A Simple Change

I am trying something I have done before but fell away from doing for some reason.  Basically, I teach in a 1 to 1 gifted and talented middle school program and during the first quarter while at North Middle School, I had the kids face the Smart Board/overhead while they sat behind the keyboard as pictured below.

Adam is a Banana

Although I am not usually in front of my classroom, when I was lecturing or presenting, I would be in front of the class, looking at the backs of the kids computer screens, and very often, kids would be doing something other than what I wanted them to be doing. Perhaps playing crazy birds, watching Davey goes to dentist, or translating Arabic into Japanese via Google translate.  Probably more often than I would like to admit. So this quarter, I changed it to look more like the image shown below.  The computers or in a circle around our work space and facing away from the center of our area of the library.

mr. a iz da bomb

Now I have the kids backs to me and the Smart Board.   I can see that each and every one of them is on the page I want them to be on and not playing crazy birds, watching Davey goes to dentist, or translating Arabic into Japanese via Google translate. When I am providing direct instruction, I force the kids to actually turn around and look at me. That way, I can tell who is listening and who is not. Something I hate doing is repeating instructions because someone was googling what the weather is like in Bhaktapur, Nepal. With my new classroom setup, it seems I have had to repeat instructions less often. I have had my room like this in the past, but somehow I went back to the old way. I hope I remember the new way from now on. It seems to have really improved my instruction in a very simple way.

On a personal note, I took the first picture above on Halloween of this year.  The kid in the banana suit actually belongs to me.  I think he was the one who was either checking the weather in Bhaktapur or translating Arabic into Japanese.

Letting the Kids be in Charge

I tried something new this week on Thursday.  I knew the kids had to get all the definitions to our Animal Farm vocabulary down one way or another and I have been espousing my belief in PBL principles for a couple of years now.  So here is what I did.  I pulled the first two kids who came into class aside and told them they were going to be the leaders, the bosses, for class today.  Most kids responded in a pretty positive way.  I gave them the task of creating a wikipage that had each of the 40 vocabulary words, their top two definitions, and an image that represented the vocabulary word.  I told them they had a few minutes to plan while I explained what was going on to the other 10 or so students I have each period of the day in my gifted pullout classroom.  I feel a little bad for the first two class leaders, because I had no clues to give them to make things go a little easier, and maybe I shouldn’t have given later classes clues that I did…but it can be difficult for me, and probably other teachers as well to watch their students struggle.  I told them that whichever class created the best page would receive an automatic 100% on the first Animal Farm quiz.  Here are the results.

1. Period 2 Vocabulary Page
2. Period 3 Vocabulary Page
3. Period 4 Vocabulary Page
4. Period 5 Vocabulary Page
5. Period 9 Vocabulary Page

Some of my classes finished, others did not.  I know these pages will improve over the next couple of days as well because I know my students.

I set down very simple guidelines including the leaders are in charge and you need to be working on the task the entire time you are in class.  Also, all questions were to be directed to the class bosses.  Gifted kids are interesting in that many of them really feel as though they must be given explicit instructions of exactly what and how they are supposed to do everything…God forbid they should make a mistake.  It is something I work on them with, and hopefully help them improve upon.  Because as I tell them, I believe that their are no such things as mistakes, only opportunities to learn and grow.  My classroom was a little like real life on that Thursday.  Some of the leaders struggled as others really excelled.  My hope is that the kids learned some valuable lessons about working together to achieve a goal…and I think they did.  I plan doing more activities like this in the future.  It was a real Quadrant D type activity, I think.  Do you agree?

Chainsaw

Going through my wiki-mails from the end of last year, I found this message from one of my students. I asked her to send me a message regarding the meaning of life when she said that was what she was pondering when I observed and mentioned that she was not working on the assignment the rest of the class was.

The girl sat in a desk with no meaning to it. Bland. That’s all she could think of as she looked around the room into the lifeless room. Others were laughing and enjoying their day, living as if there was no tomorrow. “When will I have that?” she thought. Slam. A hand with a little to much hair flew down in front of her. “What the bloody bells do you think you’re doing?” The girl’s subconscious thoughts were shattered by his crackling voice. “Get to work.” As she thought, she could only find that what there was to learn in the class, is the meaning of life.

She turned to her inner being. She found that only the meaning of life was inside herself. Not around her or on her but within her. She found the meaning with the smile she flaunted and the tears she cried and the hope inside. Her love for the play Romeo and Juliet, her love for her family. It was all there. Even though the cripple faced teacher was the chainsaw to her tree, she still found learning without a book, or pen.

- Alex J.

I have some talented students I think.  I hope I am not the cripple faced teacher that was the chainsaw to her tree.

2010 – 2011 School Year Final Reflection

Andrew Howe - North Dakotan Farmer/Chinese Teacher

Summer has been happening for about a week now and a post about my school year has been brewing in my mind…well, for pretty much the whole school year.  This post will focus mostly on the second half of the year in which we completed a unit on China.  I met a man last summer who was moving to Jishou, China to teach English to middle school students there and I told him it would be very cool if we could somehow connect our classrooms.  He thought it sounded cool and we shared skype and gtalk details with each other and ended up doing some pretty cool things, I think, with our students.  Much of what we did could have been done better, but it was the first time doing what we did for the both of us.

Jishou Middle School #1

The purpose of this post is to share what we did during the course of the year and possibly get some feedback from people like Dean, Jokay, Angela, Kim, Scott or other people in my PLN who might possibly glance at my blog every now and again.  The best way to do this is to simply share my students’ final projects.  Each student made 5 wiki pages which they linked together via a navigation bar at the top of each page.  One of the best example navigation bars/websites can be found below.  I believe the navigation bar at the top of each page allowed each student to have what was the equivalent of their own web site.

Erica’s navigation bar

4Erica’s Homepage

4Erica’s Blog page

4Erica’s Chinese Province Project

4Erica’s Chinese Pen Pal page

4Erica’s Chinese Language page

Each student created a homepage that had the purpose of sharing with their Pen Pals and their classmates who they were.  The home page was a kind of biography or compilation of their lives up to this point.  Students also created a blog page where they were assigned blogging tasks at various times during the quarter.  The Chinese Province Project page was a place for them to gather research and display their prezi, glogster, or powerpoint that demonstrated the important aspects of the five themes of geography for their chosen province, municipality, or autonomous region.  The next page down was the Chinese Pen Pal page.  Each student created a one-slide biography of their pen pal which they shared at the end of the quarter.

刘容- Maddie B.

They also posted the slide on their wiki page along with the letters that they wrote to one another as you can see if you take the time to look at Erica’s example or any of the students examples.  We used audacity to create the major components on the final page.  Mr. Howe was kind enough to stay up until 2:00am china time a couple of days and teach my students some common phrases that his students used and also help my students prepare questions for two meetups we had via QQ towards the end of the quarter.  Students created audio files on their Chinese Language Pages where they practiced their pronunciation of several of those phrases.  What really impressed the Chinese students was the fact that we made the effort to learn their language.  They (the Jishou students) had a belief that most Americans were too arrogant to attempt to learn something about another country’s culture.  I believe it allowed them to be more open with my students when we held our two meetups.

一中的学生 - Jishou Pen Pals

When I do a unit like this in the future, I will do a couple of things differently.  First I will definitely make the province project more problem based.  Each province in China, faces unique problems that students could use as topics to incorporate the 5 geography themes.  The research they did, did not have as much purpose as it could have had.  Secondly, I will not start exchanging letters until the quarter I begin the unit.  Students were a bit confused when they had to change Pen Pals when I switched middle schools during the year.  I will also take any suggestions of ways I could improve this unit based on anyone’s evaluation of my students’ projects.  Any feedback anyone has on this blog post (I don’t believe I finally made 100) is greatly appreciated.

A student at East Middle School created the Animoto below to share what we learned during the quarter.

jishoumeetseastmiddleschool – Peace2, posted with vodpod

你们很漂亮 – You are Beautiful

I have not blogged since October so I guess I haven’t been the most reflective teacher lately or perhaps I have just reflected in other ways.  Blogging takes a lot of time and I guess I am not doing it (blogging) for anyone else but me.  Many interesting things have happened in my classroom and in my life since last October.  But yesterday, I had a guy living in Jishou, China spend the day in my classroom teaching my students (and me) a very cool lesson on the Chinese Language.  Sometimes when you teach, you feel good about a lesson, and you tell yourself…Wow, that was cool.  This was definitely one of those times.  My kids were engaged, enthralled, and spent the day telling all their friends “they were beautiful” in the Chinese Language.

Andrew is my teacher

My friend, Andrew (Howeiyan) told my students a joke about how Americans tend to be a bit self centered when it comes to learning a new language to make a point to my students.  I believe that other countries perceptions of us and understanding those perceptions is more important than ever before for our students.  Having an American teacher in China shed some light on some of those perceptions is extremely powerful (厉害).  He is an extremely good teacher, and not only did he teach my students several things yesterday, but he taught me, many things as well.  I was very lucky on that day last summer in North Dakota when I met him.  谢谢我的 老师。

Blogging from my iPad

This is my first post from my iPad. I wrote this post as a guest blogger on my friend, Gerald Aungst’s blog quisitivity. I titled it “I Don’t Know”.

My name is Jeff Agamenoni and I have been teaching for 17 years in a variety of positions, mostly middle school, in Great Falls, Montana.  I am only in my second year as a gifted and talented specialist and I learned a ton in my first year.  I hope to continue learning about how to be more effective with my students as I move into my second year.

When Gerald asked me to guest blog, he posed the question, “How are we going to meet the needs of the gifted population as we continue moving into the twenty-first century?”  My initial response was that we need to be changing the way we deliver instruction for all kids in much the same way.  I told this to Gerald and he said I needed to think it through more thoroughly.  So I did, and the truth of the matter is, I really DON’T KNOW.  There are a couple of things, however that I am fairly certain of.

I believe the answer lies somewhere within the concept of Connectivism.  New technology, to me, is not about the machines, the applications, or the search engines; but about its ability to connect us to others.  Most experts I have read, talk about the importance of grouping gifted students as a means of providing them with increased learning opportunities.  They also talk about connecting gifted students to experts in their fields of interest.  Not only do current technologies increase our capacity to connect gifted students to one another, but they increase our capacity to connect our students to other great teachers and experts in a variety of fields.  I believe I have begun doing this on a small scale and I believe my job is to continue to try and increase the scale at which I connect my students with each other, to other great teachers, and to experts in a variety of occupational fields.

The second thing I began thinking about last night is sometimes it seems in education we focus more on what we need to be doing differently instead of what we are doing right.  I believe most teachers really want to do what is right for kids, but every year, no matter what happened in the previous year, it seems it has never been enough for some people, usually people who haven’t been in the classroom since last century.  So teachers who are reading this, you did a great job last year and keep up the good work.  I am certain that in some way, you touched a kid’s life.

Finally, I love connectivism and having a PLN.  I connect to my PLN in a variety of places including twitter, blogs I read, and second life, among others.  I believe that without it (my PLN), I would be lost and extremely unsure of how to approach issues like the one that Gerald asked me to guest blog about.  I think it is important to continue looking at and discussing how we can improve the way we deliver instruction to our students.  Having a strong PLN and a willingness to be a little reflective gives us the ability to accomplish that very important goal.

Camp Jokaydia

I remember a little over two years ago, when I discovered how immersive virtual worlds could be, how I said to my wife that I would really like to teach kids about this type of stuff.  Well this summer, I had the opportunity to do just that.  A couple of weeks ago I held my first class in a virtual world other than Quest Atlantis…for kids younger than 18 anyhow.  It was extremely exciting and the students who attended my class (7 of them) were extremely engaged and learned a ton.  I never imagined myself as a type of person who would teach a computer camp, but that is exactly what I have become.  The kids learned to navigate through, build, and communicate in an opensim environment.  Several of them also started getting into the scripting process and began designing some amazing things.  I will be lucky to be working with a couple of the students this year on some STEM projects and truly look forward to what they will be creating.

USTREAM, My Recorded Videos, posted with vodpod

Those thank you’s are for my good friend, Joanna Kay, a fantastic teacher/web-designer from Wollongong, Aus, who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to work with my students and deal with any crashing issues that we would experience over the week we spent on the Island of Montana in Jokaydiagrid.  I ran the class through a local college of technology as our school district is not yet ready for the new challenges working in an opensim environment presents.  I think that one of my teachers, Sebby, might be in charge of making them ready.  Below are pictures from camp.

Camp Jokaydia , posted with vodpod

Quest Atlantis Teacher

Becoming a Quest Atlantis teacher is no easy task.  I recently began my work as a buoy, training new teachers in how to utilize Quest Atlantis (QA) in their classrooms. I created a dummy new teacher account, so I could review the things I went through two years ago when I first started the training and, man, is there some good resources in the initial professional development missions.  However, the initial tasks can be time-consuming, even for someone familiar with operating an avatar and navigating through virtual worlds.

Teacherville in QA

For fear of frightening new teachers away, I found myself minimizing the amount of preparation and work it takes to become a QA teacher for the participants at my recent workshop.  The first question many teachers seem to ask about learning new ways to teach is, “How much of my time is this going to take?”  Instead of answering, as I did, “Oh, not too much, we should get through the training pretty quickly,”  I should have responded, “It can be very time consuming and seem like a thankless task at times.  You will fight battles with tech people in your district.  Figuring out how to get QA loaded on computers and get them working is a job in itself.  Coordinating the permission slips across five states and understanding all the various features in the teacher toolkit can be daunting as well.  The learning curve is very steep for QA, but I hope you will stick with it because the benefits of being a QA Teacher far outweigh the drawbacks.”

I have been reflecting as I am preparing for my first group of teachers second meeting, and I have been asking myself, why have I invested the amount of time and energy in this new educational technology.  What exactly have been the “benefits” of using Quest Atlantis with my students?  For my students I believe there have been many.  I have heard many different questers say things like “This is SOOOOO cool!” on several occasions as they work their way through various tasks.  QA engages my students in a way that nothing else seems to be able to.  They learn self-direction and have fun when they are in Quest Atlantis.  They are learning to interact, communicate, and collaborate with others in an on-line, teacher-monitored, safe environment.  They are investigating Social Commitments and how to treat others respectfully.  All the while being invested in a standards based curriculum.  The more I see kids work with Quest Atlantis, and as I become increasingly efficient at teaching with it, the more I believe that MUVEs like it definitely hold a very strong place in the future of education.

QA Teachers at a Baseball game

Those are some benefits for my students, but what about me?  I have spent all this time in QA  and learned how to use it.  How have I benefited?  I believe in several different ways.  I have become adept at interacting with others GLOBALLY through the trainings that Quest Atlantis and Bronwyn Stuckey have offered.  Not only are my students learning how to interact with others in on-line environments, but I am as well.  My PLN has grown stronger through the connections I have made with teachers who also use Quest Atlantis.  I am on the cutting edge of new technologies, which is something I have always wanted to be, and I continue to learn how these new technologies can be utilized in my classroom.  And finally, I KNOW and have professional and social relationships with people ALL OVER THE WORLD, as a result of my work in QA.  Regardless of what happens in the future for Quest Atlantis, I believe those relationships have made my time working and learning there (in QA) worth way more than any of the time and energy I have spent learning how to use it.

Nineteen Years

I have a student named Harly who is deathly afraid of speaking in front of her classmates. When those times came, where she had to speak in front of others, I have heard myself provide her (and students like her) with the following advice:

“You know, public speaking is the greatest fear faced by most people. For the majority of people it is even greater than the fear of death. But you know, the only way you will ever get over that fear is by facing it. Take every opportunity you have to speak in front of others and always volunteer to go first. If you do that, eventually that fear will decrease and perhaps it might even disappear completely.”

My wife was in my classroom when I gave Harly that advice on the day of our Dean Groom web conference at North Middle school, where Harly volunteered to present FIRST to teachers she did not even know as well as her classmates in a way that was TOTALLY new to everybody.

As I talked about my fear of presenting two workshops for teachers at a technology conference here in Great Falls, my big-headed wife reminded me of my lecture to Harly, and went on to talk about how I should take my own advice. And I guess I am taking my own advice, because I signed up to teach the workshops. I just hate it when someone else has to point it out…and I really wish the fear went away before I did the presenting.

On a personal note, On Tuesday, my wife and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. It is because of conversations like the one I just described that we have as successful of a marriage as we do. We have problems, just like everyone else, but when all is said and done, I consider myself to be about the luckiest man alive when I get to wake up next to my wife, Joanie, each day.

More on Adobe Connect Conference #2

Recently, Dean Groom ran the second of two web conferences with my students at East Middle School in Great Falls, MT.  Several teachers who I consider to be in my PLN attended and provided feedback for my students.  I sent my students a wikimail asking what they thought of the web conference.  Here are some of their responses:

“I really enjoyed the opportunity that we had to be involved in the deangroom web conference. It was awesome to listen to other people present their creative story ideas. That and the fact that a whole bunch of people heard my voice and saw my computer! It was so cool.
I want to… no scratch that… I WILL be a famous author when I’m older. After I have written my stories, I will need to share them to hundreds of people. This was a great practice for me when I present. It was also great practice for me to get up and share my exciting mini saga. Thank you for the opportunity Mr. A!” – Andi D. 7th Grade

“I thought that the web conference was really neat. I loved meeting a guy in Australia, and I don’t think I would have any other way. I love talking to people with accents, and it’s even cooler when the accents are real. It was interesting to have the pressure of “teachers all over the world” listening to us as we gave our presentations. This seemed like a very advanced program, and it was a great experience. I think the web conference has good potential to help people in the future.” – Amanda M. – 8th Grade

“I really liked presenting my story review to Dean Groom. I thought that it was helpful when he gave me feedback on my review and on how I presented. I also liked the sidebar where you could write and recieve comments from your classmates. I thought that was helpful because it was a quick and easy way for me to see what everyone else thought about my review. Those are a few reasons why I liked the Dean Groom web conference.” – Tara C. – 8th Grade

“I really liked how we got use new types of technology I didn’t know that computers could do that. Also I liked meeting dean groom and “getting” a free kangaroo.  Also I liked having the opportunity to see other people in ECS. Another way I liked was having a chance to hear other peoples stories. Some of the stories sound really interesting and I want to read them when I buy the book.” – Bailey B. – 7th Grade

“I really liked the webinar. I love how I was able to present to people all over the world. I thought that was pretty amazing. I thought it was cool how anyone else would ever care, especially. <333″                          – Kirsten W. – 8th Grade

“Last Friday, when we explained our stories at the web conference, I presented my paragraph. I thought that giving a presentation to someone not located in the same room as you was a good experience. Usually, students present to the class, or not at all but with the web conference, we could present to anyone around the world, and hear feedback about our presentation through the mikes provided.
If I had the opportunity to do this again, I would. It would be even better if more people were informed and could join in on the web conference. Another positive benefit of this is that it promoted our book, causing many people around the world to take part in reading it. I think that classrooms in America should do this more often.” – Anna L. – 8th Grade

“I thought that the web conference was very cool. It is pretty amazing that people from all over the world can listen to our web conference. I also thought that the fact that dean groom stayed up so long with us was pretty awesome, so I would love to be included in another one of these web conferences.” – Jared E. – 7th Grade

“I thought that the web conference was pretty cool because you can talk to people from all over the world. You also get to look at your story from other people’s point of view.” – Earl G. – 8th Grade

“I thought it was a lot funner then giving a speech in front of a class. I was kind of nervous but after it seemed fine. It was pretty cool though for talking about your story.”  Brandon B. -  7th Grade

“I liked a couple of things about the web conference. First, I enjoyed Mr. Groom’s feedback and his voice made me giggle. I liked how you could instantly receive feedback. I also liked how it helped me practice my presentation skills and I was instantly told I was talking too fast. Because of the real-time web conference, I was told to slow down and I could start my presentation over.” – Emma M. – 8th Grade

“I really really liked the web conference. I think it was amazingly cool that we could talk and a bunch of people who weren’t in our room could hear us and see what we were doing. It was a really fun way to share information. It made me think about how I presented my story because some of the people listening didn’t know me, or what my story was about, as is usually the case when we have class projects. It was cool for me as a writer to tell people about my book. I really liked the web conference. It was the most fun we’ve had in ecs all year.” – Zoie K. – 8th Grade

My classroom had no walls during that web conference.  I think the day is coming when classrooms as we know them will be much different.  They will be more like my classroom was on the day of the adobe connect conference.  I don’t know when, and I don’t know exactly how it will happen, but in order to teach and learn from others, you no longer need to be in the same PHYSICAL space.