Are You Just a Teacher or a Just Teacher?

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origin_497731537Last week I read a blog post by Deborah Mills-Scofield on Switch & Shift called Are You Just a Leader or a Just Leader? Like many of the business leadership blog posts out there, it applies to teaching too. In fact, after reading it, I went back and reread it replacing “leader” with “teacher,” and “people” and “customer” with students. This left me with a great blog post, about management teaching.

Here’s some of the post, through an educator lens:

Being a leader teacher requires taking the right road, not the easy road. Treating our people students fairly requires judgment, subjectivity, and clear communication of expectations and goals on an ongoing basis since the world around us changes all the time. When we treat our people students equally but not fairly, we tell people our students it’s ok to underperform and under contribute undermining the morale of our dedicated and passionate people students and are then surprised when we get mediocre output and outcomes.

What if we modify the culture to recognize people students fairly, based on their work, effort, passion, and results – as individuals and teams? We will be surprised to see the positive difference it will make.

I versus You

…I often ask my corporate educator colleagues if focusing on ‘I’, on themselves, has really gotten them the career satisfaction they sought. As leaders teachers, we need to help our people students focus on the “You” – the customer student, the recipient of our services and products and you the employee. If we honestly ask ourselves who matters more, ‘I’, ourselves or ‘You’ our customers and people students, what is our answer?

A true leader teacher is a servant who leads. So, is the business education about our needs or the needs of ‘others’? Are we really focused on delighting our customers students (to quote my friend Steve Denning), which means we will delight our people students because they are working on meaningful, purposeful solutions to real needs (outcomes) that result revenues and profit (outputs) in learning that can be reinvested in the delighting our customers applied to their lives? Or, are we doing this for the next perk, the accolades from our peers, the prestige from our position? I’m not suggesting total altruism (though that’s not a bad idea!), but I am suggesting we ponder why we’re leading teaching and whom we’re leading teaching – is it about ‘I’ or about ‘You’? Can we really lead teach if it’s about us? Would we want to be led taught by someone who was all about himself? Does our leadership teaching truly reflect our why and who? If someone asked one of our people students who mattered to us, ‘I’ or ‘You’, what would they answer?

As we approach the middle of 2013 spring, ask yourself two questions: do you treat people students equally or fairly (or both) and does your leadership teaching, hence your classroom culture, value ‘You’ over ‘I’?

So, are you a just a teacher or a just teacher?

photo credit: InsideMyShell via photopin cc

iMovie Trailers and Coloring Books

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iMovie-2.0-for-iOS-app-icon-smalliMovie on the iPad is pretty awesome. And the Trailer function is a great starting point (you can find my iMovieTrailer storyboards here). But remember, it’s just that – it’s just a starting point. Most of the teachers I know who have used it for a student project come away from the experience saying, “that was great, but now that I get it I wish it could do more.” Fortunately, you can.

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You see, the Trailer function is a lot like a coloring book; all you can do is color in the lines. Sure, you can assign a project to your students using the Trailers and they’ll all come out different, but they’ll also all kind of be the same. It’s like a coloring book: each kid can use different colors, but they all kind of end up with the same picture.

So use the Trailers, and then grow out of them. Start using the Movie function. Start drawing with a blank piece of paper. There’s so much more you can do.

And here’s a generic iMovie Movie storyboard. I think it’s a good idea to have students do some planning before they get a camera in their hands.

Why I Always Follow [my students] Back

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ios_homescreen_iconThe first time it happened it was kind of alarming. I had been using my Twitter account to share ideas with other technology-minded educators when two of my former third graders (then in sixth grade) started following me. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Granted I am the kind of educator who shares the appropriate parts of my personal life with my students, but being followed by former students now in another school seemed different.

About the same time, I heard Greg Kulowic of EdTechTeacher talk about his similar experiences with his high school students. I came away in agreement that the things I post on my Twitter account (which is public) are not scandalous and are the kinds of things I’d share with my students anyway, so there’s no harm in them reading my tweets. I don’t tweet things I wouldn’t want my grandparents or boss or students to read.

But to follow back?

After some back and forth, I decided to follow my students back. In the end I saw it as them experimenting with a new technology, and having a trusted educator keeping an eye out for them isn’t a bad thing. These days, our students are using a lot of technologies their parents may not understand so if we can have other caring adults help them navigate these technologies, that’s a good thing. And it soon paid off for one of them. origin_8484119632

A few months later one of my former students’ Twitter accounts was hacked and started sending out spammy direct messages. I tweeted her to let her know she needed to change her password. She responded that she had, but that the messages kept sending and that she didn’t know what to do; she needed help – at 7pm on a Tuesday evening. So me in my kitchen and my former student (not sure where) worked together on how disable all the apps that she’d given access to her Twitter account and then add back only the trusted ones. Ten minutes Later: crisis averted.

Kevin Honeycutt talks about our students being on a digital playground where there is no one on recess duty. He’s absolutely right; our students need us to be a part of their online lives.

We need to be at recess with our students, showing them how to play safely and helping them if they get into trouble.

Note: Instagram is a a bit of a sticky wicket for me since most of my students (current and former) are under the age of 13, the age Instagram requires for an account. But at the end of the day, Instagram still part of that digital playground.

photo credit: kjetikor via photopin cc

A Letter to the Editor: Collegiate Professional Development?

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origin_2992013920As an undergraduate sophomore I wrote a (somewhat confrontational) letter to the editor of my college newspaper. Over the past few months it has  to come up more and more so I figured I’d re-release it in the digital age. The letter stemmed out of the frustrating question that many education students find themselves asking, “I spend how much money learning how to teach and spend hours and hours in classes taught by professors who have never had instruction in effective teaching strategies?” Content and pedagogy are not the same.

It was meant to create some uneasiness, be a little indignant, maybe create some conflict. It did. Some (students and professors) loved the letter; others hated it. A teammate of mine had a history professor devote 45 minutes of a 75-minute class to complaining about the letter and it’s author. (Though he never reached out to me – he only complained to his captive audience). Other professors did reach out, always fairly positive. Some asked if the letter was about them (a brave question).

So, here it is.

Dear Editor:

These days it often seems hard to open a newspaper or listen to a news report without running across something about the quality of education in our country.  Or more specifically how it compares to the quality of education in other industrialized nations.  It would seem that as children across the world enter school at the age of 4 or 5, they are at par with each other.  However, as Americans enter middle school we seem to be performing at a lower level than students of other countries.  Following that pattern through high school and college, the gap widens.  So what is going on here?  Well, it would seem that one of two things is happening here: either Americans are genetically less intelligent than the rest of the industrialized world, or we have a problem with the education system in our country.

Well, I don’t believe that Americans are dumb (or at least not inherently dumb), so that makes the issue a systemic one.  So what is happening then?  Even a haphazard observer will notice that in the lower grades, things are working, and that as you approach the 17th year of education (the 4th year of college), things are not working quite so well.  So, then, what is happening in kindergarten and first grade that is not happening in college?  I’ll tell you: teacher education.

In order to be licensed to teach in an elementary classroom, a prospective teacher must complete about 40 credits in the field of education; that is nearly three full time semesters of talking only classes that teach you how to teach.  For junior high and high school, a prospective teacher needs about 30 credits, two semesters, of classes focused on how to teach effectively.  And college?  How much schooling do prospective college professors need, in the subject of teaching, in order to be placed in front of a class?  Zero.  Yes, that’s right, for the $18,615 you paid in tuition this year to go to school, your professors are not required to have any formal education on how to teach a class.  Sure, they need their master’s degree, but in some states you need that to teach at the elementary and secondary school as well (in New York a teacher must receive their master’s degree within five years of when they begin teaching or their license to teach will be revoked).  Moreover, when a person is licensed to teach at an elementary or secondary level, the need to be recertified every so often (every seven years in the state of Vermont).  So not only are these teachers forced to be certified, if they do not continue to educate themselves about the current trends of education, they will no longer be allowed to teach.  

So what this all means is that an 18-year-old, first year student, who has taken one 3-credit education course, who pays money to be here, quite possibly has more idea how to run a classroom than a first year professor with their PhD.  And the professor gets paid.  Granted, there are exceptions; there are wonderful teachers here who just have a knack for teaching.  We all know who those professors are.  But if you have ever sat in a class and wondered to yourself, or whispered to the person sitting next to you, “this is ridiculous, what is this professor doing?”  Well, they just don’t know any better.

So enough is enough, is there a solution?  Sure, hold our college professors to the same standard that we hold our kindergarten teachers.  What does this mean?  That someone sits down with our professors and gives them some instruction on how to run an effective classroom.  I am sure that you would agree that some professors would benefit greatly.

I certainly don’t expect every college in the nation to change its ways, but what if Saint Michael’s did?  What if over the summer the school required each professor to come in for a day or two and learn about effective teaching?  Two days won’t kill any professor, but it may save some students who would really benefit from a higher quality learning environment.  And furthermore, how valuable would it be for Saint Michael’s College to be able to say to prospective students, that our professors (and not the professors or our competing schools) are given some formal education on how to teach effectively.  They’re not just people with PhD’s.  They’re quality teachers.  With nothing to loose, and so much to gain, why are we all still forced to endure the professor(s) who can’t teach?  I don’t know either.

-Ben Schersten

Again, there are some amazing educators out there who haven’t had any formal training in effective instruction. But I still have to ask (nearly 15 years later), what would happen if colleges and universities started having mandatory professional development on instructional practices?

photo credit: tanakawho via photopin cc

Embedding a Video in Blogger (without YouTube)

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UPDATE: Currently (10/31/2014) this does not work in the new Google Drive. The new Drive won’t allow you to open a video in the Google Drive viewer. You’ll need to revert back to the old Google Drive to get the embed code (Step 2 below). To get back the old Drive, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the Drive screen and select “Leave the new Drive.”

More and more teachers these days are blogging as a way to communicate with parents and the community about what they are up to. And more and more teachers are using handheld devices (smartphones and tablets) to record what happens in their classroom. Embedding from YouTube is a great way to share videos, but what if you don’t want to (or can’t) use YouTube? There’s another way:

You’ll need to:

  1. Store the video in Google Drive
  2. Get the embed code
  3. Embed the video in Blogger

Step 1: Storing a Video in Google Drive

Storing videos to share in your Google Drive is all well and good, but you have to make sure you don’t (ever, ever) delete them or they’ll disappear from your blog. Because of this, I suggest creating a folder for blog files. Be sure to set the Sharing settings so others can see the contents of that folder.

How? Once you’ve created your blog folder, select it and click the sharing button.

Select your blog folder, and change the sharing settings.

Change the privacy settings for the folder.

Change the privacy settings for the folder.

Select “Anyone with the link” and save.

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Now anythings that goes in this folder will be available for anyone on the web to see (if they have a direct link; they won’t be able to search for it). And since everything for you blog is going to be stored in a folder together you don’t have to worry about accidentally deleting something.

Step 2: Getting the Embed Code

Once your video is in Drive, open it up. It will default to a preview window. Click the Open button at the bottom. Screen_Shot_2014-01-30_at_2_14_21_PM-3

When the video truly opens, open the File menu and select “Embed this video..”

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Then copy the code it displays to the clipboard.

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Step 3: Embedding Your Video in Blogger

Now, over to blogger.

When you are creating/editing a post you have the option of the Compose view and the HTML view. You’re probably used to the Compose view.

Switch over to the HTML view.

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Paste the Embed Code. You can ignore the rest of the code; we’re just here to drop off the embed code.

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And switch back to the Compose view. A video window will appear in your post.

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Your blog post has a video and you’re ready to publish!

Note 1: Yes, Blogger does have an option to upload a video directly to them, but I have yet to have consistent luck with that. It either doesn’t work, or the processing takes a prohibitive amount of time.

Note 2: This same embedding process also allows you to embed Google Drive documents, spreadsheets, PDFs etc in Blogger. However, instead of File -> Embed this video, you’re looking for File -> Publish to the web. From there you can grab the Embed Code.

Smartphones, Photos, and Metadata

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We all know some vague, detail-less version of this story:

amber alert logoSomewhere, a loving parent takes a picture of their child with a smartphone and posts the picture online. Some nefarious individual gets a hold of the picture and hacks into it to figure out exactly where the picture was taken. The region finds itself in the grips of an Amber Alert.

Technology is supposed to help us? Can this really happen? And how can I share photos of my kids (they’re so cute after all) and fell safe doing it?

Understanding Digital Photos

If you’re old enough to remember film, you know that a film picture doesn’t carry a whole lot of data with it. It’s basically just a picture. On the back (depending on where you got it developed) may be a printed date, but that was the developing date not the date the photo was taken. The obsessive-compulsive among us found ways to keep track of dates and locations, but that information was not inherently a part of the picture.

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Enter digital photographs. A digital photo file is much more than a physical photograph, so much more. Each file contains a picture, but it also contains something called “metadata,” or data about data. If I dust of my old digital Canon Rebel XSi and take a picture, this is the metadata it records (in addition to the picture itself):

  • Date/time the photo was taken
  • Photo dimensions
  • Color mode
  • Focal length
  • Which lens was on the camera
  • Whether the flash fired
  • Metering mode
  • White balance
  • Aperture and shutter speed
  • Film speed (ISO)
  • My camera’s serial number

And you thought it was just a mere picture. Also, there’s space in the metadata for me to add things like:

  • My name/address/website
  • Copyright information
  • Description
  • Keywords for searching
  • and lots more…

Now there are lots of reasons why this is great data to have access to. As the owner of the photo I have lots of very useful information about each photo (such as all the camera settings). As an end user I can easily find the owner and copyright information of each digital photograph (if that information is filled in). Having all this information on a film-based picture would be highly impracticable, if not impossible.

What About Smartphones

iphone5sSmartphones have one key feature that my Canon digital camera doesn’t have: access to GPS. There’s a space in the metadata for that information too (even the direction you’re facing too). And your GPS is pretty reliable – it can probably tell you what room of your house you are in. Try it now: open the maps app on your phone, switch to satellite view, and zoom in as far as you can. Your phone has a pretty good sense of where on the planet it is (which is pretty amazing if you think about it).

Also, wireless routers know where they are too. So if you connect a non-GPS tablet to the internet via a wireless network (which we all do all the time) you can get some pretty good location data. So just because you don’t have GPS on your device, the capability to get location data is still there.

Now this location data is not inherently bad. As a photographer, being able to tag the location of where I took a photograph is great. How many times have you asked yourself, “Where did I take this picture?” Of course if you’re making the photo public you might not want that information attached to the photo.

The good thing is that as a user, you have the ability to decide which apps have access to your GPS/location data. For things like weather and maps, having those apps know my exact location is a good thing; I want them to know where I am. But maybe not for photos.

Smartphone Settings

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For iOS users (iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads), go into your Settings App. Select the Privacy section and then select Location Services. Here, you can select which apps you want to have access to your location, or you can turn all location data off.

For Android users, go to Settings and select the Location option. Here you’ll be able to manage your Location Services.

How Do I Know What Data is There?

Photo metadata is often referred to as “exif data.” For iOS users, there’s a simple free app called ExifWizard that allows you to view all the metadata for the photos on your camera roll. It also will show positions on a map if that data is provided.

What About Uploading to Social Media?

These days, for better or for worse, most social media sites strip all the metadata out of pictures you upload. Pictures going to places like Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr take all the metadata out. Google+ on the other hand, leaves it intact. WordPress blogs seem to leave the metadata intact as well. There’s a quick article about this here; information about specific social media sites it here. Be aware, these were written from a photographer’s standpoint, so the author wants his metadata kept on his photos so people knows he owns them.

It Doesn’t Have to be Scary

Smartphones are really powerful devices. They do some pretty amazing things. But if we’re going to use them responsibly and safely we need to understand what they’re capable of and how to control them.

We Are All Teachers of Technology

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desksIt was about 10 years ago that I first started hearing workshop leaders pushing the idea that “we are all teachers of reading.” I was teaching kindergarten at the time, so teaching reading was already a big pat of what I was doing anyway so suggesting that we all needed to teach reading wasn’t a big deal to me. Though some of my content-specific colleagues (math, science, and social studies teachers) were less than thrilled. “We didn’t sign up to be reading teachers,” they argued. The profession pushed on, indeed the profession had changed, and (like it or not) we all became teachers of reading.

Since then, the world has continued to change. Technology now plays an increasingly large and important role in the world and the classroom (hopefully); it doesn’t matter whether it’s desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, or something in between. Because of that, we all need to be teachers of technology. I know that many of us did not sign up to be technology teachers, but we don’t have a choice; we are (in addition to all the other things we do). Of course with this it is imperative that teachers receive the support and professional development they need to become effective teachers of technology.

The world is changing.

Our roles as teachers are changing.

Today, we are all teachers of technology.

photo credit: dcJohn via photopin cc

iMovie Trailer Storyboards (UPDATED)

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imovieappThe new iOS iMovie app that premiered with OS X Mavericks and the iPad Air came with a few new features including two new trailer templates. A couple of months ago I posted about using the trailers, and posted links to PDF templates.

I’ve created single-page storyboards for the new trailers, and separated the old ones into individual files. They’re PDFs, so they’re easy to use in apps like Notability if you really want to go paperless.

Some of these I created, some are from the TeachingParadox blog (which has been taken down).

Enjoy!

I’ve Stopped Using Automatic Update for Apps in iOS 7

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20131016-204835.jpgIt sounded so great when I first heard about it: having apps automatically update. Fantastic! No more having to go into the App Store to “update all.” No more having those  red numbers on the App Store icon, nagging me to take care of them.

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Blue dot indicating update.

So as soon as I could I turned on automatic updates, and for a couple weeks it was great. All my apps updated on their own. The red numbers on the app icon never appeared. All seemed good.

But then I realized I was missing something. When apps updated, I found I wasn’t always noticing the little blue dot indicating they had updated. And more so, I had no idea what had been updated.

Okay; at this point I need to admit something. When I update apps, I am one of the few people who actually reads the update notes. I want to know if the update is just “bug fixes” or if a new feature actually been added. With automatic updates I found I never knew. With automatic updates I was missing out on things.

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Update notes.

So I’ve given up on automatic updates. I still make sure my apps are updated, and now I always know what features have been added and which bugs have been fixed.

Note: For students, I still strongly advocate for automatically updating apps.

No, Your Classroom Blog Should Not Be Private

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lockPublic or Private?

Teachers often ask me if their classroom blogs should be private of public. It’s a good question and one that always comes from a good place: if I am going to post information about my students, is it okay if its public? Absolutely (and you’re not really posting information about your students; you posting information about the learning in your class).

And I know, people are worried about posting pictures of students. That’s okay; it’s something you should be thinking about. And you definitely need to get parent permission before you do that. These days a photo permission form is usually included in the packet of forms that goes home at the beginning of school. If your school’s photo form doesn’t include something about posting pictures online, it needs to be changed.

But even if you can’t (or don’t want to) post pictures of students, you can still have a great blog. Matt Gomez, a kindergarten teacher in N. Dallas, TX recently wrote a great post about having a successful classroom blog without using students’ pictures. Even if you plan to post pictures of your students, it’s worth taking a look at his post.

Why Public?

As educators we have blogs to communicate. To communicate with parents. To communicate with the community. To communicate with other educators. To tell our story. If we make our classroom blogs private, we can’t tell our story very well. And if we’re not telling our story someone else (the media?) certainly will tell it for us. And I am sure you will do a better job telling your story than the media will.

And that story needs to be shared. A public blog can easily be shared with cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

Still a Little Uneasy About a Public Blog?

Making an unlisted blog in Blogger.

Blogger. (Settings -> Basic).

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WordPress. (Settings -> Reading)

If a public blog still seems uncomfortable, but you understand why a private blog isn’t ideal there’s good news: there is a middle ground. Make your blog unlisted. An unlisted blog is public; anyone can view it, but only if they have the direct URL. Your blog won’t show up in search engines, but if your students want to share a post with their grandparents across the country it’s easy for them to do that. You share the blog’s URL with parents, and they can easily access and share the posts.

As educators, we need to be using blogs (and other social media) to tell our story. If we don’t tell our story, someone else will. And there’s no guarantee they’ll do a good job telling it.

photo credit: Darwin Bell via photopin cc