Ben Gipin's "A Colorful Principal": A Blog Fit for a King...Or Rather a Principal

When sorting through the variety of Edublogs on the interwebs, I ended up choosing to write about Ben Gilpin’s blog for a few different reasons. The first being that his blog is very easy to navigate and sleek in that is very simple to look at. Many of the blogs that I paroozed that won blogging awards or were followed by thousands were overly flashy and had so many different links to other blogs or twitter, pictures, and other visual stimulation that I could not concentrate on its content. Another thing that caught my attention about this particular blog was that a principal was behind it. Thus far from what I have seen in the edublog realm has mostly been written and moderated by practicing school teachers.  Within each of his blog posts, Ben writes on a pretty general education topics and his writing often is sprinkled with very motivational concepts and quotes. For example, one of his most recent blog posts he writes down a variety of “what if” questions that ranged from what if “gifted students had the same supports as struggling students” and then “what if people didn’t gossip,” so his blog posts don’t strictly provide tips for teachers or discuss the pedagogical practices that research has shown to be effective. Instead, Ben’s personality shines through each post and his blog acts as place where he can both reflect on some of his personal thoughts about education, give his students, faculty, parents of students and community members a chance to get know him and remind those involved with the school in which he is charge of a glimpse of some of the current events and weekly schedule.

            

Overall I found Ben’s blog to interesting in that he used it in a unique way that seems often overlooked; many students and teachers do not get the chance to interact with the school principal, even though his level of involvement effects how both parents and students view the school and the education that occurs there. Ben’s blog made me think about how I may use my blog as a means of making connections with my school community. At the end of each of his posts, Ben shares links to a videos that he has been into for that week. These videos encompass all of his interests and many are put there because they are comical and brighten his day. The videos that Ben post allow his readers to see how Ben thinks and brighten the reader’s day as well. I like the idea of having a space both positive and informative where people of the school community can be informed of what is going on and of who has power when it comes to the education of students within that community. I wrote a comment on Ben’s “What if..” post where I wrote “What if all school principals had an accessible blog?” and described how awesome I think his blog, and the idea of a principal having a blog is. 

Can Prezi be Pretty and Pretty Helpful in the Classroom? How my Perspective of Prezi Has Changed

For my Technology in Education class, I had to present on a technology tool that has been effective in a variety of classrooms for a variety of teachers. The tool in which I was assigned was Prezi.  Coming into this project, I did not have a good impression of Prezi. When filling out the survey for what tech tool I wanted to present, I saw the list and said to myself “I definitely do not want to present on Prezi,” however after realizing I had not heard of the other tools I decided that it could be slightly “easier” (I know this way of thinking is silly but we are over-worked Masters students after all) to present on a tool that I had some basic knowledge of. When we split up the work-load between the members of our group, one of the tasks that I was given was to find examples of how teachers use Prezi. Before really researching the tool I had counted it out as something not useful for me since I am not usually one to present with a PowerPoint, which I thought Prezi was very similar to, and from the Prezis I have seen, they are disorienting and over extravagant. However, after doing research and looking at Prezi examples my entire schema of Prezi was changed.

Firstly, there was so much creativity and imagery involved in the Prezis that I viewed. I found Prezi to be very visually stimulating. As a person who often does not stay very engaged when listening to information, the wonderful example Prezis that I found online made the material easier to enjoy. It was also informative to see the different examples that spanned across the disciplines. Overall from this project my knowledge of a tool, one in which I did not have much faith in, turned out to be something that I may learn from as a student and also may use in my classroom. I now see that I must research technological tools and actually engage with the tool to determine their purpose in my classroom, both with my students and as a teacher organizing my classroom, before ruling out its use. 

So for those of you who were like me who had unfortunate and negative experiences with Prezi, I encourage you to google something along the lines of “phenomenal Prezi presentations,” so that you can see just how far the capabilities of this tool extend if it is done well and with a lot of intent. For instance here is one of the Prezintations that turned me- 

https://prezi.com/veychlhwrdgz/putting-time-in-perspective/

The Prezi above on events in time, is one example in which a PowerPoint of another presentation tool would have not been useful. In order to discuss large increments of time, a large amount of slides would be necessary. However, Prezi allows one to see these large increments of time from a different perspective. I think when it comes to all tech tools, having an open perspective like the one that Prezi allows, is important for our education practices when it comes to choosing what tech we want to use in our classrooms. 

Technology at Ypsilanti High School: A Gap between Presence and Usage

Coming into Ypsilanti Community High School which I knew was a "high needs school," I assumed that their would be a lack of resources, especially technologically While this lack of resources definitely exists, there are actually  many technologies available within the walls of the school. For instance within my mentor teacher's classroom we have 18 Macintosh computers and a set of fifty graphing calculators for students to use within its walls. As far as the overall technology in the classroom there is a teacher laptop, a projector, an audio device for the projector, a dongle to hook up the teacher laptop to the projector, a DVD/VCR player. While technological equipment is requested by teachers for their classroom the summer before the school year, the lack of enough and of organized technological specialists prevents many of these requests from being handled, For instance, many of the teachers were not even  issued the laptops that the district provides them with until two weeks after the year began-so  teachers were not able to record grades online or submit attendance electronically. While the school does have internet, it only works for about an hour and not very well in the basement where the STEMM academy is located. Even though teachers have complained about the internet servers, there has not been any changes made.  For about a month the computers in the back of the classroom weren't working as well. This limited some of the different types of lessons and activities that we could do in our classroom. In fact, my mentor teacher hardly uses the technology that eventually became available. I began to wonder about some of the reasons, other than having an overbook tech specialist, that might have helped to make this true.

I figured that some of the discrepancy between having the technology and actually using it is due to a lack of comfort with using itf or teaching and learning. Even teachers who are using technology and report a high degree of comfort with technology probably tend to use it in fairly rigid ways that mostly cater to themselves and planning for their lessons since having students learn with technology brings about a variety of complications.  While students frequently do use computers in the classroom, use is often limited using them for Google searching and as a factual resources rather than as multimedia tools or digital content to design and create products Often, learning with technology is teacher-centered rather than student-centered since teaching with technology is not always offered to teachers as a course.

While many teachers still feel uncomfortable using technology in their teaching practice, it is also likely that teachers feel new technologies are unproven in the classroom. Though there has been a great deal of research on the efficacy of technology tools for teaching and learning, many of these studies may not translate well to the reality of the classroom. This also seems to be the case in my own school where when I asked about the technology specialist, the teachers there replied that young people like myself were the specialists. I found there to be some disconnect in this way of thinking since I am still a learning teacher-I may have a better grasp of using some technologies but it is difficult for me to know how to use they effectively in the classroom since I have not been in a classroom for long!

David Theune: Transforming the Way Education Connects to Places Outside the Classroom.

After a long day of student teaching, I can't say that I was very excited to attend my bi-weekly night class about technology and education. However, the moment David Theune, an English teacher from Western Michigan, walked into the classroom I was interested in what he had to say. Perhaps it was his really neat red glasses or his colorful outfit that grabbed my attention but I think more my intrigue was due to his excitement to be there. Instead of merely presenting on some tools and ideas that could be helpful in our classrooms, he presented tools and ideas that he was very interested about and worked in his classroom since his students were interested as well.  

One thing that stood out to me about David's practices were how involved he got his students with people, places and subjects that were outside of the classroom. For instance, he explained how he often gets the student's families involved with his classroom. He explained how he made his classroom open for parents to visit. I think that this idea is one way that one can break the barrier between the school and the home-connecting these two important parts of a students life is one way in which we as educators can make the idea of school and the subjects within it more palatable to students. Getting to know student's guardians is one way to be a more socially aware teacher as well. Feedback that one gets from parents who watch them teach could be really informative for their practice and certainly helpful in helping a teacher get to know more about their students. David also talked about an activity where he had students write pieces that they were going to share with their parents and families. He informed the students that they were going to be sharing their work with people from their homes which Theune then described as a way to push students and motivate them to do well since someone whom they cared about, and someone other than their teacher would be involved in the learning process. On his blog, Theune describes a "service-learning project" that the students completed after finishing a novel. This interested me for I had taken a lot of wonderful "service-learning" classes in my undergraduate studies. In his post he wrote about the knowledge that the students got out of it and how the experience forced his students to get "real experience of working and listening to adults and empathy to community members." I had not thought about having 'service-learning" units in my classroom before looking at his blog, and seeing a personal account of it working in Theune's class made me all the more excited to think creatively about a way to implement a similar activity in a mathematics class. 

David is a colorful man whose personality and passion stood out as he presented to my class. I immediately began following his twitter in hopes of learning more about some of the other projects and ideas that he had for the classroom. I think Theune is able to bring his students out of the classroom in a way that does not always require technology which is important to consider for schools that may not have technological resources. However, in terms of his own personal technology use, David's blog and twitter have inspired me to create my own professional accounts so that I can explore the edublogger world and begin to put my own thoughts out there in cyberspace as well.

Connections Across the Species: My Reaction to a "BYOD to Discover Tree Species" Lesson Plan

When completing this same assignment, but with my content area of mathematics in mind, my group had a difficult time finding an advantageous way to incorporate students' personal devices. This is because technology in math is usually used as a graphing device, and we did not think a students phone would be a accessible way to view these graphs. After reading a Biology lesson that encourages students to "BYOD," or "bring your own device," many more ideas popped into my head for I had forgotten about the camera device that many phones include. I thought this group's usage of the camera to document their findings was both very creative and effective in many ways.

One way in which I thought this lesson was a winner, was that it had a variety of different activities that mirrored the typical heterogeneous nature of a classroom. Many different learning styles are included within  the lesson plan. For example, their warm-up worksheet has the students draw. This kind of learning might appeal to a student who enjoys engaging with visuals and illustrations. I was particularly interested in both their active mini-lesson and  work period that had the students use their senses to explore a surrounding wood, use their senses, capture species on camera and document their findings. I know that there are many bodies of research that suggest that experiential learning does indeed help students. Does anyone one remember John Dewey? (See a few posts down for some information about him and his ideas that align with experiential learning). I have also seen with myself that when I try and remember one take away from the class, that what I usually recall is what I learned during an active activity. The technology aspect of this plan really brings it together. Using the cameras on a student's device is great for it is a way to get the students thinking about keeping records and documenting their evidence which is at times a part of some of the methods involved with the sciences. I think the experience would be a lot different, as well as difficult, if the students were to attempt to use a different camera. Learning how to use a digital camera would add another task to this lesson, and would take up much time. Instead the students are already knowledgeable of their phone cameras, which would hopefully have good enough qualities to see some of the details of the trees.

 The only thing that I would tweak, is that I wish students had more than ten minutes to capture the 10 different trees or the amount of trees needed would be lower. I think by giving them time to think about their photographs and the subjects within them, would add a whole element to this lesson plan. This would really force the students to make scientific, useful, and perhaps artistic decision. Overall, I thought this lesson plan was a fantastic example of BYOD and I would love to be a student in that type of classroom with fantastic and creative teachers like the ones that created the plan!

Google Dis, Google Dat, Google Drive.

When beginning the "Organizing Your Online Life" assignment I was slightly worried for I have just started using Google's products such as Google+ and Google Docs within this past year. This is much different than most of my peers who relied on Google for most of their online cloud needs in college. I honestly did not see that my assignment was about Google Drive and not Google Docs until I started it the weekend before so I went into the assignment thinking I "just" had to explain Google Docs. I was surprised to find out that Google Drive was an entirely different thing and that is where I really began to worry. As I began my journey into Google Drive I was intimidated by all of its features. Who knew Google Docs was only one type of form that one could create ON Google Drive? Not me. Not me at all!

So much was clarified for me because of this assignment as one can clearly see. I use Google and its features in some way everyday yet I had no idea how much it could help me with different tasks. I think this assignment was very pertinent to us as teachers because Google Drive, as well as the other resources that we learned about, are pertinent to teachers. Soon our lives will be more chaotic than they currently are in the MAC program (which seems impossible, I know), so organizing our lives online will be essential for much of our work will be done on a computer. Google for instance has so many applications that not only are beneficial to us as teachers, but can be used by our students as well.


I also really enjoyed being able to create a work sheet and teach my peers about Google Drive with this assignment. I have not had too much experience creating a handout so this was a good exercise. I found myself to not want to include every small seemingly simple detail about Google Docs for that seemed a little silly. However, I was able to see that these simple steps were necessary to include for others may not have had the same experiences as I have had with the technology. This will be very important in my future teaching career. Not only when creating handouts, but explaining technology to my students in general. This is because not all of them will have the same access to the technology and the novelty of the technology will be quite the distraction to them. Since I am in the STEM field, technology is becoming more and more prominent so learning about more aspects of it and practicing teaching it with this assignment were really constructive to my practice and mindset.

Urgent Evoke and Educational Gaming: A Hop from Reader Rabbit

What first comes to mind when I think of effective educational gaming is the game series "Reader Rabbit." When I was struggling with math after I changed schools, my mother heard from a friend that this game was helpful to her child with their mathematics skills. My mother, though apprehensive, figured that having me play the game during the summer would help me retain some of my math knowledge She also figured that "Reader Rabbit" was better use of my time on a computer than "Barbie Detective." I remember really enjoying the game. My math skills improved so much that after that summer,  I was no longer in remedial classes and instead tested into advanced math. I do not know for certain, but "Reader Rabbit," may have been a large contributor to my success. Overall, it was really fun which is and was surprising for something educational. My mother and I have good memories of this particular game so it would make sense that my initial reaction to the question of whether educational gaming is effective is a jolly "heck yes."



As I began to look at some of the games that were included in the resources folder however, I began to see that the idea of educational gaming today is much different from my experience with "Reader Rabbit." One major difference is that educational gaming today is mostly discussed in the context of the classroom instead of the home. Experiencing gaming in these different environments has an impact on the learning that is gleaned from the games. For instance, if I were to make all of my students play "Reader Rabbit" in a computer lab I am guessing that many of them would be distracted by the other applications of the computer, the new computer lab environment, and if they have not had much access to computers, the idea of the computer itself. My home was also very relaxed; I was not constantly looking at my peers' screens to size up where I was compared to them, nor was there any pressure to get to a certain part in the game for it was available every day to me on my own time. I do not think "Reader Rabbit" would be as effective in a classroom setting with multiple students for these reasons.
 Another difference in educational gaming today is that the games are way more advanced and have much more to them in terms of graphics, story line, and interface. “Reader Rabbit” was a two dimensional game that followed its characters through a castle and had the gamer answer math or reading questions along the way in order to proceed. Today, upgrades in technology allow students to play online together in one game, with a variety of different games available to them and with more content areas available. For instance, the game “Evoke” has very few things in common with “Reader Rabbit.” “Evoke,” is a game where its players are asked to tackle a social justice issue and then basically research the issue then blog on it on the site. There are some prize and point incentives for these posts.  While games like “Evoke” engage students with new content, I am afraid that games like “Evoke” might be hard for students to concentrate on for a while since the interface, the social justice content, and the idea are completely novel to them.

Educational gaming is also dependent on how much students enjoy video games and game ideas/content. It would be great if student were able to have a game that pertained to their interests and experience with computers and or games, and in an effective environment. I do not think one can simply rule out educational gaming as a good, bad, or effective strategy for student learning. I may have had a blast with one type a game, but I may have suffered playing “Evoke.” In order for educational gaming to sufficiently help students, one must first look at a student’s background and sort through the variety of games that are available to them in the content area they need. I was lucky enough to hop right in with “Reader Rabbit,” but that is often not the case for all educational games. 

Smarter Balance or a Clumsy Concept?

Imagine this: a talented swimmer is training for a national race and is very nervous for there is a large academic scholarship on the line that will affect their future. Their coach has also made it very clear that his job is on the line as well. This student arrives at Nationals to find that the rumors were true; the pools there aren't filled with water but instead are filled with Jell-O. Our swimmer knew this was the case but did not know how much more difficult swimming in these pools would be for him. How do you think he placed against those with Jell-O pools at their homes or schools?

This fabricated situation is how I am guessing many students feel when faced with the task of completing a standardized test on a computer interface that they have not had experience with. I know for myself that navigating the test and its features on a computer were a point of stress for me whilst I was taking the GRE. Before the GRE I had taken all of my standardized tests on paper. I even tried to become more comfortable with the test module by taking computer practice tests a couple months prior. However, the amount of stress that I actually had that day and the environment of the testing center made for an entirely different, and more stressful, test experience. As a person who gets pretty anxious for tests, this added stress only seemed to hinder me and my actual capabilities.

It is also important to keep in mind that I have had a lot of experience with computers; from growing up with one in my home, to doing many academic assignments on one, and even taking computer science classes. Many of the students today do not have the privilege of having computers at their sides. While technology is more prominent today than ever, it is still safe to say students who have persistent access to computers at home and in their schools are clearly advantaged, in terms of testing, because they have a higher likelihood of being computer literate. Meanwhile, youth who don’t have the same access are being scored on both how to use the technology in addition to what is in the content of the test. There is a technology gap which could affect the achievement gap. I do believe that technology, and even technology integrated with standardized testing could be a good thing and (almost) standardized if there was a way to ensure that the technology used on these tests was equitably available for all students taking the test. Tests like the Smarter Balance test that we took does not seem to account for these economic disparities and overall seems to be poorly designed and inconsistent where it is now. Perhaps with more development and research, that tests like Smarter Balance could be utilized and used effectively.

So now, imagine this: a talented student is practicing story problems for a standardized test and is very nervous for their teacher told them that there is a lot on the line for their school based on this test. Their teacher has also made it very clear that his job is on the line as well. This student arrives on test day to find that the rumors were true; the test is to be taken on a computer instead of on paper. Our student and their teacher knew this was the case but did not know how much more difficult taking the test on the computer would for him. because he did not have access to a computer at home or at school. How do you think he placed against those with computer at their homes or schools?

Dew it like Dewey: Thoughts on the Subject-Matter of Education

I was very surprised to see that John Dewey wrote My Pedagogic Creed over a century ago. Many of his thoughts are very much in line with many of my own opinions about the current state of education. For example, I was taken aback by his emphasis on students social interests as "the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth." This is because I do not see much of these ideas within school curriculum and personally believe that a mindset like Dewey's is essential to student learning. This is very intriguing for one would think that this simple idea would be implemented in our schools after all of these years. Alas, this is not the case. The exact pedagogy that Dewey chastised is still in place and student social interests are more separated from school subject matters than they ever have been; Art, language, physical activity classes, and other extra curriculars have been cut from schools and  teachers are teaching content in order to meet government standards instead of the needs of the student for example. Integration of these current core subjects with student social activity and interests could be a compromise.

Overall Deweys beliefs in this section gave me conflicting views on the use of technology in the classroom. On the one hand technology takes away from social experiences, however, technology is one of the main ways in which young people engage in social activities and is of interest to them. I wonder what Dewey would think of technology in terms of his ideas on science. I think Dewey would see technology as having "value because it gives the ability to interpret and control the experience already had." In other words, technology as a means to enhance experience would ultimately be effective pedagogy.

John Dewey had ideas and beliefs that I would hope many in the field of education would have today, for they outline some ways to transform education in a way that not only promotes social justice, but the human experience for all. I hope to implement some of his ideas in my classroom by connecting my content area to student interests, using these student interests (including technology) to enhance their learning, and using experience as a means for education as well.