Creating Digital Video Reflections

I have been meaning to do this all year, but things don't always happen on my time table. Today I finally finished setting up my Digital Video Reflection area. My plan has been to have a place where students can jump in and make a quick video where they talk about their learning and then post it to their blog or the class ning. I believe that reflections is the most important step in the learning process and I want to be able to facilitate it in my school.

Why did I set this up when students are perfectly capable of writing their reflections? The answer is simple, because it is awesome! Let's face it, we live in media rich culture. Why read when we can see a picture; why see a picture when we can watch a video?

Why put up the students reflections where they can be seen by others? The same reason I write these posts, because I want people to see them, reflect on them, and hopefully leave a comment. My students want their learning validated just like I want to have my learning validated.

Here is my set-up. I use a Logitech webcam mounted on a tripod (with masking tape) to get enough elevation for the picture. The webcam is hooked up to my laptop along with my Blue Snowball microphone. Although the sound is not as loud with the Snowball, the students don't have to wear the headphone/microphone combo.

I set up a barrier so that the student recording wouldn't feel watched as they create their videos. It is hard for many to put themselves "out there" with their recordings and this can help them feel more comfortable.

This shot is from the back. I put the screen behind the student so it looks a little nicer than the wall/window combination. I plan on getting a few more screens to place around to cut down on the background noise and to make the student more comfortable. It looks raw, but if you have ever been to a television station before, only what shows on the camera matters.

Here is Yessy doing the first video reflection on the new set-up. She does an amazing job with her explanation. After she was finished I had her post the video on the seventh grade class ning. It will be used as an excellent example for the other students to emulate.

I would love to be able to set up a station like this in each classroom so that students would have access to them all the time. Imagine students having a Youtube channel that is devoted to what they are learning!

Get Rid of Grammar in Elementary School!

Yes, I expect to get flamed with this post. Ten years ago I suggested to a room full of educators in my district we should stop teaching cursive writing and was almost burned at the stake for my heresy. There were over 40 teachers in this meeting and the vote was me for everyone else against.

Now it is time to discuss another subject that I think needs to be done away with (at least on the elementary school level.) Grammar should not be taught as a class in our schools! We teach the same thing in 3rd grade as we do in 8th and they still don't learn it!

If we spend 25 minutes a day on parts of speech every day for 170 days a year that equals 71 hours. If we do that for six years it equals 425 hours, but how many of your 8th graders can successfully pick a noun out of a sentence? Why do we continue to teach them something they won't or can't learn?

I am not advocating allowing students to use poor grammar or conventions while writing, after all writing as a form of communication needs to have rules or the communication suffers. Obviously we cannot let this occur.

What I do say is that there is no real need to learn about nouns, verbs, or adjectives unless (and maybe not even then) they fall into two types of jobs; teaching grammar or being in a writing profession. After all, can't we require our students to make better word choices without identifying them as a specific part of speech?

Let's throw the systematic teaching of grammar out of our grade schools, it isn't needed!

Let the flames begin!

Why iPads Are a Good Choice for Students

Photo from Wikipedia

There is a lot of back and forth between the education community that uses technology in the classroom over Apple's newly announced iPad. While the impression I get is that most are disappointed with its lack of a few critical features (camera?) I still believe that the iPad can be successfully adopted and implemented in schools.

I am writing this post as a counter to Russ Goerend's post. I have agreed to contrasting the iPad to three other tech tools; iPod Touch, a generic netbook, and a MacBook. I would compare them, but it is the differences that are significant for this particular post.

iPad versus iPod Touch

First up is the iPod Touch. The iPad has been said to be just a big itouch. There are some obvious differences such as the ability to purchase Keynote, Numbers, and Pages which have been optimized to work with the touch screen. This allows students to create presentations, documents, and spreadsheets. While these are very basic technology tools, they are also tools that most adults in the business world have to be able to use. Because these can be rather text extensive the new keyboard docking station that will be available for purchase will make creating written content on the iPad much easier.

The second difference is the size of the screen. Not only does this make using the iWork applications usable on the device it also makes using it possible to use it comfortably as a reader. I have two readers on my iTouch and while they are usable for short periods of time, I would not want to need to rely on them as my main reading device. The size of the screen also makes watching content much more pleasurable. For example, my school subscribes to Discovery Streaming which allows me to create student accounts where the students have access to all the video content. If Apple decides to allow the Flash plug-in to work on the iPad even more content will be able to be used by students.

Finally, the price difference is significant. The iPod Touch starts at $199 and the iPad comes in at $499 for its cheapest model. When you consider the screen size and the newly available applications I believe it is worth the extra money.

iPad versus MacBook

The Macbook is a great tool for use in the classroom. It has everything a teacher would like for a student computer. The built in photography and video creating software is great and relatively easy to learn. How does the iPad compare? First lets look at batter life. Apple claims that the Macbook has a 7 hour battery life. Since this is a best case scenario I am going to assume that only one application is being used at a time. I can also say from experience you won't get 7 hours of video life on it. The iPad has been touted as having a 10 hour battery life and Steve Jobs said you can watch videos on a plane from San Francisco to Japan. Compared head to head using Apple's own site the iPad has a 3 hour longer life. This will allow it to have a long enough life to make it through the day at school even when the battery has started to lose its punch.

The Macbook starts at $900 from the education store. We don't know yet if there will be education pricing for the iPad, but the Macbooks is still about twice the price. You can outfit almost twice as many students with the iPad.

Finally, in my opinion the most important distinction between the two is the operating system. The iPhone/iTouch os is much more user friendly and intuitive that the Macbook's. My four year old can operate my iTouch without any prompting from me, but there is no way she could do even simple things on my Macbook.

iPad versus Netbook

I feel a little unprepared to compare the two because I don't have any hands-on experience with a netbook. That being said, I am familiar with the size, form factor, and most importantly the operating systems. Netbooks happen to be great tools with a few drawbacks. What makes the iPad seem to be robust is due to the inability to multitask. Because netbooks run full operating systems that allow multitasking you can quickly bog the processor down with too many open apps.

While netbooks can create content with video, I have yet to read a review where someone recommends it. Most do have built in webcams which allow for picture taking or video conferencing. According to Apple's site the iPad has the ability to connect it to a camera or a SD card. I don't think that video conferencing is a necessary tool for each student to have all day access to.

Finally the nod again goes to the iPad because of the operating system. I won't reiterate my above arguement, but I can address Linux here. I have recently installed Linux on a couple computers in my lab to try them out. While I can say it works much better than it did two years ago when I last played with it, it still is pretty hard to navigate. If I have trouble with it I am sure my students will too. The ease of use for the iPad again gives it the edge.

Don't Lose Touch

Recently, I received a comment from my friend Dr. Strange in regards to a blog post way back in December. The blog post that he commented on was a "thank you" post regarding our class blog being nominated for an Edublog Award. Now the fact that he left a comment is not the surprising part, but the point that he made in his commentary really spoke volumes to me. Here's what was said in my post....

With all the excitement expressed by my student, I thought I would share our nomination with all the faculty at Woodland...and their response was awesome. Received tons of positive feedback from many teachers in my building, many of whom didn't even know we had a class blog.

Here's what he said....

You certainly deserve the recognition and the award, as do all the people you mentioned in your post.

But I was disturbed when I read "many of whom didn't even know we had a class blog." Not surprised, just disturbed. How do we spread the world about how important blogging, and commenting on blogs is to learning? So that your fellow teachers not only know that your class and students are bloggers, but that they become bloggers, with their students blogging too.

His comment pointed out a very serious problem that I feel like exist in many schools. That is the fact that as teachers have problems getting outside their "box". Everyone knows that teachers are creatures of habit....generally speaking. One habit that has become customary is not leaving your own room. Many teachers feel like that their room is not just a room at all, instead it becomes their home away from home....in other words, it becomes their comfort zone. This mindset has developed into a very territorial approach to learning and learning spaces. Many educators take approach of this is my room, that's your room....stay out of mine, and I'll stay out of yours.

I feel like in order to be a better teacher that we have to get out of the classroom more often. We try to wall ourselves off from the rest of the school and I don't quite understand why. A perfect example of this territorial mindset of education would be the dreaded principal visit. For many teachers hearing that a principal will be visiting your room makes the hair on the back of their neck stand up....why? Are we scared of something?

When this visit happens we walk around like we are hiding something while quietly thinking in the back our head, "are they gone yet?" As teachers we need to get away from this way of thinking and realize that we should be proud of what we are doing in class. We need to be talking to other teachers, we should be hanging out in each others classrooms, we should be enjoying the company of fellow educators, and we should have a desire to show that what we are doing in our classroom is something that is special.

So, what do we have to lose by staying indoors? You may think that the fact that teachers are not visiting other classes and being "buddy buddy" with each is not a real issue. I feel like that this behavior/attitude is causing us to lose our passion. We need to realize that teachers throughout our own building are doing some really cool things and that these teachers can serve as great resources for learning best practices.

My first "real" job was a great example of teachers working together and sharing ideas. It was my first year teaching, I was paired with an excellent veteran teacher, I worked with another teacher that was also relatively new as well, and down the hall I had frequent meetings with a teacher that was innovative and passionate about his job. I learned so much from these three people because I was eager to learn something new. I could have easily just stayed in my room (during my first year), gone into survival mode, and attempted to get through my first year by myself....but because I was surrounded by passionate, supportive people I was able to excel as a first year teacher.

Lastly, we need to get out of our room because we need to practice what we preach. We harp on students all the time about being model citizens and teaching life skills. If we are not able to extend ourselves past the four walls of our classroom than we have no business teaching these qualities. Modeling is the best method of teaching and if our students see us communicating with each other, learning from each other, and cooperating together as a team then we are truly practicing what we preach. So once again, other teachers are doing some pretty cool things and you are as well....it would be a shame to not be excited about sharing these educational experiences with each other.

Mr. McClung
http://jkmcclung.edublogs.org

Play is the Way!

Today, I attended an inservice training and development session as a part of our preparations for the new school year here in Australia. Unlike Bill Chamberlain's experiences (see post), This session was inspiring.

Run by Wilson McCaskill, founder of 'The Game Factory', this session focussed on giving the kids the social and emotional skills they need to be successful both at school and in life. These skills are developed through games and conversation. Wilson kept us thoroughly entertained for the entire day, running us through the games and the language required to make them successful. This is a program we are implementing school wide this year. The video below was created by another Australian school that has been running the 'Play is the Way' program.

'I am not afraid of those who challenge, but those who accept too easily'

Wilson McCaskill

One of the first things that Wilson asked us to do was to question him. He asked us not to hold on to our doubts, and that challenging him was what he wanted. This was a great early sign that we were in for a good day.

The videos below are good examples of the games in the program. I look forward to seeing where this goes at our school, and sharing what happens along the way.

Jarrod Lamshed

http://mrlamshedsclass.org

What Should Teacher In-Services Emphasize?

Last week I attended an in-service led by Fred Jones who our professional development committee brought in to address teacher concerns from an end of year survey given last May. The in-service was about *gasp* classroom discipline. While I had to sit through another behaviorist approach to getting students to behave (Mr. Jones is a psychologist), and had to endure his overt teachers versus students presentation I became pretty irritated by both the choice of topic as well as the method Jones espouses.

Obviously the survey must have been heavy on getting classroom discipline help or the committee would not have addressed it. My biggest problem is at no time was student learning addressed. I thought the purpose of school was to help students learn; I wonder when school became a place to pacify unruly students.

What was the topic of your last in-service and did it have anything to do with student learning?

Clippers For Cancer - Supporting Children Living with Cancer

Last year, my class ran an event called clippers for cancer. It was held to raise money for the McGuinness McDermott Foundation, a local charity that supports families of children living with cancer.

After a lot of discussion, the students (all boys) decided that they would like to collect sponsorship and shave their heads. Their argument was, that a whole class of children doing away with their hair, would not only raise money, but raise awareness of an important issue. I was a little unsure about parent reaction to this idea, but all of the parents jumped on board and the event went ahead.

We set a goal of raising $200. We thought this was reasonable, as it was only our class collecting donations. We could not believe the community support that was given and we were able to raise $1870 for the foundation. It was a fantastic experience that showed what students are capable of, if they engaged in what they are doing, and they work together. They came away with a realization that they can be a productive member of their community and make a difference to people's lives.

On Monday March 1st 2010, we are running the event again, and we are looking to expand! We would like other classes or groups of students to join us. We are looking for schools that can host their own event. In Australia, we ask that your donations go to the McGuinness McDermott Foundation, for classes in other countries, we are investigating charities local to you.

If you are able to help us make this an international event, please visit the Clippers for Cancer website @ http://c4c.mrlamshedsclass.org or visit our class blog @ http://mrlamshedsclass.org

We would love to hear from you!

Jarrod Lamshed

http://mrlamshedsclass.org

Praying for Snow Days

Living in the Midwest United States it is not an unusual occurrence for students or teachers to "pray for snow days." The thought of getting a day or two out of school when we are supposed to be in school is exciting. Whenever local forecasts include the words freezing rain, sleet, or snow the whole school buzzes in excitement, not me. I love being at school. I am "one of those".

We had been out of school all last week because of the icy road conditions on our back roads. It had been much too dangerous for buses to travel down them, so we sat at home. Yesterday I had a conversation at church with another teacher about the chances of having school today. I explained to her that I thought we would have school because we were already behind 4 days and our state's high stakes test wouldn't be postponed because of missed school days.

Did you catch that? The more snow days we have the fewer days we have to prepare for our tests, but also the more days we have available to teach after the test is over! You know, the days reserved for doing the fun and interesting projects where teachers and students are excited to come to school again. For example, I used to do the Biome Project with my class after the testing and the students were very engaged with it up to the last week of school. This is why you will see me praying for snow days!

Goodbye, Hello

2009 has been a strange year at school with lots of changes along the way.

The main difference has been my change in roles. No longer confined to my classroom five days a week, I roam across the school now. Four mornings every week are spent in other classrooms, working alongside teachers or working with specific groups of children. From shiny, new 5 years olds to crusty 11 year old veterans and their teachers - I've worked with them all. I've really enjoyed it, though I still miss the time I had with Room 9, and I sometimes feel like I have no base to call home. Our classroom blog has been sadly neglected because of my new responsibilities, it hasn't quite fitted with what's been happening in class and in the afternoons there is so much to do in so little time. Next year we'll make it work.

A few highlights stand out. The trip to ULearn09 in Christchurch was a major event in our school calendar and we were lucky enough to take nearly our whole staff. Twenty-two of us descended on Christchurch from the sky, hit the road running (we landed 45 minutes before the first Keynote) and spent three days soaking up the fresh ideas and collegiality. I met up with some of the internet freaks that my mother would have warned me about, my twittering friends. It as great to meet so many of them in person. Tony Ryan says it much better than I can, but if you're considering going to ULearn next year - just do it! We returned to school in Term 4 energised and enthusiastic. If we weren't quite reading from the same page we at least had the same book open.

Working with new-entrant children is an education in itself... a reminder of just how much they assimilate in those first few years of school. They're, for the most part, eager, fearless and engaged learners. Nearly everything has a wow factor for them and they are a joy to work with, their energy seems to soak into you. I watched as a boy (at school for two days) took up the IWB pen and started using the shape tool to draw circles. Within a few minutes he'd covered the board with a rainbow assortment of circles of varying sizes. I looked away for a minute ( I was helping one of the other 5 year olds record their story with an Easi-Speak ready for sharing). When I looked back at the IWB he had sorted the circles into groups, by colour or by size. There were three left that didn't obviously fit his criteria... so he promptly changed their colours and sizes and sorted them too!

I've seen massive shifts in attitude and ability in staff and I credit our trip to ULearn with a lot of this. In particular there was one teacher who openly admitted her technophobia (you know who you are). For 45 minutes a day, four days a week, over 8 weeks we slowly chipped away at her fears, building skills in a "just in time" way that meant everything she learnt was immediately relevant, useful and used. Success!

At the end of Term 4 I found an envelope in my cubby hole. In it was a note from the Junior Syndicate, thanking me for my help... it was worded so positively that I had to sit down and blink to stop the happy tears (I'm a big softy).

To wrap up the year I've been given ICT responsibility for the whole school. I still have a classroom role, I'll continue to provide professional development for teachers and work alongside students too. I also have to focus on integrating ICT and IWBs across the school and curriculum and developing a tiered support network for colleagues. With this comes the onerous job of outlining a three year ICT strategy for the school... something I've rarely thought about, but I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the challenge.

Oh yeah, to top it all off I'm moving rooms; same age students, different location. We're moving to vertically organised groups of classes, Years 2, 3 and 4 supporting each other and learning together. You wouldn't believe the "resources" that a teacher can accumulate after nine years in the same room. Or maybe you would!

So, goodbye Room 9, hello Room 13.

Goodbye 2009, hello 2010. Bring it on!



Happy New Year to you all!

A Little Help From My Friends

This week has been a fun one for blogging. After being notified about our nomination last week for Best Class Blog, my students have been voting like crazy and are geeked up about the opportunity of winning a free subscription to Edublogs Campus.

With all the excitement expressed by my student, I thought I would share our nomination with all the faculty at Woodland...and their response was awesome. Received tons of positive feedback from many teachers in my building, many of whom didn't even know we had a class blog. At this time I would like to share a couple of those emails that I received from my fellow co-workers. This one is from Dr. John Stiefer (9th grade physical science) in response to me telling him you can only vote once per IP address.

Well, let's figure out some way around this. Ethical behavior gets thrown out of the window when things such as this are at stake. Shoot, I have my wife's office staff and all of her student workers on this. And, my daughter's sorority at the U of A is in. Before you know it, the entire "Greek" population could be voting for you. I'm on a mission.
John

While I'm not quite sure about the whole "ethical behavior" part, I really do appreciate his support and the enthusiasm that he shows! This next one is from our school tech, Laura Wainscott, in response to me notifying her about our nomination.

Thought you'd be interested in knowing that after I forwarded your e-mail to our Technology Integration Team, it has also been forwarded to all teachers and Root and all teachers at Asbell. :)
Laura

Root and Asbell are two of our elementary schools in Fayetteville School District and the Integration Team that she is referring to is our district wide team...in other words, our district "go-to tech guys/gals". This especially makes me happy to know that not only are we receiving interest from a global audience, but we are also being noticed within our own town. It is so important to have school and district level support when your trying to build a stronger community of learners through technology integration.

I would also like to thank some long-time friends of our blog that are not so local. Mr. C (Missouri), Mr. Webb (New Zealand), and Mr. Lamshed (Australia) are faithful supporters of what we are doing here on our blog. Mr. C (former co-worker) especially has helped me out in many ways, first of which is teaching me how to blog. Mr. C helped me get this thing off the ground and served as a great model to follow. More recently he has supported us through his many blog post on his class blog and on a collaborative teacher blog called At The Teachers Desk which we are all contributors to. These men are great educators and serve as great resources.

One more time (not the last), I would like to thank everyone that has supported our blog (locally, nationally, and internationally) and also those that have cast a vote for us for Best Class Blog. I really appreciate your support and more importantly my students appreciate your support. Winners for all categories will be announced tonight at 6 pm (US CST) during an Elluminate session, I will post the winners sometime on Friday.

Mr. McClung
http://jkmcclung.edublogs.org

Educating Boys: An Update

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Over the next few weeks, I will be writing up some data from the second year of our BOYS EDUCATION trials at Hackham East Schools. I have made some changes to my previous 'Educating Boys' post to show some of our updated data and am reposting it here.
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Boys sometimes get a raw deal in our education system. Research shows that boys and girls brains work and learn differently (Gurian, 2001) and that mainstream schooling better suits the learning style of girls.

If we think about our own schools, who are the most disruptive kids in the class? Do more boys or girls get sent to the office for behaviour problems? suspension? exclusion? Boys perform more poorly than girls in ALL curriculum areas with the exception of Maths and Science. Do we just accept that this is the case, or do we need to be critical about our teaching practices and consider that what we are doing just isn't working?

We need to find ways to engage boys in learning by tapping into their dominant learning styles. 'Brain breaks', using movement, giving a real life purpose for learning and, of course, using ICTs are just a few techniques that can be used for this but the one area that is most important when teaching boys is RELATIONSHIP.

In schools, girls learn subjects and boys learn teachers (Lillico, www.boysforward.com). More often than not, girls will still succeed in school if they don't have an ideal relationship with their teacher. For boys, relationship is the key and it takes time and patience to establish this. Building a strong classroom team is a must and success will be unlikely if this doesn't happen. The relationship between the students and the relationship between student and teacher are equally as important. Taking the time to establish your team at the beginning of the school year is vitally important.

I am the teacher of an all boys class in a (co-ed school) and we are about to enter our third year together. I can say that taking the time to establish 'real' relationships with my students has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. We really do operate as a team in our class and the learning has been really exciting. Boys that were labeled as 'bullies' are now showing their ability to nurture and support their classmates. Students who were not achieving are making strong gains in their learning by accepting support and encouragement from their team.

Placing 'team' expectations on the boys and expecting them to be answerable to their team mates has created a DRASTIC drop in behaviours requiring detention and suspension. Building a REAL relationship is worth the time and effort. Don't try and fake it! The boys will know and they will attempt to eat you alive. It isn't always easy, but you need to find something to connect with for each child in your class. If you can pull this off, you will find a whole new world of learning opportunities available in your classroom.

Over the time we have been together as a learning team, we have collected data. We have seen big changes in behaviour data, Literacy data, Maths data and NAPLAN data. The following graphs represent our behaviour tracking over the last three years. In both graphs, the first column of data was collected for each student before they were in the boys class.

Detention Data:

This group of boys were given 67 detentions in 2007 while in various mixed classes. They received 5 detentions in 2008, and 1 detention in 2009.

Suspension Data:

This group of boys were given 5 suspensions in 2007 while in various mixed classes. They have not received any suspensions in the last 2 years.

In 2010, Hackham East will have 5 single sex classes in total (3 boys, 2 girls). I look forward to sharing new data over the coming weeks.

Jarrod Lamshed

Boys Class Teacher

Hackham East Schools

jarrod.lamshed@hackhame.sa.edu.au

The Nomination Is the Thing: 2009 Edublog Awards

Being a nominee for an Edublog Award is not necessarily going to get you a lot of traffic. Below is the Google Analytics information for my blog. Notice there has been only 12 visitors from the nomination page for Best Class Blog. My clustermap is in no danger of spontaneously catching on fire because of the huge numbers.

There is also the amazing number of class blogs on the short list for this award, 38. All of these blogs are quite amazing for different reasons and I would suggest you spend an hour or two perusing them.

Now to my point, I won't be actively seeking votes to try to win the award. It isn't because I think the contest isn't worthy, it is because my class has already won. Being recognized by Joe McClung and Myles Webb on their class blogs is really more meaningful to me. I have worked personally with Joe at my school and Myles and I have developed a wonderful relationship over the last couple years. I have been so impressed by their work that I nominated Myles' blog for last year's awards and Joe's blog for this year's. While I appreciate any votes I do get from those going through the process and recognizing my blog, being recognized by these men I know and truly respect makes my blog the winner.