Category: Education

Nervous Energy

I took a step back this weekend to look at the trends in my life, which is a different way of doing things for me.  I have young kids so I rarely have time to sit quietly and think.  Oddly enough, after the grandparents agreed to watch them for a day while my wife and I recovered from strep throat, you have a lot of time to think in between naps.

What I noticed about myself as I reflected was that I have a lot of nervous energy before changes in the routine.  I’ll give a couple of more recent examples:

  • Once my throat started hurting early in the morning, I found it hard to go back to bed and get sleep.  This was because I was going over all the possibilities when I went in to the urgent care facility in the morning.
  • Since I signed up for spring classes in graduate school I have been checking to see if the syllabus’ have been posted in our online platform.  I know they’re probably not going to be there, but why not check and see?
  • Before my daughter’s first basketball practice, I obsessively went over the provided practice plan to make sure I knew what I was doing.  I’m an assistant coach…this is six year old’s basketball…not that critical.

I’ve been called many things when people find out about my “condition” (by the way, I say this tongue-in-cheek).  I prefer the term “has a lot of nervous energy” over terms like “worrier” because I’m not necessarily worried.  I usually just can’t stop thinking about my part in the upcoming event and what I can do to make it the best it can be.

With all this being said, if I look tired on the day of a big event, that’s because my nervous energy kept me up and I really want it to go well!

2020 Goals

I would love to say that I have done a good job of cataloging my resolutions for the new year.  Unfortunately I have not, so I’m going to try it out this year and see how I did a year from now:

Professional Goals:

  • Finish my Master’s Degree with a 4.0
  • Develop a 1-year and 5-year plan for my career
  • Find 1 mentor to continue my development

Personal Goals:

  • Read 1 book per month (not degree related)
  • Cut my screen time
  • Develop one tradition with each of my children

Presenting Followup

In a previous post, I mentioned that I would be presenting at the National Council of the Social Studies annual Convention.  That day has come and gone and I wanted to circle back and report how the convention went.

Let’s start with my presentation.  First and foremost, I forgot my Chromebook at school about four hours away.  I realized this fact at 5:00 AM the morning of the presentation.  Needless to say, not much sleep was had after this moment.  I was able to borrow a colleague’s Chromebook (thanks Anna), and it went reasonably well.  I was trying out something new during the presentation by using Poll Everywhere’s feature that links questions together, but it was not working during my presentation.  I am blaming this on using someone else’s Chromebook, but I have also followed up with the presenter I borrowed this from to get some help for next time.  Other than that, everything went well.  I heard good feedback.  Most people appreciated that my presentation was usable and practical.  I have posted a recording of my presentation in my podcast feed, which can be found here (in case you are interested).

The rest of the Conference was pretty typical of a national conference.  There were a lot of people attempting to sell me something, even more than our annual state social studies conference.  While there are times that i am looking for a new product, I am not as easily convinced of new products.  I find myself heading to my trusty favorites to see how they have adapted since I last saw them.  I also use conventions to network with people in my field.  This time I ran into one of my college roommates who is now teaching history.  It was fun getting to reconnect with an old friend.  Finally, I did learn about some new technology to use in the classroom.  I will be reviewing it on next week’s podcast and it’s awesome, so tune in!

Overall, I love going to conventions.  I think it is important to help spread the knowledge that I have acquired as well as learn from other.  Good times in Austin, TX.

Presenting

I have a love-hate relationship with presenting.  On one hand, I love sharing my knowledge and experiences with people.  On the other hand, I am more of an introvert so it can be uncomfortable.  Recently, I have had to make presentations in my graduate school classes as well as in real life, so it is time to share what I have learned.

  1. Do not wait until the last minute.  I have this bad habit of procrastinating on things until they are so pressing they have to be done today.  I try and space out time working on my presentations so that I can always look at it with fresh eyes.  This also allows me to think through issues in my presentation to make sure that I am giving the best presentation I can.
  2. Understand that there will be technical glitches.  I like seeing great presenters because it shows me what is possible.  I recently got the opportunity to watch Cara North’s presentation on engagement and thought it was spectacular, so I tried to incorporate some of her ideas into an upcoming presentation.  I also know that sometimes things do not work out ideally, so I have a plan should the new ideas do not work out.  I also try and have every cord I could ever need or want with me, just so I am not reliant on the facility to provide something in an emergency.
  3. Know your audience.  Who I am presenting to matters.  My grad school peers will find certain things important/funny/enlightening/etc. while my co-workers might not.  do you best to cater your message to the group you are presenting to.
  4. Do not be afraid to admit things that do not go right.  In the worst case scenario, it is ok to be honest with the people watching your presentation.  When my presentation in grad school was not going the way I hoped it was, my peers understood and were gracious to me.  Everyone makes mistakes…afterwards, learn from your mistakes.

Imitation

I have never wanted to be someone who was accused of cheating or copying.  Growing up I was always encouraged to have creative, original ideas because that was the sign that you were engaging your brain.  I have always taken this to heart and done my best to always try and think outside the box and be a problem solver.

This concept got me through college.  I was able to channel my creativity and problem solving ability into success in my classes.  I especially gravitated toward moral and ethical questions and topics of study because that allowed me to write and think through topics logically and come up with creative ways to solve these problems.

When I entered the work force, all of a sudden my creative thinking process was not as reliable as it was in college.  Now there were real world consequences to my thought experiments and moral dilemmas.  People were less forgiving when something did not go as planned and I began to get nervous about taking risks.  I have very recently become ok with imitation to help me try something new in a safer, more controllable way.

I was listening to a podcast about instructional design (yes, I am that nerdy) and someone put forward the idea that imitation can help you learn about someone else’s solutions to a problem.  Through imitating their solution, you can learn something that can be applied elsewhere.  Since then, I have been embracing the idea of imitating successful people I want to be like.  I try my best to give them credit and learn as much as I can so that I can begin to spread my wings into new arenas.

Professional Juggler

I have never been a very good juggler.  In P.E. they tried hard to get me to juggle.  We started out with scarves, bean bags, and tennis balls but I just could not manage to be very good no matter how I tried.  Sure, as an adult I can occasionally spin a few items in the air, but I will never be confused with a circus juggling act.

As a professional I feel like I am learning about having to juggle a lot of responsibility.  I have multiple arenas all vying for my time and attention and it seems like as soon as soon as one of these areas is doing well another of them falls apart.

As a parent, my kids are growing up fast.  Right when my wife and I think we have things under control they grow into another issue.  I understand that this is a part of “growing up” but it still freaks me out that my two are growing up so differently.

As a teacher, my life is always a bit out of control.  Right when I think I understand Middle School students they will do something that surprises me.  I love that they keep me on my toes, but at times it seems a little overwhelming.

As a student, I feel like I am constantly on the edge of losing control.  My classes have been great and I am learning a lot.  With that being said, I wish I could learn in a classroom as opposed to learning through technology.  I am hoping that learning in a different way will help me in the end grow from my experience.

With these three balls in the air my life tends to feel on the precipice of falling apart.  I am looking forward to some down time over the holidays to relax and prepare for the craziness that is the spring semester.

AR in the Classroom

A few weeks ago now, I mentioned that I created an AR game for my classes to use to review the differences between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in my history classroom. I wanted to set the scene for how it was used in my classroom and the results that I saw when we tried it in class:

Context Analysis:

The students in my history classroom had learned about the issues surrounding the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. We had covered the weaknesses of the Articles of the Constitution, the compromises that were made during the Constitutional Convention, and the arguments made by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the course of three weeks. As we began to prepare for our test over this time period, I realized that my students needed a different method of review over Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.

During the teaching of the unit, we had presented the arguments through the analysis of the Federalist papers, a chart outline the major differences, and even matching games. While these were somewhat effective, we needed something that targeted their understanding of the key issues of the debate.

Design Process:

Since we do not have very much time and there are specific things that my students needed to learn, I settled on the Behaviorist Learning Theory. The immediate feedback for being wrong and the feedback for being correct would help us study quickly and efficiently. We will be reinforcing the depth of knowledge on the topic when we transition to looking at the original political parties (which are similar).

For this particular game, I would like the students to not only associate the person with the side of the argument they took as well as all the major arguments. With this in mind, the student initially must choose whether they are a Federalist or an Anti-Federalist. At that point they must correctly identify the arguments of that party, if they do not they must start over and try again.

Link to the Game

Classroom Observations:

First of all, if you are using iPads for Metaverse, ensure that they have a good wifi connection. This seems simple, but I was having issues getting the game to load initially and it all came down to the iPad loosing signal right when the game was trying to load.

Once the game was downloaded and connected to the internet, the operation of the game was great. The students were able to grasp the point and purpose of the game without much clarification. The students spent a few minutes with it each and passed it to the next student. It reinforced whether the students knew the material or not. I used this as an opportunity to remind the students where they could go for more study materials should they need to in the future.

Overall, I believe Metaverse was a good option for this learning objective. The implementation was a bit frustrating at first (as it always is when implementing new technology in the classroom), but ended up providing good formative assessment data quickly.

Definition Confusion

I am a firm believer that definitions to words matter. It matters that we are on the same page when we talk about important topics. It matters that I understand what you are saying to me and to do so I need to understand the vocabulary you are using. What I am realizing as I begin to look at the instructional design world is that the definitions of certain words change ever so slightly in different industries. I am going to give a couple of examples from the past couple of months.

Formative Assessment

In the K-12 teacher world, formative assessments are used to make sure the information you conveyed is being understood by the students in your classroom. The way I have always understood it as a teacher was making sure the students are understanding the lesson. In this case, we are looking at the students learning as the potential issue, so if the message is being lost we look to things like scaffolding activities to help their understanding. If enough students are not comprehending the material, the teacher would look at reteaching material, but the main issue (from my point of view) is the student’s ability to understand the content.

In the instructional design world, formative assessments are looking at the instructional process to understand why the training effective or not. This is a big difference. Instructional designers moving from education might be looking at the learners not the training process as the issue. While that might be true, we should also be looking at the process to see if that is where the problem lies.

“Microlearning”

I have heard this term during my research into instructional design and have heard multiple definitions for the term. What it amounts to is small bits of learning that people can self-select to participate in voluntarily. This also seems to be very fashionable currently in the instructional design world. The technology that seems to be driving this is Twitter. Learning through Twitter chats seems to be a big part of microlearning.

I have been aware and (lightly) participating in Twitter chats for almost a decade. I am not trying to brag, but speak to how long it has been around. I am not sure that microlearning is drastically different than participating in learning through Twitter. Understanding that can help understanding the point of microlearning.

A Tale of Two Degrees

I enjoy the educational process. I always have. I loved being a student growing up. Don’t get me wrong I loved my summer break, but by the end of it I was ready to get back into school. Some of this was because I prefer routine to true freedom, but some of it was because I really like to learn new things. I have continually sought out new learning opportunities as I have grown up. Public school, college, graduate school…I even saw earning my Eagle Scout growing up as an opportunity to learn new things (do you have a Dentistry merit badge?). In the past few year, my wife attended an online program for a Master’s Degree and I have recently begun an online Master’s Degree and I’m noticing some stark differences.

To ‘module’ or not to ‘module’. One of our programs was more of a pathway you had to follow. Your program was given to you a piece at a time and when you were done with one class you moved on to the next on in a specific order. The other program is more like a traditional college degree tract. You have essential classes everyone must take and you have electives you can choose from that all add up to the number of hours you need to graduate. I don’t know which one I would consider better or worse. The pathway model seems to be more straight forward and has the potential to be well thought out. It does not allow the student to customize their experience should they want to. The traditional model is flexible, but going through a course catalog could be considered confusing and doing so online could be considered either a time saver or doubly confusing.

Specific job or opening doors. My wife’s degree was setting her up to have a very specific job. She met all the requirements at the end of her degree to be able to hold a counselor position at a public school. If she wanted to have a principle position she would need to add more coursework to her degree, anything other than school counselor is not covered. My degree is more general in nature and allows me to open the door to a lot of possibilities. To some degree, educational jobs need any Master’s Degree, but I feel like my particular degree allows me to apply for a variety of jobs. Which is better depends on your point of view. If you know exactly what you want to do you might opt for a degree that points you at that job. If you would prefer to work in an industry rather than a specific job, maybe a more general degree is for you.

My goal here is not to critique university programs (which is why neither program is mentioned by name) but to point out the very different online degrees that have been pursued in my house. I think both have value, but it is definitely something to look at when deciding what program to join should you want to. Continuing education is not always necessary, but it does come in handy depending on your situation.

Responsible Technology

As I was participating in an online discussion during a previous week of graduate school, I got into an interesting conversation with a peer. They thought that in a situation where a district goes 1:1 with technology, the district was under no obligation to make accommodations for students without internet access outside the home. This got me pondering for what solutions might be out there for students without access and whether the district is obligated to help with such a problem.

As far as options for students who do not have access to the internet in their current living situation, I think their options are:

  • Show up to school early or stay late to use their internet access
  • Go to a business that provides internet access for their patrons
  • Go to a friend’s house where they could get their work done
  • Ask for a paper copy of assignments to be completed at home

While students who do not have access do have viable options for the use of the internet outside of the school building I would argue that could be difficult for some students.

My thinking is that if a school or district is going to go 1:1 for their instruction it is also incumbent upon them to work with the community around them to help provide solutions to work on their school work outside of class. One way to do this would be to offer extended library/study hall options for students to use the school internet. Another option would be for the school district to collect the information of local businesses that provide internet access to help families find access when needed and work with other local businesses to extend the number of facilities the students could go to if needed. It is great marketing for local businesses and is a way for the community to poor back into the schools

These are just some quick thoughts on how the community could work to help all students have access to the internet to aid in their education, but I’m sure there are plenty of other models that could work. To me it just makes sense that if school districts are going to put requirements on students that could limit their access to education outside of the school they should also be working on providing fair and equal access for all their students to be on equal footing.