Kidcast Podcasting in the Classroom

I subscribed to Kidcast Podcasting in the Classroom. The person behind the scenes is Dan Schmit. I listened to a podcast titled Ethical Dilemmas, Civil Discourse, and Citizenship. It was interesting stuff. Basically, in Dan's podcasts, he brings up suggestions or ideas on the kind of podcasts students could produce. In this particular podcast that I listened to, Dan suggest having students discuss about what it means to be a citizen along with civic issues. He thinks students should build skills in civil discussion and build respect for each other's views. He feels students should be given opportunities to examine different perspectives on civil issues through a podcast or similarly an online radio show. This will lead students through analyzing the issues and then making decisions from the issues analyzed. Getting into topics like these will get students to reason, examine different points of views, and make decisions. Having them practice making ethical choices may result in becoming good citizens. Dan notices that character education has become an important part of school's curriculum. Schools who teaches character education have students role play different scenarios and then brainstorm possible solutions. When making decisions, empathy, cause and effect, and interdependence is a big part of the process. When students learn to solve conflicts in this way, students will become better citizens. Therefore, students should be challenged to come up with ethical questions in a podcast. Other students should then make brief responses, provide evidence, share their reaction to it, and then give their advice. After the student makes a decision, then the student can interview people and record their responses about their perspective. From doing this, they can compare their perspective to others as well as examine which would work best and learn from it.

I really enjoyed listening to Dan's podcast. It wasn't too long nor too short. He kept the topic interesting and was straight to the point. I really liked Dan's idea about having students discuss about citizenship and civil duties. At my school, we have a program called Steps to Respect that talks against bullying. This program is centered around being a good citizen to others. With the program, we also do a lot of role play and problem solving. Often times, students still have more to say on the topic but we usually run out of time. The use of a podcast online would be a great way for students to say what they need to say. So I think this is a good idea and I will keep it in mind for the near future. Please feel free to click the link below to listen to the podcast.

Ethical Dilemmas, Civil Discourse, and Citizenship

Podcasting / Vlog

My current social studies lesson is on the Amish Community. I decided to do a vlog on a story about the Amish community from the third grade Social Studies curriculum. The story is told at the beginning of the lesson as an introduction of to Amish community.

Yackpack Podcasting Site

I looked at many podcasting sites and decided to go for Yackpack. Yackpack is a site for education where teachers can set up an account for their classroom to record and create podcasts. Yackpack is for group communication. Yackpack gives teachers a private and secure space that’s safe from outsiders. All teachers have to do is create an account by providing an email and create a pack under that account by adding their students’ names and emails. I really liked all the things I can do in Yackpack, such as giving feedback to students after I grade their work, offer encouragement on their assignments, discuss topics as a class, answer questions from students, collaborate with other classrooms, and invite guests to join in from around the world. The site is well designed and straight forward making it simple to use. It’s easy enough for elementary students to do.

Right now, I have a fluency center station in my classroom. Students can either choose to play a tape and listen to a story or they can choose a story, play, or poem and record it using the tape player. Students really enjoyed this station because they get to hear themselves read. After hearing themselves read, they are motivated to read it better and more fluently. If they are already excited about this station, I know that they will be even more excited about podcasting. Instead of using tapes, I could utilize the internet using a site like Yackpack for students to record. To introduce my students to Yackpack, I did the following demonstration for them to listen to. It’s a literature piece from their Social Studies curriculum that we are currently on. I plan to have them listen to it during my lessons. Then maybe I can add them to my account and have them start recording. I’ll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, listen to my podcast.

A Classroom Blog

What a wonderful video on the positives and effectiveness of a classroom blog! Nothing could be more exciting than hearing the students reflections and growth from blogs! I'm now more excited and encouraged than ever to start my own classroom blog! This video has helped me and gave me ideas of how to start my own classroom blog and what to include in my classroom blog. See it for yourself.

Classroom Blog

How to meet the needs of a future generation

After I watched the video titled, “Shift-Happens”, it really challenged me to reflect on my teaching styles and the effectiveness of my teaching as well as redefining my role as an educator. (Click on the link to see the video). I agree with everything that I saw on the video. Children of the future will become more and more digital native minds. The very reason why they have more difficulty paying attention in class is from being digital natives. More and more boys talk about playing video games and how engaged they are. More and more girls are talking about emails, myspace, facebook, and chatting. I think as an educator, I am only doing students a disservice if I don’t change along with them. For this reason, I have taken many inservices that Milwaukee Public School offers on technology. Everything I do and use is the computer and internet to familiarize myself with technology. This was the basis of my decision to pursue a Master’s Degree on Technology. I really feel that teachers need to do the same by taking every opportunity to train themselves on the use of technology and imbed technology in the daily lessons. However, the sad truth is, many teachers are digital immigrants and are comfortable being digital immigrants. I’ve been trying to get my school to do more technology with students by participating in technology inservices and sharing with other teachers as well as sharing with my principal. Like my principal said, it’s hard enough for her to get teachers to check their emails. I want to continue being an influence of technology in my building by trying blogging, podcasting, social bookmarking, and social network programs with my students. Hopefully doing it this way, my students will talk up their interests and will convince others to do it. I am determined to support this new shift by implementing it into my classroom. I will definitely blog about it in the near future.

Shift-Happens

A Beautiful Song

I found this blog with a beautiful song that speaks the truth about a child's perspective on life. This is the first time I've ever heard this song, so I thought I'd share it. All teachers, parents, and anyone that works with children must hear this song. It's got a wonderful message that we all need to think about. It's very uplifting.

My Love and Logic Classroom

As I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, I've been trained in the Love and Logic class for teachers and have applied their philosophy into my classroom. This is my first year of really implementing the philosophies into my classroom and I can honestly say that of my four years of teaching, this year was one of my better year despite the fact that I have a more challenging class this year. I found a great site that summarize the Love and Logic philosophy. I included this pdf file summary for you to view. It summarize the basics on how to begin creating your own Love and Logic classroom. Along with these ideas, I would also like to share some of the things I have in my classroom and some insights of my classroom.

My Classroom rules poster is of the following:

Feel free to do anything you like that does not cause a problem for others.

If you make a problem for others, I will do something about it.


I also have the Love and Logic poster in my room that says the following:



Causing problems in the classroom are things like disrupting the class, taking other's belongings, disrespecting others, bullying others, being violent, using profanity, etc. Some problems are more severe than others so that's why consequences are determined on a case by case scenario. Least severe problems are taken care of by me and my co-teacher without parent notification. However, if the problem is severe or when the problem continues, parent is notified through our own generated Love and Logic Action Plan form that has the following on it:

Our classroom rule: Please do not make a problem for others. If you make a problem, something will be done.

1. What problem did you cause today?

2. Why did you do it?

3. How did you feel?

4. What are you going to do better next time?

5. What should your consequence be?

Parent Signature: Date:

Teacher(s) Signature: Date:

Students fill out this form, we add to it, and then parents discuss and agree on a consequence, and sign it. The student brings back the form and we implement the consequence. This form is very effective and has been a lifesaver. Parents were very cooperative and appreciated the communication.

When students disrupt the class and causes others to have a difficult time learning, we simply say to the student, "I only teach students who wants to learn. It seems you are not ready to learn now and need a little break. Please go to our 'thinking area' or to Room ____ or to the hallway outside our door and feel free to come back when you are ready to learn." Then they go and just think without any work to do or anything.

When students don't follow directions or routines, we simply say to the student, "What a bummer! How sad that you are having difficulty following directions / routines today. Why don't you come in during recess time and we'll practice together or why don't you stay during gym time and we'll practice together?"

Sometimes we have the urge to provide solutions to students' problems by simply giving them an answer when they come to us asking us what they should do when they face a problem. Love and Logic teaches us that to prepare children for the real world, we have to give them some independence in solving their own problems so that when they are on their own with their friends or others without an adult around, they can make their own wise decisions. So instead of offering solutions, we ask students what they could do about their problem. If they say that they don't know, then we offer some suggestions and send them off to make their own choice. What a great idea!

As you can see, it's all on the words you use and the empathetic statements that you apply that makes it effective. Students are bound to show more respect to these kinds of statements. I am a big fan of Love and Logic and invite you to try it in your classroom.

The Five Love Languages of Children

One of my all time favorite book is called “The Five Love Languages of Children” by Dr. Gary Chapman. This book really helped me connect to my students. When we think about human relationships in general, we are attracted to people who are caring and kind, who pays attention to us and really want to know us for who we are. When we feel loved by those individuals, we respect them and are willing to listen and do things for them. That’s how we also have to think of our students. Sometimes we wonder why no matter what we do we cannot reach out to certain students, and why they continue to fail in our classroom or misbehave. Through “The Five Love Languages of Children” book as well as other research, I learned that when kids feel loved, they are more than willing to do everything they could to please you. They see no reason to disrespect you. It is what you do with the relationship between you and your students at the beginning of the year that matters and that will set off the year.

After many years of research, Dr. Gary Chapman concludes that there are essentially five ways that people feel loved. The five love languages are acts of service, gifts, quality time, physical touch, and words of affirmation. Dr. Chapman believes that of the five love languages, there’s only one primary language that each individual speaks. Some people feels loved most when they receive acts of service, or receive gifts, or is given a hug, or is given compliments, or gets undivided attention through spending quality time. Dr. Chapman drafted a test of questionnaire for people to take to find their love language. I gave the questionnaire to my students on the first day of school. When I tally up each student’s results, I get good data about who is acts of service, gifts, physical touch, words of affirmation, or quality time. For those students who are acts of service, I would once in a long while surprise them by cleaning their area, their desk, or put away their books and folders. For those students who are quality time, I would once in a while invite them to eat with me in the classroom and we would have personal conversations and get to know one another. For those who are words of affirmation, I would sometimes write positive notes to them and give them verbal compliments. For those who are physical touch, I would give them either a hug or a high five. As for gifts, I would surprise all the students with treats or a movie or extra fun time. I’ve done this for two years now and have had many positive results. By fulfilling their love language, you are communicating that you care enough to show love the way they see love. It is an act of will and an act of unselfish love. It does not always work for every student, but it did work for most students. I was able to build good relationships with most of my students and really get to know them one by one. I also apply Dr. Chapman’s principles to my own children at home and also to my husband. I’ve seen major improvements in my relationships with my husband and my children. I would highly recommend anyone to read this book, especially parents and teachers. Some schools have actually made it a priority to study this book school wide and have inservices on it. You will not fully understand the five love languages until you read the whole book. If you’re interested, please check out Dr. Chapman’s website for more information and try it out in your classroom to see if it makes a difference.

The Five Love Languages website

Update

The latest update on the 16 year old who was in critical condition over the weekend, the parents made the decision to pull the plug yesterday. His funeral is set for this weekend from Friday to Monday. In the Hmong culture, there are strong family and community ties. When my husband and I went to visit the 16 year old boy at Children’s Hospital on Sunday, there were at least 30 people waiting in the family room just to see him or just waiting to hear news about his condition. Some have waited all day and continue to come every day. Some are friends, relatives, immediate family members, distant relatives, and acquaintances. Hmong funerals are not set just for several hours or one day, but it is set for the course of 3 days. Not only family members attend the funeral, but also the Hmong community. Even those that does not know the family very well comes to show their support and grieve for their lost one. Some will come from out of state to show their support as well. Some families keep the funeral open for 24 hours; others close at midnight. Although the family with the lost child is grieving and going through this hard time, in the Hmong culture, they are not to rest but attend to their guests and supporters. From the start of their grievance, the family will get visitors every night. As a show of respect and appreciation, the family cooks all meals to serve their guests every night. When the three day funeral comes, the family is also responsible to provide brunch and dinner for all their guests throughout the whole 3 days. An average day attendance of people attending the funeral is usually 100 to 200 people. As people come to the funeral in showing their support, they usually donate money to the family. This is the Hmong’s way of showing love for one another. Many people also volunteer to help the family prepare and cook the food for all their guests. These are just a few highlights into the Hmong culture. As educators, I think it’s important that we understand our students’ culture in order to understand their thinking and learning and to attend to their needs. Cultural values affect the way a student learn and view education. I have a diverse population of students in my classroom that include Hmong, Spanish, India, Serbia, Thai, and Burmese. I continue to educate myself about their culture, values, and beliefs.

Flickr

I love to cherish memories through photos. Everywhere I go, I have to have my camera with me. I love to take pictures and create slideshow videos of them. I love scrapbooking and would have separate scrapbooks of my kids, family, friends, and others. I want to make sure as my kids grow up, they would have all the memories in their hands. With my husband and my families combined, we have a huge family. We all live in different cities and states that it’s hard to keep up with who is in the family, especially with new additions. We either mail pictures to each other or else we don’t get to see each other until several years span. I take so much pictures that I have separate external hard drive to store them. Whenever my family request for them, I would have to select the pictures myself and burn them onto a CD and then send them. This way is a little inconvenient and takes a little longer to do.

I was so excited when I heard of Flickr. Now I can finally share my pictures with my family and friends without having to burn my pictures onto a CD and mailing it to them. Now they can choose only the pictures they want when I invite them to my photo page. What a convenient way to share photos. I really am having a fun time using it. At first, it wasn’t so fun because I didn’t quite know what to do. But as I played with it and tutor myself on it, I became more familiar with it and everything seemed easy to do. Feel free to check out my photos on Flickr. I uploaded some pictures from my anniversary trip to Hawaii as well as family trip to Disney. I also uploaded pictures of my family.

Over the weekend, my family and I went to visit “The House on the Rock” in Dodgeville. It was quite a fascinating place. The house was well-maintained, uniquely designed different, and was well decorated. We went through two tours of the whole place. It was like a museum that has lots of things displayed and lots to learn from. It’s definitely a great one to consider for a classroom field trip. Unfortunately, it’s quite far. Check out my pictures to the House on the Rock. My favorite one was the whale.

Social Bookmarking

I use a lot of internet at home and at work to plan for my lessons, research, shop online, and many things. When I use my computer at home, I have all my favorite sites bookmarked. Then I’d write them down and bookmark the same ones at my classroom’s computer. Each time I came across a site I like and bookmark it, I would have to remember to write it down to be put on my classroom’s computer and vice versa. It becomes a pain after awhile of doing it. I’ve always wondered if there was an easier way. I was so excited when I was introduced to social bookmarking sites that would save my favorite sites online where I can access them from any computer. That was a lifesaver. It is also a good way to share my sites with family members or other educators. Before social bookmarking, I use to type up a huge list of sites and share them with my colleagues. Now I don’t have to anymore. All they have to do is sign up at the social bookmark site I did and we’d all be able to share our bookmarks. Social bookmarking site would also be useful to my students. Every year we have Folk Fair at our school. Every grade has a country they have to research and do projects on. Third grade has Europe. A social bookmarking site would be useful to keep track of all good and appropriate third grade sites on Europe so that students can just utilize the site list to find information on their particular country. The social bookmarking site I ended up registering for was Blinklist. I liked the look of it and all the features it offered. It was user friendly. Check out my social bookmarking site on the left under my links.

Love and Logic

A 16-year-old boy was critically injured from a car accident late Friday night. He was the driver and there was one other passenger with him. He decided to take his parents’ car to go to a party without his parents’ approval. He went to the party and had a few drinks. As he drove home, he realized he was being followed by a police car. In fear, he speeds up his car and caused a chase. His car eventually swerved towards a park and collided into a tree on his side. The boy in the passenger seat had minor cuts and bruises, but he was okay. As for the driver, he was not breathing and was badly wounded losing lots of blood.

My husband and I went to visit the driver today at Children’s Hospital. We knew his family and stopped by to see him. He was on life support fighting for his life. Many x-rays and tests have been done. Doctors are saying that they are not sure if he’s going to make it. Even if he did, he will need to be tube fed and bed-ridden for the rest of his life. It is now up to the parents to make some major decisions about what to do next.

It’s one of those things that no parents deserve to go through. As I looked at the boy, sadness just filled up all over me. He was way too young to end his life this way. He could’ve had such a bright future ahead of him had he made the right choices. Choices were the key. Do kids really know what the consequences are from the choices they make? I’m not quite sure how well prepared kids are in this society for the real world. Even now, some students in my room have no idea how their grades and lack of learning will affect their future. They don’t see that far ahead. They have no understanding of that. Therefore, some students do not care about their grades. They have no real grasp of consequences resulting from choices. They are blind to what the real world is really like. I chose as a parent to educate my children the rough world out there. No matter how young they are, they need to realize the bad things that are happening out there and that the choices they make leads to consequences. Perhaps, as parents and teachers, we need to team up together to teach kids choices and consequences.

I didn’t quite know how to do that as a parent. I was only 20 when I had my first child. I didn’t know how to teach my kids how to make choices and how to show them that consequences follow. I had my own ways of doing it that was by trial and error and wasn’t as effective. Who was really ready for parenting? There was a lot of anger and resentment between my children and me on the discipline aspect of it. I was in desperate need of a parenting program. Through my school, I found Love and Logic. Love and logic is all about choices and consequences. I felt I’ve done all I could to teach choices and consequences to my children. However, the biggest difference between my way and the Love and Logic way is showing empathy. Instead of anger, using empathy is the loving way of giving them consequences from the mistakes they made. Empathy shows love. Love and logic’s beliefs are that we as adults need to allow children, as young as infants, to make small, affordable mistakes now so that they will be exposed to small, affordable consequences. We all know that we learn from mistakes. Why wait until they are older to give lectures when the choices and mistakes they make could be life-threatening just like the 16-year-old? Love and logic sets limits. Through research, Love and logic find that kids are more secure in life when they are given limits. Love and logic teaches responsibility and accountability. If you have not heard of Love and Logic, I recommend you checking out their website and order some of their CD’s. My school offered both the teacher and parent Love and Logic training. I attended every session and loved it. My husband and I absolutely love the program and have implemented the tools in our family. Love and Logic has helped us tremendously. I have some challenging and tough students in my room that could easily result in a power struggle or an authoritative position. But with the help of Love and Logic, I have learned so many helpful tools that eased the power struggle. If anything, the tough kids grew to respect me. So check it out and see if it’s helpful to you.

Love and Logic website

Classroom Blog

I’ve been teaching third graders for four years now and every year, I noticed students have been more and more chatty in class. Is it just me or is there any other educators out there who feels the same? I feel like some days I am just talking to myself and teaching myself. Often times I have to repeat myself more than once. Students who continue to be chatty miss out on directions and lessons that they don’t perform well. Students who listen and don’t talk during the lesson does well. Motivation has a lot to do with it as well. Those students who are motivated will stay on task no matter what you do or teach. It’s hard to reach out to those who are not motivated. I felt I’ve tried a lot of different ways to teach, such as whole group, small groups, center time, cooperative learning groups, using traditional textbooks, infuse technology into my lessons, doing experiments, you name it. Yet, students are still chatty. I’ve struggled with that. I’m always reflecting on how I can make my lessons more engaging. The more I listened to students talk, the more I realized that their conversations revolve around their life, friends, and interests. As I look at the day’s schedule, I noticed that there’s really not enough time of the day for students to just talk about things outside their school life and things that are really on their minds. I mean, on a typical school day, in the morning, students have only 10 minutes to eat breakfast, then they go to gym, music, or library where they are given directions of what to do. After specials, we have two hours of reading block time consisting of whole group, centers, and literacy small groups where they are also given tasks to do. Then there’s 15 minutes of recess time and 15 minutes of quiet lunch time. The afternoon consists of more tasks such as learning math, science, social studies, or health. So when I look at the full day, I do realize that students do not get the time to talk about things that are happening in their day to day lives. Yes, we, as educators, should give them time, but yet, we are pressured to get through all the lessons we need to accomplish. We are on a timeline and even so, we may finish the whole reading and math curriculum throughout the year, but we only get through half the science and social studies curriculum. Although I give them time to have journal entries in the same way, most students don’t have much to say. This is probably due to not knowing what to say and not knowing what their peers are saying since there doesn’t seem to be sharing time. Realizing that students need the talk time, I feel that blogging is the way to do it.

By blogging, everyone will get to see what everyone is writing and saying and by commenting to each other, this would be helpful for students to write such entries. I would definitely use blogging in my classroom for students to share things that are on their minds, things happening in their lives, things that they are interested in, problems they may have that they need help on, or any questions and discussion they would like to address. That would be the personal end of it. However, I would also use blogging in my classroom to discuss about homework, afterthoughts from lessons taught, and anything academic. A classroom blog could also extend as a way to communicate to parents. Information, schedules, announcements, homework assignments, pictures, samples of student work, homework tips, study habits tips, and parent links would be posted on the classroom blog. It can also expand into things such as e-portfolios and their own websites and weblogs. Since I would have to draft a summary of what blogs are and its purpose as well as a permission and safety note, there wouldn’t be much time for me to start this year, but I will definitely start next year. A great place to start would be Think.com. I really like the friendliness and safety of Think.com. It is a powerful tool and environment which permit students to safely learn how to use digital social networking tools.

Big Wow

» Staying Up. Looking Up. Bud the Teacher

I've heard of students taking weekly or weekend camping trips with their classroom, but I haven't heard or thought of the idea of sleeping overnight at school. Therefore, I found the article in this blog to be very interesting. Obviously, the students and teachers that experienced this together had a lot of fun and benefit a great deal from this. It's quite true that as teachers we can't really expect our students to fully understand space when we only teach it during the day. We would have to teach the students at night to get a real experience of space and one way to do it would be a sleepover. This is very effective. For the school to make this a tradition every school year is quite something. I'm really pondering on the idea. My students could really do this and some of the parents can join for the night. I'll have to think about it and maybe ask my principal about her thoughts. We'll see.

Vickie

IB or Not

What is IB?
I don't know if many of you have heard of the International Baccalaureate program, but it's been a hot topic at my elementary school in Milwaukee. My school is considering becoming an IB school. My staff will need to take a vote on it by the end of April. Some staff in my building went out of state for a few days attending informational seminars on IB. According to the presentations given by my staff, I've learned some things about IB. You may look at the IB website to find more information; however, here are some general things. IBO is a community of schools that are joined together to form an integrated curriculum. The main focus is on the subjects of science and social studies. The purpose is to promote international mindedness among the students in our schools. Students need to be aware of their nearby surroundings as well as globally. There is a need for students to learn and realize that conflicts in far places such as in other countries globally impact people around the globe in complex and unexpected ways. IB believes that children educated for tomorrow's world must be equipped with the habits of mind that will allow them to act in meaningful ways, whether locally or globally. Students need to realize that it is as important to understand the other's point of view as it is to understand one's own. Students will be challenged to come closer together to find fair and just solutions. This program seeks to build respect, peace, and ties between nations. As a result, students will learn to be more unselfish, loving, caring, giving, responsible, and compassionate citizens.

Right away when I heard the word "International mindedness", I thought of blogging. Blogging would be one way to fulfill that. Imagine having your class connect with another class in Asia or Mexico where the living conditions are different from theirs. Imagine how much they could learn from other students in other parts of the world. When I thought about the blogging and the ideas of IB, I really like its purposes and visions. I really do think students need this deeper understanding of the world in order to be better citizens. However, when I thought of the work it will take for teachers to plan for the lessons, it's a huge amount of work. IB provides no set curriculum. We have to find our own resources, mainly from the internet, to expand on the topics from our science and social studies textbooks. That literally means that we have to keep current with the news as well as research on our own about various issues and topics. I rarely have the time of the day now to plan. Most of my planning, grading papers, and other paper work are done outside of the school day. Those are all on my time. I can't imagine doing more than I am now, especially being a mom of four young kids, a wife, and a daughter -in-law at home. I feel like there is a load of things added to a teacher's profession every year and more and more demands for teachers to do so much, yet there is no time in the day to do any of it. Many teachers are putting in lots of extra hours without pay to be effective teachers of the classroom. Am I being selfish? I feel that IB is beneficial to students; yet, a lot of work on the teachers' end. Yet, it would also be very rewarding to see students grow to be responsible citizens. Right now, I'm stuck on a decision. I'm waiting to find out more about the program and then maybe think about it some more. In the meantime, if any of you know more about it than I do, feel free to share your thoughts. I know that IB is very popular in the middle schools and high schools right now. In fact, students graduating from IB high schools are guaranteed lots of college credits. So there is a lot of positives about IB. I hope to hear some of your comments.

Vickie

First Time Blogger

March 15, 2008

Hi. This will be my first time ever blogging. I'm not quite sure of how or what to do yet, but I am ready to learn and explore. I feel I have a lot to learn and look forward to. I am a third grade teacher, so I look forward to blogging with other teachers. I am also interested in parenting tips and would like to blog with other parents as well. I hope to gain more knowledge and practical skills from others to enhance my career and my role as a parent. Feel free to comment on my blogs. I would appreciate it. I would love to hear from everyone and learn from you.

Vickie