One Reason I love GoogleApps for Education

On Thursday this week my students have a major science project due. (You can read all about it here on the website I built using Google Sites, with videos in Google's youtube, and docs made and shared using GoogleApps.)

Today I went and checked to see how they were doing.

I opened up my Google Drive and went into the folder to look at their projects. I opened each one and looked at all their work. I left notes inside some of them for the students to read, contacted parents about others (using gmail), and made a list of students that I need to talk to in class. Then based on what I saw in their work I changed the next science lesson to provide more information about how to do the work.

Not once did I have to ask students to hand anything in, or go looking through their desks, backpacks or anywhere else. (Ok, except for one student who hadn't properly shared his doc with me.)

I have complete and total access to all of the student work all the time. Even though it isn't due yet.

On the due date, I don't ask anyone to hand anything in. I already have it all. No chasing students, no hunting for missing work.

GoogleApps give me the ability to give more feedback to students, and reduces my workload.

I teach Sex Ed

When I teach algebra, or how to properly punctuate dialogue in a story I know that at least half my students will only use it to graduate from high school. After that they will never need it again.

But when I teach Sex Ed I know that every student needs it.

God has given us this great gift of sexuality. But then Satan has twisted it. Our world has a terribly unhealthy view of what sex is and how we are to use this gift. Quite frankly, I think that the current generation has a far greater challenge of dealing with this than I did or the generations before me. They don't need less Sex Ed from a Christian perspective, they need more of it.

And yet I have had more parent complaints and problems with my Sex Ed classes than any other. I was even dismayed to hear that some Christian High schools have stopped tackling the topic because of the controversy it generates.

What we believe about sex as Christians runs counter to what the world believes. Which makes it all the more important for us to teach.

No matter how embarrassing it is for me and my students when I have to lead the class.

Disillusionment with BYOD ...... and yet

I have been teaching in a 1-1 classroom for almost 2 years now. Every student has access to a device every day all the time.

We managed to do this by simply asking students to bring whatever they already had. (Bring Your Own Device or BYOD) Some brought old machines and some parents bought new machines. Some families couldn't bring anything, but our school had enough netbooks that we could give every child one who didn't have one.

This has had a huge impact on my teaching. I have the opportunity to try and experiment with many new tools and ways of teaching. Some have been amazingly successful, some not so much. Either way it has now reached the point in my classroom that I could not teach if my students did not each have their own device.

But I am growing increasingly unhappy with BYOD. Here are a few reasons:

1. Not every device works perfectly with the tools I'm using. We are a GoogleApps school which means every student can access all their work no matter what device they are using. But we have run into trouble with iPads. They just don't handle some of the elements of GoogleApps well. (Charts and images inside documents give problems.)
2. I can't help students with their devices when they don't work. For example, I have not had the chance to learn Windows 8 yet and I've got a few Windows 8 devices. When something goes wrong I can't help them. Nor have I ever used a Mac.
3. I get frequent requests to help repair personal devices, which I cannot afford the time to do. 
4. Some students have such bad browsing habits online that their devices have become clogged with malware and have become essentially useless.
5. So far this year we have had 3 personal devices broken at school. Because they are personal devices the question of who's responsible for repairs gets a little murky.
6. Because they are personal devices the students customize them in all kinds of ways. This becomes a distraction in class when they spend more time choosing the desktop background than actually doing work, or playing games or using other apps that they've installed. (Although there is a skill here that they should learn, perhaps a topic for another blog post.)

So, when push comes to shove if I had a choice I would provide a device to every student that was managed by the school. At the moment my device of choice would probably be a Google Chromebook.

And yet.....

This is the only way we can afford to get to 1-1 for every child. We don't have the budget to buy a device for every student. And so  I am willing to suffer through the difficulty and trials because the devices are changing the way I teach.

Which is what it's all about.

Digital Pictures in my classroom

I am fascinated by the impact of technology on the classroom. Especially digital cameras.

Two interesting places I'm seeing their impact.

One:
Today I just finished marking a science project that my students do. I send them home with a package of science experiments to complete at home to explore the wonder of God's amazing world.

I've been teaching this unit for years, but this year's results were very different from what I've had in the past.

You see, I included in my assessment tool, which the students received before they started, the fact that they could earn extra credit if they included pictures of their experiments.

Since they had to submit their logbook of experiments digitally it was fairly trivial for them to upload pictures into the document.

I think that next time I would like to make the pictures mandatory. The quality of their reports was light years better because they had pictures and I gained a better sense of what they had done because of them.

Two:
I'm teaching students how to use microscopes right now.

In the past I taught them how to make field of view drawings and tried to get them to put in better pictures than this:


A couple of years ago one of my students took his iPod and did this:



So this year I told my students that instead of drawing them they could use their iPods if they wanted. I also gave them a tutorial video on how edit their pictures in GoogleApps so that they could add the labels we would need.

Not one student has opted to draw them by hand.

Here's why:

The wing of a fly taken with my iPhone 4 camera.

A New Way of Teaching!

Except.....that it isn't.

So, if it's the same lessons and the same assignments I've always taught why did I just spend the last two months busting my behind digitizing my second science unit of the year?

So now it's entirely paperless and all the direct instruction is recorded on video. So what? It's the same things I would have had them do on paper, and the same things I would have said out loud in class. It's all the same, so where's the benefit?

Why spend all that time and effort, hours and hours of it, trying to do this?

Here are a few reasons:

1. Students can't misplace their paper. Their assignments are available to them anywhere and anywhen they have an internet connection.
2. When a student is missing it's a lot easier to catch them up. Not easy, just easier. (I've got one student from the last unit who missed way too many days and is having a hard time catching up.)
3. When I'm not sick, or not feeling well the lessons don't degenerate. The teaching quality remains the same.
4. The lessons are closer to the student. I always put the camera in the perspective of the student. So now, when I'm talking about the parts of the microscope, instead of me standing way up at the front of the classroom pointing at some small part of the microscope, I have the camera up close and can even zoom in so that students can actually see what I'm talking about.

And I've got a few more, but none of those reasons are really enough to justify the effort.

Here's what is.

I am no longer tied to the front. Instead of standing at the front trying to keep everyone's attention, trying to remember what I say next I am free to observe and interact with students. I can actually observe what the students are learning, or not. I can see where students are struggling and look to improve things.

This is where the value really appears. I can now reflect on my teaching and start thinking about how to change things.

It's what happens next when things really get interesting. I can hardly wait to find out!

A broken classroom.

I've come to believe that the classroom as we know it is broken.

I want to push the limits, explore what is possible, to build a classroom that serves every child who walks through the door.

I'm busy jumping off cliffs, trying new things, failing, getting up and trying again.

I'd like to get my fellow teachers to do the same thing.

I'd like to see them give up on their years of expertise, the craft they've honed so carefully, the classroom they love and are comfortable in.

Give it all up so they can go back and be a first year teacher again. Clumsy, stumbling, making mistakes, feeling foolish, having to struggle to find the way forward.

I have no idea how to convince them to do that.

I'm just going to keep plugging away in my room trying things. Some of them even work.

Maybe they'll follow.

I disagree - Parent involvement in education

I was reading my twitter feed earlier this week and I read this post:

I was startled by how strongly I disagree with this.

Over the past few weeks my son has come back from grade 3 with a social studies project in which he was to study trees near our home. This project needed our assistance in order to complete. (Actually my wife is the one who really spent most of the time with him!) Hours were spent outside doing tree bark rubbings, explaining what the project meant, helping find a library book, and more.

What a powerful learning experience! Parent and child working closely together to learn. What an example for our son to see mom and dad engaged and interested in his learning. How important it is for him to be engaged with his parents in education. The biggest role models he has working with him to learn.

Parents are the most powerful influence on their children. They should be closely involved with their child's education.

I would argue that some assignments should involve and even require parent involvement to understand and/or to complete.

Doing that wisely is another story.

Stump the Teacher

Welcome to my on-going series on Christian Perspective in the classroom.

Last time I shared one example of how I apply Christian Perspective in the classroom.

After doing that example with the students I challenge them to "Stump the teacher". They are to bring in any strange or unusual object they can find and I have to demonstrate how to apply Christian Perspective to it as part of my devotions. I put them all in a box and a few times a week I pull one out and do devotions on it.

To do so I use three themes.

Creation: What is good about this item? How does it show the awesomeness of God's world?

Fall: How is this item affected by sin? In what ways is this item used poorly?

Renewal: How can we, as Christians, work to use this item to serve God? How can we make the world a better place with this item?

The students have brought in all sorts of interesting items; toys, tools, food, feminine products... But I can always demonstrate at least one of the three themes and most of the time I can easily do all three.

I hope that by demonstrating this I can encourage students to see that our Christian Faith should influence all of our lives.

Of course, some of you will recognize that this is simply an adaptation of the classic Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration themes. I've simply modified them to fit more easily in an elementary classroom.

Next time curriculum connections and what the students should do with it.

A Christian Pencil

It's just a pencil right? Nothing special. We use them every day in math class. Not remarkable at all.

I disagree. I believe, that as a Christian, everything we do, have, and are should be influenced by our faith.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, "Mine!”
― Abraham Kuyper

So, what does a Christian pencil look like?

That pencil is a good gift of God's Creation. With it we can craft poetry, songs, stories, and essays that honour him. We can create beautiful art, learn about God's amazing creation by practicing math and so much more.

But the pencil too is affected by the Fall into sin. We can take it and stab our neighbour in the classroom, or write gossipy notes to pass around the class, or we can break it and throw it away without using it.

We are called to Renew the world and to try to show the way through God's grace. We can use our pencils to write thank you notes, use the eraser end to erase mistakes and do things right, and so much more.


This is an example of the kind of exercise I take my 12 year old students through on a regular basis.

Next time "Stump the Teacher"

Teaching Christian Perspective - What it's not Part 3

"And like a flower grows towards the sun so should we grow in our faith towards Jesus."

That's how one student's science fair project attempted to include Christian Perspective.

Now it is a beautiful allegory, and there is a place for allegories like this in the development of our faith, this is not a good example of Christian Perspective about science.

To often we fall into the trap of only using our subject matter as an allegory for our faith and we do not think about how our faith should also inform our understanding of the subject matter.

Do how do we do this? Especially in the elementary classrooms where I teach!

Next time - "Teaching Christian Perspective - A Christian Pencil"