Don’t just pretend … Go for IT!!!

My journey just keeps getting better….$1000 better.  If you recall from my earlier post about “Life is a Journey; not a Destination,” in grad school I was given the assignment to go and explore about grants for educational technology. I was awarded $1000 from the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics

Association, AFCEA, for my biodiesel project in the spring! 

Words cannot express what it felt like to open that email this morning. I have been teaching for 3 ½ years; I never would have thought I would be getting a grant this early in my career. I am just over the moon about the whole thing. I was like a little kid this morning….I couldn’t wait to tell everyone!

I am the type of person that once I get an idea in my head…there is nothing stopping me. I am not just going to do it for the grad school grade so I can say I have done it… I am going all the way. I am so glad that I didn’t just stop at exploring but went all the way through the process of applying.

One of the best parts of today was sharing it with a few of my students. I have not told all of them yet because I don’t want to let them down if it doesn’t work, however a few of them did a biodiesel science fair project so they knew what I was working on. (we’ve compared notes!) They were so excited! They couldn’t wait until they got to help lead part of the project. 

Loving Learing and Teaching Technology

This texting conversation happened after my last grad school class:

Student via text message: “you’re the smartest person I know! especially about technology”

Me via text message: “well you are lucky then… I can share all my tech knowledge with you!”

Student via text message: “Awesome! Will you help me come up with something for the tech fair?”

This might be one of the greatest complements I have ever received! This particular student is one that is smart and does try hard, however still struggles at times with academic content.  This is one of those moments that remind me why I love my job so much!

Amazing.…Fantastic….Thrilling….Changing….Stressful….These are the words I would use to describe the past semester…both as a students and teacher.  I cannot separate the two. Change has been a theme for me this semester. As a teacher, this year I changed grade levels and as a student, this was my first semester back to school.  This is a lot of change at the start of a school year. I feel like these changes have re-inspired me as a teacher.

In the beginning, I was so overwhelmed… but now I can say I have a Vision and a small plan to start making changes at my school.  I also better understand why we are in the state we are in with regards to technology! I have learned so much and not only from Dr. Jo but from my peers too! If it weren’t for one of my peers I might never have been able to complete a student project! I value our face to face time! 

What are we going to learn next?!?!?!?! 

My 1st WIKI

I feel the need to blog today, today my students finish working on the Periodic Network. This project has been an amazing experience. I feel that I have started teaching with technology, not just presenting. Students really had to stretch themselves to complete this project.  This is my reflection on what we have accomplished:

My on-level students created facebook-type social network for the Periodic Table of Elements. Six weeks ago I sat down with a team of students and explained my goal for the project. I then left it up to them to create the template for the project. I believe they truly had the expertise to create the “facebook” outline, they are on it like 24/7. Without realizing how amazing this project was going to be…we dove in! It took off like I never could have imagined.  

Safety was a first and for most my concern. After an amazing class discussion on safety not just for the project but at home too, we began. Because I felt that their identities needed to remain completely anonymous, the students had to truly personify their element. I am a science teacher, Language Arts is not my strongest area to say the least, but without realizing it I was incorporating Language Arts standards. I feel this is when real learning and teaching come together. When students have to carry over knowledge from other classes or even years past and use what they have learned; they will have that knowledge forever.

This generation of kids are the technology babies…right?!? I have to say I am not sure. During the chemistry unit one of the easy concepts is electron diagramming. Normally students just draw them, well we(student team and I) wanted to have pictures on the profile pages. I tried to teach them to draw images in word and them save them as a jpg. WOW! Something that I thought would take less than a class period took three days! (and to be honest… I don’t think they all got it! But it’s about process … right?)

Once we got our pictures loaded it was time to really fill in the information. While most of the basic information could come directly from the periodic table, some had to be looked up. This really started to help the students in the way they researched. Together we had to come up with better ways search for results needed. If pictures of Iron were needed, typing in Iron brought up tons of Ironman pictures; however we started using Fe, chemical symbol for iron, and started getting the types of results we were looking to use. Learning moments like this, really using technology, helped both the students and I become better technology users.

So still not sure if having a relationship status was a good idea or not….however, I have never had students dying to know when we were going to start chemical bonding and chemical reactions. The elements couldn’t “be in a relationship” until we covered it. The project content was built as we covered new topics in class. I usually taught the basics and then sent them free to find out more about their element within the topic, and then they had to post something about it. Just like in life, one needs to know what they need in a relationship, students had to research what their element needs in a chemical bond (“relationship”). I used this opportunity to remind students that communication is key in all relationships. Before they could bond they had to communicate about what type of bond they would make together.   This allowed me to see that they understood and could discuss different types of chemical bonds. Chemical bonding is a very difficult topic for students to understand. And my students did wonderful, I was amazed at the test results from the chemical bonding and reaction test!

Finally, once the majority of the content was on every profile administrators, other teachers, and other school staff signed on and started asking the elements questions. These weren’t questions that could be answered with one word. My students had to really research the answer questions with 2-3 sentences. It was fantastic to include other adults in the project. The students in turn enjoyed seeing who was asking questions, I don’t think they would ever admit to enjoy answering the questions.

I feel that these project helped students develop a working knowledge of atoms, periodic table, chemical bonds and chemical reactions, but beyond core science content students really worked with technology.

Below are comments I collected from students as we finished the project.  I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when students start saying things like:

“I liked it creating my own profile, felt like I really learned something!” – Sulfur

“We got to work on computers.” -  Einsteinium

“It wasn’t like normal school work, and it’s always going to be there … I can go back and look at it when I graduate high school!” – Lithium

“I like the whole profile and communication with other elements; I am kinda sad it’s over!” – Hydrogen

“I liked the freedom to be creative” – Tin

“My element is radioactive…how cool is that?” – Mendelevium

“I liked posting stuff to the internet” – Copper

“It scared me a little to answer question from the principal…but cool that she took the time to look at my work!” –Radium

“It was totally awesome…I am so glad I am in this science class!!” – Oxygen

Students take out your Cell Phones….. … and TEXTED in your answers.

Let me take a moment to paint the picture of what happened in my 7th period 8th grade science class. Mr. H, the 8th grade assistant principal, was in my room and as the students came in I asked them to take out their cell phones, those that didn’t have them went back to their locker to get them.  The looks on their faces … priceless!! The students looked at me and then look at Mr. H … one finally said “are you for real?” … “COMLETLY!!”  After assuring them that it wouldn’t cost them any texts, I had them texted in the answer to the question on the board.

It was like texting in votes for American Idol. As the answers came, they could see the answers up on the board! AMAZING MOMENT IN THE CLASSROOM!!

This activity was inspired by an article Mr. H handed out today during our grade level meeting. The article, Speaking Digitally – Cell Phones as a Teaching Tool, mentioned polleverywhere.com. While I had heard and used polleverywhere.com before, I don’t think I know that you could texted in answers.  For a quick warm-up, I thought what the heck…give it a try! I wanted Mr. H to be there…after all it was his idea. He helped me re-insure the students that it was okay to have their phones out.

As I taught class, all I wanted to do was play with new amazing tool.  By the end of class I was ready to test out the open ended response polls. Very simply I asked the question… do you have any questions about the lesson today? I figured the questions would be silly and simple…well I was WRONG! The student asked real questions that inspired discussion…students even wanted to texted back answer to their peers.  I believe because no one knew, not even me, who was asking the questions students were more willing to ask real questions! My students are amazing…I love my JOB!

So now where do I go from here? How do I make sure every student get to participate?