I was reading Scott McLeod’s blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, and his latest post features a list of actions that Connecticut school leaders are proposing will transform the way students learn. Of all the changes listed, one caught my eye, and I have been thinking about it all day:

Typical current practice: Technology used to make teaching more efficient.

Proposed transformative practice: Technology used to transform teaching and learning.

Technology is often seen as a means of making teaching easier. Grading, writing, and communicating can all be greatly improved and streamlined using technology in the classroom. Finding information and sharing it with students can be done with few clicks.

The problem is that many of the old teaching practices are still being used. It’s just a lot easier to do now. This is great, but we can do better. Technology can be used to totally change the way teachers teach and the way students learn. This will require work. This will require learning, especially on the part of the teacher. This may require educating parents as well as students on what learning looks like. Once this is done, then the real learning can begin.

Only after technology is used to transform our current teaching practices will we see great dividends in the education of students.

If you have ever tried to write a 70 letter dash number dash symbol URL on the board for students to copy down and type into their browser, you will know that it ends up taking a half hour of class to get all the students to the same site. On top of the time, there is also the stress and headache for the teacher. I am convinced that having students try to find a website using a URL that is written on the board may be one of the leading causes of teachers ditching technology and going back tot the text book! This is where the classroom blog comes in handy.

Initially, students may need help finding the classroom blog, but they will get it quickly. Then, it’s just a matter of posting the links to all the cool sites and apps you want them to use. They only have to remember the one URL, and from there it’s all smooth sailing!

The page is easy to navigate giving several different means for discovering quotes. Users can simply search for a quote using key words. If a little more guidance is needed, users can search through quotes by category. The educations tab alone has 66 quotes listed. Another page has quotes listed according to popularity. There is no indication of how these are chosen, but each shows how many times the quote has been shared, so maybe that is the criteria.

Sharing is another interesting option in the page. With a simple click, users can post the quotes to a Facebook wall or Twitter feed.

After a few minutes looking at the site, I was pretty impressed. Some of this may be due to my fascination with TED. In a short time, I read several quotes that I remember being spoken as I watched the actual talk. Reading the quotes helped me to remember what I once learned. I can definitely see potential for using this in the classroom.

In the past, I have posted an inspirational quote on the board for student to read at the beginning of class. Sometimes students wrote a short response and sometimes we just had a short discussion. I always felt that this activity was successful, but it gets hard to find good relevant quotes. Problem solved!

The same goes for users of technology, maybe even more so than for fishermen. Being a purist often equals lost opportunities and knowledge. I know people who will only use a Mac or only us a PC. Both sides swear that the other is useless and hard to use. Both talk of how their computer is more easy to use and more secure than the other. Each has their own share of apps and programs that run better than the other.

Both sides are missing out.

It is totally okay to lie heavily on preferences, but to be a total purist is crazy. There are so many good technologies from both camps that it would be a shame to not explore them all as the opportunity arises.

As a teacher, administrator, or even tech professional, anyone that works in education, not having an open mind when it comes to the use of different technologies may have an affect on those they are trying to educate. With the diversity of tech ever expanding, successful students will be those that have a broad experience with technology. This means that they can easily work on a Mac platform and PC platform. This means that they know how to use word processors other than those developed by Microsoft. The more flexible and adept students are with different technology as they leave school, the more valuable they are in the work world. This will also help them to be more successful in college.

Remember, sometimes a purist misses out on all the fun!

Just in case you forgot what a telephone looks like

Lurking in the corner of almost every classroom is a technological tool that often get overlooked by teachers: the telephone. I know. You don’t need to use the school phone because you have one in your pocket, or maybe you don’t talk on the phone much at all. Most people either text or send an email.

This year, I made a goal to contact at least 4 parents a week and talk to them about how their students are doing in my class. I’ll admit, some weeks go by when I don’t get all 4 calls made, but those the calls I do make pay great dividends in the classroom. Parents wants the best for their children, and they want to know how their students are doing in their classes. Let’s be honest. If you have kids, you know how much they talk about what they do at school. Just ask them:

“Suzy, what did you learn at school today?”

“Nothing.”

This starts in the Preschool as it the answer I get on a daily basis from my 4 year old son, and the response doesn’t sound much different from my daughter’s who is in high school.

I have not yet called the parents of every student in my class, but I see visible differences in the attitude and work ethic of students after I talk with their parents. Just to let you know, these calls are positive in nature. I mostly just tell the parents that their student is working hard in class and doing a good job.That is it, a one or two minute conversation. It usually takes longer to look up the number than it does to make the call. In almost every case, I see a difference in the way the student works in my class after a call. That telephone may be one of the most important allies that you have in helping students to become more engaged in your class.

Making home calls is kind of funny, because I usually start a call by introducing myself as a teacher at the school. Instant dread can be heard in the response on the other end of the line. Parent knows that calls from the school are usually not good. However, once I tell them why I have made the call and talk to them for a minute, the tone of dread changed to utter delight.

I am going to be honest. I don’t always make phone calls. If I have a parents email, I will also us that to contact the parents, but the response is the same. Plain and simple, parents want to know how their kids are doing in school, the students aren’t going to tell them. Oftentimes, the parents may be a little scared to approach a teacher and ask.

Pick up the phone and make few calls. It takes few minutes of time but may be the most productive minutes of the week.

With Google, Yahoo, Bing, and all the other search engines out there, finding information should be easy. Really, compared to the way research was done 15 or 20 years ago, it is easier. Let me rephrase that; it is a whole lot easier, but I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that it is “easy.”

Research is hard work, even with all the tools that the Web provides. Take a service that searches database archives such as Ebsco Host. Finding good information still takes time, patience, and a certain amount of skill. I am yet to discover a means of finding good information on the Web without work, and this doesn’t only apply to scholarly study. All sorts of information that will help me live a more productive and fulfilling life sits at my fingertips.

Last year, Amber Case gave a TED talk titled “We are all Cyborgs now.” In her talk, she explains how the technology we use, specifically computers and smartphones, become an extension of our brains. While there is some harsh criticism on her ideas, I think she is right in the sense that I no longer have to remember every important fact that I hear and read. I just have to have a means of getting back to that information when I need it in the future. In other words, I have to know how to find it.

The cool thing is that I also have instant access to all sorts of facts and information that I have never heard before. I see the Web as an extension of our brain that is connected to everyone’s brain who uses the internet as depository for what they have learned or even thought and imagined.

It is this thinking and imagining thing that makes research hard. There is so much information packed into this “extension” of our brain, that we have to learn to discern what is good and what is bad. Doing this can make our real brain hurt at times!

Students (and teachers) need to realize that finding good information is hard work. There is no easy way to do it. However, the effort and discipline is worth it and necessary because after wading through the junk, there is a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge to be accessed.

Just think of the advantage a person has who possesses the knowledge of how to find information using the Web.

This reminded me that no matter how well prepared you think you are, when using technology, there is always a chance of failure. The batteries in the camera die. The computer crashes. A website is down at the precise time that your classroom of thirty students is trying to log on. Believe me, this has happened to me more than once.

The web is unpredictable in this way, and I imagine it always will be. Maybe I should also say that the web is predictable in this way. At some point, it is going to let you down.

Having a decent backup plan is a must.

More and more students come to school with a phone that is equipped with a camera that will both take pictures and record video. If they don’t have a phone on them, there is a good chance that they will have an iPod. Whether it be a phone or an iPod, both will take excellent video footage for student video projects.

Some teachers may worry about students using their own equipment in case it gets lost or stolen. Remember, the students are already bringing it to school, and don’t be fooled, they are already using it, probably in your classrom. You might as well put it to good use.

Before you have students go out and film a project on their own device, make sure that there is a means of capturing the video and transferring it to the computer for editing. This is the one drawback in using several different kinds of devices, but I think that more and more, companies are formatting the video so it can easily be downloaded to a computer. Honestly, I have had more problems trying to get video off cam-corders that students bring than I have downloading video from mobile devices.

Having students use their devices for school work definitely gets students engaged in the work. They see that that thing they carry around in their pocket all day can be used for more than social interaction. It is a tool for learning and sharing.

I imagine that this video will be worked into my lesson plans over the next few days in all my classes. That is the beauty of short video. I can show this to students, have a quick discussion on creativity and the possibilities that come with imaginitive thinking, and it will apply to any of the classes I teach, whether it be Math, English, or Current Events. Then we can move on, but I guarantee that the student will leave the classroom thinking a little differently than when they came in.

This week, I read a cool article about the climbers who recently climbed Cerro Torre, a wicked mountain in the Patagonia.  I decided to share the story with some of my classes and use the article for a research activity we were doing. I couldn’t believe the interest my students had in the controversy brought forth in the article. I don’t know if any of them have ever climbed a mountain, but they wanted to see pictures of the mountain and of people climbing the mountain. We spent several minutes with Google images projected on the board poking around to see what we could find.

Students like to learn. They especially like to learn new things, but I think they forget, as we do at times, the power that is at our fingertips. I ‘m still not talking about researching information for a paper or class. Students need to know that the web connects them to a world of interesting and informative information. Students just need someone to show them that there is more happening in the world than what is posted on their Facebook wall.

Here’s the challenge: find a topic, any topic that might have some relation to what you are teaching, open up Google in front of the class (this can be a little scary), and do some research for the class. You won’t believe how engaged the class will be in the discussion. They really do want to learn.