Walk-Ins

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Today a student walks into my class with his friend who is in the class. The new student proceeds to open a laptop and start to log in. It turns out his mom and guidance changed his elective, without telling me. OH?

Whether there is a study taking place for not, we've gone too far in the lessons to consider the possibility of catching up at this point. The guidance counselor should have investigated before making such a change. Some students who have been in the class all along are averaging Cs. It's a challenging, fast-moving research course. I hate being the bad guy when it is obvious that his friend (the one he came into class with) had told him how cool the class is and what we're doing. It sounded more appealing that the elective he is currently taking. The counselor gave me the parent's email so I explain.

UPDATE:  Parent left an voicemail and is clearly upset. She 'has serious questions about my email' and will also be meeting with the counselor and principal. Again, I should have been asked and no, in my experience he will not be able to catch up, the semester is half over.

Another man down...

Another student in the study will not be completing the semester -- his family is moving to Florida at the end of April. As it is, he is missing this week's of lessons because they have gone to shop for housing and a new school. I"ll probably have him complete his post-surveys before he leaves and mark them as early. Since he is a newbie to the course, he won't have had the previous experience but he will be able to make judgments about the difference in using Chrome with the old laptops and the new ChromeBooks.

Heat-Driven Madness

One of my offices was 85 degrees this morning, making the laptops for the first two periods of class ill-tempered. One student in particular did absolutely nothing for the whole time except try to get his equipment to work. What a waste of time and learning potential! We sat the laptops on top of dominoes to get some air movement, but it was clear the warmth of the room was impacting the technology because the usual locking and wireless-loss that happens on a day-to-day basis was accelerated and in some cases accented with additional woes.

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Blogging and Being Blogged

Today was the second Blog Check for the students blogs. Last week the checks revealed that many of the newbie students had spent too much time playing with the complexities of designing a blog instead of posting the lessons and connections of the lessons to the project at hand. This week, for some unexplained reason, they spent more time redesigning their blogs than writing their posts connecting the lessons to projects. When the grade were handed out this morning.....Oops! Deer in the headlights....

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The afflicted were the students new to the course. The repeat students played with their design the first week or so, then settled into working on the post to tie the lessons to what was happening with their topic. The newbies have gotten caught up in the bright lights of technology. MY lesson?  Prepare the students ahead of time to look at the rubric, compare what they have done with what is expected, and perhaps show examples of good and not-so-good blogs.  I have my own blog for my project [I do a project every semester along with the students so they can see research happening] but not many took advantage of it as a template for what I expected. There's another lesson in that, I just haven't figured it out yet.

A Clarity Footnote

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Brainstorm in action!

What if we do a mid-program survey once the kiddos have had the ChromeBooks for a week. THEN, the experience of the old technology will be fresh for all the students, not just those who have taken the class before. The repeat students will of course have extra depth because of their experience with the handwritten journals and note cards. The students new to the course will have knowledge about how their processes worked on the older, slower equipment compared to the new, faster equipment.

So, actually, lemons and lemonade and all's going to work out better in the end!

Clarity in a Nutshell

A 1 hour+  Clarity meeting in a nutshell:

The IT Director had not known there was a study, or a grant, or Informed Consent letters signed by parents and  students. He said the order for the ChromeBooks was place Thursday and that they should arrive in 2 weeks. There will be no student YouTube or AudioPlayer access (my current biggest concern because of the tutorials).

Since last fall, his IT minion had been leading me into thinking I would have this app or that app to accomplish high-level digital learning with ChromeBooks when the grant came through. He told me 3 weeks ago the Chromebooks were back-ordered and wouldn't be in until March. He sat silent through most of the meeting.  When he did speak up toward the end, it was to expound on the wonderful-ness of the Teacher Dashboard component and what it can do.  There was no mention if this came with the ChromeBooks or it was (as in the EasyBib APA format issue) a purchased add-on considered for the future. There was commitment for Teacher Dashboard training when the CBs DO arrive in spite of pointed questioning.

Basically, I have what I have and should make do with what I have, no matter how long to takes to get newer equipment. Luckily, I am inventive and now that I know where things stand I can begin to prepare successful lessons using the free digital tools available.

Shenandoah Visits

We had a visitor today! The students were excited to show their journals and notecards from last semester. Pictures of the artifacts were taken and opinions were shared. The professor and I discussed the wisdom of doing interviews with the students at the end of the semester instead of relying only upon the post-study surveys.

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 Also, it occurred to me that, in some off-kilter way, it may be a good thing the ChromeBooks have not arrived yet. When they DO arrive, the students not only will have had the experience of trying some digital tools to do their research and documentation (a contrast from the handwritten documentation from previous semesters), they will have the contrast of going from the older technology to the newer one. Using Google Docs is one thing on our old laptops, but to then move to using Google Docs with SPEED...where they can open the lid and the device is up and running within seconds instead of a dozen of minutes...will be an amazing realization.