MOOCs - The Next Big Thing (mooooooo)

   

OR

     Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs are an emerging international educational field causing both excitement and consternation in academic circles. Will professors become obsolete? Will this sound the death knell for personalized, face to face learning experiences? Will MOOCs provide quality educational experiences to populations previously denied higher education opportunities due to geography, finances or myriad other reasons?
     These are valid lines of inquiry, and there is much research being done even as MOOC offerings are growing exponentially. The Gates Foundation is funding a study of MOOCs, and there are many resources available for those interested in exploring further. Here's a beginning reading list.

Diigo Library on MOOCs

Practice Makes Perfect (or at least not glaringly imperfect!)

Last week we held our EDUC Technology class virtually. We had a Google+ Hangout instead of a traditional brick and mortar one. It was a learning experience with both pros and cons. This afternoon the idea was floated, by the lovely and capable Ms. Farheen K., that we try it again this week. Two thoughts leapt to mind at the same time - "Seriously?" and "Great!". So here we have the Seriously? and Great! list:

                         Seriously?                                                    __  Great!                            

wastes our class's good in-person chemistry         good group to practice something new with
too glitchy for some of us                                              good reason to practice more
I am uncomfortable being seen on screen              this is the future, better practice
we tried it, isn't that enough?                                       "once" keeps Visitor status, try practicing
can't see Far's shoes                                                          peeked at Jeff's extremely quiet child :)

Okay, jesting aside, what is the recurring theme here? Practice. Doing something more than once to gain familiarity with it instead of a fleeting meet and greet. I feel like there have been several of those meet and greets in this class - which is not a criticism, just a fact of Jeff trying to introduce dozens of ideas in a relatively brief time. My impression is that the expectation isn't that we master every single one, but that we find the ones that appeal to us - visually, organizationally, etc. - and really utilize them. Ideally, we can do that with sites that fall under different categories. Diigo for references, Storify for sharing presentations, edmoto for classroom management.

For me, there are levels of use, for lack of a better phrase. Things I know pretty well and am using on a daily basis. Things I am still practicing, but go to weekly-ish. Things I've marked to go back and check out again later. And I've tried to choose things from different categories to incorporate into my professional routines. Clearly, sharing through video chats, YouTube and the like is only going to become more present in the educational realm, and I need to be able to feel comfortable doing that. Comfortable with the technology that gets me there, and comfortable sitting at home being viewed by my peers. How to accomplish that? Practice!

So, yes. I vote for another virtual class, in fact, probably more than one.

The Dimensions of an Elephant Are Most Impressive

     

So excited!!! Every year I teach a novel by the incredibly talented Kate DiCamillo. She has written many wonderful books for children, among them Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and The Magician's Elephant. I confess that when reading certain chapters of Edward Tulane I have been known to pass the book off to one of my students to read aloud as I am crying too hard to continue. This has also been known to occur during my readings of Charlotte's Web...

This year we have been reading and jumping off from The Magician's Elephant. I must plug this book as being an amazing read all the way through middle school - it is heavy with opportunities for discussion and creativity - and as an adult, I find it to be enchanting.

So. There is a an odd character who appears in the novel for one chapter only, wearing a dark suit and a top hat. He continuously mutters, "The dimensions of an elephant are most impressive. The dimensions of an elephant are most impressive, indeed." Well, for some reason my students just loved that character. They would raise their hands and say his line, or march around the playground shouting it out to each other. I started to think about the dimensions of an elephant - what could we do with that line? Writing prompt? Bulletin board? Hmmm.

We started out with the obvious; researching the Asian elephant (since that's what's in the book), Venn Diagraming with the African elephant. Then, the book started to discuss the difficulties of housing an elephant. It occurred to me that we could see what it was like to have an actual size elephant in our classroom. Now, like most of my brainstorms, this one occurred just before a crazy time at school, two days before Open House. Why not create, in two days time, a life size elephant and suspend it somehow from the ceiling of my classroom? Surely, one adult and 20 seven and eight year olds can accomplish that.

Here's how it went down: we created our elephant from recycled materials, and she is a life size silhouette of a female Asian elephant. Since the kids were intrigued by the top-hatted man in line to see the elephant who repeatedly muttered, "The dimensions of an elephant are most impressive." those words appear in giant writing along the top curves of our elephant. The rest of the collage was made by the kids gluing on the "skin" pieces by taking off their shoes and stomping all the pieces down. You can imagine the chaos that ensued during this stage! Featured in the collage are my 2nd Graders' haiku and 3rd Graders diamontes about the elephant's feelings, as well as their illustrations of their favorite parts/characters from the story.

She is now hanging in our classroom - quite an engineering feat that required my husband and three teenagers! She was in place and I had my clothes changed and the floor vacuumed with fifteen minutes to spare before Open House.

 
When the sun shines in the windows behind her she becomes a stained glass window. Most impressive, indeed! We are feeling a bit smug at our originality, teamwork and final product. But here is the even more fun addendum - Kate DiCamillo had a book signing here a couple of weeks ago. I could not attend (my son's 18th birthday took precedence) but was able to arrange preferred seating for my class (thank you Amea's mom!)and some of my moms' volunteered to be in charge of the outing. I sent along a photo collage of our project and today I received an email from the publishing house saying how impressed the author was and that they want to post our work! My class will be thrilled!

   
   

Old School

I admit it. My favorite technological tool that I use consistently in my classroom is my phone. Ever since we have been able to turn a phone into a music player, I have been able to access and use all of my "school music" with incredible ease.
A couple of years ago one of my parents came into the classroom every afternoon for a week. He downloaded and categorized all of my CDs onto my iTunes Library. More recently, every iTunes purchase is automatically synched to my phone. Convenience times 10.
Gone is the old boombox CD/tape player with the broken handle. Gone is the issue of opening disc covers, only to find no disc! Gone is the cassette tape conversion Rube Goldberg apparatus to connect to my iPod. These days I just plug my phone into the charger plus speakers on my desk, hit a playlist, and, ahhhh, music to my ears. Literally.
I know how lame that sounds to all of you tech fast-laners, but seriously, it is huge. I use music several times a day in my 2/3 classroom. Here's a small sample:

For studying - The Vitamin String Quartet. Nothing quiets my class faster.

How about a little G-Love and Special Sauce sing-a-long?

...and we've been learning this one from The Makepeace Brothers for Thanksgiving - "Thank You"


I hope you enjoy them. Then you can put them on your phone!

Thus Far...

What have I learned so far in Educ 578? This seems like a loaded question. I feel like I know what the desired answer is, but I'm not sure that that answer has been my experience.
There are definitely a number of cool things I've been exposed to that are informing my teaching and aiding me as a student outside of our class. To name a few game-changers:

• Diigo - organization, categorizing, labeling, highlighting. I'm in love!
• Pinterest - Where I feel that I am involved in a serious long-term relationship with Diigo, Pinterest may be more of a fling. That heady rush of a mad crush, stealing time to devote to nurturing it, thinking that everything I see somehow relates to a Pinterest board. Hmmm, an adolescent crush gone wild?
• Symbaloo - Who wouldn't want to commit to something with such a fun name? It reminds me of Baloo, from The Jungle Book, and Symbaloo has definitely become one of the "Bare Necessities" for my online sanity. My classroom laptop even has a Symbaloo that my students are adding to and use daily. Symbaloo is my new BFF.
• Generally becoming more comfortable with blogging. I recognize this as a necessary skill to cultivate as it is also required at work and I have been, historically, quite hesitant about doing it. Baby steps!

Sharing Old Traditions With New Friends

Friday was Dia de los Muertos, a centuries old holiday celebrating the dead. It is a major holiday in my house - the equivalent of Christmas or Thanksgiving. There was a huge party, complete with ofrenda, sugar skulls, and raucous toasting of our departed loved ones. It was a special and unique experience to see the giant Venn Diagram circles of my life intersect for such a meaningful occasion. Thank you to Maureen, Lindsay, Far and Alexis for representing USD with such good cheer!

Happy Dia de los Muertos!

The Empathetic Student

The reading and reflecting that we have been doing after reading A Whole New Mind has mostly attended to the relationships we create with our peers and students. There has not been a focus on the relationships our students create with us.
In our calling to be effective teachers, we all know that there are weightier areas than the core curriculum. One of those areas is the social-emotional piece of the curricular puzzle. And the key to a meaningful social-emotional teaching experience in a classroom lies in the relationships held between instructors and students.
I work hard to have healthy, respectful, empathetic relationships with my students, and I expect that they will carry their weight in their relationship with me. This means that the guidelines for behavior in our classroom flow in both directions.  I stop, look and listen when a student is speaking to me.  I expect the same in return.  Teaching in the primary grades has its own, unique catalogue of interruptions and interactions - "I bit my lip", "I can't do that", "He copied", etc.  Attending to these myriad perceived crises is the primary grade educator's juggling act.  The students' issues are very real and intensely felt, and so are mine.
They expect me to empathize with the minutia of their daily experience and I expect the same.  When it is my turn, it is their "stop, look and listen" time.  And when they don't meet that expectation, as I do for them, I tell them how that feels for me and talk with them about empathy.
I believe making yourself human and vulnerable to your students and being willing to parse why it is important to wear another's shoes for a moment is a valuable part of teaching effectively. After all, experiencing empathy is a key life skill. People wonder if younger generations can understand real empathy.  Yes, they can.  They just need someone to teach them.

2:18

     I am beginning to integrate my two iPads into the classroom. Obviously, it would be better to have a greater number - either a full class set or five or six to do group work, but two is better than none! The challenge has been to avoid just using them to fill time for students who finish regular work sooner then their peers. It can quickly be seen as a treat that only an elite few receive.
     Instead I am trying to stay mindful of finding ways to either rotate the time with iPads or use them in groups of three, giving six students a chance to use them in a given time period. The latter idea has proven to work well when I plan their usage as a center. I am also finding that since they are such knowledgeable users of this technology that I am rarely needed to troubleshoot, as they can handle most issues that arise for themselves.
     So far I have used the iPads mostly in Second Grade Math and in Third Grade Geography. There are not many ways to make learning the 50 states fun, but iPads do.
     I am currently lobbying hard for an additional pair of Ipads - I bought the first two, and am asking my school to pick up the tab for two more. Being able to put more students there for longer periods of time would allow me to do more in-depth learning, particularly in reading, for greater differentiated learning experiences.