[Super] Earth Day

I finally have a bit of time to reflect on my Earth Day project that I completed with my students. I pledged to go paperless on Earth Day through Shelly Blake-Plock's edublog TeacherPaperless. It was an amazing idea and caught absolute fire with educators around the globe. Kudos to Shelly.

My 130 + students decided that we were not going to go paperless for just Earth Day, but rather the remainder of the year. We discussed a plan and then put that plan into action. My students and I were able to take a laptop cart that had been abandoned by most at the school due to the operating issue of the machines, which are about six years old. We spent the next few weeks leading up to Earth Day repairing and cleaning the machines up after school.

On April 22, we launched our own computer lab in my classroom. It was a project that all of us had a hand in. Now we are able to be 1:1 for the remainder of the school year, contributing our share through quite a few weeks of "paperless" education. I am proud of this endeavour and look forward to working in a 1:1 environment with my students.

More importantly I thank TeachPaperless and the movement that will hopefully become a long standing tradition. It was a super Earth Day for us. My students learned a great lesson and I am glad to have been a part of it.

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M. Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed

50, the New Zero!

Usually I am not sure of opinion on educational reform movements. Well, I need some help on this one.

I am working on some research on the 50 point minimum grading scale. I am reluctant to tackle this because I am not really sure how I feel about this form of assessment. If you want to read more about it, you can do so here. Long story short, you use 50 points as the minimum (to replace the zero) as the lowest grade a student can earn.

I proposed this concept to my faculty and I now have a test group of about 25 teachers. This is representative of about 25% of the faculty at my school. We will be rolling this assessment out in the 2010-11 school year and will hit the ground running with the research.

So, wanted to ask this. There are so many "outside-the-box" thinkers in the edublogosphere and I really want to know your thoughts. Do you uses this system? What are your thoughts on this system? What are you doing for assessment in the form of grading?

Help me.

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M. Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed.com

Shame, Shame!

It's been over a month since my last post to this blog. Shame on me. I will tell you I have been busy over the past weeks honeymooning, writing some professional development, graduate school (again), and working on the day job... educating.

I will tell you that although I have not been doing a lot of writing, I have been doing quite a bit of reading. You have got to get on board with Google Reader if you have not already done so - it makes tearing through all my favorite edublogs so much easier. Lots of great material out there. Check out my blogroll for some suggestions on where to begin.

As for me, I will begin to write again. Every time I sit down at the keyboard I realize how much I have to say. Thanks for listening.

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M. Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed

How Much For All These Pencils?

It's been almost twenty days. Standardization season was upon us here in Florida as we administered the FCAT Exams. It gets busy, busy... not to mention crazy at school. So, I am finally sitting down and collecting my thoughts and tearing through my mile-long "to do" list.

After my four days of proctoring the exam, I had but one question...

How much for all these pencils?

We provide pencils for the 1.7 million students that take this exam each year in the State of Florida. This is what goes through my mind as I watch these students traverse through this standardized exam. After a bit of research, I was able to find a figure for FCAT spending here in Florida. We are looking at about $28.4 million - with about $170k going to the purchase of pencils... yes, pencils.

I am a believer in standards and accountability. But, is this the way we need to go about it? Spending $28 + million to have students take the exam seems like money wasted. Why not put the money into the recruitment and hiring of qualified educators? Why not put the money into 1:1 initiatives? Why not put the money into the education (not the assessment) of our students?

So... how much for all these pencils?

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M.Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed

flickr photo by hownowdesign

Getting Left in the [Chalk] Dust

I have been mulling over this post for the last few days. Actually, I have been mulling this post for years, I just didn't know it. I thank Dr. Scott McLeod for triggering this blog of epic importance. 

Recently an article from the Orlando Sentinel and a post from Dr. McLeod on his blog rebutting the article have helped me in getting this post out of my head. I teach for a Central Florida school district neighboring the district discussed in the Sentinel's piece. The issues of whether using social media has been an ongoing debate down here for a while. The Central Florida area, as well as many others throughout the country has unfortunately had its bout with student-teacher inappropriate relationships.

The question is this: is the problem the technology, or the educator?

Blaming technology is not the answer. Instead school boards need to focus their attention on supervision of their educators to ensure that they are professional in their educational responsibilities. These educators will misuse whatever relationship they have with their students, whether it be digital, via text message, or face-to-face. Holding an entire generation of students hostage from 2.0 technologies because a few bad, bad people misuse them is not the answer. Teach responsibility, not just to students, but to educators as well.

The district that I work for has locked down technology because of the misuses and abuses of educators who were careless. We currently use Moodle and Gaggle... and that is all. We have no access to blogs, social networking, Google Apps for Education and other phenomenal technologies because they fear their use. Is this really what we want for our tech-savvy students?

Or, are we getting left in the [chalk] dust?

I would love to hear opinions, suggestions and discussion on how we can change this mindset.

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M.Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed

Prezi: David Warlick Was Right.

I know that many people have blogged about Prezi, the cloud based presentation tool. I first learned about it from David Warlick, back in May 2009. I must admit, it has been life changing (well, at least classroom changing).

I just wanted to post a presentation that I recently completed for my grad class. The topic was any multicultural issue that we wanted to address. So, I made one up... [Un]education - or, the lack of worldwide education. Enjoy, and be sure to check out Prezi.

[Un]education on Prezi

Bad Habit

So, I am still trying to decide if having the ClustrMaps widget on my blog is a good idea. I have formed a terrible habit of checking it regularly (more than once a day even though I know it only updates once every 24 hours, yikes!).

However, I then refer to the likes of Andrew B Watt (998 visits this month and counting...); Shelly Blake-Plock over at TeachPaperless (59,077 hits since May 09... what!?); nashworld and his great commentary (7,378 in just under one year); and one of my faves David Warlick and his 2 cents (30,143, don't know since when, but something to shoot for nonetheless!)...

... and it is hard not to compare. My meager blog rings in at a whopping 366 visits since Sep 2009. So, is this a bad habit, or just motivation? I'm still trying to sort it out.

More to come...

Mike Meechin, M.Ed.
mike.meechin@gmail.com
twitter.com/innovateed

What's the Answer?

That's the question left in my mind after reading two great pieces today. First, my dilemma... the technology people in my district are battling the use of any classroom 2.0 technology they cannot control. 

This leads me to the piece written by Karl Fisch over at the Fischbowl, Google Apps for Education: Is It the Right Choice for Our Students? He questions whether school control over technology applications is the answer, and brings up some great points while doing so. 

"If we want them to be safe, effective and ethical users of the Internet, let's not create a semi-walled (and only temporary) garden that limits their ability to learn, create, publish, distribute and interact. How about instead of spending all this time and effort setting up and managing Google Apps for Education, we spend it teaching our students how to responsibly use the full suite of Google Apps themselves?"

Fisch brings up what I believe is the answer - hold ourselves responsible and educate ours students on the proper ways to use and manage these new technologies. This is what they'll be doing - or are doing in the real world anyhow.

What I envision is giving our students limitless free web 2.0 technologies and teaching them how to use them responsibly in productive manners. This would lead to them being able to create without the walls that Fisch discusses. After all, I think that we are all outside-the-box educators.

A great example of what is going on that I envy is Shelly Blake-Plock's work with his 9th grade students. Shelly writes TeachPaperless, and blogged about his new project here. You can find his class blog, called the Western Civ Project here.

So... back to my question - what is the answer?

In the next week I will be meeting with the head of our county's technology initiatives (hoping to influence an answer) and I would love some more thoughts... any ideas? I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

More to come...

Mike Meechin

mike.meechin@gmail.com

twitter.com/innovateed

flickr photo by Max F. Williams

Researching 2.0

A few weeks ago, Richard Byrne over at Free Tech for Teachers, posted a great piece [Textbooks, Wikipedia, and Primary Source Research] on the use, reliability and validity of Wikipedia. I was inspired  by the post and replicated the activity in my classroom this past week. I presented the lesson as a challenge to the students. I am a teach-against-the-textbook educator anyhow, and challenged them to challenge the text. We also explored the validity of the Wikipedia articles they were researching.

I also took Byrne's advice and followed up with a GoogleDocs assignment. Using GoogleDocs Forms the assignment was so easy to assess. This truly was a great piece of web 2.0 technology to bring into the classroom.

The assignment turned out amazing. We discussed how my student's teachers were slamming Wikipedia in their classes. I was surprised at how their teachers were telling them no Wikipedia, but giving them no direction on where else to go on the Internet. This is where I know that I fall behind other educators. Often we assume that our students (especially high school level) know how to research. However, when we take away one of the best pieces of information, at least a starting point for research, where will they go? This is a question that so many of my fellow bloggers are addressing with new classroom 2.0 technologies.

What's your answer for where students should go to research?
----
Click here to link to the Google Form that I used to assess my students on this activity.

More to come...

Mike Meechin
www.innovateeducation.com
mike.meechin@gmail.com

Standardi-Nation: When Enough is Enough

Standardization. Enough is enough.

This is a personal tale about my life as a high school teacher in Central Florida. It is based on a true story.

Recently, our administrative team came to my department with another "hand-me-down" from the school district personnel and the state DOE. This time the topic was: board configuration. Yes, as in whiteboard... the standardization of whiteboard configuration. (Whew! That was a mouthful.)

The district and DOE now want the educators in our school to configure their boards in exactly the same way. They have outlined in a nifty PowerPoint exactly how this is to be done. The reasoning I am guessing is to ensure that inadequate educators do what quality educators do in their own way. The problem is that they are sucking the education and creativity right out the door. I can only take so much, as I mentioned in my post titled, I Have a Dream.

The DOE has outlined nine criteria that are supposed to be on our boards in their configuration for the secondary level. The worst part is that I teach in a classroom that has an LCD, SmartBoard, SmartReview clickers, I blog, use Twitter and yet the DOE is obsessed with me delivering content through the good ole' fashioned... whiteboard. So much for classroom 2.0!

Thanks for letting me vent.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue and what you are encountering in your classroom.

More to come...

Mike Meechin

www.innovateeducation.com

mike.meechin@gmail.com