Reflections from MACUL

Yesterday our I traveled to downtown Detroit for the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference with the rest of the members of the Secondary MAC program. We spent the entire day at the COBO center attending talks and I most definitely feel amped up to incorporate some new things into my own classroom.





The first talk that I attended was by Mark Dohn (@mdohn) entitled "Failure is an Option." The primary message of his talk was that in order to learn we must fail and our current education system does not provide the opportunity for failure.

"Failure is a step, not the destination. Failure comes first." 
                Charlie Wollborg, Failurelab Detroit

We must provide opportunities for our students to take risks and stress that with reflection we learn from our mistakes. Not only should we provide these opportunities to our students we should also model failure for our students. For example, when a project involving technology does not go as planned and is falling apart, we as teachers should not quit and give up we should persist, potentially fail, and discuss and reflect upon the failure with our students. I found this talk to be particular interesting, as in my current placement, we do not provide students with many opportunities to take risks and when students do fail we do not embrace and grow from those failures in the ways that Mark suggested. I think that as a new teacher it may be challenging, but it's a great time to start having this mentality with my students as I am sure that in my own practices there will be plenty of failures to grow from in the years to come.

The second session that I attended was by Gary Abud (@MR_ABUD), who is the 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year, and was titled "Evaluating Teaching with Google Apps: A Case Study." To be quite honest before this session I did not know about teacher evaluations in general, but I feel that I not only learned about how these evaluations are typically done but ways in which Google Apps can be used to improve and streamline the entire process. At the beginning of his talk he had all of the teachers in the room move to a corner of the room that described how their school's used evaluations. Most teachers went to a corner where the evaluations were used to measure students progress and not to help teachers with professional development, while some did think that their schools used evaluations both as a measure and as a tool to provide feedback to teachers. During this activity, one of the teachers gave us some advice that we should talk to our mentors about the evaluation process and see what kind of feedback they receive (if our mentors will share the info). In addition she suggested that we also interview our current principals about evaluation and the process of becoming a new teacher in the school. I plan on taking her advice as I think it will add significantly to my perspective as a new teacher. I feel incredibly oblivious to much of the evaluation process and business of being a teacher and I think that gaining some perspective will allow me to manage actually being a teacher much more professionally. Gary's talk then continued on how his school district has streamlined and adapted how they evaluate teachers using Google Apps and how this has improved the entire evaluation process. One final take away that I think will also help me as a new teacher is to have the perspective that it is a teaching evaluation not a teacher evaluation and that I should not take feedback personally but that I should take the opportunity to improve my own teaching practices.

We concluded our day by listening to lightening talks. These talks varied in topic from allowing students the opportunity to explore to being conscientious of students' backgrounds and providing support and high expectations for them. Overall, these lightening talks served as the final cherry on top of a very motivating and exciting day. I left MACUL feeling amped up and ready to start planning how I can provide my students with more responsibility, opportunities to explore their world, and provide opportunities for failure.

Planning for Technology Teach-In

Currently in my classroom we are beginning a unit on chemical bonding, and soon will be moving into intermolecular forces. Each of these topics are fairly abstract topics for students to grasp strongly, and in my own experiences in the high school chemistry classroom, typically learned through rote memorization. However, in my placement classroom we attempt to make abstract concepts easier for students to visualize by incorporating online simulations. 

For this particular lesson I am planning on having students use a PhET simulation called "States of Matter." 

Students have had experience working with this same simulation when learning about how molecules move upon being heated/cooled and therefore what it looks like at the molecular level when a substance is a solid, liquid, or gas. The general goal of this particular lesson is to bring together students' knowledge of molecules and intermolecular forces. In prior lessons they discovered what certain intermolecular forces are, such as, dipole-dipole interaction and london dispersion forces, and now they will use this simulation to gain a physical perspective of the strengths of these various forces.

Prior to starting this lesson, students will complete a warm-up activity reviewing the various types of intermolecular forces, then they will be introduced to the daily objective, and given a brief overview of how to use the simulation. Then the class will travel to the computer lab and begin the simulation activity.

Students will use a provided handout to guide them through the use and concepts involved in the simulation. Students will first complete the simulation with Neon, a nonpolar substance, and then compare the the same properties (such as boiling point) for oxygen and water. Each of these substances are included in this particular simulation.

Students will compare the mountain-valley-hill diagram, more formally known as a potential energy diagram, for these three substances, in addition to determining important phase change values, such as the melting and boiling points. By comparing these properties, students will be able to determine the strength of various intermolecular forces using their understanding of the compounds as nonpolar or polar.

 Students will find that it takes the most energy (heat) to overcome hydrogen bonding (polar molecules), followed by dipole-dipole interactions, and then london dispersion forces. After completing this simulation the class will discuss and explain their results in a debrief session.

Using this particular online tool through PhET will allow students to gain a molecular understanding of the strength of various intermolecular forces, an abstract and microscopic topic that is generally hard to visualize. This simulation will serve as a basis for future understandings centered on this important chemistry topic.

Please let me know if you can think of any improvements to the simulation activity. My students are used to working in the computer lab on similar types of activities, but I am interested in exploring different ways to debrief the content. Typically we have a teacher-centered discussion in which the teacher asks questions and uses sticks with student names to elicit student responses. I am interested in increasing the responsibility of my students and think that some kind of group presentations to the class in which each group explains their results (perhaps dividing by different substances tested). However, we have never completed this type of activity in my mentor teacher's classroom and I would appreciate any advice, ideas, or suggestions. Thank you for you help in advance!

Edublogger Reflection

This semester we were challenged to become active in the education blogging community. I was honestly pretty overwhelmed at first...I kept looking at edublogs but feeling that I was not worthy of commenting on their posts, so I kept procrastinating my comments on their blogs. However, I eventually did force myself to comment on two blogs (yesterday) and want to share my experience. I ended up commenting on a high school science and chemistry teachers' blogs, but have not received any responses yet (but don't worry I'll update you if/when I hear anything from them).

The first blog which was the one from a high school science teacher in Colorado is titled Science Education on the Edge: Experimenting with student-centered science education. There were many different interesting posts on this blog from thoughts on AP chemistry teacher workshops, to portfolios, to BYOD. I decided to comment on the BYOD post as I learned a great deal about what a BYOD program truly looks like a high school and issues that can arise when students are able to have unlimited access to the internet. I shared my experiences at my own school and asked about how this particular school established a school community that supports the BYOD movement.

"What an interesting story! I am a currently a student teacher in a masters degree program and have faced very different circumstances in my own school. We do not have a BYOD program established in our school and instead have a strict ban on cellphone. and other devices, at school. Teachers can choose to have students use their own tech in the classroom at their own discretion, but most teachers do not take advantage of this opportunity. We have learned a great deal about BYOD in our technology class, and I can understand both the pros and cons of this type of program.

I am curious to learn more about how BYOD at your school was implemented and how the culture of school has changed due to BYOD. Overall do you think that both students and teachers have taken advantage of BYOD? At my school, students do not have access to the WiFi other than through the guest network. Even as a student teacher, I only have access through the guest network (which can sometimes honestly be a pain). On this guest network there is a significant amount of restrictions. However, when students log onto computers in the computer lab they can get onto youtube and tend to listen to inappropriate music from school. I am not sure how the system is setup and how the restrictions vary from one type of account to another. Now I might have to look into this!

Thanks for the insightful post!"

I think the most challenging aspect of implementing a BYOD in a school, from my own perspective and experiences, would be the development of technology norms and of a culture where tech is a tool and students are responsible about their use of technology. 

The second blog I commented on is called TEACHINGchemistry: building a 21st century chemistry classroom written by a high school chemistry teacher.  This is a blog that I started to read through every blog on...I got caught up in a series of very interesting posts. The post that I eventually ended up commenting on was focused on unhelpful grading practices. When I started my placement, I was suprised about some of the practices that my mentor teacher used (such as not assigning or grading homework). The author of this blog follows many of the same principles as my mentor teacher and I asked her opinion of differences in their practices. Below is my comment:

"What an interesting post!

I am a current masters student in an education program and completing my student teaching. I will be certified to teach both chemistry and math, and am student teaching in a chemistry classroom that has sections of general, honors, and AP chemistry. My mentor teacher also does not grade homework and when I first learned that he didn’t I was SO CONFUSED. All of my previous experiences in the classroom, from elementary school through college and then through my second grad school program, all included GRADED homework assignments. It felt so wrong to me. It was definitely something that I had to adjust to as a new teacher. I have realized that some of our students are not practicing as frequently or as thoroughly as they should be. How did you create a classroom culture where students are engaged in their practice problems without the promise of points?

In my placement we do only allow students to earn back so many points on exam retakes. However in order to retake students must complete online study problems and meet with an instructor to go through the material covered in the assessment. Overall this process takes a few days to complete and I honestly think that students should be able to earn back more if not all of the points that they missed.

In our classroom we do not drop the lowest score however if a student scores below a 40% it is not entered into the system. The lowest score a student can receive is a 40% as my mentor teacher thinks that anything lower will make it impossible for a student bring up their grades. What do you think of this policy?

Your posts have been so interesting to follow! I’ll definitely be back to read more!"

Overall, I was really inspired by reading some of these blogs and it made me not only think about how I write my own blog posts but my own practices. That is truly where the power of this assignment we were given is. It has opened up a new world of resources and ideas and I can't wait to implement some new things in my practices as both a chemistry teacher and supporter of technology. Hopefully I'll hear something from the edubloggers that I read and commented on...like I said I'll keep you posted. 

Tech In My Placement

In my past life as a research scientist in an ultrafast laser lab, technology was the center of my science world. I programmed experimental interfaces, had to rebuild/fix lasers when needed, and had to work constantly on a computer to analyze data and write for scientific journals. In my own practices as a scientist technology was essential...and at times served as an extension to my own body. Due to my experiences, I personally believe that students NEED to know how to use tech as a tool and will be disadvantaged in the workplace and in their future education if they cannot appropriately use computers.

I have even considered teaching my future children to program at a young age...if you think I'm crazy or that this is cool you should check out SCRATCH. I think it is important to teach children and our students how to use technology appropriately, but that it is key that they understand the power of tech as a tool.

While completing the Tech in My Placement survey I was honestly surprised by the types of tech (from computer labs, to video equipment and software, to even personal tech that students bring to school). I think it is pretty neat how our school has video announcements and a news team that creates and shares stories with the student body. In my own classroom we have a document camera, a projector, and a very old computer meant to be used by my mentor. My mentor teacher bought the projector that he uses (although he was later given one by the district as a reward that he ended up giving to another teacher to use) and got a document camera through a grant. In addition, he bought a personal computer that he uses for teaching purposes. We are very fortunate that my mentor is part of a national fellowship program as they have afforded him different experimental probes to use, in addition to a few bought by the school. We frequently visit the computer lab for our classes, as we do not have laptops in our classroom. On those computers we have instructed students on how to complete basic tasks on Excel, complete online homework, and run Phet simulations. Overall technology is most definitely used in our classroom.

Although we do use a wide variety of tech tools in my placement, I am somewhat disappointed by the capabilities of the computers as well as student training to use technology. It honestly takes a good 10 minutes for students to turn computers on and log into their personal accounts in the computer lab. The software on the computers is too new for the computers that it is required to run on...this turns the computers to muck and makes it incredibly difficult for students to work efficiently on. Once the start-up process is complete, opening an internet browser seems to take an eternity. Especially when you only have a short time with students, it makes it incredibly difficult to use time efficiently.

I am also somewhat disappointed about the training that students have had with technology. I have seen students text at warp speed but they do not know how to type or how to navigate a simple Google search. This week I spent a good three minutes teaching a student the intricacies of a right-click. In my own educational experiences, we had a technology class in which we had to type at a certain rate and be able to use multiple fingers. We had to know how to use the basic Microsoft office package. I know that some instruction is totally manageable to teachers to complete, but I would argue that learning how to use technology is just as important if not more important for students to learn in school to be adequately prepared for the workplace. As a student teacher, I cannot change the whole system but I can try to incorporate more and more well-scaffolded technology uses into my own practices. This is challenging and time consuming but I personally feel that it is extremely worthwhile.

Something I find interesting about my placement is our no cell phone policy. Teachers can choose to allow students to use their self-phones but it is on a strictly classroom-by-classroom basis. In my classroom, we have only encouraged a student to use their cellphone one time and it was when the schools technology was not functioning correctly. Students have their phones taken away on a daily basis. I like to think that there is a positive way to establish norms in the classroom to channel students interests and skills with technology. I plan on trying to incorporate some of this into my student teaching, if possible, next semester and will definitely try to utilize it when I have my own classroom.

But for now, in conclusion, I feel as if I definitely learned a lot by completing the Tech in My Placement survey and it got me thinking about how my students use technology and ideas for what I can do as a teacher to bring technology into my own classroom.

Tech Tools in Use

Socrative is one of the Tech Tools in Use presentations given by groups in our EDUC 504 class. Their presentation was very insightful into the power of this tool and made me think about how I could apply it in my own classroom.  

This online tool is a way for teachers to poll and quiz students online that mimics the use of iClickers. Teachers can create assessments that are either multiple choice, true/false, or short answer. In each of these types of questions one can select the correct answer and can also provide instant feedback to students. Teachers then provide a code to students for the socrative "classroom" and then as the teacher you can release the quiz that you created to your students. You can also choose to use a "quick question" to poll students like one would for a iclicker question. You can also provide a fun quiz in the form of a "space race" where students can work in teams to complete a previously created quiz. Teams race against one another to answer the most questions as quickly as possible. Socrative is a simple and powerful online tool that allows teachers to assess students understanding in a few different fun ways.

My biggest concern with this technology in the classroom is that each student must have access to either a computer or smart phone. In my current placement we do not have access to laptops in our classroom daily and the computer lab computers are extremely slow. I think that it would be interesting to try to use this tool with students on their cellphones. While this tool is easy to access on a phone I think that one must establish the correct norms for use in the classroom, however our current policy is that students do not use phones in the classroom. It is left to the discretion of the teacher in my placement to decide how cellphones are used in the classroom, however, my mentor teacher prohibits their use.

I am inspired to think about how to incorporate this online tool into my future classroom. Although concerns with having technology are the most prominent in my mind, I think that the incorporation of technology into the classroom is essential, especially as the use of technology is so important for the future success of our students. Some may argue that knowing how to use technology effectively is more important than the regurgitation of rote information. This assignment not only introduced me to many different online tools, each with their own pros and cons, but it made me think more critically about how to incorporate technology into the classroom, the norms that would need to be established for student use, and what things are important for a teacher to consider when checking out new tools.

Guest Presenter: David Theune

David Theune was our first guest speaker of the semester in EDUC 504 and he was such an inspiring and motivational speaker! David is an English/Drama teacher that connects his students with "authentic audiences."

He provides provides different audiences through the use of community and technology.  

The first audience he discussed was parents. Although parents are typically very involved in elementary school, a lack of parent participation occurs in high school. David invites parents into the classroom and involves them in different activities such as listening to student read essays and helping build up students by providing feedback. Although he does state that many parents may not be able to come, providing the opportunity opens doors and provides an audience for students beyond the teacher. This started to make me think about how I could get parents involved in my future chemistry classroom. Although I think chemistry is something that many parents may find intimidating, I think it would be great to open up science into the community and have students present their work, such as lab reports or projects. As a student being able to explain and communicate science to a lay audience is a powerful and meaningful endeavor.

To provide an even broader audience David presents his student work to the world through the internet.  He has his students create digital personal narratives that his students share through YouTube. Although this is an incredibly personal and intimidating feat students rarely turn down the opportunity to share their work, however, they are provided the opportunity to opt out of sharing their work publicly. I think that creating a public space for your classroom to share their work is very cool. I have the idea for a project in which students complete a research project on a scientist that they can relate to and then they have to adopt their scientists character and present a digital narrative from the perspective of their scientist. This is a more involved project, but I could also utilize this online sharing for student work about developing different lab procedures or reporting out and explaining results. 

David also provides an opportunity to bring in local non-profits and organizations into the classroom. He has students write persuasive essays after completing research then students vote on the best essay and the winner gets to give money to the organization that they supported in their essay. In this way students contribute to their community and see that they can impact the world.  There are many different organizations, such as environmental agencies, that I could incorporate into my future lessons. When students are learning about solubility for example, we could extend what is learned in the classroom and learn about different compounds that find our way into local waterways and perhaps even learn about waste water treatment plants. 

David even suggests to have students teach younger students in the district.  Doing this you can have students plan what they are going to teach and then execute it by visiting other classrooms. This is a low-tech way to provide audience to the classroom. This could be difficult with some chemistry topics as they may be abstract for younger students, but perhaps that would provide some challenge to the high school students and try to get them to truly explain their thought process. 

The final audience that David suggests is through streaming your classroom with peers in other chemistry classrooms.  He suggests http://www.ustream.tv/ as an avenue for streaming the classroom. This even provides an opportunity for parents who are unavailable to come into school to view student work.  

Overall, I thought that David Theune's presentation was very informational and motivational. I left class feeling PUMPED UP about including audience into my classroom. Even though he suggested many different projects that have worked in his ELA classroom, his ideas inspired me to start thinking about how to incorporate his practices into my own teaching. Although this presentation happened at the end of a very long day, I left the School of Ed feeling ready for the next opportunity I may have to utilize any one of these great ideas.

If you are interested in learning more about David Theune below are the links for his twitter feed and blog.

Twitter  https://twitter.com/DavidTheune

Blog http://educationaltransformer.blogspot.com/

Connections Across the Disciplines--Collegues Lesson Plan

I cannot believe that it is already a new semester and that I am one step closer to becoming a teacher! Last semester we were asked to create a lesson plan that incorporated issues centered around the B.Y.O.D. (bring-your-own-device) movement in the classroom. My group created a lesson centered around the physics of electromagnetic radiation of cellphones and I thought that it was such a fun experience. In this post I am going to discuss another group's lesson plan that centers on "understanding the historical context of the Odyssey."

See lesson plan (with all links included):
https://docs.google.com/a/umich.edu/document/d/1CqeCcO4j2VQ5AntoIVXzwNao1GDh6ZDZHRRwGHgl-zY/edit?pli=1


This group of humanities teaching interns creatively intertwined both Greek history and the text of the Odyssey. I think that this is such an interesting topic and that my fellow interns took advantage of a great teaching tool, Blendspace, that we learned in our Teaching with Technology course.  The authors incorporated.  They also allowed students to use their own personal cellphones to stream the Blendspace, where they are guided through a presentation, YouTube videos, and a short assessment at the end of the mini-lesson. After the mini-lesson and quiz, there is a work period where students are asked to use a map of Odysseus' travels and to determine the modern cities on his path home from Troy. Then they are asked to use Google maps to determine how far Odysseus traveled in his long journey home. After the work period the students are assessed through individual exit tickets that are to be completed through Google drive and shared with the teacher. In this exit ticket they are prompted with the question "What is one way in which the overall culture of Ancient Greece influenced Odysseus' actions?"

I think that this overall lesson plan is a good supplement to reading the Odyssey and that would help students gain understanding of the time period of the piece. The variety of media in this mini-lesson has the potential to excite students about the subject matter and be incredibly educational.  In addition, allowing students to physically use their own technology in the classroom will create excitement about their own tools to discovery, in addition to solving the problem of technology constraints in the classroom.  This mini-lesson does not overwhelm students with PowerPoint based lectures and provides interesting videos and images to promote learning of students that have different learning styles.

The group, made up of interns in both English and Social Studies content areas, created an interactive mini-lesson that covered many different and important aspects of the historical context of the Odyssey.  As a science teacher I am not extremely familiar with the content area but this lesson does help me to reflect on my own experiences in Social Studies, English, and Latin classrooms throughout my secondary education.  I had varying levels of interactivity in these different classrooms, in which I discussed either Greek culture and/or literature. I hope to make my future classrooms very interactive and transdisciplinary, something that this group was especially strong at doing. I believe that this helps students make connections to their previous knowledge and perspectives meanwhile enjoying learning. I was somewhat hesitant at first about using Blendspace in the classroom but this lesson plan and example has made me feel more confident in using this tool in the classroom.

I have to say that I learned quite a bit, both about the Odyssey and technology in the classroom, from this mini-lesson. Great job team!