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It is 10:30 the day of Prom and I'm exhausted! You see, there are days "when a teacher's gotta preach" as I tell my students. The day before Winter break. The day before Spring Break. The day of Prom. The last day of school. When difficulty hits a class. When there are struggles. So, today, although we have classes until noon, I've had my three classes and three speeches. Here is a copy of some of what I told them. 1) Sometimes the only choice you can make in a night is to take the first drink or not. When you get on a slide, once you're moving you're not stopping. When you drive on a muddy rode and start to skid, you just hope the car comes to a stop in a good place and not in the ditch. When you choose to take that first sip, you do not know nor do you understand what you are saying yes too. You may be saying "Yes, I'm going to kill my best friend tonight," or " Yes, I'm going to be raped tonight" or "Yes,...

Gamasutra has an interesting article on the top ten findings of academia about the use of video games. A few interesting points from the article and how I think they relate to my classroom. 1. Ability to succeed increased when game players picked their own music. ...when players picked their own soundtracks, their ability to succeed in the game increased and they become more emotionally responsive to the activity as well. G. Cassidy et al., Glasgow Caledonia University I have found this to be true in my classroom. I have music as a reward in my classroom. I never allow individual listening on headphones but during the last 10 minutes of some classes as a reward, I allow students to play music off of the front computer. I have this assigned on a rotating basis with teams. I've found this to be very motivational and effective. Hmm. 2. Collaboration drives emotional attachment “collaboration is an extremely powerful driver of emotional stickiness,” says McGonigal. The findings i...

It is very apparent from the reader stats that many of the readers of Cool Cat Teacher like the work we've done with Wikis. I must admit that they have transformed our classroom . The Wiki Wiki Teaching day 1 post (my first one) is still my most highly trafficked ever! Here is an index of some of my Wiki posts: Wiki Wiki Teaching - The art of using wiki pages to teach What is a mashup? Google-led Socratic teaching Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts this week, March 11 Wikis at Westwood this Week (and Podcasts too!), Feb 18 Wikis and blogs this week: March 13 - Light the Match! Ninth Grade Wikis - Week 2 Head on down to wikiville It all starts with a Magnificent Monday! Blogger Blips, Web 2.0 resources It's Official -- Westwood Wikispace has been named wikispace of ... Some excellent wiki resources and how to's 3rd and 4th graders using wikis 3rd and 4th graders using wikis -- Interview with John, their teacher Understanding your values wiki - Ninth graders Podcast of Class D...

Where are the failures of Web 2.0? There are people on the Internet wondering where the failures of Web 2.0 are including Bud the Teacher when he ponders: The only problem with best practice texts, too often at least, is that they turn classrooms into Mickey Mouse spaces where all goes well and there's never any trouble. Every student in these books finds success in the classroom. At least, that's how the texts present classrooms. Again, this is not universal; many good texts share failures as well as successes, but not nearly enough. I do not want this blog to become a text that misinforms as it informs. Nor do I want to read blogs that paint stories of success while ignoring the stories of students lost or unsuccessful along the way. We aren’t going to learn anything by merely telling half of the story. And omission, intentional or otherwise, may blur the narrative. Will Richardson sort of started the discussion in To Blog or Not to Blog? and his follow up post It's ...

Spring Break is upon us! We're planning how to fit 12 people and lots of luggage into the automobiles and the discussion of the trunk monkey came up. We all want to ride together, but I proclaimed, "But the kids aren't trunk monkeys! They all need seatbelts." What is a Trunk Monkey? The hilarious Trunk Monkey videos were originally cut for the Superbowl in 2003 and 2004 for the Suburban auto group. (I love the Trunk monkey bridge video .) So, the monkey sits in the trunk just waiting to protect the car from robbers and vandals! But kids don't belong there ! Seatbelts limit the number of passengers in cars Planning to put children in vehicles is easy. There are a set number of seatbelts and you cannot legally put any more in the car than that. The old days of " stuff the VW bug " just don't apply any more, we can only fit a certain number of kids in a vehicle. Classrooms don't have seatbelts...but they should Then we have the classroom. I hav...

Sometimes we need a laugh. This company pokes fun at the names emerging from the Web 2.0 phenomenon. So, you can take a test to see whether you know if a name is from Web 2.0 or Star Wars. Spring break is Friday. Most of the kids minds went on spring break last Friday. I needed a laugh! More later. Tags: Web 2.0 education Star Wars StarWars teaching coolcatteacher

Web 2.0 Educational paper I have found an excellent article by an educator and Web 2.0 researcher. If you'd like the history and underpinnings of the Web 2.0 as it relates to education (and you have about 10 minutes) , Bryan Alexander has written a very nice paper for Educause. How did I find his paper? After reading some of the new "Web 2.0" hotlists: Business 2.0's The Next Net 25 Chicago Tribune's 50 best Web sites: SERVICES Designtechnica's The Best of Web 2.0 review I saw a common trend in that Digg was named on each list. So, I stopped fighting the urge to pick up another service and joined digg. How do you get started on digg? 1 - Go to Digg and click Join. 2 - They will send you an e-mail after you register and you must confirm. 3 - After you confirm, go to digg and log in. Now you're ready Features of Digg: A - You can use the search box . I did a search on teaching and found my articles mentioned here. (You can do this without registerin...

In the way blogging goes, Will Richardson wrote a great post yesterday "To Blog or Not to Blog" which then inspired Chris Sessums to ask a question six hours a go that I hope you'll answer. So I ask you, what motivates you to blog? Would you do it if you knew no one would read it? And what happens when you become “popular”? Do you worry about what you will post next, whether it will be well received? What happens when you become a victim of your own success? So, I posted my answer in the comments and it was this: I love this quote by Jim Carrey taken out of Reader's Digest "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." The intrinsic desire of teachers is to transform and help those they teach become a better person. So when a natural born teacher meets the blog, I find that my innate desire to help and teach others takes over. To teach not only my students but others. ...

Podcasting is so important and is a vital new medium for blogging. I've taken some time to podcast a little and enjoy it. The question is, do I have the time? Automate podcasting your blog with Talkr As my Saturday morning tradition dictates, I try something new first thing. This morning, I tried Talkr . This service takes blogs and converts them to talk format. I tested it out on my Are you a bobblehead or bumblebee? post. You can hear the results here. Listen to this article Talkr will automatically generate a podcast for each of my blog posts. People have e-mailed me that they'd rather download it into their iPods and listen than have to check bloglines, so I may add it to my template today. The Pros and Cons of Talkr I have to think about it first: The voice is a little mechanical on some words. The word "datastream" came out sounding more like "deetee stream" in one post I listened to. I do not have the time to podcast each post. I'd love ...

With a lot of preaching this Web 2.0 , the students are getting it. I have a growing list of students who are blogging outside my classroom and a growing respect for their diversity of interests. One of my students has created a beautiful blog in wordpress . Her comments about blogging are so wonderful, I'd like to share them with you. When my computer teacher, Mrs. Vicki, first told my class about blogs, I have to admit I was the person in the back of the room not really paying attention going, “What’s a blog?” Once she explained in simplistic terms what a blog was she required us to create wikis explaining Web 2.0 so we could learn about it and create our own bloglines account. Then (of all things) she had us post something on our class blogmeister account. I was still the one going, “What am I supposed to write about?” I was seriously at a loss. I mean what could I say that would actually interest anyone else, but then I started reading other peoples blogs. I finally re...

The Dream Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream of automating our gradebook system. We do many cutting edge things here, but alas we currently do report cards in Shakespearian longhand. Several of us have trialed and used online gradebook systems in the last year and we are convinced that doing this by hand is a waste of time that we do not have. I'm a big believer in efficiency. I'm also a believer that when you select software you base it on what it is easy for teachers to use or IT WILL NOT BE USED! I don't need bloatware that has more features than we want. We also don't have unlimited resources. I've been perusing the Internet, lots of software, not much information from teachers about what they think. Call for Help Here are the requirements of what we need: Online access to grades for parents and students. Gradebook software for teachers that allows averaging on a weighted as well as a straight basis. Appropriate for grades 3 - 12 Hosted off site (I teach 5 cla...

As I look around life, I see two types of people: bobbleheads and bumblebees. Bobbleheads say "yes" with their heads but their feet don't move. Bobbleheads are like those little men on the dash whose heads nod up and down based on the movement of the vehicle they are in. The bobbleheads in life are often called "yes men" but this is more than that. These are the echoes. If everyone is complaining about test scores, that is what they complain about. If people are saying students are sorry these days, that's the bandwagon they ride on. If collaborative learning is the "new thing" that is the "thing" they are doing prolifically in their classroom. He has no opinion. No thoughts. He just follows the tide and echoes the sentiment. He makes a few pundits' voices turn into a roar. There is one characteristic of a bobble head -- his head moves. His feet don't. He agrees in voice but he doesn't change a thing. A bobblehead...

This semester's anomaly I have been perplexed with a question: after teaching keyboarding for a while, I have found that most of my classes average around 45 gwam and I have set as a goal for all of my students to break 30 gwam. That is until this semester. This semester, after 10 weeks of teaching my class average is over 70 gwam (gross words per minute) and every student is already over 50 gwam. Why? This is particularly interesting in the fact that last semester I had one of a pair of identical twins and this semester I have the other one. Needless to say, they are very similar but one typed 13 gwam (last semester) and this semester the other twin is over 50 gwam. Something has changed! Coming from an engineering background, I like to understand the factors that compose this equation. I've been making notes of how I have taught differently, but I asked them today, "What motivates you to hit such high typing speeds?" Here is what they said: "We love the t...