Student's Take on Testing

We just got through our CAHSEE and our Star or CSTs this spring - on an informal survey I asked the students to give their take on the tests. Here are some of their responses:

"I would say that the testing is actually very important..I take any kind of testing very seriously, I am afraid that many do not.."

"Some CST tests were more difficult than others but they all drained us. I thought the science portion was going to be a walk in the park, but boy was I wrong..."

"...the testing did go on for a while and got really old just sitting for 2 hours reading but it was a nice break from normal tests and big homework assignments."

"I see no point in doing the testing if its going to be so long..."

"Well I think that testing is really lame...I really don't like it in general just because I think that it is pointless because we spend so much time testing when we could actually be learning something."

Interesting.

WIKIPEDIA - OPINION

My first search was to look up Newton’s Laws of Motion – which I just finished covering with my class. The search was as easy as “Google” and boom! A wealth of information at my fingertips in Wikipedia. The question – is it reliable, comprehensible, and does it address the information needs I have? The answer is pretty clear that it seems quite reliable – the portions I reviewed in detail in any case. It is also well organized and seemed to provide the depth that covers initial interest to “deep dive” if required. Highly recommended as a jumping off point to get context for anyone doing work on the web.

Second search I went to the Spanish Wikipedia and searched “Batalla de Puebla,” I was trying to find a tie for Mexico in the mid 1800s as we study French history in my Primary Language Word History class. The historical resource I found was very rich and very useful for the purposes of my class. The links to explain the battle in its larger context was powerful. The link read, “…durante la invasión francesa de México.” This led to a new page where you can find the details of the French invasion of Mexico and the establishment of Maximillian the I under Napoleon the II’s rule. The complementary paintings and portraits enhance the discussion. A quick historical check proved to be accurate and balanced.

The paradigm of Friedman’s “The World is Flat” is true within the digital solution like Wikipedia. Without repeating the arguments of Dean Shareski’s “YES – to Are Wikis Worth the Time?” (ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology December 2005-2006) I am convinced that the contributions of Wikipedia to the democratization of information and knowledge will have a tremendous impact on the world at large. The privilege of a library or a set of encyclopedias are no longer necessary – as even people across the globe in remote locations of the world will turn-on their portable devices to connect to the world of information. See the One Laptop Per Child web site at: http://laptop.org/

LEARNING STYLES

What are learning styles? At first glance it seems that learning styles are really preferred “living” preferences. For example “visual learners” probably enjoy a movie rather than a book, yet “auditory learners” probably enjoy a concert (Classical or Acid Rock), and “Kinesthetic learners” probably enjoy an outdoor restaurant with delicious food steaming and a good glass of wine. But can we really make that much of styles as a mark of distinction? I am not sure.

I have always thought myself for example as a “visual learner” – and I am! I like to see graphic organizers, seeing a complete context, seeing the “big picture.” At the same time I like to walk by the beach (Kinesthetic – dig?), enjoy the beauty of the ocean sights (Visual – see?) and listen to my iPod (Auditor – hear?). I could add that if I pick up an ice cream from a vendor, then I taste and enjoy the smell of that fruity treat as well….ahhhh, heavenly! All of this to say that, in my case at least, I have been blessed with five senses to enjoy the moment: a beautiful beach stroll. My wife on the other hand seems to have a sixth sense which most men lack – but that is another story.

I think we all have preferences but we use all our faculties to learn. We use our senses to create context, to form knowledge, problem solve, analyze, and achieve a thorough understanding of a subject – mastery – if you will. I think that the answer in the classroom is balance. We have to address all the senses as input venues into the student’s processing centers. Ultimately preferences need to be taken into account and addressed - this could perhaps be done using differentiated instruction. What do you think?

Picture Courtesy of LA Fitness

40 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE

The following exerpts from an article writtten in 1968:

"Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier."

"In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.
Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously."

Fascinating - read it at:

After doing some research into DI (Differentiated Instruction), a reference in ISTE pointed to a site called CAST Universal Design for learning. This is an interesting site - it is supposed to be brain research-based but I am not quite sure of all its implications - on the surface it looks promising. Take a gander, they say:

• Multiple means of representation, to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,


• Multiple means of expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know,


• Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.

Watch a video:

COMMUNICATIONS IN SCIENCE

This is a brief lecture on Communications given to my Science Students... it was converted from PowerPoint to Google Docs:Presentations and published for public view. The code in the blog is automatically generated for copy-paste into blogger - and first try - it works! Amazing.

HISTORY RESOURCES

Teaching history as a relevant, meaningful up-to-date, and interesting subject is very important. History was/is to many students the most boring subject ever: names, dates, places - without meaning to them personally. When good teachers bring history to life - it can be a transforming experience to the students.

Our head of our History Department is an incredible leader - thank you Keith. He freely shares resources, hints, tips, and directions creating an incredible team of history teachers. Kudos Keith. One of the resources he shared recently is the ABC-CLIO site about the Olympics... a teachable moment. Check it out at:

Look for the down-loadable lesson on the Olympics - excellent!

GOOGLE APPS

At this point in time after 6 months of piloting Google Apps – I can not envision teaching without it. Honestly it is the best teacher infrastructure available – period. The cherry on top of this wonderful ice-cream is that it is FREE. Wow – the paradigm that Goggle is currently using is outstanding!

I have 174 accounts live - and used all the time... I will be adding more in the future.

When I first started piloting it had only:

• G-mail
• Calendar
• Documents (Word Processing)
• Spread Sheets

Since then they have added and improved each time:

• Presentation
• Sites

Oh Sites – how a wonderful tool. Having come from the corporate world where groupware infrastructure systems such as Microsoft SharePoint or Oracle’s Portal Server are main-stay it is great to see a tool with robust features such as “Sites” come into the mainstream of Google Apps. This is a quantum jump in value-added to the whole Google Apps suite.

What is it? It gives the users the ability to create a web-site – but not just any web-site, but an integrated site right “out-of-the-box” no fancy knowledge is needed – you just bring it up and design your pages, integrate a file repository, different types of pages – all at your finger tips – it is incredibly easy to use. But what good is that? Can’t “Google Pages” do that? Yes, but SITES makes this is SHAREABLE – and with the power of group work, it becomes an unmatched tool for STUDENTS and TEACHERS in my case.

Kudos, Google!

Here is one examples you can see - click on the figure below to navigate to this example:

Although this is not public, this is my design of the Physics Unit "Site" complete with all the standards, handouts, warm-ups, lectures, materials, vacabulary, etc... All I have to say is - it is pretty impressive. From start to end the design took less than one hour while I learned the features of the tool... honestly, its that easy!

TEACH VOCABULARY AND FEED THE WORLD

It is amazing how many resources are available to help you do your job. It is a matter of finding good quality sites as well as innovative ideas about their deployment and use. Here you will find something amazing - honestly... A great vocabulary tool as well as a way to feed the world!

Click on the figure:

CBRA

The Center for Border and Regional Affairs (CBRA) is hosting meetings this coming Friday. Dr. Elizabeth Garza and I are scheduled to present the findings of our study… It promises to be interesting. Dr. Garza is pulling the details together… she is really an amazing lady. This is a new experience for me – promises to be interesting.

Who or what is CBRA?

“The CBRA is a faculty coordinated academic organization that articulates the expertise of CSU San Marcos personnel with local, state, national, and international funding and policy initiatives. In the context of the geographic, social, political, and economic environment in which our university is uniquely positioned, the CBRA provides a voice with which CSU San Marcos can shape and influence regional policy in collaboration with Mexican and U.S. institutions and agencies in the border region.”

http://www.csusm.edu/academic_programs/catalog/2001-02_Catalog/text_version/Catalog-html/cat_11_k_centers_institutes.htm

PINK SLIPS

An interesting combination of events has lead to me to observe a challenging facet of the teaching profession – affecting all new teachers. California has spent too much money for the amount of revenue coming into the State coffers. Deficit Spending, an all too common practice, has come home to roost: PINK SLIPS. Each district has to go through a Solomonic process to decide who goes and who stays – because cut-backs are inevitable. It is a very interesting process – similar to a corporate process – but at the same time different because the rules of the game in education are quite a bit different. It will be interesting to see what happens. Here is a reference article:

A DROP OF DESERT DEW

As one gets to know other teachers professionally whether they are from the University setting or from peers at school – natural friendships and mutual respect develops. As I think about my personal growth in this area in my recent career – I found some interesting observations about those I respect and admire: they are passionate about teaching and making a difference in their profession. Tay Cooper is admired by his peers, administration and seeing him in action when issues arise is a learning experience for all those that observe and learn from him. A few examples in my extremely limited “hallway” contacts with Tay: he encourages me, listes to me, appreciates the work I am doing, sees value in my contributions, etc. Also, seeing him respond at large on mail to issues such as an intrusive ping against a teacher – his response reads as a complete lesson in history and civics – very impressive. What a precious asset to our school.

There are others that I have seen as well… early morning and some late evenings – thank you folks for being an example.

I found out that I also need a mentor at the University level that can bring into focus some of the issues I observe in my daily work. I need the perspective of someone with passion and experience as a teacher, administrator, University Professor and now Provost. That man for me is my friend and professor: Juan Necochea. At the drop of a hat I have an invite to visit him at The National Hispanic University in San Jose – to discuss some things that have been rattling in by brain. Juan is a drop of desert dew – all teachers need this source of refreshment.

EXAMPLE ASSIGNMENT FOR MY STUDENTS...

YOUR PERSONAL BLOG - SPRING 2008 - ASSIGNMENT

PURPOSE: To create a reflective writing that will help track our progress through the covered science material. The purpose is to reflect on meaning and the things that are of interest to you in relation to science. The blog must be kept up weekly!

MECHANICS:

Go to Google Apps - Documents

• Create a new document (YOU NEED TO DO THIS ONLY ONCE!) You will add your reflections to this one document every week
• Change the title of the document to: <YOUR NAME> - BLOG
• The document will have inside the following entries - with the LATEST ALWAYS ON TOP.

TITLE (Your own Design)

<Date> <First Paragraph.....>
<Second Paragraph...>
<Optional: Third Paragraph>

<Date>
<First Paragraph.....>
<Second Paragraph...>
<Optional: Third Paragraph>

ETC...

Content:

FIRST PARAGRAPH: What did I learn this past week? Reflect on the warmups, the lecture, the reading, the labs, the assginments.

SECOND PARAGRAPH: This is the important reflective paragraph: What does it mean to me? or, What does it potentially mean to me? What is the impact on my life?

THIRD PARAGRAPH: This is for extra credit - one paragraph on any science topic of interest to you - in any field of science - something you have read, something that you find interesting, an article you have read, anything on the news that week - etc. This last paragraph is optional.

Quality

Always spell check your work - do your best writing - show off! :)

Sharing

Follow the normal protocol - SHARE with the teacher as "Collaborator" and Invite Collaborator. Please do not e-mail your document.

EXAMPLE OF POSTED BLOGS:

Oscar's Journal

2/14/08

Happy Valentine's day! This week we started the new unit - Physics. The emphasis was speed. How fast do runners, whales, and dominoes fall. I think Mr. Hirmas was trying to cover the standard. We also learned what is the standard for physics. Oh, the big idea... yeah: motion.......

What does it mean to me? well - I don't know except that as a soccer player... there is lots of motion. I found a cool site that talks about soccer and physics at: http://soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm

2/8/08

Well... the last two weeks we covered: the cell cycle, cell division (two types: Mitosis & Meiosis). We learned about the Mitosis phases - remembered by the phrase: "you Promised Me Ana's Telephone" the acronym Pro Me Ana Tel then becomes Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase - each leading to cytokenisis the actual dividing of the cell. We learned about sex - that Meiosis is sex division resulting in 4 daughter cells (Mitosis only two) but meiosis has 1/2 the chromosomes....something like that. We also covered mutations types and the disease cancer - nasty stuff.

What does it mean to me? Well honestly I am not sure. I am young so cancer and stuff probably won't affect me. But my grandpa had cancer and died - I wish I knew even more about how sick he was. This bio stuff is interesting and I feel better prepared to even talk to my doctor. Will I be a scientist based on this? I am not sure - I rather go into business - but it is good to know medicine.

DIGITAL LEARNERS

Walk into a High School classroom and observe: iPod wires dangling from the top of T-shirts – normally one thin wire and connecting pod dangling while the other lead is securely plugged into an ear. All the while some hands are busy under the table while seemingly listening to the teacher whilst occasionally glancing down giving the teacher a clue that heavy text messaging is taking place in his class. Long hair and hood’s galore draping the heads of many students, not because the air conditioning is set to too low but because they nicely hide the electronic inputs: ear pods, blue tooth ear pieces, and who knows what else. Observe the teacher calling their attention and telling them to turn off their iPods and take off anything attached to their ears – there is a massive groan in the classroom. The students moan, “...but Miss I hear you just fine. Can’t I just listen to my music too?” Or, “Please Mr. its no big deal we can do both…I also do better in class when I have my pods on!” The class is “wired” with or without physical wires. Electronic devices from the simple to the ultra sophisticated fill the classroom and they are not District property. All the signaling is occasionally punctuated with flashes from phones or digital cameras or a cute tune coming from someone’s iPhone all adding to a tumultuous digital scent. You have just observed the new phenomenon in today’s schools: our digital students. You also have just witnessed a culture clash of traditional teaching being needled by digital probes.

An awesome and poignant message regarding DIGITAL LEARNERS can be found at:

Juan Necochea

It was great news to see a teacher like Juan Necochea recognized as one of the best in his profession. Congratulations Juanito!

Now he is off to San José to open up further vistas for students – keep an eye on this man… if you intersect with him you will be richly blessed.

Here is the article on his recognition at CSUSM – they start the article quoting me! (blush!) Check it out at:

FINALS...NOW JUMP TO NEXT SEMESTER

The tasks are complete - the unit nearly done. The extra credit reviews are behind us - all we have left is taking the finals.

How will my students do? Will the assesments really reflect their knowledge? I wonder and ponder and move on to the next benchmark... get them ready for the CST in April/May.

The new semester starts next week

Here we go....

Happy New Year

2008 is here! In the blink of an eye this past year has gone... What happenned? Wow...


May this new year be a blessed year for you and yours and that you may grow more and more in the Grace and Mercy of God. Pray for Peace - the peace of Jerusalem and the Peace of the World.

2008 - Here we come!

SHADOWS

In the afternoon sun a long shadow is cast. Giants walk and walked the earth – Mr. Heard a World War II Marine bends over the grave site of Juan Hirmas honoring another sorely missed giant – two men casting a lasting umbra. Oh, that we might learn from giants.

THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO UNDER SEIGE

Monday morning 10-22-07 7:54 AM. This is the sunrise in San Marcos looking South-East toward's Escondido and Rancho Bernardo... the fire cometh!

Here is today's letter to my niece as the start of Shabbat:

All is getting back to normal… the fires are under control and the wind has stayed down. We did not have to evacuate… it is sad for our community (the whole of San Diego) because 1000s of homes were lost – this fire was the worst natural disaster in a long time in Southern Ca. 17 people from Emmanuel Faith lost their homes. A physician that works with Cheryl – almost lost her life – she barely got out alive… lots of stories of real close calls. The evacuation was huge – close to 1’000,000 people had to move somewhere… yet everything worked very smoothly overall – the Feds were right on top of things – the centers opened without a hitch – there were places to go if you were out of your house – tents, blankets, food, etc was plentiful – volunteers galore to help people – it was an incredible outpouring of love and money. The loss of life minimal really for the size of the disaster. God is awesome – really. We had help from the Mexican fire-fighters – they brought their engines from Tijuana and the border to fight the fires as well as the manpower to help people – amazing. Stories abound of heroism – to save homes and property as well as lives. It is our prayer that God would use this event to bring people closer to himself – let me tell you there were lots of praying going on in San Diego this week.

Shabbat Shalom.

CRUCES

What an incredible event to restart my blogging. It has been six weeks since school started and I am well into our first quarter of study. Time just flies! Well today I was privileged to attend the CSUSM Border Pedagogy event which focused on the theater piece written by Dr. Carlos VonSon called “Cruces.” What a fantastic adventure – I had invited my students to the event – and three of them were with me along with Gretel the author's niece. All of this was made possible by courtesy of the generous Dr. Necochea - of course. What a treat! Here are some pictures:

You don't know the border issues unless you understand the reality of the crossing - "...las cruces de los cruces."