This is a crosspost from the online journal I keep mostly for technology-related posts. However, this is also about teaching, and perhaps explains (along with daily grading of papers, lesson-planning, meetings and tracking down experienced teachers to bounce ideas off…) why I have been posting irregularly and rather poorly the last two months.

I owe my readers an update on the garden and personal life as well, but will do that this evening, when I hope to take actual “downtime” with no papers hanging over my head!

This will be brief, as my time is limited. Now teaching as a long-term sub in a middle school classroom. Learning as much as (and probably more than) the kids, and feeling highly stressed out much of the time. Also enjoying really wonderful moments, and stretching to my capacity.

I am using my macbook pro to connect to the school’s wifi and online grade book. Using Skyward, the same one the neighborhood school and my sons’ high school uses. Pretty ubiquitous around here.

I also bought an adapter so I can hook it up to the projector and show condensed versions of the textbook. The students are not highly oriented to print, so anything that reduces the effort of reading and allows them to get to the math quicker is worthwhile. It takes about 3 hours for me to do a powerpoint for a lesson. If I do a lesson over two or more days I do a quick review powerpoint the following day(s). Thinking about adding a few prezis, just for fun. I also print out notes taken directly from the powerpoint, most of which I find crumpled up or otherwise discarded, but for a few students they are really important. And of course I show a few videos either using the DVD player or youtube, to illustrate or highlight lessons.

I use my ipad mostly as a timer, occasionally to supplement the classroom calculators (which are fewer than the number of students), and rarely to give a kid who needs a break a math puzzle to work on. I don’t have time or energy during the day to read, so the books and professional journals loaded on it are waiting for me to have a nice long break (beginning of April). Just loaded Haiku Deck to the ipad, and will try that out for a quick overview of the previous chapter before the test on Friday. It looks like it may be a quick and easy way to add some color and life to the classroom.

There are a few working computers in the classroom, which the students are accustomed to playing games on. And that is apparently the only use they have been put to this year. I would love to have some computer-based research or activities, but in most of the classrooms the students need more work on cooperation, following directions and purposeful exploration before I try that.

If it turns out I will be here much longer, I will start making plans to have small groups of students work in pairs on the available computers, doing additional research or using some of the online supplemental instructional materials. It would have been nice for the current chapter (almost done), but I was still establishing classroom routines and expectations.

I think that teachers (both in training and in real life) get really excited about the possibilities of enhancing presentations, but I am finding that the prep for presentations is most valuable just in helping me distill the most important ideas and tasks. The shiny toys don’t really change the content of instruction, nor do they significantly change student engagement or learning. More on that in my regular blog later.


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