Glitchy Tech - Be the Calm One

It happens every year at the beginning of the year.  My students get their computers.  I am ready to get them enrolled in my class on our learning management system.  I am psyched to get my 8th graders blogs set up and to put my digital textbook on their computers.  I have one day in my first few days set aside just for this purpose.  And then . . .

Two kids have some weird thing that keeps their computer from opening the book.  )Make a note to send him a pdf version while we figure this out.)  Halfway through the day, the filter experiences something that causes two of my classes to be unable to set up their blog because they can get to WordPress but can't confirm their e-mail.  (Send a help ticket to IT for this.)  A student wasn't listening when you gave them the access code to get on the LMS, so he's not getting the information he should be. (Remind him of the code, again.  Don't worry, you'll get to remind him again tomorrow.)

Our IT people are AWESOME, and they work hard to make our system run smoothly.  No matter how good they are, there are just problems they cannot anticipate.  You cannot test 600 computers trying to get to the different websites different teachers use until they try.  Students love drama, so they make out like these tech glitches are the end of the world.  In their minds, this week of troubleshooting tech will cause them to fail, keep them from getting into college, or getting a job, or getting a house; and they will most surely be living under a bridge - all as a result of this filter issue.

Deep breaths, teachers.  You are the adults in the room.  Remind them that this happens every year.  Remind them how great it is to have this problem when so many in the world have no access to technology at all.  Remind them that the IT people are working hard to solve the problem.  Remind them that their teachers are not insane people who wish to see them fail and will, of course, adjust the due date of that blog post or have them submit it some other way.  One more thing, teachers.  Since you know this might happen, have a non-tech backup plan for that day.  When the thing doesn't work the way it is supposed to, do the backup plan.  Then, you can do all that tech stuff after it is fixed.

Two weeks from now, when everything is running smoothly, no one will remember that there were any tech issues at the beginning of the year (except the tech people); so let's not waste our precious energy worrying about it now.

Science Teacher's Super Bowl

I know.  I know.  The last thing you need on August 22 is another post on the eclipse.  Following NASA on Twitter means I have read so many posts and articles that I can't keep them all straight.  Then, there were the frightened people who kept posting the same article from "an ophthalmologist" (I teach my students if the source is vague, it is suspect.  Don't post something where someone hasn't shared their name.)  Last night, my feed was filled with photos from the path of totality as well as our local 93%.  You've seen everything you can possibly see regarding the moon's path across the sun.  That's fine.  I'm writing this one for myself.

Our school bought every student a pair of eclipse glasses; we even ordered them back in March before they became solid gold.  After spending the first few weeks of school fielding emails about whether we got the right ones, reassuring people that the ancients did not all go blind, and teaching some basic lessons on the cause and frequency of eclipses to my students, the day was finally here.  I'm a science teacher, but I'm also a yearbook advisor, so I enlisted the help of other teachers and parents to take shots of the kids in their glasses or with their pinhole arrangements.  My camera was solar filtered, so I asked the people who couldn't get the eclipse itself to get the kids watching.

I set out a few minutes early to set up my tripod and camera, expecting to get nothing.  Thank goodness, someone suggested bringing out a chair because I would have had difficulty squatting by the tripod over and over.  I took about 75 photos in the hour I was outside, but I didn't want my attempts to photograph the event to interfere with having the experience, so in between shots, I leaned back in the chair with my glasses on and enjoyed the eclipse as a human being, thankful that our administration bought glasses for us.  The experience was so much more real than the pinhole setup I had in third-grade.

The best part of the day, however, was being with and listening to my students.  They hovered around, asking questions of me and each other.  Since we didn't get blackout darkness, they had some difficulty describing what the sky looked like.  To be fair, since it doesn't look like anything else, it is difficult to describe.  Among my favorite descriptions were, "It's like a storm is coming, except it's still blue" and "It's like the beginning of that one Harry Potter movie, where he's on the playground."  I have e-mails pouring in with photos from our elementary students, who went home to watch it with their parents as well as group shots of kids in the glasses.  It's going to be a fun yearbook page, but my memories of enjoying it with my kids cannot be adequately captured.

Ask The Bigger Question

You may have noticed that life seems to be moving faster than it used to.  It's not really.  After all, we have the same 24 hours in every day that people always have.  It seems like it is moving faster because we are trying to fit more into those 24 hours and fueling them with caffeine.  Instead of Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, at 6 pm, we get news all day from multiple sources without regard to their credibility.  We want to get so much done that we are actually pursuing whether or not humans can live without sleep.

The relentless speed of input and activity means we rarely slow down long enough to reflect and ask the bigger questions, like how certain events fit into a larger context.  Our brains are processing so much data that we have no time to go through the steps of learning (via Architecture of Learning by Kevin Washburn).  We are constantly at the Experience level, but as our brains strive to reach Comprehension, a new piece of news comes our way.  It is hard for our brains to get to Elaboration and Application.  For that reason, we aren't fully integrating these experiences.  This cannot be good for the human brain, but we aren't even slowing down long enough to ask that question.

As a result of this constant bombardment without intellectual integration, we revert to our most basic of emotions, self-defense.  As an example, an announcement comes over the intercom at school, asking for men to come and help move some chairs.  The women in the building immediately react that this was sexist, even though, given a few moments of thought, we know that the people we work for don't view women as weak or less than men.  Because we don't take the time to reflect, we react out of surface level emotions.  We don't act; we react.  Because we live in 2017, we take our reaction to social media.  Because we live in a community, our reaction cause other people react as well; and we are soon in a Twitter war.  Other people jump on our side or the other side, and it gets out of hand quickly.  We say things we wouldn't if we just slowed down long enough to ask the bigger questions.

YIKES!  This can't be the way God meant for us to live our lives.

The good news is that we can make it better.  It won't be hard, but we will have to do it on purpose.  We have to slow down for a few seconds and ask ourselves a few questions.  This will keep us from reacting emotionally and, in some cases, keep us from reacting at all.

1.  What do I actually know about the situation?
Because of instant video footage, we think we know events.  The truth is, we may only know the 30 seconds shown in the video, which the person took after the inciting incident began.  We may not know what started the problem, but we are quick to judge that 30 seconds as though we were there.  Stop for another 30 seconds and ask yourself what you actually know before you respond.

2.  Do I know the character of the people involved?
My reaction to strangers should be different than my reaction to people I know well.  If I know that a person is not a sexist or a racist, I don't need to react to their tweet as though sexism or racism is clearly implied.  Take 30 seconds to say to yourself (out loud if you need to), "I know they didn't mean to come off that way."  Then, if you are still bothered, take a few minutes to go talk to them instead of about them.

3.  How will my reaction represent me?
This is big.  When we react out of self-defense or anger, we know everything that led up to that emotional moment.  Your Facebook friends do not.  They are not inside your mind, and to them, you may just look like an over-reacting, crazy person.  I assume you would not want to be viewed that way (unless it is the truth about you).  One over-reacting tweet may not ruin your reputation, but a series of them will.  Take 30 seconds to ask yourself, "Do I want this to be what people think of me?"

4.  Does my reaction fit with my worldview?
I am a Christian school teacher, so I spend a lot of my day thinking about worldview.  As we take in new information, it is filtered through our worldview.   That is why two people looking at the same data can interpret it as pro-creationism or pro-evolution.  Both people are reading the same thing different ways.  We think less about this, but our reactions should also be filtered through our worldview.  If I believe in the Biblical Jesus, my reaction should be Biblical.  That doesn't mean it will never be angry (Jesus did drive the money changers out of the Temple with a handmade whip), but I imagine it would be angry less often if I filtered it through a Christlike worldview.  I imagine the source of the anger would be less about me than most reactions we put online.  It's probably going to take more than 30 seconds to process this one, but it is worth the time.

We are all participating in a large scale, high stakes, sociological experiment.  That would be okay if it weren't rewiring our brains and making us reactive creatures.  You can step aside and change the parameters of the experiment.  Put the phone down for a minute.  React later.  There's no value in reacting first; there is only value in acting well.

Backwards Planning

Our school has summer assignments for teachers.  We read a couple of professional development books and do discussion boards.  This year, we watched Oscar worthy safety videos (don't touch blood or stand on unstable surfaces, that sort of thing) and do an activity called "Backwards Planning."  This is the one thing I have not yet completed.  I've thought a lot about it, but I just haven't gotten in down on paper yet.

I casually said to a few people last week, "Isn't that what all teachers do anyway?  It only makes sense to figure out what you want to do and then figure out how to get there."  Those people looked at me like it was cute that I thought that.  Apparently, some teachers just start teaching and see where it goes; I didn't know that.

Whether by training or personality, I have always been that way.  The yearbook really couldn't happen if I didn't think that way.  You have to see an end and then take the photos or gather the materials it takes to get that result.  Our professional development coach tells me that I can do my assignment as a blog post, so here goes.

As a means of learning about rotational motion, I have my students design and 3D print spinning tops.  We then hold a contest to see who can spin the longest time.  The first time I did this was last year and, while it was fun, I'm not sure how much physics they learned from it.  When it comes down to it, I think I presented things in the wrong order.  They started designing before learning the concepts behind rotation, so they just did it based on other tops they had seen.  To make that better, I'd like to make some adjustments for this year.  The questions we were asked to address in our planning are answered below.

1) What are the desired outcomes?

Answer: Students should be able to explain the relationship between shape, mass, radius, etc. on angular momentum.

2) What evidence shows progress and mastery of the outcome?

Answer: The design of the top will be accompanied by a grid in which students describe the shape, mass, radius, etc. and explain their thinking from a physics standpoint.

3) What activities will effectively get students to the outcome?

Answer: Spend the first day going through the design thinking steps and research online. Spend the next few days designing and refining in the 3D print program and filling out the thinking grid.

4) What is your essential guiding question for the unit?

Answer: What factors influence the angular momentum of a rotating object?

5) Is there an opportunity to connect with another teacher/subject? How could you collaborate to bring your class experiences together?

Answer: While I do that with other challenges, I'm not sure it makes sense here. That said, if our math teachers can think of a way to join in, I'm thrilled to do it.

6) What is the Biblical Integration?

Answer: The creation mandate instructs mankind to subdue the earth. All technology is part of that mandate as we take advantage of the laws of physics and materials from creation to create culture and helpful devices.

7) Add technology last. Where is it appropriate? Where does it provide differentiation?

Answer: We add technology last to make sure we aren't just doing tech for tech's sake. This particular activity benefits from the 3D printer. Although, if a student told me they wanted to carve a top from wood or mold metal rather than design in the 3D design program, I would be thrilled with that - built in differentiation. Their designs also provide differentiation as there is more than one way to be right.

Writing FOR Learning

If written before about wanting to take advantage of the hyperlinking brain of the digital native.  It took me a long time, but I finally found that ability in writing my own 8th-grade science textbook.  You can read about that here and here.  This year, I decided it was time to do the same for my other prep, Physics.

I put writing the book for Physics off longer for a couple of reasons.  First, it is more difficult material.  If I had been learning to use the app and writing for the first time with the most complex material I teach, it might have taken longer to finish the first book than it did.  Also, I wanted to see how the 8th-grade book worked for a few years before I jumped in.  The timing of this worked out well because the students who first used my book in 8th-grade will also be the first to use the physics book.  They know the deal and responded to it well, so they seemed like a nice group to start this book with.

In my posts about the other book, I told you some of the benefits of writing your own.  Among them were arranging it in the order you like, using examples and analogies that work in your classroom, and the increased likelihood the kids will read it.  I also talked a lot about the use of hyperlinks as that was the motivating factor in my effort to teach the digital native.  Now that I have worked with my book for three years and am writing again, I want to discuss other benefits.

1.  Do you have a chapter you struggle with in your teaching?  You try to explain things and find it difficult to get through to students with clarity?  I do.  Teaching electricity has always been difficult for me.  I like teaching circuits, but the explanation of voltage is difficult for me.  My understanding of it is so tenuous that it can be rattled by a student asking a question.  (By the way, to help with that, I show a Khan Academy video that day - Don't feel bad if you need the help of another explainer than you.  It's humility, not weakness.)  Sorry, back to the point of this paragraph - Writing about that topic helps you.  It helps you think through your explanation on a deeper level than you have before.  You read what you have written and realize it needs something.   That forces you to google the topic and find an explanation you haven't read before.  With clarity for yourself, you write a better explanation and include the link to the site that helped you on the page with your explanation.

 2. You will learn things you did not know.  I was writing about color blindness.  I don't spend a lot of time talking about this topic in my class, but I felt I needed a little more than a few sentences if I was going to include it.  I looked it up and learned the causes of 7 different kinds of color vision deficiency and found a great resource in the National Eye Institute portion of the NIH website.  It's well written, interesting, and includes video animations.  I will be using this website in a project assignment next year.  Not only that, I can answer more questions and explain more things to my students.  This happened a two or three dozen times during the writing of this book.  I have more knowledge and more resources for my students.

3.  I wrote about the hyperlinks before, but this morning I had more clarity about them.  I was doing my summer homework in which we respond to a professional development book we all read.  This summer we read The Innovator's Mindset by George Curos.  One of the questions we were supposed to answer in our discussion board was "What do you want students to do with technology?"  This is an important question that EVERY teacher should ask themselves.  You don't want to use tech for tech's sake.  You want to figure out what is important that tech makes possible.  For 18 years, I have hoped to inspire my students to love learning.  I don't believe they will all be scientists, but I hope they will all continue to be learners for their entire lives.  As I wrote about that this morning, I realized the value that the hyperlinks were giving my students.  They saw that I was interested in something outside my curriculum enough to find and provide a link to it.  Perhaps that will inspire them to participate in some self-guided learning.  Here are a couple of examples:

When discussing the trajectory of projectiles, it is fun to talk about food fights.  The greatest food fight happens in Spain every year, so why not include a link that a student might want to follow.  Perhaps, that leads them to learn about Spain or tomatoes.

If you are teaching friction or rotation, it just makes sense to add a link to the science of a thing they like.  Right now, that's fidget spinners.

I wanted some real data to write a problem with.   I knew the information for copper, so I used the Statue of Liberty.  I included the link to her Wikipedia page in the hopes that students would explore the statue, the sculptor, our former relationship with France, etc.

I'm not sure that writing a textbook is for everyone, but I am going to recommend it to anyone who is struggling to teach a specific concept well or wants a good way to model their own curiosity of their students.  You might not want to go as far as writing an entire book.  Perhaps you want to write one concept that you need help with.  Perhaps, you want to write one chapter because the book you are using doesn't handle that as well as you would like.  Writing for your own learning is helpful in a way I don't think I could acheive any other way.

Why We Should Take Better Pictures

Now that cameras are ubiquitous, so are photos.  Gone are the days when you had to decide if it was worth using the exposure on your roll of film or figure out how many exposures you had left on the roll.  You no longer have to wait to get film developed.  You can now know instantaneously whether or not the picture "came out" and retake it immediately if it didn't.  This should have left us with better pictures, but unfortunately, it hasn't.



This meme absolutely infuriated one of my millennial Facebook friends.  She went on a tirade about how previous generations would have done it if they could have (probably true) and that there was nothing wrong with having fun with her friends this way (certainly true).  She went on and on about the ways prior generations wasted time (yep, got us there too).


She isn't wrong, but neither is the meme.


I have been taking photos as an actual hobby since 1990.  I have taken landscapes, animal photos, architectural photos, and vacation photos.  I teach yearbook, so I take pictures of kids doing work on computers, creating artwork, playing sports, performing in plays, dancing, singing, playing instruments.  I am one of the photographers at a camp during the summer.  I take photographs of kids doing woodworking, crafts, playing games with friends, posing with their counselors, participating in activities, and swimming.  I take about twenty-five thousand pictures every year.

Here are the pictures I don't take.
- Duck Faces - Five years from now, when campers look at the albums we gave them, duck faces will have no meaning.  A picture of themselves conquering a new challenge will.
- Tongue Out Faces - When my students look back on their yearbooks, I doubt that they will believe their tongue was their best feature and really wish that I had captured it.
- Shots of Body Parts You Can Only Take in a Mirror - I know that people who work out are proud of their hard work, but if you have to stand backward in a mirror in your underwear to show it, maybe there's a reason God made it that difficult.
- Selfies - I'm pretty sure even Narcissus would tell us to give it a rest.  He only looked at himself; he didn't force everyone around him to stare into the pool too.

There is a place for silly pictures, and I'm not saying you should have zero.  I am saying mix some meaning into the mix.  I am just asking people to slow down for a second and ask themselves how many identical silly shots are going to want in the future.  I have hundreds of prints in a shoebox in my closet; you have hundreds of thousands of digital photos on your phone or in the cloud.  When I flip through those prints, I'm glad there aren't twenty in a row of the same five people blowing their cheeks out at the camera.  Twenty years from now, when you flip through your photos, you might wish there were fewer of those and more of you actually doing something.  It only takes a second to document something you'll be glad you can remember later.  After all, it's in your pocket for the meaningful stuff just as much as it is for the silly stuff.

Book Recommendation - Two Sides of The Moon

I haven't had nearly as much time to read this summer as I read last summer.  As I spent time writing a book for my physics class (more on that later), I realized it was taking a lot more time than I had planned, so I put my reading books to the side.  That said, I did complete a few other than my required reading for school, and I want to share one of them with you.

Two years ago, I read Michael Collins' Carrying the Fire because my students often ask whether he was upset that he didn't get to walk on the moon after traveling all the way there.  I had owned the book for several years in a set including books by Armstrong and Aldrin as well but had not yet read it, so I did.  (For the record, he doesn't seem to hold any resentment about being the guy to stay in the capsule even though he acknowledges that anyone would have liked to have been in the other position.)  This year, it occurred to me that other astronauts of that time had probably written books as well.

As all of my students know, my favorite astronaut is Dave Scott, so I began my search with his name.  I'm so glad that I did because Amazon returned with this little gem.  It is called Two Sides of the Moon.  If you are an average consumer of NASA history, these two names may not mean much to you.  Dave Scott was a Gemini astronaut; he and Neil Armstrong performed the first docking in space.  He was also the commander of Apollo 15, and by then America had become bored with the moon (I do not understand that at all).  Alexei Leonov was a Russian cosmonaut, and I'm not sure any American can name one of those (maybe, maybe Yuri Gagarin, but I doubt most would know him).

This book is written by both men separately.  It alternates back and forth from the child of Alexei to the childhood of Dave.  Then it tells about Alexei's pilot training days, then Dave's.  You get the idea.  What I found compelling was that these were just guys doing their jobs.  They weren't political figures engaged in a global chess match, and they didn't see themselves that way.  They were guys who found jobs that they loved and wanted to do them well.

In reading this book, I also learned a few things I didn't know before.  Alexei trained as an artist and wanted to pursue that as a career, but he couldn't afford the school he got into.  He never gave it up and took crayons with him into space because he knew there would be moments words could not capture.  I learned the Yuri Gagarin died in a plane crash.  I learned the Dave Scott left a falcon feather, a clover, and Bible on the moon to represent the fauna, flora, and culture of Earth.  I learned that several American astronauts met and had drinks with several Russian cosmonauts on several occasions.  I knew already about the Apollo Soyuz joint mission, but I was delighted to learn the Deke Slayton actually finally got to fly on it.  (That will only matter to hard core space geeks; so if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't feel bad.)

Both men write in the very straightforward style you might expect from military men telling a story.  They don't get flowery with vocabulary or make any attempt to present themselves as the final word on anything.  They touch on the politics of the Cold War, but they don't dwell on it.  Both speak with a lot of respect for the program in the other country and what they were able to accomplish.  They tell you what happened and what they thought about it.  That's it.

If you are a space nerd, like me, you should read this book.  If you like learning about history from a first person perspective, you should read this book.  If you want to know more about the Apollo program that we landed once (some of my students are surprised to learn we landed six times), you should read this book.  You will walk away with more respect for the people of the Russian program and may find the Dave Scott is also your favorite astronaut.