Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I recently read a feature article on ISTE called "Teach Your Students to Fail Better" and started to wonder if we as an education system have overdosed on boosting student self-esteem. Have we tilted so far in the direction of building student confidence that we have created a false sense of competency. Are we so afraid to let students fail that we have robbed them of a valuable learning experience? What will happen to these students who live in a society where 80% or more of them make honor roll? What will happen to these students who are given one chance after another to succeed? What will happen when they enter the real world when they will fail to get into the college of their dreams, or get the job that they want, or fail to solve a problem at work? What skills have we given them to overcome failure if we create an educational environment where everyone always succeeds?

How much worse will the education system get when teachers are evaluated on student performance? When the stakes are raised will the system be forced into a situation where we push more students to "succeed" by lowering the bar even further?

Instead consider teaching our students to fail. Allowing them to fail. Encouraging them to fail. Preparing them by giving them the skills to overcome obstacles.

Flipping Your Professional Development

I've been reading quite a few blogs lately (over the past couple of years, actually) about reverse instruction aka flipping the classroom. It's really a simple concept that makes a lot of sense. Deliver the content (lowest level of thinking) at home and work on the applications and problems (higher level) together to provide facilitation. But then I read a blog (forgive for not remembering where or by whom) about applying that same concept to professional development. Provide access to the content (video, document, whatever) before the pd time and then provide guided practice for the new skill. Simple. Logical. Brilliant!

VoiceThread and Collaboration

I love the concept of VoiceThread. We can create jpegs and record narration to go with them, upload them to a website and collect comments from the public about our images and narration. It is a great way to have even very young students be able to publish their work to an authentic audience!

Here's what I would like a website to be able to do.
1. Have students post jpg files of projects.
2. Have the public (or our invited audience) add their own jpgs to our project with their own narrations. Narrations are recorded on the website after uploading, not done before.
3. As additional jpgs are added, the file runs as a wmv or converts to one.
4. Is there such a tool online? Some kind of Paint, Audacity, PhotoStory 3 online collaborative digital storytelling mashup?

The reason I want these features is that I would love my kindergarten to grade 5 students to collaborate on digital stories/ presentations in real time online without having to make their own accounts. Am I asking too much? Has such a tool already been created and I just haven't heard of it yet? If you know, let me know!

Cyberbullying in Connecticut and Curriculum

This year (2011) the State of Connecticut passed a new cyberbullying law "that will make online statements subject to academic disciplinary proceedings." (http://goo.gl/wHz9h) Luckily, in my school district also had a change in our service delivery model for technology instruction in the elementary grades and were in the midst of a curriculum rewrite. The first unit was responsible use, so we had a perfect area to add lessons specific to cyberbullying. The tough part is how to introduce the concept in grades 3, 4, and 5. I wanted to share a couple of resources that we have found invaluable for this unit: the videos on  http://www.netsmartzkids.org/ start with the concept of netiquette which was a great way to kick off the topic with grade 3. Then the videos on  http://www.ikeepsafe.org/ were helpful in Grade 4. In Grade 5, the webisodes on  http://www.stopbullying.gov/kids/index.html have been a great resource. What resources do you use to teach cyberbullying to elementary students?

Changing Your Habits

We are in the midst of a great change in education. Change can be uncomfortable. Many of us resist change. But without change there can be no growth. For the year 2012, what habit would you like to change to help yourself transition to meet the trends in education? Consider the 21st learning skill of collaboration. How can you change the teaching and learning paradigm in your classroom away from the transmission of information to students that is then processed and returned to something more collaborative where students learn from each other with the teacher as facilitator?

Backing Up Documents and Favorites in the Cloud

Have you ever lost a vital document? Have you ever been devastated to learn that your laptop will be re-cloned and you will lose everything? Have you ever stopped breathing for a moment when the "blue screen of death" appeared on your computer? There are 2 tools that I recommend for my colleagues to use to avoid these problems.

The first is Dropbox.com. Simply install the software on your computer (Use this link: http://db.tt/TTffWHuc) and you get 2gb of space free. Whatever you save into the My Dropbox folder in your My Documents folder gets automatically synched in the cloud. In addition to backing up without thinking, you have access to your files from any machine anywhere. You can also share documents here.

The second tool is Delicious.com. It is a free social bookmarking website. Simply follow their directions to export your Internet favorites and import them to delicious.com. You can make them public or private. You can also tag the links making them easier to find. You will not only never lose your favorites, but they are also accessible from any machine anywhere.

Should We Be Integrating Technology?

I've recently read Chris Lehmann's and David Warlick's blogs about integrating technology. I'm a technology resource teacher, so I am constantly preaching to teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes. But after reading this particular article from TechLearning (http://www.techlearning.com/article/28304) I am beginning to change the way I think. Over the summer, I will be devising ways to make technology in education more, "like oxygen - ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible." (Chris Lehmann, http://twitter.com/sukanti/status/10092625603)

Technology Funding

Recently, my school district has been struggling with our budget. How do you manage to keep technology afloat or even increase when there is no money for instructional support, clerks, paraprofessionals, and classroom teachers are using their jobs?

I'm beginning to explore "free" options, encouraging more use of web 2.0 tools and such. Also, I've been looking for, but not finding many educational technology grants.

Handheld Computers and Assessment

Once teachers have Excel spreadsheets for collecting data, they can be synced to a handheld computer. Then the teacher can use the handheld to record the data. Instead of having students come to them at their laptop, teachers can carry the handheld computer around with them. After class, they can sync the file back on to their laptop and save it to their network folder.

We are exploring other ways to use the handheld computers. What are other classes doing?

Paradigm Shift to Standards-Based Assessment

My school district is currently moving to a standards-based assessment model. We have developed a standards-based report card and have done some training on standards-based assessment. Some teachers have made the mental shifts necessary and have changed how they assess. Others have not. The question is not why, but how do we, as a school-district, assist teachers who have not made the shift?