Jan 13
The Vintage Ad Browser, created by Philipp Lenssen, is a collection of ads from a wide array of sources (books, magazines, CD-Roms, websites, etc.).
You can browse by category (Alcohol, Animals, Office, Sports, etc) or search by a key term (Government returned 74 images).
This is a good site for students to use for projects, or a resource to show examples of propaganda.
What is the problem? Recently my district administered Semester exams. Our practice is to have one standard exam for each of the core courses (Chemistry, Algebra, World Geography, etc.). They are administered in the core class period, during the school day through D2SC. The problem is there is not sufficient bandwidth to handle administering so many exams, across multiple high schools, simultaneously. The result is that it takes a long time for the tests to load and sometimes the student’s answers are not submitted, so they have to redo the exam. Both are extremely frustrating when you are working under time constraints.
What is the solution? We use Blackboard LMS for most, if not all of your classes. Especially in my building. The Blackboard administrators have done an excellent job in making Blackboard integration into the classes seemly and nearly flawless. Part of Blackboards LMS involves a testing function, that is superior to the testing in D2SC. My suggestion would be to move testing from D2SC into Blackboard.
What was their solution? The administration decided, on the third day of testing, to have Social Studies teachers use paper copies of the exam and only release a “bubble sheet” version of the exam on D2SC, thus reducing the bandwidth necessary for the image heavy exam.
This is a clear example of solving a problem in the wrong direction.
What should have figured into the decision making process?
When you are signed into GMail, select the more link at the top of the page to find the Photo section of your account.
When the Picasa Web Album page loads, select the upload button.
In the pop-up window, select create new album.
After you have filled out the information for the album, at the bottom , select unlisted for the share status. That will allow people to se it, but not discover it. Only those people that click the link will have access.
After creating the album, on the right hand side, you’ll find information about the album. Part of this will include a link to share the album.
After clicking it, you will see a URL, which is what you need to make the link from the website to the album.
After that, all you will have to do is upload the photos to the album and they will be visible. As long as your pictures are not super high quality, this should be more than enough space. It also is easy to rotate some pictures out and others in as needed.
In response to this Lifehack post.
1. Is what I do really worthwhile? I believe that, second only to medicine, education is the most worthwhile endeavor you can have. I has the ability to change the future and your perception of the past, it can be used for good or evil, and we consider it so important that everyone gets it for free. No one is allowed to forgo it because they are too poor, or too busy, or even too rich.
2. Do I enjoy my job? Absolutely! I use to be in the military, and I really enjoyed my job there, until some changes were made and I choose to leave and become a teacher.
3. Am I learning? Constantly. I’m learning how to learn, I’m learning how to teacher better. I’m learning technology and content and about people in general.
4. Does this job lead to somewhere I want to go? That is a difficult question to answer, since I don’t have a clear idea where I want to go. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my school. I enjoy my students (even the ones that aren’t good students). Could I go somewhere else? Maybe. Right now? No, thank you.
5. Am I well paid? I am paid well for the hours I put in at work. All the extra hours I spend at home, helping others, learning new information and knowledge, I do for free.
6. Do I get on with my boss? I have an excellent boss. Easily the best of my career. He has a clear vision and is a life long learner, like me.
7. Do I get on with my colleagues? We have a good work environment. We have many strong relationships throughout our floor and good friendships between most of the teachers and staff. I count many of my colleagues among my closest and dearest friends.
8. Am I empowered to be creative and do things my way? Absolutely. Everyone from my principle to my floor vice principle and team leader supports my ideas and plans.
9. Is my work/life balance acceptable? Hmmmm…This is a close call. I love my work, so I spend a lot of time working. Probably more than most. Could I spend less time working and more time relaxing? Yes. I work harder than I have to, but not harder than I want to.
10. Is my job title prestigious? Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever told someone that I was a history teacher without some kind of affirming response. Everyone either loves history, and would love to have a job that let them talk about it all day long, or they admire the fact that you work with teenagers, because they don’t think they could do it themselves (mostly this comes from parents of teenagers).
This Washington Post article talks about Ed. Sec. Arne Duncan’s impact as schools chief in Chicago. Arguments can be made about the definition of success, or improvement, or change, but one quote has come to the attention of more than a few readers:
"Obviously, you always want to get better faster," Duncan said in an interview when asked about the federal math scores. "I was focused on outcomes — improving graduation rates, making sure that students who graduated had a chance to pursue higher ed. You can have the best test scores in the world, but if kids aren’t going that next step, you’re not changing their lives."
That is one danger of teaching based on standardized testing. Based on the metrics you are using, it is an useless loop. You establish a test to measure teaching, and then teach to improve the test. The measurement in itself is meaningless. You might as well be teaching to improve their height.
Jan 8
“Marcus, I need to talk to you about your grade.”
Some variation on that theme is where the conversation usually begins. It ends with the student either being motivated or frustrated.
All of our students get issued laptops, so typically the number one cause of low grades is distraction. At least that is the one we hear the most.
Sometimes, however, a student is really beyond their skill level. They struggle with the content, lose interest because they are not or believe they cannot be successful, and then distract themselves with the technology. So what can you teach a student that is frustrated, performing poorly, and has only a few weeks to turn a grade around in a class?
One of the few blogs that I have read consistently over the years is written by a self-described “speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking university student”. On Scott H Young (at www.scotthyoung.com) the author has collected 9 tactics that can help. Some, like pegging and linking, I have taught in class for a few years, but there are many more skills and techniques listed that could be of benefit (maybe even to you?).
If nothing else, by giving the student the link to read, you’ve introduced him or her to a valuable resource that can benefit them even beyond the scope of the problem of grades.
Jan 7
This is the last one, I promise. At least for a week.
This is by far, my all time favorite teacher related video. If I was not already a teacher, this would have done it for me. If you know me, I’ve shown you this video… If only we had this much passion in our teaching every day. Taylor Mali relates a story about a dinner conversation where a lawyer tries to denigrate the teaching profession.
“I have a policy about honesty and ass kicking. That is, if you ask for it, I must give it to you.” Perfection!
I need to create a macro that plays this every morning, 5 minutes before the students show up.
We are on a little bit of a video kick, now. This video, if you haven’t seen it yet, has a couple of versions, but I like this one the best.
On a side note, I still use note cards, but I don’t require my students to…
Yesterday I shared a few links that improve the use of YouTube video in class. Here is one to share, mostly with faculty, but I think the students would benefit from seeing it as well.
Jan 4
As we get closer this year to WWII in my US History classes, I am reminded that I have bookmarked several classic cartoons that show propaganda that I want to use in class. One of the more frustrating complaints that I sometimes hear about using YouTube videos in class is that the students get easily distracted.
Here are two websites that are specifically designed to cut down on the distracting frames that accompany YouTube videos:
One rather neat advantage of Safeshare over Quitube is that it allows you to select a start and end point in the video before creating your link. Both sites offer a short URL for sharing on Twitter or Facebook.