Week 4: How to Grow an Engaging Environment

In this article, author Suzie Boss illustrates the benefits for both teachers and students when a school garden is installed.  Holiday Heights Elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas is a Title I school with about 700 students and a school garden that offers hands on learning experience.  The garden coordinator/teacher at the school, Scott Smith, uses the garden to enhance his math and science lessons, providing a level of engagement and interest he had been missing in his “rut” over the last few years.  He says that the students have little experience with gardening or outdoor work and it’s refreshing and new for them.  He tries to use the garden as much as possible in his lessons.  Instead of showing the students a diagram of the water cycle, he takes the class outside to view whatever aspects of it are present in the garden.  Instead of calculating the volume of a rectangular prism from a worksheet in the classroom, he poses the problem of how much soil is needed to fill one of the raised flowerbeds in the garden.

There are a few steps to take to ensure the overall and long-term success of a school garden.  First, there has to be engagement on all sides of the educational world, with students, teachers, and parents participating in the garden effort.  There also needs to be a level of flexibility and subsequent problem solving when gardening.  It’s important to remember that all plants/designs may not take or work right away.  There also needs to be someone in charge of the garden at the school that is motivated to work on all aspects of the project, chief among them garnering interest and involvement from the other teachers.  Finally, it’s important for the long-term involvement in the garden that every success, whether big or small, is recognized and celebrated.  Those successes help build continuing interest and involvement from every aspect of the school community.

This garden was made possible by the non-profit organization REAL School Gardens.  I would be interested to see these gardens in action!

Boss, S. (n.d.). How to Grow an Engaging Learning Environment. Edutopia. Retrieved May 27, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-to-grow-engaging-environment-suzie-boss

Week 3: 7 Things You Should Know About Flickr

Flickr is a website for photo sharing where anybody can upload their photos, comment on other photos, and browse other users’ photos.  Organization is improved by the user’s ability to create sets of photos and to join/add to subject groupings.  The real strength of Flickr is the community of users itself.  The content on the site is only as strong as the content the users upload and the communication between the users.

Today, there are upwards of two billion images and twenty billion tags on the Flickr website, including a large contribution from the Library of Congress.  The Library of Congress shares a collection of images and invites Flickr users to comment and analyze the images.

Flickr users can register for free accounts (with limited bandwidths and groups) or a paid account with more options.  Both accounts are able to upload, share, and comment on images.  Users are also able to designate the level of copyright on a photo and also which users are allowed to comment/tag a photo. 

Despite it’s usefulness as an online photo-sharing forum, users need to be wary of the factual accuracy of any tags or comments because the users may not be qualified to identify the images.  In the classroom, Flickr can be used for studying photography and also for enhancing projects and enabling students to gain feedback on their work.

7 Things You Should Know About Flickr. (2008, February 15). EDUCAUSE Homepage. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-flickr

Week 3: What A Teacher Powered School Looks Like

In this article, author Tina Barseghian, explains the concept of teacher-run schools and how one school in particular is benefitting greatly from this flipped authority.  A teacher run school gives the policy making power back to the teachers because “teachers know their students best.”  These teachers make decisions about curriculum, educational policy, budget, finances, new hires, and a wealth of other subjects that are most often left to administrators and state officials.  Teachers at these schools (about 60 across the country) work together in a collaborative setting to figure out what is the best route for their students.

Avalon school, a grade 6-12 charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota is one of these teacher run schools and has found tremendous success utilizing this model of decision making.  Avalon school has a teacher retention rate of 95-100 percent and has higher test proficiency scores than the public schools of St. Paul.  The teachers decided on a problem based, student led curriculum format, which has created a culture of democracy and accountability among the student population.  The teachers take time to evaluate each other in the classroom and also hire a teaching coach to better improve their classrooms.

In my opinion, this approach has its positives and negatives.  While I fully support more teacher involvement in decision-making, I’m not sure that most teachers would be wiling to take on the extra work of budget/financing along with all of their other duties.  I would love to see some more examples of schools where this approach was successful.

Barseghian, T. (2014, May 20). What a Teacher-Powered School Looks Like. MindShift. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/what-a-teacher-powered-school-looks-like/

Week 2: 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs

This article explains what blogs are and how they can be used by a variety of different people.  A blog is an online “web log” that is a collection of thoughts and commentary, sometimes accompanied by links to other websites.  Blogs are characteristically easy to navigate and create, and can be accessed anywhere with an Internet connection.  What sets blogs apart from other websites and tools is the personal nature of the postings and the commentary.  Oftentimes, bloggers form groups that interact with each other and comment on postings on a regular basis.

Another great thing about blogs is that virtually anyone can make one or participate in one.  In addition to individual blogs, there are group blogs, family blogs, and educational classroom blogs among many others.   To operate a blog, a person needs only to type up an entry about a subject of their choice and publish it to the web for others to see.  Others can then comment on the entry and facilitate communication about the subject with the author/authors or other commentators.  Blogs allow for greater connections with people over the Internet.  One thing to keep in mind however, when blogging and reading others blogs is that they may contain inaccurate information.  There are no limits to what bloggers can post about and it is up to the reader to verify information on their own.  Also, blogs are subjective to their author.  Any blogger can manipulate their content, add/delete material and comments to suit their needs.  It is important to be vigilant when reading blogs and considering the information they may offer.

In the classroom, blogs are being used to facilitate communications between the teachers and the students.  In the future, teachers should look to include structured exercises and establish clear goals to maximize the effectiveness of blogging in the classroom.  All in all, blogs are a positive addition to the classroom discussion forum and look to have a bright future in the educational world.

7 Things You Should Know About Blogs. (n.d.). EDUCAUSE Homepage. Retrieved May 16, 2014, from http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-blogs

Week 2: 5 Online Tools To Combat Plagiarism

In this article Melissa Burns, a informatics teacher, discusses several ways to combat student plagiarism in the classroom.  Her first suggestion when trying to determine whether or not a student has turned in work that is not their own is to google it.    Knowing your students work is key for this suggestion to work.  If you come across a suspicious sentence or phrase, simply type the phrase in the search box with quotation marks on each end and view the results.  If the text is taken directly from another source, it should show up.  Another suggestion is to use a program called Plagtracker.  Plagtracker generates a report from a large database of sources.  Ms. Burns even suggests teachers use this program for themselves, as it is easy to forget which ideas are uniquely your own after many hours of working on a project.

DocCop is a program that allows a teacher to compare two documents for similarities.  With this program the teacher would still need to find the original source on their own but it offers a quick analysis once the two documents are compared for similiarities.  WCopyfind works in a similar way to DocCop, generating a report on the sameness of two documents.  Again, the teacher would have to find the documents on his/her own however.

Finally, Ms. Burns suggests directing students and their parents to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) for further information on plagiarism and the consequences and effects it comes with.  I think this is the most valuable tool in the bunch because it will enable the students to actually learn how to avoid plagiarism, rather than just punishing them once they have been caught.

Burns, M. (n.d.). 5 Online Tools to Help Combat Plagiarism. Edutopia. Retrieved May 16, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/online-tools-to-combat-plagiarism-melissa-burns