Think Like a Teacher

Name (or recite) your favorite poem. No, you cannot run away or close this tab.

I hear you now…

• I don’t have one.
• I can’t remember, but I’ll Google one.
• I had once once, but that was in 5th grade.
• Insert something from Shel Silverstein that you read to your kids last night or to your classroom today.
• Who cares about poetry?
• Common Core says we don’t teach poetry anymore.
• I don’t teach English. Ask the English teacher.
• Yeah, right. Like I have time for poetry with all the other stuff they lay on us.

Try this: For one week beginning April 1 (the first week of National Poetry Month), carry your favorite poem in your pocket or — even better — on your smart phone. Be ready. You could be asked by anyone, anytime to produce and recite it. Pack poetry in your pocket with tech. Create a QR code that directs to:

• a YouTube video or SchoolTube video of someone reading your favorite poem
• a music video of a song with lyrics you LOVE– yes, that’s poetry!
• a web page with a favorite poem (or limerick?) that makes you laugh or cry
• a recording of yourself  reading a favorite poem or reciting the lyrics from a favorite song (or singing it!)
• a synthesized voice reading a poem you have pasted in
• a web page montage you create of the poem and the images it generates in your mind
• a video of YOU reciting a poem YOU wrote (posted on YouTube or any online video service)

When asked,”What is your favorite poem?” hold up the QR code (saved on your camera roll) so others  can scan the QR code to listen or read. As you ask others, collect their online offerings in your Diigo or post the QR codes from students on your class wiki or web page as a scannable “treasury” for others to explore.

Not ready for such high tech stuff? Find a special piece of paper to transcribe your favorite poem and flamboyantly unfurl it when asked. Maybe a scroll or a cleverly folded booklet?

Why bother? Elena Aguilar offers Five Reasons Why We Need Poetry in Schools, and I am sure there are many more. As stressed, overworked teachers, perhaps the most compelling for us to write our own poems may be her Reason #5:

Poetry builds resilience in kids and adults

Surely, a poem penned by a teacher– included at the end of this article — may resonate with other teachers seeking resilience.

Pack a poem in your pocket. Ask your students to do the same, whether you teach physics or first grade. Simply the act of valuing the power of poetry to express, visualize, and revitalize is reason enough.  You might even find yourself humming a song or bellowing its lyrics in the car on your way home.

For more ideas for National Poetry Month, including loads of tools and prompts to write and share poetry, see this collection.

Our students can create and embed their creative projects from thousands of tools into a blog, wiki, or other social network. They love making Prezis, Glogs, and maps to share what they know. They love finding YouTube videos or making Powtoons or Vokis. If one student in your class knows how to copy/paste embed code, they all will within 15 minutes. Your class wiki becomes a veritable treasury of student projects from all over the web.

We want kids to be able to share visually — using embeds. Simply including a link to their projects does not have the “ta-da” factor they deserve after working hard to synthesize what they have learned. The “ta-da” is a fitting tribute to their ownership and pride in what they have done.

A cloud has crept into my love of embeds, however.  A friendly code-jockey I work with raised a concern as we were talking about enabling embed codes in the social stream we are creating. His concern is simple:

1. Savvy Kid creates project (glog, Voicethread, Voki, screencast, annotated image, etc)

2. Savvy Kid uses embed code to include the project on your class blog or wiki (or in a stream such as Edmodo).

3. Teacher approves said project. Kid gets accolades from classmates, etc.

4. Somewhere in the darker moments of adolescent experimentation and “cleverness,” Savvy Kid returns to the tool that hosts the glog, Voicethead, etc. and  changes the project to include an obscenity. Perhaps s/he simply puts in an additional placemarker with an obscenity or amends the Voki to utter a rude comment. Since the project is embedded on the class wiki, “pulling” from another place on the web, the wiki instantly displays the obscenity or other student “cleverness” smackdab ON your class wiki. Parents can see it, other students can see it, the WORLD can see it (and your principal can see it!).

A nasty weed has popped up in the (em)bed. As with real flower beds, there are several options to deal
with weeds.

1. We can simply pave over the entire bed, removing the capability to embed anything. Our growing wiki becomes as visually exciting as asphalt, and the kids probably feel as much pride as they would in viewing a pothole patch.
2. We can spray weed killer– sort of techie RoundUp–  thus killing targeted weeds while leaving other plants unharmed. Delete Savvy Kid’s embed, but leave the others.
3. We can use preventative mulch, establishing an environment that is simply not friendly for weeds to grow. If we talk about the negative impact a weed could have and talk about the message an obscenity sends about ownership and pride in our work, the overall class attitude toward such “cleverness” might become so unfavorable as to prevent it from cropping up (sorry, could not resist the pun). I’d like to think so, anyway.  This is simply part of good digital citizenship, and we all need to talk about it — a lot. Any gardener will tell you that you must add and arrange new mulch on a regular basis to maintain healthy (em)beds where learning can grow.

If you have dealt with students abusing embed codes to grow “weeds” in class (em)beds, please comment here about what you did — and plan to do in the future — to solve the problem.

What role do you play when you meet with other teachers (or ed tech coaches)? Do you chime in with ideas but pray they don’t ask you to take on too much responsibility? As busy teachers, we all know that temptation. This week I had the pleasure to witness the positive power of educators to move the boulder forward — and quickly — simply by leveraging a little tech.

I am part of a dynamic duo(?)  leading a powerpack of ed tech coaching superheroes. Together we are planning a “playground” event* at ISTE 2014. About eight of us met on a conference call, preceded by an email with a link to a shared Google doc. Before the call, the doc was pretty much an empty shell. No more than 3 minutes into the call, I watched a little flag typing across the doc, adding the ideas as they began to flow from our conversation. Kim McMonagle was keeping a running record of our ideas as they flew by.  She didn’t say anything. She just did it.  We ended our call with a bunch of work DONE, not just planned-to-be-done. 

How often do you simply take up a tool to help the cause during a meeting? Imagine the power of such simple modeling in front of your teacher-colleagues, especially the hesitant ones who always say they don’t have time for tech. It isn’t hard. It’s not a big deal. You don’t even need to say anything. Just give them the link to use it when the meeting ends.

Of course, a hesitant teacher will say he/she does not know how to do Google docs or prefers to use paper or prefers to just sit and listen, but (s)he really cannot ignore the leverage of one Google doc against the boulders we teachers must move. Maybe if (s)he noticed the power of one doc without being threatened or “taught,” and the doc were perceived as useful, (s)he’d try it in the secrecy of his/her classroom.

This nearly invisible moment made me stop — and wonder that would happen if teachers took up a tool to move the boulders forward during every meeting we had (or had to attend).  No “we’ll write this up and send it out” or “we will be sending you a form,” or “will” anything. It gets done while you are there, in front of your eyes. We can all take the next steps without waiting for a report, an email, or some other “afterward.” It’s a “duh” thing that too many teachers neither notice nor initiate.

We’d probably have far fewer meetings. Wouldn’t that be a shame?

From the moment you peaked over the horizon, you glimmered.

From your footer flashed fresh faces telling us About you: A founder, several funders, a dreamer, and a coder.

You celebrated yourself in a blog as attentive as a teenage boy with good intentions but…

You tried to grow up healthy. Your founder and funders fed you according to best practices.

Edsurge and Mashable sang your jingle.

You nourished yourself with beta members and captured the sunlight of freebie accounts, a power grid to emit your own bright light.

You had friends, and they talked about you. The edtech coaches brought teachers and students to meet you. Some of them remembered your name.

Your Tweets hit like snap-caps on the sidewalk at the feet of followers.

The smell of promise lingered

as the fumes faded

and the followers walked on to window shop.

You started to show symptoms. The doctors circled round. The entrepreneurs ordered tests. It was serious.

Your blog announced changes in your terms. The entrepreneurs ordered tests.

Your freebies shrank. Not five but three. Not three but one. The entrepreneurs ordered tests.

The teachers and edtech coaches who lingered out on the sidewalk, browsing among all the shops and occasionally stepping inside one to buy, did not see the signs around your eyes.

Your speech slurred a bit. You moved a little slowly and did not always respond.

Your freebies, sick and pale,  hid behind a log-in. No more clear glass to see inside.

They moved you to the hospital of backup servers.

Your early adopter friends did not visit, somehow afraid of contagion. It felt more comfortable to visit the newborns than to comfort the chronically ill.

They left old flowers for you, the projects of last year or last class or last week.

Your light grew very dim, your blog posts dated seven, ten months ago.

The entrepreneurs signed your DNR. You lingered long breathing barely, but rarely allowing a login to work or a project to save.

We do not know when you left us. Edsurge and Mashable do not have obituaries.

Your only marker is a domain name seller.

We miss you — a little. Now we have to revise our plans and find other examples, but there are others like you venturing over the horizon every day.  The first time it hurt. Now we know not to care too deeply.

Rest in peace, but know that you took part of my students with you.