Category: Teacher Resources

Guest Post: Using Facebook to Connect with Other Band Teachers

This is our SECOND guest post! Nancy Teskey shares how she uses Facebook to grow professionally. How do you connect with resources? What does your Personal Learning Network look like? See this past post for more info on starting your own PLN.

Nancy:

I’m on Facebook. A lot. Every night. But while I DO chat with old high school friends and argue politics with a few folks, I spend most of my time on professional groups. I’m a member of Facebook groups called, “Oregon Band Directors” – 226 members and “Band Directors” – 7,768 members nationwide. While there is occasional chit-chat, the vast majority of what is posted and commented upon is the very best professional development I’ve found lately.

At OES, I’m the only person who teaches what I teach.  I do chat with Jeri and Adam of course, but I don’t have anyone to go to with a question like, “what is a good march for my beginning sixth grade band that would help them learn dotted quarter notes?”  or  “what is the best trumpet mouthpiece for an intermediate player with braces?”  I can post questions such as these and within ten minutes get a dozen meaty answers from band directors all over the country.

Through these groups, I’ve borrowed pep band music from the director at Lake Oswego HS for our homecoming, gotten advice on where to find recordings of older pieces, gotten recommendations for a trombone teacher for a student, and gotten advice on the best saxophone reeds. In all cases, answers and suggestions came within minutes. Quicker than emailing across the OES campus at times!

Most of you have colleagues at OES who teach what you teach – but even if you do, wouldn’t it be cool to hear about what they’re teaching in Eugene? Or Bend? Or Nashville? Or Boston? Dig around Facebook – it’s not just for pictures of backyard flowers, political rants or silly cartoons anymore!

Technology in Spanish

This is our first GUEST POST from Charley Adams. Thank you to Charley for sharing the program he and Tessa have created both at this conference and on the blog. (If you would like to contribute, let me know!)

From Charley:

It was a kick to present with Tessa at the fall COFLT (Confederation in Oregon for Language Teaching) conference in October. Since we began to develop our own curriculum for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Spanish four years ago, we’ve developed ideas and identified resources that we felt could be useful to our colleagues from other schools. Thanks to OES’s amazing technology department and the laptop program, many of the most exciting things we’ve done in the last four years are, in one way or another, anchored by technology. We presented to an audience of 40-50 educators, who teach of a range of foreign languages, for a little under an hour. Some had useful tips to add (like uploading pictures to quizlet), while others are just getting started using technology both in and out of the classroom. All (I hope) took away at least one idea that they can use to enhance their teaching.

Google Apps Suite:

Shared documents, from simple vocabulary lists to student-generated visual/virtual flashcards using the presentation format, have opened up a new universe of how we look at our teaching resources. Allowing students to access and submit work electronically saves paper and prevents the “I lost/forgot my homework sheet” excuse. Websites and calendars provide hubs for lots of our class material and student resources, including handouts, lessons, photos, links, and more. Blogs are great for general parent communication (like on language trips!).

Garageband:

Great for creating our own music in Spanish, as well as for recording Spanish dialogues. These are some of the most fun and successful comprehension activities, especially when kids hear teachers of other subjects speaking Spanish.

Jing:

Awesome for on-screen grammar explanations, which kids can access from home whenever they want. Really helpful if students have a hard time recalling the in-class lesson when they sit down to do their homework.

Quia + Quizlet:

Lots of free, ready-to-play games that cover everything from simple vocabulary to complex grammar concepts. We’ve also made our own games on quia through setting up a subscription account. It’s free to set up a quizlet account and make your own vocabulary sets, which students can do easily. They can then share the fruits of their labor with their peers, keep scores if they want, and enjoy easy access and quick practice.

Audio Dropbox:

Excellent free resource from clear.msu.edu that allows students to record their voices online. The teacher streams their recorded answers for evaluation, saving lots of time from the now-outdated method of attaching and downloading audio files.

iMovie and Youtube:

Great for creating and sharing kid-generated movies in Spanish.

Questions I am Living

At the Klingenstein Summer Institute, we talked about “questions I am living.” What I love about this idea is that these are questions that we are constantly seeking answers to. This can feel absurd (and mildy frustrating) for a pragmatic person like myself, but it holds me in the process of living rather than focusing on a finish line.

The Questions I’m Living

1. What is “enough”? When is enough enough?

Do I give enough love, enough time, enough motivation, enough dedication, enough devotion to my life, my family, my job, myself?

2. How can some things be the same as they have always been and yet the world is always changing?

Adolescents have always rebelled against the institutions of the older generation and the older generation has always grappled with how to guide them.
Technology is changing how we live in this world, yet technology has ALWAYS changed how we live.

Side note: Scott McLeod wrote a great post about the attitude that “We didn’t have technology as a kid and I turned out okay.” I love the way Scott takes buzzwords or phrases that you feel comfortable with and picks apart the embedded issues. Technology has ALWAYS changed how we live. That doesn’t mean all technology is good or better, but it will change, and we need to adapt to it.

The Questions that Guide my Professional Development
For the OES Technology website, I wrote a short version of my educational philsophy, framing it with questions:
1. Why teach?
Learning comes from experiencing new information, skills, emotions, perspectives, connections, and relationships. Being immersed in this process, as a student or as a facilitator, is stimulating, challenging, and rewarding work.
2. Why technology?
Technology situates students (of all ages) in an environment of exploration, connection, creativity, and collaboration, during which learning opportunities are expanded. Additionally, the ubiquity and mobility of devices is changing how we function, learn, and work, and thus learning to navigate this rapidly changing, digital world is imperative.
3. Why middle school?
This is a critical age, when abstract thinking blossoms and perspectives shift; when life habits and values are formed; when capacities for empathy, creativity, and energy explode. The changes I see in students from when they enter as sixth graders to when they leave as eighth graders is a testament to the amazing growth that takes place in a short three years. I am humbled to be a part of the community that guides young people through this formative stage of their life.

Motivated to Learn

Wouldn’t life be some much easier if we could figure out how to inspire student motivation? Are we (as teachers) motivated to teach and to learn?

Deborah Stipek is a professor at Stanford and wrote Motivation to Learn (2001). We talked about her research at the Klingenstein Summer Institute. I think one reason it resonated so strongly with me was it took psychology theory and put it into practice, and explained things that I was seeing in my students.

She gives factors that influence intrinsic motivation:

  1. Need for a sense of competency
  2. Need for sense of self-determination
  3. Need for interpersonal connection
  4. Need for sense of purpose, meaning, or relevance
  5. Interest
Let’s look at the most successful unit I have ever taught: Understanding Systems using SimCity:
  1. Students followed tutorials and saw growth of their cities, and they got frequent feedback from the game to develop their competency.
  2. Students got complete control over their own city.
  3. Many students helped each other – it was rare for the classroom to be quiet – and all the chatter was about the game using the systems vocabulary.  All the chatter was about the game. They were connecting about the project.
  4. This was linked to our yearlong theme of systems and sustainability.
  5. Games are fun – there is a natural interest to seeing what the reaction is to your action.
I don’t have any evidence to back up these claims that this is why the unit was successful, but it makes an awful lot of sense to me. Each kid may not have connected to all five factors, but enough of them connected to a couple. And it jives with what I felt in my classroom.
  1. How do you make your students feel competent? What feedback do you provide? What feedback to they hear?
  2. How do you give them self-determination? What choices do they have? What real choices do they have?
  3. How do you allow them to connect with each other and you?
  4. What purpose or relevance do they see in assignments? (This does not have to be that they are saving the world…)
  5. Are they interested? Are you interested?
Thoughts?
Image credit: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s conception of Flow, from Hill Holliday’s Blog: http://www.hhcc.com/blog/2009/11/building-discovery-in-web-design/

Rescuing Time, Part 3: Personal Sustainability and Sabbath

We often think of sustainability only in terms of solar panels, plastic, and carpooling. As we reflect on stressed out and over scheduled lives, we may need to step back and think about how we keep our lives (and jobs) sustainable.

1. Pre-Whelmed

At a tech meeting, I was introduced to the idea of being “pre-whelmed,” i.e. feeling like you are buried under the mountain of work before it actually starts.

  • Case in point: I’ve started using Twitter more, and, as I tuned in to #edchat on a Tuesday night, I was pre-whelmed by the conversation. It was like standing in a crowded gym and trying to understand what every single person was saying and sharing.
But I want to be an intentional, CONNECTED teacher! The key is YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ IT ALL.
  • Twitter: select the hashtags or people you want to follow and enjoy what tweets you see. This is the beauty of just-in-time instead of just-in-case professional development.
  • Reader: follow a few blogs, only read interesting posts, and use the “mark all as read” button.
  • Conferences: take a session off to debrief with someone (a colleague or another participant) or write a blog post or journal entry. It doesn’t make you lazy or less committed and may even deepen what you can bring back to your school.
  • School day: think of the 10-minute casual conversations that keep you connected to colleagues, or the quick game of Bejeweled, or the 1-minute scan of facebook to watch a funny video… These distractions can also calm us, allowing us to be more productive afterwards. (And if this is true for us, when do we allow it for our students?)
2. Boundaries
  • Tweeting during a concert, speech, or presentation: Is it distracting or enhancing? For some, this might seem like whispering or passing notes, traditionally frowned upon. And that was my first reaction, but the more I thought about it, I think it actually ENHANCES my connection to the event:
    1. I get to share in someone else’s thoughts, making it a conversation rather than a one-way flow of information.
    2. They often pick up ideas or quotes that I missed, making my experience richer.
  • Technology. Sometimes I watch tv, work on my laptop, and text with my mom at the same time. The uber-connectedness feels stimulating and engaging, but screens can also be an incredible time-suck. On my honeymoon in Hawaii sans computer, the days seemed to stretch on forever. Last spring, we heard about periodically taking a Tech Sabbath, and I wanted to comment on the first two:
    1. Avoid technology. (More specifically, screens.)
    2. Connect with loved ones. (But if you need a screen to do this, that’s okay. My Saturday morning skype with my mom is important to me.)
Sabbaths don’t have to be on Saturdays, and they don’t have to be a full day. But taking time to disconnect can rescue us from an unsustainable life. Make the technology work for you:
  • connect with family and friends on skype and facebook,
  • explore new resources to keep yourself organized like rescue time and StayFocused,
  • create a PLN with reader and twitter,
  • and commit to a personal and professional practice that is intentional, balanced, and healthy.
And don’t think anyone who gives advice on this has it all figured out.

Rescuing Time, Part 1: Advice from parents

Everyone is stressed. Everyone needs more sleep.  Everyone is going faster, stronger, better, or harder than you are. We strive to write everything down, record everything we say, document every movement. We watch concerts and games through the video camera rather than enjoying it in the moment.

If you don’t subscribe to this attitude, well then you are clearly not doing it right.

At the 6th grade PAL meeting this week, parents offered advice:

  • Be present, remain calm
  • Pause and watch the magic of this stage  – step back and looks for connections
  • Get your rest, you never know when life will be challenging and you will need patience, etc.
  • Don’t rush – take your time
  • Be the best you can be
  • Be a witness to this amazing time of transformation in your kids
What is your advice?

I’m a TWEETER

No, that isn’t an insult.

Twitter is GREAT for developing your teaching. I was skeptical too. In fact, I still am, but I’m starting to think it might be worth it.

Why? Well I’ll tell you –

  • When I find something that I think another teacher might enjoy, I often send it via email. But when I get those emails from other people, I usually skim it and rarely use it. If I tweet it instead, MORE people see it, rather than just the one recipient, and I don’t have to feel like I’m pestering them by clogging their inbox.
  • It’s the quick, short snapshop. Sharing things via blog posts are great, but they are long, reflective, interpretive. Like this one. When you are limited to 140 characters, you have to keep it snappy – which is all I have time for.
  • You can follow LOTS of people, but narrow it by what you are interested in by the hashtag:
    • #edchat
    • #oestech
    • #engchat (English teachers)
    • #scichat (science teachers)
  • It is GREAT at conferences. I used it a lot at Klingenstein, ISTE, and Learning and the Brain.
To reinterate: I was skeptical at first, but it’s worth a try. Just listen for awhile, and eventually start sharing. It might feel like you are drinking out of a firehose. You DON’T HAVE TO DRINK IT ALL! Just keep a few things that are helpful and leave the rest…

Doodley Doo

I found myself in a 2 hour meeting with no pen or pencil, wishing desperately to be able to doodle, SO THAT I COULD STAY FOCUSED.

https://ted.com/talks/view/id/1230

I doodled while watching her talk, and now I kind of want someone to analyze my doodles.

(My doodle, uploaded by taking a picture with my iPhone using the Genius Scan app, which can make images into pdfs.)

I found myself thinking that my doodles were kind of limited, and that sometimes I can’t think of what to draw and end up just coloring in boxes. This makes me despair about my lack of divergent thinking, like Sir Ken Robinson talks about in his video.

Vi Hart is a mathemusician who has videos of math doodles about number theory. (My favorite is the binary trees.) Also check out the binary hand dance, infinite elephants, and what’s up with noises.

Doodling also ties in with the importance of visual literacy in the world today. Students are exposed to visuals every day (think billboards, tv commercials, magazines) and need to be TAUGHT to be critical thinkers of what they are seeing. Cheryl Lemke writes a great article, “Innovation Through Technology” on this in 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn. They learn this by both thinking about visuals and creating them. Some people (myself included) express themselves better visually, and therefore learn better this way.

To sum up:

More doodling + more art = more learning.