Can you put a price on learning?

There is a limited amount of technology in my classroom for anyone to use, let alone students. I only have three netbooks, but I always keep them charged and have told my students repeatedly to use them if they want to do a search for something I was discussing.

I have 1 student whose computer has been broken for weeks and he still has not filled out the first day of school info sheet on the website.  So, I turned on the netbook, plopped it on his desk and had him complete the form.  I move on with the lesson and I notice that about halfway through the period he still has the computer open and is staring intently at the screen.  There's no way that it is taking him 20+ minutes to fill out this questionnaire, so I swing over to see what he is doing as the rest of the class is copying some notes.

In the course of the lesson on the atom, I mentioned that you can put a halogen lightbulb in a microwave and it will glow from the microwaves excited the atoms.  He heard this and decided to look it up on Youtube.  Well, that video led him to a series of videos of people microwaving different materials and explaining why the material that it was made of smoked or conducted electricity or glowed.  He was fascinated!  When I asked him what he was watching, he got so excited and started describing to the class what happened to a CD.

Can he write shorthand notation for identifying protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom? No.  Was he excited about learning and engaged for the entire period? Absolutely.

So, what was the more important lesson he learned today?

Flipclass Infographic

I hope that most people who read this blog have seen the Flipped Classroom Infographic.  But, just in case you haven't, I wanted to share it with you.
Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Time to change

I will not....
...reprimand students for using cell phones in class for non-educational purposes..  Clearly my lesson was not engaging enough and I need to work harder to help you find meaning in my class.
...keep talking.  Too much of today was me talking.  You need to do as much of the teaching as I do.
...stop you from asking questions that interest you.  If I can find a way to make the material relate to what we are doing, I will do so.  Clearly the topic is important enough for you to ask a question about it so I need to give it some attention.
...write referrals for bad behavior.  Sometimes kids are kids and you can't control your urges. Students who act out do so because they are bored or need some more attention.  I guess we are back to the lack of engagement topic again.
...force you to do it my way.  I am not the expert on you.  Who am I to tell you how you should learn?  If you need the ipod to help with your ADHD, then use it.  If you want to use a 3-ring binder or a notebook or a shoebox to keep your papers organized, then go right ahead.  Now, if it is not working, then listen to my suggestions to help you improve.
...punish you for being late to class.  Things happen that are out of your control that cause you to get delayed. Get here as fast as you can and get right to work.
...allow you to eat in class.  I mean, it is a chemistry lab and there are certain safety rules we need to keep.  However, I know your teenage world revolves around food so I will do my best to incorporate it into as many lessons as I can.

I will...
...ask you to think critically.
...spark that imagination and creativity that sometimes gets shoved to the side in school.
...force you out of your comfort zone.
...ask you to trust me.
...ask you to take risks.
...make the information as meaningful as possible.
...let you use the technology as much as I do.
...find a way to have class outside once in awhile.
...trust you.

These things I owe to you as your teacher.

Is this pushing it?

About a month ago, Brian Bennett (@bennettscience) mentioned that he was going to be using students blogs in his science classroom.  I was a little surprised by this (only a little as Brian is extremely innovative and is flipped classroom trainer) because all of the talk I have seen thus far has been about student blogs in Social Studies or English (or some other humanities-type course).  Little is really being done in math and science from what I have seen.  I had messaged Brian about it because I would like to bring some of this to my chemistry class.  Unfortunately Brian is not doing it in chemistry so I couldn't see any student products.

But it got me thinking:  There is a big push with Common Core Standards to bring a greater amount of literacy into every classroom, couldn't a blog help me reach that goal?  But the problem remained, how do I put all of those fancy symbols, subscripts and ion charges onto the blog without all of the necessary format features?  

Why this idea didn't hit me sooner, I have no idea.  I decided to type a chemical reaction into Word, make the necessary formatting changes and copy/paste it into the blog like this:

CH₄   +   2O₂   à  CO₂   +   2H₂O

And suddenly, I can now have my students create electronic lab notebooks entirely on a blog.  Oh yeah, and it's free.

Now when colleges ask students to demonstrate the lab work they have done in their science class, the students can show them the blog.  Not only will they be reading and writing more, they are not limited to the small space on the back of the lab sheet.  They can write longer entries to better explain their observations and deductions which improves not only their overall literacy, but their science vocabulary as well.  And from a grading standpoint, I would much rather take my laptop home every day than lug huge stacks of papers in my bag.  

It is also has the added benefit of reducing paper as my students won't need to add page after page of conclusions to the lab sheet I gave in class.  I can actually print 1 lab sheet per station for the lab, post the electronic document to my website, and the kids can copy/paste from there to their blog in order to answer the questions.  I might have stumbled upon something here.

I would love to hear thoughts and suggestions on this idea.

I'm the fire starter. I'm the instigator.

I have been fond of using several phrases to describe myself.  When students asked why I am always doing things different than my colleagues and changing what the school does, I would say: "if you aren't making waves, then you aren't kicking hard enough."  Then the superintendent called me a troublemaker in a meeting, and not in a funny, sarcastic way.  That's when a friend said "You're not a troublemaker.  You're a trendsetter."

I am the only one in my school using a Tablet PC to teach and today I finally got my wireless device to work so my teaching was completely mobile.  My kids didn't know what to do.  I put my PC on a kid's desk so she could work the problem out for the class and it was like an alien just beamed in from Mars and landed on her notebook.  She looked at the stylus like she had never picked up a pen in her entire life.  As others realized what I did, there were whispers of disappointment and envy because she got to be the first one to write on it.  Not sure what they are going to do when they have to start using Animoto, Prezis, and the Flipped Classroom.

I'm not a troublemaker.  I get the ideas rolling and the wave of change started.  I light the fire within my students to push themselves to do something they didn't know they could do.  This is going to cause problems for some of my colleagues.  And, well, maybe it should.

I'm the fire starter.

What's the worst that can happen?

picture courtesy of ansam518.wordpress.com

If you tried something new...
some technique...
some activity...
some piece of technology...
some method that you heard about/saw/thought of yourself...
what's the worst that could happen?

Now, really think about it.  What's the absolute worst thing that could happen?

If what you did was in the best interest of kids and improving understanding, and that new idea failed, you have lost nothing.  Your students understand just as well as they did with the old way.

But you are now different.  You are not the same person you were last year at this time.  You have pushed yourself to be better, to fight stagnation.  And that is all the reason you need.

Keep kids busy or they might start thinking

While reading Teacher Man, Frank McCourt makes the comment "Keep kids busy or they might start thinking."  He is talking about how too many teachers are just assigning work, yet they have little meaning for the students and rarely makes them think.

I had a conversation with a former supervisor over mandating summer assignments in all Honors science classes. The reason he gave me was: 1) we need to reduce the number of students who are dropping out of the honors program after school starts; this will hopefully scare a few of them off, 2) we need to provide assignments that keep the kids busy for the summer, and 3) we need to eliminate the summer slide that so many of them experience.  You can imagine my reaction.

Now, I am not opposed to summer assignments, but the kids need to find meaning in them.  Give them articles to read and perform research on or give them experiments to do in their kitchen so they can explain the science behind them (or food is always a great experiment) or let them pick their own book to read to demonstrate their understanding of theme or character development.  Don't give them copies of a textbook (which is what came out of my colleagues) and have them mindlessly complete exercises.  If the teachers don't want to grade it because it is so boring, what makes you think the students will want to do it?

One of my goals this year (a formal list will be coming later this week) is to have the students develop 1 assignment in each unit.  I will give them the requirements and the learning objectives and let them run with it.  If one of my classroom rules is going to be "Think Critically" then I need to give my students the opportunity to do so.

Am I wrong?