The Connected Curriculum - Challenge #23

TED - Ideas Worth Sharing!

As a teacher, one of the most used resources that I tap into is the TED Talks videos.  They are all accessible through YouTube and my students find the presentations interesting and thought provoking.

*Click on the photo above to visit the TED web site*

TED started out in 1984 as a conference designed to connect people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  In the interim, its reach has become even wider and includes the TED Conference, TED Global, the award-winning TED Talks video site, TED Conversations, TED Fellows and TEDx programs.

The focus of today’s article is the TED Talks conferences and videos.  Within these conferences TED connects some of the world’s most captivating thinkers and doers. Speakers such as Erin Gruwell: The Freedom Writers-Becominga Catalyst for Change, Steve Jobs: How to Live Before You Die, Sir KenRobinson: How Schools Kill Creativity, and Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action. All presentations are given in 18 minutes or less and make a great resource to use in the classroom, at staff meetings, or just for your own professional development.

TED believes fervently in the power of networking and sharing ideas; ideas that transform attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.  The TED resources are a clearinghouse of unrestricted knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a network of curious souls to engage ideas with.

Click on the picture above to learn more about TED 2014

The springtime TEDConference is held yearly on the West Coast of the United States. The range of content includes science, technology, business, the arts and the global concerns facing our world. Over a course of four days, 50+ speakers each take an 18-minute slot. Their talks are mixed in with shorter presentations, including comedy, performances and music. “There are no breakout groups -- everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does ... because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to come out of the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.”

TED ACTIVE 2014 ~ The Next Chapter

TEDActive unites a curated community of inquisitive and energetic leaders to experience an immersive week of viewing the TED Conference in a creative and informal setting. The gathering is speckled heavily with surprising experiences created to inspire conversation and instant action around ideas.

TED GLOBAL 2014 ~  RIO DE JANEIRO

TEDGlobal treks the world and is more international in nature. The complete TED format is preserved, with a wide-ranging list of speakers and entertainers for four days of inspiring sessions. TEDGlobal was held in Oxford, UK, in 2005, 2009 and 2010; in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2007; in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2011, 2012 and 2013; and in 2014, it will head to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I highly encourage you to utilize these resources or at least give them some of your personal time.  
I promise you that you won’t be discouraged!

Until tomorrow…..

Collaborate and Connect Your Curriculum!

The Connected Curriculum – Challenge #22

Education& Creativity

*Freedom Writers ~ Part 2 of 2*

Freedom Writers illustrates Erin Gruwell as a teacher in an extraordinary circumstance that needs extraordinary skills. Gradually, Gruwell designed a creative model of education that resulted in a true story of success. Following, and in response to thousands of requests, Gruwell and a panel of experts have written The Freedom Writers Diary Teacher's Guide where you can find the philosophy of the education experience shown in the movie.

Freedom Writers is an inspiring movie, not only because it is based on a true story, but also because it raises questions about the concepts of violence, education, empowerment, and collective memories. It is the kind of movie that encourages you to think out of the box and to believe that small actions can make a difference.  

Freedom Writers Soundtrack

The introduction of the teacher's guide presents a three-stage process (excerpts taken directly out of the guide are shown in italics for example):

1.       Engage your students by establishing a collaborative and supportive academic environment that will draw your students into the learning process, help them make connections between who they are as individuals and who they are as students.

2.      Enlighten your students by making them practice different kinds of writing and public speaking, and by becoming critical thinkers.

3.      Empower your students by bringing the outside world into the classroom, and taking their classroom into the world. 

Dear Group Facilitator:

Set in Los Angeles during the years following the 1992 Rodney King riots, Freedom Writers tells the true story of a young English teacher and her influence in the classroom. Erin Gruwell begins the school year as an English teacher for the “at-risk” freshmen students at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. She soon realizes that her diverse group of students is embroiled in the racial gang war culture of the time. Without the positive support of family members or teachers, these students have no expectations of academic success. Each day is a struggle to survive on the streets.

In a daring move that counters her superiors at Wilson High, Ms. Gruwell sacrifices her own time and money to inspire and educate her struggling students. Using books such as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo, Gruwell leads her class in a life-changing journey against intolerance. As the students read these books, they begin to recognize parallels in their own lives and record personal accounts of their experiences and emotions in diaries. Calling themselves the “Freedom Writers,” the students gain national recognition for their efforts and begin to make positive changes in their own lives.

Freedom Writers, in both book and movie form, touches on powerful themes such as self-reflection, tolerance, facing adversity, striving for success and trust.

• Step 1) SEE THE FILM AND READ THE BOOK
• THE MOVIE: Freedom Writers, a Paramount Pictures and MTV Movies film, opened in theaters on January 5, 2007. The movie is now available on DVD through several resources.
• THE BOOK, The Freedom Writer's Diary, by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell is widely available in libraries and book stores. It contains real journal entries from Ms. Gruwell’s students as they advance through high sch
• Step 2) PARTICIPATE - Take part in powerful discussions that address themes such as:
• Tolerance
• Trust
• Family relationships
• Anti-violence
• Striving for success
• Step 3) TAKE THE LEAD TO HELP OTHERS
• Using the example of Erin Gruwell’s determination to make positive changes in her classroom, young people are urged to learn to take on responsibility by designing and conducting a service project. Youth are also encouraged to advocate for educational changes that could make a difference in their community’s schools.

Notes for the Facilitator:

The discussion questions in this guide are designed to encourage youth to think deeply about the themes and messages that arise in Freedom Writers. The discussion questions and activity ideas are arranged according to theme and provide youth with an open forum to express their emotions and engage in constructive dialogue with their peers.

Importantly, please tailor the discussion questions to the life circumstances of the youth in your group. Many of us have endured relationships or life experiences that may be similar to the challenging circumstances faced by Ms. Gruwell’s students. Yet, many youth, like the main characters of Freedom Writers, will reach into their own hearts and into a close circle of support (parents, grandparents, family members, peers, teachers and others) to develop lasting, positive relationships.

CONNECT YOUR CURRICULUM WITH THESE WEB RESOURCES!

• FREEDOM WRITERSFOUNDATION
• By linking with the Freedom Writers Outreach program, you can join empowering live events and video chats for students, school faculty, education professionals, university students and staff, corporate events, and leadership conferences.
• FREEDOM WRITERS NEWSLETTER
• FREEDOM WRITERS ON TWITTER
• FREEDOM WRITERS VIDEOCLIP
• FREEDOM WRITERS – TEACHER CERTIFICATION TRAINING
• FREEDOM WRITERS CURRICULUM

The Connected Curriculum – Challenge #22

Demonstrate a Conviction That Personal Writing Still Belongs in the Classroom

Education& Creativity

*Freedom Writers ~ Part 1 of 2*

Just two short years after the Los Angeles riots in 1992 new teacher Erin Gruwell entered into her classroom at Long Beach High School. The school sat in a gang war zone, and her student mix was black, Latino, and Asian young people. In less than one school term, Erin created a real difference in an atmosphere that was full of tension, anger, and hatred. As you will see, this story turns out to be one well worth watching.

 

Discouraged by her efforts to motivate her low-achieving students, she gave out journals and solicited the kids to record thoughts about their own lives. Their expressive personal essays were subsequently published in The Freedom Writers Diary, a book that inspired the 2007 film (staring Hilary Swank) Freedom Writers.   

 

 

At the beginning of Freedom Writers, Gruwell is lecturing helplessly in front of a blackboard, trying to demonstrate essay writing while the students express their disgust.  She had discovered on her first day of class that she had 150 kids who hated writing, hated her, and hated everything.  Full of conviction that personal writing belongs in the classroom Gruwell sets out to discover how to make things more relevant to her students.  She struggles with the challenge of engaging the kids who from the start didn’t want to read or write. Gruwell starts looking for  stories that matter to them, stories about things that are relevant to kids who can’t see a future outside of their poverty stricken community. In her book The Freedom Writers Diary, Gruwell states “I love traditional poems, but when you have your students sit down and deconstruct Tupac’s “The Rose That Grew from Concrete,” they see that you care enough about them to find subject matters to write about in their world.”

Students have to be able to think critically.  With this approach Gruwell was able to teach her students the fundamentals of writing in the process of having them read and write in their journals.  As we have all discovered; if it’s too robotic and scripted, the students will tune you out and learn nothing.  We should also all know that in order to bring learning to life, a combination of different learning modalities – visual, kinesthetic, auditory, needs to be used. In an edited scene, Gruwell brings in two sandwiches.  One of which is a really basic sandwich: a slice of white bread, a slice of baloney, and another slice of white bread.  In contrast, the other one is a really impressive sandwich that has homemade French bread, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce and a heap of ham.  She uses these as a metaphor to assist her students in deconstructing sentences. They can pen a really basic sentence, or they can use language to connect all of these other things. 

Even as a technology teacher I saw this journaling as a means to an end -- an approach to get students energized about writing so they can progress to writing academic papers.  I pursued this thought and turned it into a critical thinking/composing at the keyboard activity. With a little effort and research I came upon a wealth of resources, all off the internet and I was able to “connect my curriculum”.

The discussion guide, Freedom Writers: Express Yourself is designed for use after reading the book and/or viewing the movie. It offers discussion topics (which I turned into writing/typing prompts) for youth ages 13 - 18. It is offered by the National Collaboration for Youth, an institute which offers a unified voice for its coalition of national, nonprofit, youth development organizations.  The 35-year-old organization focuses on improving the conditions of children in the United States and empowers youth to realize their full potential. As an aftereffect, development and youth empowerment play a key role in the discussion guide for Freedom Writers.

As an initial step, I showed my students the movie The Freedom Writers. As timing would have it, I needed an additional lesson to fill in the gaps while my students were rotating through a standardized computer testing schedule. I never ONCE had to redirect a student or ask them to quiet down during this movie.  They were completely and totally immersed in it and its message.  They came in the next day begging to see more. After observing this exceptionally high level of interest, I decided to continue my journey of creating a critical thinking/composing at the keyboard activity.  Upon finding the Freedom Writers: Express Yourself Discussion Guide online I decided to replace our current “Bell Activity” of keyboarding drills with a daily journaling activity based on the prompts from the study guide.  In my twenty odd years of teaching, I have NEVER had students more engaged than with this project based activity.  I set up a simple template for them to follow and now each day they come into class, sit down immediately, and get to work….all on their own!

Coming tomorrow...Part 2 of The Freedom Writers.
 

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!

 

 

The Connected Curriculum - Challenge #21

Who Should Define Curriculum?

I believe that curriculum must be defined by individual school districts, but guided by the State Standards.  Although I don’t feel as if the State should have a complete say over what exact curriculum should be taught in our schools, I do feel they need to set a minimal “standard” of what skills should be met in each subject and at what grade level those skills should be introduced.  In a narrowly defined definition, I would look at curriculum as a packaged program that a school purchases to be used by their teachers to direct specific classrooms.  More broadly defined, curriculum would be this definition plus the added detail that the State is responsible for shaping the path of that curriculum.  In black and white, our state is not “responsible” for defining what specific curriculum we use but if we fail to meet their standards by not following an effective curriculum we look at a large list of possible consequences.  Funding can be lost or cut, the school can be labeled a PLAS (Persistently Low Achieving School), staff can be let go, and the list goes on. Standards hold us accountable as teachers and as a school district and I believe that is the way it should be.  

At our school, curriculum is viewed as established academic standards/objectives that are to be taught with the method of delivery left up to the teacher.   These standards serve as a gauge of where the students should be within a distinctly defined continuum of learning. As a teacher I frequently plan “scope and sequence” frameworks for my individual courses, but I also believe that as teachers, if we follow the child, there can be no truly set order. Focusing on the learning needs of every single child and designing curriculum to meet those needs requires our education systems to simultaneously safeguard that students meet the standards of the past but also asks that they be innovative in the design of 21^st century learning skills. As a technology teacher, and with those skills in mind, I argue that teachers must undertake a greater responsibility for all the things that a student might acquire in the school and away from the school. The teacher-led curriculum must integrate and make meaning with what students learn in their everyday experiences.   As we create individual goals for our classes, we must also create tools to help us reach those goals.  The same representation, of course, should then be employed on the students—we should help them reach clearly defined goals (standards) and we should teach them ways to become learners and problem solvers in the design of their own learning (real life experiences). We can do this as teachers by fine tuning the established curriculum to one that pushes students to learn and make connections to personal experiences. In this day and age, the pace of technological change is very swift. When crucial daily tools can change in just five years, the impact over longer stretches can be intense.  Those trends have prompted some educational leaders to argue that the long-established curriculum is not enough: schools must offer students a broader set of "21st Century Skills" to succeed in a rapidly evolving, technology-drenched world. We should make a serious effort to understand the best practical evidence on what skills will be essential for students to succeed in careers and personal lives, and we should communicate that information in clear and concrete ways that make sense to the students.  Simply asking teachers to address a long list of defined skills (State Standards) will not be sufficient as we continue to progress into the future.
 

Until tomorrow...

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!

The Connected Curriculum - Challenge #20

Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

Although standardized testing is nerve-racking and time-consuming, it is can also be very valuable. Today I am examining some of the positive and negative considerations regarding this hot topic. Standardized testing is an issue that many people feel strongly about. Most individuals either think that it is the preeminent way to assess students’ competences or it is a stress-raising nightmare for all those involved.  Nevertheless, if you step back and consider it objectively, it’s well-defined that it is neither. Standardized testing has mutually positive and negative properties and when used effectually can play a substantial role in enhancing the education of our students. The secret, of course, is to utilize the results effectively. There are many who believe strongly on both sides. In addition to the pros and cons listed below, you can read more arguments supporting standardized testing, and an argument against standardized testing.

The Pros of Standardized Testing

Standardized testing provides teachers guidance on what to teach and when to teach it. The end result is less pointless instructional time and a streamlined way of timeline management.  Standardized testing also provides parents with a good awareness of how their children are doing in comparison to students both locally and across the country. This can also reveal how your local district is doing compared with the national landscape.

Standardized testing allots for students’ progress to be tracked over the years. When students take the consistent type of test yearly (modified for grade level) it is uncomplicated to see if a student is progressing, losing ground educationally, or remaining about the same. (For instance, if a child is given a norm-referenced test and scores in the 75th percentile in the seventh grade and the 80th percentile in the eighth grade, it is apparent that the child is acquiring knowledge in school.) This helps define how a child is performing academically.

Because all students in a school are receiving the same test (with regard to grade level) standardized tests offer an accurate comparison across groups. (For instance, this makes it uncomplicated to see how boys are doing as compared to girls in a specific school or district.) Within the last decade, great improvements have been generated with regards to test bias, with the end result being more accurate assessments and evaluations.

The Cons of Standardized Testing

Many teachers are (unfairly) charged with “teaching to the test”. Many do not do this, yet some feel extreme pressure for their students to attain a specific score that they do windup teaching to the test, whether that was their intention or not. This can make school a chore for students and squeeze a teachers’ enjoyment right out of teaching.

Certain school systems are under huge pressure to increase their scores so they have resorted lessening (and sometimes eliminating) time spent in recess. This can have negative influence on a student’s social, emotional, and academic welfare.  

Standardized tests can place a enormous amount of stress on both students and teachers alike. This can result in negative health effects as well as feelings of negativity focused at school and education in general. (Read more here about how to help students deal with this stress.)

 

As much as test makers try to do away with testing prejudice, it may be difficult to purge tests of it altogether. I once tutored a 6th grader who did not understand what a recipe was. If a standardized test was to have questions regarding a recipe, that student would have been at an enormous disadvantage because most 6th grade students know and have had at best some experience working with recipes, but he did not. There is just no way to distinguish for certain that all children being tested has a reasonable amount of knowledge moving into the test.

 

The Solution to Student Success

The solution to student success on standardized tests is in having balance. Those responsible need to step back and capture both the pros and the cons about testing and discover a way to facilitate student success without initiating too much stress. So, will there always be constant back and forth arguments between testing supporters and those who advocate against them? It’s difficult to say, but I feel somewhat certain that standardized testing is going to remain in our lives. I believe the solution is to use the test outcomes as a guide for educators, parents, and students. Standardized test should also be utilized, in a limited role, to assess how good schools are doing. Standardized testing unquestionably should be used to ascertain a school’s success, but other types of assessment should also be used to determine whether a school's students are making progress or not.

 

Until tomorrow...

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!

The Connected Curriculum - Challenge #19

The Importance of Professional Development

Professional development is not an action that is important for teachers alone. It is essential for all those immersed in education from the support staff clear up to the administrators. Quality educators can be one of the greatest determinants of student achievement. An educator’s education, ability, and experience affect the variation in student achievement more than all other factors. Studies have reported that 40 to 90 percent of the variance in student test scores can be credited to teacher quality course (Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality). What’s more, educators are under more strain than ever to perform, facilitate students to produce high test scores, and validate effectiveness in the classroom. Understanding the subject matter, knowing how students learn, and integrating effective teaching methods convert into greater student achievement. It is fundamentally important that educators be well prepared as they enter the field and that they continue to develop their knowledge and skills all the way through their careers.

Characteristics of Quality Professional Development

• Uninterrupted learning, not a one-time seminar

• Focused on refining classroom practice and expanding student learning

• Rooted in the daily task of teaching, not reduced to special occasions or disconnected from the learning requirements of students

• Centered on vital teaching and learning activities— developing lessons, evaluating student effort, and developing curriculum

• Cultivated in a tradition of collegiality that includes sharing experience and knowledge on the same student advancement objectives

• Reinforced by modeling and coaching that communicates problem solving methods

• Based on analysis of practice through case study, investigation, and professional dialogue.

There are multitudes of expert professional learning opportunities that are effective, accessible and available for a great value. These opportunities can be found literally at almost any day or time of the year thanks to the internet. Perfect your skills and be at your finest by taking advantage of these professional learning opportunities. Below are several exceptional websites to investigate so that you can begin to navigate your learning course!

Online Opportunities

 

Online Professional Development, Staff Development for Teachers,

ISTE Professional Development

 

Summer Workshops

http://edtechteacher.org/index.php/summer-workshops

http://www.neh.gov/grants/education/summer-seminars-and-institutes

Twitter Feeds

 

 

Using Twitter for Teachers' Professional Development

                                       Teacher Cast TV                                     

   Professional Development Goes Digital

 

Until tomorrow...

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!

 

The Connected Curriculum - Challege #18

Start a Blog - Invite a Guest Columnist!

 

Guest Columnist ~ Angie Shaw, Elementary Library/Media Specialist

 

A couple of months ago I was invited to write a column about technology in the classroom, from a teacher’s perspective. In my day-to-day duties as an elementary library/media specialist for the Scottsbluff Public Schools, the thing I love the most is the opportunity to work with students, teachers and technology.

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One of the most exciting things about the classrooms in our schools is nearly every single classroom has an interactive white board. Teachers create interactive lessons so that their students can be actively engaged in hands-on learning activities in every subject area. Standards are being taught, student progress is monitored on a daily basis, student learning is assessed, and in the midst of all of this, students are eager to learn because their teachers are utilizing technology in the classrooms. Technology serves as the vehicle that drives student engagement and this helps us as teachers to achieve our ultimate goal of student achievement.
 

The students in our classrooms today are digital natives, which means that they were born into this culture of wireless — 3G, 4G, texting, Facebook and Bluetooth. That’s why I love the challenge of being an elementary library/media specialist at Lincoln Heights and Longfellow elementary schools. I have the unique opportunity to support both nearly 700 students per week, and their teachers, by helping them discover how to purposefully utilize the digital technology tools that are available to them.
 

Web 2.0 (free online) tools provide meaningful and easy-to-use venues for students to publish and share their own creative writing. One of my students’ favorite Web 2.0 tools is blogging. The definition of a blog, according to Google, is: “A website on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis.” Blogging provides students with the ability to experience real life text-to-world connections at the click of a mouse.
 

This past fall, a group of fifth-grade students created a blog about a book that we’d just finished reading in class called “Stolen Children.” The author, Peg Kehret, posted a comment to their blog the very next morning, telling them how much she appreciated reading their kind words about her book and she even offered them some helpful hints on how great writers come up with ideas for their stories. If only you could have seen the students’ eyes light up when they had immediate feedback from an author they admire and respect. The ability to interact with authors that they admire and respect is one way that blogging encourages students to become better writers.
 

Another one of the exciting things about working with teachers and students is, through collaboration between teachers and the media center, student-created work in the classroom can be transformed into multimedia presentations. Those presentations can be uploaded to the Internet for grandma, grandpa and the whole wide world to see.
 

Recently, after a group of second-graders produced their own YouTube video reflection of author Peter Reynolds book, “The Dot,” I decided to post a link to the student created video on the author’s Facebook page. Within minutes, the author wrote right back to the class. He wrote, “To the wonderful creative students of Scottsbluff Public Schools in Mrs. Howard’s second-grade class, I’m so glad you liked my book, ‘The Dot.’ I loved your Dot creations and your awesome movie! I encourage you all to keep creating your beautiful marks in the world. Sincerely, Peter Reynolds.”

It was amazing to see the faces of the students after receiving the instant gratification when they saw that the author cared enough about their work to compliment their efforts.
 

That’s what makes my job most meaningful, is seeing students’ faces light up with joy when they see their own work published on the World Wide Web for all the world to see.

The students that we teach are eager to devour every bit of technology that comes their way. For these digital natives, it’s just life as they know it, and that, for me and their teachers, is a very good thing.
 

Angie Shaw is an elementary library/media specialist at Lincoln Heights and Longfellow Elementary schools in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and can be reached at ashaw@sbps.net.

By Angie Shaw Scottsbluff Public Schools | Published, Scottsbluff Star-Herald, Mar 21, 2012