Culminations

Photo taken by Marissa Melin

"All endings are also beginnings, we just don't know at the time."  -Mitch Albom

I am a dweller.  I dwell on endings.  As a teacher I dwell on my closings and shudder thinking about the days I don't get there.  I like closure. I like endings.  I like to give my students that closure to each lesson.  At the end of the year, I put together an anthology for my students so that they have closure from the year.  They take away their own publication along with their memories and I hope a new found appreciation for literature and writing and technology.

I recently started a new endeavor, my journey back into grad school and I am coming up on the first ending of my semester.  As I reflect back on this semester, I am searching for closure.  I have struggled getting back into being a learner and not just a teacher.  I have read this semester, not my usual young adult literature, but professional literature about teaching and learning.  As I dive back into school, I have one profound thought: All teachers should go back to school.  It is important to rediscover what being a student is like.  I think it gives us the ability to empathize with our students and learn more about our profession.

I thought I'd end this semester and this chapter with some thoughts on what I have learned this semester.

1.  I have a lot to learn.
2.  Research is challenging, but important.
3.  Purdue Owl is my APA friend.
4.  I need to learn the power of the paraphrase.
5.  Even a tech savvy teacher like me can learn more about technology.
6.  Every picture I share should be given the correct attribution.
7.  Blogging can be fun, and tedious, and fun all at the same time.
8.  Students should be allowed to explore their own interests in my classroom.
9.  I probably should have created a Twitter account years ago.
10.  My passion is technology.

I think that last take away is the big one.  I was pursuing a degree in curriculum but changed midway to a focus in technology.  The classes I took this semester highlighted this passion for me and I cannot wait to share my passion with other teachers.

Rubrics, Checklists, Lists, Oh My!

I am a product of lists. I make to do lists, project lists, homework lists, lists of things to grade, lists of assignments I need to do for grad school, and (optimistically) lists of things I want my husband to get done. My life is conducted in between bell schedules and calendars. I even have budgeted out my life in an interactive excel spreadsheet. I exist between rules and schedules and budgets, all different types of lists.

 When I think about how this between-the-lines world parallels into my classroom, I immediately think of rubrics. I remember when I became a teacher and was first introduced into the beautiful world of rubrics. I immediately flashed back to my own educational experience and one anecdote stands out above the rest.

"Grading Exams" by Olga Caprotti
CC BY-NC 2.0 (Links to an external site.) license https://flic.kr/p/5DLXjR

 In the 9th grade, I remember distinctly having an English teacher that was difficult to work for. She had her favorites and her less-than favorites. My sarcastic, know-it-all-and-willing-to-tell-you attitude, put me firmly in the latter group. We wrote an essay for her class and she passed back all our papers. I had a nice big 83 scrawled at the top of mine. I flipped through the paper looking for the tell-tale red annotations and corrections. There was nothing. It was simply an 83. I remember the assignment had specific elements but I had no clue how much they were worth. I didn't know how I lost 17 points only that I lost them. My best friend got hers back with a 100 and the comment that she was, "practically perfect." At the time, I only saw the event as unfair. How was her paper better than mine? What did she do differently? I assumed the teacher just liked her more and realized pretty early on, this grading would be a trend for the rest of the year.

 When I became an educator, I looked back on this event even more critically. What were the criteria? How were they scored? How did this teacher make sure she was grading accurately? How could I have improved with NO feedback. This is the glory that is rubrics. They take the guessing and questions out of grading. They give students clear objectives to reach for, provide teachers with clear guidelines to help remove bias from the grading process, and ultimately give students specific feedback on which elements they need to improve.

 If you aren't using rubrics in your classroom, think about what your current students/future teachers will look back upon in the years to come. Do your grades magically come from thin air?

 If you have never used rubrics before Rubistar is a great easy to use site, I recently used iRubric which has an interesting click and score function, and I love using Goobric with Google Apps for Education!

A Model for Teachers?

Today I am looking for some feedback.  I am transitioning in my school to a digital leadership role and am trying to create resources that teachers can recreate in their classroom.  Instead of showing you what a student might create for a digital story telling assignment, I made a teacher model.  I think Nearpod still demonstrates a lot of the story telling elements (and I even added in some audio)!  I am looking for how I could improve this teacher model to help teachers see the capabilities in Nearpod and ultimately show them what a great Nearpod presentation looks like.  Thanks for the help fellow bloggers!

Curriculum Page

Check out my new curriculum page giving information, links, and even some video guides to some amazing technology!

What's Your Story?

When I tell people I teach middle school, I get one of a few stock responses. Sometimes people simply ask, "Why?" Or they tell me, "I could never do that." Sometimes they simply wish me well on this impossible journey.

What they don't understand is I have a secret weapon. I don't just teach middle schoolers, I teach middle schoolers language arts. Some could call this a handicap but they don't understand the power of stories. When students sit in math or history or science they don't get a chance to share their stories. In my room, though, we are story tellers. We share and connect as a class, and that my friends, is what makes my job wonderful.

Writing by jeffry james acres on Flickr
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjpacres/3293117576/

I recently came across a new way of telling stories and that is digital story telling.  I've been thinking of ways to make this work in my classroom.  I think it would be interesting to have students use Prezi as a story telling tool, or voice threads, or even just using narrated slides on PowerPoint or SlideShare.  What I'm struggling with now, is what type of assignment I could use this for.  Right now our standards have become very cumbersome and not oriented towards narrative writing.  I, like every other 8th grade language arts teacher, am drowning in FSA (text based essay writing).  Every spare moment I get, I spend on poetry and book clubs.

My students are just wrapping up their first book club in class, and one pretty easy way to use digital story telling would be for my student stop make digital book reviews.  I think I might offer this as a culminating activity opportunity.  Check out the amazing book review one student did on Insurgent by Veronica Roth (do not watch if you have seen Divergent!)

We are also beginning to work on spoken word poetry.  This type of poetry has a performance element and it might be interesting to have students work on reading their poems via voice thread.  Using pictures paired with audio to create their poetry story.

All of these are still in development stage and I would love to hear how YOU use digital story telling in your classroom or even personal life!

Nearpod and Kahoot: Interactive Tools for ALL Classrooms

Check out my Nearpod presentation below.  See how Nearpod can work as homework (by going through the Nearpod presentation yourself) and check out my video walk throughs for both Nearpod and Kahoot!

Trust me... you want to use these in your classroom!

Looking Back to Look Forward

I was inspired this week to take a look back at the history of computers.  If you've read my previous post about my technology autobiography, then you know technology has been a part of my world for as long as I can remember.  I thought I'd take this week to look back at some of this technology.

Yes, that's me.  Not many adults my age have pictures of them on computers at such a young age.  I was talking to my husband whose parents had a computer in the house but it was for "taxes" and he wasn't allowed to use it.  My parents had us using every computer in the house and I know this contributed to my tech savvy nature as an adult.

I talked with my dad a lot this week about the computers we had. The one in the pictures could have been our old Leading Edge PC, which came out the year I was born and we purchased in 1987.  It could have had at most 512kb of memory.  To put this in perspective, that is about the size of FIVE small pictures.  It may have been our Mac IIcx which had our first color screen.  When my father bought this computer which has a shocking 20mb hard drive, my grandfather exclaimed, how are you ever going to fill up all that space!  It is more likely that it is one of the later computers we had, maybe our PC 80386 or our Mac IIsi.  This cutting edge computer had 40mb on it's hard disc.  I have 200 times that space in my relatively out of date iPhone.  

My favorite computer we had was by far our Macintosh Portable.  

It was the precursor to today's laptops.  Weighing only 16 pounds, my dad described how excited he was to actually take this computer with him.

Now a days, I am constantly lamenting how out of date my resources are at school.  How slow the bandwidth is and the lack of technology in general.  It was refreshing to look back and see how far I have come and we have come with technology.  It has certainly been exciting literally growing up with computers and I cannot wait to see where technology takes us and education in the future.

Changes in Classroom Technology #BYOD

This week I encountered, in a couple different ways, new initiatives in BYOD.  If you aren't in education you probably got almost through that acronym: Bring Your Own ... D?  The D stands for Devices and in the classroom it is the new technology movement.  What school districts are encouraging is students to bring their own devices (lap tops, tablets, phones, etc) to school to use in classrooms.

This is a smart way of addressing a serious problems.  You see, it isn't that schools don't realize that we need technology in classrooms.  Everyone from teachers to students to principals to school board members know that we need technology.  I mean I follow my school and my district on Facebook!  The problem isn't convincing the higher ups, the problem is getting the hardware into classrooms.  It is expensive.  Not only would you have to buy hundreds of thousands of computers but you'd have to reconfigure schools that were built before teachers had computers.  BYOD is an elegant solution to this problem.  If you can't put the computers in the classrooms, have students bring the computers (or devices) with them!

Most teachers have an instant gut reaction to this idea.  We have spent the past few years fighting against cell phones.  Trying to get students to stop texting and start listening.  Watch how this teacher deals with this age old problem:

But take a closer look at this classroom.  Why is the student texting?  The teacher is standing in front of the room lecturing to a group of pretty uninterested students.  He is fighting the technology.  Check out this engaging video about how Mabry Middle school is Flying forwards with technology instead of fighting against it:

My personal experience with BYOD is limited. I am one of the blessed few that teach from a computer lab, but I have recently come across a few amazing tools for teachers who are using BYOD.   If you Google this subject, you'll come across millions of resources such as 40 Quick Ways to Use Mobile Phones in Classrooms.  I tried a new BYOD resource, Kahoot this week.  To be honest, it was almost TOO engaging.  My students had a blast!  Finally, if I wasn't in a lab, I'd be using Nearpod.  It is an amazing tool for teachers to engage students on their own devices.

I know BYOD has its problems and I know it isn't the ideal solution but if you haven't tried to engage students with their devices, I recommend you try out one of the tools above and you will be amazed at what students can accomplish when they "plug into" your classroom.

Constructing our Own Maps

This week, I was confronted with something I constantly circle back to as an educator and as a student. We encounter many ideologies, philosophies, strategies, and ultimately evaluations as teachers.  But there has been one theory that the moment I heard it, it struck a chord with me.  That theory was constructivism.  I stumbled across a similar (related) theory connectivism through a video.  This video really illustrates how constructivism plays out in our techy classrooms (or how it should).

Let me start with my real connection to constructivism which centers around my education as a kid.  I grew up in a very structured elementary school with your typical teachers.  We had the angry old man science teacher (who knew everything).  We had the 3rd grade teacher who had her clear favorites (nice sweet quite little girls).  We had the 5th grade English teacher who gave us A+++++++ (yes  7 plusses).    And then I had my gifted classroom.  One day a week, I was pulled out of class with 10 other gifted children and we were placed in Mrs. Rodriguez' classroom.  She had a love of frogs and puzzles.  In her classroom we played.  We played at games and government and math and reading and geography.  We played at learning.   We chose what we wanted to study and then dove in with fervor. It was my first experience with constructivism, and I'll tell you at 7, I was hooked.

She introduced me to the program that has guided my life since the age of 7, Odyssey of the Mind.  If you've never heard of it... check it out!  It is a student-centered program that literally forbids parents/adults/teachers from helping.  As a kid, this was the gift of freedom.  I learned how to be funny, write scripts, build props (even cars)!  I met my best friends in the world and even my husband.  As an adult I am constructivist by nature.  I figure out everything from technology in my classroom (Google Apps for Education) to how to install a toilet in my home.  Mrs. Rodriguez and Odyssey of the Mind gave me the ability to learn and the love of learning.

I stumbled across a TED talk this week by one of my favorite authors, John Green.  In his talk, "The Paper Town Academy," he speaks about creating our own maps and how he also learned to love learning in a constructivist environment.

If that talk isn't convincing enough, listen to Adora Svitak, talk about the power of kids.   As she states, "in many ways, our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries of possibility."

Both John Green and Adora Svitak talk about the power of letting kids guide their own education.

As a teacher, I know more than most how challenging this is.  With my students, I am constantly encouraging them to "Google" things that interest them or that they don't understand.  I let them form their own "book clubs" and have student-directed discussion.  But as a class, we are stuck in a curriculum and unfortunately have limited constructivist opportunities.  This is probably one of my main questions as an educator, how can I put the learning back in my student's hands?

I don't think there is an App for that...

 I recently read an interesting article on the 14 things that are obsolete in 21st Century schools and agreed with everything he stated.  Our schools need drastic change and reform.  Ultimately his post raised more questions for me and led me to really think through the reality in which I teach.

This will, I promise, be my last post of this nature.  Though I love a good soap box as much as any other teacher, I tend to with technology, only preach the positive.  But I would feel remiss not to immediately address one of the main issues I see with technology in education:  availability.  I am in a unique situation.  I have computers for each of my students but I am the exception not the rule.  When I started teaching at my school 6 years ago there were mumblings of a 1 to 1 environment.  That our district would have computers for every student.  Alas, 6 years later and I feel strongly teachers have less access to technology then they did when I started here.

A few years back, our district started making us include ISTE standards on our lesson plans.  I was thrilled.  This forced me to look at the technology I was using in a different and unique light.  I was framing my lessons around actual technology standards!  I remember sitting down with a teacher one day to plan out our lesson and asking her what ISTE standards she was using.  In my naiveté or inability to project into other's classrooms, I had forgotten that she didn't have computers.  She laughed, then responded the same one she put every week.  She had developed some politically correct almost nonsensical sentence about using her ELMO.

Another teacher decided to start using text in responses in order to have something to put in her ISTE box.  I was intrigued!  How can I use this tool in my classroom?  After observing her, I realized a harsh truth:  technology when forced, without resources or training, isn't very effective.  Yes, she was using it.  Yes, she had something in the box.  Yes, she had technology, but it wasn't effective.  It didn't push her lesson and learning in a new and exciting way.  It was a checked box.  A "highly effective" on her evaluation.  A requirement.  If we are going to implement technology, especially BYOD programs, how can we train teachers to not only use this technology but use it effectively?

At the end of last year I had to make the same argument I make at the end of every year, justifying my placement in my lab.  You would think this decision would be based on evaluations or learning gains, but it's not.  Why then would they want to change my environment?  At the end of the year, we go through our standardized testing.  This process uses all 8 of our computer labs for 3 solid weeks and another 5 for 3 more.  This is not even including the 3 progress monitoring assessments we have for 3 content areas across all 3 grades throughout the year that must be administered on the computers. After figuring out what to do with me and my students for 3-6 weeks as we are evicted from our classroom, my administrators are always wary of keeping me in the lab.   It is simply inconvenient.  I win the battle every year, but unfortunately, the trend at my school is to use our technology for testing instead of education.

My classroom is the exception.  We use computers daily and integrate technology into what we do.  But, at least at my school, we have less and less technology in classrooms not more.  We have to function using obsolete tools.  I only have one question, how do we get 21st century schools without the funding and training we need?

References:
Hrannar, I. (2014, February 26). 14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools. Retrieved August 24, 2014, from http://ingvihrannar.com/14-things-that-are-obsolete-in-21st-century-schools/

International Society for Technology in Education (2014).  ISTE Standards for Students.  Retrieved August 24, 2014, from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-S_PDF.pdf

Seminole County Public Schools (2011).  Evaluation System for Instructional Personnel.  Retrieved August 24, 2014 from http://www.scps.k12.fl.us/Portals/80/assets/pdf/2013-14%20SCPS%20Teacher%20Evaluation%20System%20to%20DOE--7.8.2014.pdf

Chadband, E. (2012, July 19).  Should Schools Embrace "Bring Your Own Device"? NEA Today.  Retrieved from http://neatoday.org/2012/07/19/should-schools-embrace-bring-your-own-device/

Technology Autobiography

Hello!  My name is Marissa Melin.  I am a vegetarian and have been one my whole life!  I got married in November but had dated my husband for nearly 10 years- we are high school sweethearts.  I am a crazy budgeter and track every penny my husband and I spend!

I have always been interested in technology.  You could probably blame my father who was a big Apple fan back in the day.  We always had the newest computers in the house and I have been hooked since then! 

The first year I started teaching language arts (8 years ago), I had a problem with how I was teaching.  I was teaching students to write using pencil and paper and I personally never used these tools.  I wrote every paper in college on my computer and was just getting into my first e-reader.  When I stepped into the classroom excited about teaching, I immediately felt like how I was teaching was incredibly out of date.

3 years later I went to a conference for English teachers and went to every tech talk I could.  When I returned to my school, I developed a plan. I convinced my principal to let me float into a lab during the 1 period it was open, so in January, my 5th period and I moved online! 

After seeing what my kids could do on the computers, my administrators moved me to the lab full time.  For the past 4 years I have developed my own curriculum (or rather how to teach my curriculum on the computers) and have had incredible success.  This year, they moved another language arts teacher into a lab to do what I do!  I am so excited to help her on her own technology journey.

I use Google Apps for Education and email students almost daily, email parents almost weekly, and keep an updated class website/calendar.  But what is REALLY cool is watching students collaborate real time as they read through a text!  I also love to watch students write and SEE their process in a way I never could on paper.  The ability to give feedback is tremendous and has totally revolutionized the way I teach.

Personally, I have followed in my father’s footsteps.  I am typing this up on my Macbook, with my iPhone and iPad nearby.  I also have a fit bit (which I shamefully don’t use), digital cameras, and my Kindle PaperWhite(perhaps my favorite device I own).