Mid-Life Teaching

Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. - Dante Alighieri

First lines of the Divine Comedy.


Recently I realized that this blog might frustrate a new teacher. She might be looking for what to do tomorrow, how to manage a rowdy class or how to deal with the countless little details of teaching. After eleven years in the teaching business, I find that I have gotten more philosophical about how what I am doing is affecting those I am doing it to.

I have lost the straight path. The answers don't really come easily anymore. I find I like to do things like write blog posts instead of grading lab reports.

However, as a teacher and a hiker, that where the trail ends, the adventure begins. And teaching, thankfully, still feels adventurous.

Tech tools: Twitter in the classroom

Me: "I'll send you an email."
Student: "uh...I don't check my email."
Me: "Ever?"
Student: "Ever. I just delete everything."

Email is sooooooo 2006. At least you would think so if you asked many of my students. Teachers use email and it represents the pinnacle of high tech for many of us. However, an increasing number of students (it was 2 in a group of about 15 in a recent poll of mine) don't really use it. Certainly not for their personal peer-to-peer communication.

Sometimes teaching is about getting others to change. Sometimes it is about changing yourself and the way you do things. I decided to try something different. I am trying to get the students in the club I advise to set up Twitter accounts. This way I can get messages to all of them at once and the messages can "push through" the digital haze into their phones. I will still do email. As a matter of fact the Twitter updates will be sent as emails to the students as well.

If you feel so inclined, answer this question in the comments:

How could you have students use cell phones for your class to learn better, more authentically or more collaboratively?

I actually put my Twitter feed up on this blog (look right.)

It's all just a big experiment....

Tools and Techniques: Google Spreadsheets

I am not a fan of high tech. I am not a fan of low tech. I am a fan of appropriate tech. However, appropriate technology has become more and more difficult to peg. I find myself osscilateing between all and nothing much the way a chronic dieter swings back and forth between celery and cupcakes.

That being said, I have discovered a great Web 2.0 application: Google Spreadsheets. Actually, I have known about it for some time but it took a while for me to use it in my classroom. I had to play with it first and get comfortable myself before trying it on my kids. As a science teacher, I feel very strongly about data. The message I try to pass on to my students is this: more is better.

Google Spreadsheets is one of Google Docs suite of tools that makes pooling the data of a group of students really easy. Primarily because I (the teacher) don't have to do it. They take responsibility for it and get to learn a very simple, very useful tool for online collaboration.

From now on, I think I am going to use it for students to upload their data after every lab. That way they can compare their results to that of the students in all of my classes. It changes the whole idea of an outlier. Instead of one of a group's data points being "off," those students now have a broader perspective as to what is actually in the acceptable range of data.

Caveat: Google spreadsheets can sometimes be a bit buggy. Initially, it kept hanging up. I found that if you refresh the page it eventually works and autosaves to the spreadsheet. In the end, all of my students posted their data without many problems.