Middle School News Team

One of the many things I love about my school, Wabash Middle School, is that we offer something for every student.  I have never seen such a small school with so many opportunities for diverse student interests.  We offer everything from tennis to Spanish Club.  Our newest edition is the APAX News Team.  Since our school is 1 to 1 we have incredible digital potential.  We have about 20 students who do a variety of jobs.  We meet everyday in our after school Computer Club.  Some days we have several stories to cover, on slow days we just hang out and think of fun things to include in the next broadcast.  I work with another teacher-sponsor who was a journalism major at one point.  She writes or at least edits most of the script, and I handle the video editing.  We are planning to hand this off to the students eventually, but its middle school.  One the things I love about this is the diverse group of students who are involved.  We are attracting new members all the time and the APAX News Team is all the rage in Wabash.

This is a perfect example of the fantastic opportunities afforded to 1 to 1 schools.  This would be very difficult without our infusion of technology.  You can follow our broadcasts at our website found here.

Pick your poison!!!!!

Kids are kids.  Halloween is coming and kids love it.  I have two projects we are doing in my class within the next two weeks.  One is an individual project and the other is a group project.

Project #1 Individual Project
This week we are learning perimeter, area, surface area, and volume.  Simple concepts, but ones I have found kids mix up.  The first step in solving one of these problems is to know which one to choose.  How else would you know which formula to select?  I am going to create categories for each topic and let the kids dress up for Halloween and try to win that category.


Here are my categories.

Largest Perimeter
Smallest Perimeter

Largest Area
Smallest Area

Largest Volume
Smallest Volume

Largest Surface Area
Smallest Surface Area

Overall Most Creative = Student has to enter one of the above categories to be eligible.

On Halloween, Wednesday the 31st, we will take pictures of each costume and calculate the category they choose.  I will put the winners on my website, they love that stuff.

Project #2 Group Project
This project I stumbled upon at the end of last year and have been waiting to try it.  There are artists that create "canstruction".  Can sculptures of ever day things and drawings.  They are usually used in relation to a food drive.  Just so happens our student council is having a food drive.  I offered to help collect from the other classes if we could have the food for a week later to let the kids create "canstruction".  I think after we make them we will either connect the shapes to the above topics or have the kids ask their own question and solve it.

I have no delusions of grandeur. I know my kids projects won't look like this, but I do know they will turn out great.

So pick your poison and have some fun with your kids.

Computer Club

The summer before my school went 1 to 1, we tried to prepare for any foreseeable problems our students, parents, or teachers might encounter.  One issue was Internet access. There are many in our community who suffer from unemployment or underemployment and roughly 70% of our students receive free or reduced lunch.  What are students supposed to do if they have homework and they need the Internet to complete their work?  While they likely have local hotspots, friends, or relatives who have Internet, as a school we can't ask them to "just figure it out" without a reasonable option.  My experience has been that students are efficient excuse machines, and if given any legitimacy, they, and their parents, will overrun you.

Thus, the creation of Computer Club.  Computer club is an after school, supervised place for students to  work on homework or just hangout and use the school's Internet access.  This is also a place to get help with computers.  Teachers often send student to me in Computer Club to learn how to use iMovie, iPhoto, or some web tool.  Teachers themselves regularly drop in to get tech advice or troubleshoot a problem.

To be fair, lots of kids come to Computer Club to play non-educational games like Minecraft, and hang out with their friends. However, one could argue this is a great alternative to having them walking around town getting into trouble or returning to an empty house because their parents are at work.  Last week I sat up and surveyed the kids in Computer Club.  There were several athletes using it as a pre-practice study hall, there were 2 kids discussing their new blog and how to promote it, our APAX News Team was planning their next broadcast, about 12 hardcore Minecraft builders hunched over their computer, and another 6 or 7 kids floating from group to group socializing and casually working on homework.  It was exciting to see kids engaged in what they were doing and having fun in school.  Computer Club has been an integral part of our 1:1 plan, it has also become a time for clubs to assemble like APAX News Team and the new upstart SWAT Team (Students Working to Assist Technology).  Great things are happening in little Wabash, Indiana, and like our announcements regularly say, "its a great day to be an Apache".

Group Project, Individual Grades

Collaboration is a 21st Century skill, and despite the social nature of today's youth, it doesn't come easy.   Leaders need to learn how to delegate work and direct people in an effective way.  Shy students need to learn to speak up.  Socialites need to learn to stay focused on the task at hand.  Group projects are a great opportunity to learn collaboration skills, but they can also be disastrous, especially when it comes to grading.  Its inevitable--someone doesn't pull their weight in the group, the group gets a low grade, and suddenly its 'not fair'.  While the old adage is true, life is not fair--group grading should be.

Last year I experimented with a grading style that helps to avoid this.  Rather than grading the entire group at the end of a project, I grade the students individually based on their contribution.  I formatively assess throughout the project, and by the end of the project I usually have a pretty good idea of who has done their work.

In addition, I like to design my projects so that each group member is responsible for an independent part of the whole final product.  In the end, the group must find a way to put all of their work together into one presentation.  Its important to make each independent part so that the other group members don't rely on the completion of another student's work.  For example in my recent project Exploring the World Project, students had to research the most amazing physical features in the Eastern Hemisphere.  They each had to make several presentation slides, create a map, and create a written explanation of how each physical feature formed.  The group had to combine their work into one presentation, map, and written paper.  Of course Google makes this very easy.  When the group presented, each group member presented their independent parts.  When they were finished, we graded out individually.  Life was finally fair.

K-12 Alignment

Districts have made attempts to align their curriculum from kindergarten to grade 12 for years.  Common Core standards and state content standards before them furthered this idea.  I reflected on this idea recently with a colleague and we had an epiphany. It shouldn't be K-12 alignment, it should be H-12 alignment.  The "H" stands for home.  The inclusion of parents has been the missing link in curricular alignment.  It has been pointed out recently by a great video produced by NBC that students who come to school behind their classmates fall further behind every year especially during the summer.  Why have we never seriously addressed this?

There are no easy solutions, but schools must make a revolutionary effort to bring parents into the schools, not just in elementary, but through student's senior year.  It seems parent involvement wanes as students work their way through school.  Parent-teacher conferences twice a year is a paltry attempt to involve parents in their student's education.  Parents need to be in the school, have knowledge of and participate in learning activities, and also be held accountable to their student's education.  Teachers are held to the highest order of accountability for a student they have for an hour each day.  Isn't there some kind of incentive we could offer parents?  Clearly the incentive of a better education is not enough.  What about free textbook rental?  What about a tax credit?  If we want to revolutionize American education and compete in a global world, education must begin and be sustained at home.

Why Chrome is the Most Amazing Browser

People don't like to talk about religion and politics because people are generally set in their ways and emotions gets high.  This is how I feel towards web browsers (nerd alert), and like any religious zealot, I am completely convinced I am right!  However, this is no leap of faith.  Google Chrome is, by any measure, the best web browser available and anyone who doesn't agree simply doesn't know what Chrome can do. This is especially true for educators and students.

Speed is thought to be a major issue with web browsers, and you can find speed tests that favor just about any browser, except maybe Internet Explorer.  I personally think Chrome is faster after using IE, Firefox, and Safari on a fairly regular basis, however, Internet speed is more linked to your Internet connection and computer processor than it is to your browser.

The real beauty of Google Chrome is the apps and extensions.  For those who don't know, web extensions (also called add-on too) are essentially mini-programs that work within your web browser.  Some of my favorites are Evernote Web clipper, Diigo Highlight/bookmarking tool, Explain and Send (screenshots), Black Menu (for easy access to all your Google Apps), and Aviary image editor for Google Drive--this is important when working in Google Presentation to edit and crop images.  The Google Chrome Store is full of thousands of other extensions and apps such as Ancient History Encyclopedia--and they are almost all FREE.

There are many other benefits too.  Google Chrome automatically updates, so there is no need to ever update the software.  Do you ever leave your browser open so you don't lose the tabs you have open?  Chrome allows you to close your browser and continue where you left off.   Possibly the greatest benefit is the fact that it is 100% web-based.  What does that mean?  I can log into Chrome (Google account) on my desktop and have the same apps and extensions I have on my laptop. I can log into my account on my friend's computer, library computer--ANYWHERE and have all the same apps, extensions, web history, bookmarks, etc. as I do on my personal laptop.  Not to mention the incalculable value of all the other Google Apps, which I've blogged about before here and here.  I don't want to live in digital world without Google.  You won't either when you discover the glory of Google.