Broyles Blog

I am really excited about some of the websites we explored for Thing 14 discovery.  Most of what I discovered I’m excited about using personally, but there are some benefits for classroom use as well.    http://www.jigzone.com/ is so much fun.  I love puzzles and am really excited about getting my 7 years old into this at home.  Jigsaw puzzles can be a very valuable learning tool.  Barbara White has a terrific article about the educational value of jigsaw puzzles.

I am also really excited about using the products from letterpop.com.  The templates and themes can be a huge time saver for a busy teacher or mom like myself.  The only down side I see is that you only get 10 projects/year free.  If you want more you have to pay.

I can’t wait to create a book for my parents with the pictures from their 40th Anniversary party for a Christmas present.  mixbook.com has some really great graphics.  They will also arrange all the photographs for you.  I still have to play around with it to figure out how to get my photos on the site though.  I like that you can download straight from flickr, photoBucket, and Picasa.  I currently do not put my photos on any of these, so this gives me more incentive to join these sites. The social aspect of this website was very evident.  Viewers are allowed to comment on books.

quizlet.com is the most valuable teaching tool I will use immediately in the classroom.  I still have many students without basic multiplication facts recall.  There are several quizzes on this website that will help track their speed and progress.  I was also impressed with many of the pre-algebra vocabulary presentations.  It will be something I can add to edline for additional practice at home.

Flickr was a completely new thing for me.  My first thoughts were how amazing it is to have so much in one location.  I found some amazing phots.  An absolutely gorgeous shot of Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee.  (I worked there for a couple of summers during college.) I’m also a big Tennessee football nut and found some cool shots of Neyland Stadium.  I can absolutely see myself using Flickr on a personal level.

Using Flickr on a professional level is also something I can see myself doing.  I teach 6th grade math.  So many days the students look at me like, “Yeah, right, so when am I ever going to use this?  These skills only exist in this textbook and in your mind, Ms. Broyles.”  I chose patterns for my search criterion.  I found some really cool shots.  I particularly liked these……

These photos could be used for a variety of lessons.   The use of shapes in a Geometry unit would cross over into architecture for the photo below by **sirop. Measurement, design, area, multiplication, and division could all be emcompassed.  The photo on the upper left by  Leo Reynolds shows a collage of patterns, particularly using raw, building materials such as bricks and cracks in sidewalks.  These photos could be used when studying lines, line segments, and angles.  The different classifications of angles and their measurements could be particularly beneficial.  The students could create their own photo collages after a study of these and classify the different types of angles they fine.  Math in their world.  How novel an idea.

• Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? I have not noticed the CC logo on any websites.  I haven’t been looking because I had absolutely no idea about Creative Commons at all up until an hour ago.
• Did you wonder what it meant? In all honesty, I probably would have thought it meant Closed Captioned just like it does on my t.v.
• Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? It has to have an impact.  Five years ago my students were just beginning to text each other.  Now it is an everyday part of their lives. CC would allow them to “test” their ideas and see what happens.
• How? I can see them using this without school direction at all.  Our very creative students would now have an outlet for song writing, poetry, visual arts. etc.
  
• Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)? I use video clips quite a bit.  I have found some very good websites with teaching videos on them.  I post links to relevant material on edline.  My textbook also has a web-based site with additional videos for each lesson I teach.  I will use them to introduce or reteach in class.  Sometimes I realize I’m not getting them to understand the concepts.  It’s good to have another “voice” so to speak with a different approach to the method.  I only use images if I need to define a term without words.
• Do you ever share content on the web? I’ve posted some images of my own on my blog and my wiki page.  I guess that counts as sharing.
• Who owns your teaching materials? Good question.  I create things everyday to use in my classroom.  I even created an entire set of math quizzes when I taught 5th grade.  Some teachers from another school found out about them and I forwarded my entire folder to them.  I can’t really say they were ever mine at all.  I shared them with all my colleagues and then others as well.  They were free to edit them for content.  Maybe I’ve been doing this for a long time, but never really had a name for it.
• What are some potential negatives for using CC? I would never want anything I created to be used to harm another individual.  Lyrics to songs have been used as excuses to perform incredible acts of destruction.  That’s not a good answer……. I’m really not sure.

It has taken me several days to explore and read the posted educational wiki projects.  I went slowly and took my time because I wanted to see how they are being utilized in the classroom.  Vicki Davis’ blog post Wiki Wiki Teaching was an excellent feel for how to “begin.”  The specific list of tasks were especially helpful.  It was also confirming to experience some of the emotions she expressed as a busy teacher trying new things.  Her willingness to try new assessments using wikis was also thought provoking.  As a math teacher, I struggle with alternative assessments and reaching different types of learners.  It is still amazing to me how the implementation of something new continues to excite our students.  We only need to create the spark.  The students fan the flames.  I especially appreciate how the other teachers came to her asking how they too might begin to use wikis in their classrooms:  “They couldn’t believe the amount of material synthesized and summarized in one class period!”

Is there a wiki in my future? Before the exploration, I would probably have replied with an exclamatory, “NO!!”  Now?  At least I can say, “Maybe.”  I was especially impressed with David Lindsay’s Room 15 wiki.  He embedded math video tutors into the corresponding curriculum page for his class.  The videos were exactly what I had been teaching in my class.  This, of course, led me to a whole new resource:  yourteacher.com is an excellent resource with a ton of help videos.  Whether I wiki or not, I will definitely use these as part of my curriculum.  Thank you, Mr. Lindsay!!!

Let’s Go West was simple, clear, and concise.  I liked the use of Venn diagrams the students created.  I thought the table of contents was very appropriate. The links were filled with interesting pictures, time lines, and age-appropriate information.  I also liked the use of color.  Any 3rd grader should feel so proud of collaborating on such an impressive site.

Math 12V Outcomes Portfolio is very advanced, but gave me a sense of the form a math site might take.  I understand that the teacher, Mr. Lee, posts the specific curriculum outcomes that each student should know and what skills they should be able to perform at the conclusion of the course.  The students then collaborate as partners to identify the outcomes.  They post the outcomes and their explanations on the wiki.  I think I could use this form and identify specific outcomes desired by chapters and then have students partner and share their own explanations.  Sometimes other students are the best teachers we have in the classroom.

Then, how could you not adore the Kindergarten Counting Book!!!  Wiki in its simplest form, yet so appropriate for the students.  My own 1st grade daughters love using the digital camera.  How very much I know they would love this activity.  That led me to think of my other kids, my 6th grade kids.  They too would love to do something like this.  What if…….they used the camera to record math in real life.  Decimals, percents, fractions, etc.   Where do we see them?  How are they used?  These images could be a part of the chapter breakdowns on the previously discussed wiki by Mr. Lee.

What did you notice about their organization? Wikis are obviously organized in different ways.  I liked the clear table of contents posted to the side with links to those particular items.  I liked the use of colorful graphics, videos, and images.  I am a very visual learner, so the more you can show me, the more I understand.  (Maybe that’s why it takes me so long to complete these Things).  I also appreciate the simplicity of the wikis designed by and for the younger learners.

What was missing? I’m not really sure.  Isn’t it about “making it your own?’  Who is to say that anything is missing from any particular one.  How do you determine this?  As the creater, we determine the form and some of the content.  As collaboraters, we add what we think is missing.  As readers, we appreciate the content as it relates to our own learning.  Maybe I’m missing the point completely here.

What could you do differently or better? I would synthesize the elementary forms I was most drawn to and then make it my own creation.  I would borrow a little from this wiki and a little from that one.  Draw upon my own need to have color, simplicity, and images within clear, concise language.  I don’t know that it would be better, just my own.

I really liked this.  Let’s face it.  We all Google search everyday looking for information on one thing or another.  I use my bookmarks daily.  I feel like I can find a lot of new ideas on the blogs I found.  For instance, who would have thought I could find something relavent and interesting using a 100’s chart for middle schoolers?  I taught factors last week.  Using a 100’s chart activity from Let’s Play Math to introduce the activity and expand upon it is something I will use.

I am also excited about finding some very thoughtful rhetoric on Kitchen Table Math by Ted Nutting.  The frustration he feels in Seattle, Washington, rings true here as well.  I teach 6th grade.  This is the grade level with the largest new student influx.  The vast majority of these students are coming from our local public schools.  I am now starting to feel the No Student Left Behind fallout.  It is unfortunate that our teachers are so pressured by the standardized tests this law requires students to pass in order to move on to the next grade level.  The math skills on these tests are the math skills my new 6th graders come into class knowing.

Then comes the question “Where Does Cheating Begin?” posted by Chris on Betchablog.  Wow!  He uses the example of a doctor using a computer to look up the name of a medication.  We would want him to use the computer, right?  Then comes the real-life, teaching connection…… Would we let that same doctor use the computer to look the correct answer up in our classrooms?  NO WAY!!!!!  We require instant recall of factual information.  Chris makes an excellent point when he states, “If basic recall of facts is all that matters, a tool like Google can make you the smartest person in the room.”  What about problem solving?  Isn’t that what we want from our students?  From our leaders?  From our world?  We ban the tools that can make our students the smartest people in the room.  Should we rethink this?

I actually liked this activity a lot.  I found some interesting thoughts by students and a very interesting article in the NY Times.

“Think Different” is an article on Students 2.0.  It challenges teachers and the current educational system to begin to “think differently” ourselves about the creative students who do not always fit into the square hole.

” Let’s face it; the current education system just doesn’t know how to handle these kinds of people. “The round pegs in the square holes,” as Apple refers to them. The system doesn’t understand creativity. It robs all students of their creative consciousness and replaces it with structure, structure, and more structure, only to prepare them for a 9-to-5 job, Monday to Friday, every week of every year for the rest of their lives.”

I am very guilty of the structure, structure, structure thing.  It’s a control issue I have.  When I was a student, this is the way we “did school.”  When I played school at home, I imagined all my  “students” sitting quietly in neat little rows listening to me (the teacher, the one in control).

When I actually became a teacher, I was the creative one.  I cut and pasted cute little decorations and helped my students make adorable things to take home at the holidays.  The thing that was missing was the students’ creativity.  It actually took having a child of my own to realize how much better the child’s eye is than my own.  She “colors outside the lines” so to speak.  She is that artsy little one that likes to do things the way she sees it, not necessarily the way the world sees it.  Sean “the bass player” is absolutely correct.  These are the people who have changed our world.  They don’t always do well in my class.  Maybe they are “sitting in silence and hearing a song that’s never been written.” I understand them better now.  I applaude their uniqueness.  I am the one that needs change my way of thinking.  Not them.

I also enjoyed the artice in the NY Times entitled “Home Again”.  Oh how I dream of this!!!!!!!  I grew up on a beautiful farm in Southeast Tennessee.  I miss it terribly and would love to have the opportunity to own a “vacation” home there.   When I return, the cobwebs of my life disappear for a while.  Life is simpler and stresses seem less troublesome.

• What do you notice about the genre of blog writing in general? I notice that blog writing is less formal and highly editorial in nature. It is very personal and can be persuasive.

• How is blog reading different from other types of reading?  How is it similar? It is different by the shear fact that you must sit in front of a computer to do.  It is less formal and one-sided.  It is different because you can read other viewpoints about the particular post immediately.  It can be very thought provoking.
• How is blog writing different from other types of writing?  How is it similar? Blog writing is less formal and very narrative.  Subjects are not limited.  The writing is not necessarily edited for content, spelling, or grammar.  It is similar in that thoughts must be organized with comprehension as the goal.
• How does commenting contribute to the writing and meaning -making? I view it as a genre similar to the editorials in the newspaper.  It obviously provokes thoughts and other emotional reactions.  The commentary brings about a different point of view or reinforces the point the blogger was trying to make.  I particularly liked the comments on the “Why I Don’t Assign Homework” They bring out the emotions behind the actual post, and open the forum to a very difficult question we as educators must wrestle with.
• Is there a “blogging literacy?” How does blogging affect the way we read and write? Yes.  there is a blogging literacy.  Thoughts must be written logically with the intent of the audience to comprehend.  Our students blog.  I think blogging affects the way we read and write depending on the audience and the goal of the blogger.  Students usually reach out to their own age group; therefore, their blogs have a lot of “text” lingo.  Our blogs are usually intended for other adults and/or educators.  Our writing would be traditional and more formal than theirs.

• How can blogging facilitate learning? Blogging links our ideas and thoughts to each other.  Perhaps it is the stimulus I particularly need to “rethink” how I do class.  Once again the argument for “Why I Don’t Give Homework” particularly comes to mind.

Admittedly, this was a difficult assignment for me.  I dutifully read the suggested blogs, but fought the urge to print them out and read them at my desk instead of sitting by the computer for a number of hours.  My eyes felt tired.  My neck was stiff.  Am I moaning and groaning too much here?  Anybody else have the same feelings?

My initial thoughts about Web 2.0 are a jumble of overwhelming questions.  How am I ever going to be able to learn everything I need to learn?  There’s just too much!!!  I just won’t pay any attention to the new stuff and stick with what has always worked for me in the past.  Sound familiar?  I believe this is the way many of our students feel sitting in our classrooms.  They hit the proverbial “brick wall.”  I sometimes feel this way with technology and keeping up.  I’m not sure how to use these tools to engage today’s “digital learners.”  If I could learn to do a podcast, then I could post it online and my students and parents could view it to better understand the material.  It would also be beneficial to students who were absent.  I could view other podcasts and subscribe to blogs that would help give me newer and more inovative ideas for teaching.

Habit 6:  Using technology to your advantage is the most important and most challenging for me to employ during this course.  I have a great tendency to become “stuck” with my teaching style.  Having a structured curriculum with such a wonderful math textbook makes it difficult for me to deviate from my normal routine and seek out new ways to introduce, practice, and assess.  The textbook offers a wonderful collection of video tutors through their website, as well as, excellent practice quizzes and tests.  Seeking out new technological resources often seems moot to me.  I realize I must challenge myself in this area and reach out to access more uses for technology in my classroom.

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