lunch. He has about half an hour left to test, but we all need a break. The rest of the school is finished testing, so all my kids go back to their regular classes. After lunch, Adam and I return to my class, and for half an hour he furiously attempts to finish an essay and two short answer questions. I've given this test at least 20 times in my career, and I've never had to tell a kid they were out of time, until this day. I suppose if he hadn't spent two and a half of his four hours asleep, he would have finished on time. The rest of fifth hour is consumed by checking test materials back in, and filing paperwork.

6th hour is academic support. This is a math class for freshman. It's designed as a supplement to Algebra 1. Students who either didn't pass math during 8th grade or didn't pass the 8th grade state assessment for math land in this class. It's our job to figure out what they didn't learn in math last year, teach it to them, and make sure they pass Algebra 1.

An aside - before you go all kamikaze on me about social promotion and how it's evil, let me explain. Social promotion is a misnomer. We don't promote kids so that they can be with their same age peers. We promote kids because until they get to high school, each grade is one complete chunk of 4 core classes. In 8th grade, if you flunk math, but pass everything else, if we hold you back, you have to take 6 courses that you already passed, and one you failed. Which means you are bored. And bored kids are bad for the classroom. They get into trouble. So we promote you, and it's up to the next year's teacher to catch them up in whatever subject they failed. Kids have to flunk at least 2 core classes for schools to consider holding them back, and for good reason. How would you like it if you worked hard all year, and were successful 6/7ths of the time, but at the end of the year, you were told that because you were unsuccessful 1/7th of the time, you had to do all 7/7ths of the work over again? Not cool bro.

So that's what academic support is. That being said, we had been riding those kids hard and putting them up wet all week. They had taken a biology benchmark, and English 1 benchmark, and an Algebra 1 benchmark. So we graded one paper, and then we watched Donald in Mathemagic Land on youtube. They mocked it, sure. But that means they were paying attention.  And on Monday, when I pull out a bunch of notes for them to copy on quadratic functions, they'll remember that I was nice to them and let them watch a dumb (math related) cartoon after they took all those annoying benchmarks.

Or else.

7th hour, our last hour, and we're back to sophomores. Geometry. These kids had just sat for their English 1 benchmarks, and weren't about to do anything too brain intensive. Plus, first through fourth hour hadn't even met, and this class was ahead of everyone else. So we did a really cool activity for review. I used the smart board to project a Khan's academy activity involving measuring angles, and let the kids go up one at a time and manipulate the digital protractor via the touch screen. I know that kids should come to 10th grade knowing how to use a protractor, but you would be shocked at how many of them are missing basic skills. So days like these we use to go back and review. After everyone had had a turn we moved on to angle pairs, and once we'd done that the day was over and we were all free to go home.

So you may think I didn't do much teaching on this day, because we were testing. But I wouldn't be too sure about that. I taught Adam that there are consequences for not getting enough sleep the night before a test. I taught James that it's ok to use your gadgets in public, but it's not ok to disturb others with them. I also taught him that I'm not going to overreact to a small mistake like accidentally clicking on a video, and I really am on his side. I taught my 6th period class that I do really know that they've been through a lot this week, and also hopefully something about Pythagoras and the golden ratio. I taught my 7th period co-teacher how to use Khan's academy. I taught my 7th period class how to use a protractor. And I even learned something. John and Ashley taught me how to annoy someone silently from across the room.

All in a day's work.

Web 2.0 and Youtube

I had a disagreement with another professional recently about whether or not Youtube is part of Web 2.0. I present my case to you, and shall let you, gentle reader, decide the outcome. 

But first, you may ask, "What the dinglehopper is Web 2.0 anyway?"  Well, that's a good question. In short, Web 2.0 is a buzzword. And like most buzzwords, it has become overused to the point of being open to interpretation. 

The term was coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci and popularized by Tim O'Reilly in 2004 ("Web 2.0," n.d.). What it means is subject to much debate. There are two different definitions - the original definition, and one that has morphed from the bizarre game of telephone we as educators play with buzzwords, of paraphrasing, and reparaphrasing, until we have an entirely new definition. The original definition is best left to someone with better words than mine. "The Web that we've known for some years now has really been a one-way medium, where we read and received as passive participants, and that required a large financial investment to create content. The new Web, or Web 2.0, is a two-way medium, based on contribution, creation, and collaboration--often requiring only access to the Web and a browser." (Hargadon, 2008).

Now, by this definition, Youtube is the poster child for Web 2.0. Users create content by video taping their cats, and upload it to the website for the enjoyment of others. 

However, Web 2.0 has come to mean something different amongst educators. I'm paraphrasing here - but that's kind of the point. It has come to mean a web app that is free, fast, and easy that allows students to interact or collaborate or has some immediate learning value. 

By this definition, I still say Youtube passes the test. It's free, it's fast to learn, and it's easy to use.  With channels and comment sections, you could have entire discussions over content related videos. 

But you know what? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, I said it. It doesn't matter what you label a tool that you use in the classroom. Web 2.0 is a silly phrase anyway. The web didn't undergo an update, or come out with a new version. The web is an organic, ever changing thing, and to put a version number on it makes no sense. Besides, that term was coined in 1999. In 1999 I was still rocking out one of these things.

And I was singing Ace of Base too. 

Do you realize that was 15 years ago? Do you know how long that is in internet years? Like, a century. We're so bent on categorizing things, and sounding smarter than everyone else with our acronyms and our buzzwords that we are classifying tools based on a term that was obsolete at least four years ago.  Mark Brumley put it best when he likened it to cars with catalytic converters. We used to make a big deal about cars running on unleaded fuel only(Brumley, n.d.). Now, every car runs on unleaded fuel only. Fifteen years ago, a website that let it's users create content was a big deal. Now? Not so much. That's basically the whole internet. 

So youtube is a tool that can help us in the classroom (if we can get our administration to unblock it).
Does it matter if it fits into the definition of Web 2.0? No. What matters is whether or not you can use it successfully in your classroom to facilitate learning. 

So here's the part you really came  here for. How to use it in your classroom. Apart from the myriad of cool educational videos available on youtube, such as the WSHS math rap videos, you can create your own videos. You can "flip" your classroom and post a short lecture on a private channel in history class, with a discussion question at the end that students must respond to via the comments section. You could have students make "trailers" for a book they read, and post them on youtube in English class. Pick the best ones to show to your class the next year before they read the book to get them pumped. Have kids make a how-to video for absent students over the latest math concepts. Heck, I even heard about one teacher who found a school appropriate funny youtube video for every day school was in session, that was about 5 minutes long. He would begin to play the video at the beginning of the passing period. Students would rush into his classroom from their previous class to watch as much of the video as possible. He never had a single tardy student.
So what about you? How do you use youtube in the classroom?

References

Brumley, M. (n.d.). Web 2.0 is dead! Retrieved February 5, 2014, from http://teachamazing.com/ 

     web-2-0-is-dead/

Grumpy cat [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://memegenerator.net/instance/45702985

Sony discman [Photograph]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://acuriouswanderer.files.wordpress.com/2011/ 
     07/sony-discman.jpg

WSHSmath. (2011, January 31). Getting' triggy wit it [Video file]. Retrieved from 

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2uPYYLH4Zo 

Web 2.0. (n.d.). Retrieved February 5, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Do your students know more about technology than you do?

I ran across the following article today while I was trying to get ahead on my grad school class for technology leadership. The article asks if your students know more about technology than you do.

The answer is no. No they don't.

I know many a teacher who thinks they do. And don't get me wrong - my students know how to download flappy birds with the best of them. They are wonderful at navigating their iPhones and their Androids. Most of them know how to navigate Power Point well enough to put together a presentation on chapter four, which they will then recite back to the class. But two things are happening today; one, is that teachers are overestimating the tech skills of students, and two, they are underestimating their own knowledge of technology.

I am forever coming across students who don't know how to do basic, simple things. Like save their work. I have not done extensive research on this particular topic; all my evidence is anecdotal. I've been teaching for four years, and helped my previous school go one to one. I am generally referred to as "the technology lady" on campus, despite it being currently nowhere in my job description.  I do push for using technology in the classroom, and my fellow teachers often both admire and fear the things I'll attempt with my students in the computer lab. So I do have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence at my disposal.

Amongst other things, I had to have a very lengthy lesson in my mathematics class about networks, when I found that my students were saving their homework to their student directory - housed on the school servers and unavailable off campus - and then claiming that it "disappeared" when they got home. This was about halfway through the year, and students had been having these problems for months without being able to figure out why sometimes they could see their homework, and sometimes they couldn't.

I had to teach several students how to save in Microsoft Word. To be fair, this is what the student saw.

Just an icon. No file menu.

The "save" icon is easily recognizable to anyone who was around in the 90s as a 3.5" floppy disk. But  the child in question was born in 1998. He had never used a 3.5" floppy disk. How could he recognize it and associate it with saving a file?

When we went one to one at my last school, I showed my students the website for typer shark. Most of them could not type, because there was no requirement for a keyboarding class in my district. When they would get an assignment for an essay in English class, at least part of their trepidation was that it would take them "forever" to type it out. I allowed and encouraged them to play typer shark after they had completed their work, and gave extra credit to those who could pass a 20 wpm typing test. Remember, I taught math.

So what's my point? We can't expect students to know things that they have never been taught. I've never seen a student make a "stupid mistake" on the computer. I've seen students make lots of mistakes because they have a very superficial understanding about computing and how it works. Most students lack basic computing skills when it comes to working on a desktop. Because they've never been taught. 

I, on the other hand, like many of my teaching cohorts graduated from high school just after the turn of the century. Going to school in the 90s meant computer lab every other week in elementary school. It meant typing class required for every 7th grader. It meant growing up with technology; not just growing up having technology, but living in a time period where the complexity of home computing was increasing as my understanding of computing kept pace. I recognize the 3.5" floppy, because I remember switching disks as I played The Secret of Monkey Island.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

How these kids understand the intricacies of the app store, I understood the desktop. You know more than you think you do. 

Consider this - some of my students have difficulty using a mouse because they are so used to a touch screen. They don't know how to edit things in word; how to make things bold or that they should use italics when they would underline the title of a book on paper. They don't know what RAM is, or a hard drive. They have no idea what a spreadsheet is, or a database.  They've never installed anything from a disk, or sometimes even a CD-rom. They have never known a world before Windows. They've no understanding of the idea that folders were once a revolutionary thing, and that computers didn't used to have mice. The idea of a text only video game like Zork would sound like a waste of time. When something doesn't work right away, they've no idea how to troubleshoot. They type entire questions into the Google search bar and are frustrated when the computer doesn't understand English. Because they do not understand technology.  

But by god, are they good at flappy bird.

References

Click on the blue square thing. (2010, March 28). Retrieved February 3, 2014, from 
     http://my.dlma.com/2010/03/28/click-on-the-blue-square-thing/ 

Guybrush [Photograph]. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.thesixthaxis.com/wp-content/

     uploads/2013/01/guybrush.jpg

Hudson, H. T. (n.d.). Do your students know more about technology than you do? Retrieved 

     February 3, 2014, from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/do-your-students-

     know-more-about-technology-you-do

Word save icon [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://my.dlma.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/     03/word_save_icon.jpg