Exit Slip IV

I learned that we might not need to drive cross country to attend class.  We can meet online if the weather is bad or if we want to.  We should do it actually just for the experience.

Exit Slip III

Class is more than sitting in a room for a couple of hours.  It iincludes woring on assignments and interactions even if only in the cloud.  At the same time there are experiences out of class in the real weorld that relate to class.  Everyone's content in a class is unique because each of our perceptions is related to past experiences.  I often think about how my classes relate to my present and past experiences.  My reflection reminded me of a John Wayne quote, "You can't help being who you are any more than I can help being me".   I was also reminded of a recent statement by my neighbor who said, It is really hard to be Wayne" (his name is Wayne; not a John Wayne thing).  Here is my thought.  I have never felt more out of place than I feel as a student at UWSP (Central Wisconsin Teacher's College?).

GoAnimate Service Learning Project

Service Learning Project: GoAnimate at Adams-Friendship High School

            Home of the Green Devils       

My service learning project started one way and then it split and doubled down.  Initially, I was able to get Marsha Roelke, biology teacher, to agree to help me teach her 10^th grade biology students to use GoAnimate to make cartoons with their class content which was biomes of North America.  I obtained permission from the principal who was familiar with the cartoon making program.  Then, I taught Marsha the program and she loved it.  So, naturally, she wanted to do it in both of her biology blocks.  I agreed.  The, we had a complication. 

The assistant principal called and asked if I would substitute long-term for an auto shop teacher who had walked out because he had too many students with bad behaviors.  He was primarily concerned with safety, I think.  I agreed to do it on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  Nick Darnick agreed to do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  He was fired last year as the teacher of ALIVE, a program for impossible kids, so that another person who had more political clout could have the job.   We worked out a coordination scheme with Mr. Nofzinger and Mr. Eichman who would feed us stuff to do in the classes.  Mr. Eichman in the wood shop guy and Nofzinger is the long-term substitute for the auto shop who was transferred to the metals shop for the new metals shop teacher who replaced Nofzinger when he moved to Minnesota because his bride wanted to move in with her mother who lived there.  So, when the new metals teacher went to hospital to deliver her baby, Nofzinger took over that job and the administration was not able to staff the auto shop with a certified substitute.  So, the students got mad and rebelled because they wanted to be in the shop.  That’s when I, expendable super sub, was called in.

 I told the assistant principal that he had to cover for me on the day that I planned to be in Marsia’s class doing my service project.  He said OK and then during my first sub day in auto shop, he told me he would not cover for me.  So, I had to punt.  Marcia’s room has several computer stations where her students work in pairs.  The room is next to the computer lab in the commons area.  Luckily, I signed up my classes in auto shop for the same times we had planned the service project.  Marcia agreed to help cover mine when I was instructing hers.  I also signed mine up for the proceeding class day so that I could teach them the GoAnimate program before I had to teach hers.  That worked out.  So, I taught the cartoon making program and assisted students to use it for content presentations during several class periods.  We did both of Marcia’s for 2 days and I did 3 blocks of mine for 3 days for a total of 13 hours.

What I DID

I started by explaining to the auto shop students that they would learn to make cartoons using the auto shop content that Nofzinger had taught them from the text book.  Some of them thought it might be fun and others threw empty plastic bottles at me.  I thought they might like to learn a little about technology tools so I set up poll anywhere and asked them to use their cell phones to text me a message consisting of the key plus their name.  They started to do this and thought it was fun.  Then I received 25 racist and pornographic messages that I deleted before closing the browser that was being displayed on the IWB.  I used the IWB on he first day to show the shop students how to sign up and start using GoAnimate when they got to the computer lab the next period.  One student took the IWB projector remote from mje and Announced that they would do the class their way.  I threw him out sending him straight to Nofzinger.  Class was over.  During the next 2 class periods which were a Friday and Monday, we spent the time in the computer lab where I monitored their work with GoAnimate and provided individual help while walking around.  During their first session, some students made pornographic and racist cartoons.  I was using Vision and shut them down.  At the end of the 4^th Block on Friday several of the students tried to leave early and started horsing around.  I raised my voice to shut them down.  They ignored me and other teachers ran out of their rooms screaming at the students to help me.  Saved by the bell!

Monday was better because the students had experience and could actually start making cartoon movies.  Students were told to bring ear phones.  Some did and some shared.  Marcia borrowed some from the technology teacher, Mrs. Kuchta. (Her husband was the former vice principal whose arm a student dislocated at the shoulder and then snapped like a stick.  He is no longer at the high school and has had several surgeries to repair his broken arm and shoulder.  Mr. Kuchta is larger than I am and younger.  Teaching can be hazardous to your health.)    In addition, Marcia was there to help me when I was in her room where I taught the program to her students.  During second block when I had my best students and Marcia had her most challenging students, Sherman Anderson, an EEN teacher, helped in Marcia’s room with some of his labeled students.  He really liked GoAnimate and his help was really good.  My kids started making cartoons and finding neat effects that I did not know about.  They made videos of cars having accidents, running over people and other things.  The biggest problem was finding cars to insert but there were several available in the templates that were free.  Some of the videos were quite good although short.  Students often got in a hurry and clicked on skits which wasted some time because the skits buttons do not take students to the movie making studio.  This simply showed that students had not paid close attention to my instruction, or that my instruction was lacking.  However, it is easy to understand how distracting the GoAnimate site is.  As the students worked I walked around helping them individually and filming their activities to provide evidence for my final report and for my electronic portfolio.  The lessons actually went very well except for a moment when I stepped into Marcia’s room before she made it to my computer lab.  Suddenly Mr. Norton ran over screaming at me not to leave the students alone.  The students felt bad for me and that helped me.  Of course I wanted to smack Mr. Norton.  He could have offered to help because he was on his prep period after all.   The students did not misbehave during this block in any way.   I know Mr. Norton was not wrong for correcting me, but under the circumstances I had little choice if I were to do justice to my service project.  There were no bad students in this block and I only left momentarily expecting Marcia to rotate with me.  She just was not fast enough.  Nuts!   Anyway, some of the student videos are highlighted in the video linked and/or attached at the end of this report.

What I Learned

GoAnimate

The GoAnimate program contained Many more options than I had found in my brief experience with it.  I learned that it is fun, user friendly and relatively easy to use.  However, it takes some practice with settings to get characters to speak clearly.  The program does not recognize technical jargon as well as more common words.  For example,  it is hard to understand he stick figures when they Are talking about the “e” vironment and so forth.  Students did not realize that they had options of setting the rates of speech so that voices would sound more normal.  Generally, students rapidly improved when using the program.  Marcia’s students produced better products than the auto shop students.  It is harder for a sub to keep students on task, especially when they know their grades are not in jeopardy.  Finally, I learned that when I compress the videos that I made for transferring, I lost audio quality more than video quality.

Learner Capabilities

There were differences among learners, of course.  My observations suggest that about half of the students regardless of which class could rapidly read the directions in the program and progress independently.  Others needed a little help from their friends to find things and that was mostly due to impatience.  On the other hand, a few really needed help and were confused while they were trying to use the program.  These kids had no e-mail addresses, no computers at home and little experience surfing computer turf on their own.   Most of their experiences boiled down to watching over peer shoulders in classes.  This I see as a real problem.  Before tech can really come into classrooms, students need to be trained to use it.  There is a learning curve.  I know from my own experience that I can learn new programs faster now because my subconscious has a feel for the formats and computing language that I did not have before.

What I Learned About teaching

I learned that technology has some problem with leaving some children behind increasing the gap between rich and poor.   I either read or wrote that computers serve as society’s equalizer like the six gun of the last century.  It can be wonderful but it can be a problem too.  I learned that HS students can rebel when teaching lacks relevance.  I learned that few teachers are technology literate.  I learned that teachers have a hard time finding the time to become literate and to develop new skills.  I learned that teachers and administrators are not always your friends but expect you to be theirs.  But, I learned that students who are engaged often use the opportunity to construct their own learning and classroom management is better when students understand the relevance of lessons and have something to keep them physically busy.  I was also reminded that students who a teacher connects with behave better.  I should have spent more time in the beginning doing connection exercises.  That was my mistake.

What I Will Do Differently as a Result

I will try to slow down and get to know the students first.  I will establish classroom rules first.  I will spend more time teaching the why before I teach the how to.  I will treat substitutes with more regard and have real, relevant lesson plans ready for them. 

Maybe most importantly, I keep thinking that I fit the best in middle school teaching.  I find that the disruptive high school students can be the toughest on me and the most dangerous.

This is really a hard question to answer because I must wonder how I can do something differently that I have never done.  Of course, I have done it for 25 years.  My problem was always learning the students’ names when classes were large and I was never a strict disciplinarian.  I did not need to be because I was teaching adults.    If I learned one thing in this project it was to make clear instructions that students can easily follow one step at a time.  These need to be printed for each student so that each person can work at their own pace.  A good analogy is the way computer lessons are presented on Lynda.  They are slow, deliberate and cover only one or two points at a time.  I tend to go to fast and forget that it is easy to lose students who have less background than I have.  Good examples of this are on our class discussions.  Some students are having more trouble than others.  The question is why.  Did some procrastinate?  Do some have little computing experience?  Are some more timid than others?  Here is an interesting thought to reflect on.  I am a retired professor.  So, why do I tend to intimidate young university students (unintentionally, of course, but I feel that I often do) versus why am I often intimidated by high school students?  I will be a teacher when I can answer this question.  Or, maybe I’ll just be a philosopher.

GoAnimate Service Learning Project from Mark Johnson on Vimeo.

Internet Sites Evaluations

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

     I know that this is a bogus site because the scientific name is bogus.  When I looked up the scientific name on I, I got a Wikipedia site that told me that the web site was a hoax.  Most links to it say it's a hoax.  Doug says, "It is every bit as real as a snipe".  Of course, Doug is too ignorant to know that snipe are real birds.  He meant snipe hunt.  Anyone who reads the site "November ....." has the answer and knows the answer for  all four of these sites and more.  The site is not a dot com; it is a dot net making it more likely to be incredible compared to a dot com.

http://martinlutherking.org/

This site is obviously a hate site based on its message.  It is a dot org.  It is blocked by school web sites.  Links go to bogus sites, there is no David Duke autobiography.  Most links end up in ludicrous cyberplaces.
David Duke would be ashamed of it and I am certain he would like his name off of it.

http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/

This site is a dot com.  It has a copywrite date.  It has links to twitter and facebook that are legit.  It has a disclaimer starting the purpose of the site.  It lists credits for certain photos etc, and it has a contact link.   Links go to legitimate sites with information I know is correct and that is verifyable elsewhere such as in history text books.  The November Learning site seems to suggest that it is a "good" site.  A google search links to a lot of good information about lessons for kids to use to evaluate web sites also too.
http://www.dhmo.org/

Obviously water is water unless it is upgraded to beer (dhmo.malt).  The translation button does not work.  November Learning lists it as a bogus site.  There are links to other goofy sites.  Its contact to a federal politician page is not a legitimate site for making contact with a federal politician.  It has no referenced literature to published research.  It is a dot org, its pay pal doesn't work. Its ""translations does not work.  I was last modified recently and the copywrite is owned by Tom Way who teaches computing stuff at Villanova University.  Obviously, he is neither a chemist nor a member of the dhmo organization which doesn't exist.

Integrating Technology into the Classroom Podcast

This is where the link to my podcast was going to be, but I discovered that it is not so simple to link a podcast to a blog.  I don't have time to do it right now.  I started making my podcast at about 4:00AM and it is now afteer 21:00 hrs and I am cleaning cat hair off of my keyboard.  I did not work the whole time on it.  I stopped initially after 6 hrs and moved on to EDUC 337 Unit Plan assignment.  Then, in the middle of that I made a Zucchini based lasagna.  Then, I finished my UbD template.  Then, I went back to the podcast at about 5 PM.  By the way UbD is a trademark owned by the people who promote UbD so that they can make more money.  If they can convince teachers that it is the best teaching method, they make more money.  And, they are pretty successful because most people are sheep, afterall.  I have my own method which is work long and work hard.

Anyway, I was initially going to say that making my podcast was quick and easy, it was easy but not quick.  I was nearly done by 8:00AM but I just couldn't figure out how to split my voice track so that my gong (sound effect) wouldn't interfere with my narration.  Oh, yes I had to find and download a sound effects program and a music program.  That was quick and easy.

So, first I found and read several related articles about using technology in the classroom and developed my script using all of them.  I dfound it more interesting and easier to script when I had multiple people to interview.  First, I hand wrote the script.  Then, I typed and edited it.  I was in a hurry to make the podcast, truthfully.  Then, I opened Audacity and started.  I had downloaded it the night before along with some other programs.  Then, I first read the script.  Then, I imported 2 tracks of the music putting one at the beginning and one at the end.  Then I modified my script and re-did it to be better able to add my gong.  I added my fades in and out (no, out and in).  Later, I divided (not split) the in to an in/out because that made more sense.  Finally, I wanted to separate my voice from my gong.  I thought it would be easy.  No, it was not because I couldn't make it happen in the correct order on Audacity.   You would think that I could just grab my gong and squeeze it.  That didn't work either but it woke me up, anyway.  So, I gave up after watching about 10 YouTube videos where people tried to explain it.  One guy did a great job in less than 2 minutes but i couldn't find it a second time.  I needed rest.  Then, when I came back, it took me just a few minutes to do it.  See, it really was quick and easy, afterall.  I just opened Audacity, called up my saved project, plaed it until it got to the place, stopped it at the right palce, highlighted (selected) the part of the voice track behind the place I stopped the play, went to edit, selected "split" and the selected part of my track dropped way to the bottom of the screen in another channel.  I selected the move tool and dragged it back a little.  I did it for page 2 and page 3 of my voice recording and I was done.

Not so Fast!  I wanted to link it to my blog.  I tried and failed.  So, I watched those instructions in Lynda.  I like Lynda a lot, actually.  I discovered that I have to publish it on a web site first.  Not today, because my provider wass hosting a free feed for everybody cept me cause I forgot about it.  Gee, Maggie May was singing too.  Nuts!  She and Roger are on the road a lot these days(Maggie May).   So, we don't have as many free barn dances as we used to.  I am glad she is doing so well.  Anyway, I'm going to try and publish it because I want to find out how to get files on my provider's server.  I wonder whether I can use dreamweaver and put it on UWSPs server by getting it on my SOE portfolio.  What do you think?

Go to the page linked below and find the title low on the right side of the page. Give it a little time to get there and make sure that Quicktime loads.  Ureka!

Technology in the Classroom Podcast

Well, how about that!  And, I hope you will scroll down to How it made me feel on he same page.


These links below represent my sources of information for my podscript

Integrating Technology into the Classroom

Using Technology in Classrooms

Government Research

School Stories

Digital Nation

I’ve seen parts of this program before but really did not think much about it as I had much less interest then.  Now, as I watched the chapters, I thought there was little that was really new about the stories.  These are the same old complaints from older people about younger people.  Yes, kids are addicted to games and my sister-in-law is addicted to gambling.  My parents became addicted to the ding, ding, and ding of the Casino too after retiring.  That, I never understood.  But then, I am cynical and I think I am savvy.  I know that I am naïve sometimes.  My brother used to drive his kids to a video game store on Saturday about 9:00AM and pick them up at about 9:00PM.  I never understood that either.  However, as a teen, I played pin ball for hours on end.  So what is different?  Well, we didn’t have pinball machines in school for one thing.  I think the reason that we don’t ban games from school computers is because we want to have something to keep bad kids from driving us crazy.  So, we let them and their bad behavior win.  What choice do we have?  It’s hard to expel them, right?  There is little we can do to control them otherwise, right?  If that is so, then why is it that when bad kids are placed in alternative programs as a last chance for schooling, they generally exhibit near perfect socialization?

I think when they get to this point students experience a catharsis and finally understand the real long-term consequences of poor behaviors.  We are making terrible mistakes with kids in some schools.  We are teaching bad behaviors.  Elementary teachers work so hard to socialize little kids.  Then, when we get them to middle school, they are allowed to revert to selfish, disrespectful behavior.  Watch a cat with her kittens.  Swift, harsh correction works and is a salvation. 

An analogy of the way we wrong kids is when we drug them after making them overactive with sugar.  Kids don’t need these drugs and I believe they hurt way more than they help.

I also do not agree with the teacher interviewed in the video report who said that kids should be allowed to multitask, and that they should be trained to multitask.  Evidence to support my opinion is the following portions of the video discussing the decline in reading and writing abilities of students.  And, a quick perusal of our class blogs supports the contention that the younger generation is less able to carry on a sustained train of thought and write about it.  If I were like them, I would have finished the course last week.  How many of our class blogs can really be labeled as essays?

Does the I add to longevity?

No, it does not!  Any activity that keeps a body interested and happy in life extends it.  Have you known people who just gave up?  My friend, Bob Jones, died one night when he was not ill (he was 88).  But, he was lonely because all of his friends including his wife had died.  He was not particularly entertained by his children and only had one grandchild.  I drank the whiskey that he had hidden under his bed after he was hauled away and after we all came in from deer hunting.  Now, my neighbor is in her mid-80s and you would never know it because she is so active.  She knows little of the I.

Is the fantasy world new?

I really don’t think so.  As children we all had our games and other ways to escape and rest our minds from worries.  People played cards at night either at a friends house or at the club.  Others seemed addicted to soap operas on TV.  But, they were not available 24/7 like the I is today.  If there is something new, I believe that it is the extension of childlike fantasy into adult years.  Science fiction writers warned us of this in the 1950s and 1960s.  We were also told that the U.S. economy would go to hell about 2010.  See, these dire predictions never come true.

Virtual Worlds, Etc

I do not believe that video games are emotionally safe learning environments.  The video tried to convince that children really know the difference between reality and fantasy.  They do not.  Many adults do not.  If you kill somebody in a fantasy world and do it over and over, your subconscious can develop dangerous illusions.  This is a form of brainwashing and it’s successfully practiced in many forms such as TV advertising, the socialization of children in public schools and in political messages where people vacation such as the Epcot Center.  In military basic training soldiers are socialized to obey their commanders without questioning.  These examples are not all bad, certainly.  But, how many people have you killed for real?  Or, how many times have you watched people die for real?  These events are usually very sobering and virtual worlds can not simulate it accurately.  A game that did would not be fun.  During the 1960s, there was a sneak preview of a movie in which John Lennin starred playing an English soldier.  This was a very effective anti war movie which the U.S. government banned within 5 days of its release.  You can rent it today, but you can not see what I saw because the scenes that made the movie so effective have been removed.  These were scenes made from real footage of people being killed.  The cameras recorded their faces up close and very personal.  The cameras captured the light leaving their eyes and the terror.  In our society we are removed from these scenes in movies and in reality.  We live in a pseudo-reality where most of us are shielded from the horrible consequences of violent acts.  Several months ago, I watched a computer screen as some of our soldiers unleashed a barrage of 20mm cannon fire from an aircraft in Iraq disintegrating the bodies of several unsuspecting people on the ground below.  Were they guilty of something?  We’ll never know.  For me, the experience of spectator was both sobering and disturbing.  It was not virtual.  It was real!  Think about the word, sobering.  Have we been raising successive cohorts of stupefied youth who will be incapable of handling reality as adults?  Interesting, Cicero has written significant thoughts about this very subject in his letter to Terrentia.  He, as a youth, was protected from the ugly realities of evil men until his father died when he was a teen.  Then, when forced to face evil from unexpected places, he suffered emotionally in ways that he never fully recovered from according to his letter.  His recommendation to us is to teach reality and not to allow children too much fantasy.  Children must be prepared to face realities that they are certain to encounter later in life.  Embrace the good in people but beware of the evil.   

The Digital Nation video highlights and whines about several concerns regarding the use of new technologies and then misses the point.  Does the Internet give people, especially youth, a false sense of reality.  Is virtual reality, fantasy and gaming keeping youth from getting a real education regarding real issues?  

Exit Slip II

Thsi week I learned that it is what the students do that is important; not what the teachers do.  I also learned not to buy flash drive gift cards from a company whose representatives have Indian or Pakistani accents.  You can't redeem your gift cards and emails to them crash your computer email file.  And, I learned that kids need somthing to do, period or they should be split up and movesd to classes where there is somethiong to do.  If you can't hire an auto shop teacher, then disband the class.