Cell Phones are Causing Serious Problems

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding cell phones in the classroom. The schools I've been observing and tutoring in do not allow cell phones to be used in the classroom, thus ignoring the possible positive advances that integrating cell phones into the classroom may have. To take a better look at the controversy, I googled "cell phone use in schools" and found this article, "Some Schools Rethink Bans on Cell Phones" which looks at both sides of the situation.

Firstly, as most smart phones are now mini-computers. They can be used to note-taking and sharing, homework logs, internet browsers, email, GPS, taking pictures. The article points out that students can use their cameras to take pictures of projects to show parents, and of the board in class when students need clearer notes. As 70% of students now have cell phones, it is easy to see why allowing phones in the classroom is useful and could enhance a students education. As we are always trying to find new ways to make our material relevant to student's lives outside of the classroom, a cell phone seems to be the perfect tool to capitalize with.

Unfortunately, students do not just use their phones to take notes and other school appropriate activities. Frighteningly, there have been reports of students snapping photos of other students in the locker room while changing for gym class. Further, in class "sexting" and rumor spreading quickly becomes a distraction to the learning environment. Students also use their phones to cheat inc lass and text each other answers. Obviously, these actions are distracting, disturbing, and a clear violation of school rules.

So, what do schools do? One solution is to reward to students for appropriately using their phones. Another, is to do what "administrators in DeKalb County, in northeast Alabama, began confiscating phones this school year, keeping them for 30 days and searching them for evidence of cheating, pornography or other “illicit activities.” If such evidence is found, it’s turned over to the sheriff’s office." I personally have a huge problem with going through students' phones in this manner - it appears to be illegal. I couldn't imagine searching through another person's phone in the hopes of finding some "illicit" information.

As a teacher, and a user of a smart phone, I can easily see the advantages of allowing phones. Especially in an English classroom where I'll be taking notes on the board and doing verbal discussions. On the other hand, I am weary of allowing students to use their phones in class should they decide to use the spell check on their phones for a vocabulary quiz or use google to seek answers on a plot/content quiz for a book. I doubt I will allow my students to use them in my classroom. There are so many other ways to integrate technology, and I plan to provide other ways of providing my students with notes to reduce the anxiety of in-class-note-taking. I feel that the temptation to step away from school appropriate actions is far too great for students to resist. If there are other ways to keep students on task with their phones without feeling like I am policing them, I may be open to the idea, but as for now, I cannot validate students using their phones in school.

SmartBoard Technology Made Easy by TeacherTube

SmartBoards are becoming more and more common in classrooms in afluent districts - and even some target districts, as grants are given to teachers to try and increase testing scores. When I graduated high school, almost every classroom was fitted with a SmartBoard, and I'm sure, by now, every classroom has a SmartBoard. I vaguely recall teachers chatting about professional development seminars and weekend sessions dedicated to the use of a SmartBoard, but only my math teachers used them. Even in my science classes, which had a long list of math problems and the possibility of videos, diagrams and other interesting things to be added to a lesson with the use of the SmarBoard, there was very little acknowledgement of the board being there.

So, why SmartBoards? You can save data sets to them as you write on a document. You can connect them to your files to show students, play movies, and finally get rid of overhead projectors with transparencies. Erasing the board is no longer a necessity, as the digital documents seem to scroll on forever, and this is a much quicker way of keeping track of how far in the lesson each class went. I found this video on TeacherTube which gives a basic, but useful, overview of how to operate a SmartBoard.

Although this covers the basics, I can start to see how a SmartBoard would be used in an English classroom. I could upload a piece of the assigned reading and annotate it with the class; I could then save the annotation to be given to students later as part of their notes. Being able to use the SmartBoard as a projector screen would be great during class! How interesting would it be to show Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, while have the uploaded book pages next to the movie. This way, instead of forcing students to look down at their books and then back up to the screen for the evaluation process of see how the lines are read, it would all be provided and lower the levels of distraction. As a time saver, I can upload students documents and/or my notes to model for the class.

TeacherTube in general is a great website! There are lessons, documents, videos and audio on the website. Even just clicking around, there are endless ways to capitalize on what the website provides! I would really suggest that any educator at least look at it and evaluate how they can use it in their classrooms or lesson plans.

Interactivity #5

The teacher I interviewed is a sixth grade English teacher who works in a school district close to Montclair State University. She works at one of the technology focused schools in the district. The students have to take a technology class as part of the their core curriculum; the technology classes are given the same weight as their science, English, math and history classes. Despite working in a technology focused school, this teacher did not know about the NETS-S 2007. She felt that the standards were interesting, but appeared to be more like guidelines than requirements, in comparison to the NJCCCS.

Although her school district has not begun to implement the NETS-S, she did acknowledge that because of the focus in her school, each teacher is required to incorporate technology into their lessons on a regular basis. It is more likely that the technology teachers know about the NETS-S than the English department. Further, she acknowledged that students are already involved in many projects that are suggested on the NETS-S website. There is a commitment to technology and proficiency with technology within her district.

I was a little surprised at the response of my teacher. I had assumed that she would be aware of the NETS-S because of her specific school within the district. On the other hand, there are already technology requirements within the NJCCCS and I know that this teacher works very diligently to work these standards into her lesson plans. I was not at all surprised to the description of the school district’s dedication to technology and the advancement of their students in this area. It is very clear that technology is going to continue to have an impact on education, so having the training and competency in this area is necessary for teachers.

As a future educator, I would want to bring up the NETS-S to my district or colleagues as a positive addition to the NJCCCS. Where the NJCCCS gives the standards that we, as educators, must meet to be successful in our career, NETS-S gives suggestions for how to better complete that. It’s important to remember that technology is a key part of learning, and I feel that any of the NJCCCS can be met with the aid of technology. Therefore, it is necessary to give students the ability to be independent, creative and intelligent/informed about their technology choices. Just from taking this class, I have been exposed to countless ways to integrate technology into the classroom to make my lessons more interesting and applicable to student’s lives outside of the classroom. Truly, NETS-S gives additional guidelines and suggestions to accomplish these things. I have updated my Lesson Plan Analysis from my previous Interactivity to add the NETS-S to the NJCCCS. Overall, I feel like the lesson improves the more a teacher can identify why and how they’re designing their lesson plans.

 

Test Scores Defeating Good Teachers

My READ411 professor, Doctor Weiner, sent us this article about a week ago. At first too busy to read the articles, I'm glad I saved the email to read over what he sent us. Every teacher worries about our students' test scores. We worry that if they don't do well, they may be placed in a remedial course the next year or perhaps, not understanding a concept on the SAT will keep them out of the college they want to go to. Now, we have the additional concern about our careers. This article from the New York Times describes how misleading test scores can be and how Hard Working Teachers can be Sabatoged When Student Test Scores Slip.

By comparing the percentages from the previous school year, when students had a passing rate of 97% and this year when students had a passing rate of 89%, the "teacher score" suffered. These teachers, as is pointed out in the article, have a long list of credentials and are trying to give students tools of learning beyond how to take an exam. They work to make their classrooms relevant and teach skills that the state does not require, but will be useful later on. It's frightening to see that 20+% of a teacher's evaluate is based on the scores of their students.

As an Englsh teacher, I feel that I have an extra concern with the standardized tests because English is viewed as being potentionally subjective in grading.  Even if a student completes the standardized test formula structure of a paragraph/paper, it's possible that a grader that doesn't like the student's word choice or examples could give my student a lower score on the exam. I do not want to be a teacher that spends 6 out of 10 months doing test prep, as there are many teachers who do this and I have been in classes where a teacher mainly focuses on test prep. I feel that there are more valuable lessons to teach and skills for students to master than how to answer a standardized test, but reading all of these articles makes me nervous for how to accomplish that while trying to ensure that my students will do well on their exams.

Rubric Problems

In my ENWR-371 class (Teaching Writing Grades 6-12) and CURR-314 class (Assessment of Learning) we're currently discussing rubrics. What makes a good/bad rubric? What is less intimidating to students? How can I convey the goals of the unit within a rubric? As is true with most topics in education, trying to make a rubric from scratch is difficult, and trying to make a rubric in the vacuum of theory classes is even more difficult. So, I turned to Google for a little help and clarification of rubrics. I was overjoyed to find several rubric creating websites! RubiStar, teAchnology, and RCampus were three useful websites that I found. Almost all of the rubrics on this site meet the standards discussed in CURR-314 and were simple to understand, a necessary adaptation discussed in my ENWR-371 course.

Rubrics are so important to English classes. As an English teacher, I'll be assessing my students' ability to write and comprehend literature. Most of my assessments will be performance tasks,with a few tests (perhaps on grammar, spelling, history of a an author or a novel) mixed in. The rubric is key to evaluating a performance task because it gives a range for students to be graded on, and shows their target areas of improvment in a subject where not every answer is cut and dry, right or wrong. Thus, the websites I found provide a great springboard to develop effective evaluation strategies in my classroom.

Interactivity #4

Lesson Plan Analysis Map

I chose this lesson plan because I felt that it had a good handle on how to relate sonnets back to the lives of the students, as well as having a fun activity to complete for the class. Overall, many teachers only teach Shakespeare when it comes to sonnets, and the power of a sonnet is lost because many students automatically assume they cannot understand anything by Shakespeare. I particularly like that the lesson started off with a modern sonnet, and then eventually circled back to Shakespeare in a very comprehensive way.

Overall, I feel that the lesson did not have many gaps. When adding in technology, I tried to focus my efforts on adding to the paper work that was originally described in the lesson plan. For example, instead of handing out worksheets that students can lose, I would publish the worksheets/notes onto a class discussion board where they can be accessed at anytime. Also, I felt that publishing the poems onto blogs is very important to help relate the activity to the students’ everyday life, as well as accomplishing more of the Core Curriculum Content Standards. The problem presented now with my version of the lesson plan is that if a school does not have access to computers for every student or a smartboard, then many of my adjustments are impossible to complete.

Although I do not feel that the technologies I presented are essential, I do feel that they are more effective than the original lesson plan. Having students publish work makes them take a certain level of pride in their work that would be difficult to accomplish in private drafts. Also, the technologies I’ve presented makes for easy note-taking, assignment collecting and adds relevance to the lesson.

Education and the discussion of same-sex marriage

A few days ago while I was on facebook, I couldn't help but notice this article on my newsfeed. The article was posted by the facebook group New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Christie's Pay Freeze. They were sarcastically remarking that Christie was jealous he had not thought of this himself, as he had just voted down the right for same-sex marriage in New Jersey.

I think that the points here are of great concern to myself as a future teacher. I believe that same-sex marriage is a right. I have many homosexual relatives and friends who are waiting for the day when they can marry who they want. But on the other hand, I am not unaware of the fact that depending on certain positions I take as an educator, and how public I make them, I may not get hired or could be fired. I know that identifying as being a homosexual, publicly, can restrict people from getting jobs.

With all of this debate about state laws, the first amendment, religion, diversity, acceptance - I am curious how/if I can voice my opinion on such matters. Does Newt Gingrich have a point that teachers who are trying to be neutral are doing a disservice to their students? This is a very complicated subject, but it's a very big concern of mine, and I'm sure other future teachers in this class.