Spreadsheet Races

It would be nice if I could say that I planned all this but in fact I stumbled across this idea when teaching spreadsheets. First, I must explain the background.

When learning about spreadsheets I have found that some students wasted significant time scrolling down to see how far the numbers went. I would often tell them to try it at home rather than doing it in class, but it never worked. Curiosity was too strong and then they wanted to have races to see whose computer could do it faster.

This time I tried a different approach. I told them we would all have a race. I was going to use the GOTO command to jump to the last row and beat them all because I knew most of them would just use the down arrow key. I was a little surprised when 3 boys beat me and finished in about 1 second. I asked them to tell the class how they got there so fast. They had used control-down arrow which of course is even quicker than the GOTO command. We had a brief discussion about alternative ways to move around in Excel and moved on.

So far I haven’t seen anyone scrolling up and down for minutes at a time, so it looks like I achieved my goal and the students still had their fun. Now I need to find more fun ways to help them keep learning.

How Do I Find Time For All This?

We want our students to become life-long learners but are we life-long learners ourselves? We faithfully attend the in-service sessions the school organises. We keep up with our first-aid certification and when there is a new syllabus, we go to the seminars organized by the QSA. Does that make us life-long learners? What if we are approaching retirement, do we need to keep learning?

The draft Continuing Professional Development Framework from the Queensland College of Teachers indicates a requirement for 30 hours of professional development per year. Will this make us life-long learners? Is this even the right question to ask?

Belshaw (2006) asks a more appropriate question in his blog post, Infectious Learning: Teachers as Lifelong Learners. “Why should teachers also be learners? Well first and foremost, teachers are role models. If we as teachers aren’t interested and intrinsically motivated by the learning process, why should we expect our students to be?”

Whether we agree with this philosophically or just recognize that legislation demands this of us, we as teachers need to become life-learners. So how does an already busy teacher find time for all this?

One way that works for me is to listen to podcasts about topics in my area of professional interest. They are available free and I can listen while I am commuting, so it does not “cost” me extra time, although it does require a little time finding, downloading and transferring podcasts to my iPod. For more information on podcasts see PD on the Move.

Podcasts will not provide for all your PD needs, but they can provide lots of ideas for further investigation and point you to other web based resources for more in-depth PD. Many conferences for teachers are now being recorded and made available on the web. Education Network Australia (EDNA) is a good place to start looking.

There is no denying it. PD does take time. We will still need to attend seminars and workshops at times but we really need to dedicate a regular portion of time each week for your own PD. After all, we are aiming become life long learners.

Utilising Hyper Connectivity

If you watched Mark Pesce's presentation mentioned in the previous post, you may be wondering how to capitalise on the hyper connectivity that students now take for granted. This video clip from Abilene Christian University in Texas may stimulate some ideas.

http://www.acu.edu/technology/mobilelearning/researchers/video/index.html

While this video clip is set in a university context, there are ideas here that could be adapted for high schools. Perhaps we can't yet give iPhones to all out students but we might be able to provide more information for students on our websites so that students can access it online. This would be especially relevant for schools considering the introduction of 1 to 1 laptop programs.

Do we communicate with students or parents by SMS and/or MSN? Do we even communicate by email? Do we provide our contact details to students? I have found that my students appreciate the opportunity to email me questions and drafts of assignments rather than trying to do this at school, where everybody is busy most of the time. I like it better too, not only because I am busy at school but because it is easier for me to email the answers or comments back than to find the student at school.

Brabazon (2002) commented on the impatience of some students in a tertiary online setting who expected instant email responses and became unhappy when she was not available after hours to respond to their questions. My students are younger and perhaps they are more patient. I told them when I am typically available for questions and they seem happy with that. I have not had students abusing this privilege or sending me unpleasant messages.

Brabazon, T. (2002) Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning or Education. UNSW Press.

Reflection on Teaching 21st Century Kids

"... all significant human development - psychological, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual - comes through reflection. That is, our highest faculty as a human person is our mind. The mind is where we discern, reflect, choose, and finally decide to act. These factors determine whether we grow, regress, or remain stagnant. In the mind, particularly through the act of refection, we determine how we will respond to life, to others, and to the wisdom and grade that God provides."
Teresa Tomeo (2007), Noise, West Chester, Pn: Ascension Press. p25.

In a post grad study program a few years ago, I had to write reflections as assignments and I somehow gained the impression to me that once I had finished studying such writing was no longer important. When I first came across blogs, I didn't feel inclined to join in because I am not prone to thinking out loud and I certainly didn't think that there would be too may people wanting to hear my 10c worth on any given topic.

What made the connection for me was a combination of the value of reflection as described by Teresa Tomeo and the value of sharing ideas with colleagues. As a result I have decided to become a blogger at least for now while I have a little spare time.

The World is Flat

I had heard numerous references to Thomas Friedman's book in podcasts over the last few years and last week I noticed in iTunesU, that MIT has posted a lecture by Friedman. It is an eye-opener. You can access the lecture at http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266/.

I was rather surprised when a 15 year old student of mine was unable to identify South America on a world map, and it seems that today's students know very little about the rest of the world, except perhaps the US lifestyle portrayed by the media. Friedman tells us that these students will face employment competition from people in China and India.

Friedman proposes that students need to learn to work collaboratively. That's not new but doing a collaborative project with students from the other side of the world will be a new idea to many. Global collaboration is not just a novel concept but preparation for their future.

Those Wacky Kids

I didn't get to attend one of the Digital Education Revolution conferences held earlier this year, but it's nice to have the free option of watching a keynote presentation from the comfort of your own home. Mark Pesce's presentation, Those Wacky Kids answered some important questions for me. He describes the hyper connected world they live in outside of the classroom, but in most cases they have to leave that behind when they come through our doors.

Pesce noted that the school's hidden agenda in the 20th century was about “timeliness and orderliness.” He proposes that in the 21st century it must “focus and how to control their hyper connectivity for their best benefit.”

These two snippets from Pesce really made me think.
“Kids can multitask – but you can’t learn calculus while you are multitasking”
“The transmission of certain intellectual traditions require that students cultivate focus in the face of enormous demands on their attention. This has got to become a core element of what the school is going to teach them and what their home life is going to teach them and they cannot do that simply by denying the hyper-connectivity … you have to accept that the hyper connectivity is there and you have to be able to incorporate it so you can harness it rather than just simply avoiding it.”

Pesce's keynote is a "must see" for teachers. http://www.viddler.com/explore/mpesce/videos/14/. The recording quality is excellent too and you get to see his Powerpoint slides. If your Internet access is slow, you may prefer the text version from http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=56 .

Facing a challenge

This year my school has been challenged to tackle ICT more than ever before. In a staff meeting this week we were shown a few video clips which highlighted the expectations of today's students who have grown up surrounded by digital devices. To engage these students we need to utilise ICT and look for ways to integrate it into our teaching.

In the past we have been limited by access to computers for whole classes but soon we will have lots of new computers courtesy of the "Digital Education Revolution" funding. Now we need to take to time to learn new skills and approaches so these new computers will do more than just provide access to Word and Internet Explorer for 90% of the time.