Why I am Against this Ipad buying rage in schools

Ask any of my friends, I am always the first one to try and adapt new technology and have it being used in my everyday life. I love messing around with new technology. Personally I would spend all day everyday just playing around with new technology if I could. But when it comes to the classroom, I am wondering why all of these schools are spending SO MUCH MONEY on new technologies.

Some of the new technologies I agree with; projectors, computers, microphone and speaker systems. I like all three of these and feel every one of these should be in every classroom. Projectors allow for a lot of digital content to be displayed to students, you can’t go wrong with this. Computers are the same; they allow digital content to be seen. Microphones and speakers allow for the teacher to be heard equally throughout the room. I am for any technology that is like these three, technology that aids student learning.

But I see A LOT of problems with all of these schools adapting tablet, all of this school specific software, and all this other technology that is limited to school use. Would I like to have Ipads in my room? Of course, on one condition, the students are allowed to take them home. It is great to be able to teach and use new technology through computers and tablets. But what happens when students go home at night and do not have the technology to continue their learning and that is the only way that they know how to work with the problems. It will create more trouble than it is worth.

This is the reason why I love the interactive geometry software Geogebra instead of the program Geometers sketch pad. Geogebra is a free java based program that anyone in the world can access as long as they have a computer (you can download the program and install it if you don’t have internet). I try to incorporate geogebra as much as I can in my lessons and let students work with the program as well. If they learn how to use the program, then they can use it on their own at home. I would also not be against the students using this on an assessment. 

I feel this same way with interactive whiteboards, what is the point to them? The teacher still has to have their back to the room. People use the excuse of “but you can save your work!” I ask them; can’t a digital camera do the same thing? Take a picture of the regular whiteboard and upload it to a class website (another great tech). Same thing with Ipads, buy each kid a $30 camera (or use their camera capable cell phone) and take a picture of an individual whiteboard! Way cheaper and just as effective!

 I have found an awesome device called a starboard which is basically a monitor with a wacom tablet built in. This allows the teacher to actually face the class all the time and still have all the benefits of the interactive whiteboards. This I agree with because it does eliminate the classroom issues of having the teacher’s back to the room.

I am also a fan of social networking; twitter, facebook, etc, being used in classrooms. Students can ask questions to their teacher and others and get responses when they are at home or away. They can also be used for note taking/questions in class as demonstrated by a couple GVSU professors here. Using technology in this way is how it benefits students, not allowing them to work with technology then be without it when it matters.

I am a strong believer that if I am going to introduce a new technology into the classroom for learning purposes, that technology needs to be available to all of my students when they are at home. If this is not the case, then I do not want the technology, simple as that.

I am against schools purchasing Ipads unless they purchase one per student and that student is allowed to take it home every night. But this would cause a huge upkeep cost to the school/parents that, for the most part, cannot afford in these times. Until all of this new technology that is trying to be introduced to students is accessible to the students no matter the time, it should stay out of the classroom.

Let me know your thoughts on this topic? Do you feel schools should be buying into the Ipad rage or do you think they should wait? I am really interested in others opinions on this topic!

Another reflection on my student teaching year

Over the course of the last four months, I have seen great improvement in many aspects of my teaching. My confidence has improved greatly while standing in front of a room. I have seen great strides in my preparation and instruction. My classroom management is allowing for open and engaging lessons to take place and I have learned to reflect even more on a daily and overall basis.

When I first started teaching I would spend hours each day planning for all of my preps. This was because I was not sure how students were going to respond to the different ways that I thought about teaching the material. Throughout this semester the time that I have spent on planning has greatly decreased, but the effectiveness of this time has increased tenfold. I know how students learn and have activities that I have created previously and can modify for the new material. This has been a great part of teaching to improve on because it allows me to complete other tasks that are required from teaching besides planning and preparation.

Another area that I have seen improvements on throughout the year is my instruction. With the less time spent on planning, I have been able to research different effective instruction models and adapt these to the ways that I like to teach. I am also more confident in front of the room which also increases the effectiveness of the instruction. I still need improvement on my instruction, but as preparation time continues to decrease, more strides will be made with instruction.

Classroom management is one area that I still struggle with. I have improved from my first time in front of a classroom sounding like a scared, lost child, but I still need improvement. I now have more confidence with my classroom management and I will put up with fewer distractions, but I am still afraid of confrontation with students. I am trying to be their friend instead of their teacher. Being their friend isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it does help to create an open and trusting classroom. But they need to know that I am their teacher and they need to respect that. Once I improve on this, I see my classroom management as well as my instruction effectiveness improving greatly.

The last area that I have seen improvements on over the course of the year is my ability to consciously reflect on what is happening each day as well as overall. This is by far one of the most important aspects of teaching. Reflection is the one of the best ways to improve, and improve quickly as a teacher. I have become more involved with reflecting on twitter as well as more involved with using my blog to reflect. Through both of these I have also achieved great responses from educators around the world which helps with professional development.

Overall, this year has been a great year and has only helped me realize that teaching was the right choice for a career and if I keep improving and having professional development on my own, I will become an effective teacher in a few short years. I will continue to improve after those years; I will be spending only the time needed on preparation, my instruction will be effective and engaging, my classroom management will allow all students to learn undistracted, and I will continue to reflect upon each day and year to improve for the next time.

Help with contact form

So I need help with my contact form for my webpage. You can view the page at www.jacobdunklee.com

Here is the code for the www.jacobdunklee.com/Contact Me.html page  I highlighted the actual part that is the contact form.

</div>
<div id="Body" style="position: relative; width: 800px; height: 664px; z-index: 3; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; left: 0px; top: 0px;">
    <div id="Bleftcolumn" style="position: relative; width: 470px; height: 619px; z-index: 1; float: left; left: 0px; top: 0px;" class="style2">
        &nbsp;<div id="ContactForm" class="style1" style="position: relative; width: 450px; z-index: 1; margin-left: 15px; height: 584px; top: 0px">
            <form method= "post" action="mailer.php">
                  <input type="hidden" name="required" value="YourName, YourEmail, Subject, Message"/>
              <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Your Name:*</span><br />
            <input name="YourName" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Your Email:*</span><br />
            &nbsp;<input name="YourEmail" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Phone Number:</span><br />
            <input name="PhoneNumber" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Subject:*</span><br />
            <input name="Subject" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Message:*</span><br />
            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
            <textarea name="Message" style="width: 405px; height: 200px"></textarea></p>
            <p class="style2"><input name="Reset1" type="reset" value="reset" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
            <input name="Submit" type="submit" value="Send" /><input type="hidden" name="order" value="YourName,YourEmail,PhoneNumber,Subject,Message" /></p>
            <p class="style4">Fields marked with an (*) are required.</p>
        </form>
        </div>
  


I then have a separate page for my mailer.php file which has the code of:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<title>Untitled 1</title>
</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {

$myemail = "Jacob.Dunklee@JacobDunklee.com";
$YourName = $_POST['YourName'];
$YourEmail = $_POST['YourEmail'];
$PhoneNumber = $_POST['PhoneNumber'];
$Message = $_POST['Message'];
$headers = "From:Contact Form <$myemail>\r\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $name <$YourEmail>\r\n";

echo "www.JacobDunklee.com/FormCompletion";
mail($myemail, $YourName, $YourEmail, $PhoneNumber, $Message, $headers);

} else {

echo "www.JacobDunklee.com/Form Error.html";

}
?>

Please help because this is not working right. I want it to be redirected to those two pages once complete, but every time I hit submit on the page it just comes up with www.JacobDunklee.com/Form Error.html
I have no clue what I did wrong, it should work because it was copied directly from a working contact form the only difference is the host. The working one is through a paid site at ipage and this one is free through awardspace. But both support .php files and mailers..

Got this working with the following code:

contact form part
<div id="Body" style="position: relative; width: 800px; height: 664px; z-index: 3; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; left: 0px; top: 0px;">
    <div id="Bleftcolumn" style="position: relative; width: 470px; height: 619px; z-index: 1; float: left; left: 0px; top: 0px;" class="style2">
        &nbsp;<div id="ContactForm" class="style1" style="position: relative; width: 450px; z-index: 1; margin-left: 15px; height: 584px; top: 0px">
            <form method= "post" action="mailer1.php">
                  <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Your Name:*</span><br />
            <input name="YourName" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Your Email:*</span><br />
            &nbsp;<input name="YourEmail" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Phone Number:</span><br />
            <input name="PhoneNumber" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Subject:*</span><br />
            <input name="Subject" type="text" /></p>
            <p class="contactform"><span class="style4">Message:*</span><br />
            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
            <textarea name="Message" style="width: 405px; height: 200px"></textarea></p>
            <p class="style2"><input name="Reset1" type="reset" value="reset" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
            <input name="Submit" type="submit" value="Send" /></p>
            <p class="style4">Fields marked with an (*) are required.</p>
        </form>


and mailer.php part

<?php

$myemail = "contact@jacobdunklee.com";
$YourName = $_POST['YourName'];
$YourEmail = $_POST['YourEmail'];
$PhoneNumber = $_POST['PhoneNumber'];
$Subject = $_POST['Subject'];
$Message = $_POST['Message'];
$headers .= "Reply-To: $YourEmail\r\n";

// validation
$validationOK=true;
if (Trim($YourEmail)=="") $validationOK=false;
if (Trim($YourName)=="") $validationOK=false;
if (Trim($Subject)=="") $validationOK=false;
if (Trim($Message)=="") $validationOK=false;
if (!$validationOK) {
  print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=FormError.html\">";
  exit;
}

// prepare email body text
$PhoneNumberOK=true;
$Body = "";
$Body .= "Name: ";
$Body .= $YourName;
$Body .= "\n";
if (Trim($PhoneNumber)=="") $PhoneNumberOK=false;
if ($PhoneNumberOK) {
$Body .= "Phone: ";
$Body .= $PhoneNumber;
$Body .= "\n";
}
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Message: ";
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= $Message;
$Body .= "\n";

// send email
$success = mail($myemail, $Subject, $Body, $headers);

// redirect to success page
if ($success){
  print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=FormCompletion.html\">";
}
else{
  print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=FormError.html\">";
}

?>

Reflection On My Student Teaching Year

Well, the year is pretty much wrapped up for me. I am in my placement until next Tuesday the 19th but have already gave control of the class back to my coordinating teacher (C.T.). Now I feel that I need to use this blog for what it was meant to be used for, reflecting back on what I have accomplished throughout the year.

Looking back over all of my posts from this new blog spot and my old one at edu blogs, I have came to realize how much I have grown not only as an educator, but also as a person. I remember when I took over my first class and when my first discipline problem arose, I sounded like a scared little girl (that is what my fellow TA told me on the way home). Now when a discipline problem arises, I handle it much more effectively. I am not saying I am perfect at it, but I am not scared to discipline a student these days for distracting others in their learning.

I have also grown into my own teacher now. When I first started I had all kinds of questions for my C.T. How do I teach this? How do I do that? How much time should I spend on this? You know, the usual questions when you are first sent out to teach your very first lesson. Now as I am sitting here looking at how many lessons I have planned over the past few months without even thinking about time and how to go about teaching it, it astounds me. I still have questions that my C.T. was thankfully able to answer, but these questions have matured to I wanna do something along these lines, but not quite sure how to do it. Such as planning an activity, I know that I wanted to do some type of review activity but wanted different options for this activity. I don't want to be stuck doing the same thing over and over and having it become just another task to students.

There are many other improvements that I have seen in myself, a lot to do with the confidence that I now have standing in front of a classroom full of students wanting to learn from me. But I would not be anywhere if it was for two very influential people in my teaching career Dr. David Coffey (twitter @delta_dc) and Dr. John Golden (Twitter @mathhombre). I had the luxury of having these two educators as professors during my teaching assistant semester. When either one of these professors would come and observe my teaching, they would take finely detailed notes on what happened during the lesson and afterwards when we were discussing the lesson, we could look back and see exactly what was asked and how I responded. This was by far the most beneficial observations I have ever had and probably will ever have. I am hoping to find a job placement near Grand Rapids in order to continue to have these two come and observe my classroom to make me a better educator.

I especially have to thank Dr. Golden, as he was the one that initially had all of us teacher assistants start blogging and start using twitter to reflect on what has been happening in our daily teachings (using twitter) and reflecting on the overall week (through blogging). I was very against the twitter aspect when I first started using it in August. Now I love it and wish I had more time to join #mathchat and #edchat and other talks that take place on twitter. I would not be nearly as capable as a teacher without the help that I have received from many other educators around the world supplying me with their knowledge of what an effective teacher looks like and lessons that they, themselves, have used. When my students were struggling to understand a certain topic, I was able to get help from twitter on possible solutions. When I am stuck in the design of a lesson, twitter is there again to help me out. If you are an educator and not taking advantage of twitter, then you are never going to reach your maximum ability. Just one post a day reflecting back on the day allows you to look over how your year has gone. It also allows for a nice reflection on what not to do the following year.

Blogging has done much the same as twitter for reflection purposes. In blogs I was able to achieve a more detailed version of my tweets with how my year was going. I may have not got as many responses/comments to my blogs as I would have liked or wanted, but it was a way for me to look back over and see how I have progressed. It also allows me to remember certain times that otherwise would have been forgotten by now. I can not thank Dr. Golden enough for his influence in twitter and blogging.

So now that I am basically done and ready to graduate on the 30th, I wonder where life will take me. I am not scared because I know that where ever I end up, I still have the power of twitter and blogs to help me become an effective educator!

Worst. Teacher. Ever

So was told by students in one of my hours today that I am the worst teacher ever and they hope I never become a teacher because those kids that I teach will fail at life. So here is the story leading up to why this comment was made by three students.

This all started with last Friday. It was a normal day in the room, class is talking about usual while I am trying to teach (I still need a lot of improvement on my classroom management). The way that I teach is probably not conventional. I am teaching algebra 1 with multiplying binomials three different ways right now. The first is distributing, the second is F.O.I.L. and the third is the area (lattice) model. (I know three different ways can confuse kids but I do emphasize that they know all three but choose one that they like the best and "ignore" the others) There are three primary reasons why the students dislike me in this particular hour

1) I write their homework assignment in set notation (actually all hours dislike me for this). This stops the students that shouldn't be working on the homework during the lesson from actually working on it unless they take time out of their day to actually learn set notation. I don't go too crazy with it just (n,xez: 0<x<25, x=2n-1) stuff like that. I teach the students that are receiving an A- or better how to read this notation or tell them the homework if they ask for it ahead of time. That way they are able to work on it once they understand the topic being taught and not have to wait till the end to get their homework. I find this helps with boredom of those students who would otherwise end up being a classroom management problem. The students HATE that I do this. But I was seeing too many students working on homework that should be paying attention in class.

2) When they give answers to problems, I do not say which one is right. I get all the different answers students found for the problem and then we evaluate and analyze which one is actually the correct solution (if even up there). WAIT! YOU MEAN STUDENTS ACTUALLY HAVE TO THINK AT HIGHER LEVELS OF BLOOM'S TAXONOMY IN YOUR CLASS! The answer is yes, yes they do. They also hate this how I will not just tell them which answer is right. I will admit this does take more time in class, but I feel it is worth it. This way the students actually find their mistakes by discussing each answer. I act more like a moderator and guide the discussion the students have.

3) The last reason why students do not like the way that I teach is due to the fact that if the talking gets out of hand, I will just silently wait until the talking ends. Usually I plan a lesson that is going to take around 35 to 40 minutes, that way I have some time to give in my 60 minute class for questions and problems that come up during the lesson. If everything goes smoothly and it actually takes less time than the students can get up to 30 minutes of work time for homework. If they talk then they eat up this time very quickly. Just Friday it took 15 minutes for me to write 1-9 all 10-26 even for their homework because they could not quit talking. All I needed was 20 seconds of silence and it would have been written. They HATE that I do this and make them actually allow me to talk without having to raise my voice. Is this punishing some of those that are sitting there silently, yes, and I do feel bad for those ones that are. I have wrote the assignment down and those that are quiet walk over to them and show them what it is so they can begin to work on it.

This is why the students today told me I was a bad teacher, because I have these practices. Does this really make me a bad teacher? I don't feel that it does. I think some of these students are use to just being told how to do everything and now are being forced on their own to judge what is correct and what way of solving problems they like best. It is not just regurgitation of algorithms but actually analyzing and evaluating of different approaches and different solutions.

But then again I could be crazy and this actually could be poor practices. Let me know what you think! Trust me I may get knocked down, but I get up again ;)

Mastery based grading/learning

I have been wanting to blog about this for a week now but haven't had time. This delay has allowed me to organize my thoughts a little more on the topic of Mastery Based Grading/Learning, so I can't complain too much.

 

I was shocked when I went on twitter the other day and a teacher was told by a 32 year veteran that being able to re-assess students was an absurd idea. He felt that students have one shot at the test and if they do not pass it then, too bad for them. They should have studied more.

 

This is one thing that I have very strong feelings about and there is research backing up my feelings. I should (but I won't) actually post any of the research in here, but you can just Google and come up with hundreds of results on why mastery based learning and teaching is better than the "one shot" method.

Anyway back to why I feel mastery learning is better.

1) The main reason that I feel mastery learning is better than the "one shot" method is due to it actually allowing students to master each topic and not just feel that they have the one opportunity to get it right. I pose the question "does it really matter when students master material if they do master it?" To me this is a strong NO! If a student masters a certain topic 4 months down the road and can show mastery on this topic, then I feel they should get credit for this immediately. Why hold it against them that they didn't 

 understand it initially. The topic might have been out of the developmental zone at the time and they had to mature a little more too truly understand what was happening. Research shows that there are optimal times when students should learn certain materials (only if education designers would listen to this). It might have been the way that it was explained by the teacher (even though we don't like to think this, but teaching styles affect learning greatly which is why differentiation is such a big topic these days), or any one of another factors. The important thing is that the student understands the topic now and can move on.

2) The second big reason why I feel mastery based learning is better than the "one shot" method is due to the stress that is present in high stakes (one opportunity) testing. If a student only has one opportunity to pass the test, this is going to create a very stressful atmosphere (I know it does for me). I hated the feeling that I had when I knew that I didn't do a problem right and if I had just one more opportunity I could show that I actually did know what was happening. If students know that they will have multiple opportunities to show they have mastered the topic, and this is not their only chance, they will be more relaxed and will actually perform better on the assessments due to this atmosphere.

3) The third reason why I do not like "one shot" testing is due to the lack of time. Most school testing is in a timed setting. If a student needs a little more time on tests and they are not able to finish everything due to this lack of time, then they are obviously not going to receive the grade that they actually deserve. (Most teachers are usually forgiving if students do need a little more time and supply it to them, but it still goes back to point number 2.) Think back to all of those times that you felt rushed to finish a test and knew that you did not put forth your best work or even complete some problems. How nice would it have been to know that you have another opportunity to show that you know this material?

So you might be wondering, "But Jacob, how do you plan on implementing this style learning in your classroom?" I will admit first thing that it is going to take quite a bit more work on my part to keep everything straight. I will have to always be updating my grades and remembering what the students have mastered and what they have not. I will most likely use the ideas that Dr. David Coffey uses here. Base my grading on a 5 point scale. 0 points being not even attempted. 1 point being started but never actually made it past the first couple steps. 2 points being started to go, got through the first few steps but couldn't finish the problem. 3 points being you made it to the end of the problem, found the correct solution, but your explanation of how you found this solution was lacking.  4 points being that you did most of the steps correctly, found the correct solution, but you either left some steps out or went too far on the problem. Finally 5 points being that you found the correct solution, the explanation of how you arrived at this solution is clear and concise, and your interpretation of the problem is accurate.

The implementation of mastery grading is the hardest part of it. The students will not really see any change in their normal day. They only time it will affect them is when they have to try for mastery again. It basically just requires the teacher to do more work. But it will be worth it if students are learning more; at least that is my feeling. It does put more responsibility on the student though to set up times to master topics if they missed it the first time. Ideally no student should receive below a B- in the class if they master every topic. Will this happen, no because some students won't care enough to take time out of their after school day to master topics. But the ones that do care and don't master the first time will be there and will be thankful for the opportunity.

Another nice thing that someone suggested to me is once students master a certain topic, an example of this would go into a portfolio that the student would keep throughout the year. At the end of the year, the students would be able to look back and assess their own learning and really see everything that they have learned that year. It would be a nice sense of accomplishment for them. It would also work as a really nice resource for the students in the future to be able to look back at their examples and remember how to do certain problems. This would also have the benefit of showing the administration that your students are truly learning A LOT in your class.

 

What are your thoughts on mastery based learning/grading?

Link to Old blog

Hey all, I wanted to switch up where my blog was at http://jdunk54nl.edublogs.org/ to blogger. No real reason other than I liked it's layout quite a bit better than what edublogs had to offer. Hope you enjoy!