Mobile Devices: A Teachers Responsibility

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Getting closer to the school year is dangerous for me.  I tend to have thought after thought going through my head and I get all of these ideas to do things in the classroom and I never make the conscious effort to write them down anywhere.  Well, today, I am.  Those that follow me and others who know me understand and know my passion for using cell phones and other mobile devices in the classroom.  Today, I started examining and thinking about using these devices from a different angle. An angle where I honestly feel it is my responsibility to help my students use these devices in the classroom and to teach them how to use them responsibly.

I can hear teachers screaming now saying, “Not me, it isn’t my responsibility!”  Yes, there are many skeptical teachers out there who believe these types of devices have no place in the classroom.  Others, already feel overwhelmed with the Common Core Standards and don’t want to add one more thing to their plate.  Though teaching students how to use mobile devices may have its challenges, it doesn’t add to my existing curriculum, it enhances it.   My passion for using mobile devices goes deeper than just being excited about the latest and greatest flashy items that can be used in the classroom.

1. Students Learn Differently – I have mentioned before how students grow up with technology in their hands.  From cell phones, Ipads, Kindles, and Nooks, it is easily accessible to students.  Think for a moment if a middle schooler has a question about anything in general.  Where do you think they look for that answer?  You got it, the internet!  In addition, according to Pew Internet Studies about 75% of students ages 12-17 possess cell phones. Those cell phones are used for texting (hmm, I smell writing opportunities here), emailing, surfing the internet and accessing social media outlets.  Our language arts department adopted Schoology for the upcoming school year ( a social media site for teachers and their students).  The bottom line is we can’t shove text books in front of our kids day after day or even have them do drill and kill exercises.  The best teachers I ever had from elementary to college were the ones that kept the class or students engaged.  Mobile devices can help me as a teacher to keep my students engaged.

2. Collaboration – One of the biggest reasons I love using mobile devices in my classroom is for collaboration. Literature circles are an easy way for teachers to expose their students to numerous novels and at the same time teach the students responsibility by assigning roles to each group member.  Keeping the spirit of the Common Core in mind, I add cell phones into the mix and my students not only collaborating with technology, but now the conversation can take place beyond the walls of the classroom and students start discussing the book without any prompting by me the teacher. Social media sites like Schoology also allows the students who don’t have mobile devices, to still interact via desktop computer.  In another instance, my students can collaborate on their writing via Google Docs.  For the past two years my students have been amazed at how Google Docs works and what it can provide.  Students instantly become connected learners when they collaborate on a piece of writing by their peers.  Google Docs was awesome for the writing group my colleague and I put together this past school year.  Watching students’ writing transform and go through the entire writing process is amazing.  The finished product is no doubt better with Google Docs because of the collaboration amongst students.

3. Digital Citizenship – To me this one term brings everything into focus for me. Part of me almost thinks as teachers we all have a duty to discuss and model this for our students. Again, some teachers may give the proverbial eye roll and bark out, “What about the parents?”  I know it may sound funny, but the parents are in just as much need to learn about digital citizenship.  Last week I proposed to my principal an “Ed Tech night” where parents get to engage themselves in what their child may do during a school day with technology.  In addition, I want to discuss with parents digital citizenship and what that means.  I want to talk to them about how students are using their cell phones in inappropriate and why it is inappropriate. Furthermore, discussing with parents what cyber bullying looks like and what affects it can have on another student.  Hopefully by engaging the parent as well as the student, some issues can be eliminated and parents will have a better grasp on why I use mobile devices in my classroom.  Needless to say, my principal is embracing the idea and we are meeting about it next week.

I am not sure if my reasoning is reasonable or even understandable, but I do know I am passionate about my job, my students, and the reasons it is important to implement mobile devices into my classroom.  When I hear in the hallway how much my students love my class because of how I use cell phones, I get pumped. After all, you don’t hear students say they enjoy language arts class.

Cheers!

Grammar, A Debate We Will Have Forever

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All summer I have been writing in some capacity. I will be the first to admit, I struggle with grammar from time to time, but who doesn’t?  Grammar has been a perplexing issue for language arts/English teachers for year and years.  Some teachers may argue for a constant drill and kill approach, thinking the more that students do it, the better they will get at grammar.  Other educators let their student’s writing do the talking and examine where their weakness lie in their writing, then they plan and teach accordingly. A balance of both approaches is also used in classrooms.  Despite how you or your district take on the daunting task of hoping your students “get it”, I am here to tell you I don’t believe there is a magic spell out there for the proverbial lightbulb to click on instantly.

My lightbulb burns, at best, about as bright as lamp.  Experts are argue time and time again that we as the writing teachers aren’t doing our job and students are falling further and further behind. Of course, these “experts” are examining standardized test scores as part of their conclusion, and I am not even going to go down that road.  In addition, others believe the use of cell phone and social media is causing students to fall further and further behind because of their “text talk”.  Read this post in Education Week and let me know and others what you think.  I was outraged when I finished reading the post as were others that I have professional relationships with.  It is one more way to blame technology for shortcomings on standardized testing.  Articles such as this gives educators and districts more reason not to embrace technology.  It is bad enough students aren’t getting more of a 21st century education and aren’t connected the way they should be.  I am not saying technology is going to fix the grammar issues that seem to plaque our students.

What I want to say is I can remember all the way back to 8th grade when I had my orange grammar handbook. As a middle schooler, I was clueless from time to time when it came to things such as misplaced modifiers or using a semi-colon correctly.  There were concepts I understood and there were some I did not fully grasp.  I can also remember there were classmates that were way better at grammar than I was.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, the same thing we see with our students today.  Are there better approaches to teaching grammar? My goodness gracious, yes!  I encourage everyone to check out Jeff Anderson’s approach to grammar in his book Mechanically Inclined. I particularly like his express lane checkout approach to the writing his students do in Journals.  There are other methods available too.  Needless to say, our students aren’t going to be grammar experts by a long shot.  Yes, they should be achieving at a certain level, but grammar takes years and years to master in my opinion.  It isn’t going to happen over night and we need to stop whipping a horse that really hasn’t changed much over the years.  Every year I am looking for new ways to engage my students with grammar as should anyone else.  Some ideas work better than others, you just need to find what works for you and your class.  Furthermore, being a writing teacher, means we need to write with our students and only then will our students start taking more of a vested interest in their writing and then maybe they will start listening to those grammar lessons we give.

Cheers!

Positive Social Media

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My brain has been swirling around a lot of 21st century learning this past week and I know the only to keep my thoughts straight is to write about it.  There is no doubt social media is becoming more and more apparent in the classroom.  Though school policies may ban it from districts, teachers and students are fighting for it. Yes, I know, I may not be saying anything new, but I wanted to share what will be taking place this year in my classroom and at my school and how I came to this point.
What to choose?
Twitter, Facebook, Celly, Edmodo, Schoology, Remind 101, Etc.  I am sure I am missing a few. It is tough to decide which social media platform to choose.  It can be really overwhelming and rather perplexing.  First, I suggest choosing something you are either familiar with or you can familiarize yourself with and won’t take up too much of your time.  My wife uses Facebook. She is a band director and at the beginning of this summer she launched a group page. She know I am technology savvy and asked me how to do it and I honestly could not give her an answer because though I have a Facebook account, I am not the huge of a fan of Facebook and didn’t know how to complete the task she was asking. She trudged through, figured it out and now has a over two hundred parents and students as part of that group.  She uses it to send out reminders, answer questions, create events, and keep an open line of communication of between herself and parents.  It works for her and she is having success. For example, she had a fundraiser event and she had over forty student volunteers because her students are a part of that social media page/group.  Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t work for me.  Facebook was never intended to be used in schools and therefore, you have bullying issues and students can private message each other and that opens a dangerous door.  Other social media platforms are simpler to navigate and upload images,files, assignments, etc.
During the 2011-2012 school year, I tried to use Edmodo in my classroom. Edmodo is a great social platform that mirrors Facebook and students can dive right in and they don’t skip a beat as Facebook users. Messages can be posted along with links, assignments, etc.  The issue I have with Edmodo is that students can get off topic easily (This can be an issue with any social media website) and students can still send private messages to each other like Facebook.  My student’s wound up creating digital debris this past year because the more I worked with it, I didn’t care for it.  Teachers can belong to groups and get other ideas from teachers.  I am sure with more training and practice, I could have made it work, I just wasn’t sold 100% on it. This doesn’t mean it won’t work for other teachers.
Celly was my main social media platform I used this past year and you can read about in my other blog posts or go to the National Writing Project’s Digital Is website and read about it.
What I Am Doing 2012-2013
At the end of the school year we had a department meeting. My high school colleague introduced Schoology to myself and another language arts teacher.  Like a professional poker player, I am all in!  Schoology rocks because my students and parents can join it once I give them an access code (Edmodo does the same).  Students can NOT private message each other.  All messages are public and viewable by me the teacher, eliminating cyber bullying.  Resources can be shared amongst teachers, assignments can be uploaded to students along with links.  The greatest thing about Schoology is the fact students can upload Google docs to the site, which I have not seen with other social media platforms. I use Google Docs in my classroom and essentially had a paperless classroom by the end of the year.  We are going to be a Google Apps school this year and we will house the students portfolios there.  We agreed between the three of us we would incorporate this social media platform into our classes.  It makes sense for us to keep our lines of communication open with our students and parents and we want to properly assess our student writers by using a writing portfolio that can be passes from grade to grade.  We will at least have grade 7-11 covered using a digital portfolio.
What ever you consider or choose, just keep in mind that there will be students and parents who may not have internet access.  Also, consult with your principal and read your policies on using such a tool.  Also, create a sample student so you see things from their perspective too. Believe me, it helps! Each of these social media sites have apps for smartphones too.  I believe the Celly app is still in the beta stages. Also, investigate Youth Voices too. I will be blogging about this site this year as I incorporate into my writing lessons.  Social media is a digital writing tool that should be considered for any classroom as we teach the 21st century learner.  The collaboration can be endless with using such a tool.  It isn’t just about students sitting in front of their computer, phone, or mobile device.
Look for more blog posts this week. I am going to try and do one at least 3 times this week. Connected Learning kicks of this week too at NWP.
Cheers!

CRWP Middle School Writing Camp: Day #4

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With the final day of middle school writing tech in the books as of yesterday, I can officially say it was a huge success.  I would have completed this post yesterday, but I needed to catch up on some much needed rest.  The very last day I did a video writing prompt with the kids. We watched the Duck Song which is easily accessible on Youtube. If you type in Duck Song in the search box, you won’t have a problem finding it!  Upon completion of viewing the video, I asked the campers how the video was related to writing and what made it so appealing.  We also discussed the idea of visual literacies.  The campers really wanted to make their own video that mirrored the Duck Song, but unfortunately we didn’t have the time.  It may be something to consider for next year.

Upon completing their writing into the day with the video prompt, we had our last guest speaker.  Our last speaker was an individual who was a head of some of the food services at CMU.  He actually runs the small bagel shop in the EHS building.  He discussed with the campers what someone in his position does on CMU and how the food service works at CMU.  I myself was really amazed at the processes that took place to meet the needs of all of the CMU students when they are all on campus.  Creating surveys and reports on student population were just a few of the items he discussed dealing with the writing world.

When our speaker was done speaking, he took us on a tour of one of the dining places on campus.  It was huge!  The kids really were able to understand better what has to take place to feed over 6000 students who attend CMU.  The students really enjoyed their free ice cream too.

After returning from our tour and eating a quick lunch, we talked to the students about fast food and doing research on some of their favorite fast food restaurants or foods.  The students learned about the research process and what to look for in a trustworthy source, especially when it comes to the internet.  Though the students didn’t have an enormous amount of time because it was the last day, the students were given more specific topics dealing with food and asked to research their topic online and then report back what they find.  Some students wrote a small blurb, others showed a short video.  This lesson/activity they did is great, but I would like to introduce it to them on the first day next year and then by the end of the week they can present their findings in a digital video, podcast, or a glog of some sorts.  They could even create a cartoon on toondoo.com to create some sort of venue to show what they have learned.  It was a lot for them to do in one day.

At the end of the day, the campers worked on their piece they were going to submit for our anthology.  Each student contributed one piece to our anthology and as co-directors we are putting together an anthology which will be mailed to them.  After they were done polishing their piece and sending it to me via Google Docs, they anxiously waited for their parents and guardians to arrive.  The participants then took some time to go over all of the work they completed throughout the week and showed them Youth Voices.  This lasted about a half hour and then we came back together as a whole group and volunteers shared with the whole group.

Overall, I feel the camp went really well.  The students seemed to have a really great experience using the Ipads, listening to various speakers talk about writing, and visiting different places to get inspired to write.  It was incredible how many of the campers came up to me to say thank-you for the week.  It meant a lot to me!  In addition, there were many parents who commented on the fact that they would be back next year.  With this being our first year, there are a lot of thing we can improve upon.  On the other hand, we are hoping this group can be a solid base and all of them return next year.  I definitely want to direct again next year and incorporate Youth Voices once again too.  Thanks to all who have followed our adventure this week!

Cheers!

CRWP Middle School Writing Camp: Day #1

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It is without a doubt a whole different world when you are talking to middle schoolers about writing when they actually care and want to be writing.  All in all, the first day of middle school tech writing camp was a success. I now understand what NWP directors go through with logistics on the first day. My co-director and myself spent a good portion of the morning getting a majority of our students signed up for their Google accounts so they can use google docs.  Unfortunately the Ipads were not ready today so the students had to use their composition notebooks, which isn’t a major set back, it was just frustrating when it is a middle school tech camp and they couldn’t use the technology.

After their writing into the day was completed, we focused on argumentative writing with the campers and we used George Hillock’s Teaching Argumentative Writing and Crime and Puzzlement by Lawrence Treat.  The campers looked at two different cartoon murder scenes and wrote down what evidence or facts they saw in the picture.  Then, they used that evidence to form a rule or warrant.  If the evidence did not answer all of the questions the campers had, they wrote down those questions.  The students worked in groups on this and eventually they wrote a police report.  Before the students wrote their reports we had a detective from the CMU police department come in and speak to the campers about his job and what police reports look like and why writing is important in police work.  The students asked great questions about his profession and they asked really smart questions about the reports they were writing.  In addition to the detective, we showed a model of an actual police report that was done on a car theft.  I also showed the campers a short youtube video on writing a quality police report.  The video had to be slowed down because it went to fast, but the students were able to understand what we were asking.  When the students were done with writing their reports, all four groups shared out their report.  Next year, I am hoping they will be put into a google doc and then be shared with the other groups so they can collaborate and get feedback from their peers.

The really fun part came in the afternoon when the students got to use the digital still cameras and the digital video cameras.  The campers were instructed to make their own murder scene and take digital still pictures of the staged murder scene similar to the ones that were given to them earlier.  In addition, the campers were to take the digital video cameras and record a narrative that would explain the scene for others to follow.  Before the students were allowed to wander the building and stage their murder scenes, they needed to develop and write out their plan for what they wanted to do.  Furthermore, they needed to write out a script for their narrative. Once their scripts and plans were approved, they were able to start staging their scene.  What I want to do is load their images and videos into youthvoice.net.  Then, I want the camp participants to go to youth voices and watch other groups videos and look at their pictures.  After viewing other groups work, I want them to comment on their work. I have to upload their work tomorrow morning to the youth voices website.

The last item I had participants complete today was write a short reflection on the days events and discuss what they might have learned about argumentative writing, visual literacies, writing as a whole, etc.  Reflecting on my own work today,  I want students to have more time to play with the digital cameras.  I would also like to bring them in props to use next year (if we go this route).  It would also be beneficial for the participants to have more time to plan for their murder scene and script.

Again, it was a very successful day. I feel that it went well and it extremely fast.  Tomorrow we are exploring poetry and we have a poet lined up to come in and speak to the students.  It should be a blast!

Cheers!

Writing Reflections

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On Thursday of this past week I asked my 8th graders to reflect back on their writing they have done this year.   Earlier in the week as I was developing my lesson plans I began to really think about the writing we have done this past year.  As I do every other year, I began to feel guilty because I was thinking I didn’t assign enough writing for them to do throughout the year.  So, when I described the reflection assignment for my students, we composed a list on the board.  If I was thinking about it, I would have taken a picture of the list and just posted the picture, but instead I will have to compose the list again here. Below you will see all of the writing I have done this year with my 8th graders.

1. This I believe Essay – Posted to our classroom wiki.

2. Alternate endings for The Giver by Louis Lowry (Students could do a traditional writing, Glog, or Comic Strip.

3. 25 word story

4. Sentence in a day

5. Compare/Contrast Essay between characters in The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

6. Glog or Book Cube for Christmas break book (See previous post I have written).

7.Celly writing – writing journal prompts and collaboration with cell phones

8. Journal Writing on various topics every day

9. Extended journal writings – Students went back through previous journal writings and found ways to make them more detailed and better.

10. 50 word stories

11. Paper Tweets – a two day lesson on Twitter and tweeting.

12. Biographies – Posted to our classroom wiki.

13. 8th Grade Reflection writing

14. Police Reports – Modeled after George Hillocks Argumentative Writing Book

15. Musical Chair Writing – Post a comment or send me an email if you want information about this activity.

16. Article of the Week – (Title does not reflect the fact I didn’t do this every week)

17. Science Fiction Stories

18. Ticket out the door writing responses.

Now for the sake of time and not boring my few readers, I will just say there are a few more writing activities that  I have not posted.  When I reflect back on the amount of writing my students did this year, I have nothing to feel guilty about.  My students definitely did more writing than I did grading.  Kelly Gallagher argues this in his books.  We as teachers do not need to be grading everything our students do.  There were many occasions my students turned in writing and it was graded on a formative scale rather than be a summative grade. What I really noticed is how much digital writing my students have done this year.  My students wrote on Glogster, toondoo, used Celly phones in class, they used Google Docs/Drive and helped create a paperless classroom and used it regularly for collaboration.

The other thought I had was about academic rigor.  The Common Core Standards essentially helps guide teachers to develop more rigor in our classroom.  I still believe my students can do more writing and I will push my students to do more writing next year and the years to come.  If you want any information on any of the listed writing above, feel free to email me or make a comment.

Cheers!

Students Viewing Writing Through Different Lenses

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The last two days in my 8th grade classroom have made me sweat profusely. I have been very intense with my two groups of 8th graders, while we discuss compare/contrast papers. As any language arts teacher know, teaching writing correctly takes a lot of hard work and preparation on our part. I started yesterday by handing to my students an exemplary example that was provided by the Common Core Standards website (corestandards.com). I discussed with my students that the student who wrote the paper was given an assignment to compare and contrast two different characters from two different genres, a movie and a book. I then instructed my students to do nothing but read the piece of writing and have a “conversation” with the writing. I wanted them to ask questions, write down things they noticed, etc. As my students were finishing up their reading I posted two simple questions on the whiteboard:

#1. Underline where the writer of the essay tells you the reader, what the essay is about. (AKA – underline the thesis).

#2. Circle any transitions the writer uses.

As our time was up yesterday, the students needed to finish the 2 items for homework. My last class of the day exited and there were a lot of disgruntled students who blurted out the dreaded term, “I don’t get it!” One of my students approached me afterwords and wanted to understand better was I wanted. He was completely lost by what he read and didn’t understand what the paper was even about. I then knew the students had not looked at the essay from the lens I wanted them to. They were reading it for understanding and they were reading it for comprehension. This was not why I wanted my students to read it. My students were reading it with the wrong lens.

Needless to say, 8th grade language arts class was very intense today after what I deemed a failed class yesterday. Today’s class was much more productive as I discussed with students that we have to put on different lenses or hats when we look at writing and literature. I told them as important as it was to get a general understanding of what the paper was about, they needed to put on their teacher or critique hats and ask themselves the question, “what makes this a quality compare/contrast essay?” After some very intense group work today analyzing the writing and my 8th graders finally putting on the right lenses, I felt very good about the conversations I had with each group. My students seemed to have a better grasp of what I was trying to accomplish.

As teachers we definitely need to guide and teach our students how to look through those different lenses. As sad and disheartening as it is to say, students need to be able to understand what makes a piece of writing exemplary for their own assignments in class, but also for standardized testing. I am proud of my students for working through the challenges we faced these last two days. I am sure we will encounter more bumps on our trip this year.

Cheers!

Being Productive

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Today’s 8th grade class was rather interesting. I began class by reading orally to them and then we did our writing into the day. I don’t have a lot of rules for my students when we do writing into the day. First, they must write the entire time. Second, I tell them they need to not worry about spelling, grammar, etc. Third, they can write about anything and not just the given topic for the day. Finally, they need to ignore the critic in their heads. My 8th graders generally write for 7-10 minutes per day. We then take time to share our writing. We share many different ways in class. Some days students just stay in their seats and share. Other days, we get into a circle on the floor and share. In addition, I sometimes have students share with two or three other students.

My focus for the first 9 weeks was to try and build a community of writers where students can trust one another when it comes to their writing. Today, something told me it must be working. After the students were given the allotted time to write, I decided to let the students just share from their seats. I figured since it was Monday the students wouldn’t be too motivated to share. After all, the topic was about experiences with public transportation. In both of my 8th grade sections we spent about 20 minutes sharing our writing. Yes, I write with my students too. Some teachers grade papers, I write with my students. My intentions for each class period was to simply take no more than five to seven minutes to share, not take 20 minutes. Let me tell you, it was worth it. I loved hearing the student’s tone in their writing and seeing their genuine excitement to share out loud. Furthermore, the gasps of disappointment when I didn’t call on a student first or right away. This did not leave me with a lot of time to discuss our next formal writing assignment. As a matter of fact, we got as far as discussing topics for the compare/contrast paper and that was it.

Most teachers or individuals would see my class time as being unproductive and what I did a waste of class time. I, however, feel it was one of my most successful class periods yet. Why? My students engaged themselves when it came to writing today and they were confident enough to share their writing with their classmates. They were excited about their writing. Productivity doesn’t have to be measured in quantity, but rather in the quality. Here’s to a productive day in anyone’s classroom!

Cheers!

Follow me on twitter @Jeremybballer

Why I Write – Part 1

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I don’t think it is remotely possible to complete a blog about my passion for writing and answering the simple question; why do I write? I assure you this will be one of many blog posts about why I write.

To begin with, I write because it is my release. It is the place where I can go to when I need to vent about anyone and anything without actually having to do it orally. It essence it is my therapy. The pages of my writing journal are always willing to listen to me and those pages are constantly talking back to me when I revisit my journal to read what I have written. Writing is my best friend. Furthermore, I see writing as my canvas where I can create narratives, poetry, fiction, memoirs, blogs, texts, etc. The idea that I can express myself in more than one genre gives me goosebumps. Throw all the digital tools into my writing holster and you will see multiple digital pieces to be shared with everyone.

Besides using writing as my own release and palette, it is important to look at my educational purpose behind my writing. Since I can remember I have always valued writing and how important it is for all students to learn how to write and how to write well. I still believe this whole heartedly. I used to think I had to teach my students about 5 paragraph essays because it was on our state mandated test. I stood in front of my classes barking at them to have an introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. I should of listened to what my heart was telling me and taught my past students about how texting is writing, what a digital story is comprised of, and how to write a blog. All of these examples may not have been possible then to teach, but nonetheless. Truth be told, I feel as if I have failed some of my past students.

I believe there is some sort of witty saying out there about how one must fail to learn and move on to success. However the saying is supposed to be written out or expressed, I feel I am making my students more successful because I am not only teaching my students the importance of writing, but I am teaching them different venues and genres to express themselves. My students are actively engaged in writing every day in my classroom because I have opened up a world that is much bigger than 5 paragraph essays. Included in this new idea of teaching, I am doing something I very rarely did before and that is how I show my students my own writing and my thought processes that I have as I go through my writing. I can’t tell you how much farther I get with my students and their writing.

Okay, now that I have rambled I want to express how I came to some of these points in my writing career. I write and I have transformed my writing because of the renewed confidence I have due to going through the summer institute at CMU. The Chippewa River Writing Project, the satellite site of the National Writing Project has given me something I can never forget. That something is confidence, passion, and desire to be a writer and to teach writing. I owe where I am at as a teacher and a professional now, to the writing project. I have a raging fire inside me every day that wants to write and be heard. I have been shown that I have a talent and others want to hear about it. This is why I write!

Cheers!