Think Like a Teacher

Recent events in Newtown, CT  twist a teacher’s gut. Though we have never been there,  elementary teachers* know Sandy Hook School. We know the singsong of morning announcements that echo in terrazzo hallways through the faint smell of departed bus exhaust. We know the sight of a lone child carrying an attendance slip, stopping for an extra moment to look at macaroni snowmen on construction paper posted on the hallway tack strip. We know the sameness of every elementary school.

We cannot conceive of Sandy Hook’s terror, but our minds alternately try to conceive of it and to push it away as an overlay to the fundamental sameness of every day in our schools. Sameness is safety.

Some say schools need to move past sameness. But there is reason and safety in sameness. Sameness is a first grader knowing the green triangle pencil gripper is there in her desk, just where she leaves it at the end of each day. Sameness is the third grader knowing that his math workbook is the one with gray smudges left by the pencil shavings that spilled inside his desk, dregs from the plastic Star Wars sharpener he begged for at Walmart last August. Sameness is the perfume the kindergartener expects to smell when she leans close to whisper to her teacher. Sameness is knowing Sam will ask to go to the bathroom five minutes into math. Sameness is cycle days for specials. Sameness is the smell of pizza day at 10 am. Sameness is knowing your cubby is third from the left and that your blue, fuzzy coat is there waiting to hug you home every day. Sameness is sanity.

I wish sameness to the children and teachers of Sandy Hook who will never be the same. I wish them the softness of their familiar coats, stranded in cubbies. I wish them the smell of a familiar teacher. I wish them an enveloping wave of routine when they return to an unfamiliar school with gaping holes in its sameness. I wish them their smudged workbooks and pencil grippers. And I wish the sameness of all schools will let them know that every school is with them.

*Among my 27 years as a teacher, about half were spent in elementary schools as gifted teacher or technology integrator.

During the holiday season we seek ways to give, not only to our friends and family but also to those less fortunate than we. Teachers give of themselves all year, whether it’s giving extra time to help a struggling student or volunteering as a coach, church helper, or scout leader. The one gift that is most difficult for us to give — for many teachers even harder  to come by than money — is time. I often wonder what teachers would give if they had the time. Here are my top three if-only gifts I would like to give if I had the time.

1. An afterschool club for kids in my community. I know many of the kids who get off the bus on my street go home to an empty home, the TV, and a snack. This is a solid, middle class community, and most of the parents get home well after dark this time of year. I would love to invite the kids to get off the bus at our community center multi-purpose room for a short game of (you name the game), a chance to eat their snacks together with other kids and some adults, and a chance to get the homework done in a friendly, cheerful place. After they were done, maybe we could go outside and play some more or invent silly games. A few adults could go a long way in making homework a positive thing that happens among friends and making a little physical activity more fun than the remote. Alas, I am still working when the buses roll down these streets, so I cannot give this gift– at least not right now.

2. Computer help for seniors (or not so seniors) who are embarrassed to say they need it. I know so many adults who do not know how to find great vacation places or share a link to a Google Map or write a blog post. They have so many stories to tell, but are afraid to start. If I were free at 10 am, I’d love to share Tuesday Tech Fun at Ten for an hour or so. I have a feeling we would discover many hidden talents and interests among folks who have no idea how much technology could open their worlds. But on Tuesdays at ten, I am otherwise occupied.

3. Family tech fun nights. It would be great to help elementary kids surprise their parents with the thought provoking things they can do using online tools like the ones we have feature TeachersFirst’s Special Occasion Ideas for the Classroom. This collection shares a selection from the hundreds of creative tools kids and adults can find on TeachersFirst to collect and montage writing, images, and sound into clever personal projects. I would enjoy organizing the kids as the experts to teach the adults how to  lessons without touching the mouse as the grownups make their own projects side by side with a mini Geek Squad.

It seems quite self centered to say, “I would like to, but  can’t.” Maybe in 2013 I can find the gift of just a little more time to give away. I would love to hear what other teachers’ dream giveaways might be.

If you have read my blog for long, you know that I am a former teacher of gifted students. One of the things we teachers of gifted quickly learn is that the teaching strategies and initiatives we use with gifted kids are often adopted several years later for all children, though altered in pace or depth. It is a source of pride to us, an “I told you so” that we knew what worked all along.  Many of the same philosophies behind creative teaching and learning for gifted can benefit all kids. The truly gifted, especially those my colleagues and I facetiously dubbed the “severely and profoundly gifted,”  need a hyperbolic version of these same strategies and rarely need any of the skill backfill that others do.

So I was not surprised to read a passionate post on Stephanie S. Tolan’s blog The Deep End about the politics within the National Association for Gifted Children and the irony that the children themselves were not invited to the NAGC conversation. This is the same discussion that is occurring among education reformers who seek to change education from “schools” to “learning.” Follow the Twitter hashtag #edchat for a few days to see the passion among educators seeking to rethink what learning is all about and to include students as key players and decision makers in their own learning. Ms. Tolan describes the gifted with powerful voice:

One of their major differences (at least until we squash it out of them with work sheets and grades and gold stars and tests, grade point averages, boundaries and limitations) is their rage to learn and understand, and to do something with meaning. [my boldface, her italics]

I absolutely agree that this describes the gifted kids I know.  I think it can also describe most kids. Gifted kids feel the rage in heightened fashion and seek meaning at greater depth, but all kids feel the rage to learn until we stuff the school experience into boxes that lack any personal meaning. The gifted often find meaning via their own odd connections or perceptions. Other learners may need some help discovering meaning and personal connection.

The many, many good teachers I know try to forge connections of meaning for students who do not seek them on their own or need help doing so.  The very best teachers are able to kindle the rage to learn despite institutional requirements that muffle it. I hope our current moves to build rigor in our schools will stop to allow students to join the conversation and find meaning just as Ms.Tolan asks. It’s not just good for the gifted.

I poke through well over 100 web sites a week as part of my job with TeachersFirst, so it takes a lot to impress or excite me. I am grateful this final Friday of November for the discovery of Fun Favs. Here is a list of a dozen that have left impressions on me recently.  All have been or will be reviewed on TeachersFirst with loads of classroom ideas. Enjoy some creative play or lasting learning.

3D Photo Cube  What a great idea to make photos display interactively. I love the idea of sharing multi-faceted impressions of an event or person. Think of the pictures you could upload of just one person to show all aspects of his/her personality. It’s just plain visual fun.

LiveTyping  This one looks pretty dumb. Watch someone type as a “recording.” Now think about all the stories you could tell this way. Remember the Google searches during the Superbowl commercial a few years ago? Show what a character is thinking as he/she types a letter  or job application or creates a resume. Record Charlie Brown applying for a job as a football kicker. Record an imagined breakup email. Record an imagined memo being written by your most hated politician. Record a letter to the principal explaining why you had a live pig in your classroom (I once did!). Have fun!

Windmap I actually used  this one during Superstorm Sandy. Apparently a lot of other people did, too. It was quite sluggish. Make weather come to life far more than those static maps or “predictors” on your local TV forecast.  I wonder what other real-time viewers we could invent: see the paths of the grease smells wafting from fast food joints? No one has invented the smellavision, but I am sure there will be an app for that eventually.

Symphony of Science I love experiencing the arts in connection with academics. As an analogous thinker/connector, I always imagine concepts through analogies in visual or artistic form. I “see” poems and words as images. I even experience  numbers via a personal, visual number sense.  So why not experience science as music? This one intrigues me. I want to spend more time with it. Do you ever wonder whether your students personally experience concepts in some unusual way (and are afraid to talk about it for fear of being “weird”)?

Overlap Maps (Do you sense a visual theme here?) This one is simply cool. See maps as overlays so you can compare geographic spaces. I need to see a map when I travel, and I remember directions via the map in my head. But now I can compare places to give them context. How does my planned vacation location compare in size to my city? How does the setting of this novel compare to my childhood hometown? Make geography a toy.

Sodaplay  Yes, you play with straws. Create animated figures that move. Gotta love the web for mess-free “crafts” and animations. Wonderful time waster/creative challenge, depending on how you look at it. How could your students use it to explain something?

Phrasr  A word (or sentence) is worth a thousand pictures. Make words and sentences into a sequence of images. Poetry makes images out of a sequence of words, so Phrasr is another way to engage your visual-verbal mind.  Or simply make a creative sign for your door.

Spectra Visual Newsreader  Arrange your news visually. As a news junky, this one grabs me. My iPad is loaded with visual representations of news and feeds: Flipboard, apps from the networks, Newsstand. This one is online and customizable. I love the idea of hooking kids on current events through the visuals.

Infographics Archive  See the latest and greatest of infographics. Learn (and critique) as you browse this very popular medium. The more I see good and bad examples, the more I respect this way of communicating. I also come to fear it as teh Viewers Digest of information, showing stats and facts

YouTube Time Machine  See times past in the videos from that era. Get lost in the past, perhaps even waxing nostalgic for a favorite TV show from childhood. But you can also build a sense of a time past the same way Madmen rebuilds the sixties. Wouldn’t it be fun to show a few clips and challenge viewers to guess the year?

The final two are for my fellow political junkies:

AllSides As much as we all like to think our opinions are correct, we know there are others who do not agree. This tool lets you see issues from many points of view. Think of it as a 3D scanner for political thought. For those unable to make up their minds, this one is a politikaleidoscope.  During en election cycle — or the approach to the fiscal cliff, you can entertain yourself predicting the next set of soundbytes.

People’s Pie Speaking of the fiscal cliff, what would YOU do about it? Here is your chance to try to solve it without filibuster of news cycle bluster. Decide the priorities for the federal budget using this simulator. P.S. If you do, please sent tips to the folks in Washington.

This has been a grate(ful)  month. Thanks for letting me share it.

I am always grateful for things that save me time or help me find things. In the spirit of sharing, I am passing along tricks that I am grateful to know, discoveries that make my life just a little easier. I show my gratitude by paying them forward.

1. I am thankful for four email accounts, not beause I like reading that much email but because this system keeps things sorted into the right “box”:

• personal/home email
• work
• shopping/travel (includes mileage programs, coupons, saver clubs, etc). All the shopping junk emails and coupons stay in this box!
• memberships (things I subscribe to or join, including web-based or cloud services). This one gets email subscriptions, wiki-Twitter-blog notifications, etc. I use the same info to set up usernames and PW on all these tools (see below re risky business).

I created the three non-work email accounts using “names” to remind me of their purpose. Fake person for memberships = my son’s childhood imaginary friend. I use it to join the zillions of web tools  where I “belong” and use the same password for all, assuming they are not really important stuff.  I ask myself whether I would care if I lost my work there. If so, I change to a second, more secure password. NONE of these emails uses the same password. Risky business: My financial sites have their very own, secure membership and passwords, not my general “memberships” log in.

2. I am thankful for color coding. I use it in my email inbox (both colored flags and colored highlighting). I use it on files in the Finder [that’s My Computer in WinSpeak] or folders on my desktop. I use it within documents as part if the writing process (green is OK, orange means needs to be revised, etc). I color code to show steps in a process, sort items on a to-do list, and to designate or sort sticky notes on my Chrome app home page. I cannot live in black and white.

Installment 3 of Thankful Fridays is for my own learning. Most of all, I am grateful to have a job that allows me to learn something new every day, both face to face and in digital venues. Here are five digital places I am glad to “visit” and participate as a learner:

1. Flipboard. At first glance a visual way to “flip” through news articles and pretty pictures,  Flipboard customized  is nothing short of WOW! This iPad (or iPhone) app can teach me via tweets, RSS feeds, magazine articles, and  multiple Flipboard offerings. Yes, I could go to all those places separately, but the abilities to FLIP through them in one place, send things to others, Fav,  and otherwise pull in a customized educational technology collection (and other, non-professional interests) make Flipboard a namesake nominee to steal my employer’s epithet: The Source for Learning! My interests do not easily fit into a box under one label, so no prepackaged collection of Things to Know appeals to all my needs. Flipboard does- easily. My only complaint is that I get sucked into endless learning and lose all track of time. If you try it, be sure to click the magnifying glass to select things you want Flipboard to pull in for you, including your own accounts from various services (Google Reader, Twitter, etc). Sprinkle in a few news services, Flipboard finds, and Twitter hashtags searches “to taste.”

2. Tweetdeck. Are you noticing a Twitter theme here? Although Flipboard displays Twitter searches, people I follow, etc, there are things I love about learning via Tweetdeck. While Flipboard lets me browse through a visual, magazine-esque tweet viewer, Tweetdeck lets me see a load of tweets at the same time in a small space. The visual footprint is tiny, but I can scroll quickly or shoot out questions for instant help. I also like being able to see my new followers, instantly set up a temporary search column and click to learn details about a Twitter user. A couple of weeks ago when Diigo went down, Twitter was the perfect place to find out if the problem was mine or a widespread concern. Unlike mobile-only Flipboard, Tweetdeck  carries my Twitter search settings on all my devices, including my laptop. Handy.

3. Google News. I am a current events junky, and I also have specific topics where I want to stay informed. Google News gives me its own news categories but customizes to grab news on topics I care about. I don’t like the fact that Google may know too much about me, but Google News is worth the compromise. I learn about politics, latest Apple-dropping predictions, public policy debates, and consumer stuff. I change it on the fly. The only drawback: getting sucked in.

4. OK2Ask®. TeachersFirst offers OK2Ask, free online teacher professional development, as a service so teachers can come together  in informal “snack sessions” to learn. What teachers may not know is how much I learn from them as I present, moderate, and talk together. Not a session goes by that I do not hear about a clever teaching strategy, a web resource, a tool, a project idea, or an innovative school policy that I never knew before. At another level, I learn what teachers are most upset about, are seeing in schools  in various locations, and are wishing for. As someone who runs a web site as a service to teachers, this is some of my best professional learning.

5. Edsurge.  As they describe themselves:

EdSurge is an independent information resource and community for everyone involved in education technology. We aim to help educators discover the best products and how to use them and to inspire developers to build what educators and learners need.

For me, Edsurge is like holding an eavesdropping glass up to the door of Edtech Cutting Edge. I hear the inside scoops on new tools, developers trying to find a niche, and educators finding success with technology. I subscribe to the emails even though I an very cautious about inbox overflow. This one is worth more than the space and time it takes. What I appreciate most is the fact that it always leaves me thinking about issues and philosophical underpinnings at the same time as I ponder practicalities of teaching.

As you dig into the turkey this coming week, think about where you can dig into  some new learning for yourself, too. You will be thankful you did.

Installment#2 of this Thanksgiving series shares my favorite tools to save me time digging, hunting, or forgetting things. As a teacher and a parent, I know how easy it is to lose things, especially among pyramids of paper. As a “teacher to go,” i.e. one who works from many locations, I especially value things that help me avoid shoulder injuries from hauling heavy bags. (Too bad the cloud didn’t exist when I taught itinerant gifted and changed schools at noon each day! ) Here are my favorite FREE helpers:

November has five Fridays this year. In the tradition of Thanksgiving, my weekly posts will share things for which I am thankful. I begin by sharing how grateful I am for inspiration sites. These five  thought-provokers offer visual and verbal sparks. If  my brain starves for the stimulation of a quirky question or a glorious graphic, I can inhale bracing breezes for the brain. I am grateful for:

1. Good. The name says it all. I click to find things tagged creativity or DIY or design, and I marvel at cleverness and surprise. I am thankful to see so many examples of people “doing different” as they “do Good.” They explain:

GOOD is learning, doing, improving–together

These are the people who– a few years ago– brought us the Wanderlust interactive reviewed here. Thank you for inspiring me to learn, wonder, and share.

2.  Places that put vastness of scale (and the meaninglessness of minutiae) into perspective: Scale of the Universe 2 (review and teaching ideas here) and Magnifying the Universe (review and teaching ideas here). I am especially thankful to be able to put stressors and annoyances into perspective  and to draw upon the vastness these interactive spaces provide. The very words space and  size melt into a chance to rise above or delve below whatever preoccupies me. I am thankful for the change of perspective.

3. The Art of Science (complete review here). This find from Princeton offers visual proof that science is art and art is science. I would never call myself a scientist, but I am fascinated by the visuals science offers (see #2). I am even more thankful that the scientists  who share images on this site are prove that not all scientists are about data,data, nothing but data. I am grateful for images about seeing and wondering.

4. 101 Questions (complete review here). OK, this one is a little odd, but it does get my creative juices flowing. There is nothing like a visual prompt to get ideas (or questions) moving. If the prompts are good, the questions move from factual and surface level to pretty deep stuff. I am grateful for questions.

5. Co.Create is even better than Good. Why? I keep finding more articles. Just when I am hooked by one title, there is another one. I find myself wishing I could read in two places at once. I honestly have not spent time figuring out who the writers are or where the content actually comes from, but there seems to be an endless stream of things to intrigue and inspire. I am thankful for their “You might also like.”

Why do these matter to a teacher/ website editor/ed tech person? Because I know I need a broader stream of inspiration than simply #edtech and #edchat on Twitter. This morning I ran across a quote from Steve Jobs:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

– Steve Jobs, Wired, February 1996

Doing my job well — being creative — means I need to continuously expand my repertoire of experiences, and this inspirational five offers endless avenues to creative questions, questions, and images.  I hope every teacher has sites like this and is thankful for the role they play in making you a Thinking Teacher.

Next week: Five things that keep me organized — and I am SO grateful!

What can I do to beat this, break this, or make people laugh?

When I taught gifted kids, their first approach when faced with a new technology tool, game, or toy was to beat it, break it, or make people laugh. I saw this reaction back in the day of early computer games we loaded from a 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. In the pre-PC days, my students — gifted or not –had the same reaction when faced with a special effects generator in the school’s black and white TV studio. (OK, now you can guess my age.) They wanted to make special effects that cut off heads or caused the TV monitors to go crazy.

Kids, especially middle school kids and older, will want to break, outsmart, or use any tech tool to make their friends laugh. We are missing a bet by not using this impulse to help them learn. There is a misconception, well debunked by Bill Ferriter, that technology itself is motivating. Ferriter is right. It isn’t motivating to ask kids to do what a tool is intended to do. It is motivating for kids to show their prowess in defeating it or molding it to their own purposes, preferably for an audience. The same social impulse makes them want to share on Facebook or YouTube. There may be some gender differences, but the stereotypes say what the boys break the girls will secretly redirect to their own purposes — giggling.

The makers movement challenges kids to MAKE things to fit a challenge. The gamification movement invites kids to create games to construct learning. I think we miss a bet by not asking kids to break things to meet a challenge. How can you use a tool of your choice to do something new and productive that it was NOT intended to do? What tool can you break to solve this unrelated problem? Give students the web full of  “tools,” and they will want to combine them or use them every way except as intended, especially middle and high schoolers. So let them.

Instead of  assigning kids tech tools to make a project using a specific tool, maybe we should simply allow them to break or “redirect” tools at will. The final rubric should certainly include curriculum accountability:  the result must show what they know about the prescribed curriculum. In the interest of teaching life skills and preserving our own jobs, we must include a requirement that the products have no more than a PG-13 rating (at least not in the version they submit for a grade). Share the rubric and any relevant acceptable use policy, but let students do it any way they want. Humor, even deviousness, can be a far greater motivator.  The teacher pleasers will ask for tools to be assigned, and that’s fine. The most able, most motivated,  and most creative will break something to make something. Isn’t that the innovation we want to build in our students?  The examples of “broken” or redirected  tools can serve to lure the timid into trying something a bit more adventurous themselves the next time.

One practical concern of this idea is that kids will take a long time to figure out the gimmicks and potential humor of the tools they choose. Let them do this on their own time. Schools have no walls, right?

Many years ago, I learned that comedy is far more difficult to write than drama. Parody, satire, and humor challenge the greatest minds. (I know how long it took to write a barely-adequate spoof of  “The Raven” last week!) If we can motivate kids to go above and beyond in their learning by following their impulse to break, trick, or make others laugh, we  have gone above and beyond our own curriculum. We have “mashed up” the student behaviors we can barely control with the curriculum we want students to master.  We have encouraged innovation. And we might even get a chance to laugh together.

‘Tis the season for the Raven. We have been watching our Google Analytics live as TeachersFirst’s Interactive Raven is hammered by traffic from around the world. I think it is kind of scary to think that we can “see” who is on the  TeachersFirst site minute by minute (their general location and numbers).

The Raven is such a haunting poem for many reasons, not the least of which is how easily it invites parody and poor imitation. So I offer an early trick or treat. Maybe you would like to invite your students to  spend some time with the Raven then try their own hands at a mimicking version related to a topic you teach.  Here is a sample. (Perhaps you can suggest a title?)

Once upon a blog post reading, logged in tabs I leave, unheeding
As the world of data miners raids my unattended store.
Clicking on, I set to shopping, then to Facebook briefly hopping
As the ads that came a-popping match my shopping cart and more
‘Tis coincidence I mutter, these enticing wares galore.
Random ads and nothing more.

Bored with browsing, I try tweeting hashtagged quips and ideas fleeting
While on Tweetdeck laughing, reading others’ pithy repertoire
Twitpics, links, from folks I follow, reweeting with praises hollow
Cheer each follower I add as I send new tweets by the score.
I’m so clever — here come more!

Bravely then I take to writing, links and articles a-citing,
A post acerbic — even biting – thoughts that none have thunk before.
Proudly dream of going viral, Technorati upward spiral
Wordiness and hubris gath’ring, will my reputation score?
Saved and tweeted. Whew, I mutter, hope my Clustrmap will soar.
I’m an optimization whore?

Insecure, I check my tags. Seems my footprint ever lags
I can find no way to raise my Google reputation score.
Googling myself, I then discover that my name has yet another
Whose accomplishments surpass my tweets and blog posts written heretofore
I must press my footprint deeper in the sand upon this shore!
Oops…that tab is for an online store.

As I click to close my Facebook, ads arising flaunt a new book:
“How to make your friends share photos, posts, and ‘like’ you more”
“See your face here!” it is screaming, but I am no longer beaming
As the monster Bigfoot prints the prideful sands upon my shore.
Haunted by my online clicks and logins I must shift to something more.
Clear the cache—clean out the store!

Logging out, I clear my history, some of which is quite a mystery
Can’t believe that I have ever clicked some things in there before
Cache is gone, and Chrome restarted, my old paths no longer charted
Yet the searches of my name still yield ten thousand eighty-four
Memberships and projects linger from a past so long before
Cast in sandstone on this shore.

Far from me, a sandstone sculptor shapes my name and gives it luster
Analytics, spiders weave my life and story more and more
All I want is to go shopping, from ideas to Pinterest hopping
Without carving data fields as Google keeps a hidden score
Let my thoughts for once be fleeting as they were in years before
Quoth the Google, “Nevermore.”