Being Real by Blogging

Another week into summer and I'm slowing my pace, working around the house and doing those chores that have been avoided since last summer. I can say that writing this blog has given me a good excuse to dodge some of my household chores. Luckily, writing has never been a chore for me. Writing has always been something that I have enjoyed in various ways. I used to have diaries or journals growing up. Short passages that would peek into the heart of an eleven year old little girl. I loved to put pen to paper when I was angry or hurt. Words of love or romance were written in verse and seldom shared with anyone. It was personal, just for me. I often forget how hard it is to put yourself out there for others to read and offer judgements or have opinions. It is safer to just keep it to myself.

Keeping it to myself isn't an option any longer. If I'm expecting my students to explore the world of blogging, I should expect the same from myself. I pride myself in connecting with my students, understanding their world. I enjoy watching movies that my students see and that opens channels of sharing back and forth. Blogging with my students has been a priceless experience that I intend to continue and expand.

Over the past year, my students and I have been using KidBlog.com to post events from the

classroom, experiences from home, and post work that students are proud to share. I have kept it with in the school environment and have shared with other grade level classes. Students have been encouraged to post news from home or shared projects that they are working on. At times I will assign a topic for a post or just offer time in class to write. Book reviews were my initial use of KidBlog.com. Students would post selfies with the book they were reading, write a hook and let us know the reading level and the points it was worth in the Accelerated Reader program. After a month, I realized I wanted to upgrade my account so students could add media content. It was the best $40 I have ever spent.

All of a sudden, our blogs were more like, Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube. I had students creating videos during their winter break for fun. Third graders were creating "how to" videos and working to elicit viewers. One student posted an awesome video on his Minecraft Lego build. Another student created a video of her playing the Ukulele. I wasn't directing the students to create this content, it was  on their own, their choice of what they wanted to post. We had serious discussions on digital footprints and what types of posts that were appropriate. Truly amazing talk about copy write infringement and how to site properly were often shared together in class or commented in student's blogs.

Two of my proudest successes this past year were MinecraftEdu and KidBlog.com. Not only were my students working on their own time creating content and sharing their ideas, they were mindful of an audience that was beyond the classroom. I feel that I cheated my students out of a wider audience in fear of exposing them to the world. It was until after the year was over that I expanded permission to allow the blogs to be viewed publicly. I learned that I have to open the doors and teach my students the proper way to communicate to the world, not shelter and filter their audience. I have changed my perspective, opened my heart to the possibilities, and better understand the needs of my students. It's time to broaden my horizon too.

What I learned this past year was my eight and nine year old students are YouTubers, bloggers, and content creators. They want to get their message out there to a wider audience. It's my job to teach them the best ways to create, post, comment, and respect others who do the same. I can't protect them from everything, I can't shield them from all the "bad" in the world. What I can do is educate them to recognize what is the best way to post and create and learn to self sensor or self check for appropriate conduct on line. If I can teach them how to have a positive presence on line, than I am creating a better audience for others.

Check out one of my students KidBlog post video. He is a YouTuber!
http://kidblog.org/class/N4Outliers/posts/ce0zldrntres444rn7fx1wat4

Find Your Own Journey

As this summer has progressed, I have been following my passions. Reading, spending time with my family, and learning how to play the ukulele. This time has provided me a chance to personally recharge and relax. In addition, following Twitter, writing, and learning more about teaching and all things tech has brought me professional satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. I often forget that my life wasn't always like this. My original direction was along a different road. I did a lot of learning along the way to discover where my path would lead.

Nursing was my first choice of a career. Growing up, I watched my mother get in her uniform and drive away to the hospital. She was a "nurses" nurse. I mean, she went to nursing college. She didn't have a bachelor's degree, she trained from the early age of 18 at a nursing college in Michigan where she was in a classroom and worked shifts in a hospital. Her dorm was just next door to the school and hospital. She lived the life of a nurse full time from the beginning. It was her path that lead her away from poverty and ignorance to a life of self worth and gratification. She was extremely proud of her cap and uniform.

My mother loved being a nurse. She was proud of her profession, but she was careful of what she shared with her family. She protected us in her way, by not bringing sadness or suffering home with her. At least I never saw it. She welcomed us to visit the hospital floor where she worked to stop by and say "hello." Often my mother had to work the B shift 3:00 PM - 11:00 PM and she missed being at home when my sister, brother or I had prom or winter formal. She arranged to have us come by dressed up to visit the hospital before we went to dinner. She would introduce us to her patients and take a few pictures. The event made everyone feel good. But the stress and emotional toll of caring for sick people, never came home with her. I later found out she shared her feelings with my father to spare her children the grief she sometimes felt.

I always thought that nursing would be my path as well. I took every science class in high school I could. I joined an Explorers group and became a volunteer at my mother's hospital. I was not adverse to needles or blood, that was just part of the experience. My mother was wise and didn't discourage me, she just made sure I received as much exposure to the job as possible. In my junior year of high school, I realized that I wanted to focus on pediatric care because of my joy of working with children. I realize now my mother knew me better that myself. My mother recognized that nursing wasn't my passion. She never said it or even hinted to me that I shouldn't become a nurse. She believed in me and continued to encourage me to do my best in whatever I chose to do.

From an early age I had a strong sense of empathy for others and I had a tender heart. I especially had a deep compassion and understanding of children and I loved babysitting, particularly the babies. I had no experience with truly ill or dying children. She recognized that working with sick children would take an emotional toll on me, but she held back. She would inquire about my interests in nursing, but she didn't interfere. She helped to guide my volunteer time and worked hard to expose the challenges of nursing, not by telling me, but by allowing me to learn and experience for myself. She didn't want her experiences to shadow my own.

When I became a sophomore at California State University, Fullerton, I planned to transfer to San Diego State or Long Beach State to complete my nursing degree. My parents took me to both colleges and I knew then I wasn't committed to nursing. I lost interest and nursing didn't fit me any more. I had started taking classes in my field of study and I realized I enjoyed learning about child development. I still wanted to work with children, but I wanted to help guide and nurture their growing minds. Now a new path was discovered and my true passion was realized. I was empowered by my revelation and I blazed through my degree and multiple subject teaching credential with confidence and joy!

Sitting across the table from my 17 year old daughter, the cycle had come around full circle. This time, I'm the mother and I'm guiding my child through the bumps and challenges of growing up. She has decided to become a teacher. Imagine that? She has been accepted to California State University, Fullerton as a history major and is pursuing a high school teaching career. I plan to model after my mom. I don't want to question or debate her choices. I want her to discover, on her own, her passions and which path she will take.

She is determined to become a teacher, I believe she will be an amazing educator. But I also know, as you travel through life, choices and decisions lead you through a maze of highways and you might find yourself following a completely different road.  Above all, I want my daughter to find her joy and happiness, to be successful and contribute to the world, to find her own path to success. There will be bumps, diversions, detours, and challenges. That's what makes each journey unique. She will be in the driver's seat. She needs to find her own way and I need to slide over to the passenger side now. My job is to encourage her, coach her, and cheer her on, she can take it from here.

Reflect Like a Pirate

Hi All! I'm back already for another blog. My original goal was to post only once a week, however, I'm just so excited that I knew I needed to reflect on my personal reading and capture my thinking before I start my next book.  It is summer after all and I'm not as involved being a mother of four now. My children are older and busy working or off playing. The youngest one is working on getting his driver's license, so I'll be even more obsolete when he finishes. So what better way to spend my time than improving myself.

Since I'm moving into a different mode of motherhood, I have more time for professional reading, planning, writing, and Twittering. That's how I was introduced to @burgessdave and his wonderful book. I was thrilled after reading Dave Burgess' Teach Like a Pirate. He really spoke to me when he wrote, "Provide an uncommon experience for your students and they will reward you with an uncommon effort and attitude." I easily embraced Dave's idea of presenting lessons with passion, enthusiasm, and something compelling. My teaching already had some "pirate like" qualities and I feel even more empowered to "pump it up!" I am already revisiting lesson ideas to pull in more drama or movement to engage all my students.

I've just finished my second PD book for the summer and I have to say, Learn Like a Pirate by Paul Solarz has my head spinning! I'm absolutely running off the plank here people! I'm totally embracing the student lead classroom. Again I found some common ground and similarities, and Paul's book gave rich concrete examples that will allow me to further hand off more "jobs" in my class and provide greater opportunities for my students to lead. I appreciated how Paul had QR codes embedded in his book to link you to a page in his website or connect to a direct source that he refers to. Amazing! Together both books are providing me with a new schema of what my classroom will look like and feel like in the upcoming year.

First change I'm making will be my "goodie bag" for day one. My first day of school always ended with a paper bag with about 6-8 things in it to get our year started. There would be an eraser because we all make mistakes. There would be a mint because the students are worth a "mint" to me and so the items go. This time around, I plan to start with the bag on their desk first thing in the morning and we are going to use the items in their bag throughout the day. Dave mentions his first day of class and how he has Play Doh out for each student. Something so easy, yet different to set the stage. I want to have an unexpected event to begin our year, a non-threatening experience that will welcome students and get them thinking and creating immediately. I love the idea of Play Doh, so much so that I already went out to get it for my students. That will be item #1 in the bag!

Item #2 will be a small bag of marbles. This is inspired by Paul's "Marble Theory" class meeting. Paul explains that every child is born with the same amount of marbles in their brain. They start out in one big pile and as we grow and learn the marbles are then placed into different cups. The cups are the skills and talents that we have or learn as we develop. I made an instant connection to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. In his book, Gladwell describes an expert is someone who has put in at least 10,000 hours of practice at their skill or ability.

A musician, an athlete, a mathematician all have put in well over 10,000 hours to excel at their given talent. I have used this example many times to explain to students that not everyone has the same skill or knowledge level. Ten thousand hours may not be equivalent to 10,000 marbles but the concepts are similar.  I am thrilled to use the "Marble Theory" to demonstrate how it might look using cups and marbles. I believe the combination will go a long way to help children understand that we all are intelligent it is just divided differently for each person.

This weekend I took to the streets to find every Dollar Tree store to find small bags of marbles. It only took me four stores to find enough, but now my marble trek is complete. Guess what? Along the way, I found my third item to be placed in my goodie bag, a micro terrarium from DuneCraft. These I also found at the Dollar Tree store and it took three more stops before I could find enough and of course the Dollar Tree store offered the better price. Yes, I'll admit, I'm a little zealous when it comes to my goodie bag items, but I really want my students to be engaged and create experiences that they will remember and be able to connect to as the year progresses.

Now the reason for the micro terrarium is to have the students connect to the "growth mindset" brought to us by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset. This is a conversation that our grade level team started to discuss about three years ago and we introduced the concept in our Back to School Night meetings with our parents. We also continually use the understanding of growth mindset instead of fixed mindset to help both our parents and students understand that we need to be open with growth and understand that we are all in different places of our learning. I believe this terrarium will help students better connect with this concept.

Thanks to both Dave Burgess and Paul Solarz for their inspiring books. I love how both educators celebrate creativity, 21st century learning, and encourage taking risks. That is my plan to think creatively, take more risks, and provide the same opportunities for my students. I'm taking the first steps to implement my new changes. I'm excited to discover what will be next placed in the bag on my students' desks for the first day of school.

TwitterBug

I may have already said this before, but I have the TwitterBug! I don't believe I'm at the highest level of the Twitter chain, but I'm close. As a more recent user of Twitter, I'm not completely proficient in Twitterese. I find myself still trying to decipher the language of Twitter and limit my posts to 140 characters. Those who know me will recognize how much of a challenge this is, because I am not one to limit myself when it comes to sharing.

Twitter has provided a collaborative group of people who share life changing professional development. After finishing my first of many summer PD books, Teach Like a Pirate, by Dave Burgess, @burgessdave, I have a pile of more books to read and I am not getting enough sleep! I'm sure getting use of my Amazon prime membership. Next up for my summer reading will include:

I find it hard to pinpoint the greatest affect Twitter has had on me. I have chosen to follow amazing educators and my Twitter feed is relentless with exciting and wonderful posts. I am filled with envy when someone posts about a conference they are participating in, or traveling to. I want to be there with them. I feel left out because I can't possibly attend every conference, professional development opportunity, or training that exists. However, I can glean from those who have! The sharing is limitless and that fits right in with how I learn.

Most importantly,  I'm invigorated with energy and excitement for teaching and that is what Twitter and my #PLN (Professional Learning Network) have given me, renewed zeal for teaching, learning and sharing! Thanks Twitter!

KidBlogs in My Class

One of the BEST ways my students are communicating has been through KidBlog. I am amazed at how my students are posting through KidBlog. Not only are they posting about the books they are reading and their class projects, my students are posting videos they are making at home. They are creating videos with LEGOs or experiences with music. I'm so impressed! Students are using their creativity and communicating their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. One of the best uses of KidBlog has been from the students who are not usually vocal in class. Students have felt more confident in sharing through the blog. It is exciting to see how many of my students who are posting that are shy and reserved. It's mind boggling to hear from more of my students through blogging. Very empowering for everyone!

MinecraftEdu Adventure

Hi All,
It's been quite a while since I've posted. I really wanted to have meaningful posts and add content that would be purposeful. Thus begins my new posts with the Adventures of MinecraftEdu. To be honest, my adventure begins with watching my son play Minecraft for the past 4 years. He started playing while he was in 7th grade and absolutely loved this game.

When he shared the game with me, I wasn't automatically taken with the game. I'm not a video game player by nature so I was not sure of the impact of the game until much, much later. When the research has come out and I have been watching TEDtalks on the benefits of gaming, I started to revisit Minecraft. What sealed the deal was the MinecraftEdu version and I was sold. I shared the concept with my son and he was just as excited to help me learn how to play the game.

He allowed me on his Minecraft server and sat next to me while I started to learn the basics. He took out his mouse, which I haven't used in 10 years. I'm a track pad person, so the mouse felt foreign. Pretty soon, I was feeling motion sick while playing, I got lost and couldn't figure out where I was or even how I got to the spot I was standing in. I made him take over and then I started asking questions.

Do you realize how many decisions a person has to make in order to start to build, or dig, or collect things? There is a lot of planning involved and the basics of learning which keys to use and whether you are in create mode or survival mode. I realized I like the create mode better, less threatening and NO loosing your life. I liked that!!!

So after learning the basics, I decided I wanted to use MinecraftEdu in my classroom. I started to look for grants to help fund the licenses. Our school foundation has a budget for each grade level, but our grade didn't have enough for the entire third grade to start. I'm an all or nothing kind of teacher and I wanted my entire grade level to share my adventure with me. Thank goodness, the ladies I work with are good sports!!!

To make me even more excited, Orange County Department of Education, offered a 3 day summer training course on MinecraftEdu. My principal approved for both myself and another member of my team to go. There were only 5 adults and 3 students. Small class, eager learners! It tools us the first day to really get the hang of it and by day 3 we were building our own worlds on our own server to share out with the group! It was awesome!!!

I knew then that I had to find a way to make it happen! So the adventure through the channels of school and district office black tape began. Lucky for me my principal fully backs the MinecraftEdu game and using it in the classroom.  When you come back next time, I'll have more to share with the Adventures of MinecraftEdu in my classroom.

Systematic ELD Work Examples

One good thing about working during the summer is . . . I get to see my friends and start thinking about next year.  The iPad will continue to be a huge focus for me as I integrate them more with my ELD students. After presenting at the 2012 Palm Springs CUE about Mobile Learning for ELs, I have found a small but passionate group of educators who want to use more technology with their EL students during ELD instruction. I am planning to create iBook ELD portfolios for my students in hopes that it will become useful at our site and in our district. Assessments are always helpful, but having a digital portfolio to show the stages of growth will be a great benefit for our teachers and the students themsevles to monitor their progress and pinpoint areas of need. Some students struggle more with writing, especially in the higher levels of language acquisition, so a collection of student writing samples is always useful.  In addition to writing, the ePorfolio/iBook will also include videos, and audio recording to demonstrate listening, speaking, and reading skills necessary for reclassification.  Here are some samples of student created work that will be placed in ePortfolios/iBooks.

For the last two years I have had the priviledge to work with the beginning and early intermediate level students. They have been a joy to work with and they love working with iPads.

Obviously they are still learning the proper gramatical forms of English, but they are writing and speaking in complete sentences. They also enjoy coming to ELD and sometimes that is the hardest part of teaching ELD, the students don't want to be there. Using the iPads has really motivated the students to come and get to my room early.