While so much went on at CUE 2010 in Palm Springs this weekend, I wanted to share some thoughts and information while it is fresh in my mind.  And based on my sinus infections things could go stale very quickly! :)

First off it was just amazing that our District was able to send 17 teachers to the conference funded by our EETT C grant.  It was not originally planned, but with staff development funding in the grant available, we were able to get it approved.  Fourteen of the seventeen teachers were first time attendees and I could see the happy faces on Friday night when when we all met up and I asked, "What was the best thing you saw today?"  For many of the teachers it was difficult to find one thing as their best.  The excitement was abuzz and they were ready to tackle Saturday with enthusiasm.  We got some of them using Twitter and "tweets" were flying back and forth as they days progressed with information about sessions.

Over the next two weeks these teachers will be sharing their experiences and what they have learned at our last staff development day of the grant for this year.  I'm sure they will bring that same enthusiasm back to our training days.  Their move from trainee to trainer has now become complete for many of them.  This sharing will be posted in our SWATTEC wiki  as the training week progresses and teachers will have access to it when they want to go back and look for a resource.  It's always been important to have a place to put all our resources for teachers to have easy access.  Over time this will be even more refined and organized so it is easier to use.

I'd like to give props to our vendors who have been so supportive to our teachers.  They were so excited to see the teachers come by and say hello while the teachers were visiting the exhibit hall.  I've heard that they have actually been spreading the news about our SWATTEC program. 

For many of the 55 teachers in our program, the infusion of all the new technology over the last 2 years has been an uphill struggle, but they have worked very hard to implement the programs and use the new hardware to improve their student achievement.  If the results from last year continue through this year, which I'm sure they will, they have met and exceeded any expectations.  They should be very proud of themselves.  So many props to our classroom teachers. 

Providing quality staff development experiences like CUE is something all teachers should have the opportunity to participate in at least every couple of years. 

A

I find this slideshow to be very helpful in walking kids through what works and what doesn't in Powerpoint design:

http://www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/Presentations-Tips.ppt

Go here: http://davosaur.edu.glogster.com/swattec-mind-map/

to see this full-screen

Many teachers have asked how to make a contact group. These groups are very handy for emailing grade level teams, office staff, and parents. Here's the lowdown:

Note: for the pictures below, if you need to see the larger version of a picture, click on it to make it bigger.

First of all, open up Zimbra and click on the "Address Book" tab.

Next, find the "New" drop down menu.

Choose "Contact Group"

The next screen is where the real magic happens. You'll give your group a name, select the members for it, and add those members to the group. <click picture to enlarge>

Once you've finished the above steps, all you have to do is save the group.

Now all you need to do to make use of your group is to type the name of your group in the "To:" line of a new email.

As I stressed in my prior post, if we are going to build effective learning environments, the thing we need to focus on is kids - not teachers, administrators, or even parents, but kids. And one of the most important things we must consider when building such environments is motivation, or more specifically, what motivates kids to learn.

Any study in human motivation will undoubtedly lead to Maslow's “Theory of Human Motivation”, which logically concludes that humans are essentially motivated by their needs. Knowing this, as well as how much the world has changed in the last decade, it might be tempting to assume that our students' needs have changed along with the world around them. But have they?

For review, let's have another look at Maslow's theory and see what we can glean from it. According to Maslow, all human motivation is driven by a hierarchy of needs, which are typically represented in the form of a pyramid as in the figure to the right. The pyramid is functionally divided into two halves, with bottom half representing deficiency needs and the top half representing growth needs. While the growth needs are what we care most about as educators, it's important for us to understand the deficiency needs before we even talk about growth. 

The deficiency needs are what one might consider to be the obvious needs, with the bottom being the physiological - I need to eat, I need to sleep, etc. Once those physiological needs are met, then we are concerned about physical safety, followed by thoughts of love and belonging, and finally an interest in our self-esteem or sense of self worth. The important thing to remember is that these needs build on each other in such a way that the means to meet higher needs will not be sought until the lower needs are first met. A person will sacrifice their need for love/belonging, for example, if they feel physically threatened, and so on. The notion here is that the deficiency needs all have to be met before we can even start thinking about our growth needs. While schools are doing a pretty good job in these areas (although I have a particular beef with our obsessive over-emphasis on esteem, ie "everyone's a winner, noone's a loser"), we would be remiss if we didn't ask ourselves the tough questions: "Do my kids feel safe at school?", "Are they getting enough to eat?", "Do I create an environment where kids feel as though they belong?"

Once the deficiency needs are met, then an individual moves on to growth needs. In Maslow's original theory he only has one item above "esteem", and that is "self-actualization" or the desire for self-fulfillment and the ultimate reaching of one's potential. A deeper read into the matter, however, reveals that there are some important considerations that must be met on the road to self-actualization, and that there is an ultimate transcendent destination beyond it, which I have broken out in the chart above. He speaks of the cognitive needs - the need to learn, the need to know, the need to understand, and the need to explore. He uses the word "explore" or "exploration", which is something that I think we've lost much of today in education. Once one moves beyond the cognitive, they move towards aesthetics, such as recognizing beauty and the need for order and patterns. And only after that can one understand the nature of their abilities and endeavor to reach their true potential (self-actualization). But the ultimate goal, the one we should all be striving for, is that point where ego steps out of the way and we transcend to a level where we want to help others reach their potential.

Above all, the important detail to remember is that higher needs only gain focus when the lower needs are met, which means that a student's focus can be ever changing, depending on other influences in their life. It's hard to focus on math when you are worried about survival, but you are immensely interested in learning about survival. Likewise, the ultimate realization of a student's potential and consequential wisdom and transcendence will never be reached if we don't create environments where students fulfill their needs to know, understand, explore, and create.

But the interesting thing about all of this is that despite all the technology in their lives and all the changes in the world around them, kids' needs really haven't changed. They still need the same basic things. What has changed is the tools and influences around them that alter the mechanisms by which those needs are met...

More to follow in subsequent posts...

I had meant to post this back when I was in chpt. 5 of our math series, but I got distracted by the myriad of other stuff- go figure. Anyway, in our math text it seems that all the authors seem to agree that the first multiple of every number is zero. Now, I had been taught that 1 times a number is the "first" multiple of a number. So, unless the number you're looking at is zero, zero is not the multiple of any number.

Apparently it is more complicated than that. In the interest of being correct, I did some research. 0 is a multiple of every integer, but so are negative values of that integer times any other integer. That means truly multiples of 5 are {....-15, -10, -5, 0, 5, 10,...}. So I'm not going to outright say that the book is wrong. I will say that our text took the wrong approach. What we're interested in are not multiples of integers but multiples of natural numbers. After all, isn't the goal to eventually have these students calculating the LCM by comparing the multiples of the two (or more) numbers they're considering? If we teach them that zero is the first multiple now, what do we teach them later? Because they're sure to declare that 0 is the LCM every time. Think about it. Teacher: "What is the smallest number that I can divide both of these numbers by? Make a list, find the first multiple that appears in each, blah blah." If we undermine that method of finding LCM, then everyone will have to calculate it by using prime factorization (arguably not a bad thing).

If you're not in chpt. 5 yet, lucky you. If you've been there and didn't notice, you might want to go back and clarify any misconceptions. 5th grade will thank you for it.

I noticed this when I gave the publisher's test and kids were missing questions (graded with the key) that they had actually answered correctly (by my instruction). I generally use the text for pacing, practice work, and back-up if I don't know the topic as well as I'd like to. I couldn't figure out why during review discussions the kids kept telling me that zero was the first multiple. Sadly, it's in the book without the natural numbers explanation I gave above. I plan on putting a yellow sticky in my book to remind me of this next year.

Illuminations has a great bingo activity on order of operations. It requires very little prep. I've used bingo games to reinforce order of operations in sixth grade before, but most of the pre-done activities are geared for a higher level. This particular one is great for a first pass. There are no exponents to mess with.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L730

I thought I would upload a graphic organizer that I like to use for order of operations. No big deal, here, but perhaps it will save you some time if you were thinking of doing something similar.

orderopstemp.xls application/vnd.ms-excel

In anticipation of the upcoming expansion of our SWATTEC program into 5th grade classrooms, we've been reviewing the latest netbook models from a variety of vendors. We've been quite happy with our Asus EeePC 901s in the 4th grade, however these models are no longer available. We would ordinarily be most likely to stick with one vendor, however the limited selection of options in Asus' current line, as well as a general disinterest in working with us from their sales team has lead us to review the offerings from other suppliers. As I know many districts are also presently looking at netbooks, I thought it might be useful to post our assessment of the models we have reviewed.

There are a number of things we look for in a netbook, beginning first and foremost with durability. More ...

I'm a tech guy, as you have probably noticed, and as a tech guy I often find myself spending a lot of time talking about all sorts of great technologies, like social media and Web 2.0 tools, the latest hardware and gadgets, and how to use them to build online communities and develop collaborative practices in the education space. I attend and participate in a number of conferences and webinars on a regular basis, both as a presenter and attendee, and serve on a number of panels and implementation teams, all of which I believe to be valuable. But lately I have been struck by the fact that, even though everyone is gathering together to talk about education, we really aren't talking much about education. We're talking mostly about tools. Think about the last conference or webinar you attended - how much of the conversation revolved around tools and how to use them? I would bet the vast majority. While the geek in me really enjoys learning about what the hot new tool is and how I might make it work, I think as a whole we've jumped the shark on ed tech. Because when we think about ourselves as educators, what we do is not really about tools, is it? It's about kids. It's about helping kids to learn and grow, and to prepare them for the world they are about to enter.

Yet many of us seem to believe that if we can just get the right set of tools into the classroom we can solve all of education's problems. So we take out our whiteboards and replace them with super-whiteboards, and we swap out our overhead projectors for document cameras, and we sprinkle in some classroom responders, just for good measure. We do all this because we genuinely believe that it will make all the difference in the world, mostly because somebody told us that the reason kids aren't learning in the 21st century is because we aren't interesting enough. And I think that's wrong. I don't think that's right at all.

I think the problem that we're having is not that we haven't figured out the right set of tools, I think it's that we're not focusing on the right things. We're not taking a look at technology and it's role in the future of education and asking the right questions.

I was following along with a discussion panel this year at NECC (now ISTE) on social networking in education (which is a topic I often speak about) and panelist David Jakes posited what I believe is the right question. And it didn't have anything to do with social networking or web 2.0 or tools or technology. It was simply this: “What does it mean to be well educated in the 21st century?” I think that is the question we really need to start asking.

To answer that question, I believe we need to take a step back and look at how the world has changed all around us – step back and look at the world our kids are entering and consider what they will face when they get there. We need to look again at their needs, their motivations, and their influences and discover what drives them to learn and grow. Only when we do that, can we rightly challenge the assumptions we have used to build our education systems and consider what school in the 21st century should look like.

More to follow in subsequent posts...

I've given a number of presentations lately around the general theme of "Rethinking Laptops and Learning". For those who haven't been able to attend (and even some of those that were) below is a compilation of links to related information and resources.

SaugusUSD SWATTEC Project: http://community.saugususd.org/swattec/page/
SaugusUSD Linux on Netbooks: http://community.saugususd.org/swattec/page/Linux+on+Netbooks
Saugus K12 Social Networking Resources: http://community.saugususd.org/jklein/page/Social+Networking
K12 Social Networking Presentation at Harvard: http://www.slideshare.net/jnetman1/k12-social-networking-harvard

Blog Posts and Commentary:
When do Laptops Become School Supplies? (Jim Klein) http://is.gd/3wWvq
Netbooks and Open-source: Rethinking Laptops and Learning? (Jim Klein): http://is.gd/4fCRU
Linux on Netbooks and Whiskers on Kittens (Karl Fisch) http://is.gd/3wWBf
Transitioning to 1:1 Netbook via BYOL (Wes Fryer) http://is.gd/3wWFY
The Value of Comment Moderation and Feedback... (Wes Fryer) http://is.gd/3wWIC
Quit Substituting Expensive EdTech Gadgets for the “Real Deal” (John Patten) http://is.gd/3wWKH

Key Open Source Projects:
The OpenDisc - http://www.theopendisc.com
Elgg Open Source Social Engine – http://elgg.org
Ubuntu Linux: http://www.ubuntu.com
iTalc Project - http://italc.sourceforge.net

K12 Open Source Resources:
CoSN K12 Open Technologies Initiative: http://k12opentech.org
K12OpenSource.com: http://www.k12opensource.com
K12OpenSource.org: http://www.k12opensource.org
Jim Klein's Open Source Pages: http://community.saugususd.org/jklein/page/Open+Technologies
K12 Open Source Help (Contractor): http://k12opensourcehelp.com

Great Netbooks for Linux:
Asus EeePC: http://eeepc.asus.com
Acer AspireOne: http://us.acer.com
Dell Mini: http://www.dell.com/home/netbooks

Are your kids unmotivated to study for social studies? I've added the next installment of Social Studies Jeopardy: Since Unit 2 (4th grade) is so long I split in half and created a Jeopardy to review Lessons 1-4.  You can access it at http://www.jeopardylabs.com/play/social-studies-unit-2-part-1

You can also create your own Jeopardy games for any subject area at http://www.jeopardylabs.com

Enjoy!

Sarah Sabol

PS: A tip for palying the game: If a question is answered correctly, add the points before clicking "Continue", or the question will remain on the board to be selected again and again.

I created a template for the students to use on their Eeepcs to use as they gather info about the different California regions. I'm intending for them to do some guided internet searching for info (with me), but feel free to use it/change it however you want.

regionsscrapbook.doc application/msword

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

Here's a website with a movie about this nonprofit organization. It goes quite well with the story from Unit 2 of the same name.

http://www.certnyc.org/ffth.html#

On November 12, students in Ms. Gardner's 4th grade class at Rio Vista school had the wonderful opportunity to speak with a soldier in Iraq about being in the military and his experiences there. It was an excellent example of what happens when technology meets learning and enables new experiences in the classroom. Below is a brief (rough) clip from the day. You can also review some of the students' blog posts reflecting on the event at: http://students.saugususd.org/_weblog/everyone.php?filter=tag&filtervalue=iraq  . More student posts are sure to follow!

Students Skype with US Soldier in Iraq from Jim Klein on Vimeo.

On Thursday, November 12, Tami Gardner and her class at Rio Vista did a Skype phone call  to Iraq with her brother who is stationed in Baghdad.  While the connection lasted he talked to the students and a few had an opportunity to ask him questions.  Here is a picture from the event.

Here's a notebook page I made for use with your Smartboard or Airliner with a little interactive map. Hope you can use it!

caregions.notebook document/unknown

I was thrilled to hear from Tammy Parks at Howe Public Schools in Oklahoma that their teachers are beginning to spend some time with netbooks based on our open-source image from the SWATTEC program. It's been great to see the concept spread to other schools and districts across the country. I believe open-sourcing education technology implementation to be the most effective way to bring large-scale classroom innovation and lasting change to schools, and to drive student achievement into the 21st century.

I wanted the class to brainstorm some words appropriate for the holiday (and school). Wordle is a fun way to showcase their efforts. Some of the students posted their Wordles on their blog. I also wanted to print with the coloring book option but could not find the option anywhere. Luckily Arlene came to the rescue with the surprisingly simple solution. All you have to do is click (or double click I think) the picture and the letters become outlines. If you choose a black and white color scheme (white background), you'll then have something that can be printed for later coloring. Thanks Arlene!

Here's another resource for graphic organizers. If you create an account (free), you can also make your own organizers. This would be useful with the Airliner.

Here's the link:

http://www.exploratree.org.uk/