The End is Nigh

I'm nearing the end of my internship in teaching. I have three weeks left and plenty of things left to do. The week before vacation and this week was filled with facilitating projects, helping 3rd graders learn keyboarding and setting up an after school club and summer camp. I never thought I would be this busy. Some days I rarely see my mentor teacher because I am so busy.

I was approach by a special ed coordinator who wanted to do technology based book projects. I did three different projects. One stop animation using Legos, an animation using Scratch and lastly a newspaper done using Google Draw. Each project was fun in their own right and the students did a wonderful job. This week they are finishing up the projects and presenting them to their class. The animations are short but the students had a limited amount of time to work on the projects. I'm hoping the presentation will go over well and students can see all the fun things they can do with technology.

I was never a fan of keyboarding in school. You had to sit all right and proper and got timed as you typed words into a simple word processor. That being said, technology as done wonders for this skill. Deerfield has a subscription to a keyboarding site called TypingTraining.com. It is wonderful for learners of all ages. Students love it because its like playing games rather then working on how to type, little do they know they are learning quite a lot. It's impressive how fast 3rd graders learn where the keys are on the keyboard and how much their skills improve in a short period of time.

I've also had the lucky chance to take a quarter long class and squash it down to a four day unit. It was no easy feat and the students aren't going to take away too much from the experience but it will be better then not learning it at all. The hardest part is stressing the importance of what they are doing in those few class periods and how it affects them. The thing I like most of it so far is that the class is normally run by 2 or more co-teachers, each one with different styles, but for this shortened unit I'm doing it all by myself which helps both me and the students, less confusion.

I feel a lot more confident in front of a group of students and I have got improvising skills for when things just don't go my way which is most of the time. You just can't plan life. A side note I talked to a first year teacher here at Deerfield. I got to ask a bunch of questions and for the most part what she could answer was what I determined the first year would be like. What she couldn't answer were things that a tech integrator would only have to deal with most of the time. It was insightful but I send so much time alone and have done so much extra stuff that I feel more prepared for that first year... aside from paper work, she said there is a lot of paper work...

Busy Busy Busy, Oh look its Curriculum Night

I haven’t done much in the way of reflecting, at least in a written format in a week or two. I've been super busy. I've started helping 3rd grade classroom in the computer lab. Smarter Balance involves a lot of typing and a lot of the 3rd grade teachers fear their students haven’t had enough opportunity to work on typing. Thus I am helping both the students and teachers work on their typing skills.

Deerfield has a account with typingtraining.com. I asked my mentor to give me an account so I can practice with the program first and learn all I can about the program. It’s a really awesome website, which is wonderfully interactive and does it all. The first class I helped I got students to log on and get them on the website and log on with another username and password. We ran through account setup and the basic than they were on their own. The website uses an avatar which gives instructions. After they started all I had to do was answer a few questions and make sure they had both hands on the keyboard. It’s fun working with younger grade levels.

I also got the chance to teach a few computer lessons to kindergartners. This was a lot of fun. Its a completely different environment. Just being around those young kids your energy levels sky rocket and everything is so much fun. I helped them work on numbers and number lines using Abcya.com. They got to play different games and used a paint program. I run them through how to save their work and how they can even print their work. The best part of this internship is working with so many different levels of learners, students and staff alike.

Another fun little thing I have been working on is three projects for a special education reading groups. There is three different groups, each one working on a different technology based project. The first group is working on a stop animation project using legos and an iPad. First they used Google draw to create a storyboard. The next step was to create the sets and the script. We are currently recording the animation with the iPad. The second group is doing an animation in scratch. They also created a storyboard first. They are currently working on animating the different scenes. The third group is working on creating a newspaper. Each group member created an article and found a picture, now they are working together to put the final project together. I’m doing all the grading and planning for the projects which has been a good deal of work, but almost everyone really enjoys doing the projects.

We also had curriculum night last week. That was a different experience. I was in the computer lab with the students from the middle school STEM club and my mentor for both the club and the tech class. The first part of curriculum night I was super intimidated to talk to anyone. I talked to kids and made comments about what we do in club or class, but I didn't really converse with any parents. Toward the end of the night  managed to melt the ice and began talking to some parents and students alike. It wasn't so bad, I mostly answered questioned about what we worked on or working on and talked with some parents about some extracurricular like STEM club and a summer camp.

Like I said very busy. I've also been creating a month long STEM club for 3rd through 5th graders and a summer camp for programming. A lot goes into playing extracurricular activities! I've got about 4 weeks left in my internship, which is kind of sad but also means I need to work on some things for finishing my degree and getting my license and finding a job. Its going to be a busy month in May. Wish me luck!

Presentation: Setup, Questions, Focus

Its been a busy week. My school is test piloting the smart balance test this week for 8th grades and it more or less sprang up at out nowhere, at least it feels like that. I’m not directly involved with the testing process. I helped install the software and did a practice test but other then that I've been mostly on the sidelines watching and reading material on the test.

Why do I bring up the test? My mentor teacher is directly involved with the test, thus I was thrown to the wolves as the teacher in charge for some of the classes. I didn't like it would be that bad coming into the week because most of the classes were doing presentations of student created info-graphics. Little did I know there is so much more to presentation then I thought there would be. The first class of the round of presentation was the largest of the classes.

I didn't give myself enough time to set up for the presentations, so as students made their way into the class, I was still looking for and opening up presentations. I didn't plan sample questions to ask students about their presentation. I noticed real quickly how students wouldn't ask questions unless someone else was thus the choir of crickets started. I was saved by other teachers in the room who started to ask questions. If students managed to squeak out a question it was more about the content of the presentation and not the data representation of the info-graphics. Lastly some student had just not finished the project and didn't have much to present. I had nothing in my empty arsenal of questions to help keep things in focus.

The second presentation period was a lot better. I managed to create enough time to open up any files and put things in order. I prepared sample questions that directed students attention to what the project was about, creating an info-graphic. The students interacted more by asking a good number of questions and since I directed the questions a certain way eventually the students caught on and started asking similar questions to my own. There was a little off topic comments and questions but they did a good job keeping focus and participating. During this event my mentor teacher snuck in and recorded data based on my actions. She recorded the number of times I asked a questions, students asked a question and what comments I made during each presentation. It made a good visual and helped me understand where I was asking too many or not enough. I also learned a detailed compliment is better than a generic one.

The last group to present, was again different. I prepared the order ahead of time, had my questions ready to go, and everyone know they were presenting. I gave clear instructions on how things were going to proceed. The problem with this group was that only the adults and maybe one or two students were asking questions. I asked more questions today then a did the other day, the students barely asked any. It was a different atmosphere without the participation of more students.

Three different experience with the same general focus. This experience helped me to better understand the nature of presentation from my teacher point of view. I learned what kind of directed questions help students think. What an involved audience can do to make a presentation better and how preparation is key to running a smooth class of presentations. A day or two of constant presentation is difficult on both fronts and maybe there is a way to maximize or stagger presentation for projects so all aren't on the same day. These are things to think about in the future.

Discipline and Students

Today two students got into a lot of trouble. They were messing around with the password setting on each others account. Once they couldn’t log on to do work in class the teacher informed the tech department about what had happened. My mentor went to talk to the boys and put the “fear of god” into them. I’m not disagreeing with punishing the boys for doing something they shouldn’t because they need that guidance to understand what they did was wrong.

I’ve been that kid. I was the little monster that was rampaging around on the schools network. I changed usernames, passwords, grades and permissions. Thats some of the tame things I did! I know what its like to be young and to have all that knowledge and power at your finger tips. I also know what it is like to get in trouble for doing such things. I’ve experience the powerless feeling of not being allowed to use a computer for weeks at a time, it’s not fun and it sinks in certain concepts.

I understand why the two boys are in trouble and I also understand how their punishment can affect them. It’s an interesting perspective. Both of the boys are students in a class I teach, a computer class. They can no longer do their work for a week because of their actions. The first class they were in I had allowed them to stay in the classroom. They had to work on writing out their program. They didn’t even start before getting into trouble again. They decided to leave the room to get a pencil without asking, I was in the middle of instructing the other students and hadn’t notice them leave. My mentor teacher did and sent them to the office.

I need to learn to handle those situations. I didn’t keep a good eye on the students and they managed to leave the room without me knowing. This wasn’t the only problem I had that day. A group girls came into the lab to print something from one of their iPhones. They proceeded to interrupt the class and distract two of the students. I told them they needed to let the boys work. In retrospect I should have been more of an authority about the situation and ask the girls to leave. I haven’t had much trouble with students not listening and thus I lack the experience to know what to do in those situations. I know a little bit more now, but experience will make me understand how best to deal with problems in the classroom.

My First Solo Class

I taught my first class on Friday. It felt like pure chaos. The students were all excited to be there, and wanted to get straight to work. I started the class by having them open up the webpage I made for the class and showing them the page and what was on it. I showed them where the tutorials are and where the log on information was available. Once I finished that I asked them to open up Scratch and log on and that’s when I felt the chaos started.

Some students followed the instructions to log on without issue others appeared to have not been listening to the instructions and needed help logging onto scratch. While helping those students the ones already logged on started to play around and just wanted to know how to do varies things or how to start. Sadly the next part was showing the different elements of the programs and how to create an animation. I didn’t make it to how to make an animation because they stopped listening and just wanted to play with the program.

I shifted gears and allowed them to play with the different kinds of blocks and sprites. If they had questions or wanted to know how to make a certain program work a certain way they could ask. I spent most of the period running back and forth answer questions and showing cool little things to different students. One interesting thing that I did was answer questions in different order that way a student with question on one side would have to wait or ask the person next to them. The students were very much into helping one another make cool animations.

There are a few different things I have been instructed I need to work on for next class. I need to keep their focus when giving instructions to the students. The way I am going to try and fix this is by having the students log on to scratch and then turn their monitors off while I give instructions about what we are doing in class today. The next part I needed to work on was reflective time. The students had a good time and had a lot of fun and learned a good deal of how the program works but that doesn’t mean it is going to stick. I need to take 5 to 10 minutes at the end of class to talk to the students and ask them questions about what they liked or how they did something a certain way or what they need help in understanding. It’s a quick little question to help gauge where each student is at in their work.

I am going to add those two elements to the next lesson and hopefully it will improve the classroom and the learning experience of the students. Once I add those two things are added I’m hoping new areas of weakness appear so I can better myself.

Observation in Kindergarten

Friday I attended a kindergarten class where technology was being used. I was invited by the teacher to observe the class to see how those young students interact with technology. I was informed they would be using technology to make a Skype call to someone in Canada. When I walked in they were setting up the projector for something else. They were on a little break and the classroom teacher was bringing up a little video for the students to dance too. One students was selected to use the smart board to select a song. They danced and had a lot of fun following the dancers on the projectors.

The next step was setting up for the Skype call. The students, I joke not; the kindergarteners setup the laptop, the microphone and plugged all the wires in so the laptop was connected to the projector and smart board. They took turns helping connecting the different devices together. Once everything was set up the teacher led the students through the process of testing the camera, to speakers and microphone. The students were very knowledgeable about the testing process, they go through it every time them make a Skype call. Once they were ready the teacher asked the students what message they send to the person they are calling. They knew the answer and helped one student was selected to type the message. They began the call.

The wonderful thing about this experience was seeing the students assemble the technology with little to no instruction from the teacher. It was just incredible. Another important thing for me to note is the teachers instilling a sense of digital citizenship in the students. They had tested their equipment and sent appropriate messages. They all had a wonderful time doing all that work, and were very excited. They didn’t get a chance to use Google World to find the location of their Skype caller, I’m hoping I get a chance to see that in future observations.

Student Teaching: Week 4 Teacher Workshop

The other day was my first teacher workshop. It was a lot different than I thought it would be. Whenever there was a teacher workshop day in school I use think teachers spent the whole day grading papers and writing lesson plans, so I was a little interested when I had to sign up for basically mini seminars. It was fun going to a different school and seeing some of the culture in that school. You can tell the difference in the way teachers from one school interact with other teachers.

The seminars were wonderful. The first one I went to was a seminar done by a high school math teacher and was about social media. He talked about using certain technologies in the classroom like document cameras, iPads, and Chromebooks. He then started on the topic of social media in the classroom. I maybe a technology guy but I don’t use heavy social media technology so it was nice to see some of the creative ways to use social media. I now have an Emodo and Twitter account which I am going to spend sometime playing with to adapt it for future class use. We also started going over iUniversity but didn't get very far because we ran out of time.

The second seminar was called the Digital War. This was my favorite seminar. It was about how there is a technology war between teachers and tech savvy students. There was a student giving the presenter a hand. He was a smart tech kid who liked to play pranks on teachers using technology, and bend or breaking rules that restrict technology. The presenter took the side of the argument that we need to be on the same side with students on technology and not fight them. The fun part about this seminar was how it erupted into a debate because a large number of the audience were older teachers from the age of “If I see it, I take it away” and the others were young like me who see things a little differently.

The third seminar was about Google scripts. In particular in was two pre-made scripts which are nice and useful for grading and passing documents back and forth on Google Docs. I wanted a bit more form the seminar. A few different scripts or how you can make your own scripts. Google Scripts is 90% JavaScript with a few different libraries which allow you to do some wonderful things with Google Docs and other Google apps. I got to answer some programming questions which was fun.

The last part of the day was a keynote speaker. He was funny. He talked about kids not having enough grit today. I know plenty of young adults my age who still don’t have true grit but it gets worse as you go down the line. I can agree with all that he said, I see it and I lived it. I was grit less for a good while in my life but things change, making me have to change too. Grit is something you earn, it can’t be gift wrapped by your mommy and daddy. I didn't like his PowerPoint. He had too many words and way too many sound effects and special effects. It hurt to watch the PowerPoint.

Revise, Revise Oh Lesson Plan

Third time’s the charm. I tweak the original plan to be more “fun” for students. The original unit plan was very structured and very focused on me talking a lot with sometime for student exploration of the programming language. I chalk it up to years of learning programming the same way in every class I participated in. Something about programming and structure just goes so well. Needless to say there wasn't much wiggle room which didn't feel right.

I talked it out with my mentor teacher who provided a simple solution. If I focus less on the structure and more student self learning it maybe helpful and free ranged for creative process that is game design. I changed the core theme from just programming to actual game design. I going to teach basic concepts about game design like space and mechanics and work it into the coding.

This wasn't the complete version when I finished the second draft. It was a little too open ended with way too much freedom and too many places for students to get lost in black holes. I needed some way to direct the students learning. Again I talked to my mentor who suggested that I have goals or task for students to complete each day. Thus I started the third draft of the unit plan.

I went through each day and thought about what were reasonable goals for the students to reach. I wrote out a few ideas and then picked what seemed most appropriate. I came to the conclusion that one day didn't need a goal because it was a focus on exploring and seeing different examples of games. The final day task is just the completion of the game and end to the makers project.

I spent a couple days working on this unit plan. I want it to be perfect even if it will not work out so great in the actual practice. The item I want to take away from here is the concept of strategies and how different strategies can change the way the classroom feels and how one teaches. My original strategy was structured, I say jump they jump but it seemed close minded and not a very good fit for me in theory. The second strategy was to give the students way more power over their learning, and it seemed a little bit like chaos with an end goal that may never be reached. The third strategy is a midway point where their is a target students need to reach but they have creative reign over their learning and how they plan to meet those goals. Again this is just the plan and not how it may work on in practice, thus it will be fun to find out how will my actions match my mental thought process.

I'm also lucky my supervisor is visiting that day!

Planning out a Unit Plan

I haven’t had much experience in creating a unit plan. Single day lesson plans was more the focus in my classes and even then they were theoretical because I would never use them. The first problem I encounter was that I didn't know the numbers of days I would need to plan for which made it difficult to start working on the unit plan. Once the number of days was discovered I set out to plan a unit based around the MIT programming language called scratch.

Scratch is a simple drag and drop programming language meant for beginners and students who haven’t ever programmed before. Granted it can do very complex programs if you know what you are doing, but it reads more like a pseudo language rather than a higher level computing language like C++. The first step was figuring out a goal for the students. During the course of the unit students need hands on experience programming and creating something. I wanted something to keep their attention so having them program an animation or simple game is great way to keep them invested.

When planning out the dates I wanted to keep the main document more like a guideline for what the students should look forward to those days. The next hard part was deciding what students needed to know in order to accomplish their goals. The way I set out to do this was by picking a sample program that accomplished but I wanted the students to achieve and looked at its code. Once I had a good understanding of that code I broke it done to different topics. Each topic was placed in a day in an order that seemed like a slow escalation to the final objective. The first three days don’t seem that hard, a lot of information but a good amount of time dedicated to exploration time for students.

Days 4 and 5 were the hardest because that involve conditional statements and loops which in any programming language is a huge factor. I really don’t think a day to each subject is enough time to truly grasp the subjects and wish there was a way to increase time to give students a chance to explore those concepts more. Granted for a simple animation or maze game students shouldn't need anything too complex to accomplish the goals set forth.

I planned only for 6 out of 7 days to make sure that if it comes down to it students have an extra day to work on their programs. It also helps having extra days in case of snow days or other events. My concerns for the unit plan at this moment in time is that it is too condensed and way too straight forward. It’s planned like a long term class in a small amount of time with half the time dedicated to students exploring the different elements of the programming language. If students fall of task they may miss something important or not really grasp the concepts or goals of the unit.I plan on asking for advice and ideas from my mentor teacher in order to better the unit plan.

My mentor teacher is giving me advice and commenting on my unit plan to give me a better idea about what I need and what I can do to improve it. Google Docs are a wonderful tool for learning. My unit plan can be found at that link along with comments my mentor teacher has provided. I included this because it is part of the reflection process. I'm getting to work on and improve my knowledge with information from a peer/someone in the field.

Re Tweaking the unit plan window

My mentor teacher and her collaborator for a technology unit had come together to re-plan their unit because of a large number of snow days/half days. I didn't have much input into these because I was just observing. Knowing full well I will be planning my own lessons in the future I thought it a good idea to observe how teachers go about adjusting to different classrooms to meet their goals for a unit. The key I took away from this observation is that the size of the classroom along with the mentality of the class greatly affect the time it takes to teach a lesson and then let the students explore that lesson. There are three different sections of this class, each one different from the last.

One class is very large and the students can be unfocused and it requires a bit of maneuvering to answer questions and help students to learn. The second class is smaller but relatively well mannered and don’t fall off track so often. The third is a small class where there is little to no issue. Each class is about at the same point in the lesson but the smaller ones are a bit more ahead or in a more comfortable position.

When thinking about reworking the schedule for the lesson it seems best to compare what you original set up as the schedule to what has been accomplished and what needs to be accomplished. This let’s you see how long it took for certain activities. Once you have an idea of how long it took to do something like writing a reflection you can plan ahead to include that time in the new schedule.

I may not have had a huge part in the process but it was a good observation to reflect upon because it is an important part about teaching. You have to take the time to reflect on a lesson and see if the students are on track to meet the goals of the lesson. If they aren’t you need to adjust and move things around to meet those goals. It’s also a very good idea to have extra days where nothing is planned because you never know if there will be a snow day or early release because of bad weather.

Student Teaching: Week 2

Second week of school, less time off from storms and more learning. I'm starting to get into the thick of the internship, meaning I'm starting to plan and create lessons to teach. Unlike other internships I have to find places and times to teach. One opportunity is during the month of march where students in the 7th grade have a month of classes based on making products or producing something taught by individuals from certain fields. The school is going to allow me to teach a computer programming class during that month. I will be using scratch.mit.edu to teach students.

Other opportunity I have is to teach are a lunch club that is also playing with scratch, but haven't started the programming aspect of it and need help learning it. There is also a chance to work with special education students who want to learn programming before they go to high school so they will be in a good position when they sign up for a new class at the high school.

Classes are going well. I've started to interact with the students a bit more. I answer questions and give advice on their class work. I got to do some discipline time with some students who didn't want to do the class work or missed the point of the assignment. That was a good learning experience in its self. It takes a lot of patience and finding out what motives a student can be difficult but I managed to help the best I could. The thing that stuck out the most of this week was the different learning styles of students and how it affects what they do in class. You have to plan accordingly to the individualized students and what works best for them. I know this from theory but its amazing to see it in practice.

Student Teaching: Week 1

I finally started student teaching. Granted it wasn't a full week because of a big snow storm but it was interesting. It's a little different I think then some of my friends experience in teaching. My mentor teacher has three different class periods, each one is different from the last. The first is a class of 32 7th and 8th graders, the second is a class of 16 made up of 6th graders, the last class is a class of 2, you read right only two kids in the class and both are 6th grades. In every period there is at least four teachers plus myself. Really different atmosphere in all the different classes.

The students focus on making their student portfolio in Google Sites. Its really a really and simple way to make a webpage. In order to be more of a help to students I decided to learn how to use Google Sites. This decision was made after I tried to answer a question on day one but couldn't because I had never used Google Sites before, thus I started a new E-portfolio in Google Sites where I can learn and be better able to help students. I'm currently trying to figure out how to put RSS feeds on a page!

In the course of that first week I got the opportunity to write up direction for student to follow. The direction weren't for a real assignment, they were for an extra/bonus assignment students can do if they finish their class work early. The instructions were about how students can add avatars from certain sites to their homepage. The three sites in question are doppelme.com, buildyourwildself.com, and voki.com. It took some learning and playing around to figure out the best way to describe the process of adding these items to their Google Sites. Voki was very difficult but I wound up finding a few different ways of doing it. I actual learned how to use screencast.com, in order to record the process students must take in order to add the voki. It gave a good visual way to instruct students.

I also got to grade student reflection. The hardest part about the reflection was commenting on them. I went with a positive and negative comment, but sometimes I needed to be more suggestive on how students can improve their reflections. The students who did an exceptional job were hard to give advice on how to improve. Over the course of the week I did a good amount of grading and got faster and better at grading the reflections, but the first day or two it was a slow crawl to learn.

I got the lovely chance to do bus duty in the morning, and then got volunteered to do it every morning for the rest of my time there. Not the most exciting job and it gets pretty cold out there in the winter morning. All and all it was a productive week with some good learning experiences.

Why I haven't Posted in a while!?

Work mostly.

Not school work.

Not internship work.

A full time job that has nothing to do with my degrees but pays the bills anyways. Why do I have said job? It took a year to find placement for my internship. I finished everything else for my master's program in August except my internship. About a week ago I an email finally saying they found placement for me in a school. I'm super excited and really nervous.

One thing I learned so far...

School doesn't prepare you for the internship in anyway. I haven't started and I am already overwhelmed and can visibly see gaps in my knowledge. Example you say!? Smart boards, since high school I have had a smart board in my class rooms every year, yet somehow I have never used one once. You would think in my schooling to be a technology integrator they would've taught us how to use a smart board. Nope. I know why we use them but not the how. It can't be hard to learn but I feel like this is something that should be covered in the learning for this particular degree.

Anyways! I'm excited! My mentor teacher is really awesome and resourceful and I think I can learn a lot. The big issue I have is that she only teaches 3 days a week so the other two I plan on doing lots of observations and a fair amount of planning/learning the other parts of this job.

One other issue I have is the Praxis II. I'm not really sure which test I take because I'm a technology integrator and NH doesn't have a test for that, I need to find out what Praxis II I need to take, study, and take it while doing my internship and working part time every night because interns don't get paid! Life is never dull, and there is always something to do! Sorry got no awesome pictures :P