My Love-Hate Relationship with Technology

Ode to Technology
(Special thanks to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43!)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the laptop, printer and network
My students can reach while doing their classwork
To the ends of the hallway in ideal conditions.
I love thee freely and your connections
I love thee purely though you are fickle.
Error codes and offline cause many a pickle.
I love thee with passion on those good days
In new ways we rework last year's projects.
I love thee with a love that fades away
Through loading and buffering and disconnects.
Smiles, tears, all class long! And if we persevere,
I shall love thee still by the end of the year!


Ah, technology project days! They try my patience in the classroom. It's engaging and rigorous, which makes students and administrators happy. However, these days present a false front for teachers. On paper, it seems like down time. Students are working away on the computers, researching facts, creating citations to show their sources, building their video/cartoon/flyer/etc. As the teacher, you've already launched the project, given the guidelines, explained the rubric and assigned partners. As much as it may seem, this is NOT the time to sit down and write your next week's lesson plans while they work, thereby freeing up your planning time to sneak a cup of coffee with your kindle! This is NOT the time to create a new seating chart or grade quizzes. No, however tempting, you must not relax.

This, my friends, is in fact the time to lace up the sneakers, get the IT guy's number on speed dial, and prepare to repeat yourself ad infinitum. As soon as your students log in, you will discover that one group forgot their password while another can't find their file that they KNOW they saved yesterday. Meanwhile, another group can't connect to the internet and three groups have questions about the project that are easily answered by simply reading the directions that they "lost" in their binder. Believe me, fellow educators, you will not rest on these days.

Despite all this, I continue my love affair with technology. I'm thankful for the access my students have to the wider world and I'm always thrilled to watch their final results. This week, one grade level was creating Animoto videos on ecosystems while another grade made an animated cartoon video on a chemistry topic. The results were funny, interesting, and well worth the time. I'm always thankful at the end of these projects to see how my students respond to each others work. Invariably, they learn something from the research of their classmates as well as from their own work.



So, now that they are done, it's time to pour that cup of coffee and give my kindle some attention!


Cheerfully yours,
Ms. Guided

For the Love of Rubrics

If you've never used a rubric to score a student project, paper or assignment, you are missing out! Here's what I love about rubrics:

• Outlines the expectations of the assignment clearly
• Helps students understand their score and connect their score to their work.
• Allows students a chance to be confident in what they're doing.
• Helps the teacher evaluate work efficiently
• Gives great feedback to students on their strengths and weaknesses

The basic idea of a rubric is to break an assignment into categories or pieces based on the expectations and then assign each category a point value. Then, you describe levels of performance in that category. Below are a couple of examples.

You can see from the examples that outlining the expectations streamlines the evaluation process. This level of specificity also helps students clearly connect their work to their final score. Also, if students are given the rubric at the beginning of the assignment, they can use the rubric to guide their work and feel confident that they are completing the activity with the right focus.

One strategy I like to use when scoring with a rubric is to have students score their own work on a blank copy of the rubric using a highlighter to select their score in each category. Then, I score their work with a pen on the same copy of the rubric. My score is the one that gets entered into the gradebook, but this comparison allows me to have conversations with students whose scores are different than mine and help them understand their grade.

I find that some students are overly critical of their own work and need to be shown how to score their work based on the evidence and how that evidence lines up with the rubric. On the other hand, some students are overly impressed with their own work and need to be shown that the evidence in their work doesn't support the score they wanted. These discussions result in both improved self scoring next time with a rubric, and in a deeper understanding of how they were evaluated and earned their grade.

Have fun making your own rubrics or borrow one you like and edit it to match your assignment!

Cheerfully yours,
Ms. Guided

Thankful...

As November marches on, I am reminded of how quickly the instructional year goes. In September, it seems like you're full of promise and great ideas. Your plans to reinvent your teaching and your classroom are shiny and new. Then, by the time November arrives...  you're faced with the truth. Another grading period has gone by, you're starting to feel overwhelmed again by the mountain of expectations from your administration, your students, their parents, and even your co-workers!

Try not to beat yourself up for not being that super teacher that you see in "Freedom Writers" and "Stand and Deliver." Take some time in this month of thankfulness to list out some successes you've experienced so far this year. Did you make a positive connection with a parent? How about with your Administration? Did you try a new hands-on approach that engaged your students? Have you successfully done more with your planning time at school or been better prepared for parent conferences?

An attitude of thankfulness starts with a positive mindset. Look for the good in people and search for moments of joy in your classroom. These are treasures to hold on to. As the year speeds up moving towards Christmas, remember to cherish the daily success and be thankful for the times that things go right. This week, I am thankful for the blessing of technology in my classroom. My students have been spending time this week on technology based projects and while these days invariable bring unexpected troubles, they also provide for great creativity and connections for my students.

Here's to your November! May it bring you refreshment for your teaching soul!

Cheerfully yours,
Ms. Guided