Observation Notes: How one Science teacher is integrating technology

I began my official observation hours this month and this entry begins a series of observation notes from the 100 hours I will eventually accumulate.

This entry concerns several 9th grade science classes at MS 202 - the Robert H Goddard school taught by Mr. Exume, with the help of the technology specialist, Ms. Deninn. The Robert H. Goddard is primarily a middle school covering grades 6-8, however they are expanding to become a high school beginning with 9^th grade in the 2008-2009 school year. Every classroom has a SmartBoard and the school is part of the 1-1 laptop program.

I spent several periods with Mr. Exume’s classes and I could see wide variation among the students. One of the biggest differences I noticed was that the 9^th graders were able to carry on real conversations (one girl walked me to the teacher cafeteria, asked if I was student teaching and what school I went to and told me she wants to go to NYU) and engage in thoughtful discussion. The subject that Mr. Exume was discussing that day was about classification of species. The general format was that Mr. Exume presented his notes on the SmartBoard including some pictures and videos while students took notes on their laptops. He also had the students break out into groups to work on classifications. The students print, save to a Flash drive or email their notes at the end of the period. One girl was asking a lot of questions and in particular consistently brought up issues of testing on animals. After several minutes of this, Mr. Exume suggested to the girl that she meet with the “newspaper committee” to write an opinion piece on the issue. He explained to me after that this topic had come up several other times throughout the year and it was a sore topic for some of the girls. The girl commented that there are no more newspapers this year. In my conversation with Mr. Exume, I suggested that he might want to encourage the girls to write a blog on the topic which he thought was an excellent idea for next year. Mr. Exume ensures that all his lessons and presentations are available on a shared network drive at the beginning of the year and students can download any or all of them at any time for use as a study guide.

Mr. Exume spent his free period providing me with resources that he uses in his classroom. Here is a snapshot of some of these resources.

• The Review Game Zone - Because of the time of year, Regents review is a big part of the curriculum. This site is a review site for Regents questions and it also allows the teacher to input their own questions. For example, here is a soccer game with review questions on classification.
• Power Media Plus - This is a subscription service that Mr. Exume uses to embed videos and other media into his Powerpoint presentations. He finds this helps to clarify complex subjects. The site lets you save videos to your hard drive for use in other applications.
• Virtual Labs: Utah Genetics Lab - Contains virtual labs on genetics. Frog Dissection - Virtual Frog Dissection. Mr. Exume is going to allow the use of this latter one for the students who choose not to dissect a real frog. InnerBody - Used to teach and study about human anatomy.
• YouTube & TeacherTube – TeacherTube is allowed in the school but YouTube is blocked. However, sometimes there are useful videos on YouTube that Mr. Exume will use in his classroom. He does this by loading the video at home and playing the cached version at school.
• Drop.io – Used to share large files between students and teachers.
• Engrade - A free service used by Mr. Exume to record grades, among other things.
• Lesson Planet - Mr. Exume uses lesson plans from this site to help enhance his own curriculum. Requires a subscription. I told him about Curriki which contains free and open lesson plans.
• Enchanted Learning - A compendium of worksheets for teachers. Subscription required.
• Classroom Performance System – Mr. Exume is going to be using these CPS Clickers to do Regents review preparation throughout the month of June. I will be going to observe this in a few weeks.

My Life as a Shadow - Part IV

It's been a while since my last shadow entry, but I'm bringing the topic back. Yesterday, I spent the day shadowing at P.S./M.S. 188 - The Island School on the lower east side of Manhattan. Unlike my other experiences, this one was not elementary school. This time it was with 6th, 7th and 8th graders. At the beginning of the day I didn't notice much difference in the grade levels but my the end I could tell that the 8th graders were much more independent and followed directions more thoroughly.

As opposed to my experience at Drexel Avenue elementary, the technology teacher here, Mr. Lahana, taught the students the same lesson across all the grades. However, the implementation was slightly different. Mr. Lahana uses TechBrarian, his own website, to post lessons for the class. The students listen to a 5 minute overview and then proceed to work on their own as the teacher goes around the room helping them. "Room" is somewhat of a loose definition since it's really an extension to the building that used to be outside and has been converted to the Internet Cafe.

Today's lesson was part 4 in a unit about how sneakers are made. Each student is supposed to listen to a video, fill in their concept map with their notes using either Bubbl.us or Inspiration and then proceed to the next step. In this case, the next step was to watch two videos (Beginner, Advanced) that Mr. Lahana created to show them how to design their own sneaker, download a sneaker template from Pig Magazine and then color the sneaker to their own preferences using layers in Photoshop. The last step is for the students to upload their creation to their blog.

Mr. Lahana chooses to use Blogger for each student and manages the blogs from the master class blog with each students' blog listed in the blogroll. I thought this was interesting because the blogs are out in the open with no security or privacy settings, however the master class blog is secure. Also, the students love blogging and it encourages them to write carefully and thoughtfully. Mr. Lahana shared with me one of the students blogs which contained a sensitive and honest portrayal of his relationship with his step-father and lack thereof with his "ancestor" - his birth father. I choose not to share the link to this young man's blog for privacy reasons.

I observed that the students behaviors during class varied by both class and grade level. Most did not watch the videos before attempting to design their own sneaker and then needed assistance along the way. Some, especially the 8th graders, followed the directions more closely. Some chose to work on their blog instead of the lesson of the day and some requested permission to use GarageBand as an alternative to the lesson. The environment was fairly freeform although I could see that some students were given more freedom than others, presumably the better behaved students.

Other tools that Mr. Lahana encourages students to use include ToonDoo which lets you create comic strips and embed them in blogs, XtraNormal which lets you turn text into animated movies, and Shelfari which students use to review books they have read and share reviews on their blog. I would say that Mr. Lahana knows his audience based on the tools he lets them use and the examples he gives them to make his point. He also uses Renzuli Learning for differentiated instruction and Keynote to create presentations that highlight student work.

My assessment was that the technology classes are focused primarily around teaching technology as opposed to integrating technology into other subjects. I asked Mr. Lahana about this and he explained that the Island School is focused on creativity and innovative outputs from the students. His lessons are all about creating and a school video that he showed me described the student population as the "future innovators of tomorrow". So, the presentations of student work that Mr. Lahana creates is a measurement of how well the students are doing. He also creates individual "profiles of talent" videos for each student, and the school also has 2 talent periods per week. It's for this reason that using GarageBand instead of doing a lesson is permitted. It's also the reason behind the schools policy "No dissing around here" which was seen in the school video and heard through the day. Students need to know that they are free from ridicule in order to create personal and creative work.

To conclude, the students seem to enjoy their time on the computers although many of them do not have computers at home. They do want to listen to music while working but it is only allowed sometimes. They also like to be free from "infractions" (points they get for improper behavior) because infraction-free students can enter the Internet Cafe at lunchtime and get free time on the laptops. It is interesting to note that Mr. Lahana uses a Google spreadsheet to manage infractions so everyone can see it during class. The last period of the day, normally reserved for test prep, is also open to students to work on their blogs when it is not test season.

While, I am not sure how much technology is being used in other classes, it is obvious that the use of Web 2.0 tools and the very concept of Social Media is very much at play at the Island School. Students relish the opportunity to use technology as creative outlets.

My Life as a Shadow - Part III

My most recent shadowing opportunities were at Denton Avenue School in the Herricks School District and at Solomon Schecter Day School in Jericho. One of the things I love about these observations is that they are all so different from each other and I have learned so much from each event.

At the Denton Avenue school, I observed in a 5th grade inclusion classroom taught by twitter friend, @LParisi (blog) and fellow twitterer @csouthard (blog). I actually came to have this opportunity through twits with Lisa and I am very grateful for it. Their classroom is unlike any other that I have yet observed in. I was introduced to the class as someone who wanted to be a "computer teacher" and they all told me that I had come to right class then! They knew that they were doing something special in the class and they loved it!

The day I went was "Flag Day" which is a big deal in this particular school. Ever since 9/11 they have a huge assembly, everyone comes dressed in all sorts of red, white & blue, and they have a barbeque for lunch. Not having much notice, or items in my closet, I wore a black NASA shirt with red, white and blue sequins. The students noticed right away and told me that they had been doing a unit on NASA and the space program that involved multimedia interaction and immediately asked the teachers if they could watch more of it today. But, that was not on the agenda. The assembly took up a lot of the morning. I learned that the flag outside the school was one of the flags that flew outside the capital on 9/11. Kids who were in the band played American songs and the Human Relations club gave some special recognition and awards. The teachers surprised the kids with a slideshow and songs.

When we got back to the classroom, they went to work on their "Cinderella Stories". This came out of a lesson on Settings. They were to write their own story in MS Word and then draw bodies representing the characters in their stories. They were encouraged to use the internet to get styles of clothing, etc... to copy as they drew. Then they took pictures of their fellow classmates and teachers (and even asked me to be in one! - which was really cute) and attached the heads to the bodies. Then they were to scan in each of the characters, edit in Photoshop if necessary, and use PhotoStory to animate the story. They also needed to record voiceovers for each scene. This was a totally impressive use of technology and while the students were at different levels of skills and some more or less ahead of others, they were all enjoying it.

After lunch, we had the "Morning Meeting". They normally do this in the morning hence the name. The first part is the greeting. A few kids have to decide what the greeting will be. Today we all went outside and went around a circle in "snake formation" introducing ourselves and saying good afternoon. This, along with the Human Relations Club, I see as ways to teach respect and kindness (as well as professional behavior). The second part of the meeting is "podcasting". Each day 2 or 3 students will tell a story about something and ask for questions and comments. The questions have to be relevant and not "all about me". The person telling the story is speaking into a voice recorder for uploading to their own personal blog. They use classblogmeister for this. They were very disappointed to learn that they would not have access to edit these blogs after school was over. So, the teachers offered to teach them how to use their own personal blog, assuming they get a signed permission slip from a parent. Part of the lessons they learned in creating their own blogs was about what it means to be a good online citizen and why cyberbullying is bad. For their podcasting, they use Audacity to edit audio and either GarageBand or Gcast to upload student podcasts. I was asked to participate in Morning Meeting by telling my own story of where I was on 9/11 (in the World Trade Center). Most of the students asked a lot of good questions. I was impressed.

At this point it was almost the end of the day. While the students are waiting to be called for dismissal, they play "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?". At one point there is a question on how something is spelled. One child went to the dictionary but another child went right to the Franklin Talking Dictionary on the teachers' desk and found the answer the fastest. These students are definitely comfortable with the integration of technology in the classroom.

This particular class has won several awards for their use of technology which includes such things as a joint project using Skype with a class in the Midwest, among other things. The teachers are well known for the high quality of technology integration. Some things I learned throughout the day include:

• Email is used extensively. They collect emails at the beginning of the year and they are expected to use it to retrieve homework assignments and the like.
• They make extensive use of the SmartBoard. For example, they often play a Jeopardy type game for learning math or science, etc...
• The teachers use a lot of methods that they learned through "Responsive Classroom" training, which they highly recommend.
• The Herricks school district is extremely supportive of this classroom and its teachers.
  

From a professional development perspective, these teachers attend a lot of conferences. They submit proposals to speak at conferences like SCOPE and Teaching & Learning Celebration. They teach at Teacher Centers and Board Meetings. They use Google Docs to take notes at conferences so it makes it easy to blog on it later.@csouthard is currently going for a Masters in Ed Tech.

To get a glimpse of some of projects being worked on this classroom - dubbed South Paris Collaborative - check out their website.

A few notes on my day at Schecter (This is where my husband works). Unfortunately I attended during the last week of school so not much learning was going on. I met with the computer teacher (the students go to the Computer "Special" once per week). This day was 1st graders and they were just playing some online games and also using KidPix. They did crave attention and I helped some of them make Father's Day cards. The rest of the time I spent in my husband's classroom doing low-tech activities like reading them a book and helping them to write letters (with pen and paper!). I was invited back next year to see more of what they are doing with technology.

My Life as a Shadow - Part II

The next day after shadowing in Long Island, I went to Queens at shadowed at P.S. 206 in Rego Park - also an elementary school but for Grades K-5. At this school, I spent a lot more time running around to different classrooms. The way technology is taught at this school is that Grades K-2 go to a Computer Lab for one period. Grades 3-5 get technology brought into the classroom or go to a different room with laptops(e.g. Social Studies).

I knew two teachers at this school. Lori is a big advocate of integrating technology in the classroom. She teaches 5th grade and she actually had an intern from Columbia University assist in the classroom all year on Wednesdays. So, naturally, I went on a Wednesday. She had lined up several different observations for me throughout the day. However, periods 0-2 were open. For period 0, I actually tried to help her setup the Mac with an InFocus projector so the students could do their presentations later in the day. The big problems here - well for one thing I am not a Mac person (though I expect I will become one soon!) but more importantly they didn't have the right adapter. So, we skipped that step for now and focused on reading. Some of the kids come in early for extra reading help which is period 0. In the 1st period, they worked as a group on math word problems and I was asked to help with this activity as well. For 2nd period, they had ballroom dancing and I found myself in a circle doing these dances (only some of which I actually knew!). There are 19 boys and 9 girls in the class so they were happy to have another female!

For 3rd period, I sat in on a 4th grade class who were working on their social studies laptops. They are so called this because that it was they are used for. The teacher, Laura, in this class uses PortaPortal to organize the lesson plans for each grade and class. This site lets you organize bookmarks, create folders, etc... So, in this class, we were talking about the American Revolution and also NYS History. You can see some of the collateral that was used. The 4th graders knew exactly how to log into the PS 206 Portal to see the materials. Laura displayed the website on the page and reviewed with them some details about the American Revolution that they were obviously supposed to already know. Then she showed a short video about the Revolution. Then the students were able to use Mac laptops to find answers to questions on a worksheet about the American Revolution. When she wants the students attention, she has her own method of getting it. She calls out "Pacman" and the students know to close the Laptop to form a Pacman shape (not all the way closed, but just enough so they can't see the screen). Laura also told me she uses Google Earth and WikiSpaces in the classroom.

Then I joined Lori again for 4th & 5th period because the intern from Columbia was there at this time. We did several activities include 2-3 student presentations of a project they had been working on. They used PowerPoint to create slides to talk about their Country reports. The presentations were supposed to include graphics that they either got from the internet or clip art and font styles. Some were better than others. The second part of the lesson was on creating newsletters. They were going to write a newsletter so the intern taught all the students (who each had a laptop) how to create columns in Word.

For 6th period, I visited the Computer Lab which had a 1st grade class. They were having a group timeout when I got there. The teacher didn't say or do anything for 10 minutes. Then she let them go to the Macs in the room and told them they could do StarFall, Millie's Math House or Clifford. I think KidPix was another option. This is what they did for the rest of the period. I was underwhelmed. I asked the teacher about this and she said that they are playing educational games and while some did have educational components I felt there was so much more they could be learning. Maybe that's what they just happened to be doing today but it seemed like this was pretty much the routine.

For the last few periods of the day, I floated around. I went to Maris's classroom because she is a friend of mine and they were doing a lesson on butterflys. I also spent some time back in the Computer Lab because I wanted to see if it was different with 2nd graders. It started out the same. They were in a timeout but eventually she let most of the kids go to the computers. Some of them still had work to finish their "All Abouts". They were supposed to pick something that they like, put a picture of it on a page and then write a few sentences about it. One girl was having a lot of trouble. She was writing about the beach but she had all sorts of spelling and grammatical errors, and her fonts were different. The teacher told her to fix the fonts but she needed hand-holding from me to do it. I told her "highlight the text, change the font size, change the font color, etc..." She couldn't process the whole thing at once but knew how to do it one at a time. The teacher didn't even care about the spelling & grammar but I walked her through it anyway. She was happy when she finished. The other students were all supposed to be working on "Interactive Skills Online" from Internet4Classrooms - aka Second Grade Skills.

I finished the day back in the Social Studies class with a group of Special Ed kids who were working on creating Presidential Baseball Cards. They were doing research on laptops about 5 presidents and they were going to have to create cards of the facts. Laura showed me a project they had just finished where they wrote about the Iroquois Indians and had to create a Word Find with various related terms. She told me they use PuzzleMaker to do this.

That's about it. Like I said, a very different experience. But both were very valuable from a learning and growing perspective.

My Life as a Shadow - Part I

You know how life gets ahead of you? Well, I meant to write this entry weeks ago when it was fresh in my mind but that didn't happen. So, a cruise to Bermuda and several events later, I'm finally getting to it. I hope I remember all the details...

So, on May 13th, I shadowed Jenna, a Technology Education Teacher at Drexel Avenue Elementary (grades 3-5) in Westbury, NY. This was my first experience in a classroom setting. Jenna's role is largely the role of Computer Teacher although she does work with other teacher's to integrate technology into their curricula which is then executed through Jenna's classes. Each grade and class goes to Jenna's room once per week. The day that I visited we had 2 5th grade classes, a 3rd and 4th grade Special Ed class, a 4th & 5th grade Special Ed and a 3rd grade class.
Jenna explained to me that she tried to use the same lesson plan with all the grades but differentiates the lesson as needed. She makes a lot of use of the SmartBoard and the Mac's in the room (which is set up in a lab formation, all Mac's in rows facing the front of the room. This is important so she can walk to the back and see what the students are doing. In order to get the students attention, she calls out "Granny Hands". She explained to me that she uses this phrase because her grandmother used to hold her hands together and rock in her chair. When Jenna uses this phrase in the classroom, the students all put their hands together above their head. In other words, don't touch the computers.

For the 1st 2 periods, we had both 5th grade classes. I learned that just because both classes are the same grade doesn't mean they will behave the same. One class was much more focused and participatory than the other. The lesson for today was a Virtual Field Trip to Pea Island, North Carolina to learn about Sea Turtles. She had the links to this site from her class portal and most of the kids knew just where to go to find it, although she was doing it along with them on the SmartBoard. They had to fill in a form with their first name, school and city/state to enter the site. When they were filling out this form, she reminded them about "First Name Only. Online Safety." Most of them remembered but some needed to be reminded. I noticed that Jenna had a lot of posters up in the room that talk about Online Safety. After a few minutes, Jenna let the kids work through the field trip on their own. They had to answer some questions on a worksheet using the tour. In the first class, the kids needed a lot of guidance but the second class did most of it on their own. Jenna reviewed the answers collectively at the end of the period and then they were off to their next class: Library.

The next period were the 3rd and 4th grade Special Ed kids. Jenna explained that most of these kids just have attention or behavioral issues. We did the same lesson for these kids, but Jenna asked the last 5th grade class to leave the tour up on the screen (so we could skip the login process) instead of the normal "Apple-Q". These students only got through a few questions so many of them took it home as homework or to the afterschool program that they attend. The next 3 periods were teacher prep, training and lunch. I had a quick lunch and then sat in on Julie's 5th grade class.

Julie is one of the teachers who uses a lot of technology in her regular classroom. I noticed a distinct difference in the classroom style. In Julie's class, the students were all working on separate projects - some math, some science, some history, etc... Julie kept her eye on all of the students and projects all at once. She also has a SmartBoard in the classroom so this helps. They also have several other computers at the back of the room and one printer. There is also a laptop cart that moves between classrooms. Some of the girls working on history were creating a poster report about the Holocaust. I told the girls about my experience visiting Auschwitz and I think they liked have the personal touch to add to their project. They were writing parts of the report on the Mac which displays to the SmartBoard and then printing and cutting the parts to attach to the poster. Julie was correcting spelling, formatting, etc while helping a boy in the class work out a math problem. Some of the kids opted to stay in during recess to keep working on their projects.

Back with Jenna and still on a break, she showed me the digital photography unit they did on "Close-ups". In teams, each group had to take pictures of common things at close ranges and write up clues describing the item. The results were posted in the hallway and there was a contest to see who got the most right. The team (or class?) who won got a Pizza Party.

We then had the 4th and 5th Grade Special Ed class but most of them were having testing so we only had 2 boys in the class. Instead of trying to teach the lesson, Jenna let them have "free time" on the computer which they love. She says that if she lets them have free time on occasion they appreciate the class more - it seems like fun instead of work. Meanwhile, Jenna spent some time with describing some of the tools she uses in the course of preparing lessons and projects. I will list some of these below.

Finally, we had the 3rd grade class and we went back to the Virtual Field Trip project on Sea Turtles. It was interesting to me because I think the 3rd graders were even more into it than the 5th graders although they needed more help starting it up and answering some of the questions. But, their focus and interest was higher.

On some days, Jenna has an afterschool program where they do special tech projects but today wasn't one of them. I would like to go back for a visit on one of these days. The students who are in the program had to "apply" and Jenna selected the participants based on their essay and other factors.

Wow, I didn't realize how long this was. If you are still here reading with me, here is the payoff! Here is the top 10 list of tools that Jenna uses to make her job easier...

1. Voki - She uses this to record her voice for various projects, etc...
2. Animoto - Creates animations and transitions for you.
3. School Leadership Ning - A community of school leaders on Long Island.
4. iMovie on Leopard - Used to create movies.
5. iWeb - Used to create web sites, blogs, etc...
6. United Streaming - Various short segment content streams. In particular, she likes Power Media Plus. Note that UStream (interactive broadcasting) is different that United Streaming.
7. WebQuests - These are the internet driven lesson plans efieldtrips.org (listed above) and WebQuest.org.
8. Music - Jenna utilizes music clips from places like Creative Commons and FreePlayMusic.
9. Comic Life - Jenna used this as part of a class on graphical design.
10. CyberDuck - Open source tool used as an ftp client for Mac.

Look for Part II in a few days - Shadowing in a NYC city.