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Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Apr 11, 2011
Apr 9, 2011
Creating an Alternative Education PLN
But how do I get my colleagues to learn about the power of Twitter? I tried to spread the word at the IAAE State Conference by facilitating the technology roundtable. Conference attendees came in and sat at laptops. They directed their own learning (much in the same way they teach their students!) and asked for help if they needed it. Below is the document I used to get them started. Please feel free to share it--comment if you want me to send you a link to the original Google Doc so that you can edit it for your own purposes. Spread the word to your Alternative Education colleagues...let's get an #AltEd PLN started!
PLN Resources for Alternative Educators
If you’re on Facebook, then you know how amazing it is to connect with old friends and chat with family members who live far away. What if you could have the same kinds of chats with colleagues in alternative education? Many alternative educators feel isolated. Many of us work in rural one-room school houses or in small schools with very few colleagues. Many of us love what we do, but don’t feel that we have colleagues nearby who really understand what our jobs are like. Through the Internet, we can join together! Here are some ways to start a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for Alternative Educators!
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| Some rights reserved by Brajeshwar from flickr |
Twitter: twitter.com
Have brief chats, post links to news articles, and meet new colleagues on Twitter!
How to use Twitter: http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/a-teachers-guide-to-twitter/
Hashtags for Alternative Educators on Twitter:
#AltEd #atrisk #edchat #education #IowaEd #IowaSchools #IAAE
Apps that make Twitter easy (on Android, iPhone, or computer):
tweetdeck: allows you to create a home column for your Twitter feed and additional columns with Twitter filters for specific hashtags (conversations). Also allows you to view your Facebook wall in the same app! www.tweetdeck.com/
HootSuite: like tweetdeck, HootSuite allows you to monitor multiple platforms and keywords at once. You can also schedule tweets to be posted at a later date and track your followers. hootsuite.com/ 
To post links, you’ll need a URL shortener. These services take long web addresses and shorten them so that they fit in a 140 character tweet! Here are some suggestions:
Need help? Check out Sue Waters’ helpful blogs at http://theedublogger.com/tag/twitter/ She has information about Twitter, how to set up a blog, and how to set up/use Skype in your classroom. Still stuck? You can DM (direct message) me on Twitter @jenmardunc, contact me on my blog jenmardunc.blogspot.com, or ask for my business card so that you can email me directly. Be sure to use the #IAAE hashtag so that I know you are from the IAAE conference!
Blogs
3 public sites for blogging
Blogger.com is Google’s blog engine
WordPress.com is favored by many (including our new Department of Education chief, Jason Glass! Visit his blog at http://educationelements.wordpress.com/about-jason-glass/)
Tumblr is another blog hosting platform
There are other blog platforms specifically for educators and their students
edublogs.org is specifically for educational purposes. It is a “safe” space for students to blog because only other students and teachers are a part of the blog system.
For help on how to start a blog, visit this WikiHow site http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog
Need help deciding which blogging platform to use? See this comparison in Google Docs or type in this shortened version of the link http://bit.ly/gX7CTX
Examples of blogs
- Our new IAAE Newsletter Blog http://iaae-news.blogspot.com
- The Innovative Educator Blog theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/ includes lots of posts (articles) about being innovative in the classroom. Many topics relating to alternative education and self-directed learning are discussed on this blog.
- The Tempered Radical-- a blog that discusses Educational Policy and 21st Century skills http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/
- Our keynoter, David Warlick’s blog http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/
There are many, many more blogs! To find them, do a Google Blog Search by going to http://blogsearch.google.com
If you find some blogs you want to follow, you can usually do so in a few ways:
1. Use your Twitter handle to log in and follow (if the blog allows
2. Use your Google Account to log in and follow
3. Use an RSS feeder, like Google Reader. www.reader.google.com
You can set up Google Reader to “feed” you news stories from websites and blogs all over the world! News reader/feeder apps let you customize your own “newspaper” each day. Want to read about alternative education around the world? Search for the phrase “alternative education” in the Google Reader search page and subscribe to the feed. It will filter out every story with the phrase “alternative education” in it that is posted on the web. Then read away--on your computer or on your SmartPhone.
What does all of this look like in an alternative classroom? Here is the blog I created for use in my classroom this year. Feel free to visit and/or borrow anything on our blog: http://ndaltschool.blogspot.com
Links to blogs created by alternative students are at the bottom of the page.
Mar 13, 2011
Don't Blame it on DIBELS
Earlier today, @DianeRavitch tweeted "Children arrive in kindergarten with gaps between them, based on family income, engagement. Teachers didn't cause that gap."
A short time later, Aaron Thiell (@althiell) tweeted "@DianeRavitch Kindergarten should be a year of bedtime stories savored among new friends, not DIBELS nonsense word fluency & stop watches."
Diane Ravitch's main point may be that teachers are not to blame for poverty and other outside factors that cause children to lag behind in school, and thus they should not be blamed for student's failure to perform on high-stakes tests. But DIBELS are not high-stakes tests. In fact, DIBELS and other curriculum based measurements are some of the only academic tools teachers have to close the the achievement gap.
Like Diane Ravitch tweeted, teachers can't be blamed if students come to their classrooms without the prerequisite skills needed for success in school. We can't be blamed if students come to school hungry, sleep-deprived, or emotionally scarred any more than we can take credit if they enter our classrooms already able to perform at or above proficiency. All kids are different when they enter our classrooms, and that difference is probably the single-most challenging part of classroom teaching. It is impossible for teachers to ensure that all students enter our classrooms with the equal access to basic needs. It is impossible for us "to fix" the many environmental and genetic factors that predict success in school. The only thing we can control is how we teach.
How do we know how to teach when every student comes to us with a different set of abilities? There are two main ways:
Here's a hypothetical example:
J.D. is a third grade student who comes to school hungry and tired. His mom is a single parent who works 2 part-time jobs but still doesn't make enough money to support her four children. They live in a low-income housing complex that is riddled with crime. J.D.'s two oldest siblings have dropped out of school, and unless something changes J.D. and his younger sister will end up doing the same. His classroom teacher has been trying to help J.D. be successful, but she can't seem to get through to him. He is easily frustrated in class and as a result he has a lot of behavior issues. She thinks about what would make J.D. successful: a two-parent household, higher wages for his mother, a nicer place to live, positive role-models in his neighborhood. She feels helpless because she can't do anything about those things. It's not her fault J.D. is failing and there is no way for her to help him. She worries because there is no way to get J.D. to perform at grade-level on high-stakes tests when he comes from such an impoverished background. As a result of circumstances that are beyond her control, she may lose her teaching job.
In this hypothetical situation, the teacher is right: there is no way to help J.D. if we blame all of his problems on things that are happening outside of school and beyond our control. We can refer him to social services and send him to a breakfast program before school, but there is still a chance that his family won't follow through on obtaining any of those services. Does that mean that J.D. is unteachable? That we should give up? That his situation is so bad that he will never be able to learn? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Scores of people have overcome situations of poverty to become successful. Teachers need to stop feeling helpless and use the tools that available to us to teach our students, no matter what skills or deficiencies they enter the classroom with. How can we do that? Using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a really good option.
Unlike high-stakes testing, CBM is what it stands for: measurement that is based on the curriculum. Students are assessed on skills they've actually been learning in the classroom, not on skills that a corporate test-maker decided all third graders should know. CBM allows a teacher to quickly find out what skills a student has when they enter her classroom by giving one or two-minute assessments in content areas such as reading or math. When a student's current level is assessed, the teacher can gear instruction for that level. Repeat measurements can be done weekly, monthly, or quarterly to monitor progress and then adjust the level of instruction if necessary. There is no guessing about what level a student is performing at or worrying about why they are at that level--teachers simply use current information to make decisions about instruction. When using CBM properly, teachers only have to worry about things over which they actually have control--how they teach and what level of curriculum they use with each student to do that teaching. I can't adjust a student's home life; I can adjust my instructional decisions.
Here's another possibility in the hypothetical situation of J.D. and his teacher:
J.D. still comes from the same situation of poverty. His teacher still wishes that there was something she could do to make his life easier. She brings snacks for her class each day so that they at least have a full belly when school starts. Within the first month of school she administers a reading probe (like DIBELS) to each of her students to see what their current reading level is. She spends a little over ten-minutes with J.D. to find out his instructional level in Oral Reading Fluency (ORF.) She discovers that despite the fact that J.D. is in third grade, he is barely reading at a first grade level. She adjusts her instruction so that J.D.'s reading group materials fit his level and he receives one-on-one instruction using first grade reading passages. The passages are challenging for J.D., but he's not so frustrated that he has behavioral outbursts. His teacher graphs J.D.'s progress and shares the graph with him. Their goal is to help him be able to read a third grade passage without getting frustrated. She spends 2-5 minutes each week checking on his progress and sharing the results with him. He feels good because he can see that he is becoming a better reader and she feels good because she is making a difference. She still worries because J.D. is not proficient in third-grade reading and won't pass the high-stakes test. But if the district penalizes her for his scores on the high-stakes test, she has proof that she made a difference--the CBM scores show that J.D. has made growth and jumped up almost 2 grade levels in reading for the year.
Not all standardized tests are bad. By the same token, not all CBMs are used properly. But when curriculum-based measures like DIBELS are used properly, they can be a valuable tool both for students and for teachers. CBM can level the playing field for students who come from situations of poverty by giving them a chance to receive individualized instruction that will help close the achievement gap.
A short time later, Aaron Thiell (@althiell) tweeted "@DianeRavitch Kindergarten should be a year of bedtime stories savored among new friends, not DIBELS nonsense word fluency & stop watches."
Diane Ravitch's main point may be that teachers are not to blame for poverty and other outside factors that cause children to lag behind in school, and thus they should not be blamed for student's failure to perform on high-stakes tests. But DIBELS are not high-stakes tests. In fact, DIBELS and other curriculum based measurements are some of the only academic tools teachers have to close the the achievement gap.
Like Diane Ravitch tweeted, teachers can't be blamed if students come to their classrooms without the prerequisite skills needed for success in school. We can't be blamed if students come to school hungry, sleep-deprived, or emotionally scarred any more than we can take credit if they enter our classrooms already able to perform at or above proficiency. All kids are different when they enter our classrooms, and that difference is probably the single-most challenging part of classroom teaching. It is impossible for teachers to ensure that all students enter our classrooms with the equal access to basic needs. It is impossible for us "to fix" the many environmental and genetic factors that predict success in school. The only thing we can control is how we teach.
How do we know how to teach when every student comes to us with a different set of abilities? There are two main ways:
- We can try to get to know each student by talking to them and closely examining their work. We can build individual relationships with each child that are so strong that we recognize when they are at frustration level, when they are confused, or when they are understanding concepts so well that they are ready to move on.
- We can use curriculum-based measurements (like DIBELS) to get quick and easy measurements of a students reading, writing, or math levels and take the guesswork out of figuring out what skills the student has when they enter our classrooms.
Here's a hypothetical example:
J.D. is a third grade student who comes to school hungry and tired. His mom is a single parent who works 2 part-time jobs but still doesn't make enough money to support her four children. They live in a low-income housing complex that is riddled with crime. J.D.'s two oldest siblings have dropped out of school, and unless something changes J.D. and his younger sister will end up doing the same. His classroom teacher has been trying to help J.D. be successful, but she can't seem to get through to him. He is easily frustrated in class and as a result he has a lot of behavior issues. She thinks about what would make J.D. successful: a two-parent household, higher wages for his mother, a nicer place to live, positive role-models in his neighborhood. She feels helpless because she can't do anything about those things. It's not her fault J.D. is failing and there is no way for her to help him. She worries because there is no way to get J.D. to perform at grade-level on high-stakes tests when he comes from such an impoverished background. As a result of circumstances that are beyond her control, she may lose her teaching job.
In this hypothetical situation, the teacher is right: there is no way to help J.D. if we blame all of his problems on things that are happening outside of school and beyond our control. We can refer him to social services and send him to a breakfast program before school, but there is still a chance that his family won't follow through on obtaining any of those services. Does that mean that J.D. is unteachable? That we should give up? That his situation is so bad that he will never be able to learn? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Scores of people have overcome situations of poverty to become successful. Teachers need to stop feeling helpless and use the tools that available to us to teach our students, no matter what skills or deficiencies they enter the classroom with. How can we do that? Using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a really good option.
Unlike high-stakes testing, CBM is what it stands for: measurement that is based on the curriculum. Students are assessed on skills they've actually been learning in the classroom, not on skills that a corporate test-maker decided all third graders should know. CBM allows a teacher to quickly find out what skills a student has when they enter her classroom by giving one or two-minute assessments in content areas such as reading or math. When a student's current level is assessed, the teacher can gear instruction for that level. Repeat measurements can be done weekly, monthly, or quarterly to monitor progress and then adjust the level of instruction if necessary. There is no guessing about what level a student is performing at or worrying about why they are at that level--teachers simply use current information to make decisions about instruction. When using CBM properly, teachers only have to worry about things over which they actually have control--how they teach and what level of curriculum they use with each student to do that teaching. I can't adjust a student's home life; I can adjust my instructional decisions.
Here's another possibility in the hypothetical situation of J.D. and his teacher:
J.D. still comes from the same situation of poverty. His teacher still wishes that there was something she could do to make his life easier. She brings snacks for her class each day so that they at least have a full belly when school starts. Within the first month of school she administers a reading probe (like DIBELS) to each of her students to see what their current reading level is. She spends a little over ten-minutes with J.D. to find out his instructional level in Oral Reading Fluency (ORF.) She discovers that despite the fact that J.D. is in third grade, he is barely reading at a first grade level. She adjusts her instruction so that J.D.'s reading group materials fit his level and he receives one-on-one instruction using first grade reading passages. The passages are challenging for J.D., but he's not so frustrated that he has behavioral outbursts. His teacher graphs J.D.'s progress and shares the graph with him. Their goal is to help him be able to read a third grade passage without getting frustrated. She spends 2-5 minutes each week checking on his progress and sharing the results with him. He feels good because he can see that he is becoming a better reader and she feels good because she is making a difference. She still worries because J.D. is not proficient in third-grade reading and won't pass the high-stakes test. But if the district penalizes her for his scores on the high-stakes test, she has proof that she made a difference--the CBM scores show that J.D. has made growth and jumped up almost 2 grade levels in reading for the year.
Not all standardized tests are bad. By the same token, not all CBMs are used properly. But when curriculum-based measures like DIBELS are used properly, they can be a valuable tool both for students and for teachers. CBM can level the playing field for students who come from situations of poverty by giving them a chance to receive individualized instruction that will help close the achievement gap.
Feb 14, 2011
A Message to my Fellow White Educators
I am relatively new to Twitter, but in a very short time I’ve become really interested in the discussions about education reform. There are two obvious camps that I can see involved in regular debate: the teacher/union/testing is bad camp vs. the Race to the Top/get rid of bad teachers/testing is the best tool available camp. I’ve tried to become active in those conversations by sending messages, posting comments on blogs and retweeting, but the conversation never starts because no one writes back to me. I commented on an Edutopia blog and the blogger responded to every other commenter except me. That isn’t much of a conversation! Since then, I have had similar experiences when posting comments on other blogs. First, I had to wonder if my comments were written in invisible ink. Then I started to think there is some sort of technical difficulty. Do I have some sort of electronic plague? Then I began to think about what I have been talking about. Maybe something I say makes people uncomfortable? I thought and thought, and talked to my husband about it (a face-to-face conversation!) He pointed out to me that I regularly bring up issues relating to race and poverty. BINGO, I thought. The education reformers I’ve been trying to engage in conversation are white.
In real life and on Twitter, I find that most white folks don’t want to talk about race and ethnicity issues when they talk about education. I’ve heard white people say time and time again, “If I talk about race, people are going to think I’m a racist.” But here’s the deal: if you don’t start talking about the fact that most of our “failing” schools are filled with African-American and Hispanic students, then you are not talking about education reform. If you do not acknowledge that race and ethnicity are directly related to poverty in our country, you are not talking about education reform. And if you don’t see the correlation between race/ethnicity and poverty--the single most important issue affecting student success in education--then you are not talking about education reform. If you are afraid to speak about the role race/ethnicity plays in our education system, then your inaction speaks louder than words.
We may have elected a person of color as president, but we still have racial problems in our society. When a black mom is jailed for enrolling kids in a higher achieving school, while at the same time thousands of white families across the country have done the same thing and have not been jailed--we have a problem. We need to open up the dialogue about the role race and ethnicity play in education.
To my white colleagues in education reform I say: Stop worrying about whether people will question your liberal sensibility. Stop worrying that someone will think you’re a racist (if that’s what’s stopping you) By not speaking out you are a bystander who is letting injustice happen and becoming exactly what you are trying not to be. We need to have open conversations about race and ethnicity and the impact they have on education. We need to prepare ourselves and our children for the future--because the time is coming where whites will be the minority. Change is coming, whether you want it or not. Prepare yourself by talking about it now.
In real life and on Twitter, I find that most white folks don’t want to talk about race and ethnicity issues when they talk about education. I’ve heard white people say time and time again, “If I talk about race, people are going to think I’m a racist.” But here’s the deal: if you don’t start talking about the fact that most of our “failing” schools are filled with African-American and Hispanic students, then you are not talking about education reform. If you do not acknowledge that race and ethnicity are directly related to poverty in our country, you are not talking about education reform. And if you don’t see the correlation between race/ethnicity and poverty--the single most important issue affecting student success in education--then you are not talking about education reform. If you are afraid to speak about the role race/ethnicity plays in our education system, then your inaction speaks louder than words.
We may have elected a person of color as president, but we still have racial problems in our society. When a black mom is jailed for enrolling kids in a higher achieving school, while at the same time thousands of white families across the country have done the same thing and have not been jailed--we have a problem. We need to open up the dialogue about the role race and ethnicity play in education.
To my white colleagues in education reform I say: Stop worrying about whether people will question your liberal sensibility. Stop worrying that someone will think you’re a racist (if that’s what’s stopping you) By not speaking out you are a bystander who is letting injustice happen and becoming exactly what you are trying not to be. We need to have open conversations about race and ethnicity and the impact they have on education. We need to prepare ourselves and our children for the future--because the time is coming where whites will be the minority. Change is coming, whether you want it or not. Prepare yourself by talking about it now.
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