March 2008

I’m trying something new (yet again) and have created a forum here called Ask Kate. Head on over and check it out - you can give me your feedback there or in a comment here, or take the time to use the forum to ask a question - that’s what it’s there for!

Why a forum? I’ve explained it all in the forum (in the Example Question), but the fact that this is a new(ish) Edublogs feature made me want to try it and my dear friend (although he won’t teach me Spanish) Frank did it and I wanted to see how it works.

Feedback is welcome!

@ijohnpederson just tweeted this to me:

and I couldn’t stop myself from blogging about it immediately. This article is a must-read - “We Have the Technology to Change” by Michelle Levesque. Michelle says (referring to her new hobby of programming in high school):

“No one explained to me that my new hobby was much more common among men than women, but I probably wouldn’t have cared if they had. Growing up, I had always spent a lot more time with the boys in my class than with other girls, preferring the adventure games that the boys played to the girls’ games of house and dolls. And although the lack of diversity in technology eventually became something that bothered me greatly, it was because I felt that the lack of women in the field was a symptom of other problems. If the “boys club” atmosphere was keeping out women, it was probably keeping out a lot of other important personalities, ideas, and philosophies. It was an indication that something was wrong and unhealthy and needed to be fixed in the field. But it was never something that stopped me personally—if nothing else, because I loved rising to meet a challenge.

When I finally reached university, I had to select a major to apply for and I was met with a difficult decision. I’d always loved and done well in the humanities, but finally there was the opportunity to pursue my passion for programming in an academic setting. I decided to enroll in Computer Science, but picked up as many non-Computer Science classes as my department would allow. I found that there was an amazing overlap between them, and that the material I learned in my political science and philosophy classes were just as applicable to a software engineering career as the programming classes were.”

I found this so interesting because I had a conversation with my best friend and running partner during a run this past weekend where I was trying to describe to her my newfound fascination with playing around in WordPress and trying to teach myself (slowly) some coding. I told her that I had always wanted to take more Computer Science and Information Systems courses when in college, but I just didn’t feel like I fit in with that culture (note: I graduated with my accounting degree in 2002, so this wasn’t all that long ago!). It was so timely that John shared this article with me just now because I’m realizing that if I had “rose to meet the challenge” like Michelle did, I could have been in a very different field than I am today. Admittedly, accounting isn’t necessarily a girly field, but business majors tended to be where girls like me migrated at the time and at my university. My roommate majored in IS and I was always jealous of the projects she was working on, but just didn’t feel comfortable with the all-male crowd she was in. The single CS and IS courses I took made me feel like I do when I’m playing with new tech toys today - completely engaged and wrapped up in my work. I wish I would have acted on my urges to change majors back then.  Call me girly, call me weak, but I was what I was - no going back on that.

I think the thing that would have made me more likely to go against my feelings of not fitting in would have been more introduction to *hard* technology in high school, before I made my decision about my major. The only technology I was exposed to in high school (graduated in 1999) was in business-related computer courses - Word Processing, Accounting, Shorthand, and such. These courses were the reason I chose my business major, and while they interested me, they were never a passion like exploring new tech is now.

Just something to think about as I teach the young women in my classrooms and raise my daughter…………oh wait……….isn’t this something we need to address with BOTH genders? Hmmmmmmm…………………will ponder.

I started my 6th 25-day rotation of 4th grade keyboarding (4 sections of 20-30 students, 2 in one school, 2 in another) today and it’s just amazing how my teaching has changed since the beginning of the year. It may be my first year teaching, but I was fairly certain when I walked into my first 4th grade class in September that I knew what to do and how to do it. The interesting thing is that I don’t think I’m necessarily a better teacher now, but I’m definitely more efficient and reflective. My classroom management has improved and my lessons have all changed drastically. I’m in a unique position - I teach an average of 3 sections (4 this round) for 25 days and move on to the next schools and start all over. I have taught this same material approximately 13 times already this year and am starting on 14, 15, 16, and 17. Every computer lab is different and every group of students is different. I’ve had 2 labs where I wasn’t able to use the projector, which made teaching those sections much more difficult. I’ve had groups of 32 students and a group of 16 students - I’m sure you can guess which was easier there!

Every group of students is different because of many things, but the 2 most important that I’ve noticed is the school they’re in and the classroom teacher they have. I’m not judging any group, not at all, but I just find it fascinating how different 4th graders can be. The group dynamics are amazing, as any teacher knows, but the fact that I change groups so often make the differences really striking.

The differences in my teaching amaze me too and I think it’s been the best learning experience ever to have to adapt to so many new environments and situations. I substitute taught before entering this position and I truly believe that subbing is something every teacher should have to do. I’m all for adding substitute teaching to teacher preparation programs (one quarter student teaching, one subbing) - why not let the education students earn some money while training? I’ll argue that it’s one of the very best ways to practice classroom management skills in a “live” setting while seeing numerous classroom and school settings (and staff dynamics). I subbed in 4 districts, K-12, across all disciplines, and learned more than I could ever write here.

One of the main changes I’ve made to my teaching is really simplifying the curriculum. I started out using a keyboarding program called Bernie’s Typing Travels which requires students to login and although it does save their work, it would take these 4th graders months to ever actually learn the entire keyboard. I’ve switched to a free online program called Dance Mat Typing that doesn’t save work, but gets the kids through the alphabet and some punctuation in about 15 or less 30-minute class periods after being introduced to the homerow and proper posture. This leaves us 2 weeks to actually USE the keyboarding skills, where before I was finishing up learning our last letters on the last day of class. (I didn’t want to pick apart the two programs here, but can if anyone is interested…………)

I’m also doing a lot less dictation and letting the students move through the lessons at their own pace and helping individually as needed. I found that while some students really needed dictation to understand finger placement, the majority of students are able to move through the lessons with minimal correction. My main objective, besides the obvious one of teaching touch typing, is maintaining motivation and excitement for doing the activities. The students seem to really enjoy using DanceMat and working at their own pace, and by my observation and their final WPM rates, their skills have improved at a greater rate than they did while using my previous teaching method. Many students are practicing at home with no prompting from me, which is one of the advantages of an online program.

I’ve experimented with a lot more things that I mentioned here, but you can get the idea that while it might not be all that exciting to teach the same thing over and over and over and over……………………it is an effective method for evaluating teaching methods and great practice for adapting to new environments. Many of the teachers I work with only re-teach material once every year (if that) and are in the same classroom year after year. While I do hope to end up in a position where I have my own classroom and have longer periods of time with students (and meatier subjects than keyboarding……..I just dream of getting to teach accounting!), I have to admit that as a new teacher, this is probably the best way I could have started. I’d be really interested to see if there’s any way possible for this kind of experience to be implemented in teacher prep programs - I’m a convert.

Let’s keep that on the DL, though, don’t want administration to think I want to do this forever - I’m initiated, ready to move on up :-) C’mon Kate’s classroom, where are you?

You can see all of my keyboarding resources here: Keyboarding Links

Some more resources for you! A friend emailed me this morning asking where she could find royalty-free music for her students to use in a project - I didn’t actually know, since I haven’t done this before, so I “asked twitter” and amazed my friend with the quick and plentiful responses! I compiled most of them in del.icio.us and they’re here if you’d like them. Even though I don’t need to use them right now, I made sure to compile them for later on when I’m doing the same kind of project. Yet again, if you have any great ones that I don’t have listed, just throw them in here!