Content, Instruction, and Technology

After a crazy week it's always nice to have the Labor Day weekend to recover!

In my AP class I struggle to give adequate time for debriefing the summer work, going over the syllabus and logistical information about the course and moving us forward to keep up the pace so that we are finished in time for the exam on May 15. It felt like we had only a brief discussion about the highlights of the summer reading, but I was able to process with them how the AP US History exam is graded on a curve and that they will be competing with the "smartest" kids in America (which maybe they are the smartest themselves!) for those scores on the Exam. More kids take the exam for US History than any other subject because all students must take a US History class to graduate. This puts a little stress on them as you can imagine. Having said that, I do let them know that at Maranacook our scores in all 5 score ranges are above the State and National average.

Despite all this, I have also pushed them forward and we have begun where they left off from the summer work. This means we started analyzing the colonies socially and politically in the years in and around the French and Indian War.

There was some anxiety this week around the release of iPads for all of our students. The State of Maine negotiated with Apple and other companies to provide a "device" for all students and teachers in grades 7-12. For the last 5 years this has meant MacBooks. However it has also meant my district could not afford this for High School Students so our students have had to use a netbook running with Linux and having lots of issues. All of that goes away as all teachers in my district 6-12 have MacBook Airs and iPad Minis, meanwhile all students in grades 6-12 have iPads all provided by the State (each District shares some of the costs). This program is known as the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.

The iPads were rolled out Friday morning and the plan was to have students power them on and personalize their unique Apple ID. That worked for some, but most had trouble getting on to the network all at the same time. This year will present quite a learning curve with this technology but i am very excited by the possibilities and capabilities! We were in a training at a Staff meeting and I witnessed some Staff who were clearly overwhelmed. I fear for them as they seem to struggle to understand the technology that to me seems so easy I was thinking about other things during the training. I'm not sure how things will be for them going forward. I am excited to use iTunes U Course Manager, iBooks Author, and iMovie. In fact, I received a grant for a High Quality HD Video Camera for my students to use to create movies and edit them in iMovie on their iPads! I hope to post more about these projects on my Blog later!

 

(This is the Camera I received with my grant)

This week I also started to make plans to finish my work for our school's Accreditation visit in March so that we can re re-accredited through NEASC. I started thinking this week about Literacy strategies as well. I am working with 2 other teachers here in Maine to deliver 2 Webinars on Literacy strategies in Social Studies later this year through a State run Professional Development program known as the Cross- Discipline Literacy Network. This program is offered to all Maine teachers for a small fee and includes face to face meetings at locations around the State and 2 online Webinars focusing on different strategies and they get to pick which ones they want to try. I am on the Board for the Maine Council for the Social Studies, and next week we have our first meeting of the new school year. Right now we are planning the annual conference for educators in Augusta in November. This year's Conference will be at the Civic Center and the theme is "Content, Instruction, and Technology: Standards-Based Approaches for 21st Century Learners". 

I am most excited about our Keynote speaker for this conference. Jared Peatman is a Professor from Virginia who will be talking about the Gettysburg Address (this year is the 150th anniversary of the address) and ways to use it in the classroom to address Common Core Standards. This is just the tip of the iceberg as there will be more presentations and more vendors then I think we have ever had for a MCSS Conference. November 8 should be a great day!

(Me, a tourist, and Lincoln at Gettysburg)