Tired Teacher

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfPM2e5geNs/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet So I just completed my first reel on Instagram and I want to share that adventure with all of you. This came about as a result of our knowledge sharing assignment. I was discussing the assignment with my daughter and she pipes up with this great idea to make a reel on Instagram.  "It will be easy", she said.  "It will be quick", she promised. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon on take 23 when I am ready to pull out every strand of hair I have. Add to that the distinct chuckling I am hearing coming from the room of my 17 year old son as I talk to myself and rerecord the same 30 seconds over and over again.  Around about take 40 I decided that this was it. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it good? Eh. But not to worry, I will get better.  Here are my conclusions. Social media is work! I always kind of scoffed at people who said that their job was to be a social media influencer, but man creating/c...

  I have been struggling with our upcoming knowledge sharing assignment. I think the problem is that I have too many big ideas. I want my students to all have access to the internet. I want my kids to all be fluent. I want them to know how to do all the things. In an ideal world, I would be able to go into my classroom on day one and incorporate every tool that we learned about in this class. I want all of these thing and I want them right now! Here's the problem. I have to do the work. If I want my big ideas to work, I have to start small. The problem is that small sometimes feels too small. I always want to put my spin on it, to try and make it my own. For me, curating and sharing the content of other people feels a little dishonest. Even when you give credit, someone is getting the idea from you and they might attribute it to you. I am much more comfortable sharing something verbally, than I am sharing something in a online space.  I am starting to understand that sharing c...

So I did something a little crazy and decided to get a summer job working with little ones. As most of you know I am a middle school math teacher. My summer job of choice working with 6, 7 and 8 year olds. I want to stop here and give a shout out to all the lower elementary school teachers out there. I will take teenage angst over little tears any day. I don't know how you do it!   What is my reasoning? I wanted to try something new? I wanted to see how the other half lives? I am secretly a glutton for punishment? Not really sure, but they did offer me some insight into this whole digital native argument.  Let me start by saying that the number of littles who have a device of their own is mind boggling to me. I remember forcing my kids to wait until late middle or high school to have their own device. Most of the students in my camp group have a device that is web enabled. By definition these kids are digital natives, but I have noticed a few things. 1. They don't ta...

The use of web tools and social media in a k-12 classroom is going to require educational leaders to trust educators. As stated in the article by Goodyear cries for pedagogical change are often not accompanied by the necessary support. In short we want teachers to maintain the status quo but also to be innovative and use new tools. As an educator this is immensely confusing.  There are so many outdated ideas and practices that we just do, because we always have. Why do kids have spelling test? If I can't spell it I can look it up using some sort of technology, but all across the country students continue to have spelling lists. When is the last time you had to complete a long division problem on paper using the standard algorithm? Chances are it was somewhere around 5th or 6th grade.   Students need to be taught explicitly how to use whatever the tool is being used.  While most of our students are classified as digital natives, they don't always possess the...

The Networked Knowledge Activities Framework (NKA) will be useful to educators who are trying to find ways to incorporate social media sites into the formal classroom environment. The framework outlines six activities that users participate in while they are participating in online activities. Online users collect, curate, share, broker, negotiate, and construct knowledge using the information they find on the internet. Collection refers to the process of saving a link for an item so it can be found and used later. Users curate information by creating organized collections of online artifacts. Users share informations that has been collected or curated in an online forum. These activities and their descriptions provide educators with a starting point when they are attempting to embed social networking sites into classroom activities. Brokers act as agents between networks of people. Learners negotiate to come up with shared meaning and understanding. Finally some learners ...

  So I am stepping out on a limb next year and changing subjects. That's right folks the math diva is now going to teach Language Arts. Change is good right! I get bored and I love a challenge. Bonus, I get to redo my very mathy classroom. After much thought (okay a little thought) I have decided to go with a coffee house theme. I operate under the belief that a comfortable classroom facilitates learning. Here is the link to my board so far. Does anyone have suggestions or ideas that I can add.  https://www.pinterest.com/kam73/ela-classroom-ideas-22-23/

 I did it! I completed the Twitter challenge this week. Here is a summary of what I shared this week! New badge here I come!! MemeMonday-This is my life! ToolboxTuesday-This is an oldie but a goodie. I highly suggest you try it! Wondering Wednesday-I am really looking forward to learning about this tool. ThrowbackThursday-Keeping with the teacher theme! Follow Friday-Breaking from the norm and suggesting everyone follow Food Network on Twitter. Shoutout Saturday-Leelocin is a lifesaver!! White text, that's all I am going to say. 

  Far be it from me to not help a fellow classmate earn a badge. They really do build a sense of community don't they?  This post is in response to the Easter Egg Challenge that is posted in our Goodreads group ( go get em'). I had just finished reading the book Click'd by Tamara Ireland Stone ( Talk about luck)!! Clik'd is a story about a middle school girl who creates an online app called Click'd in coding camp. She gets chosen to present the app in a prestigious competition and things are going great until the program hits a glitch.  This novel touches on questions surrounding social media, trends, and privacy. The fact that it is set in middle school, makes this novel particularly appropriate for classroom use.  Some research revealed that the author Tamara Ireland Stone worked in technology for two decades before she began writing novels. This would explain her understanding of how teens interact with technology. Contact information for the author is linked b...

 Okay here I go again mixing personal and professional. This blog is dedicated to all of the teachers who are getting their summer " off ". I was watching the news and am pleased to report that the governor has signed a bill to increase school safety in the state. There will be mental health training, crisis intervention training, and a revamp of emergency drills. All of these wonderful things will magically be put in place on July 1st. Hold on let me get my magic wand. There that's better. Here's my question, how are we supposed to do this? We aren't really magic. When in the next three weeks are we going to learn all these new things? But rest assured we will be responsible. My district is also getting a new curriculum for both math and reading. We are supposed to get training at some point before we begin teaching in August. Have we gotten our new books yet? Nope? A scope and sequence that lets us know how they want it taught? Nope. What do I have.... Yeah that...

If you have friends who are educators, they are not okay. Most of them can tell you stories about a colleague who was disciplined for something that had nothing to do with education and happened outside of work. This trend of "teacher tattling" is concerning especially since online resources and social media are quickly becoming classroom tools. One of the reasons many educators shy away from the use of technology is that they are fearful that it will come back and bite them in the butt. There is a lot of concern surrounding what people will do with student data, but I am interested in looking at privacy from the teacher standpoint. For educators the line between professional and personal has been blurred for a long time. As a new teacher I was cautioned against using any type of social media, and was once warned because I was seen buying wine in the grocery store. This legacy has been around for a long time. For some reason people feel like teachers don't have the right ...

This week there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the validity and effectiveness of crowdsourcing. When I began the week I was strictly thinking about people who go on the internet to ask for brunch recommendations or nail salon recommendations. But, as the week progressed I learned that crowdsourcing is much more than that, and that we use it more often than any of us think.     I started looking for examples of successful crowdsourcing. The first example I came up with was Waze. If you haven't ever used Waze it is a fantastic GPS app that is updated by people who are driving. I actually took a small day trip yesterday and I used this app along the way. It provides you with a wealth of information about both driving and non driving related things. One thing I hate is sitting in traffic with no idea of why things are so slow and how long it's going to be. With the Waze app drivers in front of you tell you about the roadwork and when it will open up. You can pr...

I have recently been toying with ideas on how to incorporate social media in the classroom. My students spend a enormous amount of time using social media. My dilemma is how to use that to my advantage.  A couple of this week's readings dealt with the practical side of using tagging in the classroom. Before reading this article, I didn't think about "teaching" learners how to use tags. I also never really thought about teaching students the rules for tagging. I didn't even think about the fact that there are dictionaries dedicated to hashtags. As I continue to craft a social media plan for my class this week's readings left me with a few topics to ponder.  What social media skills/ideas do I need to teach explicitly? How will I communicate shared ideas like commonly used hashtags? How will I control the chaos? How will I make sure my kids are practicing good online etiquette? What are some common mistakes/pitfalls that I need address? (The article discussed mi...