I wrote recently that this is the year E-readers are actually becoming a part of my classroom.  I don't have a class set of Ipads or anything but more than a few students ahve their own Kindles, Nooks, HTC' tablets, or Kindle apps on their phones.  I've begun letting students read in class on these devices, and it feels surprisingly natural and normal.

The wonderful thing about the E-readers is that students can write their post-it note responses using the note function on the e-reader program.  There is then a way for me to view all the notes at once.  Normally I have students pass in their actual book and I read through the notes flipping actual pages.  The e-readers makes this a bit simpler.  I can also turn back to the page of text to which the response refers easily to better understand the student's thinking.  

Two students have books on their phones. I was worried about letting them pull out their phones for this, but I had a serious conversation with them about the importance that they use the phone for exactly what they said they would--and it hasn't been a problem.  They understand I'm giving them a freedom, a privelege and haven't abused it.

The only thing missing is a way for students to simply email me their notes through the e-reader. Soon I think we'll probably be reading as a class on electronic devices.  Software developers?  Want to talk to a teacher about functions that would be helpful for classroom use of e-readers?  I'm right here!

[image credit: betwixttween.wordpress.com]

...listen to classroom teachers, particularly those who are already using (or trying to use) various technologies in creative and effective ways. Let them advise about not only what to purchase, but how to share the use of those tools with other teachers.

That's the title that ISKME founder, Lisa Petrides, and I came up with after much deliberation for my Rapid Fire presentation at the 2010 Big Ideas Fest in December (by far the most challenging public speaking I've ever done).  And now, the video is finally posted for sharing! (Thanks, ISKME!)  

At the moment there is plenty of discussion and question about what exactly a teacherpreneur is.  This video presents a vision of what it could be like for me as a 27 year veteran teacherpreneur in the year 2030.  

Check it out:

[image credit: mindshift.kqed.org]

Though the work of a teacher is never ending, there are several things my school does with technology that make my day go by more efficiently, thereby saving time.  Maybe I'm just not good with paper, but organizing the paper flow of a teacher's "office" has always been difficult for me and often sent me in circles looking for something.  Check out these paperless options.

1. Laptops.  Instead of a teacher's lounge with desktops, like many schools have, or a few desktops in the classroom, each teacher is loaned a laptop for the year.  The school is new, so the laptops are new Macbook Pros, and they are fast and reliable. (Each year the school brings on new staff, so the cost of this isn't so far from the cost of maintaining and updating a computer lab at the school.  

2.  Gmail accounts.  Every faculty member and every student at the school has an email with their first initial and last name on the schools google server.  This makes it easy to email anyone without hunting for their email.

3. Google Docs.  Every meeting agenda is sent out ahead of time as a Google doc.  One person a the meeting takes notes on the Google Doc.  Action steps are easily accessible, and the doc can be updated at the next meeting without anyone hunting for their notes.  I used to have a HUGE binder full of notes and handouts from meetings. Now I just have my laptop!  This means that I cannot forget where I put notes or handouts.  It also means that everyone has the notes, not just the facilitator. 

4. Google Calendar. If I want to meet with someone, I check their schedule in Google Calendar and invite them to a meeting, or vice versa, instead of hunting through schedule documents that are often not accessible to me anyway.  And if I want to sign out the laptop cart for my classes?  Each laptop cart has it's own calendar.  I just check to see that it's not already "busy" and invite it to my classroom!  This is way quicker that having to walk to a central location in the school and check through a calendar in a binder.

5. Teacher Pages.  As part of our google sites, each teacher has a page or his or her classes.  We update the homework and provide other helpful information about our classes.  Not every student has internet access at home, but the majority do, so this is an easy way to help students and parents stay on top of the work. The google site has limited capabilities, but is extremely easy to work on as opposed to some other sites I've tried to use.  

6. Gradespeed.  I've been using an online Gradebook for a while.  For anyone not using one, it takes about 15 minutes to figure out how to use and it is a huge timesaver.  If your school doesn't subscribe to one, there are sites you can use yourself that cost less than $50 a year.  But what I like even more about how my school uses Gradespeed is that we take attendance on it.  I have my laptop open on my desk.  After the first five minutes of class I enter attendance.  That means if a student comes late to my 4th period class, I enter that, and the school can easily access data about which students are chronically late to class.  Detention is assigned to students who are late a certain amount in a week.  I also can't count the times that I filled out or forgot to fill out, the old paper attendance sheet and then couldn't find it when the attendance person came to collect it.  Gradepeed and other online grade books can be set to send automatic email messages to parents about lateness or missing homework.  I've never used those features, but would be interested in trying at some point.

7. Google Spreadsheets for Parent Phone Log. Instead of every teacher having his or her own way of logging parent contact, there is a form that becomes data in a spreadsheet that I fill out when I make parent phone calls.  I just enter the students' name, my name, whom I contacted, the reason and the result, and press submit.  Somehow, typing that information seems much easier than filling out a graphic organizer by hand or finding the students' note card and recording the same information.  I'm actually getting faster at typing now than hand writing...

8. SchoolNet.  This program allows multiple choice tests to be scanned and graded electronically.  It does take some time upfront to load a test into it, but it eliminates the grading of anything that can be done in the multiple choice format (you can do short answer or essays, but have to grade them yourself, then enter a score for that question on a bubble sheet).  I think I will need to address this more fully in another post.  Of course, I don't give that many multiple choice tests. But, for example, practice state tests can be given and graded immediately.  You can link each test question to a state standard, and get data about how students scores in relation to specific standards.  Finally, using that feature, I'm working on a way to grade student writing on a rubric I've created, then creating a "test" where each category of the rubric is a "question" tied to a standard.  Then I can plug in students' rubric scores for each test question and have data about how your students perform on different areas of their writing, and track that throughout the year.  This is still a work in progress for me as a timesaver, but the capabilities of SchooNet open up a lot of opportunities--and why take time to do something a computer can do faster?

One of the only things that remain in paper form is student work. What would it be like if every student had a laptop and internet access at home?  I know some schools and districts around the country are doing this.  That will have to wait for another post.

[image credit: faqs.org]

I'm hitting a point where the digital divide is becoming painfully awkward for me in my teaching. In this case, I'm talking about students who have or don't have reliable internet access at home, and I'm also talking about the difference between what we can do with technology in school vs. out of school because of Department of Education blocks on networking sites and electronic equipment.

This year, for the first time, I teach a CTT class, and get to collaborate with a wonderful special education teacher, so that my students with IEP's get the extra help they need. For a few years, in March I've had students read The Ear, the Eye and the Arm as a whole class as part of an in depth study of the journey motif in literature (I blog about this here.)  It is a 300 page adventure story set in the future, but is much heavier on detail, description and back-story, and slightly less formulaic than other fantasy books some of my students have read, such as Harry Potter.  I expected it to be a challenge for my students, and at this point in the year, most of them are hungry for it. Nonetheless, my CTT and I were worried about a few of our struggling students and wanted to come up with way to support them without removing them from the whole experience.  It's easy for us to help students read in groups during class time, but the book is simply too long to read only in class--we'd be reading it until June.
We wanted to create a way for certain students to listen to the story as they read at home.  We found an audio recording on cassette available for order, but we realized our students today hardly even know what a cassette is--much less own tape players at home! When it comes to listening to music, our students are pretty much fluent in the use of mp3s, Youtube and MySpace.
We decided to record ourselves reading the chapters using GarageBand, and make the tracks available to students on the internet.  My CTT partner created a networking site for our class using Multiply.com. It is similar to Myspace, but with much less traffic and inappropriate content; also the age limit is 12 years old.  We figured for the students without internet access, we could burn the tracks onto cds.
We signed out the LCD projector and a laptop at school ready to demonstrate the site, only to realize, duh, the site is not accessible through school internet!  For the next day, we took still shots of the site at home and showed them to students the next day, and passed out detailed instructions for them to sign up and access the site.  
The kids were very excited about this, but only some of them have been able to access the site at home. Some have internet access, but needed help going through the steps of signing up, which of course, I can't help them with at school.  I have helped some students by phone.  For those that have entered the site, it has been great.  They are creating their own profiles and commenting on each others and on the reading!  Every comment is visible to me, so I can keep tabs on these interactions.  It creates another level of interaction for the class and it is based on academic work.  For some reason, it feels like a relief to me, and the kids are looking at us teachers differently--with some kind of added interest or respect! 
The problem is that so many students can't participate. That part of it seems unfair.  As it turns out, many students don't even own CD players, just mp3 players.  The craziest catch 22 yet is that...drumroll...students are not allowed to bring mp3 players into school!  They get taken from them by school safety officers when they go through scanning.  I do appreciate that students can't have their cellphones buzzing or headphones on during my class, and I also appreciate that students cannot go on Myspace when using school computers.  But it seems like we are cutting off too many valuable learning resources in order to keep kids "on task."  
And when will we get to the point where all students have internet at home?  Lately I've spoken to parents about this particular reading assignment.  When I mention the audio option online, they sound like they've already heard about it from their kids... They sigh, "No we don't have internet right now," almost ashamed.  
So right now, all this means is that children in my class with no internet at home need to do their reading homework the old-fashioned way.  No big deal for most.  But as we move forward, this divide is going to become more and more painful.  I'd like to see the government step in and make internet free for parents who send their children to public schools, and provide a laptop--or an easy, affordable pathway to getting one--for all public school students.  Once this is the case, schools need to get with the times and create safe and attractive networking programs for teachers and classes to use.  

[image credit: http://eppsnet.com/2004/10/into-the-digital-abyss]