Teacher Certification Tests

This past weekend I participated in the Illinois Teacher Certification Testing at Parkland College in Champaign, IL. The tests themselves were fine (although by the time you get to question 100 you get the feeling that it should have been done 20 questions ago, and you still have 25 questions to go).

I'm very upset with the lack of testing transparency that was provided before taking the exams. This is in response to testing time as well as calculator use. I was told to bring my own graphing calculator for the mathematics test  and check to see if it is on the approved calculator list, but there was no emphasis on the fact that the proctor will completely clear the memory on your calculator. It was lightly mentioned before the table of approved calculators. It wasn't in bold. Everything that I had on my calculator was lost, and I had to flash my RAM in order for my calculator to even connect with my computer again.

In regards to the morning session, it also wasn't specified that if you only registered for one test then you would have the full 5 hours to take the one test. If I knew that I would not have registered for two tests, in which I had to complete both within the 5 hours. Also, you're given both tests at the same time so you can work on either as you choose, but I feel that this shouldn't be the case. I took both the Mathematics and the Science: Physics tests where each had specific calculator requirements. The mathematics test required me to bring my own graphing calculator to use whereas the physics test required me to use a scientific calculator, a graphing calculator wasn't allowed. I was also specifically not allowed to use a scientific calculator on the mathematics test. This was contradictory because I was allowed to have my graphing calculator the whole time and work on both tests together. Not that you needed it for the physics test (surprisingly), but it still does not show that they planned well for people taking two tests during the morning session.

After testing for 9 hours, I am unhappy with the whole experience. I wouldn't do it again the way that it is set up. I am a proponent for transparency (e.g. "feed up" where you tell your students what is expected of them), and I feel that the practice tests did not reflect the content of the real exams.

Question: How do the teacher certification exams work in your state? If you're in Illinois, what do you plan on doing?

(The Lack of) Paperless Courses

I remember my freshman year here at the university. The first week of each semester I would be inundated with multiple packets of paper for each course I was enrolled in, these were the distribution of the class syllabi and projects for the semester. It was nice to have everything laid out in front of me so that I could integrate the information into my own calendar and plan accordingly.

My junior year the campus had shifted towards a greener idea with regards to distribution of paper. The syllabi for courses were no longer to be printed out, but instead made available on course websites. This was fine, I still had access to the syllabus whenever I wanted and I could still easily integrate due dates into my schedule. I felt better about taking a step to a greener campus.

I am now in my senior year and courses are still distributing syllabi by email or course website, but the thing that bugs me is homework submission. Shouldn't we take the next step to a greener campus? I am going to take a look at our education courses in specific for this discussion. All education courses that I have enrolled in and am currently enrolled in have a Moodle or Compass website to supplement the course and distribution of materials, which is great so that professors/TAs do not need to print and hand out during class. My gripe is that I need to print out my assignments (which can be in the range of 3-15 pages long) and turn in to my teachers.

What is the point of printing out our assignments if we have Moodle or Compass, both which support document submission. Our teachers need to embrace the technology they are trying to teach us to use in their own courses. They should be willing to allow us to upload our assignments to these sites and be able to use a commenting tool in a word processor or in a PDF viewer (because really, they only comment in margins anyway). This would be a great next step to a greener campus here in our own education department.

One of my C&I professors is already embracing assignment submission on Moodle. The first year of my secondary education program my professor had us print out our assignments to bring to class to talk about them as well as upload them to our Moodle page under an assignment post. It turned out that we didn't get around to talking about our assignments the majority of the time, so now we do not bring printed assignments to class anymore, but he encourages us to bring our laptops in order to see a digital version if we are to discuss it. My professor chooses to disseminate assignment grades via email and not through the Moodle grading system, but this is a step in the right direction. If my other education courses this semester supported Moodle/Compass uploading, I would have saved 35 pieces of paper + ink so far.

A question: How do you feel about becoming a paperless course? What would this mean in terms of planning and grading?

Using Twitter in the Classroom

I see a lot of tweets in #edchat and #edtech about using twitter in the classroom and specific ways to use twitter, but how does this actually look like in a classroom? What programs are used to show these tweets? What do you specifically do with twitter that makes it a unique tool in the classroom?

I wanted to find the answers to these questions because I feel that twitter can be very useful in a class where students are very likely to have a cell phone (a regular cell phone can still support text-message based tweets to their twitter account).

I encourage you to watch the following video about twitter in a large classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8


Right now I will explore the following question:

What programs are used to show these tweets?
Tweetchat.com looks like a promising place to view chats in close to real time for displaying chats or participating in them at home (away from the classroom).

EduTweet is also pretty cool, it looks like it would serve like a clicker system in a classroom, the students post a tweet with a hashtag specific to the question (e.g. #math231q1) and the teacher can search this tag and EduTweet will generate a chart with all of the different answers provided by the students. I think this would be good in a math classroom for numerical answers, or even for a multiple choice prompt.

TweetDeck is used in the above video as the facilitator of the twitter discussion. I think this is nice because you can set up columns and show multiple discussions at once so the students can view these all at the same time whereas I think the others are limited in this sense. You could ask the class a question about one thing and then a second thing without removing the first question's feed so students can refer back to it if they want.


Do you have any other ideas of programs that can be used to facilitate the use of twitter in the classroom?

Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Throughout my calculus discussion twice a week, I definitely see the difference in my quality of questioning of the students whether or not I prepare the lesson well ahead of time or I go off a generic lesson plan for the day. I think my students learn more on these days when I prepare questions for my students as well as an introduction to the topic.

Upon reflection of my questioning with my students, I notice that I go very quickly, wanting my students to come to conclusions faster than they are (or rightly should), mainly because I am time limited and the class is set up into groups where I need to circulate and facilitate understanding. If I stay too long at one group, another group can get stuck and not progress through the day's investigation. I'm not sure what to do about this because the students are supposed to be getting through the entire worksheet each class period, but if I allow for more processing time the students may not get to the topics they must cover that day. I believe this is a common problem in all classrooms which must teach to a test, or follow strict guidelines.

I'm going to have an informal midterm ICES (Instructor & Course Evaluation System) form so that I can see what the students want changed before the end of the semester, when the formal ICES forms are distributed. I will be only teaching this course at the University for this semester since I will be student teaching next semester, so it is valuable that I do this ahead of time, too

What questions do you think I should include in this evaluation form?

First Day of Observations

Today was the first day of being in my new classroom for the semester. It was very eventful day to say the least. Many challenges ahead.

I promise I will blog soon. I want to talk about differentiated assessment in conjunction with differentiated instruction. In the mean time, I want to point you in the direction of this blog post: http://realteachingmeansreallearning.blogspot.com/2011/09/differentiated-assessment.html

Time Management

I feel that balancing the teacher-student-tutor roles in my life is a losing battle to time management. I know being a full time teacher next year will be tiring and time consuming, but I feel that having one role will be easier to manage. Right now it's not simply teaching one thing, taking one class, tutoring one student, I have multiple streams of thought and action in each of my roles. Maybe when I'm a teacher I can focus on just one domain of my professional life.

Because of this crunch, I don't feel that I am learning a lot from my courses. There's nothing particularly new or stimulating in any of the new courses this semester, much of what the new courses are covering were detailed in my methods course (so I see no need for distinction other than a line on my transcript).

Current teachers, veterans and new, what is your schedule like when you teach? Do you have 12 hour days all throughout the week? Are you able to do things more at your discretion? I would like some advice here if I can ask for it.

I wanted to take some time to write, basically, that I'm busy. Now back to my multiple lives. I will try to write a better post about what I am learning in my assessment course over the weekend.

Technology in the University Classrom

Keeping on the topic of technology in the university classroom for the week, I want to revisit my 3-hour lecture. This is the course that initially fueled the fire to write my first 21st Century Learner post. I love the material in the course, I love the lecturer (she is clear, speaks well, and is interesting to listen to), but the TAs are less lovable. From what I understand, the TAs jobs are to grade any assignments we have (daily write ups, quizzes, homework, exams), but also to circle around the lecture hall like vultures waking students up, telling them to put their phones away, or telling them to get off facebook or any other website that doesn't look like notes. The rationale provided by the TAs for this behavior is:

1. It is distracting to other students.
2. You are paying for this course, why would you spend time on things like facebook.
3. It is against department policy to use technology during the lecture (this is actually what the TA said in an announcement to the class).
4. You should act the way you want your future students to act.
5. If you have other things to do in this class, then leave. You should be focused on this course.

I know I am not entitled to use my cellphone or laptop in class, but I am having a hard time understanding this rationale from the TAs' perspective. It must be a generational/technological divide between us, because many of those reasons the TAs have given for not using laptops or cellphones in class are the reasons I would use in support of using laptops or cellphones in class. 

1. It is distracting to other students. Let me tackle the distraction argument. In a lecture hall of 100+ students, I will not notice someone on the other side of the room, or even really the person in front of me, surfing facebook. This is because I am paying attention to the lecturer, and I will only be distracted by others surfing the web if I want to be distracted. The only real distractions that occur in a lecture hall are movements (shuffling through papers, getting out of a seat, people walking around) or talking. Other things like checking a cellphone are not your business, you should be focused at the front of the hall anyway and not at the person next to you or even down the row pulling out their phone to check the time. I am highly distracted by the TAs walking around the room, telling students in regular voice to shut their laptops, or when the TAs are trying to wake a student that is sitting in the middle of a row surrounded by other students who has fallen asleep. Last week, the TA actually climbed over chairs into the center of the lecture hall to wake up a student. Suffice it to say, I do not know what happened in lecture that day because I was more focused on the TAs talking, walking around, and their attempts to wake up sleeping students. Honestly, a sleeping student is the least of my distractions.

2. You are paying for this course, why would you spend time on things like facebook. I am paying for this course, so why wouldn't I spend time on facebook during class? I think this is another technological divide, but when I use facebook in class it is not for general surfing. Facebook has a feature called "groups" where you can have a discussion board and share documents, events, photos, etc. with the other members of the group. This course provides incomplete lecture slides prior to class, so as 21st century students we create a collaborative document with the lecture slides that the members of the group can open and edit in order to make it complete. The link to this document is posted on the group facebook for easy retrieval. Many of my classmates were reprimanded for having facebook open simply to get the link to this document. Facebook also has a built-in chat which allows me to ask questions to my peers without distracting others by talking aloud. Since everyone in the lecture hall can see it (everyone in the lecture knows each other, and is a member of the group by design), if they had that question too they can see it answered if they choose. You can minimize or not participate in the chat, it is at the full discretion of the student.

3. It is against department policy to use technology during the lecture. This statement infuriated me. For  one, I was not informed of any department policy (I am very well familiar with the Student Code, which does not have anything in it about technology), nor does this policy actually exist. I am unsure of the intent of this statement. I also would think that many people in the department would disagree with this because of the increasing use of technology in the education process.

4. You should act the way you want your future students to act. I agree with this, but I am in a different situation that my future students will be. My future students may not have access to technology, or my school may have a policy regarding technology use (such as cellphones or laptops) in the classroom. Even if my students were able to use their cellphones in class, I would encourage the usage of their cellphone for classroom related activities in order to model proper behavior and usage in the classroom. Although I do admit getting distracted every once in a while and checking my email on my smartphone (it is a 3 hour straight lecture), I do use my phone in a way I want my future students to. Today I was unable to bring my laptop to class, so I took notes on my smartphone. I was promptly told to put my cellphone away because it is a distraction. Why is there discrimination against my smartphone in the classroom?

5. If you have other things to do in this class, then leave. You should be focused on this course. I do agree with this, but please practice what you preach. You tell us that if we're grading for another class or doing homework we need to put it away or leave. TAs, please don't grade or look at other material during our lecture either. It supposedly is your job to be there for the full 3 hours, that is not the time for grading if we cannot do grading either. You should be modeling proper behavior too, like I am trying to do for my future students.

I think this will be my last post regarding the lack of technological support in this course. It is the one bad seed of the semester, and I will just need to deal with it.