Tim Childers’ Blog

I’ve posted a blog on the TN site about our DEN Social at TETC. We are meeting Thursday, November 29th, at 7 PM at Caffeine, a great little wifi hotspot located near the Convention Center.

For further details, follow the TN DEN Blog over here.

Not going to TETC? Not in TN? There’s even instructions on how to join us via Skype!

OK, I only have a couple more blogs to do to help recap the incredible session with Alan November at NMSA in Houston, TX last week. This one has to do with Skype.

Since so few people in the crowd were using Skype (a few more had heard of it), Alan decided a quick show-and-tell was in order. However, since his Mac wasn’t working on the wifi (PCs worked great BTW), he had his assistant from McDougal-Littel set her computer up. But then, he didn’t have access to any of his Skype accounts. So….

Alan asked for volunteers from the audience who knew a teacher with a Skype account. He took the first 2 (I was the 3rd hand raised - sorry Teryl and Karla!) and within 2 minutes had 2 classes join us at NMSA. One class had a video camera in the room so we got to see the kids as well. Cool!

Now, I know DEN teachers who are using Skype to put their kids into webinars hosted by Discovery. It is a little harder to do that in middle school because you are limited to just a few of the kids on your team. But, Alan shared a best practice idea geared toward elementary that would work across the spectrum.

He told us of a class with a high percentage of ESL students. Many had not been in the country long and they missed their family overseas. One girl from India came to her teacher crying because she missed her grandmother. She got the grandmother’s email address and was in touch with her immediately with instructions on how to install and use Skype. The next day, she put the little girl on the computer for a free phone call to India! After that, every kid in the class wanted to talk to their grandmothers!

In another class, they were reading a short story set in Ireland. One grandmother who lived in another state was from Ireland and spoke with an Irish brogue. The teacher mailed her a copy of the story, got her to read the story on Skype with the record button on, and then played the grandmother reading the story to the class.

Because that worked so well, the teacher mailed out stories to all the grandmothers she could contact and mailed them each different stories. She recorded them all so the kids could have their grandmothers read to the class.

How do you use Skype in your classroom? Leave a comment to tell us your best practice ideas. You can find me on Skype at tim.den.

This NMSA session is being led by Sharon Faber, Ed.D.  She began by stating what my teachers and I have been talking about for months: secondary teachers are not trained in literacy.  I had one class that dealt with reading in the content areas.  That’s it.

According to Faber, NCLB has given us more kids coming out of 3rd grade that have learned to read than ever before.  The problem is that beginning in the fourth grade we shift to reading to learn.  The kids that haven’t mastered learning to read, will be left behind at that point.  Elementary teachers blame parents, middle school blames elementary teachers, high school blames middle schools. I’ve heard it all before (okay, I’ve said it before!).  53% of college students have to take at least 3 classes before they can take college credit classes.  That’s huge!  Of course, there wasn’t a citation, so take it with a grain of salt.

If kids come in without a seating chart, they fall out in three groups.  The kids who sit at front are those that are academically read and eager to learn.  These kids are reading ready.  The middle group is there everyday, but they will do the bare minimum to keep you off their back.  They are almost reading ready.  The kids in the back don’t want to be there at all.  The further toward the back of the room, the more at-risk they become.  They assume since they can’t do the work that they must be dumb. If they think they are dumb, they will do whatever they can to not participate.

The kids in the back of the room are not dumb.  Some of them may be the smartest in the room.  But they can’t read.  They know all the words on their favorite CDs.  They can play all the coolest video games.  They can use all the electronic gadgets.  But they don’t have to read to do those things.

OK, this blog is long enough, and the session has only been going for 10 minutes!  Look for a follow-up later.

I am sitting in the middle of the huge general sessions auditorium that easily holds the entire crowd of middle school teachers attending NMSA in Houston, TX.  It is Friday morning, and the line to get into the auditorium (at 7:30 AM) extended past the entire length of the convention center.

Using a combination of YouTube worthy videos and a stand-up routine by both the Teacher-of-the-Year and Jack Berkmeyer, the crowd was made ready for 2 middle school students to introduce The Iron Man, Cal Ripkin, Jr.

Cal is sharing with us his 8 traits for success.  Fortunately, his number of traits matched his uniform number.  Great for the book deal!  Of course, this is his original list and does not match what the editors did for the book.

•  The Right Attitude
• A Strong Will To Succeed
  • Not important how much you have, but how you use it
  • His will to succeed caused him to act destructively as a child (tantrums, throwing bats).  Parents encouraged him to harness the energy rather than stifle it (do push up, long bike rides, batting practice) - Good tips for teachers
• Passion
  • Dad told him too many people were doing things they hate.  You must love what you do.
  • Parents who push too hard may cause kids to walk away from problems when parents are no longer there.
• Love to Compete
  • This is internal and external competition
  • His successive game streak was an internal competition - he wanted to walk away from it many times.
• Consistency
  • Adjust and re-adjust (modify and accommodate?)
  • Solving problems and finding quick solutions makes you irreplaceable
  • There was a time when Cal would call pitches from shortstop rather than the catcher.  Helped poor performing pitchers turn their game around.  This helped managers decide to leave him in the game even when he wasn’t hitting.  It led to his consecutive game streak.
• Conviction
  • This involves having a thick skin, being stubborn, and seeing things through to the end
  • He was criticized by the press and others for hogging the lineup, but he truly believed he was adding value to the game and stayed the course.
  • Remember for kids (my thoughts here), stubborn is good when it is harnessed for good.  Help kids channel their stubbornness to the things that matter.
• Strength
  • There is a connection between physical and mental strength (exercise and maintaining focus)
  • After retirement, he broke the link.  He gained weight and began to be more tired.
• Life Management
  • Keep balance between professional and family lives.  Either can control you if you are not careful.
  • In 21 years of consecutive games, Cal had 9 different managers.  How many principals have you had?  Change can happen even when you don’t move.

Time is up and we are about to move to our first session.  See you on the flip side!

In China, middle school students line up after class to ask the teacher for more homework.  No, this is not a teacher’s dream sequence.  It is an actual happening witnessed by Alan November when he visited China recently.  Can you imagine this happening at your school?  Neither can I.

But the truth is, according to November, kids will rise to any challenge you give them provided the challenge makes sense in their world.  What is their world?  Well, it is social.  So kids want to do something that is seen by others (yes, that’s one reason why so many misbehave).  Their world is also digital.  Pencil and paper will often freeze them up.  Their world is filled with online gaming.  Yes, this is the freeze tag and hide-and-seek of my generation.  Think how you felt in elementary school  when recess was cancelled.  That’s how these kids feel when their favorite website is blocked at school.

So here’s another tidbit from Alan November about how to get kids, especially boys, to open up and write in class.  Have them play their favorite online game.  Yes, even the one you thought you should keep them from because it seemed so inappropriate.  If your state or district hasn’t blocked it yet, it must be okay, right? (OK, that was me, not Alan).  Then, put them on a blog and have them write about their strategies to win the game.  They are writing, right?

Next, have them read the blog posts of other students.  They will undoubtedly be drawn to write comments about others’ strategies.  They won’t all be playing the same game, but they will probably be blogging about games they all know.  They all have opinions.  Let them write.  They won’t even know they are practicing literacy skills!

Don’t know where to start with blogging?  Ask how many of your kids blog on their MySpace account.  They know how to blog.  Remember, it isn’t important that you know how.  It is just important that you know why and when.  You can set up a free blog account at Blogmeister, and educational blog site established by David Warlick.

Now go play some games!

Teachers are the bottleneck that prevents us from using technology in the classroom. Although not a direct quote, this is the sentiment outlined by Alan November at our NMSA session earlier today. He couldn’t be more right.

There were over 100 people in attendance at Alan’s talk. Out of those, I was the only one in the crowd who had ever seen a TED Talk video. Less than a dozen had a Skype account. Barely a dozen had heard of Audacity. For me, this explained why the crowd was so thin. Middle school teachers are not current when it comes to technology. Many of us have not even immigrated to the web, so “Digital Immigrants” does not apply to everyone.

Here’s a gem from today’s conference: If you want to learn to podcast, take a couple of 12 year olds to your training session. You can grade a lot of papers and let the kids learn how to podcast. They’ll pick it up in a heartbeat. It isn’t necessary for teachers to know how, according to November. It is only important that we know why and when. The kids will do the rest.

Class 208 has a podcast on iTunes. This is a group of 2nd graders who podcast every week to explain what they learned the previous week. The teacher is pretty much hands-off. The kids organize it, write it, record it, and upload it.

Look for more information from Alan’s session in a later post. I can’t stop talking about how exciting some of these things were to witness at NMSA!

McDuggal-Littel brought Alan November to NMSA to discuss technology.  It is one of the most exciting and fun sessions I have ever been to.  I’m blogging here from the NMSA email kiosk with people waiting, so I can’t finish this now.  I’ve taken nearly an entire page of hen-scratched notes and will upload them tonight with some photos.

Great stuff!

I found a really cool tool at Freshi Flix.  Turnkey movie making with curriculum, and equipment for $750 (includes 2 cameras).  Kids can copyright their movies, add their own original mp3 track, and update it to their website for a safe kids environment.  Some kids have sold their videos for up to $75,000 to National Geographic!

Check it out here.

Continental Breakfast…$12.00

Internet Connection In Room per day….$9.95

Cup of Coffee in the Hotel Lobby….$2.50

Bottled Water Found in Hotel Room….$5.50

Going through the NMSA Exhibit Hall….Priceless

Exhibits open in 30 minutes.  I’ll let you know later in the day about some of the neat things I’m sure to find here.  And, of course, the great Discovery Booth is on my list!

The flight on the Continental puddle jumper was terrific.  Although small, the plane had a very smooth ride.  I knew it was really small when they started boarding the back of the plane first and began with row 9!

The Hilton of the Americas in Houston is fantastically beautiful.  Our room is spacious and comfortable.  Check in for the conference took all of 2 minutes.

Our party walked about two blocks to Josephine’s Italian restaurant for dinner.  Although the service was slow (the place was packed), the food was excellent.  From appetizer to dessert, I can highly recommend it.

Tomorrow (Thursday) I’ll spend the morning walking the exhibit hall and checking on the Discovery booth.  Sessions begin tomorrow afternoon.

Good night.