Thursday, November 21, 2013

Tips for Hesitant Technology Learners

Dave Burgess writes in his book, "Teach Like a Pirate", about his dislike of the phrase, "it's easy for you, you're creative."  He goes on to say that everyone has creativity in them and that by saying this phrase, you are discounting all of the work that person put in to whatever they did that you deemed "creative".  No one is born with the ability to paint, play a musical instrument or the ability to teach.  We have to put forth effort in order to grow in any area, including creativity.

Let's transfer this to technology.  No one is born with an iPhone in their hand.  No one comes out of the womb with the ability to create a website or to develop a lesson that uses technology to deepen student learning.  When people say it must be easy for me since I am a techie person, they are downgrading all of the work and effort I put into learning new things when it comes to technology.  I love to learn about everything and technology is one of those subjects that I put forth the effort in order to learn.  I am not afraid to fail either in my learning.  I make mistakes.  I have crashed many a hard drive in my days and I doubt I am done with that yet.  We have to remember those important ideas about learning not just for our students but for ourselves.

Tips

  • Acknowledge that everyone has to learn something and that not everything comes easy to everyone.  It takes some effort to learn something and you should not be afraid of that effort.  If we are afraid to learn something new, how can we expect our students to learn something new.
  • Know that there are others who are in the same spot as you.  The beauty of technology is that it changes so quickly that no one is an expert for long.  That also means that we get countless opportunities to learn something new and to share that learning.
  • Ask for help.  Just as we tell our students to not just sit there waiting for help, we have to remember that we can not just sit there waiting for someone to come to our classroom to do the work for us.  There are people in the school who can help you, there are even students who can help you.  Help will only come when you ask for it.
  • Do not be afraid to fail.  Failure is an important part of the learning process and it should not be a scary thing.  If you fail, then try again.  True failure only happens when we give up or worse, if we never try.  
  • Play, play and play some more.  People are so scared of new things that they forget that playing with something is a way of learning.  Download that app, open that site, start that program and just play around with it.  Do not think that you need to create a perfect example the first time you try something.  I love trying out new tools and just seeing what I can do with it.  I only go looking for further information after I have had some time to play.  Do not be afraid to play.
  • Enjoy learning again.  So many people forget that the key to school is the focus on learning, not content.  We succeed when we help produce learners to send out into the world.  If we were solely focused on content, we could just hand them the textbook and walk away.  We must remember that we are learners too, not just the students.
  • Start small, pick 1 or 2 things to try and learn before moving on to more.  Do not feel you need to do everything at once.  Many people fail to start learning because they assume they have to learn everything.  There are so many different tools that can help you, but it helps to focus on the ones that are easiest for you to use in the beginning.  As you get better, move on to the next one and keep learning.  
If you look at those tips, not one tool is ever mentioned.  It is about the learning that takes place in the classroom more than the tool being used.  That doesn't mean that we can avoid using technology in the classroom, it is too powerful of a tool to ignore.  The teacher that fails to make use of every tool available to them, fails their students.  We are here to help our students, not to fail them.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Unintended Effects of Created Resources

One of the first things that I wanted to do this year as a technology integration specialist was to create a simple Google Site that would contain resources and links for teachers at my high school.  The only purpose was to have a place that I could collect and sort out resources and tips for teachers when it came to technology integration.  My audience was the 80 or so teachers at our high school and possibly some of our middle school teachers too.

I did not expect that my site would get much traffic from outside of Ames, let alone from outside of the United States.  By using Google Analytics I have been able to keep track of how many people visit my site and from where.  I mostly use Google Analytics to gauge how often people from my own school visit the site.  Most of the visits, over 79% of the visits have been from the United States but that leaves around 20% of the visits from people outside of the United States.  (Now I know there is a chance that some of these visits could be from computer programs and not real people, but I have to believe that not all of them are digital creations.)

Looking at the stats below, you can see that in 2nd place is the U.K. and that is followed by a close contest between Canada and Israel.  I do enjoy looking at the stats and seeing the number of visits increase throughout the month, but I wonder how much people are taking away from my site.  It is easy to find out with the staff that I work with, as they will usually provide me with feedback but I do wonder how useful my site is to others.


While I am proud of my site so far, it is by far the best looking site that I have created on Google Sites, there is a lot left to do.  I am constantly adding content to the site and having to change things as there becomes more and more to handle.  It can not become a static thing, it has to change as the needs and wants of the teachers that I work with change.  The important thing is to make sure that it stays organized and is an efficient tool for others to use.  The minute that this tool becomes ineffective or inefficient, it is time to modify the tool or use a new one.  This should be the same strategy that we use in the classroom.

It is nice that something that I created for my purpose is being used by others.  This same thing happened with my Flipped Classroom.  The resources and videos that I created for my students were not just being used by my students.  Since I made everything public, that meant that any other student could access and use them.  Although the focus of the resources was for my specific classroom, they could be useful for other people as well.  I know that even though I am no longer using these resources, my site and my videos on YouTube are still getting hits and are being watched to this day.  That is a very nice, unintended consequence of the work that I did for my students is helping others.

Monday, November 18, 2013

How Twitter Saved My Teaching Career

Any time that I get to talk to other educators and they ask about what tips I have, I always start with telling them they need to be on Twitter.  I have said this when giving presentations at conferences, I have said this when talking with teachers at my school, I have said this when talking to administrators and I even got the chance to say this when talking to pre-service teachers at Iowa State University.

To be honest, Twitter probably saved my teaching career.  A few years ago I started looking at Twitter mostly as a way to post reminders for my students.  I even put a gadget on my Wikispaces site so that it would show my tweets for students that did not have a Twitter account.


My school was starting a 1:1 initiative at this point where every student was given a white Macbook laptop.  Even as someone who loves playing with technology, I was trying to find ways to use this new tool effectively in my classroom.  The problem was that my school was small and there weren't many teachers there and even fewer that had a lot of experience using laptops regularly in the classroom.  This was also a problem with my content areas as I was the only teacher teaching my subjects and did not have a lot of physics teachers nearby to talk to.

I don't remember why, but I started to read tweets that others were posting more often.  I started following other educators and following certain hashtags related to education.  I even lurked during weekly chats that were held on Twitter that focused on various topics in education.  It was through Twitter that I first learned of the Flipped Classroom.  I started reading posts people were making about how they were flipping their classroom and how standards based grading could be integrated with it.  I started connecting with other educators and our conversations really triggered ideas and changed how I was viewing things.  I started to figure out how to do things differently so that my students had a better learning experience.  I learned so much and was able to connect with so many educators, people I get to see at conferences and people I hope to meet at a conference someday.


Twitter helped me change how I was teaching and opened me up to so many new ideas and techniques to use in the classroom.  I am able to follow along at conferences I am attending and to conferences I am not attending.  I find resources that I can share with others.  I get to learn about something new not just daily but almost hourly.  I have connected with educators in other countries and even to people in charge of the Department of Education in Iowa.  I have connected with professionals in the science field and with some awesome educators.  I know that if I have a question, there are many who follow me who may be able to give me an answer.  Twitter is the primary source for my personal professional development and it really is the one tool that I could not teach without.

Biggest Tips I Have for Twitter Beginners
  • Don't be too selective who you follow initially, you can always unfollow down the road.  Do not be afraid to follow people you may not agree with, that is part of our learning experience.
  • Use a program like Tweetdeck in your Chrome browser as it makes it much easier to follow different subjects using hashtags.
  • Know that it is ok to lurk during weekly chats.  Do not feel like you have to post right away but the best learning takes place when you do start posting.
  • Be professional.  Remember that anything you put online will reflect on you as a teacher and make sure you do not post anything that can damage your career.
  • Follow people outside of teaching too.  I follow many different scientists as well as NFL writers and teams.  I have even won contests using Twitter so it can be for fun as well as for work.