Summers Off?

As teachers, we are often told that all of our problems are not that big of a deal because we get "summers off". I've not had a "summer off" from education since I started teaching. I taught summer school for a few years, taken summer classes for a Masters Degree, worked camps, attended conferences and spent countless hours reading and writing blogs for personal professional development. I might get away fro a week or so, but the majority of my summer is working on making myself a better teacher and planning for the next school year. I also love every second of it. If I didn't, I wouldn't be a teacher.
I wanted to get one last post out there before I head off the grid (well as off the grid as I get) for the next week. I'm heading out to a local college to be a camp counselor at the Michigan Association of Student Councils/Michigan Association (MASC/MAHS) of Honor Societies Summer Leadership Camp. I get to spend a week working with high school students who want to improve their leadership skills so they can make their school a better place. There is nothing better than seeing students passionate about learning and making a difference. I'm going to spend a week teaching leadership skills, team building, singing camp songs and making new friends. Student Government can be stressful, but this camp makes everything worth it.

Anyway, I have some pretty exciting things in the cooker that I can't wait to tell everyone about once I get back from camp. Please take care of Blogosphere and Twitterverse while I'm out. :-)

- The Nerdy Teacher

The Case for Student Blogging

The Case for Student Blogging

I've heard that many people complain that kids do not read any more. I even hear students in my class claim to never read and that they hate writing. These people are right and wrong. Books and Magazines are the traditional reading materials and pens and notebooks are the traditional writing tools. Under the traditional standards, kids do not read ans write as much as the previous generations. If we expand the reading to include blog posts, online magazines and newspapers and even Facebook posts, students are reading more than the previous generations ever did. The amount that students are writing is much more than we ever suspect. Students are updating statuses, commenting on blog posts, writing reviews of music, movies, restaurants, etc. Students think they don't like to read and write because they have only been taught that reading is done in books and writing is formal pieces done for school. These ideas need to be changed in teachers so they can be changed in students.Instead of forcing dated views on what literacy is on our students, it is time to switch the focus from books, pen and paper to mobile devices, blogs and tweets. There is a new type of literacy out there and blogging is a way to help our students become literate 21st century learners.

Reading and writing alone no longer define literacy. Computer literacy is key in developing modern learners and thinkers. Computer literacy gives students easier access to creation tools instead of just consumption. According to Bloom's Taxonomy, Evaluation and Synthesis are the two highest learning objectives in education. Most classes stop half way on the scale with application. Students take notes, study their notebook the night before the test, take the test and move on to the next set of notes. It's a cycle of education that teachers continue to use and I used for many years. The students are great at spitting out facts they were taught. what will they do when they are given new material and are asked to create new meaning? They often struggle. Blogging can help reach the Higher Order Thinking that Bloom talks about.

Class blogs allow students to information given in a class or taken from a book and create their own opinion.  Once they have created their own ideas, they can evaluate the ideas in other blog posts and even use those to further evaluate their own ideas.The set up of every class blog will be different and will ask students to create and evaluate in different ways. A science class might focus more on interpreting data while an English Class will have students focus on more abstract concepts. Art, Music, Social Studies, Math and other subjects can all benefit from blogging. Blogging allows the teachers to tailor the system to their class and the students in the class. If you are a teacher, you are a teacher of literacy. Struggling students can only be helped if every teacher helps the students become literate. Blogging can do more than just help literacy in students.

Blogging allows students to take ownership of their learning. It taps into a medium that require little teaching in how to use. It connects students with others beyond the classroom walls. It encourages learning and exploration outside the school day. Class blogs/Twitter accounts provide real-time knowledge and feedback. As students are receiving varied bits of information from all over the world, students will be taking that information and creating something entirely new on a class blog. They will then be taking that new information and evaluating it.  Students will be working with the information instead of just memorizing facts. That interacting with the information will result in higher retention rates in all students. Think of it this way, do you remember those projects your favorite teacher gave you? Why? You remember them because you were immersed in the information. You were able to play around and create with it. Every teacher has a memory like that. Why do teachers move away from what clearly worked for them? Blogging is a tool that has students constantly working with information taught in the classroom instead of preparing for a couple of days for a test. The long term benefits of using the information will help students when they take state tests and other high stakes tests. Blogging has many other great benefits for the classroom.

Student engagement will increase as they strive to recap the days events for the class blog. Parents will be engaged in the on goings of every class period every day from a student's perspective. Embracing the tools students use provide validation to their generation. Blogging and Tweeting have limitless potential. Video blogs (vlogs), Skype, movies, discussion boards, cross curriculum projects; these are all possible with these tools. Literacy is no longer an English/Language Arts problem. It is an education problem. These free services can help create literate 21st Century Citizens.

I am currently working with Van Meter to connect my English Classes with theirs. We are setting up our Freshmen Curriculum so that we can teach the same units at roughly the same time. We have ideas for joint Poetry Slams and a joint class production of Romeo and Juliet. There is a good chance we will pair up students from the two districts to write opposing viewpoint research papers. The potential is limitless as we continue to meet online and discuss ideas. I haven't felt this excited about lesson planning since my first year of teaching. By connecting with another school,  my head is filling with ideas that will not only allow my students to create new ideas, but share them with people from all over the world. If you live in a small or isolated community, blogging is a great way to open the eyes of your students and that is what I hope happens after working with other schools.  Our students have a chance to a singular learning opportunity that could change the way people look at education. Blogging is helping me create a flat classroom that will allow my students to see around the world. They will read and write more than they ever have before and they will do it using tools they already use everyday. Blogging will be the gateway I will use to usher in a new era of learning for my students. They will love to blog and comment and will become literate 21st Century Learners while claiming to hate reading and writing.

I'm not suggesting that blogging is the cure to the literacy problems in schools across America, but it is a tool that can help many students work on needed skills. Instead of forcing traditional teaching methods on students, why not try and meet the students where they are and get them creating and evaluating. You might be surprised at what the students create. Hell, you might even surprise yourself a bit. :-)

I want to give a quick shout out to Shannon McClintock Miller (@ShannonMMiller) of Van Meter fame. She has worked very hard at connecting me to English teachers at Van Meter and we planning some amazing things. We will be tweeting ideas and posting updates on our Van Meter/Grosse Pointe South experiment. Our hash is #VMGPS. If you are not following her on Twitter, you are missing an important part of your Twitter Life. Thanks for being awesome Shannon. I can't wait to see where this crazy train takes us.

Why I Tech

(Editor's Note: No, I did not spell teach wrong in the title of the post. I'm using the shortened version of technology as a verb. The English teacher in me is freaking, but it feel it makes sense. Now, on with the post.)

I was talking to someone the other day and they were asking me questions about teaching and then they asked me why I'm so into technology. I proceeded to explain of all of the benefits tech has to offer to students and schools worldwide, but that wasn't the questions they asked. They wanted to know why I like technology. I just smiled and said I'm a Mac because of my Dad.

Family. The one thing I love about my PLN is that when we talk about our students, we often refer to them as our kids. We take a parental role in their lives in the classroom and we defend them as if they were are own. I think that is what makes teachers amazing. I've met many great people who I consider family over the past 6 months and I'm proud to be in the same field as them. Having said all of that, We get our passion for what we do from somewhere and mine comes from my Dad.

I'm a Mac. I'm proud to say this. I have an iPhone, iPod, iBook, iMac and iPad. It seems over the top, but if you are a Mac, you know exactly why I have all of these things. It's not my fault though. It's my Dad's fault. When I was young, my Dad came to me and my brothers and asked if we would be willing to trade that years Christmas presents for a computer. My older brother and I were geeked! We thought about all of the hours we could spend dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. My younger brother was skeptical and said no way. Well, we got the computer and he got the toys. To this day I'm annoyed he got to play with the computer. Anyway, we just didn't get a computer, we got a Macintosh. I'll remember my Dad's words until the day I die. He said, "Nick, get used to using these because they are the future." Man, was he right.

He set up a program where I could record the daily rainfall and it would figure everything out after a year of entering in data. Even today, that is a really lame use of a Mac to me, but it was something that blew my mind. I could type up assignments and turn them into the teacher. This was huge for me because my handwriting was terrible! There was this weird betting Dove Race game that we would play. Although it was not educational, it was fun to watch birds fly across the screen. The computer even talked to you if you ran the right program. I quickly became comfortable using the Mac because my Dad told me it was important. I would use the computer as much as I could. I even stopped playing Contra to fool around with the computer. I couldn't help it. I was hooked the moment I say that smiling computer on the start up screen. It truly was an amazing device and my Dad's tech influence did not stop there.

I remember when we got the Internet. We had Prodigy. I would sit in his office and log into our newer Mac and access the Prodigy Network to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? He encouraged us to use the Internet to look things up and to have fun with it. I stayed away from chat rooms and had no idea what email was all about, but I was pretty good at surfing the net at dial-up speed. By the time I got to college, I was a pro at using AOL and had two email addresses. I felt good about being a tech guy. College was going to be a breeze because I knew how to surf the web and find information. My school also had a Mac Lab. :-)

When it came to deciding my major, many family members said I should go into business and that teachers do not make any money. My Dad told me to do what I want, but strive to be the best. I feel that is what I'm doing by trying to infuse tech into my class and constantly trying to learn new things to bring to my school or district. I could have stopped exploring tech after getting to college. I could have been happy with easy searches for information. My mastery of Word was solid and that is all any teacher really needed at the time. I guess I knew that there was always more out there. I knew that I didn't have all of the answers and that someone else in cyberspace might have a better idea. I wanted to keep learning and tech was a way for me to continue to grow.

My Dad has always been supportive of my decision to be a teacher. I strive to be the best teacher every day of my life. I know that I do make a difference, in part, because of my Dad.

Dad, you are the reason I tech.

What is the reason you tech? Have you ever told this person? Write a similar post or leave a comment here. We all have a reason. Maybe it's time to let them know.

The Reform Symposium #rscon10

Well, it looks like I tricked some people into thinking I know what I'm talking about. I have been asked to present during an on-line conference. The focus of the conference this year is innovation in education and I will be presenting on Integrating Technology into the classroom. My session is on Sunday August 1 at 12:30 EST. My presentation is entitled, Everything I Learned about Tech Integration, I Learned from Movies. I'll be drawing from a couple of older posts and talking about tech integration and what it means to teachers.

I'm excited to be presenting and honored to be in a great group of educators participating in the conference. I've met many of these people at ISTE last month and I'm excited to see their presentations and Keynotes. They have great things to say about education and it's worth stopping by for a listen. I encourage all of you to sign up if you have the time and stop by and see what people have to say about innovation in the classroom. You might find something that changes your entire view of education or just something that will make a single lesson a little bit better for your students. either way, you will walk away with something that will make you a better teacher. Best of all, it's free! Stop by The Reform Symposium website and sign up and look around. Also, here is a video that will do a better job explaining the conference than I did.

I hope this helps answer any questions you might have about the conference. If you still have some, feel free to send me an email or leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible. If you like what you see, please pass it along with the hashtag #rscon10. This will allow everyone to follow the awesomeness that is  going on.

- @TheNerdyTeacher