Observations – R. Tyler Horner

Transitions in Teaching

I am not going to pretend that we all don’t know what is happening in the world right now. The Corona Virus is changing a lot about our world right before our eyes. This includes the way we are teaching and learning and there was not much of a learning curve.

I feel like there are two types of educators in the world right now:

Educators who are comfortable learning new ways of teaching and adapting instruction to include new methodologies and technologies to meet the needs of the learners in class.
Educators who are struggling because they have always done things certain ways and are either struggling to change or unwilling to change.

I would like to think I can include myself in the former category. I have always tried to be the person that would be the guinea pig for new technologies in my classroom. To be fair, this has contributed to the greying of my hair at times, but I’ve learned what I could and moved on.

The world changed quickly during the month of March and there were definitely teachers out there who could not cope with the change. The question that I’ve been pondering over the past couple of weeks is:

Whose fault is it that teachers can’t cope with change?

Is it the teacher’s fault? Is it their supervisor’s fault? Is it their employer’s fault? Is it society’s fault?

I’m not sure that I have any answers to this question, but it something I’ve had a lot of time to ponder these questions in the past few weeks. Hopefully in the coming months educators, in general, are going to be prepared to change multiple times because of all the uncertainty caused by our current global situation.

Genius Hour: Photoshop Part 2

My project is turned in and I am awaiting a grade for it. With it behind me I feel like I can speak on how I did. One quick aside, Corona Virus decided to make it’s global debut right in the middle of the project so I didn’t get to finish as much as I would like to.

I feel like I did way better at figuring out Photoshop than I thought I might before I started. I knew I could learn the program, it was my mindset that was going to hold me back in this project. What I found as I went along was that if I had an assignment or a task to complete it was not hard for me to make it happen. However, on the projects where I needed to come up with something from scratch I often needed some inspiration. Overall, I feel like I have a good working knowledge of Photoshop and how to use it.

My evidence is in my portfolio which can be found here. I’m excited to be able to put up some original work and show off what I learned. As I mentioned above, there is still learning to be done so I’ll be able to finish that up during the summer.

Genius Hour: Photoshop Part 1

One of the projects that I have been assigned in my graduate school program is a genius hour. In short, it is a time set aside for me to work on a topic skill that I have self selected. The only specific in this case was that it had to be associated with Educational Technology. I chose to learn a skill that I have thought about in the past, but never fully understood. I am learning Adobe Photoshop.

I won’t bore you with the procedural details like how I am learning it, what my end product will be, etc. Instead I wanted to catalog what I am learning and how it applies to future endeavors.

My main takeaway so far with Photoshop is that I can learn the skills but my weakness is my creative mindset. I am enough of a tinkerer that I can figure out most programs relatively quickly. There are some specific quirks to Photoshop that I am learning on the fly and getting frustrated with at times, but those are few and far between. When I struggle the most is when I lack inspiration for what to create or modify. The course that I am walking through suggests some practice exercises. They are trying to leave them general enough to fit anyone’s interests, but I sometimes have a hard time getting started because of no inspiration.

The question for me is how do I build my creative mindset to the point where I do not get frustrated getting started? I am assuming this comes down to practice. So I will endeavor to practice using the creative part of my brain so that I do not get so easily frustrated.

Opportunity

Being given an opportunity to do something is something we should cherish. We are given the ability that others are not and can either choose to use it to the fullest or not…as my principle would say, “the choice is definitely yours.” I have been given an opportunity in my graduate school class this semester and I should be thrilled, but I think I am over-thinking it.

Let me start off by saying I love this class and I really enjoy the professor that teaches it. This project is a blessing and also makes me really nervous. The basics of the project are to pick a topic or skill that interests you (that loosely fits under the umbrella of ‘Educational Technology’) and study it in depth. The catch is that it is more than half of my final grade. These facts lead to both thankfulness and worry all at the same time.

I am thrilled to be able to study something that I would like to. This project opens a world of possibilities and I love that. I can choose anything at all. I am leaning toward developing a skill that I currently do not possess, but would help me in the future. I am trying to complete my degree with the best possible chance of snagging a job and hitting the ground running. I get bogged down with this because I start thinking of the opportunity cost of choosing one thing over the other. If I choose something practical am I giving away the opportunity to learn something else new that is more professional or academic? Is my methodology in learning something new going to truly benefit me in the future?

This particular project really makes me nervous because in the past I have done better on the week-to-week assignments and struggled a tad with the more major assignments for this particular professor. With this grade being such a huger percentage of my grade and my GPA being a 4.0 currently, I’m going to get more and more nervous as the semester goes. This is new for me because I have never been competitive when it comes to grades in higher education until now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Review Blues

It’s that time of year again. We have come to the end of our history content and now we are knee deep in the process of reviewing everything all over again. What about this time of year fills me with such dread? Why is it that I enjoy my job all year to get to the end and feel so differently?

The first thing is that the end is near and everyone is looking ahead. Summer is so much fun. Students and teachers alike are ready to be done and free to do anything but be in school. I wish I could say that this doesn’t apply to me, but it does. My patience is running thin for particular students and I am ready for an extended break to recharge my batteries. I wouldn’t necessarily call this an excuse, but more a reality at the end of the school year. I wouldn’t call it human nature, I would call it a part of the life cycle of the school year. The question is, could this be different next year? I’m not sure.

The second thing is that there is state testing involved in the stress of the season. I do not talk about the test, and I don’t want my students to be stressed about a test. Does that mean there is zero stress? No. I am a duck riding on the surface of the water…everything looks calm, but the duck’s feet are kicking wildly under the water. My caffeine intake tends to skyrocket, I’m shorter with students than I need to be, and I feel like I’m always tired. Could this be different? Sure.

I’m trying to be proactive this year. I’ve started taking evening walks now that the weather is cooperating. I’m reminding myself of a mantra a previous principle had “Choose your attitude.” I cannot control the students in my class, but I can control how I act and how I respond to the students in my classroom. No matter what, I need to be a positive influence on the students in my classroom and continue to push them to the finish line.

Teacher Culture

I am now in month two of my third school of my teaching career. The thing that I am noticing the most when it comes to changing schools is that there is a lot of culture at school. There are teacher cultures, student cultures, administration cultures, parent cultures, etc. It boggles my mind how many cultural shifts I have had to deal with in this early part of the school year.

During teacher inservice days, I was almost overcome with all the teacher cultural differences in my new school. Many of the faculty at my new school had been there for a decade or more and new the culture inside and out. They new the families that were coming, the types of kids by neighborhood, and could predict how certain students would interact before the school year started. In a way, I was envious of them and I wished I could rush the acculturation I am now beginning to experience. As I have reflected on this phenomenon, I have realized that I do not need to completely adopt the new culture of the school, but use my own culture to add a new flavor to the already established culture of my school. I do not need to be a clone of the person before me or my teaching partner on the other team. I was hired to be me.

The culture that is normally talked about in teacher circles is the student culture. I know a lot of teachers pining to work at any of a number of certain schools because the kids act a certain way. What I have found is that the issues that are found with middle school kids transcend what school they go to. Meaning that the problems that we find with middle school kids are the same no matter what school they go to. The difference is how they are manifested and how the students are dealing with it. Understanding the school’s response to these issues is fascinating to me.

As I have taught my sixth graders (when I have taught sixth grade), is that culture is something that is difficult to explain until you are outside of it. Once I leave the great state of Texas it is plain to see I am in a completely different culture. Same with changing school. I never knew how plugged into the culture of my last school I was until I left.