Switching Gears - Pay Attention!

My experimental period's students have been in the traditional class format since April 5. Next year I will have to remember if I shift gears to pay more attention. I did them wrong by failing to mention that we were reverting to the old homework policy. When I was reminded of this today, I had to add some more homework points that were lost due to my shortcoming rather than the students'.

Now I am shifting gears myself in this blog. I am in a number of online courses, two traditional in Moodle and WebVista, and the other two are radically different. They are both using RSS feeds to receive information/assignments from students. My posting this evening is an assignment for my most radically innovative course, Urgent Evoke, but I feel it is also an assignment for the other innovative course as well. Therefore, I am including both tags!

So, here I am cheating on my first assignment. I was told to pick one, and I find I must pick three secrets to social innovation:
1) think like a child - children have no limit to their thinking
2) keep learning from your customers (for me, from my students)
3) listen to the right people

1) One of my best assets is flexibility in my thinking - #1. It allows me to approach problems of any sort more like an engineer. I coopt all sorts of things for my own purposes. From a message-in-a-bottle that generated my post-spring break lesson plan, to meeting a new like-minded soul and recruiting her to host my students in an internship, to the billboard contest that ended up as a class assignment, I will use anything if it suits my needs.
2) My first and most important discovery as a new teacher was how much I learned from my students. They help me learn to be a better teacher by explaining what they don't understand, what they like, what they don't like, etc. They teach me every day.
3) Listening to the right people can help you avoid mistakes, take other variables into account, and better prepare for the tasks ahead.

And the other course asked me to do something to manifest my vision for education in the future. Here. Here it is. I am both teacher, and learner. I am sharing what I am learning with a wider audience (well if someone will read my blog, that is), I am implementing my secrets to social innovations, too!

Top that! (Okay, so there isn't video...yet!)
:-)

Fourth Quarter - Reviewing for AP Exam

We started 4th quarter today. Although I don't want to discontinue the experiment, I do feel some of this time is crucial to students solidifying their understanding. Therefore, I think we will do this unit of review in the same manner as all classes. However, we will include more technology usage than we have in the past, in all of my classes. After this unit ends next week, we will have a practice AP exam in class. That, also, will be handled the same as in my other classes. After that, though, I may be able to have a few classes that are flexible for this group. Yes, thank you blog. I didn't know that much this morning when I told them we were going to revert back to a more traditional lesson plan for today...

Friday Lab

Today I am happy to report that more laptops were taken from the cart. Students still liked exploring the test prep guides (and I did buy two more last night), but more decided they might like to also explore some online resources. At the end of class, I quizzed them inference for the slope of a regression line. Those that focused on that today were able to answer my questions....what distribution do we use for inference on slope?....what degrees of freedom do we use? I think they answered better than my other classes would have; although, I did not quiz the other classes.

Still wondering what to do about the student who is so advanced yet not so motivated. I do think he is a bit burned out, so I am cutting him a little slack.

Thursday's Lab

Today, I allowed students to use test prep guides in class. I have a bunch of them, and I do hope they will be used by students in general. These hard-copy books were the hands-down favorite activity of the day. One student got his laptop, but the rest remained unused. I guess I should go out and buy as many of the 2010 versions as I can find tonight...

It is my hope that the students will again make more use of the laptops, but in the meantime, I will give them what they choose to use.

I am having one very advanced student who isn't making much use of his time. I am trying to figure out how to re-engage him.

Man, I need work on my multi-tasking skills!

I was just on an Eluminate session about 21st Century skills, and I was caught unawares and needed to cite  an article that I just presented on last month. It took me FOREVER to find my slides and the link to the article at the end. What a pain! I need to work on my skills, apparently. I squeaked it in at the very end, and maybe no one will click on my link, but if they do, they will see its relevance. Time will tell. I built a bridge, even if it was a small, rope one!

Back In Business Today

I tried to get the laptops this morning, but both carts were checked out to teachers on a different floor for periods before and after my class. I was told I could bring them to the lab instead. I said we would take a class vote to decide whether or not to decamp to the lab. Then, about an hour later, the tech coordinator called and said a cart of 21 machines was available. I said we'd take it! It worked just fine as not all wanted to use the laptops at once, and we have a few out. One of the sites the students found is quite popular. I need to spend more time looking at it. They seem to think the explanations on it are understandable.


That's all for today. Happy St Patrick's Day!

Low-Tech Today

I opted to do the food lab today instead of the experimental learning lab. Not all of my students have been exposed to chi-squared distributions before, so I thought they would be missing out if we skipped it. Plus, today was a day I had not reserved the computers. (Administration, after receiving complaints that we were hogging the computers, decreed I can reserve them no more than 3-4 days in a row.) Tomorrow is an unreserved day also, but I told my students I will try to get the computers in the morning. I know from experience that our teachers do not often use the laptop carts.

None of my students seemed to mind my executive decision. Sugar = good. We used Fruit Loops.