Are you an analog teacher trying to function in a digital world? Is the professional chatter of your colleagues littered with terms like Smore, Voki, Today’s Meet, Prezi, Popplet, Thinglink, and others? If so, then you are a casualty of a digital divide that exists among the ever-growing number of educators as they attempt to keep up with the flow of resources and information. The demand is on for educators to provide more digital content that allows for the integration of technology, but where does the professional start? A great place to start would be a website aligned to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.

Created by a Media Coordinator and an Instructional Technology Coordinator this website offers resources from the beginner to the advanced user of digital resources.

Bloom’s Digital Web Tools

Designed with the educator in mind this website looks at the array of digital tools and cross references them to the new Bloom action verbs. The tools were selected based on several criteria. First, they had to be free or at least offer a free version as a minimum package. Second, they had to work within our district’s filtering system. Third, they had to be educationally sound and not littered with inappropriate ads.

Easily navigated, this website provides the experiences associated with each Bloom’s level. Once an educator selects a tool he or she is directed to subsequent page which offers the user a more detailed description of the tool along with additional tools that match the same criteria. In some cases, pdf documents are included that provide directions, additional ideas, student/teacher examples, and additional navigational links. A toolbar on the left allows the user to select a tag such as blogging, podcasting, cartoons, etc. This tag instantly takes the user to the Bloom’s category under which the link is housed.

An added feature of this site offers the educator a twin of the web 2.0 tools aligned to Bloom’s in an iPad app version. By clicking on the Blooming Apps tag the educator is immediately directed to a brand new site that offers the same features of the main page. The apps are laid out in an easy to use format that offers resources at each level of Bloom’s along with a related tag on the left toolbar. The difference in this site is that the icon for each app, when clicked on, takes one directly to itunes for download. For more information about the app, and similar apps, one must navigate to the bottom of that section of Bloom’s and click on the link. Both sites are continuously growing and changing with new tools and apps added on a regular basis.

Click on each photo to  link back to each site!

Blooming Apps

Finally for the educator who wants to create inquiring experiences with their students beyond the first page of a Google hit, there is a dedicated website for research in the digital age. This site provides both the educator and the student with 15 or more unique search engines and a comprehensive collection of fake websites. Along with resources on how to evaluate a website, plagiarism, and copyright resources educators can use the fake websites to teach students how to critically evaluate a site for currency, reliability, accuracy, and purpose.

A couple of weeks ago, Common Sense Media released their findings from a study they conducted on children’s media use in America. This was their second survey designed to document the media environments and behaviors of kids ages 8 and under, the first of which was conducted two years ago. While this information would clearly be interesting on its own, we find it to be even more interesting to have the comparison with the data from two years ago.

How have our young children and their media usage changed over the past two years? The handy infographic below takes a look at the data from this year’s study and comparisons with the study from two years ago. Keep reading to learn more.

Growing Up Mobile

• 3/4 of children have access to mobile devices at home
• Smartphones are the most commonly used devices (63% up from 41% two years ago).
• Tablets come a close second at 40% – compared with 8% two years ago!
• The number of kids who have used mobile devices has about doubled since two years ago (38% to 72%)
• Average daily use of mobile devices has tripled (from 5 minutes to 15 minutes a day)
• The number of children under 2 who have used a mobile device has risen to 38% from 10% in 2011.
• Traditional screen time (TV) is down from two years ago, but mobile screen time is up.
• Most children using mobile devices are either playing games, using apps, or watching videos on the device.
• The average child spends 1 hr 55 minutes per day in front of a screen – and this is still dominated by TV despite the rise in mobile usage.
• More and more of this screen time is becoming DVR, on demand, and streaming.
• The ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor still exists – high income families are three times as likely to own a tablet and more than twice as likely to have high speed internet.
• 54% of higher income families use mobile devices for educational content but only 27% of lower income families do.

Being the parent of two teenagers I can definitely relate to this article and the importance of how we view, relate and interact with each other. I am concerned as a parent, educator and person who works with teachers that there is little or no emphasis on teaching children empathy, compassion and overall being NICE. Sad but true, this is the world we live in but each day we can do a little to change it and make it a better place.

Social media is affecting the way kids look at friendship and intimacy, according to researchers.

The typical teenager has 300 Facebook friends and 79 Twitter followers, the Pew Internet and American Life project found in its report, Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.

And some have many more.

The 2013 study also says the norms around privacy are changing, and the majority of teens post photos and personal information about themselves for all their on-line contacts to see.

More recent survey data released last week by the Canadian non-profit digital literacy group MediaSmarts shows Canadian youth do take some steps to protect their privacy – for example, by not posting their contact information on social media.

But the paper, Online Privacy, Online Publicity, also points out that most kids have only a limited understanding of things such as privacy policies, geo-location services and the implications of sharing their passwords.

The research contributes to an emerging picture of how teens’ ideas about friendship and intimacy have been altered by their immersion in the on-line world, says Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA developmental psychologist and the director of the Children’s Digital Media Center @ LosAngeles.

In her own research, Greenfield has found that young people feel socially supported by having large networks of on-line friends, and these are not necessarily friends they ever see face-to-face.

“We found in our study that people, college students, are not getting a sense of social support from being on the phone. They’re getting social support through bigger networks and having a sense that their audience is large.”

The result is a decline in intimate friendships, Greenfield says. Instead, many young people now derive personal support and affirmation from “likes” and feedback to their postings.

“The whole idea of behind intimacy is self-disclosure. Now they’re doing self-disclosure to an audience of hundreds.”

Other research at UCLA shows teens’ increasingly preferred mode of communication with their friends, texting, makes them feel less connected and bonded than face-to-face communication.

Graduate student Lauren Sherman studied various forms of communication between pairs of friends. She found the closer the experience was to in-person conversation, the more emotionally connected the friends felt. For example, video chat rated higher than a phone call, but the phone created a closer connection than texting.

“I don’t think digital communication in itself is a bad thing,” said Sherman, “but if we’re losing out on opportunities to connect with people as well as we can, that’s a problem.”

Studies have estimated teens typically send more than 3,000 texts a month.

This article was originally posted in the Huffington Post

Greenfield says that indicates kids are opting for efficiency of connection over intimacy.

1. “We’ve all been to elementary school, so aren’t we all kind of experts on it?”

Umm, no. You’ve been sick before, does that make you a doctor?

2. “When I retire, I still want to do something, so I think I might take up teaching.”

Teaching is not a hobby, like gardening or sailing. Teaching will likely make your old job feel like a vacation.

3. “Have you ever thought about making your class more fun?”

No, I do my best to make it as boring as I can.

4. “If you really cared about kids, you wouldn’t worry about the salary.”

I love my students. I love teaching. I also love being able to support my family and feed my kids.

5. “If you managed your time at school, I bet you wouldn’t need to plan lessons and grade on the weekends.”

Okay, I’m a little busy at school. I teach and work with students almost every moment of the day. Spending 20 hours a week outside of school on prep and grading every week is normal for me.

6. “You’ll never be a truly great teacher until you have your own kids.”

Actually, yes I will. The relationship between teacher and student is quite different from that of parent and child.

7. “Why do you make them read so much and write so many essays? Why do you give such hard grades?”

Because it’s my job. Because my students are here to learn. Because they’ll need these skills to survive in the world. How many reasons do you need?

8. “I pay taxes in this district, so technically you work for me.”

Sorry, we’re not your minions. That’s not how it works. Taxes support public goods and services—such as the fire department, police, parks, and yes, public schools—for the community as a whole. And by the way, teachers pay taxes too.

9. “Ohh, you teach kindergarten, that must be fun. Playing and singing all day.”

Yes, my life is just like Disney movie. I sing and the children and the little animals of the forest come running. Actually, in kindergarten, we teach our students the foundational literacy and math skills—as well as the social and emotional skills—that set kids up for success in every grade to follow.

10. “Why are you so strict? They’re just kids.”

We make plenty of time for laughter and fun in my classroom. Rules and routine are not only necessary, they help children to feel safe, secure and valued in the classroom community.

11. “How hard can it be? You have all summer off.”

A longer summer break is one of the benefits of choosing teaching as a career. But keep in mind, it’s not all summer, I spend weeks every July and August on professional development and curriculum planning. And during the school year, I work 12 hours a day all week long and at least one day every weekend. Add it up and our vacation days are about the same.

12. “Teaching is nice, but don’t you want to be more successful and make more money?”

I teach because I want to make a difference. I teach because what I do every day matters for kids.

That’s what success looks like.

submitted by Nicky Mohan

Nicky Mohan
Director, The InfoSavvy Group
Mobile:+01 (604) 368 6619
E-mail: nickymohan@me.com
Skype: mnmohan70 (Auckland)

Submitted by Nicky Mohan

If you ask high school math teachers about the Common Core State Standards, you will most likely get mixed reactions. Some rejoice in the complexity and rigor of the standards and the mathematical practices, while others consider the implications for classroom practice—and the current lack of resources—with a great deal of anxiety. The instructional shifts require major changes in the ways that students are presented with information as well as assessed. Teachers can no longer rely on skill-based lessons in which students are “GPS’d” through problems to specific answers. Common-core implementation requires math teachers to start with students’ misconceptions and then teach the skills necessary for students to create their own understanding.

So, yes, there are some things that we need to take off teachers’ plates in order to make these shifts happen effectively. But I would argue that we must also rethink our notions of time and scheduling within the school day. Together, teachers can solve problems, design lessons, analyze data, and create assessments much more effectively than in insolation. Schools must provide teachers with more time to collaborate, and here are four ideas that could help:

1) Make room for common planning time

Although many schools already engage in this practice of creating a master schedule that allows teachers to have a common planning time during the school day, some (like mine) do not. Here is what a colleague had to say about a past experience:

“I had common planning with the entire math department and it was extremely beneficial. Did we meet every single day? No, but we did meet frequently to review what was and wasn’t working. This included lesson strategies, formative assessments, and summative assessments.”

 2) Provide co-teaching opportunities

One summer, I joined forced with a fellow math teacher to teach a group of 40 students who had previously failed Algebra I. The two of used separate classrooms that were right across the hall from each other and co-taught the entire group. It was the best professional-learning experience I have ever had. Working closely with another teacher to develop and execute lessons is a valuable experience that I know would support long-term positive impacts on the growth and implementation of common-core-aligned instructional strategies.

3) Let teachers lead

Since classroom teachers are the ones developing and implementing new instructional practices for their students, they should be given leadership opportunities to share ideas and bring their work to scale. What would it look like if every grade level or subject area had a master teacher who was given release time to work alongside their colleagues to create resources, analyze data, and provide meaningful professional development?

4) Meet only to “decide and commit”

Currently, teachers spend quite a bit of time attending ineffective meetings that are irrelevant to their classrooms and students. To curb this, business-leadership coach Fred Kofman offers this advice: “The only goal for a meeting is to ‘decide and commit.’ “  He recommends that any other objectives—including reviewing, discussing, evaluating, updating—be eliminated from meeting agendas; such activities can often be accomplished by other means, including e-mail. By limiting the time that teachers spend in meandering administrative meetings, teachers will have more time for authentic work and collaboration around the common standards.

What other changes could allow teachers more time to implement the common-core standards?

 

Nicky Mohan
Director, The InfoSavvy Group
Mobile:+01 (604) 368 6619
E-mail: nickymohan@me.com
Skype: mnmohan70 (Auckland)