iPads

First of all, why is the i not capitalized?  Are they not important?  Actually they are very important.  I am fortunate enough to be able to share a classroom set of iPads.  We use them occasionally, and the students love them.  We were taking a quiz on them a couple weeks back, you could hear a pin drop, and not a single one ever stopped and said it was too hard.  No one complained about not having a pencil, and no one skipped anything.  I know that if we used them everyday, they would probably become boring, but to use them once every couple of weeks, the students love them and are all engaged.  There are a lot of cool things on them, and a lot of cool things that are not on ours.  But I would say in general, they are good for my students.

Maybe I am too boring...

My life seems to a lot of people too boring.  I get up everyday and I go to work.  At that work I am faced with students who have no idea what it means to be a young adult, have to pick and choose my times to go to the restroom, I have to constantly study material, I have to fill out forms that I do not agree with, and deal with people that I have never met that do not like me because their 15 year old child does not like me.  My pay is ok, but I will never own a fancy sports car or have a bowling alley in my house.  We take a small vacation every year and every few years are able to go somewhere a little nicer.  I have a job that I must go home and look at lesson plans to make sure that I am ready for the next day.  It is not glamorous, I will never meet anyone famous at my job.  I will never be on TV being interviewed about something good that has happened.  If I dress nice, I burn up in my clothes and sometimes ruin them with a pen that I leave in the pocket.  No one ever says they want to be like me.  I never post pics from my job that people comment on or say how fun that looks.  I do not get talk to an adult until I get home, and sometimes she is so tired from the same thing, that talking is not fun.  With that being said, I would not want to change my career.  People have always told me that on our tombstone, the most important part is the hyphen or dash.  There are so many people in my life that I can not remember, but yet I remember everyone of my teachers.  I can not remember what I ate yesterday, but I remember leading prayer in my 5th grade class with Mrs. Nixon.  I do not know a single song of Justin Bieber by heart when I hear them on a daily basis, yet I can sing my Alma mater from high school without missing a word.  I have been at five different schools in my career but none are as important to me as my high school.  I will not make huge sale today, or write an important article.  I will not fire anyone or change my company's course.  I will not be invited to a function that everyone is envious of.  Yet today, I may make a memory.  Not for me, but for a 15 year old.  My day will end the same, but I might change the day of a student.  So for me, the dash on my tombstone will not be extravagant, but it will live on in the lives of a lot of students that have come in to my room. 

The Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom is a great idea in theory.  Students get the notes at night and then come to school and do the work.  But in a society where parent involvement and homework are rarely important, it seems as though this would not work. This idea will work with the motivated but I do not see it helping our at risk students.  Our motivated students are fine, our educational system works well for them.  Until we decide as a society that education is important for our children, the no new method will work better than the last.

Politics and Education

This past week was the Presidential Election.  One question that most of us have is how much we can teach politics without pushing our own beliefs.  Whenever we look at political issues in science, I make sure that we look at both sides and that I do not support either.  However, it has come to my attention that not everyone does this.  In fact it seems as those teachers that push for tolerance seem to be the most pushy when it comes to the classroom.  I know that this is not always the case, but it sure seems like it.  Teachers that are conservative have been labeled as trying to pass on their beliefs while teachers on the other side are able to hide behind freedom of speech.  It is time that we make a well defined line about politics in the classroom and that we do not allow either side to pass beyond it.

Barriers to Technology

What are the barriers to technology?  It is an easy answer for me.  Training.  As teachers, we are giving a lot of ideas for technology use, but very little PD.  We are also show new ideas but we do not have a network of help.  A lot of our administrators have been out of the classroom since technology has really taken off.  They can't help and are not able to give use real world examples.  We can all find videos on any type of technological ideas in education, yet we have no support team handily available.  Until there is support, and support from the top, we will never use technology to its greatest potential. 

Good or Bad for Literacy

Student literacy, how is it affected by technology?  If used correctly technology can be good, but it is like anything else, if used in the wrong way, it will harm our children.  Technology can be used to really get students involved.  It can be used as a way to increase interest.  It can be used to tell stories with pictures.  At the same time, there is so much information out there, that students can be overwhelmed with the amount of reading.  It can be used by students to find shortcuts which is not good.  I find myself sometimes playing on the Internet instead of doing my tasks that I need to do.  So does it help or hurt, it can do both.

VS