Interview #2 in a series of 2- What are the positive aspects of technology use in classroom and beyond?

              Once again I was amazed at the eloquent articulation of sixth graders, as well as their grasp on life in the digital age in their classroom and beyond. For this second interview,  I asked students to reflect upon the positive side of life in the digital age. Appearing to be slightly less animated than when I had asked them about the negative side of technology, they took the question seriously and jotted down a few notes about their feelings. A few interesting things came up during  discussion moments later, and the discussion took a surprising turn. Students were considering all types of technology not just their laptops, but phones, iPods, all video media, electronic devices and even cars. This was not my intended prompt for them, but this was their assumption about technology in general; that it should have broad inclusion of all things mentioned.  They all agreed that technology can make things more convenient especially in researching for schoolwork. It keeps you organized, contacted and updated was one mature  response. It's helpful for receiving quick information such as an environmental hazard, or a storm. One student remarked that he appreciated being able to write on a keyboard since he has poor penmanship. They included that it is easier to communicate with technology and to keep up with cultural awareness, online translators can be helpful with this, they thought. "It's entertaining."
            Even as the task at hand was to analyze the positive aspects of technology in their lives, students couldn't seem to resist talking about its negative aspects, much to my dismay as I tried to steer them back to the main interrogation. "More technology is not necessarily better," added one student, "because it does affect the environment, such as car emissions. Some people call it progress, but it's really a downfall because because of the bad effects it has." "It's good  to have a break and be disconnected for a while. People get angry when technology doesn't work. Then you realize that it's causing you stress, maybe you should get away from it," was another response.
           I don't think it's necessary to elaborate on the fact that these students verbal, written and analytical skills have clearly been increased due to their increased exposure to text. Maybe I should have them read  Hamlet's Blackberry, by William Powers? Based on their observations, I'm sure they would like it!

Review on Curriki as a Resource for Spanish: Middle Level

 This is a review on Curriki for teachers of Spanish on Curriki. Curriki is called the K-12 Open Curricula Community. it is described as a non profit, empowering educators to deliver and share curricula.  There is a lot of material  in Curriki, all written by teachers for teachers. When looking for specific material you have some search options. Your search is refined by grade and subject, and then by “type”. Your choices for type of resource are: any, interactive, video, podcast. The types of resource choices are: any, exercise, unit, lesson plan, games.

Some types of usage have more offerings than others. The “exercises” choice has the most to offer. I was hoping that there would be more material specifically for  Spanish. There is plenty of resource, however there are a variety of language offerings, so it is not specifically grouped for Spanish. You have to weed through the all of the other language offerings to find your subject. When you make your selected resource choice, the content is displayed. There is also a bar at the top which allows your to find more information regarding the resource, such as, standards connections and comments. I would definitely use some of the material in Curriki, and even found one lesson that I may use in class tomorrow! I could also add it to my portaportal site. So, a resource that could use occasionally with students and/or add it to my portaportal site. Students could even go to Curriki directly and work on material.  If you join and become a member of Curriki you can review the material and post a rating using a  5 star system, 1=lowest,  5= highest. The lesson plans are written by teachers and reviewed by teachers.  

Here comes the heads up: if you are choosing popular thematic lessons then you might find more extensive vocabulary and sentence grammar construction in Curriki resources ( the ones I checked at least).This can obviously be quite confusing for students, not to mention, frustrating for you, the teacher!  For example, in your instruction, if you have included only one word for the color “purple,” and the resource introduces another word for the color “purple,” it can be extremely frustrating for the learner who may now distrust you as their instructional source. You are now a source whose credibility is in serious question with your fifth grade! A source who may have given faulty information..... according to student developmental estimation! Anyway, many of the material resources had this extended vocabulary and grammar additions to basic thematic lessons. So you will have to decide whether or not it is suitable to what you have been teaching, or requiring students to understand at the time. Oh, the joys of second language teaching and finding appropriate resources!

Getting into the "Flow", Educational Nirvana.

Let me explain what I mean by getting into the flow when you are teaching. It’s a little bit like when you take advantage of a “teachable moment”, and the student makes the connections that you want them to make. Connections that will have an impact on their reality,( even if it’s just a critical perspective of their reality.)  Metaphysically speaking, that's pretty powerful! First and foremost, we as teachers want students to make powerful connections between their present and future reality with what they are learning.
         Here is a definition that I found on About.com: Elementary education. A teachable moment is “an unplanned opportunity that arises in a classroom where a teacher has an ideal chance to offer insight to his or her students.”  The article goes on to say, " that you can not plan for; rather it is a fleeting opportunity that must be sensed and seized by the teacher.” Let’s take this a bit further to get into  the “flow”. I think getting into the flow might focus more about how this process works to be both mutually beneficial for both the teacher and the student.  The type of experience that empowers us to know that we are in the right place, doing the right thing,.. simply put. Hopefully, we have all had a lot of these “flow” experiences in our teaching and our students have benefited from them also. They truly are sacred moments when you feel as if you have had some influence on learning for students that will help them........ whenever they recall it, or put in into practice. I can remember some meaningful  lessons, classes and teachers words or phrases as a young student. They were never, ever  about the subject material. They were generally times when the teacher was really leveling with us about life and being grown up, or our future, things of that nature. Pretty powerful occurrences, I’ll say again...at the risk of being redundant ! I have revisited some of these experiences time and again, and interpreted them to help fit my reality.  Students also need to be given flexibility to develop their creativity. Space and time in the classroom are not structures to support creative thinking, planning and work.  Most teachers and schools need more time in the schedule.  More use of digital technology and technology in general can help us with this.
           The teachable moment as well as getting into the "flow" is organic.  We do have to suspend our lesson plans or schedule to accommodate such unplanned occurrences. Have you ever veered away from a teachable moment just because it wasn’t scheduled? Horrors,.....be honest?  Well we all have had to at some point, for some reason. What would happen if we actually structured our school space and time to allow for this teacher and student creativity nirvana? How do we structure our time in school to allow for more teachable moments, and the “flow?”  Why must we constantly circumvent this for testing, not enough time in the block, etc? We need more of this OHMMM and nirvana time. We crave it, both teacher and student. it is the essence of true learning and creativity. The flow lessons are the lessons that we live for... both as students, and as teachers. Daniel Pink has much to say about the way we structure our time so as to create creative flow for both teacher and student. Economic studies have shown that positive growth has always occured when workers are given flexible space and time. I’m psyched, I’m all all for it. I am hopeful that being more flexible with our time and space for educational purposes will be our  near future.