time to tech it up with yearbook.

There were two weeks left of school when the Principal asked me what I thought about being the yearbook adviser at my school.  My immediate response was, "well, I've never really thought about that before."  Although it was a position I had never seen myself taking, I applied for the job and got it... surprise surprise because I was the only person who applied for it!  Nonetheless, I am officially the yearbook adviser for the upcoming year and have already jumped into the role with excitement. 

I hope to continue to teach Algebra AB sections and will have a period of yearbook.  I will continue to incorporate technology into my math lessons and daily routines, including powerpoint and a smart slate.  In addition, I am really looking forward to using technological strategies that I have learned about in our ED 240 class with my yearbook class.  The students and I will use an online program called StudioWorks to create the yearbook, and so we will definitely have access to computers in the classroom.  This will foster an environment that is conducive to helping students learn with technology.  Of course the students will be required to use StudioWorks, but I would like to extend the students use of technology to other aspects.  I plan to have the students use photography programs such as photoshop to edit pictures.  In addition, it would be great if I could use google docs to have the students work on stories.  They students could share the stories with one another and with myself.  This would be a great way for the students to collaborate outside of the classroom and for me to assess and read what they are working on.  I have truly realized the epic features of google this summer as a way to work together without having to be together!  This will be very useful when trying to meet deadlines and it will help to spread out the workload and keep students accountable.

After learning about the research on technology's influence on learning in the classroom, I will be aware of how the students on using technology to enhance learning.  Also, I will be sure that the students are properly trained on how to use the programs so that we are able to maximize the program's capabilities in order to create an awesome yearbook.  I will be learning about the program with my students so it will be important that we collaborate often.  It would also be helpful to have a representative from our yearbook publisher to come in and highlight important features of the program with all of the students.  Again, as I have learned, it is not what you use, it's how you use it.  With that said, I'm excited to get techy with my yearbook class and incorporate strategies that I have learned thus far to create a collaborative learning experience for the students, in and outside of the classroom.

HOMEwork or homeWORK?

The most effective procedures and purposes of homework (especially for math) has yet been agreed upon by educators.  The discussion of how much, when, and where homework should be completed is ongoing in the educational field.  In our ED 206 math course, we read an article about the case for and against homework.  It brought up many interesting aspects of homework that I think many teachers neglect to think about.   For example, we must consider the purpose of homework.  Let's think about math in particular (mostly because that is what I teach and that is what the article was about).  Should we assign math homework that allows students to practice the same types of problems that we taught in class, or should the homework extend to other concepts and aspects of the students lives?  Should homework be merely practice or should it focus on the application of new knowledge?  I know as a first year teacher, all of my homework assignments focused on practice and only covered that day's lesson, except for a review assignment before each unit test.

In addition, how should we go over homework, if at all?  Do we spend time going over every problem that the students have questions about at the beginning of class?  That becomes a problem when we spend time going over homework problems during the students' brains' peak learning periods in the first 15 minutes of class, and then the students don't maintain full attention during the subsequent lesson.  Is this the reason why students' are not understanding the lessons in the first place?  Are we not teaching new information at peak brain periods?  Anyways, that is probably a discussion for another blog post.

I have talked to many math teachers in particular who have not settled into a comfortable homework routine.  I tried to give my Algebra AB students at least 15 minutes to start their homework on a dailiy basis because I thought that this time allowed them to ask me or their peers for help.  Other teachers argue that it is called HOMEwork for a reason, and thus should be completed at home.  In this case, were the assignments I gave my students more of homeWORK, or practice assignments that should have been considered classwork?  While I do not have answers to all of these questions I have proposed, I think this is an important aspect of teaching that all teachers must consciously think about and plan for.  Homework should not be random assignments given to students.  Rather, we need to be sure that we are assigning purposeful and meaningful assignments for our students that are within their ability level (not too easy or too difficult) and do not take too long to complete.  It is great to involve parents in the assignments, but we should not expect parents to teach the students the concepts that we teach in our class.  With this said, does anybody have ideas about math homework?  What kind?  How often?  How to check?  How much should it be worth?.... because research has yet to agree upon answers to these questions.

Should teachers be "Friends" with their students?

A hot debate that has entered the world of teaching is over whether or not teachers should be "friends" with their students on social networking sites, such as Facebook.  I went to breakfast this morning with a teacher at my school who brought up this issue and felt that teachers should separate their personal lives from their professional lives.  She said that she has heard about many cases at our school where teachers and students have been "friends" on facebook and the teachers have shared too much with the students.  Such examples of sharing too much could include pictures, status updates, and wall posts.  As we began to discuss Facebook in more depth, the issue over who should regulate teacher use was brought up.  Should teachers get to decide who they are friends with on facebook, or should the school/district step in and set up regulations for social networking relationships between teachers and students?  I know some districts have set regulations for social network uses, however, this has not spread to all districts, including mine.

I know at the school I taught at, there are many teachers who are friends with their students on Facebook.  Some teachers tell their students that they will only be friends with them once they graduate, and others will accept current students' friend requests.  This is a very interesting topic to me because many of my students continually asked if I had a facebook and wanted to be friends.  Not only did I change all my privacy settings so that I am unsearchable on Facebook, I will not accept a students' friend request, and have made this very clear to my students.  Although I am careful about what information and pictures I share on Facebook because I am friends with family and colleagues, I am not comfortable being "friends" with my students.  I tell my students that they can email me if they need to contact me, and I do check my email often.

While personal Facebook pages should be kept pages in my opinion, it would be interesting and possibly effective to use Facebook in academic ways.  I thought about the idea of making an "Algebra AB" Facebook page, which could list homework and reminders for the students to be "friends" with.  This could act as a virtual space for students to ask each other questions.  I would feel comfortable regulating this page because it would not contain any of my personal information.  Since students are always on Facebook anyways, this could be an effective strategy to get students discussing and checking class related material!

POWERpoint.

After completing UCI's credential program, I was eager to land my dream teaching position at Los Alamitos high school and incorporate the skills and tools I learned throughout the year in my own classroom.  My schedule consisted of 3 periods of Algebra AB, which is the first semester of Algebra 1 over a year time span.  I quickly realized that my focus for the year would be classroom management.  The students were talkative, distracting, and many of them demonstrated oppositional behaviors.  Not only were the students acting in ways that were inappropriate for the classroom, we were not maximizing instructional learning time, and formative and summative assessments demonstrated their lack of mathematical understanding.  So what was I to do with these classes that were loud, off-task, and didn't understand algebra?

My answer was PowerPoint.  I began making PowerPoint lessons daily to provide structure and routine to the class.  My hope was that by using this technology, the students would become more engaged, on-task, and gain a better understanding of the algebra concepts.  I used a projector and smart slate to control the PowerPoint lessons and they actually turned out to be a huge success.  Transition time between tasks was significantly decreased because I was able to switch the slides much quicker than my use of the overhead projector in the past.  I was also able to spice up the lessons with color, images, sounds, and animation, which also helped to engage the students.  Furthermore, since I was able to control the lesson with a smart slate, I was not trapped at the front of the room.  Rather, I was able to walk freely around the room to monitor the students' note taking and behavior.  I was able to strategically place myself by certain students who had a more difficult time focusing on the lesson.  The routine of the PowerPoints also enabled the students to make predictions of what the schedule would be and be more prepared for class.  They could anticipate the warmups, notetaking, "try on your own problems" and homework time.

PowerPoints certainly allowed me to gain more power and control over my class.  I soon found that the students would much rather engage in a PowerPoint lesson when compared to watching me drag on with the overhead projector.  I hope to get a document camera this upcomming year also because I think it would really help these students follow along as I give directions.  Most of my students are visual learners, and most (if not all) of them prefer to use technology when possible, so any way I can incorporate these two learning styles in the classroom would benefit my students learning.

I would certainly recommend using technology as much as possible in the classroom to enhance student engagement and learning!  Also, it turned out to be an amazing classroom management for my Algebra AB classes.  Thank you POWERpoint.

lame technology use in the 1990s

I was born in 1987 and so by the time I was in school, the main source of technology was computers.  My first memory of using a computer in a school setting was in the computer lab in the 2nd grade.  I remember playing "educational games" like Oregon trail, which is a favorite past time for most people my age.  I also remember having two really old, dusty computers in my 4th grade class that were seldom (if not ever) used.  Middle school memories also consist of going to the computer lab for research.  I remember using the colored mac computers, that I thought were really cool at the time.  We were not allowed to use these computers for personal use, such as games, email, chat, and so on, and the computer lady was very strict in monitoring the students' screens.  I also took a typing class in 6th grade which really improved my ability to type quickly and accurately.  I'm extremely thankful for this class because it has helped me become a proficient computer user.  In high school, we used computers in the computer lab for research and class projects.  I also was fortunate enough to take a media in the art class, in which I learned how to use photoshop and other useful media programs on a mac.  In all, my educational experiences included computer use in a computer lab setting and rarely consisted of other technology use in the classroom.