Cyber Baiting

Do a Google search on "cyber baiting" and you might be amazed at the number of articles and blogs on this topic published online in the last two weeks.

The recent flurry of writing on the subject is largely in response to a Norton Online Family Report revealing that three in 10 Singapore teachers have personally experienced cyber baiting, where students taunt their teachers, film the incident and post it online to embarrass the teacher or the school.

While it is a scary threat teachers face in today's classroom, and awareness is a good thing, I can't help but worry that the publicity will mostly do harm to technology integration in the classroom.

Reactive school administrations will see this as a technology issue instead of a classroom management issue. They will continue to ban mobile devices from classroom use. They will have video and audio recording devices turned off on laptops. They will discourage teachers from creating projects where students collaborate online or post original content. Worst of all, students will not be taught, in a straightforward and candid manner, about responsible use of video and audio devices.

I do not mean to take anything away from the seriousness of the issue of cyber baiting. I just want to remind everyone that, while it will affect a small percentage of teachers and students, a much larger percentage -- virtually ALL of them -- will need to know how to use technology, including personal mobile devices, responsibly and effectively throughout their lives in academia and in the workplace.

Running scared from this issue, or banning technology in reaction to the trend of cyber baiting, will only set us back. What we need is more training on effective management of cyber classrooms.

NFL Picks ~ Week Twelve

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to a special Thursday edition of Tuesdays.
Here are the picks for NFL week 12:

Detroit getting 4 from Green Bay
LOSS
Green Bay 27 - Detroit 15

Dallas giving 7 to Miami
LOSS
Dallas 20 - Miami 19

San Francisco getting 3.5 from Baltimore
LOSS
Baltimore 16 - San Francisco 6

Arizona getting 3 from St. Louis
WIN
Arizona 23 - St. Louis 20

NY Jets giving 9 to Buffalo
LOSS
NY Jets 28 - Buffalo 24

Cincinnati giving 7 to Cleveland
LOSS
Cincinnati 23 - Cleveland 20

Houston giving 3.5 to Jacksonville
WIN
Houston 20 - Jacksonville 13

Carolina giving 3 to Indianapolis
WIN
Carolina 27 - Indianapolis 19

Tennessee giving 3 to Tampa Bay
WIN
Tennessee 23 - Tampa Bay 17

Minnesota getting 9.5 from Atlanta
LOSS
Atlanta 24 - Minnesota 14

Chicago getting 4 Oakland
LOSS
Oakland 25 - Chicago 20

Seattle giving 3.5 to Washington
LOSS
Washington 23 - Seattle 17

Philadelphia giving 3.5 to New England
LOSS
New England 38 - Philadelphia 20

Denver getting 6 from San Diego
WIN
Denver 16 - San Diego 13

Pittsburgh giving 10.5 to Kansas City
LOSS
Pittsburgh 13 - Kansas City 9

New Orleans giving 7 to NY Giants
WIN
New Orleans 49 - NY Giants 7

WEEK TWELVE RECORD: 6-10-0

2011 - 2012 Record: 87-80-9
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8

Gobble up Some Tech

HTML
Audacity
Prezi
Photoshop
Yugma

Twitter
HipCal
Animoto
Ning
Keyboarding
Skype
Google Docs
i tunes podcasts
Voicethread
ISTE NETS
Nota
GoAnimate

NFL Picks ~ Week Eleven

Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Tuesdays. After a dismal start to the season, things have really picked up. As I've done every Thursday for nearly 20 years, I'm picking every NFL game against the spread, and I'm rolling into week eleven on a hot streak.

Here are this week's winners...

Denver getting 6.5 from NY Jets
WIN
Denver 17 - NY Jets 13

Tennessee getting 6 from Atlanta
PUSH
Atlanta 23 - Tennessee 17

Buffalo getting 2 from Miami
LOSS
Miami 35 - Buffalo 8

Cincinnati getting 7 from Baltimore
PUSH
Baltimore 31 - Cincinnati 24

Jacksonville getting 1 from Cleveland
LOSS
Cleveland 14 - Jacksonville 10

Oakland giving 1 to Minnesota
WIN
Oakland 27 - Minnesota 21

Detroit giving 7 to Carolina
WIN+
Detroit 49 - Carolina 35

Green Bay giving 14 to Tampa Bay
LOSS
Green Bay 35 - Tampa Bay 26=

Dallas giving 7.5 to Washington
LOSS
Dallas 27 - Washington 24

San Francisco giving 9.5 to Arizona
WIN
San Francisco 23 - Arizona 7

St. Louis giving 3 to Seattle
LOSS
Seattle 24 - St. Louis 7

Chicago giving 3.5 to San Diego
WIN
Chicago 31 - San Diego 20

Philadelphia getting 4 from NY Giants
WIN
Philadelphia 17 - NY Giants 10

Kansas City getting 15 from New England
LOSS
New England 34 - Kansas City 3

WEEK ELEVEN RECORD: 6-6-2

2011 - 2012 Record: 81-70-9
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8

Learning to Crawl, Walk, Drive ... Understand and Use Technology Systems...

When a child learns how to walk, or even to crawl before that, his or her parents don't first lecture on the importance of developing the skill, nor do they go over the rules for safe and orderly mobility. They don't give electronic presentations on avoiding obstacles, hand out worksheets on balance, or drill and practice, "left-right-left-right."

Children observe crawling, walking, or other motor skills, and attempt to do so when the need arises. They learn by doing.

I mention these examples in an attempt to explain my thoughts on education, specifically the question of whether students need to "learn the foundations first" or "learn by doing."

I find it ironic that many of our colleagues use the cliche that students must first "learn to walk," when that action itself is a hands-on, experiential or problem-based learning endeavor. Now I understand there is no blanket rule for this. Education is an art because all students are -- and all learning can be -- unique. A perfect counter to my examples above could be driving a car or flying a plane. In no way am I suggesting that we should put young people behind the wheel before all those hours of driver's ed and learning the rules of the road, nor would I say a pilot should learn how to fly for the first time while in the air (though it has been the plot of many a sit-com or made-for-TV movie).

So here's the tech connection: you teach first grade. Your students come to you with a wide range of tech proficiencies. Some can type beautiful paragraphs, insert pictures and change fonts. Others can't type a full sentence in a class period. Still others can not successfully log in and open a word processing app. Yet we encourage all students to meet minimum tech proficiencies by the end of the year. What's the best way to move all of these students ahead, ensuring that the ones who come into the year having already mastered those skills can continue to develop, while those farther behind in their tech experiences can gain the skills to be proficient?

• Is it to have the students practice the skills in isolation, drilling their way through different tech skills in a logical order, as we used to do with EZ Tech?

• Is it play, allowing the students to discover what they need to know through educational games, connected to the curriculum or not?

• Is it integration, putting students to work on projects as the need arises in your curriculum, and developing the skills they need to complete the tasks as they need them?

• Is it something else I haven't mentioned? A combination?

There is no easy answer, other than this: it involves getting them on the computers and devices.

• You may believe the students need to go through a drill-and-practice style training program to develop basic skills (using the mouse, turning on the computer, opening a program, saving a file, retrieving the file later, etc.).

• You may believe they will learn each of those concepts as the need arises, and assign projects designed to teach something from your curriculum while allowing them to figure out a few basic tech skills each time. This is the one that takes a lot of teacher foresight, planning and advance work.

• You may believe they need to play with a program. It's how they learned everything from social interactions and motor skills to video games, why wouldn't it work with Microsoft Word or the Start Menu?

• You may believe they first need to listen to you lecture about how to use the programs and applications, or how to follow the operations. Then again, this is the problem for many teachers, who won't allow their students to use any technology that they themselves haven't mastered, a major roadblock for education, in my opinion.

But if it's mid-November, and you haven't had your students to the computer lab yet, is it going to happen at all?

NFL Picks ~ Week Ten

Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Tuesdays.
It's week ten in the NFL. Here are this week's winners...

Oakland getting 7 from San Diego
WIN
Oakland 24 - San Diego 17

Pittsburgh giving 3 to Cincinnati
WIN
Pittsburgh 24 - Cincinnati 17

Kansas City giving 3 to Denver
LOSS
Denver 17 - Kansas City 10

Jacksonville giving 3 to Indianapolis
WIN
Jacksonville 17 - Indianapolis 3

Buffalo getting 5.5 from Dallas
LOSS
Dallas 44 - Buffalo 7

Houston giving 3 to Tampa Bay
WIN
Houston 37 - Tampa Bay 9

Carolina giving 3.5 to Tennessee
LOSS
Tennessee 30 - Carolina 3

Washington getting 4 from Miami
LOSS
Miami 20 - Washington 9

New Orleans to beat Atlanta
WIN
New Orleans 26 - Atlanta 23

Chicago giving 3 to Detroit
WIN
Chicago 37 - Detroit 13

St. Louis getting 2.5 from Cleveland
WIN
St. Louis 13 - Cleveland 12

Philadelphia giving 13.5 to Arizona
LOSS
Arizona 21 - Philadelphia 17

Baltimore giving 6.5 to Seattle
LOSS
Seattle 22 - Baltimore 17

San Francisco giving 3.5 to NY Giants
WIN
San Francisco 27 - NY Giants 20

New England getting 1.5 from NY Jets
WIN
New England 37 - NY Jets 17

Green Bay giving 13.5 to Minnesota
WIN
Green Bay 45 - Minnesota 7


WEEK TEN RECORD: 10-6-0

2011 - 2012 Record: 75-64-7
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8

An Idea

I had an idea for a post on Tuesday morning, but somewhere on the ride to work, it disappeared.

This is a placeholder. When that idea comes back to me, it is going here.

:)

NFL Picks ~ Week Nine

Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Tuesdays. It's week nine and I'm hitting my stride. Here are this week's winners...

Atlanta giving 7 to Indianapolis
WIN
Atlanta 31 - Indianapolis 7

New Orleans giving 8 to Tampa Bay
WIN
New Orleans 27 - Tampa Bay 16

Cleveland getting 11 from Houston
LOSS
Houston 30 - Cleveland 12

Buffalo giving 2 to NY Jets
LOSS
NY Jets 27 - Buffalo 11

Kansas City giving 4 to Miami
LOSS
Miami 31 - Kansas City 3

San Francisco giving 3.5 to Washington
WIN
San Francisco 19 - Washington 11

Dallas giving 11.5 to Seattle
LOSS
Dallas 23 - Seattle 13

Denver getting 8 from Oakland
WIN
Denver 38 - Oakland 24

Tennessee giving 3 to Cincinnati
LOSS
Cincinnati 24 - Tennessee 17

Arizona giving 2.5 to St. Louis
WIN
Arizona 19 - St. Louis 13

NY Giants getting 8.5 from New England
WIN
NY Giants 24 - New England 20

Green Bay giving 5.5 to San Diego
WIN
Green Bay 45 - San Diego 38

Baltimore getting 3 from Pittsburgh
WIN
Baltimore 23 - Pittsburgh 20

Philadelphia giving 7.5 to Chicago
LOSS
Chicago 30 - Philadelphia 24



WEEK NINE RECORD: 8-6-0

2011 - 2012 Record: 65-58-7
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8

2nd Grade Rocks!

We came across two great ideas for tech integration lessons this week, both from second grade teachers in our district.

1) Persuasive Writing - a Montgomery teacher's students used Grandparents.com to research a city that interested them, find and download pictures of interesting attractions in that city, save the files to their network drives, then import them into an Animoto video with music, text and pictures, persuading their grandparents or other adults to take them on a trip to that city.

2) Book Reports - Librarians at North Wales and Hatfield are helping students make Reading-Rainbow-style video book reports. The students will write their reports, read them on camera, edit them in Windows Live Movie Maker, and share them via the NPTV YouTube channel or on the teachers' Wikispaces pages.

Both of these projects begin and end with the curricular goals in mind, but both also involve a lot of important 21st Century Skills. I am particularly impressed by all the skills students are developing in terms of technology operations and concepts. They are learning about finding information online, saving files in the network, file extensions and converting files, and putting the appropriate media (pictures, video, audio, music, etc.) in the right order to tell a story or make a convincing point.

With the students all coming from different tech backgrounds and experiences, this process can be slow and challenging for students at this age. But in addition to noticing how many concepts were new to these students, we also noticed how quickly they learned how to do what was expected of them. The skills they developed from this project lay foundations that their teachers in 5th and 6th grade will be extremely grateful for. I applaud these teachers and their students for tackling some difficult tasks and creating excellent projects.

Now for a note on last week's post...

I still have no passport. I went to the courthouse and submitted my birth certificate, license, and form, and was told I needed to fill out the form in black ink, not blue. I filled out the form again, and then was told that my birth certificate, which my parents obtained for me when I was 12 in order to get a passport, was no longer acceptable for passports. I had to file for a new long-form copy from the office of vital records, which I did online, but will take at least 14 days to arrive, before returning with the paperwork, documents, and several fees, some cash, some check.

When I left the courthouse, I found a parking ticket on my windshield, and had to spend an additional half hour chasing down the parking authority officer to show that I had paid for the parking space (she had given me a ticket for a space in which I was not parked) to have her rip up the ticket.

The good news? I get to do it all again in a few weeks when the birth certificate arrives. Hooray for challenges, right? :)