This has me thinking that we all have changes that happen and we all find ways to adjust and re-align our life.  This happens constantly in education.  Changes.  New curriculum, new staff, new students, snow days, sick days, new years, new technologies.  The list could go on and on.  How we deal with it is what makes the difference.  We can try and keep things the same or we can try and adapt and work with the circumstances we are given.  In today’s world, technology is making a place and this is changing education.   The focus is not technology, the focus is on how to reach our digital learners.  I posted recently at my Lutheran Tech Teacher blog a little more about this after attending the LEA convocation.  Feel free to check it out.  Because so much is changing, it is hard to keep up with everything.  Find one thing you can try.  Learn it well, use it well and add more as you go.  Make little changes that you feel comfortable with and you may surprise yourself!   Happy Learning!

I love conducting faculty meetings.  I love teaching teachers!  I broke the day up, doing different activities.  The first half of the day was our PD with Devotions time.  I am working my teachers through the book, “What Great Teachers Do Differently” by Todd Whitaker.  The second half of the day was spent on numerous activities.  Learning our email system or website, curriculum mapping, 21st Century Education, and time to share and answer some questions I wanted them to think about and answer.  On the last day we also took time to be with a partner and pray for and with that person.

One advantage I will have this year is a lot of time for faculty meetings.  Almost every Wednesday is a half day for the teachers.  So the rest of the day is time for Faculty meetings.  Obviously there is the to-do list and administrative part.  But, I am using this time for continual PD , Curriculum Mapping, and departmentalized learning sections.  I will also bring in a few presenters and speakers.  Lastly the teachers will have work they need to work on throughout the week.

How are your faculty meetings run?  Are they informative as they should be? Why or Why Not?

Some of you have no doubt had this class in your formal instruction or something close to it. I am looking forward to learning how the Christian treats education as opposed or contrasted with secular principles of education. As I go through the class, I will be sure to take notes and post some of my thoughts on our discussions here. My hope is that the discussions here will trigger some thoughts about how you handle educating Lutheran children in your classes and schools.

The course content will be divided into four primary areas that include Christian Nurture, Christian Education, Christian Instruction and Contemporary Issues. We will be looking at challenges to Christian education with case studies as well as the typical readings and reviewing books on the topics.

Once I get settled in New Ulm in the MLC dormitory, I will try to post my experiences.

I enjoyed the list immensely!  I did think how could I fit this to Lutheran Education, since many of us are our own Tech Guys or IT guys.  So I came up with my own list.

The 10 LutheranTech Commandments (in new standard version)

1. Technology must be Christ-Centered.

What does this mean: Everything we do, must be to the glory of God

2. Be a Digital Citizen: No Yelling at or Hitting the Technology.

What does this mean: The output of the tools are dependent on the input.  If it is not turning on, plug it in!

3. Remember to Save.

What does this mean: SAVE EARLY and OFTEN!!!!!

4. Honor the Computer Lab Rules

What does this mean: Be respectful to the rules set forth your use. Read Rob Jacklin’s Learning from the “Rules” Blog Post

5. Do not click on pop-up ads.

What does this mean: When it states you can win a free iPad, it is a lie! You can’t, so don’t click on it, even if you think it is cool.  You could be downloading a virus instead.

6. Filter.

What does this mean:  Although no filter is enough to prevent Satan, keep the net to catch as many bad fish as you can.

7.  Creative Commons Protection.

What does this mean: DO NOT STEAL or download illegal music, pictures, or anything that you did not create.  Ok to use if it has the creative commons attribute.

8. Be a Digital Citizen: No Cyber-bullying.

What does this mean: Behave online as you should behave offline.  You leave a trace, even if you think it is protected.

9.  Appreciate New Tools.

What does this mean: DO NOT BE LIKE ME, who wants everything that is the latest and coolest tool out there.

10. Appreciate those you can learn from.

What does this mean: Use your PLN, Learn from them, but do not be greedy, give back to those who have taught you something.

I am not trying to bag on Lutheran Schools, because I LOVE Lutheran Schools.  I am forever in debt to Lutheran Schools, but do we care?  This could apply to public schools also and Catholic schools.  DO WE CARE?

I have been thinking about my students this year and former students, and I might be as guilty as anyone, do I care for my students.  I love my students, even when they drive me crazy.  But, am I doing what is best for them?  Am I making them better students, closer to God, and life-long learners?  I know sharing my faith and openly discuss God has brought students closer to God, and no one can say I do not profess my love for Christ in my classroom.

But do I care enough to do what is best?

I think Lutheran Teachers are put into a hard spot many times.  I have some students that are very distracted and off in whatever world they have created.  I am friends with these student’s parents, even gone out to dinner with them and have them over to my house.  How do I tell them their child needs to repeat a grade?  I think our kindness and wanting to please parents put students behind the ball.  I know I have passed on students, that I did not feel would be ready.  Now some did fine, some struggled and were pass on to the next teacher.

Recently I brought up that I wanted try something new with a student, I am very close to the parent.  The parent did not take to what I had to say.  They did not want to hear their child needs extra attention and we need to find a new way to engage him.  The student is smart, but does poorly on everyday assignments.  He loses focus before he finds it.  So do I give up and get frustrated when the student isn’t engaged and holding the rest of the class up?  Do I care enough to say, this is his plan of learning and do it.  Do my administrator and board care enough to back me up?

This thought process also turns toward teachers and those who are not doing their job well.  Usually in Lutheran schools when a teacher has a problem, we tell them, maybe this isn’t the place for you, but we will give you a good word.  So they move from one Lutheran School to another and never changing their attitude or techniques.

If we just pass a student on or pass a teacher on do we really care?  I am not trying to question your love or even your quality of caring, just want to raise some questions and make you think.  Are we doing everything for the STUDENT or to keep the peace.  I know I don’t have all the answers and I am as guilty as the next person.  I want to care.  I DO CARE!

What did I learn from making French Fries for 3 hours?

Our school had the opportunity to work at McDonald’s today for a fundraiser.  We had to work for only three hours.  Some teachers were at the front counter.  Some were walking around trying to sell pies and cookies.  I was on the fries.  There were two other teachers with me.  The only task  I needed to do was put the basket of fries into the fryer, push a button, when it beeped shake the basket and put it back into the fryer, then when it beeps again take the fries out and let it drain a little.  Finally I dumped it into the pan for the other two teachers to salt and dish them into their containers.  That was it.  There was a little machine that put the fries into the basket automatically.

So what does this have to do with education?  Besides the fact I made a promise to myself when I was in High School that I would never work at a Fast Food place.  Although it was only 3 hours, I was dreading the night, but it was good for our school.  We made a lot more than I make in three days of teaching.  As the night went on, I let my mind think about things and one of the things I thought about was, “How can I make this experience benefit my educational pursuits?”  I was thinking more how I could use what I witnessed and thought about as making me a good administrator, but it is also had some “teacher” lessons here.  This is what I am going to talk about.

Although what seems like a simple task, making fries is and can be a tough job.

The first thing I found out was you need to pay attention.  You need to know what beeps mean and what the words on the fryer mean.  There were two different fryers for the fries.  One fryer would say “Shale” and the other would say “Duty” at times.  Both of those words meant that I needed to shake the basket.  If you are not paying attention, you might ruin the fries.  In school we need to pay attention to the students if we don’t read the signs our students are giving us, we might ruin them or lose them in a very important learning opportunity.

The next thing was you need to keep remaining fries away from the new fries.  That is pretty self explanatory, but it goes with the first fries made, the first fries served.  In education we need to take care of the tasks students do not understand before we move on to new concepts.  Master a concept before we let a student move on and be lost with the students that are on new material.

The third thing I learned was you need to adapt and adjust.  This was the hardest part of the night.  You never want to have too many fries and you never want no fries.  You have to go with the flow.  Each batch of fries took about 3 mins to make.  Some times fries could fly out of the waiting section and at times they can be just sitting there.  One part of the night I got finished making 6 batches.  The fries sat for a few mins, and we didn’t have any more room to put the fires into their containers, and in no time they started to go very fast, so I added another 8 batches to replace the ones we just sent out.  As soon as I was done making that last batch, no one else got fries the rest of the time we were there.  So we were sitting on a lot of fries.  As a teacher we need to be adaptable!  We have to go with the flow of what our students are ordering.  We need to give them concepts and projects as they need and want them.  We can’t overboard them with work all the time and we can’t give them no assessments.  It is a fine line.

The next concept I learned goes with the whole making sure we have enough fries but not too much.  According to McDonald’s rules every 7mins you need to get rid of the old fries.  They are outdated and stale.  I think you can see where I am going here for education.  We need to get rid of our old and stale methods.  If you are teaching exactly the same the last 5,10,15,20,40 years it is time to change out the fries and make some new ones.

The last thing I learned was things don’t always go as plan.  I mention earlier that there was a machine to put the fries in the basket automatically.  Well, I found that machine isn’t always reliable.  Maybe it was the grease and fry particles floating around, but this machine would fail every so often.  So you had to troubleshoot a little and take time to get it back on track.  Not to mention you needed to refill it after so many baskets.  In school we know lesson plans don’t always go as plan.  Some teachers can’t deal with this, others need  to deal with this.  If the fry machine stopped working, we could still make fries, I could fill the baskets myself, but that would not be feasible for my time.  This goes with technology in the classroom.  Many teachers don’t want to shift because maybe technology will go down and they think it is easier for them to do it themselves.  Recently I moved my spelling tests to the computer.  I use Spelling City (http://www.spellingcity.com) to administer my tests.  This online program will say the word, say a sentence, and then grade the work.  While students take turn taking their spelling test we work on other projects or reinforce some concepts we are having trouble with.  As a teacher I need to troubleshoot not just technology issues, but troubleshoot students.  Especially in third grade, the students do not always know why they don’t understand something or why they get a problem wrong.  I have to troubleshoot their thought process to help them understand.  Plus sometimes you need to do the maintenance or take the time to create a project for the students, to make your lessons more engaging.

It was an amazing opportunity for me to learn something new and in the end, when everything works the fries taste amazing, just like when in education things go the way you plan about the students turn out amazing.  So go into your classrooms and make some great student fries!

Phone Home ~ ET

The world is different from 50 years ago, 25 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and even 3 years ago. In today’s world of education a tool is being stripped away from the students’ hand even before they enter the hallways. Here is one policy on Cell Phones that is like many other school policies:

CLASS II OFFENSE

According to HCS Policy – Use or visible possession of electronic devices including, but not limited to, cell phones, pagers, or other audio/video devices is strictly prohibited during school hours. In addition, the use of electronic devices may not disturb or impede extracurricular activities.

First offense: The first time a cell phone (or other electronic device) is taken up, the phone will not be returned for one week (7days). A parent/guardian may retrieve the device one week later between 2:30-3:30 pm.

Second offense: The second time a cell phone (or other electronic device) is taken up the student will receive one day of in-school suspension, and the device will not be returned for thirty (30) days.

Subsequent offenses: The next time a cell phone (or other electronic device)is taken up, the student will receive two additional days of in-school suspension, and the phone or other electronic device will be held an additional thirty (30) days.

I have read and agree to the conditions established at GHS regarding the use of cell phones and/or other electronic devices during the school day.

The school is not responsible or liable for any lost or stolen electronic devices.

Just recently the state of Pennsylvania is proposing a Bill (363) which is amending the original Bill that was created in 1949:

Section 1317.1. Possession of [Telephone Pagers] Electronic

Devices Prohibited.–(a) The possession by students of telephone paging devices, commonly referred to as beepers, cellular telephones and portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material shall be prohibited on school grounds, at school sponsored activities and on buses or other vehicles provided by the school district.

So are having cell phones in the schools bad? Does this make them a drug dealer? Does this mean there is no educational purpose to cell phones?

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/01/07/16cellphone.h28.html

New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the “turned off and out of sight” rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.
A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework.

And some recent, positive examples of how the phones are being used for academic learning may eventually lead to more nuanced policies. Indeed, more educators are concluding that cellphones may be the only realistic way their schools can offer the 1-to-1 computing experiences that better-funded schools provide with laptops.

“In our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all

times, just like a pencil—it’s an underused tool,” said Rosemary Miller, the technology-integration specialist for secondary schools in the Buhler, Kan., public schools. “We don’t have a computer for every kid, as some school districts do.”

Good for those teachers. They are not afraid of what will happen if they try something new and rewarding to the students. Recently the 7th grade teacher and I redid our 6-8th grade computer curriculum including everyday application of technology. The students love it and are learning a lot more than step by step instructions.

Podcasting and classroom-response systems are among the more than 100 uses of cellphones that educator Liz Kolb has collected, and in some cases invented, for her book Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, published in October.

Bloom’s New Taxonomy has “creation” as the top level of intellectual behavior. Having students create Podcasts is a great way to evaluate the students on any topic you are covering. A quote from an unknown individual once said, “The one who is doing the talking is doing the learning.” Student response systems can be very expensive. If every student already has a cell phone, using free websites to create polls is a cheap alternative. Liz Kolb has taken her book and went to the web in her own blog: http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/, where Liz continues to find new ways to use cell phones in the classroom.

Cellphones with cameras also have great potential for simple data collection. They can enrich fieldwork or field trips by allowing students to snap images of, say, leaves, for later identification. Students also can snap pictures of museum exhibits and placards to fuel classroom discussions.

“Mobile citizen journalism” is another popular trend that schools can harness, Ms. Kolb said, though she did not know of any school newspapers doing it extensively yet. “Schools can definitely set up their own mobile journalism text-messaging numbers,”

so students who are traveling can phone in reports and images, especially if they find themselves in the midst of breaking news.

The possibilities are endless. Jon Orr of Faith Lutheran High School in Las Vegas has his bio students take pictures, on their cell phones, of the major organs and muscles of their dissections and upload them, by the way of text message, to Flickr. After the students uploaded the pictures they must go in and annotate on the pictures what is being shown. http://www.animoto.com has developed an application for I-Phone and I-Pod where you can create short video clips on the go. California Local PBS station even held a contest http://www.koce.org/filmonthefly/ where your mobile phone will receive a text message with the secret story prompt, along with the “tag” you’ll use to identify your video as part of our contest on YouTube. You will only have 20 hours to enter your finish product.

The main cause of bans is society is not ready for the power having a cell phone or mobile device, in a classroom, has. They are scared and uneducated of the positives. They only hear the horror stories that media plays for them. The topic of allowing cell phones in classrooms will go on for years. But, as the trend is increasing, every child will have a cell phone before long. 70% of my Elementary and Middle School students have a cell phone and use it regularly out of school. Why not use the tool they already have and engage them in some learning. If there is an educational purpose that can be defined in meeting a state educational standard, then the teacher is doing their job. Liz Kolb did a survey on Twitter: of 100 teachers, 97 of them said that their school had a policy that highly restricted cell phone use during school hours (either banning them completely or restricting their use to non-academic times). Yet in the same survey 40 of the teachers said they were using cell phones in learning, and 87 teachers said they would like to use cell phones for learning in their schools in the future. The educators are catching on. The administrators need to change the Acceptable Use Policies to captivate the students and how they learn. One poster made the analogy that automobiles are used in crimes can be dangerous, they pollute the air, and they cause accidents, but we don’t ban them. Why are we banning educational tools? Beth Holmes in a blog post was discussing a picture taken in 1905 and how they were 21^st Century Education in the picture titled:

“A modern training school.” Girls are sewing and cooking. Boys are woodworking. The students are using the TOOLS of the era to prepare for the work of the era. The teachers are working beside their students, coaching and mentoring them as they refine skills that transfer beyond the schoolhouse to life in the real world. Zoom in. Look a bit closer. The TOOLS include needles, knives, chisels, hammers, picks, heat, ovens. The tools of the age are potentially dangerous – but they aren’t blocked from the school. Teachers are teaching students to use the tools of the age – and use them safely.

The last line is a great sentiment for the use of cell phones in education. We need to teach students how to use cell phones and how to use them safely. A new trend is what experts’ call, sexting, where students are taking nude to semi-nude photos of themselves and texting it to other students. What students do not realize is they can be prosecuted for distributing under-age pornography and be labeled a pedophile, even if they are a minor themselves.

The way that students communicate, collaborate, and conduct business (personal or public) over their mobile devices could be both beneficial and detrimental to their futures in the 21st Century workforce. Currently with policies banning cell phones from school campus, teachers get the message that they should ignore cell phones altogether. Which includes talking with students about mobile safety, ethics, and legalese. Students do not understand the ramifications for the media they collect and send on their cell phones. Teachers have an opportunity to help educate students on how to use their cell phones appropriately, for the common good, and for their own upward mobility in the global workforce. (Liz Kolb)

Until we change the way we think, the culture, ourselves we will keep a close mind opinion on any topic, but especially where cell phones fit in this world of education. Let us stop and think about the students and what is best for them. Let us put their lives before ours, even if that means taking a risk to change. Remember all ET wanted to do was “Phone Home” and using tools he found around Elliott’s house he was able to achieve this goal. Let our students “Phone Home!”