Classroom Chronicles

School's out

2011-06-16T20:16:00.000-04:00

Actually, we've been "out" for over almost two weeks, our earliest ending time in all the years I've taught at this school. But there's no being "done" for months anymore. On my list of things to do this summer: Re-do a course to incorporate material to relate to the CBL we will be doing. Work out some of the details of the project itself. Start to prep the course I will teach that will utilize a new textbook following the Bishops' curricular framework. See if there is a book to replace the text that I just found out will be discontinued for a third course I teach. And, whether the answer is yes or no to that, find more online resources for the course.

As well: read some blogs, and keep up with discussions on our staff wiki about refreshing the look of the building.

A teacher's work is never done!

Google Documents

2011-05-07T05:59:00.000-04:00

First of all, here we are getting close to the end of the year and I asked my two frosh classes how many had experience with Google Docs, and probably one third to one half raised hands, which I think says something about what is going on in our school. Each of the seven groups ended up with at least one person who knew what to do. I think I had to help exactly one person get signed on to her group's document, because she was logged onto a Google account with a different e-mail address.

Secondly, even when I am not doing an official "CBL" I find myself thinking in that direction, and so I had my students who are exploring sacraments asking questions first and also documenting their thinking and research on a doc so that I can see the work in progress and get a glimpse into their collaboration.

Lastly: I love Docs. I can't be with every group all the time. In class I floated from group to group. But this morning I took a look at the documents and got a very good idea of what they've done and in what directions they are thinking.

Offline

2011-03-30T18:14:00.004-04:00

Once in a while, not terribly often, we will have problems with our server or internet connection or some such thing on a school day, but generally only for a short period of time before the IT people figure out what's what and we get back on track.

This time was different. This time we lost our connection to the outside world for around twenty-four hours. Nor could we get into school systems from the outside. I had a pretty free evening last night because the things I needed to do required connecting to either Moodle, our school grading system or school e-mail, and none of that was possible. This morning we traded stories about the effects of the deprivation, much like people do after a power outage.

During the day we could not get to outside websites, but we were able to do all the things I mentioned above within the building. So I got somewhat caught up. In classes then, I used actual paper for a handout some students couldn't get to on Moodle for some reason. And instead of going online to research saints, we used more old-fashioned resources, which worked fine.

But we were all glad, I think, to get our connection back. Some of us have become more dependent on it, perhaps, than we had realized.

More about Photostory

2011-03-19T09:34:00.001-04:00

I like Photostory for Windows very much. Animoto is cool, and easier, but Photostory gives more control.

A couple of weeks ago I shot some photos of my two freshmen classes, and very quickly that evening put them together into a Photostory to show classes the next day, just to introduce them to the program.

They loved it, of course.

The frosh project

2011-03-19T09:27:00.000-04:00

My second-semester freshman turned in their projects about Jesus yesterday. Well, most of them. Technical problems are being worked out in a couple of cases. It's sort of like a take-home essay test because I structure the content fairly rigidly. But they're free as birds in the case of format. I don't teach the tech. I tell them to choose something they are comfortable with (everyone can do Word), or something they want to explore.

There are many Word documents, but several in Publisher, too. I'm impressed at how easily ninth-graders who have never used Publisher can figure it out and turn out beautiful products.

I have at least one video, and I haven't watched it yet, but I look forward to it. It's supposedly about eight minutes long, partly because John the Baptist (a student's dad) took his part and ran with it. Or so I'm told.

Photostory is a little less intuitive than Publisher, I guess, but I have at least one of those to look forward to once the kinks are worked out. The variety of formats helps to make the grading process less tedious for me.

Detroit projects update

2011-03-19T09:19:00.001-04:00

The "Detroit" group met yesterday to discuss current projects. Not everything is "CBL," but it's good stuff. Students in a short story class interviewed people who grew up in Detroit or live there now to hear their storied and, I think, to incorporate them into their own writing. A Spanish teacher plans a field trip to talk to people in the southwest part of the city where a largely hispanic population resides. Our group talked about how there is a fear of the unknown among some suburban families, and providing opportunities to connect with people they might not otherwise meet could make a difference in their attitudes about the city.

As for me, the course I'm planning for is not in my schedule again until next year, so I have only ideas swirling around in my head for now.

Not my CBL update

2011-03-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

Last week I got an invitation to be part of a panel to listen to the presentation of previously mentioned AP Gov students of their project on health care. Other panelists will include folks in the fields of health and insurance. It's on a Sunday, and it's beyond my job description as a Monday-Friday teacher, but I am happy to go. I want to support what these students are doing and learning, yes. But I think I will learn some things myself!

Not my CBL

2011-03-04T11:56:00.001-05:00

Today I sent a link to an article in today's local paper to some students, just in case they might find it useful for a project they are doing. I've done things like that before, but the difference is, the project is not for my class.

As our school moves forward trying to incorporate CBL into the curriculum, there have been some "hiccups" to be sure. But there has been growth, too. One area has to do with conversations and collaborations taking place among teachers of different departments and even staff members who do not teach. Because I have been very aware of the current AP Government CBL, I have asked some of my students about it when it became clear from their conversations that they are are part of the effort.

To be truthful, not every student is entirely filled with enthusiasm, as was the case in my own venture last semester. But when the spark of learning catches fire, it's a great thing to watch.

Another student is not currently in my own classes, but asked to interview me because of my own experiences with her issue. When I saw her again later, she was excited to tell me some of what she had planned in the way of research. She was positively effervescent about the learning experience she and her group had taken charge of. Her enthusiasm fanned the flames of my own curiosity, and I've already told her I would like to see her group's presentation down the road, since the class is during my prep period. I already know that the teacher will welcome me into the class.

Department lines are getting blurred just a bit, as our faculty and staff begin to see we can encourage our students' learning even beyond our own areas.

More about CBL

2011-02-09T08:56:00.001-05:00

In professional development sessions with groups of about fifteen faculty and staff members once every six school days, we are wordsmithing challenges that we hope to integrate into the curriculum next year if not before. The groups for each specific challenge were formed in November, so in some ways it seems like we haven't made much progress yet in over two months.

To me it highlights the importance of getting the challenge right.

In the project I did last semester, the challenge I gave the girls was "too amorphous," borrowing words from our CBL guru Larry Baker. In effect, I was really giving each group the responsibility of forming their own challenge. I don't think it's a bad idea if time is not a factor. But considering the importance of a well-formulated challenge and the difficulty of crafting one (at least by those not steeped in CBL), I can see that next time I need to bring the students in a little farther down the road.

Reflection on the Justice and Peace project

2011-01-19T16:47:00.001-05:00

The mantra in my head during the last weeks of the project process was inspired by a colleague at a meeting a few weeks ago: "I am not afraid of failure." Not that I was worried or anything...

The projects were complete and presented earlier in the new year, and I don't think they failed. One goal was for a "richer" experience for my students than what last year's final project in the class provided. Goal achieved. I hoped to understand better how the CBL process works. Mission accomplished. And along the way I witnessed good thinking, enthusiasm about topics such as community, environment and abortion, and good learning -- about those content areas, technology, and about, well, learning.

But there was room for improvement. The quality of the "solutions" was uneven, though as the presentations were carried out, I saw some good research, some good design, some creativity. At times directions were not followed. Some creative ideas were left by the wayside due to procrastination or for other reasons. Some groups did not take their efforts as far as they could've, would've, should've.

I feel that I discussed the project well enough in class, nudged and prodded, offered feedback and clear directions and guidelines. But those guidelines were not always met. So, based on my own reflection and feedback solicited from students, what will I do differently next time?

1. Maybe I won't present it all at once. Students seemed confused at first by what the "solution" would entail. Maybe I will just have them ask the questions and seek the information and then ask, "What are you going to do with this?" I'm not sure about this yet.

2. Be even more of a cheerleader. And be more insistent about thinking "outside the box" (cliche, I know). Make clearer that "variety of sources" does not mean "different websites."

3. Verify that my written feedback is getting through. I wrote comments on Google docs, but I'm not really certain, now that I think of it, that they were read. I assumed too much.

4. Be more insistent about students documenting roles, responsibilities and deadlines. I feel that our students are used to getting things done by hook or by crook, and all that matters to them is having a final product by a final deadline. It wasn't clear to them that for me, the process was important, too (though it should have been clear, and more so for the 25% or so who actually accessed the rubric provided well in advance on Moodle). For some, collaboration skills are lacking. You can't complain that your classmate let you down if you and your classmate did not reach an agreement about what she would be responsible for.

5. Have another look at the timeline. Too much time? Too little? Most students seemed comfortable with the time given, but I saw them working toward the end of deadlines. One group wished they had learned about the project early in the semester.

Surprisingly, the technology aspect was not too troublesome. I had, I think, two students come to me with issues regarding uploading material. But I also had students editing video and creating websites, in some cases without previous experience.

I don't teach this course in the current semester, so I'll have a while before I go at this particular assignment again, and it's going to have a different flavor. I am in an interdisciplinary collaboration of my own with colleagues who will focus in various classes on "re-imagining Detroit." I'm excited to see where that may lead... next year.

Calendars galore

2011-01-19T08:41:00.001-05:00

Even as a teacher interested in ways that technology can help the classroom experience, there is one area that I had been avoiding: calendars. Some teachers make homework assignments available online. I resisted at first, just as I resisted when our school tried to implement a homework hotline that made the information available during after-school hours. My reasoning was that if I tell students verbally and write it on the board, that should be enough. Having the information available at all times gave students an excuse not to pay attention in class.

Which seems a bit silly now, of course.

What changed my mind was that there are always a number of absent students. And now instead of students coming to class and asking, "what did I miss?" I more often have e-mails. After responding to plenty of those over time, I decided there must be a better way. So, for a while I tried to remember to post assignments in a particular spot on Moodle. (Moodle has a calendar feature, but since I don't have different sections separated out, it won't do the job for me). That didn't last too long.

Now, after trying out a couple of personal calendars on Google, I am doing a full-fledged experiment with Google calendars for homework. One for each class. We'll see if I can get into the groove and remember to post, once a week, as I do my plans. I hope it will save time overall, with fewer e-mails to respond to.

Better late...

2010-12-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

Today is a project day, and things are finally starting to get a little more concrete. Students have been enthusiastic all along, but it seems that their project has often taken a back seat to other homework and other things going on in their lives. As Christmas break nears (as well as the deadline right after) some things have gone by the wayside, including what I thought was an interesting idea to do a "whiteboard" video. But some conversations with staff in the building are beginning to happen, and the final product is starting to look more fleshed out for some groups.

Toward the CBL Solution

2010-11-23T19:29:00.002-05:00

It was great talking to groups about their plans for the "solution" to their project challenge. I heard some great ideas! But when I looked at the docs afterward, there was a lack of concrete planning in some groups. "Who will do what, when?" I had asked each group to decide and document.

Progress on the Projects

2010-11-22T21:26:00.002-05:00

Some of my groups have been at work, and when I put out the rubric, that was a little kickstart in some places. But not all. Today there was some consternation at the mention of a deadline tomorrow, with a couple of students acting as if they had no idea what was going on. This despite the fact that it's all been out there in writing and I've given reminders in class.

But tonight I went to my Google docs and saw every single document title bold, indicating work has been done. I'll wait until after the deadline to see what they've been up to.

Tomorrow they will have class time to plan for their solution.

Cross-school challenge based learning

2010-11-10T18:54:00.001-05:00

There's lots happening in our school regarding the implementation of challenge based learning projects. At a recent in-service day, eight challenges were presented by various teachers passionate about certain ideas, and anyone was free to latch onto any project. The result? Several cross-school (the term we seem to be favoring over "inter-departmental") challenges in the works, with teams that include even non-teaching staff. And so it is that math teachers are working with social studies teachers on a project about what makes a good leader, and an English teacher is leading the charge to challenge students to learn more in depth about the psychological effects of abortion.

Our department is still hanging together with our original idea about connecting the teachings of Jesus to the 21st century, but some of us will also have a piece of the action in some other groups. One group is inspired by a recently published book by John Gallagher, Reimagining Detroit. It seems to me that my Justice and Peace project could find a good focus there, and best of all, I'd benefit from the expertise of many colleagues in the development of something for my class.

Yep, the media center where we all met was abuzz with ideas and questions that day.

Dyknow again

2010-11-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

Some students are not that thrilled with Dyknow, but some like it. At any rate, I decided to continue with notes for the current chapter so that students will have them in one place. I have experimented with writing notes for them as I talked, and writing notes that they could not see projected but not on their own screens, forcing them to copy as when I write on the board. I also had some slides with blanks that they could fill in on their own screens.

What I don't like: I am used to moving around a lot when I write on the board. I felt tied to my computer. Since I am still learning how to use it, some class time has been wasted.

What I do like: The feature where students can pick from red, yellow or green to show their understanding of what is being presented seemed useful (when I told them to use it as intended rather than picking their favorite color). The monitor is a good feature, too, when I remember to enable it. The next thing I learn should be how to send messages to students who stray from the task at hand.

Bottom line: After this chapter I will give it a break for a bit, but I would like to use it again (maybe in a different class) and try out some more features.

First Dyknow

2010-11-06T12:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, even though the first word that comes to mind is "disaster," it wasn't really that. I'm better with "tech" stuff when I can have things prepared ahead of time, and take my time. Using Dyknow in class requires me to keep a lot of stuff in my head to do on the spot, and I did not do so well my first time out, despite one-on-one tutoring with a colleague who uses the tool extensively.

My freshmen were helpful, offering suggestions about how to share a panel with them and so on. And it went better during the second class than in the first. That, I think, means that I am indeed teachable.

I don't see myself using it every day, but I do think that when I am more familiar with the software, it could be useful for some things.

Progress

2010-11-02T15:05:00.002-04:00

I felt like the projects weren't going anywhere, and that more face time was needed. So today was a "project day," and groups for the most part were able to formulate challenges and give themselves a direction. I enjoyed our discussions as I consulted with each group and tried to guide. I'm not sure whether or not I should have encouraged "bigger" thinking. But they had some worthwhile goals, and the time frame is limited. Now to see what kind of research they do and what solutions they will devise.

And most of all, now to see if the process has been jumpstarted enough to take off. The groups need to start accomplishing some things outside of class, and I hope that now they will have enough to go on.

Private blogs

2010-10-29T08:25:00.002-04:00

The question of the hour is how public to make classroom blogs and websites. Let's start with blogs. I've done just a little experimenting with them, only with my Justice and Peace classes. And only a few assignments have landed there; I have also been using Moodle and a wiki page. I know that some educators have said that students do better quality work when they are writing for more people than just the teacher. My students had only first name, last initial on the blog. Most entries showed thought and effort, though not all.

The blogs may as well have been private, because I didn't advertise them other than on Parent Night, but lately I got nervous about the whole thing and closed them off to students only. I was able to tell a concerned parent last night at conferences that her child's blog is open only to the class. She did not feel that "provisional thinking" should be on the internet for all to see. One could argue that putting that thinking out there (pretty much anonymously, by the way) gives a student a reason to think things through.

At least they still have their classmates as an audience.

Revised project

2010-10-26T19:28:00.000-04:00

Justice and Peace students are at it again, working on projects to do some research, and hopefully to make a difference. I've revised the project to follow Apple's challenge based learning format, because it's the direction our school is heading in, and because I hope the results will be richer than last year's.

But this is all pretty new to me, so I know there'll be some bumps in the road. Today the teams started Google Docs to record their brainstorming. In this way I can "listen in" even if I couldn't be with every group the whole class. I just finished writing some comments. They'll be recording their progress throughout, and will be able to communicate with each other while working from home.

It's not always positive

2010-10-21T18:26:00.001-04:00

Okay, so today I had a couple of freshmen ask why they couldn't just do a Word document instead of fooling around with Google Docs. The familiar vs. the unfamiliar. I talked about collaboration. In another class, a couple of upperclasswomen spoke of their distaste for our blog (though I have had positive feedback in a previous semester). I asked for reasons, expecting that perhaps they were worried about writing publicly. But they spoke entirely of things relating to the hassle or difficulty of it. Not that posting to the blog is hard, of course! The familiar vs. the unfamiliar.

All this makes me more determined to continue introducing these tools to students, so that the tools will become...familiar.

Docs

2010-10-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

"That's so cool " was the reaction of a freshman watching the words that her her project partner was typing appear on her computer screen on a newly-created and shared Google Doc. I agree. I think Docs is cool in how it allows for easy collaboration among students who do not always live near each other or have a lot of shared free time.

Jing fling

2010-10-17T21:48:00.000-04:00

What is a bit of "homework" that I don't mind doing even on a Sunday night when I'm almost ready for sleep? A Jing video! I actually enjoy making little tutorials for students about tech things. This one was about how to search for photos that are licensed by Creative Commons. Some things I might be able to find online, but it seems quicker (when I don't do a hundred "takes") to just show students myself in a format that they can refer to as often as they wish.

Skype in the works

2010-10-17T08:12:00.000-04:00

The thought of having a Skype session with someone who cannot physically be in the classroom but who could add to students' understanding of a subject has been tucked away in my brain for a couple of years now. It came forward in a moment of madness when I e-mailed someone to make the request.

I have since worried about technical difficulties, but I'm not even there yet. Right now there are scheduling difficulties, but I hope they can be ironed out. I am balancing a desire to provide my students with an experience that I think will be beneficial with feelings of being loathe to impose on someone that I don't really even know.

More on this in weeks to come...

First chat

2010-10-07T10:55:00.001-04:00

I had to make a decision quickly when the Mass ran long and a short third hour was pared to ten minutes to review for a test the next day. Reschedule the class? Postpone the test? I decided to go over the most essential material in that time and to offer a review session that evening through chat on Moodle.

It's not a decision made lightly, although a couple of other teachers in our school have done this. I already have been questioned about whether I need to be as available to my students as I am through e-mail. But it seemed like special circumstances. I only had about three or four students take me up on the offer, but it's a good thing we straightened out confusion about the "blinding of Isaac!"

I don't know everything

2010-10-04T20:21:00.000-04:00

I remember when the first students starting coming to class with computers. It was not yet required, but some families were pioneers of sorts, opting to buy laptops for their daughters. A couple of times a question would come up and girls would jump onto the internet and proudly raise their hands eager to share newly-found information. I had a glimmer of the potential of a 1:1 program.

But sometimes I forget. Today we discussed abortion and capital punishment, and I could not answer all of the questions. I don't know all of the current laws and they vary by state.I admitted that I didn't know all the answers, but I spoke of what I knew. Then I remembered a blog post I'd read recently, and I looked at a circle of students, a circle of twenty-five or so laptops connected to the knowledge of the world. "See what you can find out," I said, and off they went, bringing forth answers within seconds.

My first Prezi

2010-09-23T16:32:00.005-04:00

My husband teases me sometimes when we have company and I search out new recipes. Of course it would make sense to make things for guests that I had already tested. Does that mean I'm not afraid of failure? Or just that I don't like the recipes I've already tested?

I suppose I was following the same instinct when it came to a recent presentation to the staff, and ended up going with something entirely new to me. I had chosen my month to present specifically so that I could get it done while on a long break. I took most of the photos and gathered input from my department last year. I wrote the script and put together a PowerPoint over the summer.

Because I felt it needed more oomph, in the fall I went back to an idea rejected in June that had to do with Photostory (just because I like Photostory) and audio quotes from students. But I had reservations about being able to make the PowerPoint and the Photostory work together with the resources I had gathered.

Then I got an e-mail from my husband, who knew I was pondering all these things, about a "cool presentation tool." I had seen Prezi quite a while ago, but it had seemed complicated, and it never even came to mind as a possible way to present for this. But the moment Paul told me about a Prezi given at work that somehow seemed "more interesting," I knew the PowerPoint was history. And pretty soon Paul knew that he had gotten himself into a commitment to help me learn the new software and put together my program. Once I saw the page-long instructions for converting audio files to video for use in Prezis, I knew that I would need assistance for that part. Apart from the added audio, however, I found the program fairly intuitive and easy to use.

This was approximately six days before the presentation. In that time I had to solicit comments from students (I e-mailed them over a weekend), narrow down the comments and get students to record the quotes I wanted, learn how to do a Prezi, build the Prezi with files I had used for the PowerPoint, and take a few more photos to plug in a couple of places.

Later a colleague asked why Prezi is better than PowerPoint. There are features I didn't fully make use of such as layering, framing, drawing, or moving around with ease to specific points in the presentation, that I think add to functionality. But mostly I had to admit that it's partly because it's new, and I just think it's cool.

The presentation was well-received, and some of my colleagues inquired about the software. But what worked perfectly on my home PC was a little clunky on the laptop at school, and couple of the pans were not very smooth.

There are a lot of Prezis online, but a quick search showed me that one has to do a bit of sifting to find good ones on a particular topic. I searched for "sacraments" and found one with misspelled words, another that had so much panning across the space that it made one dizzy, and some that were just incomplete attempts.

I don't really use PowerPoint much , but if I wanted to do a visual presentation in class, or perhaps some resources to post on Moodle, I'd like to experiment more with Prezi.

Motivation

2010-09-19T08:25:00.005-04:00

I am in the midst of a "project" of my own, a presentation to be given to the staff, as part of a rotation of such presentations, about my department. I am thinking about motivation, and whether my own experience sheds any light on what my students do.

I have spent many hours over many months discussing content with my department, taking photos, and putting together the presentation (twice, because quite at the last minute I decided to dump PowerPoint in favor of Prezi, which, by the way, I have never used before). I want it to be a quality presentation, but at times I wonder about the whether the time expended has been appropriate, since the story could be told in a more straightforward, simpler way.

My motivation, besides a desire for a true representation of my department, has been that I do not want to bore my peers. Not sure if I will succeed there or not!

But I realized that there is something else going on in my head, too. I don't want it to appear -- in comparison to what all the other departments have done or are doing -- lame.

Projecting

2010-09-19T08:18:00.003-04:00

I thought of another reason that I am more comfortable with the data projector now. It's not to say that I use it every day, by the way, but that it's less cumbersome when I need it.

My classroom is part of what used to be a convent, and not a standard size and shape. My students' desks are only a few feet from the front wall, so the projector, in order to be far enough away from the screen, must be in the midst of the desks. Awkward for presenting. I have not complained about this to anyone, because I don't want anyone to tell me that I should use a different classroom, or heaven forbid, travel to various available ones throughout the day. I like my classroom for various reasons, not the least of which is the view.

Then along came the e-mail from one of our media center folks last year (thanks, Larry D.!) asking if we wanted a long cable to connect the computer to the projector. Yes! Now I can stand at the front and look at my students while I am projecting (and so can students), and it makes a very big difference.

Parent Night

2010-09-16T07:07:00.002-04:00

This is the first time I have used the data projector for Parent Night. It's only ten minutes per class and in the past I have filled it with talking (sometimes a little too fast). And it seemed to me that even if I wanted to use the projector, fumbling with it would take up too much of the time.

So what was different this year? I'm more comfortable with these machines, even to a certain extent with the one I have now which is new and not what I'm used to. (This reminds me of how it took me a while to get the hang of setting up those 16mm films in the projector when I started teaching!)

The other different thing was that I had a couple of things I wanted parents to see and the projector was the best way. In Justice and Peace, instead of just talking about the wiki and the blog, why not show them? The downside was that it made it seem as though those two tools dominate the course more than they do. One parent at the end seemed to need reassurance that we actually use the textbook. It would perhaps dismay some who are on the cutting edge of educational trends, but... yes, we do.

Tools for communication

2010-09-13T18:16:00.002-04:00

A last-minute idea over the weekend. (Well, an idea I had in June but decided now to act upon.) A question to pose to some of my students, one that I wanted them to think about rather than answer spontaneously in class. A deadline. So I put the question on Moodle as an assignment, and e-mailed the classes about it. By this morning (Monday) I had received significant feedback, before I even set foot in the classroom.

Quite a difference from when we first started to incorporate "tecnology," and students balked at the idea of e-mailing an assignment to me.

JP tech notes

2010-09-12T21:13:00.002-04:00

The Justice and Peace course was new for me last year, and it's also very much about current topics; those are maybe the reasons why it's the course in which I most used "technology." But it was a little overwhelming for some at times. I think that will ease up in the future as students come having had practice with blogs and wikis in other courses. But I'm seeing if I can't somehow simplify things. Once complaint was that the students had so many places to go online that they didn't know what was what.

I'm moving away from Moodle a bit in that course. Maybe I can drop it for the most part. I had to move the wiki group assignments to Wikispaces because I have two sections glommed into one Moodle course, and it would be too time-consuming to form the groups manually. Auto-creating groups would mean students from different sections would be together.

Last semester I posted assignments on Moodle that were for the blog. Today, I thought, why not post the directions right on the blog? Duh. Maybe this will help with some of that feeling of confusion.

I'm lost without you

2010-09-09T16:55:00.000-04:00

Dear laptop,

I have been without you since fourth hour today. I had to wait to get home to check e-mails from the afternoon. When you are sick and in need of the TLC of the tech guys, it is then that I realize how much I depend on you. E-mails, grading, blogging, reading blogs, attendance, my department presentation, Moodle assignments, meeting notes... At lunch I had to find a paper copy of the NCR to read, and later I scanned my "to-do" list, searching for things I could accomplish without you.Not too much, it turns out, and though I managed to get through my last classes, there were a couple of times when it would have been handy to have you there.

I'm glad you are all re-imaged and will be ready to go tomorrow.

The wiki

2010-09-09T16:49:00.000-04:00

Just spent a couple of minutes catching up on some discussions on our staff wiki. We've had wiki's before, but now the time seems ripe; a few staff members have started to connect. It will be a place to see reports of conversations that have taken place in departments, especially about our CBL challenge, in lieu of e-mailed minutes. We are going to be a little less isolated this year, it seems to me. And our department is continuing a discussion that started at our meeting today, so hopefully we will make more progress than we could just waiting for our next face-to-face meeting.

Bringing the research to you

2010-09-09T08:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I introduced our class blog, Google Reader and Google News to my Justice and Peace classes. We're just testing the blog right now, but I'll post links when we get going.

The other two are ways that the girls can start to get updates on what's going on regarding issues we will be studying, and maybe blog posts with some of the current thinking. Soon to come: I'll be showing them places to get encyclicals and Catholic perspectives, and through the course we'll try to do some reflecting and pulling things together.

For this class, though, I just had them find blogs and news about things that interest them. These are ways you can get current information about your own passions, without having to dig. The information is delivered to you, to your Reader or your News.

The first PCG

2010-09-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

Today was my first PCG (professional cluster group) meeting. It's a group of about 10-12 staff members from across departments. Larry gave more explanation about challenge based learning and about our own challenge, as well as an overview of some tools.

After the meeting was over a math teacher whom I have rarely spoken to asked me about Google Docs.

The challenge is on, but maybe more importantly, the conversations are beginning, beyond departments.

Back at it

2010-09-01T21:42:00.000-04:00

Oh. My. We discussed our summer reading, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner during our staff days last week as the new school year was getting under way. Some of us remarked that we couldn't remember the last time we took staff meeting time to discuss education. It was refreshing indeed. In small groups I found out things that other teachers were doing that I had not known about, such as the cool projects in French IV. I have had a vague notion that there are pockets of innovation and experimentation going on around the school, but there has been no formal way to learn of it. Only Larry blogs, so I have known about him and my department and some other scattered stories.

That may change. Next week I will be meeting with my PCG, one of five "professional cluster groups" that will cross departments. So in time I will learn about what others are doing. Larry's taking on the groups to help us all move forward in implementing tools that will help us with our challenge: to design a challenged based project with our department to implement next year.

Exciting stuff happening at our school this year!

Some common reading

2010-06-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

Everyone who works for our school, and the board of trustees as well, has been charged with some summer reading: The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner. I am not familiar with the book, but I think it's a good idea for all of us to latch on to something that can give us a common ground for conversation about education. I look forward to the discussions that the book will generate in the fall.

And I confess, as a religion teacher in a Catholic school, that I wish we could do the same with something about our mission or spirituality, too.

Review wiki

2010-06-08T21:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday and today we used Wikispaces for a review. I put the study guide, basically a list of topics or points, on a separate page for each chapter and for each essay topic, and let students sign up for pages to work on. The plan was to have a thorough document to study from, and also for them to engage with the material and ask me questions as they went.

It was partially successful. There was a problem when too many students tried to sign up for the same topic, so I have to have a better system for that. I had to go through the wiki to make sure the information was accurate, but it was not too time-consuming. I tried to send out invites to have all students join the wiki so that I could keep track of individual contributions. But many did not get the invite and I ended up just making it public so that we could get going on it.

Some girls had already worked on the guide, so they completed their information quickly today. Some had to be nudged to be productive. But most did their part.

We'll see how they do on the exam...

Digital texts

2010-05-27T06:47:00.000-04:00

The current seniors were the guinea pig class toting around their laptops in our 1:1 program, and we've added a class ever since until we reached full strength this year. The computers have gotten a bit slimmer and lighter, thank goodness. And the bookbags are a little less stuffed and somewhat lighter as well, and thank goodness for that, too, because students refuse to use their basement lockers and just haul everything around with them.

From the beginning, parents were promised productivity tools such as OneNote, but also online texts to lighten the backpack load. Naturally, in text selection, departments have leaned that way. That has not been the case in Religious Studies, however. I think it was around 2006/07 that I was calling publishers, who had reasons for not offering digital versions (I think one had to do with copyright costs for photos, though we did not quite understand how that was different from print).

This is not to say that there are not problems with online texts. Some pioneers in a Spanish class I taught three years ago had some difficulties with speed and reliability, either on our end or the publisher's. More convenient, perhaps, would be versions that could be downloaded, entirely or chapter by chapter, onto a student's laptop. And, it's true that we still have students in the digital age who prefer to handle "real" books.

Nevertheless, we were ready to roll next year with a brand new text offered digitally at a much lower price than the paper version. But it turns out that text will not yet be available, and we have to make a late shift in our book order. A couple of publishers I've contacted did not have definitive answers about other texts for the course offered digitally, so we had to just go with the old paper one for now.

I have to admit that we are scratching our heads a bit over the fact that publishers in this field seem to be slow in getting on the bandwagon that other disciplines have been riding for a few years now.

A great presentation

2010-05-27T06:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I witnessed one of the best presentations by students ever in my classes. Shannon and Hayley took on the topic of eschatology, researched it well, were enthusiastic about their topic, reflected on what they learned, and acted happy to share with their class. They used notecards, but had enough of what they learned in their head that they weren't overly dependent on them. Their classmates responded with full attention on a hot day (last period!) and with good questions that the pair fielded marvelously.

And, no "death by PowerPoint." As requested, mostly just images to add visual interest to their talk. It was a good day in Catholic Theology.

About the Justice and Peace projects

2010-05-26T21:46:00.000-04:00

I've nearly finished going over all the projects, and can see already things I want to change for next year. Some things I did like. One little piece of outside-the-box thinking (at least, outside the classroom, outside the state!) was the inclusion of a video chat with someone in Washington D.C. The video gives added interest to the students' wiki page.

Another student who with her partner researched world hunger, discussed (through e-mail?) poverty in Pakistan with her grandfather who is a lawyer there. It was wonderful to see how animated she was in telling the class about things she had learned about a country dear to her heart. Another wrote to Michael Nacht, an expert on national security, for his views on terrorism. That's what I'm talkin' about... learning can go beyond the textbook and beyond the classroom walls now.

I need to work more with students with how to go about crediting sources for specific information and for photos. They also need to do more analysis with the information they uncover. But it was a good start, I think.

Ave Maria Press webinar

2010-05-11T20:08:00.000-04:00

M-Hub meeting followed by webinar with Jared Dees of Ave Maria Press. Chock full of info, links, in just over half an hour. Although our school does not have smart boards, and most likely never will, much of what was presented in that section can probably be done with DyKnow, software that we do have. I've been meaning to start experimenting with DyKnow, and now I have a bit more incentive.

Some of the links I was familiar with, but others are new to me, so I'll be doing some exploring, but probably not much until I get caught up on papers and prep. Which is to say, probably not much until June!

M-Hub

2010-05-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I attended a meeting about M-Hub (M for Mercy H.S.) This is not my brainchild, but that of one of my very techy colleagues. Nevertheless, worth mentioning in my notes here, because it's pretty exciting stuff, and I believe will affect my teaching in the future. M-Hub will be a database of alums, former teachers, and maybe other connections -- people with expertise in various fields that will be open to sharing their knowledge with students.

Right now my students working on their Justice and Peace projects are asked to find an "expert" in the area they are researching and conduct an interview in some form, even by e-mail. Some may have had connections, one or two asked me for help, and others did "cold calls" or perhaps e-mails to related organizations. In the future, they will be able to consult a database of people already primed to share their expertise.

Larry's got a group of sophomores already hard at work getting this off the ground. They will be the leaders of a student club next year that will continue the effort.

More about the project

2010-05-04T20:53:00.000-04:00

Part of the problem with the final project seemed to be a lack of direction. "What are we supposed to do?" one of our school's straight-A students wanted to know. I had given some requirements regarding the research part, but not too much about what the wiki was to look like. I had suggested text, links, photos, video, but basically had told them to use their imagination about what to include to present their topic. "Think of the wiki as a canvas," I said. If this were the final project of an art class, I wouldn't tell them what to draw.

So, I tried to go back and add some guidelines about what I would be looking for. I still wouldn't tell them exactly what to put on their wiki. I have to admit, I am sort of muddling through this. More research needed, but that probably won't happen until the summer!

During a work day recently, I saw one pair sorting through a pile of papers that turned out to be a survey they had done in a sibling's middle school relating to their topic of violence in schools. A great idea! And totally their own.

More feedback

2010-05-04T20:45:00.000-04:00

I did a Moodle survey about technology in my Justice and Peace class, where tech abounds, and I had a sense that at least some students were getting either frustrated or overwhelmed. And it's true, some were, although there were positive responses as well. The tipping point seemed to be when I assigned the final project to be done on Wikispaces. One more thing to learn! Diigo frustrated some also. In order to cut back on tech I announced that we could drop the blog we had been keeping. There was a bit of an uproar. "Not the blog!" It seems that some of the students liked that very much, writing what would have been assignments anyway in this medium where they could read what one another had written.

The blog has not entirely met expectations. I'm not sure how much they really read unless required. And I haven't pressed for a wider audience. But if some of my students see value in it, that will stay.

As for the final project, someone pleaded, "can't we just do PowerPoint?" I ended up making that concession, allowing for the alternative of PowerPoint plus a paper (because the PowerPoint, I have insisted, is not going to have a lot of text, so the information has to go somewhere for me to read it) instead of the wiki. Now, PowerPoint -- that is something they are comfortable with.

Positive feedback

2010-04-25T12:53:00.000-04:00

Some of my "digital natives" come to class with not much knowledge beyond the land of Facebook and texting. Some of them are as resistant, because they miss the "feel of paper" or they are not ready to expend energy to acquire new skills. But at least some seem to recognize that it's worth the effort to learn some new things on the Web. Here is some unsolicited feedback about use of tech tools for an assignment. Students were to reflect on what they had learned, but it never occurred to me to ask them to include the Web aspects. I had in mind only the content of the research.

I think Diigo will be a great resource to have available through the rest of high school and college At first, I thought it would be a bit of a hassle, but I grew to like it. Once I began to learn how to use Diigo, I realized it has many more pros than cons. Another thing I am grateful for is that I am now a more proficient user of Google Docs. Again, I am sure this will be helpful in the future.

I read this, of course, in a Google document!

Students and e-mail

2010-04-17T20:25:00.000-04:00

Last night I returned from helping to chaperon a student retreat away from the school. Since we were gone for three days, I had to make arrangements ahead of time for classes I would miss. Our school schedule allowed me to make up some of the classes ahead of time, and co-workers who support the retreat program by subbing watched over some of the others.

I purposely left my laptop at home because I didn't want to be distracted by it and I knew I wouldn't really have time anyway. But at least once each day I checked my e-mail on a computer at the retreat center or on a colleague's laptop. Since it was not really my retreat, but the girls', I had no qualms about maintaining a connection with the world.

"Mrs. Lusch," a student wrote, "I missed the movie..." She had been absent during a subbed class and I suggested that she could either find a religion teacher to help her get the video to view on her "off time," or she could wait for my return next week. I responded immediately so that she could choose the option that best fit her schedule.

Later, a colleague complained because a student who "knows I'm on this retreat" had e-mailed her. In pondering later, I wondered what the harm was in the student's attempt to connect. The teacher still had the choice to open or not open the e-mail, and to respond or not respond. And though the teacher was on a retreat, she was in fact checking her e-mail.

The discussion moved on to whether a student should bother a teacher in the evening through e-mail, since of course, she would not think of phoning after the end of the school day. No teacher expects it to be an 8 to 3 job, but settling in for the evening with a stack of papers to grade is not the same as interacting with students.

So, I've been thinking about this further, especially since the word "enabling" entered into the conversation. Am I enabling students when I respond to e-mails they send me outside of school hours? I would not want to get phone calls from students at night, but I don't see e-mail in the same way, because, again, I have the choice. If I'm not home or I'm tired or I just don't have time, I don't have to open the e-mail or answer it. But much of the time I am happy to answer a question while I am at my computer.

I send e-mail to the students occasionally, too. During the Easter break I was a bit excited about the wiki I set up for a final project, so I e-mailed the class about it rather than wait until we were back in school. Once in a while I might send out a reminder to a class, or ask a question about a missing assignment to an individual student.

Not that students always check their e-mail. I've lost track of the number of times I have responded quickly to a student's e-mail only to have her come to class the next day to ask me, "Did you get my e-mail?"

Some teachers like to offer online chats for review the night before a test, while others wouldn't dream of engaging students in the evening hours. If any teachers happen to read this, I would be interested to know your thoughts and your practice. Is your teaching restricted to school hours, or in the age of the Internet and "anywhere, anytime" learning, are you open to being consulted outside the school day?

Cool stuff

2010-04-09T08:38:00.000-04:00

This isn't going to do much for me. I teach religion, and when I tried to put in "Jacob's sons," I got a lot of information about how many people are named Jacob, and their average age (12), and such. Maybe biblical maps. It does geography as well as math and other things. But I think it's cool, anyway. Try putting in your birthdate.

Wikispaces

2010-04-07T15:49:00.000-04:00

Justice and Peace students will be presenting information they gather for their final project on the pages of a wiki that I have just created. I've just done the explanatory home page, and though I had some trouble with the photo files, I got it done at last. I made an 18-second video just to show students that video can be included, and I made a sample link as well.

The video is made with my web cam and seems not too sharply focused. I've been reading the blog of a colleague who complains about poor production quality in some of his students' videos. I won't be expecting more of my students than I do of myself. Well, neither does my colleague, but he's much more practiced and perhaps uses better equipment.

It's a learning process for us all.

Docs

2010-04-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

The Catholic Theology research papers have been in for a while, and I am finally starting with grading. They take a while, because I check out sources and such, and make a fair number of comments.

But at least all this is fairly painless with Google Docs. The pairs have worked together on their 5-page plus paper, and I can check the revisions to see what form the collaboration has taken. I have editing privileges, so I can insert my comments while reading online. Right now I am using a template in Word for the actual grading, and I mail it to them when I am finished. But it is occurring to me now that perhaps that could be a Doc, too, shared for viewing but not editing.

I required a proper Works Cited section ("page" doesn't seem to work for this), because students still need practice with such things. URL's were not needed (supposedly MLA doesn't require them anymore), but I did make hyperlinks a requirement for each citation. I love the way I have immediate access to the sites if needed. Of course, this only works for electronic sources, but our subscription to a database of published articles provided some good sources outside the Web.

There are probably tutorials online for some of the things I want students to know, such as making hyperlinks, but I have enjoyed doing a couple of quick and very specific-to-my-needs videos with Jing to reinforce what I show the girls in class, and those are always available to them on Moodle.

Here is another advantage to Docs. The teacher who used to assign this project would offer students the opportunity to revise their work after the first grading. After one try I decided against that policy. But at the same time, I was able to allow for a learning curve. When the papers were first in I didn't read them for content but I did look over them for things like format and following directions of the assignment. I wrote an e-mail to the class suggesting specific areas they might need to pay attention to.With the papers on Docs, students could easily go and revise before I actually got to the grading. For some of them, I will need to take off fewer points in the end, and they also had to go back and pay attention to (and learn) things like how the Works Cited is formatted. Win-win.

Mix It Up

2010-03-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

The Justice and Peace class text starts the chapter on diversity and community with a story about a school having a Mix It Up Day. We used to do that at our school, but the committee that planned it became discouraged when students didn't really participate. That led to a good discussion and a "map" on my board showing which group sits where in the cafeteria.

So I came up with an idea for extra credit, and some students seemed interested, though I don't know if they'll follow through. All they have to do is introduce themselves to some freshmen and find out about them. Then they need proof to show me. Here's the cool thing: the frosh, unlike the rest of the students, have webcams. They can shoot a little video or a still shot to hand in with some text. Someone wanted to know if they could Skype! Sure, if I'm free. I'll see them, but they won't see me. Because I have a "sophomore" laptop.

The lovely podcasts

2010-03-25T22:49:00.000-04:00

A second semester go-around with this assignment. A little smoother, with some ideas for making it even better next time. Just now I was reviewing earlier posts on this and saw a comment from TeacherLady about using Moodle wikis with groups. I'll ponder that. I do like Moodle wiki groups, at least so far for in-class activities.

At one point I was feeling ready to throw in the towel and go back to the written form of the assignment. But I do like the recordings; I think they bring the content to life.

Speaking of Moodle, I'm using the "feedback" feature to do a quick survey about the assignment with my students.

Another day, another thing learned.

2010-03-17T18:55:00.001-04:00

I learned to reorganize a table in Word. I moved my columns around to an order more pleasing to me. After a lot of time. And consulting "help," which did not much help.

You learn something every day.

2010-03-16T19:06:00.000-04:00

We've got this policy of only using students' last initial to protect privacy, but that has gone by the wayside when I've had students uploading files with Google accounts with their school e-mails. But today I noticed that a student's upload came through with just her first name, last initial. It was as simple as putting her name in the Google profile, which apparently most of the other students had not done. Yay!

Sites

2010-03-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

Trying to use Google Sites as a place for students to upload podcasts. I have done this before. I remember difficulties with students getting on because of Google accounts and permissions and all that. But this time I can't even get the e-mails inviting them to the site all delivered.

There are good tech experiences and bad ones. This is shaping up to be a bad one. Time for Wikispaces? I'm testing that with the JP projects.

Diigo indeed

2010-03-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

Just got finished going over the second round of bookmarks. Much smoother this time. Everything seems to be showing up. I taught students how to find the "persistent URL" in Gale, and most got it.

It's just cool to have this view, in such an organized way, of how everyone is doing on her research so far. A few have gone way beyond requirements, finding and highlighting extra articles on her topic.

So far, so good.

The video

2010-03-04T20:39:00.000-05:00

In JP, showed Dead Man Walking. For various reasons, had exactly three class periods to do it. 129 minute movie. Intense movie. I couldn't put it off until next week because the schedule is no better, with juniors taking a state exam and missing some classes. How am I going to show this movie and be able to process it with the girls?

With technology. I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to do "backchannel" during the video, but I think it worked. Students who were unsure about things ("Doesn't she live in a convent?" "What happened to the other guy?" "Why are they talking about slavery? When is this movie set?") could get answers on the spot. I didn't have to say much -- the students answered each other's questions.

They also began the discussion about the death penalty.

Then for the first two nights, I gave them discussion questions on Moodle. Some of the questions were inspired by questions or comments during the video.

So when, today, the last day, we finally had some time for face to face discussion, it did not feel like we were starting from scratch. We can get back to it next week, but much of the groundwork has already been laid. All in all, I call this a successful experiment, one I would repeat even when I am not so pressed for classroom time.

More on the blog

2010-02-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

I am having second thoughts about the blog. So far, is it really different than their handing in individual assignments? There is not much going on in the way of commenting, and I am even unsure of how much to write publicly -- some of my comments regarding the assignment find their way to PowerSchool. Comments about content go on the blog. But there's not much in the way of actual discussion. While some of the posts are thoughtful, some are less so, and there is not always attention to spelling/typos and sentence structure that I would like for something so public (not to mention that it's an assignment.).

So, is there a point in this? Still questioning. However, it does appear that we've had some hits from California and Europe.

Doing Diigo again

2010-02-25T21:42:00.000-05:00

I went over Diigo again for my current Catholic Theology class, because their first bookmarks are due Tuesday. "This is confusing," someone whined. A little effort, please. All they need to do is come to me for help. It's not that hard! In the meantime, one student was already well underway with her research when the assignment was on Moodle but I hadn't met with them to announce it. So, here we go again!

Paperlessness

2010-02-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

The writer of a blog called TeachPaperless is promoting a campaign to get teachers to sign up to not use paper on Earth Day. I haven't committed. But the fact is, I'm using much less paper than I did only a couple of years ago. Things I used to hand out I now put on Moodle as PDF's. With the Moodle version of Reader, students can't write on the page (we have tablets), but they can easily transfer to Word or OneNote and do so (as a freshman taught me). I also have the option of projecting things to a screen.

There are a couple of things that I have had students hand in on paper still, but most work goes through Moodle, or now, on a blog.

Tests are still on paper (though I've done some Moodle quizzes). But I am fairly close to... paperless. Well, time to go back to grading some online essays.

Bloggety blog

2010-02-19T20:30:00.000-05:00

So far, so good. Almost everyone on board, though there were a couple of glitches with labeling. A couple of students who did not do the required tag did not get credit at first. I need to be able to go to the tags to find who did what rather than relying on getting it all as I scroll and read.

Students commented on sections of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, and I was pleased with some of the posts, their understanding of what they read (written in 1891), their thoughtful reactions and connections they made with concepts covered in class.

A few took the easy way out, finding the shortest paragraph and ignoring the direction not to repeat in essence what other classmates had said.

I'm trying to figure out how, in the future, I'll be able to encourage them to read and comment on one another's thoughts. If I require it, it might be tricky keeping track, or maybe not.

At some point maybe I'll advertise the blog more and see if I can't get some outside comments on their thoughts, which I suppose is part of the idea. One thing at a time. But if you are reading this, feel free to check out Justice and Peace Spring 2010.

Learning to persevere

2010-02-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

Students appear to have gotten into my Diigo group, but still do not show up as "activated." Cannot upload toolbar, message denies access. Ugh. I didn't have trouble this soon last semester. One student wanted to drop Diigo. "It's too confusing. Can't we use Google or something?" She's not even there yet and it's too confusing!

Sent a helpdesk ticket about whether we might be blocking from here. I really don't have time for this.

Diigo fiasco

2010-02-11T15:04:00.000-05:00

Introduced the 2nd semester CT class to Diigo. Tried a different way to get them signed up, by e-mailing invitations. Many of the e-mails did not go through, because I had the wrong one, or because...? Did I miss typing some of them? Students who got the e-mail then had to sign on with an account. They could use Diigo account, but didn't know how to create one. Could use Google. Then there were students who tried to download the toolbar and got at least two error messages.

I'm going back to the way I did it 1st semester.

The document question

2010-02-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

At our department meeting today we started to work with a 50+ page document from the U.S bishops, their curriculum framework. It didn't take long to decide that it was too clumsy for us to go through it at a meeting. We wanted a way to make the document accessible to all. But how? I tried to do some cutting and pasting of a couple of pages of the PDF in Google Docs, but the formatting was horrible, not very readable.

Diigo! I think that would have worked. The thing is online, and we could all have it in our libraries and share notations. But, as I had that brilliant idea, another thought was gaining momentum in the group: paper. Let's just pass around a paper copy, someone said. I had to acquiesce, though I have my doubts. Since we want to work on one copy, it is going to take some time for six busy teachers to get a look at it. With Diigo, it would have been accessible to everyone, all the time.

More about the blog

2010-02-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

We're doing a practice run; everyone is supposed to post one fact about herself. I'm still waiting for a couple to get on board, though it's been a couple of days. I've invited them to comment, but no one has (except me). I'm not sure, but I think that I am the person most excited about this.

I'm looking forward to a real assignment later this week.

Cart before the horse?

2010-02-04T22:22:00.000-05:00

Started first student blog. We'll do a test first, just to see if everyone can post successfully. Next week we'll take off with a real assignment. But now I'm reading some blogs about blogs, with some good guidelines/rules for students. I haven't really given my students guidelines, though I did tell them that what they write will be public, and that comments on the current posts, if they choose to add them, should be positive. I'm not too concerned about inappropriateness. But I will think about whether I should put some guidelines in writing.

Another thing: a rubric for grading posts? Might be a good idea. I have an example of one for biology that might give me some ideas.

Books on computer

2010-01-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

Since our school has been phasing in our 1:1 program, there's been a push to utilize online texts to lighten the backpacks of the girls. I remember making calls to religion text publishers a couple of years ago asking about online texts or versions on CD-rom. Not much going on then. Resources available on publishers' websites but not actual texts in our discipline.

That's changed now. I know of two publishers who are either making books available in an electronic format or are at least thinking about it. Today I filled out a survey for one company about just that topic. Another sent me an e-mail offering a review copy of a text that could be delivered either through UPS or electronically.

The times they are a changin'.

Second Semester

2010-01-12T19:18:00.000-05:00

Second semester: I plan to keep the same basic process for Catholic Theology, though I may change it for next year.

In Justice and Peace, I want to get students connected to what is happening outside the classroom. I think I would like to introduce them to RSS, and help them find relevant blogs or other feeds.

They will blog. One class blog, or individual? More research to be done.

Their final project will be done in pairs or groups, and will be presented through a wiki. Google Sites? Wikispaces? I have to explore more there to decide.

Oh, and I have to read the text and figure out how we will go about learning the content of the course, too.

I will be busy.

Some feedback

2010-01-12T18:58:00.000-05:00

Today our discussion in Catholic Theology got a little off track, but I thought it to be important stuff. Since I have not delved into DyKnow much, I got some of their impressions of its use, and the discussion turned to the area of privacy. The fact that with the software teachers could be viewing students screens even when they are at home is bothersome to some students. But even in the classroom, some students feel that it is their business what they are doing during the class. "It's our grade" is what they had to say.

There were complaints about not being able to use OneNote, where they would prefer to take their notes, when a teacher blocks everything but DyKnow, and about how each day's work is a separate file when they would like to organize their notes differently. Another problem is when a teacher forgets to "release" students from their class, and applications they need for homework are blocked well beyond the school day.

A complaint that I heard before was that the method of presenting, at least as used by some teachers, allows for too much passivity on the part of students. If the notes are there and they don't have to write them, they are not as engaged with the material. I do know that some teachers don't put all the material on the slides, which encourages students to add their own notes.

It was a natural jump from there to the tools we have actually used in the classroom. There was Diigo, and some students had major problems with it. The main problem seemed to have to do with the way it interacted with the databases we have access to at school. I solved that problem (I think), but too late for these students, who could not get back to articles they had marked. And I think that next semester I just have to take more time to familiarize students with the tool, as some this semester just found it confusing.

I need to do the same with Google Docs. Some pairs did not really take advantage of the collaborative aspects, but put their paper together and then pasted to Docs. In some cases they just found it confusing. One girl said that those who had used it for another teacher previously found it easy.

Some students just wished they could have done stuff on paper. They don't like reading on screens; they like to flip through the assignments they get back to read comments, not scroll. So much for the idea that all young people are digital natives who take to computer applications like a duck to water.

Even with so many complaints, I wasn't totally discouraged. One girl actually said that she liked Diigo. My basic conclusion for improving next semester: teach more of the tech.

Snow days

2010-01-08T08:59:00.000-05:00

For the record, today is not a snow day, though hopes were high at the end of the school day yesterday. The roads were bad in the thick of it yesterday, but deemed clear enough today for us to all make the trek to school.

But here we are, and learning continues. If we were at home, classes would have been interrupted until Monday. But it doesn't have to be that way when your school has access to Moodle, and some teachers use DyKnow as well. The DyKnow teachers could be conducting classes in real time. Moodle can be a simple access point for assignments, but also offers chat and discussion options. We could really maintain the same schedule, just doing all that learning in our pajamas.

Here's a blog post about a school where "snow day" does not equal "no school day." I think it would be something worth exploring in my building. We generally do not have to make up our lost days as a private school. But is our goal to follow state laws, or is it to offer the fullest education opportunities possible to our students?

The department pln plan.

2010-01-07T18:07:00.000-05:00

Had a discussion today about the PLN, and ways to connect with other teachers through Twitter, etc. I mentioned how I was in the process of trying to find more people who teach what I teach -- that is, some high school religion teachers. Finding ones who do tech would be nice, but connecting is not all about how to teach tech.

Someone came up with the idea of trying to start a Ning for religion teachers in our archdiocese. We could connect with people doing what we are doing in our own locale, and with them we could share resources and ideas.

I like!

Class evaluations

2010-01-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

In three of my five classes, I am doing the class evaluation online with Google Forms. Nice! Two classes did theirs today, and it's cool to see the results at a glance. Just not sure if there's a way to repeat the deal starting from scratch next semester without having to redo the whole thing. Or, to just clear the results to start again.

What has changed?

2009-12-26T09:06:00.000-05:00

I recently read a post on Will Richardson's blog reflecting on the last year in education. What has changed, he wants to know.

I expect that the changes were not earthshaking. Not yet. Little things here and there -- a district with some new policies, a teacher here or there who sees education in a new light. At some point, changes will start to snowball, and educators will look back and marvel at the difference, but I don't think we're there quite yet. For the longest time, Paul and I had an e-mail address but hardly anyone to send messages to. For a while it probably seemed that there was no communication revolution in the making. And now, e-mail is practically passe. Same with cell phones. Each family member has a cell, something I would not have predicted when I bought my first one maybe ten years ago. And by the way, I have absolutely no interest in the fancy smart phones. At the same time, I acknowledge that some day I might have one anyway.

What has changed for me personally as a teacher? Quite a lot, if I think about it. Here are things I had little or no knowledge/experience of until just over a year ago, but I have implemented or at least played around with since:

RSS and Google Reader (it's a mess right now, but never mind)
blogs (I have two now)
wikis (using the Moodle ones more successfully)
Facebook
Twitter (I never would have guessed I'd go there).
Diigo and Diigo Education
Google Docs/spreadsheets/presentations
Google Forms
Google Sites
Moodle quizzes
Ning
PLN
paperless handouts (I had done this before, but not as much)
Animoto
Photostory
Audacity
Wordle
backchannel in the classroom
TodaysMeet (I conducted one department meeting from a bagel shop).
Jing

There might be things I'm forgetting, but I think it's clear that I am headed in new directions as a teacher. It's not the tools, but rather what the tools can accomplish. I am looking for more collaboration, less paper, more sources of knowledge, more ways to get students excited about learning, and more ways to assess what students have learned.

I know that I have much to learn, but I think that 2009 has been a pretty good start.

Books still work.

2009-12-08T12:50:00.000-05:00

A student was giving me a number of reasons why she couldn't get her assignment completed. Her internet was not working. The verses of the psalm she was working with were on her phone, which of course she was not able to pull out in some earlier class.

I was confused. "How about using a Bible?" I asked. Her response: "You have a Bible?"

Well, it is a religion classroom. And even with all of our nifty technology, books still work.

More backchannel

2009-12-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

Rather spontaneously, I decided to have my students on TodaysMeet again as we started a video about the Eucharist. I like it even more for movies than for presentations, because Ron Rolheiser isn't actually there to be distracted by students typing their thoughts as he speaks.

Thoughts (and some non-thoughts) range from silliness ("oh whadup") to comments and questions that show attentiveness to the words of the speaker and a curiosity about his meaning. I was able to answer a couple of questions on the spot, and a couple more I will take up before we continue the video at the next class.

I don't mean for this to replace our face-to-face, vocal discussion, but I hope rather that it will help to facilitate it. Time will tell as I continue to experiment.

More on wikis

2009-12-04T21:49:00.000-05:00

In the past I've considered Moodle wikis to be a bit clunky, but they're growing on me a bit. It's better to use group pages, because different groups trying to upload to the same page just takes too long.

Having the groups auto-generated seemed nifty, but then I got to a class and discovered that four students who were not shown as absent on the computer were on retreat, and the groups were lopsided. I didn't have time to reconfigure the groups. I only needed to move one student. She was not on the right page anymore, so her partner did the uploading.

Students explored websites of organizations to make connections between their work and themes of Catholic Social Teaching. I told them that if they had time they could "make it pretty" and upload photos, and most groups were able to do so. We then viewed each wiki page while the group explained their findings.

Not bad for a period's work.

What's a wiki?

2009-12-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

Of about 50 students in two predominantly senior classes (the ones who have carried laptops around for about three and a half years), I would say that about ten raised their hands when I asked who knew what a wiki is.

Google Forms

2009-11-28T15:46:00.001-05:00

Two responses to my query on Twitter about getting feedback from students. Moodle has some kind of feedback module, apparently, but I don't know if we have it. I had not seen it when I went poking around earlier, and my e-mail to the Moodle administrator was not answered. So I went with Google Forms.

And it is great.

I made up my questionnaire and e-mailed the link to all my frosh. I wanted to know about certain aspects of a project that I had done in a new way recently. The responses have already started, so I know some of my students check e-mail on the weekend!

There's a spreadsheet that shows all of the responses together, and a summary page that has bar graphs and percentages.

I think I need to transfer the course evaluation to this format.

Backchannel

2009-11-25T21:46:00.000-05:00

I didn't even know the word "backchannel" a year ago.

Last year during the presentations in Catholic Theology I had the students who were listening take notes. I was trying to encourage paying attention while their classmates presented, but at times it seemed that students were more focused on writing than active listening. They were almost transcribing, and copying down PowerPoint slides that were too wordy (despite my guidelines).

So, a bold experiment (for me). First, following Germaine's idea, no text on the slides. Just graphics, and the titles of their subtopics. And, I had the class on a chat website during the first presentation day. Write at least one comment, or ask a question, I said.

Some of the comments were simple affirmations ("I really like the slides" or "that story was AMAZING"), and while I had hoped for something a bit more substantial relating to content, I think the speakers probably appreciated those when they got a look. But there were some other comments that were closer to what I was looking for, and there were some good questions. It's possible that some of the good stuff came from a couple of students who are not usually very vocal in class. It also helped spark some of the conversation after the presentation.

I asked for reactions. They seemed to like the idea better than note-taking, anyway. One student said that it helped her to focus on what was being said. That is perhaps counter-intuitive. I used to think that the idea of a sort of conversation going on while someone was speaking was a bit... rude. So it was a bit of a leap to try it. I think we'll continue the experiment for the rest of the presentations.

Angels on Moodle

2009-11-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, have a couple of links to articles on angels posted to Moodle, that expand a little on what we discussed. And, started a forum: one question about angels and another about "church," the topic of the chapter we are on. I'm not assigning it for now. I want to see if students will make use of it anyway, just because they want to share opinions. I don't expect that, really, based on past experience, but they looked interested when I introduced it.

Too bad we're doing a hardware upgrade this weekend and the site is inaccessible until at least this afternoon.

What's wrong with this picture?

2009-11-13T07:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in a freshman theology class, someone brought up the story of the angel Gabriel and the announcement to Mary about Jesus, and then, based on whatever I said in response to the question, there were yet more questions, about angels. A teachable moment, right? A topic in which they are genuinely interested.

When all was said and done,I had a sense that some were not satisfied. The thing is, I don't know everything there is to know about angels. And the information I supplied them with just left a couple of kids wanting more. I am pretty certain. But we moved on.

Here's the thing. Every student had in front of her a laptop connected to the collective consciousness of the world (you know, the Internet. I'll dispense with my Borg analogy for now). You get the point. Information at their fingertips. I am not the repository of all knowledge. So why did I feel I was the only one who could answer their questions? Why did we ignore those machines sitting on their desks?

There are issues that raises, like whether freshmen can find good information on the web. Oh, right, if they don't learn that here, where will they learn it?

So, I'm just brainstorming here. Provide some links to good websites? Talk about filtering all that info on the web on day 1 of the class? Every student getting the Diigo toolbar on day 1 so that they can share what they find of the things they are interested in?

Yesterday was a teachable moment. But not as much for the students as for me.

Moodle madness

2009-11-12T20:10:00.000-05:00

Oh, what a tangled web we weave... when we try to do everything on Moodle. Moodle is good, don't get me wrong; I use it extensively. But I have an assignment where each student records a podcast, and two other students listen and evaluate according to a rubric, as well as do some summarizing. The original assignment gets points, and the listening gets points. I had the girls submit their evaluations on Moodle. Some are Word documents, some PDF's because they could not open the Word version. Now I can't get some to open for me, AND, I can't figure out a good way to get each student's evaluations (submitted through two other students) back to her.

I believe I will have to give up "paperless" for this one.

Passionate about teaching

2009-11-11T15:23:00.000-05:00

According to blog posts I've been reading lately, I as a teacher am supposed to be pursuing my passion through social networking. Fishing, or birdwatching, or basketball, or whatever. I know at least one teacher who does that.

But I'm already investing hours into reading tweets about ed tech, and chatting online about ed tech, and bookmarking, sometimes skimming, blog posts about ed tech, and planning lessons that integrate ed tech. Then there's my daily life, and once in a while I squeeze in some minutes to read a novel.

That's it, I think! Only so many hours in a day. I think we're going to have to call ed tech my passion for the moment.

Teaching tech?

2009-11-11T14:54:00.001-05:00

Alison wandered into my office the other day to ask, "When you did that podcasting assignment with your classes, did you ever get to a point where you felt like you were banging your head against a wall?"

She has a way with words. And she spent more class time than I did explaining what to do. I just gave them videos and instructions on Moodle and sent them to the tech guys. But there were plenty of problems. The answer was yes.

At points I feel like I am a tech teacher and not a religion teacher. If the content is taking a backseat, something is wrong. The tech part should be seamless, some of my Twitter colleagues have said. I don't teach the tech, a colleague says. They teach each other.

It has also been said that the kids are all tech savvy, and that is just not true. Some are, to a point. Some of them don't know any more than I do, and some know less about certain things. So how much class time is it reasonable to give up?

I don't have to teach my students how to type, or how to construct a decent sentence in order to have them write a paper. Do I need to be the one to teach them how to download Audacity and LAME? (Assuming I have figured it out for myself?)

Just wondering.

Staff in-service

2009-11-09T15:51:00.001-05:00

Thought my colleague Larry did a great job planning and presenting. He presents other places, too, and preps all that in addition to his classes. Amazing.

I'm sure some folks are overwhelmed by all the information. I am to a certain extent myself, even though I was familiar with much of what was shown. Being familiar is not the same as making use of the full potential of something. And some things Larry talked about I haven't touched yet. There is so much out there.

I hope that staff members don't feel they have to immediately do everything. Pick something that looks interesting or useful, and explore.

And, if we started to utilize just one of the tools presented today to communicate more within the building, that alone would make the day a success, I think.

Looking ahead

2009-11-09T06:32:00.000-05:00

Next semester I want to focus on making some connections outside the classroom. I'm not sure yet how I will go about it! In Catholic Theology, the chapter on "church" seems ripe for that, and maybe for a project of some kind.

In Peace and Justice (new prep), I want to do that for sure. What better way to get up-to-date information on the issues we will cover than through the internet and through people to whom my students can connect through the internet? That's the class where I plan to launch into student blogging in some way, too, though my plans are modest.

Frustration

2009-11-05T20:49:00.001-05:00

What's the deal with students who are "forbidden" to enter a Google site I specifically invited them to? There's a lot of that. Now I have had students e-mailing me things which I then upload to the site. But we have to fix the problem, or they won't get there to see what their classmates have done.

I have these sites closed right now because I'm worried about privacy concerns, and in some cases, copyright issues. But I want to do some of that differently in the future. I want the students to have a wider audience for their work.

What about these .aup files? what happened there?

Why is one freshman pair's photo story over the limit to upload when at least three others chose that format and had no difficulties? It doesn't seem so much longer -- maybe the effects they used?

I'm thinking of dumping the paper/presentation for Catholic Theology all together for next semester, and designing a project or two tied more directly to the material we cover. The topics are so... random, with some overlapping what we cover in class but others not. A lot of energy expended, and maybe better spent elsewhere.

But...
I'm happy with the results that I've seen and heard so far from these assignments. Just have to work out the technical issues, because they take away from attention to the actual product.

More on the podcasts

2009-11-04T21:45:00.000-05:00

Just checked my school e-mail and answered about a half-dozen e-mails from Prayer students on the eve of an assignment due. They were supposed to listen to two other podcasts, and they can't find them all. Days after the things were due, we're still figuring out stuff, or students are absent...

I have to say that last year with Gabcast it was nothing like this. Very smooth. Hopefully I will learn enough to do it better this way in the future. Because Gabcast now = $.

Funny how I would never think of letting students disturb me at home after school hours on the phone. But e-mail is okay. I like that I can be accessible this way.

Uploading

2009-11-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

Four Google sites. Open to the class, not the public. Prayer students uploaded mp3's. Got a .wav or two, and a couple of .aup's. We'll try to figure that out during an off day tomorrow.

Frosh: some difficulties getting into the site. Some already had Google accounts but with e-mails other than the school e-mail, so the website did not recognize and authorize them to enter. Maybe some other problems, too.

I am very, very much in favor of having frosh set up Google accounts with their Mercy e-mails at orientation. If we're going to use this technology and these laptops, let's just get one step out of the way. I'm not the only teacher using Google apps.

One student couldn't upload her photostory because the file was too big. "It's really long," she said. And truthfully, I don't even know how much my Google site will hold and whether the various projects will fit. A little bit of trial and error here.

So, not everything is uploaded yet. But what I've got so far, I like! I gave a choice of formats because I hoped the girls would pick something they are comfortable with, and could be creative with and have some fun. And in many cases, I think that has happened.

A department chat

2009-10-31T17:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday because I took the day off but was free at the time of our scheduled department meeting, I decided to try to meet online. Had the five other dept. members log on to our Ning. The chat in Ning is erratic, we have found out. You might find yourself listed as "offline," and no amount of clicking on the icon will bring you to online status. Locked out. No fun. (I tried to e-mail Ning folks for help with this the day before, but no response so far). So we went to Today'sMeet instead, and everything was relatively smooth from there on out.

I'm not sure everyone liked it, but I'll find out when I get back to school Monday. But "chat" was new for some, and I thought it a good idea to introduce it. We probably will not need to do that again, and just as well. Chat is a very good tool when you need to get people together who are far apart, but it's not as good as the face-to-face meeting, of course.

Problemas

2009-10-28T14:42:00.000-04:00

Glitches here and there with the Prayer podcasts. Some had trouble downloading Audacity or LAME, some with uploading to the Google site that would not give them "privileges." I heard from a source that there was some grumbling. In the classes I apologized for the cumbersome way I went about it (another teacher sacrificed a class period to have them do it together and help one another) but not for the assignment. I think knowing how to create an audio file could be useful someday. My daughter has had to do at least one in college, for example.

Anyway, I went to the sites, and most are there. Can't wait to start listening. But I might not even listen to them all. They will be evaluating each other, a thought that comes directly from a lunch line conversation with Will Richardson last November when I told him I had too many students and too much grading to do to take time to try all the tech stuff.

Podcasts

2009-10-26T16:02:00.000-04:00

Have I talked about the Prayer class podcasts? Students are hopefully downloading Audacity successfully. In the meantime, I had trouble finding where to attach the future MP3 files on my Google site. But thanks to Lynn for showing me how!

The 10 point quiz

2009-10-26T15:58:00.000-04:00

I gave my second ever Moodle quiz ever today, to a group of frosh. It was better than the last one because every single student was able to log in and take the quiz. The quizzes are already graded and the students found out immediately how they did and which ones they got wrong. Lovely!

It was matching, which is no where near as cumbersome to set up as the multiple choice. The only deal -- there were 14 questions, and I had intended a 14 point quiz. But Moodle decided it's a 10 point quiz and converted the scores accordingly.

More about conferences

2009-10-23T09:08:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, usually in the spring, traffic dies down toward the end, and teachers get restless. Once in a while someone will get up and go over to chat with another teacher who has no parent to talk to. It wasn't quite like that last night, fairly busy until the end, but some of us had no line. Since I had my laptop, I checked to see who was online, and began conversations with about four teachers through the instant messaging in our e-mail client. Doing the same thing as always, but electronically. The only bad part was that I did not get to stretch my legs!

Conferences

2009-10-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

Even though I've been keeping grades with some sort of computer program for maybe fifteen years or more, today is the very first time I went to parent teacher conferences with no printout of grades, just my laptop. I think in the past I was afraid it would take me too long to find the information I wanted. But I experimented with the PDF of individual reports, and it seemed relatively quick to click on a certain class and click the arrows (I know, I am demonstrating once again my lack of tech savvy!) to get to a particular student. It was not ideal. Sometimes I couldn't remember whether a student was in 2nd hour or 3rd hour, and it was sometimes difficult, too, to pick out the correct class among five overlapping on my desktop.

Then our dept. went to dinner, and Joe told me his system: all the students lumped together, not by class, and using the search function to find the name. When I had a little break with no parents in line, I ran the new report. So with 45 minutes to go -- I did it Joe's way, and wow! It worked great.

More paperlessness. Although, I might still be tempted to run copies as a backup in case my battery runs low or something.

More on collaboration

2009-10-22T10:41:00.000-04:00

Some of my frosh wanted to pick their own partners. I decided not to let them, partly because it's so early in the year. Some girls came with friends or have made friends, but for some it would be awkward to have to find a partner.

So one girl, in a class that is almost entirely on Facebook, wanted to know how she was going to work on a project with someone who might live 25 miles from her house. Well, there will be some face-to-face time in school. But I reminded them that they are connected in so many ways over the internet that they should be able to work together pretty well. "Skype!" I heard from someone at that point.

Looks like the first lesson in the "Story about Jesus" project was not about Jesus at all.

DyKnow

2009-10-21T20:30:00.000-04:00

So, we have this expensive software that someone gave us a grant for. It has some cool features, monitoring, sharing control of what is projected on a screen, group work without moving from seats. I don't think I'd like to use it all the time, but today's staff meeting was a start in melting my resistance to it all.

Most of the time when students are in a class, working together face to face seems better than anonymous collaboration. But it might be good for some things. And I don't want to be stuck at a computer or with PowerPoints all the time, but sometimes on note-heavy days it might be good.

One student did tell me that having all the notes there without her having to write them was less effective for her learning. But there are different interactive things that can be done.

I can see that someday blackboards will be a thing of the past.

About the workaround

2009-10-20T22:11:00.000-04:00

1. Tech help at Gale suggests way to find "persistent" URL.
2. I can't find what she is talking about, but discover it in another place.
3. I e-mail her back to say what I have done.
4. She asks me to call so she can "walk me through it."
5. I call, and she finds out I'm on a different "product" than she thought.
6. She directs me to the exact spot I had already found.
7. My workaround was the right one.
8. If my students are using the resource I think they are.

A workaround

2009-10-19T21:17:00.000-04:00

With help from tech support at Gale (though I didn't do exactly what she said) I figured out a workaround to get stuff from Gale to bookmark successfully into Diigo. Hurray! Major hurdle in using Diigo, because the Gale stuff is a rich resource.