Third graders reading and BYOT

I spent the last three days preaching to our third graders about reading.   Reading is a skill that has to be mastered no matter what! Everything I'm doing as a 21st learner requires a high level of reading and writing skills.  I believe our biggest problem is not can our students read but can they evaluate what they are reading.  However, our students aren't ever going to be able to participate in the 21st if they do not develop better reading skills at an early age.
Only  44% of my third graders read at grade level by mid-year this year.  Amazing we had only two students not pass our state test, something seems wrong.  I, myself completely understand this false sense of security.  I made great grades in high school and thought I was very prepared for college only to find out I was way off the mark.  That is what our state standardized test is doing to our students.  Ok, back to my preaching this week.  Each third grade class was visited by me in the library with a quick speech and a review of the accelerated reader goal setting system we have in place.  Every student is suppose to understand their goal and reach their goal and this is a huge priority of mind. The media specialist, classroom teacher, and myself sat down with each third grader and double checked their understanding of the system and reminded them of their responsibilities to reach their goal.  I had several students in tears because the truth is they are under performing and they need to be told and that's my job. AR will get 90% of your readers on grade level if you use it properly, my belief.  I've had great success as a teacher, parent, and administrator with the program.  However, our third graders this year just aren't up to the task.  I'm not sure why, so I'm helping to attack the problem by constant reminders and checking up on the students.  Another great use of your smart phone and lunch room duty - monitor goals.
Today, I had a short conversation with one of our teachers about their doctoral program and she had to write her first scholarly paper. I have never been a very good writer because of have a tendency to go off topic, change tenses too much, not want to edit, and be too editorial.  It's the main reason I haven't started a doctoral program yet.   What caused me to think about her question was the content and her textbook.  Is a textbook really a credible tool for the social political environment in education today?  If it's a book it's probably slanted one way or the other because no one in the field of politics today is writing anything with just the facts or ideas in the middle.

BYOT:
Wifi is starting to work better for fourth graders.
Next step:  Develop ideas to integrate technology into the school day for our teachers.
Get third graders on grade level in reading according to Star Reading.
Get someone to develop a digital storytelling project with me.

Productivity

One of my daily quest is how to be more productive.  I have hundreds of ideas and tasks I wish I could complete, but many days I've just spend time getting people together for a meeting.  The video below is a big help to start being more productive tomorrow.

The Wifi story continues!

This weekend I had a terrible time running.  The pain in my left hip and knee was awful.  I thought to myself I'm just getting old, but the minute I made it home walking most of the five mile trip, I fired up the internet.  I quickly learned that I probably had a weak left hip and I needed to strengthen it.  The weirdest thing about this is the exercises made my hip feel better immediately.  Balance, if one part of the system isn't working right everything becomes painful.  Today, Will and I learned that the two wifi networks have different passwords and that's why we are having a hard time.  A few letters was causing students, teachers, and an administrator great anguish.
I'm very excited that Will is going to attempt to allow his students to bring their devices everyday.  I really believe that he will finds ways to integrate and not try to add something to his plate.

I'm trying my first MOOC, massive online open course, for the next six weeks.  I'm trying a pre-calculus class to refresh my mathematics skills to help my daughter next year, but also I'm very curious how MOOCs actually work.  If you are unfamiliar MOOC are all the rage in the online education world.  Universities are putting courses online for anyone to take for free.  The MOOC I signed up for through Coursea wanted you to sign up to use an assessment system that would monitor your quiz and give you feedback on how to improve by the answers you gave - that would cost $50, but you do not have to use that device.  The first lecture was a 11 minute video that wasn't bad or great but as introductions to a course go it was OK.  You did have to agree to a code of conduct, have due dates for quizzes, and the normal stuff of taking a class.  I'm very interested in the grade and will anyone give me credit for taking the class.



BYOT - Our director of technology came and spoke to our tech group.  His willingness to come and speak was great, but he needs to work on his mission.  I think he is spread to thin to truly help us and he is doing his best at the moment.  I think he will help us but like everything else these days it takes time.  I still do not understand the wireless.  I walked into my mother inlaws on Saturday in Augusta and her wireless, that I set up at Christmas, worked great for all of our devices, apple and Chrome Book.  We didn't even have to re-enter the password.  Why will that not work at school?
I am very grateful to two of my teachers for taking time out of their busy schedule each week to try and make BYOT work.  I still believe this is the only way for public education to move into the 21st century learning.

Reflections on BYOT

A day off is always a great time to seek balance in your life.  However, we moved into a new chapter of our life with a new puppy on Saturday.  Puppies bring joy to my heart, but also bring discipline to my words because I understand how easy it is to create the wrong dog by how you treat him.

This leads me into BYOT.  What I've learned with second graders.  After two days of dealing with technical problems I realize that students will be patient to use these devices.  We had lots of moments to get upset, abandon the program, or this is not worth the hassle.  I'm sure every new program goes through those moments, but the excitement of the students has sold me.  On student's mother said, "She could not sleep last night she was so excited about bringing her ipod to school and using it in class."  We must capitalize on that excitement and make sure we plan for engaging lessons with their devices.  I'm not sure if the excitement is coming from being able to play games or the feeling of newness, but it's excitement about school in second grade.  Second and third grades are the grades I believe we start losing students, so anything we can do to gain their interest let's do it.
I was finally able to get Socarative(a great classroom interactive tool for BYOT) working with about seven students, but conquering the technical issues was the hardest part of the day.  We have come to the conclusions that some devices are not going to work on our network.

My orginal belief was that the students need to understand how to log in and how to understand wifi, etc...  Not anymore that can come later.  The next class the parents will have to come to a meeting to discuss, logging in to the network, teaching their child how to use their device, purchase some apps, and understand a 21st century learners responsibilities.  We only had two parents attend our night time meeting, but we've had about 20 devices in two classes show up with signed permissions.

We've heard about the achievement gap but the technology divide is going to be the fastest than we ever thought about.  Both issues are very obvious in our title one school.
 

Next steps:
I do not think our teachers really know what to do with the devices.  They aren't sure how to integrate them into their lessons.  Next goal is to help facilitate that with my two pilot classrooms.
Next week, I suggest grouping the students into centers with CAFE or math activities.

Technology Tuesday is working so far.  I have the director of technology coming to speak tomorrow to help us with technical issues and discuss the counties technology goals.  Also, I will talk with him about the twitter account for the school.  The next week I'm going to invite just beginners for a 101 lesson on their device.

I'm excited about Edcanvas in Google Chrome for creating lessons and presentations.  I've made Powerpoints, Prez's, and tried just about everything, but nothing is faster to create than with Edcanvas.  If you use Google Chrome the site will give you access to google docs, you tube, and google search right on the site and then you just drag and drop.  Unbelievably quick, looks great, and then with google chrome you can use it on any device.  Edcanvas is worth a try!!