What Will it Take to Fix Our Education System?

This panel attempts to answer this question.  Some main themes were that we can fix schools through hiring teachers who are stronger in Math and Science coupled with an increased use of technology in the classroom.  I'll add that maybe we should also pay our teachers better to draw the teachers we need to accomplish our national goals in STEM education. 

For more on this meeting, visit this Wall Street Journal article.

Arcade Game Teaches Mulitplication Facts... For FREE!

Timez Attack!!  My students can't get enough of this game!  The students explore a dungeon filled with critters and trolls.  To succeed, they need to take out the trolls by answering the multiplication problem on their chest.  Beginning with their 2's, students are visually shown what the problem looks like.  As they learn more facts, they face more challenging trolls to conquer.  Success means they get keys to open up more areas of the dungeon.  Each level concludes with the level troll where they have to answer all the problems in the family (e.g. their 2's). Once they conquer their 2's, they move to 3's, 4's etc., until they reach their 12's.

The music is fun and graphics quality is excellent, matching any most popular arcade-style games for quality.  Thee base version is FREE which colors all multiplication facts. For more environments, buy the $40 version.  The game is downloadable and runs on Mac or PC with basic hardware requirements.  The students really love it.  Check it out!

Print Selected Text in Firefox on a Mac

I'll talk more about the awesomeness of Screenr.com in an upcoming blog post but for now, here's an example of how to use it to make easy screencasts.  This video shows how to print selected text on a Mac using Firefox.  Enjoy!

Clickers in the Classroom Without Clickers

I teach Computer classes at the K-8 and college levels. Sometimes with my college level students, I sense that they are distracted during my lectures and, therefore, not getting the content. Recently, I went to a professional in-service about clickers (or student response systems) and how they can be used for peer instruction. The idea that I could use this technology to get immediate feedback from the students in a safe, non-threatening manner or use the questions to generate engaging discussions of the concepts very much intrigued me and I wanted to try it for myself. Very quickly, of course, I found the cost to purchase a class set of clickers to be a barrier to their use, especially when all my students already have a computer in front of them.

So I did some research and discovered a couple of services that allow you to create polls and have the students enter their responses without using clickers. One such service is polleverywhere.com (they have a video demo posted on their website). It is really easy to create your poll questions, embed them into a slideshow presentation and instantly get a graph of these results without ever leaving your slides. Plus, you can set up an unlimited number of poll questions for up to 30 respondents completely for free. For more respondents, there are fee levels to meet your needs. You can save your questions for later and decide how you want to allow your students to respond - via text, Smartphone or tweet. It's amazingly simple and has a multitude of applications.

So far, I am using my poll questions to reinforce concepts and engage the students more in class discussion of the topics. I have found it better to hide the bar chart until all students have answered so that they will not be influenced by the answers of others. I realize that I am just scratching the surface of how this simple technology can be used to promote peer instruction and I plan to experiment in class.

Judging from the posts I have found on Twitter, the general consenscious appears to be that the teachers really love using clickers. Students like using them too. However, some colleges are asking the students to but their own individualized clicker for use in all their courses and the students feel they cannot take on this financial burden (about $60-$100) in addition of dramatic tuition increases being implemented by colleges across the United States. So a service like polleverywhere.com seems to be an inexpensive way to use this technology in the classroom. Of course, you have to consider your policy on the use of cell phones, but I have found that students like being able to use them for a few minutes in class as long as it is for class purposes only.

While I am just beginning to learn how to effectively implement this technology, there are two books that I recommend on this topic, both available on Amazon.com:

• Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, Eric Mazur
  
• Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, Derek Bruff
  

Happy polling!!

My Focus for This Blog – Keeping it Simple

I'm baaaack!! True, I have never really blogged here but I plan to blog more regularly on educational technology issues as I see something that I really get jazzed about. It is my hope that this space will be for teachers and educators who care about providing our students with the best technology skills we can so that they can success today and in the future.

I won't bore you with Top 10 lists and bombard you with information that will just overwhelm you. Technology should make life easier. We don't need MORE work, we need to do more with the time that we have. I will use this blog to focus on technologies that not only work but are EASY to implement. No one has the time to learn new technologies which have a steep learning curve. I know I don't so how could I expect you to. Whenever possible, I'll post screencasts to walk you through the tool. That is what I hope to do here.

While we don't know for sure, what the future will hold when our students finish college and begin looking for jobs, there are some things we know will hold true. Our students must have a firm grasp on the tools available to them and be able to apply them in a variety of circumstances. They must also learn to use these tools appropriately and with good safety and etiquette. They must be able to see trends and capitalize on them. They need to be able to evolve and grow with the times so that they can succeed while those who lack these abilities fail. I love to follow these trends and want to pass them on to you.

If it's easy, interesting, creative, useful, FREE or just plain fun, you'll see it here. Feedback is always welcome as long as you imagine me standing next to you as you write your comments. Stay tuned…

Follow me on twitter!! @bigdogdaddy (for more geeky tweets), @mrsomersatolm (for K-12 related tweets), @mrsomersatmccd (for college related tweets) and @tweetnub (for those who want to learn more about using twitter.

Teachers Continue to Fund Your Child's Education

The Funding Factory, which specializes in helping schools raise money by recycling used printer cartridges and cell phones, recently polled it's participants to determine their level of satisfaction with the program and to seek options for future promotions. Participants were very pleased with the program (99%). However, a very interesting statistic caught my attention. The following is one of the questions from this survey:

If you are a teacher, how much money out of your own pocket do you spend for classroom materials each year?

• $450+ , 297 (17.74%)
• $350 to $450, 175 (10.45%)
• $250 to $350, 296 (17.68%)
• $150 to $250, 372 (22.22%)
• $50 to $150, 351 (20.96%)
• $0 to $50, 184 (10.99%)
• N/A I am not a teacher, 2,336

Source: http://www.fundingfactory.com/admin/participant/surveys/2006_Survey_Results.doc
Fall 2006 Survey Says was answered by 4010 participants between Oct. 2 and Oct. 27, 2006.

So of the 1674 teachers who responded to the question, 18% are spending more that $450 on their classrooms. In fact, 46% say they spend more than $250 of their own money to fund what they do in their classrooms. As a teacher, this is not news to me, yet I was surprised that the totals were as high as they are, according to the survey. While I feel fortunate to live in a state that allows teachers a $250 income tax deduction, clearly not even that amount is enough for 46% of the teachers in this state. Teachers know best what the needs of their students are. Why is it that they do not have enough? Why is it that they, who are paid so little for their service to the future of our society, must still pay for these needs out of their own pocket. For example, Title I funding in California is dwindling, causing me to spend $800 of my own money for professional development this school year. This is a tragedy and the situation must stop. How much more can teachers have to give before great teachers leave the profession forever?

What can we do? Pay more taxes for education? Buy more education bonds? I don't see how that translates into money for our students. The funds simply get swallowed up by the system, like a fine mesh filter. Very little ends up directly benefiting the students. If the bureaucracy of today's school systems would allow teachers and parents more input into how the money gets spent, our students would be much better off. I have been in staff meetings (not at my current school) where the Principal simply disseminated information to the teachers about decisions that had already been made, never allowing the teachers to voice their opinions or provide constructive suggestions. We expect our students to work collaboratively, but how often to we practice it? Not often enough, I say. Wouldn't the end result be of the maximum benefit to our students and YOUR children?

TFT 1 - David Warlick on Blogging

In late November, 2006, I attended the “Teaching the Millennial Generation Conference” hosted by the California League of Middle Schools, the California League of High Schools and the Computer Using Educators in beautiful Monterrey, CA. The barking of sea lions, which I recorded during a visit to Fisherman’s Wharf, could clearly be heard even from the Marriot Hotel about a half a mile away. I attended several informative sessions between November 16th and 18th and I would like to share my recording of one of those sessions with you in this podcast.

In this episode, I present my recording of David Warlick's session titled "An Educator's Guide to Blogging". Session materials , including presentation slides, are here. Other session recordings are pending presenter approval and may be published in the near future.

Special thanks and appreciation to David Warlick for letting me post this as a podcast. Comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome at georgesomers@olmlancers.com. Thanks for listening. Enjoy!

Click here to download/play.



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