Tapped-In Mentoring and Skypalicious Times

I really liked the idea of the electronic mentorship. What an amazing opportunity to be able to get advice from wise, older teachers from all around the world. I sometimes found it hard to formulate meaningful questions, especially at the beginning of the year. It's difficult to come up with something to ask another teacher when you've not had very much experience in teaching, yourself. I came up with more questions about teaching, not always techno-specific ones, though, as the semester went on, but found that my peers answered my later questions more than the older, wiser members of the group. I guess my questions were still less than fabulous. Still, there were a couple of times when expert advice from Allanah and Aimee saved my lesson plan (yea!), and I imagine that John will be a very helpful resource for trying to get an urban perspective on things, which isn't addressed at all in W&M classes.
It was also very interesting to hear what concerns my peers have, and to see the advice that everyone gave to each other. Sometimes implementing tricks that our peers' cooperating teachers use might be helpful in our own classrooms, and those people who have has experience working in schools before, can offer some expert advice of their own. Over all, I thought that Tapped-in was a helpful resource, and enjoyed reading and posting on it.

On another note... my best friend and I went on a great Skype adventure today. He's been in the Netherlands since January, and he won't be back until July, so I've missed him very much. We exchange e-mails, and have talked on the phone a couple of times, but it's pricey, and even if I can hear his voice, it's nothing like being with him. WELL, today I caught him on Gmail, and I told him to download Skype right away. He did so, as he should, because I'm the boss, and after a few oopsey-daisies, we were using the video phone option! It was so great to be able to see his new haircut, to see him smile and laugh, and to give each other tours of our living spaces! I even introduced him to my roommate and my cats, who thought the movement on the screen was fascinating (the cats, of course, not my roommate... she's fascinated by much more sophisticated things... like Fraggle Rock). I couldn't believe how much it lifted my spirits to be able to talk to him "in person" instead of over the phone or through e-mail. We're planning to use it again soon... it's so addictive! GOD BLESS SKYPE!

My Edutastic Movie

After several days of work, I have officially produced, directed, and starred in my very own five or six minute movie! Here is what I have discovered about making movies on iMovie:

1. I am undoubtedly breaking laws by making this movie:

1a. I can't believe how few photographs are out there that we can use freely. Something that I would change if I ruled the world (which I will someday) is make a law that says that as long as someone isn't making money off of it, photos can be used freely, because it's a pain in the tokhis to find photos that you can use at all, and then it's confusing to figure out what you need to do to use them. So, in short, copyright laws hinder my creativity, and the Internet is all about connecting and sharing, so why don't more people connect and share?

1b. I'm stealing music in it too, but since I bought it, and I'm not selling it, I don't feel too bad about it. I also give the artist credit in my credits, but it kind of freaks me out that I'm probably breaking a law by doing this. What can I say? I'm a rebel without a cause.

2. It's very difficult to do voice overs, even when the program that you're using is dummy proof. My soundtrack is pretty lame, with my personal mixes of songs, and my voice narrating the whole thing, but, hey, you work with what you've got, and James Earl Jones wasn't available to do the voice over, so I had to do it myself.

3. Computers are great, but when they erase everything you've done at random, forcing you to start over again, one starts to wonder if the old way wasn't better afterall.

But, all of those things are less important than my main point. As I was putting this movie together on homelessness, I realized that I could make a movie about just about anything (IF I had free access to more photos, that is). Initially, I thought about the fact that I could make a movie about my grandmother, because we have pictures of her that go back to 1907, and it would make an amazing movie to share with my family, but truly, I could make a movie about anything. Butterflies, slavery, ancient Rome... anything. That got me really excited, because everyone likes movies, and if you had access to enough clips and photos you could do amazing things with iMovies (or other programs like it). If I ever get some time to myself again, I'm going to look into making movies on all kinds of subjects with my own photographs on sinking and floating, George Washington, addition, and anything else that occurs to me.

Yea laptops! Yea idiot-proof movie making programs! Yea technology! Life is good.

My Technotastic Lesson...

This Thursday, I taught my science/technology lesson. Of course, I had to send out an e-mail to the administrator earlier in the week to access the videos on YouTube, which I thought was because the videos might show something inappropriate, but apparently it's because they recommend that teachers not use YouTube videos for copyright reasons. It seems strange to me that if I go to the website, where anyone can view videos, and show videos to 21 five and six-year-olds, that there would be a copyright issue. Nonetheless, the administrators didn't tell me about that issue, or even tell me that they'd decided not to unblock the site, until I was frantically trying to figure out why the videos weren't working an hour before the lesson was supposed to begin. They ended up allowing me to access the websites for a few hours, which was, at least, enough to let me teach the lesson.
The videos made a big difference in the lesson. After we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," the kids had a lot of questions about how a caterpillar makes a chrysalis and how the butterfly gets out of a chrysalis, and it's sometimes difficult to explain those kinds of things to kindergartners in words that they'll understand. So, the videos were a big help when it came to teaching the kids about some of the more complex aspects of the butterfly life cycle, and they're still to young to be sick of PowerPoints yet!
Throughout the lesson, I kept an eye out for who wasn't catching on to the concepts, because I was planning to pull up to five of them to do the webquest that I put together. I was actually surprised about which kids I ended up having to pull out of the class for more help. One of the kids is so quiet that I'd never really noticed that she has trouble paying attention and needs more time to absorb new information. The other little girl is one of the best students in the class, quick and well-behaved, and comfortable asking questions, but she was having a lot of trouble with this particular concept. The third student was a little boy who often has a little bit of trouble in lessons, but he's smart, and when he gets a little bit of extra help he does very well.
So, I took the three students who were struggling to the core computers, so that they wouldn't distract the other students while they worked on the computers. They go to computer class once a week, so by this point in the semester, they'd already learned a lot about computers. I read each little intro to them and then told them to click on the link under the intro. They knew what it meant to click on the back button, and to scroll down or up, so my job wasn't very difficult. I just helped with the reading, and the occasional double or triple click on the back button that sent them to my wiki's homepage or the school's homepage. It went really smoothly, the kids liked the extra time at the computers, and they all left the lesson knowing the four main stages of a butterfly's life cycle and the order that they go in, which was the goal of the overall lesson, and they liked the one-on one time with me and getting to use the computers.

Technology for Teachers - More Tappy Tappy, Less Walking!

A Little Something for the Disorganized:

Today I was filing collages while the kids were at lunch, when another kindergarten teacher came into the room...
"Come on over and take a look at the new computer thing that I learned about at the conference," she said.
"Ooooh! The use of technology in the classroom," I thought.
I headed right over to her room to find out what the computer thing was. The computer thing turned a new tool being tested out with a few of the teachers at the school. The first thing she showed us was that the software allowed her to enter information that someone would usually have to take to another part of the building by foot. The teacher marks whether a student is present or absent, or sends out the lunch order all from the comfort of her computer chair instead of walking around the school or asking her assistant to do so. The program also allows you to see the names and school photo of each child in the class, and allows those photos to be moved around the screen to create a seating chart. The teacher testing out the new program pointed out the fact that if a substitute came into the classroom for the first time, the kids couldn't sit in another seat or pretend to be another student, because the substitute would have their names, faces, and seat assignments right on the computer screen. The program even allows the teacher to click on a child's picture to bring up their parents' numbers, health information, emergency contact, etc. If there is an accident or a problem, the teacher no longer has to sort through note cards, files or papers, all she has to do is go to her computer and click.
I see a number of advantages to this software. First of all, every day the teacher's assistant in my classroom disappears for half an hour to bring the attendance sheet to the office, the lunch orders to the cafeteria and the library books to the library। With this new program, the teacher's assistant would not have to leave the room for half an hour, which would mean that the classroom would have two teachers in it for more time every day। In time, these minutes could really add up, and mean that more time could be devoted to small group lessons or one-on-one work with struggling students. It seems like something that could save time, and trees, in general, since things that we'd usually be fishing for in our desks or trying to wipe a coffee ring off of, would be organized for us on the computer, and I imagine that it could be expanded to help with other functions too, which could free up even more time for teaching the students instead of mucking about with other things.

Go Tappy Tappy on the Screen-a-ma-thing!

Yes, go tappy tappy, my friends. I recently had my very first experience with a Smart board, something that has existed for quite some time, but which I had had yet to see for myself। I was observing a third grade computer class learning about Malian mud cloths. The computer teacher had found an activity on the Smithsonian site that allows students to make their very own Malian mud cloth, learning about the process, the meanings of the patterns and placement in the cloth's design. She sat the kids down in front of the smart board and read to them from some websites, then went on to the activity. This was the part where I got really excited. She read the information on the screen, and then asked students to come up individually, tap on the board and make things happen. The students prepared the cloth, chose designs for different parts of the cloth, dyed the cloth, etc, all with their hands. It made it seem more like they were actually making a Malian mud cloth, because they were using their hands instead of a mouse. I instantly wanted my own Smart board, but the school only has one, and it stays in the computer lab. Still, I hope that one day, some wealthy benefactor will give one, because it was amazing to see how engaged the kids were when they had the chance to use this delightful piece of technology. It's brilliant!

Teaching is Candy... No... Cookies... And I'm A Cookie Monster!

People always want to know how I am. The checkout person at Ukrops is itching to know, my neighbors wonder, my parents entreat, my cat, well, she meows, but even people on the street need to know how I'm "doin," as they say. My grandmother once told my mother that when people ask you how you're doing, they don't really want to know. We're supposed to say "fine" or "well, thank you," not "well, I have this problem with my mother, well, not really with my mother, but, wait, sit down and I'll tell you..." Few people ever want to sit down and hear how I am, especially the checkout person at Ukrops, but if you've come to this blog, you really have no choice but to hear how I am and what I think. Clearly, if you came to this blog, you are dying to know, so, please, sit down, make yourself comfy, and I'll tell you...

Lately, I've been feeling a little stressed. Trying to juggle housework, school, plagues and locusts tires me out. Lately, I've been complaining a lot, I go on and on... and on and on... and on about my problems and everything that's wrong with the world. Not my normal upbeat self, that's for sure. But, there is one thing that has really brought me joy in my life. There is one thing that actually gets me out of bed at the ungodly hour of six or seven in the morning, and that is going to kindergarten. Kindergarten is my cookie. When classes are boring, when assignments are daunting, when the apartment is dirty, the cats need flea medicine, and my computer has just exploded, kindergarten makes it better.

Even as a baby, I was never a morning person. There are very few things for which I will willingly wake up in the early morning. When my alarm goes off at 7am my first thought is "make it stop!" However, I've cleverly positioned my alarm clock across the room from my bed, so that I have to get up to turn it off. Genius, I know. By the time I get to my alarm clock, I've either realized that it's set so that I can get started on a productive day of cleaning, running errands and doing schoolwork (in which case I return to my bed and tell myself that tomorrow I will get up early, but today I need to sleep), OR I realize that it's a kindergarten day. When it's a kindergarten day I pay close attention to what I'm going to wear, I wonder what will happen, who will be in class, and I find myself getting excited, rather than disgruntled about getting up and going out.

I enjoy chatting with my cooperating teacher and the teacher's assistant before school. I like putting the little chairs in place, making books for the kids to color, and putting important artistic creations into the 21 cubbies that line one wall. I love it when the kids start to come in with stories about their grandma, a loose tooth, a dinosaur, or a new backpack. I love going around the room helping them with their work, making comments, and chatting with kids while they work. Sure, by the end of the day, they're bouncing off the walls, stabbing each other with pencils, and creating havoc, but in the mornings they're sweet five and six-year-olds who are happy to be in school and happy to see me, and I love it when people are happy to see me. I stand there, even when they are bouncing off the walls, and wonder at just how much I like being there, how comfortable I feel, how right it all seems.

What surprises me is that I never thought about teaching until this summer. I happened to be out to lunch with a William and Mary student who lives in my hometown, and who has since become a friend, and she mentioned that she was doing the elementary education program. I responded that that was great, and that I loved kids, and how noble of her, and so on, and then she said, "why don't you apply?" I paused. Why don't I? Teaching? People teach? I wish I could say my brain was racing, but, really, I felt like a cavewoman । Simple thoughts and sentences floated in and out of my mind as I sat silently at the table. Finally, after much reflection, I was able to respond to her question. "I guess I should," I said, and so, I did.

All through the summer I said that I was only going to teach for a few years, and then go on to divinity school in Boston as previously planned. Getting certified is a way to get a job straight out of college. It's practical. It gives me a break from school. Everything made sense. The first weeks of school, before I got my placement, I was thinking the same way. Practical. A few years. Go to grad school. Then I went to my second first day of kindergarten. There, I discovered many new things, like, there is something beautiful about people who will come right up to you and ask, "who are you?" And, there is something clumsy about having to introduce yourself by your last name. It's a little, Bond, James Bond. And, little people need little chairs and little tables, and young women who are 5'10" look like giants when they sit in them, but somehow it works for me. That first day, I'll admit it, I stayed longer than I should have. I missed class. I didn't want to leave the little people in little chairs who wanted to know who I am (and perhaps, how I'm doing...).

I marveled at myself. How could something so obvious, Amaya the kindergarten teacher, have never occurred to me before? I know myself well. I study myself, judge myself, laugh at myself... me, myself, and I are all very well acquainted. How could I have missed this? I am so happy, everything feels right and in order and normal, but I can't get over how I, of all people, never knew that this was my calling. How many other people are out there who could be passionate teachers, but have no clue that that's what they want to do, because they're too distracted by "grander" things? What if Bethany had never asked the simple question, "why don't you apply?" Would I have been lost for the rest of my life? For someone who prides themselves on self-knowledge, this is troublesome. It also makes me think when we ask simple questions like, "how are you?" or "how's school?" or "when are you going to get a job and move out of your parents' house?" that we should listen to what people have to say. Simple questions can lead to extraordinary things. A simple question changed my life.

I challenge all three of the people who read this blog to pose a simple question to someone today, and see if you can't change their life for the better. Maybe you'll get a "fine" or maybe a "well, thank you, how are you?" But, you could get a "well, I have this problem with my mother, well, not really with my mother, but, wait, sit down and I'll tell you... I think I want to be an elementary school teacher, but I'm not sure and I really need to talk to someone about it, but my mom lost her cell phone." Don't you wish you'd listened before?

It's Spring Break... Should I Go to Aruba or Blog About Wireless Microphones in the Classroom?

A few days ago, while visiting my parents over spring break, I came across an article in our local newspaper about the use of wireless microphones in the classroom. The microphones and surround sound style speakers were originally used in classrooms with hearing-impaired students. The speakers are not loud, but rather the teacher's voice is heard at it's normal volume from several different places in the classroom. This would mean that even if a child is sitting in the back of the room they will hear their teacher's voice as if they were sitting in the front of the room. One of our wealthier suburbs decided to try using the system in all of their classrooms, and they found that the students have been more focused. The benefit of students' ability to hear every word that their teacher says, even if the student is talking or if there is a lot of noise in the classroom, is that students are much less likely to misunderstand directions or miss an important part of the lesson due to not being able to hear the teacher well. An expert from the PA Speech-Language-Hearing Association explains that children, unlike adults, have more trouble filling in the blanks when they miss a word or two of what their teacher is saying. When adults hear "Today we'll ____ about frogs. ____ live in the jungle, where there is a lot of rain, and it is very ____.," we can usually make some pretty good guesses that "learn," "frogs," and "hot," should fit into the blanks, but for children, especially young ones, this is a difficult or impossible task. The system is expensive, so for now, it's not going to be something we see in every classroom around the country any time soon, but prices for new and newish technologies do fall, so one can hope that sometime within the next decade, if these systems are proven to be as effective as they seem to be, all schools will be able to choose to put them in their classrooms.

I really think that this is a great technology. Most people know how aggravating it can be to need to hear what a teacher or an employer is saying, but be unable to do so. I can imagine how much kids miss when they can't hear the teacher, and would love to see something like this implemented in as many schools as possible. Although the article doesn't go into it, I also think that this sound system could be really helpful with children who have attention problems. For those of us who have ADD, it can be all too tempting to just zone out completely if you can't hear what you're teacher is lecturing about, or to simply zone out because general lecturing can be boring and the teacher might not notice our trips to la-la land anyway. If I had constantly had my teachers' voices right beside me, I think I would have taken fewer of those trips as a child.

Reinventing the Future for American Children and Their Families

This evening, I read (and watched the video for) “The Power of Partnerships” (http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_1005&key=189# ) on the Edutopia site, and it blew me away. The article tells of one of the ten schools in New York City that are taking steps to reinvent what it means to go school-- allowing kids who could easily fall through the cracks of our public school systems to have a chance to thrive.

The partnership that drives the program is between the New York City Board of Education and the Children’s Aid Society. Together, they've implemented an in-school health program that provides dental, general, and mental health care for the students at the school. After school programs allow students to participate in everything from programs that help them achieve better in reading and math to programs that allow them to build their own bicycles, or learn to play a stringed instrument. The program is available to children, and to their parents (who can even attend evening classes themselves) six days a week, from seven in the morning to nine at night, all year round.

This article is inspiring to me. Having grown up in an urban area, I saw too many of my childhood friends (some of whom were exceedingly more intelligent than myself) fail to graduate high school, because they didn't have a healthy learning, home, or after school environment. We’re all asking the question, how do we reach these communities, and stop the cycle that is costing our medical schools and teacher’s colleges some of the brightest minds in our nation? How do we address the health problems that many of these children face? How do we expose the brilliance that we know many of these at risk children have in them? Of any of the programs I've seen that have been created to address these issues, the program at IS 218 is by far the most innovative, thoughtful, and inspiring. I would love to have the opportunity to work in this kind of atmosphere—one where teachers are actually given the resources they need to help their children succeed. Anyone interested in teaching in urban schools should take a look at this video.

Technology Biography

My family purchased their first computer in 1986, which I mostly used for playing games like Reader Rabbit, Oregon Trail, Family Feud, and Jones. My mom signed the whole family up for Prodigy in 1988, which was powered by an external modem made of stone and sticks, and allowed us to send e-mails to friends and family in just a few short hours.

I was in the advanced computing class in my elementary school, in which we animated Lego’s using an Apple computer, and took private computer lessons after school. As a child, I was pretty technically savvy. I had my own camera by age four, CD playing boom box and portable CD player long before most of peers, and, of course, had access to a yellow and black display PC right in the comfort of my own home. My mom was the first person we knew to buy a bag phone (ancestor to the cell phone) in the early 90s, and we were the first family to own a video camera, which my mom bought in the mid-80s.

When I got to middle school I found more people who knew their way around computers. My class learned basic programming on PC computers, how to type, and how to use Microsoft programs. My mom bought a new computer that displayed a wider variety of colors during this time, and I switched to AOL and mastered the Internet, which wasn’t something we used on our older computer or through Prodigy.
Through all of this, my father refused to update. He never got onto the Internet (and eventually lost his e-mail address to my cat), he never watched things on the VCR, he didn’t own CDs until about 1998, and he used a manual camera from the 70s. My father was stuck in the stone age, as far as my mom and I were concerned, but no matter how much we pushed, he wouldn’t give into technology.

Then, at some point, something happened to change that. My father gained interest in the Internet and started asking me for advice. I’d come upstairs and, by applying my genius computer skills, show him how to turn his computer on and off, and how to sign-in to go on the Internet. My father was awed by the technology, and spent hours fiddling with his computer. Then, one day, his business was suddenly partially online. Then his business was only online, and he no longer relied on magazines and newspapers to advertise. Suddenly, he was learning how to create web pages using codes, he started using words that I didn’t know when he talked about computers, and he started an online news feed.

One day, I looked around and I realized that I was the last person I knew to get a cell phone, the last person to get a digital camera, the last person to join facebook, and almost the last person to get an iPod (and the people who don’t have them, don’t want them). My computer skills had somehow devolved, because I couldn’t remember how to use a Mac, write a program, or even type. All I could do on a computer is check e-mail, do some Internet searches, play a few games, and type papers. How did I go from being in the lead, to being less technically savvy than my 68 year old father? I’m not sure. But, that’s where I am today. I’m a technophobe now, and I’m behind on the latest trends in… everything. I’m usually either completely lost when I’m working with a computer, or I’ve broken the computer and have to hire a nerdy computer geek, who shakes his head and mumbles about my idiocy, to come and fix my mistakes. I’m afraid that no matter how hard I try, I will fail to learn how to use the technology that is available to me. I’d like to know how all of these things work, and I’m willing to try, but I’d be a liar if I said I was confident that I was going to understand what’s going on in class.