From the Jets to the Eagles

I haven't posted in a very long time! I wasn't getting very many views, so I decided to wait to write a post until I had a really good reason to do one. I do now!

I have a whole new audience!

Over the summer, I moved from Indiana to Kansas. I am no longer a Thompkins Jet, but am now an Andover eCademy Eagle! For more information on the eCademy, click here. I am thrilled to be part of their teaching staff, working with 6th-8th graders in math. (I hear I may be getting a pre-calculus class to teach too!)

I am finding that many of the students and parents here have some of the same questions that students and parents at Thompkins had. There is one big difference though. At Thompkins, a student could easily walk from their classroom down to my office with his/her netbook to show me what was happening. ECademy students must email me or call me or come in to the building to get help. The issues that students have though seem to be the same or very similar. Therefore, I decided that it might be a good idea to get this blog back up and running.

That said...welcome Andover eCademy students and parents!!! You will find that this blog will provide you with links to help teach about digital responsibility, common problems, and just a little bit of my philosophy about using technology in education. Feel free to post comments and ask questions.

Are Smartphones Actually Helping Study Habits?

Wow!  I found this infographic via a tweet from Miss Noor about this blog post.  As I read through it, I thought about our students.  I see them on their phones or their iPods a lot! What are they doing?  Many times, we, adults, think they are playing games or listening to music.  And, sometimes, we are right.  This infographic shows that they are actually doing a lot of other things too.
As I walked through recess today, I asked a student what game he was playing.  Guess what!  He wasn't playing a game! He was looking up how to do something on his smartphone.  See, they do look up information.  They do study using their phone.  I wonder, as Miss Noor wrote, how many of our TMS Jets use flashcards on their devices.  In college, I used notecards to study for almost every test, especially in social studies.
If you are a student, please share how you use your phone or iPod to help you study for classes.  I would LOVE to share the educational world that you have found through your use of a smartphone.

Via: STUDYBLUE.com

Teaching Students about Email

It's easy to think that emailing etiquette should just come naturally.  But it doesn't.  Our children learned to text before they learned to email.  They learned to say what they needed to say quickly and with lots of text abbreviations.  Sure, I use lol and u quite often.  There is one difference in how I use text lingo though.  I think about my audience.  If I am texting someone that I know is an avid texter, I abbreviate a lot of my words.  However, if I am texting someone who rarely texts or texting my boss or someone I feel is a professional, I type out all of my words. Students need to think about that when they are emailing their teachers or other school staff.  Type out all of your words.  Use the spell checker.  Read your email back to yourself after you type it to make sure that it makes sense.

Another difference between texting and emailing is frequency.  I am just as guilty as our students about texting almost any thought I have. We can't do that with email.  Let me clarify this point though.  We LOVE for students to email us with class-related questions or to check on assignments when absent.  Please don't stop doing that.  Just keep emails to a minimum so your teachers are not spending hours just reading emails.  

Here's a good hint for students:  Use the subject line on emails.  It will help the teacher know if the email needs to be read right away or if it can wait until the teacher has time to look at it more closely.  For example, when asking for homework, simply make your subject something like, "What did I miss?"  If you found something that you think the teacher would like to use in class, try "Fun resource for class." Make the subject line something that tells the reader what the email is about.

Last but not least, do not forget the importance of face-to-face contact.  Emails, just like texts, can be easily misread.  You may mean it to be funny, but the reader may think you are being rude or harsh.  Use smiley faces and other emoticons to show emotion.  Or just ask when a good time is to meet face to face.  Text and email do not allow the reader to see facial expressions or other body language.  Tone of voice is undetectable in print.  

All of this said, email.  It is a great tool for communication.  Just be sure to think about how the person on the other end will interpret your words.  

How Time Flies

Wow!  I can't believe that it has been 20 days since my last blog!  There is another blog out there that may give you some great ideas for web 2.0 tools to use.  Check it out at http://icats30daychallenge.blogspot.com/.  Our iCATS team has put together 30 tools for you to explore.  If you are an EVSC employee, join in the challenge for a chance to win prizes.  If not, that's okay.  You can participate and have fun learning.

I watched a video last week of a speech by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.  If you don't know the name, look her up. She made some pretty amazing points during the speech, but her initial question is what keeps popping up in my mind.  "What year are we preparing our students for?"  She said that the majority of schools today are preparing their students for the year 1991.  That's probably a pretty sad, but true, fact.  We graduate from high school and spend a lot of time trying to learn all of the technology and skills needed to compete in the world that we find ourselves in.  I like to hope that our school corporation is preparing our students for a year far ahead of 1991.  Bringing the netbooks in starts to open the doors to a whole new world.  It's what we do with them from here that matters.

We have this great tool.  What are we doing with it?  How is it being used in your classrooms?  Teachers, students? How has the netbook changed your learning/teaching?  Comment and let me know!!!

Cyber Safety-What Should I Be Teaching My Children?

How often do we really talk to our children about being safe on the internet?  Do we take for granted that they know what is appropriate and what isn't?  My 9 year-old saw a game channel on our satellite system this past weekend.  It said that it had a free trial, so he just turned that channel on.  Had I somehow sent him the message that free meant safe?  What kinds of conversations should I be having with him so that he doesn't happen to find other channels or websites that I prefer him not to be exposed?  I have added a link to the top of the blog for Kids Helpline.  It is a site for Australian children, but most of it is open to anyone. There are some great resources for parents and teachers to use in having those vital conversations with children.  I hope you find some useful resources there.

Using Caution on the Internet

I had to go to the bank yesterday to get my debit card cancelled.  There was a $1.97 charge on there from a company in Clearview, FL.  The bank was very understanding, but it still made me feel violated.  Someone out there found a way to get my debit card information, either from a website that I had used my card or a business locally.  Either way, it was an invasion of my privacy.

This morning, I received an invitation from a student to join boxbe.  When I did some research on it, I quickly found many postings about it possibly being spam.  The funny thing about this tool is that its purpose is supposed to be to filter your email.  However, they do this by having you give them your email username and password.  Talk about a violation of privacy!  Now boxbe can go into my email and view anything they want, including personal information.  It also makes me wonder about the security of my personal information going to another company outside of boxbe.  Needless to say, I didn't accept the invitation.  Furthermore, I sent out an email to all students and staff about taking caution when signing up for services online.  If any service asks for your personal username and password, be cautious.  Do your homework.  Research the company by reading various perspectives on it.  If you are a student, ask an adult first.

Parenting with Netbooks

I am sure that things have changed in the homes of Evansville's middle school students in the past few weeks.  Some of those changes are probably wonderful, whereas some may cause tension in the family.  I have a 9 year-old son who loves his technology.  If my husband and I would let him, he would play his DS, while watching TV, all day long, I know he would be thrilled.  There is just something a little different about the way our kids are "wired" these days.  (Don't you remember your parents saying something like that about us?)

Every generation is different.  There is a really good book out by Dr. Larry D. Rosen, Rewired. He specifically addresses many of the differences with what is now being referred to as the Net-Geners or the iGeners.  He talks about reasons that tweens and teens hate school, how many of them step into time warps when they enter their school buildings.  With the introduction of netbooks this year, I hope that we are making strides towards lessening the gap between the technology students love to use outside our building to that which is used inside it.  

As a parent, I know that we often struggle with the best way to parent our children.  This article, http://mashable.com/2011/09/14/parenting-tech-children/, provides 5 tips for parenting in the digital age.  The site isn't very pretty.  You must scroll down the page a bit to get to the article, but is definitely worth the read.  It made me stop to think about what I am telling my son and what I am modeling to him.  I will try to post more parenting tips as I find them.  Have a great week!