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

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Learning about Emancipation

It's been one of my beliefs for years now that one of the best ways to improve your teaching is simply to learn more about your subject. This is particularly true for elementary teachers--we don't have nearly the content knowledge that our colleagues at the secondary level have. That's why I believe we should all make the effort to learn more about the subjects we teach: more about history, economics, geography, culture, and government in social studies; more about physics, chemistry, life science, astronomy, and geology in science; more about algebra, geometry, number theory, data analysis, and probability in math.

This Tuesday Barack Obama will take the oath of office by putting his hand on the Abe Lincoln's bible. As you know, Abraham Lincoln was the president responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that freed slaves from the Confederate states. But how much do you really know about the history surrounding this document? Here's a link to a podcast from the NPR show On Point with Tom Ashbrook that will help those teachers interested in learning more about it. The show's title is called Remembering Emancipation. Listen and learn!


Technorati Tags: education| learning | history | inauguration

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OK, class, it's time for YouTube

Silly videos, crass practical jokes, music videos, bloody street fights; you name it, you can probably see it on YouTube. But what many of us (teachers, that is) are finding out is that the site is also rich in serious, professionally made videos that can teach our students a lot. My students have been finding videos on YouTube for a few years now and using them in their blogs and wikis (note: this year most of them have been using videos from TeacherTube; many of those can also be found on YouTube). What I have found is that my students are amazed that videos like these are on YouTube and love finding them.

In the article "Ok, Class, It's Time for YouTube" from the Christian Science Monitor, the site even gets a cheer from a marine biology professor. The author writes about how, through the urging of his son, he begins exploring YouTube and discovers that how it can make his classes come alive. His writing reveals his excitement:

I began my lecture on the classification of the invertebrates, reciting facts about their anatomy and habits as my students dutifully scribbled away. And then it was showtime. I booted up the laptop and projector, darkened the room, and clicked on YouTube.

The effect was magical. The blue ocean ebbed and flowed before us as myriad sea creatures swam, crawled, and flew about. I stood alongside the screen, narrating the action, occasionally pausing a video clip to point out this or that detail that illuminated my students' notes. From sponges to mollusks to starfish and their kin, we covered all the phyla of invertebrates.

The "wows" and "whoas" from the class confirmed for me that I had struck gold. When the lights came back on one of my students gushed, "That was a real trip."

I love reading articles about epiphanies like this. If you haven't checked out YouTube for educational purposes, do so as soon as possible. Chances are you'll discover some good material for your classroom.

Technorati Tags: education| learning | YouTube

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The Fourth Screen

Talk about a dream for the classroom--the Fourth Screen. Nokia has put together a nice little documerical (my word) that describes the evolution of media from the First Screen (the movie screen) to the Fourth Screen (essentially their telephone).

Picked up this video from the blog Education Innovation. I'm not sure how this blog has managed to avoid my radar, but I'm sure glad I stumbled on it. There's some really thought-provoking writing taking place here. Check out the write up about the Fourth Screen video below.





Technorati Tags: education| learning | innovation

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David Byrne's Playing the Building

I've become consumed with creativity lately. So when the following video showed up on Bloglines from on Wired.com, I had to check it out. Creativity suggests originality, and I would have to say that Byrne's idea is beyond original.

What interests me most about it though is that it does not seem to be a project that would require a great deal of knowledge and skill to pull off. Through trial and error, this is a project that a highly creative and motivated teacher could do with his/her students (though on a much smaller scale). Imagine how engaged the students would be! John Dewey would be proud!


Technorati Tags: education| Wired | creativity

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PVC Instruments

What should learning look like in the 21st Century? I have endeavored to answer this question this school year by turning my classroom into a laboratory to test the ideas that I have read about and listened to over the past year. Build Your Own Instrument: Blue Man Group Style, a culminating project for a unit on sound, was my latest attempt to define my concept of learning in the 21st Century.

This project required my students to create an instrument out of PVC pipes, the same sort of pipes that you'll find in your house's plumbing. I was inspired by the Blue Man Group, a "rock group" that most of my kids are familiar with and a few have seen live. This trio can make pretty amazing music from instruments constructed with PVC. I knew that once my students had seen them perform (check out this video from YouTube), they would be eager to build their own instruments. And just as I thought, my students tackled the project with a gusto from the design stage through construction.

So what how do I define 21st Century learning? Here are the competencies that I feel the project included/developed:

• Collaboration - My students worked cooperatively in groups of 3 - 5 on this project.
• Creativity/Innovation - Sir Ken Robinson has defined creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." I'm not sure of the value of these instruments yet, but it was obvious from the multitude of different designs that each one was truly original.
  
• Problem-Solving/Critical Thinking - It was common for a group to put their finished design together, only to find out that their design was flawed. One group found that they need would need more than screws and pipe strap to hold their instrument together and had to find a new way to do it. Students tinkered with their designs throughout the construction phase.
  
• Right-Brain Competencies (see Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind):
• Play - The instruments that the BMG play are of the percussion variety. I knew that this type of instrument would appeal to my kids; what kid doesn't like to bang on things. Aren't we always telling our boys to stop using their pencils as drums? The project was meant to act as an assessment, but I purposely planned an activity that would make it an enjoyable one.
• Design - No need to elaborate.
  
• Symphony - Students created instruments that had a minimum of three notes. They accomplished this by using either a slide or changing the length of different pipes (see photo above). This required them to synthesize what they had learned about sound, particularly frequency and pitch.

So where is the technology? It permeates the project, but I can't say that what I or my students did with it was real innovative. Here's a list of the technology that was used:

• Google Video - To get the video of the BMG to spark interest.
• Think.com - I linked to Home Depot and another site so that students could create their budgets.
  
• Digital Cameras - each group took photos of their instruments throughout the construction phase.
  
• Microsoft Word - Students typed up the project summaries using this. They also inserted photos into their documents.
  
• Wireless Laptop Lab - Students completed the work on Apple computers.

The project has me thinking though--is this really learning for the 21st Century? Before 21st Century skills were invented, I (and many other teachers) had my students creating products in groups using technology. Don't most teachers make an effort to develop these abilities in their students through their teaching?


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More Web 2.0 for Kids & Travel Web Sites

A little while back I wrote about Webkinz and how my students are using the Website to connect with friends online. I got a couple comments on that post, one full of other Websites rich with social possibilities for younger ones. Here they are:

• Club Penguin
• Neopets
• Whyville
• Runescape

I'm not real familiar with the last two, but when trying to access Runescape, my school's filter blocked it!!

A short while ago I also wrote about using Flickr to plan a trip. A comment from that post directed me to this site where I learned about these two sites:

• Tripwiser
• Triptie

Tripwiser provided me with much more information for my big trip to Acadia than Triptie. I was pretty impressed all around with the information and photos that I got there.


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Technorati Tags: education | travel

Wired Teens

Yesterday Guy Kawasaki over at the How to Change the World blog published an interview with Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online. The book is helpful for those trying to understand what teens do while online. The interview itself is a good primer on the subject; Goodstein makes some important points for not only parents, but also those of us in education. Of particular interest is what she has to say about banning social networking sites in school.

(photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/d/da/davdibiase/323533_surf_in_style.jpg)

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Technorati Tags: education | internet | Guy Kawasaki

Learning in the 21st Century

I've been reading quite a bit about the type of skills that our kids are going to need to succeed in the 21st Century and I find myself particularly interested in one of them, self-directed learning. Steve over at Teach42 had a post the other day called Book Learning or DIY Education that got me thinking about it even more. In his post, he states :

Let’s face it, at the end of the day our current testing system tells us precious little about how ready students really are going to be for life beyond the school building. And there’s so much that students learn in schools that just doesn’t get tested. What grade did each of you get in “Ability to find new solutions to unexpected problems?” I don’t remember that being on my school’s report cards.

What I have realized lately is that my state test only assesses content knowledge. So that is the only thing that most teachers teach--content. What it does not assess is critical thinking skills, innovation and creativity, collaboration skills, and problem-solving ability. So, guess what, in most classrooms these skills don't get taught. This runs counter to the thoughts of corporate leaders, authors, and organizations focused on infusing 21st century skills into the classroom.

Unfortunately, preparing for the state test often leads to a traditional, teacher-centered approach. Kids learn that their teachers are the source of knowledge instead of becoming self-directed learners--learners who see themselves as active participants in the creation of their own knowledge.

In preparing for a presentation that I gave this past Tuesday, I reflected on the work my kids have done this year, researched the possibilities of Web 2.0, and found other examples of best practices with the Read/Write Web. What I discovered is how well a project-based approach centered around technology helps develop the skill of self-directed learning. In creating a multimedia blog entry or wiki page, students are forced to look for resources that best serve their needs. By linking to another page, they must make sure that the page has accurate information that, once again, supports their needs. All of this helps them develop critical skills that will stay with them long after they have forgotten the content.



Technorati Tags: education | web-20 | flat world

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Webkinz: Web 2.0 for younger kids

So a student of mine told me about this website called Webkinz today. This site allows kids to bring a stuffed animal toy to life by creating a simulated home for it online. It also allows them to connect with their friends through chat rooms.

The site is evidently pretty popular with my fifth graders as the girl who told me about it was able to name a few other students who were using it. When I asked her why she liked it, she stated that she like getting money to build things for her pet.

This is pretty timely as right now I'm wrapped up in using a simulation video game as a teaching approach. My students have been glued to their computers for the last week playing Venture Africa. To me, the popularity of the Webkinz site and my students' level of engagement with Venture Africa reinforce the necessity of using these technologies--games and social software (my students communicated with each other through my classroom blog)--in the classroom.

It's very important that we begin to leave behind the tired teaching approaches that still dominate our classrooms. Our kids are bored and unmotivated by them. Bring in the right video game though and engagement soars.


Technorati Tags: education | web2.0 | Webkinz

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eSchool News: Gaming advances as a learning tool

In the midst of my experiment with game-based learning, eSchool News has come out with an article about the benefits of gaming in the classroom. The article discusses the use of games designed "...solely for self-indulgent, time-consuming entertainment at home" instead of games designed for education. It is these types of games that can make school more engaging for today's digital natives.

Speaking of today's digital natives...

My classroom of digital natives has been playing Wildlife Tycoon, a game like the ones described above, for three days now and I can't imagine a better way of teaching them about ecosystems. Like the students in the article, my students have said that the game has made class more interesting. Many have described it as addicting. They continue to talk about it between classes. And...THEY CONTINUE TO LEARN. Check out these comments:

Flamingos can live in flocks up to 20. They need water,and space with elaphants or babboons.
Zebras can live in heards up to 12. They need water and shrubs or grasses.
Lions can live in prides up to four. They need water and zebras or hares.
Hares can live in very big groups. They need grasses, no water, and lots of space because they breed quickly.
Elephants can live in groups up to 5. They need trees, shrubs, grasses, and water.
Jewels are essential because you get food and water from them so jewels are needed for everything to live.

By the way, two of the learning targets my students are supposed to be learning from this are:

• Summarize that organisms can only survive in ecosystems in which their needs can be met. (food, water, shelter, air, carrying capacity, waste disposal)

• Support how an organism’s patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism’s ecosystem, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms present, the availability of food and resources, and the changing physical characteristics of the ecosystem.

Think they're learning these?



Technorati Tags: education | video games | Wildlife Tycoon

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The Dream is Alive...It's Alive!

Imagine walking into a classroom and seeing groups of students gathered around computers--one student in the middle, hands on the keyboard, the others, their eyes fixated on the screen, pointing and barking directions to the student who currently sits as the controller of what goes on on the screen. They're all incredibly engaged, and it's almost as though the group of bystanders is watching the student on the computer play a video game, and with best intentions, they cannot help but to instruct him on the proper steps he needs to take to be successful in the game. This is exactly what is taking place. Yesterday my classroom became ground zero for a different kind of teaching & learning (at least for me)--game-based learning.

The folks over at Pocketwatch Games have created the perfect ecosystem simulation, Wildlife Tycoon, and my students are eating it up. I started to get interested in this approach last spring, and my research led me to this game. After downloading the trial and playing just a few minutes, I knew it would be perfect for teaching my grade level life science concepts. But what I wasn't prepared for was how perfectly my students' behavior would represent what I had read about game-based learning in the classroom. Following is a little of what I have read and how my students' behavior supports it:


James Paul Gee and The Classroom of Popular Culture

Gee mentions several important concepts in his article that my students experienced in just their first day of playing the game. First is the principle of "performance before competence." That is, they learned the game while they played it. The game comes with no manual, and very basic directions are given at the beginning of the game, but my students are quickly figuring it out. Here's a comment from team wildeco at the Wildlife Tycoon blog at my website:

We figured out that flamingos die easily, and that hares don't need water to survive, but flamingos only need
water to live. This means that you have to put the hares by themselves. Our strategy is to first earn the crystals,
then second to achieve your goal. But make sure you don't run out of crystals or flowers, because it sometimes
can be hard to regain them.

And teamteam:

1. i have learned that it is hard to sustain and amount of animals because the predetors eat everything in sight, and that makes it hard to get jewels. you need to have little flowers that let you get food and animals.
2. our stratagy is to make seprate watering holes for sertain animals, so not many of them can be eaten.

Second is the cycle of "consolidation and challenge." The problems presented to my students at the early stage of the game were ones that required them to formulate hypotheses for solving later problems. The game begins with a prologue level that presents players with the basic challenges needed to keep the animals of the ecosystem alive and reach their goals; of course, as the players advance through the levels the goals become more difficult to achieve and they must rely on this consolidation to advance.

Video Games and the Future of Learning by David Williamson Shaffer, Kurt R. Squire, Richard Halverson, and James P. Gee

During the afternoon switch, a new group of students comes to me to learn science and social studies. On a typical day, my homeroom class files out and the others file in and quietly take their seats. Today was different though. As my class left, several students could be overheard talking strategy with the students from the other class.

The authors begin this article by arguing against the commonly held belief that video games are "mere entertainment." On the contrary, video games actually create virtual worlds for learning. These worlds bring players together, making the games a thoroughly social phenomenon. Because there is only one computer with the game for every four students in my class, two students must become "scribes/researchers" and log on to another computer to go to another site where there are hints and tips for playing the game. These students then relay any information back to the two players. Today I'm going to allow my students to start searching the Pocketwatch Games forum for more tips.

One thing that I haven't talked about yet is the content my students are learning without even realizing it. We start debriefing on that next week.


Technorati Tags: education | video games | Wildlife Tycoon | James Paul Gee


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More on Video Games and Internet Safety

"It is by opening doors, not closing them that we create new possibilities for our children and new futures for ourselves."

An appropriate conclusion for a well argued piece from Pete Reilly called The Facts About Online Abuse and Schools. "How justified are our fears?" Reilly asks about the intense fear that schools have of exposing students to online predators. Using statistics on child and sexual abuse, he leads readers to believe that the walls we are erecting in our schools, due to these fears, need to be broken down.


Microsoft Vista, Gaming, and Parental Controls


From the NYTimes comes an article about the new safety features Microsoft is adding to its new operating system. For the first time, parents have "...powerful, easy-to-use, practically unhackable tools to control and monitor just about everything their children do with the home computer, online and off."



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My Contribution to the Cell Phone Drama

A newsletter that I subscribe to sent along a link to a website called Math4Mobile.com. From the site:

The Math4Mobile project examines the opportunities of ubiquitous and personal technologies for educational purposes, specifically of using the mobile phone for teaching and learning mathematics.

Five different midlets can be downloaded and installed on your cell phone. The midlets appear to be similar to what you would find on a graphing calculator.


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Books That Should Be on the Banned List

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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

More on Teens and the Internet

Internet safety has been a theme on this blog lately and two articles that I've read recently fit it perfectly--particularly the ways that teens are using the Internet. Below is a link and short description of each:

• A colleague sent me an article from Yahoo! News called Poll: 'IM-ing' divides teens, adults. A large part of the Internet safety program that we put on for parents at my school was dedicated to informing them of how teens use the Internet. The survey in the article, conducted by the AP and AOL, found that there was a major "instant messaging gap" between teens and adults.
• From The Christian Science Monitor comes Facebook: A Campus Fad becomes a Campus Fact. The article deals with how students on college campuses use Facebook and how the colleges have reacted. Although university students are the subjects of the article, there is much for K-12 educators to learn about the site.

Everything Bad is Good for You

Is this a common scene in your house? Or, instead of a football, does your child have a game controller in his hands? Well, it turns out that these scenes may not be as detrimental to your child's mind as you think.

This summer I had the pleasure of reading Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, where he asserts the belief that video games, television shows, and other forms of popular entertainment are actually making us smarter. In it, Johnson describes video games that require "probing" and "telescoping" to solve problems and advance through various levels of the game. He also compares modern television shows like 24 to shows of yesterday like Hill Street Blues to demonstrate the complexity of today's TV programming.

All in all, he convinced me that I needed to see for myself just how challenging television has become. I do watch some television, but I have never seen even an episode of the shows he describes in his book (with the exception of Seinfeld). One of these was The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin. When I found out that Sorkin would have a new show on this fall, Studio 60, I figured this was my opportunity to see just how challenging television really has become.

I was afraid to breathe throughout the entire first episode, afraid that if I did, I may become distracted and miss something important. I was glued to the television for the entire hour, trying to keep track of the action on screen, off the screen, and what had happened on the screen before the show started.

The show is now going into its fourth week and I have yet to miss an episode. I can't wait to experiment with video games. This test, however, will take place in my classroom. More on that later.

Steven Johnson | Popular Culture

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