Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Google Just Right for Constructivist Tech Lessons
How many of you have been aware that Google has a contest every year that lets students compete to make a doodle for the Google logo? The contest Doodle for Google always has a theme (something in relationship to helping) and is open to any student, whether home schooled, private or public. This year Google added an educator's page, (you can find the link on the home page for Doodle for Google, and of course you can Google it) which includes videos of the Google doodle team talking about what this kind of creativity is all about, and videos of the team talking with classrooms who are making their own Google doodle, and even lesson plans for teachers to do a unit on D4G, broken down into three lessons, for four different age groups: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. As an elementary tech coordinator who also teacher K-5 classes in a computer lab these lessons really hit the sweet spot for me. First I don't teach typing or skill/drill in my lab. I know there's a place for it but with only 50 minutes a week with them, and that usually only for half the year, teaching them the joy of using tech to explore and discover, to empower their learning experience, to construct their understanding is my priority. We hardly ever play games (even problem solving ones) in the computer lab, except when we create them ourselves using a coding program like Scratch or MicroWorlds, but I still want my students to come out of class saying, "that was fun." And the lessons from Google really seem to be on that constructivist tract that I believe is paramount to making tech learning engaging. I particularly liked two parts of two of the lessons, ones that I could apply to more than just the D4G unit. The first was about getting students thinking about what inventing / creating, coming up with ideas to invent something. What I loved about this idea was how it showed that sometimes simple ideas can be great. Often students are dismayed when they have to complete something that seems overwhelming to them, but when I say I invented something that will make the world a better place, healing people, staying off infection, making them feel better, and then I hold up a bandaid, explaining how it was invented, I almost always see that light go on, with students creativity being unleashed. Other part of one of the lessons I am using is about how students can help each other refine what they've created. Using the acronym TAG, standing for Tell them something you like, Ask them something about, and Give them a suggestion, students can help each other edit their work. Since having come across this and using it in the D4G unit, I have found most students respond really well to "TAGing" their friends for almost any work they are producing in the computer lab. Since so much of what we do in the lab involves them being creative / constructing something, the TAG moment really helps to take their work to the next level.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Trying Again
This entry is going to start with an apology: I have not been keeping up with posting new information on this blog and that is really not right. By creating this blog I have committed to sharing and hopefully hosting a space on the world wide web for those interested and involved in coordinating the use of technology in the elementary school environment. Though some illness in my family has taken up a fair amount of my time I have decided posting regularly here is not a responsibility I choose to shirk. So here is the first of what I hope will be from now on regular posts pertaining to being a tech coordinator for elementary schools.
Again: Why all schools with multiple classrooms need a tech coordinator. How much of our life now involves tech? As I wrote these words I thought, well almost everything, and then of course I wanted to know, "there must be someone who has done a study to show how much of our daily life, work, home, play, is influenced by tech," so I Googled it. Didn't get the definitive answer I was looking for but I did get the statistic that 90% of American households have some sort of computer device in their house. Ten percent of America lives without a computer?!? Everywhere I go it's tech: Doctor's office, stores, schools, they all so rely on tech at their location and to connect to the rest of the world. Being comfortable with tech has become a requirement of our society, especially if we wish to rise above the menial labor choice, and isn't that what as teachers we are trying to do: Give our students the opportunity to choose what they want to pursue? Teachers need the resources that allow them to integrate tech into their classrooms: Tech that works, bandwidth consistency, pd in the use of new tech, ways to weed through the plethora of choices out there and then access to the tech that will work in their schools, and someone to help coordinate all of these needs. They need a Tech Coordinator.
Again: Why all schools with multiple classrooms need a tech coordinator. How much of our life now involves tech? As I wrote these words I thought, well almost everything, and then of course I wanted to know, "there must be someone who has done a study to show how much of our daily life, work, home, play, is influenced by tech," so I Googled it. Didn't get the definitive answer I was looking for but I did get the statistic that 90% of American households have some sort of computer device in their house. Ten percent of America lives without a computer?!? Everywhere I go it's tech: Doctor's office, stores, schools, they all so rely on tech at their location and to connect to the rest of the world. Being comfortable with tech has become a requirement of our society, especially if we wish to rise above the menial labor choice, and isn't that what as teachers we are trying to do: Give our students the opportunity to choose what they want to pursue? Teachers need the resources that allow them to integrate tech into their classrooms: Tech that works, bandwidth consistency, pd in the use of new tech, ways to weed through the plethora of choices out there and then access to the tech that will work in their schools, and someone to help coordinate all of these needs. They need a Tech Coordinator.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
A Mayor of Tech Interest
Going over some old pictures I stumbled on one from an eChalk workshop where I was asked to show Bill de Blasio, the new city Public Advocate of NYC our school web site: www.ps11chelsea.org. We had a nice conversation and unlike many politicians I have encountered he showed a genuine interest in how we were making a student and community connection by way of the pages of our school site. Hopefully as he settles into the mayor at the center of the world he'll not forget the importance of tech in schools. Coordinated use of technology throughout the NYC city system can't just be left to the administration in individual schools, but supported continually and consistently so that every student has an equal chance to use technology in every area of study, in every classroom environment. Mr. Mayor we need Tech Coordinators in all our schools.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
What's Old is New Again: Teaching Coding (Programming) in Elementary Schools.
As a teacher who uses Scratch and MicroWorlds software in my school on a regular basis I am always looking for programing / coding tools. On facebook I ran into Play-i, a new company creating a robot toy to teach the very young student how to code: Play-i "Delightful Robots for Children" I really like this product and from what I can see it's absolutely on the right track: A) Teaching coding (when I first started teaching we called it programming -- what that means today is nicely explained in this Edutopia article 7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills | Edutopia), B) Constructivist learning (Hands on Exploring, Discovery, Empowerment), C) Problem Solving strategies that aren't bound to only one right way to do things, D) Debugging, (answers aren't a straight line, and when you're moving from point E to F, or V to W, it's there where you make the really amazing discoveries).
And they really seem to have done their homework, the two robots that they show in their video seem really on the cutting edge. Of course this idea is not new, Seymour Papert created a robot to run his Logo programming back in 1967 (The History of Turtle Robots) and it reminds me of how I started my tech-ed career in 1983 thinking, every school in the world will be teaching programming / coding and having robots before we reach 1990. Well that was a little optimistic but if Play-i can get us back to that original idea of Papert: Mindstorms, Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, (still a GREAT read) I want to get on that train.
And they really seem to have done their homework, the two robots that they show in their video seem really on the cutting edge. Of course this idea is not new, Seymour Papert created a robot to run his Logo programming back in 1967 (The History of Turtle Robots) and it reminds me of how I started my tech-ed career in 1983 thinking, every school in the world will be teaching programming / coding and having robots before we reach 1990. Well that was a little optimistic but if Play-i can get us back to that original idea of Papert: Mindstorms, Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, (still a GREAT read) I want to get on that train.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Finding Myself in a Sea of Choices
To be engaged in the world of tech you really have to be quantum, or as close as possible, being everywhere at the same time. This year I feel I've spun my wheels more than ever before, but I'm realizing it's not as much because I'm not doing my job (or better put my jobs: technician, classroom teacher, tech coach to classroom teachers -- though that part of my job hardly exists), it's because my jobs are so often pointing me to a place where I can't really get anything done deeply. I'm spinning my wheels because as soon as I get going in one direction, the volume of other tasks I need to complete sways me in another direction. Schools are asking more and more of teachers, and though I believe in the notion of forever learning, getting to be the best you can as an educator, much of the asking of teachers right now is so scattered it allows for no deep learning, nothing beyond, get it and move on, NO true introspection, so that as Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, warns, we're getting good at finding the answers, not understanding them. Maybe school's aren't meant to be places where we go deep. It is an institution: The students are forced to be there; The leaders are constantly asking for proof that the inmates are meeting standards; and since it's based on a capitalist model, not a scientific one there is a notion that we must always pull some sort of higher profit out of the commodity.
More and more I feel I am running into teachers who are frustrated with their jobs because they don't get to get into the marrow of the subjects they are teaching. We talk about teaching to the test and how that limits us, but within the administration of that testing notion is also a control of the teacher. Not only can a teacher not go deep because of the time constraints that come with teaching to the test, but teachers are now administered to enter data, follow pacts, stay within the guidelines of the units, that teachers just as the students they teach are being forced to do their teaching one way and one way only: To push for a result, get it, and move on. This is the great irony of the place teachers are now in: So much work to do that it feels like being lost at sea, having to constantly choose between the lesser of two evils, but in the end being pushed so much into a model that has been deemed to get the best results, the choices of teaching, the natural art of understanding that there is no one answer, but a sea of choices, all worthy of introspection, that the only thing that can get done is to follow the guidelines and move on to the next student. As I write this the image that keeps coming up in my head is Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. I guess because my sea of choices make for very little choice at all.
More and more I feel I am running into teachers who are frustrated with their jobs because they don't get to get into the marrow of the subjects they are teaching. We talk about teaching to the test and how that limits us, but within the administration of that testing notion is also a control of the teacher. Not only can a teacher not go deep because of the time constraints that come with teaching to the test, but teachers are now administered to enter data, follow pacts, stay within the guidelines of the units, that teachers just as the students they teach are being forced to do their teaching one way and one way only: To push for a result, get it, and move on. This is the great irony of the place teachers are now in: So much work to do that it feels like being lost at sea, having to constantly choose between the lesser of two evils, but in the end being pushed so much into a model that has been deemed to get the best results, the choices of teaching, the natural art of understanding that there is no one answer, but a sea of choices, all worthy of introspection, that the only thing that can get done is to follow the guidelines and move on to the next student. As I write this the image that keeps coming up in my head is Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. I guess because my sea of choices make for very little choice at all.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Tech Things Vs. Tech People
Thanks Lisa (The Innovative Educator) Nielsen for publishing this off my old blog. In my re-read of my own words I find I have a few more things to say so here it is again, with some changes worked in ...
We tend to spend more money on "things" than we do on "people." Though there is a great amount of disparity out there, it does seem clear that schools today are filling up with technology. What they are not also filling up on is a dedicated person who has the job to coordinate the technology throughout the building. I do not mean a technician, or I might say I don't mean only a technician. What I mean is that every building needs an expert educator who will coordinate the use of technology for Students, Teachers, Parents, and Administrators.
This is a big job and can't be on top of teaching a full or almost full course load (I know as that's kind of what I've been doing for 12 years at PS11). It needs to be someone who can coach teachers in supporting students in the use of tech resources. Also someone who searches out and facilitates the use of the best equipment and software that suites the school curriculum and community. And finally in needs to be someone who works (Collaborates) with Teachers, Administrators, Parents and Students to best use in the classroom (and home) setting these amazing tools. Do you know of K-5 schools that have this person? I know of many private K-12 schools that have a tech coordinator, one that sets the tone of technology use in the school and supports the equipment, software, web use. But I don't know of many schools where there are tech coordinators that are working in collaboration with teachers and administrators (much less parents and students) to push the daily use of technology in each of the subjects being taught in the K-5 classrooms. If you have examples of that PLEASE comment on this post and if they've got any job openings.
In my experience most schools don't have a person fully coordinating the use of technology and because of this the use of tech equipment is mostly hit or miss. Without equal parts of people to tech schools are not using technology to its full potential. Those making the choices for schools seem to be focused on putting technology in the hands of learners and that's great, but it won't meet with success (or at least the full potential of success) until we focus on putting a person in every school to facilitate the use of that technology. Technology is a tool, its potential in the tapping into the potential of the students, teachers, parents, and administrators. You don't do that with just the machine, you do that by adding equal portions of people to the tech mix.
We tend to spend more money on "things" than we do on "people." Though there is a great amount of disparity out there, it does seem clear that schools today are filling up with technology. What they are not also filling up on is a dedicated person who has the job to coordinate the technology throughout the building. I do not mean a technician, or I might say I don't mean only a technician. What I mean is that every building needs an expert educator who will coordinate the use of technology for Students, Teachers, Parents, and Administrators.
This is a big job and can't be on top of teaching a full or almost full course load (I know as that's kind of what I've been doing for 12 years at PS11). It needs to be someone who can coach teachers in supporting students in the use of tech resources. Also someone who searches out and facilitates the use of the best equipment and software that suites the school curriculum and community. And finally in needs to be someone who works (Collaborates) with Teachers, Administrators, Parents and Students to best use in the classroom (and home) setting these amazing tools. Do you know of K-5 schools that have this person? I know of many private K-12 schools that have a tech coordinator, one that sets the tone of technology use in the school and supports the equipment, software, web use. But I don't know of many schools where there are tech coordinators that are working in collaboration with teachers and administrators (much less parents and students) to push the daily use of technology in each of the subjects being taught in the K-5 classrooms. If you have examples of that PLEASE comment on this post and if they've got any job openings.
In my experience most schools don't have a person fully coordinating the use of technology and because of this the use of tech equipment is mostly hit or miss. Without equal parts of people to tech schools are not using technology to its full potential. Those making the choices for schools seem to be focused on putting technology in the hands of learners and that's great, but it won't meet with success (or at least the full potential of success) until we focus on putting a person in every school to facilitate the use of that technology. Technology is a tool, its potential in the tapping into the potential of the students, teachers, parents, and administrators. You don't do that with just the machine, you do that by adding equal portions of people to the tech mix.
Computer Science in Elementary Schools
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