The Tale of a Recovering Internet Troll

Today in Educ504 the first portion of class was devoted to online footprints and how we can educate students on the importance of knowing your footprint. To begin my entry today I will start by giving my story of a recovering Internet troll. If you know me personally you would know that I am a pretty biased Michigan fan. So one night I ha the great idea, that was fueled by a great amount e-courage thanks due to online anonymity, to post a bunch of smack talk on a Michigan state sports message board, the red cedar message board. To give some back on this message board, it is perhaps the loosest moderated board for MSU sports. Well in the height of e-courage I posted a whole mess of little brother, salvation army Spartans and other inappropriate comments. Of course that caused a ruckus on the board, which ended up being a 15 page thread.

What I didn't realize is that while I was doing this someone on the board was googling my user name and finding all of my personal information. At the time I was registered with academia.org which sends you an email every time your name is googled. So that night I ended up with about ~50 email alerts that I was being googled by someone in the Lansing area. At the end of the night, this particular individual found my personal name (goodby username anonymity!), personal university email address, Facebook profile, google+ profile, posts I made when I was in high school on a marching band message board, my physical information, so basically everything. The person ended up cloning my university email address and sent me a creepy email from my own address.

So the moral of the story is don't be an idiot online. You never know when some creeper online is going is to E-stalk you and post your personal info. Thankfully the mod of RCMB deleted that thread. I definitely closed as many privacy loopholes I could find that night. When I am a teacher, I plan on creating a class Facebook page. I will tell my students my tale of moronicy, with the message DON'T BE AN IDIOT LIKE ME because it will come back to haunt you.

To end this update, I want to give a shootout to the new blogger app for iPhone. I am currently writing this update as I read the bus.

Thurston High School

Much has changed since I last blogged on here. From getting into the serious long runs of my marathon training to meeting with my student teaching mentor, like John Dylan said, "Times are a changing." The biggest change has been the beginning of my observation and student teaching internship at Thurston High School in Redford, MI. 

My first day in Thurston was for Professional Development with all of the teachers and administrators at Thurston. The first thing that struck me during PD day #1 was the strong basis of specific student achievement data for designing curricula and lesson planning. As we walked in each teacher was handed a packet that included the previous year's PLAN test, test results and statistics. The principle of Thurston had each teacher complete the PLAN test to experience what students went through for the previous year and begin to think about what changes need to made to the current curriculum in order to line up with the National Standards. Following this we meet up with the 8th grade science teachers from the middle school and compare student results. This allows the teachers to align instruction to insure that student instruction is meeting up with the current state and national science education standards.

My feelings on using standardized tests to impact curricula are mixed. I understand in the current age of high impact testing, we teachers must insure students perform adequately on the ACT and MEAP tests. However, I am a just little disturbed on our current government leaders' obsession with standardized tests. This belief is further impacted by how little actual science content is tested on the Science section of the PLAN test, which primarily tests the ability to analyze data tables and charts. We might as well not even teach science, if this is standard students are held. 

The second day of PD was devoted to designing a FLEX time activities. The teacher who moderated this activity is a former SMAC'er. The flex time activities this year revolve around the theme of developing intellectual character (which ironically was the theme of the first week of Fall semester SMAC classes). Thurston has a high population of at-risk students. I believe this would be a good activity for students to realize that not just "smart" people do well in school, but those with characteristics of intellectual character. It is those times when you fail, but persevere that develop you into a well educated and mature citizen. 

Finally, on Tuesday and Thursday I had my first days of contact with students. My mentor teaches three sections of Essentials of Physics, a section with a high proportion of students with IEP's, and an honors section. It was interesting to witness the different approaches my mentor teachers takes with the three sections. 

First and Fourth hour are our sections of Essential of Physics with the general student population. Both of these sections, I have noticed have a higher proportion of students with behavioral issues. To manage the classroom my mentor devoted a large amount of time to teaching basic student and group behavior in a science classroom during the first couple of days. Even after harping on behavior, I still witnessed students misbehaving their first lab on Thursday. Finally after sending a student to the assistant principle and reminding them whatever they did not finish would be homework, did the students finally calm down. 

In the section with a high number of students with IEP's, my mentor spent much more time going over the directions for the lab and not assuming students could some of the assumptions inherent in the directions. Along with the class para-pro, my mentor asked drawing questions to the groups as they were working on their lab to draw out their understanding of the general physics concepts of the lab. 

For the honors section, my mentor designed an extension activity that allowed the students to delve deeper into the physics and graphing concepts of the lab. My mentor was able to give less directions and spent more time from group to group to assess their understand. Not having to devote 20 minutes to classroom management allowed my mentor to really dive deep into the content. 

So, all in all, it was a great first week at Thurston. I am really excited to see what direction I can take the class. 

A Break

All of us SMAC'ers are almost there before having one month off before the real work begins. Today I felt was one of the best of the term. I felt our visitors, provided some great advice. Kevin's advice to model tech use really stuck with me. I am a tech person by heart. When I get a new piece of software or hardware or join a new social networking site I dive right into it. I love getting to know the ins and outs of technology, taking things apart to see how they work and can be put new uses. However, when I am teaching I cannot assume my students, even though they are a part of the Generation M they may not have that assumed computer literacy. Students need to know what the teacher expects for performance.

Larry said student teaching should be our one time where we as teachers can experiment with our pedagogy and classroom management. Even though I have been taught general chemistry at the University of Michigan for the past two years, I have never received the chance to experiment with my teaching. The curriculum, syllabus, lesson plans, assessments, and lab protocols were always designed ahead of time by the professor. I am excited to take ownership of my teaching. In the fall, I will be teaching integrated science and physics in an inquiry-based classroom. I have some cool ideas I would love to try out. So, I feel bad for my mentor teacher if my ideas bomb. 

At the end of class we skyped in with Lauren's class from the New York. It was great hearing from her students what they expect from teachers. I want to make my lessons content rich and utilize higher order thinking, but I also want them to be fun. I had some really cool science teachers in my past, so I would like to pay it forward all that was given to me. Lauren had a great idea when she said holds Facebook office hours. This would allow students to reach me easily when they are not in class. My only worry is that not every student has the internet resources to be able to take part in online office hours. However, hearing that most students in her low-income area have a smart phone (which was surprising) this should not be in issue as Facebook is integrated into the majority of phones (android, iOS, Windows7 Mobile, Symbian, and BBOS). 

I had a great first term in the SMAC program. I met some great new friends and future teachers. I also learned a lot about reform, using technology in the classroom, pedagogy, enhancing literacy, how to hit higher order thinking in my lessons. Therefore, my fellow SMAC'ers, have a great August and see you in a few weeks! 

Rat Race

I can easily identify with the behaviors described as search in the Emily Yoffe article for Slate Seeking. In Seeking Yoffe describes obsessive searching behavior seen in many mammalian species, including humans. This behavior described as foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy, and interest is where the creator is constantly in search for small bits of something. In animals such as a mice and dogs it could be constantly and obsessively searching for food. Most people would recognize this behavior when they with cats using a laser pointer. The animal is constantly in search for the small bits never being satisfied. In humans we can relate this to obsessively searching through google, facebook, imdb, twitter, or google+ for new information. It is like we are stuck in an endless loop, with no way to ctl-alt-del our way out of it. Now my question as an educator is how do we access this feedback loop in students, to get them to have endless need to learn new knowledge, while using higher cognitive skills?

Today with our ever increasing technology skills we need to pull away our students' attention from their facebook, twitter, and google+ feeds and get them to focus their dopamine drenched lateral hypothalumus' towards learning increasing levels of knowledge. I can imaging using twitter and facebook to produce and share creative audio and visual projects that connect global and local problems in science (in my classroom biology and physics) to the content they are learning. The generation we are education has grown up in the digital age. We might as well embrace their use in technology to hit key content standards and benchmarks.

With students growing up with the internet, the difference between one's public and private persona is becoming ever increasing blurred. Most teens today live on facebook (or transferring to google+...) and the difference between their public and private lives is coming together as one. At the dividing line between Gen X and Gen Y, I feel I grew up in two worlds. In elementary and middle school, I grew up in the world, where there was a distinct line between one's public life (accomplishments and activities at school and in public) and your private life at home. Before facebook and smartphones, it was considered rude to not give your friends and visitors your full attention. However, since smartphones have become the dominant medium to disseminate information, being connected to outside people is now kosher. I see myself checking and updating my facebook feed when I am out with my friends at the bar. I don't really consider it rude anymore. 

In the reading The Wired Life: The public and private sphere of the gen M community, the authors describe the two different persons that exist in the wired age: publicly private and privately public.  As educators we need insure students know when to utilize these two different roles in their lives. We want students to cognizant when the message board postings, blogs, podcasts, and vodcasts they create open up their identities globally. Perhaps sometimes a privately public persona would be more useful when student creations would open them up to cyberbullying and identity theft. 

A Tale of Two Classes

Today in Educ 504 was really a tale of two classes. The first half was with teacherK discussing how podcasts can help with instruction and letting us loose to create our first podcast. The second half was with teacherJ. With TeacherJ we participated with partners in a decoding activity.

Before I came into class today, I was a bit nervous to create my podcast. I will let a little secret about myself slip about why I hate the sound of my own voice. Through out elementary school I went through speech therapy. Most of my issues derived from slurring my words and speaking too quickly. I still have problems at times, which makes me extremely self-conscious about my voice.

However, I found the podcasting activity fun. In class yesterday, we were to create a podcast up to 2 minutes to advertise one of the edubloggers we follow. I chose to advertise Quantum Progress, To create the podcast we used the audio mixing tool at Aviary. The podcast besides including our recorded advertisement, had to have an opening and closing hooks along with intro and closing music. I could see how this could be a creative way to get students creating creative projects to present course content. I can also see how this can get shy students or those that are self-conscious like myself that do not like speaking up in class.

The second half of class was with TeacherJ working on a fun decoding activity. I worked with cohortS to decode a story written in all common symbols found in the airplane safety literature. I had an easier time decoding the story than my partner. When I look back, I think my past educational experience with  mathematical language aided my ease of decoding. This activity can easily be related to how a students learn how to read. Basically, when you read you are decoding symbols in a systematic manner. When you teach beginning students you cannot assume they all come in with the same past knowledge to where decoding the symbols in a textbook are automatic. Us teachers, must also not assume students are able to decode the messages written in course texts from individual sentences to the big picture we are trying to portray. . In order to make decoding reading more automatic, we need to teach our students tools that help out decoding. Students could look at nearby words or sentences in order to learn the meaning of confusing passages and words. I found this activity very powerful and help me appreciate the need to help students "unpack" new and confusing material.

World of Warcraft

One of my hobbies since growing up has been playing video games. If I look back and count the many hours sitting in front of my computer or tv playing my Wii, most people would believe the time could have been used for better uses ie. studying, or running. I would disagree with this common notion.

I believe my hours upon hours playing games like World of Warcraft, Super Mario, Legend of Zelda- Ocarina of Time gave me positive attributes and skills I would not have learned elsewhere. Attributes such as creative problem solving, collaborative teamwork, and working through epic frustration can be learned through gaming. As I watch Jane McGonigal's talk on the virtues of gaming, I was shocked to learn that gamers on average spend an equal amount of time in school as they do playing games. It is amazing gamers are actually "dual enrolled." They are enrolled in a traditional K-12 education and "enrolled" in a gaming school.

Games such as Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time emphasize gradual building up of specific cognitive skills that are needed to solve more difficult problems later on in the game. If I look back at my life and how I developed problem skills, I believe this skill first manifest when I was 7, the exact time I started playing original Legend of Zelda for the NES system. Coincidence? I think not. Since beating the Legend of Zelda I have had a love of games that require deep problem solving.

The ability to work collaboratively is also strengthen through playing multiplayer games that require team building and work by building upon each individuals' strengths and teams. MMROPGs like World of Warcraft emphasize this skill more than any other genre of gaming. In World of Warcraft users can customize their avatar to be any one of several different species, genres like Warrior, Shaman, Priest, or Paladin; and occupation like an engineer, potions master, and herbologist. In order to achieve higher levels, players must team up in clans and coordinate their strategies according to their strengths and weaknesses in order to defeat raids and instances. Team and collaborative skills like these are instantly usable in the RL (real world).
Perseverance is the one quality ever gamer needs if they will ever "beat" a video game. I can recall thousands of times when I suffer the same death in the level of Goldeneye when I must protect a unarmed computer programmer while hundreds of ex-KGB agents are coming in with machine guns. Yet I must keep trying. Why, I really have no clue other than sheer madness to beat a video game. It was these times of learning how to overcome deep frustration, got me through all-nighters doing quantum physics homework during my undergrad.


So in essence, I agree with James Paul Gee's Good Video Games, Good Learning. Video games can teach us skills that are extremely useful in real life. So, when it comes to the time where I must decide whether to support my future children's playing of video games, I say grab me a wii remote and let’s play some Mario Kart.

Fun with librarians

Today in EDUC 504 we were look enough to take a part of a "soft opening" of the brand new Brandon Center in the School of Education. The Brandon Center is a new collaboration center with beautiful meetings areas and tools for active collaboration. I can see how the way the individual spaces are arranged encourage active and open discussion of ideas.

For our activity today, we were broken up into groups 4 and 5 according to teaching major and with one librarian. Our librarian Addie was an absolute asset today. She brought some interesting ideas and perspectives to our activity. It was great she could take our overarching goals of creating a lesson plan to have students become educated consumers of energy, learn about nuclear energy, and alternative energy options; and create a coherent and well planned out lesson plan. Her idea of having students create person facebook profiles of an individual nuclear plant was absolutely genius. It will allow students to learn the basics of nuclear power, the different forms of nuclear power plants in America, the politics of nuclear power, and the reasons why some power plants are built near bodies of water and some aren't. The facebook page will also teach students to use social networking in a fun and educational manner. I am going to have to remember this lesson for my own teaching in the future.

After the lesson plan activity, the groups got together to discuss other matters such as classroom management that can effect the power of lessons. One idea we discussed was how to arrange classroom to make group work more manageable and less disruptive and noisy. I thought the idea of putting tennis balls on the legs of tables was very interesting. They would make moving tables more quiet and less disruptive to classroom activities.

I also thought the discussion on how to arrange students in groups was interesting. When I GSI'ed chemistry at Michigan, I made it a point to create lab groups with a range of abilities and personalities. I found groups work much better if all team members are able to make valuable contributions and bring their own strengths to the group. In my six terms of teaching at Michigan, I have only had to break up one group and it was due to a serious health risk two members were posing because of their screwing around.