Guest Post: Teachers of Tweens: Top Tips for Grabbing Your Students’ Attention

If you’re a teacher who works with kids around the “tween” stage – 9-13 years old – you’re probably exhausted by the end of the school day. This age group can be a lot of fun, because they’ve yet to become cynical or snobby and are still young enough to enjoy playing games, going out to recess and doing projects with friends. On the other hand, tweens are just entering adolescence, which means that they’re self-conscious, experimenting with romantic feelings, joining cliques, and starting to get the appeal of sarcasm, eye rolling and rebelling. Teachers, not just parents, may find it tough to catch, and then keep, the attention of teens as they try to educate them day after day, but there are a few tricks you can use yourself to outwit your tween students.

• Reference current pop culture: Kids get sucked into the pop culture and celebrity world at an even younger age than the generation before them. If you want to keep up with what they think is cool, educate yourself on the names of a few pop stars or teen actors that your students respect. Use these references when appropriate to help your kids relate to the lesson.
• Work with technology. An old-fashioned projector or even PowerPoint presentation isn’t going to impress your kids, so learn how to use tools like Twitter, wikis, iTunes, or Flickr to keep up .
• Invite guest lecturers. Show your kids ho relevant the skills they’re learning in class are to the real world by inviting guest lecturers to talk about their jobs and experience. Students are always interested in anyone new who shows up in the classroom, and you’ll get a break, too.
• Start with a media clip. Before introducing a new lesson – or as a way of reinforcing an old one – start your presentation with a clip from a popular song, a movie or a TV show that illustrates your point. Your students will be more likely to analyze the situation and discover the lesson’s real-life impact that way.
• Host mock or mini events. Get your kids to participate in an important lesson by setting up experiments, mock debates, classroom polls or elections and other projects that allow them to take on an active role. Their experience will help them understand the lesson on a deeper level.

This post was contributed by Emily Thomas, who writes about the best online universities. She welcomes your feedback at Emily.Thomas31@ yahoo.com

New on misterteacher.com: Thermal Energy | Properties of Light | Arithmattack

Flickr in the Classroom: A New Perspective

I've often written in this blog about how I think Flickr is a great tool for the classroom. About a year ago I took part in an interview for an article in Edutopia called My Friend Flickr. I did a complete about-face in the article, stating:

"I read on other teacher blogs that Flickr is really good for the classroom, and I think, 'No way,'" "It's open to anybody, and, because of that, you've got to assume people will put stuff there that will be offensive."

I intended to write a blog entry about it at the time but never got around to it. Well, the other night I was looking for some images on Flickr for a slide show I'm putting together and was astounded by some of the photos that I came across. I decided it was time to write that blog entry.

First of all, let me say that I love Flickr. It's free and has millions of photos that teachers can find for classroom use. I have 132 items in my photostream. However, there is NO WAY I would ever have my students use Flickr. Even the most innocent of searches can reveal some racy photos that would have me in hot water with parents and administration. And don't think for one second that the safesearch feature filters them out. For example, here is a search using the keyword teacher with safesearch turned on. Scroll down the page and see if there is anything that may be offensive to your average middle school student (the level I teach).

Now many folks would say that when students happen on offensive material, it is the teacher's job to turn the situation into a learning opportunity for kids. I agree, but only if they come across this material when doing a search of the web, not when they are using a site that the teacher has directed them to. If I have my kids search for photos on Flickr, knowing what they could come across, then I'll have a hard time defending myself if they do come across something offensive. So as much as I love sites like Flickr, I just think the risk of using it outweighs the benefits.


Photo Credit

Technorati Tags: education| Flickr | digital images

Check out: Rainforest Webquest | Digital Cameras in the Classroom | Alphabet Geometry

Using Flickr to Plan a Trip

Rugged Coast of Maine, originally uploaded by Karnevil.

A friend and I are finalizing plans for a trip to Acadia National Park in Maine this summer. One of my favorite parts of travel is the planning. Of course, in planning for this trip I've checked out a few informational sites that help visitors plan lodging, dining, site seeing, etc. However, none of these sites have many photos, and I'm really interested in SEEING what the park looks. It wasn't until today that I thought about paying Flickr a visit to do just this.

Above you'll see just one of the many photos that Flickr users have posted under the tag acadianationalpark. In fact, after a little clicking I found myself in a cluster full of photos with tags like acadia, barharbor, cadillacmountain, and desertisland, all tags for photos of places located in or around Acadia National Park. I even found a user who had a set titled Acadia National Park.

What I love is being able to click on a photo, see it and then click on the tags that go with it to see other photos that have the same tag. For all these reasons, Flickr has been great for helping me plan my trip to Acadia.

Books That Should Be on the Banned List

Check out: Digital Cameras in the Classroom | Spreadsheets in the Classroom | misterteacher.com

2006 was a strange year for me. I read more books than I have ever read, but had by far the busiest schedule in my life. Between raising 2 year-old triplets and adjusting to teaching all four subjects in a new school system, I sometimes wonder how I managed to even open a book. So how did I devour so much good reading?

For starters, I have a 35 minute commute to work, perfect for listening to audiobooks. This past year I read five books on my drive to and from work. I also had about 15 minutes to myself after the kids went to bed every night, and, amazingly enough, I was able to read three or four more books in that period.

I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend any of these books to you though. In fact, I'm going to write to somebody (???) and ask them to place them all on a banned book list. My fear is that if you read them, you might begin the slide towards total geekdom (I've already finished it and am enjoying what's at the end). And, God forbid, you may begin to think like me or some of the authors who wrote the books.

Or maybe you might learn something incredibly useful that could enhance the experience of your students this school year. So I think what I'll do is list my favorites among these books and say that these are my recommended reads from 2006.

• The World is Flat - (Thomas Friedman) - Should be the Bible for educators across this country.
  
• Everything Bad is Good for You - (Steven Johnson) - Video games and reality television really are good for you.
• Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Your Classroom - (Will Richardson) - I'm in this one!
• The Tipping Point - (Malcolm Gladwell) - I had no idea Paul Revere was so revered!
• Freakonomics - (Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner) - Weird questions, interesting answers.
  
• A Whole New Mind - (Daniel Pink) - I didn't realize I was so right-brained until I read this one!

I've already started spending those Christmas gift cards on more books. Soon I'll be learning about The Long Tail, how I think without thinking (Blink), and much more.


Technorati Tags: education | 2006 | books

An Innovative Teacher's Christmas Wish List

1. Flickr for Educators: If you read this blog at all you know that I love Flickr and have found many uses for it in my classroom. But I could be doing much more with this amazing tool if only I didn't have to worry about what my students might come across while using it. So what I'd love to see is the folks at Flickr work on setting up a safesearch option (just like the one on Google) that filters explicit text and photos. Then I could actually have my students go to the site and use it to find images to use in projects.
   
2. A classroom set of iPods: Now that it's possible to download shows from networks like National Geographic, Discovery, and Animal Planet, the number of possible uses for iPods in the classroom has skyrocketed. I can't imagine how cool it would be to take the tired practice of showing a video to the whole class and turn it into showing a video to each student individually on their own iPod. Heck, I don't even need a class set; take a corner of the room and have students watch the movies as part of a station-based lesson.
   
3. Unlimited access to the computer lab: I wish I didn't have to check out the lab weeks ahead of time and then try to fit in a lesson with computers.
4. Another class to collaborate with: I've been trying to find a teacher, or teachers, who is/are willing to collaborate on a project through blogs. Social studies, science, or math; the subject doesn't matter.
   
5. More time to read and blog: Dream on!
   

Check out: Digital Cameras in the Classroom | Spreadsheets in the Classroom | Technology in the Classroom

Technorati Tags: education | teachers | flickr | iPod | blogs

Using the Internet to Acquire Digital Images for Classroom Use

The Internet is a gold mine for finding digital images to use in your classroom. On numerous occasions I have found photos from Google or another photo site and used them on worksheets, in a blog entry, for writing prompts, or for something else. Below are some of my favorite sites for finding photos to use in the classroom.

1. Google Images.
   
2. Flickr - Millions of users, million of photos. This is Web 2.0 at its finest. This photo sharing site allows users to tag their photos, or add keywords to them when they upload. When you search for photos here, you enter a tag into the search box and any photo that has been tagged with that keyword is returned. Tips for using Flickr:
   • Try a tag search for math nature and you will get photos from folks who have tagged photos with those words. Go to the site and try this.
   • You can also do a group search for photos. Do the same search from above and your results will show groups who have uploaded photos with the theme math nature.
3. KidsClick - This page contains links to special image databases under the following categories: Art, Astronomy/Space, Animals, History/Society. Some of the links include Astronomy Picture of the Day, FWS Image Archive, and American Memory Collection.
4. Yotophoto - From the site: "Yotophoto is a search engine for free-to-use stock photographs and images. These are images that are either in the Public Domain or released under generous Creative Commons, GNU FDL or similar licenses."
5. Stock.Xchng - This site is full of stock photos for professionals. It is still full of photos that are great for classroom use.
6. PixelPerfect - Another site meant for professionals but full of of photos appropriate for classroom use. This is a comprehensive site on digital photography with tons of information on cameras, reviews, links, and more.
7. Pics4Learning - A copyright free image library for teachers. I can't say I'm real high on this one--there just isn't the depth here that you'll find in the sites above.

By the way, the above information is copied word for word from my Website Future of Math: Digital Cameras.


Technorati Tags: education | teachers | flickr | internet | photography | Pics4Learning

Teaching Probability with Tree Diagrams (Reflection)

Tree Diagram
Originally uploaded by Misterteacher.

We're finishing a two week unit on probability in my 7th grade classes. This year students had to make the jump from finding simple probabilities to computing compound probabilities (two tosses of a coin instead of one). Students were to use a list or tree diagram to find the sample space (total outcomes) and all favorable combinations (such as the number of times 2 heads and a tail occurs when tossing three coins).

Making tree diagrams has been extremely difficult for most of my students. They are having trouble even knowing where to begin with the diagrams. For instance, when calculating the sample space for tossing three coins, instead of branching out from a head and tail on the first toss, they might begin with three outcomes (two heads and a tail) and add three branches to each of those (to designate three coins being tossed).

To eliminate confusion next year, I am definitely going to create tree diagrams with blank spaces (see example) for each problem they solve and just have them fill in the blanks. This seems like the proper amount of scaffolding they will need to eventually create their own.

Flickr for Teachers: Teachers Sharing Sets

It's become quite common for teachers to share effective or innovative lessons through their blogs. This morning while I was helping my first period class complete a project on probability, I thought of another great way to share ideas--through Flickr sets.

Throughout this week I had been taking photos of my students in various stages of the project so that I could have them post the photos to their blogs with a summary of their experiments (this would be considered an artifact in project-based learning). I took seven photos in all and decided to create a set that I could link to in future blog posts. As I worked it occurred to me that with the visuals and the descriptions below them, this would be a very effective way to share ideas with other teachers. If I wrote about this project in my blog, teachers would only be able to read about it. With Flickr, teachers also get a visual representation of what they would be reading on the blog.

So check out my probability project set and consider sharing your innovative classroom lessons in this manner. You also might want to join the Flickr for Education Group and start sharing ideas there.

Categories: Education | Flickr | Math | Classroom

Flick for Teachers: Blogging Photos Part 2

In my last Flickr for Teachers post I outlined some ways that teachers can enhance student learning using the blogging feature of Flickr. The focus was on using photos as writing prompts in group, or class blogs. This post will focus on using photos from a class Flickr account in individual student blogs. The information presented below will be based on an article by Diane McGrath in the April 2005 Connected Newsletter titled 7 Tips for Successful Project-Based Learning. I've chosen a few of the tips from the article that I think Flickrblogs (a new term?) support. Here they are:

• Tip one: Blog as an Artifact
  
• "Students construct an artifact to help make their thinking visible, discussable, and revisable. It may be a physical object, multimedia, or a concept map." In our case, the artifact would be a photo, or a series of photos, that students have taken that display their learning during a project and blogged from Flickr.
  
• When they post the photo as part of a blog entry, students can also provide a description and a series of links to related material on the web.
• The blog makes the artifact visible to the whole school community.
• The comment link assures that the artifact is discussable.
  
• Tip Four: Blogs as communities of learners
• "Design your classroom to be a community of learners." The Flickr site maintains that its goal is to "...help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them." In other words, the goal is to create a community of people interested in sharing their photos. Blogs also support communities; in fact, one could argue that the purpose of blogs is to support the development of communities.
  
• Tip Five: Blogs are technology tools.
  
• "Learners can use real adult tools to...design artifacts." Based on the article, Flickrblogs would be great tools for expression, communication, and particularly cognition (tools that make thinking visible and fixable).
• Tip Seven: Blogs provide real audiences.
• "Students conclude their project with a presentation to a real audience."

I'm feeling some serious inspiration after writing this post. I'm seeing a project on probability that students complete on a Flickrblog coming up here in the next few weeks. Next up, sets in Flickr as artifacts of project-based learning.

Categories: education | Flickr | blogs | classroom | math

Linear Patterns: Flickr in Practice

With all these posts about Flickr, I figured I might actually start a classroom blog where I post a problem of the day (similar to think again!) several times a week and have my students respond through the comment link. I was able to get in a couple of these this week.

My first impression is that it's going to take the kids a while to get used to the routine--the first problem took the whole period in each class and the second problem took about 25 minutes! But doing this is going to help me achieve a few goals:

1. Get my students to write about math more often (when this is a requirement).
2. Get my students to think about how they are solving problems.
3. Elicit somewhat of a classroom discussion through the blog, almost like a silent discussion. After posting, students actually want to read about how other students solved the problems. This has similar benefits to an actual discussion--students get to read about the different strategies that one can take to get a solution to a math problem.
4. Discover an effecient form of assessment. When I scrolled through the students' responses to the problems, it was very easy to see where there were misunderstandings and note them so that I could correct them later.
   
5. Review prior learning.
   

I plan to continue this through the end of the year. Check back for more problems.

Categories: classroom teacher math

Flickr for Teachers: Blogging Photos from flickr

Once a classroom account has been set up with flickr, a teacher and his/her class(es) can begin the process of uploading photos and then using them in the classroom. One of the best ways to use these photos is to blog them. Flickr allows you to set up your account so that you can select and post a photo to any number of blogs. So if your students all have blogs, they can post photos from your Flickr homepage to them and use them for a multitude of different assignments. If your students do not have individual blogs, or if a group blog is being used as a class blog, then a host of other types of activities exist.

Following are suggestions for using a Flickr library as a tool to enhance classroom blogging. The suggestions are divided into activities for group blogs and those for individual student blogs.

Group Blogging with Flickr - In the classroom, a group blog is one that is administered mainly by the teacher. It is meant to build a community of learners by having student work published in a single place so that other members of the community can view it. Integrating digital images brings a new dimension to the group blog as the information is no longer just textual, but is now also visual.

• Writing Prompts
  
• Problem of the Day (or week) - Having students solve a problem (or problems) on a daily basis is a routine activity for most math teachers. It helps teachers to assess, review, and enrich the math curriculum. In a group blog, a problem is posted for students and they post their solutions through the comment link. Adding digital images from a flickr account allows a teacher to ask a wider range of questions because they can then use details from the image to eliminate much of the verbal description that would be needed without it.
  
• See Think Again! for a few examples
• Here's one on transformations.
• One on central angles.
  
• Journal entries - Of all the forms of writing in math, the requirements of a journal may be the most ambiguous. Entries can be as diverse as you wish, from justifying solutions to describing one's feelings toward math. A possible use of Flickr might be to take photos from classroom activities, blog them, and have students summarize the activity illustrated in the photo.
• Inquiry projects - An excellent example of using a blogged photo to get students to research a concept is at the Pre-Cal 40S blog.
  
• Blogging Photos from Your Favorites - Because Flickr is an online community, you have access to the photos of all Flickr account holders (as long as they wish to make their photos public). As you browse others' photos, Flickr has a feature that allows you to add those photos to a favorites page. Once there, you can blog those photos and use them for all of the activities above.

More Examples

If Kayla eats 1/4 of the pizza and David eats 2/3 of what is left,
how many pieces will there be when they are finished?
(from permanentennui)




What would the next three squares look like in the pattern above? Describe the pattern.
(from misterteacher's photostream)

That's it for this entry. Next up, suggestions for using photos in individual student blogs.

Flickr for Teachers: Your Own Personal Web Page

Click on the about link in flickr and here's what you'll find:

"Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world - has two main goals:

1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos."

If classroom teachers could take those goals and put them into their own words they might read:

1. I want to make my classroom photos available to members of the school community including parents, administrators, and other stakeholders.
2. I want to have a place to store my photos, regardless of platform, and use those photos in engaging classroom projects.
   

Building on the first goal, a great way to use flickr in the classroom would be as a homepage that documents the events of a particular classroom throughout a school year through digital images. Once a teacher creates an account on the site, the URL can be made available to parents and other members of the school community so they can watch the school year unfold in photos.

Here is how it might work:

• Our Class - Mrs. Jones is a third grade teacher who is great at keeping contact with parents. At the beginning of the year she takes photos of each student in her classroom and uploads the photos to the classroom flickr account. In addition, she takes the biographical information she collects on each student and adds a description of each student under their photo. Mrs. Jones then creates a set titled Our Class or Who Are We? using the photos and descriptions. Now parents can come to the site and page through the set to learn a little something about the students in their child's classroom. They can also add an inspiring comment for their child.
• Field Trip - Last Thursday Mrs. Jones' class took a field trip to the local natural history museum. With flickr in mind, Mrs. Jones snaps several photos of students at various exhibits with a digital camera. By Monday, she has uploaded the photos and created a set titled Field Trip to the Natural History Museum.
  

The possibilities are endless--photos from class parties, a science fair, class projects, assemblies, and on and on. Using flickr is more effecient than creating a web page and then taking the time to update it when new photos are added. Using flickr, you simply upload the photos, add a description, and the page updates itself.

So this ends chapter one of section one. Next up, enhancing learning through the blogging of photos from flickr.

Flickr for Teachers

for teachers

Sometime in the next few days I plan on beginning a concept album with the above title. As you know if you read this blog, I love flickr. Since discovering this site, I have thought of, and blogged, multiple uses for it for teachers. The songs on this concept album will each describe a different use for flickr in the classroom, with an emphasis on the mathematics classroom.

Let me stress that this is not a how-to--you will not learn how to upload photos or tag images. The information will be restricted entirely to classroom uses of the site. Below is a table of contents, which I'm sure will change in the coming days.

Table of Contents

Using Photos from the Classroom

• Your Own Personal Web Page
• Photos from the Classroom
  
• Blogging Photos from flickr
  
• Problem of the Day - see past blog entries
  
• Sentence Starters
• Journal Starters
• Sets - Creating Books
  
• Vocabulary Books - Patterns & Functions
  
• Real World Connections - Bring life to a concept
  
• Narratives
• Slide Shows
• Presentations from Projects

Using others' Photos

• Favorites
  
• Problem of the Day, Vocabulary, Real - World Connections
  
• Tags

Online Collaboration

• Groups

Tools

• "Send to Flickr" Bookmarklet
• Sky's the Limit!
• Social Studies - maps, presidential photos, historical photos, geography, culture photos
• Math - figures,
  
• Language Arts - photos that evoke emotions, authors, symbols, settings
• Science - concepts, scientists, tools,
  

Virtual Manipulatives

This past Tuesday our school had its first annual (hopefully) family math night. 15 families (a good turnout for our school) rotated through six stations, each lasting 15 minutes, learning about state indicators through interactive activities.

From the time the idea for a family math night was pitched, I knew that I wanted my station to involve the use of technology. But it wasn't until about a week from the big night that I decided on using virtual manipulatives. What a wonderful choice!

Virtual manipulatives weren't something I had used in my classroom before. I'm too busy using blogs, flickr, and discussion forums to find time for them. Nevertheless, I decided that I would teach transformations using the manipulatives from the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. This site is loaded with manipulatives spanning all grade levels and areas of math like geometry, algebra, number operations, data analysis, and measurement. Each manipulative comes with instructions, a lesson guide for parents and teachers, and challenges.

At my station, I instructed my students on the three most important transformations for this age group--translations, rotations, and reflections. With the virtual manipulatives, the kids were able to transform the shapes and see the results. This is powerful stuff, considering that textbooks only offer students a before and after image, there is no movement.

In my search for the perfect activity, I came across other sites with virtual manipulatives:

• NCTM Illuminations
• Manipula Math with Java

Although I am now sold on virtual manipulatives, I do have some recommendations for their use. Using these in class requires a great deal of advance preparation. You must know EXACTLY what each one does and have a list of questions ready to ask students as you teach. I had the benefit of using a projection system so that students could see what it was I was asking them to do. I can't imagine trying to teach a lesson using virtual manipulatives without one.

More Classroom Uses of Flickr

Let me tell you how much I love Flickr! Several nights ago I was busy late into the night (well, midnight) exploring the site and generating all sorts of ideas for using the images on this site in my classroom.

Let's begin with the tags section of the site. I'm currently in the middle of a unit on geometry so I was interested what I might find in the architecture and buildings section. Here I found a cornucopia of photos containing parallel and perpendicular lines, geometric solids, & symmetrical buildings, all in a real-world context. An image like this one could be posted to a discussion forum or group blog to elicit discussion about symmetry.

While exploring the above tags, I came across the urban and street tags. There were photos that illustrated the above concepts. However, it wasn't until I came across a photo that took me to the squared circle group that I really got excited. Thinking of problems that related to the photos was incredibly easy. I started blogging the best of them as I went so that I wouldn't forget them (see a few below). The rest I put in my favorites. So many concepts could easily be covered through these photos--fractions, concentric circles, and more.

So I know I can take the pictures from the site and use them elsewhere, but how could I have my students actually find their own photos on the Flickr site? I thought a tag scavenger hunt might be interesting. Give the kids a concept and have them search under related tags for photos that illustrate that concept. The only problem with this activity is that some of the photos are titled with inappropriate language or have inappropriate content. A solution might be to have students do a favorites scavenger hunt. If you have a concept in mind, like parallel lines, search for photos that contain examples of parallel lines and add a ton of them to your favorites. When mixed with the other photos in this page, students will have to look closely to find the pictures that best illustrate this concept. When they have found one, have them blog it with a short description.

Rotation

hot
Originally uploaded by .lou.

Imagine the circle is rotated so that the arrow is facing right. Describe the amount of the rotation in degrees. How would the word hot appear?

3 Central Angles

P1000010
Originally uploaded by N-ino.

3 congruent central angles are pictured. Find the measure of each angle. Please include an explanation and an equation.

Big Tire

big tire
Originally uploaded by byrdiegyrl.

Describe how you would find the area of the tire. Please include the equation you used.

I Love Flickr

Just subscribed to the Flickr blog. It's neat to see the photos that other people are posting to the site without having to browse the actual site. Of course, as a teacher I immediately began to think about how I can exploit this wonderful resource. There is so much potential for having students get really creative snapping photos with digital cameras and then having them write about the subjects. I just wish there was more time for this sort of thing.

Flickr: Student Examples

The first set of student blog entries with Flickr have been completed. I must admit that this was mostly an experiment. Originally intended as an assessment, this assignment ended up being just that, an assignment. Due to time constraints, students were only able to blog one photo. Obviously, a good assessment can not be based on one question.

The learning target for this assignment was "describe the difference between rational and irrational numbers." I graded students on a five point rubric: 1 pt for telling the fraction they saw; 1 pt for changing it to a decimal; 1 pt for telling what of kind of decimal that was; 1 pt for correctly identifying that decimal as rational or irrational; and one point for a conclusion.

Here are two exemplary entries:

Ciara's Blog
Mike's Blog