An Awakening Failure
Erin M


I have a confession to make...

I failed the second semester of my junior year of high school. 

I had chosen Ralph Waldo Emerson as a topic for my junior research paper, which was the majority of the semester's grade. I painstakingly created 25 note cards documenting my research and wrote my rough and final drafts. But when it cam time to turn in my paper, I had lost my note cards. And since I have been a procrastinator since birth, I didn't complete the assignment until the night before it was due. This meant that I didn't have time to re-make those note cards and received an F on my research paper and an F for the semester.


To this day I have no idea what I learned from that experience. As I am scouring my action research paper for APA errors, I am having flashbacks to that time of failure in my life. I still wonder why it wasn't enough she had already given me the points for completing the note cards on time earlier in the semester. I don't know if I ever told my parents the real reason I failed that assignment. I don't even remember if I had enough guts to ask for extended time to create a new set. I wonder now as I did then, what the educational value failing a student for losing a stack of cards was. I still enjoy Emerson's work and remember some of what I had learned from the research. But what I remember most is crying while digging through my closet, locker and car looking for those cards because I knew that without them I would fail. 


So I guess I did learn from that experience, although it wasn't what my teacher had intended. I still lose paper almost as soon as I put it down (so thank goodness I can take notes on my laptop.) And I still have no idea how to properly document my resources in MLA or APA. What I learned was that was one thing that I never wanted to do to my students, even though at the time I didn't know I was going to be an educator. All I knew was that I never wanted to another person to feel the way I had because of something I had done. 


Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Glogster EDU - Newly Improved
Erin M

This summer Glogster launched Glogster EDU, which was totally awesome because the EDU version is completely safe and filtered so teachers don’t have to worry about students viewing inappropriate content. For those that don’t know what Glogster EDU is, it’s basically an virtual poster creator. But it is so much more! Users can upload or link to images, video and that help convey their messages. Text and titles can be added and be linked to external website. There are also a number of graphics that can be added to “spice up” your virtual poster.
Well now Glogster has done it again! They’ve added a whole slew of education themed graphics that will enable both students and teachers to more easily and quickly create Glogs for their classrooms. Graphics such as school supplies, chemical symbols, math symbols, and safety signs have been added to improve the usability in an educational setting. The best part about Glogster is that you don’t have to worry about account creation for students. As an educator you create an account and can add up to 200 students to your account. Then you simply give your students their usernames and passwords and send them to the computer. The teacher has the ability to see all students’ glog, even unfinished glogs, and can make sure those glogs are set to private. The teacher can also retrieve an embed code for the student glogs and embed them into the class blog, wiki, or website.
Since all glogs can be set as private, it’s okay to use DE content on your glogs - as long as you’re not posting those glogs on public facing websites that is. As a teacher you can create an informative poster about cells or create a whole project sending your students all over the web from your glog. Or students can create a glog demonstrating their knowledge about the Civil War or even a presentation of their science project, all without using a single glue stick or printing out a single sheet of paper. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get your kids glogging today!

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2 1/2 Months Later...
Erin M

It's been about two-and-a-half months now that I have going to a local middle school once a week to provide professional development sessions on integrating technology into their specific curricular areas and the district's new lesson structure model. This experience has definitely been eye-opening! As a whole, the staff was pretty comfortable with using technology for themselves but were not very comfortable allowing students to use technology, which is the intended goal for the massive amount of money spent on classroom technology. I am glad to report that both teacher comfort allowing students to use technology and actual student use of technology went up in this very short time frame! A few things to note:

  1. While more teachers were allowing students to use technology in class, the number of classrooms using technology did not go up. In other words, the same amount of classrooms had technology use occurring, but more of if was student use rather than teacher use.
  2. I feel a large part of this success is due to the fact that the instructional coaches jumped right in with both feet on integrating technology into ALL professional development.
  3. While survey results would lead one to believe that student engagement went down, I don't believe that is actually the case. During the course of this semester, the definition "actively engaged" was clarified to the staff members. I believe this is why the results showed a drop in students that were actively engaged, as all conversations with staff members indicate that students were more engaged in the learning. 
Teacher Survey Results
View more presentations from Erin Misegadis.


Overall I think that the work done this semester was beneficial to all involved and I hope that the coaches will be able to continue to support technology integration into their professional development sessions and that the students will benefit from this experience.

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What's the "Right Answer"?
Erin M


This morning I read a post on David Freeburg's blog Epic Epoch about differentiating and his thoughts about whether the process or the product was the most important component of the learning experience. This of course got me thinking about our students today. One of the comments left was that his students are more concerned about getting the "right answer" than they are learning from the process. But how did they get that way? Are we born that way? Or have years of education where you must have the correct answers on the test in order to pass made students that way? I've even been in professional development sessions where teachers have asked "You've shown us a lot of ways to teach this concept. Which is the best way?" That to me leads me to think that the problem is not with students, but that the problem is with the system.
If you give a group of primary aged students some "crafts" supplies and tell them to build a model of a house, they'll dive right in and start building. They won't even think about how their teacher thinks it should look nor will they worry about "right way" to build it. They'll simply dump the supplies out and start working to build a house. But, if you give those same supplies to a secondary level student and tell them to build a model of a house, it is almost guaranteed that they'll start asking questions. "How many points is this worth?" "How big does it have to be?" "Is there an example I can look at so I can get it right?" 
What happens between those early elementary years and middle school that students are becoming disconnected from the fun of learning? Even further, what will happen to those same students when a grade is no longer attached to a product? As educators we need to recognize the fact that learning is much more than "getting the right answer." It is about learning to learn. If we as educators do not start to focus on the process, students won't either and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves when our students fail. We've got to acknowledge that we are the ones that need to implement change, and only when that happens will our students' enthusiasm for learning grow. Only then will our students truly become life-long learners. 

Image courtesy of Flickr and jason03yingling.

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Please Step Away from the Textbook!
Erin M


Textbooks are a staple in most classrooms and can be a great resource for teachers. The problem I find (not that I am even close to the first person to realize this) is that a large number of teachers use their textbook and accompanying teacher's guide as the ONLY resource for teaching. This is prominent from kindergarten all the way to post-secondary education. The problem with this is that teaching from the textbook shuts the door in the faces of students and locks them into their classrooms. Our world holds so many resources for educators - all we have to do is open our eyes and minds and look for them. 

Students today are collaborative, communicate with their peers on a highly frequent basis, create, explore, adapt, and design - except when they are in school. Often times when students enter school they are asked to “power down” their phones, computers, and themselves. On their own, students use technology to explore their world and communicate with others. But in their classrooms, many times the option to use those tools is not available to them. In a large portion of these classrooms, the reason isn’t a lack of access, but rather teachers simply aren’t allowing the students to use the tools available to them.  This lack of use is usually born out of one thing - fear. A fear that the technology may not work properly, a fear that things may not "go as planned," a fear that the students might abuse the technology, and probably mostly a fear of not being the expert in front of students. While it is okay to be afraid, it is not acceptable to allow that fear to prevent you from creating a more appropriate learning environment for students. Even if nothing works they way you plan and the students end up having to show you how to use the tools, the learning that will occur in that time will be completely worth it. The experience may even allow you to see strengths in your students that you may have never before seen.


If you are reading this post you are probably not tied to your textbook, but I'm willing to bet that you know someone that is. So why not offer up a few ideas to that person that will help them expand a learning environment beyond their classroom walls, or at least beyond the covers of the textbook? Introduce someone to the power of the internet for not only creating more engaging learning environment, but also as a way to extend their own learning network. If you're just starting to explore your options outside of your textbook, seek out another person to either explore with you or someone who could act as a mentor and guide in your journey. Trust me, whether you enter the partnership as a guide or "student" you will find yourself learning from the experience and eager to do more learning and exploring.


A couple of days ago someone on Twitter posted a link to David Warlick's article If you can't use technology get out of teaching! which inspired this post, so thanks to my PLN in Twitter (and David Warlick of course.)

Image courtesy of  joewhk and Flickr.

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Exciting New Opportunity
Erin M


Well I'm very excited about a new project that I've been able to undertake this semester. I have the privilege to be able work with a local middle school's instructional coaches to not only embed technology use into their weekly professional development sessions, but also to add technology integration ideas into their actually delivery to the teachers. Meaning for every topic and concept they're covering in PD this semester, I'm going to add ways to embed technology into specific curricular areas. I'm very excited about this because this school already has a good amount of technology in the classrooms, but the teachers still aren't using the tools to their potential - some aren't even using them at all. In my experiences, there is a large portion of the educator population that will embed technology and 21st century skills into their instruction if they are simply taught the skills to do so. Most technology PD is simply teaching participants how to use the tool. I firmly believe that if you follow that instruction will curriculum specific ways to integrate the tools and skills teachers are much more likely to do so.

I have also offered to the entire staff to personally come into their classrooms and help them plan technology rich instructional units, help them deliver the lessons, or even to teach a lesson their classroom. I really feel that most educators would are willing to integrate more technology into their instruction, thereby greatly enriching their students' learning environments, but they are simply not equipped with the skills to do so or afraid that "things might not go right." It is my hope that by giving them the skills and impressing upon them the importance of allowing the students to lead the way (even if things to always go according to plan) that their students' engagement and achievement will increase. When this happens the job of being the teacher becomes less "work" and more of a learning experience for everyone involved.

Image courtesy of tinaylin and Flickr

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What Are We Blocking?
Erin M

Our district, like most, has an Internet filter and guidelines for what gets filtered. And, like most educators that work in districts with filters, I hit that filter a minimum of once a day, most days it much more than that if I'm reading and researching. There are a number of sites that I use as an educator and technology specialist professionally that are blocked within our district, Twitter being the most frustrating block for me (although I do find access to it through a couple of widgets). I use Twitter as a professional in a number of ways, from learning from others, to share my learning, as well as the occasional "Help, I'm looking for _____ resources." And my Twitter network never fails to deliver when I need it. The latest frustration is with image sharing sites. We've got a large number of teachers starting to implement blogging into their classrooms and are wanting to use a template from the Internet. The problem is that the images for those templates are hosted on image sharing sites that are blocked in the district, which means the templates can't be properly viewed within the district. The worst part is that teachers and students have the same filtering levels, so teachers don't even have the ability to evaluate a website for classroom appropriateness if it does happen to be blocked for the students.

I understand the concept for blocking, that we're keeping students from viewing inappropriate content and materials. But I am often left wondering what we're really teaching students (and teachers) when we block so much of the Internet. How can we fully teach Internet safety if we block so much of its content? How can we convince teachers that we trust their judgement to select appropriate resources and content for their classrooms if they have to rely on someone else to evaluate whether or not a site should be blocked? How can we teach our students to collaborate in our global society if we block so many of the social networking and media sites that exist today? These are questions that are often spinning around in my head.

I read about others using social networking, media, and bookmarking sites all the time in their classrooms and district, but as we not only filter but do not supply our students with email addresses OR allow them to use their personal emails, we are not able to use a large number of these tools as they are intended. As I'm not in a position to actually make the decisions as to what types of access students have, I often find myself spinning my wheels when I hit that filter searching for a tool to use in the classroom. Some day surely we will be able to give our students safe access to all of the tools that are available out there, and surely if we all keep trying and promoting the incredible advantages to the massive number of tools that are available to us on the Internet. Considering our students (and teachers) are using a large number of social networking and media sites at while they are at home, we won't have to spend much time teaching the tools. We'll actually be able to teach our students (and teachers) how to use these tools appropriately and how to harness their power in the classroom in order to become responsible citizens in today's global society.

Image thanks to Flickr and epmd.

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