Making the Grade = Making My Life Easier

So I use this program at school called Making the Grade (MtG). It has to be one of the best things ever invented. All you need to do is click a new column and write the description and points and fill in the grades and MtG does the rest. All of my grades can then be printed out so I can have a way of recording new grades quickly. MtG also does seating charts, publishes grades online, and even randomly picks someone to read. It's a pretty sweet piece of technology.

(I hope this didn't sound too much like a sales pitch.)

Video Time

My teaching compadre Mateo wrote about some video technology in his class so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon. My video was meant to show the kiddos some of the sites of Ancient Egypt and give them a view that they didn't get from the book. The video was about the Great Sphinx. The kids got to kick back, watch the movie, and write down some facts along the way. The video was well received by all of the classes and they were happy to hear to hear that they would be able to finish the movie the next class period. I personally found the video helpful because it gave a lot of visual images to the students, something that class discussion sometimes misses.

Don't Call It A Comeback

Ever have a story that you really want to tell, but forget to get it down? Yeah, me too. Here's mine

About two months ago I got to be part of an inservice day at the school I work at. The goal for the inservice day was to become familiar with the test results and how to use them to help the students achieve more in the future. In theory, this was a great idea. The teachers were able to see exactly where each student struggled in the reading and math tests. The end result of this would be more help for each student.

Of course, there were problems. First off, some of the laptops weren't properly charged so they shut down shortly after being turned on. Another (bigger) problem was the website being used to access the results. Because the whole building was trying to access the site, it became incredibly slowed down. This frustrated many teachers who were trying to learn new technology.

I think this just goes to show that even the best plans will have some problems. For me, it was amusing to watch, but even I was a little frustrated with the website. Of course now, after two months off, I can laugh about. That's life

Holy Toledo!

Ah, the stories I can tell. For right now, I'll write about one of the coolest pieces of technology I have ever seen. In school today, I helped my co-op cover a computer class during the day. In it, we had to administer a test and then have them log in to work on typing.

Well, administering a test really meant clicking a button and that's it. The computers all had the quiz pop up on their screens. All we did was sit as they took the quiz. The scores were immediately registered to us and we knew as soon as each student finished. If we were interested in where a student was on the test, all we had to do was click a button and we could see their screen. All from our own computer. We didn't have to get up at all.

Though we did not try all of the tools this program had to offer, we could even have taken over control of one of the student's computers to help them. This was all pretty amazing, at least to me. Definitely the tech highlight of my day.


*Note about the title - That was the phrase made popular by Oakland A's broadcaster Bill King, who died earlier this week. While I am not an A's fan, I am a baseball fan and found it interesting. Check out a write-up here

Back in Action

Sorry friends for ignoring my blog for so long. I've got a couple things to write about, but I'll only hit one now.

I had my first inservice day on Monday and it was interesting. Probably the most noteworthy part was trying to use a program on the internet with some of the other teachers. It was slow going at times, more than anything because they had so many teachers all going to the same site. While most tech people could have predicted this, it was not thought of by the presenter that day. In addition to this, some of the teachers struggled with using the internet and navigating the webpages. Also, many of the laptops were not fully charged, causing even more confusion.

Despite all of this, I learned a lot, both from a tech standpoint and an education standpoint. Since I should be focusing on tech, I will point out how important it will be for me to be able to use the internet easily (though proof of my blogging skills show this already). It seems like whatever I know will come into use as I will be able to teach my colleagues what to do. Pretty exciting.

Tricks of the Trade

I had myself taped while I taught a lesson last week (my second taped lesson overall). I finally got a chance Monday to sit down and watch myself in action. It's pretty interesting to see how I work and the video tape gave me that chance. Luckily for me, the lessons were short so I did not have to watch much. I did pick up on some mistakes I was making from the tape, most importantly my problem of not being very loud when I talked. This will be something I will need to keep in mind as I teach.

P.S. Thanks to Matt for helping me figure out the title business. He's turning into a blogging pro

A Couple of Notes

Observation number 3 is done and I've finally started to see a little tech in my classroom (not counting the old school overhead that is always used). Two new devices were in yesterday, both of which were new to me.

The first was a computer program that would randomly select a student to read from the textbooks. It would use the class roster, saved on the computer, and play some goofy selection sounds before choosing a student. This could become useful, as it takes away complaints and competitions over who reads. Of course, it could cause problems if the program selects a student who refuses to read.

The other device was pretty clever. It looked like a traffic light. In a normal setting, the light would hold on green. If the noise level of the classroom rose, the light would switch to yellow. If it got too noisy in the classroom, the light would switch to red and an alarm would go off. This became useful, as I saw some students worried when the light moved to yellow. It had its downsides, though, as some students tried to purposely set it off. Also, when my cooperating teacher gave directions, he would set the alarm off.

Both of these new devices could have some real usefulness in the classroom. Of course, at this rate it won't be long before they just replace teachers with computers altogether. I'll have to wait and see about that one