Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Wet Feet

An ed blog about embarking on integrating technology into my (Jewish Studies) classroom. Join with me as i experiment with new ideas and approaches to the oldest book.

Digital Day of Learning

Today was digital learning day.  These are the digital learning elements that happened to be part of my professional day.

1. worked on a wiki project with my 10th grade: 10dibrot.wikispaces.com

2. introduced my Seniors to Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint.  (They weren't convinced.)

3. Attended a Webinar from YU 

4. Tried to translate something on google to use in class.  That was a bust.  Google translate cannot intuit Rabbinic Hebrew properly.  (I only tried this when the book was missing from the school Library.  It is particulalry annoying when a last resort tactic fails.)

 

The Power of being connected

Today was a bad day.  (Hum the bars to the Daniel Powter song here.)

I woke up with a cold and then I opened my email and saw that Ayelet Galena, a baby that I only know about through mutual friends, died. (This put my two-not-so-sick-but-sick-enough-to-stay-home-from-school kids into perspective.) Seeing the updates on Facebook and all the condolences being sent to the Galena family was moving.  I especially liked the way this blogger spoke about Ayelet's too short life and her parents courage and humor.

My day got worse when I found out that someone that I know has been using the internet in horrible ways. What takes my  breath away was how another life and persona existed and how many people are effected (allegedly) and how NOT ONE adult knew over LONG periods of time.

The world is changing. Rapidly. How do we get our heads around it and have this power to comfort, connect, console, and learn over cyberspace and at the same time keep our kids safe and grounded in the here and now.  Will we only figure it out by trial and error? Sometimes the error differential is just too big.

The need to proofread

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I made some public errors recently and it stings.  The first was a minor typo, the second was not going through slides on a PowerPoint carefully enough before my presentation. I want to publicly justify myself, cry out the unfairness, explain that a typo isn't the end of the world and why I didn't have the time to go through my presentation.  All of this is true but it doesn't matter in the end because it happened, I look bad, and I need to pick up the pieces and move on.

There are a few takeaways from this, though:

1. I am a procrastinator at heart and the more I do in front of an adult audience, the more I need to script myself.  I don't need to read the script per say but I need to have written one.  When I do that I am more thorough. A few mistakes can be forgotten but I am on the way to creating a pattern.  The 'big screen' is a powerful tool and a great magnifier of mistakes. Ouch.

2. My officemate gently chided me to move on today and she is right. I need to let go my personal disappointment. The more I harp, the worse I sound.  Admit mistakes, review them to learn and grow, and then move on.

3. I need to find a way to blow off steam when people annoy me. I tend to use conversation as a way of therapy.  I think I need to find a new way. On the other hand, I would love to share with you the story of the patronizing co-worker...

Ok, time to move on.

 

My new favorite tool

With thanks to AVI CHAI for the ISTE experience, Adam Simon for first mentioning using phones in class, and Tech Rav for his post about using polleverywhere.com as a ticket to exit. I confiscated a phone from a kid a few weeks ago and decided that I needed to start using phones in class as a tool. The result is chronicled in last week's E-tone, Beth Tfiloh's weekly newsletter.

 

Rockin' Robbin

Today's Confession: Twitter is something that I have started avoiding.

I thoroughly enjoyed #jedchat two weeks ago and have been disappointed that I haven't been able to 'attend' since then. (It is on my calendar for tomorrow. Let's hope that my home life is calmer than it has been). I hadn't even noticed that I hadn't signed in to twitter since then until Sunday.  On Sunday I had a free moment and realized that Twitter was stressing me out because there is TOO MUCH INFORMATION. 

Here are other things that I have noticed:

1. Following Twitter on my smartphone is most natural for me. Perhaps because that was the first platform that  I really used it on?

2. Tweetdeck beeps too much on my laptop but it is the best way to follow hashtags.

3. Hootsuite is much better for my iPad that Tweetdeck.  Tweetdeck is ineligent in my opinion on my iPad.

4. I really like the tips and ideas and exchanges of information but it is too easy to get bogged down.  

Here are two great things ideas that I got today from Twitter:

1. Bring a cartoon to class on X given topic.  White out the lines and ask students to fill it in themselves to check for understanding.

2. Use Wurdle for Bereishit 1 and Bereishit 2 and compare it to the thesis of the Lonely Man of Faith in a class discussion.

But, when I put my glogster question 'out there' I haven't heard a peep in return!  

How do you use Twitter? Do you have any tips on how to use it more efficiently

?

Professional Goals:

“Blog Goals” has been a to-do item on Wunderlist for the past two months.  I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to meet any goals if I never take the time to articulate them. There are professional goals limited to the realm of my classroom and ‘edteching’ worlds. It is very important to me to strike the balance between creating goals that I can attain and also stretch myself at the same time. Therefore, I have determined what are the general areas that I want to set goals for and I have tried to set one concrete goal for each. 

Classtoom goals:  I am adapting a new course this year in my role as department chair and I have been really striving to utilize different methods in the classroom. I would like to hit a stride, though, that incorporates a variety of methods that work with the material and also creates an interesting classroom environment. Under consideration are: how to quiz using technology, different approaches to covering ground in and out of the classroom, and the methodologies of approaching the text.  My goal is the take the time to reflect on the different approaches (in writing, see next category) to determine what works and what doesn’t for this course.

Blogging – I would like to blog once a month. I would be thrilled I can do write more. Blog topics will be talking strategies for classroom instruction and or technological tools that I employ. Occasionally I will talk about content related issues but I don’t plan on focusing on those ideas too much.

Professional development – I am a mentor in the Jewish New Teacher’s Project, so this one is easy. I have two professional development opportunities with the program over the course of the school year.I am, however, always hungry to learn more and that is why I joined Twitter. Following tweet, actually reading the articles, and developing a twitter presence of my own are all things that I am interested in doing. Time is my only issue; I think a more realistic goal is just to read the articles. I had a lot more time to tweet during the summer.  

Administrative goals – A department chair job, like many jobs, is what you make of it.  I mentor teachers, develop materials, and work on defining skills and benchmarks that are appropriate for my school environment.  As an administrator, I want to make sure that I get into every class this year and give some constructive feedback. 

So, there you have it.  One goal for four categories. Wish me luck!

Wurdle

Using this to teach how to study for a vocabulary quiz for דברים פרק א.  

Intrigued that אשר is one of the dominat words.  Is there significance to that? Seems kind of like filler.

Wordle: Devarim 1
The first chapter of בראשית seems to lend itself visually in a more meaningful way:
Wordle: Bereishit 1

 

Flipping Out

From Evernote:

Flipping Out

Clipped from: http://techrav.blogspot.com/2011/04/pros-and-cons-of-khan-academy.html
What does a Flipped Judaics Classroom look like?

I am in the process of developing a course for high school students with Rabbi David Fohrman and we have been discussing the the model of a 'flipped classroom' for this endevour.  On one had, it is a good model of using material that has already been created by one person that is being implemented by another teacher. However, as I have been pondering the implementation of this methodology in my classroom, I keep coming back to the question: 'what will this look like?'
Many of the teachers that are reporting on classrooms that are already 'flipped' are in the math/sciences. Tech Rav, Tzvi Pittinsky, observes in his blog post:  

Math is almost entirely about skills acquisition. One learns the skills to solve an equation, practices that skill set on a number of similar problems, and then moves on. These skills are often sequential and cumulative. The analogy that Salman Khan makes to riding a bicycle in his TED video is very apt. Learning to do math seems very similar to learning to ride a bike. But how many other subjects are like this? Certainly, Chumash and Gemara have skills but these skills are intertwined with concepts, ideas, questions, answers, and proofs. Can a Khan type of approach really do justice to this? (
http://techrav.blogspot.com/2011/04/pros-and-cons-of-khan-academy.html)

This is the fundamental question that I am stuck on.  When we have students watch a video on the 'content' what are the students applying in class? How are we structuring class discussion? I am unsure that this is the best use of technology within the Jewish Studies classroom and I wonder what parts of this revolution are going to be here when the tide shifts.

So, fellow educators: what are your ideas for what your classroom will look like if it were flipped? Chavrusas? Discussion? Projects? All of the above? I look forward to all your imput.

Getting my Feet Wet:

From Evernote:

Getting my Feet Wet:
Getting my Feet Wet:

As a full-time working mother within a one hour commute, time is of the essence. I have time to brainstorm and compile thoughts on the drive into work but I don't necessarily get to sit at my desk, browse the Internet for ideas, read all the articles that I would like to and then also create lessons, grade, and still have time to follow up on issues in the building that I need to be present for.  I am sure this isn't a unique problem (right?) but it does necessitate compromises and creative strategies and summer.  

Summer: I posted on Facebook this week that I finally finished my June 'to do' list. I wasn't really kidding. Summers have a way of going way too quickly making up for all the things that I don't have time to do during the school year.  What do people do if they aren't teachers, you ask? Good question. I believe that if they have a desk job they do have more time to take care of the phone calls and other tasks that one can't do if one is a teacher. There are days in school that I literally don't sit down from the time I enter the building until when I leave - and I am talking about a full school day plus here - between class time and meetings.  So summer becomes a time to take care of both personal and professional issues that can't get taken care of from September to June. 

This summer has been dedicated to finding better solutions for my classroom that go into autopilot during time crunches. One of the greatest challenges I face in integrating technology into my classroom is time.  That isn't to say technology can't save time but when push comes to shove and I don't have a chance to compile all the necessary materials for a given lesson or idea, I still can walk into the classroom with the raw materials and just teach. This isn't necessarily best practice - it also isn't necessarily worst practice - but it is portable, convenient and very accessible.

My first task is to find a better way to work on vocabulary for my Chumash class.  In the past, I have tried a variety of student and teacher driven approaches. My goals for vocabulary are simple: build a lexicon, have it take up as little time as possible and, at the same time, make sure that the students understand how critical a rich vocabulary is. Ok, so it doesn't look so simple on paper but the truth is in the past I met this goal most of the time.  Last year my system didn't work as well as it had in the past for reasons that I won't go into here but it was clear that I had to find a new system.

ISTE was a catalyst for brainstorming tech ways of integrating vocabulary into the classroom. I believe that in this case technology will help me meet the goals of have the students work on building their vocabulary independently and asserting the importance of it which making it accessible and user friendly to them at the same time. The question is: how to accomplish this and what technological approach is best?

The first mode that I researched was moodle.  I had tweeted my inquiry for vocabulary and @torahskills showed me the system that he had created for his classes.  After poking around his material for a bit it was clear to me that having students working at home would create a HUGE cheating problem. Not that I question my students integrity, mind you (really!), but I am of the believer that if a teacher doesn't predict a hole in the system that said teacher is begging students to exploit them. (And, if you are a former student reading this, there are times that I leave holes in my system purposely because I think resourcefulness is a skill too like posters in the back of the classroom.) In any case,  it was clear that I needed to be more creative.

Enter: show me app.  I have seen a project my friend (and former neighbor) @noamdavidovics was working of for a school that he is involved in. It is really cool, take a look: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmduIBjeIdKOdGxKT3hzZUJSeWd1MV9MdnZhSE9Wdmc&hl=en_US (feel free to contribute).  I played around with it a bit but it wasn't exactly the format that I wanted because it would have to be organized so that students would take turns preparing the vocabulary materials and I really want all students to be responsible all the time. 

I then did a search for flashcards online and - voila! - I figured it out.  http://www.flashcardmachine.com/ has a system where I can make the flashcards and have the students quiz themselves. If they have a unique username (submitted to me in advance, of course) they can take the quiz, take a screen shot and send it to me via email. They can do the work on their own time and I don't have to grade. What if someone takes the quiz for them under their screen name, you ask? Good question - if you have any ideas let me know.  I can also ask the students to create their own flashcards and share them for extra points and create a hierarchy for adding in pictures, different translations, etc. If students do that - a drill exercise may turn into something much more substantial learning experience.  I don't think all the kinks are ironed out because I need more time and some feedback. 

Look at what I was able to do, all because it is summer!
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