Quote of the day - Gandhi
Written on July 20, 2008 – 1:38 am | by Ed Warkentin
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
Tags: quotes
Written on July 20, 2008 – 1:38 am | by Ed Warkentin
Quote of the day
Written on July 16, 2008 – 9:35 am | by Ed Warkentin
“In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.“ – Eric Hoffer
Tags: quotes
Elementary Math Google Custom Search
Written on June 13, 2008 – 2:35 am | by Ed Warkentin
Well, it’s official. I’m a huge fan of the Google Custom Search Engine tool!!
I have now created several of them:
Elementary Math, Ancient Greece-6th Grade, Biomes-6th Grade, and Ancient China-6th Grade
These are groups of websites I’ve put together. When you go to any of the above web pages, you get a Google Search Engine that will use all of Google’s power to search ONLY THOSE SITES!
The advantage of using this is that you can use keyword searches to search several websites at once. Many websites have a database (aka: a search box where you can put in your search terms) that allow you to search their site very easily. One of the best sites, which has one of the cleanest interfaces of all the math sites I’ve seen is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. But it doesn’t have everything you might want if you’re searching for a good website to use to help you teach math. There are other sites that have a database of their own. The Google Custom Search Engine tool allows you to search all of them at once! It will even include, of course, web sites that don’t have a search box of their own.
I’m excited about this because I can send my students to these search pages and actually teach the concept and skill of performing good keyword searches, rather than sending them to just a list of links to try out, one by one. In the case of the Elementary Math Custom Search, I’m intending to allow other educators to search all of these sites at once.
Another very powerful feature of this tool is that sites can be contributed by up to 100 people!!! I invite anyone reading this who finds a great math website that you think should be part of this group of sites in this Custom Search, please send it to me. I can officially invite you through the Google page where I created the Custom Search, too..
Now, how is this different from http://del.icio.us/ ? This is another tool that I have also jumped into in a big way. I’ve been using my account consistently for quite a while now: http://del.icio.us/wark. I’ve also put a lot of math-specific sites together at this account: http://del.icio.us/math34
With Delicious, you can:
- Tag sites with categories you make up, that might or might not be words that show up when Google searches their titles, URLs, or text of the pages
- Give a quick notation to the sites you’re making public
- Put sites into categories (by the tags you make) for someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking for (and thus wouldn’t know what search terms to enter)
- Search your own (delicious) bookmarks, or all the bookmarks of all delicious users. Because of this feature, I initially thought that these two tools might not be all that different. At first, I thought…so why do this, if I can search delicious, too?
With Google Custom Search, you can
- Unleash Google’s powerful search algorithms to search through all of the sites you include
- Invite others to contribute
- Send people to your Google Custom Search in lots of ways. One is with simple links, as in the links above. Here’s another, like I’ve done with my class website. You can search right from your own website!
Tags: del.icio.us, Google, Math
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
Written on June 11, 2008 – 4:05 am | by Ed Warkentin
OK, I’m finally blogging about this article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky. Get it here from the author.
It’s been around since 2001, and has been talked about and referred to at almost every Educational Technology conference I’ve been to since that time. The terms “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” are now thrown around so frequently that it doesn’t even need to be explained any more.
Prensky’s thinking about effective ways to reach today’s students continues to evolve. He continues to work to apply some of his thoughts from this, his most famous article, to different contexts.
I highly recommend checking out his website. I have just perused it a bit, and really wish I had more time to read more of his stuff right now, but I really must get to sleep soon.
Some of the books and articles that I have also read, or at least are on my list to read are the following (he really chooses great titles, doesn’t he?):
Engage Me or Enrage Me
Don’t Bother Me, Mom — I’m Learning! (his latest book)
…there are many more… I sometimes just love to look at the titles of articles and books, and get an extremely brief version of the main thought of the writing. This is one reason I love to hang out in bookstores so much.
His writing is full of eye-opening quotes, not from philosophers or theologians, but simple statements from these Natives that he has provided such clarity about.
Why am I finally getting around to responding to this article? This week I’m going through SB 472 training, which is a California “thing” (SB meaning Senate Bill) where we get a week of training on our new textbook, in this case, Math. This article was assigned as homework one of the days.
OK, so what do I think of the article itself? Here are the specific points that I found particularly striking, amusing, etc.:
•The phone call asking “DId you get my email?” has happened at my school. We’ve talked about reducing the interruptions to the classroom (silent emails being much less disruptive than a phone call), but viewing this not as annoying defeating the purpose, Prensky has reminded me that the office personnel is probably “speaking with an accent” here
•I was amazed at how proficient my students were at playing certain games they showed me on the internet during the last few days of school, one being Club Penguin. TypeRacer is another example that was spontaneously very successful. Ever since becoming familiar with Prensky’s thinking, and other progressive, forward-thinking experts in educational technology, I have had a passion for trying to figure out how to “get rid of my accent”, and how to best use the “language” of my students, the digital natives, to reach them. I want to figure out how to use games to make learning more engaging, since this is what I am, in fact, competing with. I will be seen as boring and irrelevant if I don’t learn to speak their “language.” We must “engage them or enrage them.” This is more than pithy, clever sayings. This is for real. This is why I get grouchy about those that insist on our students learning the culture of the Digital Immigrants:
“We need to educate our children for their future, not our past.”
—Arthur C. Clark
•It’s very tempting to conclude, as Prensky “quotes”, My students just don’t ___ like they used to,” etc. What we need to do is to recognize that they ARE DIFFERENT THAN US. We need to change and adapt. We need to learn from them, as well as them learning from us.
•”‘Future’ content includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages, and other things that go with the software, hardware, etc.” This is one reason I would like to see a more loose policy on cell phones at school. We need to teach them how to appropriately use them (or, in most cases, NOT use them) I experimented with having my students use their cell phones as calculators, but ran into some problems with some very valid issues that administration brought up. Even so, it saddened me that we couldn’t bring some of the technology that they see as absolutely relevant in their lives into the classroom learning experience. I saw many of my students kind of “come alive” when I validated some of their “native” culture. It’s a sticky one…very interesting…
•He mentions games to teach concepts like classical philosophy, the Holocaust, etc. This renewed my enthusiasm to try and find game to help teach concepts to my students. He acknowledges that many of the attempts at this have been pretty bad (edutainment), but that we must continue to improve, because WE CAN FIGURE THIS OUT! One game that has been successful “in” my 6th grade classroom has been Civilization. Since I teach Ancient Civilizations, this is an IDEAL application. No, I can’t use class time for it. But I can offer a copy or two for checkout to my students. I can refer to it when we’re discussing content from our textbook. I can encourage students to get together in the classroom after school, or at each other’s houses , to play it together. I can affirm the expert in my room who knew about it before I even mentioned it, and had a more advanced version than I did; I can ask him to share with the class what the game taught him about ____ (filling in the concept that we were studying that day).
I’m far from figuring out how to apply Prensky’s thoughts to my own classroom practice, but I feel good about how I’ve started to experiment…
PS - David Thornburg and Hall Davidson have both written recently about Prensky’s thoughts. Thornburg expressed some reasons that Prensky’s thesis is incomplete, inadequate, and/or inaccurate. Davidson sided with Prensky, and did a great job of expressing why. This discussion took place in the OnCUE Journal, published by CUE, Computer Using Educators, with Thornburg writing an article, then Davidson and Thornburg both writing a letter to the editor, continuing the conversation. This will really be something to watch. These guys are both such great thinkers and leaders, I’m not sure I know which one I agree with!! I guess I’ll live in the tension…
Alan November @ World Cafe in Visalia
Written on June 1, 2008 – 12:23 am | by Ed Warkentin
I had the privilege of hearing Alan November speak to a group of about 150 educators on May 7, 2008. He had some very provocative things to say, as usual. Here I’ll give you some of the most salient points…the things that struck me most…the things that I most feel like trying with my own students.
In 1922, Fredrick Taylor came up with a model of management planning. Henry Ford used this to organize & manage his famous assembly line. Education used this same kind of thinking to organize itself. Previously, there were 1-room schoolhouses, with teachers teaching 8 grades, with olders teaching youngers, personalized instruction, etc. As a result of the Taylor management, education became squeezed into the assembly-line mold. This was not a problem, though. In fact, it worked extremely well at the time! The problem is that the economy has changed!
We then talked about RSS feeds. It’s his view that every student, in order to graduate from high school, should know how to manage their RSS feeds.
Wikipedia should not be so much a source, but a publishing center. He challenged us to write a wikipedia article WITH our class. Lots of great discussion there.
We discussed the ways we might teach the different perspectives on the American Revolution between the US and Britain. We could fascilitate a debate between American kids and British kids. Kids prepare, they make PowerPoints using GoogleDocs, send the PPTs to each other (across the pond). They then are essentially telling each other the story from their perspective. Then a debate is scheduled via Skype. This is recorded, and it can be put up on iTunes. What a motivation!!!! Compare that to kids that just “learn” the content for the test, and then forget it the next day. The podcast would be something that the students would very likely listen to over and over, would share with many others.
He also showed us how to use Google Custom Search for several purposes. More on this on a different post.
Delicious - to be eclipsed by Google Custom Search Engine?
Written on May 9, 2008 – 7:39 pm | by Ed Warkentin
It seems like I’ve been telling people about delicious a lot lately. I have blogged about del.icio.us before:
Here’s a kind of intro to the whole concept of social bookmarking, of which delicious is the most well-known site.
Here’s an explanation of how you can, from your delicious account, easily suggest sites for others to put on their own delicious site.
Here’s my first article about it, pondering about how I might use it.
And here’s the list of all the articles.
At the “World Café” event put on by CTAP 7 the other night, Alan November showed us a tool that has me thinking. It’s the ability to set up your own search engine…sort of. It’s called Google Custom Search Engine.
You choose the sites that should be in the bank of websites that it will search. Others can collaborate in assembling those sites. People can go to your search page, put in whatever search terms they want, and it will use the Google search algorithms to search within those pages.
How does a teacher decide which to use? You’d have to really be clear about:
- who would be using your tool (delicious page or Google Custom Search)
- what the purpose would be
- and other factors
I’ll have to get my hands dirty with Google Custom Search, and do a more thorough analysis on the idea of which tool would be best for which situation…
Tags: del.icio.us, Google, search
Dance Mat Typing, TypeRacer - great online typing tutors!
Written on May 9, 2008 – 6:34 pm | by Ed Warkentin
I just found a great website that helps teach typing! It’s called TypeRacer. You are given a passage to type, and random people are competing with you at the same time.
I like the fact that it’s an actual passage (real English words and sentences), rather than made up collections of letters. While you need to have practice with certain sets of letters as you are learning how to type, this is a lot more engaging than nonsense letters!
If you make an error, you are “stalled” until you go back and fix it. This is also a lot more like real life. Usually, I know when I’ve mistyped something, and fixing it right away is what I usually should do, rather than just plow ahead and fix the mistake later.
For the past few years, we (my school site) have been using Mavis Beacon to teach typing to our 6th grade students. This has presented immense technical problems, many having to do with problems in our local network, which has meant major delays in when the program can start with our students. Plus, our use of the computers has been delayed far too late in the school year for my comfort.
As I’m thinking about next year, I think I’m going to suggest that we abandon Mavis (since the version we’ve purchased isn’t compatible with the newer operating systems anyway), and start out with Dance Mat Typing, (which has levels, guides you through the different sets of letters) and then follow up with TypeRacer. Still chewing on this one, though…
Tags: typing
Making Change-SNL and FunBrain
Written on April 27, 2008 – 6:59 pm | by Ed Warkentin
Just discovered that SNL videos are “embeddable” (from the SNL site) just like YouTube videos! There’s some great videos there from years and years ago, plus some current ones.
I’m mentioning it here, because of the “First CityWide Change Bank” one from years ago with Phil Hartman. This could actually help students learn about making change, or at least affirm their recent knowledge of it. Maybe a fun video to show near the end of the school year, who knows?
Here’s a game for students just learning about how to make change from a very basic level. It’s a game from FunBrain called “ChangeMaker.”
Enjoy!
Traffic magazine - We’re famous!
Written on April 24, 2008 – 12:24 pm | by Ed Warkentin
Well, my family’s famous!
Some of you might be familiar with Traffic magazine. It’s a magazine that is circulated free of charge in our community (Reedley & Kingsburg, CA). It features local people, businesses, and issues. This month, my family was interviewed about the issue of adoption. Our picture, we think, turned out great! One part of the picture is even the picture for the online version of the cover story.
Enjoy!
Tags: adoption
CST testing emotions
Written on April 22, 2008 – 4:43 pm | by Ed Warkentin
So, it has finally come. My students are taking the California Standards Test (CST’s) today. Lots of emotions on this day, on the part of many stakeholders.
Fear and anxiety – on the part of students. “Will I do well? Have I learned enough? Will I please my teacher/school/parents? Can I prove that I’m smart, or will this show just how dumb I’m afraid that I am?”
Fear and anxiety – on the part of teachers and administration at every school in California that has “Program Improvement” sanctions breathing down their neck. “Did I teach my students well enough? Will we retain local control? Will our school get drastically re-organized by the state?”
Anger and frustration – on the part of, well, almost everyone (except the legislators who wrote the NCLB law that creates the pressure). “Why does this dad-gum test have to dictate so terribly much that goes on? Why so much pressure on one test? This is not good for kids! We’re teaching them that this test is the most important thing, not actual learning that goes on for a lifetime! Will they remember what this test measures when it actually applies to their life? Will they remember things we’ve taught them that aren’t on this test? Why is our worth as a school defined by this test so heavily? This is oppressive… Where’s the inspiration? Excitement for learning for learning’s sake? Thirst for knowledge?”
Fatigue – on the part of many teachers. “Wow! We’ve been working our tails off all year for this! We’re wiped out!!!
Relentlessly hard work designing great lessons that target specific standards (especially key standards),
progress monitoring assessments,
data-driven intervention,
practicing test-taking strategies and the ELA and Math content with the CST Released Questions,
sermon-ettes trying to fill the kids’ heads with hope and comfort,
reading Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!,
etc.
Most of the emotion today is probably negative, I would guess. Otherwise we wouldn’t call it “high stakes.” Kind of a confusing little season of the year. I suppose a lot of adrenalin will drop, on the part of many teachers and students. However, I’m sure there is some positive emotion going on today regarding these tests, as well.
Excitement and confidence – on the part of some students. Especially when students open their booklets and see that they really know lots of the answers they were perhaps afraid of before the test began.
Relief – on the part of some teachers. “Whew! I’m glad that’s over. Now we have some time to relax a little bit. Now we can be a bit more flexible about things. I just hope the students are still able to focus on learning and doing their best…”
Relief – on the part of students. “Finally! This famous test is finally here! Whether I do good or bad [well or poorly], let’s get it over with! I’m sick of my teacher talking about it all the time… ”
I guess I feel some of all the emotions above. But as I look around my classroom, I am heartened. I see my classroom library of 2000 books, and remember all that we have done in this room to strengthen their love of reading and love of good literature. I look at students who are finished with their tests, and have a look of excitement and contentment as they read their books, wondering what’s going to happen next. I think about the multimedia projects that we are going to be working on later this afternoon, and I know that they are going to learn things through that project that aren’t testable by any standardized test. I think about the lessons on writing coming up this week, and all the writing instruction I’ve done this year. Even though writing is much, much harder to assess, it is so incredibly important to their success in life. I am heartened to imagine all the writing and blogging my students will still be doing this year.
I have done my best to teach all the curriculum standards in this grade level. I established a classroom climate where my students and I respect each other (not 100% success there, but I’m proud to reflect on the significant relational success that we have achieved here). I know that many, many, many of my students have grown in very significant ways this year. I know I grew a lot, and that my students grew a lot…
See, there I go – I’m writing as if this is the end of the year. Like all the learning is over! This bugs me because we have several weeks of school to go, and the emphasis on this test is so significant, it feels like school’s practically over, even when it’s not over…just because the measure by which we are judged is over…
I shared a draft of this blog with my students right after the first portion of their test was over. It was an incredibly positive, enlightening conversation. I asked my students to critique my writing, using the 6 Traits of Writing, or any feedback they had at all. Here are some of the comments: (I’ll try to paraphrase as accurately as possible)
“You had good Voice. That sounded just like you when you said, ‘ Why does this dad-gum test have to dictate so terribly much that goes on?’”
“Mr. Warkentin, you hit the nail on the head!”
“You’re right…about being nervous, and then about feeling relieved.”
“You put it really well when you said…”
We discussed Ideas, Voice, Organization, and all the rest of the Traits. It was a rich, encouraging conversation. I think they felt validated for their emotions and encouraged that their teacher, “gets it.”
—————–
During this conversation, I realized that I had forgotten at least two emotions:
Boredom – on the part of students (and teachers, I suppose). This isn’t exactly the most exciting day of the year. One of the most important, for several reasons (that none of us like), but not the most exciting. The student that shared this thought said that she was bored, but from a perspective of being confident. Like the test was easy for her. I, of course, was excited about this, but honored the validity of this emotion about the test.
STRESS! was another emotion that I didn’t acknowledge about the test site coordinator. There are numerous ways to mess up on administering the test other than just plain getting answers wrong. When these happen, massive headaches threaten to completely ruin the day/week…
Tags: assessment, CST
