Thoughts on Training Effective Teachers

My husband and I had an interesting conversation on the way home from our annual Thanksgiving trip, a five-hour drive through Kansas and Missouri. We had visited some old friends with our daughter, a Teach For America alumni who fulfilled her corps program in an inner-city Dallas school and has continued to teach after her obligation ended. A couple of times during our visit the need for changes in education were discussed. All of this stayed in the back of my mind and as we drove home, I brought them back up.

You know what I'd change first about teacher preparedness? Universities need to adapt the strategies TFA uses. I'd put student teachers through a 5-week boot camp in a difficult, challenging environment. It would be sink or swim and they'd learn classroom management and lesson planning through constant feedback in a real environment. My daughter learned more about classroom management and lesson planning in her TFA boot-camp weeks than I did in my focused undergraduate courses. Their model is simple: recruit natural leaders to a profession that tests their skills and provide them resources to better equip students for college and career by using teaching as leadership strategies. The same model of preparedness is true for the KIPP organization.

Next change I'd make is the school year. Students do not need 2 months off in the summer and teachers don't either. There's too much enticement in a job that provides such a vacation. Lengthening the school year would filter out anyone from choosing a career for its vacation time. Hit the curriculum hard for 6-8 weeks, then have a breather to re-organize and re-think planning and collaboration for the next unit of learning. Learning is tremendous when the time is used effectively. When the time in class is used for deeper understanding, student achievement is distinct, as noted by the National Center on Time and Learning.

Both of these changes require passion and dedication. We have too many teachers that haven't developed a passion for their career. I have aspiring teachers that visit my classroom periodically, and I can spot the dispassionate ones immediately. I'm unable to draw them out when I discuss their interest in education. Lack of enthusiasm and inquiry from a student about the profession is a red flag. This is always very worrisome to me. The classroom is no place for timid leaders. No teacher is perfect, but we should always strive to become better at what we do on a daily basis, and curiosity on how that occurs should be natural for someone passionate to the career.

Finally, I would require all teachers to become competent at teaching students to use technology to personalize their learning. Personalize the tool while it's in the hands of the student. Technology best serves the learner when the learner uses it, not the teacher. Instructors must understand the tool, of course, but understand it also from the student's perspective as a constructive and necessary element in the curriculum. Without using tools of construction and collaboration, we cannot provide students the preparation they need for careers that demand technology skills, which nowadays means most careers. 

Replacing Textbooks via Google Apps

You may have read in my previous posts that we've adopted GAFE at our school and how it's affecting my language curriculum for 6th-8th graders. As we study units to address mechanical/grammar issues while blogging, I create a presentation and then continuously add to the presentation (assignments) as we move along. The students add their work as well. Once we do a group-edit of each individual's work on the presentation, the student can make changes to the same work on their website and I assess it from there. This got me to thinking...


I really should be videotaping my introductions of the individual lessons, the group-edit discussion, and then embedding them into the Google Doc so students can reflect on the lesson and what was learned. Once the unit's complete, I will have a recording of the topic, our work on the topic, and the reflection we made. All in all, a great way to teach a lesson by example, and a perfect way to catch a student up when they're absent. It will also give me feedback on my own teaching skill and issues I may need to fix before opening the topic next year.


But the real need falls under the preparation for our goal of not purchasing textbooks in the future. We've discussed having only laptops and tablets for high school students next year. I imagine there will be trickle down with middle school students. What will replace textbooks if we don't prepare now? The Google Docs will document all of the lesson if I will take the time to embed videos of our progress. Now, to find the tripod...

A Learning Activity for Editing

Reference my previous blog Google Apps for Education to better understand how we're using Google Doc presentations.

We made our presentation "fat" when each student added to it the sentence they'd constructed about serial commas.
 Posted was Maya Angelou's and my example:

His room smelled of cooked grease, Lysol, and age. 

--Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

Hector's room smelled of gym socks, Ranch Doritos, and lies. 

--Mrs. Johnson (2011)

I then asked them to follow this model, which was written on the presentation:

 (Place) smells like ______, ______, and _____." 
Please make the smells distinctly different. Cite as shown (Your name, 2011)

A handful of students got it perfectly--they noticed the difference in the examples and the model, changed "smelled" to "smells," used a place, and wrote a list of distinct smells. Another handful didn't focus on the model but got the place and distinct smells. And there were some that didn't use a place but a thing that was not a place, or they didn't use distinctively different aromas. 

I pulled the presentation up and we critiqued each one in a very nice, constructive way, verbally high-fiving those that got it perfectly. I wasn't trying to trick them; I wanted them to learn to focus on what was asked of them. Was this an eye-opener? Of course. 

But here's the kicker and I didn't expect this: by the third or fourth slightly incorrect sentence, students immediately volunteered what was wrong with the sentence they'd written as soon as it was read aloud, without my calling on them. They wanted to address it first, they wanted to show they understood what had happened. Now, you may think this was a cruel way to introduce them to writing for an audience. But they were all engaged, and not one student was distracted from the activity. We applauded the sentences that followed the model and enjoyed the huge variety of literal and figurative smells. I then asked them to make changes to these same sentences they had posted on their individual web pages to receive full credit.

The ensuing discussion got lively as some that followed the model claimed their due, while some woefully admitted they had rushed through the assignment. It looked like a very simple writing task, but they'd gotten it a bit wrong. I reminded them that this happens to everyone, but that they had to sharpen their focus when writing for an audience. I explained that as self-editors we have to be the first to notice our flaws, we have to continuously work on our writing skills and reflect on them after completion. 

I can remember writing essays for undergraduate courses on the old onion-skin paper that some professors insisted upon. Inevitably, three-fourths towards the bottom of a typed page, I would make a typo, and have to yank it out and start over. Students today do not have to do this, and they should be happy that technology has evolved as it has. But that doesn't mean they can't continue to reflect on their writing, nor does it mean they should read through their finished product once and be done with it. Blogging allows us to save, make changes, preview, and come back again later to write or change some more. Should we have higher expectations for students because of technology? I think we should. There are so many tools built in that help: spell-check, grammar assistance, thesaurus, dictionary, and so on. We can ask them to be thorough. We don't have to be ruthless, but we must ask them to examine once, reflect, and examine again until they develop the intrinsic motivation to write well for an audience or just for themselves. Digital tools offer them the ability to examine deeply, alter their work when needed, and make the best of their efforts in a painless fashion.

And now I welcome your thoughts on this activity. Was it too cruel? Was it definitive college/career preparation? What do you think?

Google Apps for Education

Ready for tremendous success for both students and teacher? Where should I start?

I'll start with me, as it has changed the way I approach my language course for 6th-8th grade.  Using three different resources--Everyday Editing and Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson and The Grammar Plan Book by Constance Weaver--I plan to attack the grammar within writing, mainly directed at student blogging. Using Google in our domain lets me send students presentations of topics. This week it's the study and practice of serial commas. I made a presentation doc and shared it with the students so they could add their practice sentences and cited example sentences from literature. Now they can add to the presentation when it's convenient, it can be pulled up for discussion, and we can learn from each other. I like this, as it makes the students collaborators to the curriculum. I can also send them extra practice documents (old-fashioned worksheets in digital form) via email if they need supplemental practice.

For the students, Google Apps is a fantastic opportunity to use digital tools for communication. Writing blogs and emails helps them focus on writing standards. They've been developing webpages with Sites and writing blogs. Next, I'll ask them to comment on classmates' publications, which will hopefully reinforce what we've discussed for writing: encourage conversation (comments) from readers.

Today I received an email from a middle school student, requesting that I open up the restrictions on our email domain for a brief time so she could email photos from her phone to insert on her Google Site. Students motivated to work on a Saturday evening? I'm all for that! And note: she's already got her own digital tool to use. Google Apps costs nothing yet adds so much to the learning process.

Another exciting feature of Sites is the ease of use. Students can insert links, images and videos with hardly any help. Once they discover the simplicity, they madly support their topics with interesting outside sources. The impact they can add is tremendous. I'm letting them explore topics they enjoy--personalized learning opportunities create lifelong learners and if that's what they become, I've done my job.

Next up will be the collaborative elements of Google. Teams will be formed for project-based learning. When our global contests research begins, they'll be prepared for teamwork. Google Docs gives them forms/surveys for collecting data on the fly, and they can then graph the results.

Are you considering Google Apps for Education at your school? Don't wait any longer--the engagement factor and simplicity makes the learning curve seem negligible. It can act as an ongoing e-portfolio, so unlike papers thrust forgotten into folders or worse yet, into the trash can. Invest the time for the digital literacy your students need.

Integrating QR Codes

At our previous monthly staff meeting, the principal asked us to brainstorm three topics, and one of those was ideas for school improvement. Our early childhood director noted that her church used sticker codes for young child pickup by parent. The child was "stickered" upon arrival to church and the parent given a matching sticker, placed in the appropriate class for the church service, and then picked up as the sticker was matched by the parent. She wondered if we could also do this at our school. As an early childhood worker, she doesn't know all of the students that come to our after-school care, and this sometimes concerns her as to what allergies the child might have or if all adults picking up the child were approved ones. She definitely has a wonderful idea that we can implement using current technology at no cost.


QR (quick response) codes use smart phone technology. Here's a Common Craft video explaining them. Lee Kolbert shares this and other ideas on her blog about QR codes in education. I've brainstormed how I'm going to use them in the classroom which I'll share in a later writing.


For application to the early childhood director's concerns, QR codes will allow teachers on-the-fly access to pertinent student information. And while it sounds all Big Brother, the goal is to protect the student by giving teachers in charge of unfamiliar students access to important data. If we have a student with life-threatening allergy to a food or insect, the adult in charge that day can find out instantly with a phone snap to the child's code. 


I tried out some resources to creating a code for a student. qrstuff.com provides elements in a wide range of formats. We can implement QR's by making a table of student codes on either a web page or a printout sheet in a folder. The after-school care provider can then access the code of any child she is unfamiliar with for instant information. As our school grows, this gives us an additional safety feature to protect children from unwarranted pickups and access to emergency contacts without stringing through time-negating activities. All that is needed is a smart phone with a QR code reader application and codes made from free resources. 


Mary Beth Hertz at Edutopia has some more ideas about how QR codes can be used in the classroom. Read more here.


How will you use QR codes? How will my students use them? I'm picturing all kinds of ways we can implement these in education, but it necessitates smart phones in the classroom, which is another idea whose time has come.


The QR at the top of this post is a link to my blog. Try it out for yourself!

First Week of School Reflection

It's done. The first week of school tells me a lot about how the school year will unfold: which students already need more guidance / 1:1, which students have matured tremendously over the summer and are motivated to learn, and which students I can influence.

We have many new students this year that have transferred in from other schools. I've noticed a particular distinction for many of them. They really care about their education and they want to please. Because they attend a private school, their parents pay tuition. That's an investment. These students may have transferred because they had to deal with bullying issues. They may be undergoing a shift in their families (i.e. a new parent union, new home or a divorce). I want them to have an easy transition and I don't want them to worry about pleasing me too much. Overall, I want to nurture their fresh start, and that means making them comfortable in an unfamiliar setting. One of my first jobs is to make them understand it's okay to question authority. I really don't mind having it pointed out I made a typo on a document or that the date something is due was changed and then I forgot I changed it. Forgetfulness is a bit of my makeup because I try to do too much, especially the first week. My human flaws are okay to notice as long as they learn how to do it with either #1: humor or #2: respect. This is a teaching moment not covered in textbooks, but so important in human relationships.

We got a lot accomplished this first week. My 5th-8th graders developed their Google email accounts by adding their classmates to their contacts. They learned email etiquette. They learned about passwords and privacy. They created a Google site from a template and tweaked it so that it's theirs. This alone is valuable because Sites makes it necessary to understand the different components and where to find them: navigation, layout, linking, sharing, and adding pages to the navigation menu. When we began writing code for contests, they will understand site layout much better because they've spent some time under the hood of the engine.

We started blogging and learned much about the art of reflection. This is more than a standard technology task--it's a writing task that necessitates outlining their thoughts. There are so many standards addressed from blogging and this is a great opportunity for me to really know how they feel. It also helps me understand how they can improve their writing and I develop my language lessons to meet the weaknesses that are apparent.

Team caption applications were returned all week from students that want to be leaders in technology learning. They love helping. I've promised them a sponsorship when they go to high school: if they are my helpers now, I will write recommendations to organizations when they leave our school or when they apply for a job. I encourage them to enter the field of education. They are my special students for which I have the most fond of memories because they often come back and help tutor my students once they need high school service hours. I love getting to watch them develop their teaching skills and having the opportunity to talk with them from that standpoint.

Has it been a good week? Yes, most definitely. I love my job and it continues to make me grow both as a teacher and as a person. Perfection may not be possible, but progress always is.

Rewards and Pitfalls of Student Emailing

Friday night I sent this email to teachers:

Please check often for emails from your students. I will work with them on not using so many emoticons and using a salutary and closing signature. They will be enthralled at first and email you often, I'm sure. Only 5th-8th graders will be able to email and they can only email each other and the teachers; restrictions have been put into place so they cannot email outside our domain. Please report any emails that cause you concern. The 6th graders began on Friday and I think by Monday evening they will all be actively emailing.


I was prompted to send out this email because by Friday evening I had several emails from students that were very excited to have the opportunity to use email. ("I love Google!" "Thank you for giving us Google!") I could tell that they would soon be spending a lot of time making contacts to establish camaraderie with fellow students and teachers alike.

This knowledge is quick-step with trepidation. From my past experience using Moodle with students, most of them want to create digital relationships, but they haven't figured out quite yet how to do that. Some will send repetitive messages that are mainly aimed at getting a reply. If I answer, they have touched base. It doesn't really matter that we are not saying anything new in the back and forth; it matters that they are heard. This, I think, is the heart and soul of why we need to give students email. The opportunity to understand how human relationships work, and the very deep need to give students a voice with current technology is necessary. They see their parents using email and they want to use it, too. It's my job to see they use it properly by addressing etiquette. I want them to represent themselves in the best light possible.

By Friday evening I understood that some students didn't know what the email subject line is for. How great is that feedback? Emailing means they must examine the purpose of the missive and let the receiver know the purpose on their subject line. Casual SMS doesn't offer that. This is a great precedent activity for writing topic sentences; a learning activity already in place that will help me later. I hadn't realized that by-product.

Other topics for which I must rapidly make decisions: How will I address using emoticons and English standards? Should I use behavior standards or grade standards for emailing? Should that even be an on-going directive? Will I directly contact them if they send me emails over and over again about the same message, or will I just discuss it in class?

If you have any suggestions, please make your comments here. I'd be interested to hear your opinion and/or your experience.

My Top 10 Tools for Learning

Pearltrees--visual social bookmarking with the look of concept mapping
Evernote--screen capture and notebooks all rolled into one tool that syncs with desktops and mobiles
Google Docs--collaborate and share word processing docs, spreadsheets and surveys
Google Reader--RSS feed your favorite blogs and news feeds
Google Sites--easy web publishing
Kidblog--managed student blogging platform
Webspiration--2.0 concept mapping by Inspiration
Dropbox--collaborate and share files
SchoolTube--moderated video sharing
Twiducate--moderated social platforms for students

Young Readers Club

I got an idea for creating a student-driven content about reading. What might happen if students had a forum to review books they'd read, discuss genres, and reflect on their reading? Would it generate more interest and expand Accelerated Reader's read-for-points system? I hope to put this into action for the 2011-12 school year.   Here's a sample flow chart to pitch it. Look for more about this in September.

Growing a Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

I've been doing something all my life; blind to the fact there was a phrase to describe it. PLE is a term that's been bounced around in educational technology for the past few years and I hadn't paid much attention to it until the past few months, even though I've always had PLE's, and I've created opportunities for my students and my own children to have them.

I grew up in the era when McDonald's was the only fast food and even it wasn't easily available. Everyone cooked. I was allowed in the kitchen at an early age and wanted to learn how to cook better than average, although I knew I didn't want a career in cooking. Growing older, I asked other cooks a lot of questions and worked in a restaurant a couple of summers. Cutting out recipes, buying cookbooks, watching cooking shows on TV, and experimenting in the kitchen developed my cooking abilities--a PLE in action. Surrounding myself with opportunities to learn was my PLE.

Fast-forward to now: It's amazing how many resources the Internet provides for people with hobbies. I can literally find any published recipe in a click or two; it's usually free. Connection to millions of people with the same interest has multiplied my cooking PLE beyond what I could have ever imagined in my youth.

This summer I made a personal commitment to expand my teaching PLE through a PLN (network). On Twitter, I searched for global experts in educational technology and followed their posts. I connected to many others in the field using LinkedIn, followed discussions on a daily basis and downloaded several digital literacy books from Amazon (most authors now share their Twitter and blog). I expanded my RSS feeds in Google Reader, read some amazing blogs and gave myself the opportunity to view multiple perspectives about what's happening--incredibly fast-- in ed tech. In June I took a huge breath, jumped in an ocean, and now I'm surfacing: refreshed, renewed and really, really excited about helping my students create their own PLE's with some crazy-free digital tools out there.

On the list:

• Pearltrees--social bookmarking; here's mine
• Google Apps for Ed--includes Reader for RSS feeds and sharing features within most the apps
• Spicynodes--non-linear concept mapping with collaborative abilities
• Kidblog--moderated blogging
• Twiducate--discussion forum / online space
• Wikispaces--free web publication

I've chosen the word "Growing" in the title of this blog for a definite reason. We know a child learns best when nurtured through the growing progress. Look at this amazing model by a 7th grade science student. There is opportunity right now to move massive information in our classrooms. We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that younger and younger children have devices for social media placed in their hands by parents. Using tech with students means also guiding them into a PLE. Generally speaking, I think if students are engrossed in learning "good stuff" they're interested in, they won't be distracted by "bad stuff"--the kind that surfaces when they're bored. Take this chance to prove it by giving them constructive environments to develop their own PLE.

Student Blogging: It's Time You Began

One of the roadblocks to teaching children how to blog is that many of us teachers don't know how to do it ourselves. Should that be a requirement? Not necessarily. Teachers need to embrace the authenticity that is derived from blogging, though, and make that their goal. Kids need to write, (we all know that) and blogging provides a great venue. I won't dive into the enormous topic of why you should have students blog due to the exhaustive supportive reasons you can find online if you search for the cognitive whys--the purpose of this blog is to persuade you that it's time to quit postponing what you should be teaching.

Ask your students: Do you read online? Do you have a Facebook or Twitter account (or any other) in which you have dialogue with many people? Do you SMS / IM with people? Do you follow any online magazine or blog? Chances are they will answer "yes" to at least one of those questions; middle school students may surprise you by answering yes to all of them. Want to make this conversation more interesting? Ask those same questions in an online survey (Google Form), then review the questions with students and reveal the answers statistically. Then you will have support for why students need to practice their online voice + share information they are really interested in learning about (themselves) + a quick lesson in stats if you want to squeeze that into the lesson.

So, what's stopping you from having students blog? I bet they're the same reasons that stopped me initially. Someone will be hurtful, there are privacy issues, some students will refuse or barely try, and I bet most teachers ask themselves these two: With what (safe) platform? and About what topics? How big an investment is this, anyway, to teach blogging?

First of all, there are plenty of platforms where you can set up a class, moderate student blogs, and then publish them after review. Kidblog and Edublogs are two of the most popular. That solves the privacy issues because you can control how student information is viewed and moderate hurtful or bullying comments. Visit their sites to explore how they work but rest assured that they make student blogging incredibly easy.

Second hurdle: what to write about. There are plenty of resources for ideas. Here's a great one that Miguel Guhlin shared in his blog Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: Stuff to Keep, and I've written about this before myself with Visualize the Web and The Digital Writing Workshop. Students initially need you to lead the way on topics, but then turn them loose to explore their personal interests.

Don't stifle them by too-strict writing standards (ignore a typo, non-capitalized proper noun, or misused comma). Severe standards can lead to "shy" writing; they'll be so afraid of penalization that they will write minimally. Use writing models that demonstrate great writing for an editing lesson. Focus on changing what students know by showing them great examples. Jeff Anderson addresses this beautifully in Everyday Editing, one of the best books I've read about teaching students how to edit. (Here's an interview with Jeff at Education News.) I begin every school year with a couple of brief writing assignments that carry no grading assessment for the express purpose of evaluating what each student needs to address to improve individual writing. Anderson additionally explores this in depth with Mechanically Inclined.

Your personal investment as a teacher I can't really help you resolve, but I want to encourage you. Find one or two bloggers you enjoy following. Share that with your students. Try blogging yourself. Once you blog, you'll realize how important it is to reflect and most importantly, you'll see the benefits of blogging--you must address a topic, demonstrate understanding, and map how you'll write (opener, main content, closer--my processes for this blog). The subject matter is not nearly as important as the motivation when it comes to writing. We need to allow blogging for the pure pleasure of providing student expressiveness.

Visualize the Web

Do you like concept maps? I do because I'm a "visual learner." I read a rather funny Twitter back and forth between two people the other day about in which one stated "We are all visual learners, so quit calling yourself that!" Funny and accurate. 

Concept maps were new to me before I began my M.Ed., and I fell in love quickly with Webspiration. I have found that it is a difficult transition for students to go from traditional outlining to concept mapping but Pearltrees is going to bridge that for me in the fall. Read this article to learn how it's different from other bookmarking tools like your web browser or Diigo.

My plan is to implement Pearltrees as students use their RSS feeds (via Google Reader) to explore topics of interest for their writing activities. As they find sites they want to bookmark, they'll create a pearl for that site attached to a pearltree, which represents the topic, and they'll share that with me either through Pearltrees, blog, text, or email. Once they've mastered organizing pearltrees (visual folders), they should understand concept mapping by simple osmosis. From there I can introduce c-mapping for writing outlines. I think using Pearltrees will be an eventful way to make concept mapping a no-brainer.

The Siren Call of New Digital Tools

Most people might begin their 51st birthday glumly, but mine began very, very well. I headed downstairs straight to the coffee machine, stood and waited until I got a cup, (literally, a fire would have to break out for me to consider leaving) and then I sat down to my laptop in the comfortable armchair. This is the same chair in which my mother graded English essays during my childhood. It has 10-inch arms. Why don't they make chairs like this anymore?

First check was my Google Reader RSS. Browsing through Tech & Learning magazine's feed, a link caught my eye. Here it is for your enjoyment: TeachersFirstEdge. But wait, finish reading this first.

This site holds the same intention I have for my own site (tinyurl.com/lkjohnson), and that is to provide a resource for teachers. There are several reasons why the Teacher's First Edge page is great. It can be searched by grade level. The digital tools are cutting edge (I don't have that kind of network). It's well-organized and well-stocked. I couldn't control my ADD, which insisted I explore every single link and Don't forget to share this stuff! raced through my head.

So here I was simultaneously clicking through links, reading, checking them out, opening up my own site to document, and Twittering about my great find. One page would load and I would open another while it loaded. I barely heard my daughter when she came downstairs and said "Happy birthday!" I think she even had to say it twice. She began drifting out of the room and I finally answered, "I'm so excited! You can't believe this technology!" 

"Did you get it?" she asked. What? Oh, she must have asked me, "Where did you get it?" I rapidly began explaining my find to her without taking my eyes of the laptop screen. Chelsea's little slip of the tongue went unnoticed and I had to disappointingly quit within a half hour for the birthday plans we'd made. Cut to the rest of the day: I went to the city, shopped for clothes, got a pedicure, and ate out with my sister, daughter and parents. These were the activities we'd planned. All day long I'm thinking I can't wait to get back and keep checking out all those digital tools...

At evening dinner with the rest of my family, I unwrapped an iPad2, explaining Chelsea's slip. Instant absorption. I have bounced back and forth between it and the above site for days. My birthday was last Sunday, today is Friday, and I'm still out on my technology island. I'm running the house, barely. I really need to work on next year's curriculum but I need to explore all these new digital tools first. This is the thought I've had running through my head for 5 days now.


It's unsettling that emerging technology does this to me. I often wonder if technology is most addictive to ADD people like me or if those of us with it are naturally drawn to it. I get annoyed when I can't work as long with new digital tools as I want. I get annoyed when people prevent me from exploring them. I think maybe I'm not fun company to be around while I answer technology's siren call. My next thoughts are If I'm this way as an adult, how must students who haven't had as much practice at disciplining their time deal with it? How often should we be implementing new tools? How does this affect Web 2.0 education? And shouldn't we explain our purposes? Are we accountable? (A rhetorical question, of course.)

To address the teaching implications, I do need to allow more time for students to explore new tools without directives, but I also need students to understand when I call for exploration to end. I don't think exploration time looks too good on my lesson plans (Wednesday: explore Psykopaint) or to a classroom visitor ("What are you doing?" "Oh, we're playing around with Psykopaint.") However, I learn from my students often. I don't have time to understand every nook and cranny of a new tool before I've understood the possible impact it may have on their learning (engagement impact is in there, but that's a happy coincidence when it happens). Is it a constructive tool? What are its creative and authentic possibilities? These are the criteria that technology teachers must address. When you are at funding's edge and it's tight, you have to make certain decisions. Teaching exploration can be a good thing (rubrics keep it controlled), and we also must discuss with parents, teachers, and students the benefits of the tool while we're at it. We should share why we use it and how to recognize a good one, because these tools I'm going crazy with today will be different ones in five years. 

Evernote

I grew up with grocery lists dictated by my mother. Once I was on my own, it was paper slips plunged into a pocket--any pocket--and it often remained there until the garment's next washing. With the advent of mobile phones, I had a built-in memo pad and this was much more helpful because I took care not to wash my phone. But I still relied on sticky notes if I was working on my computer (phones out in class is frowned upon) and these have a way of becoming lost as well.

But this month I found the answer to going paperless. It's Evernote and it's free. The ability for Evernote to automatically sync to a computer or cell without prompting makes it a wonderful digital tool. I can spontaneously make notes whenever I need, wherever I am, and I can also capture website pages.So, when I consider how much Evernote will keep me on track, my thoughts automatically turn to my students. 

The kids that always forget the assignment, reading, note from home? Make them use Evernote. In fact, since all my students have computers/mobiles outside of school and I teach my language class on the lab computers, Evernote is the perfect exchange for assignment books. We're giving it a whirl this fall and I'll get back to you on its acceptance. I'm pretty sure it will be a winner.

Language Arts Educators Balance Text-Only Tactics with Multimedia Skills

How can we adjust our traditional language classroom to create authentic digital literacy? Take a look at this article in Education Week..

To give you a brief synopsis, multiple educators around the U.S. are featured by explaining and analyzing how they transform their traditional teachings in language towards a digital environment. It's an environment triggering images and sounds; one that students craft through their imaginations using tools that are engaging and familiar to them. Some of the teachers add multimedia to their traditional research-writing process, and most all promote publishing for an online audience. Read the article, examine their varied methods, and learn how you might do the same in your classroom.

The Digital Writing Workshop

My best reading so far this summer is a book of the above title by Troy Hicks. Many of us may be familiar with The Writing Workshop, but Mr. Hicks takes the techniques and applies them to the digital landscape, which is the territory of our students. One of my favorite Kindle-highlighted quotes is that we should first "Teach the writer and then the writing." I know that seems confusing, but he further elaborates throughout the book about ways we can have students use digital tools to find their voices as instruments rather than only using the tool to publish. He showcases many free tools---wiki, blog, web publisher, podcast, screencast, digital storytelling, student anthology and portfolio tools--and how they can best be used; not in the traditional sense either, but as project-based, constructive resources that take students beyond the traditional writing process they've come to know. Through these types of activities, they can become much more engaged within the boundaries we create with hopes that they will continue to explore writing. 

The great priority of this book reiterates through Mr. Hick's viewpoint that "...if we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then on the writing, and lastly on the technology." This is best promoted by encouraging students to use RSS feeds to isolate their real interests. The teacher does not tell them what to write about, but rather gives them the model, such as a persuasive or a research essay, and then the student uses their RSS feed to explore possible topics while using the mode assigned by the teacher.  Through this method, the student is instantly engaged and uses high-level cognitive order thinking for the process. You can view these cognitive processes at Andrew Churches' digital update of  Bloom's Taxonomy at http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/bloom%27s+Digital+taxomomy+v3.01.pdf

Mr. Hicks further promotes these cognitive level processes by promoting current digital tools students can use, such as a classroom wiki. He explores many tools and offers suggestions ways we can use them effectively. To quote the introductory text, "In Troy's book we have not just words, but a companion website. Not just the latest tools and projects that show what students can do with them, but the layers of thinking beneath the surface of flash, the foundation of principles in a solid writing workshop. Troy delivers the fine details and the big vision. He understands the theory we know in our hearts."

I recommend this book to teachers already using The Writing Workshop techniques, knowing that it's time to move forward with 21st Century applications of these techniques. The examples given are not specific but broad, which further promotes exploration and creativity by the user--another activity that teachers should embrace for authentic student learning.