Teaching with an Infodiet

The internet is a wealth of information. How we use that internet information can say a lot. The type of information that we access can also say something else. Thus, in order to become an expert in the information that interests you then you need to have a balance of good information. We call this your “infodiet”. The information that you consume or seek out. You also want to make sure that you are not finding bad information–the useless information. To do all of this we need to build a network of reliable, intelligent and balanced information. Something Gee calls affinity spaces. According to Gee (2013), affinity spaces are key examples of synchronized intelligence consisting of multiple tools, different types of people, and diverse skills sets networked.

For the purpose of this blog post, I am getting a lot of my information from RSS feeds from blogs that relate to education technology and literacy, as well as a focus on rethinking teaching topics for strategy, implementation and curriculum design. I found a few twitter accounts, but most of my information is being posted to these blogs. By adding the RSS feeds from these blogs to my blog account, as well as my browser, I am not able to gain access almost immediately upon new posts, as well as an easy way to find older links and posts.

Henry Jenkins Video

After watching this video, I agree with Henry Jenkins’s ideas that students find more engaging topics outside of school. Once they find a topic that fascinates them they do seek out professionals or experts in those fields and learn from them–mainly through the use of technology. I like the idea of how to cross this idea over to school and develop more media literacy to engage students in these topics and ideas and establish a new norm of interest in ideas that effect society. I have real experience of first hand knowledge where students have become engaged with an activity or an idea and research and research the topic to find out as much information as they can about that topic. For example, I had a student who became obsessed with Alton Brown on the Food Network. My student watched every episode of every show he was on, he cooked his recipes and he even sought out where he could meet Alton Brown and events that he would be at that was close by. He decided to pursue a career in cooking because of it. There are many more students that I have had that can speak to the same story. I absolutely believe in this.

From my coaching experience, there was a lot of time when athletes were not great students and there only hope to gain experience for a job after high school was to get into the vocational courses that taught real life skills that can include welding, cooking, auto shop, agriculture, sewing and the like. I feel like that is the older version of what Jenkins is talking about. With the advancement of technology, those types of student might have a better chance of learning the content area curriculum through the use of their interests.

By teaching students to build those affinity spaces or networked information webs to build their literacy skills can have effects within their education that has never been seen before. We can teach students to filter all of the information on the internet and to better understand useful sources of information that they can find. We can also use our teaching knowledge of differentiation to teach students to look at different view points of their interests and get a well-rounded source of knowledge to build on. This idea is seen in the current political race. There is so much information out there that many people are just closing themselves off to the networks of their views and not willing to learn about other perspectives or views on their candidate or the other for the same matter.

The internet is a great learning tool with a vast amount of opportunity to teach our students, but we also need to ensure that we teach them how, what and diversify their learning through their networks of information.

This past week I found three new sources for my infodiet and I have used them to build on my Wicked Problem Project for a course at MSU. I am looking at new methods and stategies to “Rethink Teaching”. I have added them to my blog page, so that I can find them more easily, as well as for others that are in my affinity space to be able to use and find them. I belive this is what Gee was talking about when described affinity spaces or that network of information.

Take a look at the screen shot of my blog page with my new added RSS feeds and other blog pages that I follow. Try it out on your blog page to help build your affinity space or add me to join mine.

A Survey of Classroom Technology

I completed a survey of high school teachers to discuss their comfort and use of classroom technologies. I sent the survey to 200 high school teachers during the last week of the school year and receive a 1% response rate.

A few of the results include 100% of Ease of Integration as to why teachers are not implementing technology into their classrooms. 50% of the teachers were using some sort of online database and social network to organize and flow their classrooms. 0% of the teachers also reported that they are not using any type of online assessments or digital tools when 100% of the student have been issued handheld devices.

I wrote a white paper data analysis based on my results and thoughts on how these teachers use technology in the classroom. Here is the Google Doc to my white paper–Classroom Technology Data Analysis.

My original survey that was submitted to the teachers can be found here–Classroom Technology Survey

Literacy Tool Critique

When I was teaching I came across a few students who were diagnosed with Dyslexia. Teaching students with this diagnosis can be very difficult because the students struggle tremendously with reading and writing, thus greatly affecting their literacy.

According to Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz (2003),  Dyslexia is a specific learning disability where difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language including secondary consequences that may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

For students with Dyslexia, technology opens doors and allows them to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that were unimaginable in the past (The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, 2016). The challenge is really being about to fund technology for students of this caliber to better suit them in succeeding in the classroom. I see it as an investment in the students overall literary success.

Today, I wanted to introduce you to a tool that allows students to take notes in a much more efficient way. This tool is called Livescribe Echo Smartpen. This pen enables students who struggle with note taking and/or processing information from oral lectures or discussion to be able to have more information when they go back to review those notes. The Echo Smartpen not only records the written notes that are being taken, but it records all of the audio that is being spoken at the same time. This allows students to be able to go back and review their notes to the audio and make sure that they did not miss any information and even edit those notes to make them more effective for studying.

The other great feature of this tool is that it allows students to download the notes and audio to a computer where the students can organize their notes and files and even combine notes of similar topics or lessons together. There is even an additional feature to create dynamic PDF files to share with classmates, teachers or others. This is a great tool for struggling note takers, slow processors, students with poor hand writing or listening skills. It is even a great tool for every student–to be honest. There have been times where I have wanted to recall information or a lecture topic later on because I did not have it in my notes.

This tool is not FREE, but it should be an effective literacy tool for any student. I would have liked to have demonstrated this tool out with a few of my students, but the school that I worked at did not have access to these pens. I highly recommend checking out this tool for your students, especially if you have a few that are diagnosed with Dyslexia. Encourage your school or district to order these pens for your struggling students.

My Screencast of the Livescribe Echo Smartpen

REFERENCES

Lyon, G., Shaywitz, S., & Shaywitz, B. (2003). A Definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 53(1), 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23764731

Technology. (2016). In The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. Retrieved from http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Technology.html

A Response to Gee–Part 1

James Paul Gee wrote The Anti-Education Era, where he expands on the ideology that humans are not smart by means of how we educate and view the terms of memory and recalling information. My response to Part I of his book is a look at how his ideas give shape to the thought of “Rethinking Teaching” and how my current and future research this semester will re-examine and evaluate the current and various methods and strategies to not only rethink but enhance the learning in today’s schools and classrooms.

Link to revised Full Article of my response

 

 

Critque of a learning tool

When I was teaching I came across a few students who were diagnosed with Dyslexia. Teaching students with this diagnosis can be very difficult because the students struggle tremendously with reading and writing, thus greatly affecting their literacy.

According to Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz (2003),  Dyslexia is a specific learning disability where difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language including secondary consequences that may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge

For dyslexic students, technology opens doors and allows them to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that were unimaginable in the past (The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, 2016).

Today, there is just about an app for everything. So, I wanted to see if I could find an app that would specifically assist my students. Upon my research, I found that there are two really great tools that can be used to assist these students based on research that has and is being completed. However, they are super expensive and most likely not available to every teacher, school or student who needs them. Therefore, I decided to see if I could find some FREE apps or software that would be able to assist students with Dyslexia.

Here is what I found: Google Chrome. The Google Chrome browser allows for extensions to be added-on to the browser and allows the user to better use the technology. I found three extensions that work very well for students who are slow readers, struggle with phonics or even have hard time annotating. All of which fall into the difficulties of Dyslexia.

The three extensions are SpeakIt!, Read Mode and Evernote Clearly (which is no longer supported by Evernote).

SpeakIt! is a great tool for students to use to be able to have any document or reading read to them. It allows student to choose what and how things are read to them. It is also available in the iTunes store.

Read Mode allows students or teachers to be able to take online articles or website readings and turn them into more easily readable pages. It eliminates distractions such as Ads, different fonts, sizes and layouts to name a few. Students can then use other software and technologies to annotate, print or change the reading abililities to their liking and comforts. Evernote Clearly did do that but at the time of the posting of this article they no longer support the extension. Students could still use Evernote to clip, annotate, save and organize information.

I created a screencast of my trial of the three extensions. See below. I previously had Evernote Clearly installed on my browser, so it still works for me, but some of the tools are no longer working or available.

Screencast of Learning Tools in Action

REFERENCES

Lyon, G., Shaywitz, S., & Shaywitz, B. (2003). A Definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 53(1), 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23764731

Technology. (2016). In The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. Retrieved from http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Technology.html

 

 

Two Blogs that I recommend

Over the last few months of creating and writing this blog, I have ran across a few outstanding blogs. I wanted to give you two recommendations that I thought other teachers, like yourself, would want to check out as well.

First, is a blog by Dr. Richard Selznick called The Shut-Down Learner. This blog is great because it focuses on the students who have learning disabilities and Dr. Selznick does address many of the different types of issues students could face during their learning. The blog is also very easily organized, so the visitor is able to search and find topics very quickly. There are also several blogs through out each main category including Intervention & Remediation, Writing Difficulties, Dyslexia and various others. I have found this blog to very helpful while working in Special Education, especially last semester when I was working with a student who was diagnosed with Dyslexia and I was trying to assess and evaluate his true reading levels and abilities. I also agree with a lot of Dr. Selznick’s opinions and observations about how we allow ourselves to teach and what we require from students based on Common Core or other standards. I would suggest you also check it out or follow it to get more information and advice about teaching your students with learning disabilities.

The other blog, firEdTechnology, is written by Amy Mayer, who has worked in public education for over 20 years. This blog is aimed at educational technology, but does have some blogs posts that pertain to teaching students with disabilities, as well as incorporating technology into the content area subjects for all students. I have found this blog very helpful in learning about new technologies and methods of how to incorporate those technologies into the classroom. One of her blogs identified Google cardboard, which I have yet to use, and demonstrated and even laid out all of the steps of how to get it loaded and working, so your students can begin to use it in the classroom. Also, she created a cheat sheet of sorts to all of the google links for apps and pages that are very helpful in the classroom, so teachers can just print or make their own to post in their classrooms or provide to each student. I highly recommend that you check out this blog and find some awesome resources for your students and maybe even learn a little more about technology, yourself.

Lastly, if there are any blogs that you follow I would love to hear about them. Please share them with me. Leave a comment or shoot me an email at getnewby@gmail.com.

 

Study Skills: a student who struggles

Many students struggle for various and valid reasons, but one of the main reasons students struggle in their learning environments is due to a lack of quality study skills. I would like to discuss one specific student and their struggles with learning and how building up their study skills could improve their learning greatly.

You might have a current student who fits the same characteristics of my student and thus I want to give you three recommendations that could benefit them. My student is currently a 5^th grade student and is struggling in their social studies class. They forget to do about half of their homework assignments, does larger projects at the last-minute and, as a consequence, turns in careless and incomplete work. Do you have a student or students like this? Here are some helpful suggestions.

Since the student clearly has an issue with time management based on forgetting to complete or finish assignment and continues to do larger projects at the last-minute we need to focus on creating time management for the student. Let have the student take a time management schedule exercise (Time Management Exercise) to determine where all the student’s time is being directed during the day and night. Once we are able to see what the student is doing daily with all of their time–we can then start to help them map out their day and time more appropriately. Remember–this student might have learning disabilities, so they might not be playing video games all night long. They could be spending a lot of time on other homework assignments that are harder or they might have family obligations that you are not aware of.

Let’s get the student a planner or agenda. One of the great things about the last high school that I worked at was that the provided each student a planner each school year. Check for free resources at your school or district office!  Start by having the student create a daily schedule that incorporates all 24 hours. Map out eating times, sleeping, class time, athletics or other extra curricular activities. Once their daily schedule is formatted then customize the schedule for each day of the week. This is a great activity to do with your students at the beginning of the year and check on their use of the planner daily. Remember they are fifth graders and the best time to teach them to be organized is early as possible!

Get the student used to creating “To-do” lists, you can do this by setting up your classroom agenda and homework list as a check off list. Here are a couple of examples of student to-do lists:

Find our more information about the value and what to include and how to create to-do lists for students (Create To-do Lists). Lastly, have the students create long-range planners that map out the entire course and when they should be working and researching on those bigger projects.

Since my students are Special Education students, one thing that I think is important to demonstrate here is that because the student might seem lazy is not only the reason for the unfinished or incomplete homework assignments. There could be an underlying issue of comprehension or reading supports that might need to be put into place to assist the student in better understanding the material and being able to demonstrate understanding at a better rate. The same could be said for writing assignments and writing abilities.

I have recently found about an evidenced-based practice that can be beneficial in assisting students with their study skills and teaching them strategies to better understand and incorporate the information into their notes, learning and studying for assessments. This strategy uses Mnemonics to enhance student learning. According to Scruggs, Mastropieri,Berkeley & Marshak (2010), a teacher in a social studies inclusive elementary class created mnemonic pictures using stick figures and line drawings. After the teacher implemented the materials, she gave a unit test. Students with learning disabilities , scored 37 % correct on the traditionally presented content and 75 % on mnemonically presented information.

The research demonstrates that students can learn more effectively with visual enhancements. So, you might be wondering what is Mnemonic strategies? Here are some examples:

• Acronyms to memorize information, songs, and highlighting can all help students with mild disabilities remember key information
• Key words and pictures to represent concepts and information in social studies lessons can be valuable memory aids and also enjoyable for students.
• A picture of the president, for example, could be used to remember executive branch, judges for the judicial branch, senators for the legislative branch, and a flow chart to illustrate the concept of checks and balances.

Marcee Steele (2005) stated that Mnemonic strategies can be used to assist students with memory, processing, and attention problems. Try out a few of these strategies with your students who might seem to be lazy, but also might have some underlying disabilities or for your whole class to see if their learning will improve. Here are some student examples of learning with visual Mnemonic strategies:

Lastly, my student might seem as unmotivated. Many teachers struggle with trying to find ways to motivate students who are just not motivated! Do you share in this struggle? I think we all have. Well, I would like to discuss a relatively new concept that was created by Dr. Carol Dweck, titled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Her book looks at creating or changing the mindset of a person or a student in this case to create a better look out on life. This thought process challenges the standard that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than being immutably ingrained traits.

According to Maria Popova (n.d.), Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives, at the heart of what makes the “growth mindset” so winsome, Dweck found, is that it creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval.

If you as a teacher can change your students’ perspectives, intelligence and even personalities by way of “shifting” their thinking or mindset–I would think that many teachers would be eager to do so. I know there are a lot teachers who want to reach their students’ hearts, souls and lives. Dr. Dweck may have found a way. Talk to your administration about having a professional development to learn more about Dr. Dweck’s research and put her method into practice. You can also find her book on the link above. Here is a info-graphic about her study and theory:

REFERENCES

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ leaning with effective learing techniques: promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266

Scruggs, T. E., Mastropieri, M. A., Berkeley, S. L., & Marshak, L. (2010). Mnemonic strategies: evidence-based practices and practice-based evidence. Intervention in School and Clinic, 46(79). doi:10.1177/1053451210374985

Steele, M. M. (2005). Teaching social studies to students with mild disabilities. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 17(2), 8-10.

3 Recommendations to Improve Notetaking Skills in the Classroom

One of the biggest struggles that any student struggles with is the ability to take effective notes that will allow the student to study and comprehend the information at a later time–which is usually during an assessment. I want to give you my three recommendations to enhance and improve the note taking skills of your students. These strategies have been proven to be effective and research shows that students of all levels have shown an increase in comprehension of the content information, as well as improvement in study skills and organization.

Recommendation #1:  CONCEPT MAPS–can create a visual aide or reference to the information being learned by the student. These types of notes can be used in several different ways to enhance learning for all students. I personally enjoyed using concept maps in my teaching strategies because my students were better able to make connections to the materials, as well as have organized study guides. There are several different types of concept mapping that include:

Star or Spider Maps

Chapter Maps–I had my students complete these styles of notes for their reading assignments. See the video below on how they work.

Chapter Map Video

Fish bone Maps

Cycles and Processes Maps

Compare and Contrast Maps

Flashcards and Pairings

Recommendation #2: SQ3R— which is a reading strategy short for:

Survey! Question! Read! Recite! Review!

This strategy will help build a framework for students to understand their reading assignments. I first learned of this strategy of note taking when I was a sophomore in high school and at that time I hated it because it was so time-consuming. However, now upon reflection as an educator, I find this strategy very rich and power for student understanding and comprehension.  Check out this link to find out more about how to incorporate this style of note taking into your classroom. SQ3R–How it works.

SQ3R Video

Recommendation #3: CORNELL NOTES

This note taking method is a very popular method, however it can be a difficult task for many students who have learning disabilities. This  method allows students to take notes on one side of their paper and then create key words or clues in the other column so that student can easily review or find important studying details. If you prefer the Cornell Notes style you might want to allow your students to use a color coding system to help them find key information more quickly. Check out the video below to understand what I am talking about.

Cornell Notes with Color Coding

According to Boyle, Forchelli & Cariss (2015), students should learn how to use note-taking skills or a strategy to help them engage in the lecture and become active note-takers. Accommodations have been shown to only enable the learner to continue their lackluster note taking. The basic skills are needed to create avid and accurate note takers. Try out some of these strategies in your classroom to build and enable your students to become great note takers!!

There are various other examples of great note taking strategies. Many of the strategies will benefit a vast range of student abilities. With the advance in technology there are numerous strategies that would benefit struggling readers, those students with learning disabilities and others that need help with study skills. Check out a few of the resources that I found for this topic below.

Note-Taking

5 Methods of Notetaking

Supportive Notes

REFERENCE

Boyle, J. R., Forchelli, G. A., & Cariss, K. (2015). Note-taking interventions to assist

students with disabilities in content area classes. Preventing School Failure, 59(3), 186-195. doi:10.1080/1045988X.2014.903463

Teaching Literacy–a difficult SPED task

The biggest challenge that I faced during my practicum was trying to figure out how to make accommodations and modifications to the reading materials for my students. Many of my students read below grade level and some of them even had reading disabilities including Dyslexia. One of my major projects during that teaching semester was to assess my students reading abilities. One student in particular presented me with a very difficult challenge. This student was high school age, but the science teacher had him reading at a fourth grade level within a grade level textbook. Upon further investigation I found that each content area teacher within the school had the student reading at different grade levels.

This situation is not that uncommon. Many schools and teachers are not fully prepared or provided the resources to assist students with learning disabilities to be able to read grade appropriate level materials. In my experience, I assessed my student using the CTOPP-2 and found that the student was reading at the first grade level. Here is a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with Dyslexia that is reading at different levels in each content area class and using dated materials that do not match up to the common core standards for a high school student of his age–just so the teachers can ensure that he is understanding some of the material that relates to the content area. In this case it was Science. He was reading fourth grade science books and getting credit for his freshman science credits.

The underlying issues is that many of the materials that are available to special educators area specialized readings that allow student to comprehend material, but only at specific grade levels. There are very little materials that are out there to allow students to read the proper grade level material but with accommodations or modifications that would allow them to comprehend the much more complex literature of the content area material for their actual current grade level. The resources that are available are usually very costly or the school or district do not have the resources to provide the new types of technology or they do not have knowledge about new accommodations or modifications. Many of the schools or districts also do not go beyond the one typical assessment of the students reading abilities and keep that student at that level without reassessment or any further testing, unless they are challenged to or requested to by parent or another professional.

I believe that teaching students to read complex content area curriculum information is essential to the student being able to advance their educations past high school, but are being dis-serviced by schools, districts and teachers all over the country because many educators are ill-informed, uneducated, lazy and not provided the resources that are needed to properly accommodate or modify curriculum, especially complex literature for each content area.

Technology you might say is the answer. However, one of the accommodations that I tried to employ with my student was getting the textbook at the fourth grade level into a digital format. With the help of my supervising teacher, we contacted the publisher and created an online account that we could use with all of the students. The students could now read the material on the computer rather than in the textbook and that was about it. The publisher did not provide a “read aloud” feature, but only a translator and dictionary feature with their software. The publisher did not provide any of the textbook in PDF form, so that we could even use any online software or apps to help my student with having the material read to him or for him to be able take notes or make highlights.

According to Lauterbach (2013),  the success of students with (Learning Disabilities) LD in content area classes depends on teachers’ ability to support student literacy needs while teaching content. The sole responsibility of teaching literacy is placed on teachers, but when you look closely their jobs are undermined by administrators, districts, state/county governments, departments of education and other funding sources. More resources are need for our students to be able to become better readers and more waves need to be made about it. If you have students that are in similar situations or abilities, please stand up and ask for more resources–even educate yourself about more how to teach literacy to special needs students.

RESOURCES

Lauterbach, A. A. (2013). How expert secondary special education teachers conceptualize teaching literacy in their content area to students with learning disabilities (Doctoral dissertation, ProQuest, LLC, Ann Arbor).

 

 

RAFT Writing Strategy

When I was a student teacher one of the strategies that I used and found very helpful for my students to connect to the content learning area of social science was the RAFT Writing strategy.

The RAFT Writing strategy allows the student to take different perspectives and write in many forms to be able to demonstrate understanding within a lesson, a unit of study or as an assessment. The strategy asks student to write based off of four situational prompts:

Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A pilgrim? A soldier? The President?

Audience: To whom are you writing? A political rally? A potential employer?

Format: In what format are you writing? A letter? An advertisement? A speech?

Topic: What are you writing about?

I found that my students had to really think about what they were writing. They struggled with writing in this strategy because none of my students in the class had ever written or used this strategy before. I am confident that if I was able to continue to have my students write on a consistent basis and without the influence of my master teacher who preferred to use a different method that my students would have caught on and been able to become better writers, as well as make more connections with the material that we were learning in the social science content area. I also think that this strategy is beneficial for students because they are able to learn and practice writing in various formats that are required to write in when they are subjected to the standardized testing each year.

When I choice to use the RAFT method of writing it was based on the demographics of my student population who consisted of many English Language Learners (ELL). This strategy was great for that population since it allowed them to practice the different methods and perspectives of the English language. This strategy can also benefit many other students to make better connections and demonstrate understanding of the learning material, especially in the social sciences. I love this strategy to teach content learning material.

The research shows that the benefits from the RAFT strategy are that students must think creatively and critically in order to respond to prompts, making RAFT a unique way for students to apply critical thinking skills about new information they are learning. RAFT writing is applicable in every content area thereby providing a universal writing approach for content area teachers.

If you would like to implement this strategy into your classroom here is how you could begin:
1. Explain to your students the various perspectives writers must consider when completing any writing assignment.
2. Display a RAFT writing prompt to your class and model on an overhead or Elmo how you would write in response to the prompt.
3. Have students react to another writing prompt individually, or in small groups. It works best if all students react to the same prompt so the class can learn from varied responses.
4. As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, you can create more than one prompt for students to respond to after a reading, lesson, or unit. Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content.

Here is an example of a RAFT for the social science content area:

R: Citizen
A: Congress
  F: Letter
T: Taxation

I found some links to help you get started with the RAFT strategy in your classroom.

History Writing Fix

RAFT Handouts

Using the RAFT Writing Strategy