An unusual week

This week was full of working on my ending projects for my classes. I'm still without my desktop and this laptop's limited capability is challenging, but I see it as good practice for when I get into the field and may find myself faced with substandard equipment to complete deadlines on.

There were some professional opportunities last week that I missed due to events that were out of my hands. Wednesday evening I watched helplessly as San Augustine, Texas was hit by an F2 Tornado. Though all were lucky and there were no injuries my family and many in town have been hit hard. This is a small town and six or seven businesses were affected, one was leveled to the ground.

In light of this, we planned to go up and check on things on Friday. My husband ended up in the ER with some painful swallowing. He seems alright although we still don't' know what's going on. So that pushed back our arrival to East Texas till 1am.

Working on my cyberbullying paper, final internship paper, book review from the book, and numerous other tasks are keeping me from lingering too much on these events.

Microsoft: STEM 1 Training: Computational Thinking and its importance in education

Goals of today!

My time as an intern is almost over and I'm trying to receive all the training I can to prepare me to be a more informed IT in my future position.

I love taking these courses and working towards certifications. This has made me consider obtaining a certification in Microsoft services in the future. First I need to graduate with my Master's degree and secure a position.

Stafford MSD prides itself in its technological advancements. Dr. Bostic is such a great example of a Superintendent who sees the big picture for students in 21st Century learning. He impressed me from the first day he talked to us at convocation one year and he continues to impress me with his drive towards technology.

With my recent paper on Technology in the science classrooms, I decided to take some professional development in the STEM area of Microsoft.

The first training module is titled: Computational Thinking and its importance in education. The goals of this training are: 

• What Computational Thinking is and what it isn't
• The components of Computational Thinking
• How computational thinking is applied in various educational settings.          

The training has both text to read and a video of a teacher in a lower grade level who is teaching the students computational thinking. This type of thinking can be used at any grade level and across all the content subjects.

Decomposition is where a person takes something and breaks it down into smaller parts. This breaking down reminds me of chunking in the classroom. Students need to learn to break down problems into smaller pieces when they are faced with a complicated or complex task.

Pattern recognition is taught from very early grade levels but is essential to problem-solving. Then there is abstraction and algorithmic thinking. Abstraction is defined by Microsoft as "the ability to generalize a pattern and prioritize what is pertinent and what is not in relation to the problem". This important skill is used every time someone tries to fix something. Recently my computer began to have issues. It wouldn't stay on and the fan began to make a roaring sound. I knew it wasn't Windows that was the problem. By finding the pattern of failure I was able to trace down to three possible issues.

Algorithmic thinking does not mean that it includes mathematics. This type of thinking simply means that one creates a guide or steps to an issue or problem.

Overall this training was very informative and I'm eager to push on to more training.

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying

Interesting findings

During the last few months, I have conducted much research on bullying and cyberbullying. As a teacher of 17 years I've seen cyberbullying have a bit of an uptick in activity. I never considered it a serious issue, but after my reading and research, I've come to a better understanding of its impact on our students.

I'm writing a paper on my findings and then will transfer it into a professional development piece to put online. During this time I've learned that gender is not a big factor in bullying. My research has found that in fact, it is more time related to a child's development. Boys tend to bully more in elementary school and they tend to be more physical, while girls bully more in upper-grade levels. Human development sees girls being more self-conscious of themselves and comparing themselves against each other. In addition, where boys might fight it out, girls tend to harbor hard feelings for a long time. So where the bullying is not more so in gender it just occurs at different developmental stages of our children.

Times are changing

Bullying has changed considerably in the past several decades. Where bullying wasn't rare to even when I was in school, now with the innovations of today, cyberbullying has long-lasting, even permanent effects online. Posts are there for a considerable amount of time and where bullying affected students locally in the past, now it is a global mockery.

A Global Concern

This is a global issue. Even the UN has made strides towards addressing this issue.
https://youtu.be/VGBKONEVSFY   There is more that we must do as adults. We need to recognize the signs and know how to address incidents as they come up.

Time to Teach!

April 8th

It was on this day that I taught several fifth-grade classes about Classlink. It was interesting dealing with students I didn't know or have a relationship with. I've worked as a teacher or so many years where I build up relationships which aid in me being able to meet individual needs and better address any behavioral concerns. 

This day the students came in and were with me for 45 minutes before leaving. It was nice, though the classes were brief, that students seemed to enjoy being with me and offered me goodbyes, I even received a few hugs. 

The challenge with today was that I didn't have any time in between classes. That would have been helpful as I taught from 11:00-2:30. It would have been nice to have time to go to the restroom without someone having to temporarily watch the students. The schedule was created by the campus, though and as an experienced educator, I've learned to be flexible and go with the flow. 

I wasn't so concerned about the chatty classes, they did, after all, complete their work. Their chattiness is brought in with them from the expectations of their homeroom teachers. Homeroom teachers who have a successful behavior system in place had classes that were quieter in nature. 

Another issue that was unavoidable, but quite irritating, was when students had issues logging in. This could only be addressed by my mentor who was watching on. I would have preferred to have had her simply observe. Fortunately, the issue only occurred for one or two classes and I'd simply have students line up close to my mentor so she could give them log in and passwords they needed.

On a side note, I'd like to share I just received my comprehensive exam notification and I passed!!! 

At this point in my internship, I need to work on my cyberbullying presentation. I've almost finished my storyboard. On Monday my computer crashed, possibly from an issue with my heat sink. I'm on my laptop, but it is quite limited in what I can accomplish on it since all my programs are on the desktop. I tried to create a powerpoint video yesterday and the laptop wasn't recording my audio correctly. 

Observation #4

Observation #4

This was my final day of observation. The day progressed much like the previous days, except Tran had two reading groups instead of one to work with. During the time she worked with the reading group I choose to stay with Collins to assist her with the lessons.

It is painfully obvious which classes have computer time and which ones don't. I know personally how stressed the campus is at this time as state testing is coming up. I always hated this time of the year because our regular lessons seemed to fall to the wayside in favor of more practice for state testing. Benchmarking helps the campus see where strengths and weaknesses are and so they are needed. All this is just so much on the staff, not just the teachers. As I've stated before, everyone must do their part.

This day did find some behavior issues. For the most part, the students behaved because they wanted to work on computers. Those few who did not behave were taken off the computers and placed at a library table as not to disturb those who were working correctly.

Observation #3

Observation #3

Today's classes are supposed to be smaller and they are being introduced to classlink.

During the first class, we found that the passwords that students were supposed to use were different. There was a request sent in for the technology department to change them over to the correct password. During the day we found it seemed to be just that class that had the incorrect passwords.

There are several classes during the school day, most of them are back to back without any break time. The computerss lose energy during the day with so much use and have to be switched out.

The elementary students really fall behind when they don’t pay attention and time has to be spent catching them up to the rest of the group. There are three of us: Tran, Collins, and myself walking around helping students with their progress.

It is obvious the students who have computers at home compared to others. Some students have no literacy skills at all. It is also obvious the teachers who don’t spend time with their classes in the computer labs.

A puzzling finding is that some students can't seem to spell their own last names, I think this is anxiety from using the computers and its obvious that these students have no computer time. It was painful to find that so many students lacked basic technology skills and evident why Tran is doing these classes for the students.

Overall it was a good reminder to the days when I used technology in the classroom, that things don't always run smoothly. An Instructional Technologist must have some computer 'know-how' in order to address things that may come up. Tran and I were able to get most students to their own computers and logged in correctly.

De-escalating Students

Many years ago, I attended training, through my school district, where we were taught how to deal with behavior problems. This fantastic training really helped solidify my thoughts on how to handle challenging students. One of the most helpful aspects of this training was the fact that one must de-escalate someone who is upset in order to talk to them and see what's wrong.

I've used this in my classroom for years and found an hour training to refresh my memory on what to do about these students.

Wichita Public Schools has Melody Stuckey, who works for behavioral services, present options for de-escalating upset students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT8d8Iu4zHA

I would highly suggest any educators take the time to go through this training video. It lasts 1 hour and 7 min.