January Frustrations, February Fixes

     I have really turned into Wreck-It Ralph and my technology frustrations of January have resembled that of the kids within the building.
     If it is technology based, I can break it! I mean really and truly. I was so excited after our January D3/Digital Leadership meeting where we talked about Keynote and all of the possibilities with Keynote placeholders. Another campus made an awesome Frayer model template for vocabulary and I thought wow, the kids will love it, it will be quick, and the ability to put in videos is awesome. Yeah, no, did not work. I spent days working with the kids on how to do this as an introduction to the Cold War, and the struggle for them was all too much. What I thought could maybe take half a class period to do ten words, yes just ten words, I gave up on after two class periods, and a homework option. The kids just really did not understand the simplicity of replacing the information and photo/video place holders in keynote and how to make copies of slides. It was bad. Major frustration number two. I was so excited about how simple and awesome the All in Learning Engage and Learn app seemed. You cam import questions straight from Examview test banks, and it all seemed way awesome for how long it takes me to build AP tests. You print a QR code for the kids instead of the test,  and once the test is opened, they can view it on their iPads, and if they leave the app for any reason, it makes them start the test over again. When building my test, I noted that I had three pictures that wouldn't load. This means that 9 questions suddenly didn't have their images, but I found a way to just add the image. It work me under an hour to make four copies of the lest and make sure that you could see every question perfectly. Test day comes......I have a few kids move kids classes....after the test has already been opened. So I simply add them to my class in All in Learning like normal and they are able to take the test and see their score immediately. I had maybe 10 kids who could not see some of the images I had to manually upload, but not all of the kids, so I have no idea what happened. I have about 7 kids who ended up with white screens with answer choices...which they had to answer to be able to submit their test. So the big problem? Those kids that switched classes? Their data is missing. I can't see their test score, I can't see what questions they missed. I have no way to offer them test corrections yet. So I have been working with All in Learning teach support to say Wreck-It Ralph, well wrecked it and needed a fix.

     February fixes. The biggest take away from today is not using technology for he sake of using technolgy. I really love technology, I do. Google Classroom has minimized the amount of papers I take home regularly to grade, and how many papers are regularly all over my desk(which I am lucky to see the top of once a month). I am all in on technolgy, it like books, can hold the answers to the universe, and can streamline my life (says the person with 8 Google Calendars innerconnected). And when there are issues in my classroom with the iPads, I like to try and find ways to fix it and learn ways to fix it myself instead of always sending kids to the iTech. I try, I do, but today was an easy reminder that often times the kids are overly frustraited and sometimes there is not an easy fix to my ability to break it and that it's okay to restart Otto doing things on pen and paper. I always do a huge Dr. Suess propaganda project the week before Spring Break in my AP classes. When we got the iPads, I considered going digital with it. Coloring is okay, coloring is stress relieving, so why mess with it? It will be okay to disconnect, to have the kids create without their phones and iPads.

Why Blog?

Blogs, much like Twitter, are growing in the education sphere. When I taught elementary school, I followed more blogs that I can count from all of the adorable and smart teachers you can imagine. They were full of ideas just waiting for a new spin for a different class. When I started teaching high school 6 years ago, there was not much out there for blogs, even more specifically, content based blogs for high school teachers. As you start to wonder about all of the wonderful things we can suddenly do with iPads at every child's fingertips, start with what is already out there! 
This list from Ed Tech is from 2013, but most of the blogs are still kept up to date and the bloggers are rather impressive. It serves a great jumping point into the blog world for education.
Blogs can also be a quick way for you to create a website to use with your students if you don't plan to attach a ton of files. I know a few Geography teachers who have a blog unit where the kids have to submit blog posts to her main blog and comment back and forth on each others for each area they study.


Twitter of course will always remain important. For Social Studies there are many chats that happen on a regular basis. Most are for teachers, but around AP testing time there will be some for the students as well. #HSgovchat is a great example of this. They will later archive the entire chat on their blog for teacher who missed the chat. Much like the #ColonelsNOW that we have been using this year, you can search the hashtag on Twitter and follow the chat. I installed Tweetcaster on my phone and computer so I can monitor multiple feeds and Twitter accounts at once.